The Dirty Dust

by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

  I never met anyone as nice as him. And he wasn’t stupid either. He collected about twenty to thirty words of Irish every day. He had bags of money. A big fat Government job …

  But the day he headed off without me Peter the Publican’s daughter took him into the parlour and started to jizz him up …

  I was really very fond of him. The week just after he left, I got flattened and that was the end of me … But hey, Postmistress … Hoora, Postmistress! … How do you know that he never paid for his lodging? You opened the letter my mother sent about it to the Government …

  —And how do you know, Postmistress, how do you know that The Goom didn’t accept my collection of poetry, The Yellow Stars? …

  —Ah, for feck’s sake, it’s too bad about you. They’d have published you yonks ago if you did as I said and wrote from the bottom to the top of the page. But, hey, how about me, The Irelander rejected my short story “The Setting of the Sun,” and the Postmistress knew that too …

  —And the Postmistress knew well the advice I gave to Cannon how to crock the Kerry team in the letter I sent him two days after the semifinal …

  —And how was it, Postmistress, that you knew about what I had said to the Judge about the Dog Eared crowd when we were taking them to court? …

  —And how was it, Postmistress, that your own daughter, who just happens to be a postmistress now, how come she knew that I wouldn’t be allowed into England because I had TB, how come she knew it before me? …

  —You opened a letter that Caitriona Paudeen sent to Mannix the Counsellor about Fireside Tom. The world and its mother knew what was in it:

  “We will take him to the Fancy City in a car. We will get him drunk. If you had a couple of hot broads in the office getting him turned on, maybe he’d sign over the land to us. He’s a whore for the young ones when he’s pissed …”

  —Abuboona! …

  —You slitted open letters from the woman in the bookies in the Fancy City that she sent to the Young Master. You used to have tips about the horses before he had a clue about them himself …

  —Holy God, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints! Ababoona! …

  —You opened a letter that Caitriona Paudeen sent to Blotchy Brian saying she’d marry him no problem …

  —Abuboona, boona boona! That I would marry foul fuckmouth Blotchy bastard Brian …

  —Just so, Postmistress, I had nothing to thank you for. You always had the kettle simmering away in the back room. You opened a letter my son sent to me saying he married a Yid. The whole country knew about it, and we said neither a jot nor a tittle about it to nobody. What was that about? …

  —You opened a letter that my son had sent me from England telling me he had married a black. The whole world knew about it, although we weren’t mentioning a word about it to anyone.

  —I wrote to de Valera advising him what he should say to the people of Ireland. You kept it buried in the Post Office. You shouldn’t have done that …

  —Every single love letter that Caitriona’s Paddy wrote to my daughter, you opened it first. I never opened one of them that I didn’t know that you had peeped at it already. Honestly. I remembered the letters I got long before that. I warned the postman he had to give them to me directly into my paw. Their lovely exotic smell. Exotic paper. Exotic writing. Exotic stamps. Exotic postmarks that were poetry to my ears: Marseilles, Port Said, Singapore, Honolulu, Batavia, San Francisco … The sun, oranges, blue seas. Sun beauty skin. Peninsulas of Paradise. Gold-rimmed garments. Ebony-toothed glittering grins. Lusty lapping lips … I’d suck them to my heart. I’d kiss them with my mouth. I’d cuddle them to my heart … I’d open them up … I’d take out the billet doux. And it’s only after that, Miss Postmistress, that I would see your slimy slinky paw on any of them. Ogh! …

  —You opened the letter I sent home to my wife, when I was working on the turf in Kildare. I had nine pounds in it. You kept the lot …

  —And why not? Why didn’t you register it? …

  —And don’t you think that The Old Man of the Graveyard might have something to say also? Let me speak. Let me speak …

  —Most certainly, Postmistress, there’s no way I’d be grateful to you or to your daughter, or to Billy who gave you a hand in the back room. Every single letter that came to me from London, after I came home, you had opened it. There was an affaire de coeur, as Nora Johnny might say, involved. You told the whole world about it. The priest heard about it, and the Schoolmistress—my wife—heard about it …

  —That’s slander, Master. If you were aboveground I’d sue you …

  —That time when Baba wrote to me from America about the will, Nell, the blabbermouth, was able to tell Patrick what she said:

  “I haven’t made my will yet. I hope I won’t come to a sudden end, as you hoped in your letter …”

  You opened it, you pisshead pustule … You got that nasty streak from Nell.

  —Not at all, Caitriona Paudeen, I didn’t open the letter about the will at all, but a letter from O’Brien Solicitors in the Fancy City threatening you with the law within seven days if you didn’t pay Holland and Company for the round table you had purchased five or six years previously …

  —Abuboona! Don’t believe her, the mangy maggot! Margaret! Margaret! … Did you hear what the Postmistress said? I’m going to burst! I’ll burst! …

  4.

  —… I’ll tell you a story now, my good man:

  “Colm Cille was in Aran when St. Paul visited him there. Paul wanted to have the whole island for himself.

  “‘I’m going to open a pawnshop,’ Paul says.

  “‘You will in your balls,’ says Colm Cille, ‘but I’m telling you straight up in plain Irish to get the fuck out of here.’

  “Then he spoke to him in Legalese. Then he spoke to him in Latin. And then in Greek. In childish gibberish. In Esperanto. Colm Cille knew the seven languages of the Holy Ghost. He was the only one to whom the apostles gave the gift of tongues, when they were dying …

  “‘OK, so,’ says Colm Cille, ‘seeing as you won’t fuck off, by virtue of the powers that have been invested in me, we’ll fix it like this. You’ll go off to the arse end of Aran and I’ll go to the west of the island as far as Bun Gowla. Both of us will say Mass at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Then we will walk towards one another, and howsomuchever of the island we will have walked when we meet, we will own that much.’

  “‘That’s a deal, then,’ Paul said, in Yiddish. Colm Cille said the Mass and off he walked towards the arse end of Aran, and that’s where we get the saying, ‘being caught arse-ways’ …”

  —But, hey, Coley, John Kitty in Bally Donough used to say that Colm Cille never said a Mass in his life …

  —John Kitty said that! John Kitty is a heretic …

  —So what if John Kitty says what he likes? Didn’t God himself—all praise to him—reveal himself there? The sun was up just as Colm Cille was saying his Mass. Then it went down, and God kept it down until Colm Cille had walked to the arse end of Aran. And it was only then that St. Paul saw it rising for the first time! …

  “‘You may as well toddle off now, Shnozzle,’ says Colm Cille. ‘I’ll leave you weeping when you return to the Wailing Wall: the exact same horsewhipping you got when Christ drove you out of the Temple. You should be ashamed of yourself! Who would give a damn only that you are so greasy and sneaky as you slither away …’”

  “That’s exactly why no Jew boy settled in Aran ever since …”

  —This’s the way that I heard that story from oldfellas in my own place, Coley: when the two Patricks—Old Patrick alias Cothraighe, alias Calprainnovich, and Young Patrick—when they were hawking around Ireland trying to change the country …

  —Two Patricks! That’s a heresy …

  —… There was a day like that, Peter the Publican. Don’t deny it …

  —Master, my darling, the bed was very hard. Really very hard underneath my poor arse, Master …

  —I was only
in it about a month, Poxy Martin, and I found it very hard …

  —My back was totally flattened, Master. There wasn’t even a screed of a shred of skin left on my backside …

  —Not as much as a screed, Martin, you poor hoor …

  —Not as much as a screed, my dear Master, and there was a very tender spot in my groin. The bed was …

  —Let us forget about the bed until some other time. Tell me this much, Poxy, how is … ?

  —The Mistress, Master. O, she’s flying, not a bother. She earns her money every day at school, Master, and then she looks after Billy from then until the morning. She flashes over from the school twice a day to look after him, and they say that the poor thing hardly sleeps a wink, but is only sitting on the edge of the bed giving him his medicine …

  —The cuntish gash … the brasser …

  —Did you hear, Master, that she brought him three doctors from Dublin? Our own doctor visits him three times every day, but I’d say, Master, that it’s kind of wasted on Billy. He’s been laid up so long now that he couldn’t not be riddled with bedsores …

  —I hope he lies and never rises! I hope he gets the thirty-seven diseases of the Ark! I hope all his tubes get glutted and his bunghole stuffed! That he gets a clubfoot and a twisted gut! The Ulster flies! The yellow bellies! The plague of Lazarus! Job’s jitters! Swine snots! Lock arse! Drippy disease, flatulent farts, wobbly warbles, wriggly wireworm, slanty eyes, and the shitty scutters! May he get the death rattle of Slimwaist Big Bum! The decrepit diseases of the Hag of Beare! May he be blinded without a glimmer and be gouged like Oisín after that! The Itch of the Women of the Prophet! His knees explode! His rump redden with rubenescence! Be lanced by lice! …

  —Bedsores are the worst of them all, dear Master …

  —May he get bedsores too so, Poxy Martin.

  —She makes the Stations of the Cross twice a day, Master, and the trip to Killeana’s Well every week. She did the Mountain Pilgrimage this year, and Croagh Patrick, and Colm Cille’s Well, Mary’s Well, Augustine’s Well, Enda’s Well, Bernine’s Well, Cauleen’s Well, Shinny’s Well, Boadakeen’s Well, Conderg’s Bed, Bridget’s Pool, Lough Nave, and Lough Derg …

  —Isn’t a great pity I’m not alive! I’d drain Brickeen’s Well on the thief, on the …

  —She told me too, Master, that if it wasn’t for the way things are so dicey at the moment she’d go to Lourdes.

  “Lough Derg is the worst of them, Poxy Martin,” she said. “My feet were pumping blood for three whole days. But it didn’t matter to me how I suffered as long as it did poor Billy some good. I’d crawl from here to …”

  —The thundering bitch …

  —“I was heartbroken after the Old Master,” she said …

  —Oh, the whore of a thundering bitch! … If you only knew, Poxy! Ah, but you wouldn’t understand. There’d be no point in telling you …

  —Well, anyway, Master, the truth is the bed was too hard …

  —Will you hump off to hell hollering on about that bed, and just listen to her! … Oh, the things that that bitch of a one said to me, Martin! …

  —I know that’s all true, Master …

  —The pair of us sitting down in Crompaun. The gentle susurration of the suds caressing the rocks at our feet. A young seagull calling to his father and mother to thrill about his first flight, not unlike unto a shy bride approaching the altar. The shades of evening sliding across the shafts of sunlight on the crest of the waves, like the young kestrel slowly shaping to snatch the unready. The oars of the currach returning from its fishing grounds plashing in the water. She’s in my arms, Martin. A wisp of her gorgeous hair gently touching my cheek. Her hands are around my neck. I am quoting poetry:

  “Glen Mason:

  Rock high, sun facing.

  We slept all evening

  On its sward and apron

  “‘If you come, my love, come like one creeping,

  Come to the door that admits no creaking

  If my father asks who it is I’m seeking

  I will say it’s the wind outside that’s keening.’”

  Either that or reciting love stories, Martin …

  —I get that alright, Master …

  —The Sons of Uisneach, Diarmaid, and Gráinne, Tristan and Isolde, Strong Tom Costello and Fair Una McDermott, Carol O’Daly and Eleanor Aroon, The Hot Kiss, The Powder Puff …

  —I get that too, Master …

  —I bought a car straight up, Martin, just to take her out and about. I could hardly afford it, but I thought she was worth it anyway. We’d go into the pictures in the Fancy City, to dances in Derry Dav, to teachers’ meetings …

  —That’s all true, and up the Hill Road, Master. There was that day when I was going for a creel of turf and your car was planked there at the side of the road at Ardeen More, and the two of you over beyond in the glen …

  —OK, forget about that now, Guzzeye Martin, until some other time …

  —But for all that, Master, I also remember that day when I got the news about the pension. Not one of us in the whole house had the least clue, by the mebs of the Devil himself, what it was about. “The Old Master is the boy for us.” I says. I went on over to Peter the Publican’s place and stayed there until all the students had gone. I went back then. When I got back to the schoolhouse all I could hear was moaning and groaning and sighing. “I left it too late,” I says to myself, “pretending to be proper, according to myself. He’s gone off home.” I gawked in through the window. Saving your presence, Master, there you were with her, bonking and beasting away …

  —I wasn’t. I wasn’t, Poxy Martin, no I wasn’t.

  —Ah, but you were, Master, there’s nothing better than telling the truth …

  —Good for you, Master! …

  —You have no reason to be ashamed, Master.

  —Who would ever have thought it, Breed? …

  —We were sending our children to him, Kitty …

  —If the priest had caught him, Joan …

  —It was Whit Sunday, Poxy. I had the day off. “We should go down to Ross Harbour,” I said to her, after dinner. “Getting out and about will do you no end of good.” She did. We went. I really thought, Martin, that I knew what she was all about, that night on Ross Harbour … The long summer day was fading in the west after its long labours. Both of us were lovingly stretched on a rock observing the stars glittering on the shiny surface of the sea …

  —Yes, I get that too, Master …

  —Gazing at the candles being lit one by one in the houses shining on the far side of the bay. Gazing at the whisk of the will o’ the wisp wending on the seaweed on the well of the tide. Gazing at the sparkly dust of the weather coming in from beyond the mouth of the harbour. I can tell you, Martin, on that wonderful night I felt myself part of all those stars and lights and flashing phosphorescence and the wonder of the weather and the sweet soughing of the surf and the elevation of the air …

  —Ah, yea, sure, I get it all, Master. That’s the way it is …

  —She swore to me, Martin, that her love for me was deeper than the deep blue sea; that she was more faithful than the rising and the setting of the sun; more permanent than the ebb and flow of the tide, than the stars and the mountains, that her love for me predated tides, and stars, and mountains. She swore to me that her love was of a piece with eternity itself …

  —She said that, Master! …

  —She said that, Poxy Martin. She said that, by the hammers of hell! … But hang on a minute. I was on my deathbed. She came in and she had just made the Pilgrimage of the Cross, and she sat down on the edge of the bed. She took my hand. She said that if anything happened to me her life would not be worth living, and her death would not be a death unless we should both die together. She promised and pledged no matter how long she lived after me that she would spend the rest of her days done down and depressed. She promised and pledged that she would never marry again …

  —She promised all that, Mas
ter! …

  —She swore and asseverated, Poxy Martin! … And despite all that she had the poisoned serpent in her heart all that time. I was only buried a year—one short miserable year compared with the eternity she had promised me—and there she was swearing fealty to someone else who wasn’t me, someone else whose kisses, not mine, were on her lips, and someone else’s love that wasn’t mine in her heart. Me, I was her first love and her husband, me laid under the cold sods of the grave and she hot in the arms of Billy the Postman …

  —True, hot in the arms of Billy the Postman, Master! I saw it myself … We have to forget about a lot of things, Master …

  —And now, there he is on my bed, and she giving him gung-ho and giddy-up and go-for-it, looking after him from morning to night, going on retreats for him, sending for doctors, three of them, from Dublin, to look after him …

  … If she had sent for even one doctor from Dublin to look after me, I would have been all right …

  —You’d never believe what she told me about you, Master? I went into her with a bag of spuds just a week after you were buried. We were talking about you. “That was terrible news about the Old Master,” I said, “and there was really no need for it. If he had stayed in bed with that flu, and looked after himself, and drank a few quaffs of whiskey, and sent for the doctor at the beginning …” “Do you know the real truth, Poxy?” she says to me. I will always remember exactly what she said, Master. “Do you know the real truth, Poxy Martin, all the doctors in the world couldn’t save the Old Master. He was too good for this life …” That was it, bejasus, Master, and she said something else that I had never heard before. I think it’s an old saying, but I can’t be sure. “He whom the gods love, dies young …”

  —The bitch! The witch! The cuntinental cow! …

  —De grâce, Master. Speak nicely if you please. Don’t be like Caitriona Paudeen. The chaplain came to visit her one day. He was new in the parish. He didn’t know where Nell’s house was. “Nell, that whore,” Caitriona said. Honest! …