A Pagan Place

by Edna O'Brien

  The sun looked to be near. The sun was gold. The moon was silver. Silver and gold you had none. Gold was being dug for in the mountains, and on the isle of Capri a man beheld a woman with a plain golden ring on her finger. Al Jolson had two wives, and still sang to his Mammy, sang Mammy, Mammy. The songs exploded in your head.

  The sun and your heart beat were far apart, the sun was a great fleshy orb, and your heart was a pump attending to its own bloodstream. You dreaded your bloodstream. You dreaded the red corpuscles more than the white because they were red, but you needed both to function.

  You missed Ambie. Went home on his biannual outing, then wrote to say he wasn’t coming back. He had not written a letter before, hence the punctuation, which was calamitous. Your father said he was a bloody blackguard, said he wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t gone to be a hangman somewhere, because of his expertise with the knife.

  You loved him. You had played love, like, hate, adore and marry with his name and yours. According to it he and you would marry. You said it was because he couldn’t bear partings, couldn’t have suffered the good-bye, that made him sneak away. Your mother professed to never having cared for his folks, whom she had not met. Your aunt said that maybe he had found a sweetheart.

  You sent him a letter in secret. You wrote Remembrance is all I ask, but if remembrance should prove a task, Forget me. It seemed a bit extreme once you had posted it.

  *

  The room was fourteen feet by nine. The wallpaper, a rustic pattern, had been put on upside down. Emma had had plenty of opportunity to take stock. Emma was huge.

  She wore a black dress appliquéd with roses. You followed the protrusion of her stomach by following the circuit of the roses. Conversation was stilted. You did not look up.

  Her hands were white, dead white like hands that had been immersed in water for a long time. The room was one hundred and seventeen square feet in area, you had worked it out. She said the visits from the priest were her one and only solace. She regretted the fact that she could not go out in the street because she would have liked to have seen what the autumn fashions were like. It was impossible for her to go out for fear she might have bumped into her boss or any of her friends. She said she felt very cooped up.

  The lady who took care of her brought a tray with tea and arrowroot biscuits. Your father asked if he could have a slice of bread instead of an arrowroot biscuit. Your mother glared. The landlady said no trouble at all. He said anything, even a crust would do. The landlady removed the two biscuits which would have been his and when she went out he said he believed in being outspoken. Your mother said there was a thing called outspokenness and there was a thing called politeness and they were two very different matters altogether. He said fancy that, annoying her even more by refusing to be riled.

  When the landlady came back she said she realized what it was that you reminded her of. She laughed and said a horse.

  They all looked at you. She said your neck. They looked at your neck but did not know what to say.

  She left the bread on a small plate before him. He examined it before tasting it. It was a bit grey. Emma said the food was not at all appetizing. Your mother gave her a look and said they did not want to hear any complaints, that the strain on their funds was catastrophic. Emma said only for the lending library she would have gassed herself. Your mother said to retract that remark. Your father told your mother that it was not fair to upset Emma in her condition, and Emma began to cry but not expansively as of old. They were slow, bitter tears that she wrenched from herself.

  Your mother produced the presents and handed them over in silence. The two packages were held together with a piece of rough string. In one box there was a cake and the cling peaches and in the other a pleated skirt for when Emma would be shapely again. It was plaid. Your mother had brought no baby clothes because it was already arranged that Emma’s baby would be handed over to the State a few seconds after it was born.

  Emma said she hoped it would be soon. He said to send them a communiqué – a telegram. Your mother asked was it out of his mind he had gone, did he want the whole parish to know. He told her to be quiet. He said he had a brainwave. He said to Emma couldn’t they use morse code. Emma said they could if they knew morse code but they didn’t. He said surely there was some way of conveying secret information, the way the Germans did from the submarines.

  Your mother said to stop talking rot. He hit the palm of his hand with his fist, said he had it. He said to Emma Now suppose it’s a boy, we’ll call that a Volkswagen; and suppose it’s a girl, we’ll call that a Hillman Minx. Then overjoyed with himself he worded the telegram, Arrived safely in Volkswagen or Arrived safely in Hillman Minx. He and Emma repeated it like it was a couplet. He slipped some money into the neckline of her dress. He was transported by the code. He wanted to tell it. He kept remarking over and over again of the seconds prior to his discovery and how he knew it was going to hit him, the solution.

  You said it was a bit like Archimedes in his bath jumping up and down and shouting Eureka when he found out about floating. No one of you could float. Your father said wasn’t it remarkable how it took a catastrophe to bring out the brilliance that was in him. You said sweet were the uses of adversity.

  Your mother looked at you and said enough nonsense had been aired and asked if he’d given Emma money because if so he had a screw loose. Having to pay for Emma’s lodgings every week had completely banjaxed his finances. He said not likely but it was clear that he had.

  When you thought of her protrusion your blood curdled and all of you hurt like you were being scraped inside with a razor. You stretched your limbs but that made it worse. Your mother said why were you stretching like a hussy and to remember that you were in a train, a public vehicle, and not on a hammock, lounging. To your knowledge you had never lounged on a hammock.

  You were the only people in the carriage. They had spread themselves out, put his hat and coat on two other seats to make it seem that they were reserved. She wanted to be private. She insisted on being private to discuss the visit, to keep emphasizing the wastefulness of it all.

  You were consumed with the nightmare of Emma’s belly. You thought you saw it move. You couldn’t be sure but that it was one of her muscles or if there had been any movement at all other than a phantom one in your mind.

  In the train lavatory everything got blurred. Black rings started to appear. They twinkled black. They moved into your brain, whole batches of them. Once they got in there they started swimming and merging together. They made a whirring noise like the spokes of a bicycle. They occupied your whole heart. They were colliding. You fainted, but without anyone knowing. Not even you yourself knew.

  You came to, holding on to the pedestal of a washbasin. You sucked your cheeks to get the colour back. You splashed your face. The washbasin was font-shaped and chipped. A hen could have nested nicely in it.

  The telegram said DIFFICULTIES WITH VOLKSWAGEN and they were demented at trying to interpret it, trying to decide who was endangered, it or Emma. They argued hotly as to whether Volkswagen stood for a boy or a girl, got vituperative, he claimed one thing, she another. She said he never listened, he was too headstrong. You were called in to arbitrate.

  You stood there wringing a bit of your skirt. It was clumsy material and did not yield easily to your grasp. It was a remnant, bought at the woollen mills after a fire had occurred. She thought you were hesitating because of not daring to take sides and she told you to go ahead, that nobody would penalize you.

  But you didn’t know. At the time you had been smarting under the fact that the landlady had likened you to a horse. You shook your head.

  He said a fine asset you were to any family or to any serious enterprise, with your scatter head and your scatter brain. He said to leave your skirt alone and project your mind backwards. His point was that Volkswagen stood for a boy, hers the opposite. He said he ought to know because it had been his idea in the first place. She said all right, all
right. That flummoxed him.

  She said they would send a further telegram asking for additional information. It was dicey getting the address of the maternity hospital, because the doctor, the only one they could ask, was in court that day, acting as a defence witness in a cottage murder case, but since his client was convicted they were late home, they were delayed, drowning their sorrows. A victory would have detained them too. Lizzie got it from the postmistress, said she had a cousin in labour, went into eulogies about her cousin’s bone-structure. She was purring when she handed it to your mother. The doctor was boggled by the telegram both because he was drunk, and because the code had never been conveyed to him.

  The one they sent back was peremptory. It said REQUIRE FULL DETAILS CONCERNING VOLKSWAGEN AND DRIVER IMMEDIATELY. It cost the most of ten shillings. Your father said to keep the change.

  You cycled and bought iced biscuits. The vans had arrived that day and there was a small flush of dainties in the shops. You had them with tea. The thin icing melted from the steam of the tea. You passed them round and he took three and the doctor took three and you were left with four.

  At school girls looked at you and nudged each other. You were an aunt now. You thought it a disgraceful thing to be. The teacher made a point of being nice to you, got you to do errands, got you to light the fire which was her way of being nice.

  The wet turf was a gift from your father to the school, a whole kreel of it sent one day in the Emma era in a burst of righteousness, because tongues were wagging. Ambie had brought it. The big girls had to carry it in. Some were industrious and carried a whole armful but some just brought a sod in either hand so as to have the excuse to go back and be saucy with Ambie.

  Still no word. They were on edge. It occurred to you that Emma might be dead. You pictured a wake with the women weeping and the dressmaker enumerating Emma’s good points. You went so far as to have a baby laid out beside her in a matching habit and you supplied each of the corpses with a narcissus. It was a bit comical. He said what was the joke. You said nothing, no joke.

  You practised holding a baby by holding a big doll. The doll said ma-ma when you pressed her stomach. The place to press was hard and circular, was like a penny. You were an aunt. You all sat in the kitchen waiting. The fire you could not see. It was hidden behind porcelain and behind that again were layers and layers of asbestos. The asbestos was wound round and round like a person’s intestine.

  She hadn’t lit a fire in the room in case you would all be called away suddenly. They snapped at each other for the least little thing. The kettle was the only contented sound, the kettle simmering away. She turned the spout inwards in case anyone should get burned. Each time he used it to make tea he put the spout facing outwards again. He made tea in a cup, enough for himself. He strained it from one cup to another and in the transaction spilled some of it. He let out various moans, pleas, prayers, a medley of curses. You could not hear the knobs of coal falling away or changing their properties inside the fire and yet you knew that it was happening and that there would be ashes to be emptied in the morning. You wanted it to be morning. The prognostications were worse at night.

  When she lifted the top to fuel it there was a shudder and a dark blue flame bolted up. A horrible smell accompanied that flame. Fumes got down the back of your throat and made each of you cough. You each coughed differently. Your coughs were your signature tunes. When she put the lid back the smell still prevailed. She said they would be wanting fuel soon.

  The fuel had to be sent for, a long way off, to where it was mined. There was no telling about each load. Sometimes they got swindled, they got a load of slack but at other times they were bright cones all fashioned to the same size and she was as grateful as if she had won the sweep.

  She kept going to the front room to look for the telegram boy. He was easier to spot at night, being made conspicuous because of the glow of his flashlamp. He was a dwarf. His mother rarely let him deliver at night, claimed it was bad for his chest.

  Your father said any sign? She said if there had been any sign she would have said so, proclaimed it from the rooftops, said hosannah. It was one of the few times when she contended. You wanted to applaud. You applauded in your mind.

  He said there was no need to bite the head off him, he had only asked a civil question. She said it was inappropriate and went again to the front room to look. He read the paper, read births, marriages and deaths, aloud.

  By the following morning and after a sleepless night they had the wind up. He said he’d better go and find Emma, and bring her back. Your mother said no, she’d go, said it was a mother’s place. Then she said you could go with her and the gym frock that you had put on for school you quickly unbuttoned on both shoulders and let slide to the floor. She fished out a brassière for you, one that Hilda had given her. It was like being promoted, you were promoted to a brassière.

  The cups were too deep. She said to wear it outside your vest and you did, though that completely nullified its use. Your diddies were hardly formed. You got stinging pains in them from time to time. You discussed those pains with no one. You couldn’t touch your diddies, not even with your own finger, and you couldn’t touch the nipples either. The nipples were like warts only they were pink in colour, whereas warts were flesh-coloured and later brown when they withered away after caustic pencil had been applied to them. Hers were big and floppidy. They were agile.

  You did not look at her directly but you saw the details of her person out of the corner of your eye. She tied her brassière wrongly. A hook dug into her skin. She proposed to leave it so. Then she changed her mind, said it would persecute her for the whole day and hurriedly she took off her jumper and got you to appoint hooks and eyes correctly.

  There were spare rolls of skin on her back. It was like blancmange, cold and white and appetizing. You didn’t touch her.

  In one respect she was glad to be going. She said she would get a lipstick. For years she had been hankering for a new one. Her old one was dry and was a colour that in the cold emphasized the mauve pigment in her cheeks. Everyone had different tints, she had mauve on her cheeks and sallow on her neck and blancmange down the length of her back.

  She carried the six bottles of cloudy wine to the turf-house and buried them under mould so that there would be no danger of his finding them. She asked him not to break out. She made him vow. He kissed her, then he kissed you.

  You had a way of ignoring his kiss, you let his mouth implant itself on you but you told yourself that you were not experiencing anything and in that way you didn’t. You were like a statue except that you exuded fear. Animals could smell that fear. That was why they were not your friends.

  He and the dogs saw you off. You put the big stone to the gate and stood to wait for the lorry. A lorry went to the city each week with lime because there was demand for it among the market gardeners.

  Your mother had to borrow money from Lizzie. Lizzie waited with you at her gate and while she was waiting she kept pulling weeds and bits of grass from between the stones and from the congested flowerbeds. Her cat went across the road and she called after it Sib, Sib, Sib and went and picked it up and brought it back. She intended getting a leash for it. She mentioned a film that was on in the city about mining in a Welsh valley. Your mother said there would be no time for diversions like that, or no money. Lizzie ran into the house and got another pound note which your mother made a to-do about accepting.

  The seats of the lorry were very high and the leather ripped. You sat in the middle half on air, half on a seat. You resolved that if you had to let off a crack you would do so discreetly by making the cheeks of your bottom cleave together to muffle the sound. You rehearsed it. But of course you could not be sure that it would go noiselessly according to plan. The windows had to be kept closed to keep the lime from blowing in your eyes.

  She was very polite to the driver, who was German, asked him how he thought the war was going. He had come years before to work on the installat
ion of an electricity plant and had built a house and not gone home. Every time he touched the gear lever you shot over to your mother’s side for safety. He had a reputation for clicking with ladies. He and the tailor were friends, went in late to Mass, together.

  Your mother had to shout to be heard. They didn’t say much. He got out on a stretch of road where there were no houses and no tillage and you made the mistake of asking why. Your mother nudged you but it was too late. He said pay-pay, getting the word for pee-pee wrong.

  It was a bleak, brown vista, all bog. You knew you were in the centre of the country, the flat basin that you had learnt about at school, but had visualized differently. There were no crops and no pasture and no telling where it ended.

  As you got to the ourskirts of the city your heart began to race. The buildings were low and straggling, they were not like New York but you were delighted by them all the same. The chimney pots looked like series of tiny men standing to attention. Only then did she plot an itinerary.

  She asked the German to drop her in the main street near a pillar. It was the only landmark she knew of. It was where country people made rendezvous. There was a statue at the top, representing an English general that people scoffed at or were belligerent about. You craned your neck but couldn’t see him, couldn’t have described him to anyone. The stone was sooted.

  You went first to the house of the woman who said you were like a horse. She was haughty. Then she lashed out, said not only had Emma skedaddled before the event but had left two weeks lodgings outstanding. She said Emma was a defector in more ways than one.

  Your mother asked about the baby, calling it It. The landlady said It wasn’t all there, said she had been informed by the matron of the hospital, a thing Emma had not the breeding to do.

  The telegram made sense at last and your mother was exasperated at not having divined it correctly. The landlady said bad blood, but in a callous tone, said she herself did not rule out foul play. She said that Emma was in league with medical students and veterinary students and that that spoke for itself. She said there was a certain volume called Gray’s Anatomy and what it didn’t contain about the human body in text and diagram was nobody’s business. She said it was her contention that Emma had tampered with it, took things to hurry it on and wore a corset right up to the last day which was enough to deform any child.