About the Whistle & Fish Free House
An Insomniac’s Haven
*
“‘No, thank you,’ said the waiter and went out. He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted cafe was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it’s probably only insomnia. Many must have it.” —Ernest Hemingway, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
*
Picture 3 a.m. under a full moon. The city has been washed clean by rain that ended earlier, leaving in its wake a howling wind that propels ragged cloud remnants across the night sky, turning the moonlight off and on like a Valium afflicted neon sign. You walk the empty streets, hands jammed in the pockets of an old mackintosh, stopping now and then to gaze through darkened windows of vacant shops at their displays — strange mannequins painted as grotesque mimes. Or is it simply the way you perceive them in your insomniac state? It’s as though no one is alive in the too-early morning, save the lone dog baying in the distance. You push on, turn a corner and hear — music?
Light spills from the windows of an ancient building in an alley lit by antique gaslights. You see a wooden sign squeaking as it swings from an iron bracket over the door. It depicts a cartoon fish playing a tin whistle: The Whistle & Fish Free House, a pub.
Inside a group of bearded musicians play haunting Celtic tunes of an indiscernable age. Occasionally a patron or a group of them will join in and sing along. At nearly every table people are engaged in passionate conversation. Here, they discuss politics. There, the art of filmmaking. At another table, a man reads aloud from a work of fiction, and at still another a woman recites poetry. One man argues in favor of Luddism, while a woman insists technology will cure all humankind’s ills. A trio debates the merits of world religions. The common bond uniting them is their apparent sleeplessness. Theirs is a society of insomniacs.
You hang your coat on a wooden peg near the door and make your way through the room to the bar. A bearded bartender pushes his graying, shoulder-length hair out of his face with his left hand and introduces himself as Harry Haller, offering you his right hand to shake. “This is my bar,” he says. “What are you drinking?”
You order a Guinness and he turns to draw it from a tap on the wall. Outside a cloud scuds past the moon, and moonlight suddenly brightens the room. When Harry Haller turns back to offer you the stout, you see he is transforming, becoming lupine. You glance nervously around the room and realize all its patrons are lycanthropic. Everyone is in one metamorphic stage or another.
But it’s all right, because your own hands have become more hirsute. You grin at the bartender and notice your fangs reflected in the long mirror behind him. At last you’ve come home.
Welcome to the Whistle & Fish Free House.