The Dark

by John McGahern

  You watched him away, he genuflected in the bloody glow of the sanctuary lamp, his head was bowed. What did he know whether you’d be long or short, you might pray all night yet, what did he know, and now he was waiting at the gate in the cold. And death shall have no dominion, rang in hatred and without reason in your mind.

  You were in the state of grace, you remembered you were supposed to love everyone, and your father was waiting for you outside at the gate. You had no right to hate him, he was there to be loved too. So you mechanically rose, genuflected where he had genuflected and so many before both of you, and walked outside.

  8

  HE WAS WAITING AT THE GATE, PACING ABOUT IN THE COLD, examining the lost things that hung from the spikes.

  “It’s a good job people’s arses are well tied on to them in this country or they’d leave them behind every time they sat down,” he remarked laughing by way of greeting.

  They walked together, breaking time to avoid the pot-holes filled with water, where again and again a star shivered.

  “It’s a great feeling after Confession. You feel everything’s put right. You have no cares any more,” Mahoney said.

  “No. You have no cares,” he agreed, though loathing the direction of the words. He had his own joy. He didn’t want it confused in the generality of another’s confession. There never had been understanding or anything. But he was troubled by the intensity of the hatred, they were commanded to love, though the nerves bristled with hate at every advance or contact.

  “Have you ever decided what you’ll be when you grow up?”

  “It depends on the exams mostly. Whatever I get. There’s not much use in thinking.”

  Though he’d felt this night that he might be able to be a priest, a real priest, the one thing that was worth being. He’d felt he might be about good enough.

  “Exams,” he heard Mahoney. “By the columns of names these days in the Independent it appears that half the country will have passed an exam for something or other soon. Passed to ate one another if you ask me, for where’ll the jobs come outa? Only the ones with the pull will get the jobs. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Pull doesn’t count in some of them. Not for the University Scholarship nor the call to train for a teacher or the E.S.B. And there’s always England,” was said harshly.

  “No, I didn’t mean that. We all know any fool can go to England once he gets his hands on a fiver. I didn’t mean that. I know you’ve had it in your head to be a priest so I was just wondering what you intended to try to be,” the voice was gentle enough for once, upset by the harshness of, There’s always England. There was the temptation to be easy, not to keep him always outside, and the longing to confide, the world on your own was a cold place.

  “I often think I might, if I could be good enough.”

  “I guessed as much myself. It’s a good life and a clean one and you don’t have bostoons trying to sit on you as in most jobs. God’s your boss.”

  “You’d be all reared then and I could sell the old land and come to live with you. I could open the door for those calling and find out what they wanted and not have them annoying you about everything. I could fool around the garden, and the bit of orchard at the back. We could bring the old tarred boat and go fishing in the summer.”

  That was his dream, but there was no response. He grew aware of his own voice and stopped. He’d be given nothing. The dream was not the other’s dream. Perhaps too much had happened or lives were never meant to meet. The eagerness left his walk, he was let seem foolish to himself, and broken. No response came. Not even when he placed his hand on the shoulder that was now almost tall as his own.

  “If it happened that you did, we’d have good times that way, wouldn’t we?”

  “We would. We’d have good times.”

  “What do you think the chances are that you’ll go on?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too hard to know. It depends on too many things.”

  9

  THE LINE OF BLACK CATTLE TRAILED ALL THAT WINTER ROUND the fields in search of grass, only small patches in the shelter; always a funeral of little winter birds in their wake in the hope that the rocking hooves would loosen the frozen earth down to the worms. And in the evenings they’d crowd at the gate to low with steaming breaths for their fodder.

  No rain came, a cloudless Easter, and a cloudless May, grass no higher in the fenced-off meadows than in the pastures, the young oats stunted, the apple blossoms scorched in nights of white frost.

  When it broke it was too late in June: the quick unhealthy growths the sudden rains brought infested the cattle with worms, and it was a struggle to survive, anxiety and senseless recrimination never far away.

  “It’ll be the poor-house. I’m saddled with such lazy misfortunate bastards, we’ll have the poor-house anyhow, something to look forward to at the end of our days when we expect some ease and respect. God, Ο God, Ο God.”

  Joan and Mona had left National School and were about the house. Mahoney decided in that pinching autumn to send Joan out into the world.

  She’d become a common drudge since leaving school but the prospect of a job brought her no pleasure. She cried by the window the first night it was mentioned. She saw the same drudgery everywhere and what she knew was less to be feared than what she didn’t.

  Mahoney tried the newspapers first, but they yielded nothing, and in the end he had to write in chagrin to Father Gerald, who got her a job in a draper’s shop near where he was curate.

  He called to collect her and the usual preparations greeted his coming into an evening as lifeless and as starched as always. The conversation people make to avoid each other went shuttlecock for two agonized hours, before Mahoney made excuse to get out.

  “We’ll leave the lad and yourself together, father. You might have things to talk about, school and that, together. We’ll look after Joan’s getting ready and leave you alone.”

  The room apologetically emptied, they were alone.

  “So the first bird is leaving the nest?” the priest said.

  What was there to do but nod in vague depression, she was going, all departures touched in some way everyone’s departure, became disturbing echoes.

  “You’ll not feel till your own turn?”

  “No, father.”

  “You have no final inkling of what you might do yet?”

  “No. It’ll depend on the exams.”

  “Do you still think of the priesthood?”

  “Yes, father, if I could be good enough.”

  “It was a great pity you were never sent to the Diocesan Seminary, the time your father wanted you to stay at home from school altogether.”

  “But there’s the Mission Colleges?”

  “Yes, but as a last resort. They do good work but the fact remains that they class you with the second-raters for Africa. But if you do very well in the Leaving it may be possible to get you even into Maynooth.”

  He smiled in reflection, “Doors open under the right pressures. We are cousins. And if we cannot help our own who can we help! But don’t worry, all you can profitably do now is work hard at your studies. Perhaps next year you can come and stay with me for part of the summer holidays, and we can talk properly then?”

  “Thank you, father.”

  “That’s settled then, it’s late, we could find the others and go—I hate driving in the late night, it gets so hard to keep eyes on the road!”

  They found Mahoney idle with the others in the kitchen, Joan ready to leave, and they left immediately. There was something breaking at the priest’s car in the way she kissed them good-bye, Mahoney visibly disturbed as he stooped into the smell of brilliantine that damped her dark hair.

  “We’ll write. We’ll write. Take care of yourself,” he said.

  They opened the green gates for the car and watched the headlights search into the hills before they were lost.

  He was restless when he came in, pacing about. He started to cram the bits
of twine scattered about the house into an empty tea-box.

  “Scattered everywhere about, no care, nothing ever done right in the house.”

  He got boards and stood them on their ends against the kitchen wall, and laid one across two chairs for planing. The plane wasn’t sharp enough; so on the black bone wet with bicycle oil he sharpened it and complained.

  Soon he was in his shirt-sleeves, the kitchen too warm, beads of sweat glistened as he drove the plane over and back, the long white shavings littering the floor. He didn’t finish. He’d no interest once this savage need to do was exhausted.

  “Sweep up the shavings, they’ll make kindling,” he said, and he pulled the old Morris car seat up to the fire, its red leather faded, in the wooden frame he’d made for it. He put on his coat and got the pack of cards and play ing-board. He sat and laid the playing-board across the unpainted arms of the frame. As he began he looked suddenly an infant enclosed in its pen chair.

  The others stood as sentinels about or went outside. Joan was gone, a breath of death in the air, Mahoney was playing, nothing in the silence but his lonely playing, the shuffling of the deck, swish of the sharp boxing together, as he dealt them out on the board those worn cards of patience flicking. The yellow cat stretched in the ashes. A low pursing came from his lips as he deliberated where each card would best fit. King of Diamonds for the Ace, Eight of Clubs for the Nine, the Seven by lucky chance for the Eight. He gathers together again what is left. Three by three he counts them out on the unpainted playing-board, red and black, from count to count till no move is left. He gathers them all violently into a heap to begin the journey over again to the same dead end or to reach what he’d been playing for, all the cards magically leaping to their ordered places, once in every four or five hundred times—long lighthouse patience.

  “Look, it’s come out,” he could shout, or gloat in secret.

  Nothing came near out and he was too restless.

  “What was your beloved cousin talking about?” he asked.

  “Not much.”

  “Not much—such a bloody answer. So the pair of you stood and gaped at each other with your mouths open.”

  “No.”

  “What did he say so?”

  “He said about being a priest.”

  “What did he say about that?”

  “He said he’d help, and not to worry. He said that nothing could be done till after the exams.”

  “He meant he’d buy the calf when it was reared a bullock?”

  “No, no, he didn’t mean that. He said he’d help. He said he might be able to get me into Maynooth.”

  “Maynooth, no less. Doesn’t it cost money to get into Maynooth?”

  “It does.”

  “He didn’t say who was going to do the paying, did he?”

  “No. He didn’t say.”

  “Believe me he didn’t. He’s very free with money not his own.”

  “He said he’d help and no one said I might be a priest at all yet, who knows?”

  “What did he say about Joan?” Mahoney changed.

  “He said nothing.”

  “I suppose he thinks I should have brought her up to be better than a shop girl.”

  “He didn’t say what he thought.”

  “Believe me he didn’t say what he thought. He’s far too clever for that.”

  His face was heated, the lines of the mouth moving. The eyes were tired and hunted. He brought up his old boots that were wet from driving the cattle through the rushes, and put them by the fire to dry. He unlaced the new boots he’d worn for the priest.

  “It’s not what people say that counts, it’s what they think. If you ever want to get on in the world don’t heed what they say but find out what’s going on in their numbskulls. That’s what’ll get you on.

  “Think what you say but don’t say what you think and then you have some chance but what do I care. They can think themselves into the Sligo madhouse for all I care,” he shouted.

  The wool of his socks whispered on the cement as he went to the door.

  “Go to your beds before long, I’m dead out, and don’t forget to quench the lamp.”

  10

  EACH WEEK A LETTER CAME FROM JOAN—D.V. AFTER HER hopes, and S.A.G. on the back of the blue envelope, as she’d been piously taught to put at National School. Each was written to the same wooden formula, nothing of herself or life let come through. She hoped this letter found them as well as it left her. So they assumed that she was at least reasonably happy.

  Violence seldom flared any more, Mahoney didn’t seem to care so much, mostly complaining or absorbed in tired introspection.

  As the struggle outside eased it grew worse within the skull. You could get no control. You’d go weeks without committing any sin, in often ecstatic prayer and sense of God, again replaced by weeks of orgy sparked by a fit of simple boredom or unhappiness. The constant effort back to Confession, haunted by the repetitive hypocrisy of your life, anguish of the struggle towards repeated failure. Time was running out too. You had to spend the coming summer with Father Gerald. He’d expect you to have reached some decision. The winter after would be the last year of your life at school.

  No ecstasy after Confession any more. You were able to kneel and stare out of the protecting darkness into the blood-red glow before the altar, the same penances to say, the same promises of amendment, and how long would it last, a month or a week or days? You’d no control over your lusts and if you hadn’t how could you stay a priest?

  A priest on a Saturday night in your own smell in the confession box listening to a month of pleasure and sin and would you be able to stay calm while a girl told about a night in June, fragrance of her perfume mixed with sweat as sweet as roses on the altar, rustle of her taffeta, and the moon above the evergreens outside the windows.

  “Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”

  “Tell me your sins, my child.”

  “I was guilty of impure actions, father.”

  “With a man, my child?”

  “Yes, father.”

  “Was he married or single?”

  “Single, father.”

  “You’re not engaged to him?”

  “No, father.”

  “Tell me what happened, my child.”

  “Passionate kissing and embracing, father.”

  “Were you touched, my child?”

  “Yes, father.”

  “On the breasts?”

  “Yes, father.”

  “In another sacred place as well?”

  “Yes, father.”

  “How or where did this happen?”

  “In the river meadows, after the marquee dance in the Golf Club.”

  “Did you actually have intercourse with this man, my child?”

  A whimper of grief in her voice, her dress would rustle, her face and young body close as inches to yours in the night. The same young thighs that had opened submissively wide to the man’s rise the summer’s night by the river might open wide as that for you. She’d give you the fulfilment you craved. You’d have known pleasure before you died, it seemed a great deal to know. Bread might be marvellous in starvation, you’d find total meaning in devouring it for the time of hunger, but your hunger was for a woman, mirage of total marvel and everything in her flesh.

  And what would you do? Stay quiet and begin, “Don’t you know, my child, that you are only permitted to do these things in Holy Matrimony. You must avoid places and temptations to that sin, you must promise me that.”

  Or would you sit quiet and excite your own seed in the box with your hand or pressing against the wood and let it flow in the darkness, same as Onan; her rustling clothes and voice and smell sweeping through the wire grille. Her flesh beyond the wire hungered too for its fodder, the thrusting body of a man for her own.

  Or would you burst out of the box and take her in madness? She’d said she’d been a virgin. She’d cried out with hurt in the river meadows but the man would not stop, he took
her against her will. Would she cry too when you the priest tore her clothes off and took her on the stone floor of the church?

  That might be your priest’s life, if you’d no control now was there chance it might be different then. At least you had a choice now to go out into the world and get women, but once you were a priest you were a priest for ever, there’d be no choice left, and once you were trapped in your own choice would you stay quiet in it or go crazy? A priest all your days, hair coming away by its white roots on your comb till baldness and death, and never in all those days to have touched and entered the roused flesh of a woman in her heat, never for your nakedness to be hid in her nakedness, never to be held in her softness, buried deep in the darkness of her red flesh, and her hands stroking the nerves to ecstasy.

  Where was fear of hell gone, scorched and frenzied bodies howling on steaming stones and irons through the boredom of eternity, the racks and tortures? All lives moved into death, the last taste in every mouth, and it wasn’t sweet. Perhaps there was no final destruction on woman though it’d be dream always, just the death of passion, you’d have to crawl out same as after any orgy till it renewed, and the same circus of the flesh would pitch its tents again in another night of longing, nothing but this drifting death from hole to hole.

  You’d master it as a priest. You’d give your life back to God, you’d serve, you’d go to death in God’s name and not your own. You’d choose your death, you’d give up desire other than in God. You’d die into God the day of your ordination. All your life would be a death in readiness for the last moment when you’d part with your flesh and leave. You’d be safe. Even if there was no God or hell or heaven it didn’t make much difference, every one was as poor and equal in death as every other, and you’d have possibly less sorrow, less remembered pleasure, for if the schooling was for nothing it was still schooling.

  The more you lingered on it the more fantastic it grew, no open road, the best was to be a green cabbage head. Say your penance. Go as best you can till you fall, the refuge of confession again then, and it all had the saving grace that it wasn’t going to last for ever.