The Dalkey Archive
With a murmur of thanks the visitors started this modest and pleasant meal. De Selby himself took little and seemed preoccupied.
– Call me a theologian or a physicist as you will, he said at last rather earnestly, but I am serious and truthful. My discoveries concerning the nature of time were in fact quite accidental. The objective of my research was altogether different. My aim was utterly unconnected with the essence of time.
– Indeed? Hackett said rather coarsely as he coarsely munched. And what was the main aim?
– To destroy the whole world.
They stared at him. Hackett made a slight noise but De Selby’s face was set, impassive, grim.
– Well, well, Mick stammered.
– It merits destruction. Its history and prehistory, even its present, is a foul record of pestilence, famine, war, devastation and misery so terrible and multifarious that its depth and horror are unknown to any one man. Rottenness is universally endemic, disease is paramount. The human race is finally debauched and aborted.
– Mr De Selby, Hackett said with a want of gravity, would it be rude to ask just how you will destroy the world? You did not make it.
– Even you, Mr Hackett, have destroyed things you did not make. I do not care a farthing about who made the world or what the grand intention was, laudable or horrible. The creation is loathsome and abominable, and total extinction could not be worse.
Mick could see that Hackett’s attitude was provoking brusqueness whereas what was needed was elucidation. Even marginal exposition by De Selby would throw light on the important question – was he a true scientist or just demented?
– I can’t see, sir, Mick ventured modestly, how this world could be destroyed short of arranging a celestial collision between it and some other great heavenly body. How a man could interfere with the movements of the stars – I find that an insoluble puzzle, sir.
De Selby’s taut expression relaxed somewhat.
– Since our repast is finished, have another drink, he said, pushing forward the bottle. When I mentioned destroying the whole world, I was not referring to the physical planet but to every manner and manifestation of life on it. When my task is accomplished – and I feel that will be soon – nothing living, not even a blade of grass, a flea – will exist on this globe. Nor shall I exist myself, of course.
– And what about us? Hackett asked.
– You must participate in the destiny of all mankind, which is extermination.
– Guesswork is futile, Mr De Selby, Mick murmured, but could this plan of yours involve liquefying all the ice at the Poles and elsewhere and thus drowning everything, in the manner of the Flood in the Bible?
– No. The story of that Flood is just silly. We are told it was caused by a deluge of forty days and forty nights. All this water must have existed on earth before the rain started, for more can not come down than was taken up. Commonsense tells me that this is childish nonsense.
– That is merely a feeble rational quibble, Hackett cut in. He liked to show that he was alert.
– What then, sir, Mick asked in painful humility, is the secret, the supreme crucial secret?
De Selby gave a sort of grimace.
– It would be impossible for me, he explained, to give you gentlemen, who have no scientific training, even a glimpse into my studies and achievements in pneumatic chemistry. My work has taken up the best part of a life-time and, though assistance and co-operation were generously offered by men abroad, they could not master my fundamental postulate: namely, the annihilation of the atmosphere.
– You mean, abolish air? Hackett asked blankly.
– Only its biogenic and substantive ingredient, replied De Selby, which, of course, is oxygen.
– Thus, Mick interposed, if you extract all oxygen from the atmosphere or destroy it, all life will cease?
– Crudely put, perhaps, the scientist agreed, now again genial, but you may grasp the idea. There are certain possible complications but they need not trouble us now.
Hackett had quietly helped himself to another drink and showed active interest.
– I think I see it, he intoned. Exit automatically the oxygen and we have to carry on with what remains, which happens to be poison. Isn’t it murder though?
De Selby paid no attention.
– The atmosphere of the earth, meaning what in practice we breathe as distinct from rarefied atmosphere at great heights, is composed of roughly 78 per cent nitrogen, 21 oxygen, tiny quantities of argon and carbon dioxide, and microscopic quantities of other gases such as helium and ozone. Our preoccupation is with nitrogen, atomic weight 14.008, atomic number 7.
– Is there a smell off nitrogen? Hackett enquired.
– No. After extreme study and experiment I have produced a chemical compound which totally eliminates oxygen from any given atmosphere. A minute quantity of this hard substance, small enough to be invisible to the naked eye, would thus convert the interior of the greatest hall on earth into a dead world provided, of course, the hall were properly sealed. Let me show you.
He quietly knelt at one of the lower presses and opened the door to reveal a small safe of conventional aspect. This he opened with a key, revealing a circular container of dull metal of a size that would contain perhaps four gallons of liquid. Inscribed on its face were the letters DMP.
– Good Lord, Hackett cried, the DMP! The good old DMP! The grandfather was a member of that bunch.
De Selby turned his head, smiling bleakly.
– Yes – the DMP – the Dublin Metropolitan Police. My own father was a member. They are long-since abolished, of course.
– Well what’s the idea of putting that on your jar of chemicals?
De Selby had closed the safe and press door and gone back to his seat.
– Just a whim of mine, no more, he replied. The letters are in no sense a formula or even a mnemonic. But that container has in it the most priceless substance on earth.
– Mr De Selby, Mick said, rather frightened by these flamboyant proceedings, granted that your safe is a good one, is it not foolish to leave such dangerous stuff here for some burglar to knock it off?
– Me, for instance? Hackett interposed.
– No, gentlemen, there is no danger at all. Nobody would know what the substance was, its properties or how activated.
– But don’t we know? Hackett insisted.
– You know next to nothing, De Selby replied easily, but I intend to enlighten you even more.
– I assure you, Mick thought well to say, that any information entrusted to us will be treated in strict confidence.
– Oh, don’t bother about that, De Selby said politely, it’s not information I’ll supply but experience. A discovery I have made – and quite unexpectedly – is that a deoxygenated atmosphere cancels the apparently serial nature of time and confronts us with true time and simultaneously with all the things and creatures which time has ever contained or will contain, provided we evoke them. Do you follow? Let us be serious about this. The situation is momentous and scarcely of this world as we know it.
He stared at each of his two new friends in turn very gravely.
– I feel, he announced, that you are entitled to some personal explanation concerning myself. It would be quite wrong to regard me as a christophobe.
– Me too, Hackett chirped impudently.
– The early books of the Bible I accepted as myth, but durable myth contrived genuinely for man’s guidance. I also accepted as fact the story of the awesome encounter between God and the rebel Lucifer. But I was undecided for many years as to the outcome of that encounter. I had little to corroborate the revelation that God had triumphed and banished Lucifer to hell forever. For if – I repeat if – the decision had gone the other way and God had been vanquished, who but Lucifer would be certain to put about the other and opposite story?
– But why should he? Mick asked incredulously.
– The better to snare and damn mankind, De Selby answered.
– Well now, Hackett remarked, that secret would take some keeping.
– However, De Selby continued, perplexed, I was quite mistaken in that speculation. I’ve since found that things are as set forth in the Bible, at least to the extent that heaven is intact.
Hackett gave a low whistle, perhaps in derision.
– How could you be sure? he asked. You have not been temporarily out of this world, have you, Mr De Selby?
– Not exactly. But I have had a long talk with John the Baptist. A most understanding man, do you know, you’d swear he was a Jesuit.
– Good heavens! Mick cried, while Hackett hastily put his glass on the table with a click.
– Ah yes, most understanding. Perfect manners, of course, and a courteous appreciation of my own personal limitations. A very interesting man the same Baptist.
– Where did this happen? Hackett asked.
– Here in Dalkey, De Selby explained. Under the sea.
There was a small but absolute silence.
– While time stood still? Hackett persisted.
– I’ll bring both of you people to the same spot tomorrow. That is, if you wish it and provided you can swim, and for a short distance under water.
– We are both excellent swimmers, Hackett said cheerfully, except I’m by far the better of the pair.
– We’d be delighted, Mick interrupted with a sickly smile, on the understanding that we’ll get safely back.
– There is no danger whatever. Down at the headquarters of the Vico Swimming Club there is a peculiar chamber hidden in the rocks at the water’s edge. At low tide there is cavernous access from the water to this chamber. As the tide rises this hole is blocked and air sealed off in the chamber. The water provides a total seal.
– This could be a chamber of horrors, Hackett suggested.
– I have some masks of my own design, equipped with compressed air, normal air, and having an automatic feed-valve. The masks and tank are quite light, of aluminium.
– I think I grasp the idea, Mick said in a frown of concentration. We go under the water wearing these breathing gadgets, make our way through this rocky opening to the chamber, and there meet John the Baptist?
De Selby chuckled softly.
– Not necessarily and not quite. We get to the empty chamber as you say and I then release a minute quantity of DMP. We are then subsisting in timeless nitrogen but still able to breathe from the tanks on our backs.
– Does our physical weight change? Hackett asked.
– Yes, somewhat.
– And what happens then?
– We shall see what happens after you have met me at this swimming pool at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Are you going back by the Colza Hotel?
– Certainly.
– Well have a message sent to Teague McGettigan to call for me with his damned cab at 7.30. Those mask affairs are bothersome to horse about with.
Thus the appointment was made. De Selby affable as he led his visitors to his door and said goodbye.
3
Hackett was frowning a bit and taciturn as the two strolled down the Vico Road towards Dalkey. Mick felt preoccupied, his ideas in some disarray. Some light seemed to have been drained from the sunny evening.
– We don’t often have this sort of diversion, Hackett, he remarked.
– It certainly isn’t every day we’re offered miraculous whiskey, Hackett answered gloomily, and told at the same time we’re under sentence of death. Shouldn’t other people be warned? Our personal squaws, for instance?
– That would be what used to be called spreading despondency and disaffection, Mick warned pompously. What good would it do?
– They could go to confession, couldn’t they?
– So could you. But the people would only laugh at us. So far as you are concerned, they’d say you were drunk.
– That week-old gargle was marvellous stuff, he muttered reflectively after a pause. I feel all right but I’m still not certain that there wasn’t some sort of drug in it. Slow-acting hypnotic stuff, or something worse that goes straight to the brain. We might yet go berserk by the time we reach the Colza. Maybe we’ll be arrested by Sergeant Fottrell.
– Divil a fear of it.
– I certainly wouldn’t like to swear the truth of today in court.
– We have an appointment early tomorrow morning, Mick reminded him. I suggest we say nothing to anybody about today’s business.
– Do you intend to keep tomorrow’s date?
– I certainly do. But I’ll have to use the bike to get here from Booterstown at that hour.
They walked on, silent in thought.
It is not easy to give an account of the Colza Hotel, its owner Mrs Laverty, or its peculiar air. It had been formerly, though not in any recent time, an ordinary public house labelled ‘Constantine Kerr, Licensed Vintner’ and it was said that Mrs Laverty, a widow, had remodelled the bar, erased the obnoxious public house title and called the premises the Colza Hotel.
Why this strange name?
Mrs Laverty was a most religious woman and once had a talk with a neighbour about the red lamp suspended in the church before the high altar. When told it was sustained with colza oil, she piously assumed that this was a holy oil used for miraculous purposes by Saint Colza, VM*, and decided to put her house under this banner.
Here is the layout of the bar in the days when Hackett and Shaughnessy were customers:
The area known as ‘The Slum’ was spacious with soft leather seating by the wall and other seats and small tables about the floor. Nobody took the hotel designation seriously, though Mrs Laverty stoutly held that there were ‘many good beds’ upstairs. A courageous stranger who demanded a meal would be given rashers and eggs in a desultory back kitchen. About the time now dealt with Mrs Laverty had been long saving towards a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Was she deaf? Nobody was sure. The doubt had arisen some years ago when Hackett openly addressed her as Mrs Lavatory, of which she never took any notice. Hard of hearing, perhaps, she may also have thought that Hackett had never been taught to speak properly.
When Hackett and Shaughnessy walked in after the De Selby visit, the ‘Slum’ or habitat of cronies was occupied by Dr Crewett, a very old and wizened and wise medical man who had seen much service in the RAMC but disdained to flaunt a military title. A strange young man was sitting near him and Mrs Laverty was seated behind the bar, knitting.
– Hello to all and thank God to be back in civilization, Hackett called. Mrs L, give me two glass skillets of your patent Irish malt, please.
She smiled perfunctorily in her large homely face and moved to obey. She did not like Hackett much.
– Where were ye? Dr Crewett asked.
– Walking, Mick said.
– You gents have been taking the intoxicating air, he observed. Your complexions do ye great credit.
– It has been a good day, doctor, Mick added civilly.
– We have been inhaling oxygen, theology and astral physics, Hackett said, accepting two glasses from Mrs Laverty.
– Ah, physics? I see, the young stranger said politely. He was slim, black-haired, callow, wore thick glasses and looked about nineteen.
– The Greek word kinesis should not be ignored, Hackett said learnedly but with an air of jeer.
– Hackett, Mick interjected in warning, I think it’s better for us to mind our own business.
– It happens that I’m doing medicine at Trinity, the stranger added. I’m out here looking for digs.
– Why come out to this wilderness, Hackett asked, and have yourself trailing in and out of town every day?
– This is a new friend of ours, Dr Crewett explained. May I introduce Mr Nemo Crabbe?
Nods were exchanged and Hackett raised his glass in salute.
– If you mean take rooms in Trinity, Crabbe replied, no, thanks. They are vile, ramshackle quarters, and a resident student there is expected to empty his own charley.
– In my days in Egypt we hadn’t even got such a thing. But there was limitless sand and wastes of scrub.
– Besides, Crabbe added, I like the sea.
– Well, fair enough, Hackett growled, why not stay right here. This is a hotel.
Mrs Laverty raised her head, displeased.
– I have already told the gentleman, Mr Hackett, she said sharply, that we’re full up.
– Yes, but of what?
Dr Crewett, a peace-maker, intervened.
– Mrs Laverty, I think I’ll buy a glawsheen all round if you would be so kind.
She nodded, mollified a bit, and rose.
– Damned physics and chemistry are for me a scourge, Crabbe confided to all. It’s my father who insists on this medicine nonsense. I have no interest at all in it, and Dr Crewett agrees with my attitude.
– Certainly, the medico nodded.
– He believes that doctors of today are merely messenger boys for the drug firms.
– Lord, drugs, Hackett muttered.
– And very dangerous and untested drugs many of them are, Dr Crewett added.
– Nobody can take away Dr Glauber’s great triumph, Hackett remarked, grasping his new drink. I’ve often wondered that since glauben means ‘to think’, whether Glauber means thinker? Remember the pensive attitude of the seated one.
– It doesn’t, Mick said brusquely, for he had briefly studied German.
– Actually, poetry is my real interest, Crabbe said. I suppose I have something in common with Shelley and Byron. The sea, I mean, and poetry. The sea is a poem in itself.
– It has metre, too, Hackett’s voice sneered. Nothing finer than a good breeze and a 12-metre boat out there in the bay.
Mrs Laverty’s gentle voice was heard from her averted face.
– I’m very fond of poetry. That thing the Hound of Heaven is grand. As a girl I knew bits of it by heart.
– Some people think it’s doggerel.
– I suppose, Crabbe ventured, that all you good friends think my Christian name is odd. Nemo.
– It is odd, Mick agreed in what was meant to be a kindly tone. And if I may say so, your father must be an odd man.
– It was my mother, I believe.
– You could always change it, Crabbe, Dr Crewett suggested. In common law a man can call himself and be known by any name he likes.
– That reminds me of the poor man whose surname was Piss, Hackett recounted. He didn’t like it and changed it by deed-poll to Vomit.
– I implore you not to be facetious, the unsmiling Crabbe replied. The funny thing is that I like the name Nemo. Try thinking of it backwards.
– Well, you have something there, Hackett granted.
– Poetic, what?
There was a short silence which Dr Crewett broke.
– That makes you think, he said thoughtfully. Wouldn’t it be awful to have the Arab surname Esra?
– Let us have another round, Sussim L, Mick said facetiously, before I go home to beautiful Booterstown.
She smiled. She was fond of him in her own way. But had she heard his hasty transliteration? Hackett was scribbling a note.
– Mrs L, he said loudly, could you see that Teague McGettigan gets this tonight? It’s about an urgent appointment with another man for tomorrow morning.
– I will, Mr Hackett.
They left soon afterwards, going homewards by tram. Hackett got off at Monkstown, not far away, where he lived.
Mick felt well enough, and wondered about the morrow. After all, De Selby had done nothing more than talk. Much of it was astonishing talk but he had promised actual business at an hour not so long after dawn. Assuming he turned up with his gear, was there risk? Would the unreliable Hackett be there?
He sighed. Time, even if there was no such thing, would tell.
* Virgin Martyr.
4
Mild air with the sea in a stage whisper behind it was in Mick’s face as his bicycle turned into the lane-like approach to the Vico Road and its rocky swimming hole. It was a fine morning, calm, full of late summer.
Teague McGettigan’s cab was at the entrance, the horse’s head submerged in a breakfast nose-bag. Mick went down the steps and saluted the company with a hail of his arm. De Selby was gazing in disfavour at a pullover he had just taken off. Hackett was slumped seated, fully dressed and smoking a cigarette, while McGettigan in his dirty raincoat was fastidiously attending to his pipe. De Selby nodded. Hackett muttered ‘More luck’ and McGettigan spat.
– Boys-a-dear, McGettigan said in a low voice from his old thin unshaven face, ye’ll get the right drenching today. Ye’ll be soaked to the pelt.
– Considering that we’re soon to dive into that water, Hackett replied, I won’t dispute your prophecy, Teague.
– I don’t mean that. Look at that bloody sky.
– Cloudless, Mick remarked.
– For Christ’s sake look down there by Wickla.
In that quarter there was what looked like sea-haze, with the merest hint of the great mountain behind. With his hands Mick made a gesture of nonchalance.
– We might be down under the water for half an hour, I believe, Hackett said, or at least that’s Mr De Selby’s story. We have an appointment with mermaids or something.
– Get into your togs, Hackett, De Selby said impatiently. And you, too, Mick.
– Ye’ll pay more attention to me, Teague muttered, when ye come up to find ye’r superfine clothes demolished be the lashin rain.
– Can’t you keep them in your cursed droshky? De Selby barked. His temper was clearly a bit uncertain.
All got ready. Teague sat philosophically on a ledge, smoking and having the air of an indulgent elder watching children at play. Maybe his attitude was justified. When the three were ready for the water De Selby beckoned them to private consultation. The gear was spread out on a flattish rock.
– Now listen carefully, he said. This apparatus I am going to fit on both of you allows you to breathe, under water or out of it. The valve is automatic and needs no adjustment, nor is that possible. The air is compressed and will last half an hour by conventional effluxion of time.
– Thank God, sir, that your theories about time are not involved in the air supply, Hackett remarked.
– The apparatus also allows you to hear. My own is somewhat different. It enables me to do all that but speak and be heard as well. Follow?
– That seems clear enough, Mick agreed.
– When I clip the masks in place your air supply is on, he said emphatically. Under water or on land you can breathe.
– Fair enough, Hackett said politely.
– And listen to this, De Selby continued, I will go first, leading the way, over there to the left, to this cave opening, now submerged. It is only a matter of yards and not deep down. The tide is now nearly full. Follow close behind me. When we get to the rock apartment, take a seat as best you can, do nothing, and wait. At first it will be dark but you won’t be cold. I will then annihilate the terrestrial atmosphere and the time illusion by activating a particle of DMP. Now is all that clear? I don’t want any attempt at technical guff or questions at this time.
Hackett and Mick mutely agreed that things were clear.
– Down there you are likely to meet a personality who is from heaven, who is all-wise, speaks all languages and dialects and knows, or can know, everything. I have never had a companion on such a trip before, and I do hope events will not be complicated.
Mick had suddenly become very excited.
– Excuse the question, he blurted, but will this be John the Baptist again?
– No. At least I hope not. I can request but cannot command.
– Could it be … anybody? Hackett asked.
– Only the dead.
– Good heavens!
– Yet that is not wholly correct. Those who were never on earth could appear.
This little talk was eerie. It was as if a hangman were courteously conversing with his victim, on the scaffold high.