John McGahern - The Dark

“So this is the University,” Mahoney wondered. “A bit on the style of a castle. It’d cost a quare penny to put up a building like that nowadays, even if they had the tradesmen.”

It was the University, you looked at it, the shambles of a dream. Never would you walk again with a dream through the archway and by the canal through the Spanish Arch and out towards the sea on the Long Walk. You’d swot towards the B.Sc. here or you’d leave it for the E.S.B.

The Dean received you in his office without any waiting: the Dean, a tall lean man with eyes that weren’t easy to meet, they were cold and sharp.

“I am a student here. I have a Scholarship. I have been offered a clerkship in the E.S.B. My father thought you might be able to advise us what to do,” you tried to put it bare as possible, awkward and a fool in the stumbling words.

“That’s right, father,” it was relief that Mahoney was staying in the background.

“Which would you like to do yourself?” the priest probed calmly.

“I don’t know, father.”

“What course did you intend to follow?”

“Science I think, father.”

“You don’t have any keen interest in it?”

“No, father. It’d be easy to get a job out of it afterwards. I wanted to do Medicine first, but the course is too long. The Scholarship is only for four years.”

“What do you feel about staying on at the University?”

“I don’t know, father. It’s not like I thought it’d be,” you saw both of you look mean and shabby in the priest’s eyes.

“If you’re a scholarship boy, you’ll probably do well at the University. If you did you’d get a much more pleasant job than the E.S.B. out of the University. So I think you should stay,” what he said was like shock of cold water, he was too clever to give advice, he was throwing down the gauntlet to see if you had the wish to pick it up and he knew you hadn’t. And you saw and resented his calculated probing or attack.

“I’m afraid I might get sick or fail and there’s more in the house besides me, father,” and it sounded as lame as it was.

“You’re afraid of failing?”

“I am, father.”

“You’d not have to worry about that in the E.S.B.,” the priest looked you straight in the face and you saw what he was doing and hated him for it. The Dean was forcing you to decide for yourself.

“No. I’d not have to worry.”

“Well, I definitely think you should take the E.S.B. so,” there seemed contempt in his voice, you and Mahoney would never give commands but be always menials to the race he’d come from and still belonged to, you’d make a schoolteacher at best. You might have your uses but you were both his stableboys, and would never eat at his table.

It was hard to walk quiet out of the University at Mahoney’s side and see the goalposts luminous in the grey light of the rain and not give savage expression to one murderous feeling of defeat.

Though not even that lasted for long, the rage and futility gradually subsiding as you walked through the streets of that wet day. What right had anybody or anything to defeat you and what right had you to feel defeated, who was to define its name?

One day, one day, you’d come perhaps to more real authority than all this, an authority that had need of neither vast buildings nor professorial chairs nor robes nor solemn organ tones, an authority that was simply a state of mind, a calmness even in the face of the turmoil of your own passing.

You could go to the E.S.B. If it was no use you could leave again, and it didn’t matter, you could begin again and again all your life, nobody’s life was more than a direction.

You were walking through the rain of Galway with your father and you could laugh purely, without bitterness, for the first time, and it was a kind of happiness, at its heart the terror of an unclear recognition of the reality that set you free, touching you with as much foreboding as the sodden leaves falling in this day, or any cliche.

IN THE BEDROOM THAT NIGHT ON PROSPECT HILL THE ROSARY was said before undressing. There was morbid fascination in watching Mahoney take off his clothes, down to the long Johns, some obscenity about the yellow shade of the wool, and the way they stretched below the knees, the curly hair of the leg between that and the ankle.

Memories of the nightmare nights in the bed with the broken brass bells came, and it was strange how the years had passed, how the nights were once, and different now, how this night’d probably be the last night of lying together.

“That’s a relief,” he sighed as he sank down into a creak of springs. “The town wears you out. You walk miles without noticing, each street is so short.”

“Not being used to the concrete probably accounts for it too.”

“Well, we decided anyhow. So let’s hope for the best. It’s a relief to me too. The University had me worried. I’d never have told you though only you’ve decided this way. I wasn’t going to interfere with your decision. It had to be your own. But I’m the father to the others as well. I have to think about them as well. I was worried.”

“It’s the best decision I think.”

“You’ll go to Dublin tomorrow?”

“At nine. They said at the station that the early train goes at nine. The early train would give more chance to look around.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

“I’m certain. The whole thing’s caused you enough trouble already. And there’s no need. I’ll be able to manage.”

“It’d be no trouble to go if I could be of any use.”

“No. There’s no need. I’ll get a place.”

“If you’re stuck ask a policeman. You can take the number on his tunic if you feel there’s anything fishy about him.”

“I can do that if I’m stuck. Any place that looks alright will do till I get my feet. I can look around then.”

“Take a good look at the place first. Dublin’s not like down here.”

“I’ll do that. Will you go back tomorrow?”

“I will. On the bus. All you do in a place like this is waste money.”

There was the muffled sounds of movement in another bedroom, the stirring silence of a house at night. Feet continually passed on the concrete underneath the window.

“You’re going out into the world on your own now?”

“I am.”

“We won’t be together any more. There was good times and bad between us, as near everywhere, but it’s not what counts much.”

“No. It’s not what counts.”

“We were often cooped up too much in that house but we came through in spite of everything. That’s what is important. And you thrashed them all, and got the Scholarship. That was one good day we had, the day we went to the Royal Hotel.”

“It was a good day. I enjoyed that day very much. It cost you a lot of money.”

“A splash like that now and again is no harm. Going on all the time in the same way would land you soon in the madhouse.”

“That’s right. I never thought of it that way.”

“Things happened in all that time, none of us are saints. Tempers were lost. You don’t hold any of that against me, I don’t hold anything against you.”

“No. I wouldn’t have been brought up any other way or by any other father.”

“It might have been better if your mother had to live. A father doesn’t know much in a house. But you know that no matter what happened your father loves you. And that no matter what happens in the future he’ll love you still.”

“And I’ll always love you too. You know that.”

“I do.”

It seemed that the whole world must turn over in the night and howl in its boredom, for the father and for the son and for the whole shoot, but it did not.