Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

Mumbly Dave was gone from his high to being vexed and upset. We is pals , Johnsey, d’you know what I mean? There’s no few auld fields nor no fat fucker’s opinion above in Dublin who doesn’t know fuck all about notten goin to change that. We was through the mill together, boy. You made me welcome in your home. We know each other. I’ll tell you wan thing, boy, they can all go way and shite for themselves. Hey youssir, why should you give wan sugar what that crowd says or does?

Mumbly Dave had tears in his eyes. Then he came around and started to make jokes about the whole thing and Johnsey’s shaky feeling started to go away.

THE TRUTH WAS a quare thing, anyway, that was plain to see. It could shift beneath you like a hillock that looked firm but was really just grass on wet muck. There was a fella on The Late Late Show one time who looked like the devil with his auld eyebrows pointing up at the edges towards heaven as if to mock it and he maintained there was no God and that was the truth. He was an eighty-ist . They are people that don’t believe in belief. Mother had gone mad and said wasn’t it a fright they’d give over people’s licence-fee money to put that fella on the television but Daddy only shook his head and said Yerra, Sally, the devil will forever be trying that auld trick.

The trick Daddy meant was to convince people there was only this earthly world and no other, that we all came about by chance and would one day be dust and no more. That way the devil would rule the world: by tricking man into thinking he could rule the world and there would be neither judgment nor eternal damnation. Man would sully his soul, believing his soul not to exist. God had a plan for each and every one of us, Daddy declared, and the likes of that long-faced Englishman on the telly had given themselves over to the service of the devil. That was the truth.

What if Daddy’s truth and the long-faced Englishman’s truth met each other halfway, Johnsey wondered? What if there was a God, not one who bothered to make plans for people, but who had washed His hands of Man after He fashioned him in His own likeness? The Englishman’s story seemed unlikely; there had to be a God. Who would have made everything otherwise? But it seemed just as unlikely that this God who was the creator of all things, every winking star and grain of sand and blade of grass, was still going about attending to each person and listening to every stupid thought they had. You had to just believe and think no more about it. But the thing was, that crafty-looking Englishman put them words together so nice, he’d nearly have you doubting Our Lord. Imagine that! The likes of Johnsey, who could barely get a sentence out without his face going on fire and his brain downing tools in protest hadn’t much hope against people whose talent lay in arranging words in an order that made them into a solid wall that could never be scaled by contradiction.

What’s a lie, anyway? Do you have to know a thing to be not true, or just not care whether or not it’s true for the saying of it to be a lie, or are you telling lies if what you say is not true but you think it is? If that quare-looking curly lad in that paper really believes Johnsey to be an awful yoke that’s destroying the country, does that absolve him of the sin of lying? What would he say, Johnsey wondered, if he came to the house and gave a day gouging around with him and Mumbly Dave? Jaysus lads, I was wrong, sure he’s only a gom! He doesn’t know his arse from his elbow! The poor boy has his bit to eat and watches the telly and hangs around with a little fat fella and that’s all there is to the story. He’s one of these people that things happen to , not one of them that makes things happen . Sorry about that, my mistake. All he is is a victim of circumstance!

FAMOUS is a nice word. It glides out of your mouth. Like Siobhán . It’s a word for those that are known to all, like county hurlers and rock singers and big actors. You can be famous for a lot of different things. You can’t be famous for something bad, though. You can be known to all for that bad thing, but there’s a different word for that kind of fame. You wouldn’t call a fella a famous murderer or a famous rapist or what have you. Them fellas are called notorious . They haven’t fame; they have notoriety . That word doesn’t glide from your mouth. It bangs against your teeth and your tongue tries to tame it and still it sounds ugly, like the noise a creeping lizard might make, or a poison spider. Johnsey was notorious for his greed. And he nearly afraid to eat two Mars bars in a row for fear of committing the deadly sin of gluttony.

A lad whose face looked kind of familiar called up in one of them cars that women drive that look like bubbles with googly eyes and wanted to know would Johnsey give his side of the story, and he could be sure of fairness from his own local paper, and there’d be no opinion or twist put into it. Johnsey said he had neither side nor story, but your man wanted to know how was it he was attacked, what did he think his attackers’ motives were and Johnsey said how the feck would he know and Mumbly Dave came out from the kitchen and ran your man and when he was gone he told Johnsey that fella had always been a little faggotyarse, and he forever camped inside in the courthouse waiting to see how many of his neighbours’ names he can destroy in that auld paper. Johnsey was as well off saying notten to them rats.

FOR THE FIRST TIME since he was a small boy panned out with a burning sickness, Johnsey didn’t go to Mass by choice that Sunday. Now even God would fall out with him. What about it? The last thing Father Cotter would want, anyway, would be him swaggering up the churchyard, with his notoriety in tow, stealing Our Lord’s thunder, with the whole place gawking out of their mouths at him and small children checking his arse for a pointy tail.

The Unthanks didn’t say anything about the newspaper. That was the thing with the Unthanks: you could sit in their house for hours and barely two sentences might be said but it wouldn’t matter a damn. You didn’t have to feel any awkwardness at your lack of words in their presence. But just as he was making shapes to leave, Himself said Aren’t you as well off get out of that land to hell? And the sudden way he said it and the hint of temper in his voice shocked Johnsey and his brain was trying to grab at words and form them into a queue so that they’d come out his mouth in a proper order when Herself said It’ll only cause you trouble now forevermore. It’ll break your heart.

Johnsey had had a half an idea that the Unthanks would think it noble and brave of him to not sell the land on account of how Daddy gave his life to it, how he sweated over it and bled into it and killed himself trying to mind it and drag a living out of it, and his father before him did the same, and his father’s father. It was like Himself read his mind. He said Yerra, your heart’ll be scalded, Johnsey, with blackguards blackening you up and down the country and making up lies about you and it’s an awful shame something so good has to be taken over by them that only has their own gain in mind, but that’s the way the world is now — you have to leave businessmen off to build these things and let them make their fortunes to hell, and in the long run their greed benefits all.

Johnsey asked why people thought he was after being offered twenty million for the land and Himself said Sure that’s only an auld makey-up number, we never … And Herself made a funny, squeaky noise and belted him into the arm and Himself reddened and closed his eyes and covered his face with his hand, that lovely gentle hand that held Johnsey’s tight when there was a crush coming out of Croke Park one time when he was a small boy and he was lifted off of his feet by the crowd and had lost sight of Daddy, and now that lovely hand was shaking and so was the head behind it and Herself looked like she was going to cry, and even a gom like Johnsey could figure out what was after happening: the Unthanks were part of this famous consortium and they hadn’t wanted him to know, and Himself was after accidentally telling him. And all he wanted to do was tell Himself it was okay, he didn’t mind, he loved him anyway, sure what about it, wasn’t he as well off to have friends in the enemy’s camp? But all he could do was mumble his thanks for the dinner and turn and walk out through the door onto the empty street. And did he really hear Herself telling Himself in a shouty whisper he was a feckin eejit behind him? Sure, at this stage, anything was possible.