Lisa blew her nose and said, "Does anyone have a pen?" Mr. Hicks patted his pockets and shook his head.

Back at the Royal Hibernian Hotel, the next morning I awoke early, for no reason except perhaps too much bad rather than good wine.

Then, for no reason, save intuition, I peered out at the constant, ever-falling, and eternal rain and thought I saw a lean man in a svelte raincoat, with no umbrella but a tweed Grafton Street cap pulled down over his iron-gray hair and hawk's nose, striding by so quickly I almost said his name. My mouth moved to whisper it.

I plunged into bed to drown in tides of coverlet until nine, when the phone rang twenty times, forcing me to reach out blindly to find the d.a.m.ned thing.

"You're up?" said Ricki's voice.

"No, still deep under."

"Shall I call later?"

"No, no. It sounds like you need to talk now."

"How did you guess? Well, here's the dope. In the confusion someone invited Heeber Finn's pub friends into the house, which was like a riot of hounds and horses. They rid the place of Tom's poor booze and overloaded on John's, vanquished the brandy, debilitated the sherry, and invited all the lords and ladies down to Finn's to improve the talk. Along the line, the Reverend Mr. Hicks vanished. We found him out in the stables just now. He's refused to get up unless we put him on the Belfast train. The cake was shaken down with the stove clinkers and removed as shale for the garden path. The horses, waiting last night, ran home alone. Some of the hounds are out in the stable, asleep with the reverend. I think I saw the fox at the kitchen door at dawn, lapping cream with the cats, who, seeing his exhaustion, let him. John is in bed writhing in pain or exercising. At least he has stopped shrieking descriptions of both. I will now go to sleep for the weekend. You are to rewrite the Whale Chase whether it needs chasing or not, says John. Lisa has pleaded, then demanded, air tickets for Rome and-oh, here she is."

"h.e.l.lo," said a frail far voice.

"Lisa!" I called with false bravado.

"There's only one thing I want to say."

"Say it, Lisa."

She sneezed.

"Where-" she said and stopped. Then she finished it.

"Where's Tom?"

10.

It was Christmas noon and I had been invited out to Courtown for a turkey dinner plus gift-giving; John had asked in a few huntsmen and their wives and Betty Malone, who took fine care of his horses, and a writer and his mistress from Paris. We had the turkey and gave all the gifts save one.

"Now," announced John, "for Ricki. The big event. Outside, everyone!"

We went outside, and at a fairly loud whistle from John, Betty came running around the side of the house leading a black mare with a Christmas wreath encircling its neck.

Ricki shouted with delight and embraced John and then the horse. John hefted her up into the saddle and she sat there, laughing with joy and petting the lovely beast.

"Okay," said John. "Go!"

Ricki gave the mare the peremptory kicks and took off, once around the front yard and then over a fence. On the way over and down, she fell off. We all yelled and ran forward. I had never seen anyone, in person, fall off a horse, so I groaned and felt kicked in the stomach.

John reached Ricki first and stood over her. He didn't touch her or help her to her feet. He didn't examine her legs or arms or body, he just leaned down at her and yelled, "You b.i.t.c.h, get back on that horse!"

Which froze us all in place.

John stood between so we could not reach or touch Ricki.

Unaided, shaking her head, Ricki got to her feet.

"d.a.m.n you," cried Huston, "back on that horse!"

She tried to climb back up, but she was dizzy. Huston shoved her up in place. She looked around at the green gra.s.s, the fence her husband and, finally, at the horse under her, and at me.

I felt my mouth move. It made no sound but it shaped two words: Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, her mouth said, silently, back to me Merry Christmas.

11.

I had now read Moby d.i.c.k all the way through three times. That's three times eight hundred-odd pages. Some parts I had read ten times. Some scenes as much as twenty. And along the way, throwing out the junk, getting rid of the fat to X-ray the bones and the marrow in the bones.

I was and remained a pursuer of the Whale. I was a small ahab, with no capital up front. For I felt that as fast as I swam, the Whiteness outpaced my poor strokes and my inadequate boat: a portable typewriter and great white pages waiting to be covered with blood.

Himself and I put our blood on it, but that was not enough. It must be Melville's blood and tears. He was Hamlet come alive on the castle wall and Lear on the moor. Sometimes we heard him cry most clearly. The rest of the time, his voice was drowned in salt tides that by arriving and leaving put us off balance. There were days when My Leader, for all his talent for ma.s.saging actors into shapes and editing their shadows into recognizable parades, could not help me, nor I him.

There were days, in sum, when we stared at each other, shrugged, and then began to laugh. We had bitten off a minnow and discovered it was Leviathan in all its biblical size and maniac fury. Laughter was the only release from our dumbness, which could become stupidity if we dared put down some of the ideas that had crossed our lips, to be buried in whiskey.

One day, in the midst of our Melvillean ignorance, I suddenly leapt to my feet and cried, "I'm gone!"

"Where to?" said the monster from the Directors Guild "Heeber Finn's."

"To do what?"

"Cram the Whale in a large mug to drown him."

"Can I come along?" said the Beast.

12.

"And even further back," said Finn, in the midst of yet another monologue behind the bar, "there was a terrible event, best remembered and not seen."

"What year was that?" asked my director.

"Around about the Easter uprising," said Finn. "And the big houses beyond burned to ruins, knocked flat in their tracks. You've seen the remains?"

"I have," said John.

"The patriots did that when they was mobs," said Finn. "My father was one."

"And so was mine," said Doone.

"And mine, and mine," said all.

"A sad time."

"Not all sad, thank G.o.d. For once in a while, G.o.d lets go a laugh. And it had to do with me father and the father of our own Lord Kilgotten. Shall I tell you the start, go, and finis?"

"Tell," I said.

"Well," said Finn, "in the midst of the Troubles, in the cold snows of late winter that took Easter by surprise, my father, and all the fathers of all the dimwit boys you see leaning here, holding up the bar, stumbled upon an idea that lit, or you might say ignited, a plan that-"

"What was the plan, Finn, what was the plan?" said all, though they had heard the tale before.

"The plan was this ..." whispered Finn, leaning across the bar to tell his winter secret.

The men had been hiding down by the gatekeeper's lodge for half an hour or so, pa.s.sing a bottle of the best between, and then, the gatekeeper having been carried off to bed, they dodged up the path at six in the evening and looked at the great house with the warm lights lit in each window.

"That's the place," said Riordan.

"h.e.l.l, what do you mean, 'that's the place'?" cried Casey, then softly added, "We seen it all our lives."

"Sure," said Kelly, "but with the Troubles over and around us, sudden like a place looks different. It's quite a toy, lying there in the snow."

And that's what it seemed to the fourteen of them, a grand playhouse laid out in the softly falling feathers of a spring night.

"Did you bring the matches?" asked Kelly.

"Did I bring the ... what do you think I am!"

"Well, did you, is all I ask."

Casey searched himself. When his pockets hung from his suit he swore and said, "I did not."

"Ah, what the h.e.l.l," said Nolan "They'll have matches inside. We'll borrow a few. Come on."

Going up the road, Timulty tripped and fell.

"For G.o.d's sake, Timulty," said Nolan, "where's your sense of romance? In the midst of a big Easter Rebellion we want to do everything just so. Years from now we want to go into a pub and tell about the Terrible Conflagration up at the Place, do we not? If it's all mucked up with the sight of you landing on your a.s.s in the snow, that makes no fit picture of the Rebellion we are now in, does it?"

Timulty, rising, focused the picture and nodded. "I'll mind me manners."

"Hist! Here we are!" cried Riordan.

"Jesus, stop saying things like 'that's the place' and 'here we are,' " said Casey. "We see the d.a.m.ned house. Now what do we do next?"

"Destroy it?" suggested Murphy tentatively.

"Gah, you're so dumb you're hideous," said Casey. "Of course we destroy it, but first . . . blueprints and plans."

"It seemed simple enough back at Mickey's Pub," said Murphy. "We would just come tear the d.a.m.n place down. Seeing as how my wife outweighs me, I need to tear something down."

"It seems to me," said Timulty, drinking from the bottle, "we go rap on the door and ask permission."

"Permission!" said Murphy. "I'd hate to have you running h.e.l.l; the lost souls would never get fried! We-"

But the front door swung wide suddenly, cutting him off. A man peered out into the night.

"I say," said a gentle and reasonable voice, "would you mind keeping your voices down. The lady of the house is sleeping before we drive to Dublin for the evening, and-"

The men, revealed in the hearth-light glow of the door, blinked and stood back, lifting their caps.

"Is that you, Lord Kilgotten?"

"It is," said the man in the door.

"We will keep our voices down," said Timulty, smiling, all amiability.

"Beg pardon, Your Lordship," said Casey.

"Kind of you," said His Lordship. And the door closed gently.

All the men gasped.

" 'Beg pardon, Your Lordship,"We'll keep our voices down, Your Lordship.' " Casey slapped his head. "What were we saying? Why didn't someone catch the door while he was still there?"

"We was dumbfounded, that's why. He took us by surprise, just like them d.a.m.ned high and mighties. I mean, we weren't doing anything out here, were we?"

"Our voices were a bit high," admitted Timulty.

"Voices, h.e.l.l," said Casey. "The d.a.m.ned lord's come and gone from our fell clutches!"

"Shh, not so loud," said Timulty.

Casey lowered his voice. "So let us sneak up on the door and-"

"That strikes me as unnecessary," said Nolan. "He knows we're here now."