Mefisto by John Banville Page B

pain and rage, coughing up jagged sobs and clenching his inky fists helplessly in his lap. Now, spying me ahead of him, he stopped whistling abruptly, and the front wheel of his bicycle wobbled. Felix halted, and waited, watching him. He dismounted and crossed to the other side of the drive, and plodded along slowly, bent low and pushing the bike, frowning to himself as if a very important thought had just occurred to him. The bicycle was a sturdy black machine with small thick wheels, and at the front an enormous wicker basket filled with parcels.
    – You there, Felix called imperiously. Who are you?
    Clancy stopped, and peered about him with an elaborate air of startlement. He used to wait for me on the way home from school and knock me down and pummel me, sitting on my chest and breathing his feral breath in my face. His fury always seemed a sort of grief. In time a hot, awful intimacy had grown up between us. Now, stricken with embarrassment, we avoided each other’s eye, as if we had once committed sin together. He opened his mouth, shut it, then coughed and tried again. He was eyeing the gun cradled in Felix’s arm.
    – From Walker’s, sir, he said thickly. With the messages.
    – Messages? Felix said. What messages?
    Clancy began to sweat. He licked his lips, and pointed to the parcels in the basket.
    – Them, sir. The messages that was ordered.
    Felix turned to me.
    – What is the fellow talking about? he said. Have you any idea?
    – The grocery messages, Clancy said, raising his voice. The ones that was …
    – Oh, groceries , Felix said, with a little laugh. I see, yes. Well, have you the list, then?
    – What, sir?
    Felix looked to heaven and sighed.
    – The list, sor ! The list that was given to the shop. Have you it with you?
    Clancy blinked slowly and wiped his nose on a knuckle.
    – I’d say I have, all right, he said guardedly.
    He leaned his bicycle on its stand and produced a fistful of grubby papers from the pocket of his apron, and began to leaf through them unhappily with a thick thumb.
    – Well, read it out, man, Felix cried, read it out!
    A dark flush appeared on Clancy’s pitted brow. He licked his lips again and bent over his bits of paper, scrutinizing them with a stolid, hopeless stare. Felix groaned in annoyance.
    – Come on, man! he said. What’s wrong with you?
    Clancy, his face on fire, looked at me at last, like a wounded animal, in fury and a sort of supplication. He was not able to read. A moment passed. I looked away from those beseeching eyes. Felix chuckled.
    – Oh, go on then, he said to Clancy, take your stuff around to the back door.
    Clancy thrust the papers into his pocket, and mounted his bike and pushed off towards the house, crouched over the handlebars as if battling against a gale. Felix grinned, shaking his head. Suddenly he tossed the shotgun to me. The weight of it was a surprise.
    – Go ahead, Barabbas, he said. Blaze away.

 
    WORKMEN BEGAN arriving at the house, singly, with a fist in a pocket and one arm tightly swinging, or shouldering along in silent groups of two or three. Sophie and I watched them from the upstairs windows. They grew steadily foreshortened as they approached, as if they were wading into the ground. They would knock once at the front door and step back, holding their caps in their hands, quite patient, waiting. They wore shapeless jackets and white shirts open at the neck, and trousers larded with grime. Their faces and the backs of their necks glowed, I pictured them bent over sinks in cramped sculleries at first light, scrubbing themselves raw. One had a bald patch, pink and neat as a tonsure. They were roadmen and casual labourers, and a few factory hands laid off from the brick works or the foundry. Mr Kasperl interviewed them in one of the big empty rooms downstairs. He sat at a battered, leather-topped desk before the window, fiddling with a stub of pencil, while Felix walked up and down and did the talking. The men, standing in