The Dark

by John McGahern

  “I love you, I love you, oh my love, I love you to the end of the world, my love.”

  The pulsing dies away, a last gentle fluttering, and I can lie quiet. The day of the room returns, red shelves with the books and the black wooden crucifix, the torn piece of newspaper on the pillow. Everything is dead as dirt, it is as easy to turn over. I’d committed five sins since morning.

  The first time it had only been a matter of pressing, just time to get on the sock before it spilled out into the sheets, the second was easy too, but after that it was resort to the imagination: Mary Moran’s thighs working against the saddle of the bicycle as she came round by Kelly’s of the Big Park with a can of milk, the whiteness and hairs of Mrs. Murphy’s legs above the canvas shoes in summer, and silk and all sorts of lace. Nylons from Cassidy’s stretched on round thighs in the Independent and REMOVE SUPERFLUOUS HAIR, it had to be concentrate and use imagination then.

  Five sins already today, filthiness spilling five times, but did it matter, the first sin was as damning as a hundred and one, but five sins a day made thirty-five in a week, they’d not be easy to confess.

  Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It’s a month since my last Confession. I committed one hundred and forty impure actions with myself.

  A shudder started at what the priest would say.

  “One hundred and forty impure actions with yourself, my child?”

  Flushed cheeks was all that was left to show what I had done, and the sock. Pull it off, the wool was wet, but it’d dry. Only for the discovery once of the sock’s uses the sheet would stain grey and stiff as with starch and Mahoney might notice.

  The clock beat on the lowest of the shelves, twenty past three. A great clattering army of stares were black on the yew tree outside the window, and it was time to get up and dress and go downstairs.

  “No care for your shoes. Wear away. And this old fool can sit on his arse all day and fix them, Ο God, Ο God,” I could hear as I came down.

  He was mending boots, the old brown apron over his lap, Joan in attendance, and the hours I stood there in the same way as she stood, the solid misery and boredom of it.

  “It was sprigs I wanted; not tacks, you fool. The stupidity of this house,” and the one thing worth waiting for was to see the hammer come down on his thumb and watch him dance and suck.

  The boots were bargain boots from the Autumn Sale in Curleys, always a size too large in case our feet would grow. The strips of bicycle tyre across the sole couldn’t keep them from wearing for very long, and then it was wear them down to the uppers rather than have to listen to his nagging. At night they’d have to be hidden, but if he was suspicious he’d hunt them out, the rack of lying up in bed listening to him hunting for the boots downstairs.

  “Anything but tell. Wear them away and let the old fool pay. Money comes down in a shower of rain,” was the tune, and joy to fling them away in April and go barefoot on the grass, Bruen’s paddocks with a can for mushrooms, and into the whole of summer to October.

  “So you managed to get up, did you? Miracles will never cease.”

  “I’m alright. I’ll go to school Monday.”

  “And get a relapse and more doctors?”

  “I’m alright.”

  “Everyone’s all right and this old fool has nothing to do but fix!”

  I could do little but get books and bury myself in them at the fire, he’d resent that, but he couldn’t do much more.

  A Memoriam card slipped out of the first book. A black tassel hung from its centre, miniature of her wedding photo glued to the cardboard. Her small face was beautiful, the mass of chestnut hair. The white wedding dress drooped away from her throat. She was smiling.

  “Pray for the soul of,” and it took iron effort to keep back the rush of grief.

  Eternal rest grant unto her, Ο Lord.

  And let perpetual light shine upon her.

  And may she rest in peace. Amen.

  On the road as I came with her from town loaded with parcels and the smell of tar in the heat I’d promised her that one day I’d say Mass for her. And all I did for her now was listen to Mahoney’s nagging and carry on private orgies of abuse.

  I’d never be a priest. I was as well to be honest. I’d never be anything. It was certain.

  There was little to do but sit at the fire and stare out at the vacancy of my life at sixteen.

  6

  MUCH OF THE WORST IN THE HOUSE HAD SHIFTED TOWARDS THE others, you had your own room with the red shelves after long agitation, you had school and books, you were a growing man.

  There had only been one heavy beating in the year, a time over a shocking absurdity with cotton wool and a corset far too tight for Joan when her first flow of blood came to her, but it was less possible to stand and watch him beat the others, and much of the fear of him was going. He was frozen out. He had to play patience alone all the time, and as he felt his power go in the house he took fits of brute assertion, carried away by rage and suspicions, and it was only a matter of time till there’d be a last clash.

  He came in crazy to do someone after tripping over a bucket he’d left carelessly behind him in the darkness. He picked “always” out of a conversation over by the sewing-machine. He was crazy with frustration.

  “Did I hear you mention always?” he attacked in a savage voice and the girls turned afraid.

  “Did you know that there’s only one thing you should use always about and that’s God. He always was and always will be, for ever and ever, Amen,” he shouted, half-frothing already with the force of the nonsense rhetoric. “Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “What were you talking about?”

  “We were just saying it’d be always like this,” and they looked so afraid that it roused his suspicion. They’d been talking about him, their hopeless life with no sign of change. It’d be always as this.

  “The weather,” Joan said but it was plain she was lying, and he pounced, gripping her by the shoulder and hair.

  “No. It was not. Out with the truth. Before it’s too late—I’ll not give you a second chance.”

  “We said it’d be always like this, in this house.”

  “This house,” he repeated. “This house. It’ll be always like this. So you’re not satisfied, it’s not grand enough for you, is it not? Not for lying and throwing buckets out of your hand for people to kill themselves across.”

  He swung her by the hair. Her feet left the ground. He started to swing her round by the dark hair, mouthing, “I’ll teach you to lie. Talk about people behind their backs. I’ll teach you to lie,” and she was screaming.

  You’d watched it come to this, hatred rising with every word and move he made, but you’d watched so many times it was little more than habit. Then her heels left the ground and swung, the eyes staring wide with terror out of the face, and the screaming. You couldn’t bear any more this time.

  “Stop it. Stop it, I tell you.”

  Mahoney stopped as if struck, she fell in a heap on the floor, though he did not loose his grip of the hair.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said to stop it, let her go,” and you couldn’t control the trembling. Mahoney let go the hair and she slumped on the floor. With one savage bound and swing he sent you hurtling against the table, you felt the wood go hard into the side, but no pain, it was almost a kind of joy. You came back from the table and able to shout, “Hit,” as he came.

  He did hit, swinging his open palm with his whole strength across the face, and this time you went sideways to crash against the dresser.

  You didn’t even feel the white knob drive into your side. You were mad with strength, coming off the dresser like a reflex.

  “Hit and I’ll kill you,” you said and you knew nothing, there was no fear, you watched the hand come up to hit, your own hands ready and watching the raised hand and the throat. You knew or felt nothing, except once the raised hand moved you’d get him by the throat, you knew you’d be
able, the fingers were ready. No blow could shake you, only release years of stored hatred into that one drive for the throat.

  Mahoney fell back without striking, as if he sensed, mixture of incomprehension and fear on the face. The world was a shattered place.

  “I reared a son that’d lift a hand to his father. A son that’d lift a hand to his father.”

  “Do you see her hair still in your fingers?” Some of the tautness had gone, you wouldn’t attack now, but there was more than enough violence left.

  He had to look. Strands of her black hair were tangled in his fingers. By spreading them he thought the hair would fall loose but it didn’t.

  “I reared a son that’d lift a hand to his father.”

  The sudden strength of madness that had come was now draining rapidly away.

  “Get up, Joan,” you stooped to get her to her feet and help her to the big armchair. The others stood as stones about. They knew that something strange and different had happened in the house.

  “Get her a drink of water,” you asked and one of the girls obeyed as decisively as if you were Mahoney and you didn’t care or know.

  “You’d hit your father?”

  “You wouldn’t swing a pig like that.”

  “I’d swing anyone that way, you too. Pigs. The whole lot of you are pigs, a vicious litter of pigs. It’s the whip I should have given the whole lot of you.”

  “You’ll give no one the whip,” and you were drained and sick of it all.

  “So you’ll stop it. You’ll be the hero now. Come on, try it, hit your father, the pup is stronger than the dog. Come on, my pup, and try it.”

  You hadn’t the strength even if you’d wanted. The whole kitchen and world was sick and despairing. Hatred had drained everything empty.

  “No. I’ll not hit.”

  “But you would hit. You’d lift a hand to your father only for you’re too yellow, that’s all that’s keeping you back. And you’re the one that goes to school too, the makings of the priest. A fine young cuckoo they’ll have then. A priest, no less, and saying Mass and everything,” he laughed.

  The violence had been easier far than the jeering and mockery.

  “You’d more than a year’s luck on your side that you didn’t hit,” Mahoney went on asserting. “I’d have smashed you to pieces, do you hear that, to pieces, you pup, and you’d have tried it, you pup.”

  “You can hit away. Batter and beat away as you always did. No one cares any more.”

  Mahoney kept taunting, moving to the fire, where he dis¬ entangled the hairs out of his fingers, and let them drop into the flames. The silence of some horror came at last when they sizzled there as flesh.

  You went outside into the night, clean with stars, but you didn’t linger; but went by the plot of great rhubarb stalks to the dark lavatory, refuge of many evenings.

  7

  ABOUT THE CONFESSION BOXES THE QUEUES WAITED, DARK IN their corners, the centre of the church the one place lighted, red glow of the lamp high before the tabernacle and the candles in their sockets burning above the gleaming brass of the shrine. Beads rattled, bodies eased their positions. Feet came in down at the door, step after step tolling on the stones as they neared the rails to genuflect before the tabernacle and turn to the boxes in the dark corners, eyes on them till they were recognized in the tabernacle light. All waited for forgiveness, in the listless performance of habit and duty or torturing and turning over their sins and lives, time now to judge themselves and beg, on the final day there would be neither time nor choice.

  Through the sacristy door the priests come, they kneel before the altar, kiss and don the purple stole of their office as they move out to the boxes through the gate in the wooden rails. You can hear your heart beating as the shutter rattles open on the first penitent. In fear and shame you are moving to the death of having to describe the real face of your life to your God in his priest, and to beg forgiveness, and promise, for there is still time.

  There was an even flow that carried you nearer. You were sick and wanted to leave but you couldn’t. You tried to grasp in the memory your sins once more: lies four times, anger three, prayers not said five or six or eight times it hardly mattered. Sins of lust after women every day in your mind for the last three months, orgies of self-abuse, the mind flinched from admitting the exact number of times, two hundred times or more. You were steadily moving in the flow of the queue towards a confession of guilt, and the moment of confessing would be a kind of death.

  Was the flow of time towards the hour of his execution different for the man in the condemned cell in Mountjoy? Vain effort of the cards and wardens to distract him through the night and then on the hour Pierrepoint and his two assistants come and it’s still not real and they are marching to Pierrepoint’s time. There’ll be strict formality and order now.

  “Left, right. Left, right. Turn to the left. Mark time.

  “Are you ready, sir?” Pierrepoint asks and moving to time the assistants handcuff the condemned hands behind.

  “Follow me, sir,” Pierrepoint’s voice in the cell of his life for the last time and they go marching, “Left, right. Left, right. Left, right,” to the scaffold, the priest walking by his side and praying too in time,

  “O, Jesus, who for love of me didst bear thy cross to Calvary, in thy sweet mercy grant to me to suffer and to die with thee, O, Jesus, who for love of me didst bear thy cross to Calvary, in thy sweet mercy grant to me to suffer and to die with thee.”

  Here you’d only to move nearer in the queue and when it got to your turn draw the heavy curtain aside, no scream at the sight of the scaffold, and kneel in the darkness and wait. Though was it any different, were all waitings not the same, was it any different except in the sensitivity, the intensity.

  The slide rattled open. Through the wire grille you saw the sideface inclined towards you.

  “Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” the time had come and though you could hardly force the words out it was still the dreadful moment.

  “How long is it since your last confession?”

  “Three months, father.”

  “Now tell me your sins, my child.”

  “I told lies four times. I was angry three times. Eight or nine times I didn’t say my prayers——”

  “Anything else, my child?”

  It would be so easy to answer, “No, father. Nothing else,” but that would be worse than anything.

  “Yes, father,” you didn’t know how you were able to admit it.

  “Confess then, my child. You needn’t be afraid.”

  “I had impure thoughts and did impure actions.”

  “Were these impure actions with yourself or someone else?”

  “With myself, father.”

  “You deliberately excited yourself?”

  “Yes, father.”

  “Did you cause seed to come?”

  “Yes, father.”

  “How many times?”

  “Sometimes seven or eight times a day and other times not at all, father.”

  “Could you put a number on them?”

  “More than two hundred times.”

  “And the thoughts?”

  “More times than the actions, father,” it was all out now, one pouring river of relief.

  “That is all you have to tell, my child?”

  “That’s all, father.”

  “You must fight that sin, it’ll grip you like a habit if you don’t, if you don’t break it now you may never be able to break it. You must come often to confession. Never let yourself stay away more than a month. Come every week if you can. You must pray for grace. You must make up your mind to break that sin once and for all now, tonight. Confession is worthless if you’re not firmly decided on that.”

  “I promise, father.”

  Such relief had come to you, fear and darkness gone, never would you sin again. The pleasures seemed so mean and grimy against the sheer delight of peace, pure as snow in the air.

  �
�For your penance say a rosary before the Blessed Sacrament.”

  The hand was raised in absolution, with almost ecstasy you breathed out the poor words of the Contrition:

  “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee and I detest my sins above every other evil——”

  “God bless you. Say a prayer for me, my child,” and the world was woken by the banging across of the wooden shutter, just wire and wood before you now, the smell of cloves.

  Dazed, you got up, and pulled aside the curtain. The world was unreal. All your life had been gathered into the Confession, it had been lost, it was found. Ο God, how beautiful the world was. The benches, the lamps, the people kneeling there, all washed in wonder, the sheer quiet mystery of their faces. How beautiful the world was, you wanted to say to them, and why did they not dance and smile back at you, sing and praise. Why did the candles in the candle-shrine not flame and dance, why didn’t the benches pound and dance, awkward wood dancing, and could the peoples’ hands not clap time.

  Perhaps it was enough to know it was so and go quietly to an empty bench up the church and kneel and hide your face in trembling hands. There was such joy. You were forgiven, the world given back to you, washed clean as snow. You’d never sin again. The world was too beautiful a place to lose. You willed yourself to say the rosary, wanting new words that never were before. Afterwards, even in the very pitch of the coughing and shuffling, there were remote areas of pure silence to pray and wander in eternally.

  You started with fright when your arm was touched, it was your father, and how in a moment one wave of violent hatred came choking over prayer and silence.

  “You can’t be long more. I’ll wait for you out at the gate,” he leaned close to whisper.