The Dark

by John McGahern

  Violence often came: frustrated abuse of the books on the table till your hand hurt or you got afraid the noise might carry downstairs; or desire to smash the lamp would end with you going to the bed, loosening your clothes. A newspaper down on the floor, pull up the draped eiderdown, press your flesh on the bed’s edge. Black hair and lips on the yellow coverlet; soft white of the breast, pink nipple, lower. Pump your nakedness into the bed’s belly, hot flush rushing to the face as it goes down to the lips opening and closing on the yellow coverlet, the raw tongue seeking past the teeth, fit of trembling before the seed pumps rustling down on the already positioned newspaper. Heavy breathing and sweat hampers the dressing again. Crumple the newspaper and put it to burn, the wet centre hissing. You are quiet and moping, the body dead as ashes: as you go back to the table and books a vicious musing about how many conceptions the rationed distribution of all that seed hissing in the centre of the newspaper, how many could it cause, the passing eggs touched to life.

  The house exam was held at Christmas, trial run before the summer. It’d decide who’d continue in the honours course, who’d leave off to concentrate on passing, and passing was no good to you. You had to get high in the honours to stand a chance in the cut-throat competition for the Scholarships or E.S.B. or Training College or anything. Passing was only good if you had your own money to go to the University and few at the school had that. Most came from small farms in the country on their bicycles, stacked downstairs where they ate their lunches out of paper bags and horseplayed on wet days. They knew too it was get high honours or go to England. The air was tense with this fear through the exam, the folding doors that separated the classrooms drawn back to make an examination hall.

  This was the first time you’d ever thoroughly prepared for an exam, and it was strange excitement to be familiar with every question, able to answer it more completely than the time allowed—all the evenings with the tin oil-lamp and the fire fusing here in mastery, feeling of absolute surefootedness, and then you were simply writing, watching the electric clock close to the crucifix on the wall, the three hours gone in a flash. Down in the bicycle room you went over the questions with the others—did you get this for that, what did you put down for No. 5—elation and disappointment but your answering was as irrevocably fixed as a life that has run its course. Better far to forget it, take off the coats and make for the handball alley. Arrange an even doubles, you and O’Reilly against Moran and Monaghan. Excitement and striving reduced the world to the concrete walls and the netting wire behind, the white lines on the concrete floor, the rubber with its Elephant brand that was driven and driven again against the wall as the aces fell away towards defeat or victory at twenty-one.

  Holly with red berries was got from Oakport; ivy nearer home, for the bare walls. Fruit and some Santa Claus presents for the younger children came from town. Joan made a plum pudding with the help of the yellowed cookery-book. Though Mahoney took little part in these preparations he did not complain when they asked him for the extra the few luxuries cost, and on Christmas Eve he made his own strange gesture to the festival.

  “Do you know what I think? I think we should give the Brothers something for Christmas.”

  “But you never gave anything before.”

  “No, but it’s your last Christmas at school. They’ve done a lot for you. It’s only right to show some appreciation.”

  “What are you going to give?”

  “I was thinking we could do worse than give them two good bags of spuds—two bags of the Golden Wonders.”

  “It’s cigarettes or whiskey that’s usually given,” you tried to tell but he’d made up his mind. There was no use arguing. The potatoes were worth a bottle of whiskey but he could make a present of the potatoes without feeling the pain of parting with actual money.

  “Well what do you think?” he was demanding.

  “I suppose you better give the Golden Wonders so,” there was nothing else to say.

  He found two new meal-bags and you helped him fill the bags out of the short Golden Wonder pit, the clay on its sides frozen hard as concrete, having to be broken with the spade. Afterwards dressed up and on his way to town Mahoney was very happy, not aware much of the freezing blue Christmas Eve, shouting at everyone that passed, and humming over and over “Christmas is coming the geese are getting fat”, while you sat ashamed, hot at how the potatoes and Mahoney would seem to the cool Benedict, in the stupidity of youth.

  The embarrassment had grown almost to sickness by the time you’d to walk with Mahoney down the concrete path between the white lawn blocks and knock on the monastery door.

  “We wondered if we could see Brother Benedict,” Mahoney asked the maid, a young girl with a pale nervous face.

  “The Brothers are on retreat, but you go to the school, don’t you?” she said.

  “Yes. That’s right,” Mahoney answered, and she put you in the parlour, and struck the brass gong once in the hallway to call Benedict, the single stroke because he was the Superior. Soon the sound of his crêpe shoes and soutane were on the stairs from the oratory.

  “We’re sorry. We didn’t know about the retreat,” Mahoney apologized as they shook hands.

  “It’s annual, it ends this evening, and it’s alright. Even retreats have to allow for human troubles or business,” Benedict smiled his cool ironic smile, with the eyes.

  “No, there’s no trouble,” Mahoney was very uncertain. “We brought some potatoes for Christmas. We wondered where you’d like us to put them.”

  “That’s very kind of you. Thank you. We can bring them round to the potato-shed at the back,” and the only change was that the smile seemed for a moment to take on more energy as he spoke. He got the bunch of keys and showed the way to the sheds at the back, where the cabbage garden and orchard and alley was. You emptied them on the floor with Mahoney, who took both the empty bags away.

  “Our friend here has shown remarkable improvement. He carries our chief hopes this year in the examination,” Benedict referred to you as the bags were emptied.

  “Well he works enough anyhow,” Mahoney was as uncertain, as embarrassed as you, it was strange.

  “It was most generous of you to bring us the potatoes,” Benedict said at the gate, after five minutes of crucifying attempts at conversation around the sheds, no one at ease or knowing what to say.

  “We wanted to show our appreciation,” Mahoney said and then tried to escape this unaccustomed burden of politeness by joking, “The old potato helps to keep the wind out of all our stomachs, doesn’t it?”

  “It does indeed,” it seemed from Benedict’s smile and ironic agreement that he was dangling Mahoney’s words before his face in the cold, was sniffing them with the most exquisite nostrils, as he would a dead field-mouse. “It fills many a vacuum. I often think anybody writing a work on our character as a nation would have to closely investigate the influence of the same potato,” there was the cut of amusement in his voice.

  “There was the famine the once it failed,” Mahoney was easier, and proud. He did not notice.

  “Well we’re well provisioned against it this year,” Benedict smiled, and it was cold at the gate. “You were very kind. A happy Christmas to you both,” he put out his hand.

  “A happy Christmas, Brother,” it was over, and you went with the two meal-bags between the shops, holly and fairy lights in the windows, a huge Christmas-tree at the Clock. People were hailing each other and going together for drinks, the pubs noisy and bright with coal fires, Murray’s and the Railway Bar.

  “Nothing lacking except the snow,” Mahoney said as you left. “Those Brothers earn their salvation, up there praying with all this going on, and that Benedict is very clever. You can tell.”

  You made some formal noise of agreement and wondered if Benedict would keep the potatoes or flog them for whiskey but you said nothing. And you had to think as you went with Mahoney home that if you passed the exams, and married, the fate it would be to have to walk with a
son as taciturn and withdrawn as you now. It’d be real nightmare. You listened to Mahoney talk and talk. No matter what else, he had at least the beauty of energy.

  He was in the front field when the postman brought the exam result after Christmas, it was addressed to him as parent, but neither would it have made difference if it hadn’t, he still opened every letter that came to the house no matter who it was addressed to. When he took it inside he tried to adopt a mannered casualness.

  “Congratulations. You walked away with first place. All I hope is that it doesn’t give you a swelled head.”

  “He’s gone completely ahead of the class and at this rate of progress there’s nothing he may not attain to,” he read.

  Your hands trembled as they accepted the report sheet, tears of gratitude and resultant generosity that you couldn’t hold back. You’d been praised and you wished to return it, praise the whole world, but once you looked deeper there was the discomfort of an accusation, what right had you to take praise, you had none, what right had Benedict to praise you, but joy trampled it down, it was good to take it no matter what it was.

  “If you do as well in the summer we’ll have cause for real celebration,” Mahoney said.

  “Thanks,” what more was there to say.

  “Me and Pat Flynn were always neck-and-neck for top place in the National School. The last year, seventh class, I got the first,” he was moved enough to speak out of his own life.

  “Where is Pat Flynn now?” you had to ask, to pretend an interest.

  “He’s dead. He went on to Moyne and to be a priest for the Missions. In Africa he died. He was home once but I missed him. A great man to kick a point from the wing too. He died shortly after going out the second time, the White Man’s Grave it’s called,” he said and wandered a second in reflection.

  “And, do you know, I’m here, if anyone’s interested,” he resumed with strange humour.

  “Who’d ever believe except myself that I’m here,” he chuckled harshly as he went out again towards the front field.

  The small smell of success made a change in Mahoney to the study alone in the room. It was no longer an unhealthy and suspicious activity, wasting light and fuel but possibility of the world now, attractive labels of esteem and money close. His curiosity was as much roused by it now as the enigma of the hopeless struggle in loneliness had roused his mistrust before. He would share it this way.

  “What’ll happen if you do walk away with the exams?”

  “I could get a Scholarship.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Two for the County.”

  “But there’ll be a lot in for them?”

  “Some hundreds.”

  “That’s a lot to have to trounce. But say, say if you got it, what could you do?”

  “You could go to the University, study for whatever you’d want.”

  “What do you think you’d go for?”

  You didn’t know. The University was a dream: not this slavish push in and out through wind and rain on a bicycle, this dry constant cramming to pass the exam, no time to pause to know and enjoy anything, just this horrid cram into the brain to be forgotten the minute the exam was over. Though there were mornings, the hawthorns becoming green and no one on the early road and you could shout The Ode to Virgil for joy as you pedalled: evenings after football, the delicious weariness and warmth, but nothing seemed to have anything much got to do with school.

  The University would be different, you’d seen pictures, all stone with turrets surrounded by trees, walks between the lawns and trees, long golden evenings in the boats on the Corrib. You’d be initiated into mystery. If you went for medicine, the parts of the body you’d know, the functions, the structure of the mystery. All day you could pore over the marvel and delight of the books of the world if you chose the arts. You could walk under trees and talk with men and women who were initiates with you too, men your own age, and walk with a girl of your own who was studying the same as you.

  “I don’t know. There are too many things.”

  “You might even do medicine?”

  “I might,” it was growing disturbing, too real in the other mind, and it was so far away and unlikely.

  “If you kept passing the exams you’d get more scholarships. You could be a specialist or surgeon then. You could wind up in Harley Street. That’s what’d be a big shake-up for some around here—if you wound up in Harley Street!”

  “I got no Scholarship yet. It’s a chance just.”

  “A chance, hundreds in for it,” he repeated glumly, the castles fallen. “You’ve no pull.”

  “It’s not the pull, it’s the marks, if I get high enough of marks I’ll get it.”

  “Are you soft enough to think the marks can’t be fiddled if you’ve got the pull. You’re very young in the world, you’ll learn a sore thing or two yet. I could tell you a thing or two for the amount of schooling I got and that’s one of them,” it had to come to some end.

  Trouble about the fire and light was gone, Mahoney’s interference changed to concern over the relentless studying.

  “You’re burning the midnight oil too low, I’m telling you. Enough is as good as a feast. You’ll do harm to yourself.”

  “It’s only for another few months.”

  The bones stood out clear in the face in the mirror, a sunken glow in the eyes.

  “They broke stronger men than you, the same books,” atavistic fear was in the eyes that looked on the quiet books on the table in the lamplight. “Far stronger men than you the books broke. And if you haven’t your health what good will it all do you?”

  “I feel alright.”

  “You’ll feel alright when you’re in a brown box too, not a care in the world on you, let others do the worrying and the burying.”

  The best was to stand there and say nothing, the less his idea was opposed the more quickly it’d wear itself out.

  “You’ll probably wind up with nothing in the heel of the hunt anyhow. You’ll look a right eejit then, won’t you? And don’t say I didn’t warn you. But I suppose there’s people dying that never died before,” and he went muttering out of the house.

  20

  SCHOOL WENT IN GRINDING CONCENTRATION ON JUNE, WHAT questions were most likely to be asked and how to answer, practice at the papers of previous years, ideal answers from Caffrey’s Correspondence College in Dublin.

  The only interruptions were the priests from the various orders in search of vocations. Once or twice in these appeals they phrased your own torment too close for comfort.

  “My dear boys, you are on the threshold of life, a life that’ll end in death. Then the Judgment. All the joys and pleasures of life you yearn for now will have been just a passing bauble then. If you clutch at these now will they avail you anything in the only important moment in life, moment of death? On the other hand, if you give your life to God, and surely the priesthood is the gift outright, you can say you kept nothing back. As your whole life was in God, so will your life be in death, and in the hereafter.”

  That was it simply, and you had set your face the other way from it, towards the bauble. You were heading out into an uncertain life, sacrificing the certainty of a life based on death; for what you didn’t know, windblown excitements and imaginings that in the humdrum of their actuality might soon get stripped of their sensual marvel.

  How easy it would be to go downstairs to the community room where the priest interviewed anyone interested afterwards and say: “I want to become a priest, father.” Everything would be taken care of. You’d go on to the Seminary at the end of the year. You’d be cut loose from your father. You’d not have to worry about a job or what people thought. In your death you’d be a priest, a priest of God, the death already accepted in life, the life already given into His keeping before it was required, years before, in your youth.

  You’d be almost afraid to look at the leaflet handouts the priest took from the black leather case afterwards, photos of the Semina
ry life, on the football pitch and in the oratory, happily eating in the refectory, bent in the peace of books at study, walking with companions through grounds filled with evergreens.

  There was a fierce drag to go down to the community room and give your life into that death, but no, you’d set your face another direction, and you knew if you did go down that the drag would be back to where you were now. No way was easy.

  The other appeals—comradeship, the sharing of mysterious power, working in exotic countries where oranges and lemons grew along the roadside, walking with the great of the land—never moved you much. In the reality your life moved in the shade of a woman or death. Only the lifeless or blind fell for the lesser than these. This was just the destruction of entering the dream around delight of the woman or the disciplined waiting in the priesthood of Christ.

  Mahoney’s violence was turning more on himself. He came reeking with Guinness from the April market. When they’d given him his meal, answered his inquiries about the pigs and milking, and he could find nothing to fault, he let himself slump before the heat of the fire. It seemed he’d doze quietly there. Then suddenly he jumped up, the face red and bloated, dramatic arm outstretched, to do a half-circle swing on the floor and shout, “I went to school too.”

  “This is my life, and this kitchen in the townland of Cloone is my stage, and I am playing my life out here on,” and he stood, the eyes wild, as if grappling for his lines.

  “And nobody sees me except a crowd of childer,” the voice trailed bitterly, and then burst out again.

  “But it’s important, it’s important to me, it’s the only life I’ve got, it’s more important than anything else in the world to me. I went to school too,” and he started to sob drunkenly till he grew aware of the still eyes of the children watching him, when he began to shout again.

  “What are ye gaping at? Have you nothing to do but stand with your mouths open? Such a useless pack,” and they instinctively scattered, years of habit, before he could single any one of them out.