Liam O'Flaherty - The Black Soul

The Stranger lay on the bed without moving, with the notecase in his hands. He suddenly took out the notes and counted them. As he was not going to die, he had an interest in his material wealth, and he put his hand to his chin.

‘Wait now,’ he mused; ‘I have paid for a year’s board and lodging to Red John. Good job I did that. I’m safe for a year. And let me see: twenty, twenty-five, thirty, forty, forty-five, fifty, fifty-three pounds … ten and there are a few shillings in my trousers pockets.’ He put the notes back and gripped the purse between his fingers. He must look after that money. Life was sweet after all. It would be all right living in Rooruck … away from the world. Just living without any effort. God knows what he might not discover about life sitting up there on the Hill of Fate. ‘Say, supposing I was sent here by fate to discover something wonderful!’ He became enthusiastic.

Then Little Mary came in and he handed her the purse. She was smiling, glad that he was not seriously ill. The white streaks in her grey eyes were shining brightly as she smiled.

‘Thank God, you’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘He told me to get you a drop of brandy for the pain in your stomach. He said it was wind. I’ll run down to Derrane’s and see have they got any.’

‘Don’t be long away, Mary,’ he called after her as she went. He was afraid of being alone. As soon as she had left the house he became worried again. His enthusiasm vanished. He suspected that the doctor had told him a lie. What did the doctor care? He recalled stories he had heard of doctors letting people die without making the least effort to save them. He felt that he was deserted by the world, that nobody cared whether he lived or died, that he was unable to help himself, that there was nobody bound to him by ties of blood. He heard the sea rumble. He felt a morose satisfaction in the thought that it was licking its jaws, preparing to devour him. Then the thought came to him that he would die at night, alone in his room. The wind would sing a cunning hissing song, trying to calm his fears so that the sea would crawl up unawares and devour him. Then all those black cormorants that he had seen on the jagged Reef would strain out their twisted long necks and tear pieces from his carcass. They would swallow the pieces without chewing them and tear again. Then he discovered himself counting the number of cormorants that were tearing at his body and he tried to shout. But he was too agitated to shout. He crept down under the blankets and commenced to cry. He felt sorry that he couldn’t pray to God without losing his self-respect. It would be such a comfort to throw himself on the mercy of some Being that was stronger than nature. There was no use appealing to nature. Nature was too strong and just to be influenced by prayer. Then he remembered Little Mary. ‘Great God,’ he murmured, ‘that woman is good to me.’ Then to hide from himself the fact that he wanted her near him because he was ill and helpless, he told himself that he was very fond of her and he became jealous of her husband.

When she brought him the brandy he thanked her with tears in his eyes. She wanted to put her arms about him and embrace him, but instead she drew away to the window and pulled the curtain over it.

‘Go to sleep now,’ she whispered. She tiptoed to the door. She was closing the door when he asked her to leave it open. He wanted to hear her moving in the kitchen. He was afraid of being alone. He watched her move around the kitchen for a time and then he became sleepy as the brandy warmed his stomach. He lay prone and closed his eyes. He heard Red John coming into the kitchen, shuffling and grumbling.

‘Hey then, woman, there’s a journey for you, and the son of a loose woman never gave me a drink. Hey then, there’s a doctor for you.’

‘Be quiet there, you pest,’ said Little Mary.

‘Hey then, whose house is this, cracked woman?’

Then he heard Red John talking in a loud voice outside the door to somebody about the weather. ‘I would say in spite of the four Gospels if they were laid on my palm that the wind has veered southward a point,’ Red John was saying.

The Stranger wondered for a few moments where Red John had heard of the four Gospels, or if he knew what they were about, and if he did read them, would he think them credible? He decided that Red John would spit and say ‘Huh’ when he had finished reading the Gospels. Then he fell asleep.

He awoke at intervals during the day. The kitchen was full of peasants, men and women, every time he awoke. The peasants of Rooruck, like all peasants and rustics and small townspeople, loved the sensation of somebody in their village being dead or sick or murdered or accused of murder or gone mad. They did not read newspapers, so the pleasure of talking scandal and trying to foist crimes and immoral habits on each other was their only harmless pleasure. But they were willing to pay for their pleasure. They brought Little Mary jugs of milk, round ‘hillocks’ of butter, and dried fish as gifts for the ‘sick man.’ The men sat near the door on a wooden bench, with their elbows on their knees, spitting everywhere. The women huddled themselves like Turks on the floor, with their hands clasped in front of their shins. They would sit in silence for a long time, pitching from side to side uneasily, like sheep being eaten by maggots. They rolled their eyes around vigorously to examine everything. Then they went away and gathered in groups around the village. They talked for hours with their heads close together, hugging their elbows like wicked Chinamen in a film tragedy.

‘Lord save us, the way Little Mary looks at one.’

‘Did you notice anything, O wife of Lame Peter?’

‘I did, but I wouldn’t like to mention it.’

‘Ye needn’t be afraid. I noticed the same thing myself.’

‘You mean to say that –’

‘Yes, that’s the very thing I said to myself as soon as I entered the house.’

‘It should be stopped.’

‘A fine-built woman like that not to have a child. It’s the curse of God that struck her barren.’

It was about midnight when the Stranger awoke. He felt refreshed. When his consciousness fully awakened and he remembered the events of the day before, he felt a strange happiness. It appeared to him that he had escaped a great catastrophe. He sat up in bed with his hands about his knees, contemplating himself.

Nature was still, except for the distant quarrelling of the sea, as if the waves were complaining at being forced to keep vigil over sleeping nature. It was so still that he thought the world was dead. ‘This is the turning-point in my life,’ he said, nodding his head and frowning as if he were stating an irrefutable fact. Then he began to think with remarkable clarity. He fancied that he could see his brain thinking. It appeared to him to be like a crystal with amorphous ideas glinting within it. He wanted to poke his fingers into its sides like a boy watching goldfish in a glass. Then he lay back from the contemplation of his brain and became aware of the power and vastness of nature. ‘I am a part of nature.’ Before, he had considered himself superior to nature. Now it struck him that he was merely a component part of the universe, just an atom, with less power than the smallest fleck of foam that was snatched by the wind from the nostrils of an advancing wave. Ha! Then he belonged to something. There was a mother too between whose breasts he could hide his head, a mother more powerful than a thousand gods. Just fancy. He could surrender himself to nature without fear. He smiled, confident that he had solved the puzzle of life. Now death could hold no terror for him, since after death he would return to nature and nature was immortal. It always moved, and motion was life. He listened to the voice of the sea eagerly, as to the voice of a father. He pictured it tumbling in among the rocks, beds of seaweed swimming in the white surf. He heard its crash as it struck the base of the cliffs. He saw the fountain of surf rising, hissing as it rose to a slender curving point. He saw it fall backwards into the retreating wave that scurried in and out among the long-toothed rocks as if it had been blinded and had lost its way. He saw it drivelling into pools and then rush with a subdued roar into the body of the ocean, to join another wave that towered higher and higher as it advanced, green and menacing. Ha! It moved without purpose. That was life, motion without purpose.