John McGahern - The Dark

You wrote to a formula on the glass-covered dressing-table. You’d arrived safely, you’d got digs, you’d seen the town and the University, tomorrow you’d be enrolled. You hoped they were well and that they’d write soon.

You left the letter ready for posting in the morning, and then undressed with a sort of melancholy deliberation. You’d come at last to the University and you’d still to take off your clothes, drape them on the back of the chair. It was the death of the day, and the same habitual actions of the funeral as always, and no matter what happened all days and lives ended this way. Only longing and dream changed.

As you pulled back the corner of the sheets you knelt, mechanically going through the night prayers, what you’d not done for months, sense of the shocking space and silence of the world about your own perishing life in the room lessened by the habitual words and the old smell of camphor from the sheets in which your face was buried.

In the double bed you lay awake for long, listening to cars close and fade, and the fascination of feet you knew nothing about go by on the concrete underneath the window.

THE DREAM WAS TORN PIECEMEAL FROM THE UNIVERSITY before the week was over. Everyone wanted as much security and money as they could get.

“What are you doing?” was the conversation under the notices in the archway.

“Dentistry.”

Why?

“It’s about the best. There’s a shortage. You can earn £ 4,000 a year. The initial cost of the equipment to start out with is the worst, but there’s a lot of hard cash in it after that.”

Will teeth absorb your life?

“No, but you can get interested in anything if you’re at it long enough and if you’ve enough money it can compensate for a lot. If you have to be scraping all the time for money see how long you’ll be happy.”

And money was dream enough to soldier on too. Choice of car and golf club and suburban house, grade A hotels by any sea in summer, brandy and well-dressed flesh.

“Security. Security. Everyone’s after security. And the only gilt-edged security to be had is the kingdom of heaven,” the Reverend Bull Reegan thumping at the old annual retreats in Carrick.

The college had opened. You’d listened to the President’s address, a white-haired Monsignor, saying something about an idea of a university in Gaelic, with many quotations — and no one able to follow.

Classes had commenced, and still you didn’t know what to do. You drifted from one lecture to another, soon you’d have to decide.

“The Association of Scientists estimates that by 1968 the present serious shortage of scientists will have more than doubled. But standards are rising. Last year out of a class of thirty-two no more than fourteen passed their B.Sc. You must have aptitude and be prepared to work. It is no place for the frivolous. But those who qualify can be assured of a well remunerated position.”

The appearance of the lecturer didn’t seem to matter as you left, neither his shape nor features nor the clothes he wore, he was what he said. The University was here. Green oaks lined the boundary wall. Farther out was Galway Bay. Everybody in the world was supposed to be unique.

“Unless you have private incomes the majority of you doing English must know that you’ll wind up teachers if you’re lucky, which has its compensations, though affluence is unlikely to be numbered among them. If there are any among you who have literary ambitions the evidence would seem to point to a dosshouse or a jail as a more likely place of genesis than a University,” and went on to say that nothing interfered so much with his day as the unaesthetic sight of students lounging on the drive when he came in and out.

On the walk as he was laughed at afterwards, you’d heard them say that he had only one real ambition, to drive to Dublin in under three hours, he’d already had several crashes in the attempt.

Though there were one or two who simply spoke about their subject with love, and their quiet excitement was able to come through, one frail grey-haired woman in a botany class, a younger man at mathematics who continually brushed imaginary chalk specks from his gown as he spoke and you came away wanting to learn and share, both were beautiful and young in some way.

Your doubts grew as you wandered, you wanted less and less to stay the more you saw, but it was easier to stay than go. It was clear that there’d be little dream, mostly the toil of lectures, and at night the same swotting and cramming in a room for the exams same as last year. You wondered as you came home by Eglington Street at four if it’d be long till the E.S.B. clerkships were announced, they were based on the Leaving results, you’d entered the same as the others, and the same marks that got the Scholarships were bound to get high there too. If you stayed you’d have to choose some course before the end of this week, this dithering had a limit, you thought it had to be Science. The fees were too high for medicine. Six years was too long a course. Science was three years. A job was certain at its end. Fear close to despair came at the image of failing or getting sick or losing the Scholarship, you’d have to fall back on Mahoney for support. It was frightening.

The night was the night of the Jibs’ Dance in the Aula, a new poster was up in the archway, you’d to meet John O’Donnell inside at nine.

The preparations took over an hour, shaving and washing, clean white shirt and collar out of the case, shining of the shoes, brushing of every speck from the suit, the hair flattened with Brylcream, the teeth brushed, the painful knotting and unknotting of the wine tie before the mirror, diarrhoea of tension.

What would it be like, the band, the music, the dances, the women? Would you be scorned by these women?

Because you couldn’t dance.

Were you good-looking enough, would they look at you with revulsion?

Would you by watching pick up the steps and rhythms of the dance?

Would you have courage to ask a girl to dance?

Would you find yourself on the floor trampling on her feet, not able to dance, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m not able to dance, I’m only learning,” and would she leave you in the middle, “You’d better pick someone else to learn on,” or would she endure you in stony silence?

What would you talk to a girl about?

Would you be able to endure the white softness of her bare arm, the rustle of taffeta or the scent of lacquer when she leaned her hair close, without losing control and trying to crush her body to yours?

Would you be the one leper in the hall at Ladies Choice, flinching as every woman in the place casually inspected and rejected you, their favour falling on who was beside you, the other men melting like snow about you until you stood a rejected laughing stock out on the floor in the way of the dancers, no woman would be seen with you? It would be as if your life was torn out of your breast by every couple dancing together and you could slink towards the shadow of the pillars, fit to weep, watch your own mangled life go dancing past.

“Off to the dance,” they said downstairs as you went.

“Off to the dance,” you repeated and pressed your features into an embarrassed smile.

“All the girls will be falling for him tonight, but don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.”

“No. Good night.”

Laughter wreathed about their “Good night”, and was it mockery.

Down the hill to Eyre Square and coldness of the night on your flushed face and by Moon’s Corner down Eglington Street. It was after nine on the clocks, every step brought you nearer to your first dance and you wished they went in the opposite direction. It would be so easier to hang about the streets, but you’d promised to meet John O’Donnell beside the bandstand at nine, it was already past nine. With a sinking of the guts you crossed the Weir Bridge round the canal, the high jail wall there, and the footpath under the green oaks up University Road. There were all lights about the college, and it was surely music you could hear. Your feet slowed, you let your eyes close, if only you could turn back.