Graveyard Clay- Cré Na Cille

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  —My own razor and strop! They were kept in the top of the press. How well he knew where to find them, the thief …

  —You were darting around the kitchen, Little Cáit, like a dog with fleas …

  —As busy as Nóra Sheáinín when she’d come over to Caitríona’s …

  —Shut your mouth, you little brat …

  —“I must go upstairs and keep him propped up on his side while you’re shaving his cheeks,” you said. “The Schoolmistress will do that,” said Billyboy. “You can rest yourself there, Little Cáit …”

  —Oh! The mangy pair! …

  —Don’t heed him, Big Master. It was I who laid you out. And a fine-looking corpse you were, God bless you! That’s what I said to the Schoolmistress when we had you decked out. “He’s a credit to you, Mistress,” said I. “He made a fine-looking corpse, may the Lord have mercy on him, but that was to be expected: a fine man like the Big Master …”

  —Faith then, Cáit, it wouldn’t matter how the likes of us would be laid out, but it seems to me you’d be too rough and ready to go pawing a schoolmaster …

  —… Five days I spent watching over you, East-Side-of-the-Village Man; up and down to your house to see you: up and down to the Little Height to look over at your house to see if there was any sign of your death. Raving in your sleep you were, and the only complaint out of you was about a patch of land at the top of the village that was the best ever for fattening cattle. It seemed to me you’d much prefer not to go at all if you couldn’t take it with you …

  —And so much blather out of the gadfly about the English market …

  —… It was I who laid you out indeed, Curraoin, and still and all, you were very reluctant to be off. You definitely went through the death-throes. Every time I was about to put the thumbs on you, you’d wake up again. Your wife felt your pulse. “He’s expired, may the Lord have mercy on him!” she said.

  “Musha, may his soul have calm and fair sailing!” said Big Brian, who had just come in. “He got his passage money at last. By Dad, I thought he wouldn’t sail without taking Road-End’s daughter on board with him.”

  “May his bed be bright in Heaven tonight!” I said myself, and I ordered a tub of water to be prepared. Didn’t you wake back up at that very moment! “Take care that Tom gets the big holding,” you said. “I’d rather see it swept away by the wind than the eldest son to have it, unless he marries some woman other than Road-End’s daughter …” You woke up again: “If the eldest son gets the land from you,” you said to your wife, “the devil mend me but my ghost will have you by the tail of your shirt by day and by night! Isn’t it a pity I didn’t go to an attorney and make a sound will! …”

  You woke up the third time: “That spade Tomáisín’s daughter took away with her, the time of the early potatoes, let one of you go and get it back, since they didn’t have the decency to return it themselves. May the devil pierce them! Be sure you issue a summons on Glutton for letting his donkeys into our oats. If you don’t get satisfaction in court, the next time you catch them inside our wall, drive horseshoe nails through their hooves. May the devil pierce himself and his donkeys! Don’t be too lax or lazy to get up before dawn and keep an eye on your turf, and if you should catch Road-End Man …”

  —I thought it was the old woman who was stealing it …

  —They were all as bad as each other, himself and his old woman and their four children.

  —… You were about to surrender your soul when I came in. I knelt down as the litany was being recited. Even at that stage you were still murmuring. “Jack, Jack, Jack,” you kept saying. “How well the poor thing remembers Jack the Scológ,” I said to Nell Pháidín, who was on her knees beside me. “But the two were always great friends.” “God grant you a bit of sense, Little Cáit,” said Nell, “‘Black, black, black’ is what he’s saying! The son …”

  —I heard, Cáit, that the last warning Caitríona Pháidín gave to her son was …

  —To bury her in the Pound Plot …

  —To put a cross of Island limestone over her …

  —Ababúna!

  —To go to Mannion the Counsellor and get him to write a powerful letter about Baba’s will …

  —To let Tomás Inside’s house fall down …

  —To poison Nell …

  —Ababúna! Don’t believe him, Jack …

  —If Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter didn’t die on her next childbirth, to divorce her …

  —You’re insulting the faith, you little brat. The Antichrist will soon be here …

  —… Oh! There was pandemonium all over the village straight away:

  “He fell off a stack of oats.”

  “He fell off a stack of oats.”

  “Your man fell off a stack of oats.”

  Up I went to the house to you immediately. I was certain I’d find a brand-new corpse waiting for me there. What did I get instead but yourself there like a lazy lump, telling everyone how your left foot slipped.

  —Upon my soul, Cáit, I broke my thigh in two halves.

  —What good was that to me? I thought I’d have a brand new corpse waiting for me …

  —But I died, Cáit …

  —… I never saw a big lazy lump in a bed as restless as you were. You had one leg on the floor …

  —I knew, Cáit, that I was dying, and I tried to get up and go to the murderer and kill him. “Drink two spoonfuls from this bottle …”

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, for a story …

  —… I probed your throat. “Where’s the bone that choked her?” said I. “The doctor took it out,” said your sister. “May the Lord’s mercy be no less for that!” said I. “Nobody should stuff themselves. If that woman hadn’t been so greedy in eating her food we wouldn’t be laying her out now …”

  “She hadn’t tasted a bit of meat since the Feast of St. Martin,”18 said your sister …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t Big Brian say she’d still be alive and kicking today if she hadn’t chased Caitríona Pháidín’s dog out of the house before dinner-time? “He was so wild with hunger,” he said, “he’d have easily gone down her windpipe and got up the bone …”

  —Oh! Brian the scold!

  —… It was summer, and the perspiration was congealed in your skin. “He couldn’t but smell of sweat,” said my mother. “My poor child was a foolish boy, and it shows on him now. Putting himself through that ordeal of going to Dublin on an old bike, and sleeping in the open the same night! I hope God won’t hold it against him …”

  —Oh! If I’d been alive a month from that day I’d have seen Concannon beating Kerry …

  —In 1941, is it? If it is …

  —… You gave myself and Muraed Phroinsiais grey hair. We scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed you, but to no avail. “These spots are not dirt at all,” said I to Muraed at last. “There are five or six of them,” said Muraed. “They’re emblems that have to do with Hitler,” said your daughter. Amn’t I the forgetful one now that I can’t remember what she called them …

  —Tattoo.

  —Swastika …

  —That’s the very word, by all that’s holy. We’d wasted three pots of boiling water on you, four pounds of soap, two boxes of Rinso, a lump of Monkey Brand, two buckets of sand, but they wouldn’t come out. I wouldn’t mind, but you didn’t show the least bit of gratitude after all the trouble you put us to …

  —I’d have put you to more trouble, only for the Graf Spee, for I would have branded every little bulge of my body. Hitler was worthy of that much.

  —“Arrah! bad luck to him! Leave them,” said Muraed. “He can’t be let go in the condition he’s in,” said I. “Isn’t he as pockmarked as a stray letter! Put another pot of water on the fire, in the name of God.”

  Big Brian happened to come in at that very moment. “It seems to me,” he said, “that you two want to scald the poor fellow like a dead pig …”

  —Oh! He was the right scald himself, and an ugly scald
he was!

  —… No more than the fellow a while ago, I was exhausted washing you. There wasn’t the least lump of your body that wasn’t covered with ink. “This fellow is like a man who has been left soaking in a tub of ink,” said I. “He might as well have been,” said your sister. “The ink is what killed him. Sucking it into his lungs from morn till night and from night till morn …”

  —Writer’s cramp he had, according to himself …

  —Whatever he had, he brought it on himself. He was a black heretic. He shouldn’t be allowed into consecrated ground at all. It’s a wonder God didn’t make an example of him …

  —… I got the whiff of it as soon as I walked into the room to you. “Was there porter or something like that spilled here?” said I to Curraoin’s wife. “Not that I know of,” she said.

  —And no wonder: a man who used to drink two score and two pints …

  —There wasn’t a drop in my belly the day I died. Devil as much as a drop, then! …

  —That’s the truth you’re saying. There was not. That was one of Little Cáit’s tricks, the grinner. Expecting a drink she was, when she said that to Curraoin’s wife …

  —… That was what was wrong with me, Little Cáit. Siúán the Shop’s coffee. It rotted my intestines …

  —… Your legs were as brittle as rotted wood, with black lumps on them, and creaking like a cow with bog lameness …

  —Siúán the Shop’s clogs, of course …

  —I suppose you couldn’t get a scent as far away as Mangy Field, Little Cáit. If you’d seen Nóra Sheáinín’s feet, who never wore clogs! That is if Caitríona is to be believed, of course …

  —Shut your mouth, you little brat …

  —… The very moment I reached the door I got the smell of ash-potatoes, Cite. “Put those ash-potatoes away,” said I, “till the dead person is dressed.” “There are no potatoes in the ashes,” said Micil. “And I wish there had been none since morning either. Too many ash-potatoes she ate. They were too heavy on the stomach. They made a rock in her belly …”

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds for a story. Cite just lay back, with no life left …

  —… They had left you too long and let your body grow cold. There you were, a stiff lump, and four of us working on you to no avail. “Let somebody go and get your man’s lump-hammer,” said Big Brian, “and you’ll see how I’ll stretch his knees for him …” “Bloody tear and ’ounds,” said the son of Blackleg, “didn’t Road-End Man steal it from him! …”

  —It was he who stole it, indeed. A lovely lump-hammer …

  —… The creel of potatoes you brought from the Common Field had left its print on the broad of your back, Seáinín Liam …

  —When I was easing it off me inside in the house, the strap handle slipped and it came down lopsided. I gave my side a little wrench. The dresser began to dance. The clock went from the wall to the chimney, the chimney went to the doorway, the colt that was straight in front of me in the House Field rose in the air and went down the boreen and over the road. “The colt!” said I, and I made for the door to go after it. The heart …

  —I got the smell of the bed off you immediately, Máirtín Pockface …

  —Faith then, the bedsores were what finished me off …

  —… It gives me no satisfaction to publicise this, poet, but you were covered in a coat of dirt from the top of your head to the tips of your toes …

  —… His “Sacred Ashes.” The devil pierce him, the impudent brat! He never washed himself …

  —Myself and your aunt stripped it off you, till you had only a spot left on your thigh. We couldn’t get that off. “The dirt is stuck to him like barnacles here,” said I to your aunt. “Plenty of boiling water and sand.” Your mother had gone out looking for winding-sheets. She came in at that very moment. “That’s a mole,” she said. “Every time my dear boy got a fit of poetry he used to scratch himself there and the words would come with great difficulty …”

  —He was a fatty, he was a softy, he was a lump of lard. We were put to the pin of our collar to carry him here at all.

  —I never saw a corpse whose eyes were more difficult to close than Road-End Man. I had a thumb on one eye, and his old lady had her thumb on the other, but no sooner I’d have my side closed than the old lady’s side would open …

  —To see if there was any lump-hammer going a-begging …

  —Or any drift-weed …

  —I never got as fragrant a smell as was off the Postmistress …

  —The smell of the drugs she used for opening letters and sealing them again. The back room was like a chemist’s shop …

  —Not at all! The kettle was O.K. for that. Fragrances for the bathtub. I took a bath just before I died …

  —That’s true, Postmistress. There was no need to wash your corpse at all …

  —You don’t know whether it was necessary or not, Little Cáit. Gosh! If you’d as much as touched my corpse the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs would have the law on you …

  —… Whoever laid you out, I’d say he got the smell of the nettles of Donagh’s Village off you …

  —Even that was better than what was off you …

  —I never saw a cleaner corpse than Jack the Scológ’s. Rigor mortis never even touched him. He was like a flower. You’d think his skin was silk. You’d think he had just laid down for a rest … Not only that, but every stitch of clothes about him was as pure white as that “flour”19 that was sprinkled on the Earl at the door of the church on his wedding morning! Of course, they wouldn’t be allowed in Nell Pháidín’s house if they were any other way …

  —The pussface! The cheeky busybody!

  —They say, Cáit, that Caitríona’s corpse wasn’t …

  —Caitríona’s corpse! That one! I was sent for, but I wouldn’t go next or near her corpse …

  —Ababúna!

  —It would turn my stomach …

  —Ababúna! Little Cáit, the grinner! Little Cáit, the grinner! I’ll explode! I’ll explode! …

  6

  … There isn’t a God above or he’ll punish that pair for it! It was easily known! I had no violent pain. The doctor said the kidneys wouldn’t kill me for some time. But that pussface Nell coaxed the St. John’s Gospel from the priest for Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter, and they bought me a single ticket to this lodging, as they did for Jack the Scológ, the poor man. Wasn’t it plain to a stump of bog-deal20 that if there hadn’t been some skulduggery going on Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter would have been here on her next blast of childbirth. Instead of that, the pain and sickness left her completely …

  And of course there were no flies on that pussface! She knew that as long as I had the least puff of breath in my body I’d keep tit for tat with her about Baba’s will and Tomás Inside’s land. But she can hoodwink Pádraig to her heart’s content …

  Two thousand pounds. A slate-roofed house. A motor car. A hat … Son of Blackleg said Pádraig would get a fistful of money, but what good is that when the whole will isn’t going to him! God blast that one over beyond, I wish she’d left every shiny halfpenny belonging to her to priests! …

  Twenty-three pounds of altar-money for Jack the Scológ. And she never let a shilling out of her own house to any funeral! … High Mass. Priests. The Earl. Lord Cockton. Four half-barrels of porter. Whiskey. Cold meat … And how well the little schemer thought of lighting twelve candles over him in the chapel! To be one up on me. What else? I wouldn’t begrudge poor Jack anything, but it was just to show off the pussface did it. It was easy for her—with the old hag’s easy money.

  Jack the Scológ wouldn’t sing a song the other day. He has completely lost heart. No wonder, having spent his life with that bitch. And all the respect she had for him in the end was to get St. John’s Gospel to put him to death! …

  When I told him that the other day he never said a word except “God would punish us …” I’d say he’s in a red rash of anger by now on account of how she treated him
… And the little fool didn’t notice it at all himself. He was always and ever without guile. Otherwise he’d have realized that stiff-jointed little Nell was playing on him when she asked him to marry him. “I have Jack,” she said. “We’ll leave Big Brian to you, Caitríona” … But I’m closer to Jack now than she is. I can speak to him whenever I want to …

  Only for Pádraig heeded Nóra Sheáinín’s daughter I’d be buried in the Pound Plot beside him. That sharp-tongued Siúán the Shop is beside him now. She’ll give me a bad name. She has told him a bellyful of lies about me already. That’s why he’s so reluctant. I wouldn’t mind but the fair maid of the Filthy Feet is trying to coax him into her Rotary! And Bid Shorcha and Little Cáit are forever whining about his funeral. You’d think the poor man was responsible for their death. Not only that, but they’re showering praises to the clay-top on the pussface who got them up out of their beds …

  Muraed Phroinsiais and Ash-Potatoes Cite have cramps in their tongues praising Nell too, and so have Bríd Terry and Seáinín Liam, the Useless Red-head and Máirtín Pockface. But they won’t open their mouth to me because I won’t praise her. No. Not as much as a word. You’d think it was unlucky to speak to me. It would be great if a person would fight manfully and openly with you … This graveyard is worse now than the places the Frenchman was talking about the other day: Belsen, Buchenwald and Dachau …

  —… Had I been alive, indeed, I’d have been at your funeral, Jack the Scológ. I owed it to …

  —… Hold on now, my good man. Did you ever hear what nickname Conán21 had for Oscar? …

  —By the oak of this coffin, Bid Shorcha, I gave Caitríona the pound, and I never saw as much as a penny of it …

  —Spouting lies you are, you little scabby arse! Muraed! Muraed! Did you hear what the Hag of the Ash-Potatoes said again, Muraed? Muraed, I say! Hello, Muraed! Why don’t you answer me? … Muraed, I say! … You won’t speak? I’m a prattler, you say! … I thrive on stirring up quarrels! … There was peace and quiet in the graveyard clay till I arrived, you say! How shameless of you, Muraed, to ruin a person’s reputation like that! … I have the place like the Feast of Bricriú with my lies! Now, is that so, Muraed! You didn’t have to travel far from your own creek to find liars. I never peddled gossip or lies, thanks be to God! …