Between Dog and Wolf

by Sokolov, Sasha; Boguslawski, Alexander;

  I go back upstairs before I am compelled to join them. Their energy is magnetic, pulsing throughout the house, fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou. Outside something has changed. Someone has dragged the harp from the music room out onto the lawn, and grown bored of it. It’s sitting slantwise on the grass with all its taut strings intact, and now Conor is not trying to stop Jeffrey from opening the wine. Conor is pouring one of Pat’s seven hundred euro bottles of red wine – the ones they keep locked in the pantry in a special rack on the top shelf – over his hair and face, his lips not even open, and the thrill of that – of the deep red over Conor’s forehead, staining the bleached hair – fires them all, and they are smashing bottles into the shed wall, into each other, onto the expensive paving stones of natural granite, over the lawn feature, over the heads of those misproportioned bronze children on their bronze bench, grinning like lovers, that the O’Brien mammy loves and the O’Brien children hate, that sits on the lawn in mockery of it all. They know, these kids, that a seven hundred euro bottle of wine is worth shit, and up in the hot press Donna is fucking a stranger amid dry-cleaned suits, though she was a virgin until twenty minutes ago, because they all know, suddenly, that none of that matters the way they were told it would. The dog bounds down the stairs, covered in shaving foam, followed by a group of boys who are trying to kick and kick it, and the dog is running through the house looking for an ally. This dog has never bitten, never growled at anything but a cat, and it won’t bite when they corner it and kick it and keep kicking, flattening the shaving foam into the glossy black coat, kicking the teeth that could take a chunk out of them, the eyes that are squeezed shut, kicking until the dull blood mats its fur, he will whimper, and whimper, and wait for it to end while they kick fuck you fuck you fuck you—

  —And the same nurse who wouldn’t believe you when you told her you were giving birth, still thinks she knows better, and tries to make you lie when you tell her you need to squat. They hold you down and peer at the head, which doesn’t look like a head at all, which looks like a crumpled, wizened, purple passion fruit, like an internal organ, and when you say fuck you she tells you to keep your dignity, show respect for your child, for her, and orders the other nurse to hold you firmly and says to make you take the gas, says she is panicking, give her the gas, says she is panicking, which you are not. You are clear now, very clear, and not panicking. Angry, very angry, but not panicking, and you have never once in this labour lost your dignity and you kick away the peering face with small bare feet, small and white like the feet of maidens in old songs, and say fuck you—

  —Oisín can’t try to fight it, not dressed like this. He has given them the right already to throw a punch into his face, kick his flaccid dick, topple him out of the transvestite shoes against the wall where he once fucked Helen from behind, a secluded alley designed for illicit fucking and for kicking guys to a pulp – gays or transvestites or schizophrenic homeless guys – anyone who tells you you’re not who you think you are, that you’re a little bit the same as them actually. Oisín understands. This is their right, and that’s why he finds it impossible, even when he tries, to punch back, or to keep from falling, because that guy is just like Kevin, who might do just the same, and the other one, the one in the T-shirt that has something written on it, has a face like Denny’s.

  Kevin once sent him a video of a kid being raped in an alley like this one. Someone’s cousin being raped in an alley by three sons of three mothers, one after the other. And so he can’t do anything but fall against the wall, because there are only two roles for Oisín, and he would as soon be this freak, the kicked, as a kicker, and suddenly his submission seems like honour, and he takes the kicks until he can’t feel the impact any more, because the body does that after a while, to protect itself from the pain, it shrinks back into itself and waits.

  epilogue

  This is where I lose you, Helen, this is where you leap into a place I cannot understand. This is where you go alone, where you have to speak for yourself, or choose to be silent. I know what happens from your emails, from my grandmother’s phone call after she visited you, but I don’t know the rest, not really. I knew only what you might have felt, what those things might have meant, what your blonde ringlets might have represented—

  —you don’t take the gas because you want to feel it when it happens. You’ve come this far and you want to know it. You want to feel it alone but the lady is screaming push push push, and she takes a scissors with long, curving blades, and says she will have to cut if it doesn’t happen in the next push, says she will do it in the next contraction and you won’t even feel it, the pain is so slight in comparison, and you tell her fuck you and she has given up telling you to keep your dignity and the other one has given up trying to gas you and when you push something happens that no one ever told you happened – no one ever told you that in the final moment what happens is not pain at all, what happens feels like an orgasm of the best, most dignified kind.

  acknowledgments

  Thanks to my editor, Lisa Coen, for her dedicated work on this novel, Daniel Caffrey for the sound advice and uncalled-for labour, and my publisher, Antony Farrell, for his patience.

  Thanks also to Neil Belton and John Hobbs for encouragement at crucial moments.

  Finally, my partner, Seán, for all the stubborn love, steadfast faith, and support in every sense. Also for reading, re-reading and providing invaluable editorial advice on the earliest drafts of this novel.

  First published 2013 by

  THE LILLIPUT PRESS

  62–63 Sitric Road, Arbour Hill,

  Dublin 7, Ireland

  www.lilliputpress.ie

  Copyright © Elske Rahill, 2013

  All characters in this publication are fictitious,

  and any resemblances to real persons,

  living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may

  be reproduced in any form or by any means

  without the prior permission of the publisher.

  A CIP record for this title is available

  from The British Library.

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 84351 615 6

  Print ISBN 978 1 84351 411 4