Dream of Fair to Middling Women (29 page)

“Mr Larry O'Murcahaodha” said the Frica “will now sing for us.”

Mr Larry O'Murcahaodha tore a greater quantity than seemed quite fair of his native speech-material to flat tatters.

“I can't bear it” said Belacqua “I can't bear it.”

The Frica threw the Poet into the breach. She informed the assistance that it was privileged:

“I think I am accurate in saying” she paused to be given the lie “one of his most recent compositions.”

“Vinegar” moaned Belacqua “on nitre.”

“Don't try” said the Alba, with forced heartiness, for she did not like the look of Belacqua the least bit, “to put across the Mrs Gummidge before the coucherie on me.”

He had no desire, none at all, to put across the Mrs Gummidge at any moment of her life or anything whatever on her or anyone else. His distress was profound, it was unaffected. And two needs stood like stone out of his dereliction: to backslide quietly down on the parquet and fit his nape against the Alba's thigh, and to be delivered from
the ravening wolf whose ears his mind in self-defence was grasping. He leaned across to the Polar Bear:

“I wonder” he said “could you possibly…”

“Lotus!” screamed the bibliomaniac, from the back row.

The P.B. turned a little yellow, as well he might.

“Let the man say his lines” he hissed “can't you.”

“Merde” said Belacqua, in a loud despairing voice. He would understand that. He fell back into his place. There was no God in heaven.

“What is it?” whispered the Alba.

He was green, he fluttered a hand helplessly.

“Curse you” said the Alba “what is it?”

“Let the man say his lines” he mumbled “why don't you let the man say his lines?”

An outburst of applause unprecedented in the annals of the mauve salon suggested that he had done so at last.

“Now” said the Alba.

After a moment's hesitation he stated his absurd dilemma as follows:

“When with indifference I remember my past sorrow, my mind has indifference, my memory has sorrow. The mind, upon the indifference which is in it, is indifferent; yet the memory, upon the sadness which is in it, is not sad.”

“Da capo” said the Alba.

“When with indifference I remember my past sorrow, the content of my mind is indifference, the content of my memory sorrow. The mind, upon the indifference which it contains, is indifferent; yet…”

“Basta” said the Alba.

The early birds were making a move already. Suddenly the Alba had an idea.

“Will you see me home?” she said.

“Have you got it” said Belacqua “because I haven't.”

She covered his hand with her hand.

“Will you?” she repeated.

“What I want to know” said the Student.

“I see” said the Man of Law agreeably to Chas “by the paper that sailors are painting the Eiffel Tower with no less than forty tons of yellow.”

The Frica had taken a cold farewell of the renegades. To her mind they were neither better nor worse than renegades. Now she was making as though to regain the estrade.

“Quick” said Belacqua “before they start.”

He stood up and disengaged himself from the row. He stood back for her to pass and followed her out through the door of the torture-chamber into the vestibule. The Frica plunged after them. Torrents of spleen came gushing out of her. Belacqua opened the street-door and stood by it. Seeing the Alba inclined to do the polite, he said, in a loud outrageous voice (he was not afraid) that carried, as he learned later, even to the ears of the hard of hearing:

“Will you come on, for the love of God, away out of this?”

They taxied in silence to her home. Je t'adore â l'égal…

“Can you pay this man” he said, when they arrived, “because I spent my last make on a bottle.”

She took the money out of her bag and handed it to him and he payed the man off. They stood, side by side, on the asphalt in front of the gate. The rain had ceased.

“Well” he said, intending at the most to clap a chaste kiss on her hand and take himself off on his ruined feet, and let it go at that. But she shrank away from the gesture and unlatched the gate.

Tire la chevillette, la bobinette cherra.

“Come in” she said “there's a fire and a bottle.”

He went in. She would fill two glasses and poke up the fire and sit down in the chair and he would sit down on the floor with his back turned to her.

Voice of Grock…

It began to rain again and now it would rain on through the night until morning. It was to be feared that the morning would have a fatigued appearance, and that the air, after its broken sleep, would be inclined to take the light of day sullenly. Even for Dublin, where seasonable weather is the exception rather than the rule, it was a rainy Xmas. A Leipzig prostitute, to whom Belacqua had occasion some weeks later to quote our rainfall for the month of December, exclaimed:

“Himmisacrakrüzidirkenjesusmariaundjosefundblütiges-kreuz!”

All in one word. The things people come out with sometimes!

But the wind had fallen, as it so often does with us after midnight, a negligence on the part of Æolus alluded to in the most bitter terms by mariners of yore, as can be read in any of the old sea-journals that constitute so important a fund of our civic records, and the rain fell in a uniform untroubled manner. It fell upon the bay, the champaign-land and the mountains, and notably upon the central bog it fell with a rather desolate uniformity.

What would Ireland be, though, without this rain of hers. Rain is part of her charm. The impression one enjoys before landscape in Ireland, even on the clearest of days, of seeing it through a veil of tears, the mitigation of contour, to quote Chas's felicitous expression, in the compresses of our national visibility, to what source can this benefit be ascribed if not to our incontinent skies? Standing on the Big Sugarloaf, it may well be objected, or Douce, or even a low eminence like the Three Rock, the Welsh Hills are frequently plainly to be discerned. Don't cod yourselves. Those are clouds that you see, or your own nostalgia.

Consequently when Belacqua came out (you didn't suppose, it is to be hoped, that we were going to allow him to spend the night there), no moon was to be seen nor stars of any kind. He stood well out in the midst of the tramlines and established this circumstance beyond appeal. There was no light in the sky whatsoever. At least he could not discover any (and after all it is to his system, and none other, that we are obliged to refer for this passage), though he took off his glasses and wiped them carefully and inspected every available inch of the firmament before giving it up as a bad job. There was
some
light, of course there was, it being well known that perfect black is simply not to be had. But he was in no state of mind to be concerned with any such punctilio. The heavens, he said to himself, are darkened, absolutely, beyond any possibility of error.

Not having any money in his pocket the absence of city-bound conveyances caused him no chagrin to speak of. He had walked before, and now he could walk again. But so stiff and aching were his bones after his wetting, so raw and sore his feet, that he was reduced to a snail's pace. To make matters if possible more disagreeable, he developed an enormous pain in his stomach as he went along, and this
bowed him more and more towards the ground till by the time he reached Ballsbridge he was positively doubled in two and unable to proceed. Marooned on the bridge and far from shelter, he had no choice but to sit down on the streaming pavement. What else was he to do? There was a more comfortable seat within striking distance, it is true, but he was in such a panic of discomfort that he never knew. He leaned back against the parapet and waited for the pain to get better. Gradually it got better.

What was that in his lap? He shook off his glasses and bent down his head to see. That was his hands. Now who would have thought that! He turned them this way and that, he clenched and unclenched them, keeping them on the move for the wonder of his weak eyes that were down now almost on top of them, because he was anxious to see the details. He opened them in unison at last, finger by finger together, till there they were, wide open, face upward, rancid, an inch from his squint, which however slowly righted itself as he began to lose interest in them as a spectacle. Scarcely had he made to employ them on his face when a voice, slightly more in sorrow than in anger this time, enjoined him to move on, which, the pain being so much better, he was only too happy to do.

END