Night

by Edna O'Brien

  *

  I expect someone died in this room. I heard hymns once. I have parted the curtains in order to be a watchdog. To see the moon if it should saunter by. Another of my slaveries, even though it be a mere secondary planet, another of my fixations, on a par with my liking for the shadows and the birds and the hermits. I understand there are bird squads, commandos with fumes and searchlights to send them back into the wilderness. May God wither up their hearts, may their blood cease to flow . . .

  It is still dark, inside and out, but the hour will come when the black light will stubbornly give way to a grey and then to a greyish blue and maybe at last, towards morning, near the aurorate, a pink or orange light will invade the heavens and it will for a moment or a series of moments disseminate itself and I will see a lit-up pane, burnished, and say to myself all is not lost, all is not bleak, and the heavens and the earth can still spring their little surprises on me and flood the world with radiance. Tower of ivory, house of gold. And the pigeons under the eaves will coo. And I will laugh or I will cry. There is little difference. What more do I want.

  I am here in the capacity of a caretaker. They needed someone to take in the mail and douche the plants and so forth. Also to turn on lights in the evening, to give the semblance of a full house. They are irrational about being robbed. They ply me with post-cards saying they hope they haven’t been you-know-whated. Antelopes roaming the ranges. I keep a blunderbuss on the chiffonier, hoping that the sight of it, plus my sagging tits plus my oatmeal mask, will offset any rude assailant. I might carouse with him or suggest a game of Sardines. All it needs is for him to be a certain type, a sort of defunct hangman, granite featured, for me to get into the swing of it, get the old hairy scutcheons sliding, get on with the Thigh Show.

  Needless to add I appropriated the master bedroom, the electric blanket and this quilt. The room they ascribed to me was a single room with red wallpaper, of the oxblood variety. Lil had the audacity to appear there one night, swaddled in linen no less, and with a rosary swinging from her waist. The curtains lifted as if a flame or a breeze had been put to them and there she was, rouged, rejuvenated. Full of wise saws about Jesus, whom she called Jesu. I found it an impertinence myself. She had little gold sleepers in her ears. Some goddam dreg of love welled up in me and I wanted to put my hand out and touch the earlobe, the cool, the white earlobe that just missed being chafed by the rim of the gold. I wanted to tweak it. At the same time I wished she’d make herself scarce and said so. She was sermonising in her customary voice, about the joys of heaven and the writhing woes of hell. I wanted to inquire into the statute acreage of same and also to ask if unfortunate children got born there. She kept limbo and purgatory out of the narrative altogether. I could smell the sizzling and the burning of flesh from the great tale with which she regaled me. So vivid was it that I could see them, these poor souls, rotomating like chickens, as I’ve seen and watched them in the take-away “Nosh” place. She was looking very august. To tell you the truth her visitation gave me the willies. I was afraid she might nake herself. I was digging into the mattress and sweating like a pig. She actually got into the bed, the single bed. It squeaked. I edged away. Who wouldn’t. She arched and tilted and bowed her body so that she fitted exactly into mine, my tumescence and my curves, her tumescence and her curves, and it felt as if we were being welded together, or at least moulded together, like one of her legendary carragheen soufflés in its wetted mould. She had precepts written out on a slate, in gold no less, like the Writ of Moses, stipulating further how I must live out the remainder of my life. She kept adhering to me. Such suctorial sounds, such busying. Then she started to infer that she would be resident here for all time, keeping a total watch. She was not like Hamlet’s father, coming back at an appointed hour to deliver State news or instigate a bit of foul play. She was going to be trailing me for the rest of my life, counting the number of cigarettes I smoked, my alcoholic intake, the knaves that I brought home, my femoral moments with the Duke, she was to be my guardian angel. I had the most terrible feeling, the most shocking realisation, you cannot kill the dead. And yet I had a go, in fact I wakened up howling and aiming the warming pan at her. I gathered up my effects.

  This room is brighter as well as airier and the bed itself is on a dais. The pictures and gouaches are the backs or buttocks of various Japanese ladies. It seems he has a preference for backs, so Tig said. The wardrobes are louvred and the drawers inhumanly neat, along with being lavender-scented. There are also camphor balls volleying back and forth at the merest wrench, and I gainsay that they are the genuine thing from Borneo. In my cups I mistook them for sweets and bit into one, expecting a peppermint bouquet. Recently the place has suffered a bit of wear and tear. A table that I broke has been removed from sight. I simply locked the door, took the key and on my forenoon walk dropped it into the little pond where there are splints of ice and where there is also reputed to be carp, John Dorys, bleak and bream. It was a fiendish room, a dining-room, a morgue, twelve high-backed chairs, a perspex hotplate, artificial fruits which I hazard to say were not unlike artificial testicles. I dine in the kitchen, perch on a high stool. The saucepans are gleaming. I have looked at myself in the bottom of those saucepans and my reflection is positively fulgent. I like it here. Of course it is not ideal, but it is a resting place. The silences are unnerving. I can hear my own hair splitting. Very often as I go down the stairs, the swish of my skirt surprises me and causes me to start as if I am about to be given a clout of some kind. Another thing I hear is the salt as it falls on to my food, that little shiver it gives as I sprinkle it on to the forkful of cabbage or whatever I happen to be eating. I am a devil for cabbage. I wouldn’t mind a few beds of York cabbage in the rose garden and my having to go out with my spray gun and stop the slugs from mottling it, and eating it right through, to the bunch that is its heart. Then there are the other things, the senseless sounds, the creaks, maybe worms in the futtocks and timbers, or maybe it’s the timbers themselves settling down or revolting after hundreds of years. They are not exactly musical, but no one is asking them to be. I recall that the sweetest note I ever heard was the rupture of a cobweb as it tore, scattered and fell. Jewelled it was from the sun and shaped like a mandala. It was in a boilhouse in Coose. In the breach the note sounded, and then the silence sounded. I don’t know why it got torn, as there was no reason for it, no fist or no slashhook, but it did. It may have decided to give up.

  I am getting used to my own company, my own dissertations. I play Patience, play variations on it. It is then that the long grey tenders of cigarette-ash burn their way into some item of furniture and I jump up, my mouth full of apologies. I shall be busy with the turps, one day, one day.

  Maybe I should not have come here, maybe it has given me a taste for reverie. I should have gone as a dairymaid or a lady’s companion, or even a gentleman’s companion. But it was glorious the morning I applied. It was autumn time, a beautiful bronze light, the birch leaves like sovereigns, the wide granite steps sweeping up to the house, the two push-bells and a policeman strolling around, overseeing all. Inside, everything sunny, everything tinkling, chimes and so forth, and when I looked up at the big high ceilings and the cornices I foresaw myself giving hoolies and suppers. The first thing I did when I came to reside was to make myself familiar with the light switches. I know these switches off by heart. I dare say I know them better than they do. For instance, on one of the landings there is an array of switches that operates lights above and below even as far down as the cellar, and I can go to any one of these switches and be certain of which light it is I am turning on. I practised it for nights on end and would go up and down to see the correctness or otherwise of my actions. In the case of the cellar I had to stoop and see the crack of light under the door because it is locked and padlocked. Now I go up or down simply to applaud, to prove to myself that I am no clod in these matters. It is the same with the carpet and the stair rods. I have studied them both with my eyes and with the tips
of my fingers, in all lights, even the gloaming. I know where there are little blemishes, where the woof is going thin, and I know the various stresses on the surface of the rods. I have knelt. Providential that they didn’t come in and find me beating the ground with my head as if, like the Arab, preparing myself to remove cataracts.

  Often when I am out for my walk I get the distinct impression that they are back, have let themselves in and are disgusted at my habits, the little altar that I’ve made, the candle grease in thick splodges on the embossed cloth, various statues and icons, the shawl spread out over the prayer chair. I don’t mind what happens so long as I can stay. I like to venture and make a bit of an expedition but only with the certainty that I can get back in. I have a spare key buried, in its own little clay hole. I am not too sure of what I want to befall them, just so long as they remain away indefinitely, for ever. They don’t have to die, just so long as they never come back. I know it’s futile but I still ask for it. They can become explorers, heroes, huntsmen, lepers, anything, they can go native, join a tribe. I am making a novena for that intention. Of course I know it’s futile. I know they will come back, and maybe they will come before their time, surprise me. They were hardly gone when a sheaf of flowers got delivered. It was a Monday. Winter flowers and shining winter foliage. There were even camellias. I lingered over the arrangements. At first like a Coose skivvy I stuffed them all into a big ewer, and then I remembered that I was master, mistress, abbess, and I got various jugs and vases and bits of wire and bits of sponging and I made the most ingenious arrangements and stood back and admired them and referred to someone as though there was someone here to refer to. The last of them are downstairs in the main room. Mimosa. They have faded, curled into themselves and dried up. Now they have the audacity to be falling about. Before they actually fall they are suspended in the air like buttons, soft cloth buttons of a desiccated yellow. If I had a shrimp-net I could go down and chase them but I don’t. Even when I make a little bounce and clap hands I invariably miss them. Bad co-ordination.

  There is one little room that I am invariably to be found in. It has flowered wallpaper, the flowers neat as cymes, and it has a beautiful birdcage, turquoise and white. My niche. There is a circular table, glass topped, with postcards and souvenirs and leaves placed in under the glass. I am possessive about that room. I would like it to be mine. For instance I objected to the snapshots, the ones of Jonathan and Tig, as being too happy, too blasé. I removed them. I put them in a big blotter. Also in that room are gadgets that I play with. There are balls on the points of wires, and I play with them and tease them, and conk them together, and I make them fight with each other and make up with each other and spin round. There are four balls in all, attached to four different strands of wire, but supported on the same pedestal, connate at the base. They are different heights, and different shades, like growing children in a family. There is a yellow, a red, a navy blue and a green. They never tire of being pulled at, never refuse to co-operate, but then neither do I. The minute I go into the room I rush to them. They are on my list for stealing, that is if I have any prior warning of their return. There is a third thing that I covet, apart from the balls and the little table and it is a lady, a papiermâché lady, very gruesome but nice. She has big bubs, that even extend and grow out to the side of her and her hair as well as her face is streaming and green-black. I carry her round. She sits with me. At mealtimes I prop her up. She is called Instant Humility. Aren’t names funny. I am called Mary. The luck of God I wasn’t called Babette or Dymphna. No, I’m called Mary. At least they did that with a certain propriety. Plain Mary Hooligan.

  The flowers were sent from the shop opposite the bus terminus, with a sign which says, “Make friends, give flowers, wreaths and crosses”. Life is full of its little signs, little edicts, its little allurements. Yesterday on my afternoon walk I saw a most affectionate thing, a handwritten sign – “Lost, black and white nursing mother cat, kittens desperate.” Heartrending. Dry mouths, dry tongues, dry throats. I scolded myself, I said to myself if only I could jump into a situation like that, espouse it as they say. I didn’t. I don’t. I draw back, perpetually, except for the odd foray of lust or agitation.

  The morning she left she pointed to a trickle of whisky in a bottle and said “You might like to indulge on your first evening alone.” I like my biddy any time. It is pleasant to lie on one’s bed, or some swain’s bed, with the alcohol coursing through one’s veins, thoughts running amok, the brain like an old branch, or old vertebrae, seasoning the bitter reds of life. I didn’t comment on her miserliness. I asked if she’d remembered her citronella. Coose palaver arses me. Then I referred to their picture window. We both stood gazing out, at a hemisphere that was sodden and grey as it happened. There was a bit of snow on the window since Christmas time, artificial snow sprayed on in the manner of flakes. The design was originally meant to have the contours of an anchor but time and chance and maybe even little fingers had tinkered with it and to my eyes it had the perspective of a cross. Can you beat that. At least it was a white cross and not a red corpuscled affair like the crosses of Coose. Right butchers they were, those graphic artists, everything red – togas, garments, wounds, sores, loincloths, handkerchiefs, towels, drapery, not forgetting the blood itself, the gallons of it. I refused to have the cross removed when the window cleaner came. On Tig’s instructions windows have to get cleaned every three weeks. She does not like the grime to lodge, has some idea it will scratch the glass, maybe a well-founded idea, maybe. The master window cleaner is blind in one eye, his left eye, so as often as not the jut of his ladder seems to be aiming right through the glass, and as for ornaments, the lorgnettes and ingots and tear bottles, they skeeter to the floor at his very touch. I said to leave the cross. I thought it would assist me in litanising. The junior window cleaner winked at me and asked if he could leave his ladders. Nothing but ladders, to the ceiling, to the sky, to the denizens above and below. I hedged. I had a confrontation. I asked him when he would be likely to collect it. For me that is heroic, to pose a bald question. He mentioned an hour on the following day that was unduly early. I knew that I would be here in my bed, curled up foetus-wise between my hessian sheets, their hessian sheets, committing manslaughter in my dreams, or copulating with the succubi, being kissed by a whisker. No go. I shook my head. He smirked, then there followed an involuntary wink and he indicated the upstairs quarters with a tilt of the head. “Apples and pears,” he said, meaning would we mount. I went right off him. The old quim went quite dead, dry as his piece of brown chamois. I had a brainwave that there ought to be such a thing as a quim diviner, just as in the Barony of Coose there were water diviners. Right mohawks they were, nearly always afflicted, blind or maimed, always pockmarked, marauding around the fields with rods and wands, giving false hopes, true hopes, no hopes at all. Ferocious appetites. Loved victuals, ate heartily, then ate the scraps, the giblets, the gristles and the adipises. Bad for their stomachums. Sucked upon the bones. Kept the little bones as dice for lot casting, a sport which they were demons at. Omniferous readers, if they are to be believed, read the fireside serials, about Brendan the navigator and the mighty De Daanns and the pookas and the supernatural feats involving a Queen and a Dun Cow.

  *

  Little does my mistress know. I have wrought innumerable stains and I am champion at spilling. Also I scratched the hinges of the escritoire with my thumb nail. I did it absentmindedly one afternoon or one evening when I was idler or gamier than usual, I must have been distracted, maybe looking out at the street sweepers, an elfin bunch, or maybe at the shredded bark of the plane trees. I am still in grave doubt as to whether those shavings when boiled in vinegar are beneficial for diarrhoea. Not that I have any complaint, I am A1. I might have been looking at the shadows, discoursing, they’re a terror altogether, intruders, coming and going, making Vs, breaking Vs, splitting and multiplying and contracting and expanding, getting unfortunate people into a tizz. Not me, I juggle with them. I
try to get them to do things, to make them crash, to make them stay. Oh shadows, don’t go. Sometimes they desert me, then again they are so numerous they are all over the place, and when I kneel down I can reach them almost as they travel over the wainscotting and up the wall.