— That’s defamation, Master. If I were above ground I’d have the law on you …
— The time Baba wrote to me from America about the will, that chatterbox Nell was able to tell Pádraig what she had to say:
“I haven’t made my will yet. I hope I don’t meet with an accidental death, as you imagined I might in your letter …”
You opened it, mangy buttocks. You took a backhander from Nell.
— Not at all, Caitríona Pháidín. The letter about the will wasn’t the one I opened at all; it was the letter O’Brien the Attorney in Brightcity sent you, threatening to sue you within seven days if you didn’t pay Holland and Company for the roundtable you bought five or six years previously …
— Ababúna! Don’t believe her, the mangy little bitch! Muraed! Muraed! … Did you hear what the Postmistress said? I’ll explode! I’ll explode …
4
— … I’ll tell you a story now, my good man:
“Columkille5 was in Aran the time St. Paul came to visit him there. Paul wanted to have the whole Island to himself.
“‘I’ll open a pawnshop,’ said Paul.
“‘Faith then, you will not,’ said Columkille, ‘but I’m telling you now in plain Irish you’ll have to clear off.’
“Then he spoke to him in the ancient legal language of Féne.6 He spoke to him in Latin. He spoke to him in Greek. He spoke to him in baby-language. He spoke to him in Esperanto. Columkille knew the seven languages of the Holy Ghost. He was the only one to be left that gift by the other apostles when they died …
“‘Very well,’ said Columkille, ‘if you won’t clear off, in pursuance of the powers invested in me, we’ll solve the problem thus. You’ll go to East Aran and I’ll go to the West End of the island at Bungowla. Each of us will say Mass at sunrise tomorrow. We’ll then walk towards each other, and each of us can have as much of the island as he has walked by the time we meet.’
“‘It’s a bargain,’ said Paul, in Yiddish. Columkille said Mass and then he walked towards East Aran, which accounts for the old saying, ‘to come on you from the northwest’ …”
— But, Cóilí, Seán Chite in Donagh’s Village used to say that Columkille didn’t say Mass at all …
— Seán Chite said that! Seán Chite is a heretic …
— Seán Chite should mind what he’s saying! Didn’t God — praise be to Him forever! — give a revelation there and then. The sun was up when Columkille was saying Mass. It set again then, and God kept it set till Columkille had walked the island to East Aran. That’s when St. Paul saw it rising for the first time! …
“‘Clear off now and be quick about it, you Jew-man,’ said Columkille. ‘I’ll leave a castration mark on you, on your way back to the Wailing Walclass="underline" I’ll give you a horsewhipping like the one Christ gave you out of the Temple. Have you no shame at all! I wouldn’t mind but you’re so slithery and greasy looking! …’
“That’s why no Jew ever settled on Aran since …”
— The way I used to hear that story, Cóilí, from old people in our own village, was: the time the two Patricks7—Old Patrick, alias Cothraighe, alias Calprainnovetch, and Young Patrick — were travelling all over Ireland, trying to convert the country …
— The two Patricks. That’s heresy …
— … There was such a day, Peadar the Pub. Don’t deny it …
— … Master, dear, the bed was very hard. Very hard indeed under my poor buttocks, Master …
— I was bedridden for only a month myself, Máirtín Pockface, and I felt it hard enough …
— My back was completely blistered, Master. There wasn’t a shred of skin on my thighs …
— The devil a shred then, Máirtín, you poor thing …
— The devil a shred, indeed, Master, dear, and there was an old injury in my groin. The bed was …
— Let us forget the bed now till some other time. Tell me this now, Máirtín Pockface, how is …?
— The Schoolmistress, Master. In the bloom of youth, so she is. Earning her salary in the school every day, Master, and caring for Billyboy from night till morning. She slips over from the school twice a day to see him, and they say she gets very little sleep, the creature, sitting on the edge of the bed and plying him with medicinal draughts …
— The hussy …
— Did you hear, Master, that she brought three doctors from Dublin to see him? Our own doctor comes to see him every day, but I’d say, Master, the same Billyboy has had it. He’s lying down for so long now that he must have bedsores …
— May his lying be long and without relief! The thirty-seven diseases of the Ark on him! Hardening of the tubes and stoppage on him! Graveyard club-foot and crossed bowel on him! May the pangs of labour consume him! May the Yellow Plague consume him! May the Plague of Lazarus consume him! May the Lamentations of Job consume him! May swine-fever consume him! May his arse be knotted! May cattle-pine, bog lameness,8 warbles, wireworm, haw and staggers consume him! May the squelching of Keelin daughter of Olltár consume him! May the Hag of Beare’s diseases of old age consume him! Blinding without light on him, and the blinding of Ossian on top of that! May the itch of the Prophet’s women consume him! Swelling of knees on him! The red tracks of a tail-band9 on him! The sting of fleas on him! …
— Bedsores are the worst of them all, Master dear …
— May bedsores consume him too, Máirtín Pockface.
— She does the Stations of the Cross for him, day and night, Master, and a visit to St. Ina’s Well once a week. She made the pilgrimage to Knock Shrine for him this year, the pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, to St. Columkille’s Well, to St. Mary’s Well, to St. Augustine’s Well, to St. Enda’s Well, to St. Bernan’s Well, to St. Callen’s Well, to St. Mac Dara’s Well, to St. Bodkin’s Well, to Conderg’s Bed, to St. Brigid’s Well, to the Lake of the Saints and to Lough Derg …
— A pity I’m not alive! I’d empty St. Brickan’s Well10 against the thief, against the …
— She told me, Master, only for the shaky state of the world, she’d go to Lourdes.
“Lough Derg11 is worse than any of them, Máirtín Pockface,” she said. “My feet were bleeding for three days. But I wouldn’t mind all the suffering if it did poor Billyboy some good. I’d crawl on my hands and knees from here to …”
— The hussy …
—“I was broken-hearted after the Big Master,” she said …
— Oh, the hussy … If you only knew, Máirtín Pockface! But you wouldn’t understand. It would be no use telling you …
— Well, the way it is, Master, the bed was so hard …
— To hell with yourself and your bed, give it a rest! … Oh, the things that hussy said to me, Máirtín! …
— Faith then, I suppose so, Master …
— The two of us seated below by the Creek. The gentle lapping of the tide licking the flat rock at our feet. A young seagull encouraged by his father and mother on his first flutterings, like a shy bride making her way to the altar. Shadows of nightfall fumbling at the feet of the setting sun on the wave crests, like a blindfolded child groping to “tip” the other children. The plashing of the oars of a currach on its return from the fishing-ground. Holding her in my arms, Máirtín. A lock of her abundant tresses brushing against my cheek. Her arms around my neck. I reciting poetry: