The Third Policeman. Flann O’Brien
found a way to make him speak. I thought he even smiled slightly at me but this was doubtless the trickery of the bad morning light or a mischief worked by the shadows of the lamp. He swallowed a long draught of tea and sat waiting, looking at me with his queer eyes. They were now bright and active and moved about restlessly in their yellow wrinkled sockets.
‘Do you refuse to tell me why you say that?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘When I was a young man I led an unsatisfactory life and devoted most of my time to excesses of one kind or another, my principal weakness being Number One. I was also party to the formation of an artificial manurering.’
My mind went back at once to John Divney, to the farm and the public house and on from that to the horrible afternoon we had spent on the wet lonely road. As if to interrupt my unhappy thoughts I heard Joe’s voice again, this time severe:
No need to ask him what Number One is, we do not want lurid descriptions of vice or anything at all in that line. Use your imagination. Ask him what all this has to do with Yes and No.
‘What has that got to do with Yes and No?’
‘After a time,’ said old Mathers disregarding me, ‘I mercifully perceived the error of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them. I retired from the world in order to try to comprehend it and to find out why it becomes more unsavoury as the years accumulate on a man’s body. What do you think I discovered at the end of my meditations?’
I felt pleased again. He was now questioning me.
‘What?’
That No is a better word than Yes,’ he replied.
This seemed to leave us where we were, I thought.
On the contrary, very far from it. I am beginning to agree with him. There is a lot to be said for No as a General Principle. Ask him what he means.
‘What do you mean?’ I inquired.
‘When I was meditating,’ said old Mathers, ‘I took all my sins out and put them on the table, so to speak. I need not tell you it was a big table.’
He seemed to give a very dry smile at his own joke. I chuckled to encourage him.
‘I gave them all a strict examination, weighed them and viewed them from all angles of the compass. I asked myself how I came to commit them, where I was and whom I was with when I came to do them.’
This is very wholesome stuff, every word a sermon in itself. Listen very carefully. Ask him to continue.
‘Continue,’ I said.
I confess I felt a click inside me very near my stomach as if Joe had put a finger to his lip and pricked up a pair of limp spaniel ears to make sure that no syllable of the wisdom escaped him. Old Mathers continued talking quietly.
‘I discovered,’ he said, ‘that everything you do is in response to a request or a suggestion made to you by some other party either inside you or outside. Some of these suggestions are good and praiseworthy and some of them are undoubtedly delightful. But the majority of them are definitely bad and are pretty considerable sins as sins go. Do you understand me?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘I would say that the bad ones outnumber the good ones by three to one.’
Six to one if you ask me.
‘I therefore decided to say No henceforth to every suggestion, request or inquiry whether inward or outward. It was the only simple formula which was sure and safe. It was difficult to practise at first and often called for heroism but I persevered and hardly ever broke down completely. It is now many years since I said Yes. I have refused more requests and negatived more statements than any man living or dead. I have rejected, reneged, disagreed, refused and denied to an extent that is unbelievable.’
An excellent and original régime. This is all extremely interesting and salutary, every syllable a sermon in itself. Very very wholesome.
‘Extremely interesting,’ I said to old Mathers.
‘The system leads to peace and contentment,’ he said. ‘People do not trouble to ask you questions if they know the answer is a foregone conclusion. Thoughts which have no chance of succeeding do not take the trouble to come into your head at all.’
‘You must find it irksome in some ways,’ I suggested. ‘If, for instance, I were to offer you a glass of whiskey…’
‘Such few friends as I have,’ he answered, ‘are usually good enough to arrange such invitations in a way that will enable me to adhere to my system and also accept the whiskey. More than once I have been asked whether I would refuse such things.’
‘And the answer is still NO?’
‘Certainly.’
Joe said nothing at this stage but I had the feeling that this confession was not to his liking; he seemed to be uneasy inside me. The old man seemed to get somewhat restive also. He bent over his teacup with abstraction as if he were engaged in accomplishing a sacrament. Then he drank with his hollow throat, making empty noises.
A saintly man.
I turned to him again, fearing that his fit of talkativeness had passed.
‘Where is the black box which was under the floor a moment ago?’ I asked. I pointed to the opening in the corner. He shook his head and did not say anything.
‘Do you refuse to tell me?’
‘No.’
‘Do you object to my taking it?’
‘No.’
‘Then where is it?’
‘What is your name?’ he asked sharply.
I was surprised at this question. It had no bearing on my own conversation but I did not notice its irrelevance because I was shocked to realize that, simple as it was, I could not answer it. I did not know my name, did not remember who I was. I was not certain where I had come from or what my business was in that room. I found I was sure of nothing save my search for the black box. But I knew that the other man’s name was Mathers, and that he had been killed with a pump and spade. I had no name.
‘I have no name,’ I replied.
Then how could I tell you where the box was if you could not sign a receipt? That would be most irregular. I might as well give it to the west wind or to the smoke from a pipe. How could you execute an important Bank document?’
‘I can always get a name,’ I replied. ‘Doyle or Spaldman is a good name and so is O’Sweeny and Hardiman and O’Gara. I can take my choice. I am not tied down for life to one word like most people.’
‘I do not care much for Doyle,’ he said absently.
The name is Ban. Signor Bari, the eminent tenor. Five hundred thousand people crowded the great piazza when the great artist appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Rome.
Fortunately these remarks were not audible in the ordinary sense of the word. Old Mathers was eyeing me.
‘What is your colour?’ he asked.
‘My colour?’
‘Surely you know you have a colour?’
‘People often remark on my red face.’
‘I do not mean that at all.’
Follow this closely, this is bound to be extremely interesting. Very edifying also.
I saw it was necessary to question old Mathers carefully.
‘Do you refuse to explain this question about the colours?’
‘No,’ he said. He slapped more tea in his cup.