The Woodcutter and his Family

by Frank McGuinness

  That’s an expression baffles me, I told her, I have not the slightest notion what you mean. Indeed and you do, she declared, wasn’t it often said about you when you were a child, frightened of strangers, crying to be taken from them, happy only in your parents’ arms? Am I right? Is that not what is meant by making strange? If it is, I told her, it’s still new to me, but how would you know what way I conducted myself as an infant?

  That would be telling, she confused me, and isn’t it best not to say a word when you don’t know who’s listening, and what it is they want to hear? She clammed up then and lit her cigarette from the one that was burning between her fingers, stamping it out with her black, flat shoe on the ground. You’ll have to forgive me sitting here keeping you company, puffing the hours away, she admitted, as you’ve noticed I couldn’t be without tobacco. It’s the life of me. An awful habit I know, but don’t we all succumb to it, smoking like chimneys, women like ourselves, light on our feet, up on our toes, dancers, a breed apart?

  Is that what you are? I wanted to know. It’s what I used to be, she replied, until the weight, the aches, the pains, the hump on my back, the rheum in my eyes – they all conspired to still me. Now, if I could put one foot in front of the other, I’d try to convince myself I was stepping out onstage with the Russian imperial ballet, ready to execute the most fastidious of steps, all for the glory of the men who loved me. Tell me, have you ever been so loved?

  I felt such interrogation the height of impertinence and strongly considered passing on giving even the most cursory reply, but there was something about this old doll and the way she used her compact mirror to powder her face, holding it at such an angle that my own reflection slipped into the side of her glass, I felt for some reason honour bound to let her know that yes, I had been loved.

  I suppose you know, I informed her, that beyond these walls there’s a war raging, spreading havoc through all the nations of Europe, blighting this generation and all others that will succeed it? I have a passing knowledge of such matters, she replied, cool as a cucumber stripped of its skin and its seeds, dressed in the proper manner, reeking of cider vinegar – the only way my father would deign to digest such a vegetable. A passing knowledge? I mocked her gently, I compliment your powers of selective hearing, my good lady, since the rest of the continent is rife with rumours of horrors being committed that none can comprehend – why have armies sunk to such brutalities against their fellow humans?

  I know well what’s being done out there, she let me know, how could I not when olive trees are shedding blood from their leaves, the birds of the air abandon their songs, and the silence, that silence, drives me into these four high walls, that I might block my ears to the infinite weeping of those born to die too young, too young, too young like yourself.

  That’s where you’re wrong, I corrected her, I am not dying. I only have your word for this, she replied, I would need more concrete proof. Then are you prepared to hear and believe my deepest secret? I threatened. No, she said, for I have been well warned against you and your powers of lying. Did you not make a mockery of a poor Dublin lad from the wilds of the village of Foxrock, demanding in return for your hand he fetch you all the bricks used to construct the Eiffel Tower? No bricks were used, I defended myself. Didn’t he learn that the hard way, as all do who are touched by us? she hinted. But I missed the clue and heard only what she continued to reveal as she informed me this was how you lost him, this mockery, this was why he tossed to one side any desire to wed you, but in place of that, he pursued your father in hope of marrying him. He was rejected by that good man in deference to you, his daughter. Are you proud of yourself?

  That is none of your business, but I must insist, I told her, insist you tell me how you know so much about me and my past. Your present and your future too, she added, if truth be told.

  So you can tell me what will befall, you are a seer, a prophetess, is that what you’re now claiming? I asked her, and she nodded her head, saying nothing. How do you know me? I repeated. Because I am your vassal, your serf, your slave, you have won me in the war, isn’t that why it’s being fought? She challenged me, most fiercely. And it was then I convinced myself she had me rumbled.

  How are you certain that the world is in convulsions because of me? I demanded she tell. They speak of nothing else in Poland, she whispers. I have never been there, I let her know. In Russia, in Estonia, mothers pray to your icon, she admits. I have never been painted, I let her know that as well. Your face adorns a million walls in Germany, she tells me. And it is most cruelly mocked by the addition of a moustache, is it not? I question her. England’s king abandons the realm for the sake of a woman, she confides. Is she me? I want to know. Yes, she sighs. When has this all happened? I demand an answer. While you were sleeping, locked in this castle, she tells me, waiting for your father. To come and rescue me? I inquire. No, waiting for him to die, and he will die, she assures me.

  This is when I hear a scream that shakes me to the core, but herself sitting opposite, this hideous old fool, it does not take a wrinkle out of her, although she is more lined, more ancient than the Rock of Gibraltar, and all she says is my name, Beatrice, Beatrice, is that right? Am I guessing correctly? Do you know why I may have stumbled on this? But I refused to answer. I will not fall for that familiar ruse as a way of humiliating me.

  Once, in school, every girl in my classroom claimed that she was called Beatrice, either at birth or as a term of endearment. It was too ridiculous for words, this apparent coincidence, and I refused to believe them, so they called out to our teacher, letting her know I was calling them liars, demanding was I the only one among them with the right to bear the name? She is showing off again, they chorus, she is trying to be different. And so I must be punished. How?

  Is it to be tied to this place for eternity listening to the endless prattle of an old fool as she sits choking herself to death – it could not come quickly enough – urging me to take on board the minutiae of her existence, as if such details conformed to a marked measure with those that go to make up my own story? Or is that another matter entirely?

  I should ask the nurse when she fetches my dinner, but I’m not sure if I speak her dialect of French, or indeed if she is not herself deaf and dumb, for she never does anything nor says one civilised word of conversation, but grunts instead as if I were an animal. Perhaps I am an animal – she knows something I do not. What kind? Might she let me in on the secret of what she sees or indeed smells in me? A camel or kangaroo? A bear or a gazelle?

  No, never a gazelle, I have grown too lame to be that, and my dancing days are over. But I clearly have about me the stench of the farmyard. That is why they feed me such volumes of pig. Every meal of fat is forced down my gullet. There are nights in dreams I imagine I am growing a snout. Complain, you would say – insist on fruit and vegetables. Plead for even a little wing of chicken. But such things are beyond me now, for I feel my days are numbered. Ask the ancient fool sitting opposite me to earn her keep and let her do the necessary – finish me off, but she won’t. I notice she can guzzle as good as the rest of them, but there I run into difficulty, for it appears no one can actually see this bygone relic but myself, and there is great reluctance to admit she dwells amongst us. Once upon a time we could have smuggled her into our daily existence, in the days before rationing and shortage, but not now when it is necessary to be somebody in case they come looking for whatever tribe takes their fancy for disposal, depending on your luck, good and bad.

  I explained this complicated situation to her – or at least I made some attempt but she halted me, waving me into silence. It is not at all complicated, she smiled, the brute fact is I come and go as I please. We are under lock and key here, I retaliated. Not me, I’m not, she was now positively beaming, you may be, but I am under special dispensation, so I am permitted to open doors without a key, walk through walls as if they were carved from mere gossamer, and should I feel confined, then the roof itself will let me ascend through it
s beams and slates, if straw is no longer the fashion. There is, my dear, she tells me, an obvious reason why they cannot see me – frequently I am not there. The consequence is you are regarded as what, I believe, in legal terms, is all too often dismissed as an unreliable witness. Irritating, it must be, the only consolation is that I believe you – I know you always tell things as you see they are. In short you are a girl who tells the truth, and that is why I visit you.

  Will you tell my mother? I plead with her, will you tell her to come and see me? Bring my brother. Bring my father.

  She cannot do that. He is much too ill. In the hospital, in Zurich. Miles away. That is where they all are. It is safe there. In the mountains. In the lakes. In the rivers. In the snow. Is it snowing in his room, my father’s? Does the snow come through the window, falling on his bed, and does he think it is white as a cat, or a rabbit, coming to take his soul? I would like to be my daddy’s girl and hear him singing lullabies. Or he could tell me silly stories about the neighbours who surrounded them in his dear old dirty Dublin.

  Tell me, Papa, about Kitty Maguire. Kitty Maguire sat on the fire, the fire was too hot, she sat on the pot, the pot was too round, she sat on the ground, the ground was too flat, she sat on the cat, and the cat ran away – the cat ran away – the cat ran – where did the cat run? Do you not know? Does he not know? Why aren’t you speaking? Why is she crying, my mother? Why are you crying, Archie?

  In this house we have built from the weapons of our words, why is there silence? Will this mean that our walls fall asunder? Will our windows crack and our doors fall open – close the door, darken the windows, that’s what’s done in Galway, isn’t it, Mama? That’s how we free his spirit – or do they do the opposite? Unbolt everything, draw back the snib. Let it fly from us, his soul. No, cast nets and catch it, hold him to our breast, get up from the grave, Papa, throw off the soil of earth, rise, man, and give us a bit of your blather, dazzle us with the dirt you’ve gathered on high and low, let your soul magnify, fill the hungry with plenty, protect Israel, your servant – is it over, is he breathing?

  She’s back, the old witch. Yes, he’s breathing, she tells me. Where were you? I ask her. Near enough, she teases. Are you sure? I quiz her. Positive, she informs me. How can you be so? I wonder. I took a mirror, would you credit this? she wonders. I held it before his mouth. And did you see his breath on the glass? I demanded. No, she said, I saw his face, its reflection, and here’s the strange thing, should I tell you? I nodded my head, and she did so. I saw not his face, but my face, and when it clearly was my face, did it not turn into your face as you are now, as you were as a girl, as an infant, and as an infant I saw him in you, beckoning us all to come to him, as we do now in Zurich, gathering from all parts, getting here by hook or by crook, war or no war, boat and train and bicycle, ship and plane, some by the power of their two feet, or landing on stout wings, prompting a shout from your mother when she saw this miracle, she told us the man was an angel, qualifying her sense of awe by remembering that so too was Lucifer.

  Tell her I laughed at that. Tell her it was funny. Tell her Father would have loved she thought of saying something comical as her heart was torn out of her. Tell her in my own way I made sure I saw what was happening in the room. Tell her I won’t believe he’s dead until I hear it from her own lips.

  Tell her I want to see them move, saying, Your father has died.

  Tell her. Tell her.

  Tell her to come visit me.

  Chapter Four

  Father

  Himself

  Bed

  My son betrayed me. It is a family tradition. Didn’t I do the same to my father?

  I look at that boy and recognise nothing of myself about him. Might it be possible he is not mine at all? Is that why I take his treachery so easily? Has he escaped the curse defiling the lot of us? We hold our papas in such deepest and darkest contempt, we cannot wait to be rid of them lock, stock and baggage, ever ready with the match to light the bonfire that will greet the good news the old bastard is shaking off the mortal coil, he’s finally doing a bunk, at long last he’s breathing his bye-byes, and we’ll leave him to finish that business without too much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Would that be the case when it comes to the pater? I would, if you look for confirmation here, direct your attention to my old boy and see what he might advise, after much cogitation and perplexity as to what is the proper fate every father, should he be hale and healthy, as I unquestionably was, or on the verge of kicking the bucket, as I now indisputably am.

  Should I seek a second opinion on that diagnosis? To whom do I look to provide it? Friend or foe? Where might either be found? Would you credit I began my studies looking for a degree in medicine – was it in Paris or Dublin’s fair city? I diagnosed myself with consumption, and given that I truly thought I had only days – or, at best, weeks, to live – well, I behaved with a most impressive display of restraint that, though I say it myself, could be taken as dignity. Such propriety I associate mostly with men of the cloth, my mother’s dream for me since she rocked my cradle, but I could not oblige, nor indeed could I maintain the pose of the perfect gentleman. I engaged in a career serving the rhetorical arts and abandoned with equal fervour all thoughts of advancement in the Church.

  Did that break Mama’s heart? If it did, she made a most remarkable recovery, for she rarely spoke of my failure, or, as I prefer to call it, my betrayal, since as I told you I have passed that particular chalice onto my own issue, and he’s drunk his fill from it with a drouth to match our own. Thus, he may well be mine, and shame on me for suggesting otherwise.

  He is certainly sitting here, expecting me to croak. I have reared him well never to think as his own the country which is my own, so I cannot be sure then if he knows that in the city which gave me birth there is a football stadium, Gaelic football, that is called Croke, and there young maidens go to die, deflowered on a day called the All Ireland Final, where they witness the human sacrifice of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, their blood stains the pitch red, and any who survive the studs of boots or the clash of sticks, the kicks in the face or the hand up the shorts, they are in their exhausted state allowed choose Queens of the May, those deemed suitable brides for boys who like a bit of beef on a woman. But the look of my son tells me, sure such carry on would kill him, so I’ll leave him to his mother to make him a match as herself and myself never attempted, but fell across each other, as luck would have it.

  Have we had much luck, the pair of us? All things remembered, might she seem as a bird of ill omen? Why did the Greeks believe the gods gave us instruction through the entrails of winged creatures? I heard tell of a woman years ago, somewhere in Rathgar, where my brood lived in one of our many flits, and she, they say, had tamed a magpie called Nanette to sit by her shoulder and whisper mysteries into her ear. The children believed Nanette was watching them and reporting back their misdemeanours committed out of human sight, but visible to the judging eye and condemning beak which blew the gaffe on all and sundry hoping to get away with any caper worth chancing. The woman herself fell for the illusion, fell so deeply she started to instruct Nanette on what was her Christian duty to report, unflinchingly, on the secrets and sins of her neighbours. Things came to a head when one man was accused of setting fire to a lady’s undergarments drying on a washing line. He met this with derision and paid the price for his mockery.

  She next charged him with killing his wife some years before, when that woman met her sudden end falling from a window in the Abbey Theatre, so overcome with revulsion at the poetry of a play that she raced with such speed out of the auditorium and into a piece of stained glass she mistook for a painting by Jack B. Yeats of a bog in Sligo. Inconsolable and all as he was at her loss, vowing as he did and keeping to that oath he would never set foot inside another den of such iniquity, he still could provoke the question in many minds, did she fall or did he push her? It all seemed somewhat far-fetched, the same woman was no innocent, certainly no
t one that would let the dialogue of a dramatist push her into thinking she could fly, for that’s what it was claimed happened in some quarters. And how the hell would you mistake a painting for a window unless you were nearly blind?

  It turns out she was – more than enough witnesses could testify to that – so the case was dropped and none dared bring it up again until Nanette let her suspicions be known. A foolish move on the magpie’s part – she was found with her neck wrung, and her owner was as inconsolable as the man who lost his wife. He sympathised, of course, but she did not believe a word of that. Did he think her a complete eejit?

  Were the Greeks, as I said a while back, complete eejits to set such store in what could best be described as prophecies? Such faith they had, that’s no lie. If I were to rise from this bed and set myself the task of capturing a pigeon, dismembering it limb by limb, use the sharpest knife in the house to gut its chest open, what could I read contained therein? Would it tell me I will live or die? Would the gory patterns advise me to avoid my mother and run from my father? I tease out of its wings oil that smells of chrism, and with it, will I anoint my senses to purify as some priest in Delphi might to ready me for becoming – what? What am I becoming?

  You are becoming your father’s seed, bad son to your mother, harsh husband to a wife that loathes you, mocked by your son and daughter, blind to their laughter, paralysed on this bed, where you will soon meet your maker and he will not know you, he will not caress you, he will take hammer and tongs and crush you into embers, all this the divine bird chirps, should you care to listen. And I don’t, I’m afraid. I have better things to do while I’m dying.