The Third Policeman

by Flann O'Brien

  ‘Six point nine six three circulating,’ MacCruiskeen was saying.

  ‘High,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Very high. There must be a ground heat. Tell me about the fall.’

  ‘A medium fall at midnight and no lumps.’

  The Sergeant laughed and shook his head.

  ‘No lumps indeed,’ he chuckled, ‘there will be hell to pay tomorrow on the lever if it is true there is a ground heat.’

  MacCruiskeen got up suddenly from his chair.

  ‘I will give her half a hundredweight of charcoal,’ he announced. He marched straight out of the house muttering calculations, not looking where he was going but staring straight into the middle of his black notebook.

  I had almost finished my crock of porridge and lay back to look fully at the Sergeant.

  ‘When are you going to hang me?’ I asked, looking fearlessly into his large face. I felt refreshed and strong again and confident that I would escape without difficulty.

  ‘Tomorrow morning if we have the scaffold up in time and unless it is raining. You would not believe how slippery the rain can make a new scaffold. You could slip and break your neck into fancy fractures and you would never know what happened to your life or how you lost it.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said firmly. ‘If I am to be a dead man in twenty-four hours will you explain to me what these figures in MacCruiskeen’s black book are?’

  The Sergeant smiled indulgently.

  ‘The readings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you are going to be dead completely there is no insoluble impedimentum to that proposal,’ he said, ‘but it is easier to show you than to tell you verbally. Follow behind me like a good man,’

  He led the way to a door in the back passage and threw it open with an air of momentous revelation, standing aside politely to give me a complete and unobstructed view.

  ‘What do you think of that?’ he asked.

  I looked into the room and did not think much of it. It was a small bedroom, gloomy and not too clean. It was in great disorder and filled with a heavy smell.

  ‘It is MacCruiskeen’s room,’ he explained.

  ‘I do not see much,’ I said.

  The Sergeant smiled patiently.

  ‘You are not looking in the right quarter,’ he said.

  ‘I have looked everywhere that can be looked,’ I said.

  The Sergeant led the way in to the middle of the floor and took possession of a walking-stick that was convenient.

  ‘If I ever want to hide,’ he remarked, ‘I will always go upstairs in a tree. People have no gift for looking up, they seldom examine the lofty altitudes.’

  I looked at the ceiling.

  There is little to be seen there,’ I said, ‘except a bluebottle that looks dead.’

  The Sergeant looked up and pointed with his stick.

  ‘That is not a bluebottle,’ he said, ‘that is Gogarty’s outhouse.’

  I looked squarely at him in a mixed way but he was paying me no attention but pointing to other tiny marks upon the ceiling.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘is Martin Bundle’s house and that is Tiernahins and that one there is where the married sister lives. And here we have the lane from Tiernahins to the main telegraph trunk road.’ He drew his stick along a wavering faint crack that ran down to join a deeper crack.

  ‘A map!’ I cried excitedly.

  ‘And here we have the barrack,’ he added, it is all as plain as a pikestick.’

  When I looked carefully at the ceiling I saw that Mr Mathers’ house and every road and house I knew were marked there, and nets of lanes and neighbourhoods that I did not know also. It was a map of the parish, complete, reliable and astonishing.

  The Sergeant looked at me and smiled again.

  ‘You will agree,’ he said, ‘that it is a fascinating pancake and a conundrum of great incontinence, a phenomenon of the first rarity.’

  ‘Did you make it yourself?’

  ‘I did not and nobody else manufactured it either. It was always there and MacCruiskeen is certain that it was there even before that. The cracks are natural and so are small cracks.’

  With my cocked eye I traced the road we came when Gilhaney had found his bicycle at the bush.

  The funny thing is,’ the Sergeant said, ‘that MacCruiskeen lay for two years staring at that ceiling before he saw it was a map of superb ingenuity.’

  ‘Now that was stupid,’ I said thickly.

  ‘And he lay looking at the map for five years more before he saw that it showed the way to eternity.’

  ‘To eternity?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Will it be possible for us to come back from there?’ I whispered.

  ‘Of course. There is a lift. But wait till I show you the secret of the map.’

  He took up the stick again and pointed to the mark that meant the barracks.

  ‘Here we are in the barracks on the main telegraph trunk road,’ he said. ‘Now use your internal imagination and tell me what left-hand road you meet if you go forth from the barrack on the main road.’

  I thought this out without difficulty.

  ‘You meet the road that meets the main road at Jarvis’s outhouse,’ I said, ‘where we came from the finding of the bicycle.’

  ‘Then that road is the first turn on the left-hand latitude?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And here it is – here.’

  He pointed out the left-hand road with his stick and tapped Mr Jarvis’s outhouse at the corner.

  ‘And now,’ he said solemnly, ‘kindly inform me what this is.’

  He drew the stick along a faint crack that joined the crack of the main road about half-way between the barrack and the road at Mr Jarvis’s.

  ‘What would you call that?’ he repeated.

  ‘There is no road there,’ I cried excitedly, ‘the left-hand road at Jarvis’s is the first road on the left. I am not a fool. There is no road there.’

  By God if you’re not you will be. You’re a goner if you listen to much more of this gentleman’s talk.

  ‘But there is a road there,’ the Sergeant said triumphantly, ‘if you know how to look knowledgeably for it. And a very old road. Come with me till we see the size of it.’

  ‘Is this the road to eternity?’

  ‘It is indeed but there is no signpost.’

  Although he made no move to release his bicycle from solitary confinement in the cell, he snapped the clips adroitly on his trousers and led the way heavily into the middle of the morning. We marched together down the road. Neither of us spoke and neither listened for what the other might have to say.

  When the keen wind struck me in the face it snatched away the murk of doubt and fear and wonder that was anchored on my brain like a raincloud on a hill. All my senses, relieved from the agony of dealing with the existence of the Sergeant, became supernaturally alert at the work of interpreting the genial day for my benefit. The world rang in my ear like a great workshop. Sublime feats of mechanics and chemistry were evident on every side. The earth was agog with invisible industry. Trees were active where they stood and gave uncompromising evidence of their strength. Incomparable grasses were forever at hand, lending their distinction to the universe. Patterns very difficult to imagine were made together by everything the eye could see, merging into a supernal harmony their unexceptionable varieties. Men who were notable for the whiteness of their shirts worked diminutively in the distant bog, toiling in the brown turf and heather. Patient horses stood near with their useful carts and littered among the boulders on a hill beyond were tiny sheep at pasture. Birds were audible in the secrecy of the bigger trees, changing branches and conversing not tumultuously. In a field by the road a donkey stood quietly as if he were examining the morning, bit by bit unhurryingly. He did not move, his head was high and his mouth chewed nothing. He looked as if he understood completely these unexplainable enjoyments of the world.

  My eye ranged round unsatisfied. I could not see enoug
h in sufficient fulness before I took the left turn for eternity in company with the Sergeant and my thoughts remained entangled in what my eyes were looking at.

  You don’t mean to say that you believe in this eternity business?

  What choice have I? It would be foolish to doubt anything after yesterday.

  That is all very well but I think I can claim to be an authority on the subject of eternity. There must be a limit to this gentleman’s monkey-tricks.

  I am certain there isn’t.

  Nonsense. You are becoming demoralized.

  I will be hung tomorrow.

  That is doubtful but if it has to be faced we will make a brave show.

  We?

  Certainly. I will be there to the end. In the meantime let us make up our minds that eternity is not up a lane that is found by looking at cracks in the ceiling of a country policeman’s bedroom.

  Then what is up the lane?

  I cannot say. If he said that eternity was up the lane and left it at that I would not kick so hard. But when we are told that we are coming back from there in a lift – well, I begin to think that he is confusing night-clubs with heaven. A lift!

  Surely, I argued, if we concede that eternity is up the lane, the question of the lift is a minor matter. That is a case for swallowing a horse and cart and straining at a flea.

  No. I bar the lift. I know enough about the next world to be sure that you don’t get there and come back out of it in a lift. Besides, we must be near the place now and I don’t see any elevator-shaft running up into the clouds.

  Gilhaney had no handlebars on him, I pointed out.

  Unless the word ‘lift’ has a special meaning. Like ‘drop’ when you are talking about a scaffold. I suppose a smash under the chin with a heavy spade could be called a ‘lift’. If that is the case you can be certain about eternity and have the whole of it yourself and welcome.

  I still think there is an electric lift.

  My attention was drawn away from this conversation to the Sergeant, who had now slackened his pace and was making curious inquiries with his stick. The road had reached a place where there was rising ground on each side, rank grass and brambles near our feet, with a tangle of bigger things behind that, and tall brown thickets beset with green creeper plants beyond.

  ‘It is here somewhere,’ the Sergeant said, ‘or beside a place somewhere near the next place adjacent.’

  He dragged his stick along the green margin, probing at the hidden ground.

  ‘MacCruiskeen rides his bicycle along the grass here,’ he said, ‘it is an easier pancake, the wheels are surer and the seat is a more sensitive instrument than the horny hand.’

  After another walk and more probing he found what he was searching for and suddenly dragged me into the undergrowth, parting the green curtains of the branches with a practised hand.

  ‘This is the hidden road.’ he called backwards from ahead.

  It is not easy to say whether road is the correct name for a place that must be fought through inch by inch at the cost of minor wounds and the sting of strained branches slapping back against the person. Nevertheless the ground was even against the foot and some dim distance to each side I could see the ground banking up sharply with rocks and gloominess and damp vegetation. There was a sultry smell and many flies of the gnat class were at home here.

  A yard in front of me the Sergeant was plunging on wildly with his head down, thrashing the younger shoots severely with his stick and calling muffled warnings to me of the strong distended boughs he was about to release in my direction.

  I do not know how long we travelled or what the distance was but the air and the light got scarcer and scarcer until I was sure that we were lost in the bowels of a great forest. The ground was still even enough to walk on but covered with the damp and rotting fall of many autumns. I had followed the noisy Sergeant with blind faith till my strength was nearly gone, so that I reeled forward instead of walking and was defenceless against the brutality of the boughs. I felt very ill and exhausted. I was about to shout to him that I was dying when I noticed the growth was thinning and that the Sergeant was calling to me, from where he was hidden and ahead of me, that we were there. When I reached him he was standing before a small stone building and bending to take the clips from his trousers.

  This is it,’ he said, nodding his stooped head at the little house.

  This is what?’ I muttered.

  The entrance to it,’ he replied.

  The structure looked exactly like the porch of a small country church. The darkness and the confusion of the branches made it hard for me to see whether there was a larger building at the rear. The little porch was old, with green stains on the stonework and warts of moss in its many crannies. The door was an old brown door with ecclesiastical hinges and ornamental ironwork; it was set far back and made to measure in its peaked doorway. This was the entrance to eternity. I knocked the streaming sweat from my forehead with my hand.

  The Sergeant was feeling himself sensually for his keys.

  ‘It is very close,’ he said politely.

  ‘Is this the entrance to the next world?’ I murmured. My voice was lower than I thought it would be owing to my exertions and trepidation.

  ‘But it is seasonable weather and we can’t complain,’ he added loudly, paying no attention to my question. My voice, perhaps, had not been strong enough to travel to his ear.

  He found a key which he rasped in the keyhole and threw the door open. He entered the dark inside but sent his hand out again to twitch me in after him by the coat sleeve.

  Strike a match there!

  Almost at the same time the Sergeant had found a box with knobs and wires in it in the wall and did whatever was necessary to make it give out a startling leaping light from where it was. But during the second I was standing in the dark I had ample time to get the surprise of my life. It was the floor. My feet were astonished when they trod on it. It was made of platefuls of tiny studs like the floor of a steam-engine or like the railed galleries that run around a great printing press. It rang with a ghostly hollow noise beneath the hobnails of the Sergeant, who had now clattered to the other end of the little room to fuss with his chain of keys and to throw open another door that was hidden in the wall.

  ‘Of course a nice shower of rain would clear the air,’ he called.

  I went carefully over to see what he was doing in the little closet he had entered. Here he had operated successfully another unsteady light-box. He stood with his back to me examining panels in the wall. There were two of them, tiny things like matchboxes, and the figure sixteen could be seen in one panel and ten in the other. He sighed and came out of the closet and looked at me sadly.

  ‘They say that walking takes it down,’ he said, ‘but it is my own experience that walking puts it up, walking makes it solid and leaves plenty of room for more.’

  I thought at this stage that a simple and dignified appeal might have some prospect of succeeding.

  ‘Will you please tell me,’ I said, ‘since I will be a dead man tomorrow – where are we and what are we doing?’

  ‘Weighing ourselves,’ he replied.

  ‘Weighing ourselves?’

  ‘Step into the box there,’ he said, ‘till we see what your registration is by plain record.’

  I stepped warily on to more iron plates in the closet and saw the figures change to nine and six.

  ‘Nine stone six pounds,’ said the Sergeant, ‘and a most invidious weight. I would give ten years of my life to get the beef down.’

  He had his back to me again opening still another closet in another wall and passing trained fingers over another light-box. The unsteady light came and I saw him standing in the closet, looking at his large watch and winding it absently. The light was leaping beside his jaw and throwing unearthly leaps of shadow on his gross countenance.

  ‘Will you step over here,’ he called to me at last, ‘and come in with me unless you desire to be left behind in your own c
ompany.’

  When I had walked over and stood silently beside him in the steel closet, he shut the door on us with a precise click and leaned against the wall thoughtfully. I was about to ask for several explanations when a cry of horror came bounding from my throat. With no noise or warning at all, the floor was giving way beneath us.

  ‘It is no wonder that you are yawning,’ the Sergeant said conversationally, ‘it is very close, the ventilation is far from satisfactory.’

  ‘I was only screaming,’ I blurted. ‘What is happening to this box we are in? Where – ’

  My voice trailed away to a dry cluck of fright. The floor was falling so fast beneath us that it seemed once or twice to fall faster than I could fall myself so that it was sure that my feet had left it and that I had taken up a position for brief intervals half-way between the floor and the ceiling. In panic I raised my right foot and smote it down with all my weight and my strength. It struck the floor but only with a puny tinkling noise. I swore and groaned and closed my eyes and wished for a happy death. I felt my stomach bounding sickeningly about inside me as if it were a wet football filled with water.

  Lord save us!

  ‘It does a man no harm,’ the Sergeant remarked pleasantly, ‘to move around a bit and see things. It is a great thing for widening out the mind. A wide mind is a grand thing, it nearly always leads to farseeing inventions. Look at Sir Walter Raleigh that invented the pedal bicycle and Sir George Stephenson with his steam-engine and Napoleon Bonaparte and George Sand and Walter Scott – great men all.’

  ‘Are – are we in eternity yet?’ I chattered.

  ‘We are not there yet but nevertheless we are nearly there,’ he answered. ‘Listen with all your ears for a little click.’

  What can I say to tell of my personal position? I was locked in an iron box with a sixteen-stone policeman, falling appallingly for ever, listening to talk about Walter Scott and listening for a click also.

  Click!

  It came at last, sharp and terrible. Almost at once the falling changed, either stopping altogether or becoming a much slower falling.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Sergeant brightly, ‘we are there now.’

  I noticed nothing whatever except that the thing we were in gave a jolt and the floor seemed to resist my feet suddenly in a way that might well have been eternal. The Sergeant fingered the arrangement of knob-like instruments on the door, which he opened after a time and stepped out.