‘Shitter!’ the newcomer exclaimed as he approached, in what sounded like a distinctly malevolent tone.

Barry, however, did not seem at all put out by this. ‘What marvellous kit!’ he exclaimed.

‘Thought I’d put on my flea market best as the controls of my Time Machine indicated a ‘pataphysician was here. It seems I was mistaken.’

 ‘I am that ‘pataphysician,’ declared Barry grandly

‘Ah, you like pâté on your physics?’

‘I prefer the patter of the quantum,’ responded Barry. ‘Now permit me to make a ‘pataphysical introduction…’

The sculptor turned in my direction and a gasp escaped his Fernet-satined lips. The newcomer, however, did not bat either of his scimitar-like eyebrows as he exclaimed:

‘Bosse-de-Nage, companion of the good Doctor Faustroll! I thought you had died in the archipelago.’

‘Ha ha!’ I replied.

I wanted to express myself more eloquently but ‘Ha’ seemed to be the only sound my mouth was capable of uttering. Furthermore, my arms were covered by thick yellowish-brown fur and instead of hands I now had paws.

‘A considerable improvement,’ murmured Barry.

Both he and the newcomer found my repetition of one syllable very succinct and looked at me expectantly as though waiting for more. I was, of course, by far the drunkest of the three, practically obliterated by the pungent and herbaceous spirit. Without further ceremony, the cyclist lowered himself onto a chair and slapped Barry 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,’ retorted Barry who was drunker than anybody – completely paralytic, in fact.

‘My name is Alfred but you may call me Jarry,’ declared the cyclist.

He was obviously much more pissed than either of us. There seemed to be no rise and fall to his phrases: every syllable carried exactly the same dead weight, even the silent ones. His intonation was like Holland, though he was not speaking Dutch.

‘The man needs a drink!’ cried Barry. ‘What will you be having, Monsieur Jarry?’

‘Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, especially with an ether chaser.’

‘A prudent choice,’ said Barry.

I went up to the bar and tried to order the former but finding no words forthcoming apart from the obligatory ‘Ha ha!’, I pointed to Mari Mayans absinthe. Fortunately, it was the foremost of a drizzle of bottles that stood beneath a large mirror. The mirror bore the image of a dog-faced baboon. The depiction was incredibly lifelike. Strangest of all, as 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 struck by a disturbing suspicion. I winked and the saucy creature winked back: the baboon was I! This came as such a shock that I did not trouble the barman about the 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 and a small plastic bottle of water.

The newcomer peered at the drinks in disgust. ‘Where’s the ether?’ he demanded.

‘A regrettable omission,’ sighed Barry.

‘But I’ve been waiting an ethernity.’

 ‘Ha ha!’  

Barry and the cyclist seemed to find this surpassingly droll, but nothing more ventured from my lips despite their patience. The cyclist peered suspiciously at the green liquid.

‘What’s this?’ he demanded.

‘Absinthe,’ said Barry.

‘So where’s the fork balancing on the glass and the sugar cube cradled by it like Lautrec on a floozy’s knee?’

‘A regrettable lapse,’ Barry murmured.

‘This absinthe is pastiche!’

‘More like Pastis,’ said Barry. His tongue forked across his lip like a lizard’s.

‘Ha ha!’ I put in, a comment the other two found surprisingly enlightening. There was a long pause as they waited for me to elaborate but in this they were disappointed.

Jarry sipped some of the liquid, spluttered, and spat what he had drunk onto the table. The barman, who was cleaning glasses, ignored this.

‘Maybe you should add water,’ suggested Barry.

‘Water! That odious poison, swimming with microbes and the oily scales of fornicating fish. Water! A detestable liquid that gives birth to the drowned so they can bore us with their nautical anecdotes. Water would turn this impeccable and translucent liquor into milky sludge. I would sooner tar my face with gold leaf and honey. I tell you, Sir, this is not absinthe!’

If Jarry meant it was not the tipple of choice of Montmartre, he was right. Wormwood, the mind-altering plant that put absinthe on a par with peyote, had been subtracted from the beverage in accordance with a directive from Brussels. I wanted to explain this, but all that came out was a succinct ‘Ha ha!’

Jarry understood.

‘Trust those Belgians to fuck everything up,’ he said. ‘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 swayed among the foothills. I managed, however, to get to my feet and stagger to the bar where the barman supplied me with another bottle of Fernet Branca and a large brandy for Jarry.

‘That’s more like it,’ said the latter after he had drained more than half the contents of the glass in one long swallow. As far as being hammered, he had all the nails in him, being totally and utterly legless, whereas Barry 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 with it?’ suggested Barry, who on a plastered scale of one to ten was definitely 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 that had ever been invented. ‘Do you know what food does? It kills people. They eat all their lives and then they die! Munching, chewing and masticating destroy the teeth, whereas liquor irrigates the incisors. In a truly enlightened society avocados would be axed, beef banned, cheese censored, duck ditched, eggs excised, fudge forbidden, gherkins grounded, ham hexed, ichimi interdit, jam jettisoned, kumquats kiboshed, lamb liquidated, melon massacred, nuts nixed, offal off, peas proscribed, quail quelled, ratatouille rubbished, salami severed, treacle terminated, ugli fruit usurped, veal vetoed, whelks whacked, xacuti x-ecuted, yogurt yucked, zucchini zapped!’

‘I think I get your drift, ‘ said Barry. ‘So alcohol…’

‘Would be absolute! Aquavit advisable, beer binding, cognac compulsory, drambuie de rigeur, eggnog essential, Fino favoured, grappa glorified, hooch hailed, Inishowen imperative, Jägermeister judicious, kahlua king, lager longed for, moonshine mandatory, Napoleon brandy necessary, ouzo obligatory, Pétrus paramount, Queen’s cocktails quenched, rum requisite, sangria stipulated, tequila treasured, Ultimate Margarita unavoidable, vermouth venerated, whisky welcomed, Xanthia x-pected, yashmak yearned for, zinfandel the zippiest! Just think of all the drinking time you lose because of lunch and dinner!’

The barman had stopped cleaning glasses and with a gleam in his eyes clamped a large cigar between his lips. Taking this as his signal, Jarry pulled a pistol out of his back pocket and fired. The shot embedded itself in the mirror behind the bar, which shattered. We hoped the barman’s fury at this might be mitigated by the fact that the bullet had lit his cigar.

 ‘Voilà!’ cried Jarry.

Far from being delighted however, the barman swore softly to himself, and, lifting the receiver of the telephone next to the cash register, began to rapidly dial.

‘Ha ha!’

‘You are completely right,’ agreed Barry. ‘It is time to reassemble elsewhere.’

Outside we found the sea had invaded Paseo de Born.

Ultramarine and turquoise hues danced in the ripples of foam that gently lapped our feet. As far as the eye could see there were islands of all shapes and sizes. Strangest of all, the sea between them seemed to be a different colour whichever way you looked. We soon discovered the reason for this as we waded in. This section of sea was as dark as wine and actually composed of the stuff. Inevitably, we took a few sips as we swam, enough for the cyclist to conclude it was Bordeaux – Pétrus, in fact – though he was not sure if it was the 1865 or 1866. Inspired by such a wine-dark sea, he 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 of course 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 of the first were clusters of fresh, cork-tipped Craven A. Jarry broke off a bunch, stuffed the seven cigarettes that composed it into his mouth and lit them by firing his revolver. After passing one to me and one to Barry, 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, for 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 randomly plucked Three Castles and Capstan Full Strength, discovering after several hours of pleasant and dedicated chewing that Passing Clouds was infinitely superior.

Returning to the shore, we dived into the sea and made for the next island. This time we found ourselves swimming through warm saké. Barry, particularly, enjoyed this and began reminiscing about Japan. But Jarry complained 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 wet soil into the air – Blurp! Blurp! – which spattered our faces. Barry, of course, 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 latter, reciting a long list of artists he had posed for which included Rousseau, Gauguin and Aubrey Beardsley.

Barry, who had no time for namedropping, ignored this and continued to mould the clay, subjecting his model to frequent scrutiny as we walked. The word in fact does not describe our progress: neither does stroll, stray, saunter, sway or sidle. In fact, they staggered and then slid; I, of course being much more agile 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 both 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 consisting as it did of various single malts, sectioned by the current into zones. Jarry was at a bit of a loss at this point and let Barry be our guide as we immersed ourselves in Talisker, Bushmills, and then a Lagavulin whose peaty fumes made me almost lose consciousness. When not pondering vintages, Barry crooned pleasing Irish ballads.

We went on like this for many years, crossing oceans of rum, vodka, sloe gin, as well as the Straits of Guinness, seven seas of rye, and Mare Mort Subite, a dark sea abrim with mussels and the drowned, who floated by with happy smiles upon their faces. My favourite, though, was a lake of lager, whose blond surface was whipped into froth by wind. Sweet Afton trees, whose fruit I plucked and chewed, surrounded the lake. My companions found this a little plebeian, however. Barry going off to wallow in a pool of Connemara 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 one covered with rusting pyramids of mild steel and this Barry christened Cairo, informing us it had been made by a tribe of girder-welders. In the exact centre of the island we found Jarry’s Time Machine.

The machine consisted of a jointed, ebony structure that resembled a bicycle frame. At rest the machine sat on the circular rings of two gyrostats while the nickel ring of a third arched over the controls. The latter was made up of a lever with an ivory handle, which controlled the motor’s acceleration, and another on an articulated rod, which 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. Alongside these were the pedals that controlled them.

‘I was actually hoping to go back and see Jesus race the thieves,’ said Jarry, ‘but of course from the time machine’s perspective the past comes after the future so you have to do the former first, which explains why I dropped in on you. The machine works on the same principle as Breughel’s painting, The Massacre of the Innocents. You will have observed how the soldiers on the canvas 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 make no bones about it: what you see is the massacre. Time not being matter, does not matter. Once you realize that you can set the controls for anywhen.’[2]

‘John Latham, who reduced everything to a dot, proposed time not place to be the quarry. Speaking of which, I wonder how the shark’s decaying,’ ventured Barry, 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!’ This time Barry and the cyclist did not wait for more. They had by now concluded that the frequency of my utterances was the key and shared an elaborate system of allotting book-length meaning to the two syllables, depending when and how I said them. They nodded sagely to each other. The timing of my statement opened itself to no other interpretation other than that 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 and then lifted off the ground till it was hovering just above our heads. Its pilot favoured us with a brusque nod and called out, ‘’Pataphysics is the science…’ as he and the Time Machine vanished.

‘Why do they always give you what you want and then take it away from you?’ demanded Barry.

‘Ha ha!’ I agreed.