The Dirty Dust

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  —Oh, I remember it well. I twisted my ankle …

  —Until I hadn’t enough that would make a tinkle on a tin. That was part of your robbery, Peter: your daughter letting on that she fancied every dog’s body that you thought had a few bob, until they were milked dry …

  —You robbed me too, Peter the Publican. I was home on holidays from England. I had sixty hard-earned pounds down in my pocket. Your daughter lured me into the parlour. She sat on my lap. Something was slipped into my drink. When I woke up from my stupor I had nothing at all in the whole wide world except two shillings and a few miserable half pennies …

  —You robbed me also, Peter the Publican. I had thirty-six quid which I got for three lorries of turf that evening. I dropped into you to celebrate. At half ten or eleven I was on my own in the place. You held your ground. That was another part of your slyness: pretending that you never noticed anything. Went down to the parlour with your daughter. Plonked herself on my lap. Put her arms around me and gave me a big hug. Something went wrong with my drink. When I came to I only had the change from a pound I had before, and that was in my trouser pocket …

  —You robbed me as well, Peter the Publican. No wonder your daughter had a big fat dowry when she married Huckster Joan’s son. I won’t be voting for you, I will in my mebs, Peter …

  —I had intended conducting this Election properly on behalf of the Pound Party. But since you lot, the Fifteen Shilling Party have brought unsavoury personal issues into the contest—things I thought would never have been imputed except by the Half Guinea Party—I will disclose certain information about your own candidate, Nora Johnny. She was a friend of mine, Nora Johnny. Despite the fact that I am against her politically, that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect her and we can’t have a pleasant relationship. That is why I really hate having to say this. It eats into me. I despise it. It disgusts me. But you lot started stirring the shit, you Fifteen Shilling crowd. Don’t blame me if I hoisted you with your own petard. You can lie in the bed you made for yourselves. Yes, I was a publican aboveground. Nobody only a filthy liar could say that it wasn’t a respectable pub. You are very proud of your joint candidate. She was better than anybody in charm, generosity, and virtue, if what you say is true. But Nora Johnny was a drunk. Do you lot know that hardly a day passed but she wasn’t in the door to me–especially on a Friday, when Fireside Tom would be here—and she’d put away four or five pints of stout in the snug behind the shop?

  —It’s not true! It’s not true!

  —You’re lying, Peter, you are lying …

  —You’re spouting rubbish! It’s not true! …

  —It is true! Not only was she drinking, she was also on the bum. I often gave her drink on tic. But she rarely paid for it …

  —She never touched a drop …

  —It’s a brazen lie …

  —It’s not true, Peter the Publican …

  —It’s all true, my Fellow Corpses! Nora Johnny was drinking on the sly! Usually when she had no other business in any other shop in the village, she’d hop along the lane, sneak down past the trees, and in through the back door. And she’d come every day of the week, and after closing time at night, and before opening in the morning.

  —It’s not true! It’s not true! Not true …

  —Three cheers for Nora Johnny! …

  —Three cheers for the Fifteen Shilling Party!

  —Nora Johnny for ever! For ever! …

  —Good health to you, Peter the Publican! Give it to her up the arse! O, my God Almighty! And I never knew that the bitch was a secret toper! What else would you expect from her? Hanging around with sailors …

  6.

  —… The heart! The heart, God help us all! …

  —… God save us all for ever! … My friends and my close relations might come, they might genuflect on my grave, warm hearts might catch fire with the explosion of light, sympathetic mouths might murmur prayers. The dead soil might reply to the live one, the dead heart might be warmed in the love of the live one, and the dead mouth might understand the pressing words of the living tongue …

  Friendly hands may repair my grave, friendly hands may raise my monument and friendly voices may sing out my requiem hymn. Temple Brandon’s clay is the clay of my people! The sacred clay of my Zion …

  But there isn’t a Kelly to be found in Gallagh, nor a Mannion in Menlo, or any one of the McGraths to be found anywhere, otherwise my heap of bones would not be left rotting in the unwelcoming clay of granite, in the unfriendly clay of hill and harbour, in the ungenerous clay of rock and rubble, in the unfertile clay of bindweed and seaweed, in the unconformable clay of my Babylon …

  —She gets very bad when the madness hits her …

  —Hang on there now, you, wait ’til I finish my story …

  —“The speckled hen started croaking along the street as loud as her voice would carry: ‘I laid an egg! I laid an egg! Fresh hot on the dung heap …’ ‘Go away out of that, and don’t bother us with your scutty little egg,’ clucked one tough old hen who was listening. ‘I’ve had nine generations, four clutches, six second clutches, sixty stolen eggs, and a hundred and one shell-less eggs since the first day I started crowing on the dung heap. I was done five hundred and forty six times …’”

  —It’s a real shame that I wasn’t there, Peter! You shouldn’t let any dirty heretic insult your religion …

  —I drank forty-two pints one after the other. You know that much, Peter the Publican …

  —I’m telling you, there were no flies on Fireside Tom …

  —Are you trying to tell me I don’t know that …

  —You have your glue with your rubbishy romancing. And I hadn’t a clue at this time that your one wouldn’t gift the fat land to the eldest son and to the daughter of Tim Top of the Road …

  —… “Big Martin John had a daughter …”

  —… The murdering bastard gave me a bad bottle …

  —O Holy God, as you’d say …

  —I am the old man of the graveyard. Let me speak …

  —Qu’est-ce qu’il veut dire: “let me speak? …”

  —I was just putting my hand in my pocket and emptying it out …

  —It was your clogs, Joan, you piece of crap …

  —… O, Dotie, my darling, I am really worn out by this election. Quarrelling and quibbling all the time. Votes! Votes! Votes! Do you know, Dotie, that an election isn’t a bit as cultured as I thought it would be. Honest, I didn’t. The language is awful. And insulting. Honest! And full of lies. Honest! Did you hear what Peter the Publican was saying about me? That I used to drink four or five pints every day aboveground. Honest! Stout! If he had even said whiskey. But not stout! The most uncultured drink you could find. Agh! But you don’t really believe that I drank stout, Dotie. Agh! Stout, Dotie! It’s a lie! Dirty filthy yucky uncultured stout. It’s a lie, Dotie! What else. Honest Injun …

  And that I got drinks on the never never … It’s a disgrace, Dotie. A disgrace. And that I was on the bum. Agh! All lies and rubbish, Dotie. Who would ever have thought it of Peter the Publican to say such things? I was well got with him, Dotie. There were cultured people in and out to see him … Throwing dirt, that’s what cultured people call it. The natural thug that’s hidden in the corners of our thuggishness—“the old man,” as Saint Paul calls him—he can be forgotten about during elections … I feel that my own culture is melting away since I took up with those plebs …

  Fireside Tom, Dotie? Peter said that also. He said that there’d be no problem going to see him except when Fireside Tom would be there with him. It’s easily seen what he was trying to say about me … Honest, Dotie, I had no need to go after Fireside Tom. It was he who came after me. Honest. There are people, Dotie, who are destined to be romantic. Did you hear what Kinks said to Bliksin in The Purple Kiss? “Cupid made you, you sweety pie …”

  There was never a time when men didn’t plague me and have the hots for me. When I was young in the Fancy City,
as a widow in Gort Ribbuck, and now right here, I am involved in an affaire de coeur, as he calls it, with the Old Master. But there’s no harm in it: it’s Platonic, and cultured …

  Dotie! The sentimentality! Forget the bright fields of the Fair Meadows. You should really get this in a way that you dumped every prejudice and preconceived notion out of your noggin. It is the first step on the road of culture, Dotie … I was a young widow, Dotie. I married young also. The romantic bug again, Dotie. Fireside Tom didn’t give a fiddler’s fuck for me when I was widowed:

  “I’ll tell you one thing for nothing,” he’d say, “but I have a nice warm cottage. Not a truer word, and land to go with it. Cows and sheep. I’m still hale and hearty. But it’s hard for me to do everything: cattle, sowing, thatching. The place is going to ruin for want of a good woman … You’re a widow, Nora Johnny, and your son is settled in the house, what good is it for you to be in Gort Ribbuck now? By all that’s holy, marry me …”

  “De grâce, Fireside Tom,” I’d say. But there was no point in saying “de grâce” to him, Dotie. He was following me everywhere like a lap dog. As Pips puts it in The Hot Kiss: “The pangs of unrequited love have no borders.”

  He’d be stalking me and then crawling up to me in the village trying to cajole me in for a drink. Honest! “De grâce,” I’d say, “a drop of drink never passed my lips …”

  Honest, never, Dotie … and the things he would sing to me about love, Dotie …

  “I’ll marry you my Nora Johnny …

  You’re my star of sunshine, my autumn sun,

  My golden treasure ’til kingdom come …”

  Honest, Dotie, he’d sing that. But I knew full well that it was only the fine summer of our romance that was talking, and I’d say:

  “O moon, O small moon of Scotland, you will be heartbroken tonight, and tomorrow night, and for countless nights after that, strolling the lonesome sky beyond Glen Lay, seeking the loving haunt of Naoise and Deirdre, the lovers …”

  He came over to Gort Ribbuck three weeks before I died with a bottle of whiskey. Honestly, he did. He was like a donkey in heat. I might even have encouraged him, Dotie, if it wasn’t for the pangs of unrequited love. It was then I said to him:

  “The little moon of Scotland will never discover our loving haunt,” I said. “It is not written that Naoise and Deirdre will ever again encounter one another in a loving haunt, or taste the sweet joys of passion on the gentle rocks of Glen Lay of the lovers.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he said.

  “The pangs of unrequited love,” I says. “Other people get what they want, but I and my true love are separated for ever. We will never have a lovers’ haunt except the lovers’ haunt of the graveyard. But we will live out the sweet joys of true passion there, for ever and ever …”

  It nearly broke my heart to say that to him, Dotie. But it was God’s truth. Honest, God’s honest truth. Caitriona Paudeen came between me and my true love. Small bitchy things. She never wanted to see anybody else darken Fireside Tom’s door. She was looking for his land for herself. She didn’t leave one thing the sun shone on for him. Honest …

  —You’re lying, you old hag! I never robbed nor swiped anything from Fireside Tom, or from anybody else. You thundering bitch! Secretly supping and deviously drinking in Peter the Publican’s snug. Drinking on the sly! … Drinking on the sly. Don’t believe her, Dotie! Don’t believe her! …

  Hi Margaret! … Do you hear me Margaret! … Hey, Margaret! … Did you hear what the old shrew had to say about me? … I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst! …

  Interlude 4

  THE GRINDING EARTH

  1.

  I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken unto me! Hearken to what I have to say …

  Here in the graveyard the monster of Unfeeling is chewing coffins, hacking cadavers, and kneading the refined flesh into one great oven of cold earth. He cares not for the sunlit cheek, or for blonde beauty, or for the flashy smile which is the pride of a young woman. Nor for the muscled limbs, the fleet of foot, the stout chest which defines the pride of the young hero. Nor the tongue which beguiled thousands with its sweet nothings, its mellifluous harmony. Nor the eyebrow which won the laurel crown for beauty. Nor the mind from whence shone the light of knowledge before every sailor on the wide sea of learning … As they are all necessary ingredients in the wedding cake which he is preparing for his children and their pards: the grub, the maggot, and the worm …

  Aboveground the bog cotton is preening itself on every hillock of the moor. The meadow-sweet is a divine chemist along every wold. The seagull’s nestling gently brushes the wrack with soft wings. The young boy’s playful laugh is loud beside the cascade of ivy on the gable end of the house, the joyful ebullience of the bush in the hedgerow, the protecting canopy of trees in the copse. And the milkmaid’s spirited song from the pasture beside the shore is the sweet dulcet lullaby wafting its magic from the Land of Gold …

  But the flakes of foam on the fringe of the surge of a stream are slurping in towards the shallows of the river where they slobber on the rough sand. The white ripples of the gurgling gullies are being trapped by the willing wind in the rotting mountain sedge. The murmurous hum of the bee fades to despair as it floats to its hive from the foxglove which has yielded up its treasure. The swallow is kissing the top of the barn with its feathers, but the whine of the wind can be heard in its visiting song across the bleak and desolate wastes. The mountain ash is curling itself up against the raw and ruddy wind …

  The swagger of the youngster is fading away, the whistling of the cowherd is growing faint, and the reaper is laying aside his scythe in the swath which has yet to be cut …

  The living must pay its dues to the graveyard …

  I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken to what I have to say! You must hearken unto my voice …

  2.

  What’s this then? Another corpse, bejaysus! My daughter-in-law, certainly, this time. You’d easily know it … A cheapo coffin too. I’m telling you if this is my daughter-in-law …

  Breed Terry! But it can’t be. You should have been here a long time ago. You had the shakes and the snots and the searing heartburn as far as I can remember … You fell into the fire … And you hadn’t the strength to get up again. That wasn’t too bad, as it goes …

  Come here, I want you, word in your ear? … Have you any news at all, Breed? Whatever you’re having yourself! … Oh, you want a bit of peace! That’s what they all want, bejaysus, when they come first …

  You heard they will be putting up my cross soon, Breed. It’s already written? How long would that be, now? A fortnight? A month? … You haven’t a breeze, Breed? In all fairness, now, you never did have much of a clue about anything, now did you? …

  Ah, sure, I know well. You said that already, you fell into the fire … There was nobody there looking after you. Ah well, that’s all that they’d want. For an old hag like you! There’s no harm at all in it, Breed. It might be better from now on … but you won’t fall here. Or if you do, you won’t have far to fall …

  Listen now, Breed, just listen … Ah come on, Breed, have a bit of cop on and don’t make a moaning Minnie of yourself like that John Willy. He’s driven everyone mad in the graveyard yacking on about his rotten old heart … My daughter-in-law’s not too well all the time, is that what you’re saying? … She had another young one, did she now! Is that true? … And it didn’t carry her off! Well that’s a wonder of wonders. But she’ll never recover from this pregnancy … I’ll bet you anything, Breed, I’ll bet you she’ll be here with us the next time around … And it’s a girl … My God almighty, Breed … And they called her Nora … They called her after Toejam Nora! She heard that I wasn’t alive! …

  My daughter-in-law and Little Kitty bitching about one another … Scalping the hair out of one another’s heads, is that what you are saying? Jumping Jaysus, now you’re talking! That’s it now, Breed! Nobod
y ever believed me that that strap of a thing had it in for me since she was forced into my house against my wishes, in from Gort Ribbuck! You can’t imagine the tea she served me! And the bedclothes I slept in, I had to wash them myself! She has to vent her savage spleen on somebody else now, as I’m not there anymore for her. Little Kate was a soft touch for her, I’m telling you …

  It’s going to court, you’re saying. There’ll be a lot of gossip about that, I’m telling you, and it will cost a packet … Little Kate said that? She said that Maureen’s clothes were got from Jack Chape in the Fancy City! My daughter-in-law wasn’t half right then. How would Little Kate know anything then, except that her tongue is as long as a langer? And even if she did, what was that to her? She had no business sticking her nose into a young girl’s future going to college. It would be a long time before anyone related to her would ever be a schoolmistress. The law will take care of it, no doubt about it! I certainly hope that Pat Manning the Counsellor will take the case against her. He’s the one who would get it out of her …

  Peace and quiet, is that what you want, you say? Don’t we all want that! Well, then you came to the wrong place looking for peace and quiet, Breed … That’s all the spuds my Patrick has set this year, the Turnip Field? But sure, there’s hardly half an acre in all of that … Nell has the two Meadows under spuds! … Well now, Breed, there’s a fair bit in those two fields but there’s hardly an acre and three-quarters, as you say …

  What was that last thing you said, Breed? … Forget that falling into the fire, but just cop on and stop muttering … What did you say about Nell’s son? … He’s fine and dandy again! Ah … He’s doing odd bits of work, is it? … Holy Mackerel and Ababoona! I thought, if I could believe John Willy, that he’d never do another day’s work in his life! …