J. Donleavy - The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B

Balthazar B stopping before the shadowy outline of a house. Gabled roof over faint squares of cozy windows. No question now. I am on private property. How utterly awful. I must tip toe away. Casually. Into the dark. Over there is a garage tucked into this secluded house. With panes of stained glass I can make out. That way must be north. Uncle Edouard says to tramp steadily in one continuous direction is better than wandering in discontinuous circles. He was in my dreams when I woke back there on the grass. Gave me some rather amusing advice. At least I've struck out for Dublin when all odds were against me. Without stars. Just a momentary moon. O my God what's this. A birdbath. I hope. Hands out now to touch carefully as I go. Perhaps a vegetable garden to be crossed. There's got to be a field. And maybe a river upon whose banks I can guide my way back. Or swim this time of night. No nerve to knock and enquire. As Beefy could do all plausible and winning. Make my heart resolute now. Onward chaps. Get around the side of this house. Make a dash before there is a flash of moonlight again. I have a horror of trespass.

Balthazar B moved swiftly in the moist soft darkness. Guiding his way. And suddenly smashing into an obstacle. Something falling. And crashing to the ground. An infernal thump. Be heard for miles. Must run. Around this back corner of the house. Make exit. O my God something has me tight across the throat. They've got me already. Never did I have a chance. Please I'm only a lost natural science student from Trinity. Wait. What's this. Wet cloth. Clothes. A washing line. Lord a giant foundation garment. Fit for an amazon. Must get disentangled at all costs. And quietly run like mad away from here.

A light switching on in the house. Balthazar tugging at the line. As it stiffens and the garments rise up from the lawn. Yanking harder. A rip and crash of cement from the wall of the stuccoed house. Just below an open and ablaze window. To be back in Rathgar now to say push me the pudding will you. Instead of here helplessly damaging property. After all the bomb escapes. To be befallen this perfectly disenchanting exploration. Out of one's wits in someone's private garden. I wanted so much to guide myself homeward by the stars.To test my instincts alone with nature. And tell Miss Fitzdare. That I just followed the bent of ancestors. And now goodness someone is shouting.

"Who is that down there."

Make for that shrubbery. Crouching now in under this thick rhododendron. In the pin drop silence. And pull in this washing line.

"O Lord God Jimmie wake up there's something down in the garden."

"What is it now."

"Wake up I'm telling you."

Balthazar B hauled in the vague pegged white cloths lying out across the lawn. Which will lead straight to me. Slowly. So indeed indelicate. A brassiere. More female undergarments. All of them. Whalebone corsets. Pink silk pantaloons. Outsize. The woman who fits these garments upon her person is not to be trifled with.

"Jimmy Jimmy wake up out of the bed Fm telling you. There's a long snake moving across the lawn so help me God Jimmy do you hear me."

O my God what does one do now. I've been spotted pulling in the washline. People so easily disbelieve St. Patrick. Uncle Edouard can you hear me. At this most ignoble moment. In which I've not meant to cause such upset. Honestly madam Pve only been trying to find my way back to my rooms. Somewhere north there beyond your garage. I would recognise the grey walls and high green fence in an instant. Just beyond Merrion Square. Thump the nail once or twice on the big thick door and a porter will come from his curled up sleep at the fire. To let me in. To go abed within my thick walled rooms, so safe and cold. Dear St. Basil the Great deliver me from this shrubbery garden.

"Jimmy ah God, you'd sleep would you, and I'm being raped within an inch of me life, while you're snoring there, Fm being defiled. Wake up I'm telling you.'

To have quietly trotted to Miss Fitzdare's stables. And munched sweet hay there through the night. She said such kind things to me. Opened out a whole world of heathery flowers. In rain they sparkle down among their browny twigs even when the whole winter world is grey. Just as all this green is so dark and hopeless. Got to shift position now I've dragged in this suspicious line. Just nip over across there to the thicker bushes. And the washing line will follow.

"Ah God Jimmy there he goes. I'm calling the garda. I've seen him now. Trampling my best roses. Down there in the garden. With a length of snaky thing coming out of him so long he's dragging it. I'm telling you. Jimmy. Get up, get up. If it's ever rape with a thing like that he's dragging after him. I couldn't stomach it, the little fig stem you've got is bad enough. He must be crazed by sex to have the likes of that on him. Jimmy wake up I'm telling you. Jesus Mary and Joseph, he could be a Mohammedan. It's been in the Irish Times that a horde could be coming any time from the East. That Islam is on the march. It's shock enough to know you're in the minority without them running loose in your garden."

"Will you shut up now about the yellow peril while I'm trying to sleep. Sure not a man of them cares two hoots about Ireland."

"Sleep is it, while defilement is but a hair's breadth away.

And me raped following seventeen years of marriage."

"Shut up now about rape. There hasn't been such a thing in Ireland since the Danes and they were welcomed with open arms. Will you get back to bed."

"Jimmy for the last time."

"Shut up."

"I'm telling you Jimmy, not a bit of me will I let the rascal have."

"Too much of you anyway for him to want you all. Put out the light. And batten your gob."

"Abandon me is it. To men with the corkscrew things on them."

"Abandon you. Fm sleeping that's all."

"Batten your gob is it."

Balthazar crouched in the thicket of laurel and sinuous boughs of rhododendron. When trapped across the chippendale on a light note of conversation, an opera seen, a recital at the Music Hall in Fishamble Street, and one never knows that there are conditions and positions worse. Agony to ask to pass a sauce boat. Now, my God, the fear of running through unknown darkness. Just trying to get home madam, Fm no Moslem. Her shadow is at the window. She carries two portly breasts. By the feel of this brassiere.

"He's still there with the big long thing he's dragging. You lie there like that while your wife is raped out of her wits. Fm going to give you something to remember the occasion by. O Jesus Mary and Joseph what heinous new trials have you sent me to bear."

Damp and dripping in the rhododendrons. To know which way to run. Wait till the action dies down. Between this woman and the Far East. What was that. Bloodcurdling scream. And sound of broken glass.

"That'll teach you to lie there snoring and making dirty filthy remarks to your wife while a heinous rapist wanders in the garden. That'll teach you. Till the garda get here. To leave me panic stricken and defenceless against an immoral intruder."

A light bursting on, flooding yellow rays across the grass and gravel. A fallen ladder. Jimmy what did she do to you. I do apologise for all the needless upset. Crawled away here to cover. Just to wait now for the all clear. And the light out to give me a chance to run. Too late to offer one's card. By the silence ensued. The witty husband from whom there seems now no sound. Better advised to withhold a social overture. If I had my Landship now. I could suddenly emerge from the shrubbery. And twelve cylinders pumping, would get me back to college. Where I am but a harmless student of science.

Irish bugs fluttering at the glowing porch light. The grass pale white green. Crouch stiffly. O please, it's not the sound of tires on the road. It is. And twin beams of light through the branches. O God. Let it be some milk man and not the police. Tires sliding to a stop in the gravel. Car doors slamming. Flashes of torchlight. Three garda in their thick blue uniforms, yawning and rubbing their sleepy eyes.