Brian Friel Plays 2

by Brian Friel

  And then with sudden anger I thought: Why am I going for this operation? None of this is my choosing. Then why is this happening to me? I am being used. Of course I trust Frank. Of course I trust Mr Rice. But how can they know what they are taking away from me? How do they know what they are offering me? They don’t. They can’t. And have I anything to gain? Anything? Anything?

  And then I knew, suddenly I knew why I was so desolate. It was the dread of exile, of being sent away. It was the desolation of homesickness.

  And then a strange thing happened. As soon as Tom played the last note of ‘The Lament for Limerick’, I found myself on my feet in the middle of the sitting-room and calling, ‘A hornpipe, Tom! A mad, fast hornpipe!’ And the moment he began to play, I shouted – screamed, ‘Now watch me! Just you watch me!’ And in a rage of anger and defiance I danced a wild and furious dance round and round that room; then out to the hall; then round the kitchen; then back to the room again and round it a third time. Mad and wild and frenzied. But so adroit, so efficient. No timidity, no hesitations, no falterings. Not a glass overturned, not a shoulder brushed. Weaving between all those people, darting between chairs and stools and cushions and bottles and glasses with complete assurance, with absolute confidence. Until Frank said something to Tom and stopped him playing.

  God knows how I didn’t kill myself or injure somebody. Or indeed how long it lasted. But it must have been terrifying to watch because, when I stopped, the room was hushed.

  Frank whispered something to me. I don’t know what he said – I was suddenly lost and anxious and frightened. I remember calling, ‘Rita? Where are you, Rita?’

  ‘Here at the window,’ she said. And I stumbled, groped my way to her and sat beside her. ‘Come on, sweetie,’ she said. ‘We’ll have none of that. You’re not allowed to cry. I’m the only one that’s allowed to give a performance and then cry.’

  Mr Rice The night before I operated on Molly Sweeney I thought about that high summer in my thirty-second year. Cairo. Another lecture; another conference; another posh hotel. As usual we all met up: Roger Bloomstein from New York, Hans Girder from Berlin, Hiroko Matoba from Kyoto, myself. The meteors. The young turks. The four horsemen. Oslo last month. Helsinki next week. Paris the week after. That luminous, resplendent life. Those glowing, soaring careers.

  Maria left the children with parents in Geneva and flew down to join us. Still wan and translucent after the birth of Helga. And so beautiful; my God, so beautiful. We had a dinner party for her the night she arrived. Roger was master-of-ceremonies. Toasted her with his usual elegance. Said she was our Venus – no, our Galatea. She smiled her secret smile and said each of us was her Icarus.

  Insatiable years. Work. Airports. Dinners. Laughter. Operating theatres. Conferences. Gossip. Publications. The professional jealousies and the necessary vigilance. The relentless, devouring excitement. But above all, above all the hunger to accomplish, the greed for achievement.

  Shards of those memories came back to me on the night before I operated on Molly Sweeney on Tuesday, October 7. I had had a few drinks. I had had a lot of drinks. The fire was dead. I was drifting in and out of sleep.

  Then the phone rang; an anxious sound at two in the morning. By the time I had pulled myself together and got to it, it had stopped. Wrong number probably.

  I had another drink and sat beside the dead fire and relived for the hundredth time that other phone-call. The small hours of the morning, too. In Cairo. That high summer of my thirty-second year.

  It was Roger Bloomstein. Brilliant Roger. Treacherous Icarus. To tell me that Maria and he were at the airport and about to step on a plane for New York. They were deeply in love. They would be in touch in a few days. He was very sorry to have to tell me this. He hoped that in time I would see the situation from their point of view and come to understand it. And he hung up.

  The mind was instantly paralysed. All I could think was: He’s confusing seeing with understanding. Come on, Bloomstein. What’s the matter with you? Seeing isn’t understanding.

  You know that! Don’t talk rubbish, man!

  And then … and then … oh, Jesus, Maria …

  Frank Just as I was about to step into bed that night – that same Tuesday night that Dick Winterman phoned – the night of the operation – I was on the point of stepping into bed when suddenly, suddenly I remembered: Ethiopia is Abyssinia! Abyssinia is Ethiopia! They’re the same place! Ethiopia is the new name for the old Abyssinia! For God’s sake only last year the National Geographic magazine had a brilliant article on it with all these stunning photographs. For God’s sake I could write a book about Ethiopia! Absolutely the most interesting country in the world! Let me give you one fascinating fact about the name, the name Abyssinia. The name Abyssinia is derived from the word ‘habesh’; and the word ‘habesh’ means mixed – on account of the varied nature of its peoples. But interestingly, interestingly the people themselves always called themselves Ethiopians, never Abyssinians, because they considered the word Abyssinia and Abyssinians as derogatory – they didn’t want to be thought of as mixed! So now the place is officially what the people themselves always called it – Ethiopia. Fascinating!

  But of course I had to say no to Dick. As I said. Those rambling days were over. Molly was about to inherit a new world; and I had a sense – stupid, I know – I had a sense that maybe I was, too.

  Pity to miss Abyssinia all the same – the one place in the whole world I’ve always dreamed of visiting; a phantom desire, a fantasy in the head. Pity to miss that.

  You shouldn’t have dangled it in front of me, Dick Winterman. Bloody, bloody heartbreaking.

  Molly I remember so well the first day Frank came to the health club. That was the first time I’d met him. I was on a coffee-break. A Friday afternoon.

  I had known of him for years of course. Rita Cairns and his friend Billy Hughes used to go out occasionally and I’d hear his name mentioned. She never said anything bad about him; but when his name came up, you got the feeling he was a bit … different.

  Anyhow that Friday he came into the club and Rita introduced us and we chatted. And for the whole ten minutes of my coffee-break he gave me a talk about a feasibility study he was doing on the blueback salmon, know in Oregon as sockeye and in Alaska as redfish, and of his plan to introduce it to Irish salmon farmers because it has the lowest wastage rate in all canning factories where it is used.

  When he left I said to Rita that I’d never met a more enthusiastic man in my life. And Rita said in her laconic way, ‘Sweetie, who wants their enthusiasm focussed on bluebacks for God’s sake?’

  Anyhow, ten minutes after he left, the phone rang. Could we meet that evening? Saturday? Sunday? What about a walk, a meal, a concert? Just a chat?

  I asked him to call me the following Friday.

  I thought a lot about him that week. I suppose he was the first man I really knew – apart from my father. And I liked his energy. I liked his enthusiasm. I liked his passion. Maybe what I really liked about him was that he was everything my father wasn’t.

  Frank I spent a week in the library – the week after I first met her – one full week immersing myself in books and encyclopaedias and magazines and articles – anything, everything I could find about eyes and vision and eye-diseases and blindness.

  Fascinating. I can’t tell you – fascinating. I look out of my bedroom window and at a single glance I see the front garden and the road beyond and cars and buses and the tennis-courts on the far side and people playing on them and the hills beyond that. Everything – all those details and dozens more – all seen in one immediate, comprehensive perception. But Molly’s world isn’t perceived instantly, comprehensively. She composes a world from a sequence of impressions; one after the other, in time. For example, she knows that this is a carving knife because first she can feel the handle; then she can feel this long blade; then this sharp edge. In sequence. In time. What is this object? These are ears. This is a furry body. Those are paws. That i
s a long tail. Ah, a cat! In sequence. Sequentially.

  Right? Right. Now a personal question. You are going to ask this blind lady out for an evening. What would be the ideal entertainment for somebody like her? A meal? A concert? A walk? Maybe a swim? Billy Hughes says she’s a wonderful swimmer. (He shakes his head slowly.)

  The week in the library pays off. Know the answer instantly. Dancing. Take her dancing. With her disability the perfect, the absolutely perfect relaxation. Forget about space, distance, who’s close, who’s far, who’s approaching. Forget about time. This is not a sequence of events. This is one continuous, delightful event. Nothing leads to nothing else. There is only now. There is nothing subsequent. I am your eyes, your ears, your location, your sense of space. Trust me.

  Dancing. Obvious.

  Straight into a phone-box and asked her would she come with me to the Hikers Club dance the following Saturday. It’ll be small, I said; more like a party. What do you say?

  Silence.

  We’ll ask Billy and Rita and we’ll make it a foursome and we’ll have our own table and our own fun.

  Not a word.

  Please, Molly.

  In my heart of hearts I really didn’t think she’d say yes. For God’s sake why should she? Middle-aged. No skill. No job. No prospect of a job. Two rooms above Kelly’s cake-shop. And not exactly Rudolf Valentino. And when she did speak, when she said very politely, ‘Thank you, Frank. I’d love to go,’ do you know what I said? ‘All right then.’ Bloody brilliant.

  But I vowed to myself in that phone-box, I made a vow there and then that at the dance on Saturday night I wouldn’t open the big mouth – big? – enormous for Christ’s sake! – I wouldn’t open it once all night, all week.

  Talking of Valentino, in point of fact Valentino was no Adonis himself. Average height; average looks; mediocre talent. And if he hadn’t died so young – in 1926 – he was only 31 – and in those mysterious circumstances that were never fully explained – he would never have become the cult figure the studios worked so hard to …

  Anyhow …

  Molly As usual Rita was wonderful. She washed my hair, my bloody useless hair – I can do nothing with it – she washed it in this special shampoo she concocted herself. Then she pulled it all away back from my face and piled it up, just here, and held it in place with her mother’s silver ornamental comb. And she gave me her black shoes and her new woollen dress she’d just bought for her brother’s wedding.

  ‘There’s still something not right,’ she said. ‘You still remind me of my Aunt Madge. Here – try these.’ And she whipped off her earrings and put them on me. ‘Now we have it,’ she said. ‘Bloody lethal. Francis Constantine, you’re a dead duck!’

  Frank She had the time of her life. Knew she would. We danced every dance. Sang every song at the top of our voices. Ate an enormous supper. Even won a spot prize: a tin of shortbread and a bottle of Albanian wine. The samba, actually. I wasn’t bad at the samba once.

  Dancing. I knew. I explained the whole thing to her. She had to agree. For God’s sake she didn’t have to say a word – she just glowed.

  Molly It was almost at the end of the night – we were doing an old-time waltz – and suddenly he said to me, ‘You are such a beautiful woman, Molly.’

  Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. I was afraid I might cry. And before I could say a word, he plunged on: ‘Of course I know that the very idea of appearance, of how things look, can’t have much meaning for you. I do understand that. And maybe at heart you’re a real philosophical sceptic because you question not only the idea of appearance but probably the existence of external reality itself. Do you, Molly?’

  Honest to God … the second last dance at the Hikers Club … a leisurely, old-time waltz …

  And I knew that night that he would ask me to marry him. Because he liked me – I knew he did. And because of my blindness – oh, yes, that fascinated him. He couldn’t resist the different, the strange. I think he believed that some elusive off-beat truth resided in the quirky, the off-beat. I suppose that’s what made him such a restless man. Rita of course said it was inevitable he would propose to me. ‘All part of the same pattern, sweetie: bees – whales – Iranian goats – Molly Sweeney.’

  Maybe she was right.

  And I knew, too, after that night in the Hikers Club, that if he did ask me to marry him, for no very good reason at all I would probably say yes.

  Mr Rice The morning of the operation I stood at the window of my office and watched them walk up the hospital drive. It was a blustery morning, threatening rain.

  She didn’t have her cane and she didn’t hold his arm. But she moved briskly with her usual confidence; her head high; her face alert and eager. In her right hand she carried a grey, overnight bag.

  He was on her left. Now in the open air a smaller presence in a shabby raincoat and cap; his hands clasped behind his back; his eyes on the ground; his head bowed slightly against the wind so that he looked … passive. Not a trace of the assurance, the ebullience, that relentless energy.

  And I thought: Are they really such an unlikely couple? And I wondered what hopes moved in them as they came towards me. Were they modest? Reasonable? Outrageous? Of course, of course they were outrageous.

  And suddenly and passionately and with utter selflessness I wanted nothing more in the world than that their inordinate hopes would be fulfilled, that I could give them their miracle. And I whispered to Hans Girder and to Matoba and to Murnaghan and to Bloomstein – yes, to Bloomstein, too! – to gather round me this morning and steady my unsteady hand and endow me with all their exquisite skills.

  Because as I watched them approach the hospital that blustery morning, one head alert, one head bowed, I was suddenly full of anxiety for both of them. Because I was afraid – even though she was in the hands of the best team in the whole world to deliver her miracle, because she was in the hands of the best team in the whole world – I was fearful, I suddenly knew that that courageous woman had everything, everything to lose.

  Act Two

  Molly The morning the bandages were to be removed a staff nurse spent half-an-hour preparing me for Mr Rice. It wasn’t really her job, she told me; but this was my big day and I had to look my best and she was happy to do it.

  So she sponged my face and hands. She made me clean my teeth again. She wondered did I use lipstick – maybe just for today? She did the best she could with my hair, God help her. She looked at my fingernails and suggested that a touch of clear varnish would be nice. She straightened the bow at the front of my nightdress and adjusted the collar of my dressing-gown. She put a dab of her own very special perfume on each of my wrists – she got it from a cousin in Paris. Then she stood back and surveyed me and said,

  ‘Now. That’s better. You’ll find that from now on – if everything goes well of course – you’ll find that you’ll become very aware of your appearance. They all do for some reason. Don’t be nervous. You look just lovely. He’ll be here any minute now.’

  I asked her where the bathroom was.

  ‘At the end of the corridor. Last door on the right. I’ll bring you.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll find it.’

  I didn’t need to go to the bathroom. I just wanted to take perhaps a last walk; in my own world; by myself.

  I don’t know what I expected when the bandages would be removed. I think maybe I didn’t allow myself any expectations. I knew that in his heart Frank believed that somehow, miraculously, I would be given the perfect vision that sighted people have, even though Mr Rice had told us again and again that my eyes weren’t capable of that vision. And I knew what Mr Rice hoped for: that I would have partial sight. ‘That would be a total success for me’ is what he said. But I’m sure he meant it would be great for all of us.

  As for myself, if I had any hope, I suppose it was that neither Frank nor Mr Rice would be too disappointed because it had all become so important for them.

  No, that’s no
t accurate either. Yes, I did want to see. For God’s sake of course I wanted to see. But that wasn’t an expectation, not even a mad hope. If there was a phantom desire, a fantasy in my head, it was this. That perhaps by some means I might be afforded a brief excursion to this land of vision; not to live there – just to visit. And during my stay to devour it again and again with greedy, ravenous eyes. To gorge on all those luminous sights and wonderful spectacles until I knew every detail intimately and utterly – every ocean, every leaf, every field, every star, every tiny flower. And then, oh yes, then to return home to my own world with all that rare understanding within me for ever.

  No, that wasn’t even a phantom desire. Just a stupid fantasy. And it came into my head again when that poor nurse was trying to prettify me for Mr Rice. And I thought to myself: It’s like being back at school – I’m getting dressed up for the annual excursion.

  When Mr Rice did arrive, even before he touched me, I knew by his quick, shallow breathing that he was far more nervous than I was. And then as he took off the bandages his hands trembled and fumbled.

  ‘There we are,’ he said. ‘All off. How does that feel?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. Even though I felt nothing. Were all the bandages off?

  ‘Now, Molly. In your own time. Tell me what you see.’

  Nothing. Nothing at all. Then out of the void a blur; a haze; a body of mist; a confusion of light, colour, movement. It had no meaning.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Anything? Anything at all?’

  I thought: Don’t panic; a voice comes from a face; that blur is his face; look at him.

  ‘Well? Anything?’

  Something moving; large; white. The nurse? And lines, black lines, vertical lines. The bed? The door?

  ‘Anything, Molly?’ A bright light that hurt. The window maybe?

  ‘I’m holding my hand before your eyes, Molly. Can you see it?’