The Dualist - Chapter 1

According to the international language of signs, the raised hand meant I was in business. Last fare of the day.

I threw him a glance through the wet windscreen as I pulled up by the kerb, signalled for him to get in and watched him pull the handle of the back door.

“Phibsboro,” he just about managed to say as he plonked himself on to the seat and the door clunked closed.

“Right to be,” I said, put the car in gear and pulled out into the carnage of the Dublin mid-evening rush-hour.

“Dirty old day?” I added cheerily as I reminded him to fasten his belt. I offer service with a smile.

He didn’t reply.

Fucken oddball.

Apart from a couple of grunts from him to okay the route I planned to take he remained silent, distracted. I could have told him we would be going via Mars and it would have made no difference. Still, despondency in a fare always presents an opportunity for me to slow the cab down a little, get stuck behind a parked van, anticipate red lights and the like. Here a cent, there a cent, everywhere a cent, cent. They’re as good in my pocket as in theirs after all. And it all adds up.

I drove on savouring the silence for as long as I could. When I caught a glimpse of him in the rear-view mirror a little later on, this time on O’Connell Street, he looked as though he had aged by ten years. I was nearly going to ask him was he alright but instead I just turned the radio up and heard the presenter confirm that I should be avoiding Phibsboro like the plague at this time of the day. But I didn’t mind. Driving through glue has its benefits.

Chi-ching!

It took me nearly half an hour to travel the couple of miles to our destination and the man in the backseat hadn’t got any better looking in the meantime. He looked worse more like. By the time I’d reached the entrance to the Shopping Centre in Phibsboro, his thin face had lost all of its colour and beads of sweat had appeared on his brow. His breath had become slower and more difficult.

“Here,” he coughed when I asked him where exactly he wanted to get out.

I stopped there, about ten yards from here.

The meter was rounding up to 15 Euros as I was putting on the handbrake and popping open the cashbox.

“That’s fifteen euro please,” I said but by then he already had the door open and the first of his feet was landing on the pavement.

No reply.

“That’s fifteen euro please,” I repeated a little clearer and louder.

Again, nothing.

I don’t know about you but to me this sort of silence is just plain rude.

By the time I’d fully turned around to look him in the eye, he was out of the car and on the pavement. A couple of seconds later I was out of the car and on the pavement too. I felt a serious confrontation coming on. I run a strict no fare dodgers rule after all and carry a taser gun to enforce it. But before I could raise a finger to accost him or manage another word of reprimand, he hit the ground with a bang and was stretched out on his back, eyes rolling in his head, the rain wetting his face.

At first, all I could do was stare at him as he lay there going through his motions of ticks and gasps and flicks and twitches but eventually I knelt down and shook him by the shoulder to try and wake him up or revive him or do something.

It didn’t do much good.

“Fuck,” I thought and I dug into my shirt pocket and pulled out my phone and dialled 999. I ordered up an ambulance for main course with some Gardaí on the side from the menu of emergency services. As I hung up, I shouted to some passers-by to stop and help as I ran and got a dirty old blanket and an old newspaper from the boot of the car. One or two stopped but all they really did was stare at the man as he lay there on the ground.

I returned with the blanket and placed it over him. I made a makeshift cushion by crumpling the newspaper and putting it behind his head. As he lay there in the lap of luxury, I asked him again was he alright.

He said nothing.

This time his silence no longer angered me or suggested to me that he, the man who’d just sat for half an hour in the back seat of my cab, was either odd or distracted or even rude.

No. It just told me he was dead.

© Séamus Bagnall 2014

More tomorrow ...