“What’s that?” he demanded.
The grocer writhed.
“Well?” demanded Belacqua, he was without fear when roused, “is that the best you can do?”
“In the length and breadth of Dublin” said the grocer “you won’t find a rottener bit this minute.”
Belacqua was furious. The impudent dogsbody, for two pins he would assault him.
“It won’t do” he cried “do you hear me, it won’t do at all. I won’t have it.” He ground his teeth.
The grocer, instead of simply washing his hands like Pilate, flung out his arms in a wild crucified gesture of supplication. Sullenly Belacqua undid his packet and slipped the cadaverous tablet of cheese between the hard cold black boards of the toast. He stumped to the door where he whirled round however.
“You heard me?” he cried.
“Sir” said the grocer. This was not a question, nor yet an expression of acquiescence. The tone in which it was let fall made it quite impossible to know what was in the man’s mind. It was a most ingenious riposte.
“I tell you” said Belacqua with great heat “this won’t do at all. If you can’t do better than this” he raised the hand that held the packet “I shall be obliged to go for my cheese elsewhere. Do you mark me?”
“Sir” said the grocer.
He came to the threshold of his store and watched the indignant customer hobble away. Belacqua had a spavined gait, his feet were in ruins, he suffered with them almost continuously. Even in the night they took no rest, or next to none. For then the cramps took over from the corns and hammer-toes, and carried on. So that he would press the fringes of his feet desperately against the end-rail of the bed or, better again, reach down with his hand and drag them up and back towards the instep. Skill and patience could disperse the pain, but there it was, complicating his night’s rest.
The grocer, without closing his eyes or taking them off the receding figure, blew his nose in the skirt of his apron. Being a warm-hearted human man he felt sympathy and pity for this queer customer who always looked ill and dejected. But at the same time he was a small tradesman, don’t forget that, with a small tradesman’s sense of personal dignity and what was what. Thruppence, he cast it up, thruppence worth of cheese per day, one and a tanner per week. No, he would fawn on no man for that, no, not on the best in the land. He had his pride.
Stumbling along by devious ways towards the lowly public where he was expected, in the sense that the entry of his grotesque person would provoke no comment or laughter, Belacqua gradually got the upper hand of his choler. Now that lunch was as good as a fait accompli, because the incontinent bosthoons of his own class, itching to pass on a big idea or inflict an appointment, were seldom at large in this shabby quarter of the city, he was free to consider items two and three, the lobster and the lesson, in closer detail.
At a quarter to three he was due at the school. Say five to three. The public closed, the fishmonger reopened, at half-past two. Assuming then that his lousy old bitch of an aunt had given her order in good time that morning, with strict injunctions that it should be ready and waiting so that her blackguard boy should on no account be delayed when he called for it first thing in the afternoon, it would be time enough if he left the public as it closed, he could remain on till the last moment. Benissimo. He had half-a-crown. That was two pints of draught anyway and perhaps a bottle to wind up with. Their bottled stout was particularly excellent and well up. And he would still be left with enough coppers to buy a Herald and take a tram if he felt tired or was pinched for time. Always assuming, of course, that the lobster was all ready to be handed over. God damn these tradesmen, he thought, you can never rely on them. He had not done an exercise but that did not matter. His Professoressa was so charming and remarkable. Signorina Adriana Ottolenghi! He did not believe it possible for a woman to be more intelligent or better informed than the little Ottolenghi. So he had set her on a pedestal in his mind, apart from other women. She had said last day that they would read Il Cinque Maggio together. But she would not mind if he told her, as he proposed to, in Italian, he would frame a shining phrase on his way from the public, that he would prefer to postpone the Cinque Maggio to another occasion. Manzoni was an old woman, Napoleon was another. Napoleone di mezza calzetta, fa l’amore a Giacominetta. Why did he think of Manzoni as an old woman? Why did he do him that injustice? Pellico was another. They were all old maids, suffragettes. He must ask his Signorina where he could have received that impression, that the 19th century in Italy was full of old hens trying to cluck like Pindar. Carducci was another. Also about the spots on the moon. If she could not tell him there and then she would make it up, only too gladly, against the next time. Everything was all set now and in order. Bating, of course, the lobster, which had to remain an incalculable factor. He must just hope for the best. And expect the worst, he thought gaily, diving into the public, as usual.
Belacqua drew near to the school, quite happy, for all had gone swimmingly. The lunch had been a notable success, it would abide as a standard in his mind. Indeed he could not imagine its ever being superseded. And such a pale soapy piece of cheese to prove so strong! He must only conclude that he had been abusing himself all these years in relating the strength of cheese directly to its greenness. We live and learn, that was a true saying. Also his teeth and jaws had been in heaven, splinters of vanquished toast spraying forth at each gnash. It was like eating glass. His mouth burned and ached with the exploit. Then the food had been further spiced by the intelligence, transmitted in a low tragic voice across the counter by Oliver the improver, that the Malahide murderer’s petition for mercy, signed by half the land, having been rejected, the man must swing at dawn in Mountjoy and nothing could save him. Ellis the hangman was even now on his way. Belacqua, tearing at the sandwich and swilling the precious stout, pondered on McCabe in his cell.
The lobster was ready after all, the man handed it over instanter, and with such a pleasant smile. Really a little bit of courtesy and goodwill went a long way in this world. A smile and a cheerful word from a common working-man and the face of the world was brightened. And it was so easy, a mere question of muscular control.
“Lepping” he said cheerfully, handing it over.
“Lepping?” said Belacqua. What on earth was that?
“Lepping fresh, sir” said the man, “fresh in this morning.”
Now Belacqua, on the analogy of mackerel and other fish that he had heard described as lepping fresh when they had been taken but an hour or two previously, supposed the man to mean that the lobster had very recently been killed.
Signorina Adriana Ottolenghi was waiting in the little front room off the hall, which Belacqua was naturally inclined to think of rather as the vestibule. That was her room, the Italian room. On the same side, but at the back, was the French room. God knows where the German room was. Who cared about the German room anyway?
He hung up his coat and hat, laid the long knobby brown-paper parcel on the hall-table, and went prestly in to the Ottolenghi.
After about half-an-hour of this and that obiter, she complimented him on his grasp of the language.
“You make rapid progress” she said in her ruined voice.
There subsisted as much of the Ottolenghi as might be expected to of the person of a lady of a certain age who had found being young and beautiful and pure more of a bore than anything else.
Belacqua, dissembling his great pleasure, laid open the moon enigma.
“Yes” she said “I know the passage. It is a famous teaser. Off-hand I cannot tell you, but I will look it up when I get home.”
The sweet creature! She would look it up in her big Dante when she got home. What a woman!
“It occurred to me” she said “apropos of I don’t know what, that you might do worse than make up Dante’s rare movements of compassion in Hell. That used to be” her past tenses were always sorrowful “a favourite question.”
He assumed an expression of profundity.
<
br /> “In that connexion” he said “I recall one superb pun anyway:
’qui vive la pietà quando è ben morta . . .’”
She said nothing.
“Is it not a great phrase?” he gushed.
She said nothing.
“Now” he said like a fool “I wonder how you could translate that?”
Still she said nothing. Then:
“Do you think” she murmured “it is absolutely necessary to translate it?”
Sounds as of conflict were borne in from the hall. Then silence. A knuckle tambourined on the door, it flew open and lo it was Mlle Glain, the French instructress, clutching her cat, her eyes out on stalks, in a state of the greatest agitation.
“Oh” she gasped “forgive me. I intrude, but what was in the bag?”
“The bag?” said the Ottolenghi.
Mlle Glain took a French step forward.
“The parcel” she buried her face in the cat “the parcel in the hall.”
Belacqua spoke up composedly.
“Mine” he said, “a fish.”
He did not know the French for lobster. Fish would do very well. Fish had been good enough for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. It was good enough for Mlle Glain.
“Oh” said Mlle Glain, inexpressibly relieved, “I caught him in the nick of time.” She administered a tap to the cat. “He would have tore it to flitters.”
Belacqua began to feel a little anxious.
“Did he actually get at it?” he said.
“No no” said Mlle Glain “I caught him just in time. But I did not know” with a blue-stocking snigger “what it might be, so I thought I had better come and ask.”
Base prying bitch.
The Ottolenghi was faintly amused.
“Puisqu’il n’y a pas de mal . . .” she said with great fatigue and elegance.
“Heureusement” it was clear at once that Mlle Glain was devout “heureusement.”
Chastening the cat with little skelps she took herself off. The grey hairs of her maidenhead screamed at Belacqua. A devout, virginal blue-stocking, honing after a penny’s worth of scandal.
“Where were we?” said Belacqua.
But Neapolitan patience has its limits.
“Where are we ever?” cried the Ottolenghi “where we were, as we were.”
Belacqua drew near to the house of his aunt. Let us call it Winter, that dusk may fall now and a moon rise. At the corner of the street a horse was down and a man sat on its head. I know, thought Belacqua, that that is considered the right thing to do. But why? A lamplighter flew by on his bike, tilting with his pole at the standards, jousting a little yellow light into the evening. A poorly dressed couple stood in the bay of a pretentious gateway, she sagging against the railings, her head lowered, he standing facing her. He stood up close to her, his hands dangled by his sides. Where we were, thought Belacqua, as we were. He walked on gripping his parcel. Why not piety and pity both, even down below? Why not mercy and Godliness together? A little mercy in the stress of sacrifice, a little mercy to rejoice against judgment. He thought of Jonah and the gourd and the pity of a jealous God on Nineveh. And poor McCabe, he would get it in the neck at dawn. What was he doing now, how was he feeling? He would relish one more meal, one more night.
His aunt was in the garden, tending whatever flowers die at that time of year. She embraced him and together they went down into the bowels of the earth, into the kitchen in the basement. She took the parcel and undid it and abruptly the lobster was on the table, on the oilcloth, discovered.
“They assured me it was fresh” said Belacqua.
Suddenly he saw the creature move, this neuter creature. Definitely it changed its position. His hand flew to his mouth.
“Christ!” he said “it’s alive.”
His aunt looked at the lobster. It moved again. It made a faint nervous act of life on the oilcloth. They stood above it, looking down on it, exposed cruciform on the oilcloth. It shuddered again. Belacqua felt he would be sick.
“My God” he whined “it’s alive, what’ll we do?”
The aunt simply had to laugh. She bustled off to the pantry to fetch her smart apron, leaving him goggling down at the lobster, and came back with it on and her sleeves rolled up, all business.
“Well” she said “it is to be hoped so, indeed.”
“All this time” muttered Belacqua. Then, suddenly aware of her hideous equipment: “What are you going to do?” he cried.
“Boil the beast” she said, “what else?”
“But it’s not dead” protested Belacqua “you can’t boil it like that.”
She looked at him in astonishment. Had he taken leave of his senses?
“Have sense” she said sharply, “lobsters are always boiled alive. They must be.” She caught up the lobster and laid it on its back. It trembled. “They feel nothing” she said.
In the depths of the sea it had crept into the cruel pot. For hours, in the midst of its enemies, it had breathed secretly. It had survived the Frenchwoman’s cat and his witless clutch. Now it was going alive into scalding water. It had to. Take into the air my quiet breath.
Belacqua looked at the old parchment of her face, grey in the dim kitchen.
“You make a fuss” she said angrily “and upset me and then lash into it for your dinner.”
She lifted the lobster clear of the table. It had about thirty seconds to live.
Well, thought Belacqua, it’s a quick death, God help us all.
It is not.
From Murphy
Beckett has tended to belittle his early prose, but in this first published novel,* there already is much of what makes Beckett unique.
Take the opening sentence: “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” Or this, a paragraph into the work, putting our hero into perspective: “He sat naked in his rocking-chair of undressed teak, guaranteed not to crack, warp, shrink, corrode, or creak at night.”
Beckett is a great humorist, and Murphy a wonderfully funny book. But Murphy has also been termed satire (it is), a novel of ideas (it is), and thickly veiled autobiography (maybe). As for the last, Murphy, like Beckett in the mid-thirties, was a young Irishman down on his luck, living in London. End of speculation.
E. M. Forster has commented that in the novel Murphy is the only round character; all the others are flat. But they are willfully flat, in that they are all extensions of Murphy’s mind, which itself is controlled for us, for comic or other effect, by the omniscient narrator.
Unlike More Pricks Than Kicks, where the narrator existed in a tangible relationship with Belacqua, here the narrator is closer to the concept of the classic, omniscient narrator who controls and sometimes comments but rarely if ever intrudes. From his comments, which in themselves are often prodigiously funny, we learn the basics of Murphy’s existence. A young man of considerable learning but much given to indolence, alone in the world except for a single uncle—“a well-to-do ne’er-do-well”—living in Holland from whom he fraudulently extracts enough to keep himself barely afloat, Murphy lives in London, West Brompton to be exact, ostensibly there to find a home and amass sufficient fortune to bring his intended, a Miss Counihan, to join him. But during Murphy’s absence from Dublin, Neary, his ex-tutor, falls in love with Miss Counihan, who refuses to requite until proof of Murphy’s demise is presented her. Thus Neary dispatches a clod named Cooper to find the wandering ex-scholar and obtain the necessary proof. Meanwhile, however, our hero, who wants only release and peace, to be “a mote in the dark of absolute freedom,” further complicates things by encountering a girl named Celia Kelly, a streetwalker who loves him and whom, strangely, he loves in turn. But for Celia to cease her honored profession, Murphy must find work—the very notion is anathema to him. Still, love finds a way, and with the aid of astrological charts in which he wholly believes, Murphy finds employ in a mental asylum, the Magdalen Mental Mercy seat. There he yields to a happiness he has never known, discovering in the inmate
s “the race of people he had long since despaired of finding.”
Meanwhile, Cooper, Neary’s envoy, finds Celia in London, and concluding (wrongly) that where she is Murphy must not be far, informs Neary, Miss Counihan, and another of Neary’s students named Wylie (who has, at one point in the narrative, replaced Neary in Miss Counihan’s affections), all of whom, after settling their numerous differences, move in on Celia, to wait for Murphy. But they will have long to wait. For Murphy leaves the asylum early one morning, in the dark of foredawn, and returns to his garret where he ties himself up in the chair, intending to have a short rock before daylight and, yes, return to Celia. But such is not to be, for the garret is heated by a gas fire, the tap for which is located in the w.c. downstairs. And someone, inadvertently, turns the tap instead of pulling the chain: exit Murphy, whose charred remains are all that greet his pursuers when finally they meet.
Murphy’s last will and testament dictates that his ashes shall be brought to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, more precisely to “what the great and good Lord Chesterfield calls the necessary house,” and there be flushed down the toilet, “if possible during the performance of a piece.” But even in death Murphy’s wishes are thwarted: Cooper, entrusted with the packet of ash, stops in a pub for a quick one (or two) and before the evening is over has thrown the packet “at a man who had given him great offence.” Whereupon the mind and soul of Murphy are, by closing time, “freely distributed over the floor of the saloon; and before another dayspring greyened the earth had been swept away with the sand, the beer, the butts, the glass, the matches, the spits, the vomit.”
A novel of circularity, from birthmark to deathmark, from rocker to rocker, Murphy is very much the forerunner of that remarkable series of works whose protagonists search endlessly for nonexistent answers, each embarked upon a journey that has no end.
Early in the novel, Neary says to Murphy: “Murphy, all life is figure and ground.” To which Murphy replies: “But a wandering to find home.”
It is a retort worthy of, and applicable to, all Beckett’s long line of wandering heroes.
I can’t go on, I’ll go on Page 6