The Holy City

by Patrick McCabe

  What a wonderful man Mossie Phelan was — and to think of how his intuition and cleverness had been wasted for so long on so much superstitious Catholic mumbo-jumbo, really: ascensions, miracles, transubstantiations, the mystical body, the communion of saints and all the rest of it.

  It’s hilarious, really it is. Hilarious, for sure, if it wasn’t so — well, so damned embarrassing, really.

  But it’s all over now, and in the end that’s, as always, all that matters.

  I think if you were to ask me what the thing I most admire about modern life as it’s lived in this the early part of the twenty-first century is it is the single simple fact that no one now would dare impinge on another’s privacy. No one claims the right to interfere. Not like the old days when one’s life seemed to be lived under the shadow of omnipresent detectives, Pinkertons indeed — effectively one’s neighbours. Of every hue and colour, from old ladies in housecoats to fat men in darkened bars. Everyone was watching, cupping hands and delivering judgements. Now that’s ended. They don’t care enough. About your business, the details of your private affairs. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that no one cares about anything any more. Gossip has died and a strange peaceful silence overhangs the Plaza, with the only interruption being the static of the rotating plasmas, but which no one is aware of as their presence is constant. While, under the awning, the host-heads continue to abide, en famille, passing wine across the table. It’s like a clean breath has passed invisibly across the world. Effortlessly, it seems, ending generations of smalltown tittle-tattle, and with it all the concomitant hypocrisy.

  I mean, in total, there are thirteen other residents in this block and I’m not on speaking terms with any of them. In white-wax apartments orb-heads pass on the stairs. Such peace in anonymity never before known in Ireland. Even a scream has lost its power. To disturb the still, chill peace of our apartment building. Why, only just the other day, I feel certain, if I had been so unlucky as to meet any of the neighbours in the elevator whilst accompanied by the sullen brat of a youth I had encountered by chance in the Plaza — to amuse myself, I had christened him Stevie Wonder — I am pretty convinced there would have been scarcely any protest, little or no form of repercussion. The Eggmen, as Mike calls them, would have regarded me, recorded what was taking place. Before, delicately, with a foggy kind of lyricism, floating onward up the stairs, their privacy once more sealed with a delicate, mannerly but non-negotiable click.

  For who concerns themselves with such inconveniences now? With such unnecessary and time-consuming diversions? It’s behaviour which belongs to a prelapsarian age.

  When self-appointed custodians of morality took it upon themselves to administer merciless beatings, to encroach upon humble cottages called the Nook under cover of darkness, before delivering summary judgements with the tacit approval of a cowed community, with the result that one was packed off, undefended, to a sterile, remorseless institution, hopefully to be forgotten for ever. By order of the state and her ally Mother Church, signed Canon Burgess and all his associates from Bernie’s Bar in Cullymore.

  No, I welcome the fact that those times are consigned to history. For these cleaner, more clinical, perhaps, but distinctly pronouncing aggressively individual times (Margaret Thatcher, perhaps, began it, with her statement regarding society, effectively pronouncing that there is no such thing) tend to offer much more, and to an infinitely greater number of people, than anything which would have been accessible in the past, making the grandiose claims of the consumer era, the great permissive age of opportunity, ‘the sixties’, appear laughable. With that undertow of fierce conservatism which was still in existence throughout that whole period, lurking and ever ready to bare its face, remove its mask. Why, even to recall that awful night, in particular those few moments just before the Inquisition from Bernie’s descended on the Nook — is to facilitate the return of the most dreadful feelings. And alter one’s countenance so that it mimics that drawn, ascetic aspect of old. When one’s approach of the looking glass revealed something almost unearthly — a soul on the verge of utter catastrophe.

  A process which had, in fact, begun in earnest in the late summer of 1969. Its most significant episode, perhaps, being represented by the discovery I’d made — the letter which, to my horror, I had found in Dolly’s handbag. But the seeds of which — regrettably, I have to say — had been sown much earlier.

  I ought never to have accepted the invitation to go on the vacation, to accompany them both on ‘a little holiday’. It ought never to have been permitted in the first place. It was wholly irresponsible of his mother to allow it, but of course that’s easy to say — Dolores McCausland could be very persuasive. It had been stipulated that we were all to reside in our separate accommodations. But how credulous could his poor deluded mother have been? Did she think that Marcus was so supremely holy and devout that he would continue, inevitably, to remain beyond the bounds of temptation? Just how innocent can you be?

  This much is clear: I ought never to have gone near that holiday camp. I ought to have advanced a plausible excuse. I ought to have firmly said no, in actual fact.

  No!

  No, Dolly, I’m afraid I can’t go.

  It’s unfortunate but that’s all there is to it.

  That I couldn’t bring myself to do something as uncomplicated and simple as that. But that is the case. Once I heard that he’d he going.

  I had even packed A Portrait. With this idea in my head that somehow we’d find an opportunity to read it together. My eyes still burn with anguish and resentment. When I think of her lying there beside me in the Nook, expressing her affection for me, whispering ‘Mr Wonderful’, just before the cockerel crowed in the dawn:

  — You’re not really going to stay here, are you, Christopher? Spend the rest of your days here, working on this silly old farm, a man of your abilities and intelligence? What’s to stop us going to London? What fun we’d have: we might even see the Beatles. I could ask them to play my favourite song.

  — What’s that? I remember asking.

  — ‘Mr Wonderful’, she said, as she twinkled a little and gave a little shiver, before throwing her arm around my waist, her chest rising and falling as she gradually fell asleep.

  Try as I might, for the remainder of the entire night I couldn’t close my eyes. All I could think of, in spite of myself, were the words: It was his own soul going forth to experience, unfolding itself sin by sin, spreading abroad the bale-fire of its burning stars and folding back upon itself, fading slowly.

  16 Vesna Krapotnik, Catholic

  Every morning now when I wake up in the Happy Club, I find myself succumbing to sensations of sheer delight and amazement: when I reflect on just how fortunate I am — finding myself alive at all. Much less the sharing tenant of a freshly decorated, state-of-the-art apartment, with its chess table, as I say, its silk Moroccan cushions and Peter Blake prints. Not to mention the expensive carpeting and fittings throughout, filled with light that streams through the wide picture window that at night admits, once more, my friends the stars — the blue fruit of heaven.

  But, no matter how well your life is going, no matter how smooth everything seems to be, certain things, somehow, will always continue to irritate. Like that pesky imp, that infuriating little black bastard I mentioned earlier, whom I happened to meet, quite by chance, one day on the Plaza. Of course, in spite of his fulsome assurances to the contrary, when I eventually brought him back to the apartment it transpired that the liar could scarcely read at all. Never mind understand the first thing I’d been talking about. I slammed the book down on the table again. Portrait. With the portrait of Joyce louchely reclining on a chaise longue.

  — Will you just fucking read it, Stevie Wonder! I bawled at him. Just read it and then go!

  It was the Penguin edition. Not that it mattered what edition it was, as very soon I became aware that I was completely and utterly wasting my time. He was useless — worse than useless. Such an uncultured,
duplicitous little good-for-nothing.

  — Oh yes, mister, yes, I can read it, of course I can, it will only cost you fifty euro.

  But his lies weren’t the reason I struck him with my meerschaum cane. And quite forcibly too, to the extent that his stupid black blood stained it.

  No, he had started implying this physical thing again. Making, at first hesitant, unwholesome imputations.

  — You impertinent little wretch! I said, raising my stick. Oh you manipulative little twister, I said — with a succession of blows forcibly raining down. I have to admit — I really was furious.

  — What a fool I was to have expected either competence or civility. Get out, Wonder! Go on — clear off, and don’t come back!

  I tugged him by the collar, dispatching him forthwith into the deserted corridor. Flinging a handful of coins in his wake, I called after him:

  — Be damned to you, ingrate!

  As I sat at the table with my head in my hands, turning the fragile brown pages of the book.

  Feeling sick and dejected, to tell you the truth.

  * * *

  Which is why, that very night, I approached Vesna and told her again that I loved her, that I felt I meant it more than ever. Kissing the back of her hand as we listened to Tony Bennett, talking about the old times and how far we had come, after all this time. She said she was glad she didn’t lie to me any more. Because of course, regrettable though it might be, she had always had that tendency. She had even done it on our very first meeting. Had looked me in the face and lied through her teeth, to be honest. As we sat beneath the awning outside the café in the Plaza. I loved her accent, her Eastern European manners. It’s just a pity I discovered later that the entire story had been a fabrication. She had spun me all sorts of nonsense about being mistreated — her person violated, in fact, during the course of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

  — I no fadder, mudder, was one of her favourite lines. Which apparently was intended to mean:

  — I do not have any surviving parents. Subsequently established, with deep regret, as the most

  appallingly self-serving of falsehoods.

  I confronted her, obviously. She pleaded, in her counterfeit abject fashion.

  — I’m suh-sorry, dear, I said and could not find it within me to relent.

  Confining her to her room for a period of one week.

  I have no doubt, of course, but that Dr Thornton would have approved. I remember smiling, indulging myself in the fancy that I heard him musing in the firelight:

  — A firm hand is essential, my boy. Subordinate your emotions to your will and you’ll survive. Excellent show — I have to say I’m impressed. At last you’re doing something of which I can be proud. Backbone. Mettle! That’s you, my boy! Christopher Thornton, at last that’s become your name! Indifferent, incurious, self-controlled but best of all decisive! Unlike our friends who are of a degraded and inferior status. And you know, my boy, of whom I speak.

  Madame Vesna Krapotnik had told me all sorts of wonderful things about Dubrovnik. About how she had been born in the district of the old town, which was like something out of a medieval painting, with its mosaics, Gothic cathedrals and marble architecture. I continued to remain completely in her power as she described the fascinating magic of the coastal city, where she had been born twenty-eight years before.

  — It sounds so special, I said, almost holy.

  — It is, she said. Dubrovnik is holy. Is the place where I was born, liff all my life.

  Except that she happened not to be born there at all, but in some godforsaken dump of a fishing village, which no one had ever heard of.

  But she had looked so beautiful that day, with those small blonde curls peeping out from underneath the pale-blue patterned scarf that framed her fresh, blue-eyed complexion, as I rested my chin on my meerschaum cane, staring at her, smiling as she told me all about her father, who was a sheet-metal worker who had been wounded in the war, and her mother, who had written poetry extolling the beauties of Dubrovnik. That very first day in the café on the Plaza, hours just seemed to keep drifting on by, and it was like I had become so talkative we might have been back in the sixties again.

  Obviously I couldn’t tell her anything about St Catherine’s, I had no intention of scaring the girl off. Not that I got all that much of an opportunity, to be honest, after she got over her initial shyness. As they used to say in the old days, that girl would have talked the hind legs off a donkey. There was a lovely little mannerism she had that I particularly liked, of leaning forward to stroke her knee, as her little nose puckered. She had been educated by nuns, she told me, but wasn’t really what you would call a practising Catholic any longer, having seen at close hand what religion could do to people. Yes, I replied, we’ve had it here too, Vesna, believe me, but thankfully, as you say, it’s all over. People should just accept each other for what they are, she suggested, and went on to tell me that she loved Cat Stevens.

  — Mona Bone Jakon, she said and just for a minute I thought it was Croatian she was speaking. But it turned out to be Cat Stevens’ first album.

  — I really like so much, she said, his beautiful moosik. And Gordon Lightfoot and Carole King, yes — very much.

  I liked those too, I informed this wonderful new lady in my life, but preferred easy listening. Which, I’m delighted to be able to say, she was also overjoyed to hear, for she liked it too, Tony Bennett in particular. We exchanged phone numbers when we had finished our meal and I began to see her quite regularly after that. But the extraordinary thing is, in the beginning I didn’t suspect a single thing. I even believed her when she said she was working, acting as a translator in the Croatian Embassy. I believed nearly everything she told me, for heaven’s sake, as we strolled arm in arm, like long-time lovers, as I twirled my cane and looked into her eyes.

  Privately thinking: There’s life in the old dog yet, ladies and gentlemen. Rave on!

  And could not help thinking that Vesna, with her fair curly locks held in place by her scarf, did not look at all unlike a singer-songwriter of the seventies, herself thoughtful and quite beautiful in her blue Levi’s jeans and embroidered halter-neck top. As she continued with her evocative, historical tales. Concerning her ‘kaantry’ and ‘mudder’ and ‘fadder, yess?’ Who had suffered so much but who she longed to go back one day and see. And no doubt, perhaps, give them some of my money — of which, mysteriously, she always seemed to be in need. And was constantly promising to return.

  Vesna Krapotnik, cutest little fibber in all of Croatia. Vesna Krapotnik, so-called exploited refugee, who’d have bled me for all she could if she’d been able. If I hadn’t wised up before it was too late. Thank you, virtual highway, and Perfidia.com. But, most of all, thank you to my natural instincts, which in spite of all didn’t fail me in the end.

  — Vuh-vuh-Vesna, luh-luh big liar! I said to myself when I found out.

  That she’d been working as a cleaner in a restaurant, and had never been inside the Croatian Embassy in her life.

  But that as yet was a little way away.

  17 The Beachcomber Affair

  That day I waited at the corner to meet Marcus — it’s my greatest regret. I ought never to have done it. But at least, now that a great deal of time has elapsed, I can appreciate that it was my own absurd degree of emotionalism and naivety which was responsible for the resulting calamity.

  No, I should never have invested Marcus Otoyo with such impossible qualities. Qualities which, in fact, had never existed. Marcus was nothing more than an ordinary youth going through a phase — exactly as Mossie Phelan had suggested.

  It was inevitable that he’d grow up and I ought to have been aware of that: that, even as we talked that day in the street, he was already in the process of leaving what remained of his childhood behind. Something Evelyn Dooris couldn’t have been expected to understand — being scarcely thirteen. Which only tends to add to one’s sympathy for her. For there could be no doubting her disappoi
ntment that day in the greenhouse. Her soul was cast down — you could tell that immediately. Unaware, perhaps, that she too was entering a new period in her life, and that soon her schooldays also would be but a memory. Like those of Marcus Otoyo — except that my myopia of hopeless belief and longing had blinded me to the fact.

  The progression of events seems so stunningly simple now — something which comforts me in my advancing years. I had desired, more than anything, to be comparably spiritual, to share somehow in Marcus’s extraordinarily pious passions — those I had assumed to be burning deep within him. To be permitted to scale the foothills and crest the dizzying heights, where, my imagination had told me, destiny had placed him. And from whence he gazed down haughtily, upon the insignificant plod of the dismal human herd. In his image and likeness, I would secure the adoration and respect I had so long been denied, I felt certain.

  From the very first night I’d seen myself standing outside the Thornton Manor house with its high French windows, gazing in at my mother Lady Thornton, who was little more than a blur as she turned the pages of the golden treasury, reading, as always, to her beloved Little Tristram. Who lay there, luxuriously, desultorily, with his thumb in his mouth, curled up cosily in her warm lap. At one with her and everything about him. Inside, I thought. Belonging.

  On the very first page of A Child’s Garden of Verses — the most beautiful book in the world — there was an ink drawing of an ancient crumbling portal, whose pillars were twined with leaves. And then, underneath, in ornate script, a sentence which read: Enter through here and inherit human happiness. Abide with us herein beneath the stars of the bluest heaven.

  I really don’t think that, even if I had wanted to, I could have prevented myself from visiting Ethel that day. Because of my memories of her and that book. But I was wasting my time, as I realise now, searching for something she would always have found it impossible to give. She hadn’t a clue what I meant, poor woman, pestering her about ‘this holy city we call love’, and all the rest of it. Prevailing upon her to read ‘Escape at Bedtime’, in particular. Yes, she remembered the book, she told me — but only vaguely. So it had been a pointless exercise, emulating Tristram — manoeuvring myself into her lap, I mean. And which had been so awkward, for both of us. I should never have requested that. For, as has been reasonably, if I’m honest, suggested, it was my very insistence that had been primarily responsible for her cardiac arrest.