The Black Soul

by Liam O'Flaherty

  The Stranger, endeavouring to listen cheerfully to O’Daly’s conversation, knew that she was weeping in her room, and he felt intensely ashamed of himself He longed to be able to go into the room to her and take her in his arms. But he felt Red John’s red eyes piercing his right cheek. They were like the eyes of a she-wolf whose cubs are stolen. Yet he laughed in response to O’Daly’s jokes. And his ability to laugh in such a situation made him feel that he was a cur. He wanted to get up and strike somebody. He was afraid of O’Daly, so he turned his wrath against Red John because he knew he was weaker than himself. He looked at him savagely. Red John, who had been looking at him malignantly, lowered his eyes and began to fidget with the fire. Then he rose and stretched himself with a foolish grin.

  ‘I must go and see has Long Bartly got a pitchfork to lend me,’ he muttered, and slunk out of the cabin. But he didn’t go to Long Bartly’s. He crossed up over the crags to where his black sheep were grazing on the cliff top and kept driving them up and down the crags all night. ‘Hist!’ he would say, throwing a pebble at them. ‘Let the fairies take you. What good are you to me? May the maggots eat you. I am eaten myself by the devils.’ And he would laugh like a child.

  When Red John had gone out, O’Daly bent over close to the Stranger and whispered, ‘Something the matter with that fellow. How do they get on together?’ nodding his head towards the room where Little Mary was.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said the Stranger. ‘Why?’

  O’Daly looked at him curiously and then looked towards the fire, winking an eye.

  ‘She is a beautiful woman. You had better take care of yourself.’

  ‘Why?’ said the Stranger again, irritably.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ whispered O’Daly; ‘women are the very devil.’

  ‘Oh, rot!’ said the Stranger, ‘I’m a man of the world.’

  ‘Hm, hm,’ said O’Daly; ‘it’s funny how young men always think they’re wiser than their fathers. Oh, well, I must be going. Good night, my good woman.’

  Little Mary saw him to the door, begging him to stay longer and hoping in her heart that an evil demon would ‘cast the light of the morning sun on his rotting corpse.’ The Stranger walked down the road with him. They walked in silence for a while. Then O’Daly said: ‘I pity that poor woman. Begob, it hurts my soul to see a beautiful horse hurt or a beautiful woman living in poverty. The cruel injustice of the world.’

  O’Daly, who, like most Irishmen of his type, had no sense of justice whatever, felt that at that moment he would give a fortune to get Little Mary out of her miserable surroundings. Yet he would have whipped her with pleasure and with equal sincerity and feeling of justice had a birthmark on her face irritated him. They say that he once, at the same sitting of the Parish Court in Kilmurrage, acquitted a man for opening a neighbour’s skull in a fit of anger, and sentenced another man to a month’s hard labour for tying a sharp cord around an old goat’s thigh. His type is almost extinct to-day in the country, which does not appreciate the impulsive strength of the iron men of old who were so close to merciless unjust nature.

  Suddenly O’Daly stopped in the road and laid his hand on the Stranger’s shoulder.

  ‘Damn it, man,’ he said, ‘I don’t like to see you pining away here, wasting your life. It’s no place for a young man. I wouldn’t mind, but your father was one of the old tribe, one of ourselves. I know ye got good blood in you. Mind, I’m not pokin’ my old nose, but if there’s anything I could do … There now, what the hell am I talking about?’ And he began to curse loudly and gruffly in order to hide his sudden exposure of what he considered a disgraceful show of sentiment. The Stranger kicked the road and said nothing. ‘Hell to my soul,’ said O’Daly, catching his hand; ‘come over any time you’ve nothing to do and have a bottle with me. Don’t be too proud to visit an old man. Now good night, and God bless ye, my son.’ Then he stalked down the road cursing himself for having taken an interest in that ‘good-for-nothing weakling; how in the hell they breed them I don’t know.’

  The Stranger stood looking after him, clenching his fist, grateful to him for his sympathy and at the same time cursing him for having attempted to do him a favour. He heard a small boy coming up the road riding a donkey, and O’Daly stopped to talk to him.

  ‘Oh, boys, oh, boys, where did you get that elegant donkey?’

  The Stranger turned sharply on his heel and walked back to the cabin. ‘Yeah, he forgot all about me immediately,’ he muttered angrily; ‘nobody cares a damn about me.’

  Through the thick darkness stray lights flickered here and there about him in the windows of the cabins. They were little sickly red scars on the black face of the night. One would heave up towards him glimmering, as if the night swayed, and then retreat again. Or was it his mind that swayed, endeavouring to find an exit from the conflicting suggestions that urged him to do this and to do that? O’Daly’s words, ‘you are wasting your life,’ tumbled around in his brain, assuming strange formations as the words mixed, ‘are you wasting your life,’ ‘life wasting you are,’ in every conceivable way. He shrank from those words, and then pointing his finger at the sky he traced the words, ‘I will waste my life as I think fit.’ But that seemed to be childish. And his mind swayed again as suddenly something within said, ‘Why bother about your life? There is Little Mary in there. Forget the world.’ And he went into the cabin.

  She was sitting by the fire rocking herself as he entered. She jumped up with an eager gleam in her eyes as she looked at him, but she immediately suppressed that look and stared coolly as she set a chair for him in front of the fire. Then she sat in the corner again, nervously arranging her shawl closely about her neck. He looked at her, feeling vexed with himself for having injured her, and with her for being the cause of his feeling vexed, for being a selfish fellow, like most men, he always took care to cast the blame for his meanness on other shoulders. His nerves began to strain at the silence and his lips twitched. One moment they twitched trying to hold back an onrush of apologies, at the very next moment trying to hold back an outburst of anger. In his anger he would say to himself, ‘What right has she to be jealous of Kathleen O’Daly? It was her own fault if I am under an obligation to her.’ Then when he looked at her sad beautiful face he grew tender. He would make a motion to reach out his hand to her and then draw back shuddering and put his hand over his mouth. At last he jumped to his feet and cried, ‘Oh, damn this business, it will drive me mad.’ He stood looking stupidly at the fire with his hands in his pockets. Unable to restrain herself any longer, she uttered a low cry, and jumping up threw her arms about his neck. But somehow her touch hardened him. He unbound her arms, and holding her by the shoulders looked into her eyes with set lips. She looked at him wearily. The sadness in her eyes pained his heart physically. He felt a desperate longing to kiss her and say sweet things to her. Yet something held him back, and he kept looking at her with hard eyes. Then Little Mary, her eyes staring with fright at his look, her bosom heaving with unborn sobs, rushed from his arms. She staggered to her stool and fell in a heap face downwards on it, bursting into tears. Then that something that held him back vanished with a snap and he fell on his knees beside her. He kissed her eyes, her lips, her ears, her forehead, her throat, her hands. He rubbed his hands through her hair, and pressing his cheek against hers, mumbled almost inaudibly, ‘I love you, I love you.’ Her sobs stopped suddenly, and she strained her ears excitedly, scarcely able to believe the words that she had hardly even dared to hope for. Slowly she raised her eyes to his face, and a low gurgling sound began to rise from her breast louder and louder, until it rushed from her lips almost with a scream, a sound that might be a scream of pain or of intense joy. Covering her eyes with her hands she nestled her head against his breast. With his chin resting on her head he knew that he loved her and he wondered fearfully what was going to be the outcome. Even love filled his Black Soul with fear.

  And Little Mary, when he had gone to bed, sat by the fire kissing the places on
her hands where his lips had rested.

  2

  At Rooruck spring does not die. Like a river seeking the ocean, it gathered strength and beauty each day from its staggering frozen birth until it passed majestically into the luxuriant bosom of summer. Rooruck changed hour by hour, minute by minute, with each rush of the wind, each westward leap of the sun, each thud of the sea against its cliffs. The hungry black earth grew green with dewy grass. Sharp-pointed buds edged their way timorously through the hard soil of the tilled fields. The wind and rain descended softly on the crags and fields, whispering to the life that was coming from the womb of the earth. The air was fragrant with a sense of joy. It was like hearing good news of a loved one. Lambs frisked in the fields among the crags above the village, their growing wool already hanging from their sides in zigzag ringlets. Calves were rushing about stupidly, their tails in the air. The people began to laugh and look about them happily, their crops sown. They had already eaten eggs in homage to Crom for all the lives that had been born to them, from their sheep and cattle, on the day that Christians call Easter Sunday. One could almost hear nature clashing cymbals, urging life to grow. Beautiful, hard, grey spring life at Rooruck that swelled the chest and put steel into the eye and a warlike song in the throat. Full-grown spring at Rooruck that robbed men of fear and weakness.

  Little Mary was as happy as the lark that rose each morning to sing from her grassy nest in the clover field beneath the cabin, where those furry-headed young larks were hugging one another. Now everything was plain to her. She could see the expanse of the future rolling itself out before her, and always she and her lover walked hand in hand across it. Every other year at the end of spring she had set a goose to hatch. But that year she did not. She had already cut herself adrift. She was waiting eagerly for her lover to say ‘come,’ waiting to fly with him over the sea. When they embraced she would look in his eyes and say, ‘I wish we were together away from everybody.’ And he would say, ‘So do I, dearest,’ and then bite his lips, for he feared that final step that would make him hers.

  Nature tugged at his heart, urging him to be a man and take her with him out into the world, but his intellect refused to move in response to nature. ‘How could I support her?’ it would say. And then, ‘What the hell do I want her for, anyway? I’m not going back into the world for anybody.’ And his fear of having to go back to the struggle of life kept him in torment, preventing him from loving her. Every time he embraced her, the thought was constantly in his mind that she was trying to use him for her own purposes, selfishly. He told himself repeatedly that life did not interest him, and yet he felt the urge to do something growing daily more intense. The satisfied happy look on the faces of the peasants who had sown their crops maddened him. He felt like a soldier who is straggling behind a victorious army, unable to reach the conquered capital with them because he has led a debauched life. He felt everybody despised him, and that made him long still more to pretend indifference.

  Then Bartly the son of Black Peter got married to a woman from Coillnamhan. Horses galloped madly from Rooruck to the church at Coillnamhan. Then they galloped back again, the bridegroom leading, with the bride riding pillion. The whole village gathered in Bartly’s cabin and prepared to spend that day and the following night carousing, in celebration of the mating. Two men went around all the cabins in the village with a jar of whisky, forcing everybody to drink to the health of the newly wedded couple. Then everybody who had not been to the church drank a glass, saying, ‘May their seed prosper,’ and went to the wedding. Red John and Little Mary went. The Stranger, seeing Little Mary going to mix with the peasants, eager for the music and dancing, felt madly jealous and grew disgusted with her. It was as if he had seen a civilized savage woman eat human flesh in a moment of abandonment. At least he told himself that it was disgust, but he really felt vexed with her for being able to enjoy simple things from which he himself was cut off by his Black Soul and his foolish belief in his own importance. He waited alone in the cabin, listening to the distant sounds of merrymaking, and pretended that he was indifferent, but he could not feel indifferent. He kept wondering whether she was dancing with somebody else or whether she would smile into some other man’s eyes and allow them to squeeze her waist.

  Towards evening Little Mary came back to give him his supper. He saw her eyes gleaming with pleasure and her cheeks flushed with dancing and he was enraged with her. So he pretended to be indifferent. She noticed his jealousy and felt glad, because it showed her that he loved her.

  ‘Do come down with me,’ she said, clinging to him, ‘the people won’t like it if you don’t come.’

  ‘Oh, to hell with the yokels,’ he said, ‘I’m going in to O’Daly’s and have somebody to talk to. What do I want with a lot of stupid savages?’

  Then he ate his supper eagerly, with a great show of nonchalance, and went out.

  Little Mary tore off the trinkets that she had donned so gaily that morning and sat by her bed, moaning, ‘Now what have I done, now what have I done?’

  He walked southwards from the village across the crags until he reached the cliffs. Then he turned eastwards towards the highest cliff, whose summit was crowned by the old fort that prehistoric warriors had built. He reached it. He passed through the two outer walls and then through the massive stone gate that led into the circular level greensward that was the fort itself. He stood still; there was perfect silence within the tremendous walls, in that circular bare patch of whitened grass, trodden by savage warriors three thousand years before. Four yards in front of him, the cliff dropped three hundred feet to a vast expanse of blue sea. ‘Ah,’ he said, and he felt strong and confident as if all the hosts that had ever looked out over that sea were beside him, defending him with their shields. He felt like a monk who sits in a vast empty cathedral communing with his god. He mounted the ramparts and lay on his belly along the broad wall of the fort looking out over Inverara. There were pale green streaks of light from the setting sun on the crags that sank in terraces from east and west and south to the broad grassy valley of Coillnamhan. The sea between Inverara and the blue mainland had a million dimples on its smooth face, kisses from the departing sun. The wide strip of sandy beach beneath Coillnamhan shone white, like the reflection of the moon at night in a tropical sea. White sheep, followed by their frisking lambs, wandered about the crags. Women in red petticoats crossed here and there with cans to milk their cows. The cows lowed. A pattering sound came from afar of somebody knocking a heap of smooth stones and a horse whinnied near there, eager for her evening drink of water perhaps. He gazed in silence, drinking in the beauty of nature. He wanted to embrace it, to hold it to his breast. Nature seemed to say, ‘See how beautiful is the world. Fool. You despise peasants, do you? You think you are an intellectual? I’ll tell you what you are. You are a charlatan. Go back now to the woman that loves you and enjoy life. It is good, but only to those who prefer truth to cheap cynicism and intellectual piffle.’ And the ghosts of dead warriors seemed to clash their battle-axes silently on their shields and murmur, ‘Aye, that is truth.’ And the crags and the sea and the sand and the green valley winking under the parting embrace of the sinking sun seemed to sigh and say, ‘Aye, peace and strength are only to those who can love beauty and truth. Beauty and truth are life. Life comes from our womb. Nestle close to us, my child. You will get lost in those clouds of vaporous intellectuality.’

  And his Black Soul scowled at the accusing voice of nature. It said, ‘Intellect is above nature. I am above the common herd, these peasants of Rooruck. What purpose is there in being happy or in trying to believe anything? What do I want to tussle with the ignorant mob for?’ Then a great dark shadow passed westward from Kilmillick over the land and sea and blotted out the sun. A chill breeze began to blow. Shivering and depressed he descended from the ramparts and began to walk hurriedly down the slope towards Coillnamhan to O’Daly’s house. He was obeying the voice of his Black Soul. It was the most satisfying voice to his vanity. S
o it is easier to scoff at life than to give a child an apple. But scoffing, though sweet, leaves a sour taste in the mouth, and a child’s smile lives a long time in the memory.

  The dark shadow had thickened into night before he reached the village. But he had ceased to notice anything about him. He was deliberately trying to persuade himself that he loved Kathleen O’Daly, that she was his equal in intellect, that her presence made him happy, that she had an elevating effect on his mind, and that Little Mary had a demoralizing effect on him.

  ‘That kind of woman would turn me into a yokel. She would kill all refinement in me. I must pull myself together.’ Then he knocked at the door of the cottage.

  O’Daly opened the door to him and asked him to step inside in a whisper. He led him into the kitchen on tiptoe.

  ‘There’s a crowd o’ them in there,’ he whispered, gripping the Stranger’s right arm convulsively. ‘Take this chair. That old woman of a curate and another priest from Dublin, full of nonsense about Republicanism, and a young woman with a face like the spine of a tinker’s ass, relation o’ the curate’s, says she, “We need to enthuse the growing generation with a passion for pure ideals, and a clean unselfish moral life,”’ and O’Daly tried to imitate the voice of a robin whose nest has been robbed. ‘They’re in there in the sitting-room,’ he continued, breathing heavily as he filled an extra glass from a bottle that lay on the kitchen table. Then he handed the glass to the Stranger and sank into a bamboo arm-chair that cracked under his weight. ‘I stuck it for an hour. Couldn’t stand em any longer.’ He had obviously made an attempt to ‘stand it,’ for he was wearing a starched shirt-front and a fairly new black suit. But the stiff narrow base of the shirt-front was sticking out over his waistcoat that was unbuttoned. He had torn off his tie, and the collar-stud was hanging loose at his throat. His face was as red as a beetroot with his exertions. The poor man would have liked very much to stay in the sitting-room and poke blasphemous fun at the priests and the young lady with the face like a tinker’s ass’s spine, but his daughter’s stare told him that he was a ‘disgrace,’ so he had to retire. He was, after all, though ‘an Irish gentleman who feared neither man nor devil,’ as he said himself, afraid of his daughter and dependent on her. So he pretended that he really disliked the company and despised it. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, filling himself a fresh glass of whisky, ‘but the only people I feel like talking to are the peasants. They’re more human than these bastards that pretend to know everything, and know nothing. Eh? Isn’t that right?’