The manager watched the pen, fascinated, and once more recalled his position in all this. "But, sir, I haven"t said if we have s.p.a.ce-""
"Oh, surely you must, for six miserable wanderers in sore need of respite from overfriendly airline stewardesses. One room would do it!"
"One?" said the manager, aghast.
"We wouldn"t mind the crowd, would we, chums?" asked the older man, not looking at his friends. No, they wouldn"t mind. Neither did I, scribbling away madly.
"Well," said the manager, uneasily fumbling at the registry. "We just happen to have two adjoining-"" "Perfecto!" cried David Snell-Orkney.
And, the registration finished, the manager behind the desk and the visitors from a far place stood regarding each other in a prolonged silence. At last the manager blurted, "Porter! Front! Take these gentlemen"s luggage-"
But just then the hall porter ran over to look at the floor. Where there was no luggage.
"No, no, none." David Snell-Orkney airily waved his hand. "We travel light. We"re here only for twenty-four hours, or perhaps only twelve, with a change of underwear stuffed in our overcoats. Then back to Sicily and warm twilights. If you want me to pay in advance ..."
"That won"t be necessary," said the manager, handing the keys to the hall porter. "Forty-six and forty-seven, please."
"It"s done," said the porter.
And like a collie dog silently nipping the hooves of some woolly, long-haired, bleating, dumbly smiling sheep, he herded the lovely bunch toward the elevator, which wafted down just at that precise moment.
I paused in my scribbling because ... at the desk, the manager"s wife came up, steel-eyed, behind him. "Are you mad?" she whispered wildly. "Why? Why?"
"All my life," said the manager, half to himself, "I have wished to see not one Communist but ten close by, not two Nigerians but twenty in their skins, not three cowboy Americans but a gross fresh from the saddle. So when six hothouse roses come in a bouquet, I could not resist potting them. The Dublin winter is long, Meg; this may be the only lit fuse in the whole year. Stand by for the lovely concussion."
"Fool," she said.
No, I think not, I thought.
As we watched, the elevator, freighted with hardly more than the fluff from a blown dandelion, whisked up the shaft, away.
It was exactly at high noon that a series of coincidences occurred that tottered and swerved toward the miraculous, and myself at the eye of the maelstrom.
Now, the Royal Hibernian Hotel lies half between Trinity College, if you"ll excuse the mention, and St. Stephen"s Green, which is more like it, and around behind is Grafton Street, where you can buy silver, gla.s.s, and linen, or pink hacking coats, boots, and caps to ride off to the G.o.dd.a.m.ned hounds; or, better still, duck in to The Four Provinces pub for a proper proportion of drink and talk-an hour of drink to two hours of talk is about the best prescription.
It was high noon, and out of the Hibernian Hotel front who should come now but Snell-Orkney and his canary five, myself following and taking dictation, but telling no one.
Then there was the first of a dumbfounding series of confrontations.
For pa.s.sing by, sore torn between the sweet shops and The Four Provinces, was Timulty himself.
Timulty, as you recall, when Blight, Famine, Starvation, and other mean Hors.e.m.e.n drive him, works a day here or there at the Kilc.o.c.k post office. Now, idling along between dread employments, he smelled a smell as if the gates of Eden had swung wide again and him invited back in after a hundred million years. So Timulty looked up to see what made the wind blow out of the Garden.
And the wind, of course, was in tumult about Snell-Orkney and his uncaged pets.
Timulty, frozen to the spot, watched the Snell-Orkney delegation flow down the steps and around the corner. At which point he decided on sweeter things than candy and rushed the long way to the Provinces.
I walked briskly after, feeling like a stage manager at an animal fair.
Ahead of me, rounding the corner, Mr. David Snell-Orkney-plus-five pa.s.sed a beggar lady playing a harp in the street. And there, with nothing else to do but dance the time away, was my taxi driver, Mike himself, flinging his feet about in a self-involved rigadoon to "Lightly o"er the Lea." Dancing, Mike heard a sound that was like the pa.s.sing of warm weather from the Hebrides. It was not quite a twittering nor a whir, and it was not unlike a pet shop when the bell tinkles as you step in and a chorus of parakeets and doves starts up in coos and light shrieks. But hear he did, above the sound of his own shoes and the pringle of harp. He froze in mid-jig.
As David Snell-Orkney-plus-five swept by, all tropic-smiled and gave him a wave.
Before he knew what he was doing, Mike waved back, then stopped and seized his wounded hand to his breast. "What the h.e.l.l am I waving for?" he cried to me as I arrived. "I don"t know them, do I?"
"Ask G.o.d for strength!" I said as the harpist flung her fingers down the strings.
Drawn as by some strange new vacuum cleaner that swept all before it, Mike and I followed the Team down the street.
Which takes care of two senses now, the sense of smell and the use of the ears.
It was at the next corner that Nolan, bursting from The Four Provinces pub with an argument pursuing, came around the bend fast and ran bang into David Snell-Orkney. Both swayed and grabbed each other for support.
"Top of the afternoon!" said David Snell-Orkney.
"The back side of something!" replied Nolan, and fell away, gaping to let the circus by. I could see in his eyes that he had a terrible urge to rush back in to report upon his fell encounter with a feather duster, a Siamese cat, a spoiled Pekingese, and three others gone ghastly frail from undereating and overwashing.
The six stopped outside the pub, looking up at the sign.
Lord, I thought. They"re going in. What will come of it? Who do I warn first? Them? Or the bartender?
Then the door opened. Finn himself looked out. Finn, come into town to visit his cousin, and now ruining the occasion by his very presence! "d.a.m.n," said Nolan, "that spoils it! Now we won"t be allowed to describe this adventure. It will be Finn this, Finn that, and shut up to us all!"
There was a long moment when Snell-Orkney and his cohorts looked at Finn. Finn"s eyes did not fasten on them. He looked above. He looked over. He looked beyond.
But he had seen them, this I knew. For now a lovely thing happened.
All the color went out of Finn"s face. Then an even lovelier thing happened. All the color rushed back into Finn"s face. Why, I thought, he"s . . . blushing]
But still Finn refused to look anywhere save the sky, the lamps, the street, until Snell-Orkney trilled, "Sir, which way to St. Stephen"s Green?"
"Jesus," said Finn, and retreated. "Who knows where they put it this week!" and slammed the door.
The six went on up the street, all smiles and delight, and Nolan was all for heaving himself through the door when a worse thing happened.
Garrity, the elevator operator from the Royal Hibernian Hotel, whipped across the sidewalk from nowhere. His face ablaze with excitement, he ran into The Four Provinces to spread the word.
By the time Nolan and I were inside, and Timulty rushing in next, Garrity was all up and down the length of the bar, pa.s.sing Finn, who was suffering concussions from which he had not as yet recovered.
"It"s a shame you missed it!" cried Garrity to all. "I mean, it was the next thing to one of the fiction-and-science nllums they show at the Gayety Cinema!"
"How do you mean?" asked Finn, shaken out of his trance. "Nothing, they weigh!" Garriety told them. "Lifting them in the elevator was throwing a handful of chaff up a chimney! And you should have heard. They"re here in Ireland for"-he lowered his voice and squinched his eyes-"for mysterious reasons^ "Mysterious?" I prompted.
"They"ll put no name to it, but mark my declaration, they"re up to no good! Have you ever seen the like?"
"Not since the great fire at the convent," Nolan said. "I-" But the word "convent" seemed one more magic touch. The doors sprang wide at this. Father Leary entered in reverse. That is to say, he backed into the pub, one hand to his cheek, as if the fates had dealt him a proper blow unbewares.
Reading the look of his spine, the men shoved their noses in their drinks until such time as the father had put a bit of the brew into himself, still staring as if the door were the gates of h.e.l.l ajar.
"Beyond," said the father, at last, "not two minutes gone, I saw a sight as would be hard to credit. In all the days of her collecting up the grievances of the world, has Ireland indeed gone mad?"
The priest"s gla.s.s was refilled. "Was you standing in the blast of The Invaders from the Planet Venus, Father?"
"Have you seen them, then, Finn?" the father said.
"Yes, and do you guess them bad, Your Holiness?"
"It"s not so much bad or good as strange and outre, Finn, and words like rococo, I should guess, and baroque if you go with my drift."
"I lie easy in the tide, sir."
"When last seen, where heading?" I asked.
"On the edge of the green," said the priest. "You don"t imagine there"ll be a baccha.n.a.l in the park now?"
"The weather won"t allow, beg your pardon, Father," said Nolan, "but it strikes me, instead of standing with the bag in your mouth and not eating oats, we should be out on the spy-"
"You move against my ethics," said the priest.
"A drowning man clutches at anything," I said, "and ethics may drown with him if that"s what he grabs instead of a life belt."
"Off the Mount," said the priest, "and enough of the Sermon. What"s your point?"
"His point is, Father," panted Nolan, "we have had no such influx of honorary Sicilians since the mind boggles to remember. For all we know, at this moment, they may be reading aloud to Mrs. Murphy, Miss Clancy, or Mrs. O"Hanlan in the midst of the park. And reading aloud from what, I ask you?"
" "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"?" guessed Finn.
"You have rammed the target and sunk the ship," Nolan grouched, maddened that the point had been plucked from him. "How did we know these imps out of bottles are not selling real-estate tracts in a place called Fire Island? Have you heard of it, Father?"
"The American gazettes come often to my table, man." "Well, do you remember the great hurricane of nineteen-and-forty-six, when the waves washed over Fire Island there in New York? An uncle of mine, G.o.d save his sanity and sight, was with the coast guard there, which evacuated the entirety of the population of Fire Island. It was worse than the twice-a-year showing at Fennelly"s dressworks, he said. It was more terrible than a Baptist convention. Ten thousand men came rushing down to the stormy sh.o.r.e carrying bolts of drape material, cages full of parakeets, tomato- and tangerine-colored sport coats, and lime-colored shoes. It was the most tumultuous scene since Hieronymus Bosch laid down his palette after he painted h.e.l.l for all generations to come. You do not easily evacuate ten thousand Venetian-gla.s.s boyos with their great blinky cow eyes, and their phonograph symphonic records in their hands, and their rings in their ears, without tearing down the middle. My uncle, soon after, took to the heavy drink." "Tell us more about the night," said Kilpatrick, entranced. "More, h.e.l.l," said the priest. "Out, I say. Surround the park. Keep your eyes peeled. And meet me back here in an hour."
"That"s more like it," cried Kelly. "Let"s really see what dread thing they"re up to!"
The doors banged wide. They flew back. I fended them off and the directionless mob on the sidewalk, and the priest used his compa.s.s. "Kelly, Murphy, you around the north side of the park. Timulty, you to the sound. Nolan, Clannery, and Garrity, the east; Moran, MaGuire, Kilpatrick, the west. Git!" But somehow or other in all the ruction, Kelly and Murphy wound up at The Four Shamrocks pub, halfway to the green, and fortified themselves for the chase, and Nolan and Moran each met their wives on the street and had to run back to the Provinces, and MaGuire and Kilpatrick, pa.s.sing the Grafton Street Cinema and hearing Deanna Durbin singing inside, cadged their way in to join Doone, who I knew was spending the afternoon there.
So it wound up with just two, Garrity on the east and Timulty on the south side of the park, looking in at the visitors from another world. I joined Timulty, who, in concentration, refused conversation.
After half an hour of freezing weather, Garrity stomped up to us and cried, "What"s wrong with the fiends? They"re just standing there in the midst of the park. They haven"t moved half the afternoon. And it"s cut to the bone is my toes. I"ll nip around to the hotel, warm up, and rush to stand guard with you, Tim, and you, Yank!"
"Take your time," called Timulty in a strange sad wandering philosophical voice, as the other charged away.
Ignoring me, Timulty walked into the park and sat for a full hour watching the six men, who, as before, did not move. You might almost have thought, to see Timulty there, with his eyes brooding and his mouth gone into tragic crease, that he was some Irish neighbor of Kant or Schopenhauer, or had just read something by a poet or thought of a song that declined his spirits. And when at last the hour was up and he had gathered his thoughts like a handful of cold pebbles, he turned and made his way out of the park to me, just as Garrity ran back to pound his feet and swing his hands. But before he could explode with questions, Timulty pointed in and said, "Go sit. Look. Think. Then you tell me."
Everyone at The Four Provinces looked up sheepishly when I opened the door and beckoned Timulty in. The priest was still off on errands around the city, and after a few walks about the green to a.s.suage their consciences, all had returned, nonplussed, to intelligence headquarters.
"Timulty!" They cried. "Yank! Tell us! What? What?"
Timulty took his time walking to the bar and sipping his drink. Silently, he observed his own image remotely buried beneath the lunar ice of the barroom mirror. He turned the subject this way. He twisted it inside out. He put it back wrong-side-to. Then he shut his eyes and said: "It strikes me as how ..."
Yes, said all silently, about him.
"From a lifetime of travel and thought, it comes to the top of my mind," Timulty went on, "there is a strange resemblance between the likes of them and the likes of us."
There was such a gasp as changed the scintillation, the goings and comings of light in the prisms of the little chandeliers over the bar. When the schools of fish-light had stopped swarming at this exhalation, Nolan cried, "Do you mind putting your hat on so I can knock it off!?"
"Yeah! Put it on, knock it off!" cried everyone.
"Hush," I said.
"Consider," Timulty calmly said. "Are we or are we not great ones for the poem and the song?"
Another kind of gasp went through the crowd. There was a lame burst of approval. "Oh, sure, we"re that" "My G.o.d, is that all you"re up to?" "We were afraid-"
"Hold it!" Timulty raised a hand, eyes still closed.
And all shut up.
"If we"re not singing the songs, we"re writing them, and if not writing, dancing them, and aren"t they fond admirers of the song and the writing of same and the dancing out the whole? Well, just now I heard them at a distance reciting poems and singing, to themselves, in the green."
Timulty had something there. Everyone had to paw everybody and admit it.
"Do you find any other resemblances?" asked Finn heavily, glowering.
"I do," said Timulty, with a judge"s manner.
There was a still more fascinated indraw of breath and the crowd drew nearer, as I took notes in a fever.
"They do not mind a drink now and then," said Timulty.
"By G.o.d, he"s right!" cried Murphy.
"Also," intoned Timulty, "they do not marry until very late, if ever at all! And-"
But here the tumult was such he had to wait for it to subside before he could finish: "And they-ah-have very little to do with women."
After that there was a great clamor, a yelling and shoving about and ordering of drinks, and someone invited Timulty outside. But Timulty wouldn"t even lift one eyelid, and the brawler was held off, and when everyone had a new drink in him and the near-fistfights had drained away, one loud clear voice, Finn"s, declared: Now would you mind explaining the criminal comparison you"ve just made in the clean air of this honorable pub?"
Timulty sipped his drink slowly and then at last opened his eyes and looked at Finn steadily and said, with a clear bell-trumpet tone and wondrous enunciation: "Where in all of Ireland can a man lie down with a woman?"
He let that sink in.
"Three hundred twenty-nine days a d.a.m.n year it rains. The rest it"s so wet there"s no dry piece, no bit of land you would dare trip a woman out flat on for fear of her taking root and coming up in leaves-do you deny that?"
The silence did not deny.
"So when it comes to places to do sinful evils and perform outrageous acts of the flesh, it"s to Arabia the poor d.a.m.n-fool Irishman must take himself. It"s Arabian dreams we have, of warm nights, dry land, and a decent place not just to sit down but to lie down on, and not just lie down on but to roister joyfully about on in clinches and clenches of outrageous delight."
"Ah, Jaisus," said Finn, "you can say that again."