John McGahern - The Dark

The more you lingered on it the more fantastic it grew, no open road, the best was to be a green cabbage head. Say your penance. Go as best you can till you fall, the refuge of confession again then, and it all had the saving grace that it wasn’t going to last for ever.

Evenings after school you hung about the shops waiting for Mary Moran to pass down from the Convent, let her cycle out the road a little ahead, and pedal furiously to catch her round Clark’s.

“How are you, Mary?”

“Oh, you gave me a fright.”

“I thought you’d not be out yet and I got a surprise when I came round the turn and saw you ahead,” you explained, though you’d waited for twenty minutes in the hammering of Gill’s bicycle shop with eyes never off the road till she passed.

“No. We didn’t delay around the Convent. I came straight. Don’t you seem to be late?”

“We hung about the alley. The others are mostly there yet. Was there anything strange today?”

Her voice was pure music, it sent shivers of delight trembling. No one ever smiled as she did. A secret world was around her. Her thighs moved on the saddle, you got conscious of the friction of your own thighs, got roused, desperate in case she’d notice. Every bit of the road was precious, only it went so fast, so much to tell and to hear, and it was marvel, the world for the very first time. If you had twenty miles to travel it wouldn’t be enough, and the four went past before you could hold or taste them and you were saying an impossible good-bye.

She was gone and dream of her took over, Mary and you together, and married. With her you’d walk a life as under the shade of trees, a life in a wild summer that’d last for ever.

But you couldn’t even hold her pure, you took her into your mind a wet Saturday, excited her, put foul abuse in her mouth. Afterwards took the woollen sock that had soaked the seed and held it to the light.

“Fuck it,” was said quiet, eyes on the wet stain, dust of tiredness or hopelessness dry in your mouth.

You couldn’t have Mary Moran if you went to be a priest and you couldn’t be a priest as you were. The only way you could have her anyhow was as an old whore of your mind, and everything was growing fouled.

Summer came, the days closing on when you’d have to go to Father Gerald, Corpus Christi the last feast before.

The rhododendron branches were cut out of Oakport same as always to decorate the grass margins of the processional route, banners of red and gold stretched overhead from the telegraph poles with “O Sacred Heart of Jesus”; and the altars stood before the houses of the way, candles burning among the flowers, the picture of the Sacred Heart torn bleeding from its breast against the white linen.

Under the gold canopy the priest moved with the Sacrament, girls in their communion dresses strewing rose petals in its path, and behind the choir the banners of the sodalities self-conscious in the wake of the hymns. At the bridges and crossroads the police stood to salute.

Before the post office the people knelt in the dry dust of the road for Benediction. The humeral veil was laid on the priest’s shoulders, the tiny bell tinkled in the open day, the host was raised and all heads bowed, utter silence except for the bell and some donkey braying in the distance. Kneeling in the dust among the huddled crowd it was hard to fight back tears. This was the way your life was, you belonged to these people, as they to you, you were linked together. One day that Sacred Host would be your burden to uphold for them while the bell rang, but it was still impossible to join in the singing as the procession resumed its way, only listen to the shuffle of boots through the dust. Wash me ye waters streaming from His side , it was strange, all strange, and the candles burning against the yew trees in the day.

Or was it all mere pomp and ceremony to cover up the unendurable mystery, the red petals withering in the centre of the road with the people drinking or gone home? It was impossible to know, and in that uncertainty you went to confession, you had to find some limbo of control before facing the priest, but you were farther from any decision or certainty than ever before in your life.

Cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac pinu iacentes sic temere et rosa

canos odorati capillos

dum licet, Assyriaque nardo

potamus uncti? dissipat Euius

curas edaces .

THE ROCKING OF THE BUS JOGGED THE SMALL BLUE TEXTBOOK in his hands as he read, writing first the meaning of the new words on the margin after he’d looked up the vocabulary in the back. Once he was sure of all the meanings he’d try to translate.

Why should we not lie stretched carelessly under that pine - tree or the tall plane, and scent our white hair with roses while we may, and anointed with Syrian spikenard let us drink? Bacchus drives eating cares away .

He was able to translate it. He lifted his eyes and smiled, whether from the satisfaction, it seemed to make meaning enough, or because it evoked a beautiful life and way — old men fragrant with roses drinking life heedlessly away under the plane tree.

He’d not be asked about beauty in the leaving next June. He’d be asked to translate it, to scan it, to comment on grammatical usages. Horace wasn’t easy, he was for the Honours . So he laboured on mechanically through the notes and text.

Later he closed the book, his eyes tired from the print jogging before them. Outside the dusty windows of the bus a bright day in August was ending, the few women in the seats beginning to wear cardigans loose about the shoulders of their summer dresses.

Since midday he’d travelled in this reek of diesel and warm rubber and leather, an hour’s wait in Cavan that he’d used to hang about the streets, football fever in the town, references in the passing salutations.

“If Peter Donoughue has his shooting boots on Cavan will win, though it’ll be tight,” a conductor with a green tin box in his hands said outside the waiting-room door, and it had for some reason stayed.

“Is it long more?” he turned and asked as he let the Latin textbook slip into his pocket.

“No. Not long. Eight or ten minutes.”

“Thanks.”

He stared ahead. Father Gerald would be waiting. In eight or ten minutes they’d meet, and the strange thing was that the whole decision and meeting had seemed closer and more definite six months before, the day the priest took Joan away. The nearer the waiting got to its end the more certain it seemed that it could never end, it must surely last for ever, though it was actually ending even now. A country town huddled beneath church spires was in sight; and the conductor nodded. He’d arrived. As the bus slowed he took his coat and case from the overhead rack and the black figure of the priest with Joan at his side grew recognizable out of the few people waiting on the pavement.

After the first greetings, the inquiries and answers about the journey, it was Father Gerald who told him that they’d been invited to tea in Ryans, where Joan worked. They went towards it down the street, Ο Riain in florid Celtic lettering on the draper’s lintel. The shop was closed. They knocked on the hall door, up steps one side of the shop.

Mrs. Ryan welcomed them, a large woman with a mass of hair that must have been black once, her big body showing well out of the grey tweed dress. Three daughters and a son waited in the dining-room with their father. He seemed dominated in some way. She introduced them, one by one, shaking hands with father and son and bowing to the daughters with such strain that he was only half aware of what he was doing. They sat to the laden table. After the tea was poured the priest offered Grace.