The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘Fuckin’ answer me, Homer, when I’m talkin’. Y’ever been cut with a Stanley knife, y’know, them little knives they have for cuttin’ up wallpaper?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Well it hurts, Homer. Believe you me, it hurts.’

  ‘Anyways, when they’ve finished cuttin’ me they pull out a blade the size of yer cock, Homer. They show it to me and and then they tell me again to get out. And I said I would. Pronto. Because y’don’t fuck around with the RA, Homer. They shot me brother dead two years ago, did y’know that? Yeah. Comin’ out of a pub in town. And bang. Back of the head, Homer. Three inches behind the ear. Undertakers had to take his fuckin’ head to the morgue in a plastic bag. So I know what I’m talkin’ about here.’

  ‘Yes, boys, right enough, says I. I’ll shag away off t’England. But then didn’t you step in, Homer. And now here I am. In Homer Simpson’s gaff. Sure it suits me grand. They don’t know I’m here and neither does anyone else. Perfect. So the long and the short is yer stuck with me, Homer. I’m stayin’ here as long as I fancy it.’

  ‘You certainly aren’t. Get out of here before I call the police.’

  He strode over and punched me just once in the side of the head. The room danced. He sat on my chest, his knees pinning my arms to the floor. His face was bright red and his teeth were gritted. ‘Listen to me, yeh gunner-eyed prick yeh’ – he put his hands around my throat and began to squeeze hard on my windpipe – ‘if y’start, I’ll go straight to the pigs meself, I swear to fuck, and I’ll say y’picked me up in on the quays and brung me out here and molested me. I’ll put one hand on any bible and swear yer the biggest perverted queer in Ireland.’

  He squeezed harder. Black spots loomed up in my eyes.

  ‘I’ll say y’took the clothes off me and touched me up. And then bet me round the place for yer kicks. That’s happened me before, Homer. I know all about that kind of shite.’

  ‘All right,’ I managed to croak. ‘OK then.’

  He climbed off me and went to get the hockey stick. While his back was still turned, I half got up and tried, bent double, to make another move for the hall. Just as I made it to the doorway he turned and leapt on my back, his hands on my neck again. I fell over. He dragged me to my feet and shoved me into the middle of the kitchen again. I was so weak now that I could barely stand.

  ‘I feel like a bite of lunch now,’ he said.

  He grabbed me by the hair and hauled me over to the fridge. He opened the door, tore out the top shelf and flung it and its contents across the room into the sink. He grabbed up a saucepan and started smashing at the inside of the fridge with it. When he had finished he glared across at me.

  ‘Make us a sandwich, Homer.’

  I got the bread out of the bread bin. He went to the sink, fished around for a moment and pulled out a few slices of ham, which he sniffed before handing to me. I opened the drawer and went to pick up a knife.

  ‘Don’t be a comedian, Homer. Use a bleedin’ spoon if you don’t want that between yer shoulderblades.’

  My hands were shaking. I picked out a teaspoon, spread butter on the bread and made him a sandwich. He tore it in two and started to devour it, his eyes wild now as he swallowed.

  ‘Very nice too,’ he said. ‘But you can have this half, Homer.’

  I told him I didn’t want it.

  ‘I said fuckin’ have it before I burst yeh.’

  He lifted the top slice of bread, loudly cleared his throat and spat into the sandwich.

  ‘Now, eat it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ll eat that, Homer,’ he smiled.

  ‘I won’t.’

  He sighed and stared at me while he slowly chewed. He finished his half. He licked his fingers one by one. Then he strolled over to me, his fist clenched, and thrust his forearm up in the air as though about to hit me. I put my hands over my head. He grabbed me by the balls and squeezed hard. I opened my mouth and screamed. He started pushing bits of the sandwich into my mouth. I slumped over the table and threw up. He stood watching me, with his arms folded. He took my cigarettes from my pocket and lit one up.

  ‘Now, Homer. Say grace after meals.’

  He held the lit cigarette in front of my wet eyes and stared at me.

  ‘I said, say grace after meals, Homer.’

  My throat felt raw. ‘Bless us o Lord …’

  He slapped my face hard.

  ‘That’s grace before meals, y’fuckin’ Protestant. Grace after meals. Y’do know it, don’t yeh? We give thee thanks.’

  ‘We give thee thanks, almighty God.’

  He waggled his finger at me. ‘No, no. On your knees, Homer. Show some respect.’

  I went down on my knees.

  ‘We give thee thanks, almighty God, for all thy benefits, who livest and reignest, for ever and ever.’

  ‘Amen,’ he smiled.

  His face darkened. He reached behind himself and pulled my hammer out of his belt.

  He ordered me to stand and turn around. I tried again for the door but he was too quick. He yanked me back by my shirt with such force that the buttons ripped off and shot across the room. He elbowed me hard in the side and I doubled up. ‘You’re one contrary little get, Homer, y’know that?’ He dragged me from the kitchen, out through the back door, down the steps. I stumbled and fell sideways into the rockery. He took a hold on my calves and began dragging me over the stones and then down the garden, my back sliding on the grass. He hauled me right through the drainage trench without stopping. I heard my shirt and trousers rip, tried to to kick at him but it was no use, he got up speed, he was actually running now, cantering along backwards as he dragged me past the apple tree.

  He dropped my legs and opened the aviary gate. His chest was heaving. He told me to stand.

  ‘Get in there, Homer,’ he said.

  My knees felt liquid with fear. I told him no.

  ‘Get in, Homer.’

  ‘No.’

  He sighed and looked around himself.

  ‘I’ll bleedin’ kill yeh with me bare hands. I’ve done it before now. I was in the army. I was in the Lebanon, Homer. Didn’t know that about me, did yeh?’

  He saluted. ‘Private Donal Quinn, engineer’s corps.’

  He took a sudden stagger backwards and glared up at the sky. ‘Christ, man, what’s that?’

  I looked up.

  He lunged forward and head-butted me hard, right in the forehead. I sank to my knees, head reeling. When I opened my eyes I saw splashes of blood on my palms. I put my fingers to my nose and looked up. He was holding the hammer in his right hand and slapping it against his hip while he laughed.

  ‘I don’t fuckin believe it. Homer the halfwit, he fell for the auld look-up.’

  I lay back trembling in the grass. For a while he just stared at me, nodding, like he was thinking about something. And then suddenly his face went solemn with fury. He pointed the hammer at me.

  ‘I know what it is to kill someone,’ he said, in a quiet voice. ‘It doesn’t bother me. I’d worry more about pickin’ me nose. So I swear to Christ, you’re gettin’ into that thing, pal, or I’ll split your scalp down to your arse right now and burn this place to the ground and no one’ll ever even know I was here.’

  I stood up, my stomach boiling, and started to climb into the aviary. My vision was cloudy, my left eye was begining to close. Half-way in I thought I was about to faint. He grabbed my thighs and pushed me. I fell in forward and banged my head on the metal floor. It smelt of shit. He slammed the gate shut behind me and chuckled gently as he locked it.

  ‘Poor Homer,’ he said, and he bashed the thick steel mesh with the hammer. ‘Poor auld Homer’s all lonesome now.’

  He pointed at the sky and howled with laughter. ‘Look up, Homer,’ he cackled. ‘You just keep lookin’ up now. Here’s one little junkie’s gonna make sure y’see the fuckin’ stars.’

  He walked the length of the garden and went into the house.

  I la
y on my back and tried to get my breath. I felt the acrid, metallic taste of blood in the back of my throat. My arms and legs were trembling badly. Across the ditch I thought I could hear the distant sound of an old car being revved up and driven around the back field by the travellers.

  I got to my knees and tried the gate but could not open it.

  I sat back down and looked out through the bars. My left ankle was throbbing with sharp, insistent pain. I tried to concentrate. See things clearly. I tried to run back over what happened in the kitchen, get it straight. Every time I had turned my back to him he had hit me. I told myself that I would have to remember this, when he let me out, not to turn my back to him. Look at him head on. That way I might have some chance.

  I knew that I had to think about something, focus fast on something – anything – to stop myself panicking. In my head I began to list out all the towns you go through on the drive from Dublin to Galway, then I did Dublin to Belfast, after that Dublin to Cork. Stations on the Dart line, the names of all my first cousins, all the cars I had ever owned, the names of the weather stations in the meteorological report on the radio at night – Malin Head, Fair Isle, Rockall – the seven deadly sins, the surnames of the neighbours who lived on the street in Ringsend, the ten gifts of the Holy Spirit, all the states in America. I forced my mind to keep going, just making lists. The names of your friends. The names of Lizzie’s friends. It seemed to work, somehow it stopped the fear biting into me completely. After a while I even felt it subside a little.

  When I looked at my watch it said quarter to five. That confused me. I thought it must be later than that. Names of the kings and queens of England, the thirty-two counties of Ireland in alphabetical order, all the shops on my patch. But when I next glanced at the watch, it was still reading quarter to five; it had stopped or been broken in the fight. I had no idea how much time had passed.

  Then panic started to well up again. My head was aching, I could think of no more lists to make. For some reason it frightened me to the core that I was not in a position to know how much time was passing. I stared at the ground outside the cage and tried to focus my eyes on something small. I started trying to count the number of daisies I could see but quickly got lost. I focused even smaller. A spider’s web glistened in the bars of the cage. A line of fleas crawled along one of the perches. Outside, a ladybird was scuttling along the spine of a broad leaf of snipegrass. I followed it with my eyes. Suddenly I saw a nail. Just lying there in a tuft of dock leaves, a rusty bent nail, I told myself the builders must have dropped it when they were working in the garden. I stretched my hand out through the bars, but could not reach the nail no matter how hard I tried. I rolled up my sleeve and tried again. I pushed harder, until I could feel the skin on my arms being torn by the bars. With the very tips of my fingers I managed to brush the nail and roll it backways towards me, until I could grip it between my middle and index fingers. I moved my arm as slowly as I could so as not to drop the nail into the grass. In it came, in through the bars. I pushed it into the eye of the lock and rotated it. I jiggled it and pulled it, I tried just inserting the point and gently working the body of the nail. I do not know how long I did this, my clammy fingers just moving the nail around as softly as I could in the lock, thrown half-glances all the time at the house. But nothing happened. The sky began to turn orange and gold.

  I noticed lights going on in the upper windows. I hid the nail in my pocket and lay down, pretending to be asleep. I saw him up in my bedroom. He had the wardrobe open and seemed to be pulling clothes out of it, throwing shirts and pullovers and slacks over his shoulder. After a while he disappeared from view and the light went off. A few moments later I hear loud thudding sounds from the house, a wrenching sound like wood being broken. And then I could see that he had gone into your room.

  I jumped to my feet. ‘Get out of that room,’ I screamed. ‘Get out of there.’

  But either he did not hear or did not care. I could clearly see him moving around your room, a black silhouette against the dull yellow glow of the blind. I saw from his shadow that he was swigging a bottle and eating something. Moments later he peeled off his shirt. I heard the sound of glass shattering and then another loud, solid thud, as though something heavy had hit the floor. The light in your room went out.

  As the sun continued to fade, the garden grew noisier. I remember chaffinches and flycatchers whistling in the bushes, the old pheasant croaking up there in the apple tree, the call of a cuckoo in the travellers’ field, from the sky the sharp, clear screech of a blackcap. Wind rustled in the rushes. The crickets began to chirp. I listened hard for the stream but could not hear it.

  Darkness came down slowly over the garden. The stars began to appear. It was clear on that night, so cloudless that soon I could distinguish the different colours of the stars. This helped me, simply because it occurred to me before too long that I could list these too. There was the Plough, there was Cygnus and Hercules. There was Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor, there was Pegasus. I tried to recognise as many of the constellations as I could and give them their names. Then I tried to recall others. I trawled through my memory. Cepheus. Tucana. Corona Borealis, whenever I remembered a name I would say it aloud. It became a victory to remember another name. I thought of Stevie and me in the back yard as children, having slipped out on to the coal-house roof after your grandparents were asleep, his trembling finger pointing out the stars and constellations, his soft hesitant voice just whispering their names, with awe, almost with fear, as though if the stars were to hear him they might somehow take fright and disappear.

  Aquila.

  Delphinus.

  Andromeda.

  Vulpecula.

  Arcturs.

  Draco.

  Castor.

  Ophiuchus.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Some time later that night I woke up shuddering. My neck was aching, my throat dry as hot sand. My ankle felt like a blunt spike of pure pain had been knocked through it. It took a minute or two for my eyes to adjust to the thick, velvety darkness of the garden. A small rat was nuzzling the wire just by my hand. I lurched away and it scampered into the bushes.

  Over by the stable block I saw the glow of his cigarette. He flicked it through the air.

  ‘Well, well, girls, would y’look at our big hero now.’

  He stepped out from behind the apple tree. It was too dark to see his features but I could make out the shape of his wiry body. He was drinking from one of my bottles of wine. He slurped at it and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘Take a dekko at John Wayne now, ladies and gentlemen.’

  He sounded drunk. A torch sprang on. He shone it up into his own face.

  ‘Together again, Homer. Like the cheeks of me arse.’

  ‘Let me out.’

  ‘Comfortable in there, isn’t it, Homer? Like the Ritz fuckin’ Hotel in there.’

  ‘Let me out,’ I said. ‘I have a heart condition.’ My tongue was badly swollen. I must have bitten into it earlier when he had forced me to eat the sandwich.

  ‘Oh, I see. Homer has a heart now. It’s lately it happened him.’

  ’Let me out.’

  ‘Say please, Homer.’

  ‘Please.’

  He put his hand to his ear. ‘I didn’t hear that, Homer.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I’m gone a bit deaf, Homer.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Please what, Homer?’

  ‘Please let me out.’

  He stared at me. He flicked the torch on and off a few times.

  ‘Fuck yeh, Homer,’ he said, and he strolled up the garden.

  After he left I must have slept again, because I remember having a dreadful dream. I was walking alone through a sloping, wet, green field near the sea shore. Some kind of battle was going on there but I could not see it. I could only hear it. Around me rose the deafening screams of men and animals, the sound of iron clashing on iron, the thundering of horses’ hooves on th
e earth. Someone kept roaring my name, but still I could see nothing except the trees in the field, the light blue sky, in the distance the white tips of the waves. Suddenly I saw myself as though from above. I was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. And then the noise began to grow even louder. Before long I could stand it no longer. I sank to my knees in the mud, hands to my ears. A church bell rang. Seànie appeared before me, weeping, his priest’s robes completely drenched with blood, the bell in one hand and a spear in the other. He seemed to be trying to speak to me, but the sounds around me were so loud and intense by now that I could not make out what he said.

  I was awakened by the hysterical screaming of birds. The daylight was already bright white as salt. When I closed my eyes I saw rhythmic orange flashes. A faint echo of the awful noise from the dream seemed to sound. My back was stiff and sore, my neck was dully aching. For a moment or two I was not even sure where I was. Then I remember the sunlight glinting between the bars, dazzling me and forcing me to move my head, which made me groan with pain. I was so incredibly thirsty that I cannot describe it to you.

  Quinn was sitting in the grass, chewing speculatively like a curious cow and staring in at me. His face was clean-shaven, he looked younger and healthier. He took out a match and began to pick his teeth with it.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo, Homer,’ he said. ‘Sleep well in there?’

  I said nothing. When I moved I felt a spasm shoot across the top of my back. Then I noticed that the mobile phone from my car was lying in the grass beside him.

  ‘Good. Well, I’d a grand night’s sleep in your bed, Homer. The sheets were disgustin’ though. The filth of them. Would y’not change yer sheets sometimes, Homer, no? You and the boyfriend?’

  I got to my feet and tried to walk up and down the cage, but my calves and knees were pulsating with pain. When I tried to put weight on my left ankle, an excruciating pang bolted through my foot making me gasp.

  ‘Don’t feel like doin’ the Macarena, Homer, no? Don’t want me to come in there and give y’a dance.’

  I eased myself down on to my backside and tried to not cry out.