The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘I’m saying you’ll have to go.’

  ‘D’want to see me when I wake up in the mornin’, Homer. Hard as a knacker’s boot I am. It’d scare the shite outta yeh.’

  He stood up and opened his fly. ‘Want t’see?’

  ‘No.’

  He zipped himself and sat back down to the chessboard. He peered scrupulously at it as he moved the pieces around, although after a short while I noticed that he was only moving the white ones.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘What were we talkin’ about?’

  ‘You leaving.’

  He nodded. ‘Oh yeah. The stable, Homer, that’s right. I remember now, yeah.’

  ‘You’ll have to go.’

  He slid the white queen across the squares and flicked a bishop off the board. ‘The thing is, Homer, I’m after makin’ a place for meself down there. While y’were out strollin’.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m after cleanin’ it out a bit. See, I got to thinkin’ about it and I don’t want to be in your way up in the house. Fair’s fair like. So I’ll be grand down there. I’m after findin’ a bit of a camp-bed up above and I brung that down for meself, and a few sheets and blankets.’

  I noticed now that there were chairs and a coffee-table under the apple tree, along with a few cushions and the beanbag out of your room.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re playing at, Quinn?’

  He laughed. ‘Chess, Homer.’

  A scabrous-looking blackbird scampered across the grass, darting its head at the ground.

  ‘Look, you’ll really have to get out of here. I don’t want you here.’

  ‘Yeah. And look, I’m after borrowin’ a few of yer things and some food I found in the fridge. And I took a bottle of wine from under the sink. And a few auld magazines. I hope that’s OK. Is that OK, Homer, yeah?’

  ‘This is my house. Get out of it.’

  ‘Thanks. And I took a few of yer shirts and knickers by the way. But when I split I’ll send y’the dough for them, don’t worry, Homer. And I’m after havin’ a bath because I was stinkin’. I managed to turn yer water back on in the bathroom by the way, yer stopcock was banjaxed. Always feel better after a scrub meself, Homer, do you? On them hot sticky days?’

  ‘You get out of here now,’ I said, ‘before you regret it.’

  ‘Yer a decent skin, Homer,’ he said ‘Anyone ever tell y’that, no?’ He jumped up, grabbed the beer can – ‘if there was more like you in the world, things’d be only fuckin’ mighty’ – and sauntered down the garden, into the stable.

  I stood still, I suppose wondering what to do. He emerged after a few moments and peered around himself at the ground, irritatedly toeing the grass as though he was looking for something he had lost. Suddenly he saw it. He leaned down and picked up Sheehan’s shotgun. He rubbed the barrel carefully with his sleeve and pointed it at the sky.

  ‘Bang,’ he roared.

  Birds scattered out of the trees.

  He turned around and pointed the gun at me. ‘Bang, Homer,’ he called. ‘I like a good bang of a summer’s evenin’. Do you?’

  He went back into the stable and closed the door. I heard the thunk of bolts being drawn.

  The following morning I woke up in my bed, but still thinking for a moment that I was in the cage. It took me a while to calm down. I turned over on my side and tried to go back to sleep but could not. The room was sweltering and airless. From somewhere in the distance I could hear the insistent drone of a lawnmower floating on the breeze. When I got up and opened the window the garden smelled of roses and phlox. Wasps were buzzing crazily around the flower-beds. Far off in the back field I could see the traveller women hanging laundry on lines strung between the caravans, a scrawny boy feeding a donkey, the bronzed men beefy and hot-looking as they lumbered around in suit trousers and string vests, kicking a football to each other.

  I envied them.

  I put on some clothes and went out to the landing. The floor was strewn with bits of broken wood from where he had burst down the door of your bedroom. Your dressing table looked as though it had vomited its contents. I noticed that the poster of James Joyce on the wall beside the window had a long, jagged tear all the way down the middle, also, that Dominic’s guitar had been smashed in two and was lying on the floor in a crumpled tangle of strings. I went down to the ruined kitchen and made coffee. I sat at the table for a while trying to rehearse what I was going to say. There was a pack of cigarettes beside the sink and I smoked a few. For some reason, I could not stop thinking about the travellers. Something I had once read came into my mind, about how the travelling people are the true descendants of the Milesians, the ancient Irish who settled the land long centuries ago, only to be dispossessed during the oh-so-famous fucking Famine. I thought about the sleety winter morning one of them had come to the door selling heather – a middle-aged woman with dark, wrinkled, nutty skin and haughty Iberian eyes. She had been so cold that she was shivering in her tartan blanket. I had asked her if she wanted a hot drink but she said no. I told her that I had no use for heather but I would give her some money anyway. She shook her head very firmly. She could not take money for nothing, it was bad luck, but she would tell my palm if I wanted. I held out my hand.

  ‘You’re a travellin’ man yourself, love,’ she winced, her teeth set against the chill. ‘I see fierce roads.’

  I laughed and told her I was a salesman.

  ‘There you are so,’ she said. She held my hand lightly and nodded as she traced along it with her thumb. ‘God will bless you on the roads if you ask His protection. An angel in heaven is waitin’ to go before y’in the sky. No harm can be done you – the divine protection is there but must be asked for.’ When I gave her the few pounds I had in my pocket she kissed her index finger three times and touched the frame of the door with it. ‘May the devil never enter this house.’

  I had watched her pad down the frosty driveway, clutching the rug hard around herself as the wet snow began to fall. This blazing summer morning four months ago I found myself wondering where she was now.

  When I had finished the coffee I stuck my head under the cold tap for a minute, took a few deep breaths and headed out to the garden.

  In front of the stable he was sitting on a deck-chair and reading a magazine. He had on my prescription sunglasses and a blue and white striped rugby shirt which I had seen both Dominic and yourself wear. Now the sleeves had been ripped from it. There was a beer glass half-full of red wine on the grass, beside a plate on which were the remains of a sandwich, a pear, a few plum stones. He let me just stand there for a while before finally he looked up at me.

  ‘Mornin’, JimBob,’ he said.

  ‘Listen, you’ll have to leave,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but you’ve proved it, all right? So go.’

  He picked up the pear and bit into it, wiping the juice from his chin.

  ‘I slept very well, thanks,’ he gurgled. ‘And yerself?’

  ‘Will you go now?’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘You wanted me, Homer. Now y’have me.’

  ‘Well, I want you to go now.’

  ‘I didn’t ask to be brung here.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know you’d dig in like a tick.’

  ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘Funny, Homer.’ He flipped a page of the magazine.

  ‘Will you go now?’

  He held up the magazine so I could see the centre pages. A photograph of a gorgeous young black woman, sashaying along a tropical beach in a brief red bikini.

  ‘Isn’t she one beaut, Homer?’ he said.

  ‘Will you go now?’

  He closed the magazine and shook his head. ‘You’re really startin’ to fuckin’ bore me, Homer. And y’know what happens me when I get bored?’

  ‘What?’

  Suddenly he’s on his feet and clutching my arms so tight that I’m sore. His mouth is open wide. ‘I GO FUCKIN’ CRAZY HOMER,’ he screams. ‘FUCKIN CRAZY.’ I
get the warm sweet smell of wine on his breath. He shoves me hard away from him. I trip, fall backwards against the apple tree. He picks up the beer glass, rushes over and holds it in front of my eyes, brandishing it. Wine slops against my face. His eyes narrow to tiny slits.

  ‘Leave me alone, Sweeney, I’m fuckin’ warnin’ yeh. Don’t keep on tryin’ to spoil everythin’. Or I swear to Jesus yeh’ll be sorry.’

  Round about tea-time I went down to him again. From inside the stable I could hear the crackle of the radio, an overexcited reporter commentating on a world cup match, the blare of horns, the swell of the cheering crowd in the stadium. I tried the door but it would not open. I kicked it hard a few times. The radio was turned down. The door opened and he peered out at me. His chin and cheeks were plastered with shaving foam and he had a disposable razor in his hand. I noticed that for some reason his fingers were heavily bandaged.

  ‘Homer,’ he said. ‘What’s up with yeh now?’

  ‘I think it’s only fair to tell you. I’m giving you ten minutes to get off my property and then I’m calling the guards.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He nodded. ‘Well, I’ll tell yeh what, Homer. I’ll make yeh one promise. If y’call the pigs up t’me, by Christ it’ll be the last thing y’ever do in yer life. Now go call them if you’re callin’ them. And I’ll be in here waitin’ when they arrive, OK?’

  He slammed the door closed. I heard the radio again. The volume went up louder than before, so that the voice was distorted and the roar of the crowd seemed much nearer.

  At half-past nine that night the radio was still on.

  When I looked out the kitchen window, I saw that he had lit a fire under the apple tree. He seemed to be cooking something in a frying pan. He glanced up and saw me watching him. He stuck a fork into the pan and pulled out a slimy, fat sausage. He waved the sausage in the air and laughed.

  At this stage I decided I had to get out for a walk.

  I got into the car and drove down to Dun Laoghaire. There was nowhere to park on the sea front. I put it into the underground at the shopping mall and walked back down Marine Road to the pier.

  The new night ferry had just left for Holyhead. It is a huge thing, the size of a football pitch, or so the radio advertisements have been saying. I watched it pull slowly away from the quay. It surged into the middle of the harbour, then did a three-point turn, sending six-foot washes breaking against the pier walls. It headed out past the lighthouse, churning up thick white waves behind it.

  I started to walk the pier. It was very crowded that night, as it always is on a hot evening in summer. I remember young kids zooming around on roller-blades and skateboards, doing wheelies on their mountain bikes. Sweaty teenagers in leather. A ceilidh band playing jigs and reels on the old bandstand, girls dancing in tartan kilts and sashes, one with a head shaved smooth as an egg. All around in a semicircle old people in striped deck-chairs, clapping or lilting along with the music. Business types with jackets slung over their shoulders. Down past the lifeboat memorial, a trio of policemen awkwardly kicking around a football with some laughing Spanish girls, goalposts marked out with navy caps on the flagstones. The water so clear and bluey green. A line of teenage boys fishing for mackerel. I was sitting on the bench down at the end and looking out at the ferry, far off in the distance now, when I noticed a plump sleek seal break through the surface of a rolling wave, its broad large-eyed head bobbing back and forth in the fizzling foam. It had a silver fish in its mouth. The fish was wriggling hard and trying to escape but the seal had its jaws clamped shut.

  For a few short seconds I felt something inside me relax. I closed my eyes and breathed in deep. The air smelt of salt and paraffin. I remember the sound of the ropes clanking on the yachts’ masts. I love it down there on a summer’s evening. I sometimes think that I could stay there for ever.

  I was walking back up towards the town when suddenly I saw Dominic coming towards me, linking arms with a tall, slim girl who had short cropped hair dyed peroxide white. She was wearing a black leather miniskirt, a black bikini top and tartan tights and seemed to be talking quickly, her hand chopping her palm, her fingers counting off points. Dominic was listening so intently to her that he did not see me until I was right in front of them.

  ‘Mr Sweeney,’ he said, wide-eyed.

  ‘Dominic, how’s tricks?’

  He was blushing now. ‘Oh, not too bad, thanks. And you?’

  ‘Grand, Dominic. Grand.’

  ‘This is amazing. What a coincidence.’

  ‘Isn’t it? I had a dream about you, Dominic, the other night actually.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at me as if he was expecting me to tell him all about it. When it became clear that I was not going to, he licked his lips a bit and stared at me.

  ‘So all’s good with you, Mr Sweeney, is it?’

  ‘Yes, Dominic, never better. Results out yet?’

  He shook his head. ‘Any day,’ he said. ‘Fingies crossed.’

  ‘Fingies?’ I said. The girl laughed. He blushed even deeper. ‘I mean fingers, sorry.’

  Then he peered at me again. ‘Are you sure you are all right? Because you don’t actually look the best, Mr Sweeney. Speaking as a medical student, I mean.’

  ‘I’m grand,’ I told him.

  ‘You look a bit strained or something, I don’t know. A bit stressed out. You’ve lost some weight. And are those bruises on your face?’

  I touched my cheek. ‘Oh, I gave myself a bang in the head at home, that’s all, Dominic. Walked slap into the freezer door like a fool. I meant to get a bit of steak to cure that shiner I have.’

  I looked at the girl.

  ‘Oh, this is Sinéad Caffrey,’ he said. ‘A friend from college. Sinéad, this is Maeve’s dad.’

  ‘Maeve?’

  ‘Yes. Maeve Sweeney. You know, that I told you about?’

  The girl seemed embarrassed as she shook my hand.

  On the drive home I thought a bit about Dominic. He looked so shamefaced, poor kid, when I saw him with that girl. As if I had caught him committing adultery. I found myself thinking about what he had said to me early one morning in the hospital at the beginning of the summer, the two of us standing together beside your bed in awkward reverence.

  There’s always hope, Mr Sweeney.

  Was that true then? Is it true now?

  As I turned into the driveway a strange thing happened. I should explain that I had opened the car windows and sun-roof all the way because it was so hot that night – and I thought I could hear music coming from somewhere near. This disturbed me. You know that driveway, so completely silent and still as you move through the tunnel of overgrown trees. I told myself that I must be imagining things and drove on. But half-way up I realised that it was not my imagination. There was loud raucous Irish music blasting from the house.

  I parked, got out of the car, took my briefcase from the boot, opened the hall door and went in. The music was so loud now that the old mirror on the wall was rattling. It was coming from the living-room. Slowly I opened the door. Quinn was in there with his back to me. The carpet had been rolled up. The television was on but the sound could not be heard over the roar of the stereo. All the furniture had been pushed into one corner. And he was dancing.

  Arms straight down by his side. He skipped and jigged, lurched from side to side, clacking his feet against the floorboards. He clamped his hands to his hips and shimmied forward, as far as the wall, and then back to where he had started. He stamped and kicked to the caterwaul and clatter. And every now and then he let a great piercing whoop, like a rebel yell or an operatic scream. He wheeled around towards the door and saw me. He staggered backwards into the sofa.

  He rushed to the stereo and switched it off. His face and the top of his neck were purple.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was only dancin’. I was bored.’

  I turned off the tele
vision and plugged it out.

  ‘I did it in school,’ he said. ‘The ma made me do it. I was the only lad in the whole class did Irish dancin’. Had t’wear a kilt and all.’ Here he let a soft chuckle. ‘Sometimes I think that’s what happened me, Homer.’

  I remember that there was an extraordinary sunset that night. When I went to close the curtains, the light was fading down to ochre and deep orange. What can I tell you about it? Streaks of variegated green and rich purple were spread out in the sky, and the sun was a brilliant white disc on a field of mottled pinks. I looked at the sky for a moment or two – I couldn’t recall a more beautiful sunset – before deciding to leave the curtains open. I switched on the wall lamps, went to the table and opened my briefcase. I could smell fresh, ripe sweat in the room.

  ‘Jaze,’ he said. ‘I’m fuckin’ scarlet now.’

  ‘I thought we agreed,’ I said. ‘You stay out there in the stable and I stay in here. I thought we agreed that. If you have to be here at all.’

  He sat on the sofa, crossed his legs and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Sorry, Homer,’ he said. ‘I was bored outta me tits.’

  I started getting my order forms and brochures ready.

  ‘What’s that yer doin’?’

  ‘I’m going back to work in the morning,’ I said. ‘I’ve paperwork to do here.’

  ‘Paperwork?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He looked closely at me and nodded understandingly, as though I had just let him in on some grave secret. The last of the dusk light faded in the bay window. He muttered the word ‘paperwork’ a few more times. He seemed to enjoy saying it. Stars appeared in the lower sky. He sat there for a while and smoked another cigarette. Then he brushed the ash from his knees, stood up and ostentatiously yawned. ‘Well, I suppose I’ll head on out,’ he said. ‘Goodnight so. I’ll leave y’to do that paperwork.’

  ‘Round the house and mind the dresser,’ I told him.

  Next morning, when I arrived into work, Hopper gaped up from his desk as though I had entered the room naked except for a crash-helmet and tutu. I admit that I had of course expected some reaction to the bruising and the grazes; and as if things were not bad enough, while shaving that morning my hands had been trembling and I had sliced open my lip and lower face, so that buds of toilet paper were attached to my cheeks and chin and I must have looked like something from the worst days of the Spanish Inquisition. But Hopper seemed absolutely horrified as I did my best to stroll casually in and get to the desk without him seeing me head on. He asked me was I all right. I told him I was absolutely fine. He asked me was I sure. I said yes. He wanted to know what had happened to me. I told him it was a long, complicated story. He nodded towards O’Keeffe’s room.