More Pricks Than Kicks

by Beckett, Samuel

  Hard on the heels of the Poet came a gaggle of non-descripts, then a public botanist, then a Galway Gael, then the Shetland Shawly with her Chas. Him the Student, mindful of his pledge, accosted.

  “In what sense”—he would have it out of him or perish—“did you use sense when you said…?”

  “He said that?” exclaimed the botanist.

  “Chas” said Caleken, as though she were announcing the name of a winner.

  “Adsum” admitted Chas.

  A plum of phlegm burst in the vestibule.

  “What I want to know” complained the Student, “what we all want to know, is in what sense he was using sense when he said…”

  The Gael, in the heart of a cabbage of nondescripts, was bungling Duke Street's thought for the day to the crone.

  “Owen …” he began again, when a nameless ignoramus, anxious to come into the picture as early on in the proceedings as possible, said rashly:

  “What Owen?”

  “Good evening” squalled the Polar Bear, “good evening good evening. Wat a night, Madame” he addressed himself vehemently, out of sheer politeness, directly to his hostess, “God wat a night!”

  The crone was as fond of the P.B. as though she had bought him in Clery's toy fair.

  “And you so far to come!” She wished she could dandle him on her knee. He was a shabby man and often moody. “Too good of you to come” she hushabied, “too good of you.”

  The Man of Law, his face a blaze of acne, was next, escorting the Parabimbi and three tarts dressed for the backstairs.

  “I met him” whispered Chas “zigzagging down Pearse Street, Brunswick Street, you know, that was.”

  “En route?” ventured Caleken. She was a bit above herself with all the excitement.

  “Hein?”

  “On his way here?”

  “Well” said Chas, “I regret, my dear Miss Frica, that he did not make it absolutely clear if he comes or not.”

  The Gael said to the P.B. in an injured voice:

  “Here's a man wants to know what Owen.”

  “Not possible” said the P.B., “you astonish me.”

  “Is it of the sweet mouth?” said a sandy son of Ham.

  Now the prong of the P.B.'s judgment was keen and bright.

  “That emmerdeur” he jeered, “the strange sweet mouth!”

  The Parabimbi jumped.

  “You said?” she said.

  Caleken emerged from the ruck, she came to the fore.

  “What can be keeping the girls” she said. It was not exactly a question.

  “And your sister” enquired the botanist, “Your charming sister, where can she be this evening now I wonder.”

  The Beldam sprang into the breach.

  “Unfortunately” she said, in ringing tones and with great precipitation, “in bed, unwell. A great disappointment to us all.”

  “Nothing of moment, Madam” said the Man of Law “let us hope?”

  “Thank you, no. Happily not. A slight indisposition. Poor little Dandelion!” The Beldam heaved a heavy sigh.

  The P.B. exchanged a look of intelligence with the Gael.

  “What girls?” he said.

  Caleken expanded her lungs:

  “Pansy”—the Poet had a palpitation, why had he not brought his nux vomica?—“Lilly Neary, Olga, Elliseva, Bride Maria, Alga, Ariana, tall Tib, slender Sib, Alma Beatrix, Alba—” They were really too numerous, she could not go through the entire list. She staunched her mouth.

  “Alba!” ejaculated the P.B., “Alba! She!”

  “And why” interposed the Countess of Parabimbi “why not Alba, whoever she may be, rather than, say, the Wife of Bath?”

  A nondescript appeared in their midst, he panted the glad tidings. The girls had arrived.

  “They are gurrls” said the botanist “beyond question. But are they the gurrls?”

  “Now I hope we can start” said the younger Frica, and, the elder being aware of no let or hindrance, up on to the estrade smartly she stepped and unveiled the refreshments. Turning her back on the high dumb-waiter, with a great winged gesture of lapidated piety, she instituted the following selection:

  “Cup! Squash! Cocoa! Force! Julienne! Pan Kail! Cock-a-Leekie! Hulluah! Apfelmus! Isinglass! Ching-Ching!”

  A terrible silence fell on the assembly.

  “Great cry” said Chas “and little wool.”

  The more famished faithful stormed the platform.

  Two banned novelists, a bibliomaniac and his mistress, a paleographer, a violist d'amore with his instrument in a bag, a popular parodist with his sister and six daughters, a still more popular Professor of Bullscrit and Comparative Ovoidology, the saprophile the better for drink, a communist painter and decorator fresh back from the Moscow reserves, a merchant prince, two grave Jews, a rising strumpet, three more poets with Lauras to match, a disaffected cicisbeo, a chorus of playwrights, the inevitable envoy of the Fourth Estate, a phalanx of Grafton Street Stürmers and Jemmy Higgins arrived now in a body. No sooner had they been absorbed than the Parabimbi, very much the lone bird on this occasion in the absence of her husband the Count who had been unable to escort her on account of his being buggered if he would, got in her attributions of the Frica for which, as has been shown, the Beldam was so profoundly beholden.

  “Maaaacche!” said the Countess of Parabimbi, “I do but constate.”

  She held the saucer under her chin like a communion-card. She lowered the cup into its socket without a sound.

  “Excellent” she said, “most excellent Force.”

  The crone smiled from the teeth outward.

  “So glad” she said, “so glad.”

  The Professor of Bullscrit and Comparative Ovoidology was nowhere to be seen. But that was not his vocation, he was not a little boy. His function was to be heard. He was widely and distinctly heard.

  “When the immortal Byron” he bombled “was about to leave Ravenna, to sail in search of some distant shore where a hero's death might end his immortal spleen…”

  “Ravenna!” exclaimed the Countess, memory tugging at her carefully cultivated heart-strings, “did I hear someone say Ravenna?”

  “Allow me” said the rising strumpet: “a sandwich: egg, tomato, cucumber.”

  “Did you know” blundered the Man of Law “that the Swedes have no fewer than seventy varieties of Smoerrbroed?”

  The voice of the arithmomaniac was heard:

  “The arc” he said, stooping to all in the great plainness of his words, “is longer than its chord.”

  “Madam knows Ravenna?” said the paleographer.

  “Do I know Ravenna!” exclaimed the Parabimbi. “Sure I know Ravenna. A sweet and noble city.”

  “You know of course” said the Man of Law “that Dante died there.”

  “Right” said the Parabimbi, “so he did.”

  “You know of course” said the Professor “that his tomb is in the Piazza Byron. I did his epitaph in the eye into blank heroics.”

  “You knew of course” said the paleographer “that under Belisarius…”

  “My dear” said the Parabimbi to the Beldam, “how well it goes. What a happy party and how at home they all seem. I declare” she declared “I envy you your flair for making people feel at their ease.”

  The Beldam disclaimed faintly any such faculty. It was Caleken's party reelly, it was Caleken who had arranged everything reelly. She personally had had very little to do with the arrangements. She just sat there and looked exhausted. She was just a weary old Norn.

  “To my thinking” boomed the Professor, begging the question as usual, “the greatest triumph of the human mind was the calculation of Neptune from the observed vagaries of the orbit of Uranus.”

  “And yours” said the P.B. That was an apple of gold and a picture of silver if you like.

  The Parabimbi waxed stiff.

  “What's that?” she cried, “what's that he says?”

  A still more terrible silence fell on
the assembly. The saprophile had slapped the communist painter and decorator.

  The Frica, supported by Mr Higgins, pounced on the disturbance.

  “Go” she said to the saprophile “and let there be no scene.”

  Mr Higgins, who kicked up his heels in the scrum for the Rangers, made short work of the nuisance. The Frica turned on the poor P. and D.

  “It is not my intention” she said “to tolerate hooligans in this house.”

  “He called me a bloody Bolshy” protested the glorious Komsomolet, “and he a labour man himself.”

  “Let there be no more of it” said the Frica, “let there be no more of it.” She was very optative. “I beg of you.” She stepped back fleetly to the altar.

  “You heard what she said” said the Gael.

  “Let there be no more of it” said the native speaker.

  “I beg of you” said the P.B.

  But now she cometh that all this may disdain, Alba, dauntless daughter of desires. Entering just on the turn of the hush, advancing like a midinette to pay her ironical respects to the Beldam, she fired the thorns under every pot. Turning her scarlet back on the crass crackling of the Parabimbi she mounted the estrade and there, silent and still before the elements of refreshment, in profile to the assistance, cast her gravitational nets.

  The rising strumpet studied how to do it. The sister of the parodist passed on to such as were curious what little she and her dear nieces knew of the Alba who was much spoken of in certain virtuous circles to which they had access, though to be sure how much of what they heard was true and how much mere idle gossip they were really not in a position to determine. However, for what it was worth, it appeared…

  The Gael, the native speaker, a space-writer and the violist d'amore got together as though by magic.

  “Well” invited the space-writer.

  “Pret-ty good” said the Gael.

  “Ex-quisite” said the violist d'amore.

  The native speaker said nothing.

  “Well” insisted the space-writer, “Larry?”

  Larry tore his eyes away from the estrade and said, drawing his palms slowly up the flanks of his kilt:

  “Jaysus!”

  “Meaning to say?” said the space-writer.

  Larry turned his wild gaze back on the estrade.

  “You don't happen to know” he said finally “does she?”

  “They all do” said the violist d'amore.

  “Like hell they do” groaned the Gael, ricordandosi del tempo felice.

  “What I want to know” said the Student, “what we all are most anxious to know…”

  “Some do abstain” said the space-writer, “our friend here is right, through bashfulness from venery. It is a pity, but there you are.”

  Great wits will jump and Jemmy Higgins and the P.B. converged on the estrade.

  “You look pale” said the Frica “and ill, my pet.”

  The Alba raised her big head from the board, looked longly at the Frica, closed her eyes and intoned:

  Woe and Pain, Pain and Woe,

  Are my lot, night and noon…

  Caleken fell back.

  “Keep them off” said the Alba.

  “Keep them off!” echoed Caleken, “keep them off?”

  “We go through this world” observed the Alba “like sunbeams through cracks in cucumbers.”

  Caleken was not so sure about the sunbeams.

  “Take a little cup” she urged, “it will do you good. Or a Ching-Ching.”

  “Keep them off” said the Alba, “off off off off.”

  But the P.B. and Higgins were on the estrade, they hemmed her in.

  “So be it” said the Alba, “let it run over by all means.”

  Phew! The Frica was unspeakably relieved.

  Half-past nine. The guests, led by the rising strumpet and declining cicisbeo, began to scatter through the house. The Frica let them go. In due course she would visit the alcoves, she would round them up for the party proper to begin. Had not Chas promised a piece of old French? Had not the Poet written a poem specially? She had peeped into the bag in the hall and seen the viol d'amore. So they would have a little music.

  Half-past nine. It was raining bitterly when Belacqua, keyed up to take his bearings, issued forth into the unintelligible world of Lincoln Place. But he had bought a bottle, it was like a breast in the pocket of his reefer. He set off unsteadily by the Dental Hospital. As a child he had dreaded its façade, its sheets of blood-red glass. Now they were black, which was worse again, he having put aside a childish thing or two. Feeling suddenly white and clammy he leaned against the iron wicket set in the College wall and looked at Johnston, Mooney and O'Brien's clocks. Something to ten by the whirlgig and he disinclined to stand, let alone walk. And the daggers of rain. He raised his hands and held them before his face, so close that even in the dark he could see the lines. They smelt bad. He carried them on to his forehead, the fingers sank in his wet hair, the heels crushed torrents of indigo out of his eyeballs, the rabbet of his nape took the cornice, it wrung the baby anthrax that he always wore just above his collar, he intensified the pressure and the pangs, they were a guarantee of identity.

  The next thing was his hands dragged roughly down from his eyes, which he opened on the vast crimson face of an ogre. For a moment it was still, plush gargoyle, then it moved, it was convulsed. This, he thought, is the face of some person talking. It was. It was that part of a Civic Guard pouring abuse upon him. Belacqua closed his eyes, there was no other way of ceasing to see it. Subduing a great desire to visit the pavement he catted, with undemonstrative abundance, all over the boots and trouserends of the Guard, in return for which incontinence he received such a dunch on the breast that he fell hip and thigh into the outskirts of his own offal. He had no feeling of hurt either to his person or to his amour propre, only a very amiable weakness and an impatience to be on the move. It must have gone ten. He bore no animosity towards the Guard, although now he began to hear what he was saying. He knelt before him in the filth, he heard all the odious words he was saying in the recreation of his duty, and bore him not the slightest ill-will. He reached up for a purchase on his gleaming cape and hoisted himself to his feet. The apology he made when stable for what had occurred was profusely rejected. He furnished his name and address, whence he came and whither he went, and why, his occupation and immediate business, and why. It distressed him to learn that for two pins the Guard would frog-march him to the Station, but he appreciated the officer's dilemma.

  “Wipe them boots” said the Guard.

  Belacqua was only too happy, it was the least he could do. Contriving two loose swabs of the Twilight Herald he stooped and cleaned the boots and trouser-ends to the best of his ability. A magnificent and enormous pair of boots emerged. He rose, clutching the fouled swabs, and looked up timidly at the Guard, who seemed rather at a loss as how best to press home his advantage.

  “I trust, Sergeant,” said Belacqua, in a murmur pitched to melt the hardest heart, “that you can see your way to overlooking my misdemeanour.”

  Justice and mercy had doubtless joined their ancient issue in the conscience of the Guard, for he said nothing. Belacqua tendered his right hand, innocent of any more mercantile commodity than that “gentle peace” recommended by the immortal Shakespeare, having first wiped it clean on his sleeve. This member the Dogberry, after a brief converse with his incorruptible heart, was kind enough to invest with the office of a cuspidor. Belacqua strangled a shrug and moved away in a tentative manner.

  “Hold on there” said the Guard.

  Belacqua halted, but in a very irritating way, as though he had just remembered something. The Guard, who had much more of the lion than of the fox, kept him standing until inside his helmet the throbbing of his Leix and Offaly head became more than he could endure. He then decided to conclude his handling of this small affair of public order.

  “Move on” he said.

  Belacqua walked away, holding tig
htly on to the swabs, which he rightly interpreted as litter. Once safely round the corner of Kildare Street he let them fall. Then, after a few paces forward, he halted, turned, hastened back to where they were fidgeting on the pavement and threw them into an area. Now he felt extraordinarily light and limber and haeres caeli. He followed briskly through the mizzle the way he had chosen, exalted, fashioning intricate festoons of words. It occurred to him, and he took great pleasure in working out this little figure, that the locus of his fall from the vague grace of the drink had intersected with that of his rise thereunto at its most agreeable point. That was beyond a doubt what had happened. Sometimes the drink-line looped the loop like an eight and if you had got what you were looking for on the way up you got it again on the way down. The bumless eight of the drink-figure. You did not end up where you started, but coming down you met yourself going up. Sometimes, as now, you were glad; more times you were sorry and hastened on to your new home.

  Suddenly walking through the rain was not enough, stepping out smartly, buttoned up to the chin, in the cold and the wet, was an inadequate thing to be doing. He stopped on the crown of Baggot Street bridge, took off his reefer, laid it on the parapet and sat down beside it. The Guard was forgotten. Stooping forward then where he sat and flexing his leg until the knee was against his ear and the heel caught on the parapet (admirable posture) he took off his boot and laid it beside the reefer. Then he let down that leg and did the same with the other. Next, resolved to get full value from the bitter nor'-wester that was blowing, he slewed himself right round. His feet dangled over the canal and he saw, lurching across the remote hump of Leeson Street bridge, trams like hiccups-o'-the-wisp. Distant lights on a dirty night, how he loved them, the dirty low-church Protestant! He felt very chilly. He took off his jacket and belt and laid them with the other garments on the parapet. He unbuttoned the top of his filthy old trousers and coaxed out his German shirt. He bundled the skirt of the shirt under the fringe of his pullover and rolled them up clockwise together until they were hooped fast across his thorax. The rain beat against his chest and belly and trickled down. It was even more agreeable than he had anticipated, but very cold. It was now, beating his bosom thus bared to the mean storm vaguely with marble palms, that he took leave of himself and felt wretched and sorry for what he had done. He had done wrong, he realised that, and he was heartily sorry. He sat on, drumming his stockinged heels sadly against the stone, wondering whence on earth could comfort spring, when suddenly the thought of the bottle he had bought pierced his gloomy condition like a beacon. It was there at hand in his pocket, a breast of Bisquit in the pocket of his reefer. He dried himself as best he might with his cambric pochette and adjusted his clothes. When everything was back in place, the reefer buttoned up as before, the boots laced and not a hole skipped, then, but not a moment before, he permitted himself to drink the bottle at a single gulp. The effect of this was to send what is called a glow of warmth what is called coursing through his veins. He squelched off down the street at a trot, resolved to make it, in so far as he had the power to do so, a non-stop run to Casa Frica. Jogging along with his elbows well up he prayed that his appearance might not provoke too much comment.