Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien (Irish Literature)

by Flann O'Brien

  “If your health is good, still it cannot be so good that a glass of Locke’s of Kilbeggan will not put a fresh gloss on it.”

  As he handed over the glass with a slight bow, he excused himself for not being able to chequer les verres but his kidneys had advised him to abstain for a while. He then passed a little jug of water and sat down again, beaming. Tim recalled hearing that alcohol and strong narcotics were often incompatible. He took a good drink of the strong amber distillate and began to fill his pipe.

  “Doctor Baggeley,” he said, “I wanted to tell you I’ve had a visitor.”

  “A visitor, dear boy?”

  “Yes. A very strange one. A Scotch lady.”

  The Doctor slapped his knee.

  “Well, well. Scotch . . . and a lady? Scotland for ever!”

  Tim rammed expertly at his pipe-bowl.

  “That’s not all, Doctor. She’s living with me . . . at Poguemahone Hall.”

  “Dear boy! Well, well, well. Living with you . . . ?”

  He rose and paced delightedly to the hearth rug.

  “Living with you in mortal sin, in the opprobrious bondage of the flesh?”

  Tim managed a weak smile.

  “No, Doctor, I didn’t say that, but that isn’t all either.”

  “Don’t tell me, dear friend, that she is a distinguished pianist, or somebody that has come to find the True Cross in the Bog of Allen?”

  “No. She says she is Ned Hoolihan’s wife!”

  The Doctor, taken quite off guard in the midst of his banter, staggered to his seat, collapsed into it and presented to Tim a look of blenched amazement. His eyes stayed wide and motionless.

  “Ned . . . married . . . to a Scotch shawlie? Heavenly sweet crucified Redeemer and his Blessed Mother above! You are not taking a rise out of me, dear boy?”

  “I don’t think so, Doctor. I have no proof but that’s what she said. And I think she is telling the truth. Her name is Crawford MacPherson and that’s what she wants to be called—not Missus Hoolihan.”

  The Doctor bowed his head, cradling it in his right hand.

  “Dear boy, this is most disturbing but let us keep our heads. I would make a telephone call to Ned tomorrow if we only knew where to find him—the damn fool is always up in aeroplanes all over that dirty Texas oil country. As you know, dear boy, I warned him not to go out there.”

  “Yes, I remember. It was foolish, but he made a lot of money.”

  “Money? Pfff! He had more than he could use when he was here, and what use is money to a man who gets himself married to a Scotch hawsie from the fish-gutting sheds of Aberdeen?”

  Tim demurred a bit.

  “I don’t care for her, Doctor, but I don’t think that she’s quite that type. I mean, she’s no lady but all the same she’s not the low working-class type. She brought a horse with her.”

  “A horse, Tim? Sacred grandfathers! Why should anybody bring a horse to Ireland, where the brutes are to be found in every hole and corner of the country?”

  “It’s a wooden horse, a folding affair—I mean a clothes-horse. She made me put this thing in front of my own fire.”

  Doctor Baggeley reflectively fingered his jaw.

  “I see,” he mumbled. “Yes. That could—I say could—mean one thing. What we call diuresis.”

  “What’s that, Doctor?”

  “Pathological incontinence. Bed-wetting and all that line of country.”

  Tim was dismayed.

  “Good Lord! And my friend, poor Ned. Do you mean, Doctor, that she’s going to . . . to dry things at my fire instead of upstairs at her own?”

  He gulped savagely at his new drink as Doctor Baggeley had risen to pace the floor once again in thought. He stopped.

  “Do you know, my dear friend, whether she has any money with her? That itself would be a test of whether she is really Ned Hoolihan’s wife. He is, after all, many times a multi-millionaire, even if it’s in dollars.”

  Tim finished his drink and put his glass on a side table with a click so conclusive that the Doctor absently replenished the glass immediately from the bottle now on the mantelpiece.

  “Now listen, Doctor Baggeley,” Tim said collectedly. “If you would please sit down there again in your chair, I will tell you all I know about Crawford MacPherson’s money and her plans.”

  “Yes, dear boy.”

  Obediently he sat down, calming himself, and lit a cigarette.

  “According to herself she has money without end, millions and millions of it, all of which she can spend with the approval of Mr. Hoolihan, her husband. It seems she can do what she likes with it but she has a plan, a plan to change the whole face of Ireland.”

  “Dear me now. And why is that?”

  “Because she hates the Irish.”

  “Well, dear boy, that is true of a lot of other people but there is little they can do about it. What particular reason has she for hating the Irish?”

  “Because after the Great Famine many, many years ago when the potato crop failed, America was invaded by a million-and-a-half Irish people, starving emigrants if you like, but they pulled through, settled down, and increased and multiplied.”

  Doctor Baggeley nodded, admiring Tim’s gift of concise exposition.

  “Of course it wasn’t just this influx itself that annoys Crawford MacPherson. It’s what the Irish brought with them and planted in America—things she thinks are terrible and dirty.”

  “What sort of things, dear boy? Do you mean dancing to the fiddle—the ‘Rakes of Mallow,’ the ‘Stooks of Barley’ and ‘Drive the Jenny Wren?’”

  “No, no, Doctor. She says they brought drunkenness, and kip-shops full of painted women . . . and pox . . . and the Catholic faith.”

  The Doctor made a clucking noise.

  “Upon my word, dear boy, but I would not agree that the Irish were pioneers in these matters at all. And the Catholic Church? Heavens above, don’t you and I belong to it? And do you remember President Kennedy?”

  “Yes. But Crawford MacPherson does not.”

  “We have the Knights of Columbanus here, remember. Converting outsiders is their business, and I think they get an indulgence for every soul—forty years and forty quarantines or something of the kind.”

  Tim shook his head.

  “Crawford MacPherson has a plan, Doctor. An amazing long-term plan. She wants to make certain there never will be another Great Famine in Ireland because of a failure of the potato crop—and indeed that might happen because of the scandalous way the people here turned up their noses at Earthquake Wonder.”

  “How right you are, dear fellow. I have tried more than once to persuade Billy Colum and his friends to make Earthquake poteen. That’s the boy that would bend your back and make you sing!”

  “But,” Tim pursued, “any potato, she says, is mostly starch. She wants to replace the potato here by sago, which gives even more starch and is far more hardy. Sago is grown on trees. She wants to have forests of sago trees all over Ireland. She wants to buy up all the farming land and make sago compulsory.”

  Slow-mounting amazement and pleasure suffused the large countenance of Doctor the Hon. Eustace Baggeley. He almost sprang from his chair to stand on the hearth rug, bending towards Tim.

  “Sago? Sago? Ah, dear boy, you bring me back to Sumatra, to my Army days. Sago, by Saint Kevin of Glendalough! My dear boy, the very word sago means bread.”

  “I don’t like it, Doctor.”

  “Ah, you may be confusing it with tapioca. You get tapioca by heating the root of the bitter cassava, a tropical shrub of the spurge family. Starch is produced, certainly, but it has nothing to do with sago. Manioc is another name for tapioca.”

  “Do you tell me that, Doctor?”

  “Yes, my boy. In certain parts of South America, meat and manioc is about the only diet for the natives. And they get by on it, but sago would make men of them.”

  Tim’s face clouded in some wonder.

  “Do you think, Doctor, that sag
o trees could be grown here?”

  “Of course, dear boy. Of course. Why not? Haven’t we got the Gulf Stream? Heavens above, I am delighted!”

  “Delighted?”

  “I am charmed. Perhaps it is because I am a military medical man but did you know that the Brazilian Indians discovered that roasting the tubers of cassava would disperse the hydrocyanic acid in the milky white sap?”

  “No, but is that why you are delighted?”

  “Well, not quite, but the manioc shrub grows quickly anywhere, and kills weeds. My heart, though, is in sago.”

  Tim pulled at his pipe. He found it rather difficult to pin the Doctor down, and now Crawford MacPherson had been momentarily forgotten. The Doctor had moved to a rather littered medicinal tray on his desk and was genially selecting among the contents.

  “My dear boy,” he said, “I hope to see again, but in Ireland, the gilded palaces of Siam, the turrets and domes of Malacca and pavements littered with baked cakes of sago . . . ah, the wild, burnished enchantment of the East. . . .”

  He had found simultaneously an ampoule and a hypodermic syringe.

  “But Crawford MacPherson,” Tim urged, “says that growing those trees will take years?”

  The Doctor had given himself an injection on the side of the right buttock, putting the needle through the trouser cloth. He then sat down, pleased.

  “A sago palm of the right strain, my dear Tim,” he said, “can mature in fifteen years.”

  “Well,” Tim rejoined, “she says she is going to import sago to this country in tankers, to feed the people while the trees are growing, and wean them off potatoes!”

  The Doctor beamed but his face was slightly vacant, reflective.

  “I must immediately meet this interesting and gallant lady, Tim. She would now be in Poguemahone Hall, I suppose. But before I go it is essential that you yourself should be instructed in this new big thing, a thing that will change radically the history of Ireland and later the whole social tilt of Western Europe. Have you ever heard of Marco Polo?”

  Another stranger, Tim thought. Wasn’t the Scotch lady enough to be going on with for the present?

  “I don’t think so, sir,” he said coolly.

  “Well, there are books here. Now let me see. . . .”

  He rose and walked steadily to the loaded shelves, searching with his eyes, touching the spines of books with questing finger. Two he took down and paused, looking for a third.

  “You see,” he said with back still turned, “even if it takes a tree fifteen years or more to mature, you have only a given ten days or so within which to fell it. You must fell it when it first breaks into bloom, otherwise all your sago is lost. It all goes to nourish the flowers. Do you understand, my dear boy?”

  He had returned to his chair, putting three books on the desk and examining one of them.

  “Well, if that’s the situation, Doctor,” Tim said expansively, “the trees would have to be spread out as to the times of planting, otherwise you could have tens of thousands of trees requiring to be felled almost on the same day… and where would you get the labour in a situation like that?”

  The Doctor smiled in approval.

  “How very alert you are,” he said. “Splendid! I think Ned’s good wife will have an able lieutenant in you. Yes. Now I’m marking certain pages and passages in these books with slips of paper. I want you to take a rest here and read those passages: here, I mean, today. And read also any other parts which may appeal to you. You may rely to an unlimited extent in your labours on the produce of Locke’s Distillery of Kilbeggan.”

  He rose, as did Tim also, surprised.

  “But,” he asked, “what about my new boss at the Hall?”

  The Doctor patted his shoulder.

  “You need not worry about that at all, my dear boy, for I am now on my way to see her. I will explain that I have asked you to undertake some research that would be dear to her heart. So sit down and relax, and have another drink. On my way down I will see how Billy Colum is getting on with that panelling in the hall. And I’ll tell Sarsfield not to disturb you here but to bring you up a tray in a few hours.”

  Tim Hartigan smiled. He knew this man could be quite impossible but his heart was in the right place.

  “Well, thanks, Doctor,” he said. “That’s very nice of you. I’ll do what you say. But I would like you to warn Sarsfield Slattery about one thing.”

  “What is that?”

  “No sago.”

  “Ah-ha? No sago.”

  With a wave the Doctor was gone, carrying a very small bag.

  5

  Tim Hartigan, having picked up the first book, went back to his chair and looked it over. Good large print, he noted with approval. Opening it at the bookmark finally, he laid it face down and attended meticulously to his glass, pouring himself a generous noggin of Locke’s medicament, flavouring it slightly with water and then gratefully flushing his gullet downward. No wonder, he reflected, that the old-time monks were great scholars, for they had the wit to make on the premises the medicine that gave the mind ripeness and poise, satisfying the bodily thirst while sharpening the thirst for knowledge on that wine from the butts of God’s vineyards of human knowledge.

  He eyed the library about him with a friendly eye, then carried his book and vessels to the great desk and thankfully sank into the commodious personal chair of Doctor the Hon. Eustace Baggeley. Then he began his reading.

  Sleator’s Deposit of Dietetic Cosmography, p. 627:

  The true sago palm flourishes in low marshy situations, growing to a maximum height of 30 ft. It matures to yield starch at age 15–20 years.

  The whole interior of the stem will then be found to be gorged with spongy medullary matter enclosed by a hard shell—the only wood of the stem. At this stage the tree will be observed to put forth its terminal flowering spikes and after three years these ripen to fruits and seeds. If this is allowed to proceed, the whole starch will have been used up, the stem becomes a hollow shell, and the plant has been killed in that supreme effort. But immediately the flowering spikes appear, the stem is felled, cut up into portions of from 4 to 6 ft. long, and carried off to the factory.

  There they are split lengthways, and their medullary starch scooped out. This is thrown into water and washed until all fibrous material and other impurities float to the surface. After standing for a time, the fecula settles on the bottom of the trough, and is successively washed and the water decanted. Then it is dried and constitutes “sago meal.”

  To prepare for the shops the meal is again moistened and put into bags, in which it can be well shaken and beaten when suspended from the roof of the room.

  It is next rubbed over sieves of various mesh until it is separated into “pearl sago,” “granulated sago,” &c , when it is dried in the open or over ovens.

  The refining of sago into the grades required by the European market is done largely by the Chinese in Singapore. . . .

  About 1913 the average yearly imports to the United Kingdom of sago, sago meal and sago flour was about 29,000 tons.

  * * *

  The Book of Marco Polo the Venetian (2 vols.)

  by Col. Sir Henry Yule. II, p. 300:

  The people have no wheat, but have rice which they eat with milk and flesh. They also have wine from trees such as I told you of. And I will tell you another great marvel. They have a kind of tree that produces flour, and excellent flour it is for food. These trees are very tall and thick but have a very thin bark, and inside the bark they are crammed with flour. And I tell you that Messer Marco Polo, who witnessed all this, related how he and his party partook of this flour made into bread, and found it excellent.

  Ibid., pp. 304–5:

  An interesting notice of the sago tree, of which Odoric also gives an account; Ramusio is however here fuller and more accurate: “Removing the first bark, which is but thin, you come upon the wood of the tree, which forms a thickness all round of some three fingers, but all inside this is a
pith of flour, like that of the Carvolo. The trees are so big that it will take two men to span them. They put this flour into tubs of water, and beat it up with a stick, and then the bran and other impurities come to the top, while the pure flour sinks to the bottom. The water is then thrown away, and the cleaned flour that remains is taken and made into pasta in strips and other forms. These Messer Marco Polo often partook of and brought some with him to Venice. It resembles barley bread and tastes much the same. The wood of this tree is like iron, for if thrown into water it goes straight to the bottom. It can be split straight from end to end like a cane. When the flour has been removed the wood remains, as has been said, three inches thick. Of this the people make short lances, not long ones, because they are so heavy that no one could carry or handle them if long. One end is sharpened and charred in the fire and, when thus prepared they will pierce any armour, and much better than iron would do.

  * * *

  Malay Archipelago 1896 by A. E. Williams:

  When sago is to be made, a full-grown tree is selected just before it is going to flower. It is cut down close to the ground, the leaves and leafstalks cleared away and a broad strip of the bark taken off the upper side of the trunk. This exposes the pithy matter, which is of a rusty colour near the bottom of the tree, but higher up pure white, about as hard as a dry apple, but with woody fibres running through it about a quarter of an inch apart. The pith is cut or broken down into a coarse powder, by means of a tool constructed for the purpose. . . .

  Water is poured on the mass of pith, which is kneaded and pressed against the strainer till the starch is all dissolved and has passed through, when the fibrous refuse is thrown away, and a fresh basketful put in its place. The water charged with sago passes to a trough, with a depression in the centre, where the sediment is deposited, the surplus water trickling off by a shallow outlet. When the trough is nearly full, the mass of starch, which has a slight reddish tinge, is made into cylinders of about thirty pounds’ weight, and neatly covered with sago leaves, and in this state is sold as raw sago. Boiled with water, this forms a thick glutinous mass, with a rather astringent taste, and is eaten with salt, limes and chillies. Sago bread is made in large quantities, by baking it into cakes in a small clay oven containing six or eight slits, side by side, each about three-quarters of an inch wide and six to eight inches square. The raw sago is broken up, dried in the sun, powdered, and finely sifted. The oven is heated over a clear fire of embers, and is lightly filled with sago powder. The openings are then covered up with a flat piece of sago bark, and in about five minutes the cakes are turned out sufficiently baked. The hot cakes are very nice with butter, and when made with the addition of a little sugar and grated cocoa-nut, are quite a delicacy. They are soft, and something like corn-flour cakes, but have a slight characteristic flavour which is lost in the refined sago we use in this country. When not wanted for immediate use, they are dried for several days in the sun, and tied up in bundles of twenty. They will then keep for years; they are very hard, and very rough and dry.