The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘You’ve made your point,’ I said. ‘Let me out and just go, all right?’

  He scoffed. ‘I’ve no point to make, pal. I’m not inclined to make points.’

  He spat in the grass, picked up the phone and dialled a number. Then he clamped it to his ear and leaped to his feet. ‘Is that you, head?’ he said. ‘Yeah. It’s me, y’fat bollocks, who do y’think? Yeah. Donie Quinn.’ He looked at his watch.

  ‘It’s eight in the morning here. Serious. So listen, cm’ere to me, how’s Australia treatin’ yeh?’

  He must have spent ten minutes jabbering into the phone. ‘Any decent women over there, is there? I’d say that’s the truth, all right. Y’did not. Y’dirty little … What? Two of them? … I’ll give y’such a right batterin’ the next time I see yeh …’

  He came close to the cage, grinning so broadly that I could see his yellowed bicuspids. Then:

  ‘Only messin’ with yeh, Homer. I don’t know his number.’

  He held the phone to his ear again and rattled it from side to side. ‘But I’d say they’re handy enough things though, are they?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said ‘That’s right, Homer. Funny, I often thought to meself, one of them mobile phones’d come in handy. It’s amazin’ though, isn’t it, when you think, like? What’ll they invent next? Somethin’ like that, I really would say that’s fierce handy, is it?’

  Still I said nothing.

  ‘Are y’deaf, Homer? I’m after askin’ y’a question. They come in handy or not?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they come in handy.’

  He tossed it to the ground and stamped on it, again and again, grinding his foot into it. Then he took the hammer from his back pocket, squatted down on his hunkers and carefully, almost delicately, smashed what was left of the twisted phone to pieces. Every time he hit it, a small moan of almost sexual pleasure would come from him.

  ‘Well, that one won’t come in handy any more, Homer.’ A grotesquely clownish smile. And then he went whistling back up to the house.

  From over the wall I thought I could hear the sound of the travellers’ old car again, a faint grind of gears, a mechanical surging thrum. I asked myself whether to call out or not. If I shouted, I thought he might come down and attack me. I tried to gauge the distance of the car and in what direction it was driving – but all the time I did this I knew I was fooling myself, it was clearly too far away for me to be heard even if I were to roar. I sat on the floor with my back against the bars and attempted to stay calm. I wondered what he was planning to do with me. If he wanted to attack me he would have to get into the cage himself. I knew I must expect that. If it happened, there could be no weakness this time. If he tried to climb in, I would have to be prepared to attack him with my bare hands in such a way as somehow to do him serious harm. How could I do this? Was there some way I could exploit the fact that he would have to be physically very close to me if he wanted to hurt me? Could I perhaps unscrew one of the perches and use it as a club? I felt a sudden icy hand of fear grip around my spine. It occurred to me that I did not know where Sheehan’s shotgun was. Quinn could shoot me through the bars while I was sleeping. He could kill me without my even having any warning.

  My stomach was in ruins by now and I was desperate to go to the toilet. I crawled into a corner of the aviary and dropped my trousers. My bowels opened as I squatted, a sickening stench rose from behind me. I plucked a handful of grass and leaves from outside and tried to clean myself. I felt like screaming with rage and despair. I lay down and closed my eyes. For some reason, my father came into my mind then, not as I remember him but as he must have looked when he was a young man, in one of those forties suits with very wide lapels and a spotted handkerchief in the breast pocket.

  I took out the nail and began to work on the lock again. I did this for I do not know how long. But it was no use, a complete waste of time. I went to the back wall of the cage and tried as hard as I could to pull two of the bars apart. But I simply did not have the strength. I could not move them even a fraction of an inch.

  I sat down feeling weak with depression. I knew I would have to be careful not to lose control now. I tried to think myself out of it. But slowly it began to creep up on me. I felt like a man beginning to sink. A story my mother used to tell came into my mind. When Cromwell came to Connemara, he chained a priest to a rock on Inishboffin strand – then he and his soldiers drank wine and simply watched while the tide came in, slowly, up the beach, until the priest was drowned. I felt terror now, raw, unadulterated dread. It started to dawn on me as a reality that I might never get out of there again, that even if he did not shoot me, he might simply disappear from the house and leave me in the cage. How long could I last before it would even occur to someone to come and look? What would they find?

  I cried. That’s all I remember then, weeping with anguish, my hands cradling my chafed face, my skin raw and smarting.

  Some time later he came strolling down from the house with a can of beer in his hand. The sun was high, the shadowless garden seemed to be sucking the muggy heat into itself. He was wearing your UCD sweatshirt and had your red scarf tied around his head. He belched as he gazed in at me. He took a banana out of his pocket, peeled it and ate it in a couple of gulps. A small, important thing happened then. I happened to glance away from him and up at the sky. And I sensed irritation from him. A quick frown of annoyance. It faded in a couple of seconds and his expression returned to one of studied nonchalance. But what I had seen told me something. It told me that he wanted my attention. I suppose it gave me a weapon.

  I resolved to try not to look at him directly. I half-turned myself so that I could only see him in the corner of my eye.

  He took the key of the aviary gate out of his pocket and dangled it.

  ‘Lookat what I’ve here, Homer.’

  He reached it out towards the cage.

  ‘Ask me for it.’

  I said nothing. I stared at the ground.

  ‘Go on, serious now, I’m not messin’ with yeh. Ask me for it.’

  My eyes felt puffy and swollen. ‘Give me the key,’ I said. ‘Please.’

  He took a few steps to his left so that he was behind me. Now I could not see him at all. Still I was determined not to turn. He must have stood in complete silence for maybe ten whole minutes until finally I had to swivel back around and look at him. He put his hand to his ear and raised his thick eyebrows in a question.

  ‘What do y’say, Homer? D’y’want this or not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So ask me for it again. Nicely. That’s all y’have to do, man, it’s not much.’

  ‘Please can I have the key?’

  He stepped up and pushed his fingers in through the gap in the mesh. I could see the russet nicotine stains around his knuckles. He held the key out and dangled it against my cheek. ‘Here, take it?’ I did not move. He dropped it on the floor, walked slowly backwards, moved his hand behind his back and pulled my hunting knife out of his belt. He stared at it for a minute. He swivelled the blade so that it flashed as it caught the sunlight. Then he licked his finger and ran it along the edge.

  ‘Let yerself out, Homer,’ he grinned. ‘If you’ve the bottle.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘What I say. I’ll wait for y’here. You just let yerself out and we’ll see what happens then. We’ll see what’s the fuckin’ story then.’

  I gazed at the key on the aviary floor.

  ‘There it is. Gwon. Use it, why don’t yeh?’

  I picked it up and held it. I looked out at him. He snapped his fringe out of his eyes. He raised the knife and drew the blade across the palm of his left hand, without even wincing. Then slowly, methodically, he replaced the knife in his belt. He held up his open hand so that I could see it. The blood was pumping, tracking the lines of his palm, spilling down his wrist. He laughed. He rubbed his hand on the white sweatshirt, leaving startlingly bright red smears. He licked some of the blo
od from his palm and looked at me.

  ‘Come on out here till we play, Homer.’

  I put the key in my pocket and sat down on the aviary floor.

  ‘I’ll be waitin’ up in the house. Whenever yer ready. Just let yerself out, Homer, whenever the mood strikes. And I’ll be waitin’.’

  Suddenly he yanked the knife out of his belt again and stabbed it into the trunk of the apple tree. He pulled it out and stabbed it in again with such force that he had to use both his hands and his whole weight to haul it back out.

  He winked at me.

  ‘Any time, Homer,’ he said. ‘Y’know where I’ll be.’

  Later in the day I think I must have fallen into a deep sleep. Certainly, I remember being awakened by a heavy shower of rain. I was wet, lightning was flickering in the sky. I heard long deep rolls of booming, cracking thunder, punctuating the soft sound of spattering on leaves. Before long my clothes were completely saturated. I took them off and tried to wash myself in the rain. When I had finished I covered myself with the blanket I had given him, which was now reeking and filthy. I examined the thick yellow and black bruises on my legs and arms. My ankle was swollen so badly that I thought it must be broken.

  When the rain stopped the sun broke through the clouds. I sat naked in the aviary and allowed the heat to dry me. I think that a few hours must have passed. Next thing I clearly remember is seeing him come out of the house with these long thick canvas bags which he deposited in the middle of the garden, just beside a clump of dead hydrangeas, their crisp, brown, brittle flowers like rotten blasted globes. Then he went back inside, emerging a few moments later with a stack of bamboo poles. He emptied out the bags and placed the poles in a circle on the ground.

  It took me some time to realise that he was putting up the wigwam. That’s right, love, that old wigwam we got you in London when you were six or eight, somehow he had found it. I asked myself how he could possibly have done that. Even I would not have known where the wigwam was. Clearly he had been searching all over the house. I watched him walk around the laid-out poles, inclining his head and making shapes with his hands and muttering to himself as he began to assemble them. All the time he worked, he ignored me completely, just whistled and sang at the top of his voice.

  Ah goodbye Mursheen Durcan,

  For I’m sick to death of working’.

  No more I’ll dig the praties.

  I will leave me native home.

  Now as sure as me name is Barney

  I’ll be off to Californee,

  Where instead of diggin’ praties

  I’ll be shaggin’ Sharon Stone!

  He must have sung it twenty times. And every single time he would get to the last line – he would screech it out in a horrible exaggerated Kerry accent, which he clearly thought was hilarious.

  ‘I’ll be shaggin’ Sharon Stone!’

  I did not like the way he hammered in the tent-pegs. The ground was sopping wet by then, there was no need to hit them so hard. I remember thinking, he’s trying to get at me, look at him, whomping into them with the lump hammer like he’s trying to win some prize at a funfair. Before long he had the poles up in a perfect cone. He went back into the house and got the stepladder from the boxroom so that he could climb up and drop the canvas covering with the dancing Indians and running buffaloes over the apex. He tied the guy-ropes to the pegs. He gave the pegs another good dramatic bashing with the hammer.

  When the wigwam was done he stood back and lit a cigarette, every inch the satisfied artist just finished his masterpiece. He peered up and down at it for a while, cackling gleefully every now and again, for absolutely no reason that I could see. I turned away from him and began to put my still damp clothes back on. I heard a wolf-whistle and a slow hand-clap. By the time I had finished dressing he had gone back into the house. I could hear more loud hammering sounds, coming, I thought, from the kitchen. As if to confirm this, the back door suddenly opened and pieces of a wooden kitchen chair were flung out into the garden.

  A few minutes later I noticed thick grey smoke coming from the chimney. I knew there was no coal. The fucker was breaking up the furniture and burning it.

  I think that I waited for about half an hour and then I went to get the key from my trouser pocket. It was not there. I stood up and searched all my pockets but could not find it. I scanned the floor, but there was no sign of the key. I began to ask myself was I losing my mind. I walked slowly around the perimeter of the cage, my eyes fixed on the grass, wondering if it was somehow possible that I had dropped it outside, even though I knew all the time I walked, my fingers clutching the bars, the small muscles of my eyes straining to focus, that of course this was not possible. I began to look through my trouser pockets again. Just then I heard another shrill wolf-whistle from the house. When I looked up, I saw him standing in the window of your bedroom and waving the key in the air.

  ‘Shouldna gone to sleep, Homer,’ he called.

  I turned away from him and sat down.

  It was the middle of the afternoon. The heat seemed to be pounding into the garden. The sunlight was bright, it was as though everything was bathed in a gorgeous simmering lacquer, I remember faint steam rising up from the still-damp grass. As time passed the temperature seemed to rise even higher. I climbed up on the perch, grabbed on to the roof bars and tried somehow to fix the blanket into them in order to block out the worst of the sun. But no matter what way I did this, the blanket kept falling down a few minutes later. The effort of climbing back up to try again quickly became too much, and from then on I just had to lie there baking in the dazzle, my forearms covering my eyes, my teeth gritted to block out the pain in my ankle. My stomach pulsated with hunger.

  Time passed. Before long my mind began to race into panic again and I tried to stop it, to find something – anything – on which to focus.

  Common Irish birds. Ardea cinerea, the grey heron. Sturnus vulgaris, the starling. Anas platyrhynchos, the mallard duck. Corvus Monedula, the jackdaw. Phasianus colchicus, the pheasant. Gallinula chloropus, the moorhen. Columba palumbus, the woodpigeon. Pica Pica, the magpie. Accipiter nisus.

  The sparrowhawk.

  Perhaps a couple of hours later he came down the garden with a greasy pint glass of water, which he handed in through the bars to me. Maeve, I would love to be able to tell you that I flung it in his sneering face but I did not. I took it and drank it half down in a few swallows.

  ‘I’m after pissin’ into that, by the way,’ he said.

  I glared at him.

  ‘Jazus, look at the face on it. Yeh’d turn milk sour, Homer. Would y’relax, I’m only messin with yeh. I didn’t.’

  I drank more. He looked up at the sky, wrinkled his nose, shaded his eyes.

  ‘Hot enough to melt snot this weather, isn’t it? Got a grand summer in the end.’

  I turned away and stared at the back wall.

  ‘D’y’know any jokes, Homer?’

  I drank more water.

  ‘What do you call a Northsider in a suit, Homer?’

  I finished the glass.

  ‘The defendant,’ he said. ‘The defendant, Homer.’

  It occurred to me then that I might be able to hide the glass in the cage, maybe break it later and somehow use the pieces to hurt him if he came close enough to me.

  ‘And how d’y’know when a Northside mott has an orgasm, Homer?’

  I lay down on the floor, still refusing to look at him.

  ‘She drops her chips on the bus-shelter floor, Homer.’

  He laughed.

  ‘But you wouldn’t know anythin’ about Northside motts, would yeh, Homer?’

  I heard the flare of a match and the sound of him exhaling a lungful.

  ‘No, funny y’sayin’ that actually Homer. Because neither would I, t’tell yeh the God’s honest truth.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘So anyways, Homer, Paula Yates is at home one day and there’s this knock on the door. When she opens it, who’s outside,
only the drug squad. This big copper says, “Howarya Paula, we’re here lookin’ for magic mushrooms” And Paula goes, “Well yiz’ll have to come back later, lads, cos she’s not home from fuckin’ school yet.”’

  I said nothing.

  He walked around the aviary and stood looking down at me, all the time softly whistling through his teeth. I noticed his small, precious hands, the fingernails dirty but the wrists peculiarly slender. After a moment he trudged down through the hollow of the stream, shinned up the back wall, peered over for a while. Quickly I slid the glass across the floor towards the piled-up blanket. He dropped into the ditch again and clambered out, sniffing at the air like a dog. He whipped out the hunting knife and began cutting into the bark of that old ash down by the wall, repeated little stabs, deft scrapes. He picked off a few small bits of the bark, slipped one into his mouth, started to chew, then spat it out. He turned sidelong and began chipping at the tree again, cigarette drooping from his lip. With the end of my foot I gently nudged the glass into the blanket, coughing as deeply as I could to cover the sound. Still hacking into the trunk, he peered over at me.

  ‘Well, this is some fuckin, mess we’re in now, isn’t it, Homer? Some mess all the same.’

  ‘That isn’t my name,’ I told him.

  ‘Yeah. This is a mess an’ a half, Homer. Yer right there. Absolutely.’

  He took a long drag on his cigarette and stared at me. He spat at the ground a few times in quick succession. The way he was spitting, it looked like he was trying to hit one particular blade of grass. He must have done this for a minute or two, a large, snuffling spit every few seconds. Finally the effort seemed to bore him. With his thumb and middle finger he flicked his cigarette end in my direction but it bounced off one of the bars.

  ‘Y’know, it’s a pity y’didn’t laugh at me jokes, Homer. Because I made up me mind, up in the house there, sure, I’ll give auld Homer one chance, I’ll go on down and tell the poor auld miserable steamer a few good gags. And if he laughs even once I’ll let him out.’

  He shrugged. ‘But y’didn’t laugh, Homer.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’