The Dirty Dust

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  I have taken some liberties with this translation, but not many. Certainly not as many as those which Máirtín Ó Cadhain took in his very first work of translation. His first manuscript version of that bad Charles J. Kickham novel Sally Kavanagh was returned to the publisher with nearly twice as many words as the original! There was always a tradition in translation in Ireland of taking some freedoms, and it would have been untraditional of me not to do likewise.

  The main reason that Máirtín Ó Cadhain was so profligate with words was that he couldn’t help it. His supreme gift was his torrent of words which gushed and laughed and overflowed in a flush of excess. Not only was this the way he wrote, it was also the way he spoke. But every writer’s supreme gift is also his weakness, as he cannot be everything. The writer Liam O’Flaherty once advised him to take a scissors to his prose, although he probably meant a bill-hook. If he had, he would not have been Máirtín Ó Cadhain, but only an anaemic version of him.

  His inability to be unable not to let fly meant that although he tried his hand at drama, he was singularly unsuccessful. Drama demands some sense of structure and control of time, traits which he lacked. While The Dirty Dust does have a definite structure, it is big and baggy enough for him to dump everything into. Readers therefore might find it odd that in this graveyard there are elections, and Rotary clubs, and writers, and even a French pilot who was washed up on the shore and interred with the others. If you are wondering what they are doing there, it is quite simply that Ó Cadhain as a public polemicist could not resist the temptation of taking subtle and not-so-subtle swipes at colleagues and at issues which intrigued or pissed him off. Much of the novel is satire, not only on the easy pieties of country life but on the snobbery, pretence, and charlatanry which were as much a part of his country then as they are now.

  This satire goes deep in Irish literature and links it with texts at least as far back as the eighth-century Fled Bricrenn (The feast of Bricriu) and the twelfth-century Aislinge meic Conglinne (The vision of Mac Conglinne), but you don’t have to know anything about this to enjoy Caitriona Paudeen’s poison tongue, the Old Master’s abiding jealousy, Nora Johnny’s whoring after “culture,” and the entire inter-locking spite that gives them life while they are dead. There have only been about three hundred novels written in Irish since the start of the twentieth century, and if there were a typical mould, this certainly wouldn’t be it. Like all great novels it is unique and is to be enjoyed as a feast of language, the kind of language you might hear outside a door when everybody inside is tearing themselves apart; or in a country graveyard in the dark light of day.

  I would like to thank both Garry Bannister and the late David Sowby for their interest in this translation, and for their many helpful and often invaluable suggestions, which were a great assistance to me.

  CHARACTERS AND DIALOGUE CONVENTIONS

  Primary Characters

  CAITRIONA PAUDEEN Newly buried

  PATRICK CAITRIONA Her only son

  NORA JOHNNY’S DAUGHTER Wife of Patrick Caitriona. Living in Caitriona’s house

  MAUREEN Patrick Caitriona and Nora Johnny’s Daughter’s young girl

  NORA JOHNNY Toejam Nora. Patrick Caitriona’s mother-in-law

  BABA PAUDEEN A sister of Caitriona and of Nell. Living in America. Her will expected soon.

  NELL PAUDEEN A sister of Caitriona and of Baba

  JACK THE LAD Nell’s husband

  PETER NELL Nell and Jack’s son

  BLOTCHY BRIAN’S MAGGIE Peter Nell’s wife

  BLOTCHY BRIAN JUNIOR Peter Nell and Blotchy Brian Maggie’s son. Going for the priesthood.

  BLOTCHY BRIAN Maggie’s father

  FIRESIDE TOM Relation of Caitriona and Nell. The two of them vying for his land.

  MAGGIE FRANCES Neighbour and bosom friend of Caitriona

  Other Neighbours and Acquaintances

  BIDDY SARAH Keening woman, but fond of the drink

  COLEY Traditional storyteller. Can’t read.

  KITTY Neighbour of Caitriona’s who claimed to have lent her a pound but never got it back.

  DOTIE A sentimental woman

  MARGARET A friend of Kitty’s

  CHALKY STEVEN He didn’t go to Caitriona’s funeral because he “hadn’t heard” about it

  PETER THE PUBLICAN Pub owner. Still alive.

  HUCKSTER JOAN Shopkeeper

  MICHAEL KITTY Lying on top of Huckster Joan

  TIM TOP OF THE ROAD Lives in a hovel at the end of the town land. Accused of stealing by neighbours.

  MANNIX Lawyer who dealt with Caitriona and her family

  JOHN WILLY He had a dicey heart

  BREED TERRY Wants only peace and quiet in the grave

  GUZZEYE MARTIN, GUT BUCKET, BLACK BANDY BARTLEY, PADDY LAWRENCE, THE FOXY COP, THE OLD MASTER, REDSER TOM and others.

  Guide to Dialogue Conventions

  —

  Beginning of Talk

  — …

  Middle of Talk

  …

  Conversation, or Missing Talk

  THE DIRTY DUST

  Time

  For Ever

  Place

  The Graveyard

  Range

  Interlude 1: The Black Earth

  Interlude 2: The Scattered Earth

  Interlude 3: The Sucking Earth

  Interlude 4: The Grinding Earth

  Interlude 5: The Muck Manuring Earth

  Interlude 6: The Mangling Earth

  Interlude 7: The Moulding Earth

  Interlude 8: The Heating Earth

  Interlude 9: The Wasting Earth

  Interlude 10: The Good Earth

  Interlude 1

  THE BLACK EARTH

  1.

  Don’t know if I am in the Pound grave, or the Fifteen Shilling grave? Fuck them anyway if they plonked me in the Ten Shilling plot after all the warnings I gave them. The morning I died I calls Patrick in from the kitchen, “I’m begging you Patrick, I’m begging you, put me in the Pound grave, the Pound grave! I know some of us are buried in the Ten Shilling grave, but all the same …”

  I tell them to get me the best coffin down in Tim’s shop. It’s a good oak coffin anyway. I am wearing the scapulars. And the winding sheet … I had them ready myself. There’s a spot on this sheet! Like a smudge of soot. No, not that. A daub of finger. Who else but my daughter-in-law! ’Tis like her dribble. Oh, my God, did Nell see it? I suppose she was there. Not if I had anything to do with it …

  Look at the mess Kitty made of my covering clothes. I always said that that one and the other one, Biddy Sarah, should never be given a drop to drink until the corpse was gone from the road outside the house. I warned Patrick not to let them near my winding sheet if they had a drop taken. All they ever wanted was a corpse here, there, or around the place. The fields could be bursting with crops, and they’d stay there, if she could cadge a few pence at a funeral …

  I have the crucifix on my breast anyway, the one I bought myself at the mission … But where’s the black one that Tom’s wife, Tom the crawthumper, brought me from Knock, that last time they had to lock him up? I told them to put that one on me too. It’s far nicer than this one. Since Patrick’s kids dropped it the Saviour looks a bit crooked. He’s beautiful on this one, though. What’s this? My head must be like a sieve. Here it is, just under my neck. ’Tis a pity they didn’t put it on my breast.

  They could have wrapped the rosary beads better on my fingers. Nell, obviously, did that. She’d love it if it fell to the ground just as they were putting me in the coffin. O Lord God, she better stay miles away from me …

  I hope to God they lit the eight candles on my coffin in the church. I left them in the corner of the press under the rent book. You know, that’s something that was never ever on any coffin in the church, eight candles! Curran had only four. Tommy the Tailor’s lad, Billy, had only six, and he has a daughter a nun in America.

  I tells them to get three half-barrels of porter, and Ned the Nobber
said if there was drink to be got anywhere at all, he’d get it, no bother. It had to be that way, given the price of the altar. Fourteen or fifteen pounds at least. I spent a shilling or two, I’m telling you, or sent somebody to all kinds of places where there was going to be a funeral, especially for the last five or six years when I felt myself failing. I suppose the Hillbillies came. A pity they wouldn’t. We went to theirs. That’s how a pound works in the first place. And the shower from Derry Lough, they’d follow their in-laws. Another pound well spent. And Glen Booley owed me a funeral too … I’d be surprised if Chalky Steven didn’t come. We were at every single one of his funerals. But he’d say he never heard about it, ’til I was buried.

  And then the bullshit: “I’m telling you Patrick Lydon, if I could help it at all, I would have been at her funeral. It wouldn’t have been right if I wasn’t at Caitriona Paudeen’s funeral, even if I had to crawl on my naked knees. But I heard nothing, not a bit, until the night she was buried. Some young scut …” Steven is full of crap! …

  I don’t even know if they keened me properly. Yes, I know Biddy Sarah has a nice strong voice she can go at it with if she is not too pissed drunk. I’m sure Nell was sipping and supping away there also. Nell whining and keening and not a tear to be seen, the bitch! They wouldn’t have dared come near the house when I was alive …

  Oh, she’s happy out now. I thought I’d live for another couple of years, and I’d bury her before me, the cunt. She’s gone down a bit since her son got injured. She was going to the doctor for a good bit before that, of course. But there’s nothing wrong with her. Rheumatism. Sure, that wouldn’t kill her for years yet. She’s very precious about herself. I was never that way. And it’s now I know it. I killed myself working and slaving away … I should have watched that pain before it got stuck in me. But when it hits you in the kidneys, actually, you’re fucked …

  I was two years older than Nell anyway … Baba. Then me, and Nell. Last year’s St. Michael’s Day, I got the pension. But I got it before I should have. Baba’s nearly ninety-three, for God’s sake. She’ll soon die, despite her best efforts. None of us live that long. When she hears that I’m dead, she’ll know she’s done for too, and then maybe she’ll make her will … She’ll leave every bit to Nell. The bitch will have one up on me after all. She has Baba primed. But if I had lived another bit until Baba had made her will, she’d have given me half the money despite Nell. Baba is quick enough. She wrote to me mostly for the last three years since she abandoned Blotchy Brian’s place and took off to Boston. It’s a great start that she has shagged off from that poisonous rats’ nest anyway.

  But she never forgave Patrick that he married that cow from Gort Ribbuck, and that he left Blotchy Brian’s Maggie in the lurch. She would never have gone next or near Nell’s house that time she was home from America if it wasn’t for the fact that her daughter married Blotchy Brian. And why would she? … A real kip of a house. A real crap kip of a house it was too. Certainly not a house for a Yank. I haven’t a clue how she put up with it having been in our house and in fancy homes all over America. She didn’t stay there long though, she soon shagged off home …

  She’ll never come back to Ireland again. She’s finished with us. But you’d never know what kind of a fit would hit her when this war is over, if it suited her. She’d steal the honey from a bee’s hive, she is so smarmy and sweet. She’s gutsy and spirited enough to do it. Fuck her anyway, the old hag! After she buggered off from Blotchy Brian’s place in Norwood, well, she still had a lot of time for Maggie. Patrick was the real eejit that he didn’t listen to her, and didn’t marry the ugly bitch’s daughter. “I wouldn’t marry Meg if she had all of Ireland …” Baba hurried off up to Nell’s place as if you had clocked her on the ear. She never came near our place again, but just about stood on the floor the day she was returning to the States.

  —… Hitler’s my darling. He’s the boy for them …

  —If England is beaten, the country will be in a bad way. The economy has already gone to the dogs …

  —… You left me here fifty years before my time, you One Eared Tailor git! You lot were always twisted. Couldn’t trust you. Knives, stones, bottles, it didn’t matter. You wouldn’t fight like a man, but just stab me …

  —… Let me talk, let me talk.

  —Christ’s cross protect me!—Am I alive or dead? Are the people here alive or dead? They are all rabbiting on exactly the same way as they were above the ground! I thought that when I died that I could rest in peace, that I wouldn’t have to work, or worry about the house, or the weather, that I would be able to relax … But why all this racket in the dirty dust?

  2.

  —… Who are you? How long are you here? Do you hear me? Don’t be afraid. Say the same things here as you said at home. I’m Maggie Frances.

  —O may God bless you. Maggie Frances from next door. This is Caitriona. Caitriona Paudeen. Do you remember me, or do you forget everything down here? I haven’t forgotten anything yet, anyway.

  —And you won’t. This is much the same as the “ould country” except that we only see the grave we are in, and we can’t leave our coffin. Or you won’t hear any live person either, and you won’t have a clue what they’re up to, except when the newly buried crowd tell you. But, hey, look Caitríona, we are neighbours again. How long are you here? I never noticed you coming.

  —I don’t know, Maggie, if it was St. Patrick’s Day, or the day after that I died. I was too weak. I don’t know how long I’m here either. Not that long, anyway … You’ve been buried a long time now, Maggie … Too true. Four years this Easter. I was spreading a bit of manure for Patrick down in Garry Dyne when one of Tommy’s young ones came up to me. “Maggie Frances is dying,” she said. And what do you know, Kitty, the young one, was just going in the door when I reached the end of the haggard. You were gone. I closed your eyes. Myself and Kitty laid you out. And thanks to us, well, everyone said that you looked gorgeous on the bed. Nobody had any need to complain. Everyone who saw you, Maggie, everyone said that you were a lovely corpse. Not a bit of you, not a hair out of place. You were as clean and smooth as if they had ironed you out on the bed …

  … No I didn’t hang on that long, Maggie. The kidneys had packed up a long time ago. Constipation. I got a sharp pain five or six weeks ago. And then, on top of that I got a cold. The pain went into my stomach and then on my chest. I only lasted about a week … I wasn’t that old either, Maggie, just seventy-one. But I had a hard life. I really had a hard life, and I looked every bit of it. When it hit me, it really hit me, left its mark on me. I had no fight left …

  You might say that Maggie, alright. That hag from Gort Ribbuck didn’t help me a bit. Whatever possessed my Patrick to marry the likes of her in the first place? … God bless you, Maggie, you have a heart of gold, but you don’t know the half of it, and a word about it never passed my lips. A full three months now and she hasn’t done a stroke … The young one. She just about made it this time. The next one will really put her to the pin of her collar, though … Her brood of kids out of their minds except for Maureen, the eldest one, and she was in school every day. There I was slaving away washing them and keeping them from falling into the fire, and throwing them a bit of grub whenever I could … Too true, too true. Patrick’s house will be a mess now that I am gone. Of course that hag couldn’t keep a decent house any way, any woman who spends every second day in bed … O, now you’re talking, tell me more … Patrick and the kids, that’s the real tragedy …

  It was so. I had everything ready, Maggie, the clothes, the scapulars, the lot … ’Tis true, they lit eight candles for me in the church, not a word of a lie. I had the best coffin from Tim’s place. It cost at least fifteen pounds … and, wait for it, not two plates on it, but three, believe me … And every one of them the spitting image of the fancy mirror in the priest’s house …

  Patrick promised he’d put a cross of Connemara marble on my grave: just like the one on Peter the Publican, an
d written in Irish: “Caitriona, wife of John Lydon …” He said it himself, not a word of a lie. You don’t think I’d ask him do you, I wouldn’t dream of it … And he said he’d put a rail around it just like the one on Huckster Joan’s, and that he’d decorate it with flowers—I can’t remember what he called them, now—the kind that the School Mistress wore on her black dress after the School Master died … “That’s the least we could do for you,” Patrick said, “after all you did for us throughout your life.” …

  But listen to me, what kind of place is this at all, at all? … Too true, too true, the Fifteen Shilling plot … Now, come on Maggie, you know in your heart of hearts that I wouldn’t want to be stuck up in the Pound plot. Of course, if they had put me in there, I could have done nothing about it, but to think that I might want that …