Dublin
The lane is red with carcasses of animals slaughtered for the feast and the air too cold for flies. The once proud beasts limply hang from grey-stoned porches, a procession of upturned fetid martyrs spiked on hooks slung high enough to escape the reach of ravenous hands –and there are many around here.
You wake up in a daze, still throbbing from another wasted night. You wander about, hurtling against corners and ignoring the cobbles making a mockery of your patched up soles.
Charter-loads of British belching berks provide the ever willing cattle. They jingle keys in their pockets and scour the streets for signs of amusement. They stomp about, spitting “where are yas” into their Bakelite boxes and the last place you want to find yourself is in their way. You cringe, you hope. You think if only you could cross the river, if only you could make it to the other side, then you might be safe from harm, you might find shelter …but the gods see to it that you don’t. The horizontal shards of ice cut to shreds those foolish enough to take their chance on the bridge. Their remains feed the fishes in a Liffey the colour of fart, and their bones are carried away to sea. What do do, where to go?
You opt to stay within the confines of Temple Bar. Maybe there’ll be a gutter still unclaimed, a cistern for the taking. If all else fails, try the church.
The last thing his mother told him before taking to the wild had been “you are full of the dark, child” and she crossed herself three times. She then climbed onto the long ship America bound, never to return. He had never crossed himself again to this day. He would often wake up with spiders nestling in his eyelids, dine on eels caught in his brogues. Supplicants prowled the streets, hunting for altar boys and he quickly learned how to make himself one with the walls.
This “black pool” was steadily sinking into the ground and housewives would swap stories over back walls of babies being swallowed whole in their cots by sea otters in the dead of night. Raccoons appeared in larders and garden gnomes went missing. House poodles were found mounted by strange creatures with sharp teeth and scaly tails. You had to fetch a shovel to beat the hissing beasts off the whimpering pets. Nippers witnessing these scenes grew up fast.
On quiet days when the sea didn’t do battle with the floodgates, the stench of death lingered unopposed over the stagnant town. On stormy nights, people barricaded themselves in as an ill wind blew through the empty courtyards and it was rumoured that the Beast was in town, blind beggars had seen It.
..…
Outside temptation lurks.
Revelation is guaranteed at every shop window, with gorillas in uniforms not far behind. “There is a club out there”, you keep hearing. A club where everything goes, everyone swings, provided you have the prerequisite wherewithal. You don't believe it, you desperately want to.
Warmed-up mush blisters in your distended guts and you need sugar to dissolve it. You down a can of Coke. You regurgitate it for the road and finally get a move on; it’s time to deploy, you reckon. As you take to Dame Street, a swarm of street urchins lurking by the rusty bins swoop down on your sick and you just about trip over them. It’s a furious melee alright and elbows fly, tempers flare. Some things you see you can never unsee.
A Russian voice behind you sweet-talks the kids -you don't want to know, you quicken your pace.
Recently disembarked Scousers make enquiries as to where this elusive crack can be found but no-one's seen it. No-one can be of assistance. They hunt in cackling packs, taking over the black specked kerb and putting the boot into matches-selling girls squatted by the roadside. One-nil to Barney’s posse they explode, another one bites the dust! Timely truncheons fly and tourist bothering buskers are scattered to make way for ladies of the night. ...It’s only three-thirty.
The air is thick with the smoke of the Guinness crematoriums, it is so thick you can taste it. The national drink won’t brew itself, will it! and the belching chimneys crown the Dublin skyline like fingers raised to the heavens. They turn the day into a low ceiling and deposit their primordial soup of discarded skin particles, carbonised dust and felt remnants into the Liffey, colouring it its trademark shade of brown. All you have to do is stand still and open your mouth, let the tip of your scorched tongue catch the dusty particles blown about in devil spirals. You soon understand how the natives grow fat on the black stuff. They breathe deep, inspire, expire eventually. It's always drinking time and Dubliners might as well be the first victims.
He remembered the telegraph poles, the gallows about town.
Carriages would thunder past his hovel, and then it was automobiles. The door frames rattled with no respect for “progress”. Uniforms changed, colours of flags varied, but the men underneath were the same. Given half a seal of approval, they committed the same atrocities.
The poor used to be hunted on horseback, then they were chased by automobile vehicles. Packs of the smelly inventions tore through the avenues, cutting down everyone stood in their way. One point for adults, three for children. His kind soon learned to give up the streets entirely and took cover in cobble-stoned lanes too narrow for the four-wheeled machines. Cripples hobbled about, “my stump is shorter than yours”.
The road to ruin took many turns, all ending in a straight line. Each cigarette smoked was supposed to take half an hour of life away and many opted to rush their demise, feeling the strains. You can only ignore hopelessness for so long and then one day you snap. From home-brewed cider to crack cocaine, snorting lighter fluid to licking up fryers, new accelerants got continually invented.
As far as he could remember, he had always hated the feeling of wet.
Mildew has a taste for cotton and it sometimes got to the point where he could notice his own musk. This was not a good sign.
He soldiered through it all though, he reproduced himself. He evolved face and name, and endured as the world crashed around him and rebuilt itself time and again oblivious to his existence.
People drop trash into letterboxes (if not worse), others leave bread crumbs on motorcar bonnets for birds to do their paint-peeling business. Cellotape over locks, this will teach noisy neighbours a lesson in community spirit. Some people who pass in the street, they attract a forest of following eyes. Any satchel is a potential snatch-up here, any pocket a possible pot roast tonight. In life, you make your own luck and can't rely on your fellow human to return the favour. Ireland nineteenth twenty-first century, land of opportunity.
Furtive ray of lights sometimes fell on the garments piled up against on the walls and coloured them funny. Red turned velvet, brown gold. Fumes of an undetermined nature rose at irregular intervals from seeping fractures; getting a shut-eye under such circumstances was a privilege and it was cold, very cold in the sewers where the troglodytes lay crouched, spears in hands. They could wait all day, eyes trained on the murky waters, praying for abortions from the Goodwill Refuge Of Fallen Girls upstream to float by. The Padres provided them with a hot meal in exchange, it wasn’t too bad a deal. What the good fathers did with the butchered remains remained unknown. The underground dwellers knew better than to ask.
A "Morrissey's Butchers" shop, a tarpaulin cape, scraggy horses blind from the mines and bath-tubs full of coal. Muffled tunes from boarded-up pubs, information exchanged under the breath. The ill-advised flash of a signet ring, Celtic jerseys, the blood-curling sound of a phone ringing unanswered in an empty house and –somewhere unseen- a woman cries.
"Three for a Fiver!" someone wails, more in anger than in hope. "Three for a Fiver!", but no-one’s buying. No-one has money to spare.
The family had made it a habit of scarpering by night without paying rent, and many were the houses that were now advertised by the Tourism Board as “James Joyce’s genuine home”.
You scratch your scalp to kill time and hair falls off. What was the name of that Chinese girl again? Oh yes, Lisa. Probably not her real name, mind. Beautiful hair, beautiful hair these people have. Ink-black, long and shiny-mustn't step out in the street much! ...Better not if she has any sense, will get it hacked off to stuff mattresses or what have you. Nobody in their right mind would be silly enough to flaunt themselves in public, beauty is a dangerous luxury. Beauty breeds jealousy breeds temptation breeds crime.
There is a portly gentleman of uncertain disposition staggering ahead, propped up by a filthy trollop proposing to assist him in his peregrinations. Ah sure she will... she already has half of her forearm inside his waist-jacket and you don’t want to see what will befall him past the next corner: telescopic hammers, razor-blades not even rinsed up from the last job.
The air is now changing direction; it comes from this side of the river and chases its dust towards the sea. Ireland’s summer has been predicted on a Thursday this year. In the meantime, the Olympia Theater has lost its porch and no-one’s found it.
Somewhere, a child awoke.
..…
With a majestic roll of the shoulders he had learned from seumeone, Roy clasped and unclasped his fists for reassurance. He was not usually prone to nervousness but there was something about Dublin that never failed to unsettle the Bejaysus out of him. Maybe it was the local accent, maybe it was the flow of oversized American tourists continually threatening to congeal street traffic. Whatever it was he couldn’t tell, but it seemed to him the capital always oozed a special whiff of malaise. Cryptic, like. Subtle and cleverly disguised. It exerted a pervasive and malicious influence upon its most sensitive visitors such as himself -no wonder Wilde had preferred to relocate to Reading of all places!
Roy progressed through the town center. Despite the relatively early hour, the streets were already chock-a-block with cram-a-car traffic. Horns were honking, buses were blaring. Ah yes, Modernus Sapiens was not the best at spending hours stuck in a stinking box and the urban soundtrack bore witness to this. Insults were being exchanged with gay abandon, every motorist or courier or cyclist or pedestrian a simple disgrace in someone else’s eyes. Good Lord! Listening to the concert of imprecations emanating from little old ladies with fidgety grand-kids at the back on their school run, Roy felt right back at home.
...As in during the Manchester derby.
All Alone In The Loo!
Roy went about his business (as one does) then grabbed the handle. The handle didn't respond. "What da" frowned he, and made for pressing it down more firmly but still the handle didn’t give in. It wouldn’t budge. Holy mackerel!! Roy cursed loudly and pressed hard, but there was nothing doing. By Begorrah, he was well and truly locked in! As if he needed more complications in his life, what could have possibly happened? In this place of all places! What now, what if nobody let him out? Roy bitterly chuckled to himself: if this were to prove his fate, what a crummy way for a superhero to finish his life... First Lenny Bruce, then Elvis, and now ROI’s number 16? Ah it felt so terribly trivial, so unimpressive -and not a little embarrassing, he had to admit.
Then suddenly, his sixth sense a-glowing, Roy felt a presence next door. Someone had entered the next cubicle!
“Hey pal, sorry to bother you but... looks like I'm stuck in here. Can’t open the door. Could you possibly check if there's anything, I don't know, pushed up against the door handle or…? Could you? Much appreciate!"
But his mysterious neighbour -whoever he was- didn't respond. To be fair, they were in a public toilet. Not the ideal place for a chat, like.
"Eh I said, ‘xcuse me pal, but it looks like I'm stuck inside and..." No reply. "Can you hear me? I know you're in there." Then an idea came to Roy: "Oh, I see, do - you - speak -English? Parla inglese? Vous parlez anglais? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Habla Usted ingles? ... Eh? ... Oh?"
Roy waited for an answer. None came. Maybe the guy was too embarrassed to reply, maybe there was nobody. Still, something told Roy that he was not alone. You are not alone, Roy. Huh. Maybe the guy was engaged in -you know- taking droocks? Roy’s blood pressure instantly rose a dozen centigrades.
"Look pal, what you do in there is no business of mine, that’s totally grand, all I'm asking is -Could you check what’s up with my door?"
“You know."
The reply startled Roy.
“What??"
“You know."
The words had been pronounced without any definite intonation but were clear and precise. And yet ambiguous. The voice was best described as nondescript.
“I know what? What ‘you on about, mate?"
“You know deep within yourself why you're here."
Once again, no telling tone. And yet the message was authoritative, deliberate; this was as clear a statement as it could get.
“Listen pal, of course I know why I went to the jacks, what's so special about that? Are you going to let me out or what? Is this a prank?"
"There is no need to raise your voice, Roy. You know perfectly well why you came to this place of all places. You have been summoned."
Roy's blood froze. How did your man know his name? Had he been followed? Was this a trap? And why had he been summoned to the jacks? ... -Oh, right, your man probably meant Dublin- why had he been summoned to Dublin?
A moment elapsed and the voice added:
“You’ve heeded the calling. It is not the first time you’ve heard the signal Roy, and so you reacted in the only manner you were meant to. You came."
Too stunned to react, our hero didn’t even consider kicking the door to shite as any self-respecting psychotic midfield general would.
“Are you... are you the one who's dragged me here? Who's been sending me these alarm calls? Just who are you!"
Betraying for the first time a minute trace of affect, the voice replied
“My name is of no importance, my identity negligible. I'll be... whatever you want to call me. What does matter though, is why you came. Why you are here and now. Call it your mission if you will."
Sweet child of mine! This was pure Deep Throat meets FIFA World Cup Attribution meetings! Roy strained his ear in an effort to make out which accent his mysterious contact had. Slightly foreign, affected... Dub maybe? More in hope than in expectation, he half-suggested
“Look, this is not "Beadle's About" is it? Cos’ if it is, I hold me hand up –you really got me going for a second pal ha ha ha"
Contemptuous silence came in way of a reply and then Roy jumped as he recognised the distinctive chilling sound of a lighter being cocked: "Scriiitch!" Spicy aroma soon filled the air. Well that was a start, his phantom had some very down-to-Earth weaknesses.
"Er... just saying but, I understand that smoking is now strictly forbidden indoors, you’re gonna get yourself in trouble..."
Sarcastic puffs answered his remark. Roy held out for more information. Any information. Then the voice spoke again.
“You want to know why you're here. You are asking me to clarify it for you. Naturally you ask yourself what this is all about. You call on me in confusion and growing irritation -despite being aware of the dangers of emotions. You do know that emotions cloud judgement Roy, don’t you? Well. …... You received your wake-up call last night and experienced a profound need to intervene, an overriding urge to stand up and be counted. It inspired you to depart from the bosom of your loved ones and make haste for this daunting place."
Roy was riveted, he was glued to the cubicle partition. If only he could see the man's face!
"In your current physical incarnation, you have already traveled long and afar, you have been around the world. Granted, you didn’t stay long in the land of the rising sun but you went there nonetheless. You crossed the globe. You have tasted every glory there is to be won and yet, yet… Yet you are not satisfied. Are you satisfied Roy? No you’re not. You find yourself craving, longing. There is always something missing, something diffuse that you can’t quite put your finger on. You feel there must be more to it.”
A drop of water from a tap came crashing down in what sounded like a terrible din.
“And the question is, the terrible question at the back of your mind... Will accomplishing these feats mere mortals would kill for ever satiate your existential emptiness? ... Will they find your void?"
The mysterious stranger let out a cloud of fragrant smoke. Roy wasn’t a hundred percent what it was but it sure didn't smell legal.
"Some people would argue -and Gary is but one amongst many- that the central question at the core of our existence concerns the amount of control and authority we’re able to gather from -and exert over- our conditions. Our power, if you will. ... Isn’t it what fundamentally defines us? Can you ever claim to act as a free agent? Ask yourself. Ask yourself this question and look upon your deeds Roy. Look upon them and reflect. To what extent are your actions truly yours? To what extent were they pre-determined? Predictability, Roy. Gameplans. Pre-emptability. 4-4-2 is all very nice and may suffice against similarly structured opposition but what happens when you come against a false number nine? What then eh? Think about it. … Are you truly living your life or can you afford to be second-guessed?"
The messenger’s voice faded away as if retreating into darkness. Roy stopped himself breathing to catch your man’s last pronouncements. They just about hung in the air.
"You are a team-player, Roy. You are also a captain. You know the frustration of only taking part."
A long pause ensued.
What da? Was this the long-awaited sequel to "The Matrix"? What kind of a Chinese cracker two-Penny charade horseshite was that?? An incensed Roy turned his attention to the cubicle's door (i.e. set about pummeling it down to fuck). He would not be ignored! He was not going to stay locked inside a bleedin’ toilet when the world expected him to act!
“Wait, wait! Don’t go! What am I supposed to do? Let me out anyone! Why have I been chosen and why am I here? You still haven't said! You haven’t explained anything! What the flying feck is this about??"
Silence.
"Tell me!! I demand to know, tell me what new mission befalls me oh Master!"
Silence persisted, driving him even more mad. And then, just as Roy uncharacteristically considered losing his cool, the voice spoke again:
“You need to find the Chinaman, my son. The Chinaman nearby."
The door finally gave way. Roy burst out and dived into the adjoining stall. Nobody. There was nobody in!
And nobody in the next one either -He was on his own! On his own in the toilet!! How weirder than weird was that! Some fecked up shit and no mistake yeah, some enigma wrapped into a (blah blah blah)! Time had stood still, and The Voice had spoken.
Roy gulped hard to prevent an overwhelming shiver from shaking him to his very foundations and eventually gave in (in truth, the bitter draught from the busted window didn’t help.) Something to do with destiny and accepting your part in the grand scheme of things your man had said... Well how about that! Roy had often suspected that everything happened for a reason, could there be some truth in this hunch of this? Take Blackburn’s staff for instance, if that lot hadn’t knocked off early that Friday afternoon… Maybe it had been written in the stars. Maybe it had all been part of a plan no puny human was aware of. Accept it, don’t fight it.
This had truly been a trip to the little boys’ room Roy would not forget in a very, very long time...
---------
The furtive figure in the underpass cracked knuckles black with grime and the dried blood of snatched sparrows. He stretched out legs aching with the march of a thousand miles. It felt like he had set out on his journey a hundred years ago. Many a desert had been crossed, many a beast of the sea had been speared dead. Hurricanes, tornadoes, snow storms and mosquitoes, attacks from the air and from underfoot, shifting sands don’t make a sound. Steep ravines, hail the size of tennis balls, the shelter of caves. Touaregs rescuing him from the madness of mirages, polar bears stranded on drifting sloes.
At long last, he had reached his destination.
Fired with the faith of a thousand souls, he had made it to the announced “black pool”. False hopes had come aplenty and with them wrong paths, multiple dead ends, but here he was at last. This must be the place. The day had finally come that salvation was at hand. By this time tomorrow, twenty-four hours would have elapsed.
Twenty-four crucial hours, after which the Prince of Darkness would be vanquished.
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