The Third Policeman

by Flann O'Brien

  That was the lift,’ he remarked.

  It is peculiar that when one expects some horrible incalculable and devastating thing which does not materialize, one is more disappointed than relieved. I had expected for one thing a blaze of eye-destroying light. No other expectation was clear enough in my brain to be mentioned. Instead of this radiance, I saw a long passage lit fitfully at intervals by the crude home-made noise-machines, with more darkness to be seen than light. The walls of the passage seemed to be made with bolted sheets of pig-iron in which were set rows of small doors which looked to me like ovens or furnace-doors or safe-deposits such as banks have. The ceiling, where I could see it, was a mass of wires and what appeared to be particularly thick wires or possibly pipes. All the time there was an entirely new noise to be heard, not unmusical, sometimes like water gurgling underground and sometimes like subdued conversation in a foreign tongue.

  The Sergeant was already looming ahead on his way up the passage, treading heavily on the plates. He swung his keys jauntily and hummed a song. I followed near him, trying to count the little doors. There were four rows of six in every lineal two yards of wall, or a total of many thousands. Here and there I saw a dial or an intricate nest of clocks and knobs resembling a control board with masses of coarse wires converging from all quarters of it. I did not understand the significance of anything but I thought the scene was so real that much of my fear was groundless. I trod firmly beside the Sergeant, who was still real enough for anybody.

  We came to a crossroads in the passage where the light was brighter. A cleaner brighter passage with shiny steel walls ran away to each side, disappearing from view only where the distance brought its walls, floor and roof to the one gloomy point. I thought I could hear a sound like hissing steam and another noise like great cogwheels grinding one way, stopping and grinding back again. The Sergeant paused to take a reading from a clock in the wall, then turned sharply to the left and called for me to follow.

  I shall not recount the passages we walked or talk of the one with the round doors like portholes or the other place where the Sergeant got a box of matches for himself by putting his hand somewhere into the wall. It is enough to say that we arrived, after walking at least a mile of plate, into a well-lit airy hall which was completely circular and filled with indescribable articles very like machinery but not quite as intricate as the more difficult machines. Large expensive-looking cabinets of these articles were placed tastefully about the floor while the circular wall was one mass of these inventions with little dials and meters placed plentifully here and there. Hundreds of miles of coarse wire were visible running everywhere except about the floor and there were thousands of doors like the strong-hinged doors of ovens and arrangements of knobs and keys that reminded me of American cash registers.

  The Sergeant was reading out figures from one of the many clocks and turning a small wheel with great care. Suddenly the silence was split by the sound of loud frenzied hammering from the far end of the hall where the apparatus seemed thickest and most complex the blood ran away at once from my startled face. I looked at the Sergeant but he still attended patiently to his clock and wheel, reciting numbers under his breath and taking no notice. The hammering stopped.

  I sat down to think and gather my scattered wits on a smooth article like an iron bar. It was pleasantly warm and comforting. Before any thought had time to come to me there was another burst of hammering, then silence, then a low but violent noise like passionately-muttered oaths, then silence again and finally the sound of heavy footsteps approaching from behind the tall cabinets of machinery.

  Feeling a weakness in my spine, I went over quickly and stood beside the Sergeant. He had taken a long white instrument like a large thermometer or band conductor’s baton out of a hole in the wall and was examining the calibrations on it with a frown of great preoccupation. He paid no attention to me or to the hidden presence that was approaching invisibly. When I heard the clanging steps rounding the last cabinet, against my will I looked up wildly. It was Policeman MacCruiskeen. He was frowning heavily and bearing another large baton or thermometer which was orange-coloured. He made straight for the Sergeant and showed him this instrument, putting a red finger on a marking that was on it. They stood there silently examining each other’s instruments. The Sergeant looked somewhat relieved, I thought, when he had the matter thought out and marched away to the hidden place that MacCruiskeen had just come from. Soon we heard the sound of hammering, this time gentle and rhythmical.

  MacCruiskeen put his baton away into the wall in the hole where the Sergeant’s had been and turned to me, giving me generously the wrinkled cigarette which I had come to regard as the herald of unthinkable conversation.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he inquired.

  ‘It is neat,’ I replied.

  ‘You would not believe the convenience of it,’ he remarked cryptically.

  The Sergeant came back to us drying his red hands on a towel and looking very satisfied with himself. I looked at the two of them sharply. They received my glance and exchanged it privately between them before discarding it.

  ‘Is this eternity?’ I asked. ‘Why do you call it eternity?’

  ‘Feel my chin,’ MacCruiskeen said, smiling enigmatically.

  ‘We call it that,’ the Sergeant explained, ‘because you don’t grow old here. When you leave here you will be the same age as you were coming in and the same stature and latitude. There is an eight-day clock here with a patent balanced action but it never goes.’

  ‘How can you be sure you don’t grow old here?’

  ‘Feel my chin,’ MacCruiskeen said again.

  ‘It is simple,’ the Sergeant said. ‘The beard does not grow and if you are fed you do not get hungry and if you are hungry you don’t get hungrier. Your pipe will smoke all day and will still be full and a glass of whiskey will still be there no matter how much of it you drink and it does not matter in any case because it will not make you drunker than your own sobriety.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I muttered.

  ‘I have been here for a long time this today morning,’ MacCruiskeen said, ‘and my jaw is still as smooth as a woman’s back and the convenience of it takes my breath away, it is a great thing to downface the old razor.’

  ‘How big is all this place?’

  ‘It has no size at all,’ the Sergeant explained, ‘because there is no difference anywhere in it and we have no conception of the extent of its unchanging coequality.’

  MacCruiskeen lit a match for our cigarettes and then threw it carelessly on the plate floor where it lay looking very much important and alone.

  ‘Could you not bring your bicycle and ride through all of it and see it all and draw a chart?’ I asked.

  The Sergeant smiled at me as if I were a baby.

  ‘The bicycle is easy,’ he said.

  To my astonishment he went over to one of the bigger ovens, manipulated some knobs, pulled open the massive metal door and lifted out a brand-new bicycle. It had a three-speed gear and an oil-bath and I could see the vaseline still glistening on the bright parts. He put the front wheel down and spun the back wheel expertly in the air.

  ‘The bicycle is an easy pancake,’ he said, ‘but it is no use and does not matter. Come and I will demonstrate the res ipsa.’

  Leaving the bicycle, he led the way through the intricate cabinets and round behind other cabinets and in through a doorway. What I saw made my brain shrink painfully in my head and put a paralysing chill across my heart. It was not so much that this other hall was in every respect an exact replica of the one we had just left. It was more that my burdened eye saw that one of the cabinet doors in the wall was standing open and a brand-new bicycle was leaning against the wall, identically like the other one and leaning even at the same angle.

  If you want to take another walk ahead to reach the same place here without coming back you can walk on till you reach the next doorway and you are welcome. But it will do you no good and even if we stay here be
hind you it is probable that you will find us there to meet you.’

  Here I gave a cry as my eye caught a spent match lying clearly on the floor.

  ‘What do you think of the no-shaving?’ MacCruiskeen asked boastfully. ‘Surely that is an uninterruptible experiment?’

  ‘It is inescapable and highly intractable,’ the Sergeant said.

  MacCruiskeen was examining some knobs in a central cabinet. He turned his head and called to me.

  ‘Come over here,’ he called, ‘till I show you something to tell your friends about.’

  Afterwards I saw that this was one of his rare jokes because what he showed me was something that I could tell nobody about, there are no suitable words in the world to tell my meaning. This cabinet had an opening resembling a chute and another large opening resembling a black hole about a yard below the chute. He pressed two red articles like typewriter keys and turned a large knob away from him. At once there was a rumbling noise as if thousands of full biscuit-boxes were falling down a stairs. I felt that these falling things would come out of the chute at any moment. And so they did, appearing for a few seconds in the air and then disappearing down the black hole below. But what can I say about them? In colour they were not white or black and certainly bore no intermediate colour; they were far from dark and anything but bright. But strange to say it was not their unprecedented hue that took most of my attention. They had another quality that made me watch them wild-eyed, dry-throated and with no breathing. I can make no attempt to describe this quality. It took me hours of thought long afterwards to realize why these articles were astonishing. They lacked an essential property of all known objects. I cannot call it shape or configuration since shapelessness is not what I refer to at all. I can only say that these objects, not one of which resembled the other, were of no known dimensions. They were not square or rectangular or circular or simply irregularly shaped nor could it be said that their endless variety was due to dimensional dissimilarities. Simply their appearance, if even that word is not inadmissible, was not understood by the eye and was in any event indescribable. That is enough to say.

  When MacCruiskeen had unpressed the buttons the Sergeant asked me politely what else I would like to see.

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Anything I mention will be shown to me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The ease with which the Sergeant had produced a bicycle that would cost at least eight pounds ten to buy had set in motion in my head certain trains of thought. My nervousness had been largely reduced to absurdity and nothingness by what I had seen and I now found myself taking an interest in the commercial possibilities of eternity.

  ‘What I would like,’ I said slowly, ‘is to see you open a door and lift out a solid block of gold weighing half a ton.’

  The Sergeant smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘But that is impossible, it is a very unreasonable requisition,’ he said, it is vexatious and unconscionable,’ he added legally.

  My heart sank down at this.

  ‘But you said anything.’

  ‘I know, man. But there is a limit and a boundary to everything within the scope of reason’s garden.’

  ‘That is disappointing,’ I muttered. MacCruiskeen stirred diffidently.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘if there would be no objection to me assisting the Sergeant in lifting out the block…’

  ‘What! Is that a difficulty?’

  ‘I am not a cart-horse,’ the Sergeant said with simple dignity.

  ‘Yet, anyhow,’ he added, reminding all of us of his greatgrandfather.

  ‘Then we’ll all lift it out,’ I cried.

  And so we did. The knobs were manipulated, the door opened and the block of gold, which was encased in a well-made timber box, was lifted down with all our strength and placed on the floor.

  ‘Gold is a common article and there is not much to see when you look at it,’ the Sergeant observed. ‘Ask him for something confidential and superior to ordinary pre-eminence. Now a magnifying glass is a better thing because you can look at it and what you see when you look is a third thing altogether.’

  Another door was opened by MacCruiskeen and I was handed a magnifying glass, a very ordinary-looking instrument with a bone handle. I looked at my hand through it and saw nothing that was recognizable. Then I looked at several other things but saw nothing that I could clearly see. MacCruiskeen took it back with a smile at my puzzled eye.

  ‘It magnifies to invisibility,’ he explained. ‘It makes everything so big that there is room in the glass for only the smallest particle of it – not enough of it to make it different from any other thing that is dissimilar.’

  My eye moved from his explaining face to the block of gold which my attention had never really left.

  ‘What I would like to see now,’ I said carefully, ‘is fifty cubes of solid gold each weighing one pound.’

  MacCruiskeen went away obsequiously like a trained waiter and got these articles out of the wall without a word, arranging them in a neat structure on the floor. The Sergeant had strolled away idly to examine some clocks and take readings. In the meantime my brain was working coldly and quickly. I ordered a bottle of whiskey, precious stones to the value of £200,000, some bananas, a fountain-pen and writing materials, and finally a serge suit of blue with silk linings. When all these things were on the floor, I remembered other things I had overlooked and ordered underwear, shoes and banknotes, and a box of matches. MacCruiskeen, sweating from his labour with the heavy doors, was complaining of the heat and paused to drink some amber ale. The Sergeant was quietly clicking a little wheel with a tiny ratchet.

  ‘I think that is all,’ I said at last.

  The Sergeant came forward and gazed at the pile of merchandise.

  ‘Lord, save us,’ he said.

  ‘I am going to take these things with me,’ I announced.

  The Sergeant and MacCruiskeen exchanged their private glance. Then they smiled.

  ‘In that case you will need a big strong bag,’ the Sergeant said. He went to another door and got me a hogskin bag worth at least fifty guineas in the open market. I carefully packed away my belongings.

  I saw MacCruiskeen crushing out his cigarette on the wall and noticed that it was still the same length as it had been when lit half an hour ago. My own was burning quietly also but was completely unconsumed. I crushed it out also and put it in my pocket.

  When about to close the bag I had a thought. I unstooped and turned to the policemen.

  ‘I require just one thing more,’ I said, ‘I want a small weapon suitable for the pocket which will exterminate any man or any million men who try at any time to take my life.’

  Without a word the Sergeant brought me a small black article like a torch.

  ‘There is an influence in that,’ he said, ‘that will change any man or men into grey powder at once if you point it and press the knob and if you don’t like grey powder you can have purple powder or yellow powder or any other shade of powder if you tell me now and confide your favourite colour. Would a velvet-coloured colour please you?’

  ‘Grey will do,’ I said briefly.

  I put this murderous weapon into the bag, closed it and stood up again.

  ‘I think we might go home now.’ I said the words casually and took care not to look at the faces of the policemen. To my surprise they agreed readily and we started off with our resounding steps till we found ourselves again in the endless corridors, I carrying the heavy bag and the policemen conversing quietly about the readings they had seen. I felt happy and satisfied with my day. I felt changed and regenerated and full of fresh courage.

  ‘How does this thing work?’ I inquired pleasantly, seeking to make friendly conversation. The Sergeant looked at me.

  ‘It has helical gears,’ he said informatively.

  ‘Did you not see the wires?’ MacCruiskeen asked, turning to me in some surprise.

  ‘You
would be astonished at the importance of the charcoal,’ the Sergeant said. ‘The great thing is to keep the beam reading down as low as possible and you are doing very well if the pilot-mark is steady. But if you let the beam rise, where are you with your lever? If you neglect the charcoal feedings you will send the beam rocketing up and there is bound to be a serious explosion.’

  ‘Low pilot, small fall,’ MacCruiskeen said. He spoke neatly and wisely as if his remark was a proverb.

  ‘But the secret of it all-in-all,’ continued the Sergeant, ‘is the daily readings. Attend to your daily readings and your conscience will be as clear as a clean shirt on Sunday morning. I am a great believer in the daily readings.’

  ‘Did I see everything of importance?’

  At this the policemen looked at each other in amazement and laughed outright. Their raucous roars careered away from us up and down the corridor and came back again in pale echoes from the distance.

  ‘I suppose you think a smell is a simple thing?’ the Sergeant said smiling.

  ‘A smell?’

  ‘A smell is the most complicated phenomenon in the world,’ he said, ‘and it cannot be unravelled by the human snout or understood properly although dogs have a better way with smells than we have.’

  ‘But dogs are very poor riders on bicycles,’ MacCruiskeen said, presenting the other side of the comparison.

  ‘We have a machine down there,’ the Sergeant continued, ‘that splits up any smell into its sub – and inter-smells the way you can split up a beam of light with a glass instrument. It is very interesting and edifying, you would not believe the dirty smells that are inside the perfume of a lovely lily-of-the mountain.’

  ‘And there is a machine for tastes,’ MacCruiskeen put in, ‘the taste of a fried chop, although you might not think it, is forty per cent the taste of…’

  He grimaced and spat and looked delicately reticent.