"
A nondescript appeared in their midst, he panted the glad tidings.
A nondescript appeared in their midst, he panted the glad tidings.
Samuel Beckett
"
That was a nasty one, let him make what he liked of that one.
"Our Lord
"
"Speak for yourself" said the P. B. , nettled beyond en- durance.
"Our Lord was not. "
"You forget" said the P. B. , "he got it all over at procrea- tion. "
"When you grow up to be a big boy" said the Jesuit "and can understand the humility that is beyond masoch- ism, come and talk to me again. Not cis-, ultra-masochistic. Beyond pain and service. "
"But precisely" exclaimed the P. B. , "he did not serve, the late lamented. What else am I saying? A valet does not have big ideas. He let down the central agency. "
"The humility" murmured the janizary "of a love too great for skivvying and too real to need the tonic of urtica- tion. "
The infant prodigy sneered at this comfortable variety.
"You make things pleasant for yourselves" he sneered, "I must say. "
"The best reason" said the S. J. "that can be given for believing is that it is more amusing. Disbelief" said the soldier of Christ, making ready to arise "is a bore. We do not count our change. We simply cannot bear to be bored. "
"Say that from the pulpit" said the P. B. "and you'll be drummed into the wilderness. "
The S. J. laughed profusely. Was it possible to conceive a more artless impostor of a mathematician than this fel- low!
"Would you" he begged, putting his greatcoat on, "would you, my dear good fellow, have the kindness to bear in mind that I am not a Parish Priest. "
"I won't forget" said the P. B. "that you don't scavenge. Your love is too great for the slops. "
"Egg-sactly" said the S. J. "But they are excellent men. A shade on the assiduous side, a shade too anxious to strike
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. " He rose. "Observe" he said, "I desire
a rate. Otherwise
to get down. I pull this cord and the bus stops and lets me down. "
The P. B. observed.
"In just such a Gehenna of links" said this remarkable man, with one foot on the pavement, "I forged my voca- tion. "
With which words he was gone and the burden of his fare had fallen on the P. B.
Chas's girl was a Shetland Shawly. He had promised to pick her up on his way to Casa Frica and now, cinched beyond reproach in his double-breasted smoking, he sub- dued his impatience to catch a tram in order to explain the world to a group of students.
"
"The difference, if I may say so
"Oh" cried the students, una voce, "oh please! "
"The difference, then, I say, between Bergson and Ein-
stein, the essential difference, is as between philosopher and sociolog. "
"Oh! " cried the students.
"Yes" said Chas, casting up what was the longest divul- gation he could place before the tram, which had hove into view, would draw abreast.
"And if it is the smart thing now to speak of Bergson as —
acod"—heedgedaway "itisthatwemovefromtheOb- —
ject"—he made a plunge for the tram "and the Idea to Sense"—he cried from the step "and Reason. "
"Sense" echoed the students "and reason! "
The difficulty was to know what exactly he meant by sense.
"He must mean senses'* said a first, "smell, don't you know, and so on. "
"Nay" said a second, "he must mean common sense. "
. .
"I think" said a third "he must mean instinct, intuition, don't you know, and that kind of thing. "
A fourth longed to know what Object there was in Bergson, a fifth what a sociolog was, a sixth what either had to do with the world.
"We must ask him" said a seventh, "that is all. We must not confuse ourselves with inexpert speculation. Then we shall see who is right. "
"We must ask him" cried the students, "then we shall see. . . .
On which understanding, that the first to see him again would be sure and ask him, they went their not so very different ways.
The hair of the homespun Poet, so closely was it cropped, did not lend itself kindly to any striking effects of dressing. Here again, in his plumping for the austerity of a rat's back, he proclaimed himself in reaction to the nineties. But the little that there was to do he had done, with a lotion that he had he had given alertness to the stubble. Also he had changed his tie and turned his collar. And now, though alone and unobserved, he paced up and down. He was making up his piece, d'occasion perhaps in both senses, whose main features he had recently estab- lished riding home on his bike from the Yellow House. He would deliver it when his hostess came with her petition, he would not hum and haw like an amateur pianist nor yet as good as spit in her eye like a professional one. No he would arise and say, not declaim, state gravely, with the penetrating Middle West gravity that is like an ogleful of tears:
Calvary by Night the waste of water
the water
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in the womb of water an pansy leaps.
rocket of bloom flare flower of night wilt for me
on the breasts of the water it has closed it has made an act of floral presence on the water
the tranquil act of its cycle on the waste
from the spouting forth
to the re-enwombing
untroubled bow of petaline sweet-smellingness kingfisher abated
drowned for me
lamb of insustenance mine
till the clamour of a blue bloom beat on the walls of the womb of the waste of
the water
Resolved to put across this strong composition and cause something of a flutter he was anxious that there should be no flaw in the mode of presentation adopted by him as most worthy of his aquatic manner. In fact he had to have it pat in order not to have to say it pat, in order to give the impression that in the travail of its exteriorisa- tion he was being torn asunder. Taking his cue from the equilibrist, who encaptures us by failing once, twice, three times, and then, in a regular lather of volition, bringing it off, he deemed that this little turn, if it were to conquer the salon, required stress to be laid not so much on the content of the performance as on the spiritual evisceration of the performer. Hence he paced to and fro, making a habit of the words and effects of Calvary by Night.
The Frica combed her hair, back and back she raked her purple tresses till to close her eyes became a problem. The effect was throttled gazelle, more appropriate to evening wear than her workaday foal at foot. Belacqua's Ruby, in her earlier campaigns, had favoured the same taut Sabine coiffure, till Mrs Tough, by dint of protesting that it made her little bird-face look like a sucked lozenge, had induced her to fluff things a bit and crimp them. Un- availingly alas! for nimbed she was altogether too big dolly that opens and shuts its eyes. Nor indeed was lozenge, sucked or buck, by any means the most ignoble office that face of woman might discharge. For here at hand, saving us our fare to Derbyshire, we have the Frica, looking something horrid.
Throttled gazelle gives no idea. Her features, as though the hand of an unattractive ravisher were knotted in her chevelure, were set at half-cock and locked in a rictus. She had frowned to pencil her eyebrows, so now she had four. The dazzled iris was domed in a white agony of entreaty, the upper lip writhed back in a snarl to the untented nos- trils. Would she bite her tongue off, that was the interest- ing question. The nutcracker chin betrayed a patent clot of thyroid gristle. It was impossible to set aside the awful suspicion that her flattened mammae, in sympathy with this tormented eructation of countenance, had put forth cutwaters and were rowelling her corsage. But the face was beyond appeal, a flagrant seat of injury. She had merely to arrange her hands so that the palm and fingers of the one touched the palm and fingers of the other and hold them thus joined before the breast with a slight up- ward inclination to look like a briefless martyress in rut.
Nevertheless the arty Countess of Parabimbi, backing through the press, would dangle into the mauve presence
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of the crone-mother, Caleken Frica's holiest thing alive, and
"My dear" she would positively be obliged to ejaculate, "never have I seen your Caleken quite so striking! Simply Sistine! "
What would her Ladyship be pleased to mean? The Cumaean Sibyl on a bearing-rein, sniffing the breeze for the Grimm Brothers? Oh, her Ladyship did not care to be so infernal finical and nice, that would be like working out how many pebbles in Tom Thumb's pocket. It was just a vague impression, it was merely that she looked, with that strange limy hobnailed texture of complexion, so frescosa, from the waist up, my dear, with that distempered cobalt modesty-piece, a positive gem of ravished Quattrocento, a positive jewel, my dear, of sweaty Big Tom. Whereupon the vidual virgin, well aware after these many years that all things in heaven, the earth and the waters were as they were taken, would vow to cherish as long as she was spared the learned praise of such an expert.
"Maaaccche! " bleats the Parabimbi.
This may be premature. We have set it down too soon, perhaps. Still, let it bloody well stand.
To return to the Frica, there is the bell at long last, pealing down her Fallopian pipettes, galvanising her away from the mirror as though her navel had been pressed in annunciation.
The Student, whose name we shall never know, was the first to arrive. A foul little brute he was, with a brow.
"Oh Lawdee! " he gushed, his big brown eyes looking della Robbia babies at the Frica, "don't tell me I'm the first! "
"Don't distress yourself" said Caleken, who could smell a poet against the wind, "only by a short gaffe. "
Hard on the heels of the Poet came a gaggle of non- descripts, then a public botanist, then a Galway Gael, then the Shetland Shawly with her Chas. Him the Student, mindful of his pledge, accosted.
"In what sense"—he would have it out of him or perish
—
"He said that? " exclaimed the botanist.
"Chas" said Caleken, as though she were announcing the name of a winner.
"Adsum" admitted Chas.
A plum of phlegm burst in the vestibule.
"What I want to know" complained the Student, "what
we all want to know, is in what sense he was using sense
when he said
The Gael, in the heart of a cabbage of nondescripts, was
bungling Duke Street's thought for the day to the crone.
"Owen
mus, anxious to come into the picture as early on in the proceedings as possible, said rashly:
"What Owen? "
"Good evening" squalled the Polar Bear, "good evening good evening. Wat a night, Madame" he addressed him- self vehemently, out of sheer politeness, directly to his hostess, "God wat a night! "
The crone was as fond of the P. B. as though she had bought him in Clery's toy fair.
"And you so far to come! " She wished she could dandle him on her knee. He was a shabby man and often moody. "Too good of you to come" she hushabied, "too good of you. "
The Man of Law, his face a blaze of acne, was next, es- corting the Parabimbi and three tarts dressed for the backstairs.
"I met him" whispered Chas "zigzagging down Pearse
"did you use sense when you said ? "
. . .
. .
. " he began again, when a nameless ignora-
. " . .
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Street, Brunswick Street, you know, that was. "
"En route? " ventured Caleken. She was a bit above her-
self with all the excitement. "Hem? "
"On his way here? "
"Well" said Chas, "I regret, my dear Miss Frica, that he did not make it absolutely clear if he comes or not. "
The Gael said to the P. B. in an injured voice:
"Here's a man wants to know what Owen. "
"Not possible" said the P. B. , "you astonish me. "
"Is it of the sweet mouth? " said a sandy son of Ham. Now the prong of the P. B. 's judgment was keen and
bright.
"That emmerdeur" he jeered, "the strange sweet mouth! "
The Parabimbi jumped.
"You said? " she said.
Caleken emerged from the ruck, she came to the fore. "What can be keeping the girls" she said. It was not ex-
actly a question.
"And your sister" enquired the botanist, "Your charming
sister, where can she be this evening now I wonder. "
The Beldam sprang into the breach.
"Unfortunately" she said, in ringing tones and with great
precipitation, "in bed, unwell. A great disappointment to us all. "
"Nothing of moment, Madam" said the Man of Law "let us hope? "
"Thank you, no. Happily not. A slight indisposition. Poor little Dandelion! " The Beldam heaved a heavy sigh.
The P. B. exchanged a look of intelligence with the Gael. "What girls? " he said.
Caleken expanded her lungs:
"Pansy"—the Poet had a palpitation, why had he not
A WET NIGHT 65
—
brought his nux vomica? "Lilly Neary, Olga, Elliseva,
Bride Maria, Alga, Ariana, tall Tib, slender Sib, Alma —
Beatrix, Alba " They were really too numerous, she could not go through the entire list. She staunched her mouth.
"Alba! " ejaculated the P. B. , "Alba! She! "
"And why" interposed the Countess of Parabimbi "why not Alba, whoever she may be, rather than, say, the Wife of Bath?
"
A nondescript appeared in their midst, he panted the glad tidings. The girls had arrived.
"They are gurrls" said the botanist "beyond question. But are they the gurrls? "
"Now I hope we can start" said the younger Frica, and, the elder being aware of no let or hindrance, up on to the estrade smartly she stepped and unveiled the refresh- ments. Turning her back on the high dumb-waiter, with a great winged gesture of lapidated piety, she instituted the following selection:
"Cup! Squash! Cocoa! Force! Julienne! Pan Kail! Cock- a-Leekie! Hulluah! Apfelmus! Isinglass! Ching-Ching! "
A terrible silence fell on the assembly.
"Great cry" said Chas "and little wool. "
The more famished faithful stormed the platform.
Two banned novelists, a bibliomaniac and his mistress,
a paleographer, a violist d'amore with his instrument in a bag, a popular parodist with his sister and six daughters, a still more popular Professor of Bullscrit and Compar- ative Ovoidology, the saprophile the better for drink, a communist painter and decorator fresh back from the Moscow reserves, a merchant prince, two grave Jews, a rising strumpet, three more poets with Lauras to match, a disaffected cicisbeo, a chorus of playwrights, the inevit-
"
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able envoy of the Fourth Estate, a phalanx of Grafton Street Sturmers and Jemmy Higgins arrived now in a body. No sooner had they been absorbed than the Para- bimbi, very much the lone bird on this occasion in the absence of her husband the Count who had been unable to escort her on account of his being buggered if he would, got in her attributions of the Frica for which, as has been shown, the Beldam was so profoundly beholden.
"Maaaacche! " said the Countess of Parabimbi, "I do but constate.
She held the saucer under her chin like a communion- card. She lowered the cup into its socket without a sound.
"Excellent" she said, "most excellent Force. "
The crone smiled from the teeth outward.
"So glad" she said, "so glad. "
The Professor of Bullscrit and Comparative Ovoidology
was nowhere to be seen. But that was not his vocation, he was not a little boy. His function was to be heard. He was widely and distinctly heard.
"When the immortal Byron" he bombled "was about to
say Ravenna? "
"Allow me" said the rising strumpet: "a sandwich: egg,
tomato, cucumber. "
"Did you know" blundered the Man of Law "that the
Swedes have no fewer than seventy varieties of Smoerr- broed? "
The voice of the arithmomaniac was heard:
"The arc" he said, stooping to all in the great plainness of his words, "is longer than its chord. "
"Madam knows Ravenna? " said the paleographer.
leave Ravenna, to sail in search of some distant shore . "
where a hero's death might end his immortal spleen "Ravenna! " exclaimed the Countess, memory tugging at her carefully cultivated heart-strings, "did I hear someone
. .
"Do I know Ravenna! " exclaimed the Parabimbi. "Sure I know Ravenna. A sweet and noble city. "
"You know of course" said the Man of Law "that Dante died there. "
"Right" said the Parabimbi, "so he did. "
"You know of course" said the Professor "that his tomb is in the Piazza Byron. I did his epitaph in the eye into blank heroics. "
"You knew of course" said the paleographer "that under
. "
Belisarius
"My dear" said the Parabimbi to the Beldam, "how well
it goes. What a happy party and how at home they all seem. I declare" she declared "I envy you your flair for making people feel at their ease. "
The Beldam disclaimed faintly any such faculty. It was Caleken's party reelly, it was Caleken who had arranged everything reelly. She personally had had very little to do with the arrangements. She just sat there and looked ex- hausted. She was just a weary old Norn.
"To my thinking" boomed the Professor, begging the question as usual, "the greatest triumph of the human mind was the calculation of Neptune from the observed vagaries of the orbit of Uranus. "
"And yours" said the P. B. That was an apple of gold and a picture of silver if you like.
The Parabimbi waxed stiff.
"What's that? " she cried, "what's that he says? "
A still more terrible silence fell on the assembly. The
saprophile had slapped the communist painter and dec- orator.
The Frica, supported by Mr Higgins, pounced on the disturbance.
"Go" she said to the saprophile "and let there be no scene. "
. .
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Mr Higgins, who kicked up his heels in the scrum for the Rangers, made short work of the nuisance. The Frica turned on the poor P. and D.
"It is not my intention" she said "to tolerate hooligans in this house. "
"He called me a bloody Bolshy" protested the glorious Komsomolet, "and he a labour man himself. "
"Let there be no more of it" said the Frica, "let there be no more of it. " She was very optative. "I beg of you. " She stepped back fleetly to the altar.
"You heard what she said" said the Gael.
"Let there be no more of it" said the native speaker.
"I beg of you" said the P. B.
But now she cometh that all this may disdain, Alba,
dauntless daughter of desires. Entering just on the turn of the hush, advancing like a midinette to pay her ironical respects to the Beldam, she fired the thorns under every pot. Turning her scarlet back on the crass crackling of the Parabimbi she mounted the estrade and there, silent and still before the elements of refreshment, in profile to the assistance, cast her gravitational nets.
The rising strumpet studied how to do it. The sister of the parodist passed on to such as were curious what little she and her dear nieces knew of the Alba who was much spoken of in certain virtuous circles to which they had access, though to be sure how much of what they heard was true and how much mere idle gossip they were really not in a position to determine. However, for what it was worth, it appeared . . .
The Gael, the native speaker, a space-writer and the violist d'amore got together as though by magic.
"Well" invited the space-writer. "Pret-ty good" said the Gael. "Ex-quisite" said the violist d'amore.
The native speaker said nothing.
"Well" insisted the space-writer, "Larry? "
Larry tore his eyes away from the estrade and said,
drawing his palms slowly up the flanks of his kilt: "Jaysus! "
"Meaning to say? " said the space-writer.
Larry turned his wild gaze back on the estrade.
"You don't happen to know" he said finally "does she? " "They all do" said the violist d'amore.
"Like hell they do" groaned the Gael, ricordandosi del
tempo felice.
"What I want to know" said the Student, "what we all
. "
here is right, through bashfulness from venery. It is a pity, but there you are. "
Great wits will jump and Jemmy Higgins and the P. B. converged on the estrade.
"You look pale" said the Frica "and ill, my pet. "
The Alba raised her big head from the board, looked longly at the Frica, closed her eyes and intoned:
Woe and Pain, Pain and Woe,
Are my lot, night and noon . . . Caleken fell back.
"Keep them off" said the Alba.
"Keep them off! " echoed Caleken, "keep them off? " "We go through this world" observed the Alba "like
sunbeams through cracks in cucumbers. "
Caleken was not so sure about the sunbeams.
"Take a little cup" she urged, "it will do you good. Or
a Ching-Ching. "
"Keep them off" said the Alba, "off off off off. "
But the P. B. and Higgins were on the estrade, they
hemmed her in.
are most anxious to know
"Some do abstain" said the space-writer, "our friend
. .
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"So be it" said the Alba, "let it run over by all means. " Phew! The Frica was unspeakably relieved.
Half-past nine. The guests, led by the rising strumpet
and declining cicisbeo, began to scatter through the house. The Frica let them go. In due course she would visit the alcoves, she would round them up for the party proper to begin. Had not Chas promised a piece of old French? Had not the Poet written a poem specially? She had peeped into the bag in the hall and seen the viol d'amore. So they would have a little music.
Half-past nine. It was raining bitterly when Belacqua, keyed up to take his bearings, issued forth into the un- intelligible world of Lincoln Place. But he had bought a bottle, it was like a breast in the pocket of his reefer. He set off unsteadily by the Dental Hospital. As a child he had dreaded its facade, its sheets of blood-red glass. Now they were black, which was worse again, he having put aside a childish thing or two. Feeling suddenly white and clammy he leaned against the iron wicket set in the Col- lege wall and looked at Johnston, Mooney and O'Brien's clocks. Something to ten by the whirligig and he dis- inclined to stand, let alone walk. And the daggers of rain. He raised his hands and held them before his face, so close that even in the dark he could see the lines. They smelt bad. He carried them on to his forehead, the fingers sank in his wet hair, the heels crushed torrents of indigo out of his eyeballs, the rabbet of his nape took the cornice, it wrung the baby anthrax that he always wore just above his collar, he intensified the pressure and the pangs, they were a guarantee of identity.
The next thing was his hands dragged roughly down from his eyes, which he opened on the vast crimson face
of an ogre. For a moment it was still, plush gargoyle, then it moved, it was convulsed. This, he thought, is the face of some person talking. It was. It was that part of a Civic Guard pouring abuse upon him. Belacqua closed his eyes, there was no other way of ceasing to see it. Subduing a great desire to visit the pavement he catted, with unde- monstrative abundance, all over the boots and trouser- ends of the Guard, in return for which incontinence he received such a dunch on the breast that he fell hip and thigh into the outskirts of his own offal. He had no feeling of hurt either to his person or to his amour propre, only a very amiable weakness and an impatience to be on the move. It must have gone ten. He bore no animosity to- wards the Guard, although now he began to hear what he was saying. He knelt before him in the filth, he heard all the odious words he was saying in the recreation of his duty, and bore him not the slightest ill-will. He reached up for a purchase on his gleaming cape and hoisted himself to his feet. The apology he made when stable for what had occurred was profusely rejected. He furnished his name and address, whence he came and whither he went, and why, his occupation and immediate business, and why. It distressed him to learn that for two pins the Guard would frog-march him to the Station, but he appreciated the officer's dilemma.
"Wipe them boots" said the Guard.
Belacqua was only too happy, it was the least he could do. Contriving two loose swabs of the Twilight Herald he stooped and cleaned the boots and trouser-ends to the best of his ability. A magnificent and enormous pair of boots emerged. He rose, clutching the fouled swabs, and looked up timidly at the Guard, who seemed rather at a loss as how best to press home his advantage.
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"I trust, Sergeant," said Belacqua, in a murmur pitched to melt the hardest heart, "that you can see your way to overlooking my misdemeanour. "
Justice and mercy had doubtless joined their ancient issue in the conscience of the Guard, for he said nothing. Belacqua tendered his right hand, innocent of any more mercantile commodity than that "gentle peace" recom- mended by the immortal Shakespeare, having first wiped it clean on his sleeve. This member the Dogberry, after a brief converse with his incorruptible heart, was kind enough to invest with the office of a cuspidor. Belacqua strangled a shrug and moved away in a tentative manner.
"Hold on there" said the Guard.
Belacqua halted, but in a very irritating way, as though he had just remembered something. The Guard, who had much more of the lion than of the fox, kept him standing until inside his helmet the throbbing of his Leix and Offaly head became more than he could endure. He then decided to conclude his handling of this small affair of public order.
"Move on" he said.
Belacqua walked away, holding tightly on to the swabs, which he rightly interpreted as litter. Once safely round the corner of Kildare Street he let them fall. Then, after a few paces forward, he halted, turned, hastened back to where they were fidgeting on the pavement and threw them into an area. Now he felt extraordinarily light and limber and haeres caeli. He followed briskly through the mizzle the way he had chosen, exalted, fashioning in- tricate festoons of words. It occurred to him, and he took great pleasure in working out this little figure, that the locus of his fall from the vague grace of the drink had intersected with that of his rise thereunto at its most agreeable point. That was beyond a doubt what had hap-
pened. Sometimes the drink-line looped the loop like an eight and if you had got what you were looking for on the way up you got it again on the way down. The bum- less eight of the drink-figure. You did not end up where you started, but coming down you met yourself going up. Sometimes, as now, you were glad; more times you were sorry and hastened on to your new home.
Suddenly walking through the rain was not enough, stepping out smartly, buttoned up to the chin, in the cold and the wet, was an inadequate thing to be doing. He stopped on the crown of Baggot Street bridge, took off his reefer, laid it on the parapet and sat down beside it. The Guard was forgotten. Stooping forward then where he sat and flexing his leg until the knee was against his ear and the heel caught on the parapet (admirable pos- ture) he took off his boot and laid it beside the reefer. Then he let down that leg and did the same with the other. Next, resolved to get full value from the bitter nor'-wester that was blowing, he slewed himself right round. His feet dangled over the canal and he saw, lurching across the remote hump of Leeson Street bridge, trams like hiccups-o'-the-wisp.
That was a nasty one, let him make what he liked of that one.
"Our Lord
"
"Speak for yourself" said the P. B. , nettled beyond en- durance.
"Our Lord was not. "
"You forget" said the P. B. , "he got it all over at procrea- tion. "
"When you grow up to be a big boy" said the Jesuit "and can understand the humility that is beyond masoch- ism, come and talk to me again. Not cis-, ultra-masochistic. Beyond pain and service. "
"But precisely" exclaimed the P. B. , "he did not serve, the late lamented. What else am I saying? A valet does not have big ideas. He let down the central agency. "
"The humility" murmured the janizary "of a love too great for skivvying and too real to need the tonic of urtica- tion. "
The infant prodigy sneered at this comfortable variety.
"You make things pleasant for yourselves" he sneered, "I must say. "
"The best reason" said the S. J. "that can be given for believing is that it is more amusing. Disbelief" said the soldier of Christ, making ready to arise "is a bore. We do not count our change. We simply cannot bear to be bored. "
"Say that from the pulpit" said the P. B. "and you'll be drummed into the wilderness. "
The S. J. laughed profusely. Was it possible to conceive a more artless impostor of a mathematician than this fel- low!
"Would you" he begged, putting his greatcoat on, "would you, my dear good fellow, have the kindness to bear in mind that I am not a Parish Priest. "
"I won't forget" said the P. B. "that you don't scavenge. Your love is too great for the slops. "
"Egg-sactly" said the S. J. "But they are excellent men. A shade on the assiduous side, a shade too anxious to strike
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. " He rose. "Observe" he said, "I desire
a rate. Otherwise
to get down. I pull this cord and the bus stops and lets me down. "
The P. B. observed.
"In just such a Gehenna of links" said this remarkable man, with one foot on the pavement, "I forged my voca- tion. "
With which words he was gone and the burden of his fare had fallen on the P. B.
Chas's girl was a Shetland Shawly. He had promised to pick her up on his way to Casa Frica and now, cinched beyond reproach in his double-breasted smoking, he sub- dued his impatience to catch a tram in order to explain the world to a group of students.
"
"The difference, if I may say so
"Oh" cried the students, una voce, "oh please! "
"The difference, then, I say, between Bergson and Ein-
stein, the essential difference, is as between philosopher and sociolog. "
"Oh! " cried the students.
"Yes" said Chas, casting up what was the longest divul- gation he could place before the tram, which had hove into view, would draw abreast.
"And if it is the smart thing now to speak of Bergson as —
acod"—heedgedaway "itisthatwemovefromtheOb- —
ject"—he made a plunge for the tram "and the Idea to Sense"—he cried from the step "and Reason. "
"Sense" echoed the students "and reason! "
The difficulty was to know what exactly he meant by sense.
"He must mean senses'* said a first, "smell, don't you know, and so on. "
"Nay" said a second, "he must mean common sense. "
. .
"I think" said a third "he must mean instinct, intuition, don't you know, and that kind of thing. "
A fourth longed to know what Object there was in Bergson, a fifth what a sociolog was, a sixth what either had to do with the world.
"We must ask him" said a seventh, "that is all. We must not confuse ourselves with inexpert speculation. Then we shall see who is right. "
"We must ask him" cried the students, "then we shall see. . . .
On which understanding, that the first to see him again would be sure and ask him, they went their not so very different ways.
The hair of the homespun Poet, so closely was it cropped, did not lend itself kindly to any striking effects of dressing. Here again, in his plumping for the austerity of a rat's back, he proclaimed himself in reaction to the nineties. But the little that there was to do he had done, with a lotion that he had he had given alertness to the stubble. Also he had changed his tie and turned his collar. And now, though alone and unobserved, he paced up and down. He was making up his piece, d'occasion perhaps in both senses, whose main features he had recently estab- lished riding home on his bike from the Yellow House. He would deliver it when his hostess came with her petition, he would not hum and haw like an amateur pianist nor yet as good as spit in her eye like a professional one. No he would arise and say, not declaim, state gravely, with the penetrating Middle West gravity that is like an ogleful of tears:
Calvary by Night the waste of water
the water
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in the womb of water an pansy leaps.
rocket of bloom flare flower of night wilt for me
on the breasts of the water it has closed it has made an act of floral presence on the water
the tranquil act of its cycle on the waste
from the spouting forth
to the re-enwombing
untroubled bow of petaline sweet-smellingness kingfisher abated
drowned for me
lamb of insustenance mine
till the clamour of a blue bloom beat on the walls of the womb of the waste of
the water
Resolved to put across this strong composition and cause something of a flutter he was anxious that there should be no flaw in the mode of presentation adopted by him as most worthy of his aquatic manner. In fact he had to have it pat in order not to have to say it pat, in order to give the impression that in the travail of its exteriorisa- tion he was being torn asunder. Taking his cue from the equilibrist, who encaptures us by failing once, twice, three times, and then, in a regular lather of volition, bringing it off, he deemed that this little turn, if it were to conquer the salon, required stress to be laid not so much on the content of the performance as on the spiritual evisceration of the performer. Hence he paced to and fro, making a habit of the words and effects of Calvary by Night.
The Frica combed her hair, back and back she raked her purple tresses till to close her eyes became a problem. The effect was throttled gazelle, more appropriate to evening wear than her workaday foal at foot. Belacqua's Ruby, in her earlier campaigns, had favoured the same taut Sabine coiffure, till Mrs Tough, by dint of protesting that it made her little bird-face look like a sucked lozenge, had induced her to fluff things a bit and crimp them. Un- availingly alas! for nimbed she was altogether too big dolly that opens and shuts its eyes. Nor indeed was lozenge, sucked or buck, by any means the most ignoble office that face of woman might discharge. For here at hand, saving us our fare to Derbyshire, we have the Frica, looking something horrid.
Throttled gazelle gives no idea. Her features, as though the hand of an unattractive ravisher were knotted in her chevelure, were set at half-cock and locked in a rictus. She had frowned to pencil her eyebrows, so now she had four. The dazzled iris was domed in a white agony of entreaty, the upper lip writhed back in a snarl to the untented nos- trils. Would she bite her tongue off, that was the interest- ing question. The nutcracker chin betrayed a patent clot of thyroid gristle. It was impossible to set aside the awful suspicion that her flattened mammae, in sympathy with this tormented eructation of countenance, had put forth cutwaters and were rowelling her corsage. But the face was beyond appeal, a flagrant seat of injury. She had merely to arrange her hands so that the palm and fingers of the one touched the palm and fingers of the other and hold them thus joined before the breast with a slight up- ward inclination to look like a briefless martyress in rut.
Nevertheless the arty Countess of Parabimbi, backing through the press, would dangle into the mauve presence
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of the crone-mother, Caleken Frica's holiest thing alive, and
"My dear" she would positively be obliged to ejaculate, "never have I seen your Caleken quite so striking! Simply Sistine! "
What would her Ladyship be pleased to mean? The Cumaean Sibyl on a bearing-rein, sniffing the breeze for the Grimm Brothers? Oh, her Ladyship did not care to be so infernal finical and nice, that would be like working out how many pebbles in Tom Thumb's pocket. It was just a vague impression, it was merely that she looked, with that strange limy hobnailed texture of complexion, so frescosa, from the waist up, my dear, with that distempered cobalt modesty-piece, a positive gem of ravished Quattrocento, a positive jewel, my dear, of sweaty Big Tom. Whereupon the vidual virgin, well aware after these many years that all things in heaven, the earth and the waters were as they were taken, would vow to cherish as long as she was spared the learned praise of such an expert.
"Maaaccche! " bleats the Parabimbi.
This may be premature. We have set it down too soon, perhaps. Still, let it bloody well stand.
To return to the Frica, there is the bell at long last, pealing down her Fallopian pipettes, galvanising her away from the mirror as though her navel had been pressed in annunciation.
The Student, whose name we shall never know, was the first to arrive. A foul little brute he was, with a brow.
"Oh Lawdee! " he gushed, his big brown eyes looking della Robbia babies at the Frica, "don't tell me I'm the first! "
"Don't distress yourself" said Caleken, who could smell a poet against the wind, "only by a short gaffe. "
Hard on the heels of the Poet came a gaggle of non- descripts, then a public botanist, then a Galway Gael, then the Shetland Shawly with her Chas. Him the Student, mindful of his pledge, accosted.
"In what sense"—he would have it out of him or perish
—
"He said that? " exclaimed the botanist.
"Chas" said Caleken, as though she were announcing the name of a winner.
"Adsum" admitted Chas.
A plum of phlegm burst in the vestibule.
"What I want to know" complained the Student, "what
we all want to know, is in what sense he was using sense
when he said
The Gael, in the heart of a cabbage of nondescripts, was
bungling Duke Street's thought for the day to the crone.
"Owen
mus, anxious to come into the picture as early on in the proceedings as possible, said rashly:
"What Owen? "
"Good evening" squalled the Polar Bear, "good evening good evening. Wat a night, Madame" he addressed him- self vehemently, out of sheer politeness, directly to his hostess, "God wat a night! "
The crone was as fond of the P. B. as though she had bought him in Clery's toy fair.
"And you so far to come! " She wished she could dandle him on her knee. He was a shabby man and often moody. "Too good of you to come" she hushabied, "too good of you. "
The Man of Law, his face a blaze of acne, was next, es- corting the Parabimbi and three tarts dressed for the backstairs.
"I met him" whispered Chas "zigzagging down Pearse
"did you use sense when you said ? "
. . .
. .
. " he began again, when a nameless ignora-
. " . .
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Street, Brunswick Street, you know, that was. "
"En route? " ventured Caleken. She was a bit above her-
self with all the excitement. "Hem? "
"On his way here? "
"Well" said Chas, "I regret, my dear Miss Frica, that he did not make it absolutely clear if he comes or not. "
The Gael said to the P. B. in an injured voice:
"Here's a man wants to know what Owen. "
"Not possible" said the P. B. , "you astonish me. "
"Is it of the sweet mouth? " said a sandy son of Ham. Now the prong of the P. B. 's judgment was keen and
bright.
"That emmerdeur" he jeered, "the strange sweet mouth! "
The Parabimbi jumped.
"You said? " she said.
Caleken emerged from the ruck, she came to the fore. "What can be keeping the girls" she said. It was not ex-
actly a question.
"And your sister" enquired the botanist, "Your charming
sister, where can she be this evening now I wonder. "
The Beldam sprang into the breach.
"Unfortunately" she said, in ringing tones and with great
precipitation, "in bed, unwell. A great disappointment to us all. "
"Nothing of moment, Madam" said the Man of Law "let us hope? "
"Thank you, no. Happily not. A slight indisposition. Poor little Dandelion! " The Beldam heaved a heavy sigh.
The P. B. exchanged a look of intelligence with the Gael. "What girls? " he said.
Caleken expanded her lungs:
"Pansy"—the Poet had a palpitation, why had he not
A WET NIGHT 65
—
brought his nux vomica? "Lilly Neary, Olga, Elliseva,
Bride Maria, Alga, Ariana, tall Tib, slender Sib, Alma —
Beatrix, Alba " They were really too numerous, she could not go through the entire list. She staunched her mouth.
"Alba! " ejaculated the P. B. , "Alba! She! "
"And why" interposed the Countess of Parabimbi "why not Alba, whoever she may be, rather than, say, the Wife of Bath?
"
A nondescript appeared in their midst, he panted the glad tidings. The girls had arrived.
"They are gurrls" said the botanist "beyond question. But are they the gurrls? "
"Now I hope we can start" said the younger Frica, and, the elder being aware of no let or hindrance, up on to the estrade smartly she stepped and unveiled the refresh- ments. Turning her back on the high dumb-waiter, with a great winged gesture of lapidated piety, she instituted the following selection:
"Cup! Squash! Cocoa! Force! Julienne! Pan Kail! Cock- a-Leekie! Hulluah! Apfelmus! Isinglass! Ching-Ching! "
A terrible silence fell on the assembly.
"Great cry" said Chas "and little wool. "
The more famished faithful stormed the platform.
Two banned novelists, a bibliomaniac and his mistress,
a paleographer, a violist d'amore with his instrument in a bag, a popular parodist with his sister and six daughters, a still more popular Professor of Bullscrit and Compar- ative Ovoidology, the saprophile the better for drink, a communist painter and decorator fresh back from the Moscow reserves, a merchant prince, two grave Jews, a rising strumpet, three more poets with Lauras to match, a disaffected cicisbeo, a chorus of playwrights, the inevit-
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able envoy of the Fourth Estate, a phalanx of Grafton Street Sturmers and Jemmy Higgins arrived now in a body. No sooner had they been absorbed than the Para- bimbi, very much the lone bird on this occasion in the absence of her husband the Count who had been unable to escort her on account of his being buggered if he would, got in her attributions of the Frica for which, as has been shown, the Beldam was so profoundly beholden.
"Maaaacche! " said the Countess of Parabimbi, "I do but constate.
She held the saucer under her chin like a communion- card. She lowered the cup into its socket without a sound.
"Excellent" she said, "most excellent Force. "
The crone smiled from the teeth outward.
"So glad" she said, "so glad. "
The Professor of Bullscrit and Comparative Ovoidology
was nowhere to be seen. But that was not his vocation, he was not a little boy. His function was to be heard. He was widely and distinctly heard.
"When the immortal Byron" he bombled "was about to
say Ravenna? "
"Allow me" said the rising strumpet: "a sandwich: egg,
tomato, cucumber. "
"Did you know" blundered the Man of Law "that the
Swedes have no fewer than seventy varieties of Smoerr- broed? "
The voice of the arithmomaniac was heard:
"The arc" he said, stooping to all in the great plainness of his words, "is longer than its chord. "
"Madam knows Ravenna? " said the paleographer.
leave Ravenna, to sail in search of some distant shore . "
where a hero's death might end his immortal spleen "Ravenna! " exclaimed the Countess, memory tugging at her carefully cultivated heart-strings, "did I hear someone
. .
"Do I know Ravenna! " exclaimed the Parabimbi. "Sure I know Ravenna. A sweet and noble city. "
"You know of course" said the Man of Law "that Dante died there. "
"Right" said the Parabimbi, "so he did. "
"You know of course" said the Professor "that his tomb is in the Piazza Byron. I did his epitaph in the eye into blank heroics. "
"You knew of course" said the paleographer "that under
. "
Belisarius
"My dear" said the Parabimbi to the Beldam, "how well
it goes. What a happy party and how at home they all seem. I declare" she declared "I envy you your flair for making people feel at their ease. "
The Beldam disclaimed faintly any such faculty. It was Caleken's party reelly, it was Caleken who had arranged everything reelly. She personally had had very little to do with the arrangements. She just sat there and looked ex- hausted. She was just a weary old Norn.
"To my thinking" boomed the Professor, begging the question as usual, "the greatest triumph of the human mind was the calculation of Neptune from the observed vagaries of the orbit of Uranus. "
"And yours" said the P. B. That was an apple of gold and a picture of silver if you like.
The Parabimbi waxed stiff.
"What's that? " she cried, "what's that he says? "
A still more terrible silence fell on the assembly. The
saprophile had slapped the communist painter and dec- orator.
The Frica, supported by Mr Higgins, pounced on the disturbance.
"Go" she said to the saprophile "and let there be no scene. "
. .
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Mr Higgins, who kicked up his heels in the scrum for the Rangers, made short work of the nuisance. The Frica turned on the poor P. and D.
"It is not my intention" she said "to tolerate hooligans in this house. "
"He called me a bloody Bolshy" protested the glorious Komsomolet, "and he a labour man himself. "
"Let there be no more of it" said the Frica, "let there be no more of it. " She was very optative. "I beg of you. " She stepped back fleetly to the altar.
"You heard what she said" said the Gael.
"Let there be no more of it" said the native speaker.
"I beg of you" said the P. B.
But now she cometh that all this may disdain, Alba,
dauntless daughter of desires. Entering just on the turn of the hush, advancing like a midinette to pay her ironical respects to the Beldam, she fired the thorns under every pot. Turning her scarlet back on the crass crackling of the Parabimbi she mounted the estrade and there, silent and still before the elements of refreshment, in profile to the assistance, cast her gravitational nets.
The rising strumpet studied how to do it. The sister of the parodist passed on to such as were curious what little she and her dear nieces knew of the Alba who was much spoken of in certain virtuous circles to which they had access, though to be sure how much of what they heard was true and how much mere idle gossip they were really not in a position to determine. However, for what it was worth, it appeared . . .
The Gael, the native speaker, a space-writer and the violist d'amore got together as though by magic.
"Well" invited the space-writer. "Pret-ty good" said the Gael. "Ex-quisite" said the violist d'amore.
The native speaker said nothing.
"Well" insisted the space-writer, "Larry? "
Larry tore his eyes away from the estrade and said,
drawing his palms slowly up the flanks of his kilt: "Jaysus! "
"Meaning to say? " said the space-writer.
Larry turned his wild gaze back on the estrade.
"You don't happen to know" he said finally "does she? " "They all do" said the violist d'amore.
"Like hell they do" groaned the Gael, ricordandosi del
tempo felice.
"What I want to know" said the Student, "what we all
. "
here is right, through bashfulness from venery. It is a pity, but there you are. "
Great wits will jump and Jemmy Higgins and the P. B. converged on the estrade.
"You look pale" said the Frica "and ill, my pet. "
The Alba raised her big head from the board, looked longly at the Frica, closed her eyes and intoned:
Woe and Pain, Pain and Woe,
Are my lot, night and noon . . . Caleken fell back.
"Keep them off" said the Alba.
"Keep them off! " echoed Caleken, "keep them off? " "We go through this world" observed the Alba "like
sunbeams through cracks in cucumbers. "
Caleken was not so sure about the sunbeams.
"Take a little cup" she urged, "it will do you good. Or
a Ching-Ching. "
"Keep them off" said the Alba, "off off off off. "
But the P. B. and Higgins were on the estrade, they
hemmed her in.
are most anxious to know
"Some do abstain" said the space-writer, "our friend
. .
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"So be it" said the Alba, "let it run over by all means. " Phew! The Frica was unspeakably relieved.
Half-past nine. The guests, led by the rising strumpet
and declining cicisbeo, began to scatter through the house. The Frica let them go. In due course she would visit the alcoves, she would round them up for the party proper to begin. Had not Chas promised a piece of old French? Had not the Poet written a poem specially? She had peeped into the bag in the hall and seen the viol d'amore. So they would have a little music.
Half-past nine. It was raining bitterly when Belacqua, keyed up to take his bearings, issued forth into the un- intelligible world of Lincoln Place. But he had bought a bottle, it was like a breast in the pocket of his reefer. He set off unsteadily by the Dental Hospital. As a child he had dreaded its facade, its sheets of blood-red glass. Now they were black, which was worse again, he having put aside a childish thing or two. Feeling suddenly white and clammy he leaned against the iron wicket set in the Col- lege wall and looked at Johnston, Mooney and O'Brien's clocks. Something to ten by the whirligig and he dis- inclined to stand, let alone walk. And the daggers of rain. He raised his hands and held them before his face, so close that even in the dark he could see the lines. They smelt bad. He carried them on to his forehead, the fingers sank in his wet hair, the heels crushed torrents of indigo out of his eyeballs, the rabbet of his nape took the cornice, it wrung the baby anthrax that he always wore just above his collar, he intensified the pressure and the pangs, they were a guarantee of identity.
The next thing was his hands dragged roughly down from his eyes, which he opened on the vast crimson face
of an ogre. For a moment it was still, plush gargoyle, then it moved, it was convulsed. This, he thought, is the face of some person talking. It was. It was that part of a Civic Guard pouring abuse upon him. Belacqua closed his eyes, there was no other way of ceasing to see it. Subduing a great desire to visit the pavement he catted, with unde- monstrative abundance, all over the boots and trouser- ends of the Guard, in return for which incontinence he received such a dunch on the breast that he fell hip and thigh into the outskirts of his own offal. He had no feeling of hurt either to his person or to his amour propre, only a very amiable weakness and an impatience to be on the move. It must have gone ten. He bore no animosity to- wards the Guard, although now he began to hear what he was saying. He knelt before him in the filth, he heard all the odious words he was saying in the recreation of his duty, and bore him not the slightest ill-will. He reached up for a purchase on his gleaming cape and hoisted himself to his feet. The apology he made when stable for what had occurred was profusely rejected. He furnished his name and address, whence he came and whither he went, and why, his occupation and immediate business, and why. It distressed him to learn that for two pins the Guard would frog-march him to the Station, but he appreciated the officer's dilemma.
"Wipe them boots" said the Guard.
Belacqua was only too happy, it was the least he could do. Contriving two loose swabs of the Twilight Herald he stooped and cleaned the boots and trouser-ends to the best of his ability. A magnificent and enormous pair of boots emerged. He rose, clutching the fouled swabs, and looked up timidly at the Guard, who seemed rather at a loss as how best to press home his advantage.
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"I trust, Sergeant," said Belacqua, in a murmur pitched to melt the hardest heart, "that you can see your way to overlooking my misdemeanour. "
Justice and mercy had doubtless joined their ancient issue in the conscience of the Guard, for he said nothing. Belacqua tendered his right hand, innocent of any more mercantile commodity than that "gentle peace" recom- mended by the immortal Shakespeare, having first wiped it clean on his sleeve. This member the Dogberry, after a brief converse with his incorruptible heart, was kind enough to invest with the office of a cuspidor. Belacqua strangled a shrug and moved away in a tentative manner.
"Hold on there" said the Guard.
Belacqua halted, but in a very irritating way, as though he had just remembered something. The Guard, who had much more of the lion than of the fox, kept him standing until inside his helmet the throbbing of his Leix and Offaly head became more than he could endure. He then decided to conclude his handling of this small affair of public order.
"Move on" he said.
Belacqua walked away, holding tightly on to the swabs, which he rightly interpreted as litter. Once safely round the corner of Kildare Street he let them fall. Then, after a few paces forward, he halted, turned, hastened back to where they were fidgeting on the pavement and threw them into an area. Now he felt extraordinarily light and limber and haeres caeli. He followed briskly through the mizzle the way he had chosen, exalted, fashioning in- tricate festoons of words. It occurred to him, and he took great pleasure in working out this little figure, that the locus of his fall from the vague grace of the drink had intersected with that of his rise thereunto at its most agreeable point. That was beyond a doubt what had hap-
pened. Sometimes the drink-line looped the loop like an eight and if you had got what you were looking for on the way up you got it again on the way down. The bum- less eight of the drink-figure. You did not end up where you started, but coming down you met yourself going up. Sometimes, as now, you were glad; more times you were sorry and hastened on to your new home.
Suddenly walking through the rain was not enough, stepping out smartly, buttoned up to the chin, in the cold and the wet, was an inadequate thing to be doing. He stopped on the crown of Baggot Street bridge, took off his reefer, laid it on the parapet and sat down beside it. The Guard was forgotten. Stooping forward then where he sat and flexing his leg until the knee was against his ear and the heel caught on the parapet (admirable pos- ture) he took off his boot and laid it beside the reefer. Then he let down that leg and did the same with the other. Next, resolved to get full value from the bitter nor'-wester that was blowing, he slewed himself right round. His feet dangled over the canal and he saw, lurching across the remote hump of Leeson Street bridge, trams like hiccups-o'-the-wisp.
