Irish Portraits

by Liam O'Flaherty

  “Miss Kelly,” he gasped, between fits of apoplectic laughter that shook his fat girth, “upon my soul there isn’t a word of a lie in it. Go ahead. Ladies first.”

  Then he himself entered first, still laughing. The nurse followed him, coughed, took up the fountain pen that hung from her waistband and dabbed at her hair with the end of it. The attendant came up at a smart pace, saluted and whispered something to the doctor. The doctor’s face became serious for a moment. He glanced in Bowling’s direction. Then he began to smile again, rubbed his palms together and looked at the ceiling, at the floor, at the walls, at the windows, smelling everywhere.

  “Upon my soul,” he said at last, turning to the nurse “does my old nose - sniff, sniff, - deceive me or can I smell roses?”

  The nurse nodded, swallowing her breath modestly. She pointed to the glass door that led to the recreation lawn. “It’s from that bush that grows by the wall,” she murmured, “I saw three there last night.”

  “Hm” said the doctor and he walked over to the first bed, throwing out his feet sideways without moving the middle of his body.

  Dowling’s heart had begun to beat wildly when the doctor entered the ward. He was delighted and relieved, for the moment, of all anxiety. Now everything would be all right. He could transfer all his worries to that jolly man, with the kind fat face. And what a pretty nurse! Though her face was rather hard. Dowling began feverishly to prepare his confessions. He would explain everything. Then they would discharge him immediately. And in all probability the doctor would take an interest in his case and find him employment suitable to an educated man of good family. He became absorbed in the contemplation of what would happen after that. With his pale cheeks flushed and the extremities of his limbs throbbing with excitement, his mind soared off into a day dream, building castles in the air.

  The doctor pulled the clothes back off the first patient’s chest. He put his stethoscope to his ears and bent down to listen without looking at the man’s face. The patient, formerly a peasant farmer named John Coonan, lay perfectly still with his hands lying flat on his abdomen. He stared at the ceiling through little fiery grey eyes that were set close together with a little pointed yellow nose between them. He imagined himself to be hatching twelve eggs in his stomach and he insisted on lying perfectly still, lest he should disturb the formation of the birds.

  The doctor’s face gradually lost its merry creases as he listened here and there and tapped here and there. His eyes became sharp. Then they began to blink. Then his whole face looked cross and he straightened himself and cleared his throat. “Now my man…” he began absent-mindedly and then he stopped, puffing out his cheeks. He turned to the nurse and whispered to her, holding her arm as he walked to the next bed: “Now how can ye explain that? That man was getting better yesterday and today he’s a foregone conclusion. Well, well. It’s very queer.” He went up to the next bed.

  The patients in the ward had been silent and attentive until then, but suddenly they seemed unable to concentrate any longer on the doctor’s presence. They began to practise with voice and limb the grotesque imitations of whatever their crazed imaginations conjectured themselves to be. Dowling was startled out of his reverie by the gradual renewal of insane sounds about him. Again the true fact of his environment became real to him. He began to tremble violently. The doctor was proceeding rapidly down the ward, casually examining the fairly healthy patients. Dowling could catch the doctor looking at himself now and again. Whenever he caught the doctor’s eyes looking at him, the doctor turned away hurriedly. “He’ll soon be here,” thought Dowling excitedly, “and I can see he’s interested in me already. He sees I’m different from the rest. Now how am I going to commence to talk to him?”

  The doctor paused to look at the two old patients who were playing chess. The players never took any notice. Their gaze was concentrated on the board intently. One old fellow had his fingers on a black queen, making tentative excursions in all directions, and then coming back again to his starting point. He had his lips sucked far into his toothless mouth. The other man, clasping his dressing-gown about his withered body, looked on murmuring endlessly: “Five minutes’ pleasure and I have to suffer a lifetime for it. Five minutes’ pleasure and I…” The doctor walked away, followed by the nurse and the attendant.

  They passed Dowling without looking at him. This irritated Dowling. He felt slighted. He ceased to tremble and his face darkened. The doctor went to the end of the ward and then came back rapidly up the other side. When he was just at the far side of Dowling’s bed, he stood at the distance of a yard behind Dowling’s head. He began to laugh and told the nurse a funny story about a greengrocer named Flanagan who had made a large fortune through contracts for the new government, in which he had relatives. This fellow Flanagan, a lean, stingy, mean, ignorant peasant, according to the doctor, went off from Harcourt Street Station every Sunday morning with his golf sticks, to play on his, Dr O’Connor’s club links. He was a great joke, this fellow Flanagan. The doctor went on telling anecdotes about Flanagan, laughing violently in a subdued tone while he talked. But all the while he kept examining Dowling’s head while he talked and laughed. Dowling’s body was twitching in the bed with vexation.

  The doctor finished his story and again he moved on and passed Dowling’s bed without looking at Dowling. Dowling saw him pass and could restrain himself no longer. He called out angrily: “I say, doctor, I want to speak to you.” The doctor turned about sharply and looked at Dowling seriously. The attendant came up to Dowling and whispered in his low passionless voice: “You must wait your turn.” Then the doctor moved away again from bed to bed, talking, answering questions, examining the patients and joking with the nurse. Dowling watched him, boiling with rage. He decided that he would tell the doctor nothing. He wanted to kill somebody. Why should they persecute him like this? Could nobody in the world be kind to him?

  At last the doctor reached the end of the ward and turned back. He came down towards Dowling hurriedly, his face creased in a smile. When he was within five yards of Dowling he held out his right hand and called out: “How are you, Mr. Dowling? Now I can attend to you.” Dowling immediately became soft and good humoured and smiled, a wan smile. The doctor sat down on the bed, still holding Dowling’s hot thin right hand in his own fat two hands. He was looking into Dowling’s wild, strained, big blue eyes with his own little half serious, half merry, half sharp eyes. A mist came before Dowling’s eyes. He swallowed his breath and then he began to talk rapidly, pouring a volume of words out without stopping for breath.

  “This is how it happened,” he began. The doctor bent down his head, he kept fondling Dowling’s hand and listened. Dowling described how his mother died young while he was in his last year at college studying for the Indian Civil Service. His mother, a government official’s widow, had an annuity that expired with her death. So Dowling, who had no other means of support, had to leave college and get employment as a newspaper reporter. That was eighteen months ago.

  “I tell you,” whispered Dowling, lowering his voice and almost shutting his eyes, ’that what got on my nerves was … er … a queer thing and it may appear silly but … you know I couldn’t give expression to something that was in me … somehow … I don’t know how to tell you … of course I’m not a genius … but every man you know … of a certain class, of course, doctor … I don’t know your name … every man has some creative power … and reporting work is awful … telling lies and rubbish day after day … and nobody understood me … everybody seemed to think that I was cocky and thought myself, on account of my family and that sort of thing, you know, better than the others … so that I chucked it six months ago and knocked about since … and then, desperate, I pretended to be ill so that I could get into hospital….”

  He had been talking at a terrific pace and stopped suddenly to draw breath. Speaking rapidly, the doctor interrupted him in the same jerky low tone. “And then, of course, you went to kill the editor, fust to ma
ke people believe you were ill,” murmured the doctor.

  Dowling suddenly stiffened in bed. He dragged his hand from the doctor’s two hands. He held his two hands clenched in front of his face. His face contorted into a demoniacal grin. His eyes distended and then narrowed to slits. His body began to tremble. Gibbering, he began to mutter. Then he became articulate.

  “I’ll kill the bastard yet,” he screamed, “I’ll kill him. Where is he? Where is he?”

  Screaming he tried to jump out of bed, but the attendant’s giant hands were about him. He felt himself pressed down into the bed, flat on his back. Gibbering, he lay there trembling. Then another fit overcame him and he roared. The ward became filled with sound. All the other patients began to scream and cry and babble.

  “Padded cell,” murmured the doctor to the attendant. Then he sighed and walked away to the door.

  The Struggle

  The sea was dead calm. There was no wind. The sun stood high in the heavens. Seamus O’Toole and Michael Halloran were coming from Kilmurrage to Rooruch in a new boat they had just bought. The fresh tar on the boat’s canvas sides glistened in the sun, and the polished wooden lathes of the frame emitted a strong smell of pine. The two men were singing snatches of coarse songs as they rowed. They had drunk a lot of whiskey in Kilmurrage. They were both strong young men. Seamus O’Toole rowed in the prow. His cap resting crookedly on the back of his head, showed his white forehead above a ruddy face. His blue eyes were glassy with drink and there was a slight froth around the corners of his thick lips. Michael Halloran rowed in the stern. His bare head was shaped like a cone, shorn to the bone all round with a short glib hanging over the narrow forehead. Sweat discoloured the knees of his white frieze trousers. His shoulder blades twitched convulsively under his grey shirt as he lay forward over the oars and he kept hanging his head sideways, as if he were trying to hit his left knee.

  They were passing Coillnamhan harbour about a mile from the shore, when O’Toole stopped rowing suddenly and said, “Let us have a drink.” “I’m satisfied,” said Halloran, letting go his oars. The boat flopped ahead with a lapping sound on the eddies of her wake, O’Toole picked up a pint bottle of whiskey that rested on his waistcoat in the prow. He uncorked it and took a swig. The whiskey gurgled going down his throat. Then his lips left the neck of the bottle with a gasp and he passed it in silence to Halloran. Halloran took a long draught and passed it back. “That’s enough for us,” he said thickly. “Go to the devil,” said O’Toole with a rough laugh and put the bottle to his lips again. Halloran turned round in his seat and snatched the bottle. O’Toole’s teeth rasped against the rim as the bottle was wrenched from his mouth. Halloran swallowed his breath hurriedly and tried to put the bottle to his lips with his right hand. He was leaning backwards, his face to the sun, his left hand on the starboard gunwale.

  O’Toole cursed, drew in a deep breath, and struck at Halloran’s upturned face with his right fist. His upper lip contorted as he struck. He struck Halloran between the eyes. The bottle fell to the bottom of the boat, hit a round granite stone that lay there and broke into pieces. Halloran’s head hit the bottom of the boat with a hollow thud and rebounded as he clawed with his hands and legs. His bloodshot eyes glared and he shrieked as he struggled to his feet. O’Toole with his jaws wide open jumped to his feet too and snatched at his waistcoat. He pulled a knife from the pocket. He was opening it when he dropped it suddenly and whirled about. Halloran had yelled again. He was standing athwart his seat, the round stone in his left hand. He drew back his arm to take aim when the boat rolled to port, and he slipped. His right shin struck against the seat. In seizing the gunwales with both hands to steady himself the stone dropped into the sea. Its splash sounded loud in the silence. Hissing, they both stood upright, swaying gracefully with the rocking boat, as agile as acrobats in their drunken madness. They stared into one another’s eyes for several seconds, their bodies twitching, their thighs taut. Each felt the other’s breath hot on his face. Their breathing was loud. Each stood astride his seat.

  Then the boat stopped rocking. With a roar they rushed at one another’s throats. They met between the two seats, their feet against the sides, each clasping the other’s throat. They stood cheek to cheek, breast to breast. They had moved so lightly that the boat did not rock. The two of them close together looked like a mast. They stood still.

  Then O’Toole raised his left leg and hit Halloran in the stomach. Halloran yelled and doubled up, The boat rocked as O’Toole pressed forward and the two of them tumbled across the second seat, Halloran beneath, O’Toole sprawling on top, his hands still gripping Halloran’s throat. Then Halloran heaved and struggled sideways to his knees. He threw O’Toole’s legs over the port gunwale. The boat canted ominously to port. The port gunwale was almost under water. They both shrieked. Halloran’s body bounded off the boat’s bottom as he wrenched himself to starboard and wound his legs about the seat. The boat rocked from side to side madly. Then O’Toole tried to lift his legs on board. They were almost on board when Halloran grasped at his head and seized his ears. They swung out again with a swish. The boat rolled with them, paused for a moment with the gunwale at the water’s edge and then it toppled over with a swoop. There was a muffled yell as the two men disappeared beneath the black dome of tarred canvas, Halloran’s legs clinging like a vice to the seat, O’Toole’s hands gripping Halloran’s throat.

  For half a minute the boat hopped restlessly. There was a rustling noise of something splashing in water. Then all was still. The sun glistened on the tarred bottom of the boat. A cap floated near.

  Then the upturned boat began to drift slowly westwards.

  At The Forge

  An old farmer called Sutton was the first to arrive at the forge. He was a big man, with a black beard shaped like the head of a shovel. He was dragging a limping plough-horse by the halter. He brought the horse into the little yard off the road, and saw that the door of the forge was still locked and barred.

  “Well, be the …” cried Sutton, uttering a long string of oaths, “nine o’clock in the morning, an’ still no sign of him. Holy Moses!”

  Although the door of the forge was locked and barred with a heavy iron crowbar, it was quite easy to enter it through an enormous hole in the wall to the right of the door. Through this hole, three men could enter abreast. Tinkers and tramps passed in and out there regularly at night. Still the smith locked and barred the door scrupulously every evening.

  Sutton tied his horse to the stone fence, looked in through the hole and saw nothing. He growled again, sat down and waited patiently for half an hour until Joe Tierney, who kept the “Mountain Tavern,” five miles away the other side of the bog, arrived with his pony and trap.

  “Morra, Joe,” said Sutton.

  “Morra,” said Tierney. “Where’s Keegan?”

  “The divil a bit o’ me knows,” said Sutton. “He’s not here, anyway, where he should be at this hour o’ the morn-in’.”

  “God! Isn’t he an awful man,” said Tierney, getting out of his trap and going towards the hole in the wall. “Look at that, will ye? The door is locked an’ God Almighty could walk in an’out through this hole. Wha’?”

  Sutton said nothing, thinking angrily of his ploughing and of the rating his wife would give him for not being back in time. Tierney struck his lean, wrinkled face in through the hole and peered about the dark forge, smelling the rank odour of charcoal and twitching his nose. Then he came over to Sutton and sat down.

  “Why doesn’t he get a cottage near here?” said Tierney, “and then he’d be in time every mornin’.”

  “Huh!” said Sutton. “That wouldn’t suit him at all. The nearest public-house is in the village below in the glen, so he’d rather live there and walk the three miles back and forth every mornin’ so as to be near his pint.”

  “Me curse on him, anyway,” said Tierney. “I have to be in the town at eleven o’clock an’ it’s six miles hard goin’. She’d never be able to do it with
her two hind shoes off, not to mind that ould woman that’s always on the road, watchin’ for cruelty to animals. It’s ten to one that I’d be had up for the Court unless I get shoes on her first. Where’s this Keegan from, anyway? He’s not a local man.”

  “No. He’s a Co. Carlow man,” said Sutton. “Livin’ in sin this twenty years with Mary Karney, ould Ned Kar-ney’s widow.”

  “Lord! Oh, Lord!” said Tierney. “It should be put a stop to, so it should. I wouldn’t mind if he did his work, but when a man is livin’ in sin, ye might say, though Ned is dead this twenty years, livin’ in sin with another man’s wife, it’s the least he might do is to mind his work. Wha’? They should be made get married. Wha’!”

  “So they should,” said Sutton, “but … hech, hech … don’t ye see the joke? If she marries him she loses her lodge that she has for nothin’ from old Lord Marley on account of old Ned bein’ his honour’s coachman. Hech, hech, hech.”

  “Aw! Be the hokey!” said Tierney. “Did ye ever hear the likes o’ that maneness?”

  “Hech, hech, hech,” laughed Sutton in his enormous beard.