John McGahern - The Collected Stories

Even if the memories are bitter they still quicken the passing of time. It is the sly coughing of the children that tells me the hands have passed three.

‘All right. Put your books away and stand up.’

In a fury the books are put away and they are waiting for me on their feet.

‘Bless yourselves.’

They bless themselves and chant their gratitude for the day.

‘Don’t rush the door, it’s just as quick to go quietly.’

I hear their whoops of joy go down the road, and I linger over the locking up. I am always happy at this hour. It’s as if the chains of the day were worth wearing to feel them drop away. I feel born again as I start to pedal towards the town. How, how, though, can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time his mother’s bag of tricks? I laugh at last.

Was it not said by Water and the Holy Spirit ?

Several infusions of whiskey at the Bridge Bar, contemplation of the Shannon through its windows: it rises in the Shannon Pot, it flows to the sea, there are stranger pike along its banks than in its waters, will keep this breath alive until the morning’s dislocation.

The word Oysters was chalked on the wagon that carried Chekhov’s body to Moscow for burial. The coffin was carried in the oyster wagon because of the fierce heat of early July.

Those were the first sentences in Eva Lindberg’s loose notes, written in a large childish hand, and she started reading them at the table again as she waited for Arvo Meri to come to the small flat. The same pair of sentences was repeated throughout the notes in a way which suggested that she leaned on them for inspiration. The word Oysters was chalked on the wagon that carried Chekhov’s body to Moscow for burial. The coffin was carried in the oyster wagon because of the fierce heat of early July. There was also among the notes a description of Chekhov’s story called ‘Oysters’.

The father and son were on the streets of Moscow in that rainy autumn evening. They were both starving. The father had failed to find work after trudging about Moscow for five months, and he was trying to muster up enough courage to beg for food. He had drawn the tops of a pair of old boots round his calves so that people wouldn’t notice that his feet were bare under the galoshes. Above father and son was a blue signboard with the word Restaurant and on a white placard on the wall was written the word Oysters. The boy had been alive for eight years and three months and had never come across the word oysters before.

‘What does oysters mean, Father?’

The father had touched a passerby on the sleeve, but not being able to bring himself to beg he was overcome with confusion and stammered, ‘Sorry.’ Then he swayed back against the wall. He did not hear the boy’s voice.

‘What does oysters mean, Father?’ the child repeated.

‘It’s an animal … it lives in the sea,’ the father managed.

The boy imagined something between a fish and a crab, delicious made into a hot fish soup, flavoured with pepper and laurel, or with crayfish sauce and served cold with horseradish. Brought from the market, quickly cleaned, quickly thrown into the pot, quick-quick-quick, everyone was starving. A smell of steaming fish and crayfish soup came from the kitchen. The boy started to work his jaws, oysters, blessed oysters, chewing and slugging them down. Overcome by this feeling of bliss he grabbed at his father’s elbow to stop himself from falling, leaned against the wet summer overcoat. His father was shivering with the cold.

‘Are oysters a Lenten food, Father?’

‘They are eaten alive … they come in shells, like tortoises but.. in two halves.’

‘They sound horrible, Father.’ The boy shivered.

A frog sat in a shell, staring out with great glittering eyes, its yellow throat moving — that was an oyster. It sat in a shell with claws, eyes that glittered like glass, slimy skin; the children hid under the table, while the cook lifted it by its claw, put it on a plate, and gave it to the grown-ups. It squealed and bit at their lips as they ate it alive — claws, eyes, teeth, skin and all. The boy’s jaws still continued to move, up and down; the thing was disgusting but he managed to swallow it, swallowed another one, and then another, hurriedly, fearful of getting their taste. He ate everything in sight, his father’s galoshes, the white placard, the table napkin, the plate. The eyes of the oysters glittered but he wanted to eat. Nothing but eating would drive this fever away.

‘Oysters. Give me some oysters,’ he cried, and stretched out his hands.

‘Please help us, sir. I am ashamed to ask but I can’t stand it any more,’ he heard his father’s voice.

‘Oysters,’ the boy cried.

‘Do you mean to say you eat oysters? As small a fellow as you eats oysters?’ He heard laughter close. A pair of enormous men in fur coats were standing over him. They were looking into his face and laughing. ‘Are you sure it’s oysters you want? This is too rich. Are you sure you know how to eat them?’ Strong hands drew him into the lighted restaurant. He was sat at a table. A crowd gathered round. He ate something slimy, it tasted of sea water and mould. He kept his eyes shut. If he opened them he’d see the glittering eyes and claws and teeth. And then he ate something hard.

‘Good Lord. He’s eating the bloody shells! Here, waiter!’

The next thing he remembered was lying in bed with a terrible thirst, he could not sleep with heartburn, and there was a strange taste in his parched mouth. His father was walking up and down the small room and waving his arms about.

‘I must have caught cold. My head is splitting. Maybe it’s because I’ve eaten nothing today. Those men must have spent ten roubles on the oysters today and I stood there and did nothing. Why hadn’t I the sense to go up to them and ask them, ask them to lend me something? They would have given me something.’

Towards evening the child fell asleep and dreamt of a frog sitting in a shell, moving its eyes. At noon he was woken by thirst and looked for his father. His father was still pacing up and down and waving his arms around.

The word Oysters was chalked on the wagon that carried Chekhov’s body to Moscow for burial. The coffin was carried in the oyster wagon because of the fierce heat of early July. She found she had written it down once more. Chekhov was that boy outside the restaurant with his father in the autumn rain, was that starving boy crunching the oysters in the restaurant while they laughed, was the child in the bed woken by thirst at noon, watching the father pace up and down the small room waving his arms around. She wanted to write an imaginary life of Chekhov, from the day outside the restaurant to the day the body of the famous writer reached Moscow in the oyster wagon for burial. It would begin with oysters and end with oysters, some of the oysters, after the coffin had been taken away for burial, delivered to the same restaurant in which the child Chekhov had eaten shells. She wasn’t yet sure whether she would write it as a novel or a play. The theatre was what she knew best, but she was sure that it would probably never get written at all unless more order and calm entered her life than was in it now. She closed the folder very quietly on the notes and returned it to a drawer. Then she showered and changed into a blue woollen dress and continued to wait for Arvo Meri to come.

That morning Arvo’s wife had rung her at the theatre, where she was directing the rehearsals of Ostrovsky’s The Dragon. At the end of the abusive call she shouted, ‘You’re nothing but a whore,’ and then began to sob hysterically. Eva used the old defence of silence and put down the receiver and told the doorman that no matter how urgent any call claimed to be she was not to be interrupted in rehearsal. She was having particular difficulty with one of the leads, an actress of some genius who needed directing with a hand of iron since her instinct was to filch more importance for her own part than it had been allotted. She had seen her ruin several fine plays by acting everybody else off the stage and was determined that it wasn’t going to happen in this production. Once she began to rehearse again she put the call out of her mind but was able to think of nothing else during the midday break, and rang Arvo at his office. He was a journalist, with political ambitions on the Left, who had almost got into parliament at the last election and was almost certain to get in at the next. When he apologized for the call and blamed it on his wife’s drinking she lost her temper.