Irish Portraits

by Liam O'Flaherty

  “You may leave the table. I’ll hear what you have to say in the drawing-room,”

  The nephew grunted and went out. Mr. Timmins looked about him stealthily and fondled the tip of his beard. Then he drank two large glasses of port in rapid succession. His head became giddy for a moment. Then he grew exalted. A melancholy sensation that was very pleasant overcame him. Walking very erect, with his hands clasped beneath his shoulder-blades, he went into the drawing-room. The nephew was standing by the fire, leaning his arm on the mantelpiece, with his head bent. He tapped the fender with his toe.

  “Well,” said Mr. Timmins.

  The nephew looked up and folded his arms.

  “I owe some money,” he said. “It’s got to be paid or I’m ruined.”

  “Money,” said Mr. Timmins.

  “Yes,” said the nephew in a hoarse voice. “A Jew. He won’t wait. I put him off for two months. It’s fifty quid.”

  Mr. Timmins walked backwards into a chair and sat down.

  “Not a cent,” he said, in a calm voice through his teeth. “Not one penny of my money are you going to get. Do you hear?”

  “Very well,” said the nephew, shrugging his shoulders. “Only he’ll come down on you.”

  “Not a penny,” repeated Mr. Timmins.

  Suddenly the nephew thrust his head forward and muttered angrily:

  “D’ye think it’s any pleasure to me to spend yer rotten money or to live in this deadhouse? Why didn’t ye let a fellah have a bit o’ fun in the house? Where am I to go except to a pub when I want to talk to the lads? There never was anything here only the lives of the saints and novenas to the Holy Ghost an’ castin’ my father’s name at me. God damn the two of ye. Take it or leave it. I know the dodge. But ye’re not gettin’ me into yer office. I’d rather go to Liverpool and work as a navvy and fry a steak on a shovel. I’ve got my strength an’ I’m not dependin’ on you for my lodging.”

  Beating his broad chest with his clenched fists and muttering something under his breath, he walked heavily out of the room and banged the door after him.

  For a long time after he had gone, Mr. Timmins sat with his mouth open, without thought. Still without thinking he went into the dining-room and went to the sideboard. He poured out a measure of brandy and tossed it off. He paused, shivered and filled out another measure rather unsteadily. As he was slowly raising it to his lips the maid entered to clear the table. He started and looked her boldly in the face.

  Although she had been in the house for six months, this was the first time that he had looked her in the face. The liquor had lent him new eyes and they saw that her face was willing and as bold as his own turbulent desires. She had a handsome face with a skin the colour of milk. Her eyes were quick and passionate. They did not flinch or get excited under his gaze. They were not innocent. Her lips were avaricious. He could bargain with them. He saw and understood all this, because it seemed that the devil had lent him a new brain with the new eyes. He smiled on her. She answered him with another smile and then she said respectfully, as she put a tray on the table:

  “I’m afraid you didn’t find the dinner to your liking this evening, sir.”

  Mr. Timmins fluttered his fingers a trifle drunkenly.

  “That doesn’t matter a bit. Funny, I don’t know your name.”

  “Kitty, sir.”

  “Kitty. Ahem! Yes. Kitty. Isn’t there a song Oh, Kitty, will you marry me?’ I think I heard it somewhere.”

  The parlourmaid bent her head, shot a glance at him from under her dropping lashes and laughed slyly. Mr. Timmins flushed and tried to laugh also, but his lips were dry. His head became full of hot vapour and his limbs became loose. Without knowing what he was doing, he went towards her and held out his hand. Without looking, she caught his hand and put it away gently from her waist. He left the dining-room, raising his feet high off the floor. He staggered into the armchair by the fire in the drawing-room and stared into the fire, contemplating in ecstasy the fantastic visions that swam into his mind through clouds of vapour.

  As if to conceal the lovely, sinful visions from his wife, he suddenly became enraged with God and with his neighbours and with the societies of which he was a member. He showered unuttered blasphemies and curses on them all and sneered contemptuously on all the monkish men and skinny women that lived around him in smug, silent houses. He cursed the folly of his past life, his unspent departed youth and the misery of a Heaven in such company. With glee he shattered with a wish all that he had fought to gain in the hereafter, by penance and the curbing of his nature.

  And in this mood he became cunning and laughed slyly to himself, seeing the cunning profligacy of his nephew, as a cunning predatory bee, stealing the honey that fools had gathered and left untouched. And he decided to do likewise, to be cunning also, without belief, a hypocrite, a profligate.

  As he rose unsteadily to his feet, he heard a voice say within him:

  “My age does not matter. Nor my bony thighs. I have money, I can buy her. Lots of she things. They gave girls to old Solomon.”

  He walked to the door leading into the dining-room on tiptoe and saw her bending over the empty tablecloth with a crumb-brush. He made a sound with his lips. She looked up. He smiled. She glanced towards the door that led into the hallway and then looked coldly into his face. He beckoned to her. She did not move and her face looked indignant, but his new cunning saw something in her eyes and lips that made him hurry forward to her round the table. He put his arm round her motionless body and began to whisper into her ear. She kept saying something to which he did not listen, and then he began to shower kisses on her neck, her forehead and her hair. With his trembling hands he pressed her to him, crushing her against the table. And she murmured, struggling to free herself:

  “Not here, sir. We’ll be seen.”

  The door banged. She gasped and broke loose. Dazed, with his arms stretched out, Mr. Timmins looked up. His nephew was standing at the door. The maid was hurrying out the other door into the hallway. The nephew’s eyes followed her. Then they turned to Mr. Timmins. Mr. Timmins saw them change slowly from wonder to mocking glee.

  In a flash the vapours vanished from his brain and he felt a lassitude in all his limbs. He felt old and weak and helpless and ugly; withered and poor.

  “Excuse me, Uncle Joe,” said the nephew. “I came in to…”

  “Yes,” interrupted Mr, Timmins, sinking into a chair. “You came for that money. How much was it, did you say?”

  The Terrorist

  Louis Quigley crouched over the balustrade of the Upper Circle, shivering in his thin overcoat.

  Overhead there was a continual pattering of feet and occasional loud thuds, as the poor people crowded into the gallery, shuffling and talking noisily, jumping along the wide tiers of wooden seats. A respectable stream of shabby genteel people filtered through the Upper Circle seeking their seats rapidly. Below in the Stalls, in the Dress Circle and in the Boxes, sombrely clad men entered slowly, with rigid hips and bored faces, inattentively glancing for their sumptuous seats. The bare powdered bosoms of their women sparkled with jewels. They dropped their luxurious wraps and sank wearily into their seats.

  Quigley, leaning against his curved left arm that lay along the red velvet covering of the Upper Circle balustrade, glanced downwards at the rich who entered, with intense hatred in his feverish eyes.

  “Drones!” he muttered. “Drones soured by their own luxury!”

  The theatre filled, noisily above him, respectfully about him, boredly below him. It was very warm in the theatre. You could smell the artificial heat coming in waves through the brilliantly lighted hall. But Quigley shivered in his thin overcoat.

  He had been waiting for two hours at the door in order to get a front seat behind the balustrade. And it had been a cold winter’s night outside; a clear, frosty, starlit sky, overarching the windy streets through which the ill-clad poor went crouching.

  His overcoat was buttoned about his throat, envelopin
g his meagre frame looselv like a bag. A shabby grey cap covered his skull, down over his forehead and pressing his ears outwards. His ears were blue with the cold. His face was small, thin and pale; but there was a fever in his large, blue eyes that illuminated the paltry face and made it terrifying. The face was fixed and the vertical grooves in the skin gathered between the eyes did not twitch. His whole being was transfixed, contemplating the idea in his brain.

  The idea had been with him for six days, since he first contemplated the act, in the darkness of his room at night, clutching his knees in bed, thinking. The desire to commit the act had entered his brain suddenly without his knowing it or expecting it. When it came, he had sprung out of bed in terror. He had stood for a long time in his bare feet on the floor, stooping forward, listening. Listening he had become very tired. He had sighed. He had entered his bed again slowly, utterly exhausted. He had fallen asleep almost immediately. But in the morning he awoke to find the idea fixed in his brain; as securely fixed there as if he had been born to commit the act. All the other ideas had gone. He had no further interest in them. He read no more. He spent the six days making preparations for the act.

  Watching the people enter he was quite cool. But the tips of the fingers of his left hand were embedded in the soft red velvet of the balustrade covering. And the knuckles of his left hand were white. He waited tensely until the appointed moment should come, without thinking. It seemed to him that his head was made of iron, it felt so strong. It also seemed to him that he was really sitting alone, an immeasurable distance from everybody; that he was enveloped by a cloud; and that he would hurl a thunderbolt out of that cloud, down upon the drones. An avenging God!

  Before he hurled the bomb he would utter aloud his prophecy. It would go forth to all the world as a clarion call. The tocsin would be sounded that night. “The blare of trumpets at dawn on the banks of the Po, as the squadrons of Hasdrubal’s Nubian horsemen….” Prophets immolate themselves. His right hand was thrust into his right breast-pocket, between the second and third buttons of his overcoat.

  The theatre was full. Now a dull murmur rose as thousands of words mingled in the heated air without form or meaning. People murmuring. Broken waves seething white on a rocky shore, thought Quigley.

  The sound pleased him. He fancied that there below, beneath the cloud in which his body was hidden, a concourse of people babbled expectantly, waiting for his word and the sacrifice of blood. “Somewhere and by some one that sacrifice will be made; even by one man armed with a stone.” A bomb was more fitting than a stone, because the reverberation of its explosion would resound through the earth to awake the sleepers, to urge on the tired ones; all, all marching with the prophecy on their lips. His body grew still colder and salty moisture exuded from the corners of his eyes. His eyes blurred and he could see nothing below him. People had sat on either side of him closely. That was all right. Behind him, around him and above him were his own people. Below him were the drones.

  Crash! He started violently and then his body relaxed, trembling, as the soft sounds of music rose from the orchestra, the jingle-jingle of the cymbals tintillating, tintil-lating, the weird, melancholy, comic sound of the saxophone, the alternating boom of the drums and the choleric brasses pounding the air; all in harmony mingling. It was the mad laughter of the elements heralding the act.

  He was carried away by the sound. His miserable frame collapsed with a loose palsied movement of his weak muscles; rendered incapable by the feverish exaltation of his mind to remain fixed and taut. The crude anger of his idea now changed. It became enveloped with a maniacal joy that transcended it. Lo! The whole theatre was transformed before his eyes. Lo! There in that box to the left of the stage two women had entered, while two men, hidden from his view, seated them. He could see the white hands of the men, with jewels shimmering on their fingers, gestidilating; while the women disposed their dresses and sat upright, laughing backwards at their men. Two tipsy courtesans. One, dark, with firm jaws and rounded, firm breasts, smiled stupidly, while her black eyes ogled her man. The other, with hair the light golden colour of ripe corn, the fecund colour of the fruitful earth, drooped languidly, a beautiful fawn beast exulting in her savage beauty. His blurred eyes gloated over her long stately limbs, loosened with wine and sensuality. Lo! This was not anger but an exulting joy, the slaughter of drones; society had laid before him the most gross and yet exquisite manifestation of its lordly vice so that his act might go forth….

  Br-r-r-r. Suddenly the drums of his ears began to hum, deafening him. His cheeks flushed a rosy colour. He half rose from his seat, trembling violently. They made a startled movement about him, shrinking away and looking in awe at his frenzied eyes. Half risen, he smiled and tried to pull forth the bomb to hurl it at the fawn beast, but…

  In a moment the humming stopped in his ears. He became aware of the movement about him. This unbalanced him and he fell back into his seat. He wanted to look around him and say something to reassure HIS people. But he was incapable of any action but one, i.e. to hurl the bomb. Already nobody else existed in the world but himself and “the horned spectres of the Revelations” down below. His stomach was becoming ill and all his members were revolting in terror from any movement. And his brain began to be afraid; afraid of the extraordinary and unexpected conduct of his stomach, which was now assuming the mastery over his brain, starting some devilry of its own, expanding and throbbing, as if at the next instant it would explode and annihilate him. Plump! He sat down, closed his eyes and held his breath.

  There was a murmur about him now, about him and behind him. He heard it but he took no notice. His consciousness was impervious now to sound. Sound had become formless and meaningless to his ears. The music still continued. Down below people were swaying to its rhythm. But he no longer heard the rhythm. In the box, a man had planted his left foot on the fawn beast’s lap. With a languid gesture she cast it off and made a sensual movement downwards from her loins. No, not there. His eyes were also out of control. They wandered from the box along the Dress Circle, and there they suddenly became fixed once more.

  There was a row of black-clothed youths like mummies sitting erect, with stiff necks and thoughtless pallid faces, gazing inanely at the stage. His ecstasy changed once more into anger. The fever left him and he became rigid. Here, here was the most foul iniquity. Not debauch nor luxury, but young humanity drained of its intelligence, an insult to the divinity of man; “the headless clowns sitting on the throne of wealth to sign the edicts of ghoulish fiends that trample the starving millions.”

  Now he was completely in a state of unconsciousness. There was some excited movement about him and people were talking loudly and calling, but it meant nothing to him. Because the idea had repossessed him with terrific power. It had expanded in his brain until his whole entity had vanished and he had become purely an amorphous idea, crying: “Now, now.”

  He arose slowly like an automaton, with curious stilted movements. He raised his left hand. Abruptly he pulled forth the bomb. He raised his eyes to the ceiling, he cried out:

  “Man has conquered the earth. He now marches triumphantly to the conquest of the Universe. The drones stand in the way. Death to …”

  His voice ended in a choking murmur as several big men pounced on him. He felt numb immediately, and then … he floated away, lying, he thought, on a soft fleecy cloud, soaring over the void of the wrecked universe.

  The Bladder

  The schoolmaster was a disagreeable man. He was always interfering in other people’s business and giving advice about things of which he knew nothing. So that, although he was an excellent teacher, he was disliked in the island of Inverara. Somehow or other everything he said or did was aggressive and insulting. He walked with his head thrown back on his fat, red neck, that bulged in little waves over the collar of his coat, and with his brown beard thrusting out in front of his face. He always wore grey tweeds and a little grey cap that was pulled so far down over his forehead that a little p
atch of his baldness could be seen at the rear of his skull. Then when he spoke to any one he kept one hand in his pocket, jingling his money, and stroked his beard with the other. He had a great deep voice, slow and pompous. “Haw,” he would say, somewhere down in his throat, “what did I tell you? Why didn’t you take my advice?”

  At lunch time he walked up and down the road in front of his school with his lunch on his right palm on a piece of newspaper, and a clasp-knife in the other hand, eating bread and cheese. The cheese was always very high, and he had a horrid way of putting a piece between his thick red lips and then making a sucking sound. And he did that, he told the police sergeant, to persuade the islanders that bread and cheese was the healthiest and cheapest diet for a midday meal.

  He was always telling the peasants that they didn’t till the land properly or look after their cattle properly, and the fishermen that their nets were not the correct depth or length. In the same manner he inveighed against the unhealthy food the people used - tea, poor American flour, potatoes, and salt fish. When John Feeney’s son Brian had the influenza the schoolmaster met John one night and said, “What are you feeding your son with?” Feeney scratched his head and said, “Faith, I’m giving him the best o’ nourishment. Pancakes.” “You’re a fool, Feeney,” said the schoolmaster in his bass voice; “give him oatmeal porridge, man.” Then young Feeney’s influenza turned into consumption, and the boy died. At the funeral the schoolmaster caught Feeney by the shoulder and bawled into his ear, “What did I tell you? Why didn’t you take my advice?”

  After his wife died of the delirium tremens he began a campaign against intoxicating liquor. He would talk for hours in front of the church on Sunday after Mass, reading statistics to show how drink beggared the country and filled the lunatic asylums. “And tobacco is nearly as bad,” he would say. “Fancy a sane man making a chimney of his mouth and setting fire to his purse.”