Graveyard Clay- Cré Na Cille

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  5

  —… I could have had the law on him for poisoning me. “Take two spoons of this bottle before going to bed, and again in the morning while fasting,” said the murderer. Oh! Fasting didn’t come into it! I had just lain down in the bed …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t you lie down and die! …

  —“Ha!” said he to me, as soon as he saw my tongue. “Siúán the Shop’s coffee …”

  —“I never had an ache or a pain, my friend,” says I to him one day he was in Peadar the Pub’s. “Even if you didn’t, Tomás Inside,” says he, “you’re drinking too much porter. Porter doesn’t suit a man of your age. The odd small whiskey would be much better for you.” “By the docks, my friend, isn’t that what I used to drink all the time before now,” said I. “But it’s too scarce and too dear now.” “Peadar the Pub’s daughter here will give you the odd half-one,” says he. And indeed she did, and gave me all I asked for, but from the second drink on she charged me four fourpenny bits, and from the sixth one on, eighteen pence. The doctor Nell brought from Brightcity to see me said it was the whiskey shortened my life, but myself and Caitríona were of the opinion it was the priest …

  —God would punish us for speaking ill of our neighbour …

  —What he told the Big Master was: “You’re too good for this life …”

  —Shut your mouth, you little prattler! …

  —The doctor in the hospital put the bottle under my nose while I was stretched on the table. “What’s that, doctor?” said I. “A knick-knack,” said he …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds for a story, it would be a decent thing for a person to lie down on his bed and die, as Big Brian said, instead of lying down on a hospital table and not getting up again, as cut up as the free beef5 from the Sive’s Rocks butcher.

  —… “The flaw is up here,” says I, “in there in the pit of my stomach.” “Faith then, it’s not up there,” said he, “but down below here, in the feet. Take off your boots and socks.” “There’s no need for that, doctor,” said I. “The flaw is up above. In there in the pit of my stomach.” He had no interest whatsoever in the pit of my stomach. “Take off your boots and socks,” he said. “There mightn’t be any need for that, doctor,” said I. “There’s nothing wrong with me down there …”

  “If you don’t take off your boots and socks, and be quick about it,” he said, “I’ll put you where they’ll be taken off you … You could hardly have avoided contracting something,” says he. “Did you wash those feet of yours since you were born?” “Down by the shore, doctor, last summer twelve months …”

  —Constipated I was. I was permanently bunged up. It’s not something you’d like to talk about. “I don’t like telling you, doctor,” said I. “It’s not a decent subject.”

  —That’s how it goes, as you say. I awoke and sat up in bed. The man from Menlo6 was in the bed next to me, as he had been all along. “I thought they weren’t going to open you up for another two days,” says I … “Hey, wake up,” says I … “and don’t be lying there like a sand bag.” “Let him be,” said the nurse to me. “When you were brought down to the salting room his intestines became homesick. They got knotted up all of a sudden and he had to be sent for salting too. They didn’t put as much sugar on the knife for him as they did for you. That’s why he hasn’t woken up yet.” These nurses are a little indelicate, as you say.

  —“Decency!” says he. “Arrah! what?” says he. “Decency with me! Did you kill a man, or what?” “The cross of Christ on us, doctor!” said I. “I did not!” “What’s wrong with you so?” says he. “Out with it.” “Musha, it’s not a decent subject,” I said. “Constipated I am …”

  —Constipated, as you say. I didn’t get my appetite back for four or five days. “Hot oven bread,” said I to the nurse. “Arrah, to hell with you!” says she. “Do you think I have nothing to do but get hot oven bread for you?” That’s how the likes of them are, as you say. I asked the doctor for hot oven bread the following morning. “This decent man must get hot oven bread from now on,” said he to the nurse. Faith then, he did. The devil a word she could say …

  —… “My ankle is twisted,” said I …

  —“Constipated I am.” “Constipated,” said he. “Begging your pardon, doctor, yes,” said I. “Bunged up in my body.” “Oh, if that’s all that’s wrong with you!” says he. “I’ll cure that. I’ll make up a good bottle for you.” He mixed some white stuff with some red stuff. “This will wipe your slate clean,” said he …

  —… “The poor Belgies are much to be pitied,” says I to Paitseach Sheáinín. “I wonder is this the War of the Two Foreigners? …”

  —Wake up man. That war is over for the past thirty years …

  —He said that, as you say. “You’d better make sure she gets cold bread for me,” said the Menlo Man to him. “What’s this?” said the doctor. “Isn’t the bread here cold enough for anybody?” “But hot bread is what I’m getting,” said the Menlo Man. “Oh, I remember you now,” said the doctor. “You gave a standing order for hot oven bread when you came in. The bread here was too cold for you.” He was grinding his teeth with rage. That’s how the likes of them are, as you say. “Not a bite of hot bread will touch my lips,” said the Menlo Man. “I’m paying my way here and I must get whatever suits me,” he said. Upon my soul he did. He was adamant. “But you thought cold bread didn’t suit you when you came in,” said the doctor. “You’re the one who should be doctor here!” “I believe a person’s stomach plays nasty tricks once it’s opened,” said the Menlo Man …

  —… “It is. It’s my ankle that’s twisted,” says I.

  —“This will wipe your slate clean, indeed,” he said. “The blessings of God on you, doctor!” said I. “This is a great bottle,” he said. “The components are expensive. Would you believe how much the full of that white bottle cost me in Brightcity?” “Quite a penny, I’d say, doctor,” said I. “Two pounds, five shillings,” said he.

  —Faith then, that’s how it is, as you say. From that day on I couldn’t stomach cold bread, and it was like gall to the Menlo Man to be offered a bit of hot bread. If I was handed every penny I was ever owed for repairing chimneys I couldn’t touch the pipe since, after being so fond of it before that. And would you believe that the Menlo Man is now burning turf banks of tobacco, a man who never put a pipe in his mouth before going into hospital! …

  —“Everything is gold since this ridiculous war began,” said he, “and I wouldn’t mind if things were available, even.” “Oh! Doctor,” said I, “the people are in a bad way. If it continues we won’t be able to survive at all, but for the grace of God …”

  —Faith then, the people are in a bad way, as you say. “My intestines are completely scoured,” said the Menlo Man to me, as we were strolling up and down outside, a few days before we were sent home. “My intestines feel like trousers that are too tight for me, or something. After eating two mouthfuls I feel stuffed. Look at me now! … My poor belly is as prickly as a coil of barbed wire,” he said. He was a huge big mountain of a man. He was head and shoulders over me, and powerfully built as well. “Be damned to it, as you say,” says I, “but I feel my own intestines are not the best either. All the food in the hospital wouldn’t fill them. They gulp everything, as if they were a few sizes too big for me. If I make the slightest move, they’re like a cow’s udder, going from side to side …”

  —… The Big Butcher often told me that he had respect for me on account of the respect his father had for my father …

  —“Seven shillings and sixpence this bottle will cost you,” says he. “It’s the very best.” “The blessings of God on you, doctor!” said I. “Only for you, I don’t know what the people would do at all. I don’t, faith. You’re great for the man in distress. There’s nothing lazy or laggardly about you …”

  —The man in distress, as you say. From then on, myself and the Menlo Man would write to one another every week. He’d say in every one of h
is letters that his appetite had changed completely. He’d complain that he couldn’t bear to taste a potato or meat or cabbage now. He’d give the air above him and the earth beneath him for tea and fish, things I had come to detest, myself, now. But, as you say, you never saw anything more baffling. I had never been fond of meat or cabbage, but since being in hospital I would eat them half-cooked straight out of the pot with my bare hands. And potatoes as well. I’d eat potatoes three times a day if I got them …

  —… “Your old ankle is twisted again,” he said. “By Galen’s7 windy plexus and by the umbilical cord of the Fianna’s physician, if you come in to me again with your shitty old ankle …”

  —“Seven shillings and sixpence,” he said. “I don’t begrudge you seven shillings and sixpence,” said I. “I’ll give it to you as soon as the bottle does me good …”

  —Does you good, as you say. But nothing would do me any good. The intestines were still insatiable. Potatoes, meat and cabbage for my breakfast, dinner and supper. “These sooty old chimneys are whetting your appetite,” said the old lady. “The soot is forming a coating on your intestine.” “Not at all,” says I, “but ’tis how my intestines are insatiable …”

  —Arrah, my dear man, he jumped up, he smashed the bottle on the floor …

  —Faith then, if I jumped like that, as you say, my intestines would start going to and fro, and they wouldn’t stop for half an hour. I told the Irish-language learner who was lodging with us that summer I died. He was a trainee doctor. He’d get his credentials the following year. He quizzed me up and he quizzed me down about the way I was operated on. “Yourself and the Menlo Man were together on the table,” he said …

  —… Qu’il retournerait pour libérer la France …

  —He made smithereens of the bottle on the floor. He kicked the shelf and knocked all that was on it. “Only for I’d lose my doctor’s licence, I’d make you eat those broken bottles,” he said. And over he goes to Peadar the Pub’s …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds for a story, weren’t you lucky! If you’d drunk that poison bottle, you’d lie back in your bed like the man a while ago …

  —He would indeed lie back, as you say. “Your intestines are insatiable since,” said the young doctor. “And you have the Menlo Man’s appetite. The doctors and nurses were tipsy that day after the dress-dance the night before!” he said. “That’s how the likes of them are, as you say,” says I. “Oh, not a doubt about it,” said he, “but when they were putting the intestines back into the two of you, they put the Menlo Man’s into you and yours into the Menlo Man. That’s why you gave up the tobacco …”

  —But you didn’t give up the thieving, Road-End Man. It was after they opened you up that you stole my drift-weed …

  —And my little lump-hammer …

  —Take care that he didn’t steal the intestines from the Menlo Man! …

  —If he found them hanging loose at all …

  —All he said to me is that I had been stabbed through the edge of my liver. “You’ve been stabbed through the edge of your liver,” he said, “and that’s all there’s to it.” “The treacherous One-Ear Breed!” said I. “On behalf of my sliced-up liver I implore you, doctor! You’ll swear against them as best you can. They’ll be hanged …”

  —Caitríona went over to him. “What’s wrong with you now?” he said. “Nell was here the other day,” she said. “Do you think, doctor, will what she’s complaining of kill her? The blessings of God on you, doctor!” says she. “People tell me you have poison. I’ll share Baba’s will with you! Nobody will ever know about it if you drop the least little bit into the next one and tell her it’s the best of bottles: two spoons before she goes to bed and again on an empty stomach …”

  —But Nell could have the law on her and on the doctor then …

  —Ababúna! Didn’t the doctor admit to me that day …

  —… And I never saw my pound from that day till the day I died …

  —… That the little bitch asked him to poison me. He didn’t say it straight out, but …

  —… But listen, Siúán, did she ever return your silver teapot?

  —… I could easily know from the way the doctor spoke that day … Cite of the Ash-Potatoes! Don’t believe her, Jack! Jack the Scológ, don’t believe mangy Cite!

  —God would punish us, Caitríona, for saying anything …

  —I’ll explode! I’ll explode! I’ll explode! …

  6

  —… Faith then, as you say, I fixed the chimney for her at the same time …

  —… By the docks, my friend, not begrudging it to her, but she wheedled some money out of me, my friend, and it was the time of the roundtable too. What did she want a roundtable for? Look at me! …

  —You little good-for-nothing! When did you have a penny? …

  —… Shame on us, Curraoin, that we let the English market go! I had a patch of land …

  —By the docks, there wasn’t a sweeter bit of land from the stairs of Heaven down than that patch of mine. There wasn’t, my friend. But towards the end there was no will to walk or to work left in me, what with running after Nell’s and Caitríona’s cattle every minute, trying to keep them off it. They are the two who fleeced me, not that I begrudge it to them!

  —Oh! See how my big holding is going to rack and ruin! Glutton’s donkey and Road-End’s donkey and cattle are picking it bare every day and every night. The eldest son is keeping steady company with Road-End’s daughter, even though she’s under some spell since the day she was born not to pass my turf stack …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t she tell Big Brian there was a stoat’s nest in her own stack!

  —Oh, the devil pierce her! She has cast some sort of spell or bewilderment on my eldest son. She had a camera and she used to take pictures of herself dressed in those flimsy little rags. The Son of Blackleg thinks my old lady at home is more inclined now to make the second son hit the road and give the big holding to the eldest one. The devil take me, if she does … !

  —… Exercise: A donkey would lay bare four square perches of common pasturage in the course of one night. The question is now, Curraoin, how many times would four square perches go into the seventeen acres of my holding: 17 multiplied by 4, multiplied by 40 …

  —… Honest, Dotie, there wasn’t a spark of romance in Caitríona. It was the house and land she was after. Hoping to rob some of the gentry who used to frequent the place. You may be sure it wasn’t for love of Jack the Scológ …

  —Don’t believe her, Jack. Don’t believe Mangy Calves Sheáinín! …

  —God would punish us for saying anything …

  —… It was failing her to get a man at all, Dotie. Big Brian told me that she was like a cold you couldn’t get rid of! No sooner had you spat her out of your mouth than she was in again through your nose …

  —Oh! Jack, don’t believe her! Good Heavens tonight! Big Brian! …

  —… Honest, Dotie. Not a night went by that she wouldn’t come over the old path from her own village, to be there before him in the boreen when he was going visiting …

  —Oh, Mother of God above! The streak of misery!

  —… She asked him to marry her, two or three times …

  —Big Brian! To marry Big Brian! …

  —… Honest, Dotie.

  —Gug-goog, Dotie!

  —Gug-goog, Tomás Inside!

  —Honest to Heavens, Dotie! It’s not refined to be shouting “Gug-goog” like that all over the graveyard. What will the Pound people say? It’s a bad example to the Half-Guinea crowd. Say “Okeedoh.” But why bother to answer the old brute at all? …

  —Unrequited love, Nóróg …

  —… Big Brian, Jack! Big Brian of the stuffed-up nose, slouched shoulders, buckteeth, beard. Big Brian who never washed …

  —God would punish us, Caitríona …

  —… I tell you that life wouldn’t be half as bad if there were no women …

  —Didn’t you
hear the story Cóilí had the other day! The servant-girl tempted the Pope, and Rory McHugh O’Flaherty—a holy man who was here long ago—had to go over straight away to tell the Pope to watch himself. Riding on the Devil’s back he went to Rome …

  —Look at that drunkard of a woman in Brightcity who’s threatening law on the Small Master if he leaves her for another one …

  —Road-End Man would say that the women are worse than the men. The priest’s sister asked his son to marry her …

  —The Big Master himself says so …

  —Oh, the women are always to blame! …

  —The women are always to blame, Bríd Terry?

  —Oh, didn’t I see the state of those floozies in the pictures! …

  —Faith then, you did, and so did I, Bríd. When Mae West was smiling at us, didn’t I say to the young fellow: “I wouldn’t advise you to have anything to do with the likes of her,” says I. “She’d be good handling a colt all right, but …”

  —Listen, Seáinín Liam, the women are nothing but a rainbow on its hunkers, as the old proverb says.

  —Well, by Dad, an old codger like you giving out about women, and you never in all your life had anything to do with women, unless you saw them going the road! How the devil would you know? …

  —I do know, then. A man told me a long time ago. An old man who was very old …

  —The women are a hundred times worse. They are indeed, my friend. By the docks …

  —Oh, don’t annoy me! Look at that eldest son of mine who wouldn’t give up Road-End’s daughter although I’d let him have the big holding! The devil pierce …

  —And the son of the man over there who married a black …

  —I’m a woman, and I’d take the part of the women if I could find it in me to do so. But all you have to do is to listen to Caitríona Pháidín driving Jack the Scológ to distraction day in day out …

  —Faith then, Caitríona isn’t the only woman in the graveyard who has her tongue cocked at the Scológ’s fair son …

  —I never saw a woman as bad as that one. Do you know what she said to him the other day, that Nell deceived him when she asked him to marry her. Isn’t she the shameless one …