Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

‘Get word to him that I’m willin’ to sit and talk a Smoketown divvy.’

‘A divvy I would very much doubt, Eyes.’

A hard jab of a forefinger from Cusack, then:

‘If he wanna keep the Trace under Hartnett colours? Wanna keep slurpin’ his oysters below in Tommie’s and keep playin’ footsie with his mad fuckin’ cross-eyed missus–’

‘Leave a man’s wife out of it.’

‘He wanna keep suckin’ the wind? Then he’ll sit an’ he’ll talk a fuckin’ divvy on fuckin’ Smoketown!’

Ol’ Boy shut his eyes – the worst of it was when they got brave.

‘So you want me to go down to the ’bino with an out-and-out threat, like?’

A smile from Eyes Cusack the likes of which you wouldn’t get off a stoat in a ditch.

‘Tell him I got the flatblocks stacked.’

‘Don’t do this, Eyes.’

‘Fella gets back what he gives out, Ol’ Boy.’

‘That’s said, yes.’

‘An’ maybe he got old stuff comin’ back ’n’ all, y’sketchin’? Hear tell of a certain man pass this way in the bleaky hour…’

‘This mornin’ gone?’

‘Same one. A man what hop an El for the downtown.’

‘Who are we talkin’ about, Eyes?’

‘That’s a man the Long Fella wanna watch ’n’ all.’

‘I said who’re we talkin’ about, Eyes?’

‘Long Fella know him well enough. His missus know him ’n’ all.’

Ol’ Boy raised softly a palm in warning.

‘Plenty o’ folk have thought before Hartnett was weakening. Same folk feedin’ maggots down the boneyard now.’

‘Just get the word out for me, Mannion.’

He nodded, and he let Cusack move along. He watched the old scut hoick a gobber and tug the trackies from the crack of his arse. Shook his head, Ol’ Boy – they had no fucking class up on the Northside Rises.

A winter’s bother was brewing then. Blood would flow and soon. But there was the possibility, Ol’ Boy realised, that too long and persistent a Calm might be no good for the city.

A place should never for too long go against its nature.

Above De Valera Street the sun climbed and caught on each of the street’s high windows and each whited out and was blinded by the glare; each became a brilliant, unseeing eye. The light seemed to atomise the very air of the place. The air was rich, maritime, nutritious. It was as if you could reach up and grab a handful of the stuff. The evil-eyed gulls were antic on the air as they cawed and quarrelled and the street beneath them was thick with afternoon life.

Yes and here they came, all the big-armed women and all the low-sized butty fellas. Here came the sullen Polacks and the Back Trace crones. Here came the natty Africans and the big lunks of bog-spawn polis. Here came the pikey blow-ins and the washed-up Madagascars. Here came the women of the Rises down the 98 Steps to buy tabs and tights and mackerel – of such combinations was life in the flatblock circles sustained. Here came the Endeavour Avenue suits for a sconce at ruder life. The Smoketown tushies were between trick-cycles and had crossed the footbridge to take joe and cake in their gossiping covens. The Fancy-boy wannabes swanned about in their finery and tip-tapped a rhythm with their clicker’d heels. De Valera Street was where all converged, was where all trails tangled and knotted, and yes, here came Logan Hartnett in the afternoon swell. He was…

Gubernatorial.

Like a searchlight he turned his cold smile as he walked. He picked out all the De Valera Street familiars. He spotted a haggard old dear from the Trace. With one arm she pushed a dog in a pram, with the other she cradled a cauliflower, and he leaned into her as he passed.

‘Howya, Maggie, you’re breaking hearts, you are?’

Logan in the afternoon was almost sentimental – it was the taint that set him so. When he whispered to his old familiars, it was as if he hadn’t seen them for years.

By Henderson the Apotechary:

‘How-we-now, Denis? Any news on the quare fella?’

By Meehan’s Fish ’n’ Game:

‘Is that lung giving you any relief, Mrs Kelly?’

By the Auld Triangle:

‘When do the bandages come off, Terence?’

His smoke-grey suit, finely cut, set off nicely his deadhouse pallor. The walk of him, y’sketch? Regal, yes, quite so, and he made grand progress towards the Café Aliados.

De Valera Street runs its snakebend roll from the base of the Northside Rises all the way down to the river. It separates the Back Trace from the New Town. Its leases are kept cheap and easy – buckshee enterprises appear overnight and fold as quick. There are soothsayers. There are purveyors of goat’s blood cures for marital difficulties. There are dark caverns of record stores specialising in ancient calypso 78s – oh we have an old wiggle to the hip in Bohane, if you get us going at all. There are palmists. There are knackers selling combination socket wrench sets. Discount threads are flogged from suitcases mounted on bakers’ pallets, there are cages of live poultry, and trinket stores devoted gaudily to the worship of the Sweet Baba Jay. There are herbalists, and veg stalls, and poolhalls. Such is the life of De Valera Street, and Logan Hartnett at this time had the power over it.

He approached the Aliados. The crowd walked a perceptible curve around its front entrance in due respect. The Aliados opened onto Dev Street from the front and to the Back Trace from a laneway door. It was still, after all these years, the afternoon haunt of the Hartnett Fancy. He ducked down the laneway so as to come in, as always, by the side door – a creature of ritual and set habits. A scatter of his boys lounged inside at the low zinc tables. They smoked, and they drank tiny white cups of joe, and they ate sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds from saucers of thin china delft, and they sighed, languidly, as they leafed through the fashion magazines. The Aliados was no longer in the hands of Macu’s people, her father had long since passed, but somehow it had an air of wistfulness for the old country yet: a lingering saudade .

Logan took his usual table down back of the long, low-lit cafe. He had a clear view to both doorways from here – he was careful. He hung his jacket on a peg set for the purpose in the wall behind. The wall held photographs, faded, of ancient football teams. These were from the long-gone days when Bohane would have won All-Irelands. The girl – who was as homely as he could reasonably hire, not wanting his boys overly distracted – brought him his joe and a saucer of seeds and he smiled for her sweetly in thanks. The murmuring of talk among the Fancy boys was lower since Logan had entered the place. He smiled now for all of them. He turned the smile around the room; it was a masterpiece of priestly benevolence. Nobody was fooled by it for a minute – Logan’s smile was packed with nuance. Before its arc had fully swung the cafe, its message – its news – had changed many times, just a half-degree of a turn here, a half-degree there, adjusting minutely as it settled on the various parties of the room.

You would be in no doubt whatsoever as to your current standing within the ranks of the Hartnett Fancy.

Logan flicked his coffee cup with a fingernail. It tinked , pleasingly. He sighed then in long suffering. Examined his nails – a manicure was overdue. He allowed a particular glaze to settle over his fine-boned features. It was as though to emphasise the extent of a martyr’s devotion to the city; his devotion.

Now the custom at the Aliados, afternoons, was that mendicants would take a high stool at the bar and there they would wait precisely in turn for their brief audience with Logan. That an audience could begin was signalled by the slightest raising of the pale Hartnett eyebrows. This afternoon was a quiet one – just a couple of men waited. Logan signalled that the first of them might now approach, and it was the whippet-thin butcher Ger Reid who came dolefully across the tiled floor.