My Oedipus Complex

by Frank O'Connor

  A sort of confidence had established itself between them. The evening passed quickly in talk and singing – in whistling too, for he was a good whistler, and sometimes performed for dancing: to judge by his own statements he was a great favourite at wakes and weddings and she could understand that.

  It was quite dark when they stopped the conversation. Again he made as if to go, and again in her shy, cold way she offered him the chance of staying. He stayed.

  For days afterward there seemed to be some spell upon them both. A week passed in excuses and delays, each morning finding him about long before she appeared with some new suggestion, the garden to be weeded, potatoes to be dug, the kitchen to be whitewashed. Neither suggested anything but as it were from hour to hour, yet it did not occur to the man that for her as for him their companionship might be an unexpected benefit.

  He did her messages to the village whenever Dan, the ‘boy’, a sullen, rather stupid, one-eyed old man, was absent, and though she gave no sign that she did not like this, he was always surprised afresh by the faint excitement with which she greeted his return; had it been anyone else one might have called her excitement gaiety, but gay was hardly a word one could apply to her, and the emotion quickly died and gave place to a sullen apathy.

  She knew the end must come soon, and it did. One evening he returned from an errand, and told her someone had died in the village. He was slightly shocked by her indifference. She would not go with him to the wake, but she bade himself go if he pleased. He did please. She could see there was an itch for company on him; he was made that way. As he polished his boots he confessed to her that among his other vocations he had tried being a Trappist monk, but stuck it only for a few months. It wasn’t bad in summer, but it was the divil and all in winter, and the monks told him there were certain souls like himself the Lord called only for six months of the year (the irony of this completely escaped him).

  He promised to be back before midnight, and went off very gay. By this time he had formed his own opinion of the woman. It was not for nothing she lived there alone, not for nothing a visitor never crossed the threshold. He knew she did not go to Mass, yet on Sunday when he came back unexpectedly for his stick, he had seen her, in the bedroom, saying her rosary. Something was wrong, but he could not guess what.

  Her mood was anything but gay and the evening seemed to respond to it. It was very silent after the long drought; she could hear the thrush’s beak go tip-tap among the stones like a fairy’s hammer. It was making for rain. To the north-west the wind had piled up massive archways of purple cloud like a ruined cloister, and through them one’s eyes passed on to vistas of feathery cloudlets, violet and gold, packed thick upon one another. A cold wind had sprung up: the trees creaked, and the birds flew by, their wings blown up in a gesture of horror. She stood for a long while looking at the sky, until it faded, chilled by the cold wind. There was something mournful and sinister about it all.

  It was quite dark when she went in. She sat over the fire and waited. At half past eleven she put down the kettle and brewed herself tea. She told herself she was not expecting him, but still she waited. At half past twelve she stood at the door and listened for footsteps. The wind had risen, and her mind filled slowly with its childish sobbing and with the harsh gushing of the stream beside the house. Then it began to rain. To herself she gave him until one. At one she relented and gave him another half-hour, and it was two before she quenched the light and went to bed. She had lost him, she decided.

  She started when an hour or more later she heard his footsteps up the path. She needed no one to tell her he was alone and drunk: often before she had waited for the footsteps of a drunken old man. But instead of rushing to the door as she would have done long ago, she waited.

  He began to moan drowsily to himself. She heard a thud followed by gusty sighing; she knew he had fallen. Everything was quiet for a while. Then there came a bang at the door which echoed through the house like a revolver shot, and something fell on the flagstones outside. Another bang and again silence. She felt no fear, only a coldness in her bowels.

  Then the gravel scraped as he staggered to his feet. She glanced at the window. She could see his head outlined against it, his hands against its frame. Suddenly his voice rose in a wail that chilled her blood.

  ‘What will the soul do at the judgement? Ah, what will the soul do? I will say to ye, “Depart from me into everlasting fire that was prepared for the divil and his angels. Depart from me, depart!” ’

  It was like a scream of pain, but immediately upon it came a low chuckle of malice. The woman’s fists clenched beneath the clothes. ‘Never again,’ she said to herself aloud, ‘never again!’

  ‘Do you see me, do you?’ he shouted. ‘Do you see me?’

  ‘I see you,’ she whispered to herself.

  ‘For ye, for ye, I reddened the fire,’ went on the man, dropping back into his whine, ‘for ye, for ye, I dug the pit. The black bitch on the hill, let ye torment her for me, ye divils. Forever, forever! Gather round, ye divils, gather round, and let me see ye roast the black bitch that killed a man.… Do you hear me, do you?’

  ‘I hear you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Listen to me!

  ‘When the old man was sleeping

  She rose up from her bed,

  And crept into his lone bedroom

  And cruelly struck him dead;

  ’Twas with a hammer she done the deed,

  May god it her repay,

  And then she…then she…

  ‘How does it go? I have it!

  ‘And then she lifted up the body

  And hid it in the hay.’

  Suddenly a stone came crashing through the window and a cold blast followed it. ‘Never again,’ she cried, hammering the bedframe with her fists, ‘dear God, never again.’ She heard the footsteps stumbling away. She knew he was running. It was like a child’s malice and terror.

  She rose and stuffed the window with a rag. Day was breaking. When she went back to bed she was chilled and shaken. Despairing of rest, she rose again, lit a candle and blew up the fire.

  But even then some unfamiliar feeling was stirring at her heart. She felt she was losing control of herself and was being moved about like a chessman. Sighing, she slipped her feet into heavy shoes, threw an old coat about her shoulders, and went to the door. As she crossed the threshold she stumbled over something. It was a boot; another was lying some little distance away. Something seemed to harden within her. She placed the boots inside the door and closed it. But again came the faint thrill at her heart, so light it might have been a fluttering of untried wings and yet so powerful it shook her from head to foot, so that almost before she had closed the door she opened it again and went out, puzzled and trembling, into a cold noiseless rain. She called the man in an extraordinarily gentle voice as though she were afraid of being heard; then she made the circle of the farmhouse, a candle sheltered in the palm of her hand.

  He was lying in the outhouse he had been whitewashing. She stood and looked down at him for a moment, her face set in a grim mask of disgust. Then she laid down the candle and lifted him, and at that moment an onlooker would have been conscious of her great physical strength. Half lifting, half guiding him, she steered the man to the door. On the doorstep he stood and said something to her, and immediately, with all her strength, she struck him across the mouth. He staggered and swore at her, but she caught him again and pushed him across the threshold. Then she went back for the candle, undressed him and put him to bed.

  It was bright morning when she had done.

  *

  That day he lay on in bed, and came into the kitchen about two o’clock looking sheepish and sullen. He was wearing his own ragged boots.

  ‘I’m going now,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Please yourself,’ she answered coolly. ‘Maybe you’d be better.’

  He seemed to expect something more, and because she said nothing he felt himself being put subtly in the wrong. This w
as not so surprising, because even she was impressed by her own nonchalance that seemed to have come suddenly to her from nowhere.

  ‘Well?’ he asked, and his look seemed to say, ‘Women are the divil and all!’ one could read him like a book.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’

  ‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’ she retorted. ‘I had enough of your blackguarding last night. You won’t stop another hour in this house unless you behave yourself, mark me well, you won’t.’

  He grew very red.

  ‘That’s strange,’ he answered sulkily.

  ‘What’s strange?’

  ‘The likes of you saying that to me.’

  ‘Take it or leave it. And if you don’t like it, there’s the door.’

  Still he lingered. She knew now she had him at her mercy, and the nonchalance dropped from her.

  ‘Aren’t you a queer woman?’ he commented, lighting his pipe. ‘One’d think you wouldn’t have the face to talk like that to an honest man. Have you no shame?’

  ‘Listen to who’s talking of shame,’ she answered bitterly. ‘A pity you didn’t see yourself last night, lying in your dirt like an old cow. And you call yourself a man. How ready you were with your stones!’

  ‘It was the shock,’ he said sullenly.

  ‘It was no shock. It was drink.’

  ‘It was the shock I tell you. I was left an orphan with no one to tell me the badness of the world.’

  ‘I was left an orphan too. And I don’t go round crying about the badness of the world.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, don’t remind me what you were. ’Tis only myself, the poor fool, wouldn’t know, and all the old chat I had about the man I drew blood from, as if I was a terrible fellow entirely. I might have known to see a handsome woman living lonely that she wouldn’t be that way only no man in Ireland would look at the side of the road she walked on.’

  He did not see how the simple flattery of his last words went through her, quickening her with pleasure; he noticed only the savage retort she gave him, for the sense of his own guilt was growing stronger in him at every moment. Her silence was in part the cause of that; her explanation would have been his triumph. That at least was how he had imagined it. He had not been prepared for this silence which drew him like a magnet. He could not decide to go, yet his fear of her would not allow him to remain. The day passed like that. When twilight came she looked across at him and asked:

  ‘Are you going or stopping?’

  ‘I’m stopping, if you please,’ he answered meekly.

  ‘Well, I’m going to bed. One sleepless night is enough for me.’

  And she went, leaving him alone in the kitchen. Had she delayed until darkness fell, he would have found it impossible to remain, but there was no suspicion of this in her mind. She understood only that people might hate her; that they might fear her never entered her thoughts.

  An hour or so later she looked for the candle and remembered that she had left it in his room. She rose and knocked at his door. There was no answer. She knocked again. Then she pushed in the door and called him. She was alarmed. The bed was empty. She laid her hand to the candle (it was lying still where she had left it, on the dresser beside the door) but as she did so she heard his voice, husky and terrified.

  ‘Keep away from me! Keep away from me, I tell you!’

  She could discern his figure now. He was standing in a corner, his little white shirt half way up his thighs, his hand grasping something, she did not see what. It was some little while before the explanation dawned on her, and with it came a sudden feeling of desolation within her.

  ‘What ails you?’ she asked gently. ‘I was only looking for the candle.’

  ‘Don’t come near me!’ he cried.

  She lit the candle, and as he saw her there, her face as he had never seen it before, stricken with pain, his fear died away. A moment later she was gone, and the back door slammed behind her. It was only then he realized what his insane fear had brought him to, and the obsession of his own guilt returned with a terrible clarity. He walked up and down the little room in desperation.

  Half an hour later he went to her room. The candle was burning on a chair beside the bed. She lifted herself on the pillow and looked at him with strangely clear eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he answered. ‘I shouldn’t be here at all. I’m sorry. I’m queer. I’ll go in the morning and I won’t trouble you any more.’

  ‘Never mind,’ she said, and held out her hand to him. He came closer and took it timidly. ‘You wouldn’t know.’

  ‘God pity me,’ he said. ‘I was distracted. You know I was distracted. You were so good to me, and that’s the way I paid you out. But I was going out of my mind. I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Sure you couldn’t.’ She drew him down to her until his head was resting on the pillow, and made him lie beside her.

  ‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t,’ he said into her ear. ‘I wint raving mad. And I thought whin you came into the room – ’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘I did, whatever came over me.’

  ‘I know.’ He realized that she was shivering all over.

  She drew back the clothes for him. He was eager to explain, to tell her about himself, his youth, the death of his father and mother, his poverty, his religious difficulties, his poetry. What was wrong with him was, he was wild; could stick at no trade, could never keep away from drink.

  ‘You were wild yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Fifteen years ago. I’m tame now in earnest.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said eagerly, ‘talk to me, can’t you? Tell me he was bad. Tell me he was a cruel old uncle to you. Tell me he beat you. He used to lock you up for days, usedn’t he, to keep you away from boys? He must have been bad or you’d never had done what you did, and you only a girl.’

  But still she said nothing. Bright day was in the room when he fell asleep, and for a long while she lay, her elbow on the pillow, her hand covering her left breast, while she looked at him. His mouth was wide open, his irregular teeth showed in a faint smile. Their shyness had created a sort of enchantment about them, and she watched over his sleep with something like ecstasy, ecstasy which disappeared when he woke, to find her, the same hard quiet woman he knew.

  After that she ceased making his bed in the small room, and he slept with her. Not that it made any difference to their relations. Between them after those few hours of understanding persisted a fierce, unbroken shyness, the shyness of lonely souls. If it rasped the nerves of either, there was no open sign of it, unless a curiously irritable tenderness revealed anything of their thoughts. She was forever finding things done for her; there was no longer any question of his going, and he worked from morning until late night with an energy and intelligence that surprised her. But she knew he felt the lack of company, and one evening she went out to him as he worked in the garden.

  ‘Why don’t you go down to the village now?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah, what would I be doing there?’ But it was clear that it had been on his mind at that very moment.

  ‘You might drop in for a drink and a chat.’

  ‘I might do that,’ he agreed.

  ‘And why don’t you?’

  ‘Me? I’d be ashamed.’

  ‘Ashamed? Ashamed of what? There’s no one will say anything to you. And if they do, what are you, after all, but a working man?’

  It was clear that this excuse had not occurred to him, but it would also have been clear to anyone else that she would have thought poorly of such as gave it credit. So he got his coat and went.

  It was late when he came in, and she saw he had drunk more than his share. His face was flushed and he laughed too easily. For two days past a bottle of whiskey had been standing on the dresser (what a change for her!) but if he had noticed it he had made no sign. Now he went directly to it and poured himself out a glass.

  �
�You found it,’ she said with a hint of bitterness.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You found it, I say.’

  ‘Of course I did. Have a drop yourself.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do. Just a drop.’

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  He crossed to her, stood behind her chair for a moment; then he bent over and kissed her. She had been expecting it, but on the instant she revolted.

  ‘Don’t do that again,’ she said appealingly, wiping her mouth.

  ‘You don’t mind me, do you?’ he sniggered, still standing behind her.

  ‘I do. I mind it when you’re drunk.’

  ‘Well, here’s health.’

  ‘Don’t drink any more of that.’

  ‘Here’s health.’

  ‘Good health.’

  ‘Take a drop yourself, do.’

  ‘No, I tell you,’ she answered angrily.

  ‘By God, you must.’

  He threw one arm about her neck and deliberately spilt the whiskey between her breasts. She sprang up and threw him away from her. Whatever had been in her mind was now forgotten in her loathing.

  ‘Bad luck to you!’ she cried savagely.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ Already he was growing afraid.

  ‘You didn’t mean it,’ she retorted mockingly. ‘Who taught you to do it then? Was it Jimmie Dick? What sort of woman do you think I am, you fool? You sit all night in a public-house talking of me, and when you come back you try to make me out as loose and dirty as your talk.’

  ‘Who said I was talking of you?’

  ‘I say it.’

  ‘Then you’re wrong.’

  ‘I’m not wrong. Don’t I know you, you poor sheep? You sat there, letting them make you out a great fellow, because they thought you were like themselves and thought I was a bitch, and you never as much as opened your mouth to give them the lie. You sat there and gaped and bragged. That’s what you are.’

  ‘That’s not true.’