A Fanatic Heart

by Edna O'Brien

  “Hello, stranger” was what Nancy said, and she put her hand out, but he did not shake it. Her nail varnish was a rose pink and the cuticles were very defined. He sat near the range, scowling like a boy. She was all the time smiling, waiting for his rebuke so that she could dismiss it. Her hair was tied up in a big soft roll that stretched from ear to ear, and it made her look older and more sedate. It was like a big sausage. She told me to make myself scarce.

  Out in the garden, I wondered what they were saying, or if they had moved nearer, or if as she marched about the kitchen to prepare his repast he was shocked by the slits in her skirt. There was a front and a back slit, and as she moved she took uncommonly large strides, so that one saw above the backs of her knees—saw the flesh covered in beige silk stockings, saw the seam going right up. I was holding the stone mushroom and was about to tilt it to one side, but the next moment I let go of it and it was bending like the Tower of Pisa. In the front room, with its long French window opening onto the garden, the most terrible thing had transpired. They had gone in there and he was stripped to the waist. He had his back to the window. She was looking at his body, as if examining it for spots or a mole or something. But what? I had to come closer in order to find out. His head was turned half around, perhaps to say darling, or what are you doing. At the very same moment, my mother was coming from the farmyard with two empty buckets. My mother was always carrying buckets, always busy, always modest, and was now about to witness the most profane scene—the half-naked curate and Nancy laughing. Nancy bent and said something to his back, and then they must have heard my mother in the kitchen, because suddenly he was putting his shirt on and she was leaving the room. I do not know what she said to him or what caused him to undress. All I know is that I realized she had some secret with men, and that it was a secret I would never grasp, and never quite understand.

  The third woman, Mrs. Keogh, did not set foot in our house ever, being too shy. She came once a week, Fridays, after she had drawn her pension, and sat on the back step and drank a cup of buttermilk. She wore heavy serge clothes, the same ones winter and summer, and the same brown velour hat with the two hat pins, one being a huge dented pearl and the other of false emerald stones, many of which were missing. There were holes where the stones should be. She lived across the fields from us and only saw civilization on Sundays, when she went to Mass, and on Fridays, when she drew her old-age pension. She would sit on the back step and say eagerly to my mother, “Any news?” She had a habit of lifting her face and the tip of her nose, as if she were a bird about to take off into the air. If she saw my father or a workman coming toward the house, she would run off and leave the unfinished buttermilk. There was seldom any news, and yet she would ask and ask, as if she could be told something that would fill her up until the next week.

  She suffered from shingles. She said she hoped that my mother would never get shingles, and in a strange way my mother knew that one day she would. It was as if, out of consolation, one person eventually got another person’s ailment, and what they all dreaded getting was cancer.

  Mrs. Keogh had only two ambitions in her life, and we knew them. The first was that her husband might be persuaded to build a new house up near the main road, so that she could see people as they went by. All she wanted was to see them and to see whom they were with, and to see what kind of bicycles they rode, or to see the occasional motorcar. Motorcars were still a novelty, and she expressed a great fear of them—said they were dangerous bulls and could easily get out of hand. My mother said nonsense and that they had brakes, just like a bicycle, but we were all vastly ignorant of their workings. One man carried his toolbox on the running board of his car, and it was said to be crammed with implements. Mrs. Keogh said to just imagine how many things could go wrong with a car, and my mother said that they need not worry, as it would be shanks’ mare for them until they died. Her second wish—and this was a terrible secret—was that her husband would die before her. In that way, she imagined she could also achieve her first wish. She thought she would sell the house to people with young children, and being a widow, she might get a county-council cottage and grow flowers in a window box. She told this only one time, when she was racked with pain and was discussing with my mother a new ointment. The ointment was in a little round box, and together they smelled it and were dubious about it. She lifted her bodice and there we saw, like stigmata, a huge crop of sores, and while we were looking at them, the terrible wish tumbled out of her mouth and she retracted it at once.

  Her life had no variety. They said the Rosary every evening after their tea. They were in bed while it was still bright in summer, and she was up at five or six washing. She was a powerful washer. She washed tables, chairs, the milk tankard, she washed the outhouses, she washed the windows and the sills of windows, and she would have washed the roof of the hay shed if she had had a ladder long enough. She disliked cooking; her standby was potatoes, bacon, and cabbage; and nothing else.

  Their dogs were savages, so one did not venture there unless it was an emergency. After she had been missing from Mass, my mother and I set out to call on her one Sunday evening. As we came up the overgrown lane that led to their cement house, two ferocious creatures came bounding over the fields, barking and snarling. When we saw that the distance between us and them was desperately shortening, we backed away and jumped over a fence, capsizing the uppermost loose plank. They were upon us—two mangy creatures, baring their teeth so that we could see their tom gums. My mother told me to pick up a stone, and while I did she pushed them backward with the plank, making sure that at least the fence was between our feet and their carnivorousness. Pelting them with sod and stones made them worse, and had not Mrs. Keogh’s son, Patrick, come to call them, we would have been eaten to death. He dragged them away, and still they snarled and still they conspired to get back to us and have their revenge. He did not invite us in.

  Mrs. Keogh came down the field in a man’s hat. She always kept her head covered because of the shingles, so the air could never get to her scalp. Wiping her hands on her apron, she then shook hands with us and begged us to sit down on the loose wall. She did not dare ask us in, as her husband was moody and talked only to the sheep and never kept his money anywhere but under his mattress. He thought that any visitors would be apt to steal or borrow from him.

  Mrs. Keogh and my mother talked about a new motorcar that Mrs. Sparling had got; they raved about it. There were six motorcars in the neighborhood, but Mrs. Sparling’s was unique. It was a French car, and she had been given it as a gift by her brothers in America. Her brothers owned big stores there and gave employment to lots of local people who emigrated. My mother said that Mrs. Sparling had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth and had kept it there ever since. The car was dark purple, almost maroon, with huge headlamps that gave off two lights, a bright-yellow light and a dimmer, smokier light. I had written my name in dust on the bonnet, the day Mrs. Sparling, the proud owner, had come to show it off. I had sat in it; I had touched and smelled the red leather seats; I had wielded the steering wheel and zanily imagined going this way and that; I had inadvisedly blown the horn and sent my father’s horses into a frenzy. I put my initials on the dusty metal and thought how in a sense I would be traveling all over the countryside.

  Mrs. Keogh asked about the car in such detail—how big it was, how many could fit comfortably, and if when it was moving, the guts and stomach rumbled. We could not answer these things, because we had not driven in it, though of course we aspired to. By way of apologizing for not asking us in, she slipped me half a crown and from under her skirt produced a carnival jug for my mother. It was a beautiful orange color and it was almost opaque; yet when my mother held it up in the sunset, it gleamed and caught fire. It was like something from a far-off bazaar, completely unlike the dreariness of the surroundings. There were the big piles of cloud, the ragged fields, the hazel trees with their unripe green-skinned nuts, and the little stream that seemed to say tra-la-la tra-
la-la tra-la-la.

  Thrilled by the gift, my mother made a rash promise. She said that she would ask Mrs. Sparling if we could all go for a drive. It was as if the request had been magically made and magically answered, because Mrs. Keogh jumped up in excitement, gushed like the stream, and asked what would she wear and when would it be.

  As we walked home, my mother regretted her promise, because Mrs. Sparling was a snob and made fun of Mrs. Keogh, with her long idiotic clothes, her birdlike snout, and her nervous singsong voice. Called her a Mohawk. My mother said she would not ask just yet; she would bide her time. It was because of that we had to start avoiding Mrs. Keogh. We had to hide when we saw her coming across the fields on Friday, and after Mass my mother rushed out at the Last Gospel, before the rest of the congregation. Mrs. Keogh never left the chapel until the throng went out, and so it was easy enough to avoid her. It bothered us one day when she left a sweater on the back step. It was wrapped in old newspaper. It was a beautiful sweater, with a special zigzag pattern, and it must have taken her weeks to knit. It was for me. It had many colors and reminded me of Joseph and the dream coat. Yet getting it put us under an obligation, and I could enjoy it only in spasms.

  It was a few weeks later that we heard how Mrs. Keogh was seen in the village, in the forester’s car, and that she was waving to everyone as they sped by. They went through the village, past the school and down the very steep hill that led to the lower road, and we learned that they stopped in the next village and went into the lovely hotel with the pale-green walls, green blinds, and, on the veranda, green glass-topped tables and green bamboo chairs. To our astonishment, Mrs. Keogh and the forester took a cup of tea in there and Mrs. Keogh had the clientele in stitches describing the drive, describing how hedges and houses slid past, saying that it was too quick, was like seeing the tail of a fox as he vanished. Then the forester—he was a distant relation of hers—bought a box of matches, counted them, found there were four missing, reluctantly paid for the two teas, and rose to go home.

  At the gateway that led to their little stile, and thence led to a walk across four fields, Mrs. Keogh was loath to leave him. She even suggested going to the village where he lodged and walking home. He could only get rid of her with the guarantee that he would bring her out again. As she crossed the fields, she took off her hat and coat. She and her husband and son always did that. They would always be stripped of their good clothes by the time they got to the house, so that they could start work straightaway. She hurried in to put on the kettle, to get the feed for the hens, to oil and light the lamp, while gabbing to her son about the drive, her vertigo, the way the car swerved at a very bad corner, the forester’s presence of mind. Then all of a sudden she dropped the cup with which she was filling the kettle and said she must go out, as she felt dizzy.

  Outside, she stood under the hazel tree and clung to a bough, lowered her head onto it, and, without a word, slouched down as her feet had given way, and softly fell and died. There was a seraphic smile on her face, as if the car ride had been the crowning joy of her life. It was what everyone remarked on when they sat in the downstairs room and looked at her remains. Perhaps they found solace in it. I myself could not help thinking of the evening when we sat on the loose wall and the clouds heaved dully by and the little giddy stream went tra-la-la. It was November now, the squirrels had eaten the hazelnuts, and the husks were trampled into the ground and were rotting and nourishing the earth. I could not imagine her dead. I still can’t. I still can’t imagine any of them dead. They live on; they are fixed in that far-off region called childhood, where nothing ever dies, not even oneself.

  Sister Imelda

  Sister Imelda did not take classes on her first day back in the convent but we spotted her in the grounds after the evening Rosary. Excitement and curiosity impelled us to follow her and try to see what she looked like, but she thwarted us by walking with head bent and eyelids down. All we could be certain of was that she was tall and limber and that she prayed while she walked. No looking at nature for her, or no curiosity about seventy boarders in gaberdine coats and black shoes and stockings. We might just as well have been crows, so impervious was she to our stares and to abortive attempts at trying to say “Hello, Sister.”

  We had returned from our long summer holiday and we were all wretched. The convent, with its high stone wall and green iron gates enfolding us again, seemed more of a prison than ever—for after our spell in the outside world we all felt very much older and more sophisticated, and my friend Baba and I were dreaming of our final escape, which would be in a year. And so, on that damp autumn evening when I saw the chrysanthemums and saw the new nun intent on prayer I pitied her and thought how alone she must be, cut off from her friends and conversation, with only God as her intangible spouse.

  The next day she came into our classroom to take geometry. Her pale, slightly long face I saw as formidable, but her eyes were different, being blue-black and full of verve. Her lips were very purple, as if she had put puce pencil on them. They were the lips of a woman who might sing in a cabaret, and unconsciously she had formed the habit of turning them inward, as if she, too, was aware of their provocativeness. She had spent the last four years—the same span that Baba and I had spent in the convent—at the university in Dublin, where she studied languages. We couldn’t understand how she had resisted the temptations of the hectic world and willingly come back to this. Her spell in the outside world made her different from the other nuns; there was more bounce in her walk, more excitement in the way she tackled teaching, reminding us that it was the most important thing in the world as she uttered the phrase “Praise be the Incarnate World.” She began each day’s class by reading from Cardinal Newman, who was a favorite of hers. She read how God dwelt in light unapproachable, and how with Him there was neither change nor shadow of alteration. It was amazing how her looks changed. Some days, when her eyes were flashing, she looked almost profane and made me wonder what events inside the precincts of the convent caused her to be suddenly so excited. She might have been a girl going to a dance, except for her habit.

  “Hasn’t she wonderful eyes,” I said to Baba. That particular day they were like blackberries, large and soft and shiny.

  “Something wrong in her upstairs department,” Baba said, and added that with makeup Imelda would be a cinch.

  “Still, she has a vocation!” I said, and even aired the idiotic view that I might have one. At certain moments it did seem enticing to become a nun, to lead a life unspotted by sin, never to have to have babies, and to wear a ring that singled one out as the Bride of Christ. But there was the other side to it, the silence, the gravity of it, having to get up two or three times a night to pray and, above all, never having the opportunity of leaving the confines of the place except for the funeral of one’s parents. For us boarders it was torture, but for the nuns it was nothing short of doom. Also, we could complain to each other, and we did, food being the source of the greatest grumbles. Lunch was either bacon and cabbage or a peculiar stringy meat followed by tapioca pudding; tea consisted of bread dolloped with lard and occasionally, as a treat, fairly green rhubarb jam, which did not have enough sugar. Through the long curtainless windows we saw the conifer trees and a sky that was scarcely ever without the promise of rain or a downpour.

  She was a right lunatic, then, Baba said, having gone to university for four years and willingly come back to incarceration, to poverty, chastity, and obedience. We concocted scenes of agony in some Dublin hostel, while a boy, or even a young man, stood beneath her bedroom window throwing up chunks of clay or whistles or a supplication. In our version of it he was slightly older than her, and possibly a medical student, since medical students had a knack with women, because of studying diagrams and skeletons. His advances, like those of a sudden storm, would intermittently rise and overwhelm her, and the memory of these sudden flaying advances of his would haunt her until she died, and if ever she contracted fever, these secrets would out. It was also rumo
red that she possessed a fierce temper and that, while a postulant, she had hit a girl so badly with her leather strap that the girl had to be put to bed because of wounds. Yet another black mark against Sister Imelda was that her brother Ambrose had been sued by a nurse for breach of promise.

  That first morning when she came into our classroom and modestly introduced herself, I had no idea how terribly she would infiltrate my life, how in time she would be not just one of those teachers or nuns but rather a special one, almost like a ghost who passed the boundaries of common exchange and who crept inside one, devouring so much of one’s thoughts, so much of one’s passion, invading the place that was called one’s heart. She talked in a low voice, as if she did not want her words to go beyond the bounds of the wall, and constantly she stressed the value of work both to enlarge the mind and to discipline the thought. One of her eyelids was red and swollen, as if she was getting a sty. I reckoned that she overmortified herself by not eating at all. I saw in her some terrible premonition of sacrifice which I would have to emulate. Then, in direct contrast, she absently held the stick of chalk between her first and second fingers, the very same as if it were a cigarette, and Baba whispered to me that she might have been a smoker when in Dublin. Sister Imelda looked down sharply at me and said what was the secret and would I like to share it, since it seemed so comical. I said, “Nothing, Sister, nothing,” and her dark eyes exuded such vehemence that I prayed she would never have occasion to punish me.

  November came and the tiled walls of the recreation hall oozed moisture and gloom. Most girls had sore throats and were told to suffer this inconvenience to mortify themselves in order to lend a glorious hand in that communion of spirit that linked the living with the dead. It was the month of the Suffering Souls in Purgatory, and as we heard of their twofold agony, the yearning for Christ and the ferocity of the leaping flames that burned and charred their poor limbs, we were asked to make acts of mortification. Some girls gave up jam or sweets and some gave up talking, and so in recreation time they were like dummies making signs with thumb and finger to merely say “How are you?” Baba said that saner people were locked in the lunatic asylum, which was only a mile away. We saw them in the grounds, pacing back and forth, with their mouths agape and dribble coming out of them, like melting icicles. Among our many fears was that one of those lunatics would break out and head straight for the convent and assault some of the girls.