The Collected Stories

by John McGahern

  ‘Oysters. Give me some oysters,’ he cried, and stretched out his hands.

  ‘Please help us, sir. I am ashamed to ask but I can’t stand it any more,’ he heard his father’s voice.

  ‘Oysters,’ the boy cried.

  ‘Do you mean to say you eat oysters? As small a fellow as you eats oysters?’ He heard laughter close. A pair of enormous men in fur coats were standing over him. They were looking into his face and laughing. ‘Are you sure it’s oysters you want? This is too rich. Are you sure you know how to eat them?’ Strong hands drew him into the lighted restaurant. He was sat at a table. A crowd gathered round. He ate something slimy, it tasted of sea water and mould. He kept his eyes shut. If he opened them he’d see the glittering eyes and claws and teeth. And then he ate something hard.

  ‘Good Lord. He’s eating the bloody shells! Here, waiter!’

  The next thing he remembered was lying in bed with a terrible thirst, he could not sleep with heartburn, and there was a strange taste in his parched mouth. His father was walking up and down the small room and waving his arms about.

  ‘I must have caught cold. My head is splitting. Maybe it’s because I’ve eaten nothing today. Those men must have spent ten roubles on the oysters today and I stood there and did nothing. Why hadn’t I the sense to go up to them and ask them, ask them to lend me something? They would have given me something.’

  Towards evening the child fell asleep and dreamt of a frog sitting in a shell, moving its eyes. At noon he was woken by thirst and looked for his father. His father was still pacing up and down and waving his arms around.

  The word Oysters was chalked on the wagon that carried Chekhov’s body to Moscow for burial. The coffin was carried in the oyster wagon because of the fierce heat of early July. She found she had written it down once more. Chekhov was that boy outside the restaurant with his father in the autumn rain, was that starving boy crunching the oysters in the restaurant while they laughed, was the child in the bed woken by thirst at noon, watching the father pace up and down the small room waving his arms around. She wanted to write an imaginary life of Chekhov, from the day outside the restaurant to the day the body of the famous writer reached Moscow in the oyster wagon for burial. It would begin with oysters and end with oysters, some of the oysters, after the coffin had been taken away for burial, delivered to the same restaurant in which the child Chekhov had eaten shells. She wasn’t yet sure whether she would write it as a novel or a play. The theatre was what she knew best, but she was sure that it would probably never get written at all unless more order and calm entered her life than was in it now. She closed the folder very quietly on the notes and returned it to a drawer. Then she showered and changed into a blue woollen dress and continued to wait for Arvo Meri to come.

  That morning Arvo’s wife had rung her at the theatre, where she was directing the rehearsals of Ostrovsky’s The Dragon. At the end of the abusive call she shouted, ‘You’re nothing but a whore,’ and then began to sob hysterically. Eva used the old defence of silence and put down the receiver and told the doorman that no matter how urgent any call claimed to be she was not to be interrupted in rehearsal. She was having particular difficulty with one of the leads, an actress of some genius who needed directing with a hand of iron since her instinct was to filch more importance for her own part than it had been allotted. She had seen her ruin several fine plays by acting everybody else off the stage and was determined that it wasn’t going to happen in this production. Once she began to rehearse again she put the call out of her mind but was able to think of nothing else during the midday break, and rang Arvo at his office. He was a journalist, with political ambitions on the Left, who had almost got into parliament at the last election and was almost certain to get in at the next. When he apologized for the call and blamed it on his wife’s drinking she lost her temper.

  ‘That makes a pair of you, then,’ and went on to say that she wanted a life of her own, preferably with him, but if not – without him. She had enough of to-ing and fro-ing, of what she called his Hamlet act. This time he would have to make up his mind, one way or the other. He countered by saying that it wasn’t possible to discuss it over the phone and arranged to call at her flat at eight. As she waited for him in the blue woollen dress, she determined to have that life of her own. The two sentences The word Oysters was chalked on the wagon that carried Chekhov’s body to Moscow for burial. The coffin was carried in the oyster wagon because of the fierce heat of early July echoed like a revenant in her mind and would not be still.

  There was snow on Arvo Meri’s coat and fur hat when he came and he carried a sheaf of yellow roses. Once she saw the flowers she knew nothing would change. She laid them across a sheepskin that covered a large trunk at the foot of the bed without removing their wrapping.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m so sorry about this morning, Eva …’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ she stopped him, ‘but I do want to know what you propose to do.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said guiltily. ‘You know I can’t get a divorce.’

  ‘I don’t care about a divorce.’

  ‘But what else is there to do?’

  ‘I can take a larger flat than this. We can start to live together,’ she said, and he put his head in his hands.

  ‘Even though there’s nothing left between us she still depends on the relationship. If I was to move out completely she’d just go to pieces.’

  ‘That’s not my problem.’

  ‘Can’t we wait a little longer?’

  ‘More than two years seems long enough to me. You go to Moscow by going to Moscow. If you wait until all the conditions are right you can wait your whole life.’

  ‘I’ve booked a table at the Mannerheim. Why don’t we talk it over there?’

  ‘Why not?’ She shrugged with bright sarcasm, and lifted the yellow roses from the sheepskin. ‘I ask you for a life and you offer me yellow roses and a dinner at the Mannerheim,’ but he did not answer and started to dial for a taxi. She let the roses drop idly down on the sheepskin and pulled on her fur coat and boots and sealskin cap.

  Charcoal was blazing in two braziers on tall iron stems on either side of the entrance to the Mannerheim. They hadn’t spoken during the taxi drive and she remarked as she got out, ‘They must have some important personage tonight.’ As the lift went up, she felt a sinking as in an aeroplane take-off. A uniformed attendant took their furs and they had a drink in the bar across from the restaurant while they gave their order to the waiter. The restaurant was half empty: three older couples and a very large embassy party. They knew it was an embassy party because of a circle of toy flags that stood in the centre of the table. Through the uncurtained glass they could see out over the lights of the city to the darkness that covered the frozen harbour and sea. He had drunk a number of vodkas by the time the main course came, and she was too tense to eat as she nibbled at the shrimp in the avocado and sipped at the red wine.

  ‘You don’t mind me drinking? I have a need of vodka tonight.’

  ‘Of course not … but it won’t be any use.’

  ‘Why?’ He looked at her.

  ‘When I was pregnant you took me to the Mannerheim and said, “I don’t know what to do. It’s not the right time yet. That is all I know,” and drank vodka. You were silent for hours, except every now and then you’d say, “All I’m certain of is that it’s not the right time yet for us to have a child.” I had some hard thinking to do when I left the Mannerheim that night. And when I arranged for and had the abortion without telling you, and rang you after coming out of the clinic, you said the whole week had been like walking round under a dark cloud, but that I had made you so happy now. I was so understanding. One day we’d have a child when everything was right. And you came that evening with yellow roses and took me to the Mannerheim and later we danced all night at that place on the shore.’

  She spoke very slowly. He didn’t want to listen, but he didn’t know what t
o say to stop her, and he ordered more vodka.

  ‘And now when we spend three days in a row together your wife rings up and calls me a whore. You bring me yellow roses and take me to the Mannerheim. The vodka won’t do any good …’

  ‘But what are we to do?’

  ‘I’ve given my answer. I’ll take a larger flat. We’ll live together as two people, from now on.’

  ‘But can’t we wait till after the elections?’

  ‘No. It’s always been “wait”. And there will always be something to wait for. They say there’s no good time to die either. That it’s as difficult to leave at seventy as at twenty. So why not now?’

  ‘But I love you, Eva.’

  ‘If you loved me enough you’d come and live with me,’ and he went silent. He had more vodka, and as they were leaving she noticed the attendant’s look of disapproval as he swayed into the lift. The tall braziers had been taken in, and as they waited while the doorman hailed a taxi he asked, ‘Can I come back with you tonight?’ ‘Why not? If you want,’ she laughed in a voice that made him afraid. He was violently ill when he got to the flat and fell at once into a drugged sleep sprawled across the bed. She looked at him a moment with what she knew was the dangerous egotism of the maternal instinct before she made up a bed on the carpet and switched off the lights. He woke early with a raging thirst and she got him a glass of water. ‘Was I sick last night?’ ‘Yes, but don’t worry, in the bathroom.’ ‘Why didn’t you sleep in the bed?’ ‘I’d have to wake you, the way you were in bed.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘It doesn’t matter.’ ‘Why don’t you come in now?’ ‘All right.’ She rose from the blankets on the floor. The night conversation seemed to her like dialogue from a play that had run too long, and the acting had gone stale. He drew her towards him in the bed, more, she knew, to try to escape through pleasure from the pain of the hangover than from desire. She grew impatient with his tired fumbling and pulled him on top of her, provoking him with her own body till he came. Afterwards they both slept. She shook her head later when he asked her, ‘When will we meet?’ ‘It’s no use.’ ‘But I love you.’ She still shook her head. ‘I’m fond of you but you can’t give me what I want.’ As he moved to speak she stopped him, ‘No. I can’t wait. I have work I want to do.’ ‘Is it that damned Chekhov’s body?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘It’ll never come to anything,’ he said in hatred. ‘I don’t care, but I intend to try.’ ‘You’re nothing but a selfish bitch.’ ‘I am selfish and I want you to go now.’

  That morning there were several calls for her during rehearsals but she had left strict instructions that she wasn’t to be disturbed, and when she got home that evening she took the phone off the hook.

  She was surprised during the following days how little she yearned for him, it was as if a weight had lifted. She felt an affection for him that she felt for the part of her life she had passed with him, but she saw clearly that it was for her own life and not for his that she yearned. She would go on alone, and when he demanded to see her she met him with a calm that was indifference which roused him to fury. She had not built a life with him, she had built nothing: but out of these sentences The word Oysters was chalked on the wagon that carried Chekhov’s body to Moscow for burial. The coffin was carried in the oyster wagon because of the fierce heat of early July she would build, and for that she had to be alone. She would leave this city that had so much of her past life, the theatre where she had worked so long. She would leave them like a pair of galoshes in the porch, and go indoors. She rang rich friends: was their offer of the house in Spain still open? It was. They only used it in July. They would be delighted to loan it to her. She went and offered her resignation to the old manager.

  ‘But you can’t leave in the middle of a production.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t explain properly. Of course I’ll see the production through, but I won’t be renewing my contract when it expires at the end of the year.’

  ‘Is it salary?’ He sat down behind his big desk and motioned to her to sit.

  ‘No. I am leaving the theatre. I want to try to write,’ she blurted out to save explanation.

  ‘It’s even more precarious than the theatre, and now that you’ve made your way there why throw it over for something worse still?’ He was old and kindly and wise, though he too must have had to be ruthless in his day.

  ‘I must find out whether I can or not. I’ll only find out by finding out. I’ll come back if I fail.’

  ‘You know, contrary to the prodigal son story, few professions welcome back their renegades?’

  ‘I’ll take that risk.’

  ‘Well, I see you’re determined.’ He rose.

  As soon as a production begins to take shape it devours everybody around it so that one has no need for company or friends or anything outside it, and in the evening one takes a limp life home with no other idea than to restore it so that it can be devoured anew the next day. As she went home on the tram two days before the dress rehearsal she hadn’t enough strength to be angry when she saw her photo in the evening paper and read that she was leaving the theatre to write. She was leaving to try to write. She should have been more careful. Kind as he was she should have known that the old manager would use any publicity in any way to fill the theatre. To write was better copy than the truthful try to write. She wondered tiredly if there was a photo of the coffin being lifted out of the oyster wagon or of the starving man in his summer coat in the rain outside the restaurant while the boy crunched on the oyster shells within; and whether it was due to the kindness usually reserved for the dear departed or mere luck, no production of hers had ever opened before to such glowing notices.

  She left on New Year’s Eve for Spain, by boat and train, passing through Stockholm and Copenhagen, and stopping five days in Paris where she knew some people. She had with her the complete works of Chekhov, and the two sentences were more permanently engraved than ever in her mind: The word Oysters was chalked on the wagon that carried Chekhov’s body to Moscow for burial. The coffin was carried in the oyster wagon because of the fierce heat of early July.

  She stayed five days in the Hôtel Celtique on the rue Odessa, and all her waking hours seemed taken up with meeting people she already knew. Most of them scraped a frugal living from translation or journalism or both and all of them wrote or wanted to be artists in one way or another. They lived in small rooms and went out to cheap restaurants and movie houses. She saw that many of them were homesick and longed for some way to go back without injuring their self-esteem and that they thought her a fool for leaving. In their eyes she read contempt. ‘So she too has got the bug. That’s all we need. One more,’ and she began to protect herself by denying that there was any foundation to the newspaper piece. On the evening before she took the train to Spain she had dinner in a Russian restaurant off the Boulevard St Michael with the cleverest of them all: the poet Seven. He had published three books of poems, and the previous year she had produced a play of his that had been taken off after a week though it was highly praised by the critics. His threadbare dark suit was spotless, and the cuffs and collar of the white shirt shone, the black bow knotted with a studied carelessness. They were waited on by the owner, a little old hen of a Russian woman who spoke heavily accented French and whose thinning hair was dyed carrot. A once powerful man played an accordion at the door.

  ‘Well, Eva Lindberg, can you explain to me what you’re doing haring off to Spain instead of staying up there to empty that old theatre of yours with my next play?’ The clever mordant eyes looked at her through unrimmed spectacles with ironic amusement.

  ‘I was offered a loan of a house.’ She was careful.

  ‘And they inform me you intend to write there. You know there’s not room for the lot of us.’

  ‘That’s just a rumour that got into a newspaper.’

  ‘What’ll you do down there, a single woman among hordes of randy Spaniards?’

  ‘For one thing I have a lot of reading to catch up on.’ She was s
afe now, borrowing aggression from his aggression.

  ‘And why did you leave the theatre?’

  ‘I felt I was getting stale. I wasn’t enjoying it any more.’

  ‘Have you money?’

  ‘I have enough money. What about your own work?’

  He started to describe what he was working on with the mockery usually reserved for the work of others. The accordion player came round the tables with a saucer, bullying those who offered him less than a franc. They had a second carafe of red wine and finished with a peppered vodka. Warmed by the vodka, he asked her to sleep with him, his face so contorted at having to leave himself open to rejection that she felt sorry for him.

  ‘Why not?’ he pushed; soon he would begin to mock his own desire.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ she said gently. ‘I’ve had enough. I want to be alone for a time.’

  She was alone for the whole of the journey the next evening and night, going early to her sleeper, changing at the frontier the next morning into the wider Spanish train, which got into Barcelona just before noon. A taximan took her to the small Hotel New York in the Gothic quarter and it proved as clean and cheap as he said it would be. She stayed five days in Barcelona and was happy. Like an army in peacetime she was doing what she had to do by being idle and felt neither guilt nor need to make a holiday.

  She walked the narrow streets, went to a few museums and churches, bought a newspaper on the Ramblas, vivid with the flower stalls under the leafless trees in the cold dry weather, and ate each evening at the Casa Agut, a Catalan restaurant a few minutes walk from the hotel. She sat where she could watch the kitchen and always had gaspacho, ensalada and a small steak with a half-bottle of red Rioja, enjoying the march of the jefe who watched for the slightest carelessness, the red and white towel on his shoulder like an epaulet. After five such days she took the train to Valencia where she got the express bus to Almería. She would get off at Vera and get a taxi to the empty house on the shore. It was on this bus that she made her first human contact since leaving Paris, a Swedish homosexual who must have identified her as Scandinavian by her clothes and blonde hair and who asked if he could sit beside her. ‘How far are you going?’ she asked when she saw she was stuck with him for the journey. ‘I don’t know. South. I can go as far as I want.’ Though the hair was dyed blond the lines in the brittle feminine face showed he was sixty or more. He spoke only his own language and some English and was impressed by her facility for acquiring languages. She wondered if the homosexual love of foreignness was that having turned away from the mother or been turned away they needed to do likewise with their mother tongue. ‘Aren’t you a lucky girl to find languages so easy?’ She resented the bitchiness that inferred a boast she hadn’t made.