Bradbury, Ray - SSC 10 (14 page)

The Young Man
Eh?

The Old Man

Well,
I mean to say, are you a writer or not? I mean, don't
writers make notes of lovely things like that to
put in their next
book?

The Young Man
Er
...
yes
...

the young man
takes
out a pad and pencil sheepishly. Every
one
leans over his shoulder to see the words go down.

Timulty
{quoting himself)
"Like the fireflies . . ."

Nolan
". .
. on the bogs . . ."

Timulty

"Meadows,"
ya
dimwit! "On the meadows . . ." That's
it. "With
the sun . . ."

The Young Man
{writing)
". . . just set."

TlMULTY

There!
(Sighs)
I'm immortal.

The Old Man
Enough!
We are at the place of the grand sport!

The Young Man
(dubious)
The Greater Fine Arts Elite Cinema
Theatre?

Fogarty

Why
not? Look,
there's
three churches in
Ireland
. There's them
whose faith is the pubs, them whose faith is the cinemas, and then
there's
the Catholics.

The Old Man
There's
always
a place to go.

The Young Man

Yes,
but what
sport can
you put in a theatre? Ping pong,
basket
ball onstage?

TlMULTY

Doone
, step forward!

doone,
who has
been darting about on tiptoe, snorting, snuffing,
dances in.

Doone
Doone
, that's me! The Best Anthem Sprinter in
Ireland
!

The Young Man
What
sprinter?

Doone
(spells with difficulty)
A-n-t-h-e-m.
Anthem.
Sprinter.
The fastest.
(Bobs)

Finn
Since you've
been in
Dublin
, have you attended the cinema?

The Young Man
Just once, but in
London
last month, I saw eight films
      

TlMULTY

You're
fanatic, then, as are we all, through need, on this god
forsaken desert!

The Old Man

In
London
, if you'll excuse the curse, when the
fillum
stopped
each
night, did you observe anything tending towards the
peculiar?

The Young Man
(muses)
Hold
on! You can't mean "God Save The Queen,"
can you?

TlMULTY
Can we, boys?

All

We
can!

The Old Man

In
London
, it's "God Save The Queen," here it's
the National
Anthem, it's all the
same!

TlMULTY

Any
night, every night, for tens of dreadful years, at the end of each damn
fillum
all over
Ireland
, in every cinema, as if you'd never heard the
baleful tune before, the orchestra strikes up for
Ireland
!

The Old Man
(nudges
the writer)
And
what happens
then?

The Young Man
(muses)

Why
...
if you're any man at all, you try to get out of the
theatre in those few precious moments between the
end of the
film and the start of the
Anthem.

TlMULTY
He's nailed it!

Nolan
Buy the
Yank a drink!

Finn
(passing
bottle)
On
the house!

The Young Man
(drinks,
wipes mouth)
After all, I was in
London
a month. "God Save The Queen" had
begun to pall. It's surely the same after all
these years for you and your National Anthem.
(Hastily)
No disrespect
meant.

Finn
And none
taken!

Timulty

Or
given
by any of us patriotic I.R.A.
veterans, survivors of the
Troubles,
lovers of country.
Still,
breathing the same air ten
thousand
times makes the senses reel. So, as you've noted, in
that God-sent three- or four-second interval, any
audience in its
right mind beats it
the hell out. And the best of the crowd is—

The Young Man
Doone
.
Your
Anthem Sprinter.

The Old Man
Smile at the man.

Everyone smiles at the American, who smiles easily back.

Now!
Stand near! At this moment, not one hundred feet through that door and down the
slight declivity toward the silver screen,
seated on the aisle of the fourth row center is
O'Gavin
. . .

The Young Man
. . . your
other
Anthem Sprinter.

Nolan
(tipping
his cap)
The
man's eerie.

Timulty
(impressed)
O'Gavin's
there, all right. He's not seen the
filhim
before—

The Young Man
(looks
up)
What, Clark Gable in
It
Happened One Night?

Nolan

Ah,
that was last month. They've not got around to taking down
the names.

Timulty

This
fillum
tonight is a Deanna Durbin brought back by the
ask
ing, and the time is now . . .

Finn
holds
up his watch. All lean toward it.

Finn
Ten-thirty
o'clock.

Timulty

In
five minutes the cinema will be letting the customers out in a
herd . . .

The Old Man

And if we should send
Doone
here in for a test of speed and
agility
. . .

Doone
(dancing about)
It's stripped to the buff I am!

The Old Man
. . .
O'Gavin
would be ready to take the challenge!

The Young Man
O'Gavin
didn't go to the show just for an Anthem Sprint, did he?

The Old Man

Good
grief, no. He went for the Deanna Durbin songs and all, him playing the banjo
and knowing music as he does. But, as I
say, if he should casually note the entrance of
Doone
here,
who
would
make himself conspicuous by his late arrival,
O'Gavin
would know what was up. They would
salute each other and
both sit
listening to the dear music until
Finis
hove in sight.

Doone
(doing knee-bends)
Sure
,
let me at him, let me
at
him!

Douglas
Do—do
you have Teams?

TlMULTY

Teams!
There's
the
Galway
Runners!

FOGARTY

The
Connemara
Treadwells
!

The Old Man
The
Donnegal
Lightfoots
!

TlMULTY

And
the fastest team of all is made up of Irishmen living in
London
.

The Old Man
(reverently)
"The Queen's Own
Evaders"!

Fogarty
Fast,
do you see, to flee from "God Save The Queen"?

All laugh, assent, pummel,
gather
about,
finn
searches the
writer's face.

Finn

I
see the details of the sport have bewildered you. Let me nail
down the rules. Fogarty?!

Fogarty
Here!

Finn
Door-listener
supreme! Nolan! Kelly!

Nolan
and
Kelly
Here!

Finn

Aisle-superintendent
judges! Myself—
(Shows watch)
—Time
keeper. General spectators: Casey,
Peevey
, and
Dillon. You've
met
Doone
.
O'Gavin's
in the depths,
there!
So much for the
participants.
Now, the sports arena.
(Moves,
pointing)
Much
depends on the
character of the theatre.

The Young Man
The
character?

The Old Man
(hustling
along)

Here's the exits
,
ya
see? And inside—
(Opens
a door, points)
—the lobby . . .

Finn
(cuts in)

Now,
there
be
some liberal free-thinking theatres with
grand
aisles, grand lobbies, grand
exits, and even grander, more spa
cious
latrines . . .

Nolan
(cutting
in)

Some
with so much porcelain, the echoes alone put you in
shock . . .

Timulty
(cutting in)

And
then again there's the parsimonious mousetrap cinemas
with aisles that squeeze the breath from you,
seats that knock
your knees, and
doors best sidled out of on your way to the
men's lounge in the sweet-shop across the alley.

The Old Man

Each
theatre is carefully assessed before, during, and after a Sprint. A runner is
judged by whether he had to fight through
men and women en masse, mostly men, women with shopping
bags
which
is
terrible, or worst still, children at the
flypaper mati
nees.

Nolan
(illustrating)

The
temptation with children of course is lay into them as you'd
harvest hay, tossing them in windrows to left and
right.

The Old Man

So
we've stopped that. Now
it's
nights only here at the
ideal
cinema of them all.

The Young Man
Ideal?
Why?

Kelly
(displays
tape measure)
Its
aisles, do you see, are neither too wide nor too
narrow.

He and
the old man
pace
off by the exit door.
They illustrate
with the tape.

Its
exits are well placed.

The Old Man
(tests
door)
The
door hinges oiled.

They open the door and point in.
the young man
peers.

Timulty

Its
crowds, do you see?
are
a proper mixture of sporting
bloods and folks who mind enough to leap aside should a Sprinter,
squandering his energy, come dashing up the way.

The Young Man
(suddenly
thoughtful)
Do you . . . handicap
your runners?