Free Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien (Irish Literature) by Flann O’Brien Page A

bonnav-dealer 2 puffs away at his blackened old cruiskeen lawn as he gazes down thoughtfully into the valley. Through the smoky twilight within I see his aged help-meet, or colleen bawn, crouching over the turf fire stirring away at her three-legged poteen of carrageen, pausing now and then to gather an odd sad air from her harpeen. With a heart too full for words I reflect that this is my country, and that these people are my own kith and kin, and something like a prayer escapes me as I sob: “Oh! Thank heaven to be away from it all!”
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    1 Editors’ Note: This is the headnote to the original story printed in the Irish Digest (July 1943), p. 15.
    2 An Anglicization of the Gaelic word “banbh,” meaning “piglet.”

 
    Drink and Time in Dublin
    by Myles na gCopaleen
    A R ECORDED S TATEMENT
    —Did you go to that picture The Lost Weekend ?
    — I did .
    —I never seen such tripe.
    — What was wrong with it ?
    —O it was all right, of course—bits of it was good. Your man in the jigs inside the bed and the bat flying in to kill the mouse, that was damn good. I’ll tell you another good bit. Hiding the bottles in the jax. And there was no monkey business about that because I tried it since meself. It works but you have to use the half-pint bottles. Up the chimbley is another place I thought of and do you know the ledge affair above windows?
    — I do .
    —That’s another place but you could get a hell of a fall reaching up there on a ladder or standing on chairs with big books on them. And of course you can always tie the small bottles to the underneath of your mattress.
    — I suppose you can .
    —But what are you to do with the empties if you stop in bed drinking? There’s a snag there. I often thought they should have malt in lemonade syphons.
    — Why didn’t you like the rest of The Lost Weekend ?
    —Sure haven’t I been through far worse weekends meself—you know that as well as I do. Sure Lord save us I could tell you yarns. I’d be a rich man if I had a shilling for every morning I was down in the markets at seven o’clock in the slippers with the trousers pulled on over the pyjamas and the overcoat buttoned up to the neck in the middle of the summer. Sure don’t be talking man.
    — I suppose the markets are very congested in the mornings ?
    —With drunks? I don’t know. I never looked round any time I was there.
    — When were you last there ?
    —The time the wife went down to Cork last November. I won’t forget that business in a hurry. That was a scatter and a half. Did I never tell you about that? O be God, don’t get me on to that affair.
    — Was it the worst ever ?
    —It was and it wasn’t but I got the fright of me life. I’ll tell you a damn good one. You won’t believe this but it’s a true bill. This is one of the best you ever heard.
    — I’ll believe anything you say .
    —In the morning I brought the wife down to Kingsbridge in a taxi. I wasn’t thinking of drink at all, hadn’t touched it for four months, but when I paid the taxi off at the station instead of going back in it, the wife gave me a look. Said nothing, of course—after the last row I was for keeping off the beer for a year. But somehow she put the thing into me head. This was about nine o’clock, I suppose. I’ll give you three guesses where I found meself at ten past nine in another taxi ?
    — Where ?
    —Above in the markets. And there wasn’t a more surprised man than meself. Of course in a way it’s a good thing to start at it early in the morning because with no food and all the rest of it you’re finished at four o’clock and you’re home again and stuffed in bed. It’s the late nights that’s the killer, two and three in the morning, getting poisoned in shebeens and all classes of hooky stuff, wrong change, and a taxi man on the touch. After nights like that it’s a strong man that’ll be up at the markets in time next morning.
    — What happened after the day you got back at four