Funny Ha, Ha

by Paul Merton

  November 5th—Stuff with Jane getting a little tense. She keeps wanting to push the relationship forward. She says that we’ve been together “forever.” I said that maybe it feels that way, but that I kept track of it on the calendar and it’s actually been less than five months. She just stared at me. Then to change the subject I told her this new idea I was excited about: we’d choose a date in the future to make things official, and then every year after that, that day on the calendar would be like our own personal holiday—for just the two of us. Good idea, right? “You’d never remember it,” she said.

  November 6th—Things with Jane getting better. I think we’re going to work this out. I love Jane. That’s all that matters.

  November 11th—They sacrificed Jane today. Really happy for the Sun God.

  November 12th—Cold.

  November 13th—Dark.

  November 18th—Turns out those berries aren’t poison. So, now I’m the guy who discovered that.

  November 23rd—Alice came by and said she felt bad about the Jane stuff, and that I should hang out with her and her friends. Then it turned out her friends included this new guy she’s seeing who—get this—invented the diary. Anyway, to be the mature one, I said, “Oh, that’s great, I use that almost every day.” Guess what he says: “Oh, really? I invented that for girls.” What a dick. Then he said, “So, what else have you done?” and I said I have been totally distraught about Jane being sacrificed (I kind of exaggerated, but whatever) but that I plan on pulling it together soon and working on something new, maybe something with clocks. He said: “Well, you know what tomorrow is?” I said, yes, November 24th. He said, “No, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.” And everyone said, “Awwww” and I was like Are you kidding me?! Do you know how long it took me to get people to stop talking like that?

  December 1st—I think the key to feeling better is to really just focus on work. Starting tomorrow, I am going to choose a new project to work on every day. It doesn’t have to be clocks; it just has to be something. Let’s go!!!!

  December 23rd—It seems like Alice and Diary Guy are really close this week. Really happy for them. Hard to see other people so happy this week for some reason. Ahhhh. Going to focus on work.

  December 25th—Why do I feel so lonely today?

  December 26th—Why am I so fat?

  December 30th—I told everyone I’m ending the year early. I know it was impulsive, but I just had to do it. I was ready for everyone to make fun of me, but it turned out people were way cooler about it than I thought they would be. “That’s great,” “About time,” “Just what I need.” It was actually the most praise I got since I invented the calendar in the first place.

  This year just got away from me somehow. Looking back, I realize how much I got sidetracked and how many months slipped by that I can’t even remember. The one nice thing is seeing how I used to be so worked up about Alice, and now I realize I really don’t care at all anymore. We’re going to be friends in the New Year, and I’m really looking forward to that. And the Jane thing ended the right way, I think—better than some long, drawn-out breakup.

  So this year wasn’t everything I hoped it would be, and I didn’t get all the months in that I wanted, but I know next year is going to be totally different. When the New Year starts, I’m going to wake up at dawn every day and get to work—see, I’d love to put a number on “dawn,” that’s why I think this new clock thing could be really big. I have so many ideas for it. For example: I either want seconds to be timed to a blink of an eye so people don’t have to say “in the blink of an eye”—they can just say “one second”—or I want to double the length of a second so people don’t always say, “Can you give me two seconds?!” They can just say “one second.” I have a lot of ideas like that.

  December 31st—So many parties going on tonight. On a Tuesday?! Not complaining, just saying.

  January 1st—Woke up at sun-past-mountain with a headache. So much for the “dawn” thing. But I still feel good.

  TWO IN ONE

  Flann O’Brien

  Flann O’Brien (1911–1966), whose real name was Brian O’Nolan, and who wrote under multiple pen names, was an Irish novelist, playwright and satirist. He wrote satirical columns for the Irish Times as well as novels, the most famous of which are At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman. O’Brien’s bizarre humour and modernist metafiction has attracted a wide following. Though he was influenced by James Joyce he was, nonetheless, sceptical of the cult surrounding him, saying ‘I declare to God if I hear that name Joyce one more time I will surely froth at the gob.’ This story was originally credited to his pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen.

  The story I have to tell is a strange one, perhaps unbelievable. I will try to set it down as simply as I can. I do not expect to be disturbed in my literary labours, for I am writing this in the condemned cell.

  Let us say my name is Murphy. The unusual occurrence which led me here concerns my relations with another man whom we shall call Kelly. Both of us were taxidermists.

  I will not attempt a treatise on what a taxidermist is. The word is ugly and inadequate. Certainly it does not convey to the layman that such an operator must combine the qualities of zoologist, naturalist, chemist, sculptor, artist, and carpenter. Who would blame such a person for showing some temperament now and again, as I did?

  It is necessary, however, to say a brief word about this science. First, there is no such thing in modern practice as “stuffing” an animal. There is a record of stuffed gorillas having been in Carthage in the 5th century, and it is a fact that an Austrian prince, Siegmund Herberstein, had stuffed bison in the great hall of his castle in the 16th century—it was then the practice to draw the entrails of animals and to substitute spices and various preservative substances. There is a variety of methods in use today but, except in particular cases—snakes, for example, where preserving the translucency of the skin is a problem calling for special measures—the basis of all modern methods is simply this: you skin the animal very carefully according to a certain pattern, and you encase the skinless body in plaster of Paris. You bisect the plaster when cast providing yourself with two complementary moulds from which you can make a casting of the animal’s body—there are several substances, all very light, from which such castings can be made. The next step, calling for infinite skill and patience, is to mount the skin on the casting of the body. That is all I need explain here, I think.

  Kelly carried on a taxidermy business and I was his assistant. He was the boss—a swinish, overbearing mean boss, a bully, a sadist. He hated me, but enjoyed his hatred too much to sack me. He knew I had a real interest in the work, and a desire to broaden my experience. For that reason, he threw me all the common-place jobs that came in. If some old lady sent her favourite terrier to be done, that was me; foxes and cats and Shetland ponies and white rabbits—they were all strictly my department. I could do a perfect job on such animals in my sleep, and got to hate them. But if a crocodile came in, or a Great Borneo spider, or (as once happened) a giraffe—Kelly kept them all for himself. In the meantime he would treat my own painstaking work with sourness and sneers and complaints.

  One day the atmosphere in the workshop had been even fouler than usual, with Kelly in a filthier temper than usual. I had spent the forenoon finishing a cat, and at about lunch-time put it on the shelf where he left completed orders.

  I could nearly hear him glaring at it. Where was the tail? I told him there was no tail, that it was a Manx cat. How did I know it was a Manx cat, how did I know it was not an ordinary cat which had lost its tail in a motor accident or something? I got so mad that I permitted myself a disquisition on cats in general, mentioning the distinctions as between Felis manul, Felis silvestris, and Felis lybica, and on the unique structure of the Manx cat. His reply to that? He called me a slob. That was the sort of life I was having.

  On this occasion something within me snapped. I was sure I could hear the snap. I had moved up to where
he was to answer his last insult. The loathsome creature had his back to me, bending down to put on his bicycle clips. Just to my hand on the bench was one of the long, flat, steel instruments we use for certain operations with plaster. I picked it up and hit him a blow with it on the back of the head. He gave a cry and slumped forward. I hit him again. I rained blow after blow on him. Then I threw the tool away. I was upset. I went out into the yard and looked around. I remembered he had a weak heart. Was he dead? I remember adjusting the position of a barrel we had in the yard to catch rainwater, the only sort of water suitable for some of the mixtures we used. I found I was in a cold sweat but strangely calm. I went back into the workshop.

  Kelly was just as I had left him. I could find no pulse. I rolled him over on his back and examined his eyes, for I have seen more lifeless eyes in my day than most people. Yes, there was no doubt: Kelly was dead. I had killed him. I was a murderer. I put on my coat and hat and left the place. I walked the streets for a while, trying to avoid panic, trying to think rationally. Inevitably, I was soon in a public house. I drank a lot of whiskey and finally went home to my digs. The next morning I was very sick indeed from this terrible mixture of drink and worry. Was the Kelly affair merely a fancy, a drunken fancy? No, there was no consolation in that sort of hope. He was dead all right.

  It was as I lay in bed there, shaking, thinking, and smoking, that the mad idea came into my head. No doubt this sounds incredible, grotesque, even disgusting, but I decided I would treat Kelly the same as any other dead creature that found its way to the workshop.

  Once one enters a climate of horror, distinction of degree as between one infamy and another seems slight, sometimes undetectable. That evening I went to the workshop and made my preparations. I worked steadily all next day. I will not appall the reader with gruesome detail. I need only say that I applied the general technique and flaying pattern appropriate to apes. The job took me four days at the end of which I had a perfect skin, face and all. I made the usual castings before committing the remains of, so to speak, the remains, to the furnace. My plan was to have Kelly on view asleep on a chair, for the benefit of anybody who might call. Reflection convinced me that this would be far too dangerous. I had to think again.

  A further idea began to form. It was so macabre that it shocked even myself. For days I had been treating the inside of the skin with the usual preservatives—cellulose acetate and the like—thinking all the time. The new illumination came upon me like a thunderbolt. I would don his skin and, when the need arose, BECOME Kelly! His clothes fitted me. So would his skin. Why not?

  Another day’s agonised work went on various alterations and adjustments but that night I was able to look into a glass and see Kelly looking back at me, perfect in every detail except for the teeth and eyes, which had to be my own but which I knew other people would never notice.

  Naturally I wore Kelly’s clothes, and had no trouble in imitating his unpleasant voice and mannerisms. On the second day, having “dressed,” so to speak, I went for a walk, receiving salutes from newsboys and other people who had known Kelly. And on the day after, I was foolhardy enough to visit Kelly’s lodgings. Where on earth had I been, his landlady wanted to know. (She had noticed nothing.) What, I asked—had that fool Murphy not told her that I had to go to the country for a few days? No? I had told the good-for-nothing to convey the message.

  I slept that night in Kelly’s bed. I was a little worried about what the other landlady would think of my own absence. I decided not to remove Kelly’s skin the first night I spent in his bed but to try to get the rest of my plan of campaign perfected and into sharper focus. I eventually decided that Kelly should announce to various people that he was going to a very good job in Canada, and that he had sold his business to his assistant Murphy. I would then burn the skin, I would own a business and—what is more stupid than vanity!—I could secretly flatter myself that I had committed the perfect crime.

  Need I say that I had overlooked something?

  The mummifying preparation with which I had dressed the inside of the skin was, of course, quite stable for the ordinary purposes of taxidermy. It had not occurred to me that a night in a warm bed would make it behave differently. The horrible truth dawned on me the next day when I reached the workshop and tried to take the skin off. It wouldn’t come off! It had literally fused with my own! And in the days that followed, this process kept rapidly advancing. Kelly’s skin got to live again, to breathe, to perspire.

  Then followed more days of terrible tension. My own landlady called one day, inquiring about me of “Kelly.” I told her I had been on the point of calling on her to find out where I was. She was disturbed about my disappearance—it was so unlike me—and said she thought she should inform the police. I thought it wise not to try to dissuade her. My disappearance would eventually come to be accepted, I thought. My Kelliness, so to speak, was permanent. It was horrible, but it was a choice of that or the scaffold.

  I kept drinking a lot. One night, after many drinks, I went to the club for a game of snooker. This club was in fact one of the causes of Kelly’s bitterness towards me. I had joined it without having been aware that Kelly was a member. His resentment was boundless. He thought I was watching him, and taking note of the attentions he paid the lady members.

  On this occasion I nearly made a catastrophic mistake. It is a simple fact that I am a very good snooker player, easily the best in that club. As I was standing watching another game in progress awaiting my turn for the table, I suddenly realised that Kelly did not play snooker at all! For some moments, a cold sweat stood out on Kelly’s brow at the narrowness of this escape. I went to the bar. There, a garrulous lady (who thinks her unsolicited conversation is a fair exchange for a drink) began talking to me. She remarked the long absence of my nice Mr. Murphy. She said he was missed a lot in the snooker room. I was hot and embarrassed and soon went home. To Kelly’s place, of course.

  Not embarrassment, but a real sense of danger, was to be my next portion in this adventure. One afternoon, two very casual strangers strolled into the workshop, saying they would like a little chat with me. Cigarettes were produced. Yes indeed, they were plain-clothes-men making a few routine inquiries. This man Murphy had been reported missing by several people. Any idea where he was? None at all. When had I last seen him? Did he seem upset or disturbed? No, but he was an impetuous type. I had recently reprimanded him for bad work. On similar other occasions he had threatened to leave and seek work in England. Had I been away for a few days myself? Yes, down in Cork for a few days. On business. Yes… yes… some people thinking of starting a natural museum down there, technical school people—that sort of thing.

  The casual manner of these men worried me, but I was sure they did not suspect the truth and that they were genuinely interested in tracing Murphy. Still, I knew I was in danger, without knowing the exact nature of the threat I had to counter. Whiskey cheered me somewhat.

  Then it happened. The two detectives came back accompanied by two other men in uniform. They showed me a search warrant. It was purely a formality; it had to be done in the case of all missing persons. They had already searched Murphy’s digs and had found nothing of interest. They were very sorry for upsetting the place during my working hours.

  A few days later the casual gentlemen called and put me under arrest for the wilful murder of Murphy, of myself. They proved the charge in due course with all sorts of painfully amassed evidence, including the remains of human bones in the furnace. I was sentenced to be hanged. Even if I could now prove that Murphy still lived by shedding the accursed skin, what help would that be? Where, they would ask, is Kelly?

  This is my strange and tragic story. And I end it with the thought that if Kelly and I must each be either murderer or murdered, it is perhaps better to accept my present fate as philosophically as I can and be cherished in the public mind as the victim of this murderous monster, Kelly. He was a murderer, anyway.

  SCENES IN A NOVEL

  Fl
ann O’Brien

  Flann O’Brien (1911–1966), whose real name was Brian O’Nolan, and who wrote under multiple pen names, was an Irish novelist, playwright and satirist. He wrote satirical columns for the Irish Times as well as novels, the most famous of which are At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman. O’Brien’s bizarre humour and modernist metafiction has attracted a wide following. Though he was influenced by James Joyce he was, nonetheless, sceptical of the cult surrounding him, saying ‘I declare to God if I hear that name Joyce one more time I will surely froth at the gob.’ This story was originally credited to his pseudonym Brother Barnabas.

  I am penning these lines, dear reader, under conditions of great emotional stress, being engaged, as I am, in the composition of a posthumous article. The great blots of sweat which gather on my brow are instantly decanted into a big red handkerchief, though I know the practice is ruinous to the complexion, having regard to the open pores and the poisonous vegetable dyes that are used nowadays in the Japanese sweat-shops. By the time these lines are in neat rows of print, with no damn over-lapping at the edges, the writer will be in Kingdom Come.1 I have rented Trotsky’s villa in Paris, though there are four defects in the lease (three reckoning by British law) and the drains are—what shall I say?—just a leetle bit Gallic. Last week, I set about the melancholy task of selling up my little home. Auction followed auction. Priceless books went for a mere song, and invaluable songs, many of them of my own composition, were ruthlessly exchanged for loads of books. Stomach-pumps and stallions went for next to nothing, whilst my ingenious home-made typewriter, in perfect order except for two faulty characters, was knocked down for four and tuppence. I was finally stripped of all my possessions, except for a few old articles of clothing upon which I had waggishly placed an enormous reserve price. I was in some doubt about a dappled dressing-gown of red fustian, bordered with a pleasing grey piping. I finally decided to present it to the Nation. The Nation, however, acting through one of its accredited Sanitary Inspectors, declined the gift—rather churlishly I thought—and pleading certain statutory prerogatives, caused the thing to be burnt in a yard off Chatham Street within a stone’s throw of the house where the Brothers Sheares played their last game of taiplis [draughts]. Think of that! When such things come to pass, as Walt Whitman says, you re-examine philosophies and religions. Suggestions as to compensation were pooh-poohed and sallies were made touching on the compulsory acquisition of slum property. You see? If a great mind is to be rotted and deranged, no meanness or no outrage is too despicable, no maggot of officialdom is too contemptible to perpetrate it... the ash of my dressing-gown, a sickly wheaten colour, and indeed, the whole incident reminded me forcibly of Carruthers McDaid2 Carruthers McDaid is a man I created one night when I had swallowed nine stouts and felt vaguely blasphemous. I gave him a good but worn-out mother and an industrious father, and coolly negativing fifty years of eugenics, made him a worthless scoundrel, a betrayer of women and a secret drinker. He had a sickly wheaten head, the watery blue eyes of the weakling. For if the truth must be told I had started to compose a novel and McDaid was the kernel or the fulcrum of it. Some writers have started with a good and noble hero and traced his weakening, his degradation and his eventual downfall; others have introduced a degenerate villain to be ennobled and uplifted to the tune of twenty-two chapters, usually at the hands of a woman—“She was not beautiful, but a shortened nose, a slightly crooked mouth and eyes that seemed brimful of a simple complexity seemed to spell a curious attraction, an inexplicable charm.” In my own case, McDaid, starting off as a rank waster and a rotter, was meant to sink slowly to absolutely the last extremities of human degradation. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was to be too low for him, the wheaten-headed hound…