Best of Myles

by Flann O'Brien

  All that I believe to be true, though possibly I’m not supposed to say it so bluntly.

  I HAPPENED to glance at my hands the other day and noticed they were yellow. Conclusion: I am growing old (though I claim that I am not yet too old to dream). Further conclusion: I should set about writing my memoirs. Be assured that such a book would be remarkable, for to the extraordinary adventures which have been my lot there is no end. (Nor will there be.) Here is one little adventure that will give you some idea.

  Many years ago a Dublin friend asked me to spend an evening with him. Assuming that the man was interested in philosophy and knew that immutable truth can sometimes be acquired through the kinesis of disputation, I consented. How wrong I was may be judged from the fact that my friend arrived at the rendezvous in a taxi and whisked me away to a licensed premises in the vicinity of Lucan. Here I was induced to consume a large measure of intoxicating whiskey. My friend would not hear of another drink in the same place, drawing my attention by nudges to a very sinister-looking character who was drinking stout in the shadows some distance from us. He was a tall cadaverous person, dressed wholly in black, with a face of deathly grey. We left and drove many miles to the village of Stepaside, where a further drink was ordered. Scarcely to the lip had it been applied when both of us noticed—with what feelings I dare not describe—the same tall creature in black, residing in a distant shadow and apparently drinking the same glass of stout. We finished our own drinks quickly and left at once, taking in this case the Enniskerry road and entering a hostelry in the purlieus of that village. Here more drinks were ordered but had hardly appeared on the counter when, to the horror of myself and friend, the sinister stranger was discerned some distance away, still patiently dealing with his stout. We swallowed our drinks raw and hurried out. My friend was now thoroughly scared, and could not be dissuaded from making for the far-away hamlet of Celbridge; his idea was that, while another drink was absolutely essential, it was equally essential to put as many miles as possible between ourselves and the sinister presence we had just left. Need I say what happened? We noticed with relief that the public house we entered in Celbridge was deserted, but as our eyes became more accustomed to the poor light, we saw him again: he was standing in the gloom, a more terrible apparition than ever before, ever more menacing with each meeting. My friend had purchased a bottle of whiskey and was now dealing with the stuff in large gulps. I saw at once that a crisis had been reached and that desperate action was called for.

  ‘No matter where we go,’ I said, ‘this being will be there unless we can now assert a superior will and confound evil machinations that are on foot. I do not know whence comes this apparition, but certainly of this world it is not. It is my intention to challenge him.’

  My friend gazed at me in horror, made some gesture of remonstrance, but apparently could not speak. My own mind was made up. It was me or this diabolical adversary: there could be no evading the clash of wills, only one of us could survive. I finished my drink with an assurance I was far from feeling and marched straight up to the presence. A nearer sight of him almost stopped the action of my heart; here undoubtedly was no man but some spectral emanation from the tomb, the undead come on some task of inhuman vengeance.

  ‘I do not like the look of you,’ I said, somewhat lamely.

  ‘I don’t think so much of you either,’ the thing replied; the voice was cracked, low and terrible.

  ‘I demand to know,’ I said sternly, ‘why you persist in following myself and my friend everywhere we go.’

  ‘I cannot go home until you first go home,’ the thing replied. There was an ominous undertone in this that almost paralysed me.

  ‘Why not?’ I managed to say.

  ‘Because I am the—taxi-driver!’

  Out of such strange incidents is woven the pattern of what I am pleased to call my life.

  ONE HEARS a lot of talk about ‘Greater Dublin’ (most of it unauthorised by me and therefore mischievous) but never a mention of the sticking-out corollary that, according as you increase Dublin, you diminish the rest of Ireland proportionately. This, of course, is a very serious matter. Some fine day the inhabitants of Leixlip will notice something usual about the horizon and, sending forth scouts to investigate, will find it is Dublin. Dublin just down the road today. Tomorrow? The tide will have engulfed ancient Leixlip, the inhabitants will be answerable to Hernon, Keane and Monks. People will write letters addressed ‘Main St Leixlip, Dublin, C.98’ and you will probably be able to get there on the 16 bus. People in Athlone will say ‘You saw what happened in Leixlip. They thought they were safe, that their unborn sons would never be Dublin men. Hodie Leixlip, Cras nobis. Let us menfolk take to the hills, let our women-folk be instructed in the art of baking cakes containing keys. To arms!’

  ‘Greater Dublin’ is fine if you provide pari passu for Greater Ireland. How can this be done? There will be some who will ask that Ireland, sword in hand, should embark on vast imperial conquests. My pledged word to Clemenceau forbids this course, even if other considerations did not make it impracticable.

  Two things occur to me. You remember my recent lecture on the export of agricultural produce to Britain, how I explained that with every export of beast, man and great hundred of eggs, we were permanently expatriating a quantum of the essential constituents of the Irish earth, and thus impoverishing the material from which Irish humans are made. Suppose you accelerate this process, some churl will say, suppose you capture the entire British food trade? Would not Britons, nourished solely on Irish bullocks and Irish malt, become as Irish in their physical make-up as the Irish themselves? Develop high cheek-bones, play hurley, fight and become inexorably opposed to compulsory Irish? Write banned books? Become … neutral?

  The answer is yes and no. First, the process of metabolic hibernicisation would never be complete owing to the fact that it would be difficult for an Irish government to prevent the English people from continuing to drink English water, or to compel them to import Irish water. Water is most important since it contains many of the indigenous salts which determine national temperament. You read a lot of nonsense in the history books about foreigners having come to conquer, being ‘absorbed’ by the Irish. Actually, the poor devils had to eat and drink here, like everybody else. Until chemistry and history are fused in a biological survey of the origins and sustenances of life, there can be no realistic approach to almost any contemporary problem. The other point I must make is this: suppose we went all out to gaelicise the British through the medium of the long gut, suppose we achieved a large measure of success—what, pray, would remain here? If you export all the essential Irish nutriments and if there be ‘people’ still living here, who are they? Hmmmm.

  No, additional Ireland must be sought in a different way. It is really quite simple. The present Ireland must first carry out an elaborate survey of its own soil. Thereafter must be sent throughout the known world an army of Irish chemists analysing the soil of every land wherein people dwell. Golden sovereigns will I bet that you will find certain countries, certain areas, wherein the soil is, in structure and composition, identical with that of Ireland. The people of that country—surprised though they be to learn the fact—are Irish! Thus can you evolve a world-confederation of Irelands, an empire based on a homogeneity of stomach-trouble. Such an association would long outlast, I ween, anything based on fire and sword. (It would be damn funny if the British turned out to be thoroughly Irish all along. Trouble is they would say (casually, by way of reply to some hon. and gallant member) that the Irish were British all along.)

  I DO NOT WISH, at this peaceful time, to trouble you with personal matters, still less to obtrude questions affecting my personal honour and prestige. But an item appeared recently in this newspaper which, if allowed to pass unchallenged, might do serious damage. An oddly retrospective condition attached to it, as may be seen. At a Dublin meeting a speaker said (I assume, of course, that newspapers do not lie):

  ‘If Plato had been t
he Colossus of the ancient world of thought, Shaw was the Colossus of the modern world …’

  Since apparently he wasn’t the whole proposition seems to fall through. But there was more, which pl. note:

  ‘In variety of subject and profundity of thought Shaw equalled Plato; in the staggering boldness of his proposals he surpassed him. Shaw’s work,’ the speaker added, ‘was shot through with two fundamental convictions—creative evolution and a basic income.’

  You will, dear reader, doubtless have noticed something rather funny about all this. I’m sure it was unintentional; I like to believe that no insult was intended … but … not a word about me in the whole thing from beginning to end! (!!!) I don’t mind, of course—if people choose to make fools of themselves I don’t give a damn one way or the other. But in common decency don’t you think there’d have been even just a word? But no. No mention whatever.

  Ah well! Mind you, it’s not that I’ve anything against Shaw. Shaw is one of the best, we used to see a lot of each other during the old cycling days, many’s the fiver he borrowed off me in the Vegetarian Restaurant and to this day I never have an opening in the West End but he comes along and sits there in the stalls munching watercress sandwiches, but … calling him a Colossus of the ancient world! And then this business of shootings and convictions. Shure … how many bullet wounds and incarcerations for the freedom of political thought I have myself and is there ever a word out of me about it? And … variety of thought and staggering proposals …? Shur, glory be, man, what is that only a mild watered-down specification of my humble daily chores for H.M. Irish Times in the U.K.? And that, be the same token, brings me to the last point—basic income. I said—basic income … (Editor begins to cough, bites nails, looks out of window). I said the labourer is worthy of his hire. I haven’t got the basic income of me good friend George B. Shaw, I may tell you. It’s not that I haven’t brains—I have more brains in me little finger than your man has in his whole beard. Did you ever see my play, hah? (You had to be quick as it happens.) Ever read my novels, biographies, political tracts? My denunciations of what is evil, meretricious, unworthy? Shure, great heavens, there’s no comparison. It’s not that Shaw’s plays aren’t good—the Student Prince is a lovely thing. ‘Pig’ Malone is fine, and Rose Marie and Charley’s Aunt—these are all blooming lovely things—a man doesn’t get a reputation for nothing, mind you, but a man should have a bit more than that to his credit before you start calling him a Colossus of the ancient world, that’s all I say. (Incidentally, where does Professor Joad come into this hasty evaluation of ratiocinative grandeur?) Of course, the basic income is a great help—note that all that unfriendly speech was made at a meeting of the Royal Georgian and Shavian Association of Ireland. Perhaps … certain parties have it in their minds that maybe they’re mentioned in a certain will …?

  (Pause. Twilight falls. Voice is heard speaking in the gloaming):

  How well the crowd in this town would never think of forming a M na gC Society! It’d be such a … a … fine tribute to an old man! And with a statue in College Green, my back turned to Trinity! (I still say I have the figure to wear a stone beard and stone frock coat!)

  KNOWLEDGE and learning are funny things if you like. Take for example that old question of the genuineness of the last fifteen words of Plato’s Phaedo, in the epilogue after Socrates has had his jar. Many commentators hold that the use of the phrase tón tote is so odd and out of context that it invalidates the entire passage after andros; others hold that it is merely ‘a slip’ and that the passage is genuine. Hear Hirschig on this point, hear Riddell, Grote, Wyttenbach, Gaisford, Bekker, Geddes, Jebb, Heindorf and Stallbaum—and where are you? Precisely where you were. There is no finality, no truth, in such ‘learned’ disputation. My own view may be stated without reserve. The words between andros and dikaiotatou inclusive are quite definitely not an interpolation. The reason? Why, surely it is obvious. You cannot have an interpolation at the end of a work.

  Very well. Leave aside the scholars, forget their hard clashing voices. Is ‘the world’ the mart of men—is that a garden of noumenal calm, is clarity, precision and finality the benign trefoil that therein grows? Alas, far from it. It is lies, turmoil, chaos, the mother mistaken for the daughter, wealth owned only by the unworthy, the clean of heart in jail, favourites inadequate, money lost, the reek of war stenching the spring. It is … (fans out yellow wax-like hands in deprecation) it is … heart-breaking.

  Take for example the word ‘canny’. My dictionary endows it with a tortuous etymology based on the original meaning of ‘can’, i.e. know. cf. cunning. All that is a lie, of course. The word clearly comes from the Irish phrase ciall ceannaidhe (pro. keel canny) meaning shrewdness (of a businessman), i.e. the sort of worldly wisdom that is conferred by experience. Here then we have the wrong thing in the niche, the right thing unknown. (Blows nose.) Take even the pleas that persons in the grip of fear show the whites of their eyes. That too is wrong. That part of the eye is not white. See? (Places brown-black tobacco-charred finger on wizened eye-ball, pointing to diseased dull-yellow orbs, blood-flecked and afloat in glistening rheumy wash.) They are as you see quite yellow.

  Take what is even a more extreme example. Inebriates, as a class, are despised (chiefly by people who cannot afford to drink) but a more particular derision is reserved for the inebriate’s idea that he can see, and has in fact seen pink rats. The incorrigible phenomenalism that is conferred by protracted and malignant sobriety makes the idea of pink rats laughable. But rats are pink. Of that there is of course no doubt whatever. (Roots in ‘coat’ pocket, pulls out huge squirming black rat, obviously native of Murmansk; the coarse heavy coat and scaly tail almost visibly swarming with bubonic germs.) You see? It looks black, even these razorsharp claws—see?—are black. (Rat whistles fiercely and snaps at captor.) But let us see. We must not be deceived by appearances, here or elsewhere. (Has suddenly plugged in electric razor, pinioned rat on knee and is deftly shaving it.) Now we are getting somewhere. Knowledge is vouchsafing us a glimpse at her treasures. See? The rat is pink. (Rat, plunging wildly, is held up by tail, seen to be half original size, completely devoid of hair, but pink.) There is therefore no aberration necessarily involved in the infra-fur inspection of rodents on the part of vinous zoologists. (Rat emits shrill venomous barks; shorn fur on floor begins to move nearer fire.) None whatever. We have nailed still a further lie and we have done perhaps enough for one day. (Rises, winks broadly, takes up wife’s handbag, opens it, stuffs in infuriated whistling rat, closes and replaces bag, which jumps about for a time). I will be in later on tonight if you wish to look in for a game of backgammon. Her nibs if you please is off to a temperance meeting in the Mansion House.

  A NOTE in my diary says: ‘Ten to the power of seventy-nine. Write on this joke.’

  Very well. Why not? I wish I had the money to finance real scientific research. You remember the worry we had back in the thirties (?this century, I think—or was it?) about the electron, how to determine its mass. Eddington had an amusing angle on the thing. But first let us recall the previous situation where you had the crude journeyman’s approach of calculating it as 10 (to the power of –27) of a gramme. Most of us looked on that as a sort of music-hall joke—mass audience reaction makes you snigger but you are not really amused, you are sorry for having forsaken for the evening your monogram on Cicero’s Pro Malony. Because it really boiled down to this—that if some smartie broke into the place at Sèvres and stole the so-called ‘standard kilogramme’ your ‘10 (to the power of –27)’ immediately became more obviously the arbitrary unfunny gaffe it essentially was. Very well. The ‘scientist’, in sum, had been deluding himself that the Heath Robinson experiments which led to that ‘discovery’ could be solemnly called observational determination. Whereas it is just make-believe and whimsy, all essentially feminine.

  The ‘problem’—as one then thought of it—was to relate the mass of the electron to … to something real (like, for instance
, sleep). The point, of course, about Eddington’s handling of the experiment was his realisation that it could only give information about a double wave system which ‘belonged’ as much to the electron as to the material comparison standard necessarily used. Very well.

  To reach a result it had been necessary to investigate the circumstances where the double wave can be replaced with single waves (really, this sounds like barber-shop talk!)—or in other words, to examine the process where you are slipping from macroscopic to microscopic; call them ‘magnitudes’ by all means, terminology is unimportant. Eddington, as you know, tied this up with his engaging patent ‘comparison aether’, a retroambulant nonenity moping about introspectively way below the xx axis, whose mass can be calculated, needless to say, from a formula expressed largely in terms of the fundamental constants of macroscopical physics—the time-space radius, velocity of ‘light’ … and all the particles in the universe. Now when this mass is m and the

  0

  electric-particle- proton or electron, it doesn’t matter a damn which—is, as usual, m, you have this incredible quadratic:

  10m − 136mm+m.=0

  0

  What is quite curious is that this new equation and formula for m

  0

  yield (for this velocity) a maximum value of 780 kilom. per sec. per megaparsec … which, of course, accords with the ‘value’ found by observation (!!!!!)

  But here is what I am really getting at—the uniquely prolonged sneer that Eddington embodied in the paper he read to us at the Royal Society in the fateful autumn of ‘33.

  ‘In the maze of connection of physical constants,’ he said, ‘there remains just one pure number—’ (ho-ho-ho, I cannot help interjecting)—‘which is known only by observation and has no theoretical explanation. It is a very large number, about 10 (to the power of 79), and the present theory indicates that it is the number of particles in the universe. It may seem to you odd—’ (Not at all, not at all, one murmurs)—‘that this number should come into the various constants such as the constants of gravitation. You may say, how on earth can the number of particles in remote parts of the universe affect the Cavendish experiment on the attraction of metal spheres in a laboratory? I do not think they affect it at all. But the Cavendish and other experiments having given the result they did, we can deduce that space will go on and on, curving according to the mass contained in it until only a small opening remains and that the 10 (to the power of 79)th particle will be the last particle to be admitted through the last small opening and will shut the door after it.’