The Unexpurgated Code

by J. P. Donleavy

  If you in the first place are carrying your sword stick, it does give you a rather overt cheerful advantage. While firmly holding the handle, extend the disguised cane end which your opponent will grab in order to wrap it about forty times round your old grey head. As he enthusiastically tugs however, he pulls off the scabbard and unsheaths your sword. Glints of this instrument wagging in the sunlight accompanied by a few whistling swipes along with teeth exposed whoops and hollers, gets a message across bearing far less goodwill than your chap might like in this particularly precarious time in his personal history. And so a little verbiage is not entirely without appropriateness.

  ‘Now, what would you like to lose first, my fine foolish loutish friend. Your left foot, middle testicle or your right eyebrow. Or shall I give you a slashing overture with a fortissimo shortening of your various appendages.’

  A prolonged silent gleam of your teeth should follow this little speech. And your son of a bitch will more than likely turn and run like the enthusiastically scared coward he well and truly is. The speed with which he will withdraw may spellbind you and in the interests of universal justice do try to decorate the bastard prior to departure with a few good arse stabs. And the world will benefit of one more diabolical bullying devil brought to book.

  Of all impromptu combat that of fighting a woman presents the most peculiar difficulties. Unless for the arse cheeks, it is not done to strike ladies below the neck. And then only with the flat of the hand. But first make absolutely sure she is not armed. Or you may get your head blown off or bowel enlarged without ceremony. Women rarely defer to the niceties of sporting fair play. And being killed by a lady does kind of leave a sad image of you as a man.

  Most ladies carry a pair of fairly lethal legs. So be sure to shield your privates. Tying these in a knot while you howl in agony will always be high on her list of target priorities. And absolute unconsciousness is the only thing that stops an infuriated woman. Therefore be ready to flatten her ladyship before she deranges your complexion with claws flying or permanently puts new contours in your jewels with a crotch kick. The right cross delivered with your palm to the apex of madam’s chin is the gallant way to knock her cold.

  Women usually rely upon a gentleman’s hesitation to slug a lady and that’s when she usually gets in those two good matching gouge scratches down your cheeks. In parrying these however you may find her ladyship engripped upon you. To avoid her advantage in such one sided infighting trip her backwards to the floor. While rolling there it is unseemly to feel madam up. But do guard against her biting anything she can get her god damn deep teeth into. Which could, among other delicate things, be your neck and mortal.

  On the boulevard it may happen that an enraged woman is encountered who descends banging upon you with an umbrella or parasol. Usually you are accused of leering or harbouring untrue thoughts about her. In such cases seize the umbrella from her and grasp each end firmly, and slowly, accompanied by a low evil growl, bend it into a pretzel.

  ‘Venture any closer madam, and the same will happen to you.’

  ‘You’d dare to strike a woman.’

  ‘Yes, if madam is a woman then I dare.’

  Upon successful escape from being killed by a female adversary an appropriate chastisement is de rigueur. And spanking serves especially well in the case of nicely brought up ladies. Who although they may momentarily become viciously violent nevertheless still continue to exhibit their well bred refinement in other spheres of behaviour. To get the message soundly home it is essential to expose both cheeks of her ladyship’s bottom. This may take some preliminary ripping, tearing and wrestling. But once over your knee with one of her arms bent up behind her back the subject should be at your mercy. Deliver your blows with a straight downward motion of the hand to the peak of madam’s cheeks with the fingers slightly ajar to decrease wind resistance and increase impact. The smacking should mount in severity until your ladyship shrieks. Be careful to detect pleasure in these outcries especially when in the very middle of your correctional measures your subject abandons all resistance and invites you to strike even harder blows. Usually ladies requesting such auxiliary shenanigans become extremely red faced and attempt even while firmly restrained by the wrists to seek out your erogenous zones. Succumbing to such an overture is sure to negate all disciplinary effectiveness as well as to afford new opportunities and encouragements for her ladyship to clonk your distinguished temples with a series of heavy glass ashtrays. Especially at times when you have taken a leisurely moment in the tomblike peace of your library to peruse with magnifying glass your stamp or moth collections.

  Upon Making the Contract for the Rubout

  These expedient days when one wants desperately to live in prolonged decency there come agonizing moral dilemmas especially where one has been smothered for years in paper work involving subpoenas, writs, mandamuses, suits, claims and counter claims. As the sincere desire wells up in you for ongoing situations and to be clear of the continual lawyers’ bills and personal harassment from some human odium, so that you can make meaningful progress with the pleasures and profits you have planned for your life, it is sometimes terribly unfortunate but necessary to have administered a little strong arm and in the stubborn cases, which most turn out to be, to rub certain people out absolutely and altogether.

  First, avoid suspicion and never be witnessed threatening to kill someone. Especially when screaming the expression.

  ‘I will kill you.’

  And followed by the added emphasis.

  ‘With my bare hands.’

  Which shows you are angry as well. For even though you are an old greyhead and seemingly small and frail, it is well known that tiny people when overtaken by huge angers can exert strengths far beyond their obvious capabilities and are also types who might order a murder from the many à la carte menus around these days.

  However where merely the working over of the victim is required with a few breaks, strains or multi hued bruises one need only hire a couple of lead pipe hoodlums. But for such beatings to be effective it is necessary to first administer a warning in the form of your chap’s car or bicycle tyres being slashed, his stoop messily decorated with gobbets of non matching coloured paint or just a bustment of a selected few of his main windows. If the victim lives high up this can be done by a sling shot artist from a nearby roof.

  Give clear directions to your roughnecks as to the area of your chap’s anatomy you want broken as this directly affects the duration of incapacitation. To stop him writing cheques or his memoirs, the wrists can be smashed. In preventing him preparing his own favourite spaghettis, clean break fractures above the elbow keep him away from his chopping board. Contused kneecaps are an ideal way to keep him a week or two off the golf course but to confine him to his house for three months, compound fractures administered by cricket or baseball bat while your man’s thigh is stretched over a kerbstone, are normally required.

  It is invariably an awesome responsibility to take the decision to put an end to a person’s life. Although you would never know it, some of them have near and dear ones and may even support their community and regularly attend religious services. But they should have known not to tangle with you in the first place. No matter how you try to reason with them, such folks who fuss you always tend to stand oozing smug justification and remain implacably right smack bang in the way of one’s profit or maybe even a dazzling female pleasure one seeks. Often this rubout is humane for the victim who is only going to spend the best years of his life piling up monstrous lawyers’ bills and vituperating your name to all and sundry around him plus spending endless wasteful hours shivering with rage fruitlessly trying to dream up some new scheme to get you when he could instead be happily resting in peace with his heirs delighted by the calm following his final departure.

  Confidentiality is of course a must in the planning and execution of the rubout as you do not want to have a nosy finger pointing directly back at you as the accessory before the fact, a
fter it or in it. So carefully choose the man for the job. Deal only with the genuine underworld. Avoid shoddy impostors who offer bargain basement rates. A cool professional is required and for such accomplished experts one must be prepared to pay. These skilled reliable chaps, with their established track records, have at their fingertips the right kind of suitable send off for your chosen obtuse persons who, although you want to get rid of him at all costs you nevertheless want him to meet his end in an efficient manner without leaving a whole bunch of ghosts around.

  But in all cases it is wise and proper for you to decide whether you wish the total disappearance of the victim, afforded by providing him with cement shoes to walk across a river, or to let his corpse be found after giving your man a bunch of electrodes to hug while they’re made lively enough for a gavotte too strenuous for your victim’s slowed down heart and he is deposited somewhere unbruised in his rigor mortis. And of course it is well to remember that no matter where your chappie is vanished without trace, one is always wondering if at some future date the son of a bitch’s soggy remains are going to be turned up and a whole new investigation ensue as to who did that. When you might be nervously surrounded by a bunch of avid crime solving bureaucratic people insinuating that you did. Even incineration in a guy’s private crematorium always runs the risk of snoopers claiming they know who the embers are. Or who the gas was if they’re watching the chimney smoke with a telescope. But such embarrassment is usually prevented by syrupy sea burial from a fish entrail and tail mincer. The flow from which the seagulls and fish are ravenous for.

  At some stage it will be necessary for you to speak with an intermediary to deal with the contract In doing so couch your words in a manner which allows for your conversation to be overheard or bugged. Be patient with the overly classical usage you may encounter and always include all the other parties’ nicknames.

  ‘I’d like to speak to One Fingered Legs Apart Vinnie.’

  ‘This is he that speaks. Pray tell who dat.’

  ‘I have a proposal for membership of the club.’

  ‘Ah vouchsafe and behoove how soon does this individual wanta join.’

  ‘He’s dying for membership.’

  ‘In dat case we assure you of every convenience and dignity for his rapid election.’

  Upon Abandoning Ship

  Sea disasters have a way of happening in the most unsuitable weather. And it could be for this reason that crews made nervous by the high waves behave in a singularly disconcerting manner, especially those of nationalities without a great seafaring tradition to uphold. Some of these ruffians have been known to come on deck after rifling first class state-rooms to commandeer the lifeboats exclusively for themselves. And don’t be surprised if you see kitchen hands mounting the davits stretching your good woman’s diamond bracelets over their wrists while waving a magnum of crystal brut champagne in one fist and gnawing on a chunk of smoked salmon held in the other.

  It is quite understandable that no matter who you are, when a ship is sinking, folk want off with a degree of speed commonly referred to as in a hurry. Adding to this distress is the lack of the ship’s company’s diligence to the usual protocol and courtesy shown first class passengers. Especially now when this is most needed in the face of cabin and tourist type voyagers invading precincts reserved strictly for first class. So do please be prepared for these previous people to behave just as if their lives were absolutely as important as those travelling in the top privileged condition. It is further quite disconcerting when you remonstrate with those clearly elevated up from the bowels of the ship and making merry free in one’s luxurious preserves when they answer you with.

  ‘It’s everyman for himself, squire.’

  However, in such emergency, the casual if not boorish regard paid to you from the more plebeian members of the vessel’s passenger list, although it often leaves much to be desired, should under no circumstances be the cause of your losing your perspective in providing for your own survival and that of your loved ones. And you may even venture to employ the otherwise forbidden behaviour of rudeness expected is to be rudeness given and simply shoulder these clodhoppers out of the way.

  Nevertheless make it a habit as you leave your stateroom to always take with you a few fistfuls of your more excitingly enticeful valuables. These are awful handy up on deck in the milling and mêlée when it may be necessary to bargain your way into a lifeboat past a bunch of vintage wine consuming seaport hardened cut throats. It is no joke that a small pouch of uncut diamonds cuts the most ice for this purpose. Especially as you can whisper a description of the contents to your adversary and it won’t make you look as crass as the whole slew of folk tendering outright handfuls of vulgar ready cash which even at that moment may be being critically devalued on some international bourse. With the ill luck attendant at such times this whole scene is bound to be during dinner and if so, your evening clothes and natural silk shirt will help vouch for the genuineness of the pouch’s contents. And it is a wise precaution to be continually splendidly attired at sea.

  Some of the most wretched and heartrending moments of human trial however, have taken place in the wee hours of the morning following the alarm to abandon ship. Again it must be stressed that your clothing should at all times give immediate recognition to your haughty particularity. Your choice of bed wear therefore, must be most meticulous. Attiring yourself in a half arsed manner when you think you are out of sight simply will not do. You will of course see others in slipshod sleeping garments revealing their true and perhaps humbler status than the superior one they were pretending while playing bridge. And to you this display of tattiness should not matter. For as a person of finer feelings there is no doubt as to where your duty lies and social distinctions should not be imposed where children, mothers and other ladies’ lives are concerned. Should you suffer any momentary hesitation in this respect, forcefully remind yourself that it is simply not on to save your own neck while ignoring the desperate pleas and cries of help from those weaker and beseeching the safety of the lifeboats. If a ruffian is barring the way use strong words.

  ‘Remove yourself you bounder, before I strike you.’

  ‘Take it easy on the apoplexy pops and you won’t get hurt.’

  Under no circumstances let this kind of riposte deter you. It is understandable that only a minute or two previous, you may have been relaxing in the clubby atmosphere of the captain’s quarters following dinner on the veranda deck and now over port and cigars you are enthralling a specially selected group of your fellow first class travelling mates with a rollicking yarn over which the ship’s chief engineer is hammering his knees in helpless laughter. At that moment back there all the world was yours. Precipitated, savoured and enjoyed as only a vessel underway on the high seas can make it. And now rushing in a fuss in your life jacket which the captain himself chucked to you, you confront at nearly every turn of the corridor some son of a bitch escaped up out of steerage with a bottle of Napoleon brandy to his lips having a whale of a time as he sinks his unsavoury lunch hooks into the elegance of other people’s property. This is only the beginning of the heinousness so steel yourself.

  If you have no knowledge of seafaring ways the ship’s officers especially those of the higher ranks must be looked to at this time for guidance. They will issue you with instructions and if necessary assign you appropriate duties befitting any well known responsibilities you may have held in your terra firma station in life. But don’t think because of this, that you know it all. As the ship lists you may start directing your upper class passengers to run appropriately to the highest side and there enjoy this privileged area. It is in this blind pursuit of elite supremacy that many of your patrician folks drown. Plus you look pretty stupid and sheepish with the bunch of your exalted gullibles marooned standing suspended high on a forlorn bulge of hull. Which at its present angle of elevation will make a head busting distance for you all to dive from.

  Be mindful also in encountering embarrassment
in having to take on your authoritative position. People with whom you have established a passing recognition if not a friendship of happy equality over quoits and backgammon may take it upon themselves to absolutely ignore your commands and rush past lifebelted and clutching their emeralds as if they had never seen you before. Don’t hesitate to take action.

  ‘Madam. Stop.’

  ‘Who the hell are you suddenly telling me to stop.’

  ‘Madam I have for the benefit of passengers’ safety been put in authority by the executive officer and there also happens to be a celebrity gold star next to my name on the passenger list.’

  ‘Well the purser has put me in possession of this famous make of pistol from my safety deposit box and I hope there’ll be a rest in peace next to your name after I shoot you.’

  Such unthoroughbred behaviour is deeply troubling but should not be taken personally. Not everyone is able in times of stress to adhere to the simple niceties. Especially ocean voyaging dowagers with vast private incomes. In any case ladies carrying pistols do not need your assistance as a firearm is a great aid in securing a place in a lifeboat. And the one this lady is about to board you would do well to keep out of.

  Upon Abandoning the Aircraft

  Upon entering an aircraft one must immediately suppress the tendency of the mind to conjure up the inside of an undertaking parlour with its soft lights and music. Such mournful reflections not only make you unduly nervous at take off but also can alarm another passenger sitting next you who, bug eyed, is planning a sinful happy spree at destination. Such funereal images are further upsetting as you get buffeted about with the engines billowing smoke and spouting flame and the fuselage descending out of control towards some unpremeditated spot on the earth’s surface. This is the time to insert a pillow between your seat belt and belly to prevent the former from snapping you in two and also to put on your gloves which will protect you when grabbing red hot handles on emergency doors.