The God of the Labyrinth

  I had to admire the lucid way Donelly told the story; well into his second bottle of rum, he discoursed as soberly as a clergyman arguing about transubstantiation.

  The odd thing was that I was suddenly feeling indifferent about the whole business. I rather resented Donelly having this much power over me. I had already decided to return Fleisher’s $5,000 and forget the whole thing. So I didn’t give a damn whether Donelly could be persuaded to change his mind. And as soon as I decided that I didn’t care, I felt free and indifferent. I decided that, whatever happened, I would leave in half an hour and get back to the motel. I asked Donelly how he had become interested in his ancestor. He said he’d discovered the published travel diary in the family home in Ballycahane. I asked him how much of his life he had spent there.

  ‘Very little. We moved to Dublin when I was five, and to Malaya when I was nine.’

  ‘Did you ever think of keeping travel diaries?’ I asked the question without real interest, to fill in time, as it were. The result was an incredible flood of self-revelation. He said heavily:

  ‘I have never kept a diary because there are too many things I’d never dare to record.’

  ‘That didn’t deter Esmond.’

  He gave an odd, twisted smile.

  ‘Esmond’s sex life was the kind he could write about. Mine isn’t.’

  I thought he was referring to the burning of the hayrick. I nodded sympathetically and said I understood. He said, with a kind of weary self-mockery:

  ‘I doubt whether you do. When I was eight, we had a gover­ness who spanked us and played with our penises.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘My brother Esmond and I. Esmond was a year my senior. This girl was a Scot from Glasgow—one of those big, healthy wenches. We both adored her from the moment we saw her. We followed her around like lap dogs. One day, we were chasing one another round a table with a porcelain bowl on it, and the bowl fell off and smashed. Our parents were out, and we begged Bridget not to tell them. She agreed to hide the broken frag­ments, but said she’d have to punish us both. We were both delighted at the idea. She told us to go up to our room and get our trousers off. When she came up with the cane, we were both naked. She sat on the bed and made each of us bend over her knee, then gave us ten strokes each.’

  ‘Did it excite you?’

  ‘Not really—at least, the punishment didn’t. What excited me was being naked and pressing against her legs.’

  I won’t try to give the rest of the story in his own words, because he went into all kinds of minor detail that wasn’t im­portant. What he said was that he and his brother both agreed they enjoyed being punished by Bridget. The next time they were alone in the house with her, they deliberately broke some­thing, and went through the whole performance again. This was in 1928—the era of short dresses. He was able to press his penis against her knee as she spanked him, and said that the sensation was so exquisite it almost made him faint. This time, she saw that he had an erection as he backed away, and reached down to touch it. Donelly’s parents had believed in never trying to force back the foreskin, so the glans of his penis was hidden by it. The girl said this was unhealthy, and began gently pulling the skin back. He said that, from that moment on, he and his brother thought of nothing but how they could persuade her to spank them again. After a week or so, they no longer had to smash things to obtain their spankings. As soon as they were alone in the house with the girl, they would propose to play at schools. She was the schoolmarm. They would give the wrong answers or cheek the teacher; after a while, she would order them to their room. There they’d undress, and then they’d go through the whole charade, ending with her pushing back their foreskins ‘for medical reasons’. One night when their parents were away, she allowed them to climb into her bed, and removed her nightdress. Donelly said this was oddly disappointing, even though she went through the usual sex play. They needed this image of her fully dressed, inflicting just punishment, in order to feel excited.

  It came to an end when he was nine; they went to Malaya, where his father was manager of a tin mine. While they were away, they heard that Bridget had married, and were plunged into despair; each had bet the other that he would marry her when he grew up.

  Two years later, they had almost forgotten her. Then one day, their mother asked them how they would like Bridget to come to take care of them again. Her husband had left her, and she wanted to get away from Scotland. She joined them when they were on holiday in London, and returned with them to Malaya. Donelly said she had become bigger and heavier, and that they both found her more attractive than ever. As soon as they were left alone with her, his brother said: ‘Will you spank us if we’re naughty?’, and she said: ‘Of course.’ Donelly said they both shuddered with delight.

  For the first few weeks after their return, nothing happened. They had native servants, and she was afraid of compromising herself. But the hot climate and lack of sexual outlet soon began to erode her caution. The natives wandered around almost naked; she claimed that her upbringing had been strictly religious and that she found this shocking. The boys took pleasure in teasing her and sometimes pinching her, and she would slap them. They could tell from the increased hardness of the smacks that they were an outlet for something else besides annoyance. She saw them naked after a bath one night, and remarked on the develop­ment of Donelly’s sexual member. Esmond was jealous; that night, he and his brother had a bitter fight which ended with black eyes and cut lips.

  One day, she caught them hiding in a shed and smoking, and told them she would punish them on the spot. This was what they had been waiting for. It was impractical to remove all their clothes; they only lowered their trousers, and pressed against her. He said that when it was over, all three of them were very red and breathing heavily; he was sure she had had an orgasm (although, of course, he did not understand this at the time).

  A few days later, his mother had taken Esmond into the nearby town to buy him clothes; Donelly was alone in the house. He went up to Bridget’s room and found it empty. He opened her wardrobe, and found the dress that she used to wear when she beat them in Dublin—a brown dress of some stiff material. He placed it on the bed, undressed, and lay on it, smelling its distinctive smell. Suddenly, he heard the door slam. He recog­nised Bridget’s step. She went through the house to the kitchen. He wanted her to see him lying on her dress, so he knocked something over. She called: ‘Who is it?’ and came upstairs. He pretended to be asleep, and opened his eyes with a start as she stood over him. She appeared to be genuinely annoyed that he had looked in her wardrobe, and said: ‘I shall have to punish you—get up.’ Even before he bent over her, he had an erection, but she pretended not to notice it. She picked up a hairbrush and made him bend over her. This time, he noticed that her knees were farther apart than usual, and that by cautiously pressing on her dress, he could make it slide up her thigh. He tried to peer up her legs, but they were facing the door, and there was not enough light. Suddenly, she said: ‘This place isn’t high enough. Move around the other side’, and moved to the side of the bed that faced the window. He bent over her again, and inadvertently pushed her dress higher. She opened her knees wider, raising one of them to place it on a footstool, and he could see to the tops of her thighs. She was wearing very loose knickers with wide legs and, with her knees apart, the crotch hid nothing. He began moving his erect member against her knee as she beat him. She changed her position, and her other hand brushed against it, then slowly closed round it. Suddenly, she began to beat him with fury, striking as hard as she could, and at the same time he felt a sharp pleasure in his loins that made him feel faint. He half fell across her, and she went on beating him; then she shuddered, and dropped the brush. She said: ‘Oh, you’ve made me feel ill’, and lay back across the bed, closing her eyes. He also lay on the bed. He said they were both exhausted. Nothing further happened that day. When they heard his mother returning half an hour lat
er, he hurried to his own room. He told his brother later: ‘I’m going to marry Bridget and have her beat me every day.’

  This situation continued for three years, and during that time Bridget became engaged to a mining engineer, and had normal sexual intercourse with him. She kept putting off marrying him because she said Mrs Donelly could not do without her help in the house; the real reason was that she wanted to stay close to the brothers and continue the beatings. Finally, the engineer won; she married him and they moved to South America.

  For a week or so, the brothers were desolated. Then one day, Esmond said: ‘Pretend you’re Bridget.’ He lay down on the bed, while his brother beat him with a leather strap. Esmond had an orgasm. Afterwards, Esmond wielded the strap; Donelly imagined it was Bridget, and also had an orgasm.

  Back in England, at the age of fourteen, Donelly and his brother were sent to a minor public school. Donelly was made a fag; Esmond, a year older, was not. Donelly was such an unsatis­factory fag that he had the pleasure of being beaten once a week. And one day, after beating him, the prefect removed his trousers and sodomised him. Since his behind was still painful, the experi­ence was doubly excruciating, and Donelly enjoyed it more than any experience so far. But he discovered that sodomy without the preliminary beating gave him no pleasure.

  It is unnecessary to say that I did not leave at the end of half an hour. I even accepted more rum. Donelly talked on and on, detailing his experiences in the brothels of the world. The man had so many fixations and perversions that it would take another twenty pages to detail them—women’s hair, patent leather shoes (women’s), tennis shirts, rubber boots and raincoats, guns, whips, canes, razor blades. . . . Towards midnight, he showed me his collec­tion of guns, of obscene photographs, and of whips and canes. He handed me a cat-o’-nine-tails and asked me to try it. I swished it through the air, and he closed his eyes as if he was listening to delightful music. Then he said dreamily: ‘Would you like to use it?’

  ‘On you?’ I had guessed this was what he was leading up to.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No. I’d feel silly.’

  He gripped my arm.

  ‘Not even in exchange for the manuscript?’

  ‘You’d let me take it?’

  ‘You could copy it and return it.’

  ‘All right.’

  His voice became a croak.

  ‘Come in here.’

  We went into the next room. There was nothing in it but an enormous, old-fashioned double bed with a mattress that looked as comfortable as a wooden board. Attached to each of the four corners there were leather straps culminating in handcuffs.

  He undressed slowly, without embarrassment. I noticed that the curtains on the windows were very heavy. Now I knew why Donelly had been glad to get rid of his farm labourers. In a wooden building of this sort, the sound of blows was bound to carry for some distance, particularly in the still southern nights, where a cicada can be heard a mile away.

  He lay down naked, face downwards, and I looked at him squarely for the first time since we had been in the room. His back, buttocks and thighs were little more than welted scar tissue. It looked like a snow-covered road after half a dozen vehicles have driven back and forth over it. It was amazing that he could feel anything.

  I had to snap the handcuffs on his wrists, then on his ankles, and tighten the straps until he was stretched out. I left them rather slack at first, but he said impatiently: ‘Tighter.’ Then, with his face turned towards me, his eyes closed, he breathed: ‘Now.’ I knew there was no point in holding back. What I won­dered was whether I could go too far and make him ask me to stop. So I raised the thing above my head—it had a vicious swing—and brought it down as hard as I could. It hissed like a skyrocket. I was astounded to see the deep red mark it made. I hesitated for a moment, and he said between clenched teeth: ‘Go on, keep on, don’t stop.’ So, remembering my part of the bargain, I laid in as hard as I could. If I’d been hurting him, it would have been impossible; but it was obvious that he was gain­ing the most ecstatic delight from it. I became worried when the blood began to trickle, and to hit my face in spots as I struck; but if I stopped, he groaned: ‘Please.’ At one point, he said ‘Stop’, and I thought he’d had enough; but he only said: ‘Now the cane’, and I had to fetch a vicious officer’s cane covered with leather, and beat his buttocks and thighs with it. To begin with, I tried to make it snap by hitting him as hard as I could—my arm was getting tired—but it made no difference. It only bent. After ten minutes, I sank on to a wooden chair and said: ‘It’s no good, I shall have to rest.’ He lay still, and I realised he was unconscious. I tried shaking him by the shoulder, but his eyelids didn’t even stir. I was glad he was still breathing. If he’d died, it might have been difficult to explain that I was doing this in the cause of literature.

  I went back to the other room and poured myself a beer. Then I went and got the safe key out of his trouser pocket, and opened the safe. The other envelopes proved to contain letters and other papers. There was nothing more relating to Donelly in it. I took the box from the upper compartment and looked into it. A red cross on its side indicated that it was a medical chest, and at a first glance the contents confirmed this—rolls of bandages, a tin of adhesive plasters, bottles of antiseptic. It struck me that if Donelly got himself beaten only once a year, he would need a good stock of bandages and antiseptic. On closer inspection, I saw there were certain items whose purpose was not immediately apparent—a number of green tubes, sealed at either end, small round caps with wires attached which even I recognised as detonators, a bottle of a coarse brown-coloured powder. I exam­ined one of the tubes. It was made of plastic, and there was a removable plastic cap at either end. I took out both caps, and tried to peer through it like a telescope; but there was a blockage halfway down; the tube was divided into two compartments. Under the ceiling light, the dividing wall looked like metal.

  I opened the bottle of powder and sniffed it. It had a distinc­tive smell, but nothing I recognised. I picked up a bottle of a yellow liquid, and removed its glass stopper. I recognised this smell from my schooldays: concentrated acid, either hydro­chloric or nitric. I found a saucer in the kitchen—peeping in at Donelly as I went past—and poured a small quantity of the brown powder in it. Then I cautiously poured a drop of the acid into the other side of the saucer, so that it formed a small pool. I tilted the saucer so the acid flowed across it. As soon as it met the powder, there was a fierce crackling, and I jumped back­wards. Something spattered on my face in drops, and burned; I rushed to the kitchen and rubbed my face with a damp cloth. Smoke was already billowing out of the other room and into the corridor. The powder in the saucer was crackling and hissing, throwing off sparks. I opened the front door, and then reached out cautiously for the saucer; as I did so, it split in two. But the crackling had stopped—I had used a very small quantity of the powder. I raked the two halves on to a newspaper, and took them outside; they were still so hot that the paper was scorched. It took ten minutes or so for the room to empty of smoke.

  So the problem of the haystack fire was solved. The method was simple and foolproof. The brown powder would be sealed in one half of the tube. The acid would be carried to the scene of the fire in a small bottle—there were several in the box. It would be carefully emptied into the second half, and a hole would be made in the cap to allow the hydrogen to escape. Then the tube would be set carefully on end, with the acid half uppermost, in the barn or haystack. Donelly presumably knew exactly how long it would take for the acid to eat through the metal dividing the two compartments; if the acid was diluted, it could possibly take twenty-four hours. Probably he had placed the miniature fire-bomb in the haystack in the dark hours of Sunday morning. No wonder he looked pleased as he stood watching the fire. It was a triumph of exact timing.

  I replaced the box in the safe, together with the other papers, and locked it. Then I returned the key
to Donelly’s trousers. I was even tempted to solve the moral problem of Donelly’s pyromania by fusing one of his time-bombs and leaving it in the safe among the papers, so that his arson kit would be destroyed. But it might burn down the house with Donelly in it. That would be poetic justice, but unnecessarily cruel. (Or would he enjoy it?)

  I covered Donelly with blankets, but left him attached to the bedposts. If I was going to sleep in the house, I would prefer to feel safe; his set of guns and razors made me nervous. Then I locked the door and climbed into the single bed. Early this morning, I went into Donelly’s room, and found him asleep. His breathing was regular. I unlocked the handcuffs, and he stirred and groaned. By half past six, I was walking down towards the town. I found a roadside café open and ate fried eggs, ham and grits, then rang the taxi driver who brought me. By eight o’clock I was back at the motel, and I wrote most of this account before I left to catch my afternoon plane. I have posted the Esmond Donelly manuscript back to Diana, so she can type it before we fly back to Shannon on Thursday. Considering how much I’ve drunk in the past twenty-four hours, I feel remarkably well.

  April 22, Dallas, Texas

  I found myself wondering this morning why I had gained a certain pleasure from beating Donelly. Is there a hidden sadistic component in me, a touch of Austin? And then, after my lecture this morning, the answer struck me. In an odd sort of way, Donelly’s perversions are a proof of the freedom of the human spirit. All animals shrink from pain. Donelly had deliberately acquired the opposite attitude. He had chosen that pain should be a value, and he made it a value—something he enjoyed. I know the explanation lies in association of ideas and so on—Bridget, sex, pain—but that makes no difference. If a man can choose to experience pleasure from a beating, he can also choose to experience mystical ecstasy at the sight of a tree or a leaf. He is not necessarily a victim of his changing emotions and physical needs. That is why I couldn’t betray him. In a distorted way, there is a touch of the saint about him. A saint without a purpose.