Fourfront, page 15
The funny thing was that people began telling his stories again shortly after his murder. Somebody said it was a good career-move. And others began to make up stories about him. And others began to make up stories about the stories. And yet others a commentary on the stories. And yet others again an exegesis of the commentary on the stories. And later an explanation of the exegesis of the commentary on the stories. And then an analysis of the explanation of the exegesis of the commentary on the stories. And then a critique of the analysis of the explanation of the exegesis of the commentary on the stories.
And then somebody remembered that the story-teller himself once said, “Look, a story is just like a mustard seed . . .”
THE SINGER AND THE SONG
The chief wizard of the one and only true faith was much loved and highly regarded. He travelled the world in his golden plane and kissed the ground in humility and thanksgiving when he landed safely. He shook hands with the great and mighty with their baby-seal-lined gloves and waved at the poor and lonely who gawped on the balconies.
High or mighty, poor or lowly, they all loved his words of wisdom. Money flowed in – even when he didn’t ask for it – after a particularly good television appearance. Cheque-books and purses and wallets and bank accounts were opened as quickly as any poor person might say “God help me” or “Why doesn’t God help me?” Rich and good people loved him, and kings and emperors adored him, and presidents of rich countries whose people were fat and forgetful slobbered over his sweet and beautiful words.
“Love the poor,” he would say with a kind of sincerity that could not be denied, “but remember the poor you will have with you always.”
“Love justice and righteousness,” he would say solemnly through his loudspeaker to the crowd, “but remember to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and anything else after that isn’t God’s.”
“Don’t love worldly things,” he might say, “but remember that the labourer is worthy of his hire and never refuse what is rightly yours and earned by the sweat of your brow or any other kind of sweat.”
These were the kind of words that showed that God was in his Heaven and all was well with the world – at least in the northern hemisphere or where geographers called “The First World”.
One day, however, he changed his tune. He did this suddenly without any warning. There was no easy explanation for this and even psychobiographers were baffled. It might have been sunstroke the more literal tried to explain, or a kick from a horse, or a nightmare or even just one of those things. It was as if the conditional clause was excised from his brain by a form of grammatical circumcision.
“Sell all you have and give it to the poor,” he would say without pause or hesitation.
“Justice and whatever is right even if the sky falls,” he would say and stop with a full stop as big as a library.
“Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t fornicate. Don’t curse.” He would say this as if it was the most natural thing in the world and if he had been saying it for years.
“Pay no heed for tomorrow. Do not save or store. Look at the swallows. They neither reap nor sow and yet God minds them. Live for today. Love everybody even if they fuck you up.” You know the kind of stuff.
So it wasn’t any surprise when they started to abandon him.
Some threatened the law. Others hanging or thumbscrews. Others said it was blasphemy. Others said he should be stoned if he wasn’t already.
He had to escape in the middle of the night and retreat to the desert where truth was either wet or dry.
“Now, I know,” he said while he spoke to the stones in his cave, “I always thought that they loved me. But it appears that they only loved the nice things that I said.”
PROGRESS
There was a perfectly happy man who lived underneath a tree. He ate the fruit and the nuts that fell often and in abundance into his lap. He was never hungry.
He never had to stir a limb nor shake a leg nor wiggle an extremity except when he had to answer the call of nature.
One day a student came his way. He was studying business and entrepreneurship in the University of Limerick and walked with a swagger as if he was a Cork hurler.
“Look,” he said to the lazy dosser underneath the tree, “look at the great and wonderful opportunity you are missing to make money and get on in the world. Instead of eating this fruit and chewing these nuts why don’t you collect them all together and sell them to the shops, or at the market, or at the fair? Or even better than that, why don’t you plant some of them in the ground so that other trees might grow, and more fruit would fall, and greater nuts will come, and you should make an even bigger and fatter profit?”
“And why would I want to do that?” said the lazy man under the tree out of a half-closed eye.
“So that you would make money, of course.”
“And why would I want to make money?”
Even though the student from the University of Limerick didn’t really understand the question he tried to answer it as best he could because the education which he had received hadn’t quite erased or banished the good manners which he naturally possessed.
“Well,” he said, said the student, “if you had enough money you could do anything at all you liked. Maybe, even, you wouldn’t have to do any thing at all. You could be idle all day long. You could rest and take it easy.”
“And what do you think I am doing now?” asked the man who lived under the tree.
GREATER LOVE THAN THIS
When they told Pat’s wife that he was dead she cried until she could cry no more. She dressed herself in black clothes and she tore her hair from its roots. She cried again even though her eyes were dry and could give no more water.
Those dry white tears fell on her scoured cheeks. She spoke dark and heartbroken words to all who came near her. She could not open her ears to words of charity or consolation.
They laid her husband’s body out in the bed and she spoke sweet and sorrowful words to him between bouts of wailing and screaming. She did not sleep that first night, nor the second.
Every waking minute they had spent together rushed through her mind, all the joy and the happiness and the love they had shared ended in this cold shroud.
She threw herself on his body while he lay on the bed. She kissed him passionately on his cold, cold lips while he lay in his coffin. She would not let them put the lid on it until they had no choice, and even then they couldn’t secure it.
She was dragged screaming into the funeral car on the day of the burial. She nearly died of grief every inch of the way to the graveyard. Greater love than this no woman ever had for a man, nor any wife for a husband.
When they lowered the coffin into the grave she let out a piercing cry which reached up to Heaven and tore down deep into the earth.
And while she did not succeed in throwing herself into that black hole after her husband’s coffin she ensured that it was filled with beautiful flowers rather than with clay. Thousands and thousands and thousands of flowers and wreaths and bouquets of every colour and smell were piled into that grave wherein her husband was laid.
But when Pat woke up in his coffin some short time later he realized he wasn’t in his own bed. He raised the lid of the coffin just a fraction and his nose was filled with the sweet and fragrant smell of flowers. But he could not lift it any further because of the heavy weight of love pressing him down.
FLAT EARTH
In those far off days when people were a lot less gullible than they are now some people maintained that the earth was as flat as a billiard-table. They said that if you went to the edge of the world you would fall off and go down, down, down – to hell, maybe, or certainly to the Kingdom of Darkness from which there was no return.
But there were others who said that the world was as round as a ball and that if you walked west you would certainly return from the east, no different from a fly doddling around an apple.
But there were others who said that the world was oval-shaped, but nobody bothered with them as anybody who played with oval balls was ipso facto a bit queer.
But those who maintained that the world was flat like a billiard-table soon began to fight with those who thought it was round and circular like a ball. And even though there were wise men and elders and even geniuses on each side they could not agree whether the flatters or the ballers were ultimately right as they had no common ground between them.
And because they were people, and because they couldn’t possibly think of any other way of resolving their conflict, and because they were never likely to agree with one another, they decided to finish their dispute by war, because they were, after all, people. And even though cities were razed to the ground and priceless treasures destroyed for ever and countless millions of people annihilated, at least the war came to an end and the question was finally decided.
And the professors and the wise men began to research and to publish their findings of how the world was flat because it was they, the flat-earthers, who had won the war.
And just in case there might be any different or dissenting opinion they collected all their enemies together, or those that were left of them, and they bundled them into cars and carriages and chariots. And then they drove the cars and the carriages and the chariots over the cliff at the edge of the world, because after all, they were right.
EARS
There was a soldier who fought in the great wars in defence of civilization and democracy who sent the ears of his dead enemies home to his friends.
They thought they were dried apricots because they were a bright yellow and orange colour.
They ate them.
They were, depend upon it, disgusted and horrified and more than even concerned when they learned the truth. This is because they were, after all, nice white people with a good clean liberal conscience.
That did not mean, however, that they did not enjoy them nor find them exceedingly delicious.
THE ONLY TRUE REASON WHY CAIN KILLED HIS BROTHER ABEL
One evening when Abel was about to go out to a dance he came down the stairs. Cain was sitting at the table scratching his locks and generally minding his own business.
“What’s up? Where are you going?” he asked, for the sake of saying something or anything at all.
“It’s none of your fuckin’ business,” Abel said, trying to prevent his nose from taking off into the air. “Who the fuck are you you fuckin’ fucker for askin’ me where the fuck am I goin’. And as I’m at it why the fuck are you wearin’ my fuckin’ purple fuckin’ polka-dot tie?”
“Because, it was lying in the heap on the floor through which you jump every morning. You missed it and I thought as you weren’t wearing it it would be perhaps all right or even OK”
“Well it’s not fuckin’ OK and didn’t I tell you not to lay a fuckin’ hand on any fuckin’ thing belongin’ to me a-fuckin-gen?”
“Well, you did, of course, but so what and what is that to me? It’s not as if you are going to do anything about it, is it, now?”
Cain reached for the big bread-knife on the kitchen table and without pausing to adjust his aim stuck it viciously into his brother’s neck. He made sure that he would never wear his purple polka-dot tie again as he slashed it through the middle as he pulled the knife out of his throat. It was covered in blood anyway.
THE THIRD WORLD
There was a rich man and a poor man. The poor man had to carry the rich man around on his back. They went here, there, and everywhere. They went up hill and down dale. They met Tom, Dick and Harry and Rothschilds and Rockefellers and O’Reillys. The poor man slept in the cardboard city created by the rich and the rich man slept in the glitzy hotel built by the poor. But every morning the same sun shone on the rich man’s face and on the poor man’s bum.
The rich man dug his heels into the poor man’s neck in order to feel more comfortable. The poor man wrapped the rich man’s ankles around his chest in order to feel more safe.
Whenever they saw anything valuable or useful on their journey around the world – food or jewels or oil or riches or minerals or fish – the rich man would kindly ask, “Hey, why don’t you pick that up and I will carry it for you?”
translated by the author
Micheál Ó Conghaile, Fourfront
