The airport being fogged-in, there was nothing for it but the birds cage themselves on the Dun Laoghaire boat bound for England, and there was nothing for it but the inhabitants of Finn’s should be down at the dock to watch them pull away in the middle of the evening. There they stood, all six, on the top deck, waving their thin hands down, and there stood Timulty and Nolan and Garrity and the rest waving their thick hands up.
And as the boat hooted and pulled away the keeper-of-the-birds nodded once, and winged his right hand on the air and all sang forth: “As I was walking through Dublin City, about the hour of twelve at night, I saw a maid, so fair was she… combing her hair by candlelight.”
“Jesus,” said Timulty, “do you hear?”
“Sopranos, every one of them!” cried Nolan.
“Not Irish sopranos, but real real sopranos,” said Kelly.
“Damn, why didn’t they say? If we’d known, we’d have had a good hour of that out of them before the boat.”
Timulty nodded and added, listening to the music float over the waters. “Strange. Strange. I hate to see them go. Think. Think. For a hundred years or more people have said we had none. But now they have returned, if but for a little time.”
“We had none of what?” asked Garrity. “And what returned?”
“Why,” said Timulty, “the fairies, of course, the fairies that once lived in Ireland, and live here no more, but who came this day and changed our weather, and there they go again, who once stayed all the while.”
“Ah, shut up!” cried Kilpatrick. “And listen!”
And listen they did, nine men on the end of a dock as the boat sailed out and the voices sang and the fog came in and they did not move for a long time until the boat was far gone and the voices faded like a scent of papaya on the mist.
By the time they walked back to Finn’s it had begun to rain.
The Meadow
A wall collapses, followed by another and another; with dull thunder, a city falls into ruin.
The night wind blows.
The world lies silent.
London was torn down during the day. Port Said was destroyed. The nails were pulled out of San Francisco. Glasgow is no more.
They are gone, forever.
Boards clatter softly in the wind, sand whines and trickles in small storms upon the still air.
Along the road toward the colorless ruins comes the old night watchman to unlock the gate in the high barbed-wire fence and stand looking in.
There in the moonlight lie Alexandria and Moscow and New York. There in the moonlight lie Johannesburg and Dublin and Stockholm. And Clearwater, Kansas, and Provincetown, and Rio de Janeiro.
Just this afternoon the old man saw it happen, saw the car roaring outside the barbed-wire fence, saw the lean, sun-tanned men in that car, the men with their luxurious charcoal-flannel suits, and winking gold-mask cuff links, and their burning-gold wristwatches, and eye-blinding rings, lighting their cork-tipped cigarettes with engraved lighters. . . .
“There it is, gentlemen. What a mess. Look what the weather’s done to it.”
“Yes, sir, it’s bad, Mr. Douglas!”
“We just might save Paris.”
“Yes, sir!”
“But, hell! The rain’s warped it. That’s Hollywood for you! Tear it down! Clear it out! We can use that land. Send a wrecking crew in today!”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Douglas!”
The car roaring off and gone away.
And now it is night. And the old night watchman stands inside the gate.
He remembers what happened this same still afternoon when the wreckers came.
A hammering, ripping, clattering; a collapse and a roar. Dust and thunder, thunder and dust!
And the whole of the entire world shook loose its nails and lath and plaster and sill and celluloid window as town after town following town banged over flat and lay still.
A shuddering, a thunder fading away, and then, once more, only the quiet wind.
The night watchman now walks slowly forward along the empty streets.
And one moment he is in Baghdad, and beggars loll in wondrous filth, and women with clear sapphire eyes give veiled smiles from high thin windows.
The wind blows sand and confetti.
The women and beggars vanish.
And it is all strutworks again, it is all papier-mâché and oil-painted canvas and props lettered with the name of this studio, and there is nothing behind any of the building fronts but night and space and stars.
The old man pulls a hammer and a few long nails from his tool chest; he peers around in the junk until he finds a dozen good strong boards and some untorn canvas. And he takes the bright steel nails in his blunt fingers, and they are single-headed nails.
And he begins to put London back together again, hammering and hammering, board by board, wall by wall, window by window, hammering, hammering, louder, louder, steel on steel, steel in wood, wood against sky, working the hours toward midnight, with no end to his striking and fixing and striking again.
“Hey there, you!”
The old man pauses.
“You, night watchman!”
Out of the shadows hurries a stranger in overalls, calling:
“Hey, what’s-your-name!”
The old man turns. “The name’s Smith.”
“Okay, Smith, what in hell’s the idea!”
The watchman eyes the stranger quietly. “Who are you?”
“Kelly, foreman of the wrecking gang.”
The old man nods. “Ah. The ones who tear everything down. You’ve done plenty today. Why aren’t you home bragging about it?”
Kelly hawks and spits. “There was some machinery over on the Singapore set I had to check.” He wipes his mouth. . . . “Now, Smith, what in Christ’s name you think you’re doing? Drop that hammer. You’re building it all up again! We tear it down and you put it up. You crazy?”
The old man nods. “Maybe I am. But somebody has to put it up again.”
“Look, Smith. I do my work, you do yours, everyone’s happy. But I can’t have you messing, see? I’m turning you in to Mr. Douglas.”
The old man goes on with his hammering. “Call him up. Send him around. I want to talk to him. He’s the crazy one.”
Kelly laughs. “You kidding? Douglas don’t see nobody.” He jerks his hand, then bends to examine Smith’s newly finished work. “Hey, wait a minute! What kind of nails you using? Single-heads! Now, cut that! It’ll be hell to pay tomorrow, trying to pull ’em out!”
Smith turns his head and looks for a moment at the other man swaying there. “Well, it stands to reason you can’t put the world together with double-headed nails. They’re too easy to yank out. You got to use single-headed nails and hammer ’em way in. Like this!”
He gives a steel nail one tremendous blow that buries it completely in the wood.
Kelly works his hands on his hips. “I’ll give you one more chance. Quit putting things back together and I’ll play ball with you.”
“Young man,” says the night watchman, and keeps on hammering while he talks, and thinks about it, and talks some more, “I was here long before you were born. I was here when all this was only a meadow. And there was a wind set the meadow running in waves. For more than thirty years I watched it grow, until it was all of the world together. I lived here with it. I lived nice. This is the real world to me now.
That world out there, beyond the fence, is where I spend time sleeping. I got a little room on a little street, and I see headlines and read about wars and strange, bad people. But here? Here I have the whole world together and it’s all peace. I been walking through the cities of this world since 1920.
Any night I feel like it, I have a one-o’clock snack at a bar on the Champs Élysées! I can get me some fine amontillado sherry at a sidewalk café in Madrid, if I want. Or else me and the stone gargoyles, high up there—you see them, on top Notre Dame?—we can turn over great state matters and reach big political decisions!”
“Yeah, Pop, sure.” Kelly waves impatiently.
“And now you come and kick it down and leave only that world out there which hasn’t learned the first thing about peace that I know from seeing this land here inside the barbed wire. And so you come and rip it up and there’s no peace anymore, anywhere. You and your wreckers so proud of your wrecking. Pulling down towns and cities and whole lands!”
“A guy’s got to live,” says Kelly. “I got a wife and kids.”
“That’s what they all say. They got wives and kids. And they go on, pulling apart, tearing down, killing. They had orders! Somebody told them. They had to do it!”
“Shut up and gimme that hammer!”
“Don’t come any closer!”
“Why, you crazy old—”
“This hammer’s good for more than nails!” The old man whistles the hammer through the air; the wrecker jumps back.
“Hell,” says Kelly, “you’re insane! I’m putting a call through to the main studio; we’ll get some cops here quick. My God, one minute you’re building things up and talking crazy, but how do I know two minutes from now you won’t run wild and start pouring kerosene and lighting matches!”
“I wouldn’t harm the smallest piece of kindling in this place, and you know it,” says the old man.
“Might burn the whole goddam place down, hell,” says Kelly. “Listen, old man, you just wait right there!”
The wrecker spins
