Liam O'Flaherty - The Black Soul

He was still worrying about that look when he entered the cabin. Little Mary was sitting on a stool within the door, carding wool. A little pile of carded wool lay beside her on a mat. Her hands were covered with grease, scraping the wool between the cards. The sunshine coming in the door made an oblong shadow on the floor across her lap and her bent head. Countless little particles of matter shone like a fog of silver dust through the shadow. She looked up dreamily as he entered, and dropped her cards.

‘Where is Red John?’ he said, speaking aloud his thoughts unintentionally.

Little Mary flushed and jumped to her feet. Wiping her hands on her apron she moved towards the hearth and beckoned to him.

‘What is it?’ she said excitedly. ‘Have you seen him? Has anything happened to him?’ She was not feeling any anxiety about Red John, but she wanted to break through the Stranger’s apathy.

‘Why, what on earth are you talking about, Mary?’ he said anxiously, seeing the look of fear in her eyes. ‘I just asked where he was casually. Why, what’s troubling you?’ and he put his arms about her.

Little Mary shivered, and nestled her head against his breast. ‘I think he’s going mad,’ she said, entwining her hands in the lapels of his coat. ‘I’m afraid of him.’ She was not afraid of Red John at that moment, not even conscious of his existence, although she was speaking of him. But she was afraid that her lover was no longer hers, so she was trying this scheme to win him back again.

‘Rot,’ he said, ‘he’s all right. I don’t notice anything the matter with him. Eh?’

‘Oh, do take me away with you,’ she said gently, as she darted her head backwards and looked him in the eyes. Her eyes caught his in a flash, and then they looked over his shoulders as if she were ashamed of having spoken. But she was watching him without looking at him. She watched him with every muscle of her body that touched his. She pressed against him seductively to arouse him. And in the languorous silence of summer about them, the beating of their hearts sounded loud as she looked across his shoulder and he looked over her head at the wall beyond, his forehead wrinkled.

‘Take you with me?’ he said at length. ‘Eh? Where could I take you? Good Lord, you don’t know what you are talking about!’ And the thought of appearing in Dublin with a peasant woman made him shudder.

‘Yes, do take me,’ she said again. She purred like a cat. She looked him straight in the eyes now. Her head was thrown far back so that her long lashes almost covered her eyes, and he could see the insides of her half-open red lips. Then she uttered a low cry, and hugged him closely, sweeping her hands slowly over his face and shoulders, and pressing her cheek against his neck. ‘Ha, you are ashamed of me,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘you think I am not good enough for you. But I am Sir Henry Blake’s daughter, do you hear? And my grandfather was – oh, don’t hurt me.’

He had suddenly held her from him, gripping her shoulders fiercely. He crushed her shoulders, looking into her eyes savagely. ‘What do I care whose daughter you are? You think it matters to me who you are? Do you think I am a man like that?’

She did not reply. They stared into one another’s faces in silence, and then …

Something mysterious happened to him. It was different from anything that had ever happened to him before. In fact, he had never even imagined anything like it before. He was stupefied by it. It permeated his whole being. It was as if a sweet incense were poured into the marrow of his bones, mixed with rich wine that intoxicated instantaneously. There was the result of intoxication without its impurities. There was no heaviness in the brain. It was half-asleep like a child’s brain, watching the body throbbing and exulting in response to the mysterious feeling that had seized it. And that feeling, starting nowhere and ending nowhere, was so powerful that the body obeyed it without any reference to the brain.

Slowly they sank into one another’s arms until their lips met. Just before his lips touched hers, he saw her upper lip arched like a bridge, with numberless veins running crookedly upwards through the red skin. Then his lips met hers, and he forgot everything. If the world stopped at that moment he would not have noticed it. He could not think if he tried. All his capacity for thought was exhausted by the intensity of his feeling. His life seemed to have met her life, and united with it in the embrace. His body did not unite with hers, but his life. He had lost his individual being. Time lost its value. The past and the future became meaningless. He had been transported into a state which, even in its duration, he could not understand, since he had lost the power of thought. So no language has been invented to describe it, that highest point in life, whence all life might be seen naked and understood. People describe the road leading up to it, full of passion and worries and craving, and the road leading down from it, full of sourness and disillusionment. But only a god could describe the summit itself. The great, mysterious, beautiful vision of love in its entire purity, that vanishes into oblivion before the arms have even tired of clasping it.

Slowly their lips parted, and they returned sighing to individual consciousness. Their eyes still met longingly, but the dream had passed. They were again coming down the slope. He staggered from her arms to a stool by the wall and sat down, his head fallen on his chest, his hands hanging limply by his sides.

‘Oh God,’ he muttered, ‘it is the first time, what is it?’ And he smiled stupidly.

She followed him, knelt between his knees, and laid her head on his breast. They lay that way for a long time, until Little Mary looked up into his face with a nervous look in her eyes. ‘Will you take me away with you?’ she said. ‘You must. You must. Do you hear?’ She encircled his waist with her hands, and pressed with all her strength.

‘I am your slave,’ he whispered. ‘I will do what you like … anything.’

‘My darling,’ she said, ‘kiss me. Oh, I am so happy.’

So absorbed were the two of them, that they did not notice the short midday shadow of a man crossing the square of sunlight on the floor, and then halt, stooping at a comer of the square. It was Red John who had come noiselessly, for in summer at Rooruck there are no noises of human feet, but shadows. He stood by the door, his left shoulder leaning against the wall, his left foot on the wooden threshold, the fingers of his left hand gripping his lower lip crosswise. Then he laughed and they jumped to their feet, terrified. It was a demoniacal laugh and sounded empty, as if it had come through an endless cavern, and were going farther. Without saying a word he sat by the fire and spat into it. Then he began to snap the joints of his fingers furiously.

The Stranger’s first impulse at seeing Red John was to run away, and he obeyed it. He seized his hat and rushed from the cabin.

‘Where are you going, your dinner will be ready in a minute?’ said Little Mary, pretending to be totally unaware of the embarrassing situation in which her husband had found them, but her words passed him by without his comprehending them. He walked hurriedly towards the cliffs, with the forlorn image of Red John before his mind snapping his fingers.

‘Poor man, poor man, I have done him a grievous wrong.’ It was no use saying nothing mattered, as his reason prompted. His reason suggested closing his eyes and thinking of the delirious happiness of the embrace and the beauty of Little Mary’s face, when she looked at him with love in her moist eyes. The efforts of his cold reason were washed away by the flood of remorse that engulfed him. The effort merely wearied his brain, and dissolved completely the happiness that he had experienced but a few minutes before. Red John, who was so inconsequent in his strength, was now in his weakness and misery powerful. The vision of him sitting by the fire stricken, as it seemed, brought back the dull heavy feeling in his forehead that he had felt in winter. And he was afraid of that feeling. ‘It serves me right,’ he groaned; ‘why, oh why, did I surrender to love, knowing beforehand what it was? Just a delusion. In my case a crime. Oh!’