The Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien Read online

  Remember me and pray for me.

  Adieu!

  * * *

  *“Truagh sin, a leabhair bhig bháin

  Tiocfaidh lá, is ba fíor,

  Déarfaidh neach os cionn do chláir

  Ní mhaireann an lámh do scríobh.”

  [“It is a pity, beloved little book

  A day will come, to be sure,

  Someone will inscribe over your contents

  ‘The hand that wrote this lives not.’” (Trans. Jack Fennell)]

  †Who is Carruthers McDaid, you ask?

  John Duffy’s Brother (1940)

  by Flann O’Brien

  Strictly speaking, this story should not be written or told at all. To write it or to tell it is to spoil it. This is because the man who had the strange experience we are going to talk about never mentioned it to anybody, and the fact that he kept his secret and sealed it up completely in his memory is the whole point of the story. Thus we must admit that handicap at the beginning—that it is absurd for us to tell the story, absurd for anybody to listen to it, and unthinkable that anybody should believe it.

  We will, however, do this man one favour. We will refrain from mentioning him by his complete name. This will enable us to tell his secret and permit him to continue looking his friends in the eye. But we can say that his surname is Duffy. There are thousands of these Duffys in the world; even at this moment there is probably a new Duffy making his appearance in some corner of it. We can even go so far as to say that he is John Duffy’s brother. We do not break faith in saying so, because if there are only one hundred John Duffys in existence, and even if each one of them could be met and questioned, no embarrassing enlightenments would be forthcoming. That is because the John Duffy in question never left his house, never left his bed, never talked to anybody in his life, and was never seen by more than one man. That man’s name was Gumley. Gumley was a doctor. He was present when John Duffy was born and also when he died, one hour later.

  John Duffy’s brother lived alone in a small house on an eminence in Inchicore. When dressing in the morning he could gaze across the broad valley of the Liffey to the slopes of the Phoenix Park, peacefully. Usually the river was indiscernible but on a sunny morning it could be seen lying like a long glistening spear in the valley’s palm. Like a respectable married man, it seemed to be hurrying into Dublin as if to work.

  Sometimes recollecting that his clock was fast, John Duffy’s brother would spend an idle moment with his father’s spyglass, ranging the valley with an eagle eye. The village of Chapelizod was to the left and invisible in the depth but each morning the inhabitants would erect, as if for Mr. Duffy’s benefit, a lazy plume of smoke to show exactly where they were.

  Mr. Duffy’s glass usually came to rest on the figure of a man hurrying across the uplands of the Park and disappearing from view in the direction of the Magazine Fort. A small white terrier bounced along ahead of him but could be seen occasionally sprinting to overtake him after dallying behind for a time on private business.

  The man carried in the crook of his arm an instrument which Mr. Duffy at first took to be a shotgun or patent repeating rifle, but one morning the man held it by the butt and smote the barrels smartly on the ground as he walked, and it was then evident to Mr. Duffy—he felt some disappointment—that the article was a walking-stick.

  It happened that this man’s name was Martin Smullen. He was a retired stationary-engine driver and lived quietly with a delicate sister at Number Four Cannon Row, Parkgate. Mr. Duffy did not know his name and was destined never to meet him or have the privilege of his acquaintance, but it may be worth mentioning that they once stood side by side at the counter of a public house in Little Easter Street, mutually unrecognised, each to the other a black stranger. Mr. Smullen’s call was whiskey, Mr. Duffy’s stout.

  Mr. Smullen’s sister’s name was not Smullen but Goggins, relict of the late Paul Goggins, wholesale clothier. Mr. Duffy had never even heard of her. She had a cousin by the name of Leo Corr who was not unknown to the police. He was sent up in 1924 for a stretch of hard labour in connection with the manufacture of spurious currency. Mrs. Goggins had never met him, but heard that he had emigrated to Labrador on his release.

  About the spyglass. A curious history attaches to its owner, also a Duffy, late of the Mercantile Marine. Although unprovided with the benefits of a University education—indeed, he had gone to sea at the age of sixteen as a result of an incident arising out of an imperfect understanding of the sexual relation—he was of a scholarly turn of mind and would often spend the afternoons of his sea-leave alone in his dining-room thumbing a book of Homer with delight or annotating with erudite sneers the inferior Latin of the Angelic Doctor. On the fourth day of July, 1927, at four o’clock, he took leave of his senses in the dining-room. Four men arrived in a closed van at eight o’clock that evening to remove him from mortal ken to a place where he would be restrained for his own good.

  It could be argued that much of the foregoing has little real bearing on the story of John Duffy’s brother, but modern writing, it is hoped, has passed the stage when simple events are stated in the void without any clue as to the psychological and hereditary forces working in the background to produce them. Having said so much, however, it is now permissible to set down briefly the nature of the adventure of John Duffy’s brother.

  He arose one morning—on the 9th of March, 1932—dressed, and cooked his frugal breakfast. Immediately afterwards, he became possessed of the strange idea that he was a train. No explanation of this can be attempted. Small boys sometimes like to pretend that they are trains, and there are fat women in the world who are not, in the distance, without some resemblance to trains. But John Duffy’s brother was certain that he was a train—long, thunderous, and immense, with white steam escaping noisily from his feet and deep-throated bellows coming rhythmically from where his funnel was.

  Moreover, he was certain that he was a particular train, the 9.20 into Dublin. His station was the bedroom. He stood absolutely still for twenty minutes, knowing that a good train is equally punctual in departure as in arrival. He glanced often at his watch to make sure that the hour should not go by unnoticed. His watch bore the words “Shockproof” and “Railway Timekeeper.”

  Precisely at 9.20 he emitted a piercing whistle, shook the great mass of his metal ponderously into motion, and steamed away heavily into town. The train arrived dead on time at its destination, which was the office of Messrs. Polter and Polter, Solicitors, Commissioners for Oaths. For obvious reasons, the name of this firm is fictitious. In the office were two men, old Mr. Cranberry and young Mr. Hodge. Both were clerks and both took their orders from John Duffy’s brother. Of course, both names are imaginary.

  “Good Morning, Mr. Duffy,” said Mr. Cranberry. He was old and polite, grown yellow in the firm’s service.

  Mr. Duffy looked at him in surprise. “Can you not see I am a train?” he said. “Why do you call me Mr. Duffy?”

  Mr. Cranberry gave a laugh and winked at Mr. Hodge who sat young, neat and good-looking, behind his typewriter.

  “Alright, Mr. Train,” he said. “That’s a cold morning, sir. Hard to get up steam these cold mornings, sir.”

  “It is not easy,” said Mr. Duffy. He shunted expertly to his chair and waited patiently before he sat down while the company’s servants adroitly uncoupled him. Mr. Hodge was sniggering behind his roller.

  “Any cheap excursions, sir?” he asked.

  “No,” Mr. Duffy replied. “There are season tickets, of course.”

  “Third class and first class, I suppose, sir?”

  “No,” said Mr. Duffy. “In deference to the views of Herr Marx, all class distinctions in the passenger rolling-stock have been abolished.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Cranberry.

  “That’s communism,” said Mr. Hodge.

  “He means,” said Mr. Cranberry, “that it is now first-class only.”

  “How many wheels has your engine?” as
ked Mr. Hodge. “Three big ones?”

  “I am not a goods train,” said Mr. Duffy acidly. “The wheel formation of a passenger engine is four-four-two—two large driving wheels on each side, coupled, of course, with a four-wheel bogey in front and two small wheels at the cab. Why do you ask?”

  “The platform’s in the way,” Mr. Cranberry said. “He can’t see it.”

  “Oh, quite,” said Mr. Duffy. “I forgot.”

  “I suppose you use a lot of coal?” Mr. Hodge said.

  “About half-a-ton per thirty miles,” said Mr. Duffy slowly, mentally checking the consumption of that morning. “I need scarcely say that frequent stopping and starting at suburban stations takes a lot out of me.”

  “I’m sure it does,” said Mr. Hodge, with sympathy.

  They talked like that for half an hour until the elderly Mr. Polter arrived and passed gravely into his back office. When that happened, conversation was at an end. Little was heard until lunch-time except the scratch of pens and the fitful clicking of the typewriter.

  John Duffy’s brother always left the office at one thirty and went home to his lunch. Consequently he started getting steam up at twelve forty five so that there should be no delay at the hour of departure. When the “Railway Timekeeper” said that it was one thirty, he let out another shrill whistle and steamed slowly out of the office without a word or a look at his colleagues. He arrived home dead on time.

  We now approach the really important part of the plot, the incident which gives the whole story its significance. In the middle of his lunch John Duffy’s brother felt something important, something queer, momentous, and magical taking place inside his brain, an immense tension relaxing, clean light flooding a place which had been dark. He dropped his knife and fork and sat there for a time wild-eyed, a filling of potatoes unattended in his mouth. Then he swallowed, rose weakly from the table and walked to the window, wiping away the perspiration which had started out on his brow.

  He gazed out into the day, no longer a train, but a badly frightened man. Inch by inch he went back over his morning. So far as he could recall he had killed no one, shouted no bad language, broken no windows. He had only talked to Cranberry and Hodge. Down in the roadway there was no dark van arriving with uniformed men infesting it. He sat down again desolately beside the unfinished meal.

  John Duffy’s brother was a man of some courage. When he got back to the office he had some whiskey in his stomach and it was later in the evening than it should be. Hodge and Cranberry seemed preoccupied with their letters. He hung up his hat casually and said:

  “I’m afraid the train is a bit late getting back.”

  From below his downcast brows he looked very sharply at Cranberry’s face. He thought he saw the shadow of a smile flit absently on the old man’s placid features as they continued poring down on a paper. The smile seemed to mean that a morning’s joke was not good enough for the same evening. Hodge rose suddenly in his corner and passed silently into Mr. Polter’s office with his letters. John Duffy’s brother sighed and sat down wearily at his desk.

  When he left the office that night, his heart was lighter and he thought he had a good excuse for buying more liquor. Nobody knew his secret but himself and nobody else would ever know.

  It was a complete cure. Never once did the strange malady return. But to this day John Duffy’s brother starts at the rumble of a train in the Liffey tunnel and stands rooted to the road when he comes suddenly on a level-crossing—silent, so to speak, upon a peak in Darien.

  When I Met William of Orange (1942)

  Footnote to the Battle of the Boyne

  by Flann O’Brien

  “When I Would Wish to Have Lived, and Why”

  No. 17 of a Series.

  When the Editor asked me to write about the period in Irish history in which I would prefer to have lived, I had many doubts and misgivings. There seemed to be an endless selection of periods from which to choose, each of them offering a better prospect than the dreary and dangerous present. I went to bed with the problem and had a curious dream which I reproduce below. It seems that had I lived in the days of King William and King James, I might at least have made myself useful.

  —Flann O’Brien1

  “It was a bad business all right,” said William, edging over to me. “By the way, has he got the pipes on again?”

  “He has,” I muttered.

  “Well now, wouldn’t you think it’s warm enough without the pipes? He’s a terrible man, there’s no doubt about it. Tell me now,” he added confidentially, “how did you get into it at all? Were you walked into it?”

  “Not at all. I blame nobody but myself.”

  William coughed and tried to wave the swirling black smoke away from his red eyes.

  “Those pipes,” he said, “are very bad for anybody with a weak chest. They dry up the air, you know. Where were we? Oh, yes, the Battle of the Boyne. Tell me about it. How did you get mixed up in it? You don’t look like a fighting man, if you’ll pardon the remark.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Of course, an Irish cripple could best ten able-bodied foreigners—I know that,” he said hastily, “or at least so they say in America. But what happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” I said sulkily. “I just couldn’t mind my own business.”

  “Tell me about it. I like you, you know. I’m sure you have a background.”

  “I used to live beside the Boyne . . .” I began.

  “A nice river,” he remarked, “and nice country. As nice a piece of landscape as was ever seen in Holland.”

  “I used to live beside the Boyne, half naked in a wooden hut. We were real Irish and very poor, you know. The only thing we had was our religion. We were very strict R.Cs. We were more Roman than the Romans themselves.”

  “On the lines of Hiberniores—”

  “We spoke Irish at the time, but my father was a native speaker of English, and at a time, if I may say so, when it was neither popular nor profitable. Caith uait an Ghaedhilg, I remember him saying, tá na bodaigh gallda ag teacht agus ní bheidh aon mheas aca uirthi.’”2

  “It’s a great thing now in the schools—the Irish,” William remarked.

  “One day I was out fishing for the dinner. I don’t know whether you ever tasted a Boyne salmon. . . .”

  William made a clicking sound, ran his flat palm in a circle round his stomach and put a look of rapture on his blackened face.

  “I remember once in England I lost as nice a piece of tackle as you ever—”

  “I kept changing the bait. After a while I began to feel that there was something in the air. Occasionally I heard the gallop of big companies of horsemen in the distance. Now and again I would hear men calling and a noise like the rumble of heavy carts on stony ground. It was all far away but there seemed to be a lot of people moving about the place. I couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t a fair day or anything.”

  “I wasn’t very far away from you just then,” William said, smiling.

  “Then a couple of guns went off—accidentally, I suppose. The bang gave me a terrible start. I nearly lept into the water. And whether the fish got a fright, too, I don’t know, but a big fellow suddenly swallied hook, sinker, and all. It took me ten minutes to get him out. He weighed twelve pounds and he was that length—look.”

  I held out my charred hands.

  “Now, now,” said William chidingly.

  “On my solemn oath.”

  “All right,” said William. “No offence. Go on.”

  “With my fish caught and queer noises in the air, I needn’t tell you that I thought that the right place to be was home. And home I went.”

  “Fair enough,” said William.

  “When I reached the hut I nearly fell out of my standing with surprise. Here at the door by your leave were two foreign-looking blackguards of soldiers with fancy uniforms talking to my poor old mother—or trying to. They hadn’t a word of Irish between the pair of them.”

  “I se
e.”

  “What do you think they wanted?”

  “Roughly speaking, I could think of about two hundred things that those boys were fond of.”

  “Buttermilk!”

  “Buttermilk?”

  “Buttermilk.”

  William smiled knowingly and shook his head.

  “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “My guess is that they had had a big night the night before. They were a pair of Dutch Blue Guards, if I’m not mistaken. Terrible men, drunk night and morning.”

  “They looked pretty bad all right. I got talking to them. They said there was going to be a big war. They mentioned a lot of foreign names I could not take in properly. Then they started shaking hands and looking very friendly. Do you know why?”

  “Search me,” William said.

  “They saw something in the house that told them we were Catholics. Be damned but they were Catholics too! They were. We got very pally, as thick as thieves. They told me about grand big cathedrals across the sea and we drank the Pope’s health in buttermilk. I couldn’t take my eyes off their uniforms. You never seen the like—gold braid and buckles and whistles on fancy cords and muskets with ornamental work on the breech.

  “I asked one would I get a uniform, whistle and all, if I joined up. He said certainly. Your other man then piped up about what he called ‘pickings.’ You got the pickings in the pockets of dead soldiers. He said the soldiers that died were always on the other side.

  “‘Listen here, Bonaparte,’ says I to myself—by the way, I haven’t seen that fellow knocking around here for a while; maybe your man gave him the oven for some breach of discipline—‘listen here, Bonaparte,’ says I to myself, ‘you’re wasting your time in this hole. Join the army and see the world.’ Why the hell didn’t I mind my own business instead of meddling with foreigners and politics? Tell me that?”

  I turned to William with some heat. He only made a helpless gesture and rolled his red eyes.