by Brian Moore
“That was my uncle Daniel,” his double said. “Your kinsman. Would you like to see his picture?” He went to the shelves, pulling out an old photograph album, shuffling some photos which were lying loose in its back pages. “Here it is.” He held out a photograph framed in passepartout, showing a young man wearing an academic robe, holding a sheepskin in his right hand, smiling at the camera. The young man had very short hair and a small mustache, but the mustache did not disguise him. Again, Mangan felt that giddy sensation. It could have been himself at twenty.
“He took his B.A. at Cork University. Apparently, he was a fair Greek scholar. He taught school for a while, until drink got him the sack. And wrote poems. All his life he wrote poems.”
“You knew him” Mangan asked.
“No, he was before my time. I remember my father talking about him. He showed up once at our house at Christmastime. He was drunk for six days. I think he frightened my father. He frightens me. As he should frighten you. We are the same, all of us. We look the same, we write poetry, and we come to a bad end.”
“A bad end?”
“Yes. Let’s start with James Clarence Mangan, died of drink and drugs and malnutrition, a solitary, miserable life. Then Daniel James Mangan, a drunken wastrel, butchered in the markets like a pig. And myself crippled and destroyed and hiding from charges that could put me in prison for years. And yourself, I don’t know about. But you have some trouble, I’ll bet. Otherwise, why did you come?”
But Mangan did not heed the question. Crippled? And what crime had this man committed that could bring him years in prison? As he stared uneasily at his older face, the face smiled as though it understood his unspoken questions. “You know nothing at all about me, do you?” the face said. “And you’ve come here to find out, God help you. Well, you’re the only man in the world that I’d want to tell my story to. For I think, now that I’ve laid eyes on you, that you are probably my only true kin.”
As he spoke, he stood up and kicked a fallen clod of turf back from the lip of the hearth. The dogs, which had lain as if asleep, rose at once and stood watching. “But first let me go and see to a few lambs. I’ll leave you here. I work for a German and he has a lot of sheep out on these heads. When I come back I’ll tell you my story.” He looked at the dogs and at once they went out. “As I said before, eat something if you’re hungry.” He reached into a tin box and took out a slice of cooked meat, which he tore at and chewed like an animal. “I’ll be back,” he said, and went through the opening, his rubber boots making a flopping sound on the winding stair, leaving Mangan still sitting with the passe-partout-framed graduation photograph in his hand.
He looked into the eyes of the young man in the photograph, that young man with his high, old-fashioned shirt collar, striped tie, the rented academic gown on his shoulders, his hair slicked down, his smile obedient to the photographer’s command, posing with his academic sheepskin, ribboned and sealed. Myself on degree day in Notman’s studio in Montreal. In the foul-smelling latrine of the pub in Bantry he again saw the tall lout loom over him, felt his lapels caught, felt the head butt into his face, the blood spurt from his nose. Long, long ago his other self drunk, seeing there were two of them set against him, seized a meat cleaver from a butcher’s stall. And had his throat cut with it. And a man hanged on the gallows because of it. He put the photograph down and picked up the history of Trinity College, Dublin, opening it to the plate showing the man “believed to be the poet James Clarence Mangan,” a ghostly figure in a long theatrical cloak. And at that moment he remembered the passage which had impressed him so much that he had read it aloud to his father and Margrethe in that snow bound cottage in Quebec:
In that gloomy apartment of the institution called the “Fagel” library which is in the innermost recess of the stately building, an acquaintance pointed out to me a man perched on the top of a ladder, with the whispered information that the figure was James Clarence Mangan. It was an unearthly and ghostly figure in a brown garment; the same garment, to all appearances, which lasted to the day of his death. The blanched hair was totally unkempt; the corpse-like features still as marble; a large book was in his hands, and all his soul was in that book. I had never heard of Clarence Mangan before, and knew not for what he was celebrated, whether as a magician, a poet, or a murderer; yet took a volume and spread it on a table, not to read, but with a pretence of reading to gaze upon this spectral creature upon the ladder.
There in the photograph, peering nervously at the camera, was the spectral creature on the ladder, the person “believed to be the poet James Clarence Mangan.” And, again, in the daguerreotype, identified at last, the same face. And there, in a studio portrait, wearing an academic robe, that face reincarnate in a later time. That same face which had just left this room to tend some lambs. And which sat in this room now, come from America to find himself.
He put aside the photographs and stood, going out of the chamber down the winding medieval staircase to the ill-smelling lower room, to come out and turn down toward the cliffs in front of the tower. Wild long grasses were flattened by the wind like an angry cur’s pelt. He walked over them, right to the rim of cliff. He looked vertiginously down sheer gray stone worn by deep crevices and sea caves. Gulls floated on air currents, dipping down along the edge of these impenetrable walls, diving far down to the rocks below, rocks wet with the dash of white spume. It seemed to him that he had come to the end of his journey, that something more than chance had made him find the daguerreotype the very night that Beatrice died, that something more than chance had given him access to her money, permitting him to undertake this search and find this poet who bore his face, his true spiritual father. He sat on the edge of the cliffs for what seemed a long time, staring at the white water far below. He heard a flapping of wings and, turning, saw the two crows take off behind him, flying over him like black spies. “Kah! Kah! Kaaah!”
But the crows had not come to spy. They were in flight from the sheep dogs, which now vaulted up on the courtyard wall. And in a moment his double appeared, his felt hat pulled low over his eyes, peering out toward the cliffs, looking for him.
It was the end of his journey. There could be no turning back. He rose and went toward the tower.
“Gin, will it be?” his double asked. “We’re well fixed for it. We have a full bottle and one half full. But we don’t want to get polluted, do we?”
“No,” Mangan said as the other poured two drinks into the tin cups, then settled himself on his heap of sacking beside the fire. “There’s a gale out there on its way to us. I heard it on the wireless this morning. I moved some sheep off the end of the German’s head just now. I think we can take it easy for a while and have a real yarn together.” He pulled off his hat, revealing again his gray-white hair. “Yes,” Michael Mangan said. “The minute I laid eyes on you this morning—I was up there above you, watching you come down the head—I couldn’t see you close, mind you, but I said to myself, That’s not a tourist nor a journalist nor a policeman. That’s somebody who was sent to me. I’ll not say I was waiting for you to come someday. That wouldn’t be true. But it is true that I’ve thought many’s the time that there might be one of us in America. I knew that my father’s brother went out there. And, years ago, there was an American came to Drishane saying he was related to the Mangans and asking about Mangans. But he never got in touch.”
“That must have been my father,” Mangan said excitedly. “He came with my mother, but she got sick and they had to go back to Cork.”
“Did he look like you, your father?”
“No, not at all.”
“And do you have brothers? Or does he have brothers?”
“No, I’m the last of the line, if that’s what you mean. In America, at least.”
“Here, too,” his double said.
“Wait a minute. What about Dinny and Con?”
“Poor Dinny will never marry now. And that wee scut, Con, is a bumboy. Did you know that?”
“
No.”
“He is. Proven fact. He’s been had up twice for interfering with young lads. Oh, we’re a nice family, at this end of it. I’d say the line will carry on through you, if it carries on at all. It skips about, this special face. Uncle Dan never married, but his face showed up in his brother’s family. In me. And my son doesn’t have it, but it has showed up on his cousin in America. Which is you.”
“And wanting to be a poet,” Mangan said. “That goes with the face?”
“It does. And the bad end. Don’t forget the bad end.” His double reached for the gin bottle. “We’ll have one more,” he said, “before I start my story. But I don’t want to get drunk, mind. Don’t let me drink any more.”
“All right. Give me the bottles, then.”
But his eyes in the other’s face met his own eyes in distrust. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll be careful.”
Mangan nodded, took the bottles, set them down between his feet, and waited for the story to begin. But the other seemed unwilling to start his tale. Instead, he gave a low whistle, and at once the smaller of the sheep dogs rose and, tail wagging, came over to lie at his feet, curving its neck in ecstasy as he reached out and tickled it behind the ears. “You’ve met my wife, haven’t you? Eileen?”
Mangan nodded.
“She thinks I’m dead and it’s better so. If I were your age again, I’d not make the same mistakes. She is eight years older than I am, and God forgive me, I only married her because I had this notion of becoming a poet and she wanted to help me. You may not believe that, but it’s the truth. You see, Eileen was an only child. The mother died when she was very young and she was brought up by her father. He was a neighbor of ours. Our house was Gorteen, up where Con has his caravan now. Their house was Duntally, down the road. Our fathers were good friends, for they were both farmers whose wives had died, leaving them with young children to bring up. So Eileen was like a cousin to us. And then when she was twenty-four, her father died, leaving her all he had. She got a hired man with a family to run the farm, and moved them into the main house at Duntally, while she lived alone in the wee cottage in the back. And six months after that, it was my father’s turn to die. My older brother, Fergus, got the farm. I was in my last year at school at the time. I had started writing poems already and I even had one printed in a little mag that was put out in Galway. Oh, I’d great hopes for myself. I wanted to go on to university, but I got no scholarship and Fergus had no money to spare to help me. Gorteen was never much of a living, mixed farming and a few sheep. It began to look as if I’d have to find work as a laborer in England, and I was nearly shipping out to London when Eileen, of all people, said she would stake me to four years of university in Cork so that I could get my B.A. Well, I don’t have to tell you her offer was music to my ears. Of course I promised her I’d pay it all back when I got my degree. And the next thing I knew was that Eileen began coming into Cork City every week to see me. She had her own car, and she was lively and liked going to dances, and anyway we had a good time together. And then in my second year at University College, Cork, I had two of my poems printed in a Dublin magazine. I have the magazine to this day. Eileen was bursting out proud of me and telling everyone that I’d be another James Clarence Mangan. That or better, thought I. Anyway, the upshot of it all was that in my final year I asked Eileen to marry me and we got married the month after I got my B.A. I landed a teaching job in a little place near Youghal, so we moved there, and the second year, Eileen had a baby. That was Dinny.”
He paused to stir the fire with a piece of wood, then turned to Mangan. “And she went mad. Right after the baby was born, she went mad. It happens to some women. The doctors will tell you that. She went right around the bend and I had to put her into the asylum in Youghal. She was there three months. I had to get a woman to look after the baby, and even when Eileen came home, she was not herself. She’d changed. Nothing would do her now but that we go home and live on her farm in Duntally. She said she’d help me farm it. She said she had extra money and that she’d buy cattle like her father before her and she promised that I’d have plenty of time for my poetry. Well, to tell you the truth, I’d found out that I wasn’t that keen on schoolmastering. So I said yes and we went home to Duntally and Eileen had the land rented and we took it back and moved into the main house. She had a great head for money and when she bought and sold cattle she was just as cute as her father had been at that game.”
He paused. “Just about that time, Radio Eireann asked me to read some of my poetry on a program about young poets in the west of Ireland. I thought I was made. I thought it was just a matter of time until I’d be invited to read my poetry all over the place. Anyway, eight years after we moved back to Duntally, we had a second child. We weren’t expecting it, of course. A baby girl. And the exact same thing happened. Eileen went mad again. This time I tried to look after her at home, but it was no good. I had to commit her to Our Lady’s in Cork. And when they let her out, she was ten times worse than she’d been the first time. That little cottage behind Duntally—the one she and Dinny live in now—she half moved into that little house. At night, as soon as the children were asleep, she’d leave the big house and go down and spend the night there. What I’m saying is, she never slept with me again. It’s understandable, I suppose. She was afraid to. And she changed in other ways as well. She was no company any more. She stopped reading, and she never talked about books or my work the way she used to. I’d show her something and she’d say it was good. That was all. It was good. She had no more interest in it than if it was a football. And she that used to be so interested.
“Anyway, I’m telling you this because I’m trying to explain that there’s a reason for things that happen. There’s a reason people do what they do. I was all those years alone in that house living like a monk. And I was a young man, remember. I was writing poetry and I went to Cork now and then and met a few people I’d known in my university days. But, ah, I never knew the people that counted. Poetry is a bit of a racket, as you know. You need to know the right people, you need to be able to get yourself talked about. I was stuck away on a farm with two kids and a depressive wife. Maeve, my daughter, was growing into a big tall girl. By the time she was twelve years old she was as tall as a full-grown woman. And pretty, too. And the upshot is that I began bothering her. Her mother never knew, but Dinny did, although nothing was ever said. Anyway, I used to get into bed with her now and then. And it went on, right up till she was twenty-one years old.”
As he said this, he lifted his head, glaring at Mangan as though waiting for a blow. But when he saw the shocked, sickened look on Mangan’s face, he looked away, his gaze dull, his eyes searching the fire as though trying to remember the end of a story told him by some other person. “I said twenty-one because she was twenty-one the year my brother Fergus died up at Gorteen. He had a heart attack while he was backing up his tractor and he fell off it and it ran over him. It was a terrible mess of a death. And the strange thing is that, just like our father before him, he died a widower, leaving two children. And they were Conor and Kathleen. And as you know, that wee Conor is next thing to a midget and no good for anything, so I had to go up there and try to keep the place in order until it could be sold. My son, Dinny, couldn’t help, for two years before, he had started working in the Allied Irish Bank in Bantry.”
“Dinny was a bank clerk?”
“He was, and a good one, it seems. Anyway, to tell you my story, I went to Gorteen to give a hand, and there was Kathleen.” He paused and again looked Mangan full in the eye. “She was twelve, the same age Maeve was when I started with her. And Kathleen was beautiful. I hear she still is. I know, I know, there’s no excuse for me, but one day, when I caught her changing her clothes up in her bedroom there in Gorteen, I made a grab at her. She was upset, but I was nice to her and promised I’d buy her sweets and things. I warned her to tell nobody, not Con nor anybody. Anyway, I calmed her down, so I thought it would be all right if I didn’t tou
ch her any more. Nor did I. I stayed away from her. I was only with her once. That’s the truth, now. I only got in with her once.
“Well, anyway, it was about two weeks after that that this other thing happened. One night I was at home asleep when Maeve came into my room. She said she’d had a bad dream and that she was afraid. I should have been warned that something was up, for she never came into my room. I always went to her in her own room. But that night I took her into my bed. And she was not the way she normally was. When I kissed her she kissed me back. I should have known, but anyway, I had her nightdress up and I had a cockstand and the next thing I knew she was holding it. She never did that before. She made me stiff as a board. And all of a sudden—she must have hidden it somewhere—she out with a big sharp kitchen knife in her other hand and made a chop and cut right through it like she’d cut off a chicken’s head. And then she said to me in a very quiet voice—I’ll not forget that voice—‘Now you won’t be able to spoil Kathleen like you spoiled me.’ Christ, I was bleeding like a pig. I grabbed hold of the stump and held it tight trying to stop it. She paid no attention. She got off the bed and left the room. And do you know this? She took with her both the knife and my cock. Christ, I was certain sure I was going to bleed to death. But I never called out or anything, because Dinny was asleep in the next room. I got on my trousers and a jacket and into my boots and went dragging downstairs. It was the middle of the night. Of course, Eileen wasn’t in the house. She was asleep in the cottage. We had no car then. Dinny had a little Lambretta motorbike but I didn’t have the keys. And of course I was wondering where Maeve was. But when I got out into the yard I saw a bicycle lamp up on the road above, going up to Gorteen. I’ll bet she’s going up to tell Kathleen, I said to myself, and I was right. For she went straight up to Gorteen and ran into the child’s room in the middle of the night, frightening the life out of her, with the big knife in one hand and my cock in the other. And threw the bloody thing on the bed. And I heard tell that what she said was: ‘There. Now he cannot do it any more.’ And that Kathleen let out a scream to wake the dead.”
