The Giant, O'Brien: A Novel

A trumpet.

Two siskins in a gilt cage.

A warming pan.

A mousetrap.

A writing set.

Some sheets of wallpaper with views on them: with an Indian prince riding on a pony, and a slave holding a parasol over his head. And hunting dogs. And cranes. And flowers.

“Gentlemen of the press,” said Joe. He held his arms up, as if he were brandishing flaming torches. The gentlemen sat on chairs that Joe had hired, ferreting in their wigs and picking their noses. The Giant was behind a green curtain, crouching. “But lately from our continental triumphs,” Joe said. He looked about the room, smiling, side to side; trying to stimulate a round of applause.

“Yerg-h-h,” said one of the pressmen, yawning in his face.

That set them off all over the room, “Yerg-h-h,” in a broken chorus.

Behind the curtain, the Giant cleared his throat. His intention was only to warn Joe to cut it short; there was a crushing pain in his thighs and calves, and his kneecaps were fighting out through the skin. But the sound produced a sudden sharpening, a sobering, in the room. “By God’s balls!” one man exclaimed; all sat up straighter.

Joe was taken aback. He looked down, and saw the Giant’s toe peeping from under the screening. “Without further delay,” he announced, in the voice of a hero, while simultaneously scooping at the curtain. It stuck-the rail being Claffey’s carpentry—and Joe found himself dragging on it, wrapped in it, fighting a bout with it, until the Giant simply unhooked it from its moorings and stepped forth into plain view.

There was a moment’s silence; then a low whistle of admiration ran around the room. As it subsided, a ragged clapping began, and was taken up by one pressman after another; each uttered his own obscenity as he clapped, and each stared, and one said, “Dammit, he has snapped the curtain rail,” and the Giant looked down at his own hand and saw that oh yes, so he had.

He smiled. It was an uncalculated, accidental effect, but they had taken it like bait. Joe Vance was pink with pleasure; error had turned to triumph. “Please, Mr. Byrne!” He gestured towards the capacious wooden chair, a throne in type, that Pybus and Claffey had been working on for three days. Its construction was rough, naturally, but they had been out shopping and got a length of red plush, which Bitch Mary had draped in a most artistic fashion across the seat and arms—careless, but classical.

The Giant leaned down and tested the chair seat with his hand. Testing was his necessary habit with all chairs, stools, benches, and stone walls. He lowered himself, crossed his legs suavely, and saw and heard the pressmen gasp in amazement. “What a tableau he makes,” Joe whispered to Claffey. “What a tableau indeed!”

For what had they expected, the press corps? They’d looked for some rumblethump, some tattery freak with his head on backwards and a cyclops eye. Instead they’ve an aristocrat of height. Said Joe Vance loudly, for the benefit of the scribes, “There’s enough lace on his cuff to deck every altar in the Vatican.”

There was a pause, a hiatus. The Giant looked around the room, half-smiling. After a moment passed, he raised one eyebrow. Ah, St. Silan, he thought. St. Silan could cause death just by raising an eyebrow; suicides used to wait up, hoping to catch him at dawn in a quizzical mood.

One pressman, nodding nervously, quivered to his feet: “Sir Giant, how do you account for your parentage?”

By a piece of business pre-arranged with Joe, the Giant drew out a length of muslin, three feet or so, from his sleeve, and dabbed the corners of his mouth genteelly. Only then did he begin to speak.

“I was conceived on the slopes of a green hill, known as a sacred place by the men and women of my nation. My mother was a green girl entirely, and my father came out of Scotland, possessed of a raw and tartan heart.”

It was not the answer he had practiced with Joe. Joe’s was tedious, tortuous, something to do with Noah and his Ark: who went in and came out, and a large number of stowaways, undetected by the great man and his tribe of relatives.

“Sir Giant,” said a second man, “are there any more at home like you?”

“Alas, my upbringing was solitary. There were some few paltry fellows—two in particular, the brothers Knife, conceived on top of a haystack in our parish—who had a conceit they were tall, and who used to extort money from the credulous; but I know nothing of their lineage, and look upon them rather as sports of nature than as what I am myself, a descendent of the ancient native lords. And there is a lad named Patrick, Patrick O’Brien, who has sometimes claimed kinship with me—who has indeed, I hear, sometimes claimed to be me—but he is no more high, sir, than you are a Chinaman.”

“So accept no substitutes,” Joe said brightly. “Charles Byrne, Tallest Man in the World.”

Claffey said to Pybus, under his breath, “I wondered when they’d mention Pat O’Brien.”

A languid fellow rose, at the back of the room. He ah-hemmed before he spoke, and fluttered his hand to draw attention to himself. “You have lately been at Cologne, your publicist states. Tell me, what wonders did you see there?”

“Oh, Smartarse,” Joe breathed. “There’s always one.”

“Why, they have a little church,” the Giant said equably. “They call it a Dom. I’d take up residence in that fair stadt, only to avoid a boff on the head every time I want to say a prayer. The place wants finishing, mind, but the three kings have a golden house there.” He leaned back on his throne. “Among the French eglises there are some pretty little chapels, one they call Notre Dame in Paris I remember. Amsterdam is most picturesque, with rivulets running between the houses.”

“All right?” Joe called out to the gentleman. “Happy, are you?”

The Giant reached over to calm him, but with the tip of his middle finger he accidentally caught Joe under the chin. There was laughter, scattered applause.