The Dirty Dust

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  —Ah, come on, you can’t say anything bad about England. There’s lashings of work there. What would the youth of Bally Donough, or for that matter, the crowd from Gort Ribbuck, and Cloghar Savvy do without her …

  —Or the old gom over here who has a slice of land up above the town land that is the very best, beyond measure, for fattening cattle up …

  —Après la fuite de Dunkerque et la bouleversement de Juin 1940, Monsieur Churchill a dit qu’il retournerait pour libérer la France, la terre sacrée …

  —You shouldn’t let any black heretic like that insult your religion, Peter. It was fucking lucky I wasn’t there! I’d have asked him straight up, no bullshit: “Do you believe in God at all? Maybe you’re just like a cow or a calf, or like a … cunty little pup.” A dog doesn’t give a fuck about anything only to fill his gut. A dog would eat meat on a Friday, I’m telling you that. It would be just great, just great for him. But, of course, not every dog would eat it, either … I had a smidgen of meat left over when I was in the town, one time. “I’ll drag it out ’til Saturday,” I says, “Tomorrow’s a fast day, no meat” …

  Coming in from eating out on Friday when I was returning from the fields with a fist of spuds, I saw the Minister passing by, heading off hunting. “Maybe you’ll get away with it, you damned heretic,” says I. “Of course I’m fully aware that you won’t get past Friday without fresh meat … or even a young pleasant pup. Of course, without speaking crudely, you are very like a cow or a calf … or even a little plump pup.” When I went in clutching my fist full of small potatoes, the loop was missing from the dresser. Every single fillet of flesh gone! “It’s a cat or a dog for certain,” I said. “When I get you, you’re done for.” Eating meat on a Friday. Amn’t I the stupid eejit that didn’t put them out, and close the door after me! I caught them on the way up. The Minister’s dog gobbling the meat, and my dog growling at him trying to stop him. I got a hold of the pike. “You’d easily know who you belong to,” I roared at him, “guzzling meat on a Friday.” I thought I’d gut him with the pike. The filthy wretch got away by the skin of his teeth. I offered the meat to our own dog. May God forgive me! I shouldn’t have been tempting him. He wouldn’t refuse anything. Not a bit. Now do you feel any better? He knew it wasn’t right … It’s a pity you didn’t tell him that, Peter, and not give him the chance to insult your religion. Lord God, if it had been me …

  —How could I? The Minister’s dog never took a bit from me …

  —But the Spanish eat meat every Friday, and they’re fine Catholics …

  —You’re a liar, you piece of mush! …

  —The Pope gave them permission …

  —That’s a lie! You black heretic …

  —… O, is that so, Master, my old pal? If I rubbed—what’s that you call it again, Master … Oh, yes, if I rubbed methylated spirits on me in time, I’d never have got bedsores. Ara, but Master, there was nobody any good looking after me. They were all thick. You can’t beat the bit of education, after all. Methylated spirits. Who’d have thought of it! You say it comes in a bottle. Do you know what, Master, they must be the same bottles that the Mistress buys from Peter the Publican’s daughter. I’m told she buys loads of them. For Billy …

  —Not them, Poxy Martin. You wouldn’t get them in a pub at all. She’s drinking the stuff, the dipso. Certainly downing it. Or else Billy is sloshing it back. Or the two of them together. That’s one way with money, Poxy …

  —Really and truly honest to God, Poxy Martin, I would have burst my gut to be at your funeral. It wouldn’t have been right for me not to be at Poxy Martin’s funeral, even if I had to crawl on my hands and knees …

  —Margaret! Margaret! … Do you hear Chalky Steven bullshitting again? He’s a terrible pain … Hey there, Margaret! Did you hear? Hello, Margaret! … You’re very quiet recently. Do you hear me, Margaret? … It’s about time for you to say something … I’m talking about that blubby blabber, Chalky Steven. I didn’t know he was here at all until a while ago. There’s a very dour lot here, Margaret. They’d tell you nothing. Look at the way they stayed dumb about Chalky Steven …

  O, I know full well, Margaret, that Chalky Steven is here. I was talking to him. They thought they’d dump him in on top of me …

  That’s true, Margaret: anybody is easy to recognise when there’s a cross over his grave. It won’t be too long now before my own cross is ready, although they say that the Connemara marble is getting used up, that’s it’s hard to get enough stone for a proper cross. Poxy Martin says you’d only get one now if you knew somebody. But he told me they were hurrying up with it, all the same …

  He didn’t say that, is that what you’re saying, Margaret … There’s enough marble left in Connemara to last for ever! Ah come off it, Margaret, stop talking through your hole! Why would I bother laying lies on a decent man? Neither himself nor myself are trying to compete in telling lies just because we have been dumped in this dive together …

  You say that my daughter-in-law said that, Margaret: “We’ll be well off in this life when we can afford to start buying a cross.” Oh, I get it alright. You were eavesdropping behind closed doors again, Margaret, just as you used to do Up Above … Now, now, Margaret, there’s no point in denying it. You were eavesdropping behind closed doors. That tale you told Dotie and Nora Johnny here about my life, where else did you hear that except from behind the door? …

  What! You used to listen to me talking while I was walking the road! … And behind the ditch when I was working in the field! Well then, Margaret, isn’t it just the same to be listening behind the door, and listening on the road, or skulking behind a ditch …

  But, hang on a minute now, Margaret? Tell me this much, why are the people in the graveyard so set against me? Why can’t they find someone else to chew the cud about apart from me? Because like …

  Because like, I don’t have any cross yet, is that it? What else? What else? …

  They don’t like me since I was stroppy about cooperating? How did I get stroppy, Margaret? …

  Now I get it alright. I voted against Nora Johnny! Don’t you know in your heart of hearts, Margaret, that I couldn’t have done otherwise. The hairy molly of the Toejam trollops! The Fine Time that was had by all the sailors, the so-and-so … She was a candidate for the Fifteen Shilling Party after that, is that what you’re saying, Margaret? And your shower didn’t give a toss about Toejam Nora, nor about quacky ducks, nor about salacious sailors, nor about her toper tippling on the sly, nor about her being a so-and-so …

  What’s that you said the Master called me, you said? … A scab. He called me a scab because I voted against the Fifteen Shilling Party. But I didn’t vote against the Fifteen Shilling Party, Margaret. I voted against Nora horse arse Johnny. You know full well that our family always voted the same way aboveground. Nell was the one who was different. Nell, the fucking fussock, did the dirty. She voted for this new crowd because they got a road built up to her house …

  The Master called me that too, did he. Say it again, Margaret … A bowsie! A bowsie, Margaret! … Because I cursed Huckster Joan after she had insulted me! O my God Almighty! I never called her names, Margaret. It was she had a go at me, Margaret. I’ll tell that much to the Master. I’ll tell him straight up, without fear or hesitation. “Caitriona,” she said, “Caitriona Paudeen, do you hear me?” she said. “I want to thank you for voting for us. You are a courageous woman …”

  I never pretended, Margaret, I never pretended that I heard the sour tone in her voice. If I answered her at all, I would have said: “You fat floozie, I wasn’t voting for you, or for Peter the Publican, or for the Pound Party, no way, I was voting against that so-and-so, Nora Johnny …”

  She said that I was a turncoat because I called Nora Johnny … pretending to be friendly … after all the badmouthing I had given her since I came to the graveyard … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Margaret! Me calling Nora Johnny! … What’s that Margaret? … He called me that! The Master! No, th
at’s what he called Nora Johnny, Margaret. What else would he call her! …

  He called me a so-and-so, Margaret. A so-and-so! I’m going to burst! I’m going to burst! Burst …

  Interlude 7

  THE MOULDING EARTH

  1.

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

  Here in the graveyard is the parchment whose weave of dreams is a feculent and enigmatic epigraphy; where the gauntlet of life’s gallantry is no more than a smear of faded ink; where the majesty of our best moments melds into mouldy pages …

  Aboveground all of earth, sea, and sky is a virgin golden parchment. Every hedgerow is a flourish. Every pathway is a streamline of colour. A field of corn is a golden letter. Every sun-kissed mountaintop and every curved cove under spangle-suffused sails is a compound sentence. Every cloud lenites the purple capital letters of the pirouetting peaks of the mountains. The rainbow is a semicolon between the half-quatrain of the sky and the other half-quatrain of the earth. Because it is thus that what is writ by this scribe can unfold its gospel of glory on the parchment of earth, sea, and sky …

  But yet, even now, the deciduous trees are an uncompleted sentence on the crest of the hill. The cliff at the edge of the surging sea is a final full stop. And then, over there, on the hem of the horizon the unfinished letter ends in an inguttering of ink …

  The quick of the quill is quenching, and weariness wends its way into the wrist of the writer …

  The graveyard demands its dues … I am the Trumpet of the Graveyard. Hearken unto my voice! Hearken to what I have to say! Hearken you must …

  2.

  —… Who’s that now? … Who are you? … Are you deaf or what? Or dumb? … Who have we here now? For fuck’s sake, come on like, who are you?

  —I haven’t a clue …

  —By all that’s sacred and holy! It’s Redser Tom! What’s bugging you, Tom? This is Caitriona Paudeen talking …

  —Caitriona Paudeen. You are Caitriona Paudeen. How’s that for you? Caitriona Paudeen. Caitriona Paudeen, indeed …

  —Yes, that’s me, Caitriona Paudeen. You don’t have to go on and on and on about it. How are they all up above anyway? …

  —How are they up there? Up above. Up above there, is that it? …

  —Why wouldn’t you answer the person who speaks to you, Tom? How are they doing up there?

  —Some of them are grand. Some of them are not so good …

  —Yea, that’s a great help! Who is grand and who is not so good? …

  —It’d be a wise person who would know that, Caitriona? It would be a wise person, indeed, Caitriona. It would be a wise person who’d know who was grand and who wasn’t. Wise indeed, no doubt about it …

  —Don’t you yourself know, and you living right next to them, wouldn’t you damn well know if my Patrick is grand or not good, and his wife, and Jack the Lad? …

  —Too true, they were just there near me, Caitriona. Right smack bang next to me, that’s true. There’s no lie in that much, sure that they were living right smack bang next to me …

  —Come on, I said, show some balls. There’s no point in funking it here, any more than there was when you were aboveground. Who’s fine and who’s crap, spill the beans …

  —Well, Little Kate and Biddy Sarah are often sick. Maybe, even, it could be said that they might be a little bit poorly …

  —Great stuff! I never remember anytime when they weren’t sick, except when a corpse had to be laid out, or keened. It’s about time that they’d be sick from now on. Are they going to die soon? … Do you hear me? Are Little Kate and Biddy Sarah going to snuff it soon? …

  —Some people say they’ll be all right. Others say that they won’t. It would be a wise man who would do otherwise …

  —And Jack the Lad? … Jack the Lad, what about him? How is he doing? … Is your tongue tied to your teeth, or what? …

  —Jack the Lad. Jack the Lad now. That’s him, bejaysus, Jack the Lad. Some people say he’s poorly. Some people say he is poorly, certainly. It could be the case. It could be so, no doubt about it … But they say many things that are neither here nor there. So they do. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with him at all …

  —Maybe you would stop pissing around and tell me directly is Jack the Lad confined to bed …

  —I don’t know, Caitriona. I don’t know, I swear. I wouldn’t tell you a word of a lie …

  —“I wouldn’t tell you a word of a lie.” You’d think it was the very first time you told a lie! What’s up with Nell? … What’s the story about that bitch Nell? …

  —Nell. Yes, right, like. Nell. Nell bejaysus. Nell and Jack the Lad. Nell Paudeen …

  —Yes, yes, yes. Nell Paudeen. I asked you what’s the story about her, how’s she doing? …

  —Some people say she’s not doing well. Some other people she is middling, others again poorly, no doubt about it …

  —But is she? Or is it just part of her usual carry-on? …

  —Some say she is, certainly. Some say she is, absolutely. It could be true, that’s the way it is. No doubt whatsoever that that’s the way it might turn out could be. But they say lots of things …

  —Ah, fuck your gammy gums! You certainly heard if Nell was coming and going, if she was confined to the bed …

  —Confined to the bed. It could be, you know. It could be, of course …

  —Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! … Listen to me, Redser Tom. How is our Baba doing in America?

  —Your Baba that’s in America. Baba Paudeen. She’s in America all right. Baba Paudeen’s in America, that’s true …

  —But how is she?

  —I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Caitriona …

  —Ah, come on now, that’s ridiculous, you must have heard some talk about her going around. Maybe that she wasn’t that well …

  —Some people say she isn’t well. They say that certainly. It could be …

  —Who says that?

  —I swear I wouldn’t tell you a word of a lie, Caitriona, but I just don’t know. I don’t really know. There’s a chance there mightn’t be anything wrong with her at all …

  —Who’ll get all her money? … Who is going to get Baba’s money?

  —Baba Paudeen’s money? …

  —That’s it. What else? Baba’s money … Who is going to get Baba’s money? …

  —I wouldn’t have a clue about that myself, Caitriona …

  —Did she make a will? … Did our Baba make a will yet? You really haven’t a clue what’s going on …

  —I wouldn’t have a clue about that, Caitriona. You’d want to be a very wise man to know that …

  —But what are the neighbours saying about it, or your own neighbours for that matter? … Did they say that Patrick would get it? Or would it be Nell?

  —Some people say Nell will get it. Some people say Paddy will get it. Lots of things are said that are neither here nor there. An awful lot. I wouldn’t have a clue myself who’ll get it. It would be a wise man who’d know that …

  —You cheapskate chancer! Everyone else had something to say before you came along. What’s with Fireside Tom? … Fireside Tom. Do you get me? …

  —I hear you, Caitriona. I hear you no problem. Fireside Tom. By all that’s holy, there’s someone of that name there alright, I’m sure about that. There’s not a word of a lie in that much, there’s someone called Fireside Tom alright …

  —Where is he now? …

  —He’s in your town land, Caitriona. Where else would he be? He’s there in your town land. I thought you knew full well where he was, Caitriona. He was there in your town land all the time, every day, or so it seems to me, isn’t that so? …

  —Gum boils on your grin! What I asked was, where is he now? … Where is Fireside Tom right now? …

  —I don’t really know, unless I was to tell you a lie about where he is now, Caitriona. If I knew what time of the day it is now, but I don’t. No I don’t.
He could be …

  —But before you died, where was he? …

  —In your town land, Caitriona. He was in your town land all the time, certainly. In your town land, I swear …

  —But in what house? …

  —I haven’t a breeze really, Caitriona …

  —But you’d know if he’d left his own house because of rain or a leak or anything …

  —Some people say he’s in Nell’s house. Some people say he’s in Paddy’s house. They say lots of things …

  —But he’s not in his own house? … Do you hear me? Fireside Tom is not in his own house? …

  —Fireside Tom in his own house? In his own house … Fireside Tom in his own house. It could be that he is. It could be the case when all is said and done, for all that. You’d need to be very smart …

  —You’re a piss artist, that’s what you are, Redser Tom! Who has Fireside Tom’s land? …

  —Fireside Tom? Holy God, he has land alright. Fireside Tom has land, no doubt about that. Fireside Tom has a bit of land, not a word of a lie. He has some …

  —But who has his land now? Does Tom still have it himself, or does our Patrick have it, or Nell? …

  —Paddy? Nell? Fireside Tom? That’s it now, Paddy. Nell …

  —Cut out the pig acting and just tell me who has Fireside Tom’s land! …

  —Some people say that Paddy has it. Some people say that Nell has it. They say many things that are neither here nor there …

  —But you’re absolutely sure that Fireside Tom himself doesn’t have the land? … You are certain, Redser Tom, certain that Fireside Tom himself doesn’t have the land? …

  —Fireside Tom’s land, is it? Holy God, it could be, maybe so. You’d need to be a wise man to know who has Fireside Tom’s land now …

  —You’re a shyster scumbucket piece of shit! That’s a great present for me altogether: Redser Tom. A heap of crap! That serious illness brought you here. If it hadn’t you wouldn’t have come here until you melted. Your tongue wouldn’t have killed you anyway! You’re just more excrement in the graveyard, you ginger piece of poop! You snivelling smudge of snot! Fuck off! Get stuffed! Get the …