The Woodcutter and his Family

by Frank McGuinness

  There are times that individual knows exactly the way to my heart. Had I somehow, somewhere, let slip that this artifice, this miracle of French engineering, this most elegant masterpiece, I have long adored it as an object of brilliant genius? Ask me what it is I most covet in the great city of Paris. It is not the prized tapestries of the Virgin and the Unicorn in the Musée de Cluny, although as a child I did see a unicorn in a field – where was it? Normandy, a little village called Boisny – but on investigation it proved to be nothing more than a pedlar’s goat, milked near to extinction to sate his permanent thirst and offered to us to buy for the price of a bottle of wine and a plate of venison stew? We declined the offer, my parents did, despite the protestation of Archie and myself. He put me in here, in this hotel, my brother. Why? Perhaps in revenge that I informed him his precious unicorn was nothing more than a shitty farmyard beast.

  No, not the Cluny and all its treasures, these I would decline, as I would the grave of Napoleon, and all the silks and laces of the ladies wandering serenely through the Sundays of the racecourse at Longchamp, nervous as newborn fillies, highly strung like my good self, in most urgent need of minding. I would reject the delicate motorcars that could be most severely crushed by collision with their own like or swerving suddenly to miss a pack of cackling geese sauntering down a country road in the Auvergne, never feeling such speed or causing such mayhem, bloodied as the bodies, headless in the Vendée, priests, nuns, bishops, chopped to little pieces fed to fatten the pigs, the goats, the unicorns of the district.

  Then what about Chardin, painter of the ordinary, rendering it sublime? Look at the boy building a tower of playing cards; one feel, one breath, it falls apart, as he and all his works will when age touches him? None of these has my heart, my soul. I declare allegiance only to the Eiffel Tower.

  Why? Because I firmly maintain that in another life I built it. This feat is all the more remarkable when you consider that now, as in my past, I suffered most painfully from fear of heights. A robust dashing young peasant fellow as I was then, I had made my way – from Boisny again – to stake my claim and gain a fortune in Paris. My mother’s tears blessed me as I left our hovel, and she cried out in warning after me, remember you can barely stand on a chair without fainting, you take after my side of the family, do not forget you are terrified–

  I blocked out what she specified my terror was, for if truth be told, everything was foreign and frightening to me in this great city, where I found employment in the construction of Monsieur Eiffel’s great work. It must have been the life for me, certainly it removed all traces of vertigo, for I lasted in the job and I have not the slightest recollections of panic as I ascended into the sky, erecting this most beautiful of structures, sure of my footing to the extent that I could watch workers tumble to their death and not blink an eyelid nor feel the slightest tremor of alarm, but instead blessed them and wished their souls to heaven.

  So much of my life in that time, it is dark as night to me and I do not like to probe its mysteries too deeply, since I have trouble enough with my own sanity as things now stand, but I know why I experience such affection for the tower and the man who entrusted me when I was a young boy to construct it, taking from me the paralysing sense I would never climb as high as I might have dreamt I could.

  Then I died and turned into a girl, my career as a labourer was over. I told no one about my secret life, although I think my father guessed what kind of workman I had been. Why else would he tell me filthy songs and stories strong enough to churn my stomach? Why else would he give me his taste for kidneys or tripe and onions? Why else would he confess in drink, for my ears only to hear, the way his father forced his mother to do her duty, when she could barely talk after childbirth, let alone walk? Why else would he tell me his father loved to suckle his wife’s breasts, stroking her arse, calling her Mammy? Why else would he teach me the sacred oaths, to keep always under my breath, that a man could call a woman but never in her hearing, unless he wished permanent banishment from her bed? Why else but that he, and he alone, saw the shadow of the cock between my legs and cared for me as the son my brother failed to be?

  Why did I start calling those terrible names at Mama and keep on repeating them, turning every inch of her pale with shock, as she well realised who it was could alone teach me them to punish her as he did when they fucked? Did the young man carrying the ladder hoping we’d climb the Eiffel Tower, did he have – could he have any notion of this? I’d say not, but who knows?

  All and sundry were staring at us, him, me and the ladder sauntering through Paris, the three of us. I might have forgotten what our purpose was, had he not asked me in his usual manner of wanting to know more on the subject of my father, what was Papa’s opinion, did I know, of the Tower – marvel or monstrosity? This could not be allowed to pass without a bit of sport to entertain myself. I told him that while I had no knowledge about my father in this respect, my mother had expressed her opinion in no uncertain terms. It would be fair to say this did not spark a rush of interest. Still, I let him in on the fact that she found it a bit of an eyesore, and not a patch on what she’d seen as a girl in Connaught, or more specifically Connemara. He did not have the good grace to wonder what that might be, so I had to enlighten him it was not an architectural nor mathematical extravagance, but a monument, another kind of monument to the millions who lost their lives starving in the Irish Famine. And it consisted only of skulls, heaps and heaps and heaps of skulls reaching up into the sky, polished white by the rain and sleet and snow of Galway winters than which there never were damper nor hasher, as if these dead took their revenge through inflicting this most savage climate.

  He believed me. Papa, he did. Would that not leave you laughing your arse out? Would that not have you splitting your sides and spitting tobacco? Would that not drive you to drink and put a giddy-on to your gallop? At the news of this, would you not notice the earth spinning and the moon colliding? Would you credit that was the end of the world, for I never set eyes on him or the ladder or the Eiffel Tower again? I must have somehow shamed him and his breed, his lock, stock and barrel, his bones, his bible, the faith of his fathers, that did next to nothing to remedy the suffering Irish a century ago, and he knew it. Hadn’t I behaved like my mother’s daughter, and he left me for it. And when I informed her of this, did she thank me for my loyalty? Did she pity me for my loss? When I told her I had proved myself odd as Aunt Gertie with her arse out the window so no man would marry me and I’d be marooned alone, did she comfort me with sweet assurances I was a beautiful girl that fellows would die for and that children would flow from me?

  If she did, I could not hear her. Instead I saw the look she exchanged with my brother, and to my grief, I knew she hates me, aye, this woman hates me, and for why? Because I was born.

  Forgive me, Mama – do. Come and visit me. Why does she not? Was it because I called her names? I will not do that again. I promise. I keep my promise, as I was taught to do. I put away my toys. I chew my food. I am an exceptionally obedient child. A very, very well behaved girl. And my fiancé, he used tell me, he used to be my fiancé, I am beautiful. All dancers are. All dancers are cracked. A bit cracked. Like an egg.

  I remember eggs. For years, she would make me eat one. Boiling it in scalding water. Cracking open its gentle shell, then leaving it to stand, white and naked. The sharpest knife in our house cuts it in pieces and she shovels it – she always says that – shovels it – into my cup where butter waits to be melted into the beautiful smell. Then she fetches my favourite spoon – the littlest one with a man crossed-armed at its top, an apostle she calls him – and feeds me, making sure I swallow every mouthful. And as I break my fast, she tells me the names of Galway, the Claddagh and Taylor’s Hill, Nun’s Island and Eyre Square, towns with lovely sounds like Spiddal and Oughterard, Moycullen and Rahoon, which is when she always stops, repeating Rahoon, Rahoon, Rahoon, and some days she cries.

  When I was old enough to notice her tears, I ask
ed her why, one day. Because at this minute, she told me straight, I would like to go home, because I am tired in my bones, tired of your father and all he’s made me do, though Christ knows I was willing to be out of and far away from that nest of vipers, Ireland, but he sometimes forgets how much I sacrificed to do his bidding. I left behind my family, my faith, my home town, my heart that is breaking to see again where I belong, the girls all dark and Spanish, the black-haired fellows, beautiful, to take your breath away and put it back again, their tongues in your mouth, tasting your tonsils, the shower of them, good for only one thing, thanks be to Christ and his crucified mother – didn’t she suffer what he suffered? For they are the best at it above all men from other nations or cities of the earth. Well, so they like to tell you, and my arse is parsley. Eat up your eggs, it’s Easter Day, finish it for luck. I’ve sourced some lamb, and for your father I will roast it to perfection.

  She did so, but always ran herself down as a cook. Whatever else he sees in me, she would ever tell strangers, it’s not because I am a dab hand with the grub. No, she fed us as best she could, and I would not fault her food, were she not in the business of trying to poison me. My father tried to talk me out of what he called – what was it? Bad thoughts? No, nor mad either, but what he described as dreams, mad dreams, nightmares that came from nowhere and I must not believe in them, for they would take me from them, carry me away, and I might not come back from where they led me.

  She would simply not tolerate such nonsense, as she called it, from me no more than she would allow anything be wasted that could be put in your mouth and swallowed. But I will grow fat, I protested. What – fat as me? she snarled. I would not give her the satisfaction of rising to her bait. Instead I declared that I was in on her plan to kill me. How will I do that? she demanded. You will eat me alive, I told her, you will dine on my flesh, and you will serve it to my father and my brother. It will turn my father into a woman, for you will only serve him my breast and a slice of my anus. He will relish the smell of it and devour it, not noticing, in his delight, his knob is no more. You will stuff into Archie’s mouth my elbow, my eyes – and here’s what’s best of all, that’s when he will at long last start seeing you for what you are, Mama, a cannibal from Connemara, where Father says they eat their young out of starvation and where you say you picked up the habit of disembowelling.

  I don’t observe you too deficient in bodily parts, she retorted, and that is when I took that knife – the sharpest in the house – and heard her scream I was going to stab her.

  Not a bit of it. I simply asked my father and my brother if they would like to shave me between my legs and make cufflinks or a tiepin out of my silver down? Was it silver or gold? Was it a strange alloy of both? Do you know I can’t tell you, for it has been years now since I probed in that secret place where unborn babies lie unhatched waiting for the greatest of the gods to visit and ravish me in the shape of some bull or bird or other, depending on his mood.

  Had I a choice, which would I prefer? A bull, when I feel my mother hold sway within me, and my blood has all the hunger of the men of Connaught, longing to be satisfied up their arses by eleven inches of ivory stolen from a temple on the Nile dedicated to the goddess Isis so as to satisfy the lust of Queen Victoria, the harlot. A bird, when I feel my father caress me with his wing, feathered, his down the soft roughness of Donegal tweed, and I would let him ravish me if only to be assured he can take the form of a god, for they must not be judged by the rules of human contact.

  He must not be judged, my father. He must be eternally extolled, my father. Who is it I see bestride the colossus of my cunt but my father? Where dragons lurch breathing my mother’s fire, who is my protector but my father? Where thieves lie in wait to ambush and divest me of my armour, who is my champion, only my father? If the skies were to open and great Zeus himself threaten to burn me to a cinder, who will be my shield? Yes, my father. When my brother drinks himself into sour stupor, who burns with righteous anger at his son’s strangeness? My father, my father. Who reads to me arcane secrets buried in the earth’s frozen wastes? My father. Who will take my hand and lead me from this exile back to where my chosen people long for me, surely? It must be my father. You cannot lie there, spent, dead to the world, waiting only for death, in that lonely bed, for that is what I do, father. Get up, get up and see your daughter, my father. See yourself in her and save the two of us. Here I’ll place a knife – the sharpest in our house – place it in your hand. What will you do with it?

  It is Easter Day, and he carved the lamb. Our neighbours eat goose, fatty, smelly goose, laying eggs on their table, eggs for luck, if you were to believe their lies, and we never do. Though it is sweetly herbed and cooked as we all like it, the lamb sheds its blood beneath my father’s knife. Red trickles on our plates, and we would lick them clean, loving blood, still we are not savage but civilised beings who know what to do at table, and so we use white bread to lap the liquid, consecrated offering, who could it be possibly grows annoyed at this? Perhaps it is myself. I eat a morsel and wash it down with a mouthful of wine. Good wine. My father’s choice, an excellent vintage. He toasts my mother, my brother, myself. I down another bite. I swallow the staff of life. My mother compliments me on my appetite.

  I let this pass without looking at her, without speaking back, without touching her foul skin, tasting her fetid breath, for I have, as they say, other fish to fry since I now know what is happening inside my belly. The lamb is growing back into its living shape. I can feel it sniff my internal organs – heart and spleen, kidneys and lungs – rejecting, mercifully, to dine on my body, but I know it needs water, so I quench its thirst with water, loads of water, a basin full, a lough full if necessary.

  Was there too much salt on the beast? She’ll drink the city dry, my mother notices. At last I smile, and she is relieved I am not, as she now says so often, having one on my turns. I let her lose her panic and then I say, May I ask if we have in the kitchen any grass? I would like to eat some grass. Why? my brother asks. Why not? my mother answers, how long has she been waiting to spring that surprise? Isn’t it only right and fitting that she should look for hay – no, maybe she should be more demanding and insist on the flowers of the fields, because there we can oblige her.

  She plucks lilies from their vase. A cup of primroses is poured in front of me. I am only sorry, she laments, that our bill of fare cannot stretch to more exotic blooms, but there it is, the time of year defeats us, so I trust she will forgive us, little Miss Bo Peep here, and the herd of sheep who, if I may hazard a guess and I think I will be correct since I am getting wise to her little ways, the flock that now feeds inside her – am I right? Of course I am. They are hungry, they want grass, the green grass of Erin, you could sing that if you put a tune to it, and Jesus, am I sick to the tonsils of listening to your refrains. Will they never cease? Will you ever give it a rest? If you confound me for the delight of doing so, has it not now dawned on you I am up to each and every one of your devices and I fall for none of them? Has that not at last hit you?

  The chair I was sitting on was sturdy. I could feel it bear my weight, and it was as if its wood became part of what most turned my stomach against myself and this woman who bore me. Its legs, its arms – silent, static. I was waiting for them to do something, do anything. They did not disappoint me, for the next thing was they had jerked me – hurled me perhaps more correctly – to my feet with such force I nearly felt my head beating against the wall opposite, and I let out an almighty roar that could wake the dead if I or they were so inclined to believe in resurrections, the day that was, as I said, in it.

  On my feet I stopped swaying before my brother reached me, and that damned unmannerly chair, that wonderful chair, what did it do next but leap from the floor straight into my arms. Whatever force propelled it must have been powered by fire, for I could sense it scorching me, burning a hole through me, and it was absolutely necessary that I by some superhuman effort – it now weighed more than my brot
her – toss it away from me in whatever direction it decided to fly. Was it really any surprise it should find my mother’s face? Should any have been shocked that the chair screamed, You have long had this coming? For your arse, sitting on top of me, smelling as it does of rancid lard, for all your cruelty, for your neglect, for your hatred, fuck you. Do you not deserve this magic when the furniture, the very chairs in your house, would throttle you, if they had a chance? Now, given it, they will teach you a lesson you will never forget, Mama, never, never ever.

  No, I won’t, that’s all she said, nor will you, she added, and my brother took me away from the table, in case it too sided with me against this terrible woman.

  Commit her, I heard her tell my father, have her committed, or commit me, she asked.

  And still he said nothing.

  For a man so versed in the wisdom of all words, a mind so fashioned according to all the most elaborate and illuminating schemes of things – he was more than the author, he was the book itself that passes understanding, and only he and I knew such things – my father was my father was my father, I expect. In this instance he could be no more than my father. So what was done had to be done, and, as they say in Ballyhaunis, remove her immediately from the field of play. I have never been to Ballyhaunis, but I was removed. Bag, baggage and ladder to this spot where you find me, and my fiancé did not come to save me.

  If he did, I wonder would he notice the old woman who sometimes sits in the same room as I do? Would he find out who she might be? It is not my mother – I’d recognise her. Far gone I may be, but not that far gone. She smokes incessantly, and her voice is harsh. I sometimes have great difficulty deciphering what she says. Are you Irish? That was one of her first questions. I am when I’m not, and I’m not when I am, I answered, hoping this riddle would put a stop to that one’s gallop. I cannot fathom you at all there, she said, but I think I know what you’re up to, talking in such fashion. Is this a way of making strange with me?