by Donal Ryan
Long Puck
MY FIRST WEDNESDAY here the Orthodox Christian priest strode in long-bearded and black-eyed. He embraced me and kissed me on my cheeks, he in a frock and me in a smock, and he called me Brother. Being green and unsure of the prevailing custom I only stood and smiled at him and he smiled back at me with his hands on my shoulders and said, We will be friends. And he strode back out and across and up the wide and dusty street to his own tiny stone church. It’s peaceful here, my oldest parishioner told me. There was a thing once, a terrible thing that happened, but it was a hotness of the blood, a sudden, silly thing, young men … And he trailed off and said no more about it and I thought no further about his intimations and worked each day in the cool inside of my church and welcomed all who entered here.
A local boy in his late teens or early twenties came here one day and said his name was Halim and asked did I know a place called Tipperary. It’s where I’m from, I told him. He laughed and a light in his eyes danced. His cousin lived there. What is this place like? he asked. I told him about the green fields and low hills and forests and valleys and the villages and towns and the speedy drawly talk of the people. They must like chips, he said. My cousin is a rich man. He drives a Mercedes. He sells chips at curling matches in the summer. Hurling, I corrected him. I showed my new friend my hurley and sliotar, and pucked it against the transept wall. His eyes widened. I rang home for another hurley. It came with a shipment of vestments and wine. He’d come to the church in the cooling evening and say, Few pucks, Father? And every time I heard these words I laughed and he laughed with me and we pucked our sliotar up and down the street.
It became a thing in the town, a break in the sunwashed greyness. The hurleys and the sliotar and the priest. Slitter, shlitter, pucks, hoorleys, hurlings, roars of laughter. An imam strolled slowly down to our quarter one still day and watched silently, then smiled at me and asked could he try. He threw the sliotar and swung wildly and missed and my young friend Halim laughed and quickly caught himself. He spoke gently with careful deference to the old man and I saw by his gestures he was telling him to throw the ball slightly higher and farther outwards from his body, to keep his eye on it all the time, to grip with his left hand lower. The imam connected cleanly on his third try and smiled in satisfaction. He raised his hand and bowed slightly and walked back towards his mosque.
A band of hooting watchers formed. We took to having our few pucks at the same time each evening, after their prayers and our devotions. The hurleys were passed from hand to hand; some quickly caught the hang of it, more swung wild and awkward and rarely connected. When leather fell square and clean on ash and my sliotar soared skyward a roar went up and rose with the swirling dust raised by the minor stampede of men and boys trying to catch the falling ball. A man brought a baseball catcher’s mitt one day and the others booed. He handed it shamefaced to me and pretended he had brought it as a gift.
I rang home for as many hurleys as could be sent. A note came one day from the station that there was a delivery waiting there for me. My curate, a small and quiet man from Clare, handed it to me with a ghost of a smile; we walked through the market and past the commercial quarter and the old traders’ mansions and along the open railway that flanked the olive plantation to the paved widening in the street of dust and stones that served as the train station. We hefted a dozen hurleys home. My quiet curate sweated under his burden of ash. He tutted and huffed and muttered under his breath about me and my blasted hurleys. But when we grounded our load in the sacristy he exhaled loudly and I saw on his face a smile of tired satisfaction, and I heard him later as I stood unseen by him at the altar door, blessing the heap of hurleys and all who would play with them.
The first long puck competition was held the same day the idea of it was conceived. Landed balls were marked in dust and each man stood by his line. Arguments over whose was which threatened to end badly, until the Orthodox lad offered to officiate. A hundred yards was measured with a hand-rolled odometer borrowed from the municipal authority by the cousin of a friend of a hurler called Ahmed. Pucks were measured back from or up from the hundred-yard line. Ah lads, call a howlt, I’d shout in an exaggerated Irish accent if a row broke out, and they’d echo me, laughing. Ah lads, call a howlt! would ring along the sun-baked street as far as the marketplace. I got off a good one, clean and high. At least fifteen yards out from the previous leader. Applause rippled upwards from the marketplace like a handful of pebbles landing in water. Halim stepped up next and smiled at me before launching a sliotar skyward. It will come down with snow on it, eh, Father? And we laughed as the Orthodox priest shouted, Tie! It is a dead tie!, and supporters of my friend Halim protested and measured with fingers and feet and squinted eyes and declared Halim the champion and the competition to be a fix. The decision that one last puck each would decide the day was greeted with silence, then Ha-lim, Ha-lim, chanted rhythmically, rising in speed and volume as my friend toed the line we had drawn in the dust and swung in a tidy and powerful arc and sent the ball buzzing low and fast through the still and heavy air. I shook Halim’s hand before taking my shot and he smiled at me nodding and my curate suddenly broke free of his quietness and roared Go on, Father Anthony, give it holly, lash into it! But my ball fell short of the mark that was scraped in the dust of the street moments earlier and Halim was hoisted shoulder-high and carried off a hero.
Tell me words said in Tipperary, Halim would say. Words of the people who would buy chips from my cousin.
Well, youssir, how you keeping?
Yerra shur I’m only dragging.
Soft day, thank God.
Begod tis.
Garlic chip and cheese, two battered sausage there please, I’d ate shtones I’m so hungry.
No bother, boy, gimme wan minute.
And on and on I’d go, filling Halim’s head with paddywhackery. He’d ring his cousin before our pucks the odd evening from a brick of a mobile. Hey, you sir, you’re some stones, this is Paddy here, from over beyond, will you do me up a takeaway until I collect it? I’d ate the arse of a low-flying duck, so I would. I’ll have … And he’d laugh and laugh until he could hardly breathe and his cousin’s roars of laughter in faraway Tipp would crackle through the ancient Nokia and Halim would declare that one day he’d see this place, Tipperary, and hear these words spoken in truth, and see these mighty hurling men. He would shake Brendan Cummins by the hand, the man with the longest puck in all of Tipperary. All of Ireland? Yes. The world? Maybe, probably.
My bishop arrived from the capital in a stately old Mercedes driven by a man who hunched himself in a semi-circle over the steering wheel. He was weary, languorous, unsmiling. We concelebrated and had dinner and the town’s prominent Catholics were invited and he was gifted specially imported cognac and local wine and olive oil. As his crescent-shaped man waited at the wheel of his idling car to return him to his palace the next day he proffered his ring dourly and said, Enough with the games. And then he was gone.
I wrote a letter to Jimmy Ryan in Newport asking for a hurley for a lad of five feet eleven, with a good bas, not quite goalkeeper size, and a grand light handle. I asked would he put a grip on it in the blue and gold of Tipperary and send it in as far as Nenagh to Brother John Daly who I wanted to write a message along the length of it in calligraphy with an indelible marker. I felt a prickle of excitement each time I thought of myself presenting Halim with his gift, crafted by Jimmy Ryan of Newport, a legendary maker of hurleys.
Clouds rolled in around that time, at the start of winter. Flurries of violence in the distant capital, lightning protests quickly doused. Militias formed in the provinces, government troops massed at flashpoints and hotspots and strongholds. Halim’s hurley arrived in the town on the same train that brought two dozen dark-eyed, laughless men with guns of unreflecting metal. The Muslim women veiled more fully and walked and dressed with greater observance than before, never venturing past their doorsteps without a male relative a step or two in front of them. The Ort
hodox Christians and the Catholics for the most part stayed at home, behind their gates. The olive plantation slowed production; three of their trucks were requisitioned. The police were nowhere to be seen. I had never hefted a hurley so perfect.
Halim stood across the street from my church, facing east, not facing in. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, stroking his new beard furiously, darting looks around in all directions except mine. I walked across to him. I didn’t bring my gift for him from its resting place beside the holy-water font. He stood at a right angle from me as he spoke. All sorts of accusations had been levelled against him by his mother’s cousin. Apostasy had been whispered. He had been questioned by a group of the newcomers. Why was he friends with a Catholic priest? What were these games he played? Who else was involved in this group that hit balls with sticks up and down the streets? They were rebels, and were gathering all the men to fight. Sharia was to be observed in its fullness, apostates were to be killed, infidels driven out. Leave, my friend, Halim said. Today. And the sun flashed a spear of light from the tear at the side of his eye. As he walked away I saw that he was limping heavily, his left hand pressed against his ribs.
Scattered showers of shells fell on the outskirts of the town but government forces largely bypassed us at the start. My curate said We really ought to leave. I told him go if he wanted. I declared my church a refuge for all. Mass would be said daily and devotions would be at the usual time each evening. I hurled my sliotar up against the transept wall for thirty minutes after devotions without fail. Government forces woke fully to our town, realized we had become a stronghold, a hotbed, an enclave. Short warning was given, a helicopter gunship on a reconnaissance flight above us was shot at by hotheads and that was all that was needed. The gunship retraced its earlier route, lower, its nose angled more steeply down as though the machine itself was peering, searching. Again the rebels fired on it and on its third looping sortie it was spitting death. The olive plantation lorries that had returned two days previously were rolled to the town square and ancient-looking mortar cannons were taken from beneath the tarpaulin on their flatbeds and embedded in the hard ground. Three-man mortar teams were assembled. Coordinates were hastily applied, and the rebels began a vaguely aimed pounding of guessed-at government positions.
My curate begged me to stay inside, to join him as he sat worrying his rosary beads against the stoutest column in the nave, beneath the sturdiest centre arch. Let them come, I roared, and swung my hurley as fiercely as my muscles would allow, and sweated in the still dry heat. People carried children and belongings through my church’s door and camped beneath sheets between pews shoved back to back. I asked nothing of anyone. Government troops laid light siege at first, tightening inwards slowly with the days. The rebels held the centre.
They came in ragged battle dress through our gate three days ago, six of them, in two rows. Halim was left half-forward. There were Christians and Muslims and agnostics at shelter from the storm of fire in the coolness of the inside of my church. The big lad at full-forward swung his arm back and caught Halim by the front of his jersey and dragged him forward and out to the front. Halim looked at the ground before him and up at me and around at his cowering homeless neighbours and he pointed up at Our Lord, a long finger unfurled from a shaking hand. His other hand gripped the wooden stock of an automatic rifle. Leave this place, he roared, and the suddenness and the pitch of it startled me. I wasn’t sure in my shock was he addressing Christ or me. Leave this place, FATHER, and he didn’t look at me but he spat the word. His comrades stood behind and before me; I was shoved in the back and shoved from the front until my knees weakened and I was suddenly kneeling. A rifle-butt struck the floor before me. Your saviour-on-a-stick won’t help you if you’re still here tomorrow, a voice not Halim’s said. And Our Lord on His Cross was taken from above my altar and smashed and splintered across the flagstones. As they left I saw Halim stop beside the holy-water font. I saw him see his gift and the words along it and he looked back at me and his face had a shadow across it not made by the sun. And then he was gone.
They came again the next day, and this time there were no words spoken to me. Four of them had their rifles slung across their backs while two of them flanked and pointed, swinging their barrels around in slow, threatening arcs. I recognized one of them as one of our earliest hurlers, a friend of Halim’s, a happy, smiling fellow who had always worn an Arsenal jersey and asked me once could I tell him the best way to become a doctor. How swiftly men are robbed of light. The four scanned the refugees on the floor of my church and grabbed a man each and dragged their prisoners crying away. I stood in the doorway, my brave curate to my right, and he was shot in the chest and the round made a hole in him through which I could briefly see the sixth station of the cross on the far wall and the word KINDNESS carved below it and the butt of a rifle sent stars and sky reeling down around my head.
I rose from the floor a short while ago and saw my church was empty of living people, abandoned belongings scattered and streeled. I walked slowly across the courtyard to the gate and looked through my half-open eyes along the street. The Orthodox priest who kissed me and embraced me one time not so long ago and called me Brother and umpired a long puck competition or two is sprawled on the path before his church, a billow of black smoke behind him, a halo of blood around his head, dancing flames reflected in his open unseeing eyes. Icons have been arranged around him in a circle and set alight, accidentally almost heart-shaped. Accidentally I think, anyway. It’s hard to know now. Probably it always was. I just never knew before how hard it is to really and truly know anything.
I’m settled now in the nave, in the seat left empty by my curate who lies still where he fell, and I see through the porch and the open door that they’re back, and all I have as weapon against them is this hurley, with the words Halim Assam, All-Syria Long Puck Champion 2012 inscribed along the perfect shaft of it in beautiful calligraphy.
Losers Weepers
THE WORLD IS FILLED with unwelcome words. Insolvent. Bankrupt. Unfriended. Someone did that to my daughter yesterday, and she’s been pale and silent ever since. All I could do was say Don’t worry, love, my love, don’t cry. He couldn’t have been your real friend to start with. And she sobbed and nodded and tried to hide her pain behind her laptop screen.
There’s a shadow moving slowly outside in the orange arc-sodium light. Up and down the cul-de-sac. A neighbour who’s lost her engagement ring. It’s worth seven grand. I know because she told me in a desperate whisper as I helped her search for it earlier. Oh, God, I know, it’s only a ring, she kept saying, it’s only a ring. Her husband’s working in Canada.
Unfriended. It’s not even a proper verb, only an ugly confection of a word to describe the deletion of a thing that never really existed. Amber looked at me as she told me about it through eyes ringed with livid red and she was a child again. I wanted to run to the place where the unfriender lived and kick down his door and choke the life from his miserable teenaged body. But all I could do was say Don’t worry, love, please don’t cry.
My neighbour couldn’t say the words for a while. She was careful with them. She didn’t want to cry in front of me, this stranger she’d been living not thirty yards from for at least four years. My … engagement … ring. I’d been meaning to get it reduced. I was walking, just up and down the cul-de-sac, with the buggy. Trying to get my little man off to sleep. He’s a pure little crank, so he is. It must have just … slipped off. I’d never have left the house without it. And she placed a long and delicate-looking hand across her mouth and squeezed her eyes closed for a second or two, a flimsy barricade hastily thrown up against a procession of tears. How can I not find it? How can it not be here? How did I not feel it slipping off? And she looked accusingly at another unaware neighbour, driving slowly towards home. I never saw so many fucking cars around here, she said, and looked suddenly shocked at herself. Oh, no, I just meant … you know. I know, I said, and smiled at her and looked quickly
back at the ground.
The day I opened my shop nine years ago I overheard my mother talking to my aunt. How is it at all none of mine could be any way cute? They haven’t a dust between them, God help us. A camera shop, I ask you. The barest breeze of hardship will blow it away. And Aunty Susan sighed and shook her head and dragged deeply on her fag in sympathy and sorrow.
We trawled the footpaths and the tarmacadam with our eyes. We sifted through patches of gravel and pebbles with our fingers. We braved the sting of kerbside thistles. We were forensic about it. We’re like the crowd in CSI Miami, someone joked, an older man whose face we all knew well but whose name was known to none. Paddy. He was surprised we didn’t know his name. Sure we’re here years and years, Mary and me. Oh God, ya. There was only our house here starting off. Sure this was the countryside not so long ago. All ye crowd are only Johnny-come-latelies. And he beamed around at everyone, happy to be the one doing all the talking, and we smiled embarrassedly back. We should all have known him well.
Mother drained her champagne flute on my opening day and held it before her, squinting at it with a grimace. Lord Almighty that’s as sour as gall. Oul cheap stuff, that is. Susan rounded a bit then, as Mother’s eyeballs swivelled heavenward in disgust. They say the best stuff is always the bitterest, Elsie. Mother’s eyes narrowed again, her nostrils flared. Well, go get two more then if you’re such an expert till I anaesthetize myself. And I stepped unseen backwards, away from her, and sat for a while in the cool silence of my shining new staff bathroom with that old familiar stinging at the backs of my eyes.