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.Enough of his self-pity.Before I left I went over to the fire, put on some peat, and ruffled it with the poker.He had some of his fishing flies placed on the stonework, to dry them out.He sat up and said that fishing flies were like good women – they should never be stored away while moist – and laughed away as if it was the funniest thing in the world.I left him sitting in the chair and went back out on the bike again into the boneblack night.When I came back from O’Leary’s, he’d collapsed in the chair.His fly was open like a wound and his hands were down by his crotch.His handkerchief was tucked into the nape of his neck.It was as if he’d been about to serve himself, then forgot.In the kitchen I could tell that he’d been pissing in the sink – he hadn’t rinsed it out and there were still two saucers there, one of them with little splotches of yellow on the side.Disgusting.The least he could have done was take out the saucers.Watched him as he dozed.He raised a hand to wipe something from his eye, maybe some sort of vision, a dream, an absurdity.But I can’t imagine him having dreams anymore.What would he summon up? Maybe something slow and soporific, moving itself into blackness, a slow waltz towards oblivion.Or might it be some secret of technicolour? Who knows? Perhaps life goes out as it once came in – down to the secular brilliance of a single hydrogen atom, imploding back on to itself, the emergence of a songdog on the rim of nothing.A fatuous idea really.Too many pints of Harp in me.Didn’t recognise anyone in O’Leary’s pub, not a single soul, maybe everyone has emigrated.Sat in the corner and flipped a few bar coasters up and down on the table.Plenty of old men in there though, moving their dentures up and down in their mouths, the oval dawns of yellow nicotine stains on their hands.FRIDAYgod, i was goodWoke up late, feeling a bit nasty.All that Harp.Nectar of the dogs.He gave a laugh when he saw me, went to the cupboard and got out the whiskey.‘For what ails ya,’ he said.I took a quick shot and drank a few glasses of water.He upped himself from the table, said he was going to go down to catch his fish.But he must have run out of good flies, because he got out some bait from the very back of the freezer shelf – old shrimp of some sort in a plastic container.Boiled water in a saucepan and placed the tub in the hot water, stood over it, inhaling some of the steam, said it was good for cleaning out his head, that I should try it myself.Every now and then he pushed the container down in the water with his fingers, submerging it, licked at his fingers.They must have been burnt from the hot water, but it didn’t seem to faze him any.He plucked the plastic tub out, said he didn’t have time to wait for the shrimp to thaw, put some of it in his overcoat pocket.Stale shrimp won’t help the smell of him any, I thought, once it unfreezes in his pocket it’ll really stink him to high heaven.Illegal bait, too, but he said he didn’t care, a fish is a fish is a fish, especially if he catches that giant salmon of his.Took myself off into town on the bike for a bit of breakfast in Gaffney’s hotel.Same old place, yellowing table doilies, ducks in flight on the wall, carpet curling up at the edges, the waft of brewing tea, farmers smoking cigarettes in the corners.Sat at the table nearest the door and read the back page of the Connaught Telegraph.Ordered up a big feed with extra sausages.The waitress knew me.Took me a while to remember, but I finally did – Maria from the convent school, cheekbones you could abseil, hair to the waist.I used to blow kisses at her when she walked past the handball alley.She kept coming over to my table with bits and pieces – butter, marmalade, an extra spoon – until she finally asked me.I wasn’t in the mood for talking, pretended it wasn’t me, put on my best-dressed Wyoming drawl.Still, nothing better than a few sausages and rashers for a hangover, and I felt like ninety afterwards.Left a pound coin for a tip and she came out running after me, hair flying, said we don’t accept tips in this part of the world.She said she knew it was me all along – the dark skin, I suppose – and smiled.‘How long are you back for?’ she asked.Told her about the visa and she said I was lucky, she’d give an arm and a leg to take off herself, she has a brother in Louisiana who shucks oysters, a sister in Washington State doing nursing in a home for geriatrics.I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and fooled around with the buttons on my denim jacket.She asked about the old man, said he used to come in for breakfast every Saturday, she hasn’t seen him in a while.‘Oh, he’s in flying form.’‘That’s great news altogether.’She was jangling coins in her apron pocket.‘Well, I’ll be off,’ I said.‘Fair enough so.Come in for breakfast on Monday before ya leave.’‘I will.’‘It’s on me.’I walked back home by the riverbank, wheeling the bicycle.Had to detour by the factory, where they’ve raised the barbed wire another few feet in the air, the shouts of men amongst the squeals and the shit and the slurry.Sat down a couple of hundred yards from the factory, in the long grass.Had an urge to just get in and swim, even if the water was disgusting, black as berries, the slow roll of it through the rushes.Took off my t-shirt and trousers, hung them on the brambles of a bush, sat in my underwear, feet dangling in the water.A life of half-emergence.A consistency of acceptance.Enough of the old man’s disease, I thought.This contagion of days, teacups and nods.A vision of Maria rose up in me, a vertigo of lust and genuine longing.Should go back and sweep her off her feet, roll the coins from her apron in my fingers, do something ridiculously romantic for once, carry her off to the beach, ride palominos along the water’s edge, shove ogham stones in our pockets, ride out to sea.Kowtowed over the riverbank, I decided that I would swim, went into it up to my knees, balanced myself on a few underwater stones, rocked back and forth, and was just about to dive in when I heard a rustle in the bushes near my clothes, maybe a rat or a bird.I got up on to the bank and shook the water from my toes, pulled on my things, walked along towards home, a factory horn ringing out behind me.The old man was there with the familiar routine, and a bitterness sped its way through me as I watched him casting.Something nestled in my stomach and gnawed at me.He lives his life now in the grip of some comfortable anaesthetic.If I were to choose an anaesthetic myself, I’d probably do what Cici did – have some visions while I’m at it.When I met her, she looked like she could have been grandmother to a hill, but there was a lustful energy in her and the things she remembered.She was living near Castro Street, where all the finest dying in America was done – but Cici wasn’t dying, Cici was her own songdog, Cici was still howling in the creation of other days and places.* * *A summer of fires, that summer of 1956
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