Sifting

by Mike Mac Domhnaill

  Donal was standing in his mother’s doorway, benevolent family friend. ‘Well, will you be down to us this weekend? You should see the work he did the last time!’ He looked towards the mother. ‘He made haycocks of the entire field, you know. The small field in front of the house. Saved it all from the rain while we were away at the wedding.’ Should have made him proud as punch but this only revived a sad smile from young Brendan. In his confusion he heard himself say: ‘Ah, I can’t. I have a match … a hurling match tomorrow night … and we’re training tonight’ he rushed in, for fear even one night away might be offered.

  ‘Ah well,’ Donal saw through it, ‘maybe we’re getting a bit big for the farm, are we! You know you’re always welcome. And yourself, Jane,’ he addressed his mother, ‘you’re keeping well these times?’

  ‘Pulling the Devil by the tail, isn’t that it? Trying to mind myself! And your uncle, Mick, is in good shape?’

  ‘Never a fear of that fella! Has to be out every day – half the time getting in my way!’

  The car drove off. ‘Now why wouldn’t you go off down for yourself this weekend? I heard you say nothing about a match.’

  ‘It’s … it’s training,’ he conceded, ‘we have training up in the Field.’

  ‘Oh, I think you should make an effort. You used always love going down there to them. Your father and them were very close. Helped us out, too. They’re forever talking of the day you delivered the eleven banbhs with that sow out in the flaggers. All on your own!’ The praise brought back the faint smile.

  ‘I know … but maybe next time.’

  Next time and next time till there was no more calling and a slight coolness developed.

  ‘Ah sure, he’s growing up. Maybe he has a little girl distracting!’ And that was that.

  That sow he was sent for had a surprise. Lying there hidden among the feileastroms, she had begun to farrow, and now what? What, what should he do? He had seen it done once, snipping the cord back in the shed but … Shout. Shout again. So far from the house and now she gives a great heave and there it is, covered in slime, the first little banbh, now, oh now what? Slime on his hands he frees the mouth. Breathe little piglet, breathe, and now the cord, so tough between his nails, the slippery cord, but succeed he did and relief, now to put him to her teats and have him suckle, watch she doesn’t turn and bite, he’s heard of that, but no she’s quiet and he settles in to delivering … eleven. There on his knees in the field. He counts them again. Proud sow, proud small boy, praise all round.

  Not able to tell, unable to tell, even himself, something he locked away and got on blindly with life. But the adult world had left him down. ‘You’re one great little man. Now stiffen your muscles there. There on your arm. Ah, sure you’ll make one strong man. Play for Limerick I’d say. Play for Limerick.’

  The kitchen, darkening in the April evening. No, no need for light. ‘Isn’t it light enough we have. And how are you doing in school? Top of the class, I’ll bet you are. And already playing on the Under-14s!’ The rank breath of adult male which … the male breath too near … too near until Brendan goes SNAP.

  ‘Brought us up the field. “Go away there now,” he’d say to Mary Ann, “keep on jogging till I tell you stop. I have to show Gracey a few exercises.” Exercises! In behind the trees, he took me. And it happened many a time. With my poor mother saying, “Neddy, come up whenever you like, sure you’re doin’ wonders with them. Ready for the Olympics they’ll be!” and she’d smile at the two of us, Mary Ann beaming up: “Neddy says I’ll be better than Grace. I’ll be faster than Grace. I beat her again today.” But I saved her. At least I think I did. She nearly ate me the only time I brought it up.

  ‘Of course she was always a bit jealous of me. Jealous of my looks! What do you think, Brenny? Oh, sure we had good oul times, Bren, remember? My looks is right!’ She lightened up. The crowd were making room for a set. Sure enough Grace was led out. Always game for a laugh, but she was able to dance. The polka set.

  Not able to tell. How to tell? Then Brendan’s mother had to go away for treatment, that time when the house smelled awful with drink and her friends cajoled her out the door. She screeching, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine can’t ye let me be …’ and he had to stay with the neighbour, Molly Breen. Molly was great to him. Trying to explain how his mother would be well again, and we all had our crosses to bear, she’d soon be right as rain.

  That offered a fine excuse. Had to check out the house, you know, in case there’d be any leak, check the gas, that sort of thing. And he said to Brendan to come along, but he didn’t want to go, he knew from that day in the shed, when farm life came to an end, how Donal would never know … But he went all the same and this time it was ‘Sit down sit down we’ll have a little chat and the hurling you love the hurling now let’s see how your muscles are coming along, flex them there for me till we see if you’ll make the team.’ The sun was fading, the kitchen dim. ‘Flex them there till we see.’ There’s something wrong but I don’t know what was running up and down Brendan’s spine. Burning into his brain. Old Mick had opened his fly and was saying, ‘Feel my muscles, my muscles there on my thigh, yours are nearly as strong, do you know that, young man, feel how strong mine are. You’ll have muscles like that, that’s it, go on, feel them. You’ll play on the Limerick team.’ He felt. Snapped. ‘I have to GO,’ getting flustered as hell, hopping up from the chair, ‘I have a match I forgot. I forgot.’

  And that was the end of that. Luckily enough. No more visits down there though Donal would call and he loved him like a lost father. But he couldn’t go and he couldn’t say.

  ‘My poor mother, if it wasn’t for her. You’re great to be listenin’ to me there goin’ on. It isn’t that many you know, will listen.’ Gracey back from the dance. ‘Am I glowing?’ she said, looking into his face. ‘Am I glowing like a queen!’ she cocked her head and that smile … ‘Horses sweat they say! Isn’t that it! But listen, it was good to talk. I see he’s getting anxious to go.’ Brenny gave her one more hug, but she still didn’t hear what he had to say, or how it might make her feel.

  The Student

  … so I might see you there, Joe. And, do you know, all this has forced me to reminisce. Of course you two had that something in common. You did your bit, I remember, to coax him along, in case he felt, what? Too alone? Bear with me as I bring my mind back. The hollow days – could they have been otherwise? – when I chose medicine; I think he resented that. No more ‘Let us go then, you and I’, when we bombed out a little on Eliot and Dylan Thomas. I had gone along with it. ‘Listen to this, man: “Never until the mankind making …” Get it off by heart,’ he’d say, ‘get it rolling along.’ He liked how I did the Welsh lilt. But I soon had more than enough on my plate, in and out of labs, mixing with (to him, I imagine), a rather sedate lot. Yes, I think he sensed that and drew away. But you and he seemed to always get on. At least, that’s how it comes back.

  So here I am, Joe, on my afternoon off; Relief Doc couldn’t come too fast. You’ll forgive me if I indulge. Sift through the past. He nudged me towards Karl Jung and, for a while, you know … for a while we were away on a hack. Noting our dreams first thing as we’d awake. Comparing over and back. Those early days when we shared a flat. You could feel his excitement, analysing. And each night he’d have to report, all his bloody lectures, oh the full report, the whole whack! Remember he did start – if it wasn’t to last.

  Students are allowed play with words and we played. The nutty professor – we would come up with a better name in time – ‘walked over and back, over and back,’ he said, behind the lecture desk, so that those hell-bent on getting every word would be there craning forward, heads going ‘over and back, over and back.’ Mac Gee could read into his head: ‘For oldsters like me it gets tedious, this professorship, but ignore that, I won’t be meeting you lot in the bar.’ And if, God forbid, they landed in his favourite snug? He’d probably pace up and down with his pint, ‘Ye wouldn’t believe now what I’m g
oing to tell ye, and don’t bother looking for them – Kavanagh, Behan, Myles, all gone – ye’re too late, missed nothing, Mc Daids no more, piss off outa here to the Student Bar, outa here to the wild west of Belfield. The crack is over, ye might as well know.’ Words like that.

  Sheaves of paper curled on the lectern, the window open for the autumn breeze, he could be doing Carrauntouhill in his head, you wouldn’t know with professors. Professors could hang from the ceiling, like bats, fold in their cloaks for the night, no notice, ‘Sure isn’t he a professor, a professor of literature, no less,’ but too late for all that. Now Kavanagh of course … and Eliot … Oh Joe, were those the days, tell me now, were they what! ‘And my whole world turns – misty blue’, remember that? He’d play that over and over on the cassette, it seemed to get to him. And he’d get us to listen, have us take it in like ‘Never until’, insisting we take it all in as if somehow we weren’t hearing what he was hearing. Weren’t feeling what he was feeling. The exasperation.

  Mac Gee eyes us with his tray, unsure if he should join, unsure if he should not join, but anyway, down he sits. ‘Well Pat, how’s the English Lit?’ We’d string him along. ‘You see the thing is this …’ and off with him excited about some translation of Proust he had come across, give the auld ‘R’ a good roll there, go on! Then Hardy, Hardy for another while was his man. ‘Ye should read his poems, skip the prose.’ Wondering what to do with our days, our time, our lives. Had we lives? Were we any good? Were we mediocre? Mediocre. Out there was grey. Which reminds me, you were a bit of a Hardy man yourself, Joe, if I recall, even though you were ploughing into the German. Which reminds me.

  Poor Neart. Poor Neart had it all to do. Whoever put Heinrich Böll on our Leaving Cert course should be taken out the back and shot! Existentialism is bad, but try it in German, to a bunch of when-will-this-all-be-overs, talking of girls, fraulines we’d allow. Poor Neart, all eager, bringing in these German magazines, bands, cool German bands trying to look American; uh-uh Neart, nice try but not quite … Except for Mac Gee, who got carried away with old Neart’s ‘Es muss etwas geschehen!’ Yes, Something must happen. There it is in a nutshell. Neart had one believer. Böll and his Existentialismus! Mac Gee was gobsmacked, you remember. Maybe you too, Joe, may I say, in your quiet way, you were taken in with it too. The Existentialismus!

  The student café is one long cold place of hair and pretence, of swagger and hidden fears. Mac Gee’s father a taxi driver – hardly a boast now is it? What with. Underlays and overlays of professions, of wealth, even old dried up wealth – the veneer being kept. So poor Jude the Unsure – for that’s what we called him now – kept coming back for the knocks, all these faces around him were sure, all of a mind, of a mind that Friday night was theirs, that upward flights were theirs – leaves fell softly on their front lawns – while poor Paddy was juggling too many balls, and we kept tossing in one more, here Paddy, you’ll manage, go on! See them fall.

  Where were we? Mac Gee would arrive: ‘We have to be doing something, isn’t that all there is? Something must be happening. Is that what keeps us alive?’ He wanted to believe that stuff. Wanted us to debate. And if you were there, Joe, ye’d be back to old Neart with Mc Gee still loving the Deutsch, getting you to say it again for him, you being the expert now, Es muss ’was geschehen. Es muss ’was geschehen!

  Of course, the meanness of secondary school could not be left behind, it had to be ferried into the dark corners between Theatre 1 and Theatre 2, floating spaces where bullshit pervaded, student twiddle-twaddle, which unnerved Mac Gee. I’m sure, Joe, he wished on many a day he was back in his father’s car, cruising for a living, watching that woman with the heavy bags, ‘“Watch this now, son, she’ll wave us down, you’ll see,” driving about to put me in here!’ Imagine, poor Mac Gee feeling he couldn’t let him down but ‘here’ wasn’t where he wanted to be. Where? He knew not precisely, just his innocent feeling of finding Kavanagh’s ghost, rustling up Behan, discovering perhaps that his few poems could float, poems he had shown to no one – except maybe you, Joe. His father wouldn’t comprehend, just wouldn’t be into that, and these friends from school were back at the old slag, this wasn’t what he was at, this was not it at all.

  But for yourself, Joe, the others, the rest of us, laughed when he tried to convey, convey what but the sounds of those words. How could they mock poor Neart? ‘He was a teacher, he taught us, I don’t know … for me anyway,’ he stumbled, ‘Es muss etwas geschen didn’t it sound so urgent, so right, so “this is it”, so “let’s go, life”!’ but all Paddy could get was a laugh, ‘Yeah Paddy boy, something must happen you say, like attending a lecture for a change!’ We saw him falling off and then the slagging eased back for we weren’t that bad at heart, we knew his constraints … I like to think.

  That time he took up with the Samaritans, helping the down-and-outs, coming in one day and this time more estranged, we noticed – almost, I would say, aggressive. I remember those words: ‘Ye don’t know anything about out there, ye’re in here cocooned.’ And he went on about how easy we had it. Easy now, Paddy, easy. You weren’t with us that day, Joe.

  There was the day he arrived on with the diminutive Connemara poet, his new hero. The Poet was all he was called, you got caught up with him too, Joe, am I right? ‘He doesn’t believe in this bloody place, look how he’s done, with two books of verse, and none of these degrees … doesn’t believe in it, “stifles”, he says.’ Mac Gee was all agog. A gas man The Poet, with limericks on tap, but serious as hell when readings came up; only yourself, Joe, could be got to attend. God, poetry readings must be bloody hard so that even The Poet himself ran off – am I right! – when his bit was done, over to the nearest bar, to quaff it back, to get the hell out. And Mac Gee all this time was there by his side, he’d found him at last! His guru, at last! Hanging off every word.

  I think you were brought in on that – am I right there, Joe? – asked you to translate over from German. For The Poet. Someone obscure no doubt. And in the heel of the hunt Mac Gee got to do his poetry reading. His big night had come but then they attacked him because of the ones on the North. Another story! The Poet consoling: ‘Hide back in the curled grass. You’re a leveret. Stay still in the curled-up grass, for that’s your world.’ That was the phrase that came back. We all had it off. A leveret, our Pat!

  Of course he got his head kicked in. Bound to happen, with his Samaritan do-gooding and his quizzical nature, searching forever. And we were a bit jaw-dropped with his happy acceptance: ‘These poor devils know no better’ etc., etc. Getting his glasses repaired and a stitch in the nose, back again to helping out. ‘How could we just sit there in the canteen? Something has to be happening.’ He had stopped the German repeat, lost as it was on our newfound group, but for yourself, Joe, trying to nudge him along, ‘Try a few lectures, Pat,’ but no, he now had his friend The Poet, someone who understood, a fellow-mind, and the grant money went in Mc Daids, where his dreams could be left to reside. The Poet, being into nature, said it was like the hare’s twist of hay, that delicate, there was no den or cave for the wandering lyric poet, but left to the form in the grass – The Poet seemed to love the hare!

  ‘Of course,’ says Mac Gee, ‘the hare is hunted just like we were …’ And then he’d get all excited about the North and how we were ‘not even lifting a finger’. Did we not care, here in this barren canteen with the flat bare fields out there, as flat as our lives? He could get very carried away!

  And how he’d tear into us about the way we treated poor Neart, that night at the concert, the ‘going-away’ gig. That was always gnawing away, even with time passing, he was still going back to it. ‘He was trying to play the great old air, the Cúilean and the best we could do was jeer and mock. It was fuckin’ awful, let’s be fair about it, fuckin’ awful.’ Of course he loved Neart’s Irish classes as much as the German and believed we should all be speaking the bloody thing! That and reciting Eliot!

  Poor Neart. ‘Ní neart go cur le ch
éile,’ he’d plead. ‘Let that be our motto in this class, One for all and all for one! Isn’t that it, lads?’ But of course it wasn’t it, not for most of us. Soft touch, that’s what we saw. And that was how he got his name. Remember, Joe? Neart, meaning strength! What a joke for each new class, waiting for him to say it, the nickname passing down! Teaching Irish and German to the uncouth, ‘See the way Ó Ríordáin plays with the words “saoirse agus daoirse” freedom and … well, non-freedom, smacht, see how the Gaelic with one change of letter brings opposites into play.’ Lost on us of course. Except for Mc Gee and yourself maybe, hanging off every word. Freedom, we understood. Get the hell out of school and into the free world. Get outa there.

  They marched in the sun,

  in the cold, cold sun,

  for injustice done.

  Bloody Sunday did for him. The way some of us saw no point in marching and slunk off into our lectures. Wouldn’t take the day off. He was fit to be tied. How couldn’t we see? These were our people mown down in Derry. ‘Sweet Doire Cholmcille’ almost reduced him to tears as he looked at us, bewildered. (I forget where you stood on that, Joe. If you marched?) And then. Oh then. The Poet lets him down. Whatever about us, he was despairing of us, but The Poet to scarper. That killed him. The poet not to march like a man with him, march like a man to the British Embassy and show them we’d take no more. It was then ‘the sweet smell of smoke’, which he’d duly recall, reminding us of how they burned it down, how he regretted none of it, ‘the bastards inside looking out.’ But The Poet ran. That got him more than anything. Oh, The Poet said Ó Bruadair and Ó Rathaile and all that merry band of poetic recorders would never be at the battle front. Their job to piece together the bitterness of loss. With polished words. But not to be one of the mob. If you ask me, that was when he was lost. The Poet was his saviour, his bulwark against our sterile reality of jobs, of steady-as-she-goes lives; The Poet for him was the rebel, the something happening, something being done, everything that we were not, but then he ran. His excuse: stand back and record, not be part of the mob. How could he come from that?