The Dirty Dust

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, didn’t you just lie back and die! …

  —“Ha!” he exclaimed to me, as soon as he saw my tongue. “Huckster Joan’s coffee …”

  —“I never had either pain or sickness, dear,” I says to him one day when he was inside in Peter the Publican’s place. “That may be so, Fireside Tom,” he says, “but you’re still swilling too much porter. Porter isn’t good for someone your age. You’d be far better off with the odd half-one of whiskey.” “That’s brilliant, that’s what I used to drink all the time!” I said. “But it’s getting scarcer and dearer all the time.” “Peter the Publican’s daughter will give you the occasional half-one anytime,” he said. She sure did, no doubt about it, and anything else I wanted, but from the second one onwards she charged four pence, and from the sixth eighteen. The doctor that Nell brought in from the Fancy City insisted it was the whiskey that done for me, but myself and Caitriona Paudeen thought it was the priest …

  —God doesn’t want us to say anything bad about our neighbours …

  —He said to the Old Master: “You are too good for this life …”

  —Shut your mouth, you grabber! …

  —The doctor in the hospital, he stuck the bottle under my nose as I was stretched out on the table. “What’s that, doctor!” I asks. “It’s only a gadget,” he says …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds one way or the other, wouldn’t it be grand just to lay down on a bed and die, as Blotchy Brian says, instead of being stretched out on a trolley in the hospital and never get up again, and he as chopped up as the free beef that Clogher Savvy’s butcher had.

  —… “Up there’s the problem,” I said. “Up there in my chest.” “No it’s not up,” he said, “it’s down, down there in your legs. Take off your shoes and socks.” “No need for that, doctor,” I said. “The problem’s up here. It’s up here in the top of my chest.” He took no notice then or now of my chest.

  “Throw off your shoes and your socks,” he said. “There’ll hardly be any need for that, doctor,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with me down there …”

  “If you don’t whip your socks and shoes off pronto,” he says, “I’ll see to it you’re in a place where they’ll get them off fast … It would be hard for you not to be infected,” he said. “Did you ever wash your feet since you were born?” “Down by the shore, doctor, last summer twelve months …”

  —I was all bunged up in myself. Completely bunged up. People are very reluctant to say anything about it. “I’m very reluctant to admit that to you, doctor,” I said. “It’s not very appropriate.”

  —So it goes, as you said. I sat up again. Manning from Minlough was in the next bed, as he always was. “I didn’t think they were going to carve you up for the next couple of days,” I said … “Here, wake up,” says I, “and don’t be like a sack of potatoes any longer.” “Leave him alone,” the nurse said. “When you were taken down to the operating room, he got all sentimental, like. We didn’t put as much sugar on the knife for him as we did for you. That’s why he hasn’t come round yet.” Those nurses never put a tooth in it, as you say yourself.

  —“Decorum!” he howled. “What’s that!” he shrieked. “Decorum, treat me with decorum! Did you kill somebody or what?” “By the Cross of Christ, doctor,” I said, “I swear I didn’t!” “What’s pissing you off so?” he says. “Let it rip.” “Ah, well, like, it’s not a very seemly story to tell, doctor,” I said. “I’m all bunged up …”

  —Bunged up, as you say. I never got a taste for food for the next four or five days. “Toast,” I said to the nurse. “Ara, go and stuff yourself!” she says. “You think I have nothing else to be doing only to be supplying you with toast.” That’s the way they are, as you put it. I asked the doctor for the toast the next morning. “This gentleman has to have toast from now on,” he said to the nurse. I swear he did. There wasn’t a word out of her …

  —… “Twisted my ankle,” I said …

  —“I’m bunged up,” “Bunged up,” he said. “With all due respects now, doctor,” I said. “My body is bunged up.” “If that’s all it is,” he says. “I’ll fix that for you. I’ll make up a good bottle for you.” He mixed up some white and some red stuff. “This will sort you out, no problem,” he says …

  —… “You’d feel sorry for the poor old Belgies,” I said to Patchy Johnny. “Do you think this is ‘The War of the Two Foreigners’?” …

  —Cop yourself on, man. That war is over for thirty years …

  —That’s what he said, just as you put it. “You better get her to get ordinary plain bread for me,” Manning from Minlough muttered. “What’s this?” the doctor said. “Isn’t this bread just as ordinary and as plain as you’ll get?” “But I usually get toast,” the Minlough guy mumbled. “Oh, now I remember you,” the doctor said. “You created an unholy fuss when you were admitted, demanding toast. The ordinary bread here wasn’t good enough for you.” He was gnashing his teeth with anger. That’s the way it is with the likes of snobs like him, just as you say. “I’ll never even get a smell of a sliver of a slice of toast,” your man from Minlough says. “I’m paying up here and I have to get what suits me.” He said that, no doubt about it. He was very stroppy with them. “And you thought that the ordinary plain bread wasn’t good enough for you here when you were admitted,” said the doctor. “Then maybe you should be the doctor here!” “I don’t think it’s that unusual for the old guts do a great lot of grumbling, after they’re carved up on the operating slab,” your man from Minlough said …

  —… “Too true. My twisted ankle,” I said.

  —“This won’t cost you anything at all,” he said. “God bless you and keep you, doctor!” says I. “This bottle is magic,” he said. “Certainly the ingredients are expensive. You’d never credit what that beautiful bottle cost me in the Fancy City?” “A pretty penny, I’d say, doctor,” I said myself. “Eight shillings and four pence.” “Forty-two,” he said …

  —That’s the way it goes, as you might say yourself. From then until now I couldn’t even stomach to look at ordinary bread, and Manning from Minlough wouldn’t offer anything better. If I got every penny that was owed to me from the mess about the chimney, I couldn’t even suck a smack from the pipe, even though I was mad about it before that. What about the Minlough guy who’d smoke a whole bog, and think about it, here’s a guy who never stuck a pipe in his gob until he landed in hospital! …

  —“Everything’s absolutely fantastic and hunky dory here since this stupid war started,” he says, “and it wouldn’t matter much, even if things were as they are.” “Listen to me, doctor,” I said, “Aren’t there enough people around! If things go on as they are, we’ll have nothing to depend on, only the grace of God …”

  —Oh, there’s tons of people around, just as you say. “My guts are totally bollixed,” the Minlough guy says to me just as we are strolling down outside, a few days before we were sent home. “I feel as if my guts are like a pants that are too small for me, or somesuchfucking thing. I take two bites and I feel swollen up to the gills. Look at me now, forfucksake! … My stomach is as delicate as a live wire,” he says. He was a humungous lump. He was head and shoulders above me, and up for it. “The way it is,” I says, “as you might say yourself, but my bag of guts isn’t too good either. I don’t think all the food in the hospital would fill it up. They’re a bit baggy, like they were a few sizes too big. If I move at all, they’re like cow’s udders wobbling and yanking this way and that …”

  —… The Big Butcher often said he had plenty of time for me because he had plenty of time for my father …

  —“This bottle will set you back seven and sixpence,” he said. “But it’s the best.” “God bless you and save you, doctor!” I says myself. “If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know what anybody would do. I swear I don’t. You’re a good man even with all the bad news. You tell it like it is …”

  —A man for the bad news, as you say. After tha
t, myself and Manning from Minlough wrote to each other every week. All he’d say in every letter was that his appetite had changed. He was always moaning that he couldn’t taste either potatoes, or meat, or cabbage anymore. He’d give the whole world below and the blue sky above just for some tea and some fish, two things I took a complete turn against. But as you say yourself, you never saw anything like it. I never really liked either meat or cabbage, but since I was in the hospital, I’d claw them half-raw out of the pot. Them and potatoes. I’d guzzle potatoes three times a day if I got the chance …

  —… “The old ankle is twisted again,” he said. “By the hairy balls of Galen and the belly button of the Fenian doctor, if you even as much as approach me again with your bloody scuttered ankle …”

  —“Seven and six,” he says. “I don’t owe you seven and six,” I says myself. “I’ll give it to you, fine, if you give me a decent bottle …”

  —To do you good, as you’d say yourself. But nothing would do me any good. I was a greedy guts. Potato, meat and cabbage for my breakfast, my dinner and my supper. “It’s the old sooty chimney that’s sharpening your stomach,” the old one said. “The soot is lining your guts.” “That’s not it, at all,” I says, “it’s just that my belly is ravenous …”

  —I’m telling you then, boy, he gave a leap and he smashed the bottle on the floor …

  —So be it, but if I gave a leap, as you put it, my guts would start wobbling and yanking around, and they wouldn’t stop for half an hour. I told this to an Irish scholar who was staying with us the summer I died. He was a medical student. He was to qualify the following year. He really interrogated me about the way they had done the operation. “Yourself and the guy from Minlough were together on the same operating table,” he said …

  —… Qu’il retournerait pour libérer la France …

  —Then he crushed the bits of the bottle under the table. He gave the shelf a kick and scattered everything that was on it. “If it wasn’t that they’d disqualify me, I’d force you to eat all those bits of bottle,” he said. Then he fecked off to Peter the Publican’s …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds anyway, weren’t you haunted lucky. If you had drunk that bottle of poison, you’d have been stretched out dead, like your man we were talking about a while back …

  —He’d have been stretched out, certainly, as you put it yourself. “Your guts are gluttonous since then,” the young doctor said. “But I’m afraid that you have Minlough Manning’s stomach. The doctors and the nurses had a few too many at the dance the previous night!” he said. “That’s the way they are, as you put it yourself,” I says. “You’d never believe it,” he said, “but when they were stuffing the guts back into you the next time around, they put yours in the Minlough guy, and his in yours. That’s why you gave up smoking …”

  —But you never gave up your robbery, Tim Top of the Road. After they opened you up you still nobbled my seaweed from the shore …

  —And my mallet …

  —Careful now, maybe he swiped the stomach of your man from Minlough! …

  —Certainly if his guts were hanging around loose and nobody claiming them …

  —He never said nothing to me except that I was stabbed through the walls of my liver. “You’ve been stabbed through the wall of your liver,” he said, “and that’s that.” “Those treacherous Dog Eared thickos! I said. “Swear by your lily liver, doctor! You’ll swear as much as any man in Ireland. They’ll hang them yet …”

  —Caitriona made her way over to him. “What’s up with you now?” he asks. “Nell was here the other day,” she said. “Do you think, now, doctor, that her present ailments will do for her? Be honest now, doctor, God bless you!” she says. “Some people say that you’ve got access to poison. I’ll divide Baba’s will with you! Nobody will ever know anything about it if you let a little drop into the next one and swear that it’s a fantastic bottle: just two spoons before bedtime and fasting after that …”

  —But Nell could sue her and the doctor then …

  —Ababoona! The doctor never let me out that day …

  —And I never got a smell of my pound from that day until I died …

  —… And the little clack-box asked him to poison me. He never said it straight out, but …

  —… But tell me anyway, Joan, did she ever return the silver teapot?

  —… I easily knew the way the doctor spoke to me that day … Kitty small potatoes! Don’t believe her Jack! Jack the Lad, don’t believe poxy Kitty! …

  —God forbid, Caitriona, say nothing …

  —I’ll burst! I’m going to burst! I’m about to burst! …

  6.

  —… I know like, as you say, but I fixed up her chimney at the same time …

  —… That’s the way she was, my dear, not saying anything bad about her, but she scrounged some money from me that time when she wanted the round table. She had her heart set on a round table. Look at me! …

  —You little cunt! Money from you! …

  —… Too bad, Curran, we lost the English market! I had a patch of land …

  —Feck that too, nobody under the stairs of heaven had better land than me. No way, dear. But I was totally flahed out at the end running all over the place trying to keep Nell and Caitriona’s cattle out. Between them they had me totally shagged, not that I’m saying anything, like!

  —But look at the state of my own big holding, gone to rack and ruin! Curran’s donkey and Tim Top of the Road’s beasts making total crap of it every day and night! The eldest youngfella always having it off with Top of the Road’s daughter, even though she was expressly forbidden from the day she was born to even as much as step beyond my rick of turf …

  —Bloody tear and ’ounds, isn’t that what she said to Blotchy Brian, that there was a nest of weasels in his own rick!

  —The devil fuck her! She made a complete eejit out of the eldest guy. She had this little box of pictures and she pretended she was the one in the little skimpy clothes. Black Bandy Bartley used to say that most people expected that the second boy would be sent packing and the whole lot would fall to the older guy. Over my dead body, she does! …

  —… Exercise: a donkey would devour the grass of four square perches of land overnight. My question now, Curran, is this, how many times would four square perches of land go into seventeen acres of yours: seventeen by four, multiplied by forty …

  —… Honest, Dotie, Caitriona didn’t have a romantic bone in her body. All she wanted was the place. Thought she could rob some of the nobs who came there. It certainly wasn’t out of concern for Jack the Lad …

  —Don’t believe her Jack. Don’t believe Clammy Calf Johnny! …

  —God would punish us if we said anything …

  —… She just completely failed to get herself a man, Dotie. Blotchy Brian used to say that she had a recurring cold. No sooner was she spat out of your mouth than she snotted her way back up through your nose …

  —Oh, Jack, don’t believe a word! Jesus Christ Almighty and his Blessed Mother! Blotchy Brian! …

  —… Honest, Dotie. Every single night she’d crawl her way over the old path from her own place just to be there as he came back the other way, while he’d be out visiting …

  —Oh, Mother of God! The blubbershite!

  —… She asked him to marry her, twice or three times at least …

  —Blotchy Brian! Marry Blotchy Brian! …

  —… Honest, Dotie …

  —Goo Goog, Dotie! …

  —Goo Goog, Fireside Tom! …

  —Honest to Heavens, Dotie! It’s just not appropriate to be bleating “Goo Goog” like that all around the graveyard. What would those in the Pound Place say? It’s just a bad example to those in the Half Guinea Plot. Say “Okeedoh” if you like. But why would you say either hump or lump to the old Pain in the Bunk? …

  —Unrequited love, Norita …

  —… Blotchy Brian, Jack! Blotchy bung-nosed bent-hipped, buck-toothed, bum-bear
ded Brian. Blotchy Brian who never washed himself from …

  —God would punish us, Caitriona …

  —… I’m telling you life wouldn’t be half as bad if it wasn’t for women …

  —Did you hear the one that Coley told the other day! This skivvy gave the Pope the hots, and Rory McHugh O’Flaherty—a holy man in this country way back—was called immediately just to get him to watch himself. He rode the Devil all the way to Rome …

  —Take that stinko strapper from the Fancy City that’s threatening to sue the Junior Master, if he does anything else …

  —Tim Top of the Road always said that the women were worse than the men. The priest’s sister nagged the master’s son to marry her …

  —The Old Master himself says …

  —Oh, that’s the way it is, it’s always the woman’s fault! …

  —It’s always the woman’s fault, Breed Terry? …

  —Didn’t I see what those scuzzies looked like in those photos! …

  —I swear to God you did, and me too, Breed. Didn’t I say to the young tosser with me while Mae West was leering at us: “My advice to you now, is to have nothing to do with anybody like that,” I said. “She’d be alright after being ridden by a bucking bronco, I’d say, but nonetheless …”

  —Listen, John Willy, as the man said, women are just like a rainbow on its arse …

  —Well, that’s something, an old crotchety crock like you giving out about women, and you never had anything ever to do with them, only see them pass by on the road! How the fuck would you know? …

  —I know full well. A man told me ages ago. He was an old man who was very old …

  —The women are a hundred times worse than the men. Much worse, indeed, I’m telling you. No doubt about it …

  —Ara, will you all just shut up and listen to me! Look at my eldest boy who wouldn’t even dream of dumping Tim Top of the Road’s daughter even after he inherited the huge chunk of land! The Devil f …

  —And this guy over here, whose son married a black …