The Third Policeman

by Flann O'Brien

  Watch your step here. A very slippery-looking customer.

  I put my hand into my pocket to see if my wallet was there. It was, smooth and warm like the hand of a good friend. When found that I had not been robbed, I decided to talk to him genially and civilly, see who he was and ask him to direct me to the barracks. I made up my mind not to despise the assistance of anybody who could help me, in however small a way, to find the black box. I gave him the time of day and, so far as I could, a look as intricate as any he could give himself.

  ‘More luck to you,’ I said.

  ‘More power to yourself,’ he answered dourly. Ask him his name and occupation and inquire what is his destination.

  ‘I do not desire to be inquisitive, sir,’ I said, ‘but would it be true to mention that you are a bird-catcher?’

  ‘Not a bird-catcher,’ he answered.

  ‘A tinker?’

  ‘Not that.’

  ‘A man on a journey?’

  ‘No, not that.’

  ‘A fiddler?’

  ‘Not that one.’

  I smiled at him in good-humoured and said:

  ‘Tricky-looking man, you are hard to place and it is not easy to guess your station. You seem very contented in one way but then again you do not seem to be satisfied. What is your objection to life?’ He blew little bags of smoke at me and looked at me closely from behind the bushes of hair which were growing about his eyes.

  ‘Is it life?’ he answered. ‘I would rather be without it,’ he said, ‘for there is a queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.’

  ‘That is a nice way to be talking on this grand lively day,’ I chided, ‘when the sun is roaring in the sky and sending great tidings into our weary bones.’

  ‘Or like feather-beds,’ he continued, ‘or bread manufactured with powerful steam machinery. Is it life you say? Life?’

  Explain the difficulty of life yet stressing its essential sweetness and desirability.

  What sweetness?

  Flowers in the spring, the glory and fulfilment of human life, bird-song at evening – you know very well what I mean. I am not so sure about the sweetness all the same.

  ‘It is hard to get the right shape of it,’ I said to the tricky man, ‘or to define life at all but if you identify life with enjoyment I am told that there is a better brand of it in the cities than in the country parts and there is said to be a very superior brand of it to be had in certain parts of France. Did you ever notice that cats have a lot of it in them when they are quite juveniles?’

  He was looking in my direction crossly.

  ‘Is it life? Many a man has spent a hundred years trying to get the dimensions of it and when he understands it at last and entertains the certain pattern of it in his head, by the hokey he takes to his bed and dies! He dies like a poisoned sheepdog. There is nothing so dangerous, you can’t smoke it, nobody will give you tuppence-halfpenny for the half of it and it kills you in the wind-up. It is a queer contraption, very dangerous, a certain death-trap. Life?’

  He sat there looking very vexed with himself and stayed for a while without talking behind a little grey wall he had built for himself by means of his pipe. After an interval I made another attempt to find out what his business was.

  ‘Or a man out after rabbits?’ I asked.

  ‘Not that. Not that.’

  ‘A travelling man with a job of journey-work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Driving a steam thrashing-mill?’

  ‘Not for certain.’

  ‘Tin-plates?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A town clerk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A water-works inspector?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘With pills for sick horses?’

  ‘Not with pills.’

  ‘Then by Dad,’ I remarked perplexedly, ‘your calling is very unusual and I cannot think of what it is at all, unless you are a farmer like myself, or a publican’s assistant or possibly something in the drapery line. Are you an actor or a mummer?’

  ‘Not them either.’

  He sat up suddenly and looked at me in a manner that was almost direct, his pipe sticking out aggressively from his tight jaws. He had the world full of smoke. I was uneasy but not altogether afraid of him. If I had my spade with me I knew I would soon make short work of him. I thought the wisest thing to do was to humour him and to agree with everything he said.

  ‘I am a robber,’ he said in a dark voice, ‘a robber with a knife and an arm that’s as strong as an article of powerful steam machinery.’

  ‘A robber?’ I exclaimed. My forebodings had been borne out.

  Steady here. Take no chances.

  ‘As strong as the bright moving instruments in a laundry. A black murderer also. Every time I rob a man I knock him dead because I have no respect for life, not a little. If I kill enough men there will be more life to go round and maybe then I will be able to live till I am a thousand and not have the old rattle in my neck when I am quite seventy. Have you a money-bag with you?’

  Plead poverty and destitution. Ask for the loan of money.

  That will not be difficult, I answered.

  ‘I have no money at all, or coins or sovereigns or bankers’ drafts,’ I replied, ‘no pawn-masters’ tickets, nothing that is negotiable or of any value. I am as poor a man as yourself and I was thinking of asking you for two shillings to help me on my way.’

  I was now more nervous than I was before as I sat looking at him. He had put his pipe away and had produced a long farmer’s knife. He was looking at the blade of it and flashing lights with it.

  ‘Even if you have no money,’ he cackled, ‘I will take your little life.’

  ‘Now look here till I tell you,’ I rejoined in a stern voice, ‘robbery and murder are against the law and furthermore my life would add little to your own because I have a disorder in my chest and I am sure to be dead in six months. As well as that, there was a question of a dark funeral in my teacup on Tuesday. Wait till you hear a cough.’

  I forced out a great hacking cough. It travelled like a breeze across the grass near at hand. I was now thinking that it might be wise to jump up quickly and run away. It would at least be a simple remedy.

  There is another thing about me,’ I added, ‘part of me is made of wood and has no life in it at all.’

  The tricky man gave out sharp cries of surprise, jumped up and gave me looks that were too tricky for description. I smiled at him and pulled up my left trouser-leg to show him my timber shin. He examined it closely and ran his hard finger along the edge of it. Then he sat down very quickly, put his knife away and took out his pipe again. It had been burning away all the time in his pocket because he started to smoke it without any delay and after a minute he had so much blue smoke made, and grey smoke, that I thought his clothes had gone on fire. Between the smoke I could see that he was giving friendly looks in my direction. After a few moments he spoke cordially and softly to me.

  ‘I would not hurt you, little man,’ he said.

  ‘I think I got the disorder in Mullingar,’ I explained. I knew that I had gained his confidence and that the danger of violence was now passed. He then did something which took me by surprise. He pulled up his own ragged trouser and showed me his own left leg. It was smooth, shapely and fairly fat but it was made of wood also.

  That is a funny coincidence,’ I said. I now perceived the reason for his sudden change of attitude.

  ‘You are a sweet man,’ he responded, ‘and I would not lay a finger on your personality. I am the captain of all the one-legged men in the country. I knew them all up to now except one – your own self – and that one is now also my friend into the same bargain. If any man looks at
you sideways, I will rip his belly.’

  That is very friendly talk,’ I said.

  ‘Wide open,’ he said, making a wide movement with his hands. ‘if you are ever troubled, send for me and I will save you from the woman.’

  ‘Women I have no interest in at all,’ I said smiling.

  ‘A fiddle is a better thing for diversion.’

  ‘It does not matter. If your perplexity is an army or a dog, I will come with all the one-leggèd men and rip the bellies. My real name is Martin Finnucane.’

  ‘It is a reasonable name,’ I assented.

  ‘Martin Finnucane,’ he repeated, listening to his own voice as if he were listening to the sweetest music in the world. He lay back and filled himself up to the ears with dark smoke and when he was nearly bursting he let it out again and hid himself in it.

  ‘Tell me this,’ he said at last. ‘Have you a desideratum?’

  This queer question was unexpected but I answered it quickly enough. I said I had.

  ‘What desideratum?’

  ‘To find what I am looking for.’

  ‘That is a handsome desideratum,’ said Martin Finnucane. ‘What way will you bring it about or mature its mutandum and bring it ultimately to passable factivity?’

  ‘By visiting the police barracks,’ I said, ‘and asking the policemen to direct me to where it is. Maybe you might instruct me on how to get to the barrack from where we are now?’

  ‘Maybe indeed,’ said Mr Finnucane. ‘Have you an ultimatum?’

  ‘I have a secret ultimatum,’ I replied.

  ‘I am sure it is a fine ultimatum,’ he said, ‘but I will not ask you to recite it for me if you think it is a secret one.’

  He had smoked away all his tobacco and was now smoking the pipe itself, judging by the surly smell of it. He put his hand into a pocket at his crotch and took out a round thing.

  ‘Here is a sovereign for your good luck,’ he said, ‘the golden token of your golden destiny.’

  I gave him, so to speak, my golden thank-you but I noticed that the coin he gave me was a bright penny. I put it carefully into my pocket as if it were highly prized and very valuable. I was pleased at the way I had handled this eccentric queerly-spoken brother of the wooden leg. Near the far side of the road was a small river. I stood up and looked at it and watched the white water. It tumbled in the stony bedstead and jumped in the air and hurried excitedly round a corner.

  The barracks are on this same road,’ said Martin Finnucane, ‘and I left it behind me a mile away this today morning. You will discover it at the place where the river runs away from the road. If you look now you will see the fat trout in their brown coats coming back from the barracks at this hour because they go there every morning for the fine breakfast that is to be had from the slops and the throwings of the two policemen. But they have their dinners down the other way where a man called MacFeeterson has a bakery shop in a village of houses with their rears to the water. Three bread vans he has and a light dog-cart for the high mountain and he attends at Kilkishkeam on Mondays and Wednesdays.’

  ‘Martin Finnucane,’ I said, ‘a hundred and two difficult thoughts I have to think between this and my destination and the sooner the better.’

  He sent me up friendly glances from the smokey ditch.

  ‘Good-looking man,’ he said, ‘good luck to your luck and do not entertain danger without sending me cognisance.’

  I said ‘Good-bye, Good-bye’ and left him after a handshake. I looked back from down the road and saw nothing but the lip of the ditch with smoke coming from it as if tinkers were in the bottom of it cooking their what-they-had. Before I was gone I looked back again and saw the shape of his old head regarding me and closely studying my disappearance. He was amusing and interesting and had helped me by directing me to the barracks and telling me how far it was. And as I went upon my way I was slightly glad that I had met him.

  A droll customer.

  Chapter 4

  Of all the many striking statements made by de Selby, I do not think that any of them can rival his assertion that ‘a journey is an hallucination’. The phrase may be found in the Country Album1 cheek by jowl with the well-known treatise on ‘tent-suits’, those egregious canvas garments which he designed as a substitute alike for the hated houses and ordinary clothing. His theory, insofar as I can understand it, seems to discount the testimony of human experience and is at variance with everything I have learnt myself on many a country walk. Human existence de Selby has defined as ‘a succession of static experiences each infinitely brief, a conception which he is thought to have arrived at from examining some old cinematograph films which belonged probably to his nephew.2 From this premise he discounts the reality or truth of any progression or serialism in life, denies that time can pass as such in the accepted sense and attributes to hallucinations the commonly experienced sensation of progression as, for instance, in journeying from one place to another or even ‘living’. If one is resting at A, he explains, and desires to rest in a distant place B, one can only do so by resting for infinitely brief intervals in innumerable intermediate places. Thus there is no difference essentially between what happens when one is resting at A before the start of the ‘journey’ and what happens when one is ‘en route’, i.e., resting in one or other of the intermediate places. He treats of these ‘intermediate places’ in a lengthy footnote. They are not, he warns us, to be taken as arbitrarily-determined points on the A-B axis so many inches or feet apart. They are rather to be regarded as points infinitely near each other yet sufficiently far apart to admit of the insertion between them of a series of other ‘inter-intermediate’ places, between each of which must be imagined a chain of other resting-places – not, of course, strictly adjacent but arranged so as to admit of the application of this principle indefinitely. The illusion of progression he attributes to the inability of the human brain – ‘as at present developed’ – to appreciate the reality of these separate ‘rests’, preferring to group many millions of them together and calling the result motion, an entirely indefensible and impossible procedure since even two separate positions cannot obtain simultaneously of the same body. Thus motion is also an illusion. He mentions that almost any photograph is conclusive proof of his teachings.

  Whatever about the soundness of de Selby’s theories, there is ample evidence that they were honestly held and that several attempts were made to put them into practice. During his stay in England, he happened at one time to be living in Bath and found it necessary to go from there to Folkestone on pressing business.3 His method of doing so was far from conventional. Instead of going to the railway station and inquiring about trains, he shut himself up in a room in his lodgings with a supply of picture postcards of the areas which would be traversed on such a journey, together with an elaborate arrangement of clocks and barometric instruments and a device for regulating the gaslight in conformity with the changing light of the outside day. What happened in the room or how precisely the clocks and other machines were manipulated will never be known. It seems that he emerged after a lapse of seven hours convinced that he was in Folkestone and possibly that he had evolved a formula for travellers which would be extremely distasteful to railway and shipping companies. There is no record of the extent of his disillusionment when he found himself still in the familiar surroundings of Bath but one authority4 relates that he claimed without turning a hair to have been to Folkestone and back again. Reference is made to a man (unnamed) declaring to have actually seen the savant coming out of a Folkestone bank on the material date.

  Like most of de Selby’s theories, the ultimate outcome is inconclusive. It is a curious enigma that so great a mind would question the most obvious realities and object even to things scientifically demonstrated (such as the sequence of day and night) while believing absolutely in his own fantastic explanations of the same phenomena.

  Of my own journey to the police-barracks I need only say that it was no hallucination. The heat of the sun played in
controvertibly on every inch of me, the hardness of the road was uncompromising and the country changed slowly but surely as I made my way through it. To the left was brown bogland scarred with dark cuttings and strewn with rugged clumps of bushes, white streaks of boulder and here and there a distant house half-hiding in an assembly of little trees. Far beyond was another region sheltering in the haze, purple and mysterious. The right-hand side was a greener country with the small turbulent river accompanying the road at a respectful distance and on the other side of it hills of rocky pasture stretching away into the distance up and down. Tiny sheep could be discerned near the sky far away and crooked lanes ran hither and thither. There was no sign whatever of human life. It was still early morning, perhaps. If I had not lost my American gold watch it would be possible for me to tell the time.

  You have no American gold watch.

  Something strange then happened to me suddenly. The road before me was turning gently to the left and as I approached the bend my heart began to behave irregularly and an unaccountable excitement took complete possession of me. There was nothing to see and no change of any kind had come upon the scene to explain what was taking place within me. I continued walking with wild eyes.

  As I came round the bend of the road an extraordinary spectacle was presented to me. About a hundred yards away on the left-hand side was a house which astonished me. It looked as if it were painted like an advertisement on a board on the roadside and indeed very poorly painted. It looked completely false and unconvincing. It did not seem to have any depth or breadth and looked as if it would not deceive a child. That was not in itself sufficient to surprise me because I had seen pictures and notices by the roadside before. What bewildered me was the sure knowledge deeply-rooted in my mind, that this was the house I was searching for and that there were people inside it. I had no doubt at all that it was the barracks of the policemen. I had never seen with my eyes ever in my life before anything so unnatural and appalling and my gaze faltered about the thing uncomprehendingly as if at least one of the customary dimensions was missing, leaving no meaning in the remainder. The appearance of the house was the greatest surprise I had encountered since I had seen the old man in the chair and I felt afraid of it.