Ray Bradbury - Green Shadows, White Whales

Green Shadows, White Whale

A NOVEL OF RAY BRADBURY’S ADVENTURES MAKING MOBY DICK WITH JOHN HUSTON IN IRELAND

Ray Bradbury

Copyright

HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Ray Bradbury 1992, 2002

Cover design by Mike Topping.

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2014 Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Ray Bradbury asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

The following chapters were previously published in different form: 4, under the title “The Great Collision of Monday Last”; 12, “The Terrible Conflagration up at the Place”; 13, “The Beggar on O’Connell Bridge”; 15, “The Haunting of the New”; 18, “One for His Lordship, and One for the Road”; 21, “Getting Through Sunday Somehow”; 22, “The First Night of Lent”; 23, “McGillahee’s Brat”; 27, “Banshee”; 28, “The Cold Wind and the Warm”; 29. “The Anthem Sprinters.”

Chapter 9 appeared in the May 1992 issue of The American Way under the title “The Hunt Wedding.”

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780007541751

Version: 2014–07–21

Dedication

WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE

TO KATHY HOURIGAN,

WHO HELPED MAP DUBLIN

AND BEYOND

AND TO REGINA FERGUSON,

WHO SHEPHERDED MY FAMILY

THROUGH THAT COLD IRISH WINTER

AND TO THE MEMORY OF

HEEBER FINN, NICK (MIKE) MY TAXI

DRIVER, AND ALL THE BOYOS IN THE PUB,

AND TO THE PROPRIETOR OF THE

ROYAL HIBERNIAN HOTEL, HECTOR FABRON,

AND PADDY THE MAÎTRE D’

AND ALL THE HOTEL STAFF,

THIS BOUQUET

LONG IN COMING

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Dublin Revisited

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

I looked out from the deck of the Dún Laoghaire ferry and saw Ireland.

The land was green.

Not just one ordinary sort of green, but every shade and variation. Even the shadows were green, and the light that played on the Dún Laoghaire wharf and on the faces of the customs inspectors. Down into the green I stepped, an American young man, just beyond thirty, suffering two sorts of depression, lugging a typewriter and little else.

Noticing the light, the grass, the hills, the shadows, I cried out: “Green! Just like the travel posters. Ireland is green. I’ll be damned! Green!”

Lightning! Thunder! The sun hid. The green vanished. Shadow-rains curtained the vast sky. Bewildered, I felt my smile collapse. A gray and bristly customs official beckoned.

“Here! Customs inspection!”

“Where did it go?” I cried. “The green! It was just here! Now it’s—”

“The green, you say?”

The inspector stared at his watch. “It’ll be along when the sun comes out!” he said.

“When will that be?”

The old man riffled a customs index. “Well, there’s nothing in the damn government pamphlets to show when, where, or if the sun comes out in Ireland!” He pointed with his nose. “There’s a church down there—you might ask!”

“I’ll be here six months. Maybe—”

“—you’ll see the sun and the green again? Chances are. But in ’28, two hundred days of rain. It was the year we raised more mushrooms than children.”

“Is that a fact?”

“No, hearsay. But that’s all you need in Ireland, someone to hear, someone to say, and you’re in business! Is that all your luggage?”

I set my typewriter forth, along with the flimsiest suitcase. “I’m traveling light. This all came up fast. My big luggage comes next week.”

“Is this your first trip here?”

“No. I was here, poor and unpublished, off a freighter in 1939, just eighteen.”

“Your reason for being in Ireland?” The inspector licked his pencil and indelibled his pad.

“Reason has nothing to do with it,” I blurted.

His pencil stayed, while his gaze lifted.

“That’s a grand start, but what does it mean?”

“Madness.”

He leaned forward, pleased, as if a riot had surfed at his feet.

“What kind would that be?” he asked politely.

“Two kinds. Literary and psychological. I am here to flense and render down the White Whale.”

“Flense.” He scribbled. “Render down. White Whale. That would be Moby Dick, then?”

“You read!” I cried, taking that same book from under my arm.

“When the mood is on me.” He underlined his scribbles. “We’ve had the Beast in the house some twenty years. I fought it twice. It is overweight in pages and the author’s intent.”

“It is,” I agreed. “I picked it up and laid it down ten times until last month, when a movie studio signed me to it. Now I must win out for keeps.”

The customs inspector nodded, took my measurements, and declared: “So you’re here to write a screenplay! There’s only one other cinema fellow in all Ireland. Whatsisname. Tall, with a kind of beat-up monkey face, talked fine. Said ‘Never again.’ Took the ferry to find what the Irish Sea was like. Found out and delivered forth both lunch and breakfast. Pale he was. Barely able to lug the Whale book under one arm. ‘Never again,’ he yelled. And you, lad. Will you ever lick the book?”

“Haven’t you?”

“The Whale has not docked here, no. So much for literature. What’s the psychological thing you said? Are you here to observe the Catholics lying about everything and the Unitarians baring their breasts?”

“No, no,” I said hastily, remembering my one visit here, when the weather was dreadful. “Now between lowerings for the Whale, I will study the Irish.”

“God has gone blind at that. Can you outlast Him? Why try?” He poised his pencil.

“Well …,” I said, putting the black sack over my head, fastening the noose about my neck, and yanking the lever to drop the trapdoor, “excuse me, but this is the last place in the world I’d dream of landing. It’s all such a mystery. When I was a kid and passed the Irish neighborhood on one side of town, the Micks beat the hell out of me. And when they ran through our neighborhood, we beat them. It has bothered me half a lifetime why we did what we did. I grew up nonplussed—”