The Hard Life

by Flann O'Brien

  –I don’t think, Mr Collopy said at last, there there will be any need for you boys to go to school tomorrow and maybe the day after. Mourning, you know. The Brothers will understand.

  The brother put his glass down on the range with a clinking thud.

  –Is that so, Mr Collopy, he said in a testy voice. Well now is that so? Let me tell you this. I am not going back to that damned school tomorrow, the day after or any day.

  Mr Collopy started up in astonishment.

  –What was that? he asked.

  –I’ve left school—from today. I’ve had my bellyful of the ignorant guff that is poured out by those maggots of Christian Brothers. They’re illiterate farmers’ sons. They probably got their learning at some dirty hedge school.

  –Will you for pity’s sake have some respect for the cloth of those saintly servants of God, Mr Collopy said sharply.

  –They’re not servants of God, they are slaves to their own sadistic passions, they are humbugs and impostors and a disgrace to their cloth. They are ruining the young people of this country and taking pride in their abominable handiwork.

  –Have you no shame?

  –I have more shame than those buggers have. Anyhow, I’m finished with school for good. I want to earn my living.

  –Well now, is that so? Doing what? Driving a tram or a breadcart, or maybe sweeping up after the horses on the roads?

  –I said I wanted to earn my living. What am I talking about—I am earning my living. I am a publisher, an international tutor. Look at that!

  Here he had rummaged in his inside pocket and pulled out a spectacular wad of notes.

  –Look at that, he cried. There’s about sixty-five pounds in that bundle and upstairs I have twenty-eight pounds in postal orders not yet cashed. You have your pension and no work to do, and no desire to do any.

  –That will do you, Mr Collopy retorted with rising temper, that is quite enough. You say I have no work to do. Where you got that information I cannot say. But let me tell you this, you and your brother. I have been engaged on one of the most ardious and patriotic projects ever attempted by any man in this town. You will hear all about it when I’m gone. You have a damned cheek to say I do no work. What, with my health in the state it’s in?

  –Don’t ask me that. I’ve left school and that’s all.

  The subject seemed to become inert and was dropped. It had been a tiring day, physically and emotionally, and both Mr Collopy and the brother were the worse for drink. Later, in bed, the brother asked me whether I intended to continue going to the Brothers in Synge Street.

  –I might as well for the present, I replied, until I can find some job to fit into.

  –Please yourself, he said, but I don’t think this place is suitable for me. An Irish address is no damned use. The British dislike and distrust it. They think all the able and honest people live in London. I am giving that matter some thought.

  9

  DURING the year that followed Mrs Crotty’s death, the atmosphere of the house changed somewhat. Annie joined some sort of a little club, probably composed mostly of women who met every afternoon to play cards or discuss household matters. She seemed to be—heavens!— coming out of her shell. Mr Collopy returned to his mysterious work with renewed determination, not infrequently having meetings of his committee in our kitchen after warning everybody that this deliberative chamber was out of bounds for that evening. From an upper window I occasionally saw the arrival of his counsellors. Two elderly ladies and the tall, gaunt man of the funeral came, also Mr Rafferty with a young lady who looked to me, in the distance at least, to be pretty.

  The brother went from strength to strength and eventually reached the stage of prosperity that is marked by borrowing money for industrial expansion. From little bits of information and from inference, I understood that he had borrowed £400 short-term with interest at twenty per cent. A quick turn-over, no matter how small the profit, was the brother’s business axiom. He happened to read of the discovery in an old English manor house of 1,500 two-volume sets of a survey in translation of Miguel de Cervantes Saavaedra, his work and times. The volumes are very elegant, bound in leather and handsomely illustrated; the first contained an account of the life of Cervantes, the second extracts from his major works. These volumes were printed and published in Paris in 1813, with a consignment apparently shipped to England, stored and forgotten. A London bookseller bought the lot for a small sum and to him the brother wrote offering 3s. 6d. cash per set for the whole consignment. At the time I thought the transaction foolhardy, for surely the London man could be presumed to have had a clear idea of the market. But once again the brother seemed to know what he was about. Using the name of the Simplex Nature Press, he put advertisements into English newspapers recklessly praising the work as to content and format, and also making the public an astonishingly generous offer, viz., any person buying Volume I for 6s. 6d. would also get Volume II for absolutely nothing. The offer, which was of limited duration, could not be repeated. No fewer than 2,500 acceptances reached him, quite a few from colleges, and he was many times later to adopt this system of enticement, offering something for nothing. The deal showed a clear profit of about £121. It also indirectly affected myself, for when wooden packing cases began to arrive full of those memorials of Cervantes, he politely suggested that I should take my bed and other gear to another room which was empty, as the original room was now his ‘office’ as well as his bedroom. I had no objection to this move, and agreed. Unfortunately the first four packing cases arrived when both myself and the brother were out, and Mr Collopy had to sign for them. I was the first to arrive home to find them piled in the kitchen. Mr Collopy was frowning from his chair.

  –In God’s name, he said loudly, what is that bucko up to?

  –I don’t know. I think there are books in those cases.

  –Books? Well now! What sort of books is he peddling? Are they dirty books?

  –Oh I don’t think so. They might be Bibles.

  –Faith and that would take me to the fair altogether. You heard what he said about the pious and godly Christian Brothers some months ago. Now by the jappers he is all for being a missionary to the niggers in Black Africa or maybe the Injuns. Well, there’s no doubt about it, we rare up strange characters in this country. I don’t think he knows anything about the Word of God. I’m not sure that he knows even his prayers.

  –My mention of the Bible was only a guess, I protested.

  Mr Collopy had risen and was at the press in search of his crock and glass. Fortified with them, he sat down again.

  –We’ll see what’s in them all in good time, he announced sternly, and if those books are dirty books, lascivious peregrinations on the fringes of filthy indecency, cloacal spewings in the face of Providence, with pictures of prostitutes in their pelts, then out of this house they will go and their owner along with them. You can tell him that if you see him first. And I would get Father Fahrt to exorcise all fiendish contaminations in this kitchen and bless the whole establishment. Do you hear me?

  –Yes, I hear.

  –Where is he now?

  –I don’t know. He is a very busy man. Perhaps he is at confession.

  –The what was that?

  –He might be seeing the clergy on some abstruse theological point.

  –Well, I’ll abstruse him if he is up to any tricks because this is a God-fearing house.

  I sat down to attack my loathsome homework with the idea of being free at eight o’clock so that I could meet a few of the lads for a game of cards. Mr Collopy sat down quietly sipping his whiskey and gazing at the glare of the fire.

  It was about eleven when I got home that night, to find no trace of Mr Collopy nor the piled boxes. Next morning I learnt that Mr Collopy had gone to bed early and the brother, arriving home about ten, went out again to summon Mr Hanafin to assist him in getting the boxes up to his office. No doubt the reward was a handsome tip, though a soiled glass in the sink suggested that further rec
ompense from the crock had been sought by either Mr Hanafin or the brother himself. I warned the latter, before I set off for school, of Mr Collopy’s dire suspicions about the books and the threats to fire him out of the house. Was Cervantes an immoral writer?

  –No, the brother said grimly, but I won’t be long here in any case. I think I know how to fix the oul divil. Have a look at these books.

  They were thick octavo volumes of real beauty in an old-fashioned way, and there were many clear pictures of the woodcut kind. If only as an adornment to bookshelves, they were surely good value for six and sixpence.

  Later in the day the brother cunningly inscribed a dedication to Mr Collopy in each volume and ceremoniously presented them in the kitchen.

  –At first, he told me, he was mollified, then he was delighted and said I had very true taste. Cervantes, he said, was the Aubrey de Vere of Spain. His Don Quixote was an immortal masterpiece of the classics, clearly inspired by Almighty God. He told me not to fail to send a copy to Father Fahrt. I had to laugh. There’s a pair of humbugs in it. Can you give me a hand to do some packing? I have bought a load of brown paper.

  I had to, of course.

  It was a peculiarity of the brother never to stop in his tracks or rest on his oars. In a matter of days he was back at work in his private mine, the National Library.

  After some weeks he asked my opinion of three manuscripts he had compiled for issue as small books by the Simplex Nature Press. The first was the ‘Odes and Epodes of Horace done into English Prose by Dr Calvin Knottersley, D.Litt.(Oxon)’; the second was ‘Clinical Notes on Pott’s Fracture, by Ernest George Maude, M.D., F.R.C.S.’; and the third was ‘Swimming and Diving. A Manly and Noble Art, by Lew Paterson’. It was clear that these compositions were other people’s work rehashed but I offered no comment other than a warning of the folly of making Dr Maude a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. A register of such Fellows was in existence, and somebody was bound to check.

  –How do you know there isn’t a Fellow named Maude? the brother asked.

  –So much the worse if there is, I answered.

  But I noticed later that the doctor had lost that honour.

  10

  IT was a vile night as we sat in the kitchen, Mr Collopy and I. He was slumped at the range in his battered arm-chair, reading the paper. I was at the table, indolently toying with school exercises, sometimes pausing to reflect on the possibilities of getting a job. I was really sick of the waste of time known as study, a futile messing about with things which did not concern me, and I rather envied the brother’s free, almost gay, life. I could sense his growing maturity and his determination to make money, a lot of it, as quickly as possible without undue worry as to the methods used. This night he was out, possibly conferring on some new deal in a public house. Annie was also out.

  There was a knock and I admitted Father Fahrt. Mr Collopy greeted him without rising.

  –Evening, Father. And isn’t it a caution!

  –Ah yes, Collopy, but we had a good summer, thank God. You and I don’t go out much, anyway.

  –I think we deserve a smahan, Father, to keep the winter out of us.

  As Father Fahrt produced his pipe, now a treasured solace, Mr Collopy dragged himself up, went to the press and took down the crock, two glasses, and fetched a jug of water.

  –Now, he said.

  Drinks were poured and delicately savoured.

  –I will tell you a funny one, Father, Mr Collopy said. A damn funny one. I will give you a laugh. We had a committee meeting last Wednesday. Mrs Flaherty was there. She told us all about her dear friend, Emmeline Pankhurst. Now there is a bold rossie for you if you like, but she’s absolutely perfectly right. She’ll yet do down that scoundrel, Lloyd George. I admire her.

  –She has courage, Father Fahrt agreed.

  –But wait till you hear. When we got down to our own business, discussing ways and means and ekcetera, out comes the bold Mrs Flaherty with her plan. Put a bumb under the City Hall!

  –Lord save us!

  –Blow all that bastards up. Slaughter them. Blast them limb from limb. If they refuse to do their duty to the ratepayers and to humanity. They do not deserve to live. If they were in ancient Rome they would be crucified.

  –But Collopy, I thought you were averse to violence?

  –That may be, Father, That may well be. But Mrs Flaherty isn’t. She would do all those crooked corporators in in double quick time. What she calls for is action.

  –Well, Collopy, I trust you explained the true attitude to her—your own attitude. Agitation, persistent exposure of the true facts, reprimand of the negligence of the Corporation, and the rousing of public opinion. Whatever Mrs Flaherty could do on those lines, now that she is at large, there is little she could do if she were locked up in prison.

  –She wouldn’t be the first in this country, Father, who went to prison for an ideal. It’s a habit with some people here.

  –For public agitation you must be in the middle of the public. They must see you.

  –How would the Church look on Mrs Flaherty’s scheme?

  –I have no doubt it would merit strong condemnation and censure. Such a thing would be highly sinful. I think it could be classed as murder. It is not lawful to kill to ameliorate public misrule or negligence. Assassination is never justified. One must put one’s trust in elections and the vote, not in shedding human blood.

  –I fear, Father Fahrt, that that is the gospel of chicks and goslings. My forebears were brave, strong-arm fellows. And what about the early Christian martyrs. They thought nothing of shedding their own blood in defence of a principle. Give me your glass.

  –There is no comparison, of course. Thanks.

  –Now listen here, Father. Listen carefully. This is the first part of November. In the year 1605 in England, King James the First was persecuting the Catholics, throwing them into prison and plundering their property. It was diabolical, worse than in Elizabeth’s time. The R.C.s were treated like dogs, and their priests like pigs. It would put you in mind of the Roman emperors, except that a thullabawn like Nero could at least boast that he was providing public entertainment. Well, what happened?

  –James was a very despicable monarch, Father Fahrt said slowly.

  –I will tell you what happened. A man named Robert Catesby thinks to himself that we’ve had as much of this sort of carry-on as we’re going to take. And he thought of the same plan as Mrs Flaherty. He planned to blow up the parliament house and annihilate the whole bloody lot of the bosthoons, His Majesty included. I know the thanks you’d get if you told him to busy himself with elections and votes. He’d slap your face and give you a knee in the belly. Remember, remember the Fifth of November.

  –They lived in another age, of course, Father Fahrt answered.

  –Right and wrong don’t change with the times and you know that very well, Father. Catesby got Guy Fawkes on his side, a brave man that was fighting in Flanders. And Grant and Keyes and the two Winters, any God’s amount of sound men, Romans all. Fawkes was the kingpin and the head bottlewasher of the whole outfit. He managed to get a ton and a half of gunpowder stuffed into a cellar under the House of Lords. But there were two other men lending a good hand all the time and saying God bless the work. I mean Greenway and Garnet. Know who they were, Father?

  –I think I do.

  –Of course you do. They were Jesuits. Hah?

  –My dear man, Jesuits also can make mistakes. They can err in judgement. They are human.

  –Faith then they didn’t err in judgement when Guy Fawkes was found out. They scooted like greased lightning and Father Greenway and another priest managed to get to a healthier country. Father Garnet was not so alive to himself. He got caught and for his pains he got a length of hempen rope for himself, on the gallows high.

  –A martyr for the Faith, of course, Father Fahrt said evenly.

  –And Fawkes. They gave him tortures you wouldn’t see outside hell itself to make him give the na
mes of the others. Be damn but he wouldn’t. But when he heard that Catesby and a crowd of his segocias had been chased, caught and killed, he broke down and made some class of a confession. But do you know what? When this rigmarole was put before him for signature, believe it or not but he couldn’t sign it. The torture had him banjaxed altogether. His hands were all broken be the thumbscrews. What’s your opinion of that?

  –The torture Fawkes so heroically endured, Father Fahrt said, was admittedly appalling and terrifying, the worst torture that the head of man could think of. It was called per gradus ad ima. He was subjected to it by direct order of the King. He was very brave.

  –I needn’t tell you he and several others got the high jump. But Lord save us, poor Fawkes couldn’t climb up the ladder to the gallows, he was so badly bet and broken up in the torture. He had to be carried up. And he was hanged outside the building he tried to blow up for the greater glory of God.

  –I suppose that’s true enough, Father Fahrt said meekly.

  –For the greater glory of God. How’s this you put Latin on that?

  –Ad majorem Dei gloriam. It is our own Society’s watchword.

  –Quite right. A.M.D.G. Many a time I’ve heard it. But if blowing up councillors is bad and sinful as you said, how do you account for two Jesuits, maybe three, being guilty of that particular transaction, waging war on the civil power? Isn’t Mrs Flaherty in the same boat as Mr Fawkes?

  –I have pointed out, Collopy, that events and opinions vary drastically from one era to another. People are influenced by quite different things in dissimilar ages. It is difficult, even impossible, for the people of today to assess the stresses and atmosphere of Fawkes’s day. Cicero was a wise and honest man and yet he kept slaves. The Greeks were the most sophisticated and civilized people of antiquity, but morally a great many of them were lepers. With them sins of the flesh was a nefarious preoccupation. But that does not invalidate the wisdom and beauty of the things many of them left behind them. Art, poetry, literature, architecture, philosophy and political systems, these were formulated and developed in the midst of debauchery. I have—ah-ha—sometimes thought that a degraded social climate is essential to inspire great men to achievement in the arts.