The Black Soul

by Liam O'Flaherty

  He finished arranging his trousers and stood up, looking in front of him at the ledge. Then through the intricate maze of his reasoning his mind again grasped in horror the reality of his position. He cast a fleeting glance at the peasants behind and he saw only the figure of Little Mary huddled on the boulder, afraid to look up, dumb and spellbound with the accumulation of horror, until even the news that her lover was going to cross the ledge only touched her brain as a needle pricks a limb that is frozen. In the moment that his eyes swept back to her and then forward to the ledge, he took in every single detail of her figure, as if his brain were lashed by terror to a speed equal to that of light. She was leaning on her right hand against a boulder. Her dark hair strayed down over her left cheek, that was towards him. He could see by the straining of her white bare throat that her eyes were shut. And her body was indistinct under the outline of her heavy cashmere shawl, as if she had crumbled up, struck by sorrow. His love for her made him so dizzy that he was unable to obey the impulse to fly back to her until it had passed, exhausted by its own force, and he was reasoning again.

  He moved a step forward, gripping the slippery rock carefully with his toes. Going back would mean losing his self-respect. There was no reason for going ahead, but to go back would mean a return to his rudderless floating in a sea of ridiculous theories about life. Instinct urged him forward. Why? It was neither because of honour, morals, principles, religion, or sense of duty. It was merely instinct that said, ‘Go ahead and you will feel clean. Go back and you will have to keep arguing all your life in order to prove that you are not dirty.’ He took three steps in rapid succession and then swayed slightly as his right foot skidded three inches and he grasped the face of the cliff with both hands. His heart began to beat audibly, although his breath was coming regularly. Still he moved forward towards the curve.

  The ledge grew narrower. He could no longer put forward his left leg that was nearest to the cliff. He had to grip the cliff and shuffle forward with his right leg in front. His spine seemed to be melting. He was afraid to look down at the sea. He shut his eyes and stood still. Suddenly the thought struck him that Red John was waiting around the curve with a knife to kill him, even if he succeeded in escaping the fall to death. Before his closed eyes the knife appeared menacing and he was unable to escape. He opened his eyes to see whether it really was there and he saw nothing but the protruding belt of slate, swelling like a black ulcer from the cliff in front of him. Fear ate at his bowels, giving him the feeling that he had not eaten for a week. ‘I had better turn back,’ he muttered aloud. But he made no attempt to move backwards. In fact he leaned jauntily against the cliff and took out his handkerchief to wipe his forehead, as if he were quite at his ease. And as he wiped his forehead he thought that there was no chance whatever of saving Red John and that he was bound to go back to Little Mary, as a point of honour. But just then he heard a peasant shout, ‘Ah, God of the thousand battles, what a brave man!’ ‘Yes, I am a brave man,’ he murmured, crumbling the handkerchief in a ball. He grasped the cliff again to move forward.

  Stupefied with fear he lurched around the curve carelessly in three strides, that made the cliff and the sea turn a somersault three times before his eyes. He scraped his left ankle to the bone. He gashed his left temple. As he was drawing his right leg up after the third stride, it tripped over a boss of the rock and he hurtled forward, stumbling along the brink of the cliff between the earth and sea, like a willow rod blown by a sudden squall. And then as if by magic he righted himself and walked calmly on to a broad plateau, that stretched eastwards, a triangular notch cut midway into the cliff. ‘Safe,’ he sighed breathlessly.

  He sat down on the plateau exhausted and content at having performed a feat of such daring. But in a moment he remembered Red John and he jumped to his feet again. He had come to save Red John. He looked about him. Red John was nowhere to be seen. ‘I hope he is dead,’ he murmured. Voices reached him from the summit of the cliff overhead. Peasants had run up the slope from the shore and were now gesticulating above the plateau, pointing to three large boulders that leaned against the cliff at the eastern edge of the plateau, just where the plateau sank into the cliff. ‘Ha!’ he muttered, ‘there’s where he is waiting for me with his knife.’ He wanted to raise his hands and ask them to take him away. But he was ashamed to do so in spite of his fear. They looked upon him as a brave man. He must keep up the pretence. ‘What difference does it make if I get killed by Red John? People would look upon me as a hero. Eh? And I’ll have to die some day. Everybody dies. Don’t they?’ He began to walk towards the boulders mechanically, but his efforts at stoicism did not prevent his body from trembling and smarting. Every muscle was uttering an inarticulate whine of terror. His limbs, although thrust forward by his will, moved with the ponderous slowness of an immense engine making its first hesitating revolution. Though his will tried to force his legs to move quickly, like the legs of a determined courageous man, the legs pretended to be exhausted with weariness. It seemed that the knee-cap of the right leg had jumped off and that blood was gushing from the wound, but when he grasped the knee he found it was a delusion. The knee was perfectly fit. But although he knew it was perfectly fit, he let it go limp and dragged it after him. That gave him a plausible excuse for going slowly. And the slower he went the more the folly of his action grew before his mind. The fear of death grew greater. He doubted the reality of his environment. He thought that Red John and the peasants on the cliff-top were a delusion and that he himself was going to commit suicide, impelled by the consciousness of a monstrous crime. He had a fleeting vision of things like a cliff pressing into his forehead so close to his eyes that the atoms in its face appeared as big as universes. But while his mind conjured with these delusions, his body, his desire to live, were grappling with realities. He had dropped on his belly and was crawling sideways up to the mouth of the cavern between the boulders, in order to see inside it without being seen. And when his right shoulder brushed against the slimy black boulder and he saw the dim interior of the cavern through a corner of his left eye, his senses became so acute that his trembling fear left him and he experienced the kind of morbid enthusiasm and coolness that the soldier feels when he is about to draw the trigger from a concealed position on an advancing enemy. ‘Red John, Red John,’ he called out loudly, ‘what the hell are you hiding in there for? It’s only the Stranger out here, who has come to save you. Come out, man, and don’t be making a fool of yourself. Nobody has got anything against you. Come out.’

  He listened, panting slightly, but for a moment or two he heard nothing. Then he heard something move, with the sound a duck makes walking on slippery wet flags. Then there came the sound of teeth chattering violently, and the kind of horrid mumbling a dumb man makes when in a rage. These sounds irritated without terrifying him and he struggled to a kneeling position and drew himself up to the entrance of the cavern. He stared in. His face was within three inches of Red John’s.

  He lay crouching on his hands and knees, spellbound. Red John crouched facing him, kneeling on his right knee, his left hand, palm downward, embedded in the yellow sea-moss that grew on the side of a tiny pool. His right hand holding the open knife was stretched in front of him, with the point of the knife resting against the face of the cliff. Large drops of water pattered from the cliff on his naked back. And through the opening at the far end of the cavern, the sea, half-hidden by the mist, loomed up like an undulating plain that is set in imaginary motion by the shadows of a winter dawn. He looked like an uncouth monster risen from the black sea. His bloodshot eyes seemed to have been thrust out from their sockets by a violent shock that had jammed their mechanism and prevented them from getting back into their natural position. And when he breathed his whole body contracted, so that the skin lay in loose wrinkles between the ribs. His mouth and throat contorted violently, as he tried to speak. And the Stranger stared at him for several moments, speechless. Then he said in a low voice, as if afraid to hear himself, �
��Come on, Red John, follow me. You’ll catch cold there.’ And he began to edge backwards, keeping his eyes fixed on Red John’s face.

  But he had barely moved when Red John roared and flung himself upon him. He fell in a heap over the Stranger’s shoulders and the two of them rolled out into the open plateau. The peasants watching on the cliff-top yelled. ‘The knife, the knife! he’ll kill him with the knife,’ came a scream from a woman, as Red John tore his right hand free and lunged at the Stranger’s chest. But the Stranger twisted around and struck Red John’s arm with his fist. Then he closed with Red John, grasping Red John’s body about the shoulders, so that he was only able to move his legs below the knees. The Stranger pressed with all his might, and Red John struck out with his feet and snapped with his teeth, trying to bite the Stranger’s left ear. Then suddenly his body stiffened. He planted his heels on the rock and raised his hips, so that his body rested on his shoulders and his heels. The Stranger, fearing that he planned a fresh attack, moved and threw his legs over him in order to crush him with his weight. But as his eyes came in line with Red John’s throat he drew back. The throat was shivering like the gills of a dying fish. The whole body had gone limp. The eyes were glassy. The lower jaw had dropped. Red John was dead. His heart had burst in the last effort of his madness.

  2

  ‘On and on I wander endlessly. I am the lord of nature. I heal and kill heedlessly. I drive men to a frenzy and soothe others with the same roar of my anger. I am the sadness of joy. I am the ferocity of beauty.’ So murmured the sea, as the Stranger, crouching astride the stiffening corpse of Red John, held his hands aloft to the peasants on the cliff-top and mumbled cries for help. Then the sea seemed to take a short leap forward and struck the cliffs noisily. Gullies of wind eddied westwards from the Fort of Coillnamhan, whirling in and out under the cliffs like swallows. The mist rose before the wind and a cloud-racked sky appeared. The sun stared through a flimsy white cloud that had just parted in the middle. Advancing breakers buffeted by the wind began to turn somersaults. Sea-birds, roused by the sudden squall, soared aloft screaming. The peasants crossed themselves and said, ‘God save us, it is the magic wind.’ And the Stranger, listening to the chorus of sounds from nature that had a few minutes before been wrapped in mist and silence, started as he had been awakened from a nightmare by a bugle call. He looked at the corpse between his legs, and a sense of the reality of life, of his surroundings, of himself, became so vivid that it wiped out his fear of the death of which a few moments before he had accused himself in terror. Instead of fear of the future, of what men would say of him or do to him, because of the death of Red John, he experienced a feeling of anger that was born of a sudden access of strength. Instead of maudlin pity for the corpse beneath him, he looked upon it in anger, meaningless anger. Whence that anger? Perhaps it came from the sudden rush of the sea and wind to his assistance. Perhaps the presence of death made him lust for life. He stood up, exultantly watching Big Dick descend the cliff on a rope to his assistance, and he thought of nothing but his fierce desire to get to the cliff-top and fly with Little Mary to safety. He doubted no more. The nightmares that had haunted his soul had vanished. He feared life no more. He longed for it, with its ferocity of endeavour, of suffering and of happiness. Life as he had learned to understand it in Inverara, to the sound of the sea, strong like the hailstones that pattered on the crags, like the roar of the storm wind, like the lashing of the breakers against the cliffs. Inverara had rubbed the balm of her fierce strength into his marrows. She had purified his blood with her bitter winds. She had filled his exhausted lungs with the smell of her sea. And it was at that moment, when he came face to face with the reality of death, that the reality of life assumed a meaning for him.

  Big Dick reached the plateau, and advanced towards the Stranger and the corpse, the legs of his yellow oilskin trousers clashing one against the other with a shuffling sound. ‘Mother of God!’ he said, crossing himself, ‘he’s dead.’ And he looked from the corpse to the Stranger with awe and fear.

  They hoisted the corpse to the cliff-top and then the Stranger put the noose under his armpits and was hoisted up. As he ascended the cliff, he felt a wonderful exhilaration as if he were being raised aloft into a heaven of happiness. And for the first time since he had rounded the dangerous curve he thought of Little Mary. And with the thought of her, he felt a fiercer anger than before, like an animal whose mate is in danger. And then he felt hands about his shoulders, and he scrambled to the cliff-top into Little Mary’s arms.

  For half a minute they lay clasped in an embrace that made them unconscious of their surroundings, of the angry mutterings of the men, arguing with O’Daly, who had arrived just then, of the screaming of the women, of the corpse of Red John, lying ghastly and naked against a green mound; unconscious of the wind that now tore up over the cliff-top with a savage roar. Red John’s uncle’s wife rushed at Little Mary, screaming, ‘She killed him, she’s enchanted, down with her, the whore!’ and the Stranger jumped to his feet, with Little Mary clinging to his waist. He had raised his arm to strike the woman, when O’Daly rushed in between them and pushed him back. ‘Go, run for your lives,’ he whispered; ‘run.’ ‘Keep back there,’ he shouted to the peasants, ‘or I’ll get every one of you shot.’ And as the Stranger and Little Mary hurried away from the cliff towards the village, the men cursed and threatened them and the women gathered around the corpse, screaming and wailing the death dirge. And Red John’s livid face frowned sardonically in death, as if he were conscious that he who in life was despised and persecuted were now in his death the centre of all interest.

  O’Daly overtook them near the cabin. ‘Hurry! Get your things and come with me,’ he panted. ‘You want to leave the island immediately. Be quick. I’ll give you an address in Dublin … see you right … I’ll fix up everything here … magistrate, parish priest doesn’t want a scandal … all … everything, d’ye see? … all right.’

  The Stranger grasped his hand and said, ‘O’Daly, you’re a friend indeed. I’ll never forget you.’

  The old man muttered an oath under his breath and shouted gruffly to hide his embarrassment. ‘Come on, damn it, there’s no time to waste.’

  When they entered Rooruck, it was deserted like a place suddenly stricken with a plague, and the Stranger darted into the cabin to get his money and his clothes, as if every moment he had to spend in the place were a torture to him. Rushing about the cabin he started at every sight, at the bitch that lay curled carelessly on the hearth, with the wind coming down the chimney, blowing the yellow ashes about her snout, at Red John’s waistcoat lying by the stool where he had dropped it, at the upturned milkcan, and the stains of the spilt milk licked dry by the dog. But when he was passing through the kitchen on his way out, dressed in his wrinkled blue suit, with a suit-case in each hand, he looked around and heaved a sigh. For it is sad to look at even hateful places for the last time. Then he rushed out and they walked away hurriedly towards Coillnamhan. ‘I’ll get you some clothes from my daughter’s wardrobe,’ O’Daly was saying to Little Mary; ‘now for God’s sake keep your heart up. Everything is all right. I’ll see to everything. You have life in front of you.’ And as they reached the brow of the hill east of Rooruck, a weird song was carried to them on the wind from the southwest. They paused and looked back. The peasants, carrying the dead body of Red John on their shoulders, were coming in a straggling procession from the cliff, the men in front, the women behind, their shawls thrown back over their shoulders, their frieze petticoats waving in the breeze against the black sky, their hair dishevelled, their voices rising and falling mournfully through the changing rush of the wind. And behind the corpse the white-haired wife of Red John’s uncle staggered, rending her hair, and her voice came distinct over the din, chanting the death dirge. ‘And the screech heard at dawn shall be ever in my ears, ochon, ochon … my sorrow pierces the bowels of the sea, oh my sorrow, my sorrow …’

  They shuddered and sped eastwards hurriedly
.

  3

  That evening the Stranger and Little Mary set sail in O’Daly’s yacht from Coillnamhan for the mainland. Night was falling as they scudded out under white sails. O’Daly sat at the helm and the Stranger sat with Little Mary in the prow, looking back at Inverara. Inverara was becoming an amorphous mass through the autumn mist, a black smudge on the horizon. Then it disappeared, and only spectres of white breakers arising from the deep to embrace it remained, where it sank out of sight. Farther, and only the distant mumble of the sea against its cliffs reached their ears. Then that sound died in the murmur of the wind, through the yacht’s sails.

  Inverara had passed out of the Stranger’s life. Tears trickled down his cheeks and he pressed Little Mary’s hand. Inverara, wild, fierce, beautiful, never-changing Inverara, child of the sea, had vanished.

  To Edward Garnett

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © 1924, 1981, 1996 Liam O’Flaherty

  The Moral rights of this author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise

  make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means

  (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,

  printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the