Fourfront, page 4
“It mightn’t sound like a good deal to someone who’s a bit astray but it’s the right deal for you at this point in your life. Right now, this minute! And I’ll set your watch going again. Isn’t that what you want?”
Like a big eejit – and to this hour I don’t know what prompted me – I took out my last twenty-pound note and handed it to him, with the watch. And do you know what? I was rather pleased with the transaction.
He took the watch, without looking at it. Instead he looked at all the other watches in his den – those on shelves and tables, those dangling from the ceiling and his beady eye roamed from one to the other.
“Got it,” he said finally with a wink, his mouth breaking into a smile, a twinkle forming in his eye. “I’ve discovered a time previously unknown, a time that no other watch has. How fortunate you are!” The smile had crept fully across his mouth. He fixed the time on the watch-face and opened up the back. Taking a little plastic bag from his jacket pocket he picked out what appeared to be a tiny white tablet. This he crushed into powder between his thumb-nails and deposited the dust into the watch’s womb.
“Now,” says he, “that’ll keep you going for a good while – maybe forever.” He closed the back of the watch and shook it close to his ear, as though concocting a cocktail.
A fog descended on my brain. The two of us looked at the watch. The hands were at it like blazes, scything away for all their worth. My heart rose.
“Now,” says he, “do you see that! Do you hear it? The purring of a kitten that’s got the cream.”
“What was that white stuff you put into it?”
“Do you not know? What galaxy are you from at all? That’s crack lad, the hottest dope around. Mighty big in America, as they say, and it’s cheap too.”
“And you’re peddlin’ dope to these wretched watches?” I said, looking all around me and my eyes beginning to water almost.
“That’s all they want, lad. It’s the dope that keeps them ticking over – sure isn’t it keeping the whole world going? Sure yeah, all these watches are doped to the gills, high as kites . . . some are stoned on cannabis, others on coke, more on grass, a lot on E, LSD, speed, ice – the lot. Crack’s the latest.”
“They like the crack?”
“Mad for it. Wired to the moon half of the time, hyperactive, schizophrenic, zonked, but full of devilry and the joys of life – can’t you see yourself all twelve eyes of them popping out of their heads – and the way their hands are going, the fast lane, eh? None of them at the same speed, none having the same time and that’s the way they like it and that’s the way the world should be. Boring old farts they are not, or feckless fools going around imitating each other – but they have a certain rustic pigheadedness and humanity about them and if they’re not having a good time I don’t know who is.”
“And you’re the one who keeps them going?”
“Myself and God’s spirit. Oh, it’s hard work I’m telling you. My perspiration alone would fill buckets.” He picked up another watch. “Winding and winding. We do our best. What else can anyone do? A lot depends on us. Trying to get the time, keeping the time going, putting in time, stopping time, seizing the hour from time to time whenever possible. Time and tide wait for no man, time belongs to no one and we only have it on loan, to keep going as long as we can, as long as we can . . .”
“And it’s here that time and all the time in the world is kept going?”
“It’s all here. All time resides here – and simple folk think there’s nothing going on here. They haven’t the time to come in even. They haven’t time to do this or time to do that. Nobody has time any more for God or man or beast, not to mention time for time. The poor ignorant savages. They avoid this place, poor things. If they only knew that all time is encapsulated here. Anyone who finds himself here hasn’t the time or the inclination to leave. And there’s loads of time here for anyone who wants to come looking for it – if they only knew. They wouldn’t have to do anything else again for the rest of their lives – simply pause for a second outside the door and slink in – as you did.”
“As I did?”
“Oh, yes, lad, as you did.”
translated by Gabriel Rosenstock
The Man Who Exploded
Where exactly did it happen, is that what you’re asking, is it? Right smack bang in the middle of the street, Joe, that was it, smack bang in the middle of the street. The upper main street that juts out from the square in the guts of the city. Where else did you think? Are you right or are you right? All the action happens all the time in the guts of the city. He wouldn’t have bothered his arse exploding way out in the suburbs, and why would he? That would have been the end of it. No more said. Waste of time.
Saturday afternoon? That’s what I said, Saturday afternoon when the place is busy as hell. Shagging shoppers! Shagging shoppers, Joe, with things to do and their shagging kids off school. And half of the hill-billies in from the mountains with shag-all left to do except make some use of their free travel. Finding out who else was in and about. Bad news, Joe, bad news. He picked a lousy time to explode, I’ll say that much. He could have really fucked things up, he could’ve. Standing out there in the middle of the road like a statue. And then, boom! Traffic screwed up for the rest of the day. Traffic jams everywhere. Time to duck, I’d say. It wouldn’t have been so bad early in the morning, or late at night, or even on Sunday apart from Mass-time . . .
A warning? What do you mean “a warning”? Warning my arse, Joe, cop yourself on. People who are going to blow the shite out of themselves hardly give a warning. Why should they? It’s part of the game, man, part of the show, part of the miraculous mystery of the big bang. Anyway, if he gave a warning nobody would have seen him, would they? Nobody there to tell the tale. Everyone fucked off like snots off a shovel. Fucked off like hares with gas up their arse. Not a twit nor a twat left on the street. What you say? Winos? OK winos if you like. Winos or quarehawks trying to take the balls out of his eyes or the change from his pockets if he had any . . . or the police, or the army if they bothered to come out to defuse him . . . and I don’t suppose they’d bother. What the hell could they do anyway? What could they do to stop some guy determined to blow himself to kingdom-come? Who ever trained them for chrissake? How can you have an expert who knows how to decommission some knob for blowing yourself up? And then if he went wham bang just when they were fiddling with him, if he got them right between the eyes and under the oxter. The army experts were clueless, also. I suppose they had a lot more important work to do. Anyway, a man isn’t the same as a bomb. You’re right there Joe, you could take the harm out of a bomb easily enough, but a man, a person . . . even the American Army itself couldn’t take the harm out of a person, never mind defuse them . . . Isn’t that why he exploded without warning . . . Oh, he was a tricky Dicky all right, slick enough to make no excuses to nobody.
Stuck a pin up his arse, is that what you’re saying? I don’t believe that. Hate that. They made a hole in his arse with the jab of a pin and he went up in splinters? Ah come off it, cop yourself on Joe. That’s all balls. Boll ix. Pig’s boll ix hanging down. Don’t believe those crap artists, Joe, I’m telling you. That’s all me eye and Betty Martin. Some chancer made that one up. It’s only pub-talk. Bar-blather, pub piss-take. What do you mean, everyone says so? Doesn’t one thing lead to another, a lie for a lie and a truth for a truth. For chrissake he wouldn’t blow up like that if they made a hole in his arse. Come off it, cop yourself on. Wasn’t there a hole there already, there had to be. A hole so big that the sun shone out of it, some people said. But, hang on, that’s not a nice story. Forget I ever said it. But one way or the other, Joe, he was a man and not a baloon before he exploded. Aman like any other man. Aman first and foremost. Even if he exploded because he swelled up like a balloon, he was still a man for all that . . .
Internal pressure? Maybe so, Joe, maybe so. Could have been too much pressure. You know what I mean, him swelling up . . . expanding, getting bigger, like something boiling, bubbling over and not being able to hold himself. Oh, I suppose you’re right Joe. Had to happen sooner or later. Gave way at the sides and was ripped apart. Of course he couldn’t have stood that god-damn pressure another second. Even a solid stone statue would have gone up under that strain. And booze? Go on, say it straight out, Joe. There’s no doubt that the booze had something to do with it also. Doesn’t it always. Drink is always involved in cases like this, wherever there’s trouble and aggro you’ll find the drink. But I suppose he did have some kind of excuse, however small. I suppose he did, Joe. Wouldn’t things be properly fucked up if he exploded for no reason whatsoever . . . ?
Did he have a job? Is that what you’re asking, Joe? I didn’t hear that he had. Is a man a real man if he has no job? They say he had none anyway, that he didn’t want one, but that doesn’t mean he was idle . . . Some arty-farty thing they say. Messing around with art? OK working with art, Joe. An artist if you like, in fact, he was quite an important artist if some of the reports are to be believed. Others denied that, of course. Don’t they always. There you have it again. As many begrudgers as you have arse-lickers. Now don’t ask me why. I don’t understand this caper any more than anyone else. I’m as ignorant as the rest in these matters. But whatever kind of art he was up to he was always doing . . . doing queer things. I’m telling ya, really weird things . . . things that made no sense . . . things that were useless, some people said. One way or the other anyway, Joe, listen I’ll tell ya . . . this Yank bloke comes to him one day and buys a tree . . . a feckin’ Papal cross. Ah no, Joe, forget that Papal cross, that’s all shite . . . look you eejit, this one was made out of wire, one he made himself. So this American Yankee bloke buys this tree made of wire, not just any old kind of wire, but shaggin’ barbed wire, imagine that. Barbed wire just like that spiky stuff around a prison wall. Pots of money! O you’re right there, Joe. What else. They say he got dollops of dollars for his tree of wire . . . something you wouldn’t get for a shaggin’ Papal cross even if it grew. No way José. Now what do you make of that?
Jaysus, imagine having a forest of wire . . . you’d be a millionaire in a year, a bloody millionaire, man. Somebody said that a wire tree grew in America, that there are wire trees growing all over the place there. Could be too. Now what do you say, Joe? Leave it to the Yanks, boy. They’d grow anything, even a bloody strand of seaweed out in space . . . Now isn’t that weird, the great artist’s tree of wire. But that’s what done for him too. Went to his head in the end. If it wasn’t for his art and his wire tree he’d never have exploded. Many trees have fallen . . . but how many people have exploded?
Too true, Joe, too true. Could be that his head got too big for him. It happens . . . happens when people become famous. That’s what happened, maybe. The pressure. That’s it, the pressure and the fame and all that goes with it. Looking over his shoulder all the time at the other artists nibbling at his arse. It wasn’t enough for him to be famous. He wanted to be bigger than the whole shebang of them put together. There they were always before him, haunting him. On the streets. Every corner of the town where you could stand or sit making way for themselves to lie down . . . thrown down in a dirty heap . . . as if they owned the place . . . giving each other airs and graces and rewards . . . selling themselves and their art before anyone else. All eyes on them, Joe. Huge crowds milling about them from the bank manager to the yobbo – examining their art, praising it as if they knew something about it, saying it was great for them to be there, that they added life to the city . . . and you wouldn’t mind only most of them are only . . . only . . . piss artists. That’s it Joe, you took the words clean out of my mouth. Piss artists. Don’t dirty your mouth again with the word, that’s it. Didn’t one of them even claim that the stream of piss on the side of the road that his mangy shitty dog did – the one who was always crawling after him – was modern art. He stuffed it down his throat. That’s what put so much air in him. No wonder he exploded with spite to get out of the way of that lump of street garbage, that lot who were robbing him of his reputation for their own glory. Maybe he just had to explode . . . just to start again, to get back his own sense of self-worth, to know who the fuck he really was. To make art of himself, every friggin’ bit of him, that’s what they said, to make himself into art . . . and then to explode. Without warning, without sweet whack all smack bang in the middle of the city streets . . . it was then they called what he had done modern art. I’m telling you they did. They accepted him then when they got it straight up the arse, or in the face, whichever you prefer. They had no other choice anyway when he was fucked up in a billion pieces. By Jaysus they didn’t, Joe. Now they have him all lock, stock and barrel. They can keep him, they can fuckin’ keep him.
And they did. Maybe if they didn’t want him when he was alive they had no choice but to take him when he was plastered all over the place in bits and pieces. Every bit of the city got their own bit up their arse and in the nose and down their throat when chunks of his fat slob body were fucked around every building site and every arse-hole street in the arsehole of the arse-hole city. By Jaysus, they had to put up with him then, Joe, I’m telling you that – a blob of guts here, a chunk of gob there, a toe or a finger or whatever, a bit of liver splattered on a lamp-post, a bit of an ear stuck on to the graveyard gate, a few fingernails half-stuck in the door of the National Theatre, a smidgen of lung smarmed on the goalposts of the football field . . . perched on the peak of the top of the cathedral one of his balls – that’s a good one for you, they hadn’t found the second one yet, crowds messing around as if they were on a treasure hunt . . . somebody said there was somebody from some American sperm bank sniffing around . . . that the blue-rinse crowd of frustrated American women were looking for a good deal. I mean, Jaysus, the great artist’s sperm! . . . Probably too late, Joe, probably too late . . . Half his prick shot off on the top of the convent wall . . . the only two young nuns in the place pissing themselves laughing, the old nuns shrivelled up in their surprise and good fortune . . . asking the Archbishop to bless the place again from top to bottom and to keep two holy vigils one after the other . . . a sliver of his heart landed on some bank sub-office, one of his eyes came down smack plop on the Mansion House, just as you’d expect, a gobbet of his arse thrown up on the dole office where he collected his money every Tuesday, a shred of his foreskin stuck to the Garda barracks – they were looking for fingerprints in case of foul play . . . a wedge of his skull on the roof of the lab of the university . . . they were drawing up charts already hoping to make some use of them. Bad story, Joe, sad story. Anyway, as for the rest of him, I don’t suppose anyone would know the difference, mounds of muscle, bits of bone, blobs of blood, whorls of water, brickbats of bone, strips of skin . . . gobbets of gollops of dollops plastering whole segments of the city – street and lamp-posts, and telephone boxes, and bus stops, and zebra crossings, and advertising hoardings, and shopfronts, and schools, and statues of martyrs . . . you’d hardly say that any shaggin’ bit escaped Joe, nothing at all, only maybe a bit of a backstreet or a hole of a public toilet . . . certainly some of the women’s toilets escaped they said . . . maybe he was a ladies’ man after all . . .
Some queer sight. The way they left him there. Even the dogs of the city weren’t willing to go near him. They weren’t willing to go near him even though their guts were hanging through their balls with hunger. I suppose an artist’s cantankerous flesh, especially one who exploded, isn’t the same as everybody else’s mortal flesh. Dogs didn’t eat nothin’ after that, no other meat. Some wag said they were becoming veggies . . . going around with their noses in the air like snobby shites. It was said, of course, that he should be put back together again . . . They could stitch him up, they said, if they got all the pieces in one place. Maybe the government could squeeze some slush-fund European grant and get some unemployed FÁS people . . . to like, stitch him so he’d grow together again . . .
It was said, Joe, it was, but what else hasn’t been said . . . A small oriental little fart of a doctor up in the hospital who might be able to blow some life back into him. He’s miraculous. Maybe yes and maybe no . . . Sure thing, Joe, but I’d put my money on the second maybe. Maybe they should have tried it anyway. You never know. But they didn’t. No more than Humpty-Dumpty in his day . . . The bigwigs of the Corporation voted unanimously against it. It was said that they did it out of fear . . . they were scared shitless that he’d wreck the joint if he was alive again . . . And anyway he was worth three times more scattered around the place dead. But between the two of us there was even another reason, Joe. Insurance! Millions of pounds in insurance that could never be claimed if he was alive again. That’s one for ya! But that wasn’t the official version, of course. The Corporation scumbags said that it would have been unfair to the artist. It was his own decision to blow up at that particular time and place – that he was opening a new chapter in the story of art in the city, and of course, in his own inimitable personal style. A conscious pre-planned decision, they said. A climax all of his own choosing. Some people would do anything, Joe . . . Sometimes they would . . . looking for recognition and publicity. His name in the next edition of the Guinness Book of Records. And wasn’t he finally recognized in his own native city as a result. Isn’t that something in itself? Twice refused the Freedom of the City during his life, and now he gets it despite the lot of them with a bit of violence. That was it, boy, that was it. All he ever wanted from the beginning, if they’d only have given it to him . . . Recognition . . . Exhibition . . . A Grand Exhibition . . .
Alive grand exhibition of himself – and he dead! Hundreds of pieces of art that couldn’t be valued, nor bought nor sold because they were priceless. There they were presented to the city. Real modern art, Joe, the genuine article, made from his own natural resources. The Junior Minister for Arts, Culture and the Breac-Ghaeltacht was summoned home from his sunny holidays to officially open the exhibition – while the stuff was still fresh, they said. Ordered home, I’m telling you he was. Accompanied by government officials just in case. The Minister said that the entire city outdoors was now one gigantic and ornamental gallery. That no developer or demolisher could touch a brick of a building from now on. Now, wasn’t that worth it! His fame spread far and wide beyond these shores . . . great tourist potential and money-spinner for the entire region. Would bring thousands of interested visitors . . . he said it, Joe, he did . . . Double-deck buses full of tourists disgorging themselves into the shops . . . Small Japanese with their hand videos. Fat-arsed middle-aged American women with their spyglasses. Tall blonde German beasts with their cameras clicking . . . Trained guides showing them the city from open-topped buses. It’s true, Joe, leave it to the tourists. Would be easy to satisfy them. Or to fool them. But the experts, Joe, the experts! They’re the crowd to watch. Standing on one another’s toes trying to make sense of it all . . . Every specialist and expert in the country – in the world, if it comes to that, pathologists, psychologists, pseudologists, sociologists, anthropologists, geologists, gayologists, arseologists, pissologists . . . After all, it isn’t everyday that someone just blows up. Wasn’t that what they said. Everyone for himself making sense of it in his own way . . . research for some of them, lectures around the world for others, money-spinning books, television appearances . . . More guards needed twenty-four hours a day or they’d cream off whole blobs of him in little plastic bags as samples . . .
