Irish Portraits

by Liam O'Flaherty

  After they had signed the agreement, they went to celebrate in the town, but Martin refused to accompany them. Neither did he give any assistance in the preparation for the wedding. He went about his ordinary work.

  Patrick, on the other hand, went about in his best clothes, talking loudly, drinking, superintending the preparations, treating all his friends with the extravagance of a mean man carried away by a sudden passion. He hardly slept at all.

  “Why don’t you drink with me?” he said to Martin. “Why are you gloomy? Have you anything against me?”

  “This is not a time for drinking and merrymaking,” said Martin. “It’s your prayers you should be saying approaching a sacrament, instead of leering at the thought of your marriage bed.”

  “Pruth!” said Patrick. “Bloody woes! What a monk you are!”

  Martin heard the people whispering and mocking at his brother, because he was going to marry a withered woman, who already had a child. Children, as is the custom when there is a marriage in a house, used to call after him, shouting: “Kate Tully.” Instead of paying no attention to this harmless teasing, he was deeply mortified,

  Patrick spent money freely on the preparations. His uncle’s wife and two other women were brought in. They scoured out the house, whitewashed it, put curtains on the windows, delft on the dresser, new sheets on the beds. whiskey, porter, wine and a large quantity of food was purchased. A sack of flour was baked into bread.

  The whole countryside came to the wedding. The kitchen and the two bedrooms were packed with people. Only a few had room to sit in the kitchen. The rest stood, row behind row, around the little space in the centre where couples were dancing. A man sat on a chair near the fire playing an accordion. Three men went round serving whiskey and porter. Out in the yard there was a group of young men, drinking heavily, boasting and discussing feats of strength. In the bigger bedroom, where the marriage bed was prepared, people were eating in relays. Women passed back and forth, carrying teapots from the kitchen fire. Other women hustled guests to the table. Patrick went around shouting, already quite drunk, urging everybody to be merry. There was an air of reckless savagery and haste about the whole thing, and the older people noticed a lack of decency and of respect. They where whispering to one another.

  Martin, sitting gloomily in a corner of the hearth, noticed that people had no respect for the house or for the marriage. He heard the whispering. He felt terribly ashamed and angry. He thought it was about him they were whispering, that they were jeering at him. So he refused to eat or drink. He sat without movement, with his eyes on the fire. He wanted to get up, leave the house and stand on the cliffs, looking out at the sea; but he would not move, lest they might jeer still more at him for running away. And yet it was a torture to stay. He was aware of the little boy, Kate’s son, who was sitting in the opposite corner of the hearth. He was aware of Kate herself, who sat in triumph near the musician. He hated them all. Henceforth they would all be in the house with him. He would stand naked before the people, a butt for people’s scorn. So he thought.

  Every time Kate spoke in her loud, gay, rasping voice, he shuddered. And yet he could hardly restrain himself from looking at her.

  Everybody was watching her and she seemed partly to enjoy the attention she attracted and partly to resent it. She sat with her legs crossed. Her dress was so short that a red garter showed on her thigh above the knee. She kept tapping her foot on the floor and pulling down her skirt that refused to go any farther than the brink of her knee. Her legs were beautiful. She wore silk stockings. Her dress was gaudy. It was red. Her cheeks and lips were painted. She was very slim and she had an exquisite figure. But her broad shoulders were bony. Her chest was flat. Her hair was dyed a yellowish colour. Her face bore the remains of great beauty. But her eyes were hard and her mouth was coarse. Although she was only thirty-five years of age she looked old. All that was left of her youthful beauty was a skeleton. She had, however, that power of attraction which comes of knowledge. The coolness of her manner, the cynical, brusque way in which she spoke, the glitter in her strange eyes were more exciting than the freshness of young beauty. She kept smiling. Her smile was contemptuous. With her mouth she enjoyed her triumph. But her eyes sometimes had a look of fear in them.

  Her son was even more strange than she. He was six years old, pale, delicate and shy. He looked alien. His skin was yellow. His ears were large and strangely fashioned. His neck was long and thin. He had hardly a chin. His wrists were like spindles. His thin legs bent inwards at the knees. His upper teeth protruded. He kept eating sweets from a paper bag and looking casually at the dancers, without any excitement.

  Patrick kept going up to his wife and putting his arm around her and saying:

  “I have you now.”

  Then he got so drunk that they put him lying on the marriage bed in the big bedroom. Then Kate danced with the young men and drank punch in the little bedroom with the women.

  When it was nearly dawn, Patrick awoke from his drunken sleep, drank some whiskey and came into the kitchen. He went up to his wife and began to caress her passionately in front of the people, mumbling:

  “I have you now.”

  The guests began to leave. Martin heard them laugh as they went away, shouting: “I have you now.”

  Before they had all left the house, Patrick dragged his wife into the bedroom and locked the door. The little boy lay asleep in the corner of the hearth, forgotten. The uncle was the last to leave. He said to Martin:

  “Where is little Charley going to sleep?”

  “His bed is in his mother’s room,” said Martin.

  The uncle tittered drunkenly and said:

  “You had better take him into your bed tonight, Martin, in the little room. It’s not right to disturb a couple on their marriage night.”

  Then the uncle went away. It was daylight. Martin took the little fellow in his arms and carried him into the little bedroom. The boy woke up and started on finding himself in a stranger’s arms. He began to call for his mother. He struck at Martin’s chest with his little fists. Martin put him into his own bed without undressing him. Then he lay on the bed, soothing the child. The child fell asleep.

  Then Martin went into the kitchen and sat by the fire. He heard Patrick snoring. He jumped to his feet and dashed out of the house, leaving the door open. He went up to the cliffs and wandered around there. He came back to the house, took the can and milked the cow. When he returned with the milk, Kate had arisen. She was busy tidying the house and getting breakfast ready.

  “Hello!” she said gaily. “You didn’t go to bed?”

  She was full of energy and yet she looked horrible, like an old woman. There was no paint on her face. Her cheeks were hollow. Her lips were cracked and yellow like those of a corpse. She was wearing a loose wrap, belted at the waist. She wore slippers without heels on her bare feet. Her hair was bedraggled, streaming around her neck. He looked at her in amazement and said nothing. Then he sat in the corner of the hearth, waiting for his breakfast.

  She took no notice of him. She hummed a tune as she worked and she worked at great speed, deftly. She gave him his breakfast and brought tea into bed to her husband. Martin heard his brother growl when she wakened him. Then his brother called out:

  “Martin.”

  “What?”

  “Start cutting potato seeds. We’ll begin sowing tomorrow.”

  Martin said nothing. But he thought:

  “He orders me like a servant before her.”

  He became inflamed with anger. He left his breakfast and went out. He stood outside the door, trying to rebel against his brother, but it was alien to his nature. He could not do so. The child awoke and began to cry.

  “What the devil is the matter with that child?” grumbled Patrick.

  “I’ll run in and see,” said Kate. “He probably finds himself strange.”

  Martin walked away. He entered the barn and began to cut potato seeds. Later, Patrick joined him. They worked t
ogether in silence. Neither referred to the wedding. Patrick looked cross and discontented. The child came out of the house and began to play in the yard, uttering loud cries and calling his mother to look at things which he found strange.

  “He won’t live,” said Patrick. “What do you think?”

  Martin said nothing.

  “No. He won’t live,” said Patrick. “His father was a foreigner. They have bad blood in them.”

  At dinner the child was cranky and refused the food that was given to him. His mother suddenly lost her temper and beat the boy. The boy went into hysterics. Patrick jumped up, cursed and left the house.

  “Tare an’ ouns,” Martin called after him. “Have ye no more nature in you than to curse a child?”

  “Mind your own business,” shouted Patrick from the yard.

  Martin took the boy in his arms and began to soothe him.

  “Don’t spoil him,” said Kate. “It’s just temper.”

  Martin looked at her angrily. She dropped her eyes, caught the child from his arms and began to kiss it. Then she sat down and burst into tears, rocking the child and murmuring:

  “You poor little orphan. I don’t know what to do with you.”

  Martin went out. That evening, when the child was being put to bed, Patrick said:

  “Hadn’t you better put his little bed into Martin’s room?”

  “Why so?” said Martin.

  “Nothing,” said Patrick. “Only … only I thought he might keep you company. You never liked being alone at night.”

  Martin looked at his brother savagely.

  “Do what you like,” he said. “You’re master here.”

  They put the child into Martin’s room. That night, when he came in after visiting in a neighbour’s house, he stood for a long time over the little bed, in the dark, listening to the child’s breathing. He pitied the child and at the same time hated his brother. He realized that his brother was jealous of the child.

  A few days later, while they were working in the field sowing potatoes, Patrick said:

  “You’re spoiling that child. You had better not be coddling him. He’s nothing to us anyway. His father was a foreigner.”

  “Every child was made by God,” said Martin. “Kindness won’t spoil anything.”

  “It’s time you were thinking of getting a wife for yourself, then,” said Patrick, “as you’re so fond of children.”

  The Spring came. The dark earth became a paradise. It was good to smell the wind that was scented with the perfume of growth. Bird music was triumphant. The cold sunlight glittered on the black earth uprooted by the sowers. Each dawn was wild with the cries of living things going forth to labour. Each dusk was full of tender murmurs, as tired men happily sought their beds and cows lowed for their milkers and sheep bleated over their new-born lambs. All evil passions were silenced by man’s frenzied efforts to satisfy the energy born of the earth’s awakening.

  Yet it was a false peace that fell upon the house. The silence grew as menacing as a dark cloud that hangs in the sky on a sultry day, foretelling thunder.

  A great change came over Kate. She no longer put paint upon her cheeks and lips. She cast aside her foreign clothes and dressed in the manner of a peasant. She did the housework with enthusiasm and skill. She left nothing undone. She dropped her brusque, gay manner. She became serious. She no longer talked of anything but of the house, the crops, the cattle. She no longer looked alien. She became a peasant woman again. She grew bold in the house and spoke curtly to her husband. She put on flesh. Her eyes lost their strange, lascivious look. Instead, they became avaricious. Her cheeks, that had been hollow and yellow like the cheeks of a corpse beneath the paint, now filled out and became tanned brown by the healthy air and wind. Her lips and fingers no longer twitched nervously. She was no longer taken by hysterical bursts of passion. She became like a rock in which there is neither softness nor passion. Now she did not inspire desire. Although her attraction still remained great, she reacted differently on men. Women of the village began to speak well of her.

  She treated both men with equal coldness, as if neither were her husband. And in the evening, when they had returned from work and were sitting by the fire before going to bed, she talked to her child instead of talking to them.

  Neither did the child become friendly with either of them. He still remained an alien. He improved in health and became bold, playing about the house as if he had been born there; but whenever he looked at the brothers there was a vacant stare in his eyes, as if they were strangers to him. When Patrick scowled at him, he sighed and went to his mother. When Martin tried to play with him or gave him toys which he had whittled with a knife, he remained silent and as lifeless as a girl with a man whom she does not love.

  Yet Martin was not offended by the boy’s manner. His kindness to the boy pleased him because it irritated his brother. He was pleased also with the change that had taken place in Kate. He was pleased with her coldness towards her husband. He was pleased with the gloomy, discontented look that had settled on his brother’s countenance. He had become bitter. He no longer found pleasure in the sea, nor in the singing of birds, nor in watching the starry sky at night. A mocking, malicious spirit had taken possession of his mind, driving out all other pleasures but that of making his brother unhappy.

  Spring passed. Now warm breezes sang among the swaying fields of corn. People became idle watching the growth of their crops. It was good to lie in a glen in the sunlight among the wild, sweet flowers.

  The brothers stayed about the house, drawn irresistibly towards the cause of the bitter enmity that was growing in their minds.

  One morning, Martin was making a top for the little boy by the fire. The boy stood near, watching. Patrick sat in the corner of the hearth, smoking. Kate was out in the yard, attending to young pigs they had just bought.

  Suddenly Patrick said to the child:

  “Hey, Charley, did you have a top in America?”

  “Yes, I had,” said the child. “I had three.”

  “Who made them for you?” said Patrick. “Your father?”

  “No. Mammy bought them in a shop.”

  “Didn’t your daddy make any tops for you?”

  “No,” said the child. “I don’t remember my daddy.”

  “Leave the child alone,” said Martin angrily.

  Patrick’s little eyes gleamed. He sniffed and moved his white eyebrows up and down.

  “What was your daddy’s name?” he continued.

  “My daddy’s name was John.”

  “John what? What was his other name?”

  “John Smith,” said the boy.

  “Bloody woes,” said Patrick. “That’s a handy name to have. Where was he from?”

  “Leave the child alone,” shouted Martin.

  “What’s up now?” cried Kate from the yard.

  “Wasn’t your daddy called Martin?” continued Patrick.

  The child began to cry. He ran out into the yard to his mother. Martin jumped to his feet and cried:

  “You leave that child alone. Do you hear?”

  Patrick jumped up and shouted:

  “Whose house is this? Clear out if you don’t like it. I’ll have none of your impudence.”

  Kate came in, holding the boy by the hand.

  “What’s this?” she cried. “What were you doing to the child?”

  “I asked him a civil question about his father,” shouted Patrick. “Haven’t I a right to know the brat’s father was, seeing I’m keeping him?”

  Kate ran to the hearth and picked up the tongs.

  “I’ll brain you with this,” she hissed, “if you say another word.”

  Martin caught her.

  “Don’t you hit him,” he cried. “Let me deal with him.”

  “So that’s it, is it?” cried Patrick. “You’ve changed your mind about her since the night you said you’d rather lie with a dog than with her.”

  “Liar,” shouted Martin, turning pa
le.

  “You can have her now, then,” said Patrick. “She’s a dry bag. I’ve been sold a blind pup. There was nothing in her womb but that sick vermin that doesn’t know his own father. My curse on the house.”

  He rushed out. As he passed the child he made a kick at it. The child screamed. Kate dropped on to a chair, put her fingers between her teeth and bit them. Martin stood before the hearth, trembling. Then he cursed, took his tobacco from his pocket and bit at it. He began to chew. Kate began to tremble. Then she began to sob hysterically.

  “Look here,” said Martin to her angrily. “I did you wrong. He said the truth. I said what you heard just now. But don’t you be afraid. I’ll do right by you now. That savage won’t raise a hand to your child while I’m here,”

  He left the house.

  All that day, Patrick went among the neighbours, complaining that his wife treated him with cruelty, that she was barren, that there was a scar on her stomach, that her womb had been extracted in an hospital, that she favoured his brother, that she was robbing him in the interests of her child. He returned late at night. His wife was waiting for him. She received him as if nothing had happened and gave him his supper.

  Martin returned from a visit while Patrick was having his supper. He glanced with hatred at his brother and immediately went into his room.

  Patrick called after him:

  “We’ll begin tomorrow making a field of that crag beyond the Red Meadow. There is going to be no one eating the bread of idleness in this house.”

  “All right,” said Martin calmly from his room.

  Then he stood near the bed of the sleeping child, listening to the child’s breath, in the darkness. His face broke into a smile and his eyes glittered. When he got into bed he kept laughing to himself. He kept waking through the night and listening to the child’s breathing and laughing to himself.

  Next day they brought crowbars and a sledge and they went to the crag beyond the Red Meadow. They began to quarry the rocks. They worked savagely, excited by their hatred of one another. Patrick ordered his brother about, treating him like a servant. Martin obeyed meekly and smiled in a strange manner at his brother’s oaths.