Mneme’S Place: Book One

By Glenn P. Wolfe

Mnemes Place is Ralph Jonas internal refuge from his anxieties and the pressures of everyday life, a timeless place where he relives his memories and drinks with friends and colleagues, with authors and their characters, with scientists, criminals, psychologists, sociologists, ballet dancers, musicians, artists, and on and on, multitudes of people he has known, or not known, but read and read about.

Jonas two big passions are the English language, as spoken by the Irish, and baseball. He is at his most comfortable with the tens of thousands of ballplayers at Mnemes, and often spends time assembling two All-Star teams, one Jewish and one Polish, himself the manager of both.

Having fled Hollywood for Europe to regain his sanity after years of writing for TV, Jonas attempts to write a novel about his former writing partners, his own dysfunctional familymother, father, sisterand the Isaacsons, his mothers family, the likes of whom have never been written in American immigrant literature. While it proves impossible for Jonas to put these people down on paper, Wolfe has created a fascinating and unforgettable lineup of characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462017157

Glenn P. Wolfe

Glenn P. Wolfe was a longtime Hollywood writer of comedy and detective teleplays and contributed to such series as Perry Mason, Surfside Six, Ann Sothern, and others. After spending several years in Europe, he returned to New York. He died in 2007 while working on the final volume of Mneme’s Place.

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Contents

DEFINITION OF MNEME

THE REGULARS

SAM GELLER

MATTY ROSS

WILL HERMANN

THE TEAMS

THE NOVEL

FRANCINE

GOODBYE LITTLE HOUSE

Of what did bellchime and footstep and lonechill remind him?

James Joyce, Ulysses

DEFINITION OF MNEME

MERRIAM-WEBSTER:

1. Classical mythology: The muse of memory.

2. Psychology: The persistent or recurrent effect of past experience of the individual or of the race.

THE OXFORD UNIVERSAL DICTIONARY:

Capacity for retaining after-effect of experience or stimulation.

THE REGULARS

And once more off the depend and then as always on his crypsychal and as always then into Mneme’s where as always the ballplayers the first there to greet him. Pitchers. Catchers. Infielders. Outfielders. Tipping of caps and scraping of spikes on the rail. His beerarchy of ballplayers. Or was it not bierarchy? And were they not pallbearers? A bierarchy of pallbearers!

Which in turn led them to say, his Joycean mood again, is it? Or is it not Joycean mode? Mowed! Mowed? Can anyone here deny the lad’s a cutup! Rejoice, read Joyce, indeed! Well whatever, our own Ralph Jonas is here. The original copy himself.

A jeerarchy, said Jonas.

Of those at the bar, the ballplayers were the most noticeable. Yet despite the times, the many times, he had set out to count them, an exact figure was elusive. If one indeed existed. Long before it was to be known as Mneme’s Place, they had begun arriving there, and he supposed them now to number in the thousands. Not of googol intimidation, but certainly ten-to-the-four. Yes, could hardly be less than ten thousand.

Two hundred sixteen center fielders alone! Had counted that many on one occasion alone. And possibly even more. He had sought at the time to separate the ballplayers by position the better to get the aggregate number. Beginning with pitchers, he would roster each of the nine skills and make a grand total of them. As it happened however, for some reason Willy Mays drew his attention first. So it began with center fielders. Besides Mays, four other Willies drinking there. Davis, Wilson, McGhee and Keeler of the Wee. He then saw Joe DiMaggio, arm-in-arm with like fielding brothers, Vince and Dom. And nearby, Dom Dallessandro and Dummy Hoy, flanked by Al Simmons and Tris Speaker. And in a glass-raised cluster, Doc Cramer, Hugh Duffy and Ed Rousch. Earl Combs and Tommy Holmes, Clifton Earl Heathcote and Vada Pinson. Baby Doll Jacobson. Amos Strunk, Amos Otis. Piersal, Snyder and Blair. Max Carey, Ping Brodie, Coaker Triplett and Harry Craft. And then, reciprocal nods with Dale Murphy, Ed Delahanty and Freddy Lynn. And with Casey Stengel and Jigger Statz. And Elmer Flick, Nemo Leibold, Heine Manush and Happy Felsch. Kreevich, Pickering, Pafko and Smoot. Crabtree, Snodgrass, Little Poison Waner. Ron LaFlore, Andre Dawson, Frank Demaree. Averill, Doby and Case. Hack Wilson, Rube Oldring, Minnie Minoso. Agnew, Ashburn, Bruton, Burkett. Mickeys Mantle and Stanley, Walkers Dixie and Harry, Chapmans Ben and Sam, and Sam Rice. Cedano, Moreno, Maddox, Virdon, Gee Moore, Terry Moore, Jojo Moore, JoJo White, Moon, Rivers, Flood.

Two hundred sixteen. And this despite a confusion of gloves from the one of the count. Mays had also played first base and left field. Joe DiMaggio, a shortstop when he joined the Yankees. Likewise Delahanty with the Indians. And before the Cubs put Statz in center field, a second baseman for the Giants. Duffy, Keeler and Stanley—five glove careers. Honus Wagner, an adept of seven positions! Were there, in fact, Jonas wondered, any center fielders without innings spent elsewhere. Ballplayers, perhaps the only taxon for ballplayers.

However, what finally interrupted and stayed the count at that number was the failure on his part to include until then the nonpareil of the position. The inimitable, matchless matrix himself, Ty Cobb. A regular at Mneme’s before any of the others, he was the most deferred to by them. And by Jonas. The Georgia Peach Is Beyond Your Reach long his leveler to rookies there preening with scrapbook importance; the humbling analog when statistics were evoked. After all, who else but Cobb had played in 3,033 games over twenty-five seasons, with 4,191 hits, of which 724 were doubles, 97 trip1es and 118 home runs. Five thousand eight hundred sixty total bases. And who else but he had batted-in 1,954 runs whi1e scoring 2,044 himself, with fourteen games of five or more hits, three games four extra base ones. Stolen bases 892, thirty-five of them of home. Eleven putouts one game, two games two unassisted double plays. Twelve times highest batting average American League, nine in succession, which if not for Sisler’s .420 in 1922 to his .401 would have been thirteen. Altogether, three seasons over .400. And, not only one Triple Crown but three times two thirds of one. Lifetime batting average .367! And who else there but Jonas, except for Cobb, knew this so well.

Nonetheless, had counted two hundred fifteen before him. Triplett, with fewer times at bat in the majors than Cobb had runs batted in. Estelle Crabtree, fewer hits than Cobb had doubles alone. Ollie Pickering, with a total of 885 games, seven less the number of bases Cobb stole. And Dallessandro—a .267 career!

From the opening of Mneme’s, slights no more than omissions were tolerated there. Proscribed even when the place had no particular name. They had of course occurred, but this was without precedent. And nobody more aware of it than Jonas. As for the other instances, for the most part these he could justify. The time of the failure to include Andrew Huxley when it had seemed certain the entire family was at the bar. Julian, Aldous, grandfather T. H. True, Andrew’s work on the electrical and chemical properties of nerve cells was nearly complete then, but the Nobel Prize still a decade ahead. So, in a way, a relative unknown. And likewise understandable the time of the confusion there over Edouard Manet and Claude Monet. Besides similarity of sound, a kinship of canvas. A shared frame of reference.

In no way however could this oversight be dismissed. A comparable breach would have been to ignore Anna Pavlova on the occasion when he had counted the Giselles. And this so disturbed him that he had to look away from the ballplayers. Then, on glancing around, saw Arnett Cobb, with tenor sax hanging from neckstrap. And also drinking there, Lee J. Cobb, the actor, and Irwin S. Cobb, the humorist. John Cobb, the auto racer and one-time land speed record holder. Further down the bar, William Coblentz, the physicist, the early prover of Planck’s constant. And Max Planck himself. Whose constant, Jonas knew, related the energy of a quantum of radiation to the frequency of the oscillation that produced it.

Back among the ballplayers he then spotted Eddy Plank, who had won in his career 355 games. And immediately Jonas fell to counting the other Hall of Fame pitchers.

Was then Mneme’s solely for the trophied? The Cy Young prized and Cooperstown select. All-Stars, MVPs. Where the only pitchers admitted were those of record. Lifetime or season most wins, most consecutive wins, most shutouts. Most complete games, lowest earned run average, highest won-loss percentage. The most years twenty or more wins. The most thirty or more. Most strikeouts—inning, game, season, career. And no-hitters. A place only for the hummers of the high an’ tight and low an’ away, the cagey of curve, slider and knuckle. World Series aces. Like Plank. Like Mathewson, Joss and Big Train Johnson. Like Spahn, Chesbro and Three Finger Mordecai Brown. Feller, Grove and Grover Cleveland Alexander. And restricted as well, then, to the glove-gifted and batting-crowned of infielders, outfielders and catchers? Like Sisler, Aaron and Napoleon Lajoie. Hornsby, Ruth and Big Poison Waner. Foxx, Eddie Collins and Hazen Kiki Cuyler. And Robinsons—Frank and Brooks and Jackie. Unerring handlers of groundballs and flies, with harquebus arms and who, like Cobb, were constants at the plate. From the right side, the left side. From both.

If however, this were so, how then could Jonas put their number at such a high exponent of ten. On that one occasion counted two hundred sixteen center fielders, when by themselves those possessing all of the most-of records could scarcely equal that. A figure more in keeping with all of the Arctic explorers there, or the group Nathan Jonas, his father, called Women of the Night. But, to have over a thousand possible teams at the bar could only mean that eminence was not the price of admission. That booters of groundballs with bat stats of tarnished plate, and pitchers who were walkers of many and easily hit, were as welcome as the others. Would make up the majority, in fact. That for Johnson, with his 416 career wins, 113 of them shutouts, and earned run average of barely two, there had to be replications galore of Jack Knott, with lifetime losses of 103 while winning but 82, 4 shutouts and ERA of 5. Likewise inverse, the number there who had to be ringers for Lefty Weinert, season loser of 17 while victor in 4, with ERA of 5.42, in proportion to Lefty Grove of 2.06, and a 31 win and 4 loss season. To one Christy Mathewson then, with thirteen years of twenty wins or more, a surfeit of Eddie Smiths. Those of many starts for many teams over many seasons. and with many more losses to show than wins.

They indeed made up the majority, and in spite of Jonas’ disapproval possessed tabs there as lengthy as those accorded the others. Not that Jonas would have limited Mneme’s solely to the select, but he would certainly have barred the journeymen. Subs, scrubs and benchwarmers. Late inning figurants, the pinch-hit for those up from the minors for a cup of coffee and down again. Mike Miley, Dick Trecewski and Rod Kanehl, whose lifetime totals combined of home runs and runs batted-in were considerably less than a season’s output for Ted Williams, did not belong at the same bar with him. Still, they were there and showed no signs of leaving.

Were he able to set a standard for admission, it would allow for the likes of Rowdy Dick Bartell, Eddy Stanky, Cookie Rojas and Enos Country Slaughter. Feisty, competitive ballplayers, who even if failing to first the league in anything, would get the hit or make the play which won the game. Instead Fabian Gaffkie, Ray Ike Boone, Marv Thronebery, Steve Boros and Wayne Terwilliger. Asthenic in the field, marrowless at the plate. The entrance norm.

Klotzes & Graces had seemed to him the perfect description of this commingling. Had even thought once of mounting such sign over the section of the bar where the ballplayers assembled. It would however have been disingenuous of him, for the careers of the Graces, Joe and Earl, he knew were indistinguishable from the Kluttzes, Clyde and Mickey. The four all of middling skill, and with nearly identical records. Like omission, misrepresentation was also forbidden at Mneme’s, and to denigrate the one tandem while inflating the other so as to fashion a slogan, would certainly have been that.

So from among the others he then sought the combination that, while as concise, would accurately depict the situation there. And in Johnny Kling, he found the moiety of it. Between Interpretation of Dreams and Sarajevo, Kling had been a catcher for the Cubs, and later the Braves, where he also managed. More renowned for defensive ability than hitting, although owning a respectable .280, he was also, and unusual for a catcher, a leader in stolen bases. His success in stealing second as great as his success in throwing out those who tried. Even more unique, an admitted Jew when it was thought there were none in baseball. Christened the Big Jew by Mathewson himself, no less. Then, as for the other half, the nether side of the description, Jonas found it in Mike Cubbage. A utility infielder with career splintered among the benches of the Twins, Rangers and Mets, he might have served for the template of those Jonas would have excluded from the bar. But subsequently honored there, as never on the diamond, in Cubbages & Klings.

The response to this, as Jonas had expected, was the usual raillery. Whatever his pronouncements, it was always forthcoming. For along with caps and spikes, the ballplayers brought their dugout mouths to Mneme’s. Putouts and putdowns, as he often reflected. Not that he was entirely without defenders there, for Cobb and those who had become regulars soon after him, Ruth, Hornsby and Wagner, would generally tame the gibes. But they too protested this discrimination. Who was a Jonas to chaff a Cubbage? Or mock a Miley? Knock a Kanehl? Their records notwithstanding, they were professional baseball players. Major leaguers! Did Jonas ever so much as play the game—?

The Mickshtiks, as Jonas had come to call them, then took over at Mneme’s.

Now, now, now wait a moment, lads. Are we to be as chary of charity as he? The bodacious boyo with his blithering, blathering bar biases. Hoity-toity finicalities! Now as to whether hisself ever performed on the diamond, ’tis like Onan’s sport something not to be dismissed out of hand. If a ballplayer, after al1, be a man of runs, isn’t there something to be said for a man of reruns? And who’s here to be disputing that Jonas isn’t that! Why, in a way now it makes for twice a ballplayer, wouldn’t you say. Thrice, if you take into consideration that hits also for a ballplayer make! An’ who’d be after forgettin’ now the goodly number the darlin’ boyo’s had. Oh, that’s a fact now, especially those of the long running variety, if I’m not too mistaken. Ah, touches all the bases then, does he! Indeed, a baseman for sure. Come now, a wee bit of restraint here, lads. If hisself’s a ballplayer or not can be deduced from the most elemental of syllogisms. All ballplayers walk on occasion. And, as we all here can attest, Jonas has walked on numerous occasions. Therefore, ipso facto, a ballplayer! Oh, I’ll grant you that, man, especially in the clear illuminatin’ light of the why and what he’s walked from. Now, now, lookee here. Anyone who’s made the substantial number of pitches he has must a ballplayer indubitably be! What, a pitcher you say—? Ah, of many things, wouldn’t you agree. Well now, it seems to me that of the many diverse kinds of pitchers that be, the most basic is the urn. So what I’m for knowing is, basically what does Jonas earn? Oh, pretty much catch as catch can, from what I hear. What, are you after saying then he’s a catcher too? Oh, more than a catcher—a catch! The devil you say, man, or are you after disremembering now that a ketch is a boat. And as we all here know, or should be knowing, he long ago missed that. What, are you tellin’ me then that things have gone awry for our own little kidger? Ruefully so, I’m afraid. Indeed, if a catcher, a catcher in the awry. Sure now you don’t mean kvetcher in the wry—? Now, now, faith and begorrah, lads, are you for missing the apodictic incontrovertible proof, a priori, a posteriori and a fortiori of hisself a baseball player? Anybody who’s been out in left field a lifetime would have to be!

It was not always stage Irish. Sometimes the routines were Polish or Italian, and at other times they did Hebe comic turns. These however, which Jonas called Krakowitz, Romantics and Yidbits, were far less offensive to him than were the Mickshtiks. The English of Jews, Italians and Poles he regarded as never more than the stuff of sketches, the trappings of travesty even when grief was the issue. But the English of the Irish! Here was language as he would have had it spoken by all. Vowels and consonants, diphthongs, triphthongs, labials and palatals, trochees and iambs, spondees and dactyls, which made dance steps of words. Arias and oils, and string quartets.

The language of Joyce and O’Casey. Yeats. Sean O’Faolain, Dion Boucicault and John Millington Synge. And of Stephens and Colum, O’Connor and Carroll. And of Lennox Robinson, Lady Gregory and AE. And Brendan Behan, Flan O’Brien and Liam O’Flaherty. Tom Peete Cross, Eleanor Hull and Patrick Henry Pearse. Of Hugh Leonard and Brian Friel too. Druid English. Erse English. Fenian. Celtic, Gaelic or Goidelic, of Greek, Norse and Latin incursions. And Anglo-Saxon. All of whom, and all of which, Jonas knew. As he also did casts from the Abbey, the Gate and the Gaiety. MacLiammoir, O’Dea and Maire O’Neill. Siobhan McKenna, Sean McClory and Dan O’Herlihy. McCormick and Shields and Cusack, Sara Allgood and Eileen Crowe. Frank Fay, Milo O’Shea, Jack MacGowan. And as well, familiar with the beginnings in ogham script and cuneiform. The Book of Kells, The Book of The Dun Cow. The Lebor Gabala and the Three Sorrows of storytelling. And he knew the legends and myths—The Partholon, Tuatha De Danann and Dagda and Lug. Brian Boru. Cathleen ni Houlihan, Cu Chulainn and Fionn mac Cumhail, the Finn MacCool.

What he did not know however, about Irish English and Anglo Irish, was the way to speak it. For when he tried, a self-consciousness grounded all word flight, and made of cadence and brogue, and timbre and stresses, a facsimile of the Pat & Mike of the ballplayers. Not Abbey Theatre, but Minsky’s. Hollywood Irish! In fact, whenever the patter commenced at the bar, he saw himself as audience to a John Ford production, "The Now of Barry Fitzgerald." Instead of Cobb and the others, Victor McLaglen, Maureen O’Hara and Alice Brady. James Cagney, Jimmy Gleason and Frank McHugh. Pat O’Brien, Ann Sheridan and Ward Bond. May Robson. Alan Hale and Dennis Morgan. Which could be confusing, for usually they were to be found drinking in their own section at Mneme’s.

But if Jonas was disdainful of their Irish English, he was no more generous toward his own. Could think in the language, or thought he could, and certainly had no trouble recognizing it when spoken by Sean O’Casey and the other warders of the word. Or, as Jonas would address them, Awarders. After all, was it not a gift they had bestowed on English. Still, his own efforts aloud he knew were not above the boyo and begorrah of the bogus and banal. Contrived setups and one-liners, and alliterations, which only a second-rate gag writer could take in. Danny Boy, I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen, Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra. McNamara’s Badinage. Mickshtiks!

Had Ireland corrupted the language, it would have been understandable to him. With the givens of English benefits to the country, a well deserved requital. But that the Irish had instead glorified the language while those with little or no grievance against England were the abusers of it, was one of his favorite ironies. Not that Jonas was for gun and bomb as means of redress, only that he thought it preferable to the other. What if to settle accounts for Poyning’s Law and the Coercion Act, and the Penal Laws and the Land Acts, and the Battle of Boyne and the Siege of Derry, and the English proclaiming it Londonderry, the Sinn Fein had expunged their verbs, nouns and pronouns? And in payment for the partitioning and famines, and forced emigrations, and the setting-up of the Anglican Church and the shearing of the land into English shires, and the transplanting there of Scots and Huguenots—adjectives, prepositions and pluperfects? And the IRA to avenge the deaths of Robert Emmet, Wolfe Tone and Sir Roger Casement, the jailing of Parnell, Collins, De Valera and Griffith, the Easter Rebellion felled, the clubbed and gunned of Falls Road and the fasters of Long Kesh, had at their participles, gerunds and conjunctions? And, for what the Plantagenets did, and the Tudors and the Windsors. James I and Charles I and Elizabeth I, and the Henrys and Georges and Williams. And for what Palmerston did, and Disraeli, Asquith and Baldwin, and for what Cromwell did, and Thatcher and the Churchills, father and son, and the Black and Tans, did a job on datives, ablatives and syntax? And yet, one of the reasons which had kept Jonas from visiting Ireland, and the North, was that the Irish did not equate an adverb for an eye and a predicate for a tooth. Indeed, were he to go, those parts he believed would be the least of him to remain there, on one or the other side of the border. In Belfast, especially, he foresaw the likelihood of being the mistaken prey of many. UDA, the Ulster Defense Association. UVM, the Ulster Vanguard Movement. RUC, the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Whatever their sympathies—nationalist, unionist, Whitehall—each he was certain would find him suspect. An American contributor to the IRA, or perhaps an outside agitator in the pay of IRSP, the Irish Republican Socialist Party. A PLO delegate to INLA, the Irish National Liberation Army. Then what? Truncheons? Plastic bullets? Piano wire and electrodes? DEATH BY ACRONYM, however, is what he would want the media to report.

A patrol of Tommys, or the British Secret Service, might also cut short his stay in Belfast. Thought to be an Irishman out for a stroll, and in proper need of intimidation. Still another deterrent, the receipt he’d receive in a department store there. Or in a pub or post office. Coevous with purchase of Waterford, pint or stamp, a bomb exploding. The visit, too, could conclude with his simply losing his way and entering the wrong neighborhood. Presumed a Catholic by Protestants. A Protestant by Catholics. ATHEIST MISTAKEN FOR CHRISTIAN he thought would do nicely in either case.

Yet if Belfast to Jonas meant bombs, Dublin to him was the city of their origin. Not the actual assembly perhaps, but definitely the planning. And since planning and conversation were inevitably of one mouth, a trip there he supposed might prove even more jeopardous. Conversation, from what he knew of the city, was as much part of its pub ritual as Guinness, and the pubs there would be of far more interest to him than any castle, museum or church. Like his stays elsewhere, a planned unguided tour of talk. Or, more accurately, of listening. Of the pubs in Dublin, books and travel articles had acquainted him with a dozen or so, and in these and others which he’d undoubtedly discover on his own, a great many conversations were certain to be observed. And of these, there need be but one, no matter the brevity or even if whispered, concerning a bomb for Belfast, or perchance something planned for London, and it would be sufficient. Words, which had always been a problem to him, could now cost him his life.

Not that those involved in this particular exchange would immediately suspect he was an informer or agent of some sort. First curiosity, a few oblique looks his way followed by long deliberating stares. His smile, the defanging one reserved for situations such as this, might then dispel their fears of having been overheard. However, the habit of taking notes, as indispensable to his drinking as was whiskey, with both required for his listening, would quickly reinstate them. They would, of course, have no way of knowing it was not their conversation on his pad. While as for the others in progress there—and as usual he’d have seated himself convenient to many—those too would not be found in his notes. For what Jonas took in and what he put down were not all the same. The committed to paper not the heard, but the potential it offered. Talk, which if not humorous in itself, could be made so. That was all he asked from the spoken around him. And though this had seldom failed to produce something, it had at times led only to misunderstandings in public places. Nothing, of course, like what he anticipated happening to him in Dublin, where he also imagined the conversations in little need of alteration. Doubtless the one that would lead to trouble there would be complete in itself.

Those of the bomb discourse, whatever their number, after inviting themselves to his table—and he could not very well prevent this—would first insist on a round of drinks. And over them admit that from his clothing, they had thought him an Englishman. Inasmuch as Jonas favored tweeds and flannels, and saxonies and twills, storm-welted brogues and Burberry raincoats, a not so surprising deduction. Indeed, one he was accustomed to. There was however no Made In Great Britain affixed to his accent, and this as they would exclaim was apparent to them from the moment of his Of course, do sit down. An American! And Americans were the dearest people on earth to them, and would hope he had not taken exception to their errancy. He was perhaps stopping over in Dublin in route home from a shopping spree in London?

That he had come there on a direct flight from New York, which in the event of the trip would be the way of arrival, his passport could then easily enough verify. But would this satisfy them, or would it sire even more suspicion? Besides rude or hostile, this might also appear the response of a man rehearsed for interrogation. If so, why? So to convince them they had nothing to fear from him, he would try to explain that his apparel hardly connoted Anglophile. That while he knew, as who didn’t, of Bond Street and Savile Row, he had yet to patronize one of those shops, or for that matter any other in London. His entire outfit in fact, from ready-to-wear back in the States. The prudent purchase of a man who must make things last. And would display for them patinas and places of wear, and where there were mends, and for additional proof the Union Jack was only of incidental weave to his woolens, would pass among them his hat, the nubby tweedy crushable kind of Donegal make and export, long his choice and one of which he was never without. Then to their exhortations of Slow down and speak up man, and Here have another drink, which in similar circumstances had never failed to happen, he would not only unschedule London for good from any itinerary of his but Belfast as well, claiming unequivocally, monolithically, that the Irish Republic and his sympathies were one. As for their assumption his presence in Dublin was a stopover, as far from his purpose there as Prince Charles and Lady Diane were from their hearts. And his! Had come to Dublin to admire from up close what hitherto he had admired from afar, the confluence of literature, poetry, theater, history, mythology, genetics and wit, which made of it the unique city in a most singular country. And, if they were so disposed, would make of the table a lectern and prove this. Above all, there in Dublin, Baile Atha Cliath, to experience the language!

Student? Professor? Scholar? One of the three, if not all, was certain then to circulate in glances among them. But only briefly, for having heard him now speak at some length they could not be expected to err again. His attire notwithstanding, no more a student, professor or scholar than Englishman. Indeed, what he wasn’t, Jonas knew, would be less a problem to them than what he was. And that he wasn’t an academic his maundering would have made painfully clear. If there was a university he’d ever attended, they would imagine it one where language was hardly a requisite. Perhaps even prohibited. Whereas at some later date at Mneme’s, were he to live through this, his talent for conversation would impress them, here the very opposite would occur. Away from Mneme’s this was always the case. And like others before them, and especially considering their background, hold him the most inept user of words they’d ever encountered. Moreover, a waster of words. A man who seemingly did not wish to be understood. Not only a pace of speaking which argued for starting gate and stopwatch, but with words so frequently inaudible as to make one grope for dials to turn. A voice which did not carry much beyond the length of his cigarettes, which he consumed in sync with his gibbering. And he had come to Dublin to immerse himself in their language! And ready to lecture them at will! What form of mockery this…

Now at least, they would no longer suspect him there in some tale-bearing capacity. Who would be so foolish as to trust him? As unlikely in the hire of a government agency as he was of a campus. Still, if he had taken down their plans, it would hardly do to have him on the loose. Some child might get his hands on them! But then what they’d supposed were the notes would lead to sympathy there. For in addition to those on his pad, there would be those on bits of paper which, as always, were prepared beforehand and carried about in the pockets of his shirt, pants and jacket. And which, following five or six drinks, he would take out and ponder. Not all at once, but randomly as the drinking progressed. In that pub, surely with the rounds they’d have stood, and for which he was bound to reciprocate, these would end up on the table. Where they would see that despite his attentive reading of them, the message on each was the same: SHUT UP JONAS.

Whenever out on a listening, it was necessary he do this. And not just to remind him of the purpose, but to keep from forgetting what was ever-present when sober. That away from Mneme’s he must restrict himself to as few words as possible. And until well into several hours of drinking usually did not need to be reacquainted with this; the closure demanded in them would take effect then, and over a half-dozen more glasses prevail. Beyond that however, he knew there’d be things said best saved for Mneme’s. Might even suppose he was there! But unlike Mneme’s where this habit, like the others, was understood, here they would look from one slip of SHUT UP JONAS to another, sometimes he prepared as many as twenty-five, and wonder that a man his age had nothing better to do than inscribe caveats to himself in a pub. And why the shut up, when he was incapable of saying anything coherent when not shut up! Oh my…

That these were not the notes they had observed him taking down would be known soon enough however. Jonas himself would inform them of this, and with an accent no less confusing. His Irish-English he would now presume as enchorial as theirs, instead of the slurred version of the one at Mneme’s it was. Later there would come the realization, of course, that had he said nothing then, they would have moved from his table. And with their departure, so too the probability of violence. By