Shapeless figures dancing on tremendous stilts, on the brink of an
abyss, to the sound of rocks being tumbled about below, in the
darkness, everything immense and dark and resounding, everything
without shape or meaning, gloom and preponderance, yawning, yawning
abysses full of frozen fog, cliffs gliding away when touched, leaving
no foundation, an endless wandering through space, through screeching
winds and . . . crash.
Gypo awoke with a snort, perspiring with his nightmare, terrified.
The old woman had at last awakened him by squeezing his nostrils
between her fingers. He sat up, looked about him and saw her. He saw
her weird and pale, with her white hair streaming. He was going to
strike her in terror, thinking her an ogre from his dreams, when she
spoke.
“They’re after ye,” she hissed. “They’re after ye. They’re on the
stairs.”
He listened. There was nothing. Not a sound. What? Just a whistle of
the wind on the roof. Ha! Something creaked. Was it the bed? No. Trup,
trip, r-r-rip. Somebody had slipped on the roof.
Gypo bounded from the bed to the floor in one leap. He stood
motionless, crouching forward, panting, with dilated nostrils. A sound
came on the stairs outside the door. Somebody on the stairs said:
“Hist!” Then utter silence. Gypo stood transfixed, still wet with the
perspiration of his nightmare.
Then he moved noiselessly to the fireplace and picked up the tongs. It
slipped from his fingers as he rose and rattled to the stone hearth.
He whirled about to the door with an oath. Simultaneously the door was
flung wide with a bang. Three flashes of light came before his eyes
from the doorway. As he rushed headlong towards them there was a
deafening roar. Three men had fired together at him. Then there was
chaos.
As he dashed across the floor to the landing, he felt a sting like
frost-bite in his thigh. Then he saw their terror-stricken, mad faces.
He recognized two of them, Mulholland and Hackett. The third man was
Curley. When he closed with them and felt his giant hands on the soft
warm flesh of their bodies he breathed a sigh of satisfaction.
Somebody fired again, unintentionally, in the struggling mass on the
landing. It must have been Curley. For his thin voice screamed
querulously after the explosion, “God have mercy on my soul!” Gypo
smelt burning under his armpit as his head was bent down to mobilize
his spine strength.
Then the banister gave way with a crash of breaking wood. The four men
went down, without a cry. Their fists thudded with dull sounds as they
struck blindly at one another in the dark.
They fell on the next landing. Gypo and Mulholland were on top.
Mulholland had his right knee on Curley’s back. He was cool with the
mania of death-terror. He bared his teeth and raised his pistol to
fire into Gypo’s open mouth. But Gypo rammed him with his monstrous
head.
Mulholland was hurled backwards like a gymnast, head over heels, heels
over head. He brought up on a black sheepskin carpet outside a
tenement door in the far corner. He lay with his knees to his chin,
perfectly quiet. The pistol shot splashed through the whitewashed
woodwork of the ceiling. The pistol jingled to the floor.
Gypo scraped around on his hands and knees in the darkness. He groped
for the two men who lay beneath him. He felt their rumps, their backs,
their thighs, in a wide sweep of his hands. Their bodies were lax and
soft, like the carcasses of dead things. One of them sighed and turned
over. Gypo rose to his feet. Without looking anywhere he rushed for
the stairs and leaped down.
Half-way down the last flight he paused and tried to think. But he
drew his hand over his eyes and shook his head.
“It’s no use. It’s no use,” he said aloud.
There was a great din of disturbed people in the house above him.
He reached the hallway. Through the open door he could see the street
outside. The dawn had come. The air was grey, cold, empty and silent.
He marched steadily to the door. His body was very cold. And his mind
was dead. Cold and dead. Dead and cold.
A stream of red blood trickled down over his right boot from the wound
in his thigh. Another stream trickled along his right ribs. He did not
know. He was cold and dead. Dead and very cold.
He stopped in the doorway. His eyes expanded. A last passion made his
body rigid. He roared. He had seen Gallagher standing against the
church railings across the road, with his hands in his raincoat
pockets, smiling insolently.
Gypo descended the five steps to the street at one bound. Then as his
right foot landed on the pavement there was a rapid succession of
shots. They came from all sides. Three of them entered his body.
Without bringing his left foot to the pavement he jumped again into
the air, with his two hands reaching out and his face turned upwards,
in the earnest attitude of a symbolic dancer.
He hurtled out into the street, hopping on staggering feet, writhing
and contorting. Then he fell to his knees. He groaned and fell prone.
He struggled up again, looking wildly around him, holding his bowels
with his hands. Gallagher was there in front of him, smiling dreamily
now, with distant, melancholy eyes.
Gallagher shrugged himself and turned away sharply to the right.
Gypo wanted to go after him. But he no longer knew why he wanted to go
after him. His eyes were getting dim. His body was cold. Cold and
dead.
Grinding his teeth he got to his feet. He threw out his chest,
shrugged his shoulders and walked ahead like a drunken man. He walked
slowly straight ahead, straight, stiff, swinging his limp hands
slowly.
He walked through the iron gateway of the church, along the concrete
path to the door. He had to crawl up the steps on his knees. Blood was
coming up his throat.
Reverently he dipped his hand into the holy-water font. He wet his
hand to the wrist. He tried to take off his hat in order to cross
himself. His hand pawed about his skull, but his fingers were already
dead. They could not grip the tattered hat. He tried to cross himself.
Impossible. His hand could not reach his forehead. It went up half-way
and then fell lifelessly. It was a ton weight. He strode to the left.
He staggered through a narrow Roman door. He was in the church.
It was a great high room, curtained with silence. At the altar, away
in the lamp-lit dimness of the dawn, a priest was saying Mass. The
droning sound of the words came down the silent church, peaceful,
laden with the quaint odour of mystery, the mysterious calm of souls
groping after infinite things. All round the church the people knelt
with bent heads and faces wrapt in prayer for infinite things. Sad,
haggard, hungry faces wrapt in the contemplation of infinity, wafted
out of the sordidness of their lives by the contemplation of infinite
things.
Peace and silence and the quaint odour of mystery and of infinite
things.
Deep, long, soft words murmured endlessly in a silent place. Mystery
and the phantoms of death breathing faint breaths.
Mercy and pity. Pity and peace. Pity and mercy and peace, three
eternal gems in the tabernacle of life, burnished ceaselessly with
human dust.
From dust to dust.
Gypo’s eyes roamed around the church. His eyes were very dim. There
was a blur before them. He thought he saw somebody whom he knew. He
was not sure. Yes. They were looking at him. There, on the left, on
the other side of the aisle. It was a long way off. What? Frankie
McPhillip’s mother!
He set out, with a great sigh, towards her. He fell in a heap in front
of her seat. He raised his head to her face. He saw her face, a great,
white, sad face, with tears running down the fat cheeks. He struggled
to his knees in the aisle before her. People were rushing to him
talking. He waved his hands to keep them away. It was very dark. He
swallowed the blood in his mouth and he cried out in a thick whisper:
“Mrs. McPhillip, ’twas I informed on yer son Frankie. Forgive me. I’m
dyin’.”
“I forgive ye,” she sighed in a sad, soft whisper. “Ye didn’t know
what ye were doin’.”
He shivered from head to foot and bowed his head.
He felt a great mad rush of blood to his head. A great joy filled him.
He became conscious of infinite things.
Pity and mercy and peace and the phantoms of death breathing faint
breaths. Mercy and pity and peace.
“Lemme go!” he cried, struggling to his feet.
He stood up straight, in all the majesty of his giant stature,
towering over all, erect and majestic, with his limbs like pillars,
looking towards the altar.
He cried out in a loud voice:
“Frankie, yer mother has forgiven me.”
Then with a gurgling sound he fell forward on his face. His hat rolled
off. Blood gushed from his mouth. He stretched out his limbs in the
shape of a cross. He shivered and lay still.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
This transcription follows the text of the edition published by Alfred
A. Knopf in 1925. However, the following words have been changed from
the original text to correct what are believed to be unambiguous
printing errors.
* “_recontre_” was changed to “_rencontre_” (Chapter I).
* “Your as bad” was changed to “You’re as bad” (Chapter III).
* “stood at east” was changed to “stood at ease” (Chapter III).
* “awkard” was changed to “awkward” (Chapter IV).
* “ridicul-ulous” was changed to “ridiculous” (Chapter VII).
* “It it” was changed to “Is it” (Chapter VIII).
* “its less” was changed to “it’s less” (Chapter XI).
* “for out” was changed to “far out” (Chapter XI).
* “sang into” was changed to “sank into” (Chapter XI).
* “a think like” was changed to “a thing like” (Chapter XII).
* “banis-ister” was changed to “banister” (Chapter XVI).
* Five occurrences of mismatched quotation marks were repaired.