John McGahern - The Dark

As June drew closer the school prayers, morning and evening, were offered for the exams — that the school might do well. The class was exhorted to offer their private prayers for the same intention.

Please God may I not fail .

Please God may I get over sixty per cent .

Please God may I get a high place .

Please God may all those likely to beat me get killed in road accidents, and may they die roaring.

It made no sense, even if you did say your prayers any more. If God was there nothing mattered but the Presence.

The poor, the tramps of the road, were supposed to have better chance in the final round-up than the secure. What was you alone went to Him, not roses and vegetable garden and semi-detached house and young wife and children and the Ford or Volkswagen for Sunday outings from the Dublin suburbs you took to him if you got the Junior Executive Exam for the Civil Service, but whatever was you alone.

What was there to do but keep silent, but when Mahoney offered the hurried rosary they said each night for your success you couldn’t stand it, at least Mahoney should be above that slobber, you thought.

“What did you say that for?” you almost shouted the moment they’d finished, unable to choke back the anger.

“What?”

“Praying for my success.”

“Don’t you want the Grace of God or are you a pagan or something?”

“No. It’s not that. What does it matter to God whether I get the exam or not, or to my life under him? If it’s his Will, and I’m lucky enough and good enough, I’ll get the exam. And if I don’t it doesn’t matter. It’ll not matter the day I’m dying.”

“What sort of rubbish and blasphemy am I listening to?”

“None. You want to use prayer like money, wheedle the exam out of God. Can’t you leave it alone. God is more important than a getter of exams for people. What does it matter whether I get the exam or not?”

“There was enough fire and light used on it then, if it wasn’t important. You should take your scarecrow face and bag of bones before a mirror if you want to get a fright sometime, apparently it matters that much. And now you’re gone too crazy madhouse to ask God. Is it out of your mind you’re gone?”

“No. I’m sane as you are, or more. Ask for Grace if you want, but don’t ask him to pass the exam —”

“Heathen rubbish!”

“No. No exam deserves the Grace of God, nobody does. Let them ask Grace, a bolloksed poor devil, but no, no, no.”

Mahoney waited till the rush of passion subsided, and then addressed more the general house than made direct answer.

“Do you hear what I had to wait till near the end of my days to hear in my own house? Heathen rubbish. And in future keep your dirty language for your street-corner friends in town, do you hear me?”

“I do, but I don’t want any praying for exams.”

“We wouldn’t as much as dirty prayers with your name again but such filth and rubbish. Hell is where you’re heading for and fast. I never knew too much books to do good yet. Puffed pride. You think you can do or say anything you’ve a mind for. I’ve seen a few examples of it in me time, but never such prize heretic baloney as this night. I’ll hear no more in this house. Do you hear me now?”

“Alright. You’ll hear no more.”

“Such rubbish,” he went on complaining. “And in front of the children too. Puffed up and crazy, it’d choke you to live the same as other people, wouldn’t it? You don’t even need God now? You wouldn’t ever have to do such a mean thing as clean your arse, would you, these days? Maybe it’s up in the sky you spend your time these days, having conversations with God, and not down here with the likes of us. And I reared you and let you to school for that. As if there could be luck in a house with the likes of you in it.”

He went muttering and complaining that way to bed. And then, when he was gone, the wave of remorse that came. You’d troubled him, and for what? Did it matter what was prayed for? If it gave him satisfaction to pray for success why not let him, it would make no difference except he’d not be upset as now. Stupid vanity had caused it all. The house had gone to bed. You were alone in the kitchen. You wanted to say to him you were sorry but you weren’t able.

His boots, wet from the grass, stood drying by the raked fire. They started to take on horrible fascination.

They were your father’s boots, close to the raked fire. They’d been put there to dry for morning. Their toes touched where the ashes spilled out from the fire on the concrete, boots wet from the grass. Your father’s feet had been laced in their black leather, leather over walking flesh. They’d walk in his hopes, be carried over the ground, till they grew worn, past mending, and were discarded for the new pair from Curley’s, on and on, over the habitual fields, lightly to the football matches in Reegan’s field on Sundays, till the feet themselves wore, boots taken off his dying feet. Corns of the flesh against the leather. All the absurd anxiety and delight and heedlessness the boots carried. They stood so utterly quiet by the fire, the feet that they’d cover resting between sheets to wear them through another day. The boots were so calm there. They would not move. You touched them in fascination, they did not stir, only the rough touch of wet boot leather against the finger-tips. One lace was broken, replaced by white twine.

How could you possibly hurt or disturb anyone? Hadn’t the feet that wore the boots, all that life moving in boot leather, enough to contend with, from morning to night to death, without you heaping on more burden, from sheer egotism. Did it matter to the boots, moving or still, whether your success was prayed for or not? Why couldn’t you allow people to do the small things that pleased them? In this same mood you did what you had never done and went and knocked on his door.

“Who’s that? What do you want?”

“I’m sorry over the prayers.”

“It’s a bit late in the day to be sorry now, easy to be sorry when the harm’s done, such heathen rubbish, easy to know why you’re sorry. It’s more than sorry you ought to be—”

Anger rose as the voice continued to complain out of the darkness of the bedroom. The same boots could kick and trample. You couldn’t stand it, you’d only meant well, that was all.

“Forget it for God’s sake. I just said I was sorry,” you said and closed the door sharply to go troubled and angry through the kitchen to your own bedroom.

CLOSER AND CLOSER THE EXAM CAME ON A COUNT OF DAYS, early June days of pure summer that year, memory of boats on the river down the town at the bridge and girls in white at tennis over by the Courthouse on Wednesday half-days through dead evenings. All but the exam classes had been let away on summer holidays. The pressure of the ordinary schooldays was completely relaxed, effort to ease the strain of waiting for the exam. Timetable and rule went overboard, chairs were brought out on the lawn. In the shade of the huge cypress tree a half-circle was made about Benedict, the lawn bright outside the shade, white flags of the clock golf, white lawn blocks like toy dogs on either side of the concrete path that cut the lawn in two, the pink snow of petals on the grass under the one lilac tree.

“There’s no need to sweat any more. The work is over. More harm than good is always done this time of year by work. Just relax. An exam is the same as a football match. You never train heavily on its eve. What we’ll do now is go over any points that still puzzle you. Well, I’m waiting for questions,” Benedict smiled, the jet-black hair sleeked, he’d to shave twice a day because of the darkness of his beard. The wide leather belt was buckled tight about the narrow waist, part of the cape drawn across his throat and thrown over his shoulder. It was said that he could read in six languages and that he had foreign blood because of his blackness.