Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  I am also doing a German version, into what mercantile contract?

  Upstairs in his empty room

  Gaspard plays his violin

  And the embarrassed corpses whom

  He asks to dance, just grin.

  So he calls his sister Cissie

  (Whose surname now is Derham)

  And asks would she pepulisse

  Ter pede terram.

  I like to give a domestic tip now and again because I have reason to think that a few ladies read my notes here. A good way to prevent blood from curdling is to make sure that only the purest ingredients are used. Secondly, pour the blood in very slowly, a spoonful at a time, and thin it out with a few drops of vinegar when the mixture threatens to become too turgid.

  I think some of our government departments should see about getting themselves more appropriate names. Our military ministry, seeing we are neutral, should be called the Department of the Fence. And surely the Department of Agriculture is a poor title—would it not be better to call it the Department of Yokel Government?

  Really, stuff like this should not appear in a respectable newspaper like the Irish Times. It should refuse to print it. Or else change its name to the Irish Mess.

  Enough.

  IT IS FASHIONABLE for you women to jeer at us men and pretend that we spend our lives in the sheerest self-indulgence without a thought for anybody else. This is quite wrong, as I have reason to know from something that happened the other day. I was approached by two friends who were very worried about a third party, a great friend of us all. This man (a frightfully decent sort) was making a fool of himself. Question of running around with a married woman. There was talk. The whole thing was most unsuitable. My two visitors thought it was up to the three of us to do something. They thought that I knew the erring man best of all and would I think of seeing him and having a talk as between men of the world? I immediately saw that it was my duty to do so. However unpleasant the interview might be—and some men are inclined to resent advice on personal matters—I saw that I owed it to my fellow-man at least to reason with him and to try to make him see that he was transgressing the rules of good conduct. Accordingly I went. I called to my friend’s rooms at 3 p.m. on Sunday and according to my watch it was 3.6 p.m. when I emerged. My other companions, who were nervously waiting for me round the corner, remarked that my face was red. I explained to them what had happened. Yes, it was quite true that he was carrying on with a married woman. He was married to her, of course. Detestable business. We haven’t spoken since.

  WASTED TIME

  I was passing the Irish Times office the other day, and, realising how dreadfully dull newspapers are nowadays, I suddenly dived down on all fours and bit a passing dog in the leg. The creature squealed. I immediately went into the Irish Times office and reported the occurrence. Here was genuine news at last, a scoop. But no, they wouldn’t use it. Sorry sir but the public would not be interested sir. Times have changed sir. Very sorry sir. And so forth. I ask you.

  I went and hung my head in Shame, that well-known suburb of Canossa.

  ABSINTHE MAKES THE HEART GROW WARMER

  WAITER, what was in that glass?

  Arsenic, sir.

  Arsenic. I asked you to bring me absinthe.

  I thought you said arsenic. I beg your pardon, sir.

  Do you realise what you’ve done, you clumsy fool? I’m dying.

  I am extremely sorry, Sir.

  I DISTINCTLY SAID ABSINTHE.

  I realise that I owe you an apology, sir. I am extremely sorry.

  EVERY NOW AND AGAIN my friend Quidnunc down here on my left (your right) sees Fitt (best tailor in Dublin) to make mysteriously incomprehensible and far-from-called-for observations. (I digress to remark that uncalled for drinks are rarely served in Irish dram-shops.) A few weeks ago I caught him saying in that charming high-pitched voice (there is nothing better than one coat of pitch and tar applied evenly with a mop for preserving timbre) the following:

  I hope that the church and monastery of San Niccolà, the most interesting buildings in Catania, have survived the recent fighting.

  To this I make one unanswerable query: Why?

  If you are going to make observations like this on Sicily, why pick on the one thing we know to be a piece of unthinkable theatrical shoddy, so ruthlessly ‘re-built’ in the last century as to be completely unrecognisable, even to those of us who measured it in the sixties. I have the drawings above in a drawer to this day together with a prayer book belonging to Father Johnson and a silver calipers once the property of Cooley R.I.P.

  Look at me, I hope that nothing happens to the temple of Zeus at Agrigento, to temples ‘C’ and ‘D’ at Selinus, to that long pseudo-peripteral hexastyle agglomeration of architectures at Segesta, comprising the styles often centuries on one site, and presenting, through century-slow fragmentation, the artistic erasures of Time, which is cunningly enough removing the more recent, leaving the oldest to the last. I know a fair amount about this subject but do not shout about it, unlike a certain other person.

  Look at me again. I have a passion for the Moslem work that was there before the Normans came and which Roger and the bishops he brought with him from Provence were broadminded enough to admire. (I knew the Guiscards well—all excepting the brother of Pope Urban.) Yet do I talk of all this?

  I hope to heavens nothing happens to the Church of the Martorana that the Admiral George of Antioch built in 1143 (not 1144 as Brehier so wrong-headedly suggests). And I have a great graw for the Capella Palatine: very special stuff, Latin plan, structure frightfully Greek and the nave plasthered with Byzantine mosaics. And then those incredibly Moslem road-houses (you know—Favara, Menani (Roger II) La Ziza (William I) and La Cuba (William II)! What one finds in Sicily is … well … Europe … but is there ever a word out of me about that? Do you find me … parading my knowledge? I think not.

  Cefalu, Vespri, Palermo, Monreale, that squat timber-roofed tub—if it weren’t for the plan, you’d say pre-Norman. And those very quarelooking gadrooned voussoirs, which really must be Islamic in origin—after all, the earliest example of them is in Bab el Futtuh, Cairo 1087, as every one knows. And those interesting intersecting arcades that give the effect of fourteenth-century English window tracery … they at least are Norman in origin, as is the chevron ornament that we find even in Ireland and sometimes on the sleeve of me son’s coat that’s in the Army.

  I hope nothing happens to the Municipio and the Cathedral in Syracuse (some relatives of mine are buried within the walls)—as nice a pair of late Renaissance essays as you could hope to find. I make nothing of this, nor do I shout of my predilections in the newspapers, much as less talented persons might be gently suborned to my lordly standards of taste. If there is one thing I would warn you against it is the baroque style. There you have something that lacks the sternness and strength of truly virtuous and admirable work. It is effeminate—I would sooner have Philipstown. (I hope nothing happens to Philipstown.)

  ABOVE IN THE CITY HALL

  I read with bitter amusement that the ‘scandal’ of Dublin’s basement dwellings will be raised at the June meeting of the Corporation. This may impress some people, but to me it simply means that the City Vat-Herrs are too fat, too sybaritic, to attempt the climb to the top floor. It is not that basements are luxurious; but compare for one moment, I pray you, the essentially warm situation of the couple in the kitchen with the plight of the widowed lady on the upmost storey. She lives alone with five mahogany sideboards, four beds, an inlaid escritoire, and two upright pianos. Every day she scrubs the stairs from attic to cellar, and do not forget that the only accessible water tap is in the yard, and that she is seventy-three. The gas rationing does not affect her, it is true, since she has nothing to cook; but she does feel it would be nice to use the only bath for some purpose other than collecting rain water, which comes in through the ‘roof’, owing to the absence of slates. She does not wish to complain, but though twelve of her children
are happily married in Cleveland (Ohio) she does not forget that thirteen others slipped through the rotting floorboards in infancy, and had to be waked in the two-pair back. She feels that if the floor were repaired life would be rather marvellous. She has some bitter words for the Government but feels that, all things considered, Mr Asquith is doing his best. She was born in Dublin, but sometimes would as soon say it’s from Injeh she is.

  YESTERDAY I marched into the polling booth, happy that the decent Government had permitted me to take part in the complex quinquennial gestation that culminates in an expression of The People’s Will. As usual, everybody looked as if they (yes, I know that ‘they’ is wrong there) were engaged in some criminal conspiracy. Shifty looks, muttering mechanical smiles. Women trying to look as if they had the remotest idea of the meaning of Irish politics. Youngsters of twenty-one coming in with a face that was intended to mean ‘I suppose I’ll have to vote but God be with the days of me dead chief, Parnell.’ A general air of deceit and pretence, though I’m not sure that there is any difference between those two words. In the corner, a man that looked very like a member of the crew known as ‘all right-thinking Irishmen’ carefully reading a bound volume of Irish Times leading articles in order to find out for whom he should vote ‘unless the country is to embark upon another decade of recriminations based upon a civil war that was fought at a time when a large body of the electorate was not even born’. (Needless to say, I dissent from the view that what took place before a man was born can be of no interest to him. I can think of a number of ante-natal occurrences that should be of some interest to every right-thinking Irishman: a certain wedding, for instance; or the steps taken in 1914–18 which ended all war forever, the foundation of the G.A.A., the emigration of Bernard Shaw, even my own fight in the eighties for the use of the ‘full regulator’ in Irish railway practice.)

  In the polling booth also I saw evidence of that dreadful pest, the man who is anxious to give the impression that he is personating himself. I will not say that he tries to look like a suspicious character, for the sole reason that I try to write decent English and I will not permit myself (for one moment) to say ‘suspicious character’ if I mean a character who is not suspicious but whose behaviour provokes suspicions on the part of others. This man manages to sidle into the booth, avoids everybody’s eyes, starts searching his pockets and makes no attempt to vote. He is ultimately asked for his name and stammers a name out after some hesitation. No, he cannot find his card. He does not know his number. The agents immediately challenge him. A Guard hovers in the background (using the patent wings devised by my Research Bureau.) Then me dacent man changes his tune, establishes his identity with devastating precision, causes a number of bystanders to identify him, casts his vote (instead of voting) and walks out leaving a very discomfited parcel of officials behind him, all wondering if they will receive solicitors’ letters the next morning. A very bad low Irish type.

  Leaving the booth myself, I realised that I had once again spoilt my vote by marking Xs opposite the names I had decided to honour. I had also, of course, inserted the usual comic verse but that alone does not invalidate a voting paper. I walked home wondering why all illiterates use the complex symbol X when they put pen to pay up her. Are we wrong in assuming that a stroke or straight line is the simplest and most primitive literary symbol? Is it in fact more recondite and difficult than the X? Or has the X a mystical import for humans, a quality that transcends all considerations of intellect? Naturally, I do not care a thraneen which it is, it is only a self-conscious peasant like myself would raise such issues in a respectable newspaper.

  I am glad it is over but for my part I will not celebrate when me man is returned. I am off the bier, as the corpse said when the drunken motorist crashed into the funeral.

  I FOUND MYSELF going homewards the other evening, not in a cab but in that odd mobile apartment with the dun-coloured wall-paper, a brown study. Long long thoughts occupied my mind. I was examining myself according to occult criteria which substitute for ‘time’, ‘death’ and other gaffes of the frail human intellect that blinding instant of vision which simultaneously begins, explains and closes all. Such insights as I have been vouchsafed give warning that all of us will encounter serious trouble in due time, for the upper limits of our aerial ‘existences’ bristle with complexities. Your politician will assure you that the post-war world is the great problem that looms ahead, but those of us who do not spend all our time in this universe well know that the real problem will be the post-world war.

  Yet going home that evening I was remembering my small self, thinking of all that had happened through the years, re-examining the mélange of achievement and disillusion that I call my life. Praise I have received, blame also: yet how vain are both, how easy of purchase in the mart of men! I feel that one thing at least stands forever to my credit in the golden ledgers—the rather generous provision I made for the widow Manity and her children when her husband—my best friend—died after a long and painful illness. Poor suffering Hugh Manity, I kept the promise I made to him on his death bed.

  When I reached home I was in an odd mood. I felt … old. Age and achievement hath like brandy a mellowness yet withal a certain languor. My daughter was in the next room humming and putting on her hat. I called her.

  ‘Hullo, Bella. Sit down for a moment, will you.’

  ‘Yes, Daddy. What’s the matter?’

  A long watery stare out of the window. The pipe is produced and fiddled with.

  ‘Bella … how old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen, daddy. Why?’

  Another frightful pause.

  ‘Bella, we’ve known each other for a long time. Nineteen years. I remember you when you were very small. You were a good child.’

  ‘Yes, daddy.’

  More embarrassment.

  ‘Bella … I have been a good daddy to you, haven’t I? At least I have tried to be.’

  ‘You are the best daddy in the world. What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘Bella … I want to say something to you. I’m … I’m going to give you a surprise. Bella … please don’t think ill of me but … but … but, Bella—’

  With a choking noise she has jumped up and has her arms about me.

  ‘O daddy, I know, I know! I know what you are going to say! You … you’re not my daddy at all. You found me one day … when I was very small … when I was a tiny baby … and you took me home … and cared for me … and watched over me … and now you find you have been in love with me all these years …’

  With a scream I was on my feet. Soon I was racing down the street to the local cinema, clutching in my inside pocket the old-fashioned Mauser, a present from Hamar Greenwood for doing a few jobs for him at a time when it was neither profitable nor popular. I reached the cinema and demanded to see the manager. Soon the suave pink-jowled ruffian appeared and invited me into his private office. Very shortly afterwards two shots rang out and I sincerely hope I will be given an opportunity of explaining to the jury that I had merely wished to suggest to my daughter that as a father of a family who had worked and scraped for years to keep other people in luxury, it was about time I should be relieved of the humiliation of having to press my own trousers.

  DO YOU KNOW it frightens me sometimes when I look at the date. 1943, eh! Getting on, not getting any younger and no use trying to disguise it. The ears, like grate-black coxswains! I was sauntering down Molesworth street the other day (nothing will do me but try to fix up a merger between that crowd and the Knights, there are difficulties in the way but I am making some progress) and suddenly I found myself looking at the old Molesworth Hall. Will you ever forget the night we did Broken Soil, that thing of Colum’s? Do you realise that was neither today nor yesterday? The Fays were in their element that time, Frank as the Wise Man in The Hour Glass and Willie as the Beggarman in A Pot of Broth. And the best fun of all was myself and Starkey as the pupils—I have to laugh when I think of how near we went to making a hames
of the whole thing. And Mary scolding the two of us how lovely she looked. I still say it was Joe Hone’s fault standing there in the wings making faces at us.

  HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW?

  I encountered all the undermentioned expressions (in the course of) last week. Indicate (in your own words, whatever that means) what is wrong with each.

  1. An auctioneer’s poster which advertises the disposal of a number of things, including a library of books.

  2. ‘I bought a new pair of shoes today and they are cutting the feet off me.’

  3. ‘I was down seeing my tailor about a suit of clothes.’

  4. ‘The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder.’

  You will find the answers lower down in this interesting article.

  H.M. ENGLISH

  In this newspaper recently I noticed a big headline (footlines are prohibited by special orders of the Editor) ESCAPEE GETS JAIL FOR LIFE. One sighs, of course—I mean, surely this man was (if anything) an escaper. The escapee was either the governor of the jail or the State. But I like the scene which takes place in the governor’s simply furnished office when me man is caught and brought back again, looking rather foolish and abashed. Present is Mr Kevin Dixon, Attorney General. A blazing mess of wax in the corner indicates that lackeys are sealing an important document. Soon the little ceremony is over and me man is on his way back to the cells, the possessor for life of all that and those Portlaoise Prison with a row of twenty-seven strongly-constructed cottages let to solvent warders, fruit and vegetable gardens, handball-alley, death-chamber, hot linen press, maid’s bedroom, garage accommodation for 59 motor cars, well-kept apiary, the whole in perfect working order a unique opportunity for investors. (And all this, mind you, notwithstanding the fact that it is illegal to alienate State property.)