by Kevin Barry
Swallowed hard, Fucker, a crab-apple of terror descending and then rising again the length of his throat.
‘We strollin’ back, H?’
‘And what about Jenni – should we do away with Jenni Ching, Fucker?’
‘I wasn’t brought up to mess with no Chinkees, Mr Hartnett.’
‘You’d be as wise not to, child, under normal circumstances. But what I’m hearing about Jenni Ching?’
He shook his head slowly.
‘She’s got plans, ain’t she, Fuck?’
‘Don’t know about that, H.’
‘Do you not? I see.’
Logan stood from the bollard and approached the boy and he placed his hand on the back of the boy’s head and pulled him close. He leaned in, brow to brow. He said:
‘Let me tell you a few things, Fucker. All this?’
A wee swoop with the palm was shaped – a gesture to take in the world as was.
‘All this is going to pass away from you so quickly now, hear me? You’ve been in your glory, Fucker Burke. A set of grapes on you and a few bob put away and I dare say certain females who’ve been deranged enough to put themselves at your disposal. You’ve had your lovely dog, Angelina. And I understand what you did, Fucker. I do. It felt as if your life would never start but in fact it’s been racing past you all the while. But this ain’t for play no more. What are you, eighteen?’
The certainty of what was to come apparent, Fucker’s tone was flat now with resignation.
‘I’m seventeen, Mr H.’
‘Oh that’s a beautiful age to be, Fuck. You think you’re going to live forever … Well, I’m here to tell you that you ain’t.’
Logan made an O with his lips, and he blew a slow, steady whooshing, like the wind through the hollows of a wood, and it was aimed directly at the boy’s face.
The breath lingered as a foul breeze – Fucker smelt the pipe-burn and the Ho Pee on it, and the rot of an old outlaw that he would never be.
Logan said:
‘Look at me, Fucker. Look at me, sweetness. I can’t say that I ain’t had the luck. I’ve been twenty-five years with the Fancy to my name. I’ve been reefed six times and I’m still sucking at the poison air. An accident, do you think?’
He smiled, and the pale blue of his eyes showed the colours of sky and water, refracted.
‘Did you think I was fit to move on from things, Fucker? That I’d go and play a few hands of rummy and dribble my moscato and get fat?’
The boy’s lips greyed in expectation. He felt again the breath of the Long Fella on his face, the cold hand on his throat.
‘Why did you do it, Fucker?’
A mark of the city that it was not fear that flushed the boy’s face now but shame.
‘Mr H, I never meant nothin’ by –’
‘Gave the Gant everything you had, Fucker.’
‘H, please.’
‘I know what you told him, Fucker.’
‘Don’t have to do this, H, please …’
A strange glow came to Fucker: what little of love and intimacy he had known in his life surfaced for a last time and gave succour for the journey ahead.
‘I know because the Gant told me, Fucker.’
The air on Riverside was washed by the Atlantic gusts that came over the estuary and it carried all the dread of its ghosts. The Bohane all the while ferried a drag of gravel and stones and the drag swirled drunkenly deep down – it had the sound of chains being swung.
Logan slid the dirk slowly and let it sit heavily in the boy’s gut. Then he worked it from side to side, a neat and easy movement, and he held the boy, gently, as his head slumped forward, and he whispered to him.
He stepped back, and with a deft wrench removed the dirk, and the vitals flowed as he kept the boy propped still.
He felt an oddness then, Logan, it was a kind of … lightness, and he near enough succumbed to it.
He took a breath down, hard, and held it.
Let his brow lean in to the dying boy’s again and rested it there a moment and asked forgiveness.
He stepped back and the last of Fucker Burke was left to slump where it would – like a useless hand puppet – and he stepped nimbly aside. With a stick from the ground and the blood that had spilt he daubed on the path by the body the word ‘Judas’ – it was written in his big, nervous, childish hand.
He scaled the chainlink fence then and descended a set of thick stone steps cut into the river wall.
Daintily with forefinger and thumb he raised the ankle cuff of his trouser leg and dipped a Croat boot into the water to wash it clean.
Saw a red vibrancy mingle with the tarry brown of bog water and so quickly disappear in the great mass of the river.
36
Macu’s Dilemma
Then it was night-time in the Trace.
She walked the wynds, and she came at length to a small, deserted square, and she sat for a while on the wrought-iron bench. Dead lovers’ names were scratched into the wooden seat back. The growth all about was so fervent, so cloying, so diseased. Fescue grass gone to the black rot, and the cat’s tail that climbed mangily the tenement walls, and the sickly perfume of the clematis that persisted, even yet, and trailed from the rooftops; petals on a grave. Late spring was a rude throbbing as the Bohane creation ascended to the peak of its year, and ever closer to its precipice.
The pulsing of April brought a soreness to her glands.
Sometimes, in the good times, they didn’t even have to speak to know what the other was feeling. A child would have put fear in the town, sure enough, and would have given to the marriage a motive force. But a child never came, and the space was filled by his jealousy.
He would come back to the Beauvista manse in the small, dim hours, and he would say:
Were you out at all?
Did you see anyone?
What have you been doing?
What did you do today?
Where did you go today?
Who did you see today, Macu?
Who did you see today?
Were you out at all?
Where did you go?
Who did you see today, Macu?
It had made a child of him. He began to lock her in. She said that she would leave him if he turned those locks on her again, and he stopped for a while, and it drove him all the madder to stop, and he could no longer sleep at night.
He sat in the dark and watched over her.
Were you below in the town, Macu?
Who did you see today, girl?
He had the Fancy boys follow her. She would walk the New Town, at the hour of the evening paseo, and catch a sconce of Fucker Burke and Angelina acting blithe in a sideway – and Fucker wasn’t born to blithe – or Wolfie Stanners at a discreet distance behind, with his thyroidal eyes bulging.
She said:
This is not a life for me, Logan.
He dreamed up new ways of testing her. There was nothing he could do any more that would surprise her. Only the persistence of her love for him was a surprise to her.
Was she strong enough now to stay lost to him?
37
Speak a Dream
Midnight.
The Ho Pee Ching Oh-Kay Koffee Shoppe.
An upstairs salon.
And Logan Hartnett lay on the settle, and he placed softly the tips of his fingers on the back of Jenni Ching’s hand. The girl put the flame to the pipe for him. He drew deeply. She placed a dampened cloth on his brow.
Jenni said:
‘So you’d been doin’ her yet, y’had? Till she went an’ legged it on ya, like?’
‘With a long marriage, Jenni, one needs to make the effort.’
‘Fair dues t’ya, H. Guts o’ thirty year on, like, an’ still fleadhin’ the same aul’ bint … Not get samey?’
Logan squinted through the smoke and tightened his lips. Nobody else but Girly could talk to him like this. Hot night rippled in the salon’s dense air. A slow moment passed – it had somehow a memorial
taste. He sighed for Fucker. He slipped a little deeper into his dream, and he felt the seep of the Bohane lost-time, and he softened.
‘Know how the Fancy got started, Jenni?’
Eyes-to-heaven from the Chinkee gal.
‘Here he goes,’ she said. ‘D’ya remember when and d’ya remember how – stall a halt, ’bino, till I goes an’ fetches me knittin’.’
‘Was on account of the gee-gees, going way back,’ he said. ‘When we had the horses running.’
She gave in to him.
‘Fancy was the lads what did the follyin’ o’ the hoss business, check?’
‘The only money in this town was horse money, Jenni. And that’s a fact, girl. In the Back Trace, out on the stoops? The boys would trade horse-talk all day. If we knew anything at all out here, we knew our horses. We had the best horses, the best track, best jockeys …’
‘Spooky, jockeys,’ said Jenni, ‘when you see ’em in the ol’ pix, like? Weird eyes.’
‘Fancy opened out from the horse business. Went into herb and dream and hoors.’
Jenni lit the flame again.
‘Always nice to hear about the olden days, H.’
He drew deep and held it a count against the nausea and then slowly exhaled. He ascended. She leaned in and kissed him. The kiss was slow and deep and not quickly to be recovered from.
‘The fuck is that comin’ from, Jenni?’
‘Jus’ a taste for ya, ’bino.’
‘Don’t ever do that again.’
‘Won’t so.’
‘You’d have the melt out on a fucking statue,’ he said. ‘How’ll the Gant get over you at all?’
A freeze ran through her sure enough.
‘Fuck y’sayin’ to me?’
‘He’ll get lonesome, girl. These long old spring evenings …’
Gathered herself quickly.
‘Am I lookin’ impressed, H?’
‘Oh I don’t blame you, girl. You need to keep the eye out on all sides in a small town. I’d almost have been disappointed if you hadn’t.’
Jenni’s breath came evenly. She looked hard at him. She said:
‘I didn’t give him nothin’ about the Fancy’s dealings.’
‘I know that, Jenni. He told me.’
For a moment she had no comeback, and looked scared. But she never let go the eye-lock. She said:
‘I ain’t no gommie lackeen, Logan.’
‘No, Jenni,’ he said. ‘If there’s one thing you ain’t it’s no gommie lackeen.’
38
Baba-love
Let it be said that the Hartnett magic still worked a drag across the city. Their reach yet was sinuous. It crabbed out across the rooftops, and each action they played in due course begot its reaction, and sure enough, before the month of April was done, there was an outbreak of Sweet Baba Jay mania on the Northside Rises.
In defeat, of course, they very often turned up there to religion. An SBJ revival needed no more than a little prompting. And within days of the faked stigmata appearing on the palms of the Cusack girl, there were holler-meetings being staged in the shebeen basements of the flatblocks. The meetings were writhing with fainters, swooners, hot-foot shriekers. There was a quare amount of roaring going on. One-time Norrie aggravators packed away the tyre-chains and the dirk-belts and the sweat was dripping off them as they swayed in the shebeens and roared tearful thanks to His Indescribable Sweetness. Great tremblings took hold of these boys and their knees buckled and oftentimes gave way altogether as Word was delivered from Messengers Unseen. Next thing, miracle gave onto miracle – as is the way – and there were reports that an SBJ icon atop the fountain outside Croppy Boy Heights had shed tears of blood. Sure the same wee stigmatic girl-chil’ of the Cusacks saw it with her own fervent eyes. And thus a congregation was on its knees around the icon, night and day, praying for more signs. The Norries were hugging each other and whispering blessings on the bleak avenues. It became a season of midnight visitations. In no time at all, the Sweet Baba Jay was showing up all over. Was said His Likeness had smiled down from the gable wall of an avenue grogpit. Was said His Likeness had appeared in the shape of a cloud over Louis MacNiece Towers. Was said His Likeness had formed, and shimmered, though briefly, in a puddle by the top of the 98 Steps. Norries were waking in the night and sitting bolt upright in their cots and crying out the Word of Love. Norrie sound systems had packed away their dub plates and their Trojan 45s and were playing for the shebeen gatherings a sacramental music of harpsong and hymnal chant. Women of the Northside were sporting a more modest cleavage line. They walked primly their Patterns of Devotion in the sweltering spring afternoons. They muttered half-remembered novenas as they paraded. Many found that their hair had taken on a fresh shine. There was great colour in everybody’s cheeks. Nobody went downtown much. They prayed for and pitied the doomed sinners down there. They forgave their recent losses. They forgave their fallen and their dead …
See the dream-fed twist of the ’bino’s crooked smile.
… and tiny yellow flags were cut out from great screeds of fabric choo-chooed in specifically for the purpose, and the flags were initialled ‘SBJ’ in an ornate hand soon mastered by lads henceforth to be known as flag-stylers, and the flags were tied onto lengths of rope at measured intervals and were strung from rooftop to rooftop of the flatblocks – dozens of them, then hundreds, then the sky was filled – and the effect was at once festive and pious.
Swearing all but disappeared. Beards were trimmed. Fornication – previously on the Northside an activity as common as sucking air and to be found, at all angles of the clock, on stairwells, in turf-bunkers, behind avenue wind-shelters, generally everywhere, and in broad daylight – was confined now to marital beds, and was soberly practised, missionary-style, and swiftly, wordlessly concluded. It became the habit of the Norrie gentleman to bite the pillow at the end-moment so as not to embarrass the air with expressions of bodily joy.
The yellow flags spun, the yellow flags turned, the yellow flags shimmered.
And though they were tied securely enough to withstand even the harshest assaults of Big Nothin’ hardwind, the flags were found when the wind got up to create a many-voiced cacophony – they rattled and groaned and sang in the wind, and if one listened to the flags for long enough, the effect was mesmeric, haunting, and it became the common understanding this spring that messages were being transmitted by Sweet Baba Jay through the medium of the flags.
Oh indeed.
And there were those on the Northside this particular spring we’re talking about who became acknowledged experts in flag-listening. These were generally older gents who had known a share of life. You would see them crouched on their haunches, there on the avenues, in the hot April afternoons, beneath the flags, listening, and betimes approaching each other to compare notes. Quiet, interested faces on them. Faces full of … Significance. And it became the practice that by teatime each day the listeners (as they were quickly named) would convene in the shebeen basement of a Croppy Boy Heights flatblock and come to agreement about the gist of the day’s message. The message would then be written in block letters a foot tall upon banners that were carried along the Northside avenues, for a period of one hour precisely, by local sluts. The sluts were given the punishment of banner-bearing for their attempted seductions of decent Baba-devoted young Norrie men. At holler-meetings nightly, it was argued that banner-bearing was hardly punishment enough for these Baba-denying harlot bitches, and that their private parts should by force be rendered useless, with the aid of knitting needles and hot knives, but this was controversial. An editorial comment in the Vindicator, while acknowledging and declaring joy at what it called ‘The Miracle of the Flags’ – a souvenir supplement was issued – had quietly suggested that genital mutilation might, at this stage, be a step too far, even by the standards of the Bohane uptown. And so for now the sluts merely marched with their heavy banners, and they wept under the strain of the weight, and upon the banners were such fla
g-whispered messages from the Sweet Baba Jay as:
Grog Is The Devil’s Spit!
Dogs Have Souls Too!
Polacks Can Never Be Clean!
Sweet Baba Jay was telling them which side was buttered, sure enough, and the people of the Northside were eternally grateful for His Direction. Each night, devout Norrie families would line the avenues for the slut parade. They would kneel and babble in tongues and they gave lusty voice to their Baba-love as the banners were carried past. If the sluts were treated cruelly and occasionally bottled as they stumbled along, it was felt that it was no more than those painted-up little trollops deserved. Certain sluts could take it no more, however, and they banded together, and they fled the Northside Rises under cover of dark.
Yes and so it was this springtime we are talking about that near-feral Norrie sluts hit the downtown, and began to roam the Back Trace, and they took up with the bands of wilding girls who had lately come together there in devotion to the killer-bint Ching, and their shrieks of solidarity were heard across the city – the Northside and the Trace united – and most surely these would mark the summer to come.
I could hear them from the back room of the Ancient & Historical Bohane Film Society as I sat late and drank exquisite Portuguese wine direct from the neck of the bottle, and you may trust, as ever, that I made careful notes.
Beyond the shrieks, the river carried as ever from Big Nothin’ its black throbbing.
Oh and heed this, my fiends, my tushies, my gullible children:
There was nothing good coming in off that river.
39
Logan’s Letter to Macu
Macu, I miss you so badly. Especially at night. I lie there half raving without you beside me. It’s as though you’ve been years gone from me. I can’t even hear your voice. I close my eyes and I picture you but I can’t hear you. I tell you, Macu, I feel barely human without you. I can’t be on Beauvista without you. I think about you all the time. I am ashamed of how jealous I’ve been. All I can say is my love for you has maddened me. I see that clearly now I’m alone. I asked the Gant to do his worst. I asked him to test you and I knew he would try. Please don’t blame him, Macu. The game was mine, he saw it only as a chance to win you back. And I pity the man now his lonely years. I would not have had the strength for them. I’m sorry, Macu. And it’s hideous, I know, but my game has proven your faithfulness. I want you back so badly. Remember once when we were young and we walked in the Trace one night and we found a bottle of moscato, perfectly chilled, just waiting for us on a stoop? With nobody anywhere to be seen. Just you and me in the Back Trace, Macu, and we drank the wine. I ask you to forgive me. I know you will need time. You’ll need these months to understand the pain that was in me. But I know your love is there still. If you want me to pull back from the Fancy, I will. Mr Mannion will deliver this – where are you, Macu? I think maybe I sense you in the Trace. I expect no letter in return. All I ask is that you think about the years ahead. Apart we are nothing. If you choose to come back to me and give me life, Macu, you will meet me at the Café Aliados. At 12 midnight. On the night of August Fair.