Flann O’Brien - The Dalkey Archive

He had picked up a breathing mask, with its straps and tank affair at the back.

– I’ll go after you, Mick muttered, with Hackett at the rear.

In a surprisingly short time they were all fully dressed for a visit under the sea to the next world, or perhaps the former world. Through his goggles Mick could see Teague McGettigan studying an early Sunday paper, apparently at a rear racing page. He was at peace, with no interest whatever in supernatural doings. He was perhaps to be envied. Hackett was standing impassive, an Apollo space-man. De Selby was making final adjustments to his straps and with a gesture had led the way to the lower board.

Going head-down into cold water in the early morning is a shock to the most practised. But in Mick’s case the fog of doubt and near-delusion in the head, added to by the very low hiss of his air supply, made it a brief but baffling experience. There was ample light as he followed De Selby’s kicking heels and a marked watery disturbance behind told him that Hackett was not far away. If he was cursing, nobody heard.

Entry to the ‘apartment’ was efficient enough for beginners. If not adroit. De Selby readily found the opening and then, one by one, the others made their way upwards, half-clambering, half-swimming. They left the water quite palpably and Mick found himself crouching in an empty space on a rough floor strewn with rocks and some shells. Everything was dark and a distant sussurus must have been from the sea which had just been left. The company was under the water and presumably in an atmosphere that could be breathed, though only for a short time. Time ? Yes, the word might be repeated.

De Selby beckoned Mick on with a tug at the arm, and he did the same for Hackett behind. Then they stopped. Mick crouched and finally squatted on a roundish rock; De Selby was to his left and the three had come to some sort of resting posture. Hackett gave Mick a nudge, though the latter did not know if it meant commiseration, encouragement or derision.

From his movements it was evident even in the gloom that De Selby was busy at some technical operation. Mick could not see what he was doing but no doubt he was detonating (or whatever is the word) a minuscule charge of DMP.

Though wet, he did not feel cold, but he was apprehensive puzzled, curious. Hackett was near but quite still.

A faint light seemed to come, a remote glow. It gradually grew to define the dimension of the dim apartment, making it appear unexpectedly large and, strangely dry.

Then Mick saw a figure, a spectre, far away from him. It looked seated and slightly luminescent. Gradually it got rather clearer in definition but remained unutterably distant, and what he had taken for a very long chin in profile was almost certainly a beard. A gown of some dark material clothed the apparition. It is strange to say that the manifestation did not frighten him but he was flabbergasted when he heard De Selby’s familiar tones almost booming out beside him.

– I must thank you for coming. I have two students with me.

The voice that came back was low, from far away but perfectly clear. The Dublin accent was unmistakable. The extraordinary utterance can here be distinguished only typographically.

– Ah not at all, man.

– You’re feeling well, as usual, I suppose?

– Nothing to complain of, thank God. How are you feeling yourself, or how do you think you’re feeling ?

– Tolerably, but age is creeping in.

– Ha-ha. That makes me laugh.

– Why?

– Your sort of time is merely a confusing index of decomposition. Do you remember what you didn’t know was your youth ?

– I do. But it’s your youth I wanted to talk about. The nature of your life in youth compared with that of your hagiarchic senility must have been a thunderous contrast, the ascent to piety sudden and even distressing. Was it?

– You are hinting at anoxic anoxœmia? Perhaps.

– You admit you were a debauched and abandoned young man?

– For a pagan I wasn’t the worst. Besides, maybe it was the Irish in me.

– The Irish in you?

– Yes. My father’s name was Patrick. And he was a proper gobshite.

– Do you admit that the age or colour of women didn’t matter to you where the transaction in question was coition?

– I’m not admitting anything. Please remember my eyesight was very poor.

– Were all your rutting ceremonials heterosexual?

– Heterononsense! There is no evidence against me beyond what I wrote myself. Too vague. Be on your guard against that class of fooling. Nothing in black and white.

– My vocation is enquiry and action, not literature.

– You’re sadly inexperienced. You cannot conceive the age I lived in, its customs, or judge of that African sun.

– The heat, hah? I’ve read a lot about the Eskimoes. The poor bastards are perished throughout their lives, covered with chilblains and icicles but when they catch a seal – ah, good luck to them! They make warm clothes out of the hide, perform gluttonly feats with the meat and then bring the oil home to the igloo where they light lamps and stoves. Then the fun begins. Nanook of the North is certainly partial to his nookie.

– I reprobate concupiscence, whether fortuitous or contrived.

– You do now , you post-gnostic! You must have a red face to recall your earlier nasty gymnastiness, considering you’re now a Father of the Church.

– Rubbish. I invented obscene feats out of bravado, lest I be thought innocent or cowardly. I walked the streets of Babylon with low companions, sweating from the fires of lust. When I was in Carthage I carried about with me a cauldron of unrealized debauchery. God in his majesty was tempting me. But Book Two of my Confessions is all shocking exaggeration. I lived within my rough time. And I kept the faith, unlike a lot more of my people in Algeria who are now Arab nincompoops and slaves of Islam.

– Look at all the time you squandered in the maw of your sexual fantasies which otherwise could have been devoted to Scriptural studies. Lolling loathsome libertine!

– I was weak at the time but I find your condescension offensive. You talk of the Fathers. How about that ante-Nicene thoolera-mawn, Origen of Alexandria? What did he do when he found that lusting after women distracted him from his sacred scrive-nery? I’ll tell you. He stood up, hurried out to the kitchen, grabbed a carving knife and – pwitch! – in one swipe deprived himself of his personality! Ah ?

– Yes. Let us call it heroic impetuosity.

– How could Origen be the Father of Anything and he with no knackers on him? Answer me that one.

– We must assume that his spiritual testicles remained intact. Do you know him?

– I can’t say I ever met him in our place.

– But, dammit is he there? Don’t you know everything?

– I do not. I can, but the first wisdom is sometimes not to know. I suppose I could ask the Polyarch.

– Who on earth is the Polyarch?

– He’s not on earth, and again I don’t know. I think he’s Christ’s Vicar in Heaven.

– Are there any other strange denizens?

– Far too many if you ask me. Look at that gobhawk they call Francis Xavier. Hobnobbing and womanizing in the slums of Paris with Calvin and Ignatius Loyola in warrens full of rats, vermin, sycophants, and syphilis. Xavier was a great travelling man, messing about in Ethiopia and Japan, consorting with Buddhist monkeys and planning to convert China single-handed. And Loyola? You talk about me but a lot of that chap’s early saintliness was next to bedliness. He made himself the field-marshal of a holy army of mendicants but maybe merchandizers would be more like it. Didn’t Pope Clement XIV suppress the Order for its addiction to commerce, and for political wire-pulling? Jesuits are the wiliest, cutest and most mendacious ruffians who ever lay in wait for simple Christians. The Inquisition was on the track of Ignatius. Did you know that? Pity they didn’t get him. But one party who wouldn’t hear of the Pope’s Brief of Suppression was the Empress of Rooshia. Look at that now !