He Got Hungry and Forgot His Manners

by Jimmy Breslin

  “D’Arcy Cosgrove.”

  “Well, D’Arcy, I am a writer. I have been working on a book on the British military and the reasons for so many stunning and bloody failures on the part of leadership which is supposedly the world’s brightest. In my research I found that the leadership is far from the brightest because traditionally British officers paid for their jobs. The reason for the Charge of the Light Brigade, for example, was stupidity on the part of an insufferably stupid man named Lord Cardigan who had the money to buy himself a field command, which he used with such ineptness that many fine young men were killed. Dastardly! ‘Theirs not to reason why.’ Rubbish! In researching my work in London, I was told that Lord Cardigan had been a landlord here in the West of Ireland and I wondered just what sort of a landlord he was. Probably one of those who drove everyone from the land.

  “I decided to come here for a fortnight and see if there was the slightest trace of the man remaining in the towns about. I had heard there were records kept here and I received permission in Dublin and here I come today, seeking the records of a landlord, and what do I find? My God!” Her voice dropped. “Young man, we have here in this room, apparently, a daily record of the greatest famine the world has known.” She leafed through the packet of papers on her lap. “Will you examine this! My English are much like the Germans, you know. They both keep the most damning records about themselves. See the paper. It has withstood moisture for over a century. Look, look!”

  She rubbed her fingers over the paper that was still thick and white. The writing on the paper was impossibly neat. “And look at this, just at a glance mind you, but here is the name of ship, master, owner, cargo, wheat grain, and the date of departure from this bay. And here is the list of those who died of starvation at the very same time. What dreadful animals these government administrators were. Oh, my dear young man, we’ve only been here, what is it now, a half hour? I am totally exhausted. I must go. I am staying here at Lady Glassniven’s home. I must pull myself together for tomorrow. It seems to me that I have months to spend here. My book on the military pales next to this work. Such a trove!”

  Cosgrove helped her down the ladder and saw her out of the building. He went over to the Landmark Inn and borrowed a hurricane lamp from the proprietor and then went to work.

  On the third night in the wet attic — he came back when the old lady was gone — Cosgrove found the first of the entries he had been told to find. The light from the hurricane lamp danced across pages 111 and 112 of the month of November 1845. There, in neat yeoman’s writing, probably done with quill pen, was this recording:

  Maj. Anthony Guest of the Queen’s Own was dispatched to the beachfront to find a tribe of people engaged in battle with each other. Many of the natives were armed with strange-looking clubs, which they wielded with insane anger. Maj. Guest cautioned his troops to beware of the crowd, lest one of the natives, whose mouths seemed to be foaming with possible communicable disease, would bite them. He also instructed his troops to be on the ready for these strange clubs, of a boomerang sort, he thought. Maj. Guest then pretended to charge the crowd, with much huzzahs and sabre waving. Sensing they were unable to defend themselves against His Majesty’s forces, the natives fled. Whereupon Maj. Guest was able to find one club that had been dropped. Reporting back to barracks, the club was given to Capt. Harrison, brigade surgeon, who upon examination reported that it was not a boomerang at all, but identified it as the elbow bone of a human being. Capt. Harrison left barracks with a special investigative party. In the course of his patrol he was rendered unconscious and suffered a severe head injury in that a native emerged from behind a boulder and dealt him a heavy blow to the forehead with another club. Warrant Officer Pegsworth described it as a human bone, another elbow bone. Back at barracks, Capt. Harrison, upon regaining consciousness, was astonished to see that he had been hit with not an elbow bone, but with a thigh bone and knee joint attached. Capt. Harrison marvelled at how shiny the bone was. It had been picked clean before being used as a weapon. He particularly noticed that there was not even gristle left in the joints and crevices. Capt. Harrison is of the opinion that people with extraordinary small teeth ate the meat on the bones. He wonders if teeth shrink during starvation.

  At night’s end Cosgrove brought the paper across to the pastor, who dropped it into the turf fire without reading it. It was on the fourth night of finding such small reports that Cosgrove found a lengthy report, written the following year, by another medical officer, Colonel Devers, who noted,

  Apparently, those who are destined to live through this are those who partake of human flesh. Where and how the natives obtain this flesh is unknown to us, but we have witnessed few funerals. The cooking of such flesh, it can be reported, is done on a spit over a fire and that the natives, upon chewing the grilled flesh, do so without breathing through the nose, thus eliminating any sense of taste as they swallow. Upon eating, they take huge gulps of water and walk about for some time, breathing only through their mouths. We report herewith that the Irish are so ravenous that they overeat during these meals. I watched a man eat a huge liver the other night and attempted to tell him that one can only digest so much and that this portion, an entire liver, was entirely too much for him but he simply chomped away (these people are quite thick-headed), and afterwards he was distinctly uncomfortable from having overeaten.

  When Cosgrove mentioned this to the pastor, the old cleric watched the fire until every last bit of white paper was in flames. He trusted no one with a document such as this. Back at the attic, the writer mentioned one day to Cosgrove that she continually arrived at places where there were distinct gaps and she had difficulty in understanding why, for the British had kept such meticulous records. Still, she would of course continue with her work on the famine, and she read on. Cosgrove, after several weeks of clandestine research, came to the last packet and reported back to the pastor that his work was done. He was congratulated and told that he would have letters of commendation from every important figure in the religious and secular community sent to his seminary.

  In the final days before Ordination there was one meeting after another with church people describing religious opportunities in Ireland, with the last, apparently regarded as the most important — for all the prefects from the seminary also attended — being given by a Redemptorist who had spent his life, and a long life it was, too, as a missionary in Africa. The priest was gaunt and had a slack jaw and spoke in a monotone, which indicated that he had his speech quite well memorized. He spoke of the sheer thrill of having so many souls to save and of the indescribable beauty in which such opportunity was presented. The ancient priest finished and acknowledged applause, particularly from the prefects, and was about to leave the room and head for sherry when Cosgrove stood and asked, “How can a new missionary expect to be received by the people in today’s Africa?”

  “That is an excellent question and I will be glad to answer it for you,” the missionary said, the first life in his voice. “I first went to African mission duty while there were still members of the last Yellow Fever Commission, which had expired in the year 1915, I believe, living in Ghana,” he said. “The African peoples were thoroughly delightful and thankful for the presence of all of us. There was in my time on the continent only one recorded case of cannibalism, and this involved a Presbyterian missionary from Belfast. The cannibals were particularly cruel to him, I believe. They had of course long since made their peace with the established Catholic mission people, but these Protestants, particularly of the northern strain, the Presbyterians most prominent, never did seem to catch on with the locals. Therefore, it could be said that, at the time, a Protestant missionary did risk life and limb, as a matter of actual fact.

  “The cannibals had unimaginable savagery in that they removed the Presbyterian’s leg and immediately packed the wound with mud in order to keep the Presbyterian alive — oh, barely alive, to be sure — but the heart was still beating and this kept the Presbyterian f
rom spoiling. The cannibals had their leg of Presbyterian and the next day another cluster of savages came around and sawed off the Presbyterian’s other leg and packed this wound with mud, too, and then the following day here they are, right back for your man’s arm. I understand that the witch doctors in charge were disappointed because the Belfast Presbyterians all tend to be quite gaunt and there was very little meat, particularly on the arms.”

  “How long did the minister live?”

  “Oh, for a day or two, I should imagine, and then when his heart gave out they of course had to devour whatever there was of him immediately. I’ve been told that there was considerable rancor over the face, for the Presbyterian had this typical Ulster nose, long and made completely of bone and cartilage and with virtually no real flesh to eat. The natives did make a business of going around and chewing on the nose, as a dog worries a bone, but the nourishment from the nose was so minimal that many people maintain that it was the absolute end of cannibalism, and we can thank the Presbyterian and his thin frame for the cessation of this practice. Nevertheless, you do raise a good point. I don’t believe it is very helpful for a fat Catholic to roam around the jungles, even today.”

  “Can we be sure that there are no more cannibals?” Cosgrove asked. “I don’t wish to offend by suggesting that I am not willing to lay down my life for my God, as I certainly have more faith in me than that, but 1 just like to know the things for which I should prepare myself. Or are the rewards greater if I simply carry my faith into the unknown?”

  “Knowledge is always better,” the old missionary said, “but in this case I do think it is irrelevant to worry about cannibalism because from all the reports we get, it seems to be completely gone from the entire continent. I would stress, however, that you do not waddle off the boat fat and sassy in the face of millions of people who don’t have quite enough to eat. Oh, the inner peace of having served.”

  The missionary, now truly thirsty, left for his sherry.

  Cosgrove, on his way back to his room, told himself that he must think at length and thus thoroughly about the possibilities of serving in Africa. And when he did arrive at this conclusion that he would serve on that dark continent, he began to practice saying Perfect Acts of Contrition at most incredible speed, just in case the savages swung the ax and packed his wound with mud and sat around a fire devouring the first leg for dinner.

  Cosgrove gave his senior sermon to eight hundred in the dining hall. It was a test that often caused many seminarians to faint, but during dinner Cosgrove walked brazenly to the lectern and started a prepared speech on Barabbas: “It was morning in Jerusalem.”

  A bishop shouted, “And moonlight in Mayo!”

  The bishop stuck a potato in his mouth and his jaw worked happily as the hall rocked with laughter. Cosgrove shrugged and went on and did so successfully.

  In pageantry that only the Roman Catholic Church is able to produce, with chalices and vestments, with bowing and prostrating in candlelight, and with music, ancient music, Gregorian chant, Cosgrove’s hands were anointed with oil and as the Sacrament of Holy Orders entered his soul he could turn wine into the blood of Christ and a wafer of bread into His body.

  He had a month at home before leaving for Africa. He heard his first confession a week after he arrived in town; the confessor was a man who told him, “Father, I have committed adultery.”

  D’Arcy made a strangling sound. “How many times?”

  “Oh, only once in my whole life, Father.”

  “With whom did you commit such a sin?”

  “With a woman in the town.”

  “Do you know this woman long?”

  “Oh yes. She lives next door.”

  “For how long?”

  “Twenty-seven years.”

  Cosgrove couldn’t wait to get away from his own, a race of amateur and professional liars, and get to Africa.

  5

  WHEN THE DOOR FLEW open, the counterman at the Cross Bay Pizza stand looked up and the Chief, the boss of Howard Beach and other communities, walked in. This pizza stand was two long blocks from the New Park Pizza stand, but the only difference to the eye was that one sign read NEW PARK and the other CROSS BAY. The New Park managed to become famous on this night, but at the moment, nobody knew that or certainly cared, for the Chief needed nobody to create excitement for him.

  The Chief stood directly under the fluorescent light so everybody could see his head of gray hair, close-cropped but still standing high, brushed, curried, and combed so much that the top of his head gleamed like a sword blade. He had heavy eyebrows on a gaunt face dominated by a prominent nose that stood for all the centuries of Rome. He wore a dark blue suit and a white shirt. His neck still was young and thick. The eyes were colored brown venom. “Hello, buddy,” the counterman said.

  “Buddy, my balls,” the Chief said.

  Dominic the Counterman began to quiver.

  “Where’s what you owe me?” the Chief said.

  “I got nothin’ right now,” Dominic said.

  “You got two hundred twenty dollars for me?” the Chief said.

  “I ain’t.”

  “You either got two hundred and twenty dollars for me or I take your fucking ear home with me.”

  Dominic began to stammer.

  “Don’t fucking talk to me,” the Chief said.

  Two days before, the Chief and Dominic had made a bet on the Knicks-Chicago game and the Chief made Dominic take the Knicks and five points and, for the privilege, lay eleven to ten. Dominic was not such a complete moron that he would bet the Knicks on his own. But the Chief walked in and said, “I want you to bet the Knicks against me. I want the Chicagos.” Dominic winced, but agreed. The Knicks lost by their usual twenty or thirty points, and now the Chief was here to take Dominic’s money home. There is no money too small for the Chief.

  The Chief felt good. He had just been to a big cocktail party thrown by Network Records at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Manhattan. All the little bald record people had flocked around him at the cocktail party and some of them even touched his arm, in order to feel the biceps of a real gangster. Of course they introduced the Chief as their distribution consultant, but everybody understood that just beneath the title and the smiles it caused was the knowledge that his idea of distributing was to rip from the nose. Yet the record executives couldn’t stay away from him at the party and indeed had invited him to the party for just such a thrill. They stood around him in a semicircle, and this caused the Chief to expound. “I have to have a big bet going for me every day. If you don’t bet, you could be walking around lucky all day and not even know it.”

  They all laughed at that one. Isn’t it marvelous, they said to each other, the way such a primitive can simply hurl these phrases out? Of course, because the Chief was there the record people suddenly began to talk about violence, steering away from the Mafia but going to street crime, muggings, and quickly Bernhard Goetz was the central topic. “Kill the black bastards come up to you on the subway!” one man said. Another said, hesitantly, that it was perhaps dangerous to do that because even if you thought the four kids were going to kill you, you still might wind up in the can.

  The Chief smirked. “I’d rather be tried by twelve than carried by six.”

  It was an old line, maybe the oldest of the street expressions that the Chief ever heard, but the record people laughed and slapped one another’s backs and looked with wild admiration at him. Of course, if they hesitated to pay him big money he would take them into the men’s room and cut off their heads.

  And now, stopping off in the Cross Bay Pizza stand before going to his home in Howard Beach, the Chief grunted as he watched Dominic try to imagine an excuse, which was impossible because the whole world knows how Dominic handles himself when he is in tight. Hanging in the Chief’s Mafia clubhouse over in East New York, alongside a picture of Frank Sinatra, is the page from Dominic’s cross-examination when he took the witness stand as a defense witness for himself. Domin
ic had a night job with the Automatic Detection Burglar Alarm Company and during the hours Dominic worked, many fur coats were stolen from warehouses whose burglar alarms were shut down for testing at the moment the robbery occurred. One day the cops crashed into Dominic’s house and found a sable coat in the closet. A rat kid district attorney questioned Dominic on the witness stand in Part 4, Queens Supreme Court:

  Q. I show you this coat, Mr. Cafiero, a sable coat. Can you identify it?

  A. It is a coat that got fur.

  Q. Is it your coat?

  A. That kind of coat is for women and some guy wants to be a woman.

  Q. What was it doing in your closet?

  A. I never look in the closet. I got bad asthma and my closet has too much dust in there. I never open it.

  Q. You are telling me that you never knew this sable coat was in the closet. A twenty-thousand-dollar coat.

  A. Never. I’m not kidding.

  Q. Do you know the coat was stolen from the Continental Fur Storage in Forest Hills?

  A. I never put no coat in my closet.

  Q. Did you help take it out of the fur vault?

  A. How could I do that when I was the only one working on my job that night? I had to be at work all night.

  Q. And what was your assigned task in the office?

  A. I told you, I was the only one.

  Q. The only one to do what?

  A. The only one to turn off the alarm system and check that it works. Nobody else.

  Q. And do you have any idea why the alarm system for the Continental Fur Storage was turned off at the exact time a burglary occurred and that a fur coat from that burglary turns up in your closet?

  A. I couldn’t steal. I had to stay in the office for the switches that make the alarms go on and off.