John McGahern - The Dark

Inside the lodge gates there was some commotion. You crossed the other side of the road, glad of any excuse of delay, the blood pounding at the temples, you felt you could sit all night on a lavatory bowl. The hands were trembling.

“Control yourself. Control yourself. It’s not the end of the world. It’ll be forgotten by tomorrow morning,” but it was no use.

“You can’t face it,” the nerves shivered.

“If you don’t go to this dance it’ll be even harder the next time, you’ll never be able to go, you’ll never be able to take any natural part in life, get any natural fulfilment. You’ll be an oddity all your days.

“No. No. I’m not able to face it. I’m sick. Another night it’ll be easier.”

You’d drawn a most level with the gates on the opposite pavement. If you stood and stopped the crazy fighting within yourself you’d be able to see what the noise inside the gates was. It was a crowd of students out of range of the lodge lamp under the chestnuts. A pair of girls with college scarves passed in. The shouting started up again into a foxtrot drifting from within the quadrangle. The words were easy enough to catch out of the general howl as the girls came level.

You’re out for your onions tonight.

Bless me, mother, for I’m going to sin.

Get them off you. Get them off you.

Dance, mother, dance .

The phases could be picked out before the shouting rose to one general howl of derision as the girls hurried up the drive to the main door.

A single man student went through the gates, the same performance started under the trees. He paid no attention. He continued along the drive, in the one unruffled stride, and that was the way to go past, but you were certain by this that you wouldn’t go past, perhaps you’d not pass even if they weren’t there, they were no more than the easy way out you’d be looking for all along. You stood on the pavement and watched and listened. The music came over the short distance from the quadrangle, changed to a quickstep you recognized from some sponsored radio programme.

A vision of the dance floor came to plague you, naked shoulders of the women, glitter of jewellery on their throats, scent and mascara and the blood on their lips, the hiss of silk or taffeta stretching across their thrusting thighs, and always their unattainable crowned heads floated past. And you stood on the pavement outside the lodge gates.

This was the dream you’d left the stern and certain road of the priesthood to follow after, that road so attractive now since you hadn’t to face walking it any more, and this world of sensuality from which you were ready to lose your soul not so easy to drag to your mouth either for that one destructive kiss, as hard to lose your soul as save it. Only in the mind was it clear.

You turned away, back towards the town, not able to return to the room because of the shame if you were seen slink through the hallway, you’d have to wait till they were sleeping or the dance was over.

You walked, it soothed and gathered back calm in some way, along the rotting network of the canals, stars caught between the invading grass and reeds, the flour-mills at the bridges and not many about under the lamps, your life and all life a strange thing.

In the café, over cups of coffee, in Shop Street, you spent the last part of the night; here you’d sat with John O’Donnell after the Savoy; and tonight he was dancing.

You envied the old waitress, she seemed asleep in everything she did, there were worse lives. All day she served nondescript customers that came through the swing doors, tired on her feet at the end, the one desire to get back to her bed and room, but perhaps it wasn’t as simple as that either, perhaps nothing was. When the café was closing, chairs being stacked on some of the tables, you made your way back to Prospect Hill. It was after twelve, and the dance should have been about over. By this time it didn’t seem to matter whether anyone was up or not to ask you about the dance. You felt like telling them the truth, and as violently as possible, it’d be some compensation.

The next morning two letters were waiting when you came down; one from Mahoney, the other had been redirected, it was typed, with a Dublin postmark. When you tore it open it was from the E.S.B. You were asked to present yourself for a medical examination in Dublin on Monday, and if passed, you should be ready to take up employment with the Board almost immediately.

It’d be pleasant to walk to work on a fine morning through the streets of Dublin, to have pay coming at the end of each week, to be free for ever from dependence on Mahoney, to be able to go to Croke Park Sunday afternoons, and to be free. Chained to a desk all day would be the worst part, but there was money for it, and freedom. Staying here at the University would be three years of cramming rubbish into the mind in constant dread of sickness and failure at the exams. You just couldn’t go home defeated to Mahoney.

It was strange this morning leaving Prospect Hill in the rain, through Eyre Square for the last time or the beginning of every morning for the next three years, you’d have to answer the letter this evening, dallying was over, you’d have to answer it one way or the other. You’d have to choose.

With a new detachment you watched the goalposts, strangely luminous in the rain, the green onion domes, and the first classes of the day. You’d have to make up your mind to stay here or leave before this evening, and then an absurd accident struck that removed all detachment.

The Physics Theatre was full, the seats rising in stairs to the back, and the waiting crowd shouting and beginning to grow restless when a white-coated attendant entered with some apparatus for an experiment. The restlessness became directed at the little attendant. He was loudly cheered down to the table, feet were stamped, the theatre close to a football match when the lecturer red with fury appeared.

In a second dead silence fell.

“I won’t tolerate hooliganism in my class now or at any other time,” the lecturer, small with glasses, thundered, and there wasn’t even a stirring of feet.

It was strange, the sudden deadly silence in place of the shouting, and his fury too big in some way for the small man with the glasses, several of the students who were dumb now could have taken him in their hands and thrown him out the window.

“I’ll tolerate no hooliganism in my class,” the small lecturer who would teach physics through Irish and who’d told them in the previous class that he’d found no difficulty in following lectures in Germany once he’d got over the initial newness of the language, and he saw no reason why they shouldn’t be able to do the same through Irish, shouted again from the table, and it suddenly seemed too comic, the huge hooliganism too big in his mouth, and the students roaring a minute ago, quiet as mice before him, and you made the mistake of smiling.

“Get out you,” he pointed.

Whoever was next you stood.

“No. Not you. The gentleman on your left.”

It couldn’t be, you were suddenly bewildered, but stood expecting it to be someone else.

“What’s your name?”

The room swam, you were hardly able to answer, there was sense of bewildering unreality, everyone must be looking at you. You’d been quiet, but why had you to cursed smile.

“Get out. I won’t take hooliganism in my class now or at any other time.”

Awkwardly you got out of the bench, the others standing to make way, and you were alone on the wooden steps of the passage without strength to climb, sense of that mass to your left staring at you, and the shock and shame. You wanted to weep when you’d got through the door, it had happened too quick to comprehend, the shock was too sudden, and you stood dazed on the quadrangle in the rain.