"The Walker" is one of O'Brian's most interesting and complex short stories to date.

The beginning of the story could easily stand on its own, as the narrator discusses walking, and his attempts to construct a satisfying walk in the countryside around him. The "real aim of a walk," he says, "for me is a half-conscious gentle, physical exercise, the perfect accompaniment to reflection. I do not say that the countryside is anything but superb, and for one who walks to see magnificence these paths are ideal: but that is not my aim, and sometimes I long for an ordinary sober country lane, a way through the level cornfields or a towpath along a quiet river or a sea wall between salt flats and a marsh." (p. 70, page numbers throughout from Norton pb).

This first part is excellent, like something out of Samuel Johnson's Rambler, and the narrator comes off as sympathetic, reflective, and a man you could easily identify with, especially if you enjoy walking yourself.

In the course of this first part, we learn a bit about the walker: that he enjoys walking, of course; that he is living in a small village near the sea; that he lives amongst "quiet and civil" people (p.71); and that he is "a big, heavy man" (p.70). This physical description is quite important and is repeated almost verbatim near the story's end ("I am a very big, heavy man", p.79).

At the end of his synthetically constructed walk, he comes to "a shingle beach" (p.72) where he occassionally comes across "a savage old man, a solitary, and I do not speak to him nor him to me" (p.73).

Also at the beach are reminders of the Second World War. (The story appears to take place in southern France.) There is a "destroyed German searchlight" and a "huge domed gun-emplacement home" and one day he finds "a cheap ring, the kind that is sold in fairs" with a swastika upon it: "no doubt it had belonged to one of the Germans drowned here in the war. The ring filled me with repulsion, like a thing unclean: the round was so much the answering shape to the finger that had fitted it that I shuddered and threw it far into the sea, wiping my hands on the pebbles afterward. A human finger, by itself without a hand, is a disgusting thing. A human finger in the sea." (p73)

On another occassion, he finds a human pelvis, presumably from another drowned German. The walker comments, "Ordinarily, I suppose, a human bone would raise some emotion, some emotion resembling piety; it would be a disturbance of decency, a kind of profanation on the shore. But I felt no such emotion as I sat looking at this bone: I connected it with death, but with no particular death." (p.74)

Then comes a reflection (previously quoted by Susan) on the general procession of thoughts through one's mind: "One's mental processes, and especially the wandering fantasies that pass through one's mind as one walks, are linked by a chain of association so slight that it usually cannot be traced. A bramble will claw out from a thicket: one pushes on automatically, and then in half an hour one will find that one has been dwelling on the Passion for the last mile of the road." (p.74)

In the next part of the story, we learn a bit about Joseph and Martine Albčre, the mysterious elderly couple he is living with. Joseph is a man of wealth, but "not a man of high standing" in the community (p.75). They live together in their large house, the walker their only lodger, neither of them going out very much, and never together. At night, one or both of them, would creep through the house, inspecting each room from the top of the house to the bottom (pp.75 - 76).

At last, the walker learns the history of M. Albčre from "a Dutch painter", "a fat, exuberent man" (p.77): Approximately thirty years previously, Albere and two other villagers were crewmen aboard a packet ship, the Jules-Bastide, running between France and North Africa. One day, amidst "a black gale of wind", "one solitary priest, indifferent to the weather, stayed on the afterdeck" (p.77). This priest carried a mysterious black valise with him at all times. "In the morning the priest was missing. Nobody knew anything about it: the official inquiry revealed nothing whatever." (p.78)

Albčre and his two fellow villagers were the only crew members on that part of the ship at the time. Soon after, each of them quit the sea and make big purchases. The first buys a cafe, which burns within a year, killing him and his wife. The second buys a farm; within three years, his son is killed in a motorcycle accident and the man hangs himself. Albčre buys the house and three boats and has been waiting his doom ever since. He and his wife have brought in the walker "as some kind of protection (the lightning, they thought, would not strike a house where a just man lived)" (p.78).

Then we get the first clear sign that the walker is mentally unhinged (quickly and overwhelmingly confirmed in the 2 final pages of the story) as he reflects, "I had thought that it might be the beginning of the day of wrath, but when I looked at the stars I found that I was wrong: I had been unable to move Aldebaran" (p.78).

The full extent of his madness quickly becomes clear:

"I was the hand of God again; the wrath of a jealous God Who spoke through the prophet and ploughed the Amalekites into the ground. And without any knowledge I had been set there in my place for a long year past: oh, it was the sweetest realization in the world, this kindness done to me.

"Clearly I knew it was not for the murder I had been sent: no, no; it was for accidie. These wicked people had despaired of all forgiveness: they had hardened their hearts, and for that last wickedness they were to be destroyed in this world as they were already damned in the next." (p.79)

Between half past three and four o'clock in the morning, he hears the Albčres on their nocturnal inspections and "run[s] out out with my black coat over my nakedness, barefoot up behind them." He springs upon them shrieking, "The priest, the valise, the priest, ha ha ha ha ha." (p.79) After chasing them around, nearly choking on his own laughter the while, he ascends the stairs : "I flew, I say, I flew, and smashed them down on the far stone floor."

And the story ends: "It was finished almost before it had begun. I had meant a full night's inspired, enormous ecstasy, and I had wasted it in half an hour. Before it had started it was done: they had died without a mark; and I had not set the sign." (p.80)

There are numerous things to say about this story.

The short stories have been full of religious references, most of them fleeting and subtle. "The Walker" brings the religious themes to the surface: a horrible, distorted, dysfunctional religiosity, which begins subtlely with an (apparently) passing reference to the Passion (the betrayal, trial, and death of Jesus). Just what the walker thought of the Passion is not spelled out: on a first reading we might assume he is thinking of sacrificial love (Jesus sacrificing His life for the sake of humanity); but, based on what we later learn about the walker, we might now think he was thinking of the betrayal or the details of the scourging and crucifixion.

The fuller manifestation of his dysfunctional religiosity is fairly obvious (thinking he is the hand of a vengeful God, etc.). O'Brian himself stated that he meant the walker to be "the devil, a man possessed but who thinks he acts for God". (Quote is Susan Wenger's summary from her earlier post of PO'B's comments in Harper's as reported by Dean King. Let's see: that makes it a fifth-hand quote by me.)

With dysfunctional religiosity comes dysfunctional mental balance, along with dysfunctional sexual desire (about which more in a moment).

What's the significance of the walker's self description as "a big, heavy man" (important enough to be stated twice)? I see three possible significances: first, physically, the walker is precisely the opposite of O'Brian himself (a small, slim man). Since PO'B is using the first person throughout, this may be his way of emphasizing that the walker is NOT him.

Second, how do we square the walker's physique with his constant exercise? If he takes long walks every day (especially in the "blazing heat" (p.70) of the long summer), why is he so big and fat? The pedestrian explanation (that he still consumes more calories then he works off in his exercise) may very well be right, but there are two other intriguing possibilities: (a) he has some sort of chemical or glandular disorder that may very well have mental as well as physical effects; or (b) he does not walk at all: his "walking" all takes place in his mind, in his room at night. (He always seems to be around when the Albčres are doing something interesting in the house.)

The final significance of emphasizing the walker's heaviness is that it emphasizes that he is not a physically attractive man; again, I'll return to this in a moment.

The incident with the solitary man on the beach I see as a metaphorical, early warning sign about the walker. The solitary man seems similar to St. Anthony, or another hermit monk, who lives alone in the desert, and is visited and tempted by demons, but will have nothing to do with them.

The part about the German ring, pelvic bone, etc., I think is largely an attempt to misdirect the reader: at this point in the story, the walker still seems very sympathetic, and the incident seems to confirm his sensitivity: here's a man, we might think, who is affected by the death of another, even if that other was the enemy of his country (making the assumption that the walker was French or English or American; in any event, on the opposite side as the Germans).

But if we look closely at the walker's reaction, we can see that his reaction is less horror at the loss of human life than what appears to be an obsessive-compulsive horror at things being out of the order that he thinks they should be in. Thus he thinks that a "human finger, by itself without a hand, is a disgusting thing. A human finger in the sea." (p73), but an ENTIRE hand would not necessarily provoke the same reaction: he thinks later, without any apparent squeamishness, of thieves with "their hands cut off" (p. 78). Similarly, the pelvis, being "white, dry and smooth, symmetrical and polished to inhumanity" and altogether "like a shell" fit in with the beach, and was not "a disturbance of decency, a kind of profanation on the shore" (p.74).

The walker finds the ring to be "a thing unclean", but because of its shape to the finger that wore it, and the finger not being attached to a hand, etc., and NOT, as we might assume on a first reading, because of the swastika on it. The swastika is interesting, in that it introduces Naziism as an idea (as distinct from the German servicemen) into the story. Naziism is another theme that has appeared in previous short stories, associated with evil, and darkness, and now with demonism.

As for the priest story: it appears that the priest was killed by Albčre and his two fellow villagers and that they stole his valise. What was in the valise? Money or gold, perhaps, or perhaps it was something like the monkey's claw (was this a Poe story?), that grants its owner his wish but at the price of his doom. Now where did the valise, or its contents, come from?

An especially interesting possibility is given if we look at "The Path", the story immediately before "The Walker" in The Rendezvous and Other Stories. (I know the stories weren't written in the order in which they appear, but I am more and more convinced that their placement is no coincidence, but that certain themes are developed across successive stories.) In "The Path", there is another myserious priest, and a backpack with unidentified "bad revelations" (p.68) within it. In "The Walker", is it the same priest? Does he have in his valise now what was in the backpack previously?

Now let's look more closely at the climactic killings: the walker wears only his "black coat over [his] nakedness" and as he springs and jumps and runs about, shrieking, howling, and laughing, we can imagine that his coat is flying about, exposing the nakedness beneath; and if we look at the language he uses while on his killing spree -- "delight" (p.79), "pleasure" (p.79), "I had meant a full night's inspired, enormous ecstasy, and I had wasted it in half an hour" (p.80) -- the conclusion is inescapable: he is experienceing a perverse sexual delight in his murders. And remember, he is a "a big, heavy man" (i.e., not at all physically attractive), thus stripping the scene of any slight eroticism it may have, and rendering it all the more obscene.

One final point on the significance of the title, and why I found it particularly significant:

Ten years ago, I lived in Paris (as part of junior year abroad in college), and being young and tall (6'2'', which is moderately tall by American standards, but a giant by French standards), I had no fear about walking the Paris streets at any hour of the night or day, which I often did, both to get from point A to point B, and to help me think (the "half-conscious gentle, physical exercise, the perfect accompaniment to reflection" mentioned at the beginning of the story).

One night, probably around ten p.m. or so, I was walking along and a young Frenchman, with shabby clothes, an unshaven face, and fanatic eyes approached me. "I know you," said he (and this all in French).

Well, I didn't know him, but I was willing to listen for a bit. I didn't know what he was going to say but I was fairly sure that it would end with an appeal for money.

"I've seen you," he said, pausing for a moment, then continuing, "You are A Walker. Yes, a Great Walker (un grand coureur)".

I was still there waiting for the punch line, when he turned and walked off, looking back at me to shake his head up and down knowingly, as if he'd solved one of the great mysteries of life, and adding once again, "Yes, A Great Walker."

I had no idea what he thought he meant by that, and I still don't; but I was convinced then, and still am, that there was some sort of (literally) insane explanation. And, no, he wasn't drunk or high, just, as far as I could tell, mentally disturbed.

And now let's look once more at what O'Brian had to say about his story: "The walking, you see," said O'Brian, "seems to me an essential part of his madness and his possession".

Yes, I think that's right; and I think O'Brian had an insight into what phantasms my interlocutor that night had floating through his mind as he thought of The Walker, The Great Walker.

John Finneran