The Third Policeman

by Flann O'Brien

  I kept on walking, but walked more slowly. As I approached, the house seemed to change its appearance. At first, it did nothing to reconcile itself with the shape of an ordinary house but it became uncertain in outline like a thing glimpsed under ruffled water. Then it became clear again and I saw that it began to have some back to it, some small space for rooms behind the frontage. I gathered this from the fact that I seemed to see the front and the back of the ‘building’ simultaneously from my position approaching what should have been the side. As there was no side that I could see I thought the house must be triangular with its apex pointing towards me but when I was only fifteen yards away I saw a small window apparently facing me and I knew from that that there must be some side to it. Then I found myself almost in the shadow of the structure, dry-throated and timorous from wonder and anxiety. It seemed ordinary enough at close quarters except that it was very white and still. It was momentous and frightening; the whole morning and the whole world seemed to have no purpose at all save to frame it and give it some magnitude and position so that I could find it with my simple senses and pretend to myself that I understood it. A constabulary crest above the door told me that it was a police station. I had never seen a police station like it.

  I cannot say why I did not stop to think or why my nervousness did not make me halt and sit down weakly by the roadside. Instead I walked straight up to the door and looked in. I saw, standing with his back to me, an enormous policeman. His back appearance was unusual. He was standing behind a little counter in a neat whitewashed day-room; his mouth was open and he was looking into a mirror which hung upon the wall. Again, I find it difficult to convey the precise reason why my eyes found his shape unprecedented and unfamiliar. He was very big and fat and the hair which strayed abundantly about the back of his bulging neck was a pale straw-colour; all that was striking but not unheard of. My glance ran over his great back, the thick arms and legs encased in the rough blue uniform. Ordinary enough as each part of him looked by itself, they all seemed to create together, by some undetectable discrepancy in association or proportion, a very disquieting impression of unnaturalness, amounting almost to what was horrible and monstrous. His hands were red, swollen and enormous and he appeared to have one of them half-way into his mouth as he gazed into the mirror.

  ‘It’s my teeth,’ I heard him say, abstractedly and half-aloud. His voice was heavy and slightly muffled, reminding me of a thick winter quilt. I must have made some sound at the door or possibly he had seen my reflection in the glass for he turned slowly round, shifting his stance with leisurely and heavy majesty, his fingers still working at his teeth; and as he turned I heard him murmuring to himself:

  ‘Nearly every sickness is from the teeth.’

  His face gave me one more surprise. It was enormously fat, red and widespread, sitting squarely on the neck of his tunic with a clumsy weightiness that reminded me of a sack of flour. The lower half of it was hidden by a violent red moustache which shot out from his skin far into the air like the antennae of some unusual animal. His cheeks were red and chubby and his eyes were nearly invisible, hidden from above by the obstruction of his tufted brows and from below by the fat foldings of his skin. He came over ponderously to the inside of the counter and I advanced meekly from the door until we were face to face, is it about a bicycle?’ he asked.

  His expression when I encountered it was unexpectedly reassuring. His face was gross and far from beautiful but he had modified and assembled his various unpleasant features in some skilful way so that they expressed to me good nature, politeness and infinite patience. In the front of his peaked official cap was an important-looking badge and over it in golden letters was the word SERGEANT. It was Sergeant Pluck himself.

  ‘No,’ I answered, stretching forth my hand to lean with it against the counter. The Sergeant looked at me incredulously.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘Not about a motor-cycle?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘One with overhead valves and a dynamo for light? Or with racing handle-bars?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In that circumstantial eventuality there can be no question of a motor-bicycle,’ he said. He looked surprised and puzzled and leaned sideways on the counter on the prop of his left elbow, putting the knuckles of his right hand between his yellow teeth and raising three enormous wrinkles of perplexity on his forehead. I decided now that he was a simple man and that I would have no difficulty in dealing with him exactly as I desired and finding out from him what had happened to the black box. I did not understand clearly the reason for his questions about bicycles but I made up my mind to answer everything carefully, to bide my time and to be cunning in all my dealings with him. He moved away abstractedly, came back and handed me a bundle of differently-coloured papers which looked like application forms for bull-licences and dog-licences and the like.

  ‘It would be no harm if you filled up these forms,’ he said. ‘Tell me,’ he continued, ‘would it be true that you are an itinerant dentist and that you came on a tricycle?’

  ‘It would not,’ I replied.

  ‘On a patent tandem?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dentists are an unpredictable coterie of people,’ he said. ‘Do you tell me it was a velocipede or a penny-farthing?’

  ‘I do not,’ I said evenly. He gave me a long searching look as if to see whether I was serious in what I was saying, again wrinkling up his brow.

  ‘Then maybe you are no dentist at all,’ he said, ‘but only a man after a dog licence or papers for a bull?’

  ‘I did not say I was a dentist,’ I said sharply, ‘and I did not say anything about a bull.’

  The Sergeant looked at me incredulously.

  ‘That is a great curiosity,’ he said, ‘a very difficult piece of puzzledom, a snorter.’

  He sat down by the turf fire and began jawing his knuckles and giving me sharp glances from under his bushy brows. If I had horns upon my head or a tail behind me he could not have looked at me with more interest. I was unwilling to give any lead to the direction of the talk and there was complete silence for five minutes. Then his expression eased a bit and he spoke to me again.

  ‘What is your pronoun?’ he inquired.

  ‘I have no pronoun,’ I answered, hoping I knew his meaning.

  ‘What is your cog?’

  ‘My cog?’

  ‘Your surnoun?’

  ‘I have not got that either.’

  My reply again surprised him and also seemed to please him. He raised his thick eyebrows and changed his face into what could be described as a smile. He came back to the counter, put out his enormous hand, took mine in it and shook it warmly.

  ‘No name or no idea of your originality at all?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Well, by the holy Hokey!’

  Signor Bari, the eminent one-legged tenor!

  ‘By the holy Irish-American Powers,’ he said again, ‘by the Dad! Well carry me back to old Kentucky!’

  He then retreated from the counter to his chair by the fire and sat silently bent in thought as if examining one by one the by-gone years stored up in his memory.

  ‘I was once acquainted with a tall man,’ he said to me at last, ‘that had no name either and you are certain to be his son and the heir to his nullity and all his nothings. What way is your pop today and where is he?’

  It was not, I thought, entirely unreasonable that the son of a man who had no name should have no name also but it was clear that the Sergeant was confusing me with somebody else. This was no harm and I decided to encourage him. I considered it desirable that he should know nothing about me but it was even better if he knew several things which were quite wrong. It would help me in using him for my own purposes and ultimately in finding the black box.

  ‘He is gone to America,’ I replied.

  ‘Is that where,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Do you tell me that? He was a true family husband. The last
time I interviewed him it was about a missing pump and he had a wife and ten sonnies and at that time he had the wife again in a very advanced state of sexuality.’

  That was me,’ I said, smiling.

  That was you,’ he agreed. ‘What way are the ten strong sons?’

  ‘All gone to America.’

  That is a great conundrum of a country,’ said the Sergeant, ‘a very wide territory, a place occupied by black men and strangers. I am told they are very fond of shooting-matches in that quarter.’

  ‘It is a queer land,’ I said.

  At this stage there were footsteps at the door and in marched a heavy policeman carrying a small constabulary lamp. He had a dark Jewish face and hooky nose and masses of black curly hair. He was blue-jowled and black-jowled and looked as if he shaved twice a day. He had white enamelled teeth which came, I had no doubt, from Manchester, two rows of them arranged in the interior of his mouth and when he smiled it was a fine sight to see, like delph on a neat country dresser. He was heavy-fleshed and gross in body like the Sergeant but his face looked far more intelligent. It was unexpectedly lean and the eyes in it were penetrating and observant. If his face alone were in question he would look more like a poet than a policeman but the rest of his body looked anything but poetical.

  ‘Policeman MacCruiskeen,’ said Sergeant Pluck.

  Policeman MacCruiskeen put the lamp on the table, shook hands with me and gave me the time of day with great gravity. His voice was high, almost feminine, and he spoke with a delicate careful intonation. Then he put the little lamp on the counter and surveyed the two of us.

  ‘Is it about a bicycle?’ he asked.

  ‘Not that,’ said the Sergeant. ‘This is a private visitor who says he did not arrive in the townland upon a bicycle. He has no personal name at all. His dadda is in far Amurikey.’

  ‘Which of the two Amurikeys?’ asked MacCruiskeen.

  ‘The Unified Stations,’ said the Sergeant.

  ‘Likely he is rich by now if he is in that quarter,’ said MacCruiskeen, ‘because there’s dollars there, dollars and bucks and nuggets in the ground and any amount of rackets and golf games and musical instruments. It is a free country too by all accounts.’

  ‘Free for all,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Tell me this,’ he said to the policeman, ‘Did you take any readings today?’

  ‘I did,’ said MacCruiskeen.

  ‘Take out your black book and tell me what it was, like a good man,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Give me the gist of it till I see what I see,’ he added.

  MacCruiskeen fished a small black notebook from his breast pocket.

  ‘Ten point six,’ he said.

  ‘Ten point six,’ said the Sergeant. ‘And what reading did you notice on the beam?’

  ‘Seven point four.’

  ‘How much on the lever?’

  ‘One point five.’

  There was a pause here. The Sergeant put on an expression of great intricacy as if he were doing far-from-simple sums and calculations in his head. After a time his face cleared and he spoke again to his companion.

  ‘Was there a fall?’

  ‘A heavy fall at half-past three.’

  ‘Very understandable and commendably satisfactory,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Your supper is on the hob inside and be sure to stir the milk before you take any of it, the way the rest of us after you will have our share of the fats of it, the health and the heart of it.’

  Policeman MacCruiskeen smiled at the mention of food and went into the back room loosening his belt as he went; after a moment we heard the sounds of coarse slobbering as if he was eating porridge without the assistance of spoon or hand. The Sergeant invited me to sit at the fire in his company and gave me a wrinkled cigarette from his pocket.

  ‘It is lucky for your pop that he is situated in Amurikey,’ he remarked, ‘if it is a thing that he is having trouble with the old teeth. It is very few sicknesses that are not from the teeth.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I was determined to say as little as possible and let these unusual policemen first show their hand. Then I would know how to deal with them.

  ‘Because a man can have more disease and germination in his gob than you’ll find in a rat’s coat and Amurikey is a country where the population do have grand teeth like shaving-lather or like bits of delph when you break a plate.’

  ‘Quite true,’ I said.

  ‘Or like eggs under a black crow.’

  ‘Like eggs,’ I said.

  ‘Did you ever happen to visit the cinematograph in your travels?’

  ‘Never,’ I answered humbly, ‘but I believe it is a dark quarter and little can be seen at all except the photographs on the wall.’

  ‘Well it is there you see the fine teeth they do have in Amurikey,’ said the Sergeant.

  He gave the fire a hard look and took to handling absently his yellow stumps of teeth. I had been wondering about his mysterious conversation with MacCruiskeen.

  Tell me this much,’ I ventured. ‘What sort of readings were those in the policeman’s black book?’

  The Sergeant gave me a keen look which felt almost hot from being on the fire previously.

  ‘The first beginnings of wisdom,’ he said, ‘is to ask questions but never to answer any. You get wisdom from asking and I from not answering. Would you believe that there is a great increase in crime in this locality? Last year we had sixty-nine cases of no lights and four stolen. This year we have eighty-two cases of no lights, thirteen cases of riding on the footpath and four stolen. There was one case of wanton damage to a three-speed gear, there is sure to be a claim at the next Court and the area of charge will be the parish. Before the year is out there is certain to be a pump stolen, a very depraved and despicable manifestation of criminality and a blot on the county.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said.

  ‘Five years ago we had a case of loose handlebars. Now there is a rarity for you. It took the three of us a week to frame the charge.’

  ‘Loose handlebars,’ I muttered. I could not clearly see the reason for such talk about bicycles.

  ‘And then there is the question of bad brakes. The country is honeycombed with bad brakes, half of the accidents are due to it, runs in families.’

  I thought it would be better to try to change the conversation from bicycles.

  ‘You told me what the first rule of wisdom is,’ I said. ‘What is the second rule?’

  ‘That can be answered,’ he said. ‘There are five in all. Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any. Turn everything you hear to your own advantage. Always carry a repair outfit. Take left turns as much as possible. Never apply your front brake first.’

  These are interesting rules,’ I said dryly.

  ‘If you follow them,’ said the Sergeant, ‘you will save your soul and you will never get a fall on a slippy road.’

  ‘I would be obliged to you,’ I said, ‘if you would explain to me which of these rules covers the difficulty I have come here today to put before you.’

  ‘This is not today, this is yesterday,’ he said, ‘but which of the difficulties is it? What is the crux rei?’

  Yesterday? I decided without any hesitation that it was a waste of time trying to understand the half of what he said. I persevered with my inquiry.

  ‘I came here to inform you officially about the theft of my American gold watch.’

  He looked at me through an atmosphere of great surprise and incredulity and raised his eyebrows almost to his hair.

  ‘That is an astonishing statement,’ he said at last.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why should anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?’ Hark to his cold inexorable logic. ‘Search me,’ I said.

  ‘Who ever heard of a man riding a watch down the road or bringing a sack of turf up to his house on the crossbar of a watch?’

  ‘I did not say the thief wanted my watch to ride it,’ I expostulated. ‘Very likely he had a bicycle of his own and that is ho
w he got away quietly in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Never in my puff did I hear of any man stealing anything but a bicycle when he was in his sane senses,’ said the Sergeant, ‘- except pumps and clips and lamps and the like of that. Surely you are not going to tell me at my time of life that the world is changing?’

  ‘I am only saying that my watch was stolen,’ I said crossly.

  ‘Very well,’ the Sergeant said with finality, ‘we will have to institute a search.’

  He smiled brightly at me. It was quite clear that he did not believe any part of my story, and that he thought I was in delicate mental health. He was humouring me as if I were a child.

  Thank you,’ I muttered.

  ‘But the trouble will only be beginning when we find it,’ he said severely. ‘How is that?’

  ‘When we find it we will have to start searching for the owner.’

  ‘But I am the owner.’

  Here the Sergeant laughed indulgently and shook his head.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘But the law is an extremely intricate phenomenon. If you have no name you cannot own a watch and the watch that has been stolen does not exist and when it is found it will have to be restored to its rightful owner. If you have no name you possess nothing and you do not exist and even your trousers are not on you although they look as if they were from where I am sitting. On the other separate hand you can do what you like and the law cannot touch you.’

  ‘It had fifteen jewels,’ I said despairingly.

  ‘And on the first hand again you might be charged with theft or common larceny if you were mistaken for somebody else when wearing the watch.’

  ‘I feel extremely puzzled,’ I said, speaking nothing less than the truth. The Sergeant gave his laugh of good humour.