The Black Soul

by Liam O'Flaherty

  Little Mary was excited now. She was constantly shivering. Her passion surged up into her throat. She tripped around tidying the kitchen, her hips swaying like a dancer’s. She combed her long black hair and put a ribbon in it. She turned around and around in front of the mirror by the lamp. She fidgeted, standing in front of the fire. She blushed as she toyed with the breast of her bodice. Then she gasped and put her hands to her heart as she heard footsteps coming around the gable-end. She had opened the door before the knock came.

  As the Stranger entered, he stumbled against her, buffeted by the storm. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said gently, and half-turned to her before he stopped short as if he remembered that he had committed an indecency, and his face set again in a scowl. Little Mary curtsied and smiled.

  The Stranger went to the centre of the room and commenced to take off his dripping oilskin coat. Little Mary paused, half-ashamed to help him until he called sharply, ‘Come, give me a hand, please.’ As his face turned to her in the half-light, she could see that he was intoxicated, but she was not afraid of that. It seemed to her to be natural that her man should drink. Drink made men wild, and wildness was of the sea and of all things that were passionate and strong and beautiful. She took the coat gently from his shoulders and hung it on a nail. The Stranger, muttering something, kicked a stool to the front of the fire, sat down with a thud and spread his hands to the blaze.

  ‘Will you have your supper now?’ she asked.

  He looked around at her contemptuously. ‘Supper?’ he said. ‘Oh yes. Why not? I’m not hungry. Yes, of course I will.’

  As she passed him going to and from the fire preparing supper, she kept looking at him, eager to speak and unable to begin. She was hoping that he would begin. After that it would be easy. But the Stranger kept silent. He had drunk several glasses of whisky in Derrane’s shebeen, and the whisky had made him gloomy and depressed, as it always does with men whose souls are troubled. He kept looking into the fire, furrowing his forehead, twitching his nostrils and cracking the fingers of his right hand restlessly. His face, lit up by the firelight, was as pale as the face of a corpse, and the high cheekbones seemed to be straining against the skin like the ribs of an old cab-horse. His spine was distinct through the back of his coat as he sat leaning forward from the hips. But his eyes were wild and fierce. They would have kept a strong man away in fear from the wrecked body that encompassed them. They stared intently, and the lashes never blinked over them. But the brows kept contracting.

  He sat trying to think, but the whisky made thought incoherent and illusory. The whining of the wind seemed to enter his brain.

  ‘Are there eggs for me, Mary?’ he said with a start, eager to busy himself with the world about him to prevent the mad rush of past memories that he felt were coming. They always came when he sat thinking.

  ‘Yes, there are.’

  ‘Oh, well, I don’t want them.’

  ‘But you must eat,’ said Little Mary. ‘A person must eat to live in this weather.’

  He looked at her, about to argue with her, but he remembered that she was a peasant. She would not understand. He laughed and looked at the fire again. ‘All right, Mary, I’ll eat them.’ Of course it would be ridiculous to talk to her. What in the name of the devil did she know about life? And why should he want to talk to people about important things, about life? He had come to Inverara to get rid of important things, of life. But was life important?

  He clenched his hands and gritted his teeth to kill those hateful thoughts that began to rush into his mind like a shower of bullets fired in rapid succession. He moved his stool back from the fire with a nervous gesture, but the draught between the chimney and the door caught him, and he moved up again with a muttered oath. He began to tremble with rage. A dog began to bark in a cabin to the right. The roar of the sea became distinct and separate from the other sounds. He gasped and let his body go lax. He couldn’t resist his thoughts. He couldn’t govern them. With his lips wide open and a kind of wondering expression in his eyes he stared into the fire. Immediately something began to throb in his brain, like a motor, jumping back into the past. Then a door seemed to open – the door of his memory. It opened with a snap. As a whirlwind catches up suddenly a heap of snow, just around the bend of a mountain road, and lashes the countless flakes round and round in the air, the bulk remaining together in a winding column that rises higher and higher, while stray flakes drop from the white cloud, stand still for a moment and then fall into the valley beneath, so visions of his thirty years of life whirled round and round in the cell of his memory. One of them would break loose, pause for a moment at the door and then vanish. They did not come in the order of time or importance. They did not even seem to bear any relation to himself. In fact, he could see himself as if he were a stranger.

  First he saw himself, a boy of twelve years, sitting in a brake with a score of other boys, some older than himself, some the same age. He was dressed in a knickerbocker suit with a belt down the back of the jacket, a school cap on his head, a cutaway starched collar over his jacket. Beside him sat a rosy-cheeked priest, with huge red hands, and his clerical waistcoat stained with snuff. The brake was approaching a large dome-shaped marble gate, with a large bronze cross over it. All the boys were silent, some smoking cigarettes. ‘Ha, ha!’ laughed the priest, ‘this is the Pearly Gate, my boys. No smoking allowed in Heaven.’ And as the brake scratched its way over the granite dust in through the school-gate, the boys with a sigh threw their cigarettes on the huge pile of other cigarettes that lay to the left of the gate, under the niche that held a statue of the Blessed Virgin.

  That picture vanished. There was a hum in his ears, and another picture stood out like a little red star. He saw himself as an infant, sprawling naked in his mother’s lap. Black clouds were forming far away from his eyes, and then they approached nearer and nearer until they became little red spots. He was crying from fear. He was afraid of his mother. He could see a queer look in her eyes above him as he lay on his back. She was fondling his naked toes, but she was laughing boisterously at the same time and talking shortly to an old woman who was mixing punch at the table. Then that picture merged into another, in which he himself did not figure. It was his home, a square grey building, with a garden in front, white blinds drawn on the upper windows, and the yellow chimney-pots discoloured with black soot. Voices were coming from the dining-room. His mother was shrieking, ‘Oh then, oh then, oh then! Are you going to murder me, John? Can’t I take a drop of brandy for my rheumatism? Oh then, oh then, oh then!’ Then his father came out and banged the door behind him. He walked down the gravel path to the gate, his left hand in his pocket, his right hand stroking his brown beard, his grey cloth hat pulled down over his eyes, a melancholy expression in his face, his full red lips twitching. Next came a vision of himself, at seventeen, standing over his mother’s corpse. His father’s hand was on his shoulder, the fingers clasping the shoulder-blade spasmodically. ‘Fergus,’ said his father, ‘promise me now that you will never forget how …’ And then the voice faded as he heard the parish priest denounce his father from the altar as an atheist, ordering his parishioners under pain of excommunication to keep their children from Mr. O’Connor’s school.

  ‘I should love to see that priest dying of cancer,’ the Stranger muttered aloud.

  Then came his father’s death. It was a back room, in one of those drab streets off the South Circular Road in Dublin. He himself, then an enthusiastic youth of twenty, a brilliant student at the University, chaste, studious, supporting his father by clerical work in the evening in a newspaper office, while he maintained himself at college with scholarships, was holding his father’s hand, comforting him, telling him he would be happy and prosperous yet. And the old man shook his head and said, ‘I wonder, Fergus, is their hell as cruel as life?’

  ‘Oh, damn it!’ cried the Stranger, striking his forehead with his clenched fist.

  Little Mary started and looked at him tenderly.

/>   ‘Keep away from the fire,’ she said, ‘until you have eaten your supper. Food will settle your stomach. The heat goes badly with whisky.’

  Ha! Now the visions became more comfortable. He could recognize himself as he was now. He was alone in the world, scoffing at the world. There was his first night at a music-hall. What a strange effect that had on him! When he saw the women, half-naked, displaying their plump limbs sensuously as they glided up and down the stage, he almost went mad with suppressed passion. He was then twenty-one and had never touched drink or knew women. That night after the theatre he tasted both.

  ‘Of course. Why not?’ he said aloud.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Little Mary, as she laid a cup and saucer on the table.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ grumbled the Stranger.

  Little Mary shuddered and thought that it might have been the wind she heard. It sometimes seemed to talk with a human voice when it whistled around the western gable of the cabin, where the thatch rubbed between the two round stones that held the manilla ropes to the roof. Or it might have been the Wave of Destiny that roared distantly off the Fountain Hole. People said there was an underground palace there, submerged for thousands of years. Dead warriors feasted there in winter, and the sound of their banquet music was carried by the wind over the sea, to drive lonely women crazy with longing for love. She sighed and brushed the Stranger’s elbow as she passed him to the fire.

  The Stranger shivered inwardly as he felt her body touch his. He turned his head slowly to look at her. As she bent over the fire, with the fire-glow on her cheeks, she looked beautiful to him. But she did not arouse his passion. For him it was like looking at a statue.

  ‘Women are a curse,’ he muttered. ‘No, no. Not a curse, but the playthings of folly, disused. ....’

  With a snap the motor in his brain began to purr again. Again a picture eddied out of the mass of memories and stood still. It was the picture of the night with his first woman. She became distinct for a moment, beautiful eyes burning like coals in the wreck of a beautiful face, a loose soiled dressing-gown with a fleshless collar-bone showing at the open neck. Then the woman vanished as she held out her thin hands and said, ‘Are you leaving me so soon, dearie?’ He himself became distinct, wandering through back streets, tearing his hair, cursing himself, feeling his body unclean, begging the earth to open up and devour him. Then a whole series of pictures came with a rush, crowding one over the other. That was his year of debauch before he joined the army. At last the pictures joined together and formed into one. He saw himself standing outside a recruiting office, down at heel, in a tattered coat, with sunken cheeks. Then a monstrous picture came, distorted like a madman’s fancy. It was a vast plain without a tree or a blade of grass, pock-marked with shell holes, covered with rotting corpses. He could see the vermin crawling on the dead lips. And he smiled. That picture did not accuse himself. It accused the world that he hated. ‘Just think of it,’ he muttered, ‘I spent three years in that hell. Great God!’

  He smiled as he saw himself wandering around the world for two years after the war, trying to find somewhere to rest – Canada, the Argentine, South Africa. ‘What a blasted fool I was! As if there were any rest for a man in this world!’ And then, worse still he saw himself back again in Dublin, burrowing in the bowels of philosophy, trying to find consolation one day in religion, next day in anarchism, next day in Communism, and rejecting everything as empty, false and valueless. And at last, despairing of life, flying from it as from an ogre that was torturing him, he had come to Inverara.

  He jumped to his feet, and with his hands behind his back he began to stalk up and down the floor, muttering disjointedly:

  ‘Honour, civilization … eh … all rot … culture be damned … all the culture in the world … prostitution and hypocrisy … only thing is to live like a beast without thought … not to give a damn …’

  ‘Your supper is ready,’ said Little Mary.

  He had forgotten his supper, and he felt no desire to eat. Still, he had no energy to refuse it. What did it matter, anyway, he thought, whether he ate or did not eat? ‘In the world men make revolutions in order to eat. How ridiculous!’ He took a seat at the deal table. He broke an egg and tasted it.

  ‘Drink the tea first,’ said Little Mary. ‘It will do you good.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, woman, let me alone. How do you know what’s good or bad?’

  Mary almost dropped the kettle she was taking from the hearth. She whirled around like a tigress. Her eyes blazed. He had sworn at her. Her lips went white. Her husband had often sworn at her. The men around Rooruck always swore at their women and often beat them. But she had expected that this man would have been refined. He had insulted her! She forgot that she was a peasant. Her father’s blood boiled in her. The hand holding the kettle shivered. Then her anger fled in a flash. Instead she felt a throbbing of her breast. It hurt her, as fire hurts a numbed hand. The Stranger had looked at her fiercely, and before his stare her anger had changed into the hunger of love. She felt a physical pain as if he had beaten her with a stick. It was more cruel than that. He had burnt her with his tongue and his eyes had drawn the sting from her body, leaving it numb. She sighed. Her breast heaved and her eyes dimmed with sadness looking into his. They said, ‘Come, you may kill me. I am yours.’

  He looked at her through the mist that the whisky raised before his eyes, and thought that she was a cocotte ogling him. He could see her only at a far distance. Between his eyes and hers there were a host of visions – his mother, his father, his youth that was pure, his debauched manhood, and the horrors of war. All these visions told him that she was a cocotte, ‘like all women,’ that she would look at all men as she looked at him. Beyond these visions was the beauty of her sad eyes and her swelling white throat. That beauty attracted him. But his soul, enraged with his sordid past, hissed at the beauty and scowled, persuading itself that the woman was repulsive, ‘like all women.’

  ‘I won’t let the slut drag me back to life,’ he muttered, savagely eating his griddle cake.

  And Little Mary moved about the kitchen excitedly, watching him without looking at him.

  ‘He has trouble on his mind,’ she thought. ‘I will wait. Wait, wait, wait for ever.’

  The Stranger finished his meal and sat again in front of the fire. Little Mary cleared the table and sat in the corner beside him looking into the fire. And then he began to feel her presence drawing him towards her again. His mind was bored. It was his body that was excited. It was an ugly excitement that filled his mind with repulsion. He struggled against it, but it remained. Then he looked at her with the look in his eyes that all men had when they looked at her. She shuddered. The accumulated passion of years was burning in her and she was eager for his love. And yet she began to feel afraid. She did not see the light of love in his eyes. She wanted him for ever. And that hot passion in his face was like what she saw in all men’s faces. It was lust. He had arisen from his stool and was moving slowly towards her, his hands shaking.

  ‘No, no,’ she cried with her lips, as her body moved towards his. ‘No, no. I … I … don’t.’

  He swore as he grasped her shoulders, and then there was a loud roar that sent them both to their feet gasping.

  The cabin shook. Thunder crashed across the heavens. The slits between the boards on the windows were bright with the forked lightning. The sound came rumbling from east to west louder and louder, as if each peal gave birth in its passage to a peal louder than itself. Through the sound of the thunder came the screech of the wind. And the sea roared monotonously like a hungry lion. The air was full of sound.

  The Stranger stood transfixed by the fire. Little Mary stood beside him looking up at him, careless of the storm. Then she threw her arms around his neck and pressed close to him feigning fear.

  ‘Protect me,’ she murmured.

  He thrust her gently from him and went to the centre of the floor, trembling. He felt that the thunder had clapped as a warnin
g to him. It warned him against falling a victim to passion. So God might have warned a hermit monk of old. He became full of self-pity. He told himself that the whole world was in arms against him, dragging him back again into the torture from which he had fled. Even here, to the desolate bleak fastness of Rooruck, the wickedness of the world had pursued him. These passions and desires of the flesh were ugly and futile. Passion belonged to young men, full of the enthusiasm of youth. It belonged to the chattering mob. He was dead to it. He had heaped huge rocks on its grave.

  ‘Ye-ah,’ he said, baring his teeth. A demoniac look came into his eyes. Then his stomach turned. He went stumbling to the door and out into the night.

  Little Mary dropped into her seat by the fire. Her bosom heaved with sobs. She bit her finger, trying to think what was the matter with her. Her body felt as if pins were being stuck through every pore of her skin. The soles of her feet itched. ‘Virgin Mary,’ she kept saying, ‘what is coming over me? I love him, I love him.’

  She could not look at him when he came in. She wanted to be alone with this wonderful thing that had seized her body. She wanted to master it.

  He stood at the door dripping with rain, his black hair in a matted mass about his face. Nothing of his face was visible but his bloodshot black eyes staring wildly. His bosom heaved as he hiccupped. Then he stumbled to his room, tore off his clothes, and fell on the bed. In a moment he was fast asleep. His passion died and left him as helpless as death, for in winter all things die that live in summer.

  But even in winter, morning brings life and motion. It is a glorious motion to the strong, that winter movement of life in Inverara. It makes the body feel clean and the mind strong, as if it were bound with laths of steel. But for the weak, of body or of mind, it is a torture. The sun rose in the east, dim and sour, with a veil over its face. It sank again in the west without warming the earth. The birds were silent, hiding in their holes, or fled to the mainland over the sea, sitting on the masts of ships, searching the south and the sun. The sea moved mightily. At times it rested, green and bilious, between two battles. And the wind whined when the sea was resting. Everywhere in Inverara there was death on the ground and above it. The people went about clad in their heavy frieze, talking in low voices. At night they sat in the shebeens and around their own hearths telling stories of wrecks and drowning and death. Even sin had fled, for sin is born of the languorous passion of summer, and of the cold gritty breezes of spring.