Drinking Fernet Branca with Flanagan in a Palma bar altered my relationship with space and time. We fast-forwarded to late afternoon, grinning at complicities that would have made sense to no one, except the playwright Alfred Jarry.
Thus summoned, a diminutive, birdlike man entered the bar. He was wearing bicycling gear – a sweater, short coat, tight trousers and dilapidated plimsolls. Strapped to his head, a pair of goggles flattened his long, centrally parted hair, which was very black and dripped with grease. He had a sliver of a moustache, and his eyes were as dark and phosphorescent as a nighthawk’s.
‘Shitter!’ the newcomer announced.
Flanagan was not at all put out by this. ‘What marvellous kit!’ he said.
‘The controls of my Time Machine indicated a ‘pataphysician was here, so I thought I’d don my flea market best.’
‘I am that ‘pataphysician,’ declared Flanagan.
‘You like pâté on your physics?
‘I prefer the patter of little feet. Now permit me to make a pataphysical introduction…’
The sculptor turned in my direction, and a gasp escaped his Fernet-blackened lips when he saw my transformation. The newcomer, however, did not cock either of his wing-like eyebrows:
‘Bosse-de-Nage,’ Flanagan said, ‘companion of the good Doctor Faustroll! I thought you died in the archipelago.’
I wanted to express myself eloquently, but ‘Ha, ha!’ seemed to be the only sound my mouth was capable of uttering. Furthermore, my arms were covered by thick yellowish-brown fur. Instead of hands, I now had paws.
‘A considerable improvement,’ murmured Flanagan.
Both he and the newcomer considered my two syllables most succinct and waited for more. I was, of course, by far the drunkest of the three, obliterated by the pungent and herbaceous spirit. Without further ceremony, the cyclist sat down at our table and slapped Flanagan on the knee.
‘I always like to pat a physician,’ he said.
‘I’m not a doctor, though some might say my practice is prolific,’ replied Flanagan, who was drunker than anybody, completely paralytic in fact.
‘My name is Alfred, but you may call me Jarry,’ declared the cyclist.
He was much further gone than either of us. There seemed to be no rise and fall to his speech: every syllable was burdened by the same dead weight, even the silent ones. His intonation was like Holland, though he was not speaking Dutch.
‘Our friend is thirsty!’ cried Flanagan. ‘What will you be having, Monsieur Jarry?’
‘Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.’
‘A prudent choice.’
‘With an ether chaser.’
I went up to the bar and tried to order, but finding no words apart from the inevitable ‘Ha ha!’, I pointed to a bottle of Mari Mayans absinthe. Fortunately, it was the foremost of a regiment of bottles standing to attention beneath a large mirror. The mirror held the image of a dog-faced baboon. I lowered my arm. So did the baboon. I opened my mouth, and the animal did too, revealing a row of yellow fangs. I was pondering what new optical marvel this was when I was assailed by a disturbing suspicion. I winked, and the saucy creature winked back. I was the baboon. This came as such a shock that I forgot to ask the barman for ether, which I timidly suspected might be against the law, and was, besides, beyond my powers of mime. I returned to the table, bearing the glass of absinthe and a small bottle of mineral water.
The newcomer peered at the drinks in disgust. ‘Where’s the ether?’ he demanded.
‘A regrettable omission,’ sighed Flanagan.
‘But I’ve been waiting an ethernity!’
‘Ha ha!’
Flanagan and the cyclist found my comment surpassingly droll, but nothing more ventured from my lips despite their patience. The cyclist peered suspiciously at the green liquid in the glass.
‘What’s this?’ he demanded.
‘Absinthe,’ said Flanagan.
‘So, where’s the fork balancing on the glass, cradling a sugar cube, like a floozy’s knee upholding Toulouse Lautrec?’
‘A regrettable lapse,’ Flanagan murmured.
‘This absinthe is pastiche!’
‘More like Pastis,’ said Flanagan. His tongue forked across his lip like a lizard’s.
‘Ha ha!’
My companions found this most enlightening. They waited for me to elaborate, but in this, they were disappointed.
Jarry sipped some of the liquid, spluttered, and spat onto the floor. The barman, who was cleaning glasses, ignored this.
‘Maybe you should add water,’ suggested Flanagan.
‘Water! That odious poison, swimming with microbes and the oily scales of fornicating fish; that loathsome liquid that gives birth to the drowned so they can bore us to death with their nautical anecdotes. Water would turn this translucent liquor into milky sludge. I would sooner tar my face with gold leaf and honey. Sir, this is not absinthe!’
If Jarry meant it was not the choice tipple of Montmartre, he was right. Wormwood, the mind-altering plant that puts absinthe on a par with peyote, had been removed by an edict from Brussels. I wanted to explain this, but all that came out was a succinct ‘Ha ha!’
Nevertheless, Jarry understood. ‘Trust those Belgians to mess everything up. Get me a real drink, will you! Something to burn the throat and demolish the senses.’
I was by this time almost too drunk to stand, in terms of inebriation way beyond the other two, pie-eyed on the summit of Everest while they staggered in the foothills. I managed, however, to get to my feet and lurch to the bar. The barman supplied me with another bottle of Fernet Branca and a large brandy for Jarry.
‘That’s more like it,’ said the Frenchman after he had drained more than half the glass. He was totally and utterly legless, whereas Flanagan and I had between us still one limb to stand on. The cyclist finished off the brandy and loudly demanded a refill.
‘Fancy a nibble?’ suggested Flanagan, who on a plastered scale of one to ten was a nine, while the cyclist and I were all at sixes and sevens.
‘A nibble!’ Jarry hissed in a flat and deadly tone as though it were the most horrible word he had ever heard. ‘Food kills! People eat all their lives, and then they die! Munching, chewing and masticating destroy the teeth, whereas liquor irrigates the incisors. In a truly enlightened age, avocados would be axed, beef banned, cheese cancelled, duck ditched, eggs excised, fudge forbidden, gherkins grounded, ham haram, ichimi illegal, jam jettisoned, kumquats kiboshed, lamb liquidated, melon massacred, nuts nixed, offal outlawed, peas proscribed, quail quelled, ratatouille rejected, salami shredded, treacle taboo, ugli fruit unauthorised, veal vetoed, whelks wasted, xacuti x-ecuted, yams yucked, zucchini zapped!’
‘I think I get your drift, ‘ said Flanagan. ‘So, alcohol…’
‘Would be absolute! Aquavit advisable, beer binding, cognac compulsory, drambuie de rigeur, eggnog essential, Fino free, grappa glorified, hooch hailed, Inishowen imperative, Jägermeister judicious, Kahlua king, lager longed for, moonshine mandatory, Napoleon brandy necessary, ouzo obligatory, Pétrus paramount, Quaker’s cocktail quenched, rum requisite, sangria stipulated, tequila treasured, Ultimate Margarita unmissable, vermouth venerated, whisky welcomed, Xanthia x-pected, yashmak yearned for, Zinfandel the zippiest! Just think of all the drinking time you lose due to lunch and dinner!’
The barman had stopped cleaning glasses and, with a gleam in his eyes, clamped a large cigar between his lips. Jarry pulled a pistol out of his back pocket and fired. The shot shattered the mirror behind the bar but lit the barman’s cigar. We hoped this might mitigate his fury.
‘Voilà!’ cried Jarry.
Far from being delighted, however, the barman swore, and lifting the receiver of the telephone next to the cash register, began to rapidly dial.
‘Ha ha!’
‘You are completely right,’ agreed Flanagan. ‘It is time to reassemble elsewhere.’
Outside, we found the sea had invaded Paseo de Born.
Ultramarine and turquoise danced in the ripples of foam that lapped our feet. As far as the eye could see, there were islands in all shapes and sizes. Strangest of all, the sea between them seemed to be a different colour whichever way you looked. We discovered why when we waded in. The water was wine. We took a few sips as we started swimming, enough for the cyclist to conclude it was Bordeaux – in fact, Pétrus, though he was not sure if it was the 1865 or 1866. Inspired by such a wine-dark sea, Jarry began reciting the Odyssey in the original Greek.
The first island we came to was entirely made of crystal. It was a bit tricky for my companions to pull themselves onto the jagged shore, but with my long, dexterous arms, I found this easy, and my feet had a grip far superior to theirs. Crossing the surface, which refracted light like a prism, so our footfalls seemed to fall on rainbows, we came to a grove of tobacco trees. The ground beneath them was covered with butts, but hanging like leaves from the branches were clusters of cork-tipped Craven A. Jarry broke off a bunch, stuffed them into his mouth and lit them by firing his revolver. After passing one to me and one to Flanagan, he inhaled his quota in greedy puffs and scanned the island in every direction.
Apart from the trees, there was only crystal. Whatever he was looking for remained elsewhere. I, however, became increasingly attached to the place. Finding the smoke unpleasant, I broke my cigarette in half and began chewing the unlit portion, whose pungent taste immediately made me crave more. I went into the glade and plucked Three Castles and Capstan Full Strength from their respective trees, discovering after several hours of pleasant and dedicated chewing that Passing Clouds was the best.
Returning to the shore, we dived into the sea and made for the next island. This time, we found ourselves swimming through warm sake. Flanagan began whistling a tune from The Mikado. Jarry complained that the rice wine was not strong enough for his liking.
On the next island, there were mud volcanoes that made gurgling noises as they threw sludge into the air – Blurp! Blurp! The mud spattered our faces. Flanagan could not resist gathering up several handfuls, which he kneaded into a ball and then began modelling, giving quick-fire glances in Jarry’s direction as he did so.
‘Why does everyone want to reproduce my mug?’ demanded the Frenchman, reciting a long list of artists he had posed for, which included Rousseau, Gauguin and Aubrey Beardsley.
Flanagan, who had no time for name-dropping, ignored this and continued to mould the clay, subjecting his model to frequent scrutiny as we walked. The word does not describe our progress: neither does stroll, stray, saunter, sway or sidle. They staggered and then slid; I loped along on all fours. The passage of time and our exertions had put us on a par in terms of drunkenness: we were communards on the piss, entirely on an equal footing in terms of tipsiness and the terrible thirst that made us anxiously scour the bizarre landscape for any sign of drink.
Fortunately, the next stretch of sea was to everybody’s taste. It consisted of single malts, divided into zones by the current. Jarry was at a bit of a loss at this point and let Flanagan be our guide as we immersed ourselves in Talisker, Macallan, and then a Lagavulin, whose peaty, lapsang-souchong-scented fumes made me lose consciousness, almost. While sampling, Flanagan crooned a pleasing Irish ballad.
We went on like this for many years, crossing oceans of rum, vodka, and sloe gin, as well as the Straits of Guinness, seven seas of rye, and Mare Mort Subite, a dark sea brimming with mussels and the drowned, who floated by with happy smiles upon their faces. My favourite was a lake of lager, whose blond surface was whipped into froth by the wind. Sweet Afton trees, whose fruit I plucked and chewed, surrounded the lake. My companions found this below par, however. Flanagan went off to wallow in a pool of Connemara peated single malt while Jarry stumbled on a cave of ether that was much to his liking. We travelled to hundreds of other islands in what seemed an infinite archipelago, each with unique, fantastic features that are recorded elsewhere [1]. Finally, we reached an island covered with rusting mild steel pyramids that Flanagan christened Caro, informing us a tribe of girder-welders had made it.
At the exact centre of the island, Jarry was reunited with his Time Machine, whose black, jointed structure resembled a bicycle frame. The device rested on the circular rings of two gyrostats, while the nickel ring of a third arched over the controls. A lever with an ivory handle controlled acceleration, and another lever, located on an articulated rod, slowed the machine down. There were four ivory dials, which marked days, thousands of days, millions and hundreds of millions of days. Under the driver’s seat were the storage cells of the electric motor. The pedals that recharged them were alongside.
‘Originally, I hoped to go back and see Jesus race the thieves,’ said Jarry, convinced there had been a marathon at Golgotha, ‘but of course from the time machine’s perspective the past comes after the future, so you must visit the latter first, which explains why I dropped in on you.’
Flanagan wanted to know everything about the machine.
‘It works on the same principle as Breughel’s painting, The Massacre of the Innocents. You will have observed how the soldiers batter down doors with the butts of their muskets in the streets of a Flemish town. This beneath a misty northern sky, as little like Herod’s Palestine as can be imagined. Yet what you see is the massacre. Time not being matter, does not matter. Once you realise that, you can set the controls for anywhen.’[2]
Flanagan nodded vigorously. ‘John Latham, who reduced everything to a dot, proposed time, not place, the essence. I wonder how the shark’s decaying.’ He was putting the finishing touches to the clay head, which by now was the spitting image of the chrononaut. He turned and looked at me. ‘You should say thank you.’
I tried, but all that came out was the inevitable ‘Ha, ha!’
Flanagan and the cyclist had by now concluded that the frequency of my utterances was the key and shared an elaborate system of allotting meaning to the two syllables, depending on when and how I said them. They nodded sagely to each other. The timing of my statement left no other interpretation than one of gratitude and farewell.
Jarry pulled down a side panel and hoisted himself onto the saddle. He began to pedal furiously, sliding the lever forward as he did so. The Time Machine started to vibrate. Soon, it was hovering just above our heads. The pilot favoured us with a brusque nod and called out, ‘Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions,’ before he and the Time Machine vanished.
Flanagan sighed, ‘Why do they always give you what you want and then take it away from you?’
‘Ha ha!’
[1] For a more detailed guide to the archipelago, see Exploits & Opinions of Dr Faustroll, ‘Pataphysician by Alfred Jarry.
[2] A description of the time machine, along with instructions for its construction and use, can be found in Jarry’s essay: ‘Practical Construction of the Time Machine’.