Fourfront, page 2
– It’s not him at all. Some kind of evil spirit. Some kind of malevolent changeling that causes havoc if he doesn’t get his own way. He’s not of this world at all, I’m more than certain of that. How do we know that he’s not the devil incarnate in some kind of disguise? The spawn of Satan. He was always an Antichrist. He hasn’t come back for our good, I’ll tell you that . . . he doesn’t deserve to live.
– Pretending all the time that he was a bit simple. Abit gaga. Nobody at home, like. I suppose he thinks now that we believe that he was that simple that he couldn’t tell he should stay pegged out the way he was like any decent corpse with a wisp of sense. Like any decent corpse with any respect for the unfortunate creatures he had left behind. Himself and his stupid, inane, asshole simplicity. A bad bastardy ball-brained bollux . . . Let’s be fair, he doesn’t deserve to live . . .
– I’ll never get the widow’s pension. Fat chance as long as that fat turd is around. I’ll be disgraced and mortified again like the last time when he shagged off and they called me the “live man’s widow”. We can’t let him get away with it again. It would be apalling, unjust. He’s a cheating lying deceiver anyway – letting on he was dead, the little shite. That was below the belt. The lying scumbag. He got his just desserts. If he crapped out as cold meat, let him stay crapped out to push up daisies like any half-decent man. It’s bad enough when someone is a sly chancer in this life, but when they come back from the dead to be a sly chancer again it’s ten times worse. We’ve yapped on long enough about him . . . he doesn’t deserve to live . . .
– I got to him just in time. Just in time to anoint him. I wouldn’t have, of course, if I hadn’t left my fine dinner to go cold on me. I certainly wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t have made his last sincere confession if it hadn’t been for me. A true and genuine confession from the bottom of his heart . . . real soul-searching stuff. When he was fading away and his breath coming in short wheezy gasps, I said the Act of Contrition right into his ear. I did, I did that. And before my prayer could go through his thick head and out through the other ear – puff! – he popped off. Croaked. Out for the last count. But it didn’t matter, I had forgiven him all his sins, even the very worst of them, every single one of them – and I can tell you they were many and varied . . . robbery, calumny, lies, cursing and swearing, blasphemy, lechery and whoring and whoring and lechering . . . Not to mention all the newfangled sins he had deliberately learned from the New Catechism. I’d be here until morning . . . or beyond. By the time I was finished with him he was ready to go; as ready and as steady as a strong stone bridge, and maybe he was halfway across it on his journey to Paradise if the fool had only kept going . . . The next time, yes the next time, the unfortunate man may not be half as prepared. Maybe he’d be caught off guard, on the hop. And as regards the altar offerings, they were the biggest that I have ever seen for a deceased man in this diocese. He must have been held in the greatest respect, or the greatest disrespect as the case may be and people were relieved to see him gone. All those fivers, and tenners, and even a few twenties . . . and all the Mass cards . . . hundreds of them with a fiver stuck in them all. Enough money for half the devils in hell to buy their ticket to Heaven. I’d never be able to give them all back, never – I’ve already booked two fortnights in Bangkok, put a fat deposit on a new car . . . and why not? An extension wouldn’t be good for him anyway. More time would be bad news. I’m only for his own good. His soul was as pure and as scrubbed-clean as the new marble on a memorial monument. He wouldn’t be half as ready the next time – that is, if there is to be a next time. He couldn’t possibly be as prepared as he was, or his soul as ready to meet his Maker. I mean, if I was to be called out again to anoint him, I couldn’t really be expected to . . . I mean, how could I believe that kind of a call. Once bitten twice shy and all that. He’d be the worst for it, he’d be the one to suffer. Another sackload of sins accumulated, one blacker than the other. God’s will be done. We’re only for his own good. In the name of God and of His Blessed Mother, and for all our sakes and the sake of all the saints and the suffering holy souls in Purgatory who are in torment, but most of all for his own sake, I have to say to you . . . that . . . he doesn’t deserve to live . . .
– He doesn’t deserve to live . . .
– Do away with him . . .
– Send him back to where he came from . . .
– Finish the job . . .
– Good riddance . . .
– For once and for all . . .
– For ever and ever . . .
– Amen.
They beat his legs. Broke his bones. Twisted his arms. Tortured his limbs. Split his skull in two places. They smeared blood on his face, on every part of him. Tore out his hair. Ripped out one of his balls. Bruised him black and blue with their boots and kicking. Stabbed him with knives, stabbed him anywhere they could find unstabbed flesh. Children spat and snotted at him . . .
After that they blessed the body.
translated by Alan Titley
Father
How was I supposed to know what to do – once I’d told him? I’d never seen my da crying before. Even when mum died nine months ago in the accident, he never cried as far as I know. I’m sure of it because it was I brought him the bad news. And I was around the whole time, up to and after the funeral. It was my job to stay with him. His brothers and my mother’s brothers – my uncles – made all the arrangements, shouldered the coffin. And it was the neighbours, instructed by my sisters, who kept the house in some order. There was a sort of an understanding – unspoken, mind you – that it was best I stay with dad since I was the youngest, the only one still at home all year round.
That’s how I’m nearly sure he didn’t shed a tear. Not in the daylight hours anyway. He didn’t need his hanky even. Sure, he was all over the place, you could hardly get a word out of him. Long silences would go by and he just stared into the fire or out the kitchen window. But no tears. Maybe it was the shock. The terrible shock to his system. But then again, you wouldn’t really associate tears or crying with my father.
That’s why I was so taken aback. Mortified. Not just the crying. But the way he cried. In fact, you couldn’t really call it crying – it was more like something between a groan and a sob stuck in his throat. Yes, a muffled, pained sigh of revulsion a few seconds long. You’d’ve thought he choked on it like one of those horrible pills the doctor gives you. And he didn’t even look at me, except for a stray watery glance that skirred by when I told him; afterwards, it was like he was trying to hide his face from me, half of it anyway. It should’ve been easier for him in a way; but not for me, there was no way I could look him in the face, for all my curiosity. So, while he dithered about, I sat there like a statue – only for my body-heat. The breath was knocked out of him; and me. Then I realized that even his smothered cry – if it could be let out – was better than this silence. Maybe you could do something about the cry, if it happened. Adeadly silence was unworkable, impossible, as long drawnout and painful as a judgment. I felt all the time that he wasn’t looking anywhere near me, even when he got his breath back and some speech.
“And you . . .” he said, as if the word stuck or swelled up in his throat until he didn’t know if it was safe to release it or rather he hoped, perhaps, that I would say it – the word that had popped in his ears just now, a word he was never likely to form in his rural throat unless it was spat out in some smutty joke for the lads down the pub. Aword there wasn’t even a word for in Irish, not easy to find anyway . . . I forgot I hadn’t answered him, carried away trying to read his mind when suddenly he repeated:
“Are you telling me you’re . . .”
“Yes,” I said, half-consciously interrupting him with the same reticence, unsure whether he was going to finish his sentence this time, or not.
“I am,” I said again quickly, uncontrollably, trying for a moment to make up for the empty silence.
“God save us,” he said. “God save us,” he said again as if he had to drag the words individually all the way from Mexico. It seemed to me he wanted to say more, anything, an answer or just some ready-made platitude, a string of words to pluck from the silence.
“Do you see that now?” he complained, taking a deep sniff of the kitchen air and blowing it out again with force. “Do you see that now?”
He grabbed the coal-bucket and opened the range to top up the fire. Then he lifted a couple of bits of turf out of the 10-10-20 plastic bag beside the range and – breaking the last two bits in half over his knee to build up his corner of the crammed space of the open range – shoved it on top. The coal was too hot – and too dear, he’d say – plus it was hard to burn the turf sometimes, or get much heat out of it, especially if it was still a bit soggy after a bad summer . . . He took the handbrush off the hook and swept any powdery bits of turf on the range into the fire. He slid the curly iron frame back into place with a clatter and took another deep breath, focusing on the range.
“And have you told your sisters about this?”
“Yes. When they were home this summer; the night before they went back to England.”
He stopped a moment, still half-stooped over the range. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, making no sound, like a goldfish in a bowl. He tried again and, still choked with emotion, managed a broken sentence:
“And your mother – did she know?”
“Dunno,” I said. “Mothers know a lot more than they get told.”
“They do, they do. God rest them.” He blessed himself, awkwardly. “But fathers know nothing. Nothing until it’s spelt out for them.”
He was standing at the table filling an already full kettle with well-water from the bucket. He placed it on the range again as if he was making tea the way he did after milking-time. He always made tea with well-water, boiling it in the old kettle instead of using tap-water and the electric kettle unless it was early in the morning when he’d no time. It would save on the electric, he said. Even mum couldn’t get him to change. She wanted rid of the range altogether since the electric cooker was more consistent, more dependable for everything – dinners, cooking, boiling, baking, heating milk for the calves... There’s always the chance of a power cut, he’d say whenever there was a storm or thunder. If the electric runs out, it’ll come in handy. And any time it happened, he’d turn to us, delighted, and say: “Aren’t you glad now of the old range?”
He lifted the poker. Opened the top door of the range. Plunged it in to stir up the fire, trying to draw some flames from the depths. When the embers didn’t respond very well, he turned the knob at the top of the range somewhat clumsily, making the chimney suck up the flame. He poked the fire another couple of times, a bit deeper, trying to let the air through. Soon there were flames dancing, blue and red, licking the dark sods and fizzing and flitting over the hard coal, shyly at first but growing in courage and strength. He closed the door with a deep thud, turning the knob firmly with his left hand, and put the poker back in the corner.
“And what about Síle Jimí Beag?” he asked suddenly, as if surprised he hadn’t asked about her earlier. “Weren’t you going out with her a few years ago?” he said, a hint of hope rising in his voice.
“Yes . . . in a way,” I stammered. I knew that was no answer but it was the best I could do just then.
“In a way,” he repeated. “What do you mean? You were or you weren’t. Wasn’t she coming here for a year and God knows how long before that? Didn’t she leave Tomáisín Tom Mhary for you?” He stared at the bars over the range.
“But I was only . . . only eighteen back then,” I said, changing my mind. “Nobody knows what they want at that age, or where they’re going,” I added.
“But they do at twenty-two, it seems! They think they know it all at twenty-two.”
“It’s not that simple, really,” I said, surprising myself at going so far.
“Oh, sure, it’s not simple. It’s anything but!”
He pushed the kettle aside and opened the top of the range again as if he was checking to see the fire was still lit. It was.
“I went out with her, because I didn’t know – I didn’t know what to do, because all the other lads had a girl . . .”
“Oh, you were . . .”
“I asked her in the first place because I had to take somebody to the school formal. Everyone was taking some girl or other. I couldn’t go alone. And it would’ve been odd to take Máirín or Eilín. They wouldn’t have gone anyway. I couldn’t stay at home because I’d’ve been the only one in my class not there. What else could I do?” I said, amazed I’d managed to get that much out.
“How do I know what you should’ve done? Couldn’t you just be like everyone else . . . that, that or stay home?” There was something about the way he said “home”.
“I couldn’t,” I said, “not forever . . . It’s not that I didn’t try . . .” I thought it best to go no further, afraid he wouldn’t understand.
“So that’s what brings you up to Dublin so much,” he said, glad to have worked that much out for himself.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose.” What else could I say, I thought.
“And we were all convinced you had a woman up there. People asking me if we’d met her yet . . . or when we’d get to see her. Aunty Nóra asking just the other day when we’d have the next wedding . . . thinking a year after your mother’s death would be OK.”
“Aunty Nóra doesn’t have to worry about me. It’s as well she didn’t get married herself anyway,” I said, scunnered as soon as I’d said it at the suggestion I was making.
“Up to Dublin! Huh.” He spoke to himself. “Dublin’s quare and dangerous,” he added, in a way that didn’t require an answer.
He turned around, his back to the range. Clambered over to the kitchen table. Tilted the milk-cooler with his two hands to pour a drop of it into the jug till it was near overflowing. I was glad he never spilt any on the table, ready to clean it up if I had to. I felt awkward and ashamed sitting there watching him do this – my job usually. He poured the extra milk that wouldn’t fit in the jug into the saucepan the calves used and set it on the side of the range to heat it up until the cows were milked; after that he’d see to the calves. He lifted the enamel milk-bucket that was always set on the table-rails once it was cleaned every morning after the milking. Then he gave it a good scalding with hot water from the kettle – water boiled stupid that had the kettle singing earlier. He set down the kettle, with its mouth turned in, back on the side of the range so that it wouldn’t boil over with the heat. He swirled the scalding water around the bottom of the bucket and then emptied it in one go into the calves’ saucepan. He stretched over a bit to grab the dishcloth off the rack above the range. Dried the bucket. Hung it up again rather carelessly, watching to see it didn’t roll down on top of the range. It didn’t.
All at once, he straightened up as if a thought had suddenly struck him. He turned round to me. Looked for a second as our eyes met and went over each other. The look he gave was different from the first – that soft sudden glance he gave me when I first told him. I noticed the wrinkles across his forehead, some curled, some squared off, the short grey hair pulled down in a fringe, the eyebrows: the eyes. What eyes! It was those eyes drove out of me whatever dream was going through my head just then. Those eyes caught me out all right. Those eyes that could say so much without him even having to open his mouth. I understood then that the only way to look at a man was right in the eyes, even if it was a casual side-glance, on the sly . . . I looked away, couldn’t take any more, grateful that he took it upon himself to speak. He had the bucket tucked up under his armpit the way he did when he was going out milking.
“And what about your health?” he managed to say, nervously. “Is your health OK?”
“Oh, I’m fine, just fine,” I replied quick as I could, more than glad to be able to give such a clear answer. I started tapping my fingers. Then it struck me just what he was asking.
“God preserve us from the like of that,” he said over his shoulder to me, on his way to the door. You could tell he was relieved.
“You don’t have to worry,” I said, trying to build his trust, having got that far. “I’m careful. Very careful. Always.”
“Can you be a hundred per cent careful?” he added curiously, his voice more normal. “I mean if half what’s in the Sunday papers and the week’s TV is true.”
I let him talk away, realizing he probably knew much more than I thought. Wasn’t the TV always turned towards him, with all sorts of talk going on in some of the programmes while he sat there in the big chair with his eyes closed, dozing by the fire it seemed but probably taking it all in.
He took his coat down off the back of the door, set it over the chair.
“And did you have to tell me all this at my age?”
“Yes and no.” I’d said it before I realized, but I continued: “Well, I’m not saying I had to, but I was afraid you’d hear it from someone else, afraid someone’d say something about me with you there.” I thought I was getting through. “I thought you should know anyway; I thought you were ready.”
“Ready! I’m ready now all right . . . And are you telling me people round here know?” he said, disgusted.
“Yes, as it happens. You can’t hide anything . . . especially in a remote place like this.”
“And you think you can stay around here?” he exclaimed in what sounded to me like horror. His words hit home so quick I didn’t know whether they were meant as a statement or a question. Did they require an answer: from me or himself, I wondered. Sure, I was intending to stay, or I should say, happy to stay. He was my father. I was the youngest, the only son. My two sisters had emigrated. It was down to me. Although my sisters had convinced me the night before they went away that there was always a place for me in London if I needed it.
Surely, he should’ve known I would want to stay. Who else would look out for him? Help with the few animals we had, look after the house, keep an eye on our wee bit of a farm, see he was all right, take him to Mass on Sunday, keep him company . . . “And you think you can stay around here,” I wondered, none the wiser, still trying to work out whether I was to take it as a question or a statement; if he expected an answer or not.
