Eating Mammals

His discourse ran on and (it must be said) on. By subtle increments, though, he began to challenge even the most credulous before him, with tales of monstrous extravaganzas of consumption, of quantities measured not in numbers, but in numbers of crates and sackfuls.

The first snort of disbelief was heard quite suddenly, from the back of the room, and was followed immediately by the shuffling sound of an audience losing all faith in the act, the sound of embarrassment as a magician’s illusions are seen through, of a comedian’s jokes becoming hopelessly predictable. Mulligan played on this, indeed he appeared to relish it, and the louder the (still somewhat muted) cries of derision, the louder he talked above the noise, and the prouder and more outlandish his stories became. He laced his performance with a finely judged pathos. Waiting. Waiting for it.

‘Nonsense! Codswallop!’ came the full-voiced cry of contempt from some way off. Mulligan, caught mid-sentence, stopped and looked around to identify the source of the outburst. The room fell dead quiet, as forty-nine pairs of eyes watched one enormous, silent face move from shock to a hurt, childlike indigence, as if the Irishman had been found out, and his pathetic lies derided as the vulgar stuff of a fairground sideshow.

The chap who had voiced his doubts looked down into his coffee cup and shook his head, aware that, slowly, and without another word, the great man was approaching him. As luck would have it, the author of those first outspoken criticisms was a short, tubby fellow, rather red in the cheeks, and a true wobble-pot of inflated self-importance. When Mulligan got up to him, he bent down and whispered something in the man’s ear. Tubby got to his feet, cowering under Mulligan’s huge bulk.

‘This man,’ he boomed, standing behind his victim and draping both his arms ominously over the shoulders of the smaller man, ‘this man, gentlemen, believes me to be a liar.’

Stifled gasps as the dread word rang out around the hall, and Mulligan’s reverse bear hug tightened, so that the little chap’s ruddy cheeks turned purple.

‘A liar,’ Mulligan repeated, emphasising each syllable with a good, solid slap of his hand on the chest of the wilting individual caught up in his embrace. From the shadows at the back of the stage, where I was sitting, horrified and amazed in equal measure, I noted that those most proximate to Mulligan wore concerned expressions, trying with no success at all to treat the whole thing as a joke, whereas those further off appeared to find the scene wildly amusing, nudging each other and sniggering like schoolboys, although their animated delight was for the most part silent.

Then Mulligan’s face lit up. He broke out into the broadest smile and released the short, fat man. Spinning right around on his heels twice in uncontrollable joy, he announced: ‘I have a plan!’

More murmurs now from the tables, some of which seemed to indicate a resurgence of boredom and embarrassment with the act.

‘Sir,’ Mulligan continued, talking to the little man, ‘I cannot eat you’ (amusement all around). ‘No, we all have our standards’ (hoots of laughter), ‘but I can perhaps regain my honour. You will at least permit me that small favour?’

The man in question was too abashed to do anything other than nod. Mulligan cleared away a few plates and glasses from the place setting in front of him and, picking Tubby up like a child, sat him on the edge of the table, his little legs dangling down like a puppet’s. A concerned kind of laughter stirred around the hall, whilst Mulligan fussed about, apparently looking for something. He turned all of a sudden and, tripping over the vacant chair behind him, fell to the floor.

A few wisps of cruel laughter could be heard, and other diners looked on with pity. Further off conversations grew afresh, as if the act were already a rather tiresome irrelevance.

‘This is it!’ came a deafening cry from the ground. Everyone stared, but instead of Mulligan getting to his feet, they saw the chair rising slowly into the air. Then Mulligan stood up, the chair held high above his head. ‘This, my friend,’ he said, and brought the chair down, holding it right in front of the little man’s nose, ‘this is what I will eat tonight! I will eat your chair!’

With that he marched over to the stage, on to which there now fell some light, illuminating not only myself, but also the imposing form of The Machine, which lay shrouded in red velvet.

Inside my baggy dinner suit I prickled with sweat, desperate to get my part right, and at the same time feeling a certain complicity with Mulligan, who even now was tweaking and poking at the audience’s disbelief and mercilessly burlesquing the pity directed towards him only moments before.

‘Gentlemen,’ he shouted, twirling the chair effortlessly in one hand like a toy, ‘although I am twice the man of anyone here today, my teeth are my weakness. Once, in Torquay, I no more than nibbled on a hatstand, and got a cracked molar for my troubles.

‘But,’ and here he swept away the red velvet, revealing what on first sight perhaps most resembled a pygmy combine harvester, ‘I will swallow this chair tonight …’ (chuntering and some giggles from the floor), ‘… wood …’ at which he snapped a leg off with his hands and tossed it to me, ‘… seat …’ ripping a little of its fine gold braid from the edge of the chair’s cushion, ‘… and screws!’ flicking with his fingernails the tacks which held the seat’s ancient cloth in place (only brass, quite thin). Gasps from the floor at the word screws. Many hands dropped down to feel the girth of chair legs; half a dozen men scrambled to put on their glasses and, having done so, stared all the more urgently at Mulligan, and then at the chair they were sitting on. The short, fat man, utterly mesmerised by Mulligan, slipped down from the table, never taking his eyes off the stage, and procured himself a vacant chair from the side of the hall. He retook his place at the table, lit himself a cigar, and settled back for the entertainment, apparently believing that his own ordeal was over – in this he was correct, for Mulligan was no bully – and in addition feeling perhaps just a touch proud of himself.

‘You will, I trust, allow me a little light refreshment?’ Mulligan asked, pouring himself a pint of orange liquid from the Egyptian jug and taking a sip. With that he gave me a nod. I dropped the chair leg into the funnel and cranked the long iron handle. At first nothing happened. The series of gears transposed my efforts into a slow, menacing rotation at the bottom of the funnel, but as fast as I might wind the handle, nothing happened. Then, little by little, the leg in the funnel began to move, turning and twisting, slowly at first but then with more animation, bobbing and dancing in the teeth of the grinder. The handle stiffened as the sound of cracking, splintering wood filled the hall, and the chair leg began its long, painfully slow journey through the mechanism. I worked frantically at the cranking handle, and even from the stage I could sense that there was not a single movement anywhere else in the place, all eyes on the top of the chair leg, which poked up above the rim of the funnel, but was gradually disappearing from view.

Wood moved steadily through the various crushers and grinders, but with more wood always entering from the top the job became harder, and soon I was lunging at the crank handle twice, once to wrench it up towards me, and again to push it back over for another revolution, throwing my body halfway back round with it.

Mulligan laughed out loud.

‘Some day,’ he said, turning to the dumbfounded men before him, ‘this young man here will be as strong as an ox. But it will require work, oh yes, and a very special diet.’

Then he was off again, regaling his audience with more stories: of the time he had eaten a beehive, comb, honey, bees (fried), the lot; and the occasion on which, purely as a party trick in Hollywood, he drank the bathwater of a certain film star’s six-month-old baby.

Was all this true? Was any of this in the least possible? You may well wonder, and from time to time, as I recall the great man’s orations, those most expansive, most outrageous, most boastful claims, I too sometimes wonder. But there, in front of forty-odd men of sound mind, with Mulligan’s sweet, hypnotic voice, and the low grinding of The Machine as it crunched, splintered and powdered solid wood, ready to assuage the gargantuan appetite which this extraordinary man proclaimed of himself, in those circumstances, in that hall, no one doubted a single word he said.

And I ground and I ground.

At last it arrived, the slightest trickle of powder, although really it was more a dry, gritty pâté, which dropped from the pert sphincter of the big, iron digestive tract like pale, crumbly mouse droppings. Only then did I notice where it dropped: on to a large platter, a gleaming oval of fiery, crimson-hued gold, which was positioned directly beneath the grinder’s nozzle. (A present from an ecstatic maharaja after he had witnessed one of Mulligan’s regular appearances in Paris.) The platter was a part of the stage set which he kept concealed until the appropriate moment. On the large shining oval the pile grew fractionally. Feeling somewhat ashamed at my own performance, I redoubled my efforts, and before I knew it Mulligan had thrown another leg into the funnel, to resounding cheers from the floor. However, the cheers soon fell away to nothing as, pulling a golden spoon from his pocket, he stooped down and collected a sample of the chair dust, inspected it for colour and aroma and popped the loaded spoon into his mouth. There he remained, crouched and absolutely still; without thinking I stopped cranking, my incredulous eyes, like those of everyone else besides, on the great man. (Later, he commended me on this little detail, which, I have to admit, did add somewhat to the drama of the moment.) He moved his jaws in a slow, ruminating fashion, and then, after an appreciative mumble, smacked his lips and sprang to his feet. Taking a quick drink, he announced: ‘The chair, gentlemen, is exquisite!’

Shrieks and hoots greeted the announcement. Mulligan held up his hand for silence.

‘Compliments to the chef,’ he said, turning and giving a solemn bow in my direction.

More howls, and great applause. I returned to the crank handle, and Mulligan set to breaking up the rest of the chair. By the time he had got down to the seat, I had ground a tolerable amount, perhaps something more than a whole legful, and the pile of sawdust had grown to a dusty pyramid which covered half the platter.

He indicated that I stop grinding. With plate in one hand and spoon in the other, he shovelled the stuff into his mouth. He made as if to masticate for a moment, then put down the spoon and took a long draught from his glass of liquid. And swallowed. The audience chuckled, as if to say, Yes, yes, that was funny, you really did swallow a mouthful of the stuff. But he followed it with another mouthful, and then another, eating greedily, swilling it down with the sickly orange liquid, until nothing remained on the golden surface but a powdery film, turning the warm glow of the metal dull.

I recommenced grinding, and he, after refilling his glass, strolled amongst the tables in the hall, exaggerating, boasting, joking, until the next course was ready.

By the time he came to his fourth plateful, both his eating speed and the enthusiasm of his audience were on the point of waning. A true master eater, though, is not simply one who can swallow, but one who can make that swallowing an entertainment. So, he descended with his golden platter into the audience and offered some of the fare to a tall, elegant-looking gentleman near to hand. The man declined, but the one next to him dipped his tongue in, and through his expression alone confirmed that it was indeed no more nor less than sawdust. Another gallant offered to eat a whole spoonful and, attempting to follow the example of Mulligan, poured a full glass of port into his mouth to accompany the dust. He chewed and chomped, and with great industry tried to swallow the mixture, but to no avail; the whole lot came back out and was deposited into a large, white handkerchief which, curiously, he stuffed straight into his jacket pocket. Another, less sober individual thought he might upstage Mulligan’s comic performance, and took a pinch as if it were snuff, but succeeded only in half choking himself.

Then we had the evening’s tough. Permit me here to indulge in a little amateur psychology. I have, over the years, observed many gatherings of men (women, for some reason, are seldom to be found in great numbers at these events), and it is unquestionably the case that whenever groups of men congregate there is a tendency for one man to emerge as the tough, the hard type. Unlike the playground tough-boy, the adult version is seldom the leader of the group, and never at the centre of things. He may in fact say and do very little. Often he is neither the richest nor the most powerful; neither the most respected nor the most heroic; he is in fact more often than not the dullest, and his presence is only ever really valued if trouble erupts and reliable fists are needed. Anyway, in the company of Mulligan, even in sight of him, the local tough would often disappear from view completely, receding further than normal into the anonymity of the group. However, over the course of an evening, these types invariably sought some means of proving themselves in face of a seemingly harder, bigger, greater man. Let us say that in this respect Mulligan, quite without wishing it, constituted an unfortunate stimulus-to-act for these men.

On this occasion the fellow in question was a tall, grim-looking thug in his mid-fifties, not unlike Mulligan in build, but a degree or two smaller in all departments. A scowl had adorned his face all evening and now, just as Mulligan made to return to the stage, this man stood up, to a variety of rumblings, mutterings, and not a few sit down!s. But he stood firm, a pudding spoon at the ready, held down at his thigh, inadvertently, I believe, although it looked for all the world like a deholstered pistol. He stared straight at the platter.

Mulligan was not one for humiliating people, no matter how disagreeable they were, but this chap had certainly set himself up for a rather large slice of humble pie, although in this case of a rather unusual recipe. Mulligan had no desire to crush the poor man’s infamy, yet what could be done? He marched over with the golden plate and, rather obviously half filling his spoon, offered it to the new challenger. Not to be put off with insults, the man brushed Mulligan’s spoon aside and grabbed the platter, spilling a good deal of dust down his suit in the process. He dug his own spoon into the pile and brought it up to his mouth, spilling about half its load. Having tipped what remained into his mouth, he repeated the operation two more times, both times resulting in significant spillage, although at least proving beyond doubt that his mouth was indeed full. After returning the gold plate to Mulligan, he strode over to the stage, slowly and with his chest out in front, and took a long draught from the Egyptian jug. The liquid ran down his chin, staining his collar a salmon pink. When he could absorb no more liquid, he returned to his table, stood face to face with Mulligan and swallowed. Three times. After a period in which his hard face turned red, and then white, he took up his glass of port and drank that too.

Mulligan led the tumultuous applause. With the platter held out in front of him, he shook the man’s hand vigorously, managing to spill a good cupful more dust down the front of the chap’s jacket without anyone noticing. Then, more as a joke than anything, he offered the plate again. Somewhat gingerly, Tough then helped himself to a more modest spoonful. To cheers all around, he slugged down someone else’s wine greedily and, after another long and protracted swallowing, sat down, bringing his diverting cameo to a close. However, his contribution to the evening’s entertainment really only ended some twenty minutes later as he was dragged out of the hall, groaning the word mother.

Then we were down to the seat. Somehow I didn’t expect him to eat it, horsehair, brass tacks and all. But in it went, Mulligan tearing bits of cloth and stuffing from the main structure and dropping them into the funnel. The grinding became easier, and even the brass tacks, which were the very final items to go in, seemed to cause no problems.

As soon as the last remains of the seat had disappeared down the funnel, Mulligan made a furtive adjustment to The Machine and whispered: ‘Carry on turning!’

He had cut off the supply, with a good deal of the chair still inside the grinder. Within seconds no more of the fine, wispy grounds of horsehair and velvet accumulated on the gold plate. Nevertheless, I continued cranking, and he made an elaborate pretence of ensuring that everything had been minced up, and that the last crumbs of chair were ready to eat.

Whilst munching them down he delivered some amusing observations on the nature of horsehair, it being but inches away from real meat etc., and once or twice, in great pain, removed a mangled brass tack from his mouth, holding his jaw in agony, and then offering it to a nearby member of the audience. Of course, the tacks from the chair were all by now ground down to a fine powder, or, indeed, were still inside The Machine. The mangled ones were from a supply of such items secreted in his jacket.

As the last spoonfuls of chair went in and, with much apparent effort, went down, I became alarmed at the great man’s obvious discomfort; he walked ponderously, and held very still whilst, with a slow, tense concentration, he attempted to swallow. One felt that he was bunged up solid with sodden dust, and that each new mouthful found its way no further down than the back of the throat, where it lodged itself, tickling the uvula and impeding the flow of his breath. By this point his stomach was so distended that he appeared to be in constant danger of toppling forward; I am convinced that, for one horrific moment, every person watching believed that Mulligan was about to perish there on the stage, as his huge bulk ground to a final halt. The sawdust, it seemed, had set firm inside him.

And there he remained, utterly still, his eyelids drooping heavily like those of a man passing quietly from drunkenness to unconsciousness. Finally, his head turning painfully slowly towards the silent ranks of dinner suits, he said, in a quite unconcerned manner: ‘I think I need a drink.’

After innumerable pats on the back, and calls of Bravo! and Good show! he finally opted for a place next to the small, tubby man, who grinned like a delighted child. He accepted a glass of brandy, and nibbled at the few petits fours which were left, in evident high spirits and answering the questions thrown at him with the best humour he could: Have you ever eaten a horse? (‘Yes, but I made sure it was a filly!’) What about an umbrella? (‘The spokes get in one’s teeth!’) Snakes? (‘By the sackful, my man! Nothing better!’) A window? (‘Let’s draw the curtains on that question …’) The complete works of Dickens? (‘Not to my literary taste, but I did sample the pulped score of The Pirates of Penzance, and found it rather toothsome!’). Et cetera, et cetera.

Thus, my introduction to the art of eating had been, by preposterous good fortune, the very best possible. Mulligan stayed at the table with the Freemasons just as long as it took for everyone to realise, with incredulity still framing their thoughts, that this man really had ingested, had dined on a chair. Just long enough also to confound the widespread suspicion that he would dash straight off and expel the contents of his stomach down the lavatory. Indeed, he was eating again, and accepted at least three glasses of port from the excited company around him.

At last, with beaming, happy faces bidding him goodnight, and several dozen earnest handshakes and garbled declarations of his damned brilliance duly acknowledged, we began to dismantle The Machine. The process was over almost as soon as it was begun, since (as I subsequently discovered, to my eternal gratitude) the contraption was designed not so much for its compactness in transit as for the speed with which it could be returned to its crates. We were packed up and ready to go even before the last, drunken stragglers in their crumpled jackets and cock-eyed bow ties had staggered from the premises. The low-growling Rolls-Royce carried us away from the Masonic hall and into the darkened streets and lanes of northern England.

And it never occurred to me to wonder where we had been, east, west, city, town, village. The single point of reference I can offer is that, a good many miles from the place in question, behind a hedge on a secluded country lane, someone deposited a curious mound of damp, orange-coloured sawdust.

‘Did you think I was going to sleep with that lot inside me?’ he said, rather superciliously as he climbed back into the car and we headed off into the night.

For the next seven years I accompanied Mulligan around the world, although by this time his world had reduced in splendour and opportunity considerably. He never replaced the car, or the suit for that matter. But he kept going. And with the maestro’s approval I undertook some freelance appearances of my own, during the increasingly long breaks between his own performances. Having neither the reputation nor the contacts which Mulligan could rely on, my own career began not in the homes of crown princes and cinema actresses, of shy millionaires with glamorous Riviera villas, but in obscure towns, unheard of village fairs, mostly in dark, faceless corners of Europe, and at the odd German festival where a hushed-up sideshow of bizarre and illegal acts would be organised for those of perverser mind than the sausage munchers and beer swillers.

Captain Gusto (for, after my impromptu baptism by Mulligan, I felt no urge to change the name) specialised in a modest eat-all programme. He would invite those assembled to offer up items for consumption, at a price. With each object offered he would state the cost of its ingestion, inflating the amount beyond the perceived pocket of an individual when disinclined to consume, and keeping it reasonable when the thing was more manageable. In return I paid a site rent to the fair, circus or freak show in question. I was, if you like, an itinerant beggar to Mulligan’s aristocrat. But we both ate.

For the main part, though, we travelled together with The Machine. There was an endless supply of stories, mile after mile in that old, majestic car. Names and feats which amused, surprised or saddened, like poor Henry ‘Tubby’ Turns, who died in a sideshow tent in Pittsburgh whilst trying to keep two rats down, out of pure professional pride, and even against the wishes of those half a dozen appalled Pittsburghers who’d paid to witness it. Our conversation would also touch on more recent times, to the decline of our trade and the rise of public opinion against us, to arrests and the lack of offers of work from travelling shows, the short-lived interest shown by television and the tragic cases of those who made it big on TV only to find that they were subsequently pursued all the more assiduously by local public health officials eager to stamp out the whole business. He warned me that things would only get worse.

He was right. Since then I have probably spent more time in local jails and courthouses than in hospitals. And hospital is by far the better place to be from time to time. In hospital, you say? Yes! As the mountaineer can expect the odd broken leg, and the tennis player his eponymous elbow, so the eater is no stranger to the stomach pump and the enema bag. Nor does he fear the liquid shakes of gastroenteritis, other than through the loss of income which it implies. No, from experience I can affirm that I would prefer to be bound over by a surfeit of sawdust than by the local magistrate any day of the week.