The Black Soul

by Liam O'Flaherty

  Spring did not come in a night. It did not emerge from winter like a shell from a cannon mouth. It came gradually. But to the Stranger it appeared to come in a flash, drear and ghastly. For a week after returning from his meeting with O’Daly’s daughter he kept indoors, feverishly disputing with himself, unconscious of everything around him. Sitting silently by the fire, he argued with Kathleen O’Daly, defending his own cynicism against her piety, his own weakness against her fortitude. ‘Bah,’ he would say, ‘she is a fool. Everything is dead. What is the use of virtue or ambition or God? They are all meaningless.’ And yet he could not drive away her memory. Her memory aroused memories of his youth, sweet ambition, respectability, the regard of fellow beings, the solace of religion. She was the emblem of what he had left, of what he had thrust from him. He was conscious that he had gained nothing in exchange. And he clung to that nothing, that annihilation of life, as men cling to a worthless article for which they have paid dearly. ‘She is a hypocrite,’ he would say. He accused her of gross immoralities, but he shuddered at the thought as at a profanation of his mother. He tried to arouse obscene desires in his mind for her in order to break the spell of her personality, but in vain. He could not think of her as a woman in the flesh. She was almost a spirit. She was the personification of memories. And in revolt against this spell he lounged slothfully about the cabin, unshaved, unwashed, scowling, in order to drive himself farther down into the abyss of degradation where even memories of cleanliness could not reach him.

  For that whole week he was never conscious of Little Mary or her husband. They moved about him without his seeing them. Red John obeyed the spring like an automaton. He obeyed it unconsciously like the grasses that were being thrust from the earth in spite of themselves. His weak will revolted against life that was a joyless burden to him, but the remorseless wind lashed him into action. He worked ceaselessly mending baskets, splicing ropes, manuring the two fields in which he was preparing to sow potatoes, cutting seeds. And all the while his passion for Little Mary, fanned by the lustful spirit of spring, maddened him. But her glance terrified him. He saw that she was lost to him. He would look from her to the Stranger sitting slothfully by the fire, and his eyes gleamed with hatred. Then they changed immediately and distended with fear. Drear phantoms pursued one another through his savage unreasoning mind that brought his breath from his lungs in gasps. So he worked furiously without purpose to keep himself from going mad. He sowed, caring nothing whether he should reap or not. He no longer raged against his fate. The people about him lost interest for him. He could understand nothing. There was a great want within him continually demanding satisfaction, and he was unable to satisfy it. He wanted his wife. The wind of spring lashed the marrows of his bones, urging him to satisfy that want. The crazy structure of his reason lurched dangerously. He spoke to nobody and they shook their heads at him contemptuously, saying, ‘What a boor of a fellow. It’s avarice that makes him that way.’ Nobody cared to find the cause of his melancholy, least of all his wife, Little Mary. Spring was in her blood too, but it was to her an elixir that made her shiver with love of life. She moved jauntily, with a springing step, swaying from the hips. Her eyes glittered mischievously. The dimples in her cheeks when she smiled were lost in a thousand creases. Her teeth when she bared them in a laugh shone like ivory. She used to look at the Stranger sitting moodily by the fire and smile to herself. ‘Ha,’ she would say, ‘it is the beginning.’ It seemed that a skittish imp had entered her soul that was gentle and sad in winter. That imp transformed her. Her beauty, that was sombre in winter like the beauty of a mist-clad mountain, was now maddening like the beauty of a fountain in which sunbeams are sparkling.

  Then one morning the Stranger awoke from sleep, conscious of all the activity about him. Sounds reached him from all sides of people working. They had reached him every morning for the past week, but they had flitted past unheeded. His mind, busy with its controversies, did not grasp their meaning. As he dressed he heard the bleating of a sheep coming down the lane at the back of the cabin. He went to the window and looked out. A peasant woman was carrying a newborn lamb in her arms. Its body, yellow with the shine of birth, hung awkwardly across her breast, its long legs dangling, its large ears drooping. A little boy running by the woman’s side kept stroking its head and skipped as he shouted, ‘Tuirteen a’m, tuirteen a’m.’ A sheep circled around bleating, a brier trailing from her haunch, her belly covered with hard pellets of earth that jingled as she ran. The woman held the lamb to the sheep’s nose now and again to ease her fierce anxiety.

  The Stranger felt a pain in his chest looking at the sight. It appeared to be the embodiment of life to him, of spring, of awakening energy. Then with it came all the other sounds of life. From the cabin door he could see the whiteshirted men working in the fields beneath the village. The perspiration shone on the horses’ flanks as they galloped past him. Their dung smoked in the lane. The wind ran close to the earth with a whipping sound. He stood looking out motionless, as if amazed at the treachery of nature’s return to life and activity. He felt as bitterly alone as the roué, when all his boon companions have suddenly deserted vice for a life of virtue. He stood looking out of the door for fully half an hour, unable to understand it.

  Little Mary was preparing his breakfast in the kitchen behind him. He could hear her humming a song carelessly as she moved about. The sound of water gurgling from the spout of the kettle into the teapot appeared strange to him, as if he had never heard it before. He was afraid to turn around to look at her, lest she too might have changed in the night with the rest of the world about him.

  ‘Your breakfast is ready,’ she said.

  He wheeled about and looked at her. She moved to the window without glancing at him and stood looking out dreamily, arranging a curl of hair on her right temple. He stood by his chair staring at her as if she had done him an injury. He tried to think of something to say to her. But he couldn’t speak. Something fermented within him that tied his tongue to his palate. ‘Fuh!’ he said at last, querulously, and banged the chair against the ground. She shot him a coquettish glance and went out. Then he heard her calling loudly to her hens, ‘Tiuc! tiuc! tiuc! come here to me, you darlings,’ as if she had completely forgotten all about him. But she kept smiling to herself as she thought, ‘Now I can play with him.’

  He gulped his breakfast, angry with himself. Then he walked about the kitchen excitedly. He put on his hat and coat to go for a walk, but he turned back from the door and took off his coat again. Then he swore when he realized that he wanted her. The memory of Kathleen O’Daly came before his mind. He found himself thinking religiously, he who was an atheist. ‘It would be a sin,’ he said to himself, standing by his bed. But the very thought aroused his passion the more. Then he laughed aloud at the incongruity of his thinking that such a thing could be sinful in the eyes of a man who scoffed at the world, in the eyes of a man who had … well, done all the things that men do when they cut adrift. He went into the kitchen and sat by the fire waiting for her. Then she came in. He smiled at her, but she never noticed him.

  ‘Is it cold outside?’ he said, wondering how he should approach her.

  ‘No,’ she said carelessly, shrugging her shoulders. ‘I’m going to the fields to spread seeds now. Would you like to come and watch?’

  ‘No, I would not,’ he said angrily. ‘The devil take the seeds!’ He put on his coat again and rushed out.

  He wanted to go eastwards to Carmody’s public-house at Coillnamhan, but he found that he could not leave Rooruck. He kept circling around the field in which Little Mary was working. He fashioned all kinds of excuses to pass by that field. When he came near it, he talked to the peasants in the neighbouring field, and passed on without speaking to her. And then, coming up again to the cabin, he cursed himself for an utter idiot. His pride was insulted by the fact that passion was gaining the mastery over him. His winter apathy was slipping away from him. In fact, before dinner he shaved himself and tri
mmed his beard. He felt the lack of flesh on his bones, and wished that he was in better condition and less repulsive physically. And all the while some skittish imp kept smirking within him, hiding from his accusing conscience. He felt a quickening of his pulse and a warmth in his blood. He was almost dizzy with that strange feeling of spring. And it was completely physical, overpowering the mind like wine. In fact, it formed a mind of its own, with a distinct philosophy and a moral code. That mind seemed to be not in the brain but somewhere around the heart and the bowels. It shut out the past and the future, and demanded immediate satisfaction of its desires. It was cold and biting like the wind. It was irresistible.

  While Little Mary was preparing dinner for him he watched her breathlessly, struggling violently with himself. In her presence he felt ashamed, conscience stricken. But when she was leaving the cabin to take Red John’s dinner to the field he caught her by the hand and looked into her eyes. She laughed and snatched away her hand. He swore. She stopped at the door and said in a rippling voice, ‘I’m in a hurry.’ Then she ran down the lane.

  ‘Curse the woman,’ he said, ‘she’s making a fool of me. All right. That finishes it. Good God, I was mad to think of a peasant woman. I’m becoming utterly degraded. I’m finished with women! They are the curse of life. There, she’s been trying to tempt me. I’m glad I resisted her advances.’ And he ate his dinner hungrily, quite satisfied with himself. Then he endeavoured to fall back into his slothful habits of winter. He sat by the fire smoking. But he couldn’t rest. His hands and feet were fidgeting. He suggested all sorts of activities, a walk by the Hill of Fate, a visit to the old fort, a turn around the fields where the peasants were working, but none of these things satisfied him. All these places were connected with Little Mary, and he must avoid her. Finally, towards evening, he set out towards Coillnamhan. He told himself that his walk there was completely without purpose, but he sat on a fence above the beach, waiting. That was the road from the school to O’Daly’s house. He kept watching the hill between him and the school. Kathleen O’Daly would come along that way.

  Then he saw her coming over the hill talking to another man, a priest. He made a movement to jump from the fence, but he held back. ‘Why should I run away from a woman?’ he asked himself. He tried to calm himself and be indifferent as he waited until she came up. He could hear her laughing as she approached, but he wouldn’t look in her direction. He was watching two seagulls on the beach quarrelling raucously over the carcass of a dogfish. Then he turned towards her suddenly and raised his hat as she was passing.

  ‘Good evening, Miss O’Daly,’ he said.

  Kathleen stopped dead and made a startled gesture.

  ‘Good gracious! Mr. O’Connor,’ she said, ‘you gave me a fright. I never saw you.’ She had in fact seen him a long way off. ‘Let me introduce you to our curate, Father Ronan – Mr. O’Connor, Father Ronan.’

  The Stranger shook hands with the curate with an effort at cheerfulness, although he hated priests. He associated them in some peculiar way with all the things that had caused his ruin. The curate, a squat, heavily built, shabbily dressed man with a dark face and beautiful grey eyes, stammered something inaudibly and then smiled. He began to smile towards the Stranger, and finished smiling towards Kathleen. He was always shy of men, though quite at home with women. A most peculiar man, though a fine character, and absolutely sincere in his belief in his religion and mission. His body was that of a prize-fighter, but his eyes were those of a nun, and his manner corresponded with his eyes. He could look no man in the eyes, and he always blushed and fidgeted when talking. His face would darken suddenly, and he would grip his side as if he had a stitch in it. The Stranger misunderstood his embarrassment. ‘He’s in love with her,’ he said to himself. ‘The hypocrite!’ Then he himself fell in beside Kathleen and began to talk cheerfully and nonchalantly. He would show the yokel of a priest that he was a man of the world. But his affected cynical bantering had no effect either on Kathleen or the priest. They both pitied him. They did not get irritated as he hoped they would. They merely raised their eyebrows and said a word now and again in agreement with the most bitterly cynical things he could say about the country and its religion. They parted almost in silence at the western end of the beach. As he shook hands with Kathleen she pressed his hand slightly and looked pityingly into his eyes.

  ‘You must come to see us often,’ she said; ‘my father is always talking about you. Do please come.’

  The curate tried to say something and then blushed and looked at Kathleen. The Stranger could catch the words ‘interesting books.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Kathleen, ‘if you should like something to read, Father Ronan would be pleased –’

  The Stranger interrupted her with a wave of his hand, and began to walk away.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I prefer to be a primitive man. I have no wish to be converted.’ And he walked on.

  The roads parted at right angles. He walked hurriedly for a short distance, and then paused to tie his shoe-lace, which did not want to be tied. He undid it and then tied it again as he looked after the other couple. They were on the brow of the hill, going towards the village. Kathleen kept twitching her shoulders slightly as she walked, and held herself very straight, staring in front of her. A curl of hair waved from beneath her black round cap.

  ‘You should try and save him,’ the curate was saying. ‘There is something on his soul.’ And Kathleen smiled, glad to give that construction to her desires.

  But the Stranger, watching them, thought they had forgotten all about him.

  ‘They think I’m not fit to associate with them,’ he thought. ‘Wouldn’t even argue with me. Very well. To hell with them. It’s just the price of you, Fergus O’Connor.’ And suddenly he laughed aloud, and drew his lower lip over his mouth. ‘There’s Little Mary, anyway,’ he said. Going westwards the sharp wind cut into his marrows, and he felt the urge of spring fiercely. ‘Hurrah!’ he shouted, and threw his hat in the air. ‘I wish I could commit some heinous crime to satisfy myself.’

  He passed Red John riding on his pony near the cottage. Red John did not speak, but lashed his pony and passed at a flying gallop, his short legs swinging in opposite directions along the horse’s flanks. The Stranger could hear him swear at his horse long after he passed out of sight.

  ‘All right, you lout,’ he muttered viciously; ‘I’ll make you a cuckold for your surliness.’

  All feelings of refinement had left him now. Spring held him in a strong grip that crushed his conscience. He was like a primitive savage. He vaulted over the stone fence into the yard, and opened the door without pausing. Little Mary was laying his supper, her back turned towards him. Without looking around she moved to the fire and said:

  ‘Did you pass Red John on your way?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘where was he going?’

  ‘Into Kilmurrage for a new spade. I don’t suppose he will be back before morning. Whenever he gets a shilling he drinks it. He has my heart broken.’ And she gazed at the fire mournfully in pretended woe.

  But the Stranger saw the colour mounting in her cheeks, giving the lie to her words. He sat down to his supper in silence and toyed with the food, but he couldn’t swallow anything. His heart was thumping wildly. He sat listening to the silence without for fully a minute. There was a long-drawn hissing from the west, of a wave receding over a pebbly beach. The sound like a command made him stand up. He had to move his chair, and the act irritated him. Then he moved swiftly to her and bent down over her shoulders until his cheek touched hers. He could feel her body trembling. With a sigh she turned around and fell into his arms.

  It was dark when he threw himself on his bed. His head swam. His body seemed to be on fire, burning with the shame that seized him for having taken her. He writhed on the bed, murmuring, ‘Christ! what possessed me to do it?’ He felt that he had committed himself to her now. His surrender to his passion hurled him back again into the world. It appeared gross to him. H
e tried to laugh scornfully, but he couldn’t. He repeated continually, ‘I don’t love her. I shouldn’t have done it. She trusts me.’ He was in agony when he recalled the look in her eyes as she lay in his arms. They were gentle, soft, trusting. He tore his hair and bit the bedclothes with his teeth. Then he lay still, and gradually his mind began to calm. Instead of being ashamed of himself he now became angry with Little Mary for having succumbed to him. But his anger was unreal, and he lay on his side, resting his head on his hand, staring at the wall, wondering what he should do now. Should he run away? Yes, he would run away. He got up and packed his clothes. Then he realized that he couldn’t get a steamer to the mainland until the following day, and sat down again on his bed. He sat there for a long time thinking gloomily until he heard the door open and somebody stagger into the kitchen. He jumped to his feet and rubbed his eyes. It was broad daylight.

  ‘Hey there! hey there!’ came Red John’s voice in a thick whisper; ‘is there nobody in this kip of a place?’ He kicked at a chair and upset it.

  The Stranger went into the kitchen and asked him what was the matter.

  Red John, his clothes spattered with mud, and his beard matted with porter froth, clung to the dresser with his right hand.

  ‘Ho! ho! there, my fine fellow,’ he chuckled, ‘so there you are, you son of a loose woman. You spawn of a dogfish. You –’ He uttered a wild yell, and began to tear his shirt from his back when Little Mary came rushing at him from her room, and he dropped on his knees in a trice. ‘Don’t strike! merciless woman,’ he whined; ‘they wouldn’t give me a spade. They wouldn’t open the shop to me, I tell you, so I had to drink in Mulligan’s while I sent a boy to look for one. I declare by the cross of the Crucified One that I couldn’t get a spade. What’s all this noise now about a spade? Haven’t I got a good spade already?’ He kept babbling as he crawled to the hearth and sat down glaring at the two of them like a wild animal. Little Mary shrugged her shoulders and said nothing.