The Woodcutter and his Family

by Frank McGuinness

  That word stopped all consternation. That subject. Madness. It was used only in the most extreme circumstances. That was the rule. And as a rule, it had proved effective though nowadays it seemed to be spoken at the drop of a hat. Still and all, Papa never rose to the bait. If he might be expected to draw himself to his full height and let rip a volley of facts and figures that could prove where these streaks of lunacy stemmed from that afflicted us, then on this occasion he could not be drawn into open warfare. Best to let things stand, my mother decided – his silence alone exhausted her tonight. Were she to get into a slagging match, her head might explode.

  Not that anyone would notice if it did. This would be her parting shot for the evening, but she was unprepared for my request. I asked because somehow I sensed – don’t ask me why – I would be given whatever I craved, as some way to appease me for enduring my sister’s screams. Can I have a birthday party? I looked at both of them. A birthday party, I repeated, and invite friends? Why are you looking for this? Mama demanded to know, you’ve never insisted before. Because I want to, I told her, but if I cannot have it on the exact day – if that date is not convenient for you, I don’t mind waiting, I can be patient, I spelt out to her, even for a few months – until September, the end of September, and I smiled at Papa. Why then – why wait till then? Because it is the feast day of my favourite saint – my favourite angel. St Michael.

  My mother gave her loud laugh, with all the workings of the world buried in it. Could you be up to him, this fellow? Now it’s the saints and angels he wants to associate with – is that right, Archie? I tell you, she pointed at Papa, you’ve made a fine fist of an atheist out of him. At so tender an age, already he’s in communion with your enemies. Who learned him of feast days and the like? Don’t look at me. I have only been following your strict orders to keep silent on all such matters so their heads are not turned astray with such superstitious nonsense as you have declared I was taught and you were taught at your mother’s knee. Have I not had that lesson hammered into me so hard didn’t I agree my child – my son – would not be baptised at your bidding? Who’s the dictator–

  You have had him christened, he said, don’t deny that; bad enough his mother subjected him as an infant to that ignominy, without her being a liar as well.

  How could I be lying? When did I do it? she asked. Are you saying I arranged for him to get the sacrament behind your back? A midwife can bless a baby in danger of dying, he retorted. So you are now calling me some low class of wet nurse? I’ll pass on that appellation, she demurred, though I admit the language you subject me to hear should not be uttered in a lady’s presence. Better fit for you to be saying your prayers.

  But she got no further, for he thumped the table, shouting, I’ve got you now, you’ve walked into it, you did what I accused you of doing, you had my son–

  Circumcised? I did not, she denied, for I regard that as a vile and cruel act against a tiny little fellow, and look at you, a grown man touching yourself where you shouldn’t, as if I’m going to come with a knife or a nettle to sting the jizz out of you before chopping you clean.

  I could never anticipate what they would find hilarious. It must be something secret shared between only the two of them. But this was one occasion when she had him in fits of laughter. He was holding himself as if his sides would split open. If they did, I imagined what would pour out of them – and for some reason I thought it might be chickens. Not china or chocolate hens but real ones, with feathers and scaly feet and eggs that didn’t break when they landed on our floor. Where did that come from? Something he’d said – something he pictured in his mind’s eye and passed it on to me, one brain leeching into the next, father to son? I never asked him, for I doubt if he’d answer, and he can’t now, lying there, waiting to die, to let go and stop listening, stop speaking, stop gabbling, stop writing. My father is a great writer, but you wouldn’t think it if you’d just recently come across him. It’s tempting to say that now at the quiet end of his days he’s keen to keep his counsel. It’s not true. He’s just tired. Exhausted. Worn to the bone. He always was. It was why he missed my party. Or threatened to.

  There was cake, of course. In the shape of a clock, the hour hand pointing to my age, and the date iced on the centre of the face. This did not please my mother. She had asked for the date to be at the side, month on the right, day on the left. I thought she might relent and let the day go off peacefully. My father told her the fuss she was making over nothing was spoiling the celebration for me. She replied she had paid good money for what she’d specifically ordered, and it was not satisfactory that the bakers had failed to deliver. She had a good mind not to pay. That is how her family always dealt with the best of tradesmen Galway had to offer. By not paying them? Papa teased her, but she was not for stopping this time.

  I think you’ll find that’s more your family’s failing – a bit of an allergy to settling bills, she retaliated. Jesus, if we had sixpence for every time your shower had to make a midnight flit round the streets of dirty Dublin, I’d be sitting dripping in diamonds. Don’t dare upcast, in my direction, we didn’t pull our weight in Galway. My people could face the highest and the lowest in the land knowing we owed nobody as much as a sixpence. You get what you pay for – an old saying and a true one of my grandmother’s. I said what I wanted to them baking this cake, I didn’t get that – in fact, as far as I’m concerned, I got nothing, so that’s what I’ll offer them. Let them sing for their money.

  My father paid for the cake. She didn’t resist. You take the good out of everything, he chided, look at the poor child’s face, shattered. You’ve ruined the day that’s in it.

  All right, she declared, for his sake I’ll cheer up, I’ll welcome his pals, the merry band of men, not one of whose parents would clean their arse with us if opportunity of such misfortune we’d meet should arise. Stop talking like that in front of the boy, he demanded. Why? she asked, hasn’t he heard much worse spewing from your filthy mouth?

  I had.

  It was fortunate so few of my school friends could speak any English, for there were times when some oaths and choice phrases learned from listening to both of them spilt from my lips, each accusing the other of being the source of my foul tongue. Where did your learn that mouthful? I’d be quizzed by either. I was cunning enough to catch Papa out and just tell him what he wanted. When she was in a temper, Mama would accuse me, you have neither your father’s brain nor the brawn of the men on my side of your breeding, what’s to become of you if we don’t leave you money? Not that there’s much chance of that. We have had to scrimp and save to give you this treat, so you’d better enjoy it, she threatened.

  The boys came in their Sunday bests, red bow ties, little suits, socks neatly matching their black polished shoes, myself rigged out like the rest of them. Each shook my hand politely and handed me a small gift – balloons, a few books, a yellow candle for some reason or other, and, I now remember, a spinning top. I already had a smaller one, made from tin, but this was wooden and painted the colours of the Union Jack. Go on, Archie, spin it, my mother told me, and, as I recall, I did, making it whirl in the silence as we watched it rotate and rotate and rotate until it fell lopsided by my feet. Are you not supposed to make a wish on your birthday? Mama asked. What would you wish for, son?

  Could I tell her any of the many things I so wanted to happen? That my sister would disappear and I would again be their only child? That I could learn the piano well enough to please Papa? Sing more beautifully to make Mama cry with pleasure and smile as if her cheeks might crack with happiness? Or be the smartest boy in the class, scoring top marks, and that way some of my schoolmates – if only one of them – might like me? For even here, at my birthday party, swimming with good things and ice cream, none of them really spoke to me. Yes, they were polite, particularly to Mama, courteous and well behaved, but they addressed their questions and answers only to each other, never to me.

  Now I had no cause to complain. I was too
shy to start a conversation with any. If they were ignoring me, it was because they were paying me back in the same coin as I had dealt them. And yet I was surprised my brilliant plan of taking them into our house and letting them enjoy my birthday had so backfired. If I had been lonely in their company up to now, then I would be ten times more so after today. Mama must have noticed how little rapport there existed between me and the others. She suddenly clapped her hands and said it was time for games. This provoked some cheers, not terribly hearty, more like an acknowledgement that this turn of events was to be expected, best get it over with.

  Who will hide and who will seek? Mama decided: Archie and your friend – what’s your name? Federico – Federico then, hide with Archie, she commanded, the rest of you, come with me, outside to the landing and let them find a dark corner to confuse us. She marched the boys out, and Federico gave me a look of more than usual utter contempt.

  – I don’t know where it would be healthy to hide in this pigsty, he declared, but if it should be necessary to squeeze in, please do not touch me.

  – My home is not a pigsty.

  – It smells of you, it stinks of pig, it stinks of sties. I am only being polite, in front of your mother, that I did not vomit in her presence.

  – You are not polite, you are very rude, Federico.

  – Yes, Archie, perhaps I am, perhaps you deserve I should be. What kind of name is Archie, anyhow?

  – It is a family name.

  – Not your father’s name? Is it a Jewish name? Are you Jewish?

  The way Federico said that, it was like a blow in the stomach. He was eyeballing me. I was so taken aback I could not answer. Then I heard my mother calling from outside, wondering if we’d found a hiding place. Not yet, I called back. Well, hurry up, she admonished.

  Federico was climbing under a table. That’s too obvious, I assured him, they’ll find us first thing. That is what I’m hoping they’ll do, he snapped back, get under. I did as he bid, and when the pack entered, I heard myself hissing at him, we aren’t Jewish, none of us.

  – Your Papa does not go to Mass or take the Sacraments?

  – No, he doesn’t.

  – Neither does your Mama?

  – Neither does she.

  – Why not? Do they not believe in good God? Or do they only believe in the Jewish gods?

  His hand went to my trousers and I felt him rapidly unbutton them. Boys were searching all through the bedroom’s presses and wardrobes, some even rolling under the bed. Federico had found the gap in my underwear and with some dexterity squeezed my dickybird tight. Now the gang were turning their attention to the table.

  I could feel my stomach churning as he rapidly left me alone. Do up your buttons – do it quickly, he ordered, and I did so just as they snatched the cloth from the table to reveal us, him innocent as the day is long, cheering their discovery of himself and myself, me burning like the sun, breathless as if I’d run the whole way from school.

  I saw where my mother had perched herself, and where she must have stood since coming back to the room. Right beside the table, hearing everything, saying nothing, daring me to tell her what we had been getting up to in the dark, and I was so overwhelmed with relief Papa was nowhere in evidence, for in ways I believed I had done to him something as wrong as Federico had done to me.

  From that day on, though we said nothing, Mama would use what she learned as a threat. When I upset her, or asked for something that pained her or she did not like to give me permission to do, she would sigh and raise her eyes, saying, should we not ask Papa? She was, I felt, ever allowing me to know this could be the occasion when she might let slip what his son enjoyed doing, playing hide and seek with his friends under a table.

  Even now as he is dying, is she capable of telling him? Do I want her to whisper all the secrets she and I conspired to share? For all his fame, we – his wife, his boy – we kept so much from him. At whose instigation? Her? Me? The two of us?

  I cannot say for sure, and neither can she. Tonight, all these years later, she suddenly returns to that birthday party, remembering the delicious cake – was it chocolate? she asks. I think it was, I lie. And did it have birds flying on it – in icing? she wonders. It may have had, I tell her, I can’t say. She wants to know did we eat chicken or veal? There was only cake, I inform her, and ice cream, buckets of ice cream. She asks what became of them? Those boys who attended the party? Do you ever see any of them? There were so many I doubt if I’d know where they disappeared. I let her understand that none of them was very special to me.

  One of them, a dark haired boy, what was his name? The best-looking, do you remember him? she wonders. Federico, I tell her, yes, I do. What became of him? He is fighting in the army, the Italian army, I say. I hope he is safe, she sighs. He will be, his type always are, I tell her. What type? she wants to know. My father saves me. From his bed he says my mother’s name. I know they are going to speak of my sister, or of dying, and I wish only to escape from either subject, so I excuse myself, saying I need fresh air.

  Is such air to be found in Zurich? It is a city – in fact, the only city – where I find my lungs congest and I have to gasp for breath. Why this should be the case I struggle to discover. The people do not suffer from any lack of friendliness. By and large, they are distant but amiable enough, with splendid Swiss manners. So why then is it such an effort to walk through the streets and not feel as if I will soon expire, panting like a fish longing for salt water? And perhaps the explanation can be found when I remember another oddity – why, no matter where I intend walking, is my destination always the graveyard, where Papa will be lying, sooner rather than later? What wicked motive could be stirring deep in my brain? Am I urging him on his way and do not even realise how much I desire–

  Yes, my desires, always a problem. Never satisfied, never realised, perhaps best not. As a family we have tended not to share our infatuations with the common lot of humanity. In my case this oddness first manifested itself fully when as a small boy in company with Papa, we visited my mother’s mother in Galway. Just the two of us, the menfolk – some quarrel or other, between mother and daughter, there was constant bickering in that quarter, prevented Mama from travelling that time with us back to Ireland to see her family. She would not give them the satisfaction of being first to relent once again and break breath to such a gang of shysters, as she might describe them. But they received us – the swanky, foreign boys all the way from Italy – most kindly, with a comfortable bed to share in my grandmother’s house and jars of sweet, milky tea that I revelled in like the best of all Connaught gallants, devils for the sup of the soft stuff. Those nights were my happiest, ever deep in my father’s arms, no one else to disturb our sleep. And during the days, I spent my time pursuing my first love – the most beautiful swan eyes were ever set on, that was agreed by all.

  My grandmother panicked at my fascination with this creature. She knew too well the strength of such birds. Hadn’t a cousin of her own had his arm broken, a full-grown man, when in a moment of daring-do he ventured too close once to a nest. The swan beat the lining out of him, and though in company she held her tongue, my grandmother was on the side of the feathered fellow. Wasn’t the poor darling only trying to protect its young? Who wouldn’t lift a hefty wing and let fly with it, should such a weapon be in the vicinity of your fist or beak or whatever was appropriate in a fight? The woman then sensed I’d have a connection with this Hercules of the sky, inheriting, through her, an affinity with its ways and means. Best put a rapid stop to that carry on, but she was too late. It turned out the swan adored me, and I took to it.

  What else could I do, so handsome and winning as it was? It walked beside me, like a pet dog. If any dared come near me, it would go most viciously for them, reserving a special savagery for my grandmother. She thought this the funniest thing in the world, complaining to the swan it was a most ungrateful beast, since she and she alone stood up for it when the cousin endured the full brunt of that stren
gth, and he would see it put down if given a gun.

  I know who’s behind it, she whispered, I know who’s hidden inside it, it’s your mother, my most unforgiving daughter, she’s crept within the skin to keep the evil eye on us, and her raging we’re having the time of our lives just to spite her. Well, let her stew. I have no fear of the same lady, and I don’t fear the swan that serves her.

  What did I care if that was the case? As far as I could make out, I was far from Mama’s scheming, no matter what others made of my swan. At night it would turn into my Papa, and we would fly above the bed out the open window, over the great city of Galway and from there over the whole island of Ireland, the swan singing as my father sang beautiful arias I always believed were of his own composing, and he was more than happy to let me think so.

  I have circled round the moon, he would unleash his song, I have given her my heart, and I beg her to accept that humble gift. But Papa, I heard myself asking in my dream, how can you – how can anyone live without a heart? And he had no answer, putting all his strength into this most miraculous flight, his son on his downy back.