The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (18 page)

Misery Hill. A name down these black streets. And a walk along here by the water on a narrow edge of granite by this plank wall of a coal bunker. And suddenly a shadow is looming up above my head. A figure with an arm raised and in a hand a lump of coal. Good God. Someone to kill me. Knock me on the head. That I would fall to this granite, to take my money and roll me into the greasy water.

Balthazar raised up a shielding arm. And the figure high in the bunker teetered and fell from sight. An old grey bewhiskered face. Staring and mad. And all I can do is run. Away from here. To the Liffey. By all the long rusting sides of ships. And rats nipping over the wet gleaming cobble stones.

Balthazar B chased along the Quay, chest choked with a beating heart. Detouring from walls, shadowy cranes and dark doorways. Heading west for the life and lights of the city. Past gangways up to merchant ships. White shirted figures in the portholes. Others leaning with lighted cigarettes looking down from the ship's railings. A warehouse ahead. Keep out on the clear road. Away from harm.

At the corner of the shed Balthazar B gasped as he bumped into and confronted a figure. Of strange lighted eyes. And a round suddenly smiling face, so unsurprised.

"Beefy."

"Balthazar."

"Beefy what are you doing here, you frightened the life out of me, I was nearly murdered a few minutes ago."

"I am looking for sin."

Balthazar staring at these two unflickering globes. Jacket askew on his shoulders. Tie loosened from his collar. All the strange rumours. About this man. Who reads divinity. That Fitzdare would never say. To find him here. As he finds me.

"I was nearly hit on the head with a lump of coal."

"Dear boy. There are no rules down here on the Quay. No rules. Do you understand. I have come for sin. I know where to find it. Come with me."

"Beefy what do you mean."

"Deepest most sordid sin. I have been to the latrines. But I am randy again. I have other places too. Come. The deepest and most sordid sin purifies. I bugger old men. I lay old ladies. Some of them are dying when I do it."

Balthazar looking into these burning eyes. A tremor of fear takes a fluttering hold of the heart. The lips smile. A ship hoots.

"My God Beefy, I don't know what to say."

"My pleasures are utterly beautiful Balthazar. Sacred. I mingle my elegance with their wretchedness. This city is a sewer flowing with rancor and decomposed flesh, rotting through all these streets. Disease eats out these hearts. Bodies full of poison. I come with my beauty. I bugger them. And do appalling things. And I invite you to come too.' "I was rather planning an early evening."

"I shock you."

"You terrify me out of my wits, Beefy."

"Ah. I thought so. But I will introduce you slowly to the pleasurings. Very slowly. You will thank me. When you get into the grisliness. That you can savour such things as I can show you. The sin. I love the sin. That's what I most desire. You look so left out of it all Balthazar."

"Would you care to come back to my rooms with me and have some cocoa Beefy."

Along the Liffey quays this night, puddles of water on the cobble stoned street. Lonely lamplights. Coal dust and barrels, crates and bundles of wire. Great shadow of the gas tank rearing in the sky. A whiff and sniff and smell of pine timber. Beefy reaching up his arm to put a hand on Balthazar's shoulder. To look with easy warm eyes on this pale blond apprehensive face.

"Balthazar, my dear man. I am most awfully sorry. I could not resist to shock you. Do you know you are a most handsome fellow. You are in fact very beautiful. Your beauty would lend so well to my planned defilement. Look at you. Fve never seen anything like your saintliness. Have you been seeing Miss Fitzdare."

"I had lunch with Miss Fitzdare and her aunt and uncle."

"O my God how charming. Did you sit poised on the settee."

"Yes."

"Did Miss Fitzdare tinkle the wires of her harpsicord."

"Yes."

"I knew it. For joy. I knew it. She is a lovely creature. But think what wonderful defilement you could lend your spirit to tonight. Sunday. After all the prayers are said. But I think it's so splendid. You and Fitzdare. It crucifies me, your blond and her black beauty. O my God."

"Please come and have cocoa, Beefy."

Wild shadows against a sky faintly purple. Clouds rolling with moonlit edges. The blast of a ship's whistle. A hawser splashing in the water. Up in the crystal night the ship's red light. Trembling engines as the great black silhouette moves out on the flowing river.

"Ah but I must go. Upon my appointed rounds."

"I have cream to go on top of the cocoa."

"I must not be distracted from my mission. Sinful desire consumes me. The most malodorous and desecrated defilement is waiting. Only fifteen steps away. Come. Please. Just along here. Let me show you. You see nothing. But wait. We go now up into this doorway. It will amaze you. You will thrill to this creature."

An opening broken door up wide greasy granite steps. A stench of death. The choking wail and sob of a child. A lurking face. A girl. Half her face in the light. A tiny bow of ribbon tied in her hair. Her hands clutching a broken black shiny bag.

"Ah Balthazar this is my queen. She waits for me here. Her name is Rebecca. Isn't she beautiful. But she does not think so herself. But Rebecca, you are."

"Go on now I'm not."

"Rebecca, I want you to meet my friend. He is beautiful too, isn't he."

"Ah he is."

"But it is I who have a horn on me this evil night. Rebecca you have the most splendid eyes to gaze upon this horn of mine."

"O go on with you I think you're crazy."

"And you have limbs. Fine limbs. I could eat up your white beauty Rebecca you know that I could, don't you. Wait Bal-thazar, don't go. You must not leave. Rebecca will fetch her sister for you."

"Ah sure you've got the gentleman upset, can't you see he's upset.'

"Balthazar you're not upset. I would never want that. Isn't it marvellous here."

"I think I must go Beefy."

"Come. With us. Rebecca too will come. And so will her sister. We'll go over the fence at the back gate. Even though needs be a spear up the rear. And I will take Rebecca and her sister to my rooms. We will all like it there. Come now, Rebecca. Let us get your sister. And I beg you Balthazar don't desert me now."

Their feet sounding up the broken stairs. Past a great tall window on the landing, its frame buckled, string and bits of rag blowing in the breezes. A three legged dog hobbling down between their legs. Bits of bicycles and broken prams along a wall. The dim slit of light under doors. Where dark Dublin lies sleeping.

On the attic landing Rebecca pushed through a door into a great darkened room. Rags and bones and suitcases in a corner, hunks of plaster hanging from the ceiling. A man sitting hunched forward on a chair staring silently into the red dying embers of a fire who slowly turns a head to nod at Beefy and Beefy nodding a smile to Balthazar.

A table covered in newspaper, cups and crusts of bread. By a red candle burning on a cardboard altar near a window a thin dark girl sits huddled reading in the flickering light. Rebecca whispers in her ear. And they both look at seven heads sticking from the covers of a great mattress on the floor. The dark girl steps behind a torn curtain and emerges with a handbag. Pulling a sweater over her shoulders as she turns towards the sleeping figures under a picture of a bleeding heart encased in thorns.

Balthazar B descended last out of this broken gutted building, taking deep breaths as they walked under a black railway trestle towards Trinity down an empty desolate lane. By locked up shops and closed pubs. Along Fenian Street taken that night with Beefy when I first met Fitzdare. The heads of death lurk in all the black skulls of houses. The girl dark and small with beady black eyes. A gold cross upon her throat.

Blue dress, blue sweater, her elbows poking out the sleeves.

And I feel so bereft of Fitzdare. So alien to this wisp of girl.

"What's your name.'

"My name is Breda. What is your name."

"My name is Balthazar.'

"Are you a student.'

"Yes. What are you."

"I work in a pub out towards Howth. I'm a barmaid. I'm not her sister. She enjoys a lie. I come from Cavan. I was just into Dublin to help take care of her little brothers and sisters. She's the oldest, she's twenty three. Her mother died three months ago. I know of your friend. He's been good to her family but he's a holy terror in other ways. You don't look the sort as would be down the Quays associating with strange women. Are you afraid of me."

"You won't say much. I don't mind. You're English, that's the way you all are. Never say what's on your mind. How will he ever get us over that big fence."

Beefy high up balanced between the fence spears. A hand held down to Rebecca. She reached up, one foot on Balthazar's shoulder. Beefy with a great grunt and heave lifted her and their hands parted to drop her back down again into the arms of Balthazar. As Beefy lowered himself into Trinity and grinned through the fence bars.

"Come now."

"Ah no. I'm not climbing up that again."

"You must make her Balthazar, grab her arm and twist it."

"Ah you're not to twist me arm."

"Chuck her in the gutter Balthazar, this is no time for niceties."

"I'll give him one in the jewels if he does."

"We must get them over Balthazar. Put them through the most amazing antics you have ever seen. Here let's try to squeeze them between the bars."

"Beefy the porter's lodge is just there. We'll be seen.'

"You'll squeeze neither of us between the bars I'm telling you."

"Just look at them. The two of them. Think of the defilement."

"Come on Breda, let's go on out of this now."

"Stop them Balthazar, stop them, I'm coming over. We must never let the two beauties go. It will be as splendid as running wild through a hospital of incurables. Get them back."

Balthazar stood and watched Beefy chase the girls down Lincoln Place into Westland Row. Where they have an Academy of Music and where Miss Fitzdare may have learned the harpsicord. They returned hand in hand in the darkness. Beefy's eyes coming near, alight with pleasure. So strange he treats them with such soft grace. Between the threats of violence. So brilliant in scholarship. So fearless at sport.

In the shadows of Wicklow Street just past a window display of spring fashions in Switzers a taxi was loaded with the women. A white five pound note passed by Beefy to the taxi man. The girls covered in a rug squeezed down between the knees of the gentlemen. Beefy handed his silver flask to Balthazar to take brandy at this delicate moment. Poised for fluent entrance without the flicker of a lid, or murmur of lie. To present at the great wooden gates. And safely pass.

The taxi proceeding around these bleak corners of commerce. Down an incline between pubs and banking houses. And out on the broad stretch of Dame Street. Leads west to the Atlantic. East to the black high arched portal of this ancient seat of learning. The massive grey pillars and porches of the Bank of Ireland. The taxi heading across the tram tracks. Over a bump. Under that blue gold clock high above. And Beefy is giggling as Rebecca's head is rather burrowing where it shouldn't be.

"Stop it Rebecca. This is a tender moment when one's countenance must wear a bland look of ecclesiastic purity. Demanding of a salute from those who serve."

Beefy rearing in his seat eyes widening in horror as the taxi fails to decrease speed. And slams to a stop against the wooden barricade. Two porters come out. Slowly inspecting the dent in the timber they come to the window and peer at a motionless Beefy. They go to pull up the iron pins and lift back the main door. We move forward. Porters lean over ever so slightly. Beefy nods. They touch their caps. And now we trundle across the cobble stones.

"By God we've done it Balthazar. By God we've done as nice a piece of elemental underhandedness as could be expected in a vehicle which should not be allowed out on the roads. Just lie low now girls until big uncle Beefy gets you safely into his randy quarters. Who's for brandy. Ah Balthazar. You know I'm enjoying your company. You give me a sense of destiny. I rather mean to say my character is all shot to hell. I'm skidding along now on infamy. Heading for my holy orders. With my trustees screaming. My granny stony hearted. My vile despicable propensities raging. Of course I shall take my holy orders. But not before I've had my fill of the diabolical."

"Beefy I don't like the look of things. I have a strange feeling we got by the porters too easily. Can't we have cocoa and go out again."

"Balthazar you are an awfully polite man you know. But not one for filling in the silences in conversation, are you. Taxi man, apply your brakes now, that doorway right there. Get close in. That's a good man."

Beefy debarking with rug. Holding it aloft between car door and the dark stony entrance. To let the damsels discreetly pass. Into chill darkness and move up three landings guiding with hands on the smooth banisters and creaking stairs. Beefy whispering close.

"Ah Balthazar aren't you excited tonight. With these two lasses. You can engage in any proclivity you fancy.'

"I heard what you said and don't be thinking I don't know all them big words mean the same thing."

"I love you Rebecca. I love you."

"You love yourself."

"You see Balthazar these girls are clever. Far above the ordinary. You know, this isn't a time to bring this up, but I rather funked it in the military. Could never organise an assault. Would say to the chaps. This is your captain speaking, can you hear me chappies, there are the buggers beyond the ridge, let them have it by God, mortar them good and proper. Forsooth I set off a barrage to give them what for beyond the ridge. After the preliminary softening up I told the chappies to rush them. I put my umbrella up to march out setting a good example, through the rain of shells. Men didn't like it at all. Thought I was putting on the dog. But the enemy were so stunned to see me marching at them under my snake skin handled umbrella that they ceased firing. Just as well. The unhappy thing was, I was attacking my own men. I was an absolutely dead loss at war. Soon as they got rid of me they started winning like mad. But you know, let me say confidentially, I tried to soldier well. Even now when I pass Horse Guards' Parade in London, hear the band, the crunch of heels on the gravel, a reverberation goes through me and I thrill to an instant erection. I mean some chaps express their loyalties in other ways. But that little signal, that pure salute. One's private little pole. Standing outright and quivering. Has always made me feel that my love of regiment, my loyalty to the Monarch, was a swelling splendour of heartfelt salutation. Wait girls, for your captain. This fearful trip is not yet done. Until we are safely inside."