No More Learning

"I never knew anyone founder" he declared in a pas- sionate way, "and I've seen a good many. "
"No" said the Smeraldina.
"Automatic dispensation" he cried. "Strength from on high" snapping his thumb "like that. Meet in Paradize. "
"Yes" said the Smeraldina.
"No sooner does he arrive" clasping his hands and look- ing up (why up? ) "there where there is no time, than you burst in upon him. "
"He's all right" said the Smeraldina. "I know that. " "Therefore be glad" cried the parson.
He pedalled away like a weaver's shuttle (but not be-
fore she had covenanted to be glad) to administer the Eucharist, of which he always carried an abundance in a satchel on the bracket of his bike, to a moneyed wether up the road whose tale was nearly told. Seven and six a time.
Capper Quin arrived on tiptire, in a car of his very own. He grappled with the widow, he simply could not help it. She was a sensible girl in some ways, she was not ashamed
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to let herself go in the arms of a man of her own weight at last. They broke away, carrot plucked from tin of grease, and Hairy stood humbly before her, hers to command. He was greatly improved, commerce with the things of time had greatly improved him. Now he could speak quite nicely, he did not simply have to abandon his periods in despair after a word or two.
She stood by while he freighted the car. The sacks dis- tended with fern and bracken; the boughs of eucalyptus, piecemeal to meet the occasion, tied up in an old stable jacket; a superb shrub of verbena treated in the same way; a vat of moss; a bag of wire tholes. When all these things had been safely stowed and the car pointed in the right direction, Hairy followed her lead into the house and took up position, the crutch well split, the great feet splayed, swollen paws appaumee two dangling chunks of blood ballast, aborted mammae much in evidence, at gaze. Even Ireland has a few animals, now generally regarded as varieties, which have been ranked as species by some zoologists. He felt his face improving as grief modelled the features.
"Might I see him? " he whispered, like a priest asking for a book in the Trinity College Library.
She had herself supported up the stairs, she led the way into the death-chamber as though it belonged to her. They diverged, the body was between them on the bed like the keys between nations in Velasquez's Lances, like the water between Buda and Pest, and so on, hyphen of reality.
"Very beautiful" said Hairy.
"I think very" said the Smeraldina.
"They all are" said Hairy.
Shed a tear, damn you, she thought, I can't. But he
went one better, he choked a whole bucketful back. His face improved rapidly.
They met again at the foot of the bed, like parallels made to for the sake of argument, and occupied this fresh viewpoint with heads together until the Smeraldina, feel- ing the absurdity of the position, detached herself, left the room and closed the door behind her, on the dying and the dead.
Hairy felt it was up to him now to feel something.
"You are quieter than humus" he said in his mind, "you will give the bowels of the earth a queer old lesson in quiet. "
That was the best he could manage at the time. But bowels surely was hardly the right word. That was where Queen Anne had the gout.
The hands pious on the sternum were unseemly, de- funct crusader, absolved from polite campaign. Hairy reached out with his endless arms and tugged at the marble members. Two nouns and two adjectives. Not a stir out of them. How stupid of him.
"This is final" he thought.
Belacqua had often looked forward to meeting the girls, Lucy especially, hallowed and transfigured beyond the veil. What a hope! Death had already cured him of that naivete.
Hairy, anxious though he was to rejoin the Smeraldina while his face was at its best, before it relapsed into the workaday dumpling, steak and kidney pudding, had his work cut out to tear himself away. For he could not throw off the impression that he was letting slip a rare occasion to feel something really stupendous, something that no- body had ever felt before. But time pressed. The Smeral- dina was pawing the ground, his own personal features were waning (or, perhaps better, waxing). In the end he took his leave without kneeling, without a prayer, but his brain quite prostrate and suppliant before this first fact of
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its experience. That was at least something. He would have welcomed a long Largo, on the black notes for pref- erence.
In the cemetery the light was failing, the sea moonstone washing the countless toes turned up, the mountains swarthy Uccello behind the headstones. The loveliest little lap of earth you ever saw. Hairy shifted the roof of planks from off the brand-new pit and went down, down, down the narrow steps carefully not removed by the grounds- man. His head came to rest below the surface of the earth. What a nerve the man had to be sure. The significance of this was lost on the Smeraldina, she merely crouched on the brink.
Well, to make a long story short, the pair of them be- tween them, she feeding him from above, upholstered the grave: the floor with moss and fern, the walls with the verdure outstanding. Low down the clay was so hard that Hairy had to take his shoe to the tholes. However they made a great job of it, not a spot of clay showed when they had done, all was lush, green and most sweet smell- ing.
But soon it would be black and dark night, a chill wind arose, the pangs of light began on the foothills, the moon- stone turned to ashes. The Smeraldina shivered, as well she might. Hairy, taking a last look round at his handi- work, was as snug as a bug in a rug. Belacqua lay dead on the bed with the timeless mock on the face. Hairy came up out of the hole, drew up the steps behind him, put back the planks and rubbed his hands with a sigh, labour ended, labour of love, painful duty.
All of a sudden the groundsman was there, a fine man in ruins, as drunk as he knew how, giving point to the consecrated ground. He was most moved by their atten- tions, without parallel in his experience of the forsaken.
For his own part he could be relied on to work himself to the bone for the defunct, whom he had known well, not only as a man, but as a boy also. The Smeraldina had a quick vision of Belacqua as a boy, shinning up the larch trees, his breast expanding to the world.
Hairy feeling father, brother, husband, confessor, friend of the family (what family? ) and the inevitable something more, did the heavy with the reeling groundsman. The Smeraldina played up. Belacqua, idealised something hor- rid, made the widow and her huge escort, who now stalked off, four lovely deaf ears, faces tilted slightly to the starry sky, one in this sordid matter.
"Home Hairy" she said.
Hairy quickened his step, enveloped her, helped her along.
"I don't see the moon" she said.
Like a jack-in-the-box the satellite obliged, let down her shining ladder to the shore. She had a long lonely climb before her.
The groundsman, cut to the quick, mindful of his lum- bago, sat down on the planks and lowered his bottle of stout. Guinness for Thinness, stultifying stout. He had lost interest in all the shabby mysteries, he was beyond caring. He strained his ear for the future, and what did he hear? All the ancient punctured themes recurring, creeping up the treble out of sound. Very well. Let the essence of his being stay where it was, in liquor and liquor's harmonics, accepted gladly as the ultimate expression of his non- chalance. He rose and made his water agin a cypress.
That night Hairy lay in his bed, tossed and turned for various reasons, fell off at last into a troubled sleep, woke not at all refreshed to a day of wind and rain, the weather having broken in the small hours.
At midday to the Smeraldina, in bed indulging her most
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secret thoughts, salivating slightly for a lightly boiled egg, Mary Ann appeared. Mr Malacoda. Keen to coffin. The Smeraldina observed in a bitter voice that if the man must coffin why coffin he must, surely there was no clear call on Mary Ann to make a point of pestering her with what could not be cured.
A thin wall, a good but thin wall, separated her from Mr Malacoda and assistant ungulata, in a fever to have done. Cerements did not suit the defunct, with their riot of frills and lace they made him look like a pantomime baby.
When Hairy arrived it was the magic hour, Homer dusk, when the subliminal rats came abroad on their rounds. The little something extra that he felt he had come in for made great strides at the expense of its co-heirs. He agreed ab- solutely that cerements did not suit the defunct, somehow they made him look so put-upon and helpless, almost as though he had not done dying. He stayed to supper.
A point to bear in mind is that the Smeraldina was so naturally happy-go-lucky that she did not find it at all easy to feel deeply, or rather, perhaps better, be deeply sentimental. Her life had been springing leaks for as long as she cared to remember. A husband—and how! —was oakum in the end the same as everything else, prophylac- tic, a wire bandage of Jalade-Lafont. Belacqua had come unstuck like his own favour of veronica in What a Mis- fortune. Losers seekers. The position was not quite so simple as all that, there was some sentimental factor in play (or at work) complicating the position, but that was more or less it.
That night the weather so mended as to be more than merely clement for the ceremony. Malacoda and Co. turned up bright and early with their six cylinder hearse, black as Ulysses's cruiser. The demon, quite unable to control his impatience to cover, could only manage a quick
flirt with Mary Ann. The Smeraldina was through with the death-chamber, not that she was callous, quite the reverse, but the livery of death, leaving aside its pale flag alto- gether, was too much for her. Hairy, more and more self- assured servitor, was of the same opinion. So let the good man cover by all means. That was what he was there for, that was what he was paid for. Let the whole nightmare brood walk up by all manner of means.
Now he was grinning up at the lid at last. "No flowers" said Hairy.
God forbid!
"And no friends. "
Need he ask!
The parson arrived in the nick of time. He had been casting out devils all morning, he was in a muck sweat.
Hairy scampered out into the sunlight and the balmy breeze, free of the house that was suddenly jerry-built mausoleum, with a message from his sweet ward to the driver whose name was Scarmiglione, a strongly worded message exhorting him to temper full speed with due cau- tion. "Let her out" said Hairy in his pretentious jargon "to the irreducible coefficient of safety. " Scarmiglione met this request with a look of petrified courtesy. On these trips he deferred to the speed-controlling washer of his own mind and conscience, and to none other. He was adamant in this matter. Hairy shrank away from the affable rictus.
All aboard. All souls at half-mast. Aye-aye.
Mary Ann found the gardener shut up in the toolshed, all of a heap on an upturned box, nervously tying knots in a piece of raffia. He was not neglecting his work, he was
grieving.
"The only one" said Mary Ann, alluding to their late
employer, "as ever I dreamed on," as though that could possibly interest the gardener. But what higher tribute
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could she pay? The gardener had secured his retreat, she could not come at him, she could only hold her livid far- thing of a face at the broken window and commit copious nuisance with her opinions and impressions. She did not expect an answer, she did not pause for one, she received none. He heard the voice at a great distance, but could make no sense of it. For he was, temporarily at all events, just a clod of gloom, in which concern for his own state of health counted for more than he would have cared to admit. Was he overdoing things about the place? It was hard to say. He heard Mary Ann in the run, her voice raised in furious hallali, butchering a fowl for the table. He began to look about for his line. It was gone from its place. Someone had stolen his line. Some unauthorised person had taken his line, with the result that now he was helpless to put down his broccoli. He rose and let himself out, he slobbered out of darkness into light, he chose a place in the sun and settled, he was like a colossal fly trim- ming its load of typhus. Gradually he cheered up. Ten to one God was in his heaven.
Though the grave was deep the committal was neat, not a hitch; its words perhaps a trifle mis-directed on the vile, the sure and certain hope rather gobbled up in the fact of departure. The tone conveyed to "earth to earth" was a triumph of passionate and contemptuous reproach to all the living. How dared they continue full of misery! Pah!
"Now in Gaelic" said Hairy on the way home "they could not say that. "
"What could they not say? " said the parson. He would not rest until he knew.
"O Death where is thy sting? " replied Hairy. "They have no words for these big ideas. "
This was more than enough for the parson, a canon of
the Church of Ireland, who hastily exclaimed, no doubt by way of a shining straw, to the Smeraldina:
,,
"My wife would so much like to see you.
"O Anthrax" said Hairy "where is thy pustule? "
"She has been through the fire" said the parson, "she
understands. My poor dear mother-in-law! "
"O G. P. I. " said Hairy "where are thy rats? "
By the mercy of God the good canon was slow to wrath. "And so on" said Hairy "and so forth. They can't say it
once and for all. A spalpeen's babble. "
Belacqua dead and buried, Hairy seemed to have taken
on a new lease of life. He spoke well, with commendable assurance; he looked better, less obese cretin and spado than ever before; and he felt better, which was a great thing. Perhaps the explanation of this was that while Belacqua was alive Hairy could not be himself, or, if you prefer, could be nothing else. Whereas now the defunct, such of his parts at least as might be made to fit, could be pressed into service, incorporated in the daily ellipses of Capper Quin without his having to face the risk of exposure. Already Belacqua was not wholly dead, but merely mutilated. The Smeraldina appreciated this with- out thinking.
As for her, it was almost as though she had suffered the inverse change. She had died in part. She had defi- nitely ceased to exist in that particular part which Belac- qua had been at such pains to isolate, the public part so cruelly made private for his convenience, her last clandes- tine aspect1 reduced to a radiograph and exploited to gin- ger his secret occasions. That was down the mine Daddy with the dead Sadomasochist. Her spiritual equivalent, to give it a name, had been measured, coffined and covered
1 What a competent poet once called the bella menzogna.
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by Nick Malacoda. As material for anagogy (Greek g if you don't mind) the worms were welcome to her.
What was left was just a fine strapping lump of a girl or woman, theatre nurse in Yellow from the neck down, bursting with Lebensgeist at every suture, itching to be taken at her—very much so to speak—face value, and by force for preference.
Now it so happened that these two processes, a kind of marginal metabolism possibly you might call them, inde- pendent but of common origin, constructive in the case of the man, destructive and delightfully excrementitious in the case of the woman, culminated simultaneously on the drive back from the grave.
Hairy stopped the car.
"Step down" he said to the parson, "I don't like you. " The parson appealed mutely to the Smeraldina. She had
nothing whatever to say to him. Never again in this life would she occupy any position more partisan than that of a comfortably covered bone of contention, her mind was made up.
"Bill the executors" said Hairy "and out you hop. "
The parson did as Hairy bid. He felt miserable. They did not even give him a chance to cock up the other cheek. He racked his brains for coals of fire.
As the car began to move away he jumped up nimbly on the running-board, stooped forward in the lee of the windscreen and began, heedless of punctuation, in a lamentable voice:
".
. .
no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither
"
shall there be any more
At which point, the car beginning to sway in a perilous
manner, he was obliged to break off in order to save his life. He stood in the road, far from home, and hoped, with- out exactly making a prayer out of it, that they might be forgiven.
"Wouldn't he give you the sick" said Hairy "with his Noo Gefoozleum. "
Little remains to be told. On their return they found the house in flames, the home to which Belacqua had brought three brides a raging furnace. It transpired that during their absence something had snapped in the brain of the gardener, who had ravished the servant girl and then set the premises on fire. He had neither given himself up nor tried to escape, he had shut himself up in the tool-shed and awaited arrest.
"Ravished Mary Ann" exclaimed the Smeraldina.
"So she deposes" said a high official of the Civic Guard. "It was she who raised the alarm. "
Hairy looked this dignitary up and down.
"I don't see your fiddle" he said.
"Where is the girl? " asked the Smeraldina.
"She has gone home to her Mother" answered the high
official.
She tried him again.
"Where is the gardener? "
But he had been expecting this question.
"He resisted arrest, he has been taken to hospital. " "Where are the heroes of the fire-brigade" said Hairy,
entering into the spirit of the thing, "the boys of the old brigade, the Tara Street Cossacks? May we expect them to-day? They would act as a kind of antiphlogistic. "
This Hairy was a revelation to the Smeraldina, he was indeed hairy.
"They are unavoidably detained" replied the Commis- sioner.
"Take me away" said the Smeraldina firmly, "the house is insured. "
The Commissioner made a mental note of this suspi- cious circumstance.
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Poor Smeraldina! She was more than ever at a loose end now.
"Why not come with me" said Hairy, "now that all this has happened, and be my love? "
"I don't understand" said the Smeraldina.
Hairy explained exactly what he meant. In the heart of the purple mountains the car conked out. Hairy had ex- hausted his petrol supply. But nothing daunted he con- tinued to explain. He explained and explained, the same old thing over and over again. At last he too conked out.
"Perhaps after all" murmured the Smeraldina "this is what darling Bel would wish. "
"What is? " cried Hairy aghast.
She handed him back his explanation in a nutshell. "Darling Smerry! " cried Hairy. "What else? "
They fell silent. Hairy, gazing straight before him
through the anti-dazzle windscreen, whose effect by the way on the mountains was to make them look not unlike the picture by Paul Henry, was inclined to think that it was about time they started to make a move. But this seemed out of the question. The Smeraldina, far far away with the corpse and her own spiritual equivalent in the bone-yard by the sea, was dwelling at length on how she would shortly gratify the former, even as it, while still un- finished, had that of Lucy,1 and blot the latter for ever from her memory.
"We must think of an inscription" she said.
"He did mention one to me once" said Hairy, "now that I come to think of it, that he would have endorsed, but I can't recall it. "
The groundsman stood deep in thought. What with the company of headstones sighing and gleaming like bones, the moon on the job, the sea tossing in her dreams
A most foully false analogy.
and panting, and the hills observing their Attic vigil in the background, he was at a loss to determine off-hand whether the scene was of the kind that is termed roman- tic or whether it should not with more justice be deemed classical. Both elements were present, that was indisput- able. Perhaps classico-romantic would be the fairest esti- mate. A classico-romantic scene.
Personally he felt calm and wistful. A classico-romantic working-man therefore. The words of the rose to the rose floated up in his mind: "No gardener has died, comma, within rosaceous memory. " He sang a little song, he drank his bottle of stout, he dashed away a tear, he made him- self comfortable.
So it goes in the world.
THE END
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© Samuel Ikekett 1989
Company firsl puhlished in 1980 by John Cald"r (Publislwrs) Ltd. 1/1 Scm 1/1 Said first puhlished by Editions de Minuit. Paris. as Ma/oll Ma/ dit illl'J81 and in the author's translation in 1982 by John Calder (Publishers) Ltd. Ukslward 110 first puhlished in 198:) by John Cahkr (Puhlislwrs) Ltd.
© Samuellkckett 1980, 1981, 1982, 198:). 19B9 ALL RICHTS RESERVED
BRITISII L1BHARY CATALOClflNC I'" PLBLlC\TION
Beckctt, Samuel
Nohow On
I. Titl. . II. Beekctt. Samud' «''''/HUI}' III. Beck. . tt. Samud [Ma/oll Ma/ dit] 1/1 Sern 1/1 Said IV. Beckett. Samu. . 1 U"(Jrslward 110
82:l-'J12 [F] PR60o:l . E 282 ISBN 0 71i. 'i . . 111 7 (hardcover)
ISBN 0 71i:, . . 112. 'i (papcrhack 1991)
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A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine. G
To one on his back in the dark. This he can tell by the pressure on his hind parts and b) how the dark changes when he shuts his e:es and again when he opens them again. Only a small part of what is said can be verified. As for example when he hears, You are on your back in the dark. Then he must acknowledge the truth of what is said. But by far the greater part of what is said cannot be verified. As for example when he hears, You first saw the light on such and such a da:. Sometimes the two are combined as for example, You first saw the light on such and such a clav and now
c, .
:ou are on :~our back in the dark. A device perhaps from the incontrovertibilitv of the one to win credence for the other. That then is the proposition. To one on his hack in the dark a voice tells of a past. With occa­ sional allusion to a present and more rareh to a future as for example, You will end as vou now are. And in
5
another dark or in the same another devising it all for
L
compan:'. Quick leave him.
Use of the second person marks the voice. That of the third that cankerous other. Could he speak to and of whom the voice speaks there would be a first. But he cannot. He shall not. You cannot. You shall not.
Apart from the voice and the faint sound of his breath there is no sound. None at least that he can hear. This he can tell bv the faint sound of his breath.
Though now even less than ever given to wonder he cannot but sometimes wonder if it is indeed to and of him the voice is speaking. Ma:' not there be another with him in the dark to and of whom the voice is speaking? Is he not perhaps overhearing a communi, cation not intended for him? If he is alone on his back in the dark why does the voice not sav so? Wh\, does
it never sa:' for example, You saw the light on such and such a day and now yOU are alone on \'our back in the dark? Why? Perhaps for no other reason than
to kindle in his mind this faint uncertainty and embar' rassment.
Your mind never active at any time is now even less
than ever so. This is the t:'pe of assertion he does not
question. You saw the light on such and such ada:
and your mind never active at any time is now even
less than ever so. Yet a certain activity of mind howev­
er slight is a necessar: complement of compan:-. That
is wh\- the voice does not say, You are on \our back in
. "
the dark and have no mental activity of any kind. The voice alone is compmw but not enough. Its effect on the hearer is a necessar:- complement. \Vere it onl: to kindle in his mind the state of faint uncertainty and embarrassment mentioned above. But compan: apart this effect is clearly necessan-. For were he mereh- to hear the voice and it to have no more effect on him than speech in Bantu or in Erse then might it not as well cease? Unless its object be b\- mere sound to plague one in need of silence. Or of course unless as above surmised directed at another.