Green Shadows, White Whale Part 32

"Your cap . . . ?"

"When victory is yours, show them, and we'll explain you ran to replace this fool leg of mine!"

I clapped the cap on, tied the scarf.

"But look here-" I protested.

"You'll do brave! Just remember, it's finis and no sooner! The song's almost up. Are you tensed?"

"G.o.d, I think so!"

"It's blind pa.s.sions that win, boy. Plunge straight. If you step on someone, don't look back. There!" Doone held his legs to one side to give clearance. "The song's done. He's kissing her-"

"Therm's!" I cried.

And leaped into the aisle.

I ran up the slope. I'm first! I thought. I'm ahead! There's the door!

I hit the door as the anthem began.

I slammed into the lobby-safe!

I won! I thought, incredulous, with Doone's cap and scarf like ictory laurels upon and about me. Won for the Team!

Who's second, third, fourth?

I turned to the door as it swung shut.

Only then did I hear the shouts and yells inside.

Good Lord! I thought, six men have tried the wrong exit at once, someone tripped, fell, someone else piled on. Otherwise, why am I the first and only? There's a fierce silent combat in there this second, the two teams locked in mortal wrestling att.i.tudes, asprawl, akimbo, above and below the seats-that must be it!

I've won! I wanted to yell, to break it up.

I threw the door wide.

I stared into an abyss where nothing stirred.

Nolan came to peer over my shoulder.

"That's the Irish for you," he said, nodding. "Even more than the sprint, it's the muse they like."

For what were the voices yelling in the dark?

"Run it again! Over! That last song! Phil!"

"No one move. I'm in heaven. Doone, how right you were!"

Nolan pa.s.sed me, going in to sit.

I stood for a long moment looking down along all the rows where the teams of anthem sprinters sat, none having stirred, wiping their eyes.

"Phil, darling?" called Timulty, somewhere up front.

"It's done!" cried Phil.

"And this time," added Timulty, "without the anthem."

Applause.

The dim lights flashed off. The screen glowed like a great warm hearth.

I looked back out at the bright sane world of Grafton Street, the pub, the hotels, shops, and night-wandering folk. I hesitated.

Then, to the tune of "The Lovely Isle of Innisfree," I took off the cap and scarf, hid these laurels under a seat, and slowly, luxuriously, with all the time in the world, moved in past Snell-Orkney and his canary five and quietly sat myself down . . .

30.

And suddenly it was time to leave.

"But great G.o.d!" Timulty said. "You just arrived!"

"We found what we came for and said our say and watched your amazing sprint, for which much thanks. There's no need to stay," announced the tall sad happy old young man. "It's back to the hothouse with the flowers ... or they wilt overnight. We are always flying and jumping and running. We are always on the move."

The airport being fogged in, there was nothing for it but the birds cage themselves on the Dun Laoghaire boat bound for England, and there was nothing for it but the inhabitants of Finn's and myself should be down at the dock to watch them pull away late in the evening. There they stood, all six, on the top deck, waving their thin hands down, and there stood Timulty and Nolan and Garrity and the rest of us waving our hands up. And as the boat hooted and pulled away, the keeper-of-the-birds nodded once and winged his right hand on the air, and all sang forth: As I was walking through Dublin City, about the hour of twelve at night, I saw a maid, so fair was she . . . combing her hair by candlelight.

"Jesus," said Timulty, "do you hear?"

"Sopranos, every one of them!" cried Nolan.

"Not Irish sopranos, but real real sopranos," said Kelly.

"d.a.m.n, why didn't they say7 If we'd known, we'd have had a good hour of that out of them before the boat."

Timulty nodded and added, listening to the music float over the waters, "Strange. Strange. I hate to see them go. Think. Think.

For a hundred years or more, people have said we had none. But now they have returned, if but for a little time."

"We had none of whatT' asked Garrity. "And what returned?"

"Why," said Timulty, "the fairies, of course, the fairies that once lived in Ireland, and live here no more, but who came this day and changed our weather, and there they go again, who once stayed all the while."

"Ah, shut up!" cried Kilpatrick. "And listen!"

And listen we did, nine men on the end of a dock as the boat sailed out and the voices sang and the fog came in, and they did not move for a long time until the boat was far gone and the voices faded like a scent of papaya on the mist.

By the time we got back to The Four Provinces it had begun to snow, which soon turned to rain.

31.

The night of the long knives.

Or one long knife-the guillotine.

If only I had known, as the heroes in mystery novels used to say.

When it was over, I was reminded of Elijah at the gangplank or myself in Beverly Hills in the bookshop buying my portable Melville and hearing that strange woman's prophecy of doom: "Don't go on that journey."

And my naive response, "He's never met anyone like me before. Maybe that will make the difference."

Yep. Sure. The difference being it took a bit more time to prepare the pig's head for the hammer, the razor at the throat, and the hanging on the tender-hook.

Lenin referred to dumbclucks like me as "useful idiots."

Which is to say the image of Chaplin-remember?-crossing a street as a lumber truck pa.s.ses and drops a warning red flag off the load. Chaplin picks it up and runs after the truck, to warn them they've lost the flag. Instantly, a mob of Bolsheviks rounds the corner behind him, unseen, as Chaplin stands waving the flag after the truck. Enter the cops. Who promptly seize Chaplin, trample the red flag, and beat the h.e.l.l out of him before throwing him in the hoosegow. The mob, of course, escapes. So ...

There I am, in Dublin, with a red flag, waving it at John. Or there I am in the Place de la Concorde as the Bastille wagons park and I offer to help folks up the guillotine steps. Only when I reach the top do I realize where I am, panic, and come down in two pieces.

Such is the life of the innocent, or someone who kids himself he is innocent. As someone once said to me: "Let's not be too naive, shall we?"

I wish I had heard and followed that advice on that night in a Chinese restaurant somewhere in the fogs and rains of Dublin.

It was one of those nights when the prophet Elijah did not prevent me-nor did I prevent myself-from drinking too many drinks and spilling too many beans in front of Jake Vickers and his Parisian lady and three or four visitors from New York and Hollywood.

It was one of those nights when it seemed you can't do anything wrong. One of those nights when everything you say is brilliant, honed, sharpened to a razor edge of risibility, when every word you speak sends the house on a roar, when people hold their ribs with laughter, waiting for your next shot across their bows, and shoot you do, and laugh they do, until you are all bathed in a warm love of hilarity and are about to fall on the floor writhing with your own genius, your own incredible humor raised to its highest temperature.

I sat listening to my own tongue wag, aim, and fire, d.a.m.n well pleased at my own comic genius. Everyone was looking at me and my alcohol-oiled tongue. Even John was breaking down at my wild excursions into amiable insult and caricature. I imagined I had saved up tidbits on everyone at the table, and like those handwriting experts we encounter on occasion in life who read more in our hairlines, eyebrows, ear twitchings, nostril flarings, and teeth barings than are written in our Horatio stars or inked on plain pad with pencil, guessed at the obvious. If we do not give ourselves away in our handwriting or clothes or the percentage of alcohol on our breaths, our breathing does us in or the merest nod or shake of the head as the handwriting expert sniffs our mouth-wash, or our genius. So lining up my friends one after another, against the stockade wall, I fired fusillades of wit at their habits, poses, pretensions, lovers, artistic outputs, lapses in taste, failures to arrive on time, errors in observation, and on and on. Most of it, I would hope, gently done with no scars to bandage later. So I drilled holes in masks, poured sulphur in, and lit the fuse. The explosions left darkened faces but no lost digits. At one point Jake cried, "Someone stop him!"

Christ, I wish they had.

For my next victim was John himself.

I paused for breath. Everyone stilled in their explosive roars, watching me with bright fox eyes, urging me to get on with it. John's next. Fix him So there I was with my hero, my love, my great good fine wondrous friend, and there I was reaching out suddenly and taking his hands, --------- "Did you know, John, that I, too, am one of the world's great hypnotists?"

"Is that so, kid?" John laughed.

"Hey!" everyone cried.

"Yep," I said. "Hypnotist. World's greatest. Someone fill my gla.s.s."

Jake Vickers poured gin in my gla.s.s.

"Go it!" yelled everyone.

"Here goes," I said.

No, someone inside me whispered.

I seized John's wrists. "I am about to hypnotize you. Don't be afraid!"

"You don't scare me, kid," John said.

"I'm going to help you with a problem."

"What's that, kid?"

"Your problem is-" I searched his face, my intuitive mind. "Your problem is, ah."

It came from me. It burst out.

"I am not afraid of flying to London, John. I do not fear. It is you that fears. You're afraid."

"Of what, H.G.?"

"You are afraid of the Dun Laoghaire ferry boat that travels over the Irish Sea at night in great waves and dark storms. You are afraid of that, John, and so you say I am afraid of flying, when it is you afraid of seas and boats and storms and long night travels. Yes, John?"

"If you say so, kid," John replied, smiling stonily.

"Do you want me to help you with your problem, John?"

"Help him, help him," said everyone.

"Consider yourself helped. Relax, John. Relax. Take it easy. Sleep, John, are you getting sleepy?" I murmured, I whispered, I announced.

"If you say so, kid," said John, his voice not so amused but half amused, his eyes watchful, his wrists tense under my holding.

"Someone hit him over the head," exclaimed Jake.

"No, no," laughed John. "Let him go. Go on, kid. Put me under."

"Are you under, John?"

"Halfway there, son."

"Go further, John. Repeat after me. It is not H.G. who fears flying."