J. Donleavy - The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B

"God what have you done to me Balthazar. What have you done to me."

At Gare St. Lazare. Out on the train quay at nearly six o'clock. They went that afternoon up to Sacre Coeur, climbing all the steps. And sat in the church while a procession moved around the aisles. Sacristans with crosses held high in their dark blue and red robes. Followed by women with empty married eyes. Their white pasty skins that held in their fat. And as they left the Palais Royal, his mother stood in the foyer and waved her wrists and sniffed and shook her head slowly back and forth.

The train doors slamming. Heads sticking farewell from windows. A whistle blowing. A green flag waving. A chug of steam. And the tall green carriage begins to move. I look up.

The last thing we did together was to sit each with a sandwich jambon in a cafe across the street. To say little and then nothing at all. We were two lonely persons. Like we had never been before. And she put her hand across the table to me and bent her head. And the tears poured from her eyes.

And I knew it was time just to touch her. And not say we will meet again or write. Because she would never walk out of my mind. While there was a glowing light. I knew because I could see her sitting there. Just crossing her knees. Where my lamp was lit and other lamps were out. And up in this window now. Her teeth over her lip. Her hand touching the blue ribbon she put in her hair. Choo choo choo. I cannot move or run. I stand. The train is gathering speed. Taking with it so many years. Dragging them away. Faces staring out the big glass windows. Wheels turning. Hard white steel on steel. Goodbye Miss Hortense, goodbye.

And when

The Channel

Comes

And you slip out

On the

Grey and greeny

White

Whisper to it

And say

God love you

Tonight.

In that last Paris summer Balthazar B stood in the evening Tuilleries gardens near the big pond with his solitary love held in empty hands.

Alone in September he headed to his new school across the Channel and a short train ride from London. With autumn came the war rumbling east spitting cannon across the plains, rivers and valleys all the way between St. Petersburgh and Bucharest. And one afternoon on a hillside overlooking London he wept when France fell. The summers, autumns and winters turned all Latin and Greek, all grey and drab and Miss Hortense neither came nor wrote.

His mother fled across Spain and by tramp steamer to Argentina. She settled grandly in a suburb of Buenos Aires. And went horse riding every day. Uncle Edouard joined the Free French and in Easter holiday Balthazar came to visit. At a tiny London house where Uncle Edouard nearly filled each room with his big chest and stretched out legs. And then he was gone. His housekeeper whispered at the beginning of summer holiday that the Baron had been parachuted into France. And eight months later in February came news. The Baron had been shot against a white stone wall in the sixteenth district.

And through Uncle Edouard Balthazar B had appointed new lawyers, Bother, Writson, Horn, Pleader and Hoot in the Temple, and a firm of accountants up a dark stairway and street in the City of London. In May he was called to hear something to his advantage. Uncle Edouard bequeathed to him the big stuffed bear in Paris and his town house in London with all chattels. And Mrs. Bottle was given a three year contract to remain as housekeeper.

Quarterly Balthazar B was invited to lunch by these elderly legal gentlemen. Until his school was evacuated north to Yorkshire near the Ilkley Moor. And there often he wandered through the wintry heathers and spoke to the lonely posted men of the home guard with cups of tea nestled in their hands. And one weekend the first month of spring he went to Huddersfield. Climbed a gentle hill. Between the sooty broken buildings across the town. And came to a low wall around a large stone house set in a lawn cold and grey. A woman in an apron answered the door and said politely Miss Hortense was in the military and lived here no more.

Standing at the stove in the small basement kitchen of the little house in Brompton between the quiet reaches of Hyde Park and Knightsbridge, Balthazar B cooked a kipper. When one month ago were said all the fond farewells from school. The wireless announced that the war was over. And there was dancing cheering and kissing through all the streets. One night huddled alone in bed I had a dream. That all were dead in France. And Uncle Edouard's big stuffed bear was standing against a sun rising high in the sky on a mild moist windblown day. The bear held great open arms out to where there were hills that were green. And brooks that flowed silver. There was a wide wide street and a great big park. And awake the next morning Balthazar B sat at the little oak desk facing out on the narrow back yards and wrote to Trinity College Dublin.

An end of September came when he took two trunks and an evening taxi across the bridge of the Serpentine through Tyburnia and along Marylebone Road to Euston. With a quickened heart and life lightly on the fingertips. The great granite pillars of the station. And then this moment. Amid the uniforms brown and blue. I saw a face hurrying by. Only an arm away. A woman who looked small. Perhaps because Fve grown so tall. Her hair swept up under her cap, her legs in black stockings. I held two newspapers in my hand. And a voice called after me that I'd left my change. I shouted Bella. Under the great arching blackened roof. And the figure began to run. And I ran. Shouting Bella Bella Bella. And stopped. It could not be. And I hoped so much that it wasn't. If she would flee. Across the grey concrete platforms all grit and dust and wrappings. Where she went. Towards the train to Liverpool.

In the darkening night the clicking clacking wheels sped across England through Crew and Chester and into Wales. And out across the lonely land to Holyhead. On this breezy Saturday clear night I sailed to Dublin. With a heart hollow with so little hope. To read a letter again and again. And each time it was true. The words said we look forward to seeing you here. And in the upper left hand corner was a seal and a shield with a lion, harp, and book over a castle, and a gate and two turrets flying flags. In the saloon high amidships at a smooth brown table a waiter poured out a dark liquid which foamed and swallowed bitter sweet down the throat. The way now so grey. Miss Hortense said once that when she was glad she felt like a drop of dew on a blade of grass and when she was sad she rolled down and got sucked up in the ground. And ahead on a black shore were the flickering coastal lights of Ireland.

Tuesday, on the first day of October, Balthazar B removed in a handsome cab from the Shelbourne Hotel to go prancing down Kildare Street towards the wall and fence and trees of Trinity College. To smile suddenly at this city. The red faces of the men and white faces of the women. The missing door handles of the cab kept closed by string. And the unsmiling scattering begging bare footed little children. Last night to peer out a window across the top of trees in St. Stephen's Green. Other windows set in granite and blue grey rooftops wet with rain. Purple little mountains rising in the distance, set gently beyond the wispy fragrant smoke. And to walk the city as I did, down the dim lit streets and by the great walls and green railings behind which I would go to live. In one street past a cinema I walked. A girl on the other side of the road.

She stared at me and I stared back at her. And both of us walked into obstructions. Me into a wall and she into a post. I laughed, she laughed. I bowed and she ran. And now this windy morning. Low sky of tumbling clouds. The curving fence of Trinity. The horse cab crossing College Green and down Dame Street to come back again and head straight at the grey stone front. A clock, hands at ten, the row of top square windows, the arched gate, and pillars. All this strange cold nobility. A toy green tram squealing by. And floods of bicycles. The tall red faced policeman stopping traffic and giving the horseman a violent wave forward across this open apron of street and in between the iron gates to stop before this great wooden door.