Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  ‘This is Mr Doyle Erin speaking. Could I speak to Mr Burke of Kelly, Burke and Shea?’

  ‘Hello.’

  That is the sole reply. Then you say loudly:

  ‘Hello. This is Mr DOYLE ERIN. Could I speak to Mr BURKE?’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello! This is Mr Doyle Erin. Will you please listen to what I am saying, this is most important and urgent. I arranged with Mr Burke yesterday that I should ring him today at this hour to confirm a tentative business arrangement. Is he there, please?’

  ‘Hello.’

  Then you drop the overheated supercharged tone and drop to the steely ‘conversational’ voice in which an American gangster says Listen, Bugs, just turn your back and walk over there, I’m not going to do a thing to you. Thanks Bugs. BANG!

  ‘Listen,’ you say, ‘will you please tell me is Mr Burke there?’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘I said will you please tell me is Mr Burke there?’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Is Mr Burke there?’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Is MR BURKE THERE, DAMN YOU?’

  ‘Hello.’

  The illiterate stupid … clodbrained … half-witted … platter-faced … cuckoo. Hello. Hello. YAH! Yah. YAH!

  RECENTLY I HAD a word to say about a certain literary man’s ‘laurels’ and the advice he received to ‘look’ to them. The other day I was passing the house of another literary man and it occurred to me to call to see how his laurels were (faring) and what he was doing with them. I found him resting on them. Squatting there with his gross carcase on a heap of the decayed vegetation, he looked (for all the world) like a clucking buzzard perched on some jungle eyrie trying to digest some unspeakable feed while hatching its own evil eggs.

  We talked for four hours, and the entire conversation (I may say) was in French. And never once (let me add) did he ask me whether I had a mouth on me. He is one of the old crowd.

  THE FUTURE

  I read somewhere the other day (by mistake, I was looking for something else) that the great motor car manufacturers are continuing for the duration of the war to design ‘phantom’ models of their vehicles, one new one every year, each improving on its predecessor, but that the public is to be kept in ignorance of all this. After the war (if that means anything) the first model to be (launched) will be as much an improvement on 1939’s model as 1939 was on 1910, the year I bought the old De Dion from your uncle Joe. This is awful nonsense. By 1978—not that I suppose your men will have laid off their scrapping by then—I’ll certainly have forgotten how to drive the 1939 car (first, down, second up and across and so on—I ask you, how could a poor blind rheumatic old man like me be expected to (turn round) (all over again) and learn how to drive these divilish newfangled injins of 1978?). Sure ’tis nonsense, boy, nonsense.

  And wait. Supposing this strictly private progress is also carried on in (other spheres)? What then? Suppose Montague Burton in his secret laboratory turns out each year a phantom lounge suit, gradually streamlining it, knocking off a pocket here, a lapel there, changing the trousers, taking them off, turning the waistcoat back to front, sewing the buttons on inside, coming out with two spare sleeves as well as the usual two, eventually throwing aside all accepted dress theories in favour of some mad invention (in shark-skin probably) buttoning down the back with a pair of stainless steel elastic breeches, hollow glass-tiled shoes and a hat with a periscope and a radiogram that turns records over and plays them upside-down and pours out drink for you and your pals every time you press the button on the zip fastener at the back of your neck. What decent Irishman would be seen in that rig-out matther a damn what year is in it? Sure it’s nonsense, nonsense, Jack, do you see. You can’t believe all the stuff you read in the papers, boy, no, sir, not by—

  Not by what extended calcinated writing tool?

  THE OTHER DAY I was reading that man down there on the right—£nunc*—and I caught him saying this:

  ‘If you have the bones of a typewriter lying in an attic they are worth money today.’

  This seems reasonable enough until we bring (to bear) upon it our whole fatuous battery of professional paranoia, perversion and catachresis, rushing out with our precast vaudeville clown-routine of quotation, misinterpretation and drivelling comment. Does the result please anyone, bring the most faded polite laugh, the most tenuous giggle, the most bilious sneer?

  Well, all I can say is this: if I have the bones of a typewriter, £nunc can do nothing for me, Harry Meade can do nothing for me, Barniville can do nothing for me, and it’s a sure thing I won’t be lying in an attic reading this newspaper’s advice on how to make money. I’ll be stuffed into some circus and billed above the Bearded Lady. On payment of sixpence you will be permitted to view my unique bones through some X-ray gadget.

  Remington I knew well. He had the whole of his insides taken out of him, bones and all, when he was a lad—he was suffering from diffused chrythomelalgia—and had new bones made for him out of old typewriters. And, mark this, when he grew up, he was as fine a looking man as you’d meet in a dazed walk. (No, no, no, put away that pencil, I didn’t mean you to mark it that way. I meant you to read, mark, and inwardly digest, that’s all.)

  In middle life Remington discovered that he had a weak chest and (what would do him), (only) have a complete brand-new typewriter built into the upper part of his metal torso. Occasionally he would accidentally tap down a key or two when leaning against counters or bridge-parapets. People said that mysterious tips for horse races were often found on his internal roller; (be that as it may) (certain it is) that he never went out without a sheet of paper stuck in his ‘carriage’.

  I well remember an embarrassing incident that occurred—I think it was the year of the split—the last time I was talking to him. (What would do me) (only) get into a political argument with him. I kept (on) tapping him on the chest to bring home all my points. Only when I heard the tinkle of a little muffled bell did I remember that I was talking to no ordinary man. Did he take offence? Not old Bill Remington. With exquisite refinement he excused himself, turned away, and inserting a hand under his waistcoat, drew back the carriage. I often wonder what stupid motto I typed out during that encounter. ‘Up the Prince of Wales’ or something, I suppose.

  Poor old Underwood and that astute statesman, Smith Premier, were also men who had the typewriter in their bones. I knew them well. Decenter men never stood in that substance one associates with hot feet—shoe lather.

  Towards the end of Premier Smith’s life he was a sick man. And at what was he a very sick man?

  At that.

  But old George Underwood was a bright soul, always up to practical jokes and harmless rascality, you couldn’t have a party without him. What shrill acoustical phenomenon was he?

  A scream.

  I FIND IT very hard to conquer this neurotic weakness of mine, reading newspapers. In this (very) paper the other day I read the following:

  ‘The Department of Defence announces that persons who are not in receipt of a military service pension, or in possession of a military service certificate entitling such persons to a pension, must apply for a medal to the Secretary, Department of Defence. Such application will not be necessary from persons in receipt of a military service pension or in possession of a certificate.’

  I’m not very sure about this. Suppose the population of this country is three millions and suppose that 5,000 citizens have these pensions or certificates. That leaves a total of 2,995,000 persons who must apply for a medal. For that proprietary fraction, my own part, I have no objection (in the world) to applying for this medal, providing reasonable arrangements are made to deal with the vast hordes of people who will be converging on the Department of Defence. But I have one serious doubt. Is there not an important principal at stake here? Is it wise to compel so many people to apply for a medal? Is it judicious to introduce into our democratic civilisation the ugly word ‘must’? If I concede the right of a state departmen
t to compel me to apply for a medal today, how do I know that tomorrow I will not be compelled to call to some dispensary and swallow a bar of chemical chocolate? And the day after to have all my teeth extracted in the public interest? Do réir a chéile seadh tuitid na caisleáin.

  Conceiving my liberty to be threatened, therefore, I have decided after the fullest consideration of all the relevant facts (funny how nobody bothers considering the irrelevant facts) to refuse to apply for this medal, and if need be to suffer jail or any other punishment that may be (visited) upon my head. (I digress again to remark that I am thankful that punishment is always confined to the head, which is a thickly-boned eminence and well able to endure it.)

  Of course, I realise the awful futility of all this. I make a noble gesture in the cause of human liberty. I will not apply for or accept a medal. I sacrifice myself. I go to jail. I suffer. I lose weight. It is whispered that I am ill, nay, dying. People pray for me. Meetings are held. The public conscience is moved. A protest comes from the Galway County Council. There is a strike in Portarlington. Milk churns are upset at Athlone railway station. From my lone cell I issue an appeal to the people of Ireland to remain calm. High political personalities are closely guarded. Anonymous ballad-mongers sanctify my cause. The public temper mounts. Sligo County Council makes its voice heard (in no uncertain manner). The Banner County is next with a sternly-worded resolution. The Gaelic League comes into the open, calling me a martyr. Muintir na Tire dissolves itself as a token of mourning. The sea-divided Gael, meeting in solemn conclave, at Chicago, pledges its ‘inalienable community of feeling with the people of Ireland in their devotion to the glorious martyr now lodged in the citadel of Mountjoy.’

  And it all works. I am released. Cheering crowds bear me from the grim fortress. It is 8.15 of a winter’s night. Grotesque torchlights enflame the city. I am wheeled away in Parnell’s coach. Massed piper’s play ‘A Nation Once Again’. Where are we going? Dorset Street, O’Connell Street, Nassau Street. The Mansion House! Doyle is there and all the boys. The wan emaciated figure is assisted to the platform. Speeches. Different people keep standing up and sitting down. Speeches speeches speeches. Then I find that some very distinguished person has walked over to myself and is talking to me. What’s this? I struggle to my feet. What has he there? A little black box. More talk. Then he opens it. A medal!

  Then the crowd goes mad, but they don’t feel half as mad as I do.

  HERE’S ANOTHER THING I read in this paper recently:—

  ‘When your unlocked bicycle disappears from the kerb of some unfrequented side-street, you can have no grouse coming—it happens every day of the week—but when the office stair carpet vanishes from under your eyes it is time to get perturbed. At that stage you unhook the nearest phone and communicate with the law.’

  I don’t get it. Look. There you are, miraculously enough, in an unfrequented side-street, your bike propped at the kerb, and behind you a hired thug in tweeds, clutching a shotgun. Suddenly the bike is gone. What I want to know is—why must it be assumed that there is no possibility whatever of the chance appearance of those dun-feathered fowl? That a carpet should magically disappear from under our feet may be surprising, but surely it is far more astounding that there should, in fact, ever have been a stair carpet under the feet of myself and my gunman when we are standing in an ‘unfrequented’ side-street waiting for a bicycle to vanish and for grouse not to appear. I mean. And worse, more complicated still, the carpet has also to vanish from under our eyes. The truth is very few people wear carpets under their eyes—though little bags knitted by Seán Jameson, yes.

  And when this mysterious carpet vanishes, ‘at that stage you unhook the nearest phone and communicate with the law’. A tramcar stage, I suppose, although we are told it is an unfrequented side-street. And ‘unhook’? Alexandre Dumas Père? Period stuff. Unhooking phones, electric broughams, call me a hansom, you’re a hansom, Yellow Book, Wilde, Harris, Marie Lloyd, murder in gaslight.

  Now let us consider the thing on another plane as the pilot said to the rear gunner. Your carpet is stolen by what this anonymous writer calls ‘light-fingered gentry’. Listen that’s nothing. I left the office here in Westmoreland street the other day for a drop of lunch at five o’clock, locked the front door so that none of the crowd could get out and spread lies about me when my back was turned. Back to the office punctually at a quarter to eleven. No office, no great newspaper building. Westmoreland street, yes, but no sign of the archaic buzantion facade behind which. Stolen, Locke, Stack and Birrell (three best backs Ireland ever had, Ernie Crawford was only trotting after them). What did I do? I unhooked the nearest telephone box and asked for Commissionaire Guard Sheehan Daniel Depoe Finished Pork. Look, I want to report a robbery. My offices at 31 Westmoreland street have been stolen. Could you help? Last seen wearing a handsome old-world front of no particular (recognisable) period, wears a brownstone moustache and speaks Greek fluently. Certainly sir, not at all sir, a pleasure sir. I went back to a certain place greatly relieved that (the matter) had been taken out of my hands (though not by a doctor). Cycling home at five I noticed that the building had been put back again. But in their hurry the light-fingered gentry had replaced it back to front. It looked very queer I can tell you.

  We are now having the thing chained.

  I CANNOT stand or understand the sort of typographical shouting that goes on in that hierofrantic sheet, my income tax form, and it would not surprise me in the least to learn that yours is the same. This sort of thing: ‘If you are a MARRIED MAN and your wife is living with you …’ I think it is very bad taste using those heavy black caps, as the convict said to the trial judges (pace Hanna J. and this thoughtful letter to Ireland’s premier finest most tunisian-minded newspaper, the Irish Times, all uncover, please). ‘If you are a MARRIED MAN.’ Undoubtedly there is some dreadful sneer intended here, some recondite official indecency that could be understood only in the underworld of please attach file, have you papers please, please speak, can you discharge file please, I am directed to say that the matter is under consideration.

  ‘If you are a MARRIED MAN and your wife is living with you.’ These hidden baroque-rats have the cool cheek (warm cheek for some reason is considered rare) to suggest that it is the exceptional thing in Ireland for a married man to have his wife living with him. One expects the formula to go on like this: ‘If, however, you are a MARRIED MAN and have your wife parked out in Shankill so that you will not be embarrassed by her fearful appearance, ludicrous “conversation” and appalling clothes, give her address and telephone number.’ Yes. But read the thing again. ‘If you are a MARRIED MAN and your wife is living with you …’ Supposing your wife is living with and you are not a married man (or even a MARRIED MAN), what then? What subtle poor oak rat’s distinction is being made here?

  If I understand English, a wife is what a woman becomes after she is married and no account of equivocal chat can convince me that anybody other than a married man can have a wife. (I am assuming all the time that cab-horses, cows and cats are not regarded as being in receipt of (mark that lovely phrase, ‘in receipt of’) a taxable income. Why then the ‘if you are a MARRIED MAN’ when the word ‘wife’ follows on at once? Why not say ‘if you have a wife living with you …’? It would be too simple, I suppose. Incidentally, what is the legal meaning of ‘living’? Supposing I am a MARRIED MAN and my wife is dying with me? Yes, I see it. The cold official brain thinks of everything. They must insist on this word ‘living’. Leave it out, they will say, or even to change it to ‘if you are living with your wife’ and you will have all sorts of unprincipled persons claiming relief in respect of a wife who is (sure enough) sitting in the drawing room, very well preserved woman considering she died in 1924. Can you beat that for ghoulish circumspection? (It just occurs to me that there must have been a lot of official jargon in our jails in the oul days, have you file please, please attach file, is file with you please. Why this eternal tender supplication ‘please’)?
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  On the next page of the form I see CLAIM IN RESPECT OF PERSONAL ALLOWANCE (TO A MARRIED MAN), ‘HOUSEKEEPER’, CHILDREN, DEPENDENT RELATIVES, AND LIFE ASSURANCE PREMIUMS. Why this sneering sophistication of putting my housekeeper into inverted commas? The woman has a blameless character and makes that indigenous culinary complication, an Irish stew, that you would get up out off yoor bad en tha maddle off tha neight fur tay eet a wee bet off ut, d’yeh ondherstond me. Is a dependent relative what happens when you are unwise enough to say: I seen you with the man that you were speaking to whom? And why cannot I get relief in respect of dependent absolutes? The wife’s mother, for instance?

  I will not harrow you with the dreadful mess that this form assumes you to be in ‘if you are an UNMARRIED PERSON’. Earlier it was a question of a MARRIED MAN; if you happen to be unmarried, you are only a PERSON, which I consider insulting and sinister. Furthermore, I see no provision for the situation where you are a MARRIED WOMAN and (decently enough) support your husband. Listen to this: ‘If you are an UNMARRIED PERSON having living with you … your mother.’ What gaucherie! Unmarried persons in Ireland do not have their mothers living with them, they live with their mothers.

  Small wonder faith that nobody likes this wretched form. Small wonder every bank, insurance office and big business firm in the country is tearing down and building up its walls rather than pay. Please speak. Bah!

  YEARS AGO when I was living in Islington a cub reporter in the service of Tay Pay, founder of that modern scourge, the ‘gossip column’, I had great trouble with my landlord. The man was a vulgar low bowler-hatted plumber who tortured me exquisitely by his vulgarity of dress, talk and aspect. The situation rapidly became Russian. Evenings in the yellow gaslight, myself immersed in a letter to George Harris or painfully compiling my first novel, the gross plumber audibly eating tripe in an armchair behind me. The succession—the crescendo of ‘Greek’ emotion—irritation—anger—loathing—then hatred. And then the quiet grey thought—I will do this creature in. I will do for him, gorblimey, if I have to swing for it!