The Third Policeman

by Flann O'Brien

  ‘If we ever find the watch,’ he smiled, ‘I have a feeling that there will be a bell and a pump on it.’

  I considered my position with some misgiving. It seemed to be impossible to make the Sergeant take cognisance of anything in the world except bicycles. I thought I would make a last effort.

  ‘You appear to be under the impression,’ I said coldly and courteously, ‘that I have lost a golden bicycle of American manufacture with fifteen jewels. I have lost a watch and there is no bell on it. Bells are only on alarm clocks and I have never in my life seen a watch with a pump attached to it.’

  The Sergeant smiled at me again.

  There was a man in this room a fortnight ago,’ he said, ‘telling me that he was at the loss of his mother, a lady of eighty-two. When I asked him for a description – just to fill up the blanks in the official form we get for half-nothing from the Stationery Office – he said she had rust on her rims and that her back brakes were subject to the jerks.’

  This speech made my position quite clear to me. When I was about to say something else, a man put his face in and looked at us and then came in completely and shut the door carefully and came over to the counter. He was a bluff red man in a burly coat with twine binding his trousers at the knees. I discovered afterwards that his name was Michael Gilhaney. Instead of standing at the counter as he would in a public house, he went to the wall, put his arms akimbo and leaned against it, balancing his weight on the point of one elbow.

  ‘Well, Michael,’ said the Sergeant pleasantly.

  That is a cold one,’ said Mr Gilhaney.

  Sounds of shouting came to the three of us from the inner room where Policeman MacCruiskeen was engaged in the task of his early dinner.

  ‘Hand me in a fag,’ he called.

  The Sergeant gave me another wrinkled cigarette from his pocket and jerked his thumb in the direction of the back room. As I went in with the cigarette I heard the Sergeant opening an enormous ledger and putting questions to the red-faced visitor.

  ‘What was the make,’ he was saying, ‘and the number of the frame and was there a lamp and a pump on it into the same bargain?’

  Chapter 5

  The long and unprecedented conversation I had with Policeman MacCruiskeen after I went in to him on my mission with the cigarette brought to my mind afterwards several of the more delicate speculations of de Selby, notably his investigation of the nature of time and eternity by a system of mirrors.1 His theory as I understand it is as follows:

  If a man stands before a mirror and sees in it his reflection, what he sees is not a true reproduction of himself but a picture of himself when he was a younger man. De Selby’s explanation of this phenomenon is quite simple. Light, as he points out truly enough, has an ascertained and finite rate of travel. Hence before the reflection of any object in a mirror can be said to be accomplished, it is necessary that rays of light should first strike the object and subsequently impinge on the glass, to be thrown back again to the object-to the eyes of a man, for instance. There is therefore an appreciable and calculable interval of time between the throwing by a man of a glance at his own face in a mirror and the registration of the reflected image in his eye.

  So far, one may say, so good. Whether this idea is right or wrong, the amount of time involved is so negligible that few reasonable people would argue the point. But de Selby ever loath to leave well enough alone, insists on reflecting the first reflection in a further mirror and professing to detect minute changes in this second image. Ultimately he constructed the familiar arrangement of parallel mirrors, each reflecting diminishing images of an interposed object indefinitely. The interposed object in this case was de Selby’s own face and this he claims to have studied backwards through an infinity of reflections by means of ‘a powerful glass’. What he states to have seen through his glass is astonishing. He claims to have noticed a growing youthfulness in the reflections of his face according as they receded, the most distant of them – too tiny to be visible to the naked eye – being the face of a beardless boy of twelve, and, to use his own words, ‘a countenance of singular beauty and nobility’. He did not succeed in pursuing the matter back to the cradle ‘owing to the curvature of the earth and the limitations of the telescope.’

  So much for de Selby. I found MacCruiskeen with a red face at the kitchen table panting quietly from all the food he had hidden in his belly. In exchange for the cigarette he gave me searching looks. ‘Well, now,’ he said.

  He lit the cigarette and sucked at it and smiled covertly at me.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said again. He had his little lamp beside him on the table and he played his fingers on it.

  ‘That is a fine day,’ I said. ‘What are you doing with a lamp in the white morning?’

  ‘I can give you a question as good as that,’ he responded. ‘Can you notify me of the meaning of a bulbul?’

  ‘A bulbul?’

  ‘What would you say a bulbul is?’

  This conundrum did not interest me but I pretended to rack my brains and screwed my face in perplexity until I felt it half the size it should be.

  ‘Not one of those ladies who take money?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not the brass knobs on a German steam organ?’

  ‘Not the knobs.’

  ‘Nothing to do with the independence of America or suchlike?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A mechanical engine for winding clocks?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A tumour, or the lather in a cow’s mouth, or those elastic articles that ladies wear?’

  ‘Not them by a long chalk.’

  ‘Not an eastern musical instrument played by Arabs?’ He clapped his hands.

  ‘Not that but very near it,’ he smiled, ‘something next door to it. You are a cordial intelligible man. A bulbul is a Persian nightingale. What do you think of that now?’

  ‘It is seldom I am far out,’ I said dryly.

  He looked at me in admiration and the two of us sat in silence for a while as if each was very pleased with himself and with the other and had good reason to be.

  ‘You are a B.A. with little doubt?’ he questioned.

  I gave no direct answer but tried to look big and learned and far from simple in my little chair.

  ‘I think you are a sempiternal man,’ he said slowly.

  He sat for a while giving the floor a strict examination and then put his dark jaw over to me and began questioning me about my arrival in the parish.

  ‘I do not want to be insidious,’ he said, ‘but would you inform me about your arrival in the parish? Surely you had a three-speed gear for the hills?’

  ‘I had no three-speed gear,’ I responded rather sharply, ‘and no two-speed gear and it is also true that I had no bicycle and little or no pump and if I had a lamp itself it would not be necessary if I had no bicycle and there would be no bracket to hang it on.’

  ‘That may be,’ said MacCruiskeen, ‘but likely you were laughed at on the tricycle?’

  ‘I had neither bicycle nor tricycle and I am not a dentist,’

  I said with severe categorical thoroughness, ‘and I do not believe in the penny-farthing or the scooter, the velocipede or the tandem-tourer.’

  MacCruiskeen got white and shaky and gripped my arm and looked at me intensely.

  ‘In my natural puff,’ he said at last, in a strained voice, ‘I have never encountered a more fantastic epilogue or a queerer story. Surely you are a queer far-fetched man. To my dying night I will not forget this today morning. Do not tell me that you are taking a hand at me?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Well Great Crikes!’

  He got up and brushed his hair with a flat hand back along his skull and looked out of the window for a long interval, his eyes popping and dancing and his face like an empty bag with no blood in it.

  Then he walked around to put back the circulation and took a little spear from a place he had on the shelf.

  ‘Put
your hand out,’ he said.

  I put it out idly enough and he held the spear at it. He kept putting it near me and nearer and when he had the bright point of it about half a foot away, I felt a prick and gave a short cry. There was a little bead of my red blood in the middle of my palm.

  Thank you very much,’ I said. I felt too surprised to be annoyed with him.

  That will make you think,’ he remarked in triumph, ‘unless I am an old Dutchman by profession and nationality.’

  He put his little spear back on the shelf and looked at me crookedly from a sidewise angle with a certain quantity of what may be called roi-s’amuse.

  ‘Maybe you can explain that?’ he said.

  That is the limit,’ I said wonderingly.

  ‘It will take some analysis,’ he said, ‘intellectually.’

  ‘Why did your spear sting when the point was half a foot away from where it made me bleed?’

  That spear’ he answered quietly, ‘is one of the first things I ever manufactured in my spare time. I think only a little of it now but the year I made it I was proud enough and would not get up in the morning for any sergeant. There is no other spear like it in the length and breadth of Ireland and there is only one thing like it in Amurikey but I have not heard what it is. But I cannot get over the no-bicycle. Great Crikes!’

  ‘But the spear,’ I insisted, ‘give me the gist of it like a good man and I will tell no one.’

  ‘I will tell you because you are a confidential man,’ he said, ‘and a man that said something about bicycles that I never heard before. What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.’

  ‘Very wonderful,’ I said, ‘but I do not understand you.’

  ‘The point is seven inches long and it is so sharp and thin that you cannot see it with the old eye. The first half of the sharpness is thick and strong but you cannot see it either because the real sharpness runs into it and if you saw the one you could see the other or maybe you would notice the joint.’

  ‘I suppose it is far thinner than a match?’ I asked.

  ‘There is a difference,’ he said. ‘Now the proper sharp part is so thin that nobody could see it no matter what light is on it or what eye is looking. About an inch from the end it is so sharp that sometimes – late at night or on a soft bad day especially – you cannot think of it or try to make it the subject of a little idea because you will hurt your box with the excruciation of it.’

  I gave a frown and tried to make myself look like a wise person who was trying to comprehend something that called for all his wisdom.

  ‘You cannot have fire without bricks,’ I said, nodding.

  ‘Wisely said,’ MacCruiskeen answered.

  ‘It was sharp sure enough,’ I conceded, ‘it drew a little bulb of the red blood but I did not feel the pricking hardly at all. It must be very sharp to work like that.’

  MacCruiskeen gave a laugh and sat down again at the table and started putting on his belt.

  ‘You have not got the whole gist of it at all,’ he smiled. ‘Because what gave you the prick and brought the blood was not the point at all; it was the place I am talking about that is a good inch from the reputed point of the article under our discussion.’

  ‘And what is this inch that is left?’ I asked. ‘What in heaven’s name would you call that?’

  ‘That is the real point,’ said MacCruiskeen, ‘but it is so thin that it could go into your hand and out in the other extremity externally and you would not feel a bit of it and you would see nothing and hear nothing. It is so thin that maybe it does not exist at all and you could spend half an hour trying to think about it and you could put no thought around it in the end. The beginning part of the inch is thicker than the last part and is nearly there for a fact but I don’t think it is if it is my private opinion that you are anxious to enlist.’

  I fastened my fingers around my jaw and started to think with great concentration, calling into play parts of my brain that I rarely used. Nevertheless I made no progress at all as regards the question of the points. MacCruiskeen had been at the dresser a second time and was back at the table with a little black article like a leprechaun’s piano with diminutive keys of white and black and brass pipes and circular revolving cogs like parts of a steam engine or the business end of a thrashing-mill. His white hands were moving all over it and feeling it as if they were trying to discover some tiny lump on it, and his face was looking up in the air in a spiritual attitude and he was paying no attention to my personal existence at all. There was an overpowering tremendous silence as if the roof of the room had come down half-way to the floor, he at his queer occupation with the instrument and myself still trying to comprehend the sharpness of the points and to get the accurate understanding of them.

  After ten minutes he got up and put the thing away. He wrote for a time in his notebook and then lit his pipe.

  ‘Well now,’ he remarked expansively.

  ‘Those points,’ I said.

  ‘Did I happen to ask you what a bulbul is?’

  ‘You did,’ I responded, ‘but the question of those points is what takes me to the fair.’

  ‘It is not today or yesterday I started pointing spears,’ he said, ‘but maybe you would like to see something else that is a medium fair example of supreme art?’

  ‘I would indeed,’ I answered.

  ‘But I cannot get over what you confided in me privately sub-rosa about the no-bicycle, that is a story that would make your golden fortune if you wrote down in a book where people could pursue it literally.’

  He walked back to the dresser, opened the lower part of it, and took out a little chest till he put it on the table for my inspection. Never in my life did I inspect anything more ornamental and well-made. It was a brown chest like those owned by seafaring men or lascars from Singapore, but it was diminutive in a very perfect way as if you were looking at a full-size one through the wrong end of a spy-glass. It was about a foot in height, perfect in its proportions and without fault in workmanship. There were indents and carving and fanciful excoriations and designs on every side of it and there was a bend on the lid that gave the article great distinction. At every corner there was a shiny brass corner-piece and on the lid there were brass corner-pieces beautifully wrought and curved impeccably against the wood. The whole thing had the dignity and the satisfying quality of true art.

  ‘There now,’ said MacCruiskeen.

  ‘It is nearly too nice,’ I said at last, ‘to talk about it.’

  ‘I spent two years manufacturing it when I was a lad,’ said MacCruiskeen, ‘and it still takes me to the fair.’

  ‘It is unmentionable,’ I said.

  ‘Very nearly,’ said MacCruiskeen.

  The two of us then started looking at it and we looked at it for five minutes so hard that it seemed to dance on the table and look even smaller than it might be.

  ‘I do not often look at boxes or chests,’ I said, simply, ‘but this is the most beautiful box I have ever seen and I will always remember it. There might be something inside it?’

  ‘There might be,’ said MacCruiskeen.

  He went to the table and put his hands around the article in a fawning way as if he were caressing a sheepdog and he opened the lid with a little key but shut it down again before I could inspect the inside of it.

  ‘I will tell you a story and give you a synopsis of the ramification of the little plot,’ he said. ‘When I had the chest made and finished, I tried to think what I would keep in it and what I would use it for at all. First I thought of them letters from Bridie, the ones on the blue paper with the strong smell but I did not think it would be anything but a sacrilege in the end because there was hot bits in them letters. Do you comprehend the trend of my observations?’

  ‘I do,’ I answered.

  ‘Then there was my studs and the enamel badge and my presentation iron-pencil with a screw on the end of it to push the point out, an intricate article full of ma
chinery and a Present from Southport. All these things are what are called Examples of the Machine Age.’

  ‘They would be contrary to the spirit of the chest,’ I said.

  ‘They would be indeed. Then there was my razor and the spare plate in case I was presented with an accidental bash on the gob in the execution of me duty…’

  ‘But not them.’

  ‘Not them. Then there was my certificates and me cash and the picture of Peter the Hermit and the brass thing with straps that I found on the road one night near Matthew O’Carahan’s. But not them either.’

  ‘It is a hard conundrum,’ I said.

  ‘In the end I found there was only one thing to do to put myself right with my private conscience.’

  ‘It is a great thing that you found the right answer at all,’ I countered.

  ‘I decided to myself,’ said MacCruiskeen, ‘that the only sole correct thing to contain in the chest was another chest of the same make but littler in cubic dimension.’

  ‘That was very competent masterwork,’ I said, endeavouring to speak his own language.

  He went to the little chest and opened it up again and put his hands down sideways like flat plates or like the fins on a fish and took out of it a smaller chest but one resembling its mother-chest in every particular of appearance and dimension. It almost interfered with my breathing, it was so delightfully unmistakable. I went over and felt it and covered it with my hand to see how big its smallness was. Its brasswork had a shine like the sun on the sea and the colour of the wood was a rich deep richness like a colour deepened and toned only by the years. I got slightly weak from looking at it and sat down on a chair and for the purpose of pretending that I was not disturbed I whistled The Old Man Twangs His Braces.

  MacCruiskeen gave me a smooth inhuman smile.

  ‘You may have come on no bicycle,’ he said, ‘but that does not say that you know everything.’

  ‘Those chests,’ I said, ‘are so like one another that I do not believe they are there at all because that is a simpler thing to believe than the contrary. Nevertheless the two of them are the most wonderful two things I have ever seen.’