The Black Soul

by Liam O'Flaherty

  Then the wind began to sigh more loudly. Cows lowed. The sea crashed heavily against the southern cliffs. The dim shadows of day crept up closer to the door of the cabin. Night was falling. He jumped to his feet. ‘Get me an oilskin coat, Mary,’ he said, ‘I want to go to Coillnamhan.’

  She started, afraid that he was going to Carmody’s public-house.

  ‘Oh, don’t go drinking again,’ she said beseechingly, standing near him.

  ‘Go on, get me the coat,’ he said angrily.

  She forgot her shyness of him and caught him by the breast. She pressed close to him and looked fondly into his eyes. He felt her hot sweet breath on his face. Unconsciously he put his arms about her and kissed her red lips. But even as his lips touched hers, his mind was far away contemplating a million men kissing a million women aimlessly. The soft suction of her lips burying themselves in his repelled him. He put her from him and stroked her hair. She stood motionless. Then he snatched his coat from its peg and went out. And as he strode away down the lane he felt proud of his conquest of her, and he smiled. But coming out on the highroad he halted and bit his lip. His conscience pricked him for having kissed her. He cracked his fingers and frowned. ‘She’s an excellent woman to me, I must look after her,’ he said, and walked on, as if he were an omnipotent God who could perform a miracle or blast a kingdom with the snapping of a finger.

  But still the kiss pursued him. He kept wiping his lips with his handkerchief as if it were a physical injury. He had kissed a hundred women, in cabarets, in cafés, even in brothels. He had made love sometimes with passion, sometimes boredly, always carelessly, forgetting the women nonchalantly after he had left them. Yet he now felt conscience-stricken after kissing this peasant woman. ‘It’s this damn island,’ he growled. ‘It’s enchanted. Ugh!’ Nature seemed to be leering at him viciously. He thought spirits were watching him among the black crags that loomed sombrely out of the darkness on either side of the white road, warning him against violating the mating law of nature. The sea was running sibilantly in and out on the sandy beach at Coillnamhan. It was cutting narrow deep gashes in the sand. He felt it was showing him how sharp its claws were. The wind came in little fawning rushes about his ears, like a cat tapping a mouse with furred claws before it suddenly drives its sharp teeth through the neck and growls as it hears the bones crunch. He said ‘Phew’ and walked faster. Then he cried aloud querulously, ‘But, Great Scott, it was she herself … but oh to hell with it, I’m going crazy. Ha, ha, ha!’ Then he forgot about her and began to array in his mind the pet subjects that he wanted to discuss with O’Daly.

  He heard sounds of music coming from O’Daly’s cottage as he approached. He stood in wonder listening, drinking in the delicious sound that always intoxicated him. He realized this was classic music and he wondered who was playing. ‘It’s a violin,’ he said. He became jealous of O’Daly for being able to play so well, for he himself could not play and he hated anybody being able to do anything which he himself could not do. He swore and knocked at the door. He waited for two minutes, but no answer came. The music still continued. Then a woman’s voice began to accompany it. ‘Ha, that’s his daughter,’ he said, and his heart began to throb. Her voice was sad and sweet. It seemed to mingle with the sounds of the wind and the sea. It would go forward for a space softly, sibilantly. Then it gathered strength and rose in a thickening wild cascade of sound, like a wave ridden by the wind breaking against a cliff. Then another clear note joined it at the height, a note of fierce unconquerable pride, that wound whirling steel bands about it. And immediately it fell, lower and lower, laughing, tingling, as if it were shivering in an ecstasy of ferocious joy, like the voice of a mad woman laughing over the dead body of her lover. A frenzy of passion rose within him as he listened. He longed to grasp a sword, to smite mountains, to heave huge weights, in order to exhaust the energy born in him by the music. He ran down the path away from the house. But as soon as he was out of reach of the music he stopped, snorting. He leaned over the gate, his perspiring body chilled. He looked back at the house as if it concealed enemies. He trembled with fear, thinking it was enchanted. The moon and myriads of stars made the night bright. The thatched cottage stood out clearly against the face of the low hill behind it, where the crag ended in a glen. The glen was covered with a shadowy mist, the gaunt bare trees standing about in it. He could hear the dull rumble of the spring water dripping from the base of the ivy-covered rock to the left. The roof of the cottage hung low, as if it staggered under its thatch. The rain had stained the yellow paint on the walls. Withered rose bushes lined each side of the little portico. ‘Hell, I’m silly!’ he said. ‘I’ve seen hundreds of cottages like that. I’ll go in.’

  He walked steadily up to the door again and knocked. The music stopped. He heard a chair upset and then the door opened. O’Daly’s daughter faced him in the hall. A lamp swinging over her enveloped her head in a bright light. Stray tresses of auburn hair rose quivering in the wind from the huge coil that lay banked about her forehead. They glistened as if sparks of fire had fallen from the lamp on them. Her eyes were just like her father’s, blue, gleaming, fierce, cold eyes. Her face was like her father’s. The lips were thin and compressed. The nose was straight and the nostrils were slightly distended. The rest of her body was slight. In her right hand she held the violin she had been playing.

  ‘You are heartily welcome,’ she said, bowing slightly. Her voice was cold, almost sharp, totally unlike the voice he had heard singing a minute before.

  He said ‘Thank you’ and followed her into the sitting-room on the right.

  The sitting-room was low-roofed and large. A turf fire burned brightly in a large black grate. A French window, with sloping bays, almost covered one side. A reading-lamp rested on a round mahogany table in the centre. The remaining walls were lined with books. The picture of a fierce-looking man, wearing sidewhiskers, hung over the fireplace. Evidently an O’Daly, and an ancient one, for he wore ruffles. O’Daly’s head appeared over the back of a leather-covered armchair that was drawn up in front of the fire. The toes of his right foot, covered with a grey sock, also appeared over the back of the chair. It was resting on the low mantelpiece. O’Daly did not rise, but he wheezed and groaned, as he apologized for not rising. ‘Rheumatism … Meet my daughter Kathleen … nearing my last … heard you had the doctor … sorry to hear it … an awful scoundrel … take your chair to the fire … get that bottle of brandy, Kathleen.’

  The Stranger sat opposite O’Daly. He cast a hesitating look after Kathleen as she walked slowly to the door, strumming her fingers along the table as she passed. He noticed she was wearing a knitted saffron dress, with a deep black band around the waist. Her slim body was as lithe as the body of a wild animal. The length of the fingers that strummed along the table made him stare after her, as she disappeared through the door. There was a deep hollow in the back of her neck beneath her piled-up hair and the hair grew thickly each side of the hollow. As he looked towards O’Daly from her he blushed. She was the first educated woman with whom he had come in contact for a long time. In fact he had never known the companionship of educated women. The kind who gave their love easily attracted him more. ‘They were less waste of time,’ he used to say. Now he felt embarrassed and attracted. He also felt ashamed of himself. He was looking at O’Daly for several seconds before he could see the man. O’Daly was making peculiar grimaces, jerking his face upwards slightly with his upper lip curled. Then he leaned over and whispered, grasping the Stranger’s right knee, ‘Be careful what you say. She is very religious. Gives me dog’s abuse for swearing. I declare to Christ the women nowadays … whist! here she comes.’

  Kathleen entered the room with a tray, carrying a bottle and two glasses. As she filled the glasses in silence, she made grimaces as if the smell of the brandy were stifling her. She handed a glass to each of them and then sat by the table holding her handkerchief to her mouth.

  O’Daly, with his glass half-raised to his lips, look
ed at her half-mournfully, half-fiercely, like an old dog after being beaten by a young master, and then he said, ‘Phew. Here’s a good health, Mr. O’Connor.’ He drank. ‘My daughter is a temperance woman,’ he added. Kathleen shrugged her shoulders with a sigh, and they both looked at her. But nobody spoke. O’Daly swallowed the contents of his glass, but the Stranger put down his glass almost full. He knew Kathleen was watching him and he became oppressedly conscious of the dilapidated state of his clothes, his worn features, and … though he hated to admit it … of his sinful past. Then he began to talk to her; casually at first, while O’Daly glared furiously at each of them, cracked his fingers, made a noise like a man urging a horse, and swore under his breath, trying to find a more comfortable place in his chair. He was like a fish out of water in the presence of his religious, cultured and highly civilized daughter. But the Stranger, as soon as she began to talk to him, felt a stiffening that drove out his embarrassment. There was an aggressive yet pitying tone in her voice that maddened him. ‘You’ve been to the University,’ she said, rubbing the fingers of her right hand slowly along the back of the left.

  He felt she was patronizing him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said curtly, ‘I spent a few years in that den of superstition before I had sense enough to begin my education properly.’

  O’Daly laughed loudly and then swore as he stubbed his toes trying to sit upright.

  ‘Damn right,’ he yelled, waving his beard in an ecstasy of self-enjoyment, ‘the only place to learn is …’ And then he stopped dead, meeting the cold stare of his daughter. He dropped down into his chair until only his arms protruded.

  Kathleen looked at the Stranger with a half pitiful, half-contemptuous look. She looked from under her eyelashes and seemed to shiver inwardly in horror of such a statement.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I see.’

  The Stranger fumed. He understood quite well that she said several things after the manner women have of saying a thousand bitter things in a silent glance. She said, ‘You have been in the British army and therefore you are an enemy of your country,’ since she, like all cultured young Irish women, was a Nationalist for the same reason that similar types in other countries are suffragettes or followers of nature-cults or social reformers, to express their newly discovered sex freedom. She said, ‘You are a pariah since you have lost your religion,’ for as a cultured young Irish woman, the Christian religion was to her an emblem of purity, sex freedom, and a bulwark against everything gross and foreign. And the Stranger, even though his reason despised both Nationalism and Christianity as relics of the childhood of human thought, felt himself in the position of a man accused by his own family of heinous crimes against the family honour.

  He began furiously to denounce everything – religion, Nationalism, civilization.

  ‘Civilization,’ he said, ‘is only a plaster to hide sores. Priests are hirelings of the patriotic vampires who suck the blood of the people.’

  He became eloquent, as Kathleen tried to refute his arguments. In Irish fashion they gesticulated, they struck the table, they said things they didn’t mean to say, and they finally ended by forgetting what they began to discuss and lapsed into a heated silence.

  O’Daly, who had stared open-mouthed at them during the argument, then jumped to his feet and laughed.

  ‘Yah, he said, ‘you two are young and foolish. Sure you know nothing about life. Said the man, “Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.” Come on, we’ll go down to Carmody’s.’

  ‘No, I must go home,’ said the Stranger, also rising. ‘I don’t feel very well.’ He was very pale and weak and he trembled slightly, overwrought by his recent illness and his excitement.

  ‘Damn my soul,’ cried O’Daly tenderly, catching him by the shoulder, ‘I didn’t know you were seedy. Drink that brandy. There now. Kathleen, ye’re the devil for talk. You … fooh!’ He glared at his daughter.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Kathleen. ‘Of course I didn’t mean to irritate you. Please forgive me.’

  The Stranger took her hand and laughed.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m quite all right, quite. It’s only nervousness. I’m frightfully sorry.’ But he had seen the softness in Kathleen’s eyes and the blush that suffused her neck as she spoke, and it maddened him still more inwardly. He felt that she was superior to him, had more command over herself, was purer. ‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘No, no, don’t move, Mr. O’Daly. Good night.’

  Kathleen began to apologize to him again at the door, but he laughed and bid her good night hurriedly. She watched him going down the path and then called out, ‘Be sure to come again soon.’

  ‘All right,’ he called, ‘thanks.’ And then, walking hurriedly down the road, he said, ‘Never. Never again. I’m lost. I’m not fit to associate with her. I’m accursed. What a wreck I have made of my life!’

  Spring

  1

  Winter died with a melancholy roar of all the elements. For three days storm-driven rain fell furiously on Inverara, while the exhausted sea writhed in the death agony of its winter madness. Then the sun rose in an arc of shimmering light south of the Head of Crom. It shot out its myriad tentacles over the sea and land. It sent out a heatless invigorating light. The sea danced, rippling, and hummed a tune like the sound of insects breathing on a weed-covered rock, as it tossed against the cliffs. Inverara, washed by the rain and torn by the wind, cracked in every pore noiselessly as it began to move. The dew on the crags glittered and then died, sucked into the sun. Each tuft of withered grass that had lain during the long winter between the crevices of the crags, bitten by the frost, shivered. Green sprouts began to crawl up through the withered ones. In the bare green plains above the beach at Coillnamhan the grasses began to wave their pointed heads spasmodically. Like blind men they clawed the air, seeking a way to the sun and warmth. The worms, dizzy after their winter’s sleep, their heads swaying drunkenly on the coil of their bodies, squirmed in the cold light. The birds chirped as they flitted hither and thither trying to find a mate and a nesting-place. The larks rose with the bleak dawn, stammering as they leaped from the earth, as if their music, frozen by winter, was being melted in their throats by the joyous light. Their voices rang out clear and defiant as they soared high over Inverara. The heralds of spring and life, they sounded the reveille to the earth below.

  ‘Spring has come. Up, you laggards. Your sleep is o’er.’ So whispered the wind, coming in fast, hissing rushes from the sea. It was no gentle, languorous wind. It was sharp and biting. It beat the earth with thin steel rods. It throbbed with energy. It hardened the muscles. It sent the blood rushing from the heart to the limbs. It made the teeth chatter. It aroused passion. It was full of cold lust. It poured into every crevice of the crags, catching everything in its harsh grip. It poured into every cabin to rouse the people. It made the horses neigh and gallop, as it tore the shaggy winter hair from their backs. It was the lashing wind of spring.

  The back of the sea was covered with wrinkles as if it were shrinking from the cold caress of the wind. And, spurred by the wind, it struck the cliffs mighty blows gently, like a giant who is building with heavy instruments. It rolled banks of yellow and brown and black seaweed to the beaches to fertilize the earth. Its broad bosom was covered with low ridges, as it heaved itself towards the land, driven by the wind, white thin lines dividing green swathes of water. It hurried, ceaselessly building on the ruins of winter. Its never-ending sound carried all over Inverara, like the panting breath of nature building spring. Every living thing in Inverara breathed its strong smell that was carried on the wind. It loosened stiff limbs and poured iron into blood that had thinned in winter.

  Life, life, life, and the labour of strong hands in Inverara in spring. From dawn to dark the people hurried, excitedly opening the earth to sow. At dawn they came from their cabins, their noses shining with frost, slapping their lean hands under their armpits, their blue eyes hungry with energy. They ran through the smoking
dew for their horses. From dawn to dark their horses trotted, neighing, their steel shoes ringing on the smooth stones. Through rain and driven sleet the people worked. Cows gave birth to calves, and the crooning of women milking in the evening mingled dreamily with the joyous carolling of the birds. Yellow lambs staggered by their mothers’ sides as they made their first trembling journeys in life. Lean goats were hiding their newborn kids in the crevices among the crags. Everything moved hungrily for life. Even the grey limestone crags seemed to move as the sun sucked the dew from their backs. Smoke rose everywhere, as if nature perspired conceiving life.

  The valley that lay beneath Rooruck, bound on the south by the ivy-covered low hill where the crags ended and on the north by the stretch of black, rocky, sandless beach, teemed with sounds of work. Each plot of land, bound by stone fences, was being tilled. Rotted seaweed, whitened by the rain, lay like a healing rash on the yellow grass, spread in winter. Heaps of fresh seaweed, glistening in the sun and sleet, were being dropped here and there from the horses’ backs. Peasants, with their white frieze shirts hanging loose about their bodies, were cutting the earth with spades, covering the potato seeds that the women were spreading. Fierce sounds filled the air, men shouting, horses neighing, spades beating the earth, boys lashing donkeys with seaweed stems, sleet pattering against stone walls.