Green Shadows, White Whale

by Ray Bradbury

  I held out four shillings

  “Doone,” I said.

  “Without having seen him sprint?”

  “A dark horse.”

  “Well said!” Timulty spun about. “Clannery, Nolan, inside, as aisle judges! Watch sharp there’s no jumping the finis.”

  In went Clannery and Nolan, happy as boys.

  “Make an aisle, now. Yank, you and Snell and Orkney over here with me!”

  We rushed to form an aisle between the two closed main entrance-exit doors.

  “Fogarty, lay your ear to the door!”

  This Fogarty did. His eyes widened.

  “The damn music is extra loud!”

  One of the Kelly boys nudged his brother. “It will be over soon. Whoever is to die is dying this moment. Whoever is to live is bending over him.”

  “Louder still!” announced Fogarty, head to the door panel, hands twitching as if he were adjusting a radio. “There! That’s the grand ta-ta that comes just as THE END jumps on the screen.”

  “They’re off!” I murmured.

  “Hush!” said Timulty. “There’s the anthem! Tenshun!”

  We all stood erect. Someone saluted.

  But still we stared at the door.

  “I hear feet running,” said Fogarty.

  “Whoever it is had a good start before the anthem—”

  The door burst wide.

  Hoolihan plunged to view, smiling such a smile as only breathless victors know.

  “Hoolihan!” cried the winners.

  “Doone!” cried the losers, myself and Snell-Orkney. “Where’s Doone?”

  For, while Hoolihan was first, a competitor was lacking.

  “The idiot didn’t come out the wrong door?”

  We waited. The audience shuffled off and was gone.

  Timulty ventured first into the empty lobby.

  “Doone?” he called.

  Silence.

  “Could it be he’s in there?”

  Someone flung the Gents’ door wide. “Doone?”

  No echo.

  “Good grief,” cried Timulty. “It can’t be he’s broken a leg and lies on the aisle slope with the mortal agonies?”

  “That’s it!”

  The island of men, heaving one way, changed gravities and heaved the other, toward the inner door, through it, and down the aisle, Snell-Orkney, chums, and myself in hot pursuit.

  “Doone!”

  Clannery and Nolan were there to meet us and pointed silently down. I jumped in the air twice to see over the mob’s head. It was dark in the vast theater. I saw nothing.

  “Doone!”

  Then at last the mob bunched near the fourth row on the aisle. I heard their boggled exclamations, staring at Doone.

  He was still seated in the fourth row, his hands folded, eyes shut.

  Dead?

  None of that.

  A tear, large, luminous, and beautiful, fell on his cheek. Another tear, larger and more lustrous, emerged from his other eye. His chin was wet. It was certain he had been crying for some while.

  We peered into his face, circling, leaning.

  “Doone, are ya sick?”

  “Is it fearful news?”

  “Ah, God,” cried Doone. He shook himself to find the strength, somehow, to speak.

  “Ah, God,” he said at last, “she has a voice of an angel.”

  “Angel?”

  “That one up there.” He nodded.

  We turned to stare at the empty silver screen.

  “Is it Deanna Durbin?”

  Doone sobbed. “The dear dead voice of me grandmother come back—”

  “Your grandma’s behind!” exclaimed Timulty. “She had no such voice!”

  “And who’s to know, save me?” Doone blew his nose, dabbed at his eyes.

  “You mean to say it was just the Durbin lass kept you from the sprint?”

  “Just!” cried Doone. “Just! Why, it would be sacrilege to bound from a cinema after a recital like that. You might as well jump across the altar during a wedding, or waltz about at a funeral.”

  “You could’ve at least warned us it was no contest.” Timulty glared.

  “How could I? It just crept over me in a divine sickness. That last bit she sang—‘The Lovely Isle of Innisfree,’ was it not, Clannery?”

  “What else did she sing?” asked Fogarty.

  “What else did she sing?” cried Timulty. “He’s just lost us half our day’s wages and you ask what else she sang! Gah!”

  “Sure, it’s money runs the world,” Doone agreed, seated there. “But it is music that holds down the friction.”

  “What’s going on there?” cried someone above.

  A man leaned down from the balcony, puffing a cigarette. “What’s all the rouse?”

  “It’s the projectionist,” whispered Timulty. Aloud: “Hello, Phil, darling! It’s only the Team! We’ve a bit of a problem here, Phil, in ethics, not to say aesthetics. Now, we wonder if, well, could it be possible to run the anthem over?”

  “Run it over?”

  There was a rumble from the winners, a mixing and shoving of elbows.

  “A lovely idea,” said Doone.

  “It is.” Timulty, all guile, called up, “An act of God incapacitated Doone.”

  “A tenth-run flicker from the year 1937 caught him by the short hairs is all,” said Fogarty.

  “So the fair thing is”—here Timulty, unperturbed, looked to heaven—“Phil, dear boy, also is the entire last reel of the Deanna Durbin fillum still there?”

  “It ain’t in the ladies’ room,” admitted Phil, smoking steadily.

  “What a wit the boy has. Now, Phil, do you think you could just thread it back through the machine there and give us the finis again?”

  “Is that what you all want?” cried Phil.

  There was a hard moment of indecision. But the thought of another contest was too good to be passed, even though already-won money was at stake. Slowly everyone nodded.

  “I’ll bet myself, then,” Phil called down. “A shilling on Hoolihan!”

  The winners laughed and hooted; they looked to win again. Hoolihan waved graciously. The losers turned to their man.

  “Do you hear the insult, Doone? Stay awake, man!”

  “When the girl sings, damn it, go deaf!”

  “Places, everyone!” Timulty jostled about.

  “There’s no audience,” said Hoolihan. “And without them there’s no obstacles, no real contest.”

  “Why”—Snell-Orkney blinked around—“let’s all of us be the audience.”

  “Snell-and-Orkney,” said Timulty, “you’re a genius!”

  Beaming, everyone threw himself into a seat.

  “Better yet,” announced Timulty, up front, “why not make it teams? Doone and Hoolihan, sure, but for every Doone man or Hoolihan man that makes it out before the anthem freezes him on his hobnails, an extra point, right?”

  “Done!” cried everyone.

  “Pardon,” I said. “There’s no one outside to judge.”

  Everyone turned to look at me.

  “Ah,” said Timulty. “Well. Nolan, outside!”

  Nolan trudged up the aisle, cursing.

  Phil stuck his head from the projection booth above.

  “Are ya clods down there ready?”

  “If the girl is and the anthem is!”

  And the lights went out.

  I found myself seated next in from Doone, who whispered fervently, “Poke me, lad, keep me alert to practicalities instead of ornamentation, eh?”

  “Shut up!” said someone. “There’s the mystery.”

  And there indeed it was, the mystery of song and art and life, if you will, the young girl singing on the time-haunted screen.

  “We lean on you, Doone,” I whispered.

  “Eh?” he replied. He smiled ahead. “Ah, look, ain’t she lovely? Do you hear?”

  “The bet, Doone,” I said. “Get ready.”

  “All right,” he groused.
“Let me stir my bones. Oh, no! Jesus save me.”

  “What?”

  “I never thought to test. My right leg. Feel. Naw, you can’t. It’s dead, it is!”

  “Asleep, you mean?” I said, appalled.

  “Dead or asleep, hell, I’m sunk! Lad, lad, you must run for me! Here’s my cap and scarf!”

  “Your cap …?”

  “When victory is yours, show them, and we’ll explain you ran to replace this fool leg of mine!”

  I clapped the cap on, tied the scarf.

  “But look here—” I protested.

  “You’ll do brave! Just remember, it’s finis and no sooner! The song’s almost up. Are you tensed?”

  “God, I think so!”

  “It’s blind passions that win, boy. Plunge straight. If you step on someone, don’t look back. There!” Doone held his legs to one side to give clearance. “The song’s done. He’s kissing her—”

  “The finis!” I cried.

  And leaped into the aisle.

  I ran up the slope. I’m first! I thought. I’m ahead! There’s the door!

  I hit the door as the anthem began.

  I slammed into the lobby—safe!

  I won! I thought, incredulous, with Doone’s cap and scarf like victory laurels upon and about me. Won for the Team!

  Who’s second, third, fourth?

  I turned to the door as it swung shut.

  Only then did I hear the shouts and yells inside.

  Good Lord! I thought, six men have tried the wrong exit at once, someone tripped, fell, someone else piled on. Otherwise, why am I the first and only? There’s a fierce silent combat in there this second, the two teams locked in mortal wrestling attitudes, asprawl, akimbo, above and below the seats—that must be it!

  I’ve won! I wanted to yell, to break it up.

  I threw the door wide.

  I stared into an abyss where nothing stirred.

  Nolan came to peer over my shoulder.

  “That’s the Irish for you,” he said, nodding. “Even more than the sprint, it’s the muse they like.”

  For what were the voices yelling in the dark?

  “Run it again! Over! That last song! Phil!”

  “No one move. I’m in heaven. Doone, how right you were!”

  Nolan passed me, going in to sit.

  I stood for a long moment looking down along all the rows where the teams of anthem sprinters sat, none having stirred, wiping their eyes.

  “Phil, darling?” called Timulty, somewhere up front.

  “It’s done!” cried Phil.

  “And this time,” added Timulty, “without the anthem.”

  Applause.

  The dim lights flashed off. The screen glowed like a great warm hearth.

  I looked back out at the bright sane world of Grafton Street, the pub, the hotels, shops, and night-wandering folk. I hesitated.

  Then, to the tune of “The Lovely Isle of Innisfree,” I took off the cap and scarf, hid these laurels under a seat, and slowly, luxuriously, with all the time in the world, moved in past Snell-Orkney and his canary five and quietly sat myself down …

  Chapter 30

  And suddenly it was time to leave.

  “But great God!” Timulty said. “You just arrived!”

  “We found what we came for and said our say and watched your amazing sprint, for which much thanks. There’s no need to stay,” announced the tall sad happy old young man. “It’s back to the hothouse with the flowers … or they wilt overnight. We are always flying and jumping and running. We are always on the move.”

  The airport being fogged in, there was nothing for it but the birds cage themselves on the Dun Laoghaire boat bound for England, and there was nothing for it but the inhabitants of Finn’s and myself should be down at the dock to watch them pull away late in the evening. There they stood, all six, on the top deck, waving their thin hands down, and there stood Timulty and Nolan and Garrity and the rest of us waving our hands up. And as the boat hooted and pulled away, the keeper-of-the-birds nodded once and winged his right hand on the air, and all sang forth: As I was walking through Dublin City, about the hour of twelve at night, I saw a maid, so fair was she … combing her hair by candlelight.

  “Jesus,” said Timulty, “do you hear?”

  “Sopranos, every one of them!” cried Nolan.

  “Not Irish sopranos, but real real sopranos,” said Kelly. “Damn, why didn’t they say? If we’d known, we’d have had a good hour of that out of them before the boat.”

  Timulty nodded and added, listening to the music float over the waters, “Strange. Strange. I hate to see them go. Think. Think. For a hundred years or more, people have said we had none. But now they have returned, if but for a little time.”

  “We had none of what?” asked Garrity. “And what returned?”

  “Why,” said Timulty, “the fairies, of course, the fairies that once lived in Ireland, and live here no more, but who came this day and changed our weather, and there they go again, who once stayed all the while.”

  “Ah, shut up!” cried Kilpatrick. “And listen!”

  And listen we did, nine men on the end of a dock as the boat sailed out and the voices sang and the fog came in, and they did not move for a long time until the boat was far gone and the voices faded like a scent of papaya on the mist.

  By the time we got back to The Four Provinces it had begun to snow, which soon turned to rain.

  Chapter 31

  The night of the long knives.

  Or one long knife—the guillotine.

  If only I had known, as the heroes in mystery novels used to say.

  When it was over, I was reminded of Elijah at the gangplank or myself in Beverly Hills in the bookshop buying my portable Melville and hearing that strange woman’s prophecy of doom: “Don’t go on that journey.”

  And my naive response, “He’s never met anyone like me before. Maybe that will make the difference.”

  Yep. Sure. The difference being it took a bit more time to prepare the pig’s head for the hammer, the razor at the throat, and the hanging on the tender-hook.

  Lenin referred to dumbclucks like me as “useful idiots.”

  Which is to say the image of Chaplin—remember?—crossing a street as a lumber truck passes and drops a warning red flag off the load. Chaplin picks it up and runs after the truck, to warn them they’ve lost the flag. Instantly, a mob of Bolsheviks rounds the corner behind him, unseen, as Chaplin stands waving the flag after the truck. Enter the cops. Who promptly seize Chaplin, trample the red flag, and beat the hell out of him before throwing him in the hoosegow. The mob, of course, escapes. So …

  There I am, in Dublin, with a red flag, waving it at John. Or there I am in the Place de la Concorde as the Bastille wagons park and I offer to help folks up the guillotine steps. Only when I reach the top do I realize where I am, panic, and come down in two pieces.

  Such is the life of the innocent, or someone who kids himself he is innocent. As someone once said to me: “Let’s not be too naive, shall we?”

  I wish I had heard and followed that advice on that night in a Chinese restaurant somewhere in the fogs and rains of Dublin.

  It was one of those nights when the prophet Elijah did not prevent me—nor did I prevent myself—from drinking too many drinks and spilling too many beans in front of Jake Vickers and his Parisian lady and three or four visitors from New York and Hollywood.

  It was one of those nights when it seemed you can’t do anything wrong. One of those nights when everything you say is brilliant, honed, sharpened to a razor edge of risibility, when every word you speak sends the house on a roar, when people hold their ribs with laughter, waiting for your next shot across their bows, and shoot you do, and laugh they do, until you are all bathed in a warm love of hilarity and are about to fall on the floor writhing with your own genius, your own incredible humor raised to its highest temperature.

  I sat listening to my own tongue wag, aim, and fire, damn well pl
eased at my own comic genius. Everyone was looking at me and my alcohol-oiled tongue. Even John was breaking down at my wild excursions into amiable insult and caricature. I imagined I had saved up tidbits on everyone at the table, and like those handwriting experts we encounter on occasion in life who read more in our hairlines, eyebrows, ear twitchings, nostril flarings, and teeth barings than are written in our Horatio stars or inked on plain pad with pencil, guessed at the obvious. If we do not give ourselves away in our handwriting or clothes or the percentage of alcohol on our breaths, our breathing does us in or the merest nod or shake of the head as the handwriting expert sniffs our mouthwash, or our genius. So lining up my friends one after another, against the stockade wall, I fired fusillades of wit at their habits, poses, pretensions, lovers, artistic outputs, lapses in taste, failures to arrive on time, errors in observation, and on and on. Most of it, I would hope, gently done with no scars to bandage later. So I drilled holes in masks, poured sulphur in, and lit the fuse. The explosions left darkened faces but no lost digits. At one point Jake cried, “Someone stop him!”

  Christ, I wish they had.

  For my next victim was John himself.

  I paused for breath. Everyone stilled in their explosive roars, watching me with bright fox eyes, urging me to get on with it. John’s next. Fix him!

  So there I was with my hero, my love, my great good fine wondrous friend, and there I was reaching out suddenly and taking his hands.

  “Did you know, John, that I, too, am one of the world’s great hypnotists?”

  “Is that so, kid?” John laughed.

  “Hey!” everyone cried.

  “Yep,” I said. “Hypnotist. World’s greatest. Someone fill my glass.”

  Jake Vickers poured gin in my glass.

  “Go it!” yelled everyone.

  “Here goes,” I said.

  No, someone inside me whispered.

  I seized John’s wrists. “I am about to hypnotize you. Don’t be afraid!”

  “You don’t scare me, kid,” John said.

  “I’m going to help you with a problem.”

  “What’s that, kid?”

  “Your problem is—” I searched his face, my intuitive mind. “Your problem is, ah.”

  It came from me. It burst out.

  “ I am not afraid of flying to London, John. I do not fear. It is you that fears. You’re afraid.”