When she brought him the brandy he thanked her with tears in his eyes. She wanted to put her arms about him and embrace him, but instead she drew away to the window and pulled the curtain over it.
‘Go to sleep now,’ she whispered. She tiptoed to the door. She was closing the door when he asked her to leave it open. He wanted to hear her moving in the kitchen. He was afraid of being alone. He watched her move around the kitchen for a time and then he became sleepy as the brandy warmed his stomach. He lay prone and closed his eyes. He heard Red John coming into the kitchen, shuffling and grumbling.
‘Hey then, woman, there’s a journey for you, and the son of a loose woman never gave me a drink. Hey then, there’s a doctor for you.’
‘Be quiet there, you pest,’ said Little Mary.
‘Hey then, whose house is this, cracked woman?’
Then he heard Red John talking in a loud voice outside the door to somebody about the weather. ‘I would say in spite of the four Gospels if they were laid on my palm that the wind has veered southward a point,’ Red John was saying.
The Stranger wondered for a few moments where Red John had heard of the four Gospels, or if he knew what they were about, and if he did read them, would he think them credible? He decided that Red John would spit and say ‘Huh’ when he had finished reading the Gospels. Then he fell asleep.
He awoke at intervals during the day. The kitchen was full of peasants, men and women, every time he awoke. The peasants of Rooruck, like all peasants and rustics and small townspeople, loved the sensation of somebody in their village being dead or sick or murdered or accused of murder or gone mad. They did not read newspapers, so the pleasure of talking scandal and trying to foist crimes and immoral habits on each other was their only harmless pleasure. But they were willing to pay for their pleasure. They brought Little Mary jugs of milk, round ‘hillocks’ of butter, and dried fish as gifts for the ‘sick man.’ The men sat near the door on a wooden bench, with their elbows on their knees, spitting everywhere. The women huddled themselves like Turks on the floor, with their hands clasped in front of their shins. They would sit in silence for a long time, pitching from side to side uneasily, like sheep being eaten by maggots. They rolled their eyes around vigorously to examine everything. Then they went away and gathered in groups around the village. They talked for hours with their heads close together, hugging their elbows like wicked Chinamen in a film tragedy.
‘Lord save us, the way Little Mary looks at one.’
‘Did you notice anything, O wife of Lame Peter?’
‘I did, but I wouldn’t like to mention it.’
‘Ye needn’t be afraid. I noticed the same thing myself.’
‘You mean to say that –’
‘Yes, that’s the very thing I said to myself as soon as I entered the house.’
‘It should be stopped.’
‘A fine-built woman like that not to have a child. It’s the curse of God that struck her barren.’
It was about midnight when the Stranger awoke. He felt refreshed. When his consciousness fully awakened and he remembered the events of the day before, he felt a strange happiness. It appeared to him that he had escaped a great catastrophe. He sat up in bed with his hands about his knees, contemplating himself.
Nature was still, except for the distant quarrelling of the sea, as if the waves were complaining at being forced to keep vigil over sleeping nature. It was so still that he thought the world was dead. ‘This is the turning-point in my life,’ he said, nodding his head and frowning as if he were stating an irrefutable fact. Then he began to think with remarkable clarity. He fancied that he could see his brain thinking. It appeared to him to be like a crystal with amorphous ideas glinting within it. He wanted to poke his fingers into its sides like a boy watching goldfish in a glass. Then he lay back from the contemplation of his brain and became aware of the power and vastness of nature. ‘I am a part of nature.’ Before, he had considered himself superior to nature. Now it struck him that he was merely a component part of the universe, just an atom, with less power than the smallest fleck of foam that was snatched by the wind from the nostrils of an advancing wave. Ha! Then he belonged to something. There was a mother too between whose breasts he could hide his head, a mother more powerful than a thousand gods. Just fancy. He could surrender himself to nature without fear. He smiled, confident that he had solved the puzzle of life. Now death could hold no terror for him, since after death he would return to nature and nature was immortal. It always moved, and motion was life. He listened to the voice of the sea eagerly, as to the voice of a father. He pictured it tumbling in among the rocks, beds of seaweed swimming in the white surf. He heard its crash as it struck the base of the cliffs. He saw the fountain of surf rising, hissing as it rose to a slender curving point. He saw it fall backwards into the retreating wave that scurried in and out among the long-toothed rocks as if it had been blinded and had lost its way. He saw it drivelling into pools and then rush with a subdued roar into the body of the ocean, to join another wave that towered higher and higher as it advanced, green and menacing. Ha! It moved without purpose. That was life, motion without purpose.
He jumped up in bed and cried in an awed whisper, ‘By God, I’ve found it!’ He judged the world in the light of his discovery, that life was motion without purpose. His brain had a weird faculty for presenting things to him vividly, as clearly as if they were filmed. He watched the tens of millions of people in cities striving for wealth, power and fame, sacrificing everything to gain honour and property. He laughed outright, heartily. It was the most ridiculous farce he had ever looked at. He held his sides laughing. He began to imitate them. He saw a fat-bellied man rising at a Business Dinner. ‘Gentlemen!’ he said, ‘I can confidently assert that James Buchanan is a man who will leave his mark on the pages of the world’s history. His self-sacrifice, his indomitable courage, his business acumen, his untiring energy, his …’ ‘Oh hell,’ gurgled the Stranger, ‘now I understand Rabelais!’ He saw others, lean-faced men, with anger in their eyes and hunger in their stomachs, shouting at the fat-bellied men, agitating for revolution and liberty, shouting about ideals and principles, honour, self-sacrifice, brotherly love! They were still more ridiculous. Did the sea have principles? Did the wind rise and tear down houses inspired by ideas? Did the rain flood towns, inspired by the spirit of self-sacrifice? Did the waves consider themselves in honour bound to wreck ships? ‘Pish! It’s motion without purpose,’ he said, turning on his side to have a better view of the idiots. He nestled his hands between his thighs. And now the world presented the appearance of a lunatic asylum. Demented people were running about, grinning like apes, shouting at one another, puffing out their chests, turning somersaults like small boys from school on a holiday. One man came running with a manuscript in his hand. ‘I am a genius,’ he cried. ‘See this book I have written!’ The manuscript rolled page after page before the Stranger’s eyes. He read every word in a trice. He saw vermin crawling on the beautiful heroine’s corpse even before she had fallen into her lover’s arms in the last paragraph. Then another man appeared, with something in a little glass tube. ‘Hey! you people,’ he cried, ‘hey you, look at me. I’m the devil of a scientist! I have discovered a cure for all diseases. Man will soon be immortal.’ And he had scarcely finished speaking when he got run over by a motor-car and got killed. A fat general with bandy legs, a fierce moustache and a sloping forehead came along. He stood squat and roared like a bull until his lungs almost burst and his face was red and choleric. ‘This is General Dictator speaking,’ he shouted. ‘I have killed a million of the enemy. Now let liberty reign and peace.’ The millions flung their hats in the air, when a huge wave rose playfully and enveloped all the millions! Then the whole world froze up and skidded off through space. Another planet had collided with it.
The Stranger was laughing at his vision when he suddenly became vexed with the folly of the world. ‘What a scoundrelly farce!’ he muttered. ‘And look at all the good men
it deceives!’ There was no end, no goal, no certainty, except in living aimlessly. Nothing was assured but the air, the earth and the sea. He fancied that he could see the cormorants sitting stupidly on the jagged Rock, bobbing their heads lazily. ‘We have lived here five hundreds of years,’ they croaked sardonically. ‘And we have heard it all, all before now! but tell us what does it end in? In ashes and oblivion?’
Then having torn the veil of sanity from the face of the mad world he turned on himself. He had been just as insane as the others whom he despised, trying to create a purpose in life. He had considered himself a genius and was enraged with his fellows for ignoring him. ‘Fancy being vexed with people whom you despise!’ Ha, he could laugh at them all now!
Then, having satisfied his vanity, he stopped thinking. He listened for sounds in the house. He felt a slight thirst and thought he would call out for some brandy. But he immediately found that he did not feel thirsty but hungry. He was so glad at feeling hungry that he flopped down flat in the bed, snored and fell asleep immediately.
Little Mary, sitting by the kitchen fire, keeping vigil over him, heard the creaking of the bed and tiptoed to the room door.
‘Do you want anything?’ she whispered.
Hearing no reply she moved softly to the bed and heard him sleeping calmly. She brushed her hand lightly over his hair and went back to the fire again. She sat half-sleeping, half-dreaming of love, arranging the minutest detail of her future life with her lover. Her dreams all began with the day they would fly from Inverara together. Before that day there was a vast wilderness in which she could see nothing.
When the Stranger awoke next morning he felt better. There was nothing but a slight twitching at the knees when, in spite of himself, his mind scurried into the past for a fleeting moment. He ate ravenously. Little Mary stood beside him while he ate, hoping that he would give her a glance of recognition. But he had forgotten all about her as soon as his fit had vanished. She was again to him but a peasant woman who was handing him his food. Her eyelashes drooped. Her lips quivered. She was debating in her mind whether she hated or loved him. She wanted to hate him, but she couldn’t. But she made an irritated gesture as she swept away the remains of his breakfast. He did not notice it. He noticed nothing but himself. He lay back and smoked a pipe.
‘I am a new man,’ he thought. ‘I’m finished with the past. I think I will get up and walk around the shore. I will look at the sea.’ He put on his clothes and walked into the kitchen. But then he got dizzy and Little Mary had to help him to a seat.
Little Mary was arranging a couch for him by the fire when Red John came in.
‘How does the sea look to-day?’ asked the Stranger.
Red John growled, ‘It looks very well,’ and spat into the fire. He sat in the opposite corner with his head between his hands. Since he had seen his wife by the Stranger’s bedside with the bewitched look in her eyes, his mind was troubled with queer and terrible thoughts. He wanted to kill his wife, but he was afraid to do so. The good God forbade it. And in what other way could he get rid of her? What were the neighbours saying about him? Great Virgin of the Valiant Deeds! how they’d laugh at him if they found his wife was in love with the Stranger! As he sat by the fire he thought of the fat widow in Kilmillick who had fifteen acres of land, whom he knew was willing to marry him. Had she not whispered to him one night in Kilmurrage that it was lonely sleeping alone in winter. And Kilmillick was a better village in every way than Rooruck. He had heard Sean Mor prove it one night in Mulligan’s publichouse. But how was he to get rid of his wife? Eh? He looked at the Stranger furtively over his beard and then jumped to his feet and muttered as he went out of the door, ‘To the devil with it for a story.’
‘What is that he said, Little Mary?’ said the Stranger.
‘Oh, don’t mind him,’ she said, fussing anxiously about the room. She swore to herself that she would thrash her husband at the first opportunity.
But the Stranger felt uneasy. He realized that Red John was jealous of him. He thought that he was making a fool of himself with Little Mary. ‘But good God! I have done nothing,’ he told himself. It was ridiculous to think that he would have ‘an affair’ with her. ‘She is good to me and that is all,’ he thought. But even as he thought that his passion became slightly aroused. But it died again immediately. His body was very weak. He laughed lowly and thought, ‘What a fool I am!’ Little Mary looked at him and he said to her with a laugh, ‘Oh well, of course I know he didn’t mean anything.’ But they both blushed as they looked at one another, as if they were conscious of having something to hide from Red John.
He passed the day quietly thinking by the fire, flying from one field of thought to another sleepily. At one moment he felt happy and certain of everything; at another moment he felt gloomy and in doubt. He reacted to every sound that he heard from outside. At one moment it was a boy riding a donkey down the lane; the wild yells of the boy rose triumphantly after each hissing lash of a dried sea rod across the donkey’s flank. And the donkey’s hoofs tipped the ground slowly in jingling succession as if he were not being hit. A flock of seagulls whirled screaming over the village. A peasant woman called out ‘Ho-e-e-e-e White Anthony, what news have you got?’ Then all sounds would die, except the sounds of the sea, thr-r-up, flup, hsssss. Then a cock would crow sadly. And he wove trains of thought about all these sounds. Night brought him sound sleep. His mind was shrouded by a kind of birth bag that shut out the world. The past was becoming unreal and distant. The sea was singing a crooning song in his ears that lulled him to sleep. It was a sad song, like the songs that mothers sing to their babes in Inverara, where all joy is the depth of sadness in winter. It was the joyous sadness of those who grow to despise joy in their sorrow. There was a half-smile on his lips as he was falling asleep. The wind coming down the slope of Coillnamhan Fort from the east was the last sound he heard. It played somnolent music on the grey smooth crags, epics of races dead a million years, a moment in its ageless life. It sang them with a jeer at the end of each blast, jeering at effort and ambition. He stretched out his legs, crossed his feet and slept.
Next morning he sat once more by the fire. He had no energy. He wanted to sit quietly and listen to life moving about him. He shuddered when he saw Red John come in after a night hunting for wreckage, drenched to the skin by the ice-cold sea-water. He had been fighting the other peasants for two barrels of paraffin oil that had been washed ashore and he had got nothing. Red John walked up and down by the door stamping his wet feet and saying ‘huh’ now and again viciously. He began to curse the other peasants, gesticulating.
‘That son of a wanton, Patch the son of Bartly, prevented me from getting the second barrel,’ he cried, spitting out of the door. He crouched around the floor describing the struggle for the barrel. He had gone out to his waist to meet a huge wave. He had his hand on the barrel as it was carried past him. Then the wave swept the barrel and himself fifty feet along the weed-covered rocks. He was knocked into a pool. The barrel was sweeping back again towards him on the backwash of the wave, when Patch the son of Bartly, his eyes starting from his head with greed, rushed in front of him. Clinging with one hand to a ledge of rock Red John was about to grasp the barrel with the other hand when Patch threw himself upon it with a yell, shouting, ‘Let go, let go, it’s mine!’ And then they both struggled and the barrel was carried out along the rocks until Michael the son of Littie Michael grappled it with a hook. ‘I’ll have his life yet, the son of a wanton,’ cried Red John furiously. Then without changing his clothes he took a pitchfork and went out to gather seaweed on the pebbly beach that stretched along the north of Rooruck towards Coillnamhan.
Little Mary was at the well beetling clothes, and the Stranger sat by the fire shivering, glad that he did not have to go out to fight for barrels. It made him afraid of life, that fierce struggle on the wild beach.
‘I wish Little Mary would come,’ he muttered. He felt lonely. He listened to the splashing sound of her beetle
falling on the clothes and counted the strokes, wondering when she would have finished and come back to him. ‘Why do I want her?’ he cried angrily. ‘I’m all right, eh? I don’t want anybody.’ He began to excuse himself for wanting her near him. Yes, it was nothing more than her company. Nothing more. It would be utterly disgraceful falling in love with her. ‘Love?’ he cried aloud. Then he laughed harshly. ‘Go on, O’Connor! You are a fool. An utter idiot. I just want to talk to the woman. I must talk to somebody.’ He waited until she came back. ‘Sit down, Little Mary,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you.’ Little Mary took her knitting and sat near him quietly. Her face bore the expression of a man preparing for confession.
He began to talk, listening to his own voice excitedly. He debated abstruse problems. He asked himself questions as he talked. He threw out theories as his own and began to refute them as if they were set up by an enemy. Now and again he asked Little Mary, ‘Do you understand that?’ She nodded her head in silence and looked at him with a smile from under her lashes. But she never understood a word of what he was saying. She was watching the play of his lips as he spoke, feeling that she wanted to kiss them. She was debating with herself what would put ‘some flesh on his body.’ She was wondering how he would make love to her if she could only arouse his passion. She smiled instinctively in the right place or nodded her head or shrugged her shoulders, in order that he might think she was listening to him and be pleased with her. Then the Stranger disarranged the pillows under his back in the heat of an argument with himself and she jumped up to settle them comfortably. The Stranger paused suddenly with open mouth. He had reached what he thought was a marvellous climax to a chain of reasoning. He was denouncing the cupidity of an American millionaire who had rushed from success to success, until at last the dreary accumulation of his satisfied mercenary desires drove him to … And just then when he expected Little Mary to be waiting eagerly for the climax she jumped up to arrange his pillows. ‘Bah!’ he thought, ‘she is a stupid peasant. She doesn’t understand me. I must go and have a talk to O’Daly. I can talk to him. He is a man of the world.’ But he sat moodily by the fire for another hour, unable to rouse his energy.
The Black Soul Page 6