Cassandra Voices

Tag: Fiction

  • Automated Spirits

    They’ve been protesting now for three weeks outside the closed factory. I have to walk past them every day on my way into town. I know they think I’ve betrayed them by not joining them, but I can’t relate to my former coworkers’ problems. Our natures are just inalienably opposed. I can’t bring myself to sympathise with them. If I did go and join them, and pick up one of their many endearingly naïve picket signs, “Deceived by Hadley’s “Taoiseach! You Let Us Down!” or “We Fight for All Workers,” I would just be consolidating their delusions and the myths of national flagship industries, of corporate responsibility, of fair-play, and of my ex-colleagues´ strategy of hopeful, dignified indignation. As I pass by them, on the opposite side of the road, Glen, our old forklift operator, shouts over to me from the picket line.

    “Chris! Chris! It´s well for you, isn’t it? When you don’t have responsibilities! When you have no mortgage to pay! Or kids to be fed and watered and put through school!”

    I just nod to him, wave, and shout back, “Fair play, Glen! Keep up the good work.” This I can say fluently. My stutter, strangely enough, doesn’t come out when I shout. Or when I sing.

    But this isn’t what I really want to shout back to Glen. What I want to shout back, and would have shouted back too, if it wasn’t so long to get out of my mouth, is “Well Glen, as the venerable Father Fintan Stack once said, ‘I had my fun, and that´s all that matters.’” But why bother? Why antagonize him further? Best to keep it civil.

    During their first week of protesting they had all been chanting in unison,

    “We will not be! We will not be moved!”

    “We will not be! We will not be moved!”

    These days, still out in front of the closed factory gates, they just walk around and around in a circle in silence, as though part of a funeral procession. Their numbers have thinned. I´ve noticed that car horns aren’t beeped as much in support anymore. And I’m sure they’ve noticed this too. The townspeople have wearied of their presence. The protestors are a negative image now, like an open wasteground, or an illegal dumping site. An unsightly collection of pitiful human refuse. They are an eyesore on the main road into, and out of, what was once a prosperous and proud Tidy Town.

    Soon the protesting will die down, come to a final halt, and be dismantled. Soon the protest will be scrapped and recycled. The death of everything is but the patience of time. Besides, their opponent can never waver or weary. Their protest and their signs cannot appeal to it. Their opponent isn’t even human. Their opponent is the sovereign bottom line.

    On my way home from the pub at the end of the night, smelling of stout and carrying a bag of takeaway cans and a bag of steaming salt-and-vinegary chipper chips, I pass by the factory again. It’s quiet now, peaceful. No trace of hardship or injustice, no men or women with heads lowered, wandering around in circles. Nothing to suggest that anything at all is wrong. No trace of the consequences. No distortion of reality. Just a quiet factory in the steady orange glow of the streetlights. I open a can of stout and stand there for some time, leaning up against a lamppost, munching on my chips, euphoric with the stillness, with the utter perfection of the night.

    I see myself standing up on a soapbox, above my former coworkers, a megaphone in hand. Before me, a gathering of admiring, battle-weary, yet expectant faces. “Brothers and sisters. Comrades and friends. I come here. Not to speak in place of you. But to speak in favour of you. And to give you. You who cannot be heard. And you. You who don´t ever listen. These precious, fragrant winds. Machine brothers. Machine sisters. Consider the lily in the field…” I could see it and hear it all so clearly. It would be riveting.

    Of course, I’d be different, my entire life would be different, if I didn´t have a speech impediment. As it is though, I´m not going to win over an audience and hold them in raptures with “Bbbbbbbbb ‘rothers and sssssssssss….sssssssss….ssssssss ‘isters. Cu-cu-cu-cu-cu comrades…” Having a stutter sucks. Still though, it has made me a lot more sensitive to other people’s faults, to human frailties. It’s certainly given me character. Definitely made me more compassionate. Positively Christ-like in fact. Without it, I know I would have turned out to be a right insufferable, arrogant little prick. Definitely would have become a politician.

    I take a sup from my can and look at the factory, emptied of investment now, devoid of all human intention and feeling. I should write something about the factory closure for the local paper. Something about the thrilling desolation, and the sense of liberation, which comes with our being disabused of a collective fantasy. End it on an upbeat note too. Of difficult, but definitive, new beginnings. I drain my can of stout, crush it, and throw it away, satisfied that I have hit upon an idea. Thoughts to keep me company at least, on my long walk home.

    My walk home, back to the cottage and to Sarah, is seven miles outside of town. The last two miles are treacherous. Bending, narrow country roads, with neither a footpath on either side nor streetlights to light one´s way. Some nights, if I’m lucky, I might get the improbable beam of a high, full moon to guide me. It could be argued, I suppose, that those of us who walk these dangerous roads at night while drunk are looking for, or willing, “An accident” to occur. Looking for an easy out. A blameless way to die. Sometimes, if its particularly still, I hear the thundering hooves of a team of wild, riderless horses galloping through the dark of the fields. Mostly, I just keep my eyes up on the old leaning telephone poles, on their cruciform tops, appreciating how they advance toward me and retreat behind me. How they punctuate the distance at reassuring and satisfying intervals. I do this most nights, until I get back home.

    Sarah, my girlfriend, works in Bridgestone´s Restaurant and Wine Bar, the only upmarket wine bar of its kind in town. She also sleepwalks. A poet of sorts too, in her own unique and effortless way, she is certainly a medium for some stunning oracular speech. My ritual, when I get back home to our cottage, is usually to make sure that nothing sharp or breakable has been left out. I make sure to hide her house keys and her car keys and make sure that the cutlery drawer is still locked, that the key for it is still in its hiding place. After this is done, I light a fire in the stove in our living room, leave the living-room door open, and stay up drinking the rest of my cans while listening to music or watching some YouTube videos on my phone. I keep one earbud in, leaving the other ear free and sensitized to the stiller atmosphere of the cottage, attentive to any stirrings, sudden creaks, or of Sarah speaking. And I wait, hoping that this might be a night that she’ll get up out of bed and begin her round of ghostly somnambulation.

    Sure enough, at around three-fifteen, just as I´m dozing, I hear our bedroom door creak open. I get up off the couch and go and look out from the living room to see Sarah, in her pyjamas, with one bare foot and the other foot in a slipper, come hobbling out of our bedroom. The sound of her slipper drags on the tiles as she limps toward me.

    “There are twelve devils.” she says.

    “Where?”

    “Twelve devils.”

    “Where are the twelve devils, Sarah?”

    “They’re drowning.”

    “Where are they drowning?”

    “In the lake.”

    “In a lake? Which one?”

    “Yes. In a lake. Twelve devils drowning…in the lake inside our car.”

     

    About two months before the factory closed down, Kevin Walsh, from Human Resources, sent an email around asking all employees to write a page about who we were, where we came from, what we did before, what our roles were in the factory, what kind of relationship we had with our employer and what our aspirations were for the future. This was a new initiative that he was launching, he wrote, to help personalise his working relations. Now, I don’t think it would be too unkind to say that a lot of my coworkers only picked up a pen or a pencil to do a crossword or an arrow-word puzzle, or when in the bookie’s or at the Lotto stand. A number of them certainly weren’t comfortable with the idea of self-reflection, or of a company´s prying behind their curtains and into the musty folds of their soul. So, as one might expect, the request was met with either bafflement or coarse, contained opposition. There was groaning and complaining about it over the morning-break tea and coffee. At lunch, in the canteen, people muttered about it into their plates of subsidized mashed potatoes, beans and chips.

    In the smoking shed, Glen kicked over the ashtray bin and scattered six months’ worth of rotten cigarette butts all over the ground, so incensed he was at being asked to write something about himself.

    “Did you ever hear of such utter bollocks, Man?”

    Confusion, if not mild despair, was worn into some people’s faces, as they left the factory on the eve of when the one-page self-report was due in. Premonitions of a gloomy evening spent at home, at the kitchen table where, after dinner had been cleared away, the blank screen of a Word document, or a blank page taken for a child’s copybook would stare back at them, blankly.

    I, on the other hand, began straight away. I jotted down a quick plan on a torn piece of cardboard, giving each section a heading and five bullet points to be developed. Before I knew it the cardboard was covered in fluid and erratic arrows directing and redirecting me back and forth between the verso and recto sides where notes and elaborations and quick ideas spread and proliferated. There was an announcement on the PA for workers to hand in or email their written piece to HR first thing in the morning. I finished what stocktaking I had left and then retired to the farthest aisles, at the back of the warehouse, to continue my writing. When I got tired, I snuck in behind some boxes and took a nap on an emptied pallet and used my arms as a pillow. I awoke, like clockwork, three minutes before my shift was due to end, feeling refreshed and deeply satisfied with the day’s work I had done.

     

    Two days later I was sitting in Kevin´s office.

    Pale, tall and thin, Kevin was wearing a white shirt and the white and maroon club-tie of the local hurling team. His presence, from behind his desk, seemed faint and insubstantial. Maybe because Kevin had been copied from a crumpled schematic in Holy God´s pocket and had been sent down amongst us to take up posts like this all around the world. Kevin. Kevin-Kevin. Kevin-Kevin-Kevin-Kevin. An iteration of the quintessential, helpless, carbon-based bureaucrat. But this only endeared him to me further.

    “Chris, I don’t know what to say to you. I mean…what is this?”

    He was holding my page in his hands, looking over it again. He needed some time to take it in so I looked at his plastic fern plant, the mandatory grey filing cabinets, the obsequious, anally retentive neatness of his desk and, on the left wall, the black-framed picture of four men, silhouetted, in a row boat, rowing into the sunset on a mirror-still lake. The word TEAMWORK written in big white letters underneath. Through the cheap white blinds over Kevin’s shoulders, I could see that it looked dull outside. Dull, wet, cold and grey. The type of day that you can feel the rats inside you shivering and baring their teeth.

    Kevin cleared his throat, gave me a worried look, and started to read.

    “Chris Gallagher was born in Sligo General Hospital in 1985, and grew up in Cape Canaveral and The Bermuda Triangle. In 2003 he began a B.A in Fine Art in Toulouse. After graduating he toured Europe in a hard-rock cover-band called “Spider Hands and the Phantom Fingers.” Dissatisfied with life on the road, he returned to Ireland in 2010 and enrolled on a structured PhD course in Trinity College Dublin where he wrote his doctoral dissertation, “Towards The Radical Relief of a Post-Marxian Flatulent Hermeneutic: On the Utopian Impulses in “The Benefit of Farting Explained” by Jonathan Swift.” However, he abandoned a professorship after having fallen in love with a country girl, and they moved here to Ballymadfun, for the purpose of finding work. Chris applied for the position of Box Manager in a sober state, with a clean and clear conscience. He felt called to do this work by dullness, Jove and Fate. His tasks in Hadley’s Ltd. include looking at boxes, touching them, lifting them and setting them down, tagging them with stickers, loading them on to a palette lift, and shifting them into different places around the factory floor. On any given day you can find Chris moving boxes, cleaning the toilets, sweeping the floor, napping behind boxes, staring into space, feeding the little Capuchin monkey Maintenance have hidden in their cloak room, counting peanuts in the canteen, painting tiny frescos on the ceiling of the men’s toilets, reading poetry, conducting 4:32 by John Cage on the factory roof for an audience of culturally starved crows and seagulls, fantasizing about eternal life, of the myriad possibilities and worlds that may be awaiting him after death, and wondering what it means to love a girl who sleepwalks. Chris would like to thank you for giving him some money in exchange for some of his time, and is grateful that you have kept your smiles in your pockets while exploiting him thusly. Chris has absolutely no plans for the future as he can barely comprehend his present, because he is absolutely terrified of looking into his past. Many thanks and with the warmest of abject regards, Chris.”

    Kevin stopped reading and put the paper down flat on his desk in front of him. He positioned it carefully, making sure that the page was symmetrical, level and right. Foolishly, I started to wonder if maybe he liked the piece. A compliment surely, for showing initiative and industry where most, I was certain, had barely scratched the page, would not be entirely out of order. Kevin leant forward in his chair.

    “Chris,” he said, “do Declan and Ian have a monkey down in Maintenance?”

    “No,” I said smiling, “they du-du-…No, they don’t.”

    “Chris, is any of this, I mean, is anything that you’ve saying here…”

    I could see he was struggling, so I made an educated guess.

    “Some of it is true,” I said. “And su-su-su-sssss´ome of it is fufufufufufalse.”

    “But why did you, I mean, did you not understand…”

    “I did understand. It’s ju-just how I fufufufu-felt. It’s what I wwwwanted to say.”

    Kevin sat back in his chair and looked at me. He was going to say something but stopped himself. Through the walls I could hear machine-noise coming from the factory floor. Music without emotion is the rhythm of machines. Over Kevin´s shoulder, I watched and listened to the rain tapping persistently on windowpane, and smiled.

     

    I was asked to leave the following week. Not for what I wrote. My position, I was informed, had become redundant. I didn’t mind though. I spent my first week in bed, catching up on sleep and dreaming what I felt like were incredibly significant dreams. I started to keep a dream diary. I hadn’t dreamt so vividly in years. My second week I began to take walks down by the river where I watched unemployed men, and retirees, fishing by the bridge. I went to the cinema during the day. On my third week, I went to the pub more often, to drink on my own and to write in my notebook. The last thing I wrote in my notebook was, “If you sit on your laurels for too long, they’ll turn into cyanide and poison you.”

    Strangely enough, it was later that very evening Sarah came home from work with two bits of exciting news. The first was that the Bridgestone had received the Carmella Fitzpatrick Great Places to Eat Award. They would be getting a star put outside on their wall and the staff were going to have their picture taken for the local paper. The staff had also elected Sarah to be the one to be interviewed by the local reporter for a small features piece on the Bridgestone. Then she told me that she had overheard two customers, a middle-aged man and woman, who’d been sitting at the bar, talking about something called The McGuire Programme. Via her eavesdropping, Sarah had gathered from the man that he’d had a stutter all his life, but doing the McGuire Programme had utterly transformed him. He’d learned a technique called costal breathing, and he could now speak with confidence in public, as long as he employed that technique. Sarah had looked it up online. The next intensive course was being held in Galway, at the end of May. Three months away. I told her I´d think about it.

    In the meantime, I still wait up at night and follow Sarah around our cottage as she goes sleepwalking from room to room. There is an incredible stillness and poise about her sometimes, as she moves about in her pyjamas or stands, frozen-like, in the kitchen, with her head cocked to one side as though she were listening to the kettle, or to some ancient frequency deep inside of her. The idea of touching Sarah, in that possessed state, always fills me with a special kind of dread. Last night I watched her as she tried to open the cutlery drawer.

    “What are you doing, Sarah?”

    “I need a knife.”

    “Why do you need a knife, Sarah?”

    “There’s one devil left.”

    “A devil? Where is the devil, Sarah?”

    “He’s standing behind me.”

  • Beautiful Things

    I see everything as if it were under a magnifying glass, so clear that it hurts. My thoughts race to and fro. Ideas drop as ingredients would, into the mix. Into a boiling cauldron. Then as popcorn does, they fly out, across the counter, and all over the floor. Trying to contain this is futile. That buzzing sound they emit is driving me mad. Add to this my impatience and an indecisive nature.

    I’m painfully aware of what’s entailed in attempting to follow through with a single idea. The details of which are tedious and delay any potential progress. But after a glass or two… it all becomes manageable. I cease to worry about the details and start imagining my success. After a bottle or two, I even think that I might find someone who could collect the bricks that are my ideas and with them, build me a palace.

    Waiting for something to happen is unbearable. So, to relax, I have another drink. Preferably two. I really need to drink a lot to drown any unwelcome thoughts. If anyone is going to bring up any obstacles, I will lose my temper. I don’t need that. I need clever people to carry out my plans, but clever people tend to have their own ideas, and don’t want to be bothered with mine. It’s so frustrating… but the wine is going down well. Floating on cushy clouds, I’m feeling no pain. There is nothing that needs to be done. Finally, I can fall asleep.

    When I wake up in the morning, whatever the weather is, I’m fine. Weather doesn’t get me down. It’s people who do. If my wife doesn’t greet me with a smile, I get upset. But of course, she had a rough evening, listening to me getting angry because it takes so long to get anything done. So, the smile isn’t there. Everything is clear again, crystal clear. It’s excruciating and I’m beginning to think that a nice glass of something would be nice. But, it’s not even noon.

    I can’t stand the fact that she isn’t on my side. If she continues to sulk, I won’t be able to think. I get emotional and my brain becomes mush. She doesn’t realize what she is doing to me. Suppose I’ll have to apologize. That’s it. I’ll apologize. I don’t know what I said last night, but it must have been bad.

    She says it’s ok. But I’m not ok with ok. I want my wife to radiate goodwill. I want her to listen to my ideas and take over. Put them into practice. At least write them down.

    It’s hard to find people who will turn your ideas into reality. Very hard. Because people are so stupid. They lack vision.

    Many of my friends have such successful businesses. I know that I can be even more successful than they. I’ve more brainpower in my little finger than most of them. Their success, well, it’s like a slap in the face. Soon it will be time for lunch and I can’t wait to have a drink. My friends might ask my advice. That would help to wipe away any doubts I have about myself.

    My wife is exceedingly clever in one way and quite stupid in another. She says that you don’t need to be clever to make money. She’s of the opinion that if you want money badly enough you will get it. That said, you’ll have to work and build up a business. That means more details. Lots and lots of dots and knots. I need money, but hate to work. The idea that I would have to start from the bottom up sounds ludicrous to me. Start at the bottom? Me? The idea could drive me to drink.

    I’m busy most mornings. Making important decisions. Don’t bother me with unpaid bills. Distractions like that will only derail my chances at success. The urgent decision right now is where to have lunch today. I call my friends to see where they are going. If it’s not to my liking, I suggest another place. Once this is sorted out, I can relax and give my wife a list of things to do. She will sort her own lunch. I’m not worried about that. My lunch is business. You never know what will crop up.

    If you aren’t successful, who are you? You’re a nobody. And that scares the hell out of me. I’ve had some financial success. But not on the scale I aspire to. You’ve got to keep your cards close to your chest. This way at least your friends see you as a success. I often remind my wife to keep her trap shut. I’m not a bully. But I feel the need to repeat it, because I’m never sure if she’s understood me. She says I drive the point home so hard, that it comes out the other side.

    I don’t like it when I see her talking to someone, and I can’t hear what she’s saying. What is she saying? She’s giving something away. So naïve, and laughing a little too enthusiastically. She should maintain her composure and behave like a lady.

    That man she’s talking to is touching her arm. This is outrageous! I’ll have to do something about it. I feel as if it’s not her, but me he is touching in his patronizing way. He is laughing at me. He’s saying “See how easy it is to touch your wife? And she likes it.” No! He won’t get away with this. I’ll put a stop to it now.

    I walk over and pull his hand away. She shoots me a look of dismay when I say it’s time to go home. She isn’t happy and I’m positively furious. What’s wrong with her? Can’t she see that she’s let me down? I don’t need this.

    I have a lot on my mind.

    So, I give her a piece of my mind.

    “You’re drunk!” she says.

    How dare she. Doesn’t she realize what she is doing to me? This is why I’m in the hole I’m in.

    “Just because someone touched my arm as we were chatting? It’s normal. People do it all the time.”

    “People? We aren’t just any people. A lady doesn’t behave like that.

    “Well, if being a lady means no one can touch my arm, then I don’t want to be a lady.”

    This is hopeless. I now see. And I despair. She points out that I’m paranoid. That I read something into it which wasn’t there.

    “I wasn’t flirting”, she says.

    “Anyway, he’s your friend. If you question his intentions, then don’t be his friend.”

    What really kills me is that he’s a nobody! Absolutely nobody. It would be different if he was successful. Then that would be a compliment. When a somebody finds your wife attractive, well, that’s a whole different ball game.

    My wife thinks success isn’t all about money. Maybe she’s wise, but I couldn’t live like that. I spend money. To impress people. So, I need it. It’s not necessary to accumulate it. I just want to walk about unhindered. Yet, no matter how much money I manage to come into, it slips through my fingers. When I have money, it triggers a frenzy of shopping. My wife goes bananas trying to stop me. But there’s no stopping me. I’m like a criminal. On the run.

    In fairness, I love beautiful things. Things of quality. She doesn’t understand that it’s an investment. I did well in the past but would she give me credit?   Nowadays, I’m not bothered to sell my acquisitions. I have a position to maintain. It’s too demeaning to haggle over the price. After a few drinks, if I’m trying to sell something, I get the price wrong. And once you get it wrong, there’s no righting it. Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps subliminally, I didn’t want to sell it in the first place. People may let you down, but beautiful things are always there for you.

    I don’t see why my wife won’t look after my debts. It’s not a bottomless pit. She suggested I speak to Monsieur So-and-So. Plead with him to wait a little bit longer to be paid. So-and-So doesn’t bother calling me anymore, because I don’t bother answering when he does. But he’s begun to call her. There’s no point talking to him. Have you ever seen his eyes? They’re small and cold. Like two bullets sticking out of their sockets.

    “Nonsense,” she says. “He is a kind and understanding man. Just give him a reasonable explanation and a time frame for paying him back.”

    But I haven’t the slightest idea when I’ll be able to pay him back. If I make more money, there will be things I’ll want to buy. If I can’t look forward to getting something new, life just isn’t worth living.

    A kind person would just forget that I owe him anything. If someone owes me and can’t pay, I don’t push.

    “Don’t be silly,” she says. “You’ve got to pay your debts and vice versa.”

    What baffles me is why I can’t get away with murder … when so many other people do.

    Feature Image: ©Daniele Idini

  • The Communist’s Daughter

    In the morning before waking, I dream of vast empty plains of flatland and red undulating weather systems in the far distance. It is a dream I have often which leads me to wake with a nameless anxiety, and while the images quickly dissipate like dreams do, the nervousness persists. It is before dawn and I lie there on the couch for an hour, before rising and dressing without showering because I have resolved to leave for the office alone, but Tadhg appears in the doorway of his bedroom before I can make my exit.

    “Well Senan, how’s the head this morning then?” He asks in his meek manner which belies his Corkonian extraction.

    “Same as.” I tell him as I strip the sofa of bed sheets.

    “Ah man it’ll get better.” He says.

    “It will.”

    I check my phone for messages from Anaz but there are none since last night when she broke the silence which has existed between us for the past week and suggested we meet this evening for drinks. I check Instagram as well but little has been updated since I last checked it at about 2AM.

    “I’ll make us some coffee and we’ll head.” Tadhg says.

    I want to respond. Tell him that I’d rather make my own way to the office this morning, but I can’t put the words together. Instead I feel irritated by his presence, even though it is his flat I am staying in. I fold the sheets and leave them on one side of the couch, as if in anticipation of another night which will be spent there, and sit. Tadhg, still standing in the doorway, watches me do this, and after a beat when it becomes clear that I am no longer present, he moves to the coffee table in front of me and clears it of the cans and full ashtray that I left there the night before, despite his request that I not smoke inside. In the kitchen I can hear the coffee machine gurgle and spit, and the cans being crumpled one by one and binned. I consider just walking out the door while he is occupied, but checking my phone again I am reminded that I may need his couch indefinitely, so I stay where I am, staring vacantly into the screen of my phone, scrolling aimlessly and without register, down the endless feed of Instagram. Already new stories are appearing from people I barely know and I tap their smiling icons and view their manicured nails, brightly coloured and bedazzled, gripped around cardboard cups or tilting towards the small lens on their phones a plate with muffins of seed and bran and obscure berry or grape, and infused with cinnamon or pumpkin spice even though it is now November and not October, and the rain outside has turned cold and the air heavy, but all the pictures are warm and dry, and yet somehow still frigid and empty. After what seems like a long time but is likely only a few moments I am returned from my uneasy reverie by Tadhg planting a cup in front of me and falling heavily on the couch to my left, both his hands holding his own cup close to his lips as he blows on the steam that rises from it, and it is only then that I notice the cold of the room. The damp feel to it that I hadn’t felt before, and the dull throb of a hangover rousing behind my eyes.

    “Are you gonna see Anastasia later then?” Asks Tadhg.

    “I am.” I answer, though I don’t remember discussing with him my arrangement with Anaz. But then, I don’t remember much from last night.

    “You sure that’s wise?” He asks with only a hint of incredulity.

    “We share an apartment, Man.” I respond, and then after a beat, “And Buddy.”

    “This isn’t the attitude you had last night,” Tadhg says.

    “Well, I was drunk last night.”

    “I can see that,” he says, drinking his coffee now.

    “How many more did you have after I hit the sack?”

    “Not enough.” I respond.

    “Right.” He says, and a silence descends.

    “Look, I know I need to end it,” I concede. “It’s gone fuckin’ toxic.”

    “It’ll get better, Man.” He repeats.

    I pick up my phone again and open Instagram and refresh the feed. A new story from Anaz appears at the top, her icon a smiling glittering visage cuddled up to the dog we share, Buddy. I tap the icon and Buddy appears again, at the end of his leash which trails back up beyond the camera’s sight, and ahead of him is the public park which is across the street from our apartment building. The grass is an almost luminous green, the cloudy sky not grey but bright, and the caption reads “Out for a walk with my little man!”, with the sunglasses emoji. I lock my phone and put it down again and drink the hot coffee, its taste bitter and sickening.

    Tadhg is moving around his small flat, wiping down the coffee table and coming in and out of the living room from his bedroom in increasing states of dress. The place is tiny, the kitchen a cove, shared with an oversized washer-dryer that he was bragging about having bought, about never having to go to the launderette down the street again. The TV is too close to the couch, the coffee table too close to my knees, and the couch too low, old and impacted. I put down the cup of coffee and finish dressing by grabbing my tie, still tied from yesterday, and noosing it around my neck.

    “Not gonna finish your coffee?” Tadhg asks, a look of concern, or perhaps irritation, on his face.

    “I’ll grab one on the way to the subway station sure,” I say, before adding, “Thanks though, it was… decent.”

    From the street the sky is a huge churning spectral mass of grey which cascades over the roofs of the differently crested buildings of downtown Toronto. We walk the short distance to the subway station in silence and I am tempted to put my headphones on now rather than when we get on the train. I hold off and tell Tadhg that I am running into Tim Horton’s to grab a cup of coffee, but he follows me into the shop and stands with me after I order.

    I check my phone again for messages from Anaz, or anyone, but there are none. There are numerous new stories on Instagram, mostly of coffee cups and allegedly healthy breakfast choices. Anaz has posted a picture of a cardboard coffee cup and the yogurt and granola pot that she likes but always says is too expensive. I study the photo closely but there is little more info I can glean from how the picture is cropped. When I receive my own coffee, without thinking, I hold it out in front of me and open the camera function on Instagram.

    “Are you taking a photo of your coffee?” Tadhg asks me, laughing.

    “No.” I mutter, quickly locking my phone and putting it back in my pocket, disturbed by the apparent instinct of my own action. Tadhg continues laughing at me and despite the fact that he is probably my best friend in this country, the desire to walk away from him and put my headphones on is intense, and the knowledge that this reaction is merely a projection of other feelings does not quell the almost overwhelming impulse.

    I walk out of Tim Horton’s and make a beeline for the entrance to the subway station, holding my coffee in my right hand and pulling my wallet from its pocket with my left. At the ticket barrier I stop and struggle with one hand to remove my subway pass. Tadhg sees this, and his own pass already in his hand, takes my wallet and removes my pass and hands it to me so that I can easily go through the turnstile.

    “So where is it you’re meeting her tonight?” He asks me when we’re both on the other side, Tadhg this time holding my coffee cup while I put the pass back into my wallet.

    “The Communist’s Daughter,” I tell him, before adding, “Ossington.”

    “Ye seem to like that place, you go there so often,” he says, “I’ve still never been.”

    Redundantly I reply, “We don’t go there that often.” Though I find myself thinking about this point as we descend the city and catch a train that’s already waiting at the platform.

    At lunchtime I don my Bluetooth headphones again and hit play on a new episode of the podcast I’ve been listening to which is about an Irish serial killer who murdered his victims by pushing them in front of tube trains in London. I manage to duck out of the office unnoticed and make my way to the underground concourse 70 stories down and walk past a small second hand electronics store which is run by a short, crippled Asian man, past a dollar store where I bought a red rubber spatula when we first moved into our apartment, and through the link corridor. Then past a chain clothing store which reminds me of Dunnes Stores or Marks and Spencer or something of that ilk from back home, but is far more expensive just like everything is here. Past an LCBO which if I’m honest is located too close to where I work, and around the corner past three different Canadian banks, to the food court. I follow the kiosks which circle the seating area, reading the menus of each – Falafel, bagels, Indian, Chinese, Italian, Burger King, A&W Burger, Sushi – but I become aware that the seating area is full and bustling which will make it difficult to sit alone and away from absolutely anyone else, so I make a snap decision to leave the shelter of the concourse and take to the street.

    The clouds still hang low and swollen and ominous, and though the pavements are stained damp it does not appear to have rained again since last night. I walk steadily along the footpath, dodging some people and overtaking others, passing different shops where I could take a look at the lunch options but am put off entering either by the crowds or by the glimpse of my own haggard and tired reflection in the windows. Persistent, the hangover has abated to something more familiar and manageable, but my mood is a strange amalgam of weariness and restlessness. Tired and tense at the same time. Muscle memory leads me to subconsciously take out my phone yet again, and by the time I realise what I’m doing I’ve already unlocked it. So I relent and go through the process of checking everything: messages from Tadhg and Aidan and Freddie and Harry asking where I disappeared to and if I’m free for lunch; a missed call from our apartment building manager; an email from my bank offering me increased credit and an additional credit card; countless emails from Linkedin even though I have unsubscribed numerous times, and Facebook even though I deactivated my account months ago; nothing from Anaz. Instagram consists of stories depicting what people are actually watching on TV at any given moment and  posts about the colour of the clouds, or about how rain cleanses everything and how we should feel positive about this: “Positive vibes only”, followed by love heart emojis and the sun wearing sunglasses, probably expensive ones.

    I’ve walked as far as the shop fronts go before they turn into condo building entrances, so I enter a Loblaws and absently wander the isles not focusing on what I might eat for lunch but thinking instead about the last time Anaz and I were together.

    Despite a barrage of texts from Anaz asking where I was, rather than go home that evening, I had been out drinking with Tadhg and Aiden. I let myself into our apartment as quietly as I could so as not to set the dog off, or Anaz. But she was up.

    “Do you realise we don’t had sex in two weeks more than?” She said from the shadows before I saw her on the couch eating caprese salad in red lace underwear and a halter top. Her trousers, shoes, socks and jacket were strewn to various different points throughout the apartment, which was lit only by the sprawl of the city shining through the floor to ceiling windows in sharp spears of light. I wondered briefly if she had been alone the entire time. Whether she had removed her clothes herself, but before the thought could fully form in my mind she spoke again, “Where the fuck were you?”

    I digressed to the fridge and grabbed a beer, trying to remember what excuse I had made up, before finally settling on, “I told you, I was having drinks with clients.”

    “Sex,” she said again, not listening to me, lifting above her head a slice of tomato with a generous sliver of mozzarella cheese heaped on top of it, and a leaf of basil, and then lowering it, craning it, slowly into her mouth, and then shutting her eyes tightly and clenching her fist with pleasure. It was a display I had observed before, and had previously found strangely arousing, but in that moment I was so utterly repulsed by the show that I felt like weeping. Instead I did as I always do and opened the beer and downed it while standing at the kitchen counter.

    “Why we don’t had sex?” She repeated.

    “Because we don’t even like each other, Anaz.” I muttered to myself.

    “What?”

    “Where’s Buddy?” I asked her.

    “I walk him and feed him and now he sleep in the bedroom, where you think, Senan,” She answered me with a calculated bite.

    “You supposed to walk him,” She continued.

    “I walked him this morning, like I do every morning.”

    “Oh ya!” She scoffed.

    “Why are we fighting Anaz, it’s Friday and we’re both drunk. We should be happy,” I said tiredly to her. To the empty apartment.

    “Why you don’t come home?”

    “Drinks. Clients.”

    “Bullshit.”

    Had I not been drunk I may have considered the fact that she was right, I was bullshitting her, and had done so countless times before. Had I not been drunk I may have contemplated the possible reasons I preferred not to go home to our spacious apartment in leafy midtown Toronto, where I had a beautiful girlfriend and a dog and a future unfurling. But rather than think I drank, and I don’t remember who initiated it or how and I don’t remember desire awakening in me, and I don’t remember but I must have joined her on the couch, and I must have allowed my eyes to trace up the silken sheen of her sallow-skinned legs, crossed and toned and elevated on the coffee table, to her underwear delicate and transparent. I must have because an image of it lingers even now. So too lingers the fragrance of sex, still in my nostrils. The smell of stale cigarettes and liquor and caprese salad. The taste of her mouth in mine. The sensation when her teeth broke the skin inside my lower lip, and the sight of blood, black in the dark, marked on her chin. The taste of it when my teeth and tongue followed the line it had traced. My hands as they held her hips and her waist. My fingers when they found the flesh under her top and drew up to her arms and threaded her fingers held high above her head. Then her underwear torn away and my trousers unbuckled and lowered just enough. The impatience we shared as we both tried to ease me into her, our hands wet with spit. The image of a tug at the corner of her mouth forming a sinister grin which I should have paid more attention to as I held her arms down with one hand and arched a leg with the other, blood smeared on her face, dripped from my lip tense with intent. The image of her legs locked around me as they negotiated a rhythm. The memory of her words of goading in the guise of encouragement. The tightening of her legs around me and the slow inward rise of an orgasm. The memory which is trying to bury itself of her holding my hands to flesh under her hips, of her holding me there, inside her. The memory of her intent. The memory of my words of caution turned pleads, turned echoes unheeded.

    The whole scene replays before me as I stand in front of single serving plastic containers of red and green salads, of triangular sandwich boxes, or wraps, or veg sticks and fruit cups. I haven’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday and though I feel empty and depleted, nothing in the array of options in front of me, anywhere in this shop, appeals to me. The disembodied voice of the Irish serial killer, gruff and slurred, brags in my ears about how many people he pushed in front of oncoming trains, how they were all ruled just suicides, and he repeats those two words several times, “Just suicides”.

    Still standing in front of the lunch options, as if to break the trance I’m in, I take out my phone. Another missed call from our apartment building manager. Instagram stories from people back home, coffee cups and porridges with seeds and honey, salads of avocado and lettuce with tomato and egg, and complaints about the cold and the wind and the rain and “It’d be a grand aul country if you could only move it har har!”. A picture of a dazzling warm sunset posted by my sister in Australia with a caption about there being “A grand aul stretch in the evenings”. So many different emojis plastered over every picture that I can’t fathom what I’m supposed to feel at all. And a reminder that a friend’s birthday is tomorrow, which I dismiss.

    I grab a sandwich and slalom the isles again, unsure if the sandwich will suffice or if I’ll need something more, something other.

    At the dairy freezer I stop and peruse the different cheeses, all of them foreign to me and expensive, like everything is here. I pick up a cheese that Anaz likes. One we eat with crackers in front of the TV. Aged Five Years is advertised on its red ribbon emblem, and without looking around me, I open my jacket and slip it into the inside pocket, and walk to the checkout where I purchase only the sandwich, before leaving the Loblaws and without thinking, without giving it any conscious consideration at all, acting purely on some sort of toxic instinct, I walk out into the middle of the street, traffic coming in both directions, and I cross the road and walk into a Firkin Pub which has a John Cleese silhouette on the wall ascending the steps, and I sit at the empty bar and order a pint of Moosehead and a shot of Jameson, and when I’m told that I can’t eat the sandwich that I bought in the Loblaws, I ask what sandwich. The bartender actually has to nod at my hand before I realise I’m still clutching the sandwich box tight, crushing what’s inside, so I ask for a food menu as well and end up ordering a Classic Poutine which I don’t initially think I’ll eat but end up devouring.

    Back in the office I spend the afternoon sending emails to clients: millionaire hedge-fund managers, managing billions of dollars worth of wealth. I send them short snappy missives which emphasise how I know how precious their time is and assuring them that I’m not in the business of wasting it. How their quarterlies show good numbers while many of their competitors are sliding precariously into the red. “It was my robust macroeconomic advice which assisted this, and with year end approaching I hope I can count on your business for what I’m sure will be another successful year. Kind regards, Senan O’Sullivan”. Then I avoid all calls and scroll Reddit and Instagram for hours until my neck and shoulders begin to ache. Anaz has continued posting stories throughout her day, of her yoga mat laid out in our apartment which she refers to as “My place“. Of Buddy at the obliterated end of a chew-toy even though it is usually me who plays those games with him. Of the view from our balcony which looks down the long stretch of Yonge Street to the city, broad and still at a distance. I am still scrolling Reddit when I leave the office, and still when I am waiting for the elevator, and still when I am riding it down the throat of the building. I am so engrossed in the variety of nothingness reeling before my eyes that I do not notice that Tadhg has gotten on the elevator as well and is speaking to me. I have to ask him to repeat himself twice before I can register that he is asking me about sleeping on his couch again tonight.

    “You’ve been pretty out of it all day.” Tadhg says to me with a forced kind of humour.

    “Have I?” I feign. “Just tired.”

    “And will you be needing the couch?”

    “Probably…” I tell him, wanting to form more words, to give him an answer more certain, but I am just breathing audibly on the verge of a panic attack. He stares at me puzzled until the elevator doors open on the ground floor, where we exit to the lobby and walk together to Bloor subway station.

    The sky is now a disintegrating black horde manifested on the street as the heaviest rain I have ever seen, and we run through this along with hundreds of other people finishing work at the same time and descending from their offices in the sky and following the same routine. Cars and buses and taxi cabs blast their horns and make their presence known but otherwise there is only the sound of the falling rain and then the squeak of rubber soles on tiles as we enter the shelter of the concourse. At the ticket barrier Tadhg turns to me and says: “Let me know then, I’ll be downtown having a drink but the couch is there for you if you need it.”

    To which I nod and respond: “Grand, I’ll let you know.”

    And I’m thankful to him for being a friend, and I want to articulate this but instead we separate, going in different directions on the subway lines.

    When I arrive in Ossington the neighbourhood is drenched in the light of the city, the streets shimmering back at the night sky like a warped mirror. I’m early and I stand for a time under the awning of a restaurant in the style of an American diner on the other side of the street from the small speakeasy bar that reads above its door The Communist’s Daughter.

    It has been five years since I met Anastasia Smirnov on that curbside one sweltering summer night. Four years since I moved here to be with her. Three we have lived together. And two that we’ve shared Buddy. Each year marked by some type of progression or milestone or marker. Red Toronto streetcars pass me and chime at clocklike intervals. I take out my phone and text Anaz to say that I will be a little late, and then turn around and enter the diner restaurant and take a booth by the window facing across the street, and when the waitress comes by I order a gin and tonic off the bar-rail menu. In my ears ring the unsubtle hymns of Arcade Fire, and for the first time all day I feel tranquil.

    Anaz texts me back to say she will be there in the next ten minutes. I respond sarcastically that I’ve been enjoying the stories she’s been posting all day, but I realise the subtext was lost when she says she has been able to relax and think. That she has tomorrow off work so we should put some wood on the fire tonight and enjoy ourselves. Adding wood to the fire is something she has always said: that our fire will die if we don’t add to it.

    Instead of waiting just a little longer to speak to her in person like I know I should, I type out the message:

    “Are we just going to ignore what happened the other night?”

    “Ignore what Baby?” She responds a little too quickly.

    “That you made me finish inside you,” I write.

    And then immediately on top of that: “I wasn’t wearing a condom.”

    “No Baby, you didn’t pull out because you were drunk.” She immediately responds again.

    “Anaz, you wouldn’t let me pull out.” I tell her.

    “No Baby, it was you.”

    “Anaz, we were drunk but I remember,” I write, the memory of my rising panic giving me a sudden jolt.

    “I wasn’t drunk.” She says.

    Minutes pass and I don’t respond to the last message. I replay in my mind the events of the night as I remember them, only now I doubt myself. I doubt what I know is true. The minutes stretch and a directionless anger rises within me. I finish my gin and tonic and order another and while the waitress is walking away from me, I find myself typing: “The thing I’ve come to realise about you Anaz is that you are undeniably beautiful… but only on the outside.” I read this message over and over trying to calculate its effect before my fingers delete it and instead type and send:

    “Did you take Plan B?”

    “Yes Baby.” She says.

    “How can I know that’s true?”

    “Well you’ll see in 9 months when I don’t give birth.” She tells me and I can’t know if this was meant as a joke or not.

    Another expanse opens between us, the only sound the din of shifting metal cutlery and ice in glasses like a death rattle. Anaz has posted a picture looking out of a bus window at the rain with the caption “Date night!”, and the drinks emoji. When I look up from my phone I can see her across the street finishing a cigarette outside The Communist’s Daughter, and as always I am struck by her beauty, and the night maps out in front of me coldly.

    I will go over to her and we’ll order drinks, perhaps beers to start with but then we’ll move on to cocktails and we’ll definitely do shots, and then we’ll probably move on to another bar somewhere. Maybe we’ll take a cab back downtown, and maybe we’ll score some coke and then we’ll go home, possibly with some random people in tow, and the night will blur and we’ll never address that night or our problems directly, but we’ll take some wonderful pictures and videos and we’ll post them to our Instagram accounts and we’ll call them the memories we’ve made together, and people back home will comment on them saying how great I look and how happy we seem, and I’ll like the comments and respond with emojis which will assure everyone of my complete and utter contentedness.

    Anaz vanishes briefly into the darkness of the bar but reappears when she takes the booth in the window box which is the best table in the place, and I become aware that all I need to do to break this cycle is to not join her tonight – that on some unconscious level I already knew this and took the first steps by entering the restaurant and not the bar.

    I chew the ice at the bottom of my glass.

    I tear a napkin to shreds.

    I watch the waitress meander about the tables filled with the frivolous Friday nighters.

    I order another drink.

    The rain outside has started up again and I watch her over there, as she removes her red beanie hat which through the two water streaked windows that separate us looks like an undulating beacon, warning me, while always drawing me in.

  • Head Shop

    Tedium was tip tapping on the pane of Gibbo’s day, the hours slouching into another shite night alone, like the slow but certain, annihilating course of ink on blotting paper. A visit to Tosh in the Head Shop “Happy Daze” on George’s St might just resurrect the dregs, if not by consuming a selection of the products for sale there, then at least by listening to Tosh describe them and the effects they’d produce, the feelings and sensations they’d induce once ingested.

    The shop was dimly lit like one of those places that sell lizards as pets to stoners; it smelled of stale joss sticks and half eaten Govinda take away trays. Dub reggae oozed like liquid hemp from two battered vintage speakers that stood at either end of the glass cabinet containing all the pills, powders and shrooms, which looked like the moist, fecund sex organs of alien amphibians. And then there was, Tosh.

    Some people become caricatures of themselves but Tosh took it to another level entirely, becoming a parody of the caricature itself. He was pencil thin and tall enough for half of his body to be in an entirely different, Himalayan weather system, to the rest of him. He didn’t wear clothes; they hung from him like sheets of washing out to dry. The brown, round neck Aran sweater that he wore like a second knitted skin, billowed at the slightest twitch of his body.

    He had that wizened pirate look that comes from years on the high seas of late nights, rolling spliffs in other people’s kitchens, at parties that always ended with dawn breaking on crushed green cans that spread like metallic spawn from butt soaked sinks.

    Of course he had a benign, pointed satanic beard too! And he wore an earring that was given to him by a German girl he’d spent the night with after seeing Marley in Dalymount Park, years back. Everything was “Years Back” with Tosh except for his eye brows which were fierce as fresh printed font. He wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of “Mojo” magazine talking about his comeback album but he had little to come back from, other than his greatest hits played in the kitchens of Dublin where he’d roll the best numbers while talking about Syd Barret,  arcane sub clauses in the Brehon laws and mumbling something about the Tuatha De Danann being connected to the Mayans.

    “Ah Gibbo, my man! How are we today? Are ye in for a buzz or a chat or a bit of both? I’ve got some crackin’ new stock in from a warehouse in Budapest. I’ll talk ye through it in a minute but c’mere, how did ye get on with them ones I sold ye last week?

    Did you do as I told ye?

    The cheeky half, chased by a full one just as the half is settlin’ in nicely, then when you’re tilting full gear on the whole one, drop the last half, see, that’s how ye play a two pill game!

    D’ye remember I wrote it down for ye? Like how to take them properly, in the right order, there’s no point in double droppin’ these, that’d just be bein’greedy and ye wouldn’t be lettin’ them tell their story, it’s a three act thing, ye got yer intro, yer crescendo and yer beautiful sunrise fade. Apart from the obvious whack off them, did ye get any of those subliminals, I’was tellin’ ye about? There’s a nuance to them, like they’re not in yer face, but they’re all over ye at the same time.

    So Gibbo, I have another fella like yerself who comes in most Fridays, now, he loves his food, he’s all culinary, mad into his ingredients, would know his way around all them African spices on Moore St, so, when I’m talkin’ him through the pills I go all Master Chef with me metaphors but you’re a man like meself who’s into his tunes  so I’ll keep it musical for ye, so ye get me drift, I love doin’ the R+D on this shit, I take it seriously, I want me good customers like yerself to know what they’re getting’ into and always remember Gibbo, when ye feel yer bowel howl, ye’ll know they’re kickin’ in, c’mon, are ye ready?

    These ones here I call Kittsers, after yer man David Kitt, half an hour or so after takin’ the first half, ye’ll feel a warm acoustic vibe comin’ over ye, a half full but well in to it crowd in Whelan’s buzz, but ye’ll feel a slight stitching of electronics studded around the hinterland of things, I don’t wanna say “a glow” but ye get what I mean, the Kittsers aren’t too strong though, when ye drop the full one, it’s more of a Boutique festival vibe, like Whelan’s morphin’ into a Body and Soul stage and it goes on like that a while, a more genteel “Gloaming” vibe than yer urban “Lankum” trad, they’re smooth, the muchies with these pills are organic, d’ye get me, I found them a bit shite in the end to be honest, like being at some gig in the Iveagh Gardens and ye wonderin’ how ye ended out there?

    Nah, I like a bit of grit in me pills.

    These ones here are more like it, though may I say, they are strictly for well-seasoned travellers like yer self. I call them, “The Gaffs”.

    About twenty minutes after taking the first half, remember yer maths Gibbo, half + full + half, the only way to do it, the narrative, the flow, that’s what yer after,

    It’ll start to feel like there’s a house party in yer head, a good one with all yer mates there, you’ll feel them coming in, a mad rush at the front door, swingin’ bags of cans, it’s not Whelan’s anymore man, it’s a stairwell full of people ye hardly know, that you’ve never seen in yer house before, one of them nights that’s goin’ to swell, it has its rough edges too though when ye start comin’ up proper, a Garda siren lickin the walls blue and white, ye might feel a tremor, a panic but it’ll pass with a rattle of worry farts, when ye drop the full one it’ll be like the house has been dipped in spirits and torched with new beats you’ve never heard before, some Brazilian dude is DJ-in in yer front room, Favela-Fuckin’-Chic, wadin through a block party, a carnival and a  sudden flash of asphalt wasteland in the room, there’s no lettin’ up with these ones, pure ritual,

    ye’ll be all alone but surrounded by people, nice bit of hallucinatin’ on these too, the party will become external, people will leave yer head and pour into the kitchen, ye’ll meet people there ye haven’t seen in years, ye’ll feel the erotic rush of a whole house heavin’ with the dance, like a greedy snort of Pentecostal Poppers,

    the colour range on these is like a serious fuckin’ festival rig, ye’ll end out focusin’ on the colour of the kitchen door for way longer than’s natural, ye might even feel a Oneness with shit that’ll make ye oblivious to all the other shit around you,

    ye know like when all of life’s asteroids are comin’ at ye, thick n fast and ye do a Han Solo on it and go straight into Spiritual Hyper Space, bypassin’ all the mundane crap that brings ye down, it went like that way for me anyway,

    these really are quality pills, all the colours get like a Biblical Dulux paint catalogue, ye’ll start makin’ connections between things that’ll fade as soon as ye try thinkin’ of them again, ye’ll remember nothin’ later, yer mind’ll be like The Shining maze, bein’chased by half formed feral sentences, ye’ll wish ye had a brain stenographer with ye to record yer thoughts, ye’ll think they are important but they might just be shite but who’s to know,

    they’re roarin’ “Tune” in the front room, ye’ll have strobe light black outs on the dance floor, not knowin’ how ye arrived into the glare of the kitchen light, ye’ll feel epic and loved, all the walls of the house throbbing like a heart pumpin’ speed, the kitchen and the front room will seem like they’re different hoods in some huge smudged metropolis that yer racin’ through now, high as some released captive thing, a vertigo in your stride, fearless, ye’ll have flashes of being all alone because you are all alone, reality sneaks in the fuckin’ cat flap the odd time with these pills, like morning light torn from a drawn curtain, a prison break on the dance floor,

    there’ll be a blonde PR bird at yer living room door with a clipper board, askin’ ye what guest list yer on, ye’ll have to choose carefully or ye’ll be fucked out high as a kite cut loose, tremblin’ alone on the quays, freezin’, neon taxi slur in the puddles, ye’ll look back at the entrance to The Liquor Rooms and ye’ll realise it’s yer own gaff, the door into yer own livin’ room and everyone there is bein’ sliced by strobe, tribal Batucada Beats, and the bird who had the clipper board has lassoed you with her eyes, ye’ll get a lust rush but it’ll be a brain boner, yer lad will be limp as a droopin’ glove, ye’ll think of Lou Reed, “between thought and expression there lies a lifetime”, the music will go all,

    ah- whacka-whacka-whacka, ah-whacka-whacka-whacka,

    ye’ll get down on yer hands and knees and try crawlin’ away from the echo but soon enough ye’ll surrender to it sweatin’, relieved that it’s yer new Master.

    these pills can have quite a rough come down, the worst kind of psychic turbulence but they’re worth it for their plasma screen clarity and the integrity of their buzz, when ye come down proper, all the people who weren’t there will have gone but ye’ll be glad ye met them anyway.

    Are ye with me Gibbo? Am I givin’ ye a few ideas for later? C’mon, I got a couple more to show ye.

    I call these pills “The launches”, they’re cunnin’ little bastards, the first half comes on all warm like yer at some art openin’ in a warehouse, somewhere in the Batter, NCAD heads wearin’ vintage gear, some lad in a knit wear bobble hat, stooped over a lap top playin’ Ricardo Villa Lobos minimal techno, craft beards and shite lager but it’s free, so ye dive in and talk crap about the installations, ye’ll get these comin’ up jitters, feelin’ that what yer sayin’ about the installations isn’t the right thing to be sayin’ about them, like yer out of yer depth at a party full of those Irish Times “ 50 People To Watch in 2009”, ye know the fuckers, video sculptors ‘n vegan choreographers.

    Ye won’t feel like yer one of them, me and you Gibbo never make it on to them lists, but once ye drop yer first full “Launch” ye’ll feel better than all them cunts collaged together

    You’ll feel like you’re the artist, that it’s your launch, you’ll have interviews about your work runnin’ through yer head, ye’ll feel like ye own the room, on top of yer mad out of it game, ye’ll see yer self on the box talkin’ about yer difficult second album even though you’ve never played a note in yer life, it’ll be like ye become whatever music yer listen’ to, it’s so real, ye’ll feel ye’ve got the fingerin’ all sorted on the tenor sax yer mimin’ the fuck out of in the mirror, ye’ll see posters for “An Evenin’ With Gibbo” flappin’ on the lampposts in yer twisted, head fucked streets, you’ll believe you’ve really gone and learnt an instrument, then the most fucked up, loved up shit kicks in,

    Yer playin’ stadium concerts now, yer the lead singer or the guitarist, ye can be whoever the fuck ye want to be, snortin’ lines of adulation, ye grab yer crotch and gurn, “I am Live Aid. I am Freddie Mercury”, a Nuremberg crowd rush of pure fuckin’ love, the best gig ye ever gave to yer reflection in the mirror, yer all alone and shittin’ yerself, a stab of the fear, but ye mange to pull yerself back into a pub sized gig, yer listenin’’ to Howlin’ Wolf, built for comfort, “300 Pounds of Joy”, it’s Walters in Dún Laoghaire and ye command the room, ye’ll see everyone ye knew there when ye were young and they’ll love ye, ye’ll feel Savoy 1 screen stretched, everythin’ about ye will feel epic, it’s the maddest rush.

    I, like, became Marley in Dalymount an’ I seen meself singin’ as Marley to me younger self and the German bird that gave me the earring, fuckin’ multiple identity trippin’

    The come down from these is smoother than you’d than ye’d think, like a class of farewell tour, a “for one night only” vibe, ye’ll see posters for yerself again but they’re smaller, ye’ll be back to playin’ Whelans, but it’ll be a good crowd, when ye come round ye’ll have forgetten all the interviews ye gave but ye’ll know ye did give them,

    ye won’t even have a ticket stub to one of yer own gigs.

    The rest of the gear I got is natural, herbs and shrooms, Inca gear, it’s not really party gear, it’s all about foliage and mad ancestral voices,

    These first two herbs work in seconds, they both wreck yer sense of time, one makes nine hours seem like it’s just two minutes that’s passed and the other stretches two minutes into what seems like nine fuckin’ hours, so, you choose dependin’ on how yer fixed for time, both have the same immediate effect of ye seein’ foliage growin’ on yer walls, it’s Amazonian, the green is so deep ye could swim in it.

    The Shrooms are ancestral though, I got an intense Ogham Stone vibe off them, like I was rubbin’ my hand up one of them and understandin’ this 8th century braille that was chipped into them by some mad mason monk years back before, like when ye know some of the Brehon Laws were still standing, I felt like a kind of gutter with all this mythology streamin’ through me, playin’ me Bothy Band and me Ó Riada sa Gaiety albums backwards and hearin’ messages from The Tuatha, ancient secrets that would make Fatima blush, d’ye get me, I had some experience of knowledge, somethin’ unbroken, like I was totally plugged in to the whole meaning of shit, like, I saw through it all, connected it all up, wrote a new fuckin’ alphabet and found a story way out of it all, I was it all, I had Prophet deliriums, I sweated two languages and learned a third, I tied myself to a post and crawled through centuries to tell people what I’d learned , the further I went the less I remembered until I had no idea where I was or what I was doin’ and I’d forgottin’ what I was supposed to tell them and they didn’t like me for that.

    Ye just don’t know what portals the shrooms are goin’ to open up for ye Gibbo.

    Are ye with me Gibbo?

    So, what’s it goin’ to be? A bit of herb and nine hours of Kittser?

    A mad one or a quiet one?

    You tell me.

  • Winter When Thy Face is Hid

    I was so tired, Tuesday night. Don’t sleep well when I get that tired. I have obsessive dreams and wake up later than usual. And sleeping in always makes my head hurt. I was clumsy tired, where you bump into things; and getting into bed, I whacked it. The big clunky picture frame hanging over my headboard.

    I like the picture a lot. That’s why I put it there. Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow, it looks so cold and ancient, a somber blackish sky, intrepid hunters with their intrepid dogs, and the polder lakes below dotted by tiny skaters. On hot August nights I switch on the lamp, look at it, and feel cold enough to sleep.

    But Tuesday night, hanging there, that painting wasn’t a positive presence. I hit my head on it. Which hurt until I fell asleep. And in my sleep, how aware I was of this thing dangling! Over me. Waiting to drop, and in the process, dash my brains out. Quite a long time ago, while I was away from home, a wooden bracket, bearing a ceramic vase, tumbled on to my sleeping head, and that incident is probably what made me so preoccupied by the painting. Much later, in a dopey semi-consciousness, I began groping at the wall above my head, trying to protect myself from the picture’s pointy frame.

    Of course, I only managed to whack it again, so hard it swung wildly on the nail, and suddenly I was wide awake. Something cold had fallen on my neck.

    I pawed the wet substance off: crystalline, frigid, and unmistakable. Put some in my mouth. Snow. In a sealed bedroom. In May. Wallowing upright, I clutched the side of my neck where the last tiny flakes were with every instant turning to water, and reached for the lamp. In its gift of sight, I looked left, right, up, and down, finding no possible source for the little flurry, until I became aware of an icy draught behind my shoulders.

    Twisting round, I discovered, with a glee I only hope to feel again at Resurrection, that the draught was puffing out of the Brueghel picture.

    The inner edges of the frame were furred with hoarfrost, and on the carved outer face of the lower frame, slush fused into bright drops from the room’s warmth, remnants of the snow-flinging disturbance that had awakened me. I was now aware of a curious low, broken whistling that I mistook at first for wind. Then a sharp little bark undeceived me. It was in miniature, the far-off baying of those hunting dogs. The three dark figures of hunters, against white snow, moved with hampered steps, leaving profound footprints, to the brow of a steep foreground hill, and in their descent slowly disappeared, followed by their entire pack of restless dogs, whose howls and deep barks diminished. The party left only churned, dirty snow. My gaze sought other figures, distant peasants around a bonfire in the left mid-ground; they moved rhythmically, poking at the blaze, sometimes pausing to hold hands toward it. I could just hear their minute voices in sporadic, unintelligible exchanges, by leaning very near the frame. On the far-removed polder lakes, skaters rotated, flailed, traversed the slate-grey ice in total silence.

    My first wild yearning was to climb into it. This proved undoable: the cold breathing from the frame was so intense, it had me goose-fleshed in my underwear; and its frame was too small to admit me, unless I broke it. Somehow, I feared losing the whole scene if I did that. My second instinct was to tell some other human what was happening, make someone else believe it, so that I could. There was no second thought as to whom I would tell: my high-school art instructor, Dick Carey.

    Enthusiastic, but an astute reasoner, good-natured enough to answer the phone in the middle of the night, he was batty about the Flemish Masters, and also the man who had introduced me to Bruegel. I still had his number. Feeling for it in my jeans, I pulled my cell phone from a pocket.

    “Hello?” He didn’t sound sleepy at all. Probably up reading art criticism at this unearthly hour.

    “Hi, Mr. Carey?” (I’ll never have the gall to call him Dick.) “I’m sorry to disturb you so late. Something weird has happened. With a Bruegel painting.” There, now I had him. He didn’t interrupt me once as I described the phenomenon.

    “Mr. Carey, did this… I’m not pulling your leg. Have I ever pulled your leg before? Is this happening? Is this real?”

    I heard that little rumble in his chest. Anyone who’s ever been in his classes knows that that rumble means an avalanche is coming, an avalanche of rock-like reasoning and information. I held the phone tight to my head, feeling glad. And warmer.

    “You wonder if that can be happening. You’re not the only one of us who’s wondered! You’re questioning empirically what I’ve questioned in the abstract for decades. But you’re the only one still wondering. Listen. Bruegel was a realist, a representationalist. I’ve always respected them most, always will. Shakespeare said the purpose of art is to show reality to itself, “Hold up the very mirror,” of reality. He did it so well, his work is still blurring the line between representation and reality, people are still literally living his work in order to touch and understand life itself! Now, Bruegel… he’s a kind of Shakespeare, I’ve always maintained that. Not just because they were contemporaries. The work of a realist, listen, is to reproduce life, more accurately, and more accurately, and always more accurately. The mistake of art criticism is to suppose the process endless, with infinite space for improvement. But, technically, it has to be finite. That’s what I figured out. There is an end to that quest, anyone can see, the goal is reality itself. Now, if such huge strides can be made toward that goal, like the stride between say, late Medieval manuscript illuminations, and Bruegel, think about that contrast! Do you realize that the stride between Bruegel and reality itself, is smaller?”

    I felt quivery and shaky, the more so because this thing behind my back was still exhaling below-zero air at me. “Why… Why is it happening to me?”

    “Ha! Because… If you were a Polynesian who’d never seen either snow or people in full clothes, would you believe Hunters in the Snow depicts something real? Probably not. Recognizing realism in art has a huge component of belief. Now you, you’ve lived with that painting for years, you say, and it’s become internalized with you, love is the first part of belief… and now, in a state of impaired consciousness, you encounter it again, and wham, your defenses are down, you believe, and Bruegel, the last person to believe it, finally has a successor, an understander, and his vision is seen.”

    “Th-thanks,” I breathed. “Mr. Carey… if you’ll excuse me, I want to be alone with it.”

    “I understand. Wish I was you. It’s alright. I’ll see Bruegel one day.”

    But when I was alone, I was afraid to turn around and face it again.

    Every waft of cold on my back was joy. How could this be! How marvelous!

    … But why was I so happy? What did this mean, for me, or anyone? A great barrier had been crossed. But what barrier? And was its crossing a good thing?

    What barrier, but that mankind had never been able to create before, only manipulate the already-created. Now a man with a marten-hair brush had removed a thought from his head, and look, the thought was real; not an imagined form transferred to preexisting objects, but the imagined objects, themselves, stood in the round.

    Previously, only God could do that.

    ‘Well, they used to say angels were the only rational creatures that fly, and now people can fly,’ I said to myself. ‘That was a good thing. And this is a good thing.’

    But this was a different thing.

    ‘A barrier is broken. The realists, in every form of art, have been trying to break it since time began. Now it’s broken, and… what does it mean? Are we any nearer to the fulfillment of every wish?’

    But wishes could be divided, I thought, into two types—wishes that were part of maintaining life in the body, and wishes for the thing that made life worthwhile. Wishes to live, and when alive, wishes for love. And no earthly love could ever meet all those wishes, that was why people became religious. And this thing behind me, spewing cold air, was not a direct path to the end of all wishes, but a round path going nowhere: because it did not go to the God they say is love, but bypassed him. Man could create.

    I pulled the blanket over my head, to protect myself from that kind of cold.

    I woke up late, and my head hurt from sleeping in. Behind me on the wall was a somber, dingy old print of a flat painting, with flyspecks on the snow. I grabbed the cell phone and looked through Recent Calls.

    No outgoing call to Dick Carey last night. Of course not. Carey had been dead five years.

    Te Deum Laudamus.

    Featured Image: Pieter Bruegel the Elder – Hunters in the Snow

  • La Petite Mort

    Hannah sat deep in thought waiting for the reception room’s red light to turn green indicating she could open the door to Dr. Dysart’s interior space. She was trying to decide what to talk about – the love bombing or green. Green was her favorite color and had been ever since she had learned the word verdant was a variety of green. As in lush. She was feeling lush and new and full of herself this sunny spring day.

    She had built her vocabulary by acquiring a new word or term every day, employing them with anyone she wanted to impress, and was determined to make an impression on her psychiatrist. Because she was in love. When the light turned green, Hannah inhaled, and turning the door handle, entered his office on the exhale.

    Smoking a Dunhill, Dr. Dysart sat behind the desk he had bought from a New Orleans antique dealer. He smiled and then pursed his lips releasing a ring of smoke that rose and settled above his head like a nimbus. And why not. He was her god. Hadn’t he performed miracles much like Jesus had done for Mary Magdalene, his most beloved disciple?

    “Why you look like a specter today, Dr. Dysart.”

    “I see we’ve learned another word, Hannah. Where did you find this one?”

    Sauntering over to her designated place on the couch directly across from him, she replied, “In some research for my Victorian lit class.”

    “What were you reading?”

    Hannah stood up from her seat and after an exaggerated curtsey, launched into a short recitation of a poem she had located in a nineteenth-century Ladies Home Journal called The Difference:

    Cried the grim spectre Death:
    “Time is a thief,
    Who, with each passing breath,
    Lightening grief,
    Takes from men all their fears.”
    Love merrily
    Laughed, “In a thousand years
    Time robs not me.”

    Imagining herself one of the literati, Hannah reversed her steps toward the couch with an unceasing stare. She might not be rich, but like any woman in her family, she was a reader. So, when she felt his sofa’s dark green damask caress the back of her calves, she asked, “What do you think about that, Doctor?“

    The psychiatrist took a long look at his precocious patient and snuffed out the cigarette in a crystal ashtray. Without leaving her gaze, he walked from behind the desk to take his place on a wingback chair adjacent to the couch. This was one of his strategies for disarming an ego defense.

    He examined Hannah at close range. She was blonde and brilliant. Dangerous only to herself. He knew she was in love. This too was part of his strategy with histrionic patients. Especially a female one.

    Except this time, she did not giggle as she had done before. She stared back at him. And while the doctor settled in for their prescribed fifty-minute rendezvous, Hannah began to fidget with her shoulder bag, which he noticed she placed not beside her, but in her lap.

    “What’s going on, Hannah?”

    “Nothing special.”

    “What’s the fidgeting about, then.”

    Startled, Hannah willed her hands to stop, slipping the right one into the bag on her lap. Her eyes dropped down to fix on the various shades of green spirals in the damask upholstery. Verdant she thought, now letting her eyelids flutter closed.

    “Hannah…,” he whispered into her left ear. On the couch next to her now, Dysart had been waiting for this moment. She was calm enough and would permit him to say,

    “Come back to your body, Hannah.” As he spoke Dysart placed his hand on her thigh. “Come back to the present, Hannah.” She opened her eyes. Looking straight ahead and not at him, Hannah’s hidden hand tightened around the handle of a box cutter. A gift from her brother.

    Dysart’s hand moved up her thigh. Hannah closed her eyes and began counting her breaths as he had coached her to do when anxious. Inhale . . . one . . .two . . .three. . .four.  Exhale . . .one . . .two . . . three . . .four . . .five.  When his fingers reached the sweet spot, he felt her involuntary shudder. Dysart’s warm breath was on her throat before his lips landed there. He kissed the neck, making his way up to the cheek, and she turned toward him, her hand exiting from the bag to embrace him.

    His final kiss landed in full on her mouth. A vital force energy traveled up from Hannah’s second chakra to the third flying right by the fourth. Filling her throat, it formed and then released two words, petite mort.

    This experience of tantric love bombing startled both doctor and patient. Now drowning in Hannah’s wide open green eyes, Dysart did not move a muscle. A nanosecond into it, he could feel the cold sharpness of a box cutter’s blade penetrating flesh just above his carotid artery. “Hannah,” he whispered. “You don’t want to do this.”

    Deep in thought about where she might have heard petite mort, Hannah put the box cutter back into its hiding place without reply. Dysart’s apparent astonishment left her feeling like a mature woman. Casting one last look at the damask’s green spirals, she rose from the couch and strode for the door.

    Heading out of his office, Hannah reminded herself that she must go look up petite mort, and its meaning, in her French dictionary. She also wondered, Should I tell Mama about Dr. Dysart? About the love bomb and how much I love him. Or wait… to bring up in our next session? In the end, Hannah waited.

  • Lent

    The poor auld Bunty Mac was a great friend of mine back in the late 70s and early 80s. We being young men taken to the sup, what you might call drink. Bunty Mac was the Doc Holliday of Longford and well, I was the Wyatt Earp of Westmeath. The Bunty was a poker shark and every one knew he cheated, but no one could ever catch him out. Not even meself. It wasn’t quite like the film, but it wasn’t far off it, and we always came out on top, or on top more times than not. It funded the lifestyle we choose to live at that time.

    At the poker schools, we took large sums in winnings off the lads. I’d have the Bunty run out a door or window, any exit he could get through. Carrying the cash. That’s when the lads would get mad and start a row. No matter what, Bunty never looked back, because the wad of cash was more important than me. Sure manys the swinging match I had to face while the Bunty made his escape. It was the toss of a coin if you boxed the heads off a lad or two, or they boxed the head off of me. Sure, I didn’t care about them things. I saw it as part of the game.

    One time and we lodging in Harlesdon North London. Big Phil from Cork was our landlord, and a real gentleman he was. Came from money and wealth, and had grown up in a very different situation to the Bunty Mac and meself. But we were great friends in those days and Big Phil would love to come around for the chat and the craic.

    “Bejaysus Lads,” Big Phil would say, “Never a mad pair of hoors like yous pair did ever I see. But yous are great craic, the happy madness.” Poor auld big Phil talked us into giving up the drink for Lent, and he a religious man. Sure the Bunty looked over at me, and says he,

    “We have as much chance of climbing mount Everest in our bare feet, as give up the porter and poker for Lent.”

    It so happens in those days neira mobile phone or social media was come about.

    “What yous boys should do is find two nice girls to straighten yous out. Sure, I looked at the Bunty Mac and says I,

    “There as much chance of that, as climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, in a pair a high heels and suspenders.” After a lot of persuasion, he got us to write to the pen pal club and find ourselves two dacent women to straighten us out.

    As the weeks passed and we climbing the walls for a pint, their letters began to land on the mat. Two fine dacent young ladys began to correspond, and with pictures we got to see what they looked like. After a round of letter correspondence, we made the phone call, and arrangements be made for to meet a first date.

    The Bunty Mac had lied to impress herself, saying he was a business man from Piccadilly instead of a wild hoor from Harlesden, a working class spot. We met them the same night and mine was at Northwood station. His at Piccadilly.

    When she turned up I got the shock of my life, and she had aged 30 years since she sent me her picture three weeks before.

    “Be Jaysus says I. You’re auld enough to be me mammy. What happened to you in the three weeks since past?” She lit me a smile, and asked,

    “Am I still staying at yours?”

    “Be Jaysus, you’re not, Missus!” and I ran like a blue hoor.

    No sooner I be home, and who lands in the door but himself. On his lonesome. Surprised, says I, “Well where is herself, Bunty Mac?

    “Be God, Nicky Feery, You never guess what! A grand posh wan she was, and as she landed on the platform. And me stood there, grinning with a bunch of roses. Says I, to herself, ‘Well Hello Sweetheart, and welcome to Pickladdiki.’ The word came out all wrong. Be Jaysus, if she only walked by me. Her head in the air, like I wasn’t even there. An over she goes to the next platform. Boards a train back, from the direction she came.”

    “Sure,” says I, “I faired no better. T’was the auld mammy she sent, or by Jaysus, she aged shocking in the three weeks since.”

    So, that was the last time we gave up the porter for the duration of Lent.

  • Spent Batteries

    The shop sign was in a Youghal side street, and it said Afro Crafts and Groceries. The right half of the window displayed cooking oil, tinned spices, bottled sauces and small bags of beans and lentils. On the left, a selection of small paintings of village and river fishing scenes, were cramped by colourful patchwork, miniature handcarved drums, wooden masks, animals and human figures. The carving of a village woman carrying a water jug on her head jolted Hal’s memory. Dark as the one his Dad had kept on the mantelpiece.

    “Let’s come back here tomorrow, after a day at the beach,” Hal suggested to Jeanette. During the drive to the caravan they’d rented in Ardmore, though it was thirty years ago, Hal told her about his father’s stint as a volunteer agriculturist in Tanzania.

    The following day, after a swim and a stroll, Jeanette ambled off on her own. The Afro Crafts and Groceries was open and empty, in the after dinner shade. Among the groceries were Barry’s Tea, tins of sardines and processed peas. Packets marked Siucra, shared shelves alongside cane sugar from Mauritius. Bags of maize meal, couscous and soya beans proclaimed the shop’s African dimension, and even more so the display of wrapped frozen cuts of goat, oxtail and whole bream in the display freezer. Hal selected a plastic jar of mild Caribbean curry, and a small tin of Kenyan pineapples; souvenirs that would not go astray in his Cork kitchen cupboard.

    Placing the items on the counter beside the cash register, he headed over to browse the alcove laden with crafts.

    First he flipped through a colourful bundle of batiks decorated with a motif of women and men at work, and wild animals. The wood carvings showed skill, but some of the masks erred on the side of kitsch.

    Stretching deeper into the window, he lifted out the black ebony carving of a woman balancing a water jug on her head.

    “From south-central Tanzania, Bwana. She is taking water from the river to her hut in the village.” The African shopkeeper now appeared quietly at Hal’s side.

    “Made from a single piece of timber?” asked Hal, turning the figure he held upside down, and fingering the varnished grain of the heavy base.

    “From a tree trunk. They first cut the local forest trees and chop the branches for firewood with pangas.”

    “And the trunks?”

    “Two men sawed these tree trunks. Kazi kweli – lots of work, we say in Kiswahili. But the carvers pay them, some local, some in other places of Tanzania, such as Kondowe.” The shopkeeper smiled faintly after his burst of English fluency. “You want other carvings? Some more I have in boxes behind.” nodding towards an open rear door.

    “This woman with the water pot interests me.”

    A holidaymaker entered the shop and began browsing around, which brought the African shopkeeper back to his cash desk.

    Hal recalled snatches of conversation with his father. Peter Sheridan hadn’t opened up often about his East Africa days. He and a young British volunteer had driven around in a 4-wheel drive Toyota pickup. If they didn’t have bundles of timber, pipes or cement in the back, they took on casual passengers: pedestrians flagged them down, on the way to Kilosa or on the potholed dirt roads to distant Dar-es-Salaam. The isolated town itself, offered limited craic.

    “My late father did agricultural work in Tanzania in the late sixties, helping small farmers with livestock and growing food.“ Explained Hal, approaching the cash register once the only other customer had left.

    “Kazi ya maendeleo – development work, as we say.“ The African’s eyes brightened as he extended his hand. Hal grasped it. “There were some young wageni –  foreigners-  in the town near our village. They worked for the British company.”

    “Voluntary Service Overseas: VSO. They recruited from Ireland too,“ Hal elaborated. He raised the wood carving still in his left hand. “He brought back something like this from a place called Tar… Tarande, I think.“

    “You mean Tarandawe? Kweli kabisa!“ Dropping any semblence of formality, the shopkeeper stared Hal in the face.

    “Tarandawe, as you say. Some hours drive south of Kilosa, beside a tributary of the Rufiji river. He said there were elephants in a forest upriver.“

    The African’s demeanour changed from surprise to certainty. “The Mindenzi is a small river near our village and passes through the forest into Rufiji. The men hunt small animals there but that government does not allow to kill the elephant.“

    “Any more carvings like this?“ Hal stood the pot-carrier on the counter, beside the tinned pineapple and plastic curry jar.

    “You must ask Margarethe. She stays at the hostel for asylum seekers. Her friend sends boxes from Tanzania. Her village was in the district where the VSO company put down water pipes for the shambas – small farms.“

    “You’re both from the same area? Did you know each other before coming to Europe?“ Assuming they were asylum seekers, Hal kept the questions general. No need to pry.

    “I have a Portuguese wife, and passport of Portugal. Margarethe and myself, we were strangers, but many from Tarandawe went down to Cabora Bassa to build a big dam for electricity on Zambesi River in Mozambique. Few escudos and hard work. Margarethe’s mother cooked posho for the workers and the little girl just played with other children.“

    “Did Margarethe’s father work on the dam?“

    The African hesitated. “She never knew her father. Her mother was… alone. I became like her uncle. We could sometimes collect firewood, but the Portuguese soldiers supervised. We feared their rifles. Soldiers shot freedom fighters in the forest.“

    Hal paid for his goods and asked the whereabouts of the asylum hotel. At the Cork end of town, it was a B & B cobbled together by the amalgamation of two adjoining houses. In a grassy front garden, he spied two rustic benches and a garden table. An Asian child peddled a plastic tricycle around a mother, absorbed in her embroidery, on the patio.

    A girl helping in the kitchen told Hal that Margarethe was away visiting friends in Cork, so he took the telephone number and walked back to meet Jeanette near the old clock gate on main street.

    During Sunday lunch with his mother and younger sister at the family home, Hal mentioned the Afro shop coincidence. Had Dad mentioned much about Tarandawe village? His mother denied that his talk had been anything but technical: damaged irrigation pipes, difficult road conditions, and the odd reference to wildlife and vegetation.

    “The volunteers found Tarandawe a lonesome spot. Drinking weekends in one or two decrepit bars and dancing freestyle on the bar floor with anyone around to the accompaniment of scratchy Congolese rumba music. The music got weird whenever batteries ran down. No electricity, so tilley lamps and candles lit up the gloomy nights.“

    “The one luxury he brought to Africa was his shortwave radio. Listened to it a lot in the dark evenings.“ Hal was happy to add one of the few details his dad had told him as a child. “Must have used up a lot of those batteries, too. Social life must have been pretty zero for young white fellows?“ Hal mused.

    “That’s why VSO field officers came their way twice a year in a Land Rover, bringing tinned food, wine and old newspapers. Volunteers had an annual expenses-paid get-together in Dar, and bunked down at each others’ houses during holidays.“ Hal’s mother shuffled in her armchair. “Your Dad did his development bit, saw a few sights, and came back. Then he met me at a co-op dance in Mitchelstown.“

    As his mother flipped through a Sunday supplement, Hal fetched the old photo album and pored over the ageing black and white snapshots of people. His father and an English mate posed with them. There were photos of working farmers and a longshot outside Kanjenje Bar in the village, looking like something out of a wild west film, except for the tropical flowers and palms. Among holiday snaps in faraway Dar es Salaam, there was one of his dad with two African men beside the bar entrance. Another was a closeup of his father standing at the same spot, next to a young village woman in a patterned headscarf.

    A couple of weeks later, Hal phoned the Youghal hostel and asked for Margarethe. “Miss Sichalisi hasn’t returned from the Afro grocery yet. She helps out there unofficially, until the Dublin officials decide on her application. When he inquired if she would be at the shop on the following Saturday, The response was, “Probably.“

    On a dry morning in Youghal, Hal parked his car, then strolled to the shop. The African man was again at the cash register, and introduced a fair-skinned woman who looked to be in her forties. “My wife Francesca,“ he said, after shaking hands. “We first met in Cabora, before she fled back to Tarandawe, after freedom fighters started moving against Portuguese soldiers. We got married and flew to Lisboa. But now we are trying for a new life, in Youghal.“

    “My contacts in Lisbon and Maputo send us the foodstuffs, and also some crafts. Margarethe gets the wood carvings through associates in Dar. Come into the back room and meet her.“ Explained Francesca before she led Hal into a storeroom with wall shelves and boxes.

    “Odi. Margarethe,“ Francesca called.

    A woman, wearing a short sleeved red chemise over smart white slacks, entered through the doorway from a kitchenette. She had to be in her late twenties, just a few years junior to Hal. Her fawn colored curls complemented a caramel complexion, interrupted by patches of paler pigmentation. Not nearly as dark as her older African “uncle,“ Magarethe extended her hand as Francesca introduced, “Mr. Hal is from Cork city. He likes the Tarandawe wood carvings.“

    “I have to be in the shop, so you can show Mr. Hal the new stock from Dar,“ suggested Francesca, before she left them alone.

    Margarethe unloaded several carved objects from a packing case, for Hal’s inspection.

    He picked up a carving of a woman with a water pot on her head. “My father told me that many villages in Tanzania have no piped water.“

    Her eyes were on the carving as Margarethe answered, “African women have walked to rivers and water holes for thousands of years. Our village was near the river. The women got water and washed clothes at the river bank.“

    “Was it the Mindenzi River?“ asked Hal, eager to show an informed interest.

    At this, Margarethe’s polite reserve dissolved, and eyes sparkling, she placed the bust of a bearded old man on the table. “Mindenzi. You know it? No, it was a smaller river that soon joined Mindenzi. A British aid company brought pipes. Our villagers dug trenches. My mother helped, and so my grandparents had water for the kitchen. But still the women go to the river to wash clothes.“

    “Your uncle mentioned the Mindenzi, last time I was here. He says it flows through Tarande.“ Hal knew he was once more mispronouncing the name of the place.

    “Tarandawe“ corrected Margarethe, “is the market village of the district. The foreign workers lived there.“

    “My late father, Peter…Peter Sheridan, worked for VSO… the British aid group, in Tarandawe. It was about thirty years ago. Perhaps he helped your mother and others to lay those water pipes.“ Hal was looking directly at Margarethe now. Her left hand  went up to her cheek, before it covered her mouth in an attempt to conceal the soft sigh she emitted. Dabbing under her eyelids, she excused herself, producing a paper tissue from her handbag. Once composed, she looked at Hal. “My mother took me, as a child, to Cabora Bassa. She cooked for the workers. My friend, now Uncle Josam, was there. Sometimes we returned to our village for holidays. You are Hal… Sheridan?“

    Hal nodded.

    “Then you are the son of Bwana Peter, the white boy that drove the Toyota truck?“

    “My father Peter worked in Tanzania after graduation. Yes, Peter Sheridan – he died of cancer in 1998. He was a volunteer in Tarandawe. After a two-year stint he came back to Cork.“

    “My mother, she passed away, so I came to Europe with the help of Josam and Francesca. I think I am now home – if the Dublin office gives me a residence permit. With God’s help, here is my home.“

    Hal selected two carvings of water pot women, and another of a giraffe.

    “I’d like to come here again with my fiancé, Jeanette. We could take you to a restaurant. I’m curious to know more about Tarandawe and my father’s time there.“

    Hal paid Francesca at the cash desk. As he turned towards the exit, Margarethe offered him a business card.

    “I am sure we will meet often.“ She smiled as Hal stuffed the card unread into his shirt pocket. She followed him out and extended her hand in farewell. “You are welcome here always, Hal. Always,“ she said, sounding almost like a sister.

    Back in the Cork flat, Hal put the carvings on his mantelpiece. Sipping lager from a stem glass, he withdrew the business card from his shirt pocket. At the left edge, he saw a silhouette of a palm tree, with Afro Crafts & Groceries prominently centered in green capital letters. Underneath appeared the rubric Manager: Francesca da Silva. In smaller print, at the bottom of the card, Hal read a second rubric – Craft Sales Agent: Margarethe Sichalisi-Sheridan.

    Garreth Byrne worked in schools and promoted agriculture in East & Central Africa, and later taught English in China. He now lives in Leitrim and has no African progeny to declare.

  • A Slice

    Robbie was in what his friends referred to as “swaying tree mode”. This meant the slender greying hipster was pissed, his eyes barely open, and not engaging with anyone but moving slowly side to side, mouthing the lyrics to a song that wasn’t playing. He was tall but no one worried he’d fall over. His skinny jeans were tight enough to turn his long legs into pylons that served as a rock-solid foundation. The ritual had begun. Around 2am, the others’ attention turned to finding a few bags and a session, whereas Robbie exercised his right to abscond via an “Irish goodbye” without a word to his friends, stomach churning, in search of a slice.

    Leaving The Workman’s Club on Wellington Quay, the crisp air off the Liffey hitting his face was somewhat sobering and his eyes opened fully to admire the river’s glow. He stepped in to Di Fontaine’s, and was greeted with a smile from a familiar face, before leaving with an enormous pizza. Parking the big box atop a bin, he dug through his pockets for his headphones. It wasn’t far back to the apartment Robbie shared with his friend Barry, in the Liberties. Jaw clicking, he nursed his “walking home slice”  tearing at the doughy wedge, on the uphill walk past Christchurch, then downhill towards St Patrick’s Cathedral. Against the backdrop of these strikingly lit monuments, he hummed along to Handel’s “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba,” and commended himself for another flawless extrication. Once again he had dodged the eyebrow-licking, coke-fueled shite talk his mates had in store, and unlike them, Robbie would be fresh for training the following morning.

    His roommate, Barry, was probably out on the piss  with his own mates or the Tinder-date-of-the-week. An empty apartment was what Robbie needed. The love of his life was a gorgeous  grey feline. Grimes would be waiting at the foot of the bed, with a hypnotizing purr that would sooth him to sleep. Robbie could see Fallon’s bar on the corner of New Row South and although just minutes away from home, he began to doubt whether he’d make it in time. A nonnegotiable need to piss came over him. Prompted by the swelling between his legs, he scanned the surroundings for the least inappropriate place to have an urgent slash. Relieved that no one was sleeping rough in the alcove at the entrance to the Centz discount store, he seized the opportunity to avoid soiling in his favourite faded jeans. Placing the still warm pizza box on the ground and out of harm’s way, with his back to the road, he released a steady stream of steaming stinking piss.

    Retrieving the box, Robbie arose to meet the flinty eyes of two lads clad in tracksuits. The older one moved closer, mouthing something at him while the younger hung back, smoking a cigarette. Robbie removed an earphone.

    “Giz a slice of yer pizza, Man” the older one demanded. The younger lad laughed at the hipster, blinking and cornered. “Go on Man, don’t be a scabby cunt, just giz a lil’ slice, for fuck sake.” Before Robbie could find any words, the young lad lunged forward, flicking the lit cigarette with precision directly into Robbie’s face, its red embers bursting upwards and into his eyes. The older brother smacked the pizza box out of Robbie’s hands, which opened up, sending several slices and two sealed plastic cups of garlic dip spiraling down to land on the urine-soaked concrete. The guy then grabbed Robbie by the throat, pushing him up against the shop’s metal shutters.  The young one then snatched Robbie’s phone from his hand, severed it from the headphones with a tug and took off running towards Kevin Street.

    Along with a proclivity for skinny jeans, craft beers and ridiculous mustaches, the modern-day hipster harbors a penchant for watching and practicing Mixed Martial Arts. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in particular. Robbie, being no different to his cohorts, trained quite a bit. Once acquired, the mechanics of locking up, taking an unsuspecting cunt down, and chokeholding him into submission was no problem at all. Even for a gangly chap like Robbie. Drunk or not.

    Now on the ground, and with arms flailing wildly, the older brother blurted out threats about how Robbie was going to get “fucking sliced up.” A serenade made brief, once Robbie’s legs and arms hooked in, and he applied enough forearm pressure to choke out the threats, which went from barks to hardly audible gurgles to silent gasps.

    When the guy stopped struggling, Robbie allowed him enough of an airway to breathe. “I’m fuckin’ sorry man…Let me go, and I’ll get your phone back.” His pleading went on for a while and Robbie half expected him to start crying, but he didn’t. It was cold, very cold, and the puddle of piss crept closer.

    A passing couple were kind enough to ring the Guards, but they didn’t care to stick around. Within a couple of minutes the squad car pulled up, and its flashing blue light gleamed across the surface of the puddle, just as Robbie rolled the guy over in to it, face first.

    A female officer cuffed the shivering suspect. “Up to your old tricks, Damien?” asked her senior officer with a smirk. “C’mon O’Reilly, I’m not into anthin’ anymore. This lad fuckin attacked me!” answered the detainee, now in custody and being packed into the back seat of the squad car. O’Reilly turned to Robbie, “Garda Keogh here will take your statement. Have you been drinking, yourself?” Robbie admitted that he had and after giving his statement, Garda Keogh instructed him to present himself at Kevin Street Garda Station, the following day.

    Damien and his brother were known to the Guards, who upon entering the nearby family home, found a bedside locker drawer full of phones and other contraband, in a room the brothers shared. Robbie’s phone was returned to him, as it matched his detailed description. He was advised that he could press charges if he liked, but unless he was hurt, it wasn’t worth the bother. The younger brother was a minor, but Damien awaited sentencing for a slew of more serious offenses.

    Robbie didn’t venture out the following weekend or the one after. He offered no excuses for his absence, nor did anyone ask. When he did eventually resurface, so did the ritual. At least it seemed so, to his mates, but Robbie had employed some imperceptible changes. He became conscious of leaving before getting “too-too” pissed, and he skipped the pizza. Hands free, he walked with only one earphone in, listening to Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries.”

    The little bump of coke he had done was keeping him alert. Barry’s black leather studded belt had been left in a pile of clothes in their laundry room for weeks. It’s buckle featured a removable set of fully functioning brass knuckles. Barry wouldn’t miss them.

    Grinding his teeth, Robbie felt his knuckles pop as he gripped the brass in one sweating palm, jammed in his jacket pocket. He was looking over his shoulder with every couple of paces and distracted by a group of lads crossing the street behind him, he smacked right into someone at the corner of Kevin Street. It was Damien.

    Out of his pocket came Robbie’s fist, cocked and ready to rain down. For weeks he had fantasized about the sound of Damien’s bones crunching, and now he saw one side of Damien’s face was bruised in healing hues of yellowish green. On the other, was a fresh slice. The  pink scar bubbled up and ran diagonally down his cheek.

    Recognizing Robbie in an instant, Damien clocked the gleaming knuckles before shielding his face and screaming, “I’m sorry man, I’m sorry…Sorry!” When Robbie hesitated, Damien dashed down the street, running at an incredible pace.

    At home, Barry had a little session brewing. There were a load of people drinking and smoking weed on the balcony. Grimes was asleep on the couch, unperturbed by the speaker’s base or the voices raised over it which carried through the sliding door someone left ajar. Retrieving her would have drawn unwelcome attention, so soundlessly, Robbie made straight for his room.

    How much debt would you need to be in before a dealer would cut your face, Robbie wondered examining his own mug in the bedroom mirror. Then he conjured a similar scar and finally decided his dilated pupils made him look like an alien. Burying the brass knuckles deep in his sock drawer, he put in earplugs, and switched off his bedside lamp. He tried to have a wank for some relief to calm down but couldn’t stay hard. Robbie was not used to coke.

    Behind closed eyelids, Robbie watched a woman crying. From the kitchen of a dilapidated Dublin flat, she peered out of the window into a littered courtyard, ashing in the sink and wishing her sons would come home. He still heard Damien’s nylon tracksuit swishing in the wind. Beautiful in a way, it was much like the sound of a serrated blade moving backwards and forwards through wood, or maybe bone. In the darkened room, Robbie raised his right hand, barely able to stare at his shaking fingers.

  • DUMAINE

    “I’m leaving.”

    “Oh?”

    “Yes. I’m moving on. Been puttin’it off, but gotta go today.”

    “Baggage ready?”

    “Gonna do that now because it’s getting late.”

    “Why don’t I pack you a tuna fish sandwich, just in case?”

    “Yep. Good idea.”

    In the bedroom, I flung the doors of all three floor-to-ceiling closets open wide, which were designed like the entrance of a cathedral, doors that for the greater glory of God, make man minuscule, put you in your place. The perspective of my many possessions purchased, carefully cleaned and stacked up high in an orderly fashion was somewhere between repulsive and overwhelming but mostly beyond my reach. I selected a few books and that fuzzy bear my parents brought back as a gift from Germany, but little else before closing the suitcase.

    She caught me off guard, intercepting me in the hall on my way out, to hand over a brown paper sack as promised. I’d forgotten she’d offered the favor. Preoccupied, I guess.

    “Listen, there’s a chocolate pudding and an apple in with the tuna fish sandwich too.”

    “Thank you.”

    “Okay, bye-bye”

    Glacial and dark by design, her house inhaled the heat if by the gliding open of a sliding glass door, its hermetic seal was compromised. And like a large lung, the house then exhaled a quixotic draft of cooler air, which carried me with it out on to the balcony. Before she’d bolted the door behind me, no matter how briskly, and believe me she was… The sweet swelter had swallowed me whole.

    Across the street, its source obscured by a high fence hugging lush foliage, smoke was rising. Must be the Mexicans. Like too many magpies, they gathered around their granny on her tiny purpose-built patio. No one was more thrilled than she to be grillin’ again.

    Yes, our side of Bayou St. John was on low boil, but the houses on its opposite bank undulated in a mirage. So I was leaning left, feeling in my bones, a future of possibilities and personal freedom lay that way. Right hand tightening its grip on the sweaty suitcase handle, I stashed the sack lunch under my moist armpit, elbow clamped in to keep it there and descended the wrought iron stairs. Pausing at the bottom, I opened the suitcase to put the brown bag in with the rest of my treasures. Now, really on my way, I was again delayed by the obligatory exchange of pleasantries with Steve, our landlord and neighbor below. As it happens he was walking his well-dressed Chihuahua whose name was N’est-ce pas which is French for “Isn’t it so?” Keeping in mind a direct question can indeed be misperceived by older gentlemen as intrusive, in a carefully modulated tone I dared ask,

    “Pardon me Mr. Steve, but why does your dog have on a colour coordinated raincoat and galoshes?”  At this juncture, in unison we surveyed the quivering creature sporting four knee-high Wellingtons on palsied paws.

    “Because it’s a brand new set I just bought that was too cute to leave in the closet even if there isn’t a cloud in the sky. You gone for good this time?” he answered, giving me the eye and theatrically inspecting my little luggage.

    “Afraid so. You two, do take care.” Turning, I saw mucho macho matching heads. The Mexicans were like one monstrous centipede, lined up as they were for a last look over their high wooden fence. We both yelled “Adios” and waved at them but they did not disperse. Didn’t move a muscle. The scorching sun on my scalp said, don’t take all day for this stand off. With better things to do, I would leave the bayou behind.

    I hadn’t got halfway when I spotted the strangers sitting on their front steps just as if they’d lived here forever. They were smoking those cigarettes that smell better than the store bought ones, but you have to roll them yourself. Though unknown to me and mine, these people were in a really good mood, so pleasant in fact that I paused. Especially on account of how thirsty walking with a heavy suitcase made me, and the hissing sound the ice cold can of Dixie Beer let out when they pulled the crackling metal tab stopped me in my tracks. Without hesitation, I held it to my forehead for a minute then next to my neck and drank it slower than heck, so as not to get one of those excruciating brain freezes, to which we Southerners are prone.

    The new tenants invited me inside. Said I could bring my suitcase with me and I did, gingerly placing it on the coffee table, which frankly it monopolized in an absurd fashion. I sat down on their silky soft sofa, but not before being welcomed to do so. Everything of theirs was smaller than ours, and they smelled strange, but were so nice to show interest in what I cared enough about to carry with me. They confirmed my bear was genuinely German. And though I knew every word in my books by heart, indeed they politely declined to borrow them, just as they didn’t care to share my tuna fish sandwich three ways. Said they’d just eaten and instead offered me one of their piping hot homemade brownies. After I don’t know how long, what most intrigued them was that a midget could memorize her digits. I proved my point by borrowing their pencil and a notepad of pretty purple paper to jot down my home telephone number.

    We were having such fun, I nearly forgot they were foreign. The shades were drawn, and I guess I’d been there a while, when one prolonged blast from the building’s main buzzer led to two terse raps on the first floor apartment’s soft hollow-sounding wooden door. Furthermore, when it swung open, you could’ve knocked me over with a feather. Glaring from the hallway, hands on hips, was Mom.

    Like stumbling on an oasis in the nick of time, an accidental magic had occurred. That haphazard ambience which happens in abandoned colonies with greater frequency than you might imagine. Well, that mystical moment had passed and with a firm grasp on my suitcase, Mom was on the march.

    “Step on a crack, break your momma’s back,” I sang real low, hopscotching on one foot, alongside her back to a home that in my eyes was about the same size as The Superdome. Right or wrong, now that meanders of mine are no longer confined, I see Herbsaint-soaked curbs cloaked in ceramic smiles, their teeth-like tiles intelligently fired in the truest hue of Belgian blue. They spell out street names like: D-A-U-P-H-I-N-E, D-R-Y-A-D-E-S, or D-E-S-I-R-E. But the four corners of a sublime world that will always keeps me squarely entertained are contained in time, and still say D-U-M-A-I-N-E.