Interlude 2
THE SCATTERED EARTH
1.
You were asking for it. If I hadn’t stabbed you, somebody else would have stabbed you, and isn’t the fool and his lackey all the same? As you were going to be stabbed anyway, wasn’t it better to be stabbed by a neighbour than by a stranger? The stranger would be buried miles away, maybe, over on the flat plains of the Smooth Meadow, or up in Dublin, or the arsehole of the country somewhere, and what would you do then? Look at the satisfaction you get chewing me up here. And if the stranger was lying next to you, you would be at a loss to know what to throw up in his face, as you would know nothing about his seed, breed, and generation. Cop yourself on, you knacker. You wouldn’t mind, but I stabbed you cleanly …
—The Dog Eared Lot often stabbed cleanly! …
—… A white-headed mare … She was gorgeous …
—… I swear, Huckster Joan, I swear by the oak of this coffin, that I gave her the pound, Caitriona Paudeen …
—… That’s the way it was. Went up to the Bookie’s around three o’clock. “‘The Golden Apple,’” I said. “She better win,” I said, sticking my hands in my pockets and turning on my heels out the door. I didn’t have a brass farthing …
Won the three o’clock. The race was over. “The Golden Apple” at a hundred to one. Went to collect my fiver. The wench smiled at me again: a sweet innocent smile from a pure heart. It meant a lot more to me than a fiver: “I’ll get you sweets, or I’ll bring you to the pictures, or to a dance … Or would you prefer … ?” I was mortified. I didn’t finish what I was saying.
“I’ll meet you outside the Plaza at a quarter past seven,” I said.
Go home. Shave, shower, shite, shampoo, slap on the slime, get ready. Didn’t even drink a drop for good luck. I had far too much time for that innocent smile from a pure heart …
To the Plaza for seven. Put a hole in my fiver buying her chocolates. The chocolates would really melt her young pure heart, and the glint of the beauty of the rose would appear in her smile like the first rays of the breaking morning. Wasn’t I the eejit who had spent so much …
—Hang on now ’til I read you the Proclamation that Eamon de Valera put before the people of Ireland:
“Irish men and Irish women …”
—Wait now, until I read the Proclamation that Arthur Griffith put before the people of Ireland:
“Irish men and Irish women …”
—… I drank forty-two pints that night one after the other. And I walked home after that as straight as a reed … as straight as a reed, I’m telling you. I delivered a calf from the brindle cow, which was in labour for two hours already. I drove the old donkey out from Curran’s oats … and I tied up Tommy. I had just taken off my shoes and about to go on my knees to say a bit of a prayer, when the young one comes in. Her breath was totally shagged. “My Mam says to go over straight away,” she said “Dad is doing his thing again.”
—“I don’t give a toss about him doing his thing if it’s not the right time,” I said, “just as I was about to say my prayers. What’s bugging him now?”
“Downing poteen like water,” she said.
Off I went. He was out of his tree and nobody in the house was able to hold him down. You couldn’t say they weren’t a bunch of wimps …
“Here, grab this,” I said. “Take a hold of this rope, like, right now, before he goes for the axe. Can’t you see he’s eyeing it …”
—I remember it well. I twisted my ankle …
—We won the match.
—Not a bit of it. If the mine hadn’t destroyed the house …
—… “I washed my face in the dew of the morning,
And combed my hair with the wind of my hand …”
It’s not right yet, Curran. There’s a stray bit still there. Hang on a minute now:
“I washed my face in the dew of the morning …” That bit is just dandy, Curran. I already used it in The Golden Stars. Hang on a minute now … Listen to this, Curran:
“I washed my face in the dew of the morning,
And combed my hair with the wind of my hand …”
That’s just perfect. Curran, I knew I’d get it in the end … Are you listening now?
“I washed my face in the dew of the morning,
And combed my hair with the wind of my hand …
My shoelaces were as the sparkle of the rainbow …”
Hang on now, Curran … Wait a second … Eureka … “And the Pleiades were holding up my pants …” I knew I’d get it, Curran. Listen to the whole verse now …
—Will you go and get lost, and don’t be driving everyone around the twist. My mind is numb for the last two years listening to your nonsense verse. I have worse things on my mind, God forgive me: my eldest boy knocking around with the floozie from Up the Way, and the boss of the house all ready to hand the place over to him. And on top of that, I have no idea is it old Gut Bucket’s donkeys, or Tim Top of the Road’s beasts who are guzzling my corn …
—You’re dead right about that, Curran. They should have stuffed the piece of shit in the eastern graveyard. Mike O’Donnell is there, the guy who wrote “The Song of the Turnip,” and “The War of the Hen with the Grain of Corn” …
—And Big Mike Connolly who made up the “Ballad of Caitríona” and “Fireside Tom’s Song” …
—And “The Psalm of the Cat.” That’s a fantastic piece of work, “The Psalm of the Cat.” I’d never be able to do that, never …
—… Eight sixes forty-eight; eight sevens fifty-four … You’re not listening at all, Master. You’re not with it at all, these days, … I’m not making one bit of progress … Is that what you said, Master? Hardly surprising, Master, and the way you have been neglecting me … Answer me this … How many tables are there anyway, Master? … Is that all? Well, fuck me pink if that’s it! I thought that there were at least a hundred … or up to a thousand … up to a million … up to a quadrillion … we have so much time to be lying in the grave, that’s what they say. He who made time, made tons of it …
—God help us! Isn’t it a tragedy that they didn’t transport my mortal bones beyond the Fancy City and to lay me down in Brandon’s Temple on the white bleached plains of the Smooth Meadow amongst my own people! There, the clay is gentle and welcoming; there, the clay is soft and silken; there, the clay is quiet and loving; there, the clay is protective and snug. Decay there is not the decay of the graveyard; corruption there is not the corruption of the flesh. But clay will cling to clay; clay will hug and kiss clay; clay will inter-breed with clay …
—She’s gone all sloppy again …
—You’d never see anyone as crazy mad as her, only when this stupidity gets her …
—It’s the way she is, God help us! Caitriona’s far worse when she starts going on about Nell and Nora Johnny …
—Caitriona’s gone over the top altogether. Blotchy Brian was right when he called her a jennet …
—Blotchy Brian wasn’t right. Honestly, he wasn’t …
—What’s up with you? Are you against that arsehole too, Nora?
—Honest, he wasn’t right. The jennet is a very cultured beast. Honest, it is. The Rooters in Bally Donough used to have a jennet when I was going to school, years ago. And it would eat raisin bread from the palm of my hand …
—Going to school years ago! Toejam Nora going to school! Raisin bread in Gort Ribbuck! O holy cow and mother of Jesus! Margaret … Margaret, did you hear what Toejam Nora Johnny Robin of the Stinky Soles said? O, O, I’m going to burst …
2.
… Nora Johnny … Nora Johnny … Toejam Nora Stinky Soles … You weren’t happy to leave your lying ways aboveground, but you had to bring it down here too. The whole graveyard knows the devil himself—keep him far away!—gave you a loan of his tongue when you were just a slip of a thing, and you used it so well that he never asked for it back …
One hundred and twenty pounds dowry for that trollop of a daughter of you
rs … My goodness me … A woman that didn’t have a stitch of clothes to put on her the day she got married, only I bought her an outfit … Toejam Nora had sixty pounds … There wasn’t sixty pounds ever in all of Gort Ribbuck end to end. Gort Ribbuck of the Puddles. I suppose you’re too snobby now to milk the ducks … A hundred and twenty pounds … A hundred and twenty fleas! No, six thousand fleas. They were by far the commonest creatures that the Toejam Crowd ever had. I’m telling you, if fleas had to give dowries, then that eejit who married your daughter, Noreen, would have enough to make him a knight in a castle nine times over. The two of them had plenty between them coming into my house …
That was the disastrous day, Noreen, the first day yourself or your daughter ever darkened the door of my house … The little hussy that she is. Certainly, Nora, she is a credit to you: one who can’t put a patch on her child, or make her husband’s bed, or throw out the wasted ashes every week, or to comb her own clump of hair … It was she had me buried twenty years before my time. She’ll bury my son too, and before too long, if she doesn’t come here soon to keep you company and keep you in gossip at her next delivery …
Oh, your little yackity mouth is in great form today, Noreen … “We’ll be …” How’s that you put it? … “We’ll be OK then.” … “OK”: that’s your catch phrase, Noreen … “We’ll be OK then. You’ll have your son, and I’ll have my daughter, and we’ll be together again down here just as we were aboveground …” The devil’s plaything is in great mocking form altogether in your little yackity mouth today, Noreen …
That time you were in the Fancy City … You’re telling me I’m lying. It’s you’re the filthy liar, Toejam Noreen …
—Witch!
—Harridan!
—Hag!
—Toejam Crowd … Duck milkers! …
—Do you remember the night Nell was sitting in Jack the Lad’s lap? “We’ll leave Blotchy Brian to you, Caitriona …”
—I never sat in a sailor’s lap anyway, thanks be to God Almighty …
—You never got the chance, Caitriona … I don’t take a devil’s blind bit of notice of you. Your endless bitching and lies doesn’t leave a scratch on me. I’m far more respected in this cemetery than you are. There’s a fine upright cross on my grave, which is more than can be said for yours, Caitriona. Smashing! Honest! …
—… Well, even if there is, it didn’t cost you anything. You can thank that fool of a brother of yours who stuck it up when he was home from America. You’d be a long time getting the money for a cross from milking the ducks in Gort Ribbuck … What’s that you’re saying, Nora? … Spit it out. You haven’t the guts to say it to my face … I have no culture? … I have no culture, Noreen? … I have no culture, imagine that! … Too true for you Noreen. I often saw maggots and crawlies on the Toejam Crowd …
What’s that you’re saying, Noreen? … You don’t have the time to be yacking with me … You’re wasting your time yacking with me. For the love of God! You don’t have the time to be yacking with me … You have something else to do, yea! … Now what’s that you’re saying? You have to listen to another episode of … What’s that she called it, Master? … Master … He doesn’t hear me. He’s totally lost it since he heard about his wife … That’s it, got it … Novelette … This is the time that the Master reads a bit of the … novelette to you every day … If the Master paid any attention to me … Oh, Mary Mother of God! … A novelette in Gort Ribbuck … The Toejam thickos with a novelette … Margaret! Hey, Margaret! Can you hear me? The Toejammy Crowd with a novelette … I’m going to burst! I’ll burst! …
3.
—… I swear, Gut Bucket, by the oak of this coffin, I gave her the pound, I gave Caitriona the pound …
—… God save us all! … My death would not be like death to me there: for I would lie in the soft warm clay of the plain; the potent clay which can afford to be kind with its own brute strength; the proud clay whose treasures do not decay, nor rot, nor wither in its fertile womb; the seasonal clay which finds it easy to dispense its gifts generously; the renewing clay which takes all its nourishment of food and drink making it fruitful again without waste, deformity, or metamorphosis … It would recognise its own …
The gentle buttercup, the moist mossy sward, the pleasant primrose and the creeping grass would grow upon my grave there …
The sweet warbling of the birds would sing above me instead of the chatter of the waves or the clatter of the waterfall or the sigh of the sedge or the shriek of the cormorant as she plunges with lust upon the small sprats of the sea. O clay of the plain, wouldn’t it be good to settle beneath your mantle …
—She’s gone all soppy again …
—… Pearse said, O’Donovan Rossa said, Wolfe Tone said, that Eamon de Valera was right …
—Terence McSwiney said, James Connolly, John O’Leary, John O’Mahony, James Fintan Lawlor, Davitt, Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Sarsfield himself, they all said that Arthur Griffith was right …
—Owen Roe O’Neill said that Eamon de Valera was right …
—Red Hugh O’Donnell said that Arthur Griffith was right …
—Art McMorrough Kavanagh said that Eamon de Valera was right …
—Brian Boru, Malachy, Cormac mac Airt, Niall of the Nine Hostages, the two Patricks, Brigid, Colm Cille, and all the Irish saints wherever they are—on land, sea, or sky, and all the Irish martyrs from Dunkirk to Belgrade, and Finn McCool, Oisin, Conan, Caoilte, Deirdre, Gráinne, the Great Professor of Ireland, and Gael Glas all said that Arthur Griffith was right …
—That’s a lie, they didn’t …
—I’m telling you, you’re a liar. The truth hurts …
—You treacherously murdered me when I was fighting for the Republic …
—You had it coming. Neither God’s law nor that of the Church allows the overthrow of a legitimate Government by force …
—I have no interest in politics, but I have some regard for the old IRA …
—You coward, you were skulking under the bed when Eamon de Valera was fighting for the Republic …
—You old bag, you were under the bed when Arthur Griffith was …
—… “And he went off to market for courting …”
—… Wait now, my good man, wait ’til I finish my story:
“… Now send out to me John James
And I’ll be for ever without him.
“The fairy lover captured John James in the magic palace and there was no escape for him. Just then, all the waters of the grey green Isle of Ireland, including those around its islands and about its shores, dried up, all except for two bottles of Portuguese aerated water that was thrown up on the Blaskets, and a cask of holy water from Spain that a fishing trawler swapped for some fifty potatoes from the Island of Hens’ Eggs …
“The maid of the sweet brown ringlets was in Dublin at exactly that time …”
—The version I heard from old people around here, Coley, was that it was a nurse in the Fancy City …
—A woman in a bookie’s shop, I heard …
—Oh, so what? It was up in Dublin, anyway. What else? “‘I have an arrow,’ she said, ‘that will rescue John James if he promises me a hundred and one large barrels, a hundred and one large casks, and a hundred and one of the best hogsheads as a dowry …’”
—Now, you old Gut Bucket, where are your forty-two pints now? …
—Coley, hang on a moment. This is how I would have ended that matter if I hadn’t died …
—… If Hitler gets as far as England, he’ll have them living on dead cats …
—I’m telling you things weren’t as bad until then. You’d hardly get a penny for a cow or a calf. God help the poor man if the cattle get any cheaper. I have a bit of land up on the top of the town, and there’s no telling what it costs to look after the beasts. It’ll go to waste, as there’s not a tosser to be earned on cattle …
—“There’s no point in rearing cattle!” Take the crap land in your place. L
et two rabbits loose, let them at it, and after five years there would still only be two rabbits, even if that many …
—You were a gutless pansy, Peter. If it had been me! I swear to Jaysus, I’d have given him what not. If I had a pub, Peter, if I had a pub and dirty heretics coming in through the doors insulting my religion like that …
—… We,—The Cadavers of the Half Guinea—we are putting forward a joint candidate in this election also. Just like the others—The Cadavers of the Pound Place and the Cadavers of the Fifteen Shillings—we have absolutely nothing to offer to our fellow cadavers. However, we are taking part in this Interred Election because we have a policy—the Half Guinea Party—we have a policy also. If those aboveground can have an election, those of us underground can have one also. There is no democracy without an election. Us, we, here, in the cemetery clay, we are the democrats.
The Pound Cadavers are the party of the rich, of the Conservatives, of the Big Cheese, of the Reactionaries, of what they call Stability. The Cadavers of the Fifteen Shillings are the party of commerce and of merchants, of the professional class, the bourgeoisie, the middle class, property and capital. But we, and us here, my fellow Cadavers, we are the party of the working class, of the proletariat, the peasants, the wage slaves, the nothing nobodies, the utter dependents, the party of the completely dispossessed: the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. We are absolutely bound to stand up for our rights as did the men of old (knocking of skulls and gnashing of teeth clearly heard from the Half Guinea Place) …
—…
—… Our candidate, our joint applicant—our own candidate if you like, the Fifteen Shillings—she’s a woman. Don’t let that bother you. Her husband was never a Teachta Dála, a Member of Parliament. She made a name for herself by her own ability and cop on. When she came down into the dirty dust three years ago she knew as little as any of the windbags that are spouting rubbish down in the Half Guinea Place. But despite what the Half Guinea crowd say, there are absolutely equal rights and opportunities in this graveyard (more knocking and clapping of skulls). Our candidate is the living proof of that. She is cultured and wise. Let me introduce her to you … Nora Johnny! (Even more knocking and clapping of skulls.)
The Dirty Dust Page 6
