Kevin Barry - Beatlebone

He thanks her as he squeezes by — hello? — and for half a moment she brightens. She lays a papery hand on his — quality of mothskin; the veins ripped like junkie veins — and she whispers—

Your man? she says. You’re very like him.

Not as much as I used to be, he says.

——

He started to Scream with Dr. Janov in California. He was worked up one-on-one. He was worked up fucking hard. He sat there for hours, and for months, and he went deep. He wasn’t for holding back. He hollered and he ranted and he Screamed. He cursed everybody, he cursed them all, he cursed the blood. Dr. Janov said he needed to get at the blood — he went at the blood.

Mother, father.

Cunt and prick.

What had stirred and made and deformed him. What had down all the years deranged him. He was angry as hell. They worked together four months out on the coast. Dr. Janov wore a crown of beautiful white curls — it shimmered in the sun. Dr. Janov spoke of amorphous doom and nameless dread and the hurt brain. It was no fucking picnic out on the coast. He squatted on the terrace and he looked out to the sea and he was heartsore and he drank fucking orange juice and he wept until he was weak. He had a shadow beneath the skin and he was so very fucking weak.

Dr. Janov said that fame was a scouring and a hollow thing — he said there’s fucking news. Dr. Janov said he should ignore it — he said you fucking try. Dr. Janov said he should channel his anger and not smoke pot — he said I’ll see what I can do.

Dr. Janov said he should Scream, and often, and he saw at once an island in his mind.

Windfucked, seabeaten.

The west of Ireland — the place of the old blood.

A place to Scream.

——

He sits in his tomb up top of the Newport hotel. It contains a crunchy armchair, a floppy bed, several arrogant spiders, a mattress with stains the shapes of planets and an existential crisis. But he wouldn’t want to sound too French about it.

He looks out the window. It really is a very pretty day. The street runs down to the river, and there is the bridge across, and the hills rising and

lah-de-dah,

lah-de-dum-dum dah

the green, the brown, the treetops, and it means nothing to him at all. Across the square a flash of hard light, turning — a swallow’s belly, and now dark again, and his mind flips and turns in just that same way. He wants to get to his island but unseen and unheard of — he wants to be no more than a rustle, no more than a shade.

He makes the calls that he needs to make. It’s arranged that a fixer will be sent the next day. He lies on the bed for a while but cannot sleep. He takes his clothes off and climbs from the bed. He has a bit of a turn. He scrunches up in the armchair by the window. He’s all angles and edges. He speaks aloud and for a long while. He speaks to his love — his eyes close — and he speaks to his mother. Fucking hell. The hours he spends in the chair are like years—

He is a boy.

He is a man.

He is a very very old man.

— and he sits all day until the sun has gone around the building and the room is almost dark again. A day that feels slow as a century — he might be out there still. The evening gets chilly and he climbs onto the bed. He wraps himself in a blanket and phones downstairs. He has a long Socratic debate that after a certain period of time results in a bowl of brown vegetable soup arriving. The kid that brings it has a perfectly ovaline face on as flat as a penny.

You’d be quicker on roller skates, John says.

He slurps down the soup. He sits wrapped in his blanket. The soup is that hot it makes him cross-eyed. The bed is moving about like a sea. A call comes in from the fixer. Something deep and familiar to the voice — like a newscaster, and he sees the high purple face again, the dead nose, the fattish driver.

You again?

Well.

He is asked gently of his needs. It’s as if he’s had a loss. He is on a bloody raft the way the bed is moving about.

The important thing, again, he says, is no newspapers, no reporters, no TV.

Not easy.

Another thing, he says. I can’t remember exactly where the island is.

Okey-doke.

But I do know its name.

Well that’s a start.

The arrangement is made — they will set off first thing.

What was your name anyhow?

My name is Cornelius O’Grady.

Cornelius?

——

The way that age comes and goes in a life — he’ll never be as old again as he was when he was twenty-seven. In the attic room at the small hotel he paces and laughs and the words come in pattern for a bit but they will not hold. No, they will not fucking hold. He looks out to the town square by night. It is deserted but not static — it comes and goes in time and the breeze. Half the time, in this life, you wouldn’t know where you are nor when. There are moments of unpleasant liveliness. Tamp that the fuck down is best. He aims for the telephone. He builds himself up to it. He breathes deep and dials and there is a transaction of Arabic intrigue with the fucking desk down there. It works out, eventually — the roller-skate kid fetches a glass of whiskey up.

That’ll put hairs on me chest, he says.

Okay, the kid says.

Peat and smoke — it tastes of the past and uncles, sip by the beaded sip. He doesn’t really drink anymore. No booze, no junk, no blow. These are the fucking rules. He is macrobiotic. He is brown-rice-and-vegetables. The stations of the fucking cross. A read — that would be an idea. The room has grown sombre as the night finds its depth. What’s the fucking word? Crepuscular. He flicks a lamp switch against it. The amber light of the lamp as it warms weakly on the old flock wallpaper brings the waft or flavour — you can’t miss it — of Edwardian time. Oh and here’s a word — Edwardiana. Very nice. The word gives dapperness, and tapered strides, and teddy boys. He looks around his tiny room beneath the eaves and laughs — the West of Ireland by night. Oh just taking the fucking air, really. I’ll have a stroll in a bit. Try not to fuck myself in the briney. Fathomless depths, et cetera. Oh Christ, a read — fill up this sour brain with words. He slides a drawer on the tiny dresser — the dresser is so tiny it might be for the fittings of elves — and there is no Gideon’s, not as such, but there is an old book there:

The Anatomy of Melancholy by Richard Burton

Richard fucking Burton? What kind of establishment is this? Now the melodious syllables come to shape his lips — hammy, taffy, lispy, vaguely faggy? How did it go? In Under Milk Wood ? He looks in the dull silver of the dresser’s mirror and mouths the words—

I know there are

Towns lovelier than ours,

And fairer hills and loftier far,

And groves more full of flowers

And boskier woods more blithe with spring…

Boskier? Fuck me. He flicks through the pages. Okay. It’s a different Richard. And there are all sorts herein. He falls onto the bed. He unknits his long, cold limbs. He falls into the drugged pages. He reads for hours and every now and then

Thou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself.

he speaks aloud but

Melancholy can be overcome only by melancholy.

just the two words, repeated

He that increaseth wisdom, increaseth sorrow.

over and over again

If you like not my writing, go read something else.

fuck me,

fuck me,

fuck me.

——

At last he gives in to the night or at least makes an arrangement with it. He sleeps a long, unquiet sleep disturbed by quick dreams of woodland places. These come as no great surprise. He meets elves and sprites and clowning devils. Anxiety? He wakes at last to a new world and to a morning lost in a heavy mist. Sorely his bones ache — he traces the length of the soreness with a long, dull, luxurious sighing. Which is very pleasant, as it happens. Though also he feels about ninety fucking six. The grey buildings outside have softened in the mist and in places have all but disappeared. The hills across the river are entirely wiped out. He feels oddly at home, as though he’s woken to this place every day of his life: a sentimentalist. Maybe as the grocer or as the farmer or as the priest. Now his calm is broken by a set of angry steps come along the passage and a mad rapping on the door and the door is nearly off its bloody hinges—