Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

Saw a red vibrancy mingle with the tarry brown of bog water and so quickly disappear in the great mass of the river.

Then it was night-time in the Trace.

She walked the wynds, and she came at length to a small, deserted square, and she sat for a while on the wrought-iron bench. Dead lovers’ names were scratched into the wooden seat back. The growth all about was so fervent, so cloying, so diseased. Fescue grass gone to the black rot, and the cat’s tail that climbed mangily the tenement walls, and the sickly perfume of the clematis that persisted, even yet, and trailed from the rooftops; petals on a grave. Late spring was a rude throbbing as the Bohane creation ascended to the peak of its year, and ever closer to its precipice.

The pulsing of April brought a soreness to her glands.

Sometimes, in the good times, they didn’t even have to speak to know what the other was feeling. A child would have put fear in the town, sure enough, and would have given to the marriage a motive force. But a child never came, and the space was filled by his jealousy.

He would come back to the Beauvista manse in the small, dim hours, and he would say:

Were you out at all?

Did you see anyone?

What have you been doing?

What did you do today?

Where did you go today?

Who did you see today, Macu?

Who did you see today?

Were you out at all?

Where did you go?

Who did you see today, Macu?

It had made a child of him. He began to lock her in. She said that she would leave him if he turned those locks on her again, and he stopped for a while, and it drove him all the madder to stop, and he could no longer sleep at night.

He sat in the dark and watched over her.

Were you below in the town, Macu?

Who did you see today, girl?

He had the Fancy boys follow her. She would walk the New Town, at the hour of the evening paseo, and catch a sconce of Fucker Burke and Angelina acting blithe in a sideway – and Fucker wasn’t born to blithe – or Wolfie Stanners at a discreet distance behind, with his thyroidal eyes bulging.

She said:

This is not a life for me, Logan.

He dreamed up new ways of testing her. There was nothing he could do any more that would surprise her. Only the persistence of her love for him was a surprise to her.

Was she strong enough now to stay lost to him?

Midnight.

The Ho Pee Ching Oh-Kay Koffee Shoppe.

An upstairs salon.

And Logan Hartnett lay on the settle, and he placed softly the tips of his fingers on the back of Jenni Ching’s hand. The girl put the flame to the pipe for him. He drew deeply. She placed a dampened cloth on his brow.

Jenni said:

‘So you’d been doin’ her yet, y’had? Till she went an’ legged it on ya, like?’

‘With a long marriage, Jenni, one needs to make the effort.’

‘Fair dues t’ya, H. Guts o’ thirty year on, like, an’ still fleadhin’ the same aul’ bint… Not get samey?’

Logan squinted through the smoke and tightened his lips. Nobody else but Girly could talk to him like this. Hot night rippled in the salon’s dense air. A slow moment passed – it had somehow a memorial taste. He sighed for Fucker. He slipped a little deeper into his dream, and he felt the seep of the Bohane lost-time, and he softened.

‘Know how the Fancy got started, Jenni?’

Eyes-to-heaven from the Chinkee gal.

‘Here he goes,’ she said. ‘D’ya remember when and d’ya remember how – stall a halt, ’bino, till I goes an’ fetches me knittin’.’

‘Was on account of the gee-gees, going way back,’ he said. ‘When we had the horses running.’

She gave in to him.

‘Fancy was the lads what did the follyin’ o’ the hoss business, check?’

‘The only money in this town was horse money, Jenni. And that’s a fact, girl. In the Back Trace, out on the stoops? The boys would trade horse-talk all day. If we knew anything at all out here, we knew our horses. We had the best horses, the best track, best jockeys…’

‘Spooky, jockeys,’ said Jenni, ‘when you see ’em in the ol’ pix, like? Weird eyes.’

‘Fancy opened out from the horse business. Went into herb and dream and hoors.’

Jenni lit the flame again.

‘Always nice to hear about the olden days, H.’

He drew deep and held it a count against the nausea and then slowly exhaled. He ascended. She leaned in and kissed him. The kiss was slow and deep and not quickly to be recovered from.

‘The fuck is that comin’ from, Jenni?’

‘Jus’ a taste for ya, ’bino.’

‘Don’t ever do that again.’

‘Won’t so.’

‘You’d have the melt out on a fucking statue,’ he said. ‘How’ll the Gant get over you at all?’

A freeze ran through her sure enough.

‘Fuck y’sayin’ to me?’

‘He’ll get lonesome, girl. These long old spring evenings…’

Gathered herself quickly.

‘Am I lookin’ impressed, H?’

‘Oh I don’t blame you, girl. You need to keep the eye out on all sides in a small town. I’d almost have been disappointed if you hadn’t.’

Jenni’s breath came evenly. She looked hard at him. She said:

‘I didn’t give him nothin’ about the Fancy’s dealings.’

‘I know that, Jenni. He told me.’

For a moment she had no comeback, and looked scared. But she never let go the eye-lock. She said:

‘I ain’t no gommie lackeen, Logan.’

‘No, Jenni,’ he said. ‘If there’s one thing you ain’t it’s no gommie lackeen.’

Let it be said that the Hartnett magic still worked a drag across the city. Their reach yet was sinuous. It crabbed out across the rooftops, and each action they played in due course begot its reaction, and sure enough, before the month of April was done, there was an outbreak of Sweet Baba Jay mania on the Northside Rises.

In defeat, of course, they very often turned up there to religion. An SBJ revival needed no more than a little prompting. And within days of the faked stigmata appearing on the palms of the Cusack girl, there were holler-meetings being staged in the shebeen basements of the flatblocks. The meetings were writhing with fainters, swooners, hot-foot shriekers. There was a quare amount of roaring going on. One-time Norrie aggravators packed away the tyre-chains and the dirk-belts and the sweat was dripping off them as they swayed in the shebeens and roared tearful thanks to His Indescribable Sweetness. Great tremblings took hold of these boys and their knees buckled and oftentimes gave way altogether as Word was delivered from Messengers Unseen. Next thing, miracle gave onto miracle – as is the way – and there were reports that an SBJ icon atop the fountain outside Croppy Boy Heights had shed tears of blood. Sure the same wee stigmatic girl-chil’ of the Cusacks saw it with her own fervent eyes. And thus a congregation was on its knees around the icon, night and day, praying for more signs. The Norries were hugging each other and whispering blessings on the bleak avenues. It became a season of midnight visitations. In no time at all, the Sweet Baba Jay was showing up all over. Was said His Likeness had smiled down from the gable wall of an avenue grogpit. Was said His Likeness had appeared in the shape of a cloud over Louis MacNiece Towers. Was said His Likeness had formed, and shimmered, though briefly, in a puddle by the top of the 98 Steps. Norries were waking in the night and sitting bolt upright in their cots and crying out the Word of Love. Norrie sound systems had packed away their dub plates and their Trojan 45s and were playing for the shebeen gatherings a sacramental music of harpsong and hymnal chant. Women of the Northside were sporting a more modest cleavage line. They walked primly their Patterns of Devotion in the sweltering spring afternoons. They muttered half-remembered novenas as they paraded. Many found that their hair had taken on a fresh shine. There was great colour in everybody’s cheeks. Nobody went downtown much. They prayed for and pitied the doomed sinners down there. They forgave their recent losses. They forgave their fallen and their dead…