The Black Soul

by Liam O'Flaherty

  She did not reply. They stared into one another’s faces in silence, and then …

  Something mysterious happened to him. It was different from anything that had ever happened to him before. In fact, he had never even imagined anything like it before. He was stupefied by it. It permeated his whole being. It was as if a sweet incense were poured into the marrow of his bones, mixed with rich wine that intoxicated instantaneously. There was the result of intoxication without its impurities. There was no heaviness in the brain. It was half-asleep like a child’s brain, watching the body throbbing and exulting in response to the mysterious feeling that had seized it. And that feeling, starting nowhere and ending nowhere, was so powerful that the body obeyed it without any reference to the brain.

  Slowly they sank into one another’s arms until their lips met. Just before his lips touched hers, he saw her upper lip arched like a bridge, with numberless veins running crookedly upwards through the red skin. Then his lips met hers, and he forgot everything. If the world stopped at that moment he would not have noticed it. He could not think if he tried. All his capacity for thought was exhausted by the intensity of his feeling. His life seemed to have met her life, and united with it in the embrace. His body did not unite with hers, but his life. He had lost his individual being. Time lost its value. The past and the future became meaningless. He had been transported into a state which, even in its duration, he could not understand, since he had lost the power of thought. So no language has been invented to describe it, that highest point in life, whence all life might be seen naked and understood. People describe the road leading up to it, full of passion and worries and craving, and the road leading down from it, full of sourness and disillusionment. But only a god could describe the summit itself. The great, mysterious, beautiful vision of love in its entire purity, that vanishes into oblivion before the arms have even tired of clasping it.

  Slowly their lips parted, and they returned sighing to individual consciousness. Their eyes still met longingly, but the dream had passed. They were again coming down the slope. He staggered from her arms to a stool by the wall and sat down, his head fallen on his chest, his hands hanging limply by his sides.

  ‘Oh God,’ he muttered, ‘it is the first time, what is it?’ And he smiled stupidly.

  She followed him, knelt between his knees, and laid her head on his breast. They lay that way for a long time, until Little Mary looked up into his face with a nervous look in her eyes. ‘Will you take me away with you?’ she said. ‘You must. You must. Do you hear?’ She encircled his waist with her hands, and pressed with all her strength.

  ‘I am your slave,’ he whispered. ‘I will do what you like … anything.’

  ‘My darling,’ she said, ‘kiss me. Oh, I am so happy.’

  So absorbed were the two of them, that they did not notice the short midday shadow of a man crossing the square of sunlight on the floor, and then halt, stooping at a comer of the square. It was Red John who had come noiselessly, for in summer at Rooruck there are no noises of human feet, but shadows. He stood by the door, his left shoulder leaning against the wall, his left foot on the wooden threshold, the fingers of his left hand gripping his lower lip crosswise. Then he laughed and they jumped to their feet, terrified. It was a demoniacal laugh and sounded empty, as if it had come through an endless cavern, and were going farther. Without saying a word he sat by the fire and spat into it. Then he began to snap the joints of his fingers furiously.

  The Stranger’s first impulse at seeing Red John was to run away, and he obeyed it. He seized his hat and rushed from the cabin.

  ‘Where are you going, your dinner will be ready in a minute?’ said Little Mary, pretending to be totally unaware of the embarrassing situation in which her husband had found them, but her words passed him by without his comprehending them. He walked hurriedly towards the cliffs, with the forlorn image of Red John before his mind snapping his fingers.

  ‘Poor man, poor man, I have done him a grievous wrong.’ It was no use saying nothing mattered, as his reason prompted. His reason suggested closing his eyes and thinking of the delirious happiness of the embrace and the beauty of Little Mary’s face, when she looked at him with love in her moist eyes. The efforts of his cold reason were washed away by the flood of remorse that engulfed him. The effort merely wearied his brain, and dissolved completely the happiness that he had experienced but a few minutes before. Red John, who was so inconsequent in his strength, was now in his weakness and misery powerful. The vision of him sitting by the fire stricken, as it seemed, brought back the dull heavy feeling in his forehead that he had felt in winter. And he was afraid of that feeling. ‘It serves me right,’ he groaned; ‘why, oh why, did I surrender to love, knowing beforehand what it was? Just a delusion. In my case a crime. Oh!’

  Summer purred about him heedlessly. He reached the cliffs and lay down flat on a green hillock. A grassy plot of ground sloped down to the summit of the Hill of Fate in front of him. It ended in a broken fringe of slaty earth, and then there was a drop of two hundred feet. A short slippery stretch of rabbit-eaten grass lay between him and a headlong fall into the sea and death. He had but to close his eyes and let himself slip, down the grassy slope, then through the silent air, and he would sink into the sea and forget everything. But would it end there? …

  ‘Look here,’ he said to himself, and upright ridges appeared in his forehead as he frowned. ‘I must get out of here. Look at the mess I am in now.’ His misfortunes overpowered him. They towered over him. It was as if millions of people surrounded him, yelling at him, as boys yell at a confused and encircled rabbit, like a beautiful Magdalen at the mercy of a jury of ugly respectable women. He was afraid both of life and of death. He wanted some way of escape that did not mean suffering or effort. And nature that scorned weakness or cowardice presented none. She asked none herself, coming from the frozen sleep of winter through the icy grip of spring to the languorous ease of summer. And then his weakness struck him in its entirety. He began to analyse his difficulties and they vanished. ‘I have a love-affair with a peasant’s wife,’ he laughed, ‘and I make a mountain of it. I am a great big fool, a strong healthy idler, wasting my time and …’ But his heart revolted at this profanation of the feeling towards Little Mary, which he felt to be too sacred for mockery. Ha! It went deeper than reason. No matter how deeply he tried to bury it under a mound of jeers and arguments and abuse, it sang down there within his breast, causing his being to throb. It said, ‘I am here. You can’t deny me. I defy your brain. I am nature. I am beyond your understanding. You must submit to me, or you perish. Only nature that begat me can destroy me.’ And jumping to his feet he said, ‘To hell with everything. I am going to enjoy myself.’

  That evening he sat with Little Mary by the hearth, murmuring soft phrases, stroking her hair, making promises, telling her how beautiful she was. And sometimes, when his reason sneered, saying, ‘You can’t mean what you say. It is a lie, a lie. Love is a profanity. It is against common sense,’ he smothered the sneers with a laugh. Sitting in front of the fire, where two sods of turf smouldered silently in their yellow ashes, he talked eloquently of their future together. He tried by the very fury of his words to overwhelm his Black Soul that sat gloomily within him saying, ‘What a fool you are. It’s all a lie. You’ll think otherwise in a year’s time, tomorrow perhaps. How are you to know that she loves you? She only wants to use you in order to get away from here. She is making a tool of you, you idiot. All women are base and deceitful.’ He fancied he could see his Black Soul smirking through a fleshless skull in a cavern of his brain. But his words, coming from his heart, talked of tearing the world to pieces and refashioning it beautifully for his beloved, as beautiful as the surface of the sea in summer, with sunbeams gleaming on it. He talked, looking at the ashes, his eyes gleaming, his right hand gesticulating with the fingers outstretched like an eagle’s claws, and his left hand about her waist.

  With her head leaning on his shoulder Little Mary sca
rcely heard his words. The sound of them wafted her into her own dreams. And her dreams were of the children of her love. She cared nothing for his dreams of greatness, but as the setting for the life that was to be, the real life of love, a child from her womb, the living expression of her love for him. For her he was then but the medium of love. Her brain knew nothing of the love of civilization. She knew but the love of nature, that obeys nothing but the blind instinct to fulfil its function and shatter the tool that has achieved its purpose. And he was trying to compromise between his brain that desired to be godlike, and his heart that talked honeyed words, stolen from the god’s brains, to entice a woman in the net of his desire.

  In the days that followed he tried to find that compromise between his brains and his heart, that level where he could love her without regret, and he could not. Each day merged into the next languorously, and he could decide nothing. He swayed like the pendulum of a clock from love to cynicism and from cynicism to love. When Little Mary begged him to take her away he would say, ‘Why rush at things? We are all right as we are for the present. Something must happen shortly. I will fix on a plan, my treasure.’ And all the time he knew that the reason that he did not take her away was because she did not satisfy his reason. He could not abandon himself to her. He was perpetually doubting her. He would say, ‘Her loss would make no difference to me. Therefore I don’t love her. And she would never understand me.’ And yet when he had her in his arms he forgot everything in his love for her. That strange feeling of humility and purity would overmaster him, so that he often fell down at her feet and wanted to worship her. But as soon as he was alone his doubts came back again, so that he was in continual torment. For days at a stretch he would lapse into silence, merely staring at her coldly when she spoke to him, all the while trying to decide what to do with her, and whether he loved her or not, and without ever being able to arrive at a decision. In fact, the more he reasoned the more intricate the problem became. It was beyond the power of reason.

  He spent most of those days on the pier, at the westward end of Coillnamhan harbour, where the boatmen from the mainland were selling turf. The pier was crowded every day by peasants buying turf or carting it home or just loafing. In summer it was perhaps the most beautiful spot in Inverara, by the harbour that ran like an azure streak through the grey rocky shores to the white sandy beach, with the green valley of Coillnamhan beyond, and beyond that the grey, sun-scorched crags rising in terraces to the cliffs. He trudged down each morning along the pier, through the brown turf dust to the farthest point. There he sat among the peasants, with his legs dangling over the wall, listening to the conversation and watching the sea. And the time flew. At one moment it would be high tide, with the sea reaching to the highest step of the iron ladders that ran down the sides of the pier and licking the base of the great rock that lay half-way up the beach at the western end. The next moment, as it seemed, it would be low tide, and the base of the pier was dry, and one could see the patch of pebbles covered with yellow moss in the centre of the strand, far out. And yet six hours would have passed. The peasants would yarn and say, ‘Oh, my God, is it that time.’ Then they would lie down again with their backs against a heap of turf and their hats over their eyes, revelling in luxurious idleness after the fierce struggle with spring. Sometimes they would look at the Stranger curiously and say, ‘They say his soul has been bought by the devil.’ Another would say, ‘Don’t talk of him. They say he casts the Evil Eye. Did you notice Red John lately?’ Yet they talked to him with that peculiar contemptuous respect that the peasants of Inverara have for strangers whom they do not understand and despise inwardly because they are different from themselves, and are not known to possess land. ‘What is he, after all?’ they would say behind his back. ‘Why, I tell you, he is a worthless fellow. His father was a devourer of books (the peasants’ nickname for a schoolmaster), and he himself, they say, is just a useless fellow. Why, he can neither sow nor fish. By the Virgin, what queer people there are in the world. By the Book, there are. There now.’

  The Stranger, on the other hand, looked upon the peasants with the interest that a lazy man might take in the horseplay of a number of puppies. On the pier he was at rest, lulled to sleep by the languorous sound of everything about him, for in summer there is nothing so languorous as the sound of other people working. The turf boats came in in the morning, sails flapped, blocks creaked, anchor chains ran out, shaggy-breasted men began to swear, horses galloped, and the sea murmured dreamily. And he listened to these sounds, as if he could never again arouse himself to take an interest in life, or make an effort. While he was on the pier he could laugh cynically when he thought of Little Mary, for it is only when the mind is restless and dissatisfied that men desire love that is more than mere sexual passion. The sun and the sea and the unexciting companionship of the men about him murmured, ‘Sleep, rest, dream, for ever and for ever.’ Even O’Daly, who came down to the pier every day, did not arouse in him the former interest. ‘He is a boring fellow,’ he would think, listening to O’Daly’s interminable stories. Several times he went home with O’Daly in the evening, and met Kathleen, and even she did not arouse him. She was like a stranger to him now, and he wondered what he had seen in her before to make him desire her. ‘If she only had Little Mary’s beauty,’ he would think, as he sat talking to her, ‘what a wonderful woman she would be.’ And because he was indifferent to her, he talked freely to her. But strange to say it was when he was with her that he felt his love for Little Mary most. And, inspired by that feeling, he often grew enthusiastic in praise of fine feelings and a high standard of honour and clean living, those things that are so dear to the hearts of all modern Irish, in discussion. For since no single one of the three are entirely attainable, they are ideal subjects for discussion. So absorbed was he in the contemplation of his own difficulties and his love, which, however, he would not admit to himself, that he never noticed Kathleen, or the marked change in her attitude towards him. And what a change! Was it the languor of summer that caused her cheeks to flush when she heard his step approaching? What caused her to tremble when she touched him in passing? It was fear of herself, of surrendering to the passion that she had always repressed. She prayed and fasted, trying to overcome it, that love which she considered impure because it was for another being than God. And except for the slight occasional flush and the trembling, no one would have guessed that the proud cold face concealed such furious passions. Least of all the Stranger, since he no longer took any interest in her as a woman.

  Then one evening he and she were alone in the sitting-room together. She sat playing her violin in the niche by the window. A blackbird was singing on a rose-bush outside as if his throat would burst. He sat near her in the black mood that music always evoked in him, listening to the intermingling of the blackbird’s voice with that of the violin. ‘How impossible it is to be happy,’ he mused. ‘Music only makes me sad. Beauty hurts me. Beauty and the sunset. Sadness grins like an ape grinning at the futility of life. And yet men find joy in music. I must indeed be mad.’ And covering his head in his hands he sighed. She stopped playing. She sat waiting for him to speak to her. At that moment she knew that she could not resist the evening, the sweet scent, the desire for … life. But he made no movement. He was thinking of himself. And at length her pride gained the mastery, and she left the room, banging the door behind her. The noise startled him, and he sat up. Then with his eyes half- closed, as if to hide his sadness, he went out by the window.

  2

  When summer had softened the wild beauty of Inverara, so that neither the calm sea stretching about its shores, nor the breezes sweeping its crags, disturbed the peaceful silence of nature by their clamour, the eye turned by day to the majestic sun, that stood all day in the cloudless sky, and by night to the stars, that shone forth in myriads, vast star streams with constellations wheeling slowly over the night sea. Inverara was no longer a gaunt rock, whose crude strength made the mind fierce. It was a platform f
rom which the beauty of the heavens was visible. The fathomless blue sky, dotted by clouds that looked like washed wool tossed by a smooth wind, seemed so near that men kept looking at it with narrowed eyes, as if trying to see insects moving on its face. The island seemed to lie in the sea, dreaming of the vastness of the universe.

  But the silence filled Red John with horror. He had no longer anything to distract him. The crop that he had sown in spring had withered, choked by weeds. He often looked in over the fence into his potato gardens and laughed emptily, wondering what had possessed him to spend so much labour to no purpose. Then he would catch up stones from the fence and hurl them in among the weeds, saying with a chuckle, ‘Ha, I’ll settle you.’ He found great satisfaction in being mischievous. Everybody and everything inspired hatred in him. When a man or a woman passed him he would stare at their throats and long to draw a knife across them. And his right hand would clench the cloth of his waistcoat pocket. He often spent hours at night chasing his two black sheep, until he was lathered with sweat, his eyes blazing, furiously desiring to kill them. But when they stopped in the middle of the crag panting, and each trying to hide her head under the other’s belly, he would merely claw at their wool, mumbling, wondering why he had chased them. And all the while he was unable to think. And yet it was impossible for him not to try to think.

  Each day the heat of the sun and the empty vastness of the blue sky urged him to inconceivable tortures of aimless thinking. ‘What is this?’ he would say, looking at the sky and holding his head between his hands, with the knuckles of his fingers white with the pressure. ‘What is it at all, at all? My sweet Virgin, what is it?’ And the blue sky eddied towards him in monotonous blue balls, advancing first slowly, then with the rapidity of thought, until everything became a blur and something commenced to sing within his skull, and the soles of his feet itched. He would then sit down and begin to tear up the grass and count the blades aloud.