'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

A Doctor With a Goldfish Bowl


A good autumn can make up for a bad summer. It's great to be outside in the strong wind and the cold air. The wife's uncle says that when he was young, himself and his friends used to have parties in the hills to celebrate the start of autumn. Some of the parties lasted for over a week because it took days for some people to arrive. One of his friends travelled everywhere by tunnelling, so he was always late. Another travelled by limping, which took even longer.


My cousin Craig went on a guided tour of a castle one afternoon in August. When the tour was completed he walked around the gardens. He sat on a bench to rest. He was doing his best not to fall asleep, but he struggled to stop his eyelids from covering his eyes, like a T-shirt being pulled down over a beer belly before springing back up again. He was just on the point of falling asleep when he stood up suddenly and looked around. In his mind he saw the image of a doctor holding a goldfish bowl that held a goldfish. The doctor, assuming he was a doctor, had a stethoscope around his neck (this was the only grounds for assuming he was a doctor). Craig felt sure that he had seen this as he was dozing off, but it could also have been the start of a dream as he drifted towards sleep. The doctor looked as if he didn't want to be seen. He had walked on quickly when he noticed Craig looking at him. Craig walked on the path the doctor took, assuming he was real.


The path led Craig to a lawn where a woman was posing for an artist, who was working at an easel. She was wearing a cream-coloured scarf and a long red coat. The artist had captured the colours perfectly, but her head was out of proportion with the rest of her body. It was much bigger than it should have been. Her name was Amanda, and the artist was Terence.


Craig asked him if he'd seen a doctor go by with a goldfish bowl. Terence said, "If you don't see it in the painting, I haven't seen it."


Craig looked closely at the painting. There was no sign of the doctor with the goldfish bowl, but there was a group of people standing behind Amanda in the painting. They were all wearing blue coats. Craig couldn't see them in real life. He asked Amanda if she'd seen the doctor and she said, "Possibly. Or possibly not. What does he look like?"


"I'm not entirely sure. But I know he had a stethoscope around his neck and he was holding a goldfish bowl with a goldfish in it. When it comes to identifying him, those features would be more important than the colour of his hair or his height. Lots of people are tall and have blond hair and blue eyes, but there can't be too many people with stethoscopes around their necks and goldfish bowls in their hands."


"What if I saw a blond man who was four feet tall and he had a stethoscope around his neck and a goldfish bowl in his hands, and I said, 'There he is! Get him!' And then it turned out that the man you were looking for was seven feet tall and had red hair. How would I explain that to the four-foot man?"


"Just blame him for it," Terence said as he pointed at Craig.


"I'm fairly sure he's not four feet tall," Craig said.


"But you're not absolutely sure," she said.


"No. It depends on how big the goldfish bowl was. If it was an average size goldfish bowl, then judging by the proportions, the doctor was an average size man. But it could have been a very small bowl and a small man. Or a big bowl and a big man."


"Or your sense of proportion could be wrong," Terence said.


"Yeah, that's possible too."


Amanda said, "When I was dressed as a maid once I got lost in the fog and it played havoc with my sense of proportion. Perspective too. My hands looked way too big."


Craig wondered if there was a link between her being dressed as a maid and getting lost in the fog, but he wasn't sure if he should ask. As he tried to think of an indirect way of asking about it, she said, "I suppose proportion and perspective would be linked. You'd know how big a man in the distance is if he was standing next to a tree."


"If you knew how big the tree was," Craig said.


"How far away was the doctor with the goldfish bowl?"


"I don't know."


"He could have been a long way away. And that could have been why you saw him as a four-foot man."


"I didn't see him as a four-foot man. At least I don't think I did."


"Are you sure you weren't in the fog at the time? Because when I was in the fog there was..."


"Dressed as a maid."


"Yeah, dressed as a maid. There was this man and he was huge. He appeared out of nowhere in the fog. He had a dog too. I noticed a little tear in his shirt and I pulled at it. I ended up tearing most of his shirt and all of his trousers off. He was made out of paper. It must have been a billboard. When I tore away the paper I saw a room in a country cottage underneath. I waited there until the fog cleared."


"Are you sure it wasn't just a dream?"


"What sort of a question is that?"


"Sorry. I didn't mean it as a 'sort' of a question. I was just... Sorry."


"That's okay. I suppose it's a fair question, given the bare facts I've outlined, but it wasn't a dream. I'd just been to the shop to get jam. You don't wander into a dream just after going to a shop."


"While dressed as a maid."


"Yeah, while dressed as a maid."


Craig said he should resume his search for the doctor with the goldfish bowl. He walked on again. He stopped at a fish pond and looked at his reflection in the water. He saw a huge goldfish, one that would be severely cramped in a bowl. He remembered the painting of Amanda, and the real version of Amanda, but he couldn't remember if her head was too big and the painting made it look smaller or vice versa. He wondered if he was the one who was dreaming. He couldn't rule out that possibility on the basis that he'd just been to the shop to get jam. He could understand why he'd dream of a woman dressed as a maid (rather than just a maid) but he didn't know where the doctor with the goldfish bowl came from, or where he went to. And Craig was losing interest in where the doctor went to. Whether this was a dream or reality, he was more interested in pursuing the line of inquiry relating to the woman who was dressed as a maid.


So he went back to them. As he was wondering how he'd raise the issue of the maid's outfit he noticed something odd in the painting. Terence had added in a doctor with a goldfish bowl.


Craig said, "Why have you added in the doctor with the goldfish bowl?"


"I must have seen him."


"You hadn't seen him the last time I was here."


"Well I must have seen him since then."


Craig asked Amanda if she'd seen him and she said she hadn't. Craig said to Terence, "I think you just saw him in your mind after I mentioned him. He looks nothing like the man I saw."


"You don't know what that man looks like."


"I know what he doesn't look like."


"The man in the painting is holding a goldfish bowl, has a stethoscope around his neck and he's between four and seven feet tall. He matches your description perfectly."


"I'm not so sure he is between four and seven feet tall in the painting. He's in the background, but how far back is he? And if you judge his size in relation to her head, he's tiny, but in relation to her body, he's huge."


"Whichever way you look at it, and you can look at it both ways if you want, he's between four and seven feet tall, give or take a few inches."


"How could you have seen a man who was between four and seven feet tall?"


"I didn't know how far away he was. And I tried to judge his size in relation to my hand, but one of my arms is longer than the other and I keep forgetting which one it is. When I hold my hands out, one looks smaller than the other because it's further away."


Craig was starting to get confused. He felt that the fog of confusion could be cleared away if he just had the answer to one question, so he asked it. "Why were you dressed as a maid?" he said to Amanda.


But she pointed behind him and said, "There he is! Get him!" She was pointing at a tall man with red hair.


The group of people in blue coats emerged from behind some bushes. They ran towards the tall man, who ran away when he realised they were heading for him. Amanda ran with them. They caught him and brought him back to Craig. "We got him for you," Amanda said.


The tall man said to Craig, "You better have a very good explanation for this."


"I... Well, no. I don't have a very good explanation. Or even a good one. I have a bad one, if that'll do."


"No."


"Can I have some time to find a good one?"


"Where are you going to find a good one?"


"If I found a doctor holding a goldfish bowl, everything would make perfect sense."


"I'll give you twenty minutes. Then I'll come looking for you."


Craig went inside the castle and wandered around the rooms. He looked at all of the paintings in one room. He examined the background closely, and sometimes he saw faces looking out at him. He tried to judge how big they were, but this only thickened the fog of confusion in his mind. The final painting was of a maid. There was a slight tear in it, and he couldn't resist pulling it, but the maid slapped him across the face.


"Sorry," he said. "I was looking for a doctor with a goldfish bowl."


"Is that what you expected to find beneath my dress?"


"Well I've looked everywhere else, so... No. That's not what I expected to find. I wasn't expecting to find anything, apart from maybe a room in a cottage. Now that I think about it I know what I'd find... Not that I'm thinking about that now... This isn't a very good explanation, is it?"


"No."


"What would constitute a good explanation?"


"That you expected to find what you thought about after you looked."


"That might be good in one sense, in the sense that it's complete, assuming it's not nonsense, but in another sense it's bad for me because it casts me in a very poor light. If I actually found the doctor and the goldfish bowl, would that make my explanation any better?"


"Only if you found them under my dress. And they weren't there the last time I checked. Don't worry about the explanation casting you in a bad light. I feel safer with certainty. I much prefer a believable theory that casts people in a bad light rather than a shaky theory that portrays the whole world as sweetness and light. There would be something inherently unstable about such a theory. Most people prefer certainty."


"Right. I don't know what this doctor looks like, and that's led to a lot of confusion, but if I came up with a definite description of him, even though it would obviously be a lie, that would make people feel more comfortable."


"Absolutely. People can gloss over any lie if you give them something definite. Give them a rock to stand on, even if it is just floating through space. You should say that the doctor has an eye patch, because it's much easier to find someone with an eye patch."


"Okay."


"And say he has a beard, and a limp. He's about six feet tall and he's dressed in a brown suit with a dark red tie.


Craig went to look for the tall man with the red hair. The maid went with him. They found the man near the fish pond. Amanda, Terence and the people in the blue coats were there too. Craig said, "I haven't found the doctor yet, but I have a good description of him. He has an eye patch and a beard. He's about six feet tall and he's wearing a brown suit with a dark red tie. And he has a limp."


The maid said, "I know that man. Follow me."


She led them all back into the castle. She took them to a room at the back, where the man with the eye patch was looking in a filing cabinet. The tall man caught him, with the help of the people in the blue coats. Amanda said to him, "You'd better spill the beans."


The maid said, "Do you still think my forehead looks funny?"


"If you don't talk," Amanda said, "we'll make you talk. And after that you'll never want to talk about this again."


"I have no idea what you're referring to," he said. "I demand an explanation."


"I'm sorry about this," Craig said. "There seems to have been a slight mis-understanding. Y' see, I saw, or at least I thought I saw..."


The tall man pointed at Craig and said, "There he is. Get him."


Craig ran away and the others chased him. He ran down a corridor and took a left at the end. He saw a stethoscope hanging on the back of a chair. A doctor had been called earlier because a tourist had fainted. He put the stethoscope around his neck and he went into a room. There was a goldfish bowl on a table inside. He picked up the bowl and went to the far end of the room. He stood on a chair behind a baby grand piano. The windows just behind him were huge.


Amanda, Terence, the people in blue coats, the tall man with the red hair, the maid and the man with the beard all looked into the room. They stared at him for a few seconds before moving on again. Craig breathed a sigh of relief.


As he was leaving the room he saw himself in a mirror, and he got a strong feeling of deja vu. He believed that the image he saw was just like the image he'd seen earlier. He didn't want to investigate this any further, given the problems his previous investigations had led him into. He took off the stethoscope, put down the goldfish bowl and left the castle as quickly as he could.


The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys the autumn too. There's so much more to see outside the window when the leaves start falling from the trees. Watching the rugby on TV is nowhere near as enjoyable as watching dead leaves fall from a tree, although there are parallels. There's still one last chance of redemption against Argentina on Sunday, and if they do redeem themselves, the reward is to be humiliated by New Zealand, so the leaves would still provide the more uplifting experience.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Ferrets


Dropping pebbles in the fish pond is something I could do all day. Watching the ripples on the water is as relaxing as listening to the sound of waves or watching the neighbours try to make their homemade plane fly, which amounts watching a man running through the fields while holding a set of wings.


My cousin Gary arranged to meet his friend, Martin, at a gate on a quiet country road. The gate was on a long, straight stretch of the road. Gary was waiting there for about ten minutes before he saw Martin approaching on his moped, and it was another long wait before Martin arrived. He would have been quicker on foot. When he finally got there, Gary said, "In the time that I was watching you approach, a woman being attacked by ferrets could have negotiated the sale of an abandoned asylum to foreigners who don't speak her language."


Martin paused before responding as follows: "Why did you say that?"


"During the pause before you said that, the woman could have designed a trap to kill the ferrets."


"Do you know this woman?"


"Sort of. Well, not really. No."


"Can I meet her?"


"Okay."


They went to the top of a hill. This is where Gary expected to find her. There was someone there (a man making a humming sound) but it wasn't her.


Martin said, "I'm starting to wonder if this woman really exists."


"When have you seen ferrets attack something that doesn't exist?"


"I've often seen that. Imaginary ferrets."


"You often imagine ferrets attacking something that doesn't exist?"


"I often imagine ferrets attacking something, like bins or radios or me, but because these things are in my mind, they don't exist in the real world."


"Are you saying you don't exist outside your own mind?"


"Some people would say that none of us exist outside of our own minds. But they'd probably say that no one else exists apart from themselves. I do believe in other people, and I believe that I exist outside my own mind, but there's a version of me that only exists in my mind."


"What's that version of you like?"


"Well, for one thing, he keeps getting attacked by ferrets. The version of me outside my head has never been attacked by even one single ferret. I've never single-handedly defeated a group of terrorists who had captured a yacht either."


"But the version of you in your head has defeated the terrorists?"


"Yeah."


"So he can outwit terrorists on a yacht, almost like James Bond, but he keeps getting attacked by ferrets."


"It's quite possible that the real James Bond got attacked by ferrets too. Just because he's holding a cocktail and looking sophisticated, it doesn't mean he's immune to ferrets."


"James Bond isn't real. He only exists in books and films."


"He'd appear a lot more real if they occasionally showed him being attacked by a ferret or a squirrel."


"You can control the version of you in your head, just like you can edit things out of a film or a book, and yet you choose to see yourself being attacked by ferrets."


"You can't control everything. You can make the terrorists fall overboard with basic mental kung fu, but you can't control the ferrets in your dreams."


"Here's anther play thing for the version of you in your head: ferrorists. Hundreds of them invade a yacht and overpower the crew. Their fur is black and you can't see them at night. And the woman who's selling the asylum will kick your knees because she blames you for attracting the ferrorists."


"I'm not sure I want to meet this woman any more."


"Good."


"But seeing as you don't want me to meet her, I think I should."


"Why would you have any interest in meeting her?"


"Because we've both been attacked by ferrets, even if they are just mental ones. That's a fairly glaring thing we have in common."


"She's never actually been attacked by a ferret. She just doesn't like them, and they don't like her either. And she's never sold an abandoned asylum."


"It seems as if this woman has a very significant version of herself in your mind. And not only that, the ferrets who attacked her exisit only in your mind. That shouldn't come as any surprise, seeing as you've also got an abandoned asylum up there."


"I'm not going to introduce you to her."


"I'll find her eventually. I'll just ask around about the woman who doesn't like ferrets. There aren't too many people who have an opinion on ferrets, and I should know because I've often asked. When I find her I'll tell her what this other version of herself is doing in your head."


"Okay, I'll introduce you to her, but if you tell her what she's doing in my head, I'll tell her what you're doing to terrorists in your head."


Her name was Suzanne. Gary took Martin to her house and he introduced them.


"You're nothing at all like what I imagined," Martin said to her.


"Well, I'm... You actually imagined me in advance of meeting me?"


"You could say that a version of you had formed in my head based on the information given by Gary."


"No one's ever imagined me before meeting me before. Even after meeting me, there wouldn't be any remnants of me left in their heads. And people have often said that even while they were meeting me it was as if I wasn't fully there, as if they could see through me."


"I doubt very much that people have said that."


"Well, one person said it. But not in those words."


"I've formed a mental opinion of that person. Their knuckles are scraping off the ground."


"It was my mother."


"I was obviously imagining a completely different person there."


"I think it was meant as a compliment, sort of."


"Oh yeah, I can see how it would be meant as a compliment. Because there's nothing worse than those people you can't see through and you see them everywhere you go and you'd really rather avoid them."


"Am I better or worse than the person you imagined?"


"Much better. Not that there was anything wrong with the person I imagined. I wouldn't have wanted to meet you if I imagined you as someone I'd rather avoid. I was intrigued by the person in my mind, who was based on the person in Gary's mind."


Gary said, "But that person wasn't really you."


"Who was it?" Suzanne said.


"She was based on you, but there were a few embellishments."


"What sort of embellishments?"


"I don't mean the sort of embellishments that Caroline got with the plastic surgery. These embellishments were things like imaginary Chinese people. In fact, at first they were just foreigners, but now they've been embellished into Chinese people."


"This sounds intriguing," Suzanne said. "I've never been involved in anything as interesting as this in real life. I never knew there were different versions of me doing all these interesting things in other people's minds."


"It was your fear of ferrets that made me think of you. I suppose that makes it sound less intriguing."


Martin said, "But he said you were standing on one leg while being attacked by ferrets, and you were selling an abandoned asylum to foreigners, who have now been embellished into Chinese people, if it's possible to embellish a foreigner into a Chinese person."


"Of course it is," Gary said. "When you make them Chinese you give them a nationality, a country to live in, a language, a culture, a history. And you just embellished the story again by saying she was standing on one leg. I never said that."


"It's not an embellishment to be standing on one leg when before you were standing on two."


"You might embellish a person by giving them two legs instead of one, but you embellish a story by saying they just have one."


"Why was I standing on one leg?" Suzanne said.


"That's something only Martin can answer."


"I don't know," Martin said. "That's one of those details my mind threw up. Sometimes it sends ferrets to attack me."


"I can understand that completely," Suzanne said. "I suppose the question I should have asked is why was I selling an abandoned asylum to Chinese people."


"That's something only Gary can answer."


"I suppose my mind will have to take responsibility for that one," Gary said. "It was the ferrets that made me think of you, and then everything else came from my mind. Apart from you standing on one leg."


"It's funny," Suzanne said, "because I've been in an abandoned asylum. It was an asylum a long time ago, and then it was a hotel, until it was abandoned. It's only about a mile away."


"I think I know the place," Gary said. "I didn't know it used to be an asylum, and I've never been in there."


"It's probably too late to go there now. It's getting dark outside. But we could go there tomorrow."


They arranged to meet on the following day in the same place where Gary had met Martin earlier.


Gary had to wait at the gate again. He saw Martin's moped approaching, and it was moving as slowly as ever, but there was something odd about the sight. He thought it might have just been a trick of his mind, but there appeared to be two helmets where before there was just one.


When Martin stopped at the gate and the helmets were removed, Gary saw that Suzanne was filling the second one. Martin chained his moped to the gate and they walked through the fields to the hotel. On the way, Suzanne said, "I was talking to Caroline and I told her that you mentioned those embellishments, but she says they're not artificial embellisments at all. It's all in people's minds. That got her thinking about what the different versions of herself must be doing in other people's minds."


They got into the hotel through a window at the back. They made their way to the lobby and they climbed a wide staircase to the first floor. They spent an hour exploring the bedrooms. Most of them were empty, but in one they found a painting of a cottage by the sea and a box full of old nails. They left when it started to get dark, and they arranged to meet again on the following day.


Gary stood at the gate and watched Martin's moped approach for the third day running. Suzanne was with him again, and she seemed to be getting more attached to him.


As Martin approached the gate he was presented with a sight that looked odd, a bit like the way Gary's vision had looked odd on the previous day. As Martin got closer, he realised that this day's equivalent of the helmets both belonged to Caroline. She seemed to be very attached to Gary. The four of them went to the hotel.


The dining room in the hotel was huge. Caroline said it would be a great place for a party, but no one responded to this. There were photos on the walls. Most of them were taken in the hotel. One of them showed a primitive robot on a stage. The caption said 'Little Robot Slow performs for the guests'.


"I've heard of him," Gary said. "It's a man dressed up as a robot. He was at his funniest when he was insulting people, but it wasn't very funny for the person being insulted. He was sick of being punched. Kids could get away with insulting people, so he chose to be the next best thing to a kid: a slow robot."


"I doubt if a slow robot is really the next best thing to a kid," Suzanne said.


"It could be the next best thing to a slow kid."


"I doubt it."


"In terms of insulting people and not being punched, a robot is the next best thing to a kid."


"I'd have my doubts about that too," Martin said. "I know people who'd punch a robot."


The next photo showed a group of Chinese people outside the hotel. They were members of a soccer team.


Suzanne said to Gary, "Isn't it funny how you had the former asylum and the Chinese people in your mind and you never knew they were here all along."


"There are lots of former asylums. There are lots of Chinese people too."


"Yeah, but this is a former asylum within walking distance of where you formed the idea, and this place has a connection with Chinese people. And it has a connection with me because I've been here before. Are you sure you've never been here before?"


"It's the sort of thing I'd remember."


"Do you get a feeling of deja vu when you walk around the place?"


"I don't know. I get a feeling of something. But if this is the place in my mind, it must be crawling with ferrets. Or ferrorists. They're hiding in the shadows right now, watching us, waiting to pounce. This place hasn't been abandoned after all. It was just taken over by the ferrorists."


"I don't think a party here would be a very good idea," Suzanne said.


"I think it's a brilliant idea," Gary said, and Caroline smiled.


They had the party on the following weekend. Martin and Suzanne were still afraid of being attacked by ferrets, or by ferrorists, but he was able to use the opportunity to impress her by pretending to protect her. He built a trap for ferrets. She said that even James Bond would be proud of it. It didn't catch any ferrets, but it did catch a few rats.


The moose's head over the fireplace rarely looks bothered by stress. Even after Cork lost to Kerry on Sunday, he didn't let it get to him. Last week I mentioned something about hiding in a hole if Cork lost. I now realise that this course of action would only add to the stress of losing, rather than easing it. Avoiding Kerry people is the best way to restore my natural calm, and that's what we have a border for. Now that the GAA is out of the way for another year, the Champions League is getting underway again. And there's still the rugby to look forward to. Again, I won't need to dig a hole after we play France on Friday night. I'll just have to avoid French people.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The Plagelot


I found an old black-and-white photo of the garden. It was taken when the lawns were hidden beneath a layer of snow. A snow man had been made. According to the writing on the back of the photo, his name was Hickey and he was suspected of being involved in the robbery of a shoe shop. The wife is always taking photos of the garden. She says that the present colours our memories, and that we need photos to see the past as it really was, without the layer of the present. Her aunt paints to add a layer over the present. Her latest painting of the garden includes a pinball machine.


My cousin Rachel is a member of an Amateur Dramatics Society. Napoleon was a character in one of their plays. Many historical figures appeared in it, from Machiavelli to Scooby Doo. One of Rachel's neighbours, a man called Liam, had a replica of Napoleon's hat. He allowed them to use it in the play, but he warned them to be careful with it. The warning was heeded, but this didn't prevent the actor playing Napoleon from spilling soup on the hat. It left a stain, and a bit of a smell, but the hat wasn't badly damaged.


The hat had been entrusted into the care of Robert, and it was his job to return it. He wasn't looking forward to this. Liam had a glass eye and he could be frightening when he glared at people. Rachel told Robert she'd go with him. She was looking after Daisy and Graham, her niece and nephew, and she brought them along too.


When they got to Liam's house, Rachel waited outside with the kids. Robert said, "I thought you said you were coming in with me."


"I said I'd 'go' with you. I didn't say I'd meet him as well."


"She's got a point there," Graham said.


Robert didn't push the point because he hated arguments when the kids got involved. The only way you could win was if you kept repeating the same point for hours.


So Robert went inside and he was back out within two minutes. "Bad news," he said. "He wants two-hundred euros to get a new hat. I told him it just needs to be cleaned, and we'd pay for cleaning it, but he insisted on the money."


"Did you give in?" Rachel said.


"I didn't have much choice. I never noticed this before, but his glass eye is black. At least I assume it's made out of glass. If he was able to grow it himself, that'd be a bit odd."


Rachel said, "You don't grow things like eyes and livers and toes and things. They grow by themselves."


"In you."


"Yeah, but you don't water them and give them fertilizer and manure."


"You eat and drink and exercise."


"You don't look at your eye and say, 'My eye could do with a bit of water.'"


"No. You look at your eye and say, 'There's something wrong with my eye.' So you go to the doctor and he gives you a prescription for it."


"Yeah, but you don't 'grow' them. It's not like a vegetable competition to see who has the biggest cabbage or melon."


"People grow their muscles and compete against each other to see who has the biggest muscles. That's a vegetable competition."


"You can grow muscles," Rachel said, "but not eyes. Most people never put any thought into the growth of their eyes."


"Most people never put any thought into the growth of plants either. You just put them in the ground and let nature do the rest. Wild flowers don't need anyone to think about them. Putting them in the ground wouldn't be as much fun as making kids, but they'll be a lot less trouble later on. And flowers wouldn't be as ugly as kids."


"Okay, so he didn't 'grow' the black eye, but he chose it himself. He could have chosen one that looks like his other eye, but he chose a black one. That's weird."


Robert said, "When I was in a museum once I saw a stuffed plagelot, and its eyes looked black. The plagelot is extinct now. They were a sort of a cross between a duck and a kangaroo. 'Dungaroo' would have been a better name for them."


Daisy said, "People would have got confused with dungarees."


"Well 'duckeroo' then," Alan said.


"That's just like 'Buckeroo'," Graham said.


"What's Buckeroo?"


"It's a game where you put little ropes and buckets and things onto a little plastic horse and hope he doesn't buckeroo and throw them all off."


"It's quite possible that the man who named the plagelot was just about to name it the 'dungaroo' but he stopped and thought, 'Wait a minute, what if someone confuses it with dungarees? I don't know if dungarees have been invented yet, but just to be safe, I'll call it a duckeroo instead. But wait a minute, what if someone invents a game where you put things on a small plastic horse and calls it Buckeroo? I better call it something else instead. I think I'll call it a plagelot.'"


"Who named it?" Daisy said.


"I have no idea."


"Why do you assume it was a man?"


"Because a woman would have far too much sense to call something a plagelot just in case someone invented a horse that may or may not buck when you put things on it. And they'd have too much sense to wear dungarees too."


"But the man was right about Buckeroo," Graham said.


"I doubt if this plagelot even exists," Rachel said.


"Why would you doubt that?" Robert said.


"It just sounds a bit too unbelievable. A cross between a duck and a kangaroo. You've probably just taken your idea of a duck and your idea of a kangaroo and melted them together. You've created the plagelot in your own head by melting things together. Possibly after sniffing melting plastic."


"No, I saw it in a museum."


"You need to do a bit of spring cleaning in your head. People take in all sorts of information and theories and ideas. It's like storing them all in the attic. You've got to look at these things and ask what should you throw out and what's worth holding onto. The plagelot should definitely go in the bin."


"What if you found Anne Frank hiding in your attic? Would you have all of her information and theories and ideas too?"


"No, because that Anne would be constructed from things already in your attic, a bit like the plagelot. She'd be put together from all the things up there. Her head might be a mop and her body might be a cardboard box."


"What would be the point of making an Anne Frank like that?"


"I don't know. You're the one who asked about her."


"Yeah, but the Anne Frank in my head doesn't have a mop for a head."


"It was just a metaphor. We're talking about your brain, not an attic."


Daisy and Graham decided to make their own version of the plagelot using an old teddy bear whose eyes were missing. They used a black button for one eye and a daisy for the other (because it was something he could grow on his face). They dressed him in dungarees. They attached things from Buckeroo to his hands, like a bucket, a rope and a pickaxe.


Rachel took the kids and their plagelot to see Robert. "That's very impressive," he said when he saw it. "It's not quite like the real plagelot, but it's a good interpretation. I've been working on a creation of my own. I took your advice about cleaning out my attic. I found Anne Frank there."


He showed them the version of Anne Frank he had made. It was a box with a mop sticking out of it. He had taped gloves to the box to represent hands.


"If that's the version of Anne Frank in your attic," Rachel said, "then I never want to go into your attic."


Daisy put the plagelot on the ground next to Anne Frank. "I think they work well together," she said. "They look as if they both come from the same attic."


Rachel asked Robert if he had collected the two-hundred euros for the hat. He said he had, but the other members of the Amateur Dramatics Society had been very reluctant to pay because they blamed him for giving in to Liam.


Liam called to collect the money later that day. Robert invited him in, and then he went upstairs to get the money. Liam noticed the plagelot, but he didn't recognise it at a plagelot. He saw the single black eye and he assumed it was a voodoo doll of himself. It wouldn't have been the first time someone made a voodoo doll of Liam. He had suffered unexplained pains in many parts of his body. But Robert had done something even worse than sticking a pin in his head -- he put dungarees on the doll. Liam knew something had been wrong. He thought it was just something he ate (either the cake he got off a dog or the sausages with the illegible 'best before' date). He saw the daisy in the other eye socket and he wondered what that could mean. Did it suggest the doll was dead, and pushing up the daisies? Even if he was dead he'd feel uncomfortable in dungarees.


Then he saw the much bigger being looming over him, the one with the mop for a head. He wondered who that could be. He was afraid to destroy the doll of himself, and he was even more afraid of the other one.


When Robert returned to the room, Liam was taking the dungarees off the doll.


"Who's the one with the mop for a head?" Liam said.


"Anne Frank."


"Anne Frank?"


"Yeah."


"Are you out to get Anne Frank or me?"


Robert was sure there must have been a third option. He tried to think of one, but he couldn't think straight under pressure. "It's a metaphor," he said.


Liam didn't understand this. It only made him more suspicious, and he left without saying another word. He took the money and the dungarees. Robert thought this was odd.


Liam feared the wrath of a superior being. He assumed that any being who was superior to him would be warthful because that was his experience with humans. For him to consider anyone as superior, they'd have to beat him in a fight outside a pub, so benevolent people didn't stand a chance. If it really was Anne Frank, he'd be okay, but he didn't think it was her. He had to take action because he hated being afraid of something he couldn't threaten with a broken bottle.


He had to fight fire with fire. Benevolence wouldn't settle this. So he made a voodoo doll of Robert, and he put it in his field next to a scarecrow. He dressed the scarecrow up as Hitler. He took a photo of the doll next to the scarecrow and he sent it to Robert, but Robert didn't recognise himself. He showed it to Rachel and he said, "This is even weirder than when he took the dungarees off the plagelot. He's really freaking me out."


Liam's scarecrow didn't go down too well in the locality. An angry mob protested outside his house one evening. He didn't know why they were protesting, and he assumed it was Robert's response to the photo. Liam thought that this was like being beaten outside a pub, so he accepted defeat to a more sinister being. He left the house through the back door and headed for Robert's place. On the way he saw that his scarecrow had been set on fire.


He arrived at Robert's house in an agitated state. Robert was just about to say, "Please don't hurt me." But before he had a chance, Liam said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the voodoo doll and everything. Is it about the hat? Here, take the money back. I'll just get it cleaned."


Liam gave the money back to Robert and he left.


When Robert was telling Rachel about it on the following day, she figured out what Liam was referring to when he mentioned the voodoo doll. She said, "He made a representation of you in doll form. That's probably an idea you'd want to clear out of your attic."


"Now I know how Anne Frank must have felt."


"Why?"


"I don't know. Who is Anne Frank anyway?"


The moose's head over the fireplace is looking forward to the All-Ireland football final on Sunday. It's Cork against Kerry. As if winning an All-Ireland wasn't good enough, there's the added bonus of doing it by defeating Kerry. Of course, being beaten by Kerry would require the swift construction of a hole to hide in, but no one's considering that.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

An Action Film


The garden is getting ready for its annual autumnal show. It's time to just sit back and enjoy the performance as the trees turn yellow and brown. The wife's aunt has a thing about yellow. 'Thing' is the only word I can think of that encompasses the numerous manifestations of her attitude to yellow. Two examples of those manifestations would be her love of touching yellow cars and her belief that you can communicate with the dead by dropping lemons on the ground.


My cousin Ronan used to go for walks with his girlfriend, Audrey, on the quiet roads near her house. They often met her neighbour, Fay, and they always had trouble getting away from her. She spoke slowly and told long, boring stories that were full of pointless details. She did have some interesting stories, but she told these very quickly and gave the barest of details. For example, she once said, "I went to the fancy dress party as Dracula, and that's how I became a feminist icon, for a while. Is there any sign of the glove your dog ate?"


She once said she did the voice of one of the bears in an animated version of Goldilocks. Ronan and Audrey wondered how she got this role, and which bear she played. Ronan finally managed to get a word in when she finished her story about her glands. He asked about the film and she told them that her brother is a director. He started out in kids' TV, but he's moved onto action films since then. He loves smoking and smiling enigmatically -- that's partly how he built his reputation in the film world.


She said he'd been filming the sea just a few miles away for the past few days. Ronan and Audrey didn't bother asking her about which bear she played. They walked back to Audrey's house as fast as they could and then they drove to the sea to meet the director. His name was Oliver. Ronan had always wanted to see an action film being made, but seeing Oliver at work came as an anti-climax. He really was just filming the sea, and the water was very calm at the time. He had fallen in love with a French actress called Louise. She was his muse. He always pictured her moving in slow motion. In reality she never moved very much at all. His action films seemed ridiculous to him, and he wanted to film entirely in slow motion.


Life had slowed down for him, but for his brother, Malcolm, things were speeding up. Malcolm had always been very laid back. Nothing ever bothered him, and he was always happy doing nothing. He had a small field next to his house. It was full of wild flowers and long grass. There were trees beyond the field. Oliver was always suggesting possible uses for the land, but Malcolm thought that the best possible use was to provide something to look at. He could spend hours looking at the field. Afternoons would fly by. Even when he was in the city, he'd walk slowly through the streets while everyone else rushed around him.


But then one night he had a dream in which he saw himself beneath a clock that followed him everywhere. He was moving slowly, but the hands on the clock spun around very quickly. It gave him a sense of time slipping away and a determination not to waste it. He moved quickly after this, and he tried to fit as much as possible into every day.


Oliver told Ronan and Audrey about his new-found interest in things that moved slowly. When he said he'd be perfectly happy to film people standing still, Audrey remembered a group that her sister had joined. They recreated scenes from old paintings. They'd dress up as the characters from the paintings and they'd stand still. They performed these scenes at parties or in parks or on streets. They enjoyed playing Bruegel's peasants, but they often had trouble staying still. Sometimes they couldn't resist eating or drinking or fighting. This was fine at parties, but they often got into trouble on streets.


Oliver loved this idea. Still scenes were a natural progression from slow motion. "It's just a single scene and nothing happens," he said. "I've never before realised the dramatic possibilities of nothing."


He used this group to film a scene of medieval peasants getting drunk on a street. Ronan and Audrey joined the group. Louise was included in it too, but she was allowed to move. She smoked cigarettes and drank cocktails. A waiter brought her the drinks. The others had to stay still for two hours while they were being filmed, and they all began to resent Louise.


After two hours Oliver said, "Cut. That was excellent. We'll do another take tomorrow."


The cast groaned in unison, apart from Louise. She was happy with her day's work. Oliver only noticed her reaction, and he ignored the others.


He went for a walk around the town that night before he went to bed. He walked slowly, and he appreciated all the sights and sounds around him. Before he met Louise he never went for walks and he never appreciated things that didn't explode or jump out of helicopters. He looked over a fence into a garden and he saw two greyhounds. They looked exactly the same, but one was sitting on the grass and the other was running in circles around him. Oliver watched them for about twenty minutes. In that time, neither greyhound ceased from the sitting or the running.


When he was walking back towards his hotel, he got a sudden impulse to jump, so he jumped, and then he stood still. He got the impression that he had jumped out of himself. He looked back, expecting to see himself, but there was nothing there. He walked on again, and he thought of Louise. She told him she couldn't spend time with him this evening because she was washing her dog's dungarees, and when he thought about this then it seemed suspicious. He wasn't even sure if she had a dog.


That night he had a dream in which she was having an affair. He saw her telling him she couldn't spend the evening with him because of her dog's dungarees, and then she went away to meet another man. But the other man was another version of Oliver. This one moved very quickly. He took her dancing, and they went for a drive in his sports car.


When he woke he was determined to get revenge on this other version of himself, but as consciousness returned he realised that this was a ridiculous idea. He thought of his brother and the way he'd been moving so quickly, and suddenly it all made sense. Malcolm was the other man. This is what his dream was telling him. His subconscious mind had stored all the signals he had missed during his slow days and compiled them into a play that was performed in his dream. And it was telling him that Louise was having an affair with his brother. This is why he spent so long looking at the greyhounds -- that was another one of the signs his subconscious mind wanted him to take note of.


The slow Oliver was dead. He was back to his old self. When filming the second take of the scene he'd dispense with nothing and go for everything instead.


Ronan wasn't there for this take because he was expecting more nothing. He met his friend, Adrian, who was dressed up as a lizard. Ronan asked the obvious question: "Why are you dressed as a lizard?"


"A lizard? I thought I was meant to be a blade of grass. I'm handing out fliers for a sale in a garden centre."


"Blades of grass don't normally have red tongues. If they did, you wouldn't need signs telling people to keep off the grass. That would make a good action film: being attacked by thousands of lizards that look like a beautiful lawn. We should film a lawn and show it to Oliver, just to make fun of this rubbish about the dramatic possibilities of nothing."


So while Audrey was taking part in the second take of Oliver's film, Ronan and Adrian were filming a lawn. Malcolm was still completely unaware of his brother's idea that he was having an affair with Louise. He was unaware of most of the world around him as rushed about. He hadn't looked at the field in days. This lack of awareness is why he fell over a woman in the park. Her name was Betty Climate and she was a weather forecaster on TV. She used to predict the weather by falling over. Earlier that day she had fallen over in the park and she didn't get up again because she knew it would rain later and spoil a beautiful summer day. When Malcolm tripped over her he apologised, but he didn't get up again. He realised that he wanted to lie on the grass and do nothing, rather than rush around the place, so he stayed on the ground with her


In the second take of Oliver's film, he got them to eat and drink and fight. At first they thought they'd struggle to keep going for two hours, but they lost their inhibitions and it seemed to give them a rush of adrenalin. This took them through most of the shoot. Even when it started raining they kept going. Fatigue eventually caught up with them. The final ten minutes were like the end of a marathon, and when Oliver said 'cut' most of them collapsed on the ground.


Ronan and Adrian arrived after the take had finished. Ronan wondered why everyone was lying exhausted on the ground, surrounded by food, broken bottles and glasses, but he was more interested in his own film. He got out his camera and showed his lawn film to Oliver. It consisted mostly of a lawn, but at the end, two characters were introduced. Oliver saw his brother lying on the grass with Betty Climate. They were getting to know each other very intimately. Then she started screaming and they both ran away. The camera panned to the left to show a giant lizard, which was the reason they ran away.


"This is brilliant!" Oliver said. "He isn't having an affair with Louise. I should have known. He'd never do something like that."


Audrey came over to him and said, "I think you should do a version of Ronan's lawn film. It'd be much better than this."


"No, I'm happy with what we did here today. From now on, everything is fast. That's the one thing I've learned from this experience."


"I think you should do another take. I think my wig fell off in the middle of the last one."


Ronan didn't read anything into the way Audrey was so eager to do another take. She had many inhibitions, and Ronan was well aware of all of them. They were like electric fences around her. But her inhibitions had been swept away during the second take, and she had ended up lying on a table with a man called Nigel, who was one of her sister's friends. That's why her wig fell off.


Oliver said, "What we filmed here today might need some editing, but there's the basis of a really good film in it."


"That's not what you were saying this morning," Audrey said. "You've thrown away your principles already. You're a sell-out. You told us you wanted to make a work of art, and you came so close to that yesterday, but you're nowhere near it now."


"You're right. I have thrown away my principles. This is the message my subconscious is really sending me: that I should go back to doing what I do best. Speed alone isn't enough. Filming people fighting and having sex isn't enough either."


His action film instincts took over and he made a film about a giant lizard in medieval times. He used the end of the film that Ronan shot on the lawn because there was such an obvious chemistry between Malcolm and Betty, and their reactions to the giant lizard were much more realistic than the lizard himself, but he looked okay in the bad light during the heavy rain. He used twins to play a man and his medieval ancestor, who uses the time machine to follow the lizard into modern times.


The rain had stopped shortly after Betty ran away with Malcolm. In the film, Oliver used a story line about Betty controlling the weather. She helped kill the lizard by bringing a blizzard in the middle of summer. He even used footage of her doing the weather forecast on TV. He had to bring a time machine into the story so he could use the scenes of the peasants fighting and drinking and so forth. What Audrey did with Nigel would come under the heading of 'so forth', and it was used in the film. She told Ronan that she was just acting, and she was relieved that he accepted this explanation, but then she was angry that he accepted it so easily, despite the fact that her performance was so realistic.


The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys the company of our neighbour, Rose. The things she says would be more intellectually stimulating than anything I could come up with. The questions I'd seek answers to would be ones like 'Why are there no big yellow cars?'. All yellow cars are small. We're not in New York -- it's not as if a big yellow car would be mistaken for a taxi. There's no way I'd drive a yellow car, big or small. The thought of the wife's aunt repeatedly touching it would spoil any enjoyment I'd get from it.