Kevin Barry - There Are Little Kingdoms

‘Open your mind to it, kid. That’s all I’d say to you. Imagine where I could send you. There’s no end to the possibilities. But at the same time, don’t be ridiculous. I mean, I get fellas looking at me, in all seriousness, and asking for the control of their thoughts. And I have to tell them straight, Ralph. Behave, I say. Get real.’

Ralph seems downhearted.

‘But look,’ says the genie, ‘let’s see if we can’t rustle something up.’

The genie sketches a fresh design. He rethinks Ralph Coughlan. The new Ralph will have enough salt in him to meet a crisis head on. The new Ralph will parade the intimate streets with a sense of vigour and purpose. The lease on a new store will be arranged. It will be an elegant space in one of the nice laneways off the Mall, with Deco-style frontage. It will be high-end, without a brass monocular in sight, and handsome Ralph will tool around town in a low-slung Mercedes. Almost always as he rides he will get the run of the lights.

‘All possible, Ralph,’ says the genie, ‘with just a wish or two. You see, one thing leads to another. This is how it works out. You make your fortune, then your fortune will make you.’

He paints a beautiful picture, this genie, but Ralph has had enough.

‘No,’ he says. ‘We’re going in the wrong direction here. As it happens, I’ve no great interest in material wealth.’

‘Don’t be distracted by the surface details,’ says the genie. ‘Surface is surface. All I’m asking you to do is to live intelligently.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘The only way to live a life elegantly, Ralph, is to live it with intelligence. And if you’d just use what you’ve already got, there is no reason why you can’t do that. I can’t tell you what to wish for. But I can tell you that each and all of us have boundless possibilities and if you know where to look, if you know where to search, if you reach deep within yourself and…’

‘Genie?’ Ralph interrupts. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, this is all getting a bit Whitney Houston.’

‘Change or perish, Ralph.’

‘Now what’s that mean?’

‘It means you have two choices.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Cluckety cluck. Try your luck.’

‘You’re… who the fuck are you?’

‘Eat the world up, Ralph. Make a meal out of the place. Stop hiding in a junk shop down a filthy fucking quay. Get on with it! And name for me your second wish, please.’

Ralph pales.

‘Is this about my wife?’ he says.

The genie sighs, and throws his hands up. Why is he always given the fuckwits? Ralph Coughlan comes out from behind the counter and stalks the floor.

‘I have you now,’ he says. ‘I have you now! And you know what, genie? You’re absolutely spot on! That bitch is the bane of my life! She’s ground me down! So okay, fine, right, let’s do it. I wish that I…’

‘Ralph? Oh, Ralph. I really didn’t take you for that type of client.’

‘But you’ve brought it all home to me!’ says Ralph, ‘Jesus, do I ever need to have that weapon out of my life!’

The genie shrugs and takes a seat. He has heard it all before.

‘She’s sat on the couch above in Luke’s Cross,’ says Ralph, ‘and the whole thing has her fucking mangled. If I hear another word about ovaries! And she isn’t going to go anywhere, is she? Unless you can actually overdose on Chocolate Hobnobs, she isn’t going to go anywhere, is she? So can you do anything for me there, genie? Can you do anything about that situation?’

‘You’re being sentimental, Ralph.’

‘How so?’

‘You’re asking me to send you back. You want it to be all fluffy and lovely again, you want to turn the clock back.’

To when they’d walk on the long evenings to the Esso across from the brewery. They’d buy Cornettos: mint and pistachio for her, original flavour for him. They’d walk by the river, feeling pretty jaunty, because you’re self-important with it when you’re young, you carry it like a small dog carries a stick. She says, I hear there’s going to be a heat wave. Yeah right, Brid. The windows of flats are left open and people play records — dub reggae, all the crooked-smiling dopeheads with their elbows on the sills — and the angles of the rooftops lean in on you. They make plans. They cross the shaky bridge and go up to one of the pubs in Sunday’s Well. She gets amorous with a couple of drinks in her. The walk back home can be eventful and when you come outside, in the night-time, it’s like you spiral, you spin out, and your lungs fill up with the cold-starred air. She says, do an Elvis, and he curls his lip and does the thing:

‘Aw-haw-huh.’

‘Okay,’ says Ralph. ‘Fine. You got me. I wish I could go back to that place. Can you send me back there?’

‘You just been.’

The streets are thinning out. The traffic has started to bolt free of itself, atom by atom. Shadows slide down from the rooftops.

‘You’ve one left, Ralph.’

‘I’d just like an outstanding day. Alright? How about one outstanding day for me? And no fucking about. I wish, genie, for an outstanding day.’

The genie smiles.

‘I’ll do that for you now,’ he says. ‘Take it easy, killer.’

He clicks his fingers and is gone. He has given Ralph what’s left of a dreary Tuesday in March. Ralph douses the bad lamp and drags a sweeping brush across the floor. Tomorrow might bring nostalgic people or at least somebody with an open-minded attitude to monoculars. He locks up and walks with squared shoulders down the street. He nods to the white-haired old dude pulling the shutters on the second-hand bookstore.

‘How’s business, Ralph?’

‘Rockin’ altogether. I’m beating ’em back with my bare hands.’

He steps into the corner shop and gets down on the floor and unplugs the chicken. He looks at the woman behind the counter and he says:

‘I hear this asshole again, he goes in the river.’

He cuts across town to catch a number eight. He has it timed perfect. Just as he reaches Eason’s, an eight pulls up. He pays for his ticket and goes upstairs. He takes a seat at the front, top right, overhead the driver. He’ll be in at twenty past six for the tea. If there is any kind of God at all, it won’t be the Shepherd’s Pie. He wonders if he should try a few notes. Or give it an hour? The bus takes off and crosses the bridge and revs itself up to ascend into the northside… Oh where are the angels? Where are the trumpets? But all we’ve got is the teatime traffic, and the grey stone hills of the place, homicidal, and a deranged gull flies low over the water, then wheels away downriver for Little Island, Haulbowline, and points south.

It was deadening winter, one of those feeble afternoons with coal smoke for light, but I found myself in reliably cheerful form. I floated above it all, pleasantly distanced, though the streets were as dumb-witted as always that day, and the talkshops were a babble of pleas and rage and love declared, of all things, love sent out to Ukraine and Chad. It was midweek, and grimly the women stormed the veg stalls, and the traffic groaned, sulked, convulsed itself, and the face of the town was pinched with ill-ease. I had a song in my throat, a twinkle in my eye, a flower in my buttonhole. If I’d had a cane, I would have twirled it, unquestionably.

I passed down Dorset Street. I looked across to the launderette. I make a point always of looking into the launderettes. I like the steamy domesticity. I like to watch the bare fleshy arms as they fold and stack, load and unload, the busyness of it, like a Soviet film of the workers at toil. I find it quite comical, and also heartbreaking. Have the misfortunes no washing machines themselves, I worry? Living in old flats, I suppose, with shared hoovers beneath the stairs, and the smell of fried onions in the hallway, and the awful things you’d rather not hear late at night… turn up the television, will you, for Jesus’ sake, is that a shriek or a creaking door?