A Goat's Song

by Dermot Healy

  He himself it was – before he met Catherine – judged what was right and what was wrong. He it was had accepted that these were his hands and these his knees. Now they looked like someone else’s. Then the panic began again, for the mind, outside the body, did not wish to deny the body.

  He looked through the bus window. He wiped away his breath, but what lay beyond could not be identified. Even the surface of the oncoming road was a great mystery. It was hard to believe that a few days ago he had been filled with happiness at the prospect of Catherine’s return. His heart raced as they turned a corner. Fear made the mind settle into the body again, to protect its instrument; he held the seat in front of him; they swung out over the white line, they rose into the air over a bump on a small bridge, then the bus righted itself again.

  The physical sickness was itself a reprieve. This will be soon over. It will soon end. And another voice said, Never. You will have to live with this. Forever! The doctrine of endless torments. The unseen world where his misgivings began. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. He felt his face to see whether all his features were still in place. But touch would not reassure him. He needed to see. His eyes needed to see themselves. And yet he longed to rest from this ceaseless activity of naming the parts of the mind. He wanted to close his eyes and let his body be free of this constant surveillance.

  They entered the last stretch of road before Ballina.

  I’ll never make Dublin if I feel like this! He looked out of the windows but found for a second that nothing he saw was familiar. They stopped for a flock of sheep, haphazardly dabbed with green, to pass. The sheep wandered one behind the other into a field of standing stones. Then, as if someone had reassembled the landscape, it ceased to be strange. I know this bit, he realized. I recognize here. He nodded at someone across the aisle.

  “There’s not far to go,” Jack called in a strangely cheerful voice.

  “And then, bless us,” complained the woman, “we’ll have to do the same journey all over again on the return.”

  He looked at her aghast.

  “Are you under pressure?” she asked with a small curtsy of her eyes and mouth.

  “It’s severe, Ma’am,” he smiled.

  She nodded in reply, then nodded again, and her face filled with sympathy and quiet satisfaction.

  In Ballina it was cold. At the entrance to the town a girl, half-dressed, was tied to a pole. A light drizzle, turning to sleet, was falling. Out of the pub opposite women came and began pelting the girl with plastic bags of soot.

  “Christ!” said Jack.

  “She’s to be married,” his neighbour explained. “She’s a Mullarkey girl from Muinguingane.”

  “Oh.”

  The girl bent her head and jerked sharply at the ropes that held her. Her blouse in the fracas had been torn so now she had a breast full of soot. Her skirt rode up round her thighs. She was drenched. Quick as it happened it was over. All the women, laughing, returned to the pub.

  She did not go with them, but seemed to disappear into some hole in Jack’s memory. One minute she was being showered with soot, the next minute the ropes that held her swung in the wind, the wet soot lay round the pole, but she, who a second before had been distraught and hysterical with laughter, was gone.

  The rain fell loudly.

  As he walked the town, he was followed by the sound of coins tumbling, extraterrestrial sounds and muffled explosions. Unlit Christmas stars and coloured bulbs hung above the streets. A small, dark-skinned fat man, bowed over so that his chin was tucked into his chest, came towards him pulling a suitcase on wheels. The man stepped out of the rain into the doorway beside Jack. He had enormous old-fashioned glasses behind which his mischievous eyes were perked up in elaborate gaiety. He turned his head sideways and looked at Jack.

  “The best film I see in a while was Crocodile Dundee,” he said.

  “You go to the pictures?” asked Jack.

  “Oh the young women love me,” he told Jack. “They like to gee-gee with me,” he smiled. “The Irish women like the Jew.”

  He asked Jack to pull his suitcase for him. He was eighty years of age and had been selling parts for spectacles round Ireland since the Second World War. Jack walked ahead pulling the case while the old man, unabashed, followed behind describing his unbelievable sexual conquests. He held up a hand to stop the traffic. “The Irish,” he told Jack in the middle of the street, “lack self-esteem,” and the two of them trundled forward. They continued up another sidewalk through shoppers hurrying between showers. “Over there,” said the old man, and they crossed the road again. They had reached a bed-and-breakfast. The Jew handed him a brown paper bag containing two ham sandwiches.

  “Take these, please,” he said.

  Jack took the bag. The Jew entered the hallway. He stood on the battered lino talking to himself, then headed off down the corridor trailing his case. Jack stepped up onto a weighing scale that stood in the doorway of a chemist’s shop. He dropped a five-pence piece into the slot and watched the hand swing to nine and a half stone. First he thought, I’ve lost a stone, and then he thought, as he looked at the hand quivering round the figures, that’s me, that’s the weight of a human body. That’s who I am.

  He was putting off the moment when he would go into the pub. It was the type of day when anything might happen. The warning signals were there. The distorted perspective, the disturbing thoughts, the loud voice of his consciousness. He went to a draper’s and bought a shirt and a pair of trousers. I need shoes, thought Jack. “I’ve been wearing the same pair of boots for the last two years,” he said. “Well, that’s no good,” replied the assistant. “Go across the street to Burke’s. Here,” he said, “you forgot your lunch.” He handed Jack the sandwiches. Jack stood in a doorway again. More people hurried by.

  The sleet turned to snow. Then sleet again. Then hail. The hail blew down the street bouncing like popcorn. Slush, thrown up by cars, followed. He counted his money. If I buy shoes I’ll have nothing left for a drink. I can’t go up looking like this. He stood in a doorway looking across at Burke’s shoe shop. This morning I made a promise to myself. But what’s the point? I’m going to die anyway. But who would I like to meet on resurrection day? Who would I like to find by my side? The thought unnerved him. The wind changed direction and blew frantically to and fro. When he was wet and cold enough he went into the nearest pub. But he didn’t drink there. Nor in the pub after that. No, he was looking for someone. In the third pub he was looking for no one, but found instinctively that he was. This is what I’m doing here, he reminded himself – looking for someone. The men drinking there watched him for a second as if they, too, understood – that you keep searching till you find the right place to begin the day’s drinking.

  He sat down, thinking he had reached the place. He put his hand in his pocket to search for money. When he looked up each face had grown pale and ignorant and hostile. Then indifferent. Ea’ch was cocooned, not a human soul stirred among them. It was as if there was nobody there.

  “I was looking for someone,” he said to the barman and left, taking care as he did not to walk into anything.

  He moved on with the drinker’s ploy for fending off the first drink. The first drink that must be taken when all the signs are right. But none of the pubs was right. Loud TVs, piped music, strange glances. Eventually, in the fourth pub, he found that someone he was searching for. That someone who was no one. The person who didn’t exist was an excuse to move on. But here, in the low light, that non-person was.

  He stayed in the fourth pub because he recognized the girl who had been covered in soot and tied to the pole. Now she was sitting with three other women at the bar drinking hot whiskey.

  Jack was glad to see her again.

  “I’m in mourning,” he said.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’ve been pissing balls,” he replie
d, “and I keep them back in my room. I keep them in little bags.”

  “We had a brother went like you,” she said.

  He ordered his first drink. “I like a Harvey’s Bristol Cream for breakfast.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I like the taste in the nose.”

  “Do you want to join us?”

  “Nah,” he said, “I’m getting the train to Dublin.”

  They drank. The old feeling of being a camera returned. He panned the bar. He focused on the women with their hair piled and blow-dried who sat around him. Cufflinks gleamed. Men lifted drinks to their lips. It’s a B-movie, that’s what my subconscious is, and he laughed.

  “Tell us the joke,” said the bride-to-be. “You remind me of my da.”

  “He’d be a Mullarkey,” said Jack, “from Muinguingane.”

  The camera closed in on her face. Unabashed, she stared back.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “That would be telling,” he said.

  “Go on,” she said.

  Little pods of soot stood like flecks of rain on her lashes and brows and in the corners of her eyes. The corners were inordinately exposed. What holds the eye in tension so that it can see? Her eyes closed as she waited for his reply. The darkness seemed to last a long time.

  He sat into a taxi in New York. He was quite happy to find the warm upholstery against his back.

  “How long have you been driving taxis?” he asked the figure behind the wheel.

  “This is not a taxi,” the man replied.

  “I’ve always wanted to go in a taxi through New York,” said Jack, looking at the city.

  The man replied with words Jack could not understand. They passed beneath high buildings, and arcades lit up, and small ponds that were behind dark trees. A brilliant sign for GINGS, UNDERTAKERS, sped by. Jack continued to talk away about America. Kafka never went, you know, he said. Is that so? asked the chauffeur. No, said Jack. It just goes to show you, said the chauffeur. Yes, said Jack, but he got there still the same. For you see, explained Jack, time is not linear. It does not go in straight lines. Indeed it does not, agreed the driver as he flicked a light on his wide and shining instrument panel. That’s not to say it’s cyclical either, continued Jack. No, the man nodded. It goes, said Jack, leaning forward, in stops and starts. That’s right, said the chauffeur.

  Eventually the taxi pulled in. The man came round, still wearing his light blue chauffeur’s outfit, and opened the door. Thank you, said Jack grandly. He got out awkwardly. He was very tired. And must have slept a little. Because now he saw that the chauffeur was not a chauffeur at all. The policeman led him into the barracks.

  “I found him sleeping out on the side of the road,” said the guard to an orderly who was standing in a wide blue shirt.

  “I wasn’t sleeping,” said Jack, “I was hitching home.”

  “He was lying stretched out on the side of the road and could have been run over,” said the guard.

  “I was hitching,” said Jack. Then he added. “I might have sat down.” He thought again. “No one was stopping.”

  “Where were you going?” asked the orderly.

  “I was going to Belfast.”

  “Were you now?”

  “Yes I was.”

  “Well, son,” said the guard, “if you were going to Belfast, you were on the wrong road.”

  Jack reconsidered, then he remembered. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I was actually going to Dublin.”

  “That’s a horse of a different colour.”

  “I must have missed the train.”

  “I’d say you did. It’s three in the morning.”

  “I’m charging him with being drunk in a public place,” said the guard.

  “Right.” The orderly was taking out a clean sheet and about to write down the details of what happened when the sergeant appeared.

  “That’s Jack Ferris,” declared the sergeant. “From Kilty.”

  “That’s right,” said Jack, gratefully.

  “That’s the playwright,” he said.

  “That’s right,” said Jack.

  “You live only two doors up from me. We’re neighbours at home.”

  “That’s right,” said Jack, “Can I make a phone call?”

  “Fire away.”

  “You see,” explained Jack, “the woman might be worried.”

  So while the guard explained where Jack had been found, Jack dialled the theatre. In the far distance he heard a recorded voice repeating the times of various shows. “Catherine,” he said, “can you pick me up?” – he swung round to look at the group of policemen – “I’m in the Garda station in Ballina.” He listened a moment over the phone. “That’s a pity.”

  “I’m afraid she can’t come,” he said, replacing the receiver.

  “Never mind,” said the sergeant. “We’ll drive you home.”

  The guard who had wanted to arrest him sheepishly led him out to the squad car and Jack sat into the back. The sergeant got in behind the wheel. The guard sat silently in the passenger seat. Then the orderly closed the barracks and sat in beside Jack.

  “I’ll be glad of the spin,” he said. “We’re not expecting trouble tonight anyway.”

  “It’s all for the sake of art,” said the Leitrim man. “Where do you live?”

  “Mullet.”

  “Fuck me,” said the sergeant.

  Dawn was breaking on the Atlantic when the squad car pulled in at the gate that opened onto the path that led to his bare back wall.

  “You live here?” asked the sergeant.

  “I do.”

  “Fuck me,” said the sergeant.

  “Here,” said the guard, “you forgot these,” and he handed Jack the two sandwiches in the sodden brown paper bag.

  He lay on his bed for an hour. A storm had started. He got up, still drunk, and left three feeds for the dog alongside the gable. He sipped a cup of tea and imagined the first drink he would have. It might be a gin. It might be a tequila. It was eight in the morning when he set off for Dublin again. This time he arrived in the city near two in a newspaper van. He went directly to the theatre through streets that were filled with reindeer and bells and Christmas music.

  But he did not stand outside waiting for Catherine to make her appearance. Instead, he strode through the foyer past the girl at the desk, who followed behind calling him back. He fled up a deep-carpeted stairs, ran past walls of portraits of old actors and playwrights, and then on through the theatre itself. He found his way backstage by instinct to the rehearsal rooms. Through the door he could hear some actor intoning lines of dialogue that were his. He stood and listened and then flung open the door. Immediately everything stopped. The actors swung round to look at him and Eddie turned, irritated, script in hand, to banish whoever it was.

  “I tried to stop him,” exclaimed the girl.

  A doorman, breathing heavily, ran in.

  “Ha-ho!” said Jack shrilly and he took a seat.

  “Come with me, son.” said the doorman.

  “It’s all right,” said Eddie. “This is Mr Ferris. This is our playwright.”

  The cast, bewildered by his appearance, turned to look at Jack Ferris. His eyes were nervous and exhausted, the black hair turning grey was swept back so tight to his head that the bones of his forehead gleamed like horns. The laces on his mud-caked army boots were hanging askew. The zip on the fork of his jeans came to half-way. He was wearing a bright-red jumper under a green oilskin coat that had one ripped pocket.

  “Ha-ho!” he said. The girl nervously withdrew while the doorman held the door ajar for her.

  “OK, everyone take a break,” said Eddie.

  He approached Jack warily.

  “I brought you some more revised pages,” said Jack pulling a bundle of sheets from under his jumper.

  Eddie took them without comment.

  Jack looked at the actors who had gathered embarrassed round a kettle and some paper cups.

&n
bsp; “Would you like to go some place where we can talk in private?” Eddie asked.

  “Here will do nicely, thank you.” He watched the actors regain their composure. They started to chat as if he wasn’t there.

  “Where’s Catherine?” he asked.

  “She’s free today.”

  “That’s a coincidence.”

  Eddie held the revised pages uneasily. “Look, Jack, I don’t want an argument.”

  “There will be no argument. I wanted to see her, that’s all – if she was here. If she’s not here, fine. I just came to deliver the new text.”

  Relieved, Eddie skimmed through the handwritten notes.

  “What do you think?” Jack asked.

  “I’ll need time. There’s an awful lot of changes here.”

  “Don’t you think it makes for a better script?”

  “If you say so.”

  He continued to read the pages. “Lots of this we have already rehearsed. We’ve moved it, it’s all nearly done.” Then he placed the pages into his script. “I’ll look at it later, OK?” They sat there a while in silence.

  “I was thinking of sitting in on a few rehearsals.”

  “In the circumstances, I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Is Catherine of that opinion?”

  “It’s my choice. And I don’t want you talking to the actors.”

  Again came the silence. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “No,” said Jack. “I think I’ll go. I just wanted to make sure you got that stuff.” He stood. “I’ll send the others on.”