I Sing the Body Electric. Ray Bradbury
he looked the more his eyes began to tic and his mouth to work over a nameless thing.
Finally Nolan said, “Your Lordship, what is it?”
“I was just thinking,” said the Lord, at last, “you love Ireland, do you not?”
My God, yes! said everyone. Need he ask?
“Even as do I,” said the old man gently. “And do you love all that is in it, in the land, in her heritage?”
That too, said all, went without saying!
“I worry then,” said the Lord, “about things like this. This portrait is by Van Dyck. It is very old and very fine and very important and very expensive. It is, gentlemen, a National Art Treasure.”
“Is that what it is!” said everyone, more or less, and crowded around for a sight.
“Ah, God, it’s fine work,” said Timulty.
“The flesh itself,” said Nolan.
“Notice,” said Riordan, “the way his little eyes seem to follow you?”
Uncanny, everyone said.
And were about to move on, when his Lordship said, “Do you realize this Treasure, which does not truly belong to me, nor you, but to all the people as precious heritage, this picture will be lost forever tomorrow night?”
Everyone gasped. They had not realized.
“God save us,” said Timulty, “we can’t have that!”
“We’ll move it out of the house, first,” said Riordan.
“Hold on!” cried Casey.
“Thank you,” said his Lordship, “but where would you put it? Out in the weather it would soon be torn to shreds by wind, dampened by rain, flaked by hail; no, no, perhaps it is best it burns quickly—”
“None of that!” said Timulty. “I’ll take it home, myself.”
“And when the great strife is over,” said his Lordship, “you will then deliver into the hands of the new government this precious gift of Art and Beauty from the past?”
“Er … every single one of those things, I’ll do,” said Timulty.
But Casey was eyeing the immense canvas, and said, “How much does the monster weigh?”
“I would imagine,” said the old man, faintly, “seventy to one hundred pounds, within that range.”
“Then how in hell do we get it to Timulty’s house?” asked Casey.
“Me and Brannahan will carry the damn treasure,” said Timulty, “and if need be, Nolan, you lend a hand.”
“Posterity will thank you,” said his Lordship.
They moved on along the hall, and again his Lordship stopped, before yet two more paintings.
“These are two nudes—”
They are that! said everyone.
“By Renoir,” finished the old man.
“That’s the French gent who made them?” asked Rooney. “If you’ll excuse the expression?”
It looks French all right, said everyone.
And a lot of ribs received a lot of knocking elbows.
“These are worth several thousand pounds,” said the old man.
“You’ll get no argument from me,” said Nolan, putting out his finger, which was slapped down by Casey.
“I—” said Blinky Watts, whose fish eyes swam about continuously in tears behind his thick glasses, “I would like to volunteer a home for the two French ladies. I thought I might tuck those two Art Treasures one under each arm and hoist them to the wee cot.”
“Accepted,” said the Lord with gratitude.
Along the hall they came to another, vaster landscape with all sorts of monster beast-men cavorting about treading fruit and squeezing summer-melon women. Everyone craned forward to read the brass plate under it: Twilight of the Gods.
“Twilight, hell,” said Rooney, “it looks more like the start of a great afternoon!”
“I believe,” said the gentle old man, “there is irony intended both in title and subject. Note the glowering sky, the hideous figures hidden in the clouds. The gods are unaware, in the midst of their bacchanal, that Doom is about to descend.”
“I do not see,” said Blinky Watts, “the Church or any of her girly priests up in them clouds.”
“It was a different kind of Doom in them days,” said Nolan. “Everyone knows that.”
“Me and Tuohy,” said Flannery, “will carry the demon gods to my place. Right, Tuohy?”
“Right!”
And so it went now, along the hall, the squad pausing here or there as on a grand tour of a museum, and each in turn volunteering to scurry home through the snowfall night with a Degas or a Rembrandt sketch or a large oil by one of the Dutch masters, until they came to a rather grisly oil of a man, hung in a dim alcove.
“Portrait of myself,” muttered the old man, “done by her Ladyship. Leave it there, please.”
“You mean,” gasped Nolan, “you want it to go up in the Conflagration?”
“Now, this next picture—” said the old man, moving on.
And finally the tour was at an end.
“Of course,” said his Lordship, “if you really want to be saving, there are a dozen exquisite Ming vases in the house—”
“As good as collected,” said Nolan.
“A Persian carpet on the landing—”
“We will roll it and deliver it to the Dublin Museum.”
“And that exquisite chandelier in the main dining room.”
“It shall be hidden away until the Troubles are over,” sighed Casey, tired already.
“Well, then,” said the old man, shaking each hand as he passed. “Perhaps you might start now, don’t you imagine? I mean, you do indeed have a largish job preserving the National Treasures. Think I shall nap five minutes now before dressing.”
And the old man wandered off upstairs.
Leaving the men stunned and isolated in a mob in the hall below, watching him go away out of sight.
“Casey,” said Blinky Watts, “has it crossed your small mind, if you’d remembered to bring the matches there would be no such long night of work as this ahead?”
“Jesus, where’s your taste for the ass-thetics?” cried Riordan.
“Shut up!” said Casey. “Okay, Flannery, you on one end of the Twilight of the Gods, you, Tuohy, on the far end where the maid is being given what’s good for her. Ha! Lift!”
And the gods, soaring crazily, took to the air.
By seven o’clock most of the paintings were out of the house and racked against each other in the snow, waiting to be taken off in various directions toward various huts. At seven fifteen, Lord and Lady Kilgotten came out and drove away, and Casey quickly formed the mob in front of the stacked paintings so the nice old lady wouldn’t see what they were up to. The boys cheered as the car went down the drive. Lady Kilgotten waved frailly back.
From seven thirty until ten the rest of the paintings walked out in one’s and two’s.
When all the pictures were gone save one, Kelly stood in the dim alcove worrying over Lady Kilgotten’s Sunday painting of the old Lord. He shuddered, decided on a supreme humanitarianism, and carried the portrait