Green Shadows, White Whale Read online

  “What can be worse than death?” I wondered.

  “We,” murmured the priest, “shall soon see.”

  “Gentlemen!”

  A voice called. The mob turned.

  Lawyer Clement, at the rim of the grave, took the prim briefcase from under his arm, opened it, and drew forth a symboled and ribboned document, the beauty of which bugged the eye and rammed and sank the heart.

  “Before the obsequies,” he said, “before Father Kelly orates, I have a message, this codicil in Lord Kilgotten’s will, which I shall read aloud.”

  “I bet it’s the Eleventh Commandment,” murmured the priest, eyes down.

  “What would the Eleventh Commandment be?” asked Doone, scowling.

  “Why not: ‘Thou shalt shut up and listen,’ ” said the priest. ”Shh.”

  For the lawyer was reading from his ribboned document, and his voice floated on the hot summer wind, like this:

  “ ‘And whereas my wines are the finest—’ ”

  “They are that!” I whispered.

  “ ‘—and whereas the greatest labels from across the world fill my cellars, and whereas the people of this town, Kilcock, do not appreciate such things, but prefer the—er—hard stuff—’ ”

  “Who says?!” cried Doone.

  “Back in your ditch,” warned the priest, sotto voce.

  “ ‘I do hereby proclaim and pronounce,’ ” read the lawyer, with a great smarmy smirk of satisfaction, “ ‘that contrary to the old adage, a man can indeed take it with him. And I so order, write, and sign this codicil to my last will and testament in what might well be the final month of my life.’ Signed, William, Lord Kilgotten.”

  The lawyer stopped, folded the paper, and stood, eyes shut, waiting for the thunderclap that would follow the lightning bolt.

  “Does that mean,” asked Doone, wincing, “that the lord intends to …?”

  Someone pulled a cork out of a bottle.

  It was like a fusillade that shot all the men in their tracks.

  It was only, of course, the good lawyer Clement, at the rim of the damned grave, corkscrewing and yanking open the plug from a bottle of La Vieille Ferme ’49!

  “Is this the wake, then?” Doone laughed nervously.

  “It is not,” mourned the priest.

  With a smile of summer satisfaction, Clement, the lawyer, poured the wine, glug by glug, down into the grave, over the wine-carton box in which Lord Kilgotten’s thirsty bones were hid.

  “Hold on! He’s gone mad! Grab the bottle! No!”

  There was a vast explosion, like that from the crowd’s throat that has just seen its soccer champion slain midfield!

  “Wait! My God!”

  “Quick. Run get the lord!”

  “Dumb,” muttered Finn. “His Lordship’s in that box, and his wine is in the grave!”

  Stunned by this unbelievable calamity, the mob and I could only stare as the last of the first bottle cascaded down into the holy earth.

  Clement handed the bottle to Doone and uncorked a second.

  “Now wait just one moment!” cried the voice of the Day of Judgment.

  And it was, of course, Father Kelly, who stepped forth, bringing his higher law with him.

  “Do you mean to say,” cried the priest, his cheeks blazing, his eyes smoldering with bright sun, “you are going to dispense all that stuff in Kilgotten’s pit?”

  “That,” said the lawyer, “is my intent.”

  He began to pour the second bottle. But the priest stiff-armed him, to tilt the wine back.

  “And do you mean for us to just stand and watch your blasphemy?!”

  “At a wake, yes, that would be the polite thing to do.” The lawyer moved to pour again.

  “Just hold it, right there!” The priest stared around, up, down, at his friends from the pub, at Finn their spiritual leader, at the sky where God hid, at the earth where Kilgotten lay playing Mum’s the Word, and at last at lawyer Clement and his damned ribboned codicil. “Beware, man. You are provoking civil strife!”

  “Yah!” cried everyone, atilt on the air, fists at their sides, grinding and ungrinding invisible rocks.

  “Yah!” I heard myself echo.

  “What year is this wine?” Ignoring them, Clement calmly eyed the label in his hands. “Le Corton, 1938. The best wine in the finest year. Excellent.” He stepped free of the priest and let the wine spill.

  “Do something!” shouted Doone. “Have you no curse handy?”

  “Priests do not curse,” said Father Kelly. “But Finn, Doone, Hannahan, Burke. Jump! Knock heads.”

  The priest marched off, and the men and I rushed after to knock our heads in a bent-down ring and a great whisper with the father. In the midst of the conference the priest stood up to see what Clement was doing. The lawyer was on his third bottle.

  “Quick!” cried Doone. “He’ll waste the lot!”

  A fourth cork popped, to another outcry from Finn’s team, the Thirsty Warriors, as we would later dub ourselves.

  “Finn!” the priest was heard to say, deep in the heads-together. “You’re a genius!”

  “I am!” agreed Finn, and the huddle broke and the priest hustled back to the grave.

  “Would you mind, sir,” he said, grabbing the bottle out of the lawyer’s grip, “reading, one last time, that damned codicil?”

  “Pleasure.” And it was. The lawyer’s smile flashed as he fluttered the ribbons and snapped the will.

  “ ‘… that contrary to the old adage, a man can indeed take it with him …’”

  He finished and folded the paper, and tried another smile, which worked to his own satisfaction, at least. He reached for the bottle confiscated by the priest.

  “Hold on.” Father Kelly stepped back. He gave a look to the crowd who waited on each fine word. “Let me ask you a question, Mr. Lawyer, sir. Does it anywhere say there just how the wine is to get into the grave?”

  “Into the grave is into the grave,” said the lawyer.

  “As long as it finally gets there, that’s the important thing, do we agree?” asked the priest, with a strange smile.

  “I can pour it over my shoulder, or toss it in the air,” said the lawyer. “As long as it lights to either side or atop the coffin when it comes down, all’s well.”

  “Good!” exclaimed the priest. “Men! One squad here. One battalion over there. Line up! Doone!”

  “Sir?”

  “Spread the rations. Jump!”

  “Sir!” Doone jumped.

  To a great uproar of men bustling and lining up.

  “I, ” said the lawyer, “am going to find the police!”

  “Which is me,” said a man at the far side of the mob. “Officer Bannion. Your complaint?”

  Stunned, lawyer Clement could only blink and at last, in a squashed voice, bleat: “I’m leaving.”

  “You’ll not make it past the gate alive,” said Doone cheerily.

  “I,” said the lawyer, “am staying. But—”

  “But?” inquired Father Kelly, as the corks were pulled and the corkscrew flashed brightly along the line.

  “You go against the letter of the law!”

  “No,” explained the priest calmly. “We but shift the punctuation, cross new T’s, dot new I’s.”

  “Tenshun!” cried Finn, for all was in readiness.

  On both sides of the grave, the men and I waited, each with a full bottle of vintage Château Lafite Rothschild or Le Cotton or Chianti.

  “Do we drink it all?” asked Doone.

  “Shut your gab,” observed the priest. He eyed the sky. “O, Lord.” The men bowed their heads and grabbed off their caps. “Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful. And thank you, Lord, for the genius of Heeber Finn, who thought of this.”

  “Aye,” said all, gently.

  “ ‘Twas nothin’,” said Finn, blushing.

  “And bless this wine, which may circumnavigate along the way, but finally wind up where it should be going.
And if today and tonight won’t do, and all the stuff not drunk, bless us as we return each night until the deed is done and the soul of the wine’s at rest.”

  “Ah, you do speak dear,” murmured Doone.

  “Shh!” hissed all.

  “And in the spirit of this time, Lord, should we not ask our good lawyer friend Clement, in the fullness of his heart, to join with us?”

  Someone slipped a bottle of the best into the lawyer’s hands. He seized it, lest it should break.

  “And finally, Lord, bless the old Lord Kilgotten, whose years of saving up now help us in this hour of putting away. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said all.

  “Amen,” said I.

  “Tenshun!” cried Finn.

  The men stiffened and lifted their bottles. I did the same.

  “One for His Lordship,” said the priest.

  “And,” added Finn, “one for the road!”

  There was a dear sound of drinking and, Doone claimed, a glad sound of laughter from the box in the grave.

  Chapter 19

  It was twilight in Heeber Finn’s pub, with only Finn and myself and Doone and Timulty there to listen to the spigots and nurse the suds.

  “There is no figuring us,” said Finn. “We Irish are as deep as the sea and as broad. Quicksilver one moment. Clubfooted the next.”

  “To what do you refer, Finn?” I asked.

  “Take the case of the AMA invited to Dublin in the final part of last year, for instance,” said Finn.

  “The American Medical Association?”

  “That one, yes.”

  “They were invited to Dublin?”

  “They were, and did.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “To enlighten us.” Finn turned to gaze in the mirror and comb his soul straight. “For we need enlightenment. The great unwashed is what we are. Have you stood in line at the pustoffice …?”

  “Post office? Yes.” I wrinkled my nose.

  “Is it not like trudging about a sheep-sty pigpen?”

  “Well …”

  “Admit it! By midwinter, the average Dubliner, for months not out of his clothes or into the tub, walks higher than his shoes by Christmas. You could plant bulbs in his armpits by New Year’s. Pick penicillin off his shins Easter morn.”

  “What a poet,” said Doone admiringly.

  “Get to the point, Mr. Finn,” I said, and stopped.

  For you must never ask an Irishman to get to the point. The long way around and half again is more like it. Getting to the point could spoil the drink and ruin the day. “Ahem.” Finn waited for the apology.

  “Sorry.”

  “Where was I? Oh. The AMA! Invited to Dublin they was, to teach us the cleanliness that lives skintight to godliness.”

  “How many medics were invited?”

  “A team of surgeon-rascals, and a platoon of pill-prescribing learned physicians. There was a big ta-ta about it in the Irish Times. Headlines, by God. ‘American Doctors Arrive to Educate the Irish and Preserve Lives!’ ”

  “Sounds wonderful.”

  “It was, as long as the good feelings lasted.”

  “They didn’t?”

  “The College of Surgeons, Dublin branch, invited their American cousins across. It seemed a grand idea in the pub, along the bar and over the drinks. Someone must have sent a telegram late at night, when all was awash and no one recalled. Next thing you know the New York surgeons respond: ‘Yes, by God. Stand back! Here we are!’”

  “And no sooner the cable read when at Shannon a planeload of menthol-smelling docs step off and smile ’round, full of brains and lacking the wisdom to use same carefully.”

  “But they were given the grand tour, nevertheless?”

  “Embarrassed, because they could not remember having sent the drunken telegram, the College of Surgeons, Dublin branch, put on a brave face and gave them the free rein to peer in this ward, then that, for a full week. A terrible mistake. The surgeons pared every fingernail, checked laundries for unwashed frocks, tested scalpels to see if they could split hairs or cut cheese, took snorts of oxygen, tried the anesthetics on for size, and at last—can you think it?—unmasked the Irish surgeons, college and all. A devastation.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Why, hell man, we threw them out of the country!”

  “They let themselves be thrown out?”

  “It was that or be served fresh for the postmortem. They was hustled to Shannon!”

  “They flew back home?”

  “With their tails between their legs!”

  “But they were invited …”

  “None of that! They should have known, by reading the tacked together way of the telegram, it was insufficient wits that sent the words.”

  “I suppose they should’ve …”

  “But no, they came! They looked. Looking was bad enough. It was remembering what they saw ’twas bad. And worse, commenting on it! It got in the papers. The Irish Times rioted. Drive them from the country! the headlines said. Down AMA! Goodbye, surgeons, so long American docs. Farewell and to hell with you, Yanks!”

  “And off they went?”

  “Never to return.”

  “Yes, well, if I were them—”

  “But you aren’t, thank God.” Finn refilled my glass.

  “Will Dublin ever reform its hospitals, do you think?”

  “No need, when there’s the postoffice at hand.”

  “And penicillin in the post office.”

  “On every sheepfold man and winter-moldy girl. We lug our own cures with us.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said.

  “I’ll join you!” said Finn.

  Chapter 20

  “Have you ever thought, Finn—”

  “I try not to.”

  “Have you ever noticed life is like those masks seen in theaters—comedy here, tragedy there?” I said.

  “Before the curtain and during intermissions at the Gate, I have seen those masks. And?”

  “Doesn’t it strike you that the events of each day, or the expressions on the faces of all of us, resemble those masks, every hour changing and changing back?” I said.

  “You run deep. It’s simple.”

  “Is it?”

  “On the good days, when a laugh is splitting your face like you been hit with an ax, you use the front door of Finn’s.”

  “And on the bad?”

  “Sneak in the back so no one sees you. Hide in the philosopher’s cubby, where doubles and triples line up.”

  “I’ll remember your back door, Finn.”

  “Do that. And stop thinking. It’ll increase your ruins. My uncle in Rome once, died of the ruins. He saw so many spoiled buildings he took a fit of melancholy, sailed home, ran in my front door, and sank before he could reach the bar. If he’d only thought to use the back, he might have lived to drink again.”

  “Which uncle was that, Finn?”

  “It will come. Meanwhile, take your sweaty hands off your mind. Have you ever thought, all the college professors who’ve wandered in here with migraines?”

  “I never—”

  “It’s from trying for answers that brain damage occurs. Do you agree?”

  “I’d like to, Finn.”

  “Shall I tell you what those professors need? To attend a funeral. Like the one we just had. Yes! After a great long sermon and longer drinks, they’d be glad they’re alive and get the hell out and promise not to read another book for a month, or if read, don’t believe it. Are you heading back to Dublin early this night?”

  “I am.”

  “Then take this card. It’s a pub on upper Grafton Street with a fine back door, where the cure is quicker and the results longer.”

  I looked at the card. “The Four Provinces. Is there another pub as good as Finn’s in Dublin? Why didn’t you tell me!”

  “I like your palaver and feared the competition. Go. It’s not the best, but ’twill do when Sunday stays on a full week
from noon to sundown.”

  “Provinces,” I said, reading the card aloud. “Four.”

  Chapter 21

  It was Sunday noon and the fog touching at the hotel windows when the mist did not and rain rinsing the fog and then leaving off to let the mist return and coffee after lunch was prolonging itself into tea with the promise of high tea ahead and beyond that the Buttery pub opening belowstairs, or the Second Coming and the only sound was porcelain cups against porcelain teeth and the whisper of silk or the creak of shoes until at last a swinging door leading from the small library—writing room squealed softly open and an old man, holding on to the air should he fall, shuffled out, stopped, looked around at everyone, slowly, and said in a calm drear voice:

  “Getting through Sunday somehow?”

  Then he turned, shuffled back through, and let the door creak-whisper shut.

  Sunday in Dublin.

  The words are Doom itself.

  Sunday in Dublin.

  Drop such words and they never strike bottom. They just fall through emptiness toward five in the gray afternoon.

  Sunday in Dublin. How to get through it somehow.

  Sound the funeral bells. Yank the covers up over your ears. Hear the hiss of the black-feathered wreath as it rustles, hung on your silent door. Listen to those empty streets below your hotel room waiting to gulp you if you venture forth before noon. Feel the mist sliding its wet flannel tongue under the window ledges, licking hotel roofs, its great bulk dripping of ennui.

  Sunday, I thought. Dublin. The pubs shut tight until late afternoon. The cinemas sold out two or three weeks in advance. Nothing to do but perhaps go stare at the uriny lions at the Phoenix Park Zoo, at the vultures looking as though they’d fallen, covered with glue, into the ragpickers’ bin. Wander by the River Liffey, see the fog-colored waters. Wander in the alleys, see the Liffey-colored skies.

  No, I thought wildly, go back to bed, wake me at sunset, feed me high tea, tuck me in again, good night, all!

  But I staggered out, a hero, and in a faint panic at noon considered the day outside from the corners of my eyes. There it lay, a deserted corridor of hours, colored like the upper side of my tongue on a dim morn. Even God must be bored with days like this in northern lands. I could not resist thinking of Sicily, where any Sunday is a fete in regalia, a celebratory fireworks parade as springtime flocks of chickens and humans strut and pringle the warm pancake-batter alleys, waving their combs, their hands, their feet, tilting their sun-blazed eyes, while music in free gifts leaps or is thrown from each never-shut window.