The Giant, O'Brien

  William had begun to complain of his symptoms on fifteenth day, third month, Year of Grace 1783. He, John, had made an annotation in his book. Thursday, twentieth day, William had got out of his bed to give a lecture. He was brought back to his house in a state of collapse. Twenty-second day of this month, an incident occurred in the night; let us say the rupture of a small vessel, let us say some bleeding into a small space, let us say some leakage, let us say he’s a goner.

  After this, they send for John, and he comes, of course. Whoever lives longest will win the contest. If he is honest with himself—and he is always that—he will say their quarrel did not so much touch on the structure of the placenta, as it touched on who should take credit for the work of discovering about it. For he thought Wullie had beaten him out of glory, as Wullie often did; he humble, meek, and useful, and Wullie your high-society dandy. But what does it matter now—your man collapsed among his pillows, white as thin paper, crying.

  March 29: the spring long in coming: buds sealed on the trees still, and Wullie ebbing visibly. He speaking, he’s saying, “John, when you come to it, as I have, as I know I have—when you come to it, it’s not hard to die.”

  He leans forward, and with a handkerchief dabs a spool of dribble from his brother’s lower lip.

  Some lawyer of William’s is sitting beside the bed. He leaps up and flitters by John’s elbow, as he crosses the room to stare down into the street. “He’s left you naught,” he says. “Dear Mr. Hunter. Don’t think it.”

  “I wanted naught,” John says. His voice rasps in his throat.

  William is still calling out to him: believe it, John, believe it, dying’s not so hard.

  Tears are blurring his eyesight. He stands with his back to the bed, so as not to show them. He says, “It’s poor work, brother, if it comes to that.”

  At the Black Horse that night, there was a scene the Giant had not prepared for. Joe Vance, his face white, his little hands moving up and down. “For I cannot abide,” he said. “I cannot bide more.”

  “But Vance, my agent,” the Giant said. “For grief’s sake, don’t abandon me.”

  “Not at this juncture,” said Constantine Claffey; who had become—the Giant did not know how—part of his treat.

  “I can no longer stay in this town,” said Vance.

  “Ah, come, come,” said Claffey. “Dear Joe, you are drink taken. Tomorrow you will think again.”

  “Tomorrow I will not,” said the wrecked and weeping agent. “I must remove or die. I cannot be here in this city. The streets are thronging with opportunity, the stones running with gore. I have read the bible of the strangling necks, their handbooks and their lore, and I feel the pull of England’s fatal cord: Jack Ketch is coming for me. For Ketch is what they call the hangman, he has but one name, and that one is not his own.”

  “Jack Ketch, to my knowledge,” drawled Constantine, “has been dead these many hundred years.”

  Said Pybus, “It is what he saw at the puppet show. At Bartholomew. He is unhinged by it.”

  “Unhinged?” said Claffey. “He is a gate flapping in the gale.”

  John Hunter is sitting in the dark, among his skulls. He’s knuckling his own head. He’s saying, Not hard to die. He’s saying, Poor work if it comes to that. He’s saying, Oh God blast. And Wullie, with more work in him, years more work yet. And he’s saying, I’m sure I’ll never die: except in a fit where the world looks yellow, in a fit where upright objects slope, when the pain in his chest so starves his brain that nothing filters through but narrow and yellow and slanted: where he begins violently to daydream, and the world in those dreams is close and full of texture and the snuff of death and its very colour, which colour he now knows, and different God damn me from the blue of Wullie’s face, as different God damn me as the lark from a starling.

  When they woke up next morning, Joe Vance was gone.

  “You had to expect it,” Claffey said. “It was a case of blind panic. My brother says he’s seen it before, in men who’ve been in London six months or a year. A sort of addling begins in their heads, a scrambling, he calls it, in the senses—they cannot help it, but the next thing is they are cut and run.”

  Pybus shook his head. Poor old Joe. They did all, truly, commiserate with him.

  One snag. This was not discovered till the Giant rose, muzzy-headed and nauseous, sometime after eleven. Along with Joe had gone the Giant’s bag of money, seven hundred in pounds sterling.

  “I’ll scour the bugger,” Claffey said. “I’ll scour him out. I scoured for Caskey and I found her and I beat her sodden skull in. I’ll do the same for Vance. There’s not a ditch in this ville where he can hide from me. There’s not a hole so low that my eye won’t be in it.”

  “Why break sweat?” said his brother Constantine. He dusted some debris from his waistcoat. “Think about it, bro—what does it matter to you that the Giant’s money’s gone? ’Tisn’t as if you were seeing the colour of it.”

  “That’s true, I suppose,” Claffey said.

  The Giant lies on his back on the floor. Their legs weave about him, so do their verbals. He puts his hands over his ears to stop the sound, but to do that he has to take them away from his eyes, and then light filters in. He closes his lids hard, he screws them down. But all the same the red winter’s day nips under his skin, and steals his blackness.

  Let me be blindfolded, he thinks. He remembers Jankin’s dream, out of which the idiot spoke a line of verse: my eyes are blinded.

  He thinks, my speech is silent. The verse is the mother’s lament, as Herod’s hangmen come for the babies, to gibbet them by their doors. My heart’s a blood-clot.

  Let us say we reverse time. Suppose the Holy Innocents grow up. Suppose they grow up and one becomes a horse-thief and another a bigamist, one tells lies in the journals and another fires his neighbour’s barn, say one becomes a soldier, say one becomes a whore: say they trample through Palestine, conflagrating, confabulating, mad and dirty as Uxbridge brick-makers, say one becomes an idiot, and one becomes a king.

  Where’s your Herod then?

  The Giant’s ribs heave, up and down, up and down.

  Men staring down at him. Strangers, in all but name. And estimating. Sizing him up. Selling by the inch.

  “So, now,” said Con Claffey smoothly, “you can work the freak as he should be worked. Never mind the beau-monde and their half-crowns. Half-crowns are all very well, but there is a limited quantity in circulation. All the society people in this town have already viewed your giant. Open him up now to the plaudits of the multitude. Ask them but one penny. Those pennies will soon add up.”

  “It will be a great while before they add up to the size of the pile Joe Vance ran away with.”

  “And so? You can diversify. For now that Vance has gone, you’re cock of the walk, I’d say. The boy and the addle-wit will do what you say, and as for the brute, dope him, Fran, if you must—though it strikes me he’s tractable enough.”

  “Yes. He’s docile these days. And what can he do without his money? Used to threaten to flounce off to Mulroney’s, but where can he flounce now?”

  “Where at all?”

  “He’s to be my creature,” Claffey gloated. He stared down. “You’re my creature, Charlie O’Brien, and I’m your only agent now.”

  “So what you do, you go to Slig, say, convenient cellar wanted. Only condition, it must be deep enough to let the brute stand up and show off his attributes, get him crouching low and it misses the whole point. A cellar then, deep and dirty. One penny to come down the steps and view. They’ll flock, brother. Every punk in England.”

  “Could we not exhibit him here?”

  “Here? Why no. These premises, which all persons of refinement like myself find mean enough, would be a terror to the kind of menial dross I’m talking of. You see, there is an art in pleasing the masses—”

  “An art, is it?” Claffey said.

  “Yes, because by comparison with the masses, philosophers an
d dukes are easy prey. The problem with the populace is that people are always passing off on them, I mean you get some five-foot fly-by-night standing on a tree-stump, ‘Oh, I’m a giant,’ you get some goitered cretin passing himself off as the Freak That God Forgot—well, it won’t do. Just because a man’s lousy it doesn’t mean he’s a fuck-wit too, it doesn’t mean he’s a moon-calf just because he’s poor. No, what the wider public requires is an honest product, bring them a freak and let it be a sound and genuine freak like Charlie here.” Constantine nudged the Giant with his toe. “Is he asleep, or pretending? Then the other thing is, with the public, you must suit them, you must coddle them, you must slowly considerate about them; when you take their money you must make them feel they’re in their own lice-shot parlours.”

  “Hence the cellar.”

  “Hence and hence. So get over to Slig.”

  “I still say it will be slow work, building up a sack. Maybe we ought to scour as well, see can we find Joe.”

  “You know he will have spent it,” Con said patiently. “For you know Joe Vance. The man is a dilettante. He is a snapper-up. A man shows him a cravat at three times its worth, and oh, snap it up, says Joe, cravats like that are worth a king’s ransom. How he ever got on in agenting is something I couldn’t account for.”

  “You’re right, bro,” Claffey said. “Charlie’s money will be gone on Canary wine, Chinese cabinets, and unstrung lutes. Moth collections behind glass, rambling roses, and tickets to the opera. That’s what grieves me. I could have spent it on something sensible.”

  “Yes,” Con nodded. “It could well be remarked of Joe Vance, that he had a sensibility above his income.”

  The Giant opened his eyes. He stared up at them, from the floor, his clear eyes turned backwards in his head. And spoke to this effect: “The Devil cannot genuflect, for backwards are his knees.”

  “Mester Howison, will you stand us a round?” Pybus shouted. “Our Giant is robbed and our agent gone, and our pockets are empty.”

  So, Pybus: neatly telling the man Howison everything he wished to know.

  Ordering up the ale, Howison asked, “How’s your Giant taking it?”

  “He lies on the floor,” said Con Claffey, “with his eyes and ears shut mostly.”

  “The poor man,” said Howison thoughtfully.

  “We will pay you back,” said Claffey, “when we drive the Giant to work. My brother Con here, he has a scheme, about putting him in a cellar.”

  “And you have not heard the pretty part of it,” said Con, settling with his pot in front of him. He smiled, and looked mysterious, as well as greasy.

  Presently, Tibor the Terrible Tartar came in.

  “The man himself,” Con greeted him. “How’s your prancer, Tibbsie?”

  Tibor shook his head. He looked downcast. He was a little bow-legged man, grey in the face.

  “Her ghost walks the amphitheatres,” he said. “God bless her, Jenny. She was a horse and a half.” An oily tear shone in his eye. “Nobody regards a Tartar with just one horse. Stand on the back at full gallop, swivel under belly, and shoot arrows, they think it’s a mere nothing. I’ve had complaints and demanding their money back. I’ve had dung thrown.”

  “Lack of capital just now prevents our investment,” Con Claffey said. “But it may not prevent it forever. Meanwhile, you were telling me about a human pincushion?”

  “Yes.” Tibor sat down, sighing, and rubbed his nose. “Whether it’s a plague of agents absconding, or what it is, but there’s a number of acts and shows floundering for want of investment—”

  “And want of management,” Con Claffey said. “Here, Mester Howison, won’t you sit with us? You might be interested in this.”

  Howison, amiably commanding their pots filled, translated himself among them.

  “So what have you got?”

  “Pinheads,” the Tartar replied. “Pinheads there for the harvesting. Three I know of alone, in a garret in Conduit Street, existing by the charity of their neighbours, too frail to venture out to get bread, and afraid of being stoned.”

  “Hm. These neighbours,” said Con Claffey. “How much would they want?”

  “Hardly a question at all,” Tibor said. “They’re not in the freak game, it seems they supply the pinheads just out of Christian charity.”

  Francis Claffey sniggered. “We’ll send them a bouquet.”

  “And what else?”

  Tibor wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “There’s a stone-eater wants managing.”

  “I’ve a scepticism,” Con Claffey said, “about stone-eaters.”

  “No, it’s right,” said Tibor. “He eats up to a peck a day. If you dunt his belly you can hear them rattle. Paid a halfpenny, he will jump up and down for you and they rattle better.”

  Said Pybus—who had grown noticeably intelligent since Mary attacked him, as if all he needed was a blow to the head—“Do they not stop him up, the stones?”

  “Ah,” said Tibor. “Once in three weeks he takes some opening medicine, and voids a great quantity of sand.”

  “How does he do that?” said Howison.

  “His stomach is equipped with a grinding mechanism.”

  Howison smiled.

  “Just think.” Beaming Con Claffey rubbed his hands. “All the cellars of London. A thousand cellars, and each fitted with a freak, and each freak bringing in a pound a day! Do you begin to see, Mester Howison? The potential?”

  “I see it clearly,” said Howison. “But what has it to do with me?”

  “The life of a freak is not long,” said Con. “Not once it has been brought to London and been worked. Now, Tibbsie, bear me out here.”

  “The life of a freak is not long,” said Tibor the Terrible.

  “You are thinking my master would be interested,” Howison said. He took a long and pensive pull of his ale. “He might, at that.”

  “So we were thinking,” said Francis Claffey.

  “So we were thinking,” his brother Con said, swooping fatly over his brother’s words, “we were thinking that if Mr. Hunter would lay out on the initial capitalising of our cellars—for which we would cut a favourable deal with our countrymen—we could give him first refusal on the corpses.”

  “Mr. Hunter has no money to throw about, you understand? Besides, I don’t know that … I’m not sure that he …” Howison lapsed into silent thought.

  Respectful of it, all the companions took a long drink.

  In the end, Howison said, “But I’d be interested. I myself.”

  For, he thinks, any corpse I come by, I can always sell on to John-o at a rate which will make me a small but interesting profit. He always has no money, but there are sources he can draw on, if I remind him early enough. Borrow from his admirers, why not? He has many. And he will always raise cash to buy the things he really wants to cut up.

  John-o is interested in cutting up whatever he finds at the limits of life. He is interested in what distinguishes plants from animals, and animals from man. The latter distinction, Howison thinks, may need more than a scalpel to make it.

  But he keeps such thoughts to himself. He turns back to the Irish, wreathed in smiles.

  “By God, man,” said Hunter, pulling down the Giant’s eyelid.

  “What is it? What do you see?”

  “What do you see?” asked John.

  The Giant had come out to the knock: to the peremptory rap of a man who expected the door answered. He’d thought it might be the law. I am large enough, he’d thought, to knock down the law of England. Thought it without self-promotion. Only sad fact.

  Hunter had been stamping there, scrappy and mere and bluff. “I come to see how you do, Charles Byrne.”

  “Go before me,” said the Giant, courteous. “There will be no charge. My minders aren’t here, and by now, I should say, I regard you almost as a personal friend.”

  Hunter stepped in, and looked around. “I am afraid they have sold the tea-caddy,” said the Giant, “and all its c
ontents. Or I could offer you …”

  “No matter,” said the Scot.

  He took a seat. “That one has a dint in the back,” the Giant said.

  “No matter.”

  “I once wept, sitting in that chair.”

  “For what reason?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Your memory fails?”

  “Everything fails, sir. Reason, and harvests, and the human heart.”

  For a moment Hunter stared at him, oddly. “I wonder,” he said. “That is a fine set of satirical prints you have got on your wall there. Might they be for sale?”

  “Possibly,” said the Giant. “Quite probably, in fact. What the late Joe Vance thought of as a satire, is not precisely my idea of the term.”

  Hunter shifted uneasily in the dinted chair. “And what would your idea be?”

  “Properly understood, a satire can blister the face of the man it’s made against. It can fish out his soul and spit it on the tip of a knife.”

  “Well, if one could,” the Scotchman said, regretting. “If such a manoeuvre were possible.”

  “It may be,” the Giant said, “that you don’t have the right kind of knife.”

  Hunter conceded. He sat nodding his head, balding, with the frippery bits of cheek-ginger bristling, like scragged lace, against the failing light of a fine spring evening.

  “Drink, sir?” said the Giant. “From our decanter? Or is it too early for you?”

  “Oh, why not, why not?” said Hunter. No danger, tonight, that he would go whoopsy-hic. He was concentrated now; you could pour in a distillery and it wouldn’t dizzy him.

  The Giant bestowed a glass of decent crystal, and within it what tasted like a decent claret—but what would he know? Probably Wullie would have damned it. But Wullie was dead.

  “Are you quite well, Mr. Hunter?”

  He was aware that the Giant was gazing down at him.

  “My brother Wullie has passed away.”