Sifting

by Mike Mac Domhnaill

  The look on Kitty’s face shut him up. He had a quick look at the paper. The television was useless during the summer. They got to bed early.

  They had little talk that night. Kitty felt very uneasy. Tadhg had set out to best her father, she felt. And he had won. There was her secret love for the fort where she used to play when they were young. They had great games of hide-and-go-seek in the hollows, herself and Jimmy and the friends from around. And later on she would often go there on her own when she had some teenage problem on her mind. It was her retreat. Tadhg was going to knock that too.

  God forgive her, but she hoped it would pour during the night. Come down in sheets like the day her father often spoke of and go straight through the bales. Teach him a lesson to be so cocky. Oh, what a terrible way to feel. Hadn’t she brought Tadhg into the place … Her vows at the altar … She was restless and couldn’t close an eye. Rain, pour torrents on the fort field. Shield my secret place in floods.

  The Search

  ‘Nolan!’

  We jumped.

  ‘If you don’t put away those cards …’ his words came slowly, slowly and deliberately, ‘I’ll go down and burst your head off the wall.’

  I was mad. We had just got him on to dealing with the universe. He knew a few of us, at least, were really interested. Where does it all end? And time, what is time? He rattled us with that answer: relative to spinning planets. And Purgatory, Hell? Sir, do you think they exist?

  ‘Well, don’t you get hell here sometimes! From the other teachers, not me of course, right Nolan? Hmm.’

  ‘The atom bomb, what’s the worst thing, you ask. Well that booklet you refer to, sent around to every house …’ he smirked, a knowing smirk. ‘Well it’s all right as far as it goes. You stock up on tins. Stand under a doorway if the ceiling starts shifting, hoping the lintel … And of course it would have to be well underground, we’re not talking inches! Well, what does anyone think? The most important thing, if the worst happened?’

  ‘Loads of beans, sir, tins of beans!’

  ‘Beans, Nolan? Beans … wouldn’t like to be down in that bunker with you then – the gas in this lab is bad enough!’ Nolan was now happy as Larry, simple to get back in auld Dooch’s good books: just show the slightest bit of interest.

  Dooch would sit up there, his round form rarely stirring from the desk, the odd experiment, at a push, preferring to talk, make us wonder. Bunsen burners were for Inter Cert.

  ‘So figure it out, what would you say is the most important thing you’d need in the bunker? Picture it, you’re down there with your family or whoever.’

  ‘Suppose it happened here, when we’re at school, sir? Would we all go down to the basement?’

  ‘Now you’re talking hell, Nolan. Me stuck down there for weeks with you lot!’ The laugh meant camaraderie. This was the way to spend a Friday afternoon in a double physics. Nolan had put away the cards down in the back desk.

  But it wasn’t Hell that worried me, kept me from sleep. It was God. In this Catholic school he was prepared to discuss it from time to time. Worried me when he explained the history of the Gospels. And why didn’t Christ write it down himself, make it crystal clear: this is it, A, B and C? Follow that and the job is oxo. Why leave it up to reporters, second hand, years later, not even there!

  ‘But it all comes down to belief. In the heel of the hunt, it’s down to belief.’ If anyone reported back, the priests couldn’t get him on that. Here he was toeing the line. Belief.

  ‘Sir, do you believe we live forever?’ – Nolan. ‘How can anyone live forever?’

  ‘Hmm. Well now that you’ve put away the cards, Nolan … Were you listening when we spoke about time? What does living forever mean if time is no longer there? Time as we understand it.’

  ‘Ah, come on now sir. Come off it, hah?’ Nolan getting all colloquial with him. ‘Sure if there’s no time there’s nothing! Hah?’

  ‘Well, there you are, how are we sure there is anything? Go and have a think about that for a while.’

  After a suitable pause. (Nolan was rearranging the cards under the desk). ‘In your maths class you may have heard your teacher mention Descartes?’

  ‘The what?’ from Nolan, under his breath. ‘The cart? Oh … I have it! The cart before the horse! That’d be Mackey all right!’ Great titter around the class.

  Pretending not to have fully heard: ‘I’ll have no referring to other teachers in my class.’ Dooch was getting his back up. Trust Nolan to push it too far. But the eyes went around. We settled.

  ‘Well, our friend Descartes, he gave us the immortal dictum: Cogito ergo sum! Now you all do Latin so no doubt I don’t need to explain …’ (Dooch needed his bit of enjoyment too.) We all adopted as best we could the unbaffled look of the learned, but it failed Nolan as his gaze came up from under the desk.

  ‘So, Mr Nolan, you’ll give us the translation!’

  Nolan gave some frantic digs into Collopy’s back. With his head down behind him we could hear the muffled, ‘Whassit, whassit, quick Colpy, whassit?’

  ‘Eh, think … Sir … think.’

  ‘Think what, Nolan?’ A long and delicious pause. ‘Oh for God’s sake sit down. I think, therefore I am.’

  Where was this leading? But the bell rang.

  ‘You never gave us the answer, sir. Remember last week, the most important thing down in the bunker?’

  ‘Nolan … the things you remember. Could you tell us about Faraday’s Law if I asked you? Hmm? Well, the beans might get boring, no! And then, you see you all just thought of your stomach. What about the mind? How long could you stay down there without tearing each other apart? Games! That’s what you’d need. Loads of games. Even the cards, Nolan, wouldn’t go astray. Chess, I’d recommend.’

  ‘And when you’d come out of the bunker …’ And on it went. Could you eat the vegetables? Wash them. What if the water … Getting tedious. You could tell on Dooch’s face that we’d be as well stand out in it and welcome the hereafter. Find out sooner or later.

  I got him back to the Gospels. We knew he did a few years towards being a priest. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it all seems to boil down to this: God … is love.’ A bit of a titter. ‘Not the love you look for down the back of the pictures, Hanly!’ Hanly, milk-skinned and dreamy-eyed, always chasing the girls, gave a sheepish look across to his pal Dwyer. The conspiratorial look came back. ‘No, theologians might define love more by what it is not: it is not about the self. It is the seeming contradiction: it is in giving that we receive … It is loving your enemy. If Greek hadn’t been taken off the course you would have the basic word: agape. That is the beautiful word for it: agape,’ he drifted off for a second.

  ‘In here we learn that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so that in giving away you should be doing just that, losing something, be diminished, but the Christian message is the opposite.’

  Another day. Energy can neither be made nor destroyed. He said to think about this for the weekend. Is every moment canned somewhere, like a reel of film?

  The answer, Mr O Hagan, the answer. Questions, he tossed out questions. I wanted the answer. The only answer that preoccupied me. Was there, is there, a God?

  So lying awake at night I’d go over things like ‘to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’. Take it out of the lab, he advised. So everything is balanced. Everything. No hill without a valley, joy without pain. But love breaks the mould. Love is ridiculous: giving to receive, love those who hate you … Agape, the way he pronounced it made it sound mystical, he made it sound kind in itself. There was the spreading word of flower power. San Francisco. Were we on the threshold of the Age of Aquarius? Was everyone thinking like me?

  (There was something there to hang on to. The father figure had disappeared, then the surety of the priests. Now it was down to this teacher of physics. A certain excitement gripped him as he took control, broke the natural laws, thought of people who gave him a pain in the arse but he conscious
ly tried to love them, they were his brothers, do good to them, otherwise the world was going to end in a bang. The United States and Russia, bloody fools, halfwits. The good ones, Abraham, Martin and John all took the bullet in the Land of the Free. What hope was there … But love was above it all. He felt himself rise above the humdrum, suffer with the saints, go ahead, burn me in oil, crucify me, tear out my tongue but my mind will still love. Exhausted, he fell asleep.)

  Nolan played The Entertainer nifty as hell on the piano there in the music room. We had it to ourselves quite often these days, the swots busy at their books and the smokers in their hidden nooks. Ragtime was all very well.

  ‘Imagine falling into the abyss,’ I said, ‘the abyss of nothing.’

  ‘Jeez, life’s too short for that kind of stuff,’ Nolan cajoled.

  The staleness in the air. Everything seemed to have been said. We had got what we could from each other. Schooldays were ending.

  ‘Wish I could play it like you, Nolsy!’

  ‘Practice, old boy, practice.’ Nolan was good at the toff accent.

  ‘Getting back to what I said, you just don’t worry about God: there or not? I don’t get that. I can’t get it out of my head. It’s the only thing that bothers me.’

  Nolan cleaned his glasses, all the while looking across at me with a goofy smile.

  ‘What’s the problem? You live, you die. Simple as that!’

  He put on his glasses, giving him that Buddy Holly look, and he was back at The Entertainer, hunched over and speeding it up like a wizard. Morgan Traynor and his shadow Val O’Brien came in and said they had just got Barry McGuire’s The Eve of Destruction so they asked Nolan to shut the fuck up with that Entertainer. Traynor was lord of the record player, bringing along his own needle in case his records got any scratches and never a loan from his record pile; play them himself and that was it. He carried a bit of weight, Traynor.

  So we sat around and listened to more worrying stuff, agonising on the words. Were we hurtling towards destruction? Of course. But were the Powers listening? Of course not. Traynor’s record spinning. Mesmerised, we listened as World War Three beckoned.

  All these Superpowers, Superidiots, with their macho posturing, their bullying, while dreamy, make-love-not-war kids stuck flowers in their hair, went back to nature. That. I wanted that.

  Your final word for us, sir, your final word?

  ‘What can I recommend? Hmm, hopefully you leave here with a love of physics …’ The titter went around. ‘Hopefully, in the future, you’ll keep asking those questions.

  ‘On Life? Hmm. When you’re not reinventing the wheel, like us all? Oh I’d say when you have time, take down the Gospel of John.’ A short silence and he began:

  In the beginning was the Word

  The Word was with God

  And the Word was God

  ‘The word being logos. Write that down and, whatever about the physics, remember me for that! Logos.’

  So he wrapped himself up in those words, their beautiful fall, the Word was all. In the beginning … was the Word. You could repeat that forever, it seemed.

  This would be the booster rocket, to explode into the world and explain all. You were going to explain it all, dismantle philosophy and reassemble where everyone would have their grasp of love and flower power would rule the world. There would be no competition but people would only strive to improve themselves, sharing that improvement as if it were the community’s, a part of the Word. Peace and love.

  Back in the music room you were on a wing, not listening to the gibes, sailing out and into space, this love was an expanding fireball, for ever and ever engulfing what we choose to call the world; beyond thought, beyond words – happy there, in that music room, as you set out to embrace.

  The arrival at the door. With Nolan. The parting shot, the final bit of wisdom? You had rustled up a few quid from the ones who liked old Dooch’s Friday afternoons, the languid style, the nod in the direction of syllabus, the hint of true knowledge. Whatever you bought was there in the wrapped up package. You arrived bearing gifts.

  When the door opened it was … Dooch. But not as imagined. Dressed in an old sweater and dumpy jeans, he seemed a little shocked and out of it. At a door in the suburbs, a door we’d found hard to find. ‘A present? But, but why? Come on in.’ And his wife sat you down and there was an awkward silence. ‘Just for all you’ve done … For the Friday afternoons especially …’ ‘Oh, thanks. Thanks for that. It’s, it’s a nice gesture.’

  Come on, where’s the banter, the subtle hints? The direction towards the future? Take on Kant and Heidegger? Square up to Nietzsche. No, Friday afternoons seemed to be gone, as in a flutter. A new class and new names, was that all?

  We had tea and biscuits and said an awkward farewell. Dooch at home was a different ball game, but for Nolan he had, ‘Whatever else you do, don’t ever lose your sense of humour – when you lose that, you lose your soul.’

  As he left us out all we got was: ‘Don’t expect too much, that way you won’t be disappointed …’ He seemed to see my face falling: ‘And as for you, young man, you just keep up the search, right!’

  He rose a smile at the door as we left. Well now, I thought, forlorn, is that all we get in the end?

  No Return

  Brenny English stepped down into the Corner Bar. Into the rattling good session, banjo and fiddle, at least one bodhrán. Festival.

  ‘How’s Brenny me auld pal?’ this was from Grace with a welcoming smile. ‘You’re lookin’ great, come here and give us a hug!’

  ‘Gracey!’ Still good-looking, still the pale clear skin and lively eyes. She was with a tall bloke.

  ‘This is Tommy, you remember Tommy!’

  Brenny remembered the face, drew in a breath to give a good look.

  ‘Tommy, how’s it goin’?’

  ‘You’re lookin’ at me … no wonder, my first time back in years … Brenny? – Brendan, that’s how I remember you, from school.’

  ‘Oh, I was a few years ahead of you. Sure you’re only a gorsún, Tommy! England?’

  ‘Clapham Common! Where we all went in those years.’

  And they got talking a little of work, how it had been for each. ‘Sure, you know yourself – I have a daughter, twenty-three, Sophie. Split up for years but Sophie always keeps in touch. Doing great, not like the auld fella! She’s even thinking of America,’ proudly showing the picture. Meanwhile Grace is answering Brenny’s eyes: ‘Look, he’s home for a while and we get along.’ Tommy had other company at the bar and he said, ‘We’ll talk later on,’ and hesitated. ‘Brenny … I’ll have to get used to your new name! You’re staying here I take it … packed to the gills up town. Mind that woman there for a while!’

  This gave Grace the chance to squeeze his arm. ‘You’re lookin’ great Brenny – what’re you on?’ They had gone out for a short while when they were young, nothing too serious, but there was still the fondness, the ‘auld grá’, as Gracey put it.

  The music hummed on in the background with the odd yelp when there was a change up in gear. There now you could hear the Mason’s Apron, banjo solo. ‘Ah sure, Billy’s an absolute genius. An absolute genius – if he wasn’t so odd!’ Through the crowd Brenny could make out the cowboy hat bobbing and the pheasant tail feather, as always, stuck in the band, bright, saying, ‘I’m here, banjo player.’

  Gracey wanted to talk. The crowd pushed her into Brenny and he thought, with a slight guilt, the feeling wasn’t unpleasant. But she wanted to talk about O’Neill. Oh God, anything but that.

  ‘Out of prison I hear? After doing what? A few years. For all he done? That girl was right, fair play to her. If my poor mother only knew what he done to me. And she trustin him. “Oh, come on up anytime, Neddy. You can train the girls. Sure they’re mad for the runnin’.” If she only knew. Taught us more than runnin’, the dirty auld bastard. What was I, ten or eleven? And he comin’ round by the way helping us with our training – I was a good little runner you know!
’ With a wistful smile.

  Brenny wanted to share his – felt he could with Gracey – but she kept butting in whenever he saw an opening. ‘You know I had a kind of similar, not as—’ But she was back again, the gin not letting her stop. Tears welled in her eyes. ‘I’m only waiting for my poor mother … I couldn’t while she’s still alive. ’Twould kill the poor woman. To think she used to invite him in. Oh make tea, “Sit down there, Neddy,” and Neddy this Neddy that. When I think of that slimy bastard and what he did.’ She gripped his hand. But he too wanted to tell. To say “We’re comrades, of sorts,” to say somehow he might understand. He stood cradling his pint and couldn’t but like again this girl who held on to a listening ear. Always the soft spot for her as she wandered from man to man since the marriage went. The anger he felt coming back from the Men’s when the box player returning to his seat should whisper: ‘I see you talking to Gracey up there. You know what they’re calling her now?’ Here we go, some confidence, ‘The village bike!’ The scairt of a laugh. The shock of this reference to his one-time girlfriend, this offence, but he could only find words like, ‘For fuck’s sake, Jim. Ah, for fuck’s sake go on out of it!’

  ‘The worst time – tell me now if I’m upsettin’ you, Bren, I know I’ve had the few drinks – I had to say it was barbed wire. That’s what he got me to say. I caught myself in barbed wire.

  ‘And my poor mother of course believes me. Giving out about I being such a tomboy. We ended up at the doctor. Seven stitches …’

  ‘Did the doctor …?’

  ‘Sure the doctor believed my mother. Didn’t want to know if you ask me. How did it happen? I was climbing over the fence into Lacey’s field, Doctor …

  ‘Oh I was, climbing over a fence all right.’ She clenched her fist. ‘As soon as my mother’s gone – ’twould destroy her – I’m going to go after him. I’ll wipe the smirk off his auld crooked face. God forgive me I’d love to see him hanged.’