At a quarter to four the drizzling rain ceased. A sharp bustling wind
arose. It came screaming down from the mountains upon Dublin. It was a
hard, mountainous wind, a lean, sulky, snowy wind, that rushed through
the sleeping city savagely, so that even the drops of rain on the
muddy sidewalks leaned over before it, with frills on them.
The clouds arose, their hanging rumps cut away by the newborn wind.
They hung high up in the heavens, gashed and torn, with a sour
expression on their grey, slattern bodies. Here and there a rent came
in the dishevelled panorama of cloud and the sky appeared, blue and
chaste and a long way off.
This change in the mood of nature occurred when Gypo was bounding away
from the Bogey Hole, trembling shakily with excess of energy. He ran
through a short, narrow lane, so narrow that his shoulders grazed
either side as he dashed through. He crossed a thoroughfare in four
strides, casting a look on either side as he leaped across. He saw a
sloppy roadway on one side, with a watchman’s glowing brazier at the
far end and on the other side a hill. Tall tenement houses lined the
thoroughfare, their battered old walls rambling up towards the sky,
their squalor hidden by the majesty of the night.
He fled across the road and entered a dark archway. Then he bumped
suddenly against an old cart and went head-over-heels with a smothered
exclamation. The concussion and weight of his body propelled the cart
a distance of three yards on its crazy wheels, with the shafts
scraping along the ground. He struggled to his feet and was about to
rush away again, when a human voice, coming from beneath him, made him
stand still. He looked down fiercely. It was only some homeless
derelict, who used the archway and the cart as a house and a bed.
“The curse of—” began a cracked, shivering voice.
Gypo was gone, with a clatter of boots, over the cobblestones of the
archway. He debouched into a wide street of new, red-brick houses. He
gripped a wall and peered around him, panting for breath, wild with
the excitement of his escape.
It was then that he noticed the wind, the lifting clouds, and the
far-away sky. He smelt the wind as he breathed in great gasps through
his nostrils, to ease the pressure on his heart and lungs. Then
suddenly, he longed for the mountains and the wide undulating plains
and the rocky passes and the swift-flowing rivers, away to the south
in his own country. Freedom and solitude and quiet, with only the wind
coming through the bog heather! Hiding in some rocky fastness of the
mountains, listening to the wind! Away, away, where nobody could catch
him! To the mountains! To the mountains! Dark blue mountains with
bulging sides and little sheep roaming over them, that he could catch
and kill!
A wild ferocity of joy overcame him. He stared with dilated nostrils
ahead into the rim of the sky above the houses, towards the south. He
gazed, as if he were measuring the distance between him and the
mountains, so as to take a giant leap, that would carry him at once
into the heart of their solitude.
Then he bent down, looking ahead intently. He spat on his hands. He
put his hand to his head to settle his hat. But his hat was not there.
His skull was bare and damp. He felt all over it and found a patch of
clotted blood at the rear base, where it had been kicked during the
struggle in the inquiry room. He took no notice of the blood, but kept
feeling all over the skull, with a dazed look in his eyes, muttering:
“What am I to do without a hat? I had it this two years.”
In the same dazed way he felt all over his body. He uttered a little
shout. He had found it in his trousers pocket, where he had stuffed
it, during the inquiry, when he heard that ominous ring in Gallagher’s
voice. He clapped it on to his skull, all wrinkled and tattered and
tiny. He beat it with his palms, as if it were a mattress. Then, with
a gentle sigh, he darted away, headed due south for the mountains.
He ran recklessly, without thinking of the way, or taking any
precautions. It was the slum district which he knew so well, the
district that enclosed Titt Street, the brothels, the Bogey Hole,
tenement houses, churches, pawnshops, public-houses, ruins, filth,
crime, beautiful women, resplendent idealism in damp cellars, saints
starving in garrets, the most lurid examples of debauchery and vice,
all living thigh to thigh, breast to breast, in that fœtid morass on
the north bank of the Liffey. He ran through narrow streets and great,
wide, yawning streets, lanes and archways, streets patched and
buttressed, with banks of earth from fallen houses almost damming them
in places, pavements strewn with offal, soddened by the rain.
He never made a mistake. He was headed for the mountains. The smell of
the mountains was in his nostrils, flooding his lungs, making his
heart pant with longing.
At last he entered Beresford Place and saw the river. Instinctively he
paused, leaning against a wall, to examine the Bridge. He gasped and
trembled.
Two men were standing at the near side of the Butt Bridge. They had
already forestalled him. He listened. He toyed with a last hope. He
moved cautiously across the open space, to reach the shelter of the
ruins of the Custom House. He reached it. He peered closer at the men.
They were still indistinct. After all, they might be robbers, workmen,
homeless fellows trying to pass the night, students coming from the
brothels and having a last drunken argument on their way home. He
crawled nearer. Then his little eyes blinked and narrowed.
One of the men crouched against the biting wind. Gypo recognized the
crouching figure silhouetted against the sky. It was Mulholland. And
the other man, standing stiff, with his hands in his pockets, was
Peter Hackett.
Gypo’s head became hot and stuffy. His eyes closed, as a sudden pain
struck him in the forehead. He had an impulse to rush forward at the
two men and strangle them. But he did not move. He was not afraid of
the two of them, in spite of their being armed. He did not fear their
guns. But they were part of the Organization. The Organization was at
the Bridge. It had got there before him. He could not pass.
Gallagher’s cold, glassy eyes were on the Bridge. He could not pass.
The smell of the mountains left his lungs and his nostrils. The wind
still blew about his crouching body. But it had lost its odour. Now it
was only sharp and biting, an enemy that drove him backwards, skulking
and dumbfounded. Where was it driving him? Where was it driving him?
He crouched away before it, without taking counsel with himself, with
his head hanging limply on his breast. He crouched across the open
space and entered a roadway that led northwards. There was nothing
within him with which he could take counsel. Within him he was blank
and dark, like a bottomless abyss filled with thick fog. His hulking
figure was driven by the wind to some boundless region where there was
no shelter. He was driven by the wind to some boundless region where
everything was coloured a dim grey, amorphous, terrible.
The vision of an abyss, grey, without shape, swayed before his eyes as
he strode northwards, moving uncertainly, staggering slightly, without
guidance. His footsteps became slower. He came to a halt and looked
about him curiously. He was under a railway bridge that crossed the
street sideways over his head, encased in a black covering. A little
dark laneway opened to his right. He walked three paces up the laneway
and leaned his shoulder against the damp wall.
There was shelter there. The wind did not come in. Only an odd gust
swivelled around the corner and stirred the damp, musty air for a
dying moment. It was quiet and dark, like the interior of a cave. He
sighed.
Gradually he grew composed. He grew calm and very weary. He wanted to
lie down and go to sleep for a long, long time. There was no use
struggling any farther. He was alone. The darkness of the night
enveloped him.
“There’s nobody here,” he murmured aloud.
The ground was a puddle. The walls were blank. He felt with his feet,
seeking a dry spot to lie down. Everywhere his boot sank into a
puddle. He cursed and moved on a pace. He felt again with his feet.
Still more puddles. He moved along still farther and tried again. No
use. Then he began to walk along mechanically, feeling the ground at
intervals. Then he kept walking slowly without feeling the ground. He
had forgotten about lying down.
He came to the end of the lane and saw a wide street in front of him.
He halted excitedly.
“Where am I going?” he cried aloud.
He started at the sound of his voice and peered suspiciously over his
shoulder. Of course there was nobody there. Then he steadied himself
and tried to think of where he was and what had happened. It was a
terrific struggle.
Slowly he began to remember recent events. Fact after fact came
prowling into his brain. Soon the whole series of events stood piled
there in a crazy heap. Everything rushed towards that heap with
increasing rapidity, but nothing could be abstracted from it. It was
just as if the facts were sinking in a puddle and disappearing. It was
utterly impossible for him to reason out a plan of action.
“I must make a plan,” he murmured aloud.
In answer to this exhortation came a vision of Gallagher’s glittering
eyes. They fascinated him. He forgot about a plan. A horde of things
crashed together in his brain making an infernal buzz. He lost control
of himself and ran about under the archway, striking out with his
hands and feet madly, trying to fight the cargo of things that were
jammed together in his brain. It was that insensate rage that
overcomes strong men at times, when they have nothing upon which to
vent their fury, no physical opponent.
He worked madly at this curious exercise for fully five minutes. Then
he stopped, with perspiration streaming from his forehead. He felt
better. His head was clear. He was again conscious of a grim
determination to escape, to outwit those fellows who were on the
Bridge. An idea that he thought amazingly cunning occurred to him, an
idea to escape towards the south, by making a wide detour towards the
north, up by the North Circular Road to Phœnix Park, then westwards
through the Park, then southwards again by Dolphin’s Barn. He was
toying with the route pleasantly when he was suddenly interrupted by a
sound of feet.
Trup, trap, trup, trap . . . came the sound of heavy feet coming down
the street in front of him. Two policemen on their beat were coming
along slowly, rattling door chains as they came. Gypo’s heart began to
beat with terror. He thought they were looking for him. In his
bewilderment he could not understand that he was now under police
protection, an informer. He forgot that he had only to rush up to them
and say that the Revolutionary Organization had condemned him to death
and were now tracking him, in order to be taken to a police barracks,
into safety. On the contrary, he still regarded them as his enemies.
His mentality had not yet accustomed itself to the change that his
going in the police-station that evening had wrought in his condition.
To his understanding he was still a revolutionary. He was not at all
conscious of being an informer, or a friend of law and order, a
protégé of the police.
He bolted headlong out of the laneway and clattered away across the
street. He wheeled to the right, ran ten yards and then dived into
another lane. He continued his flight without stopping. He ran without
purpose, without guidance, driven northwards by panic and the
impossibility of thought. He ran headlong in all directions, into a
street, down its course, then to the left, back again in a parallel
line, down once more the street he had left, passing several times the
same corner in his mad flight. He ran desperately, as if he were
chasing some elusive sprite that delighted in turning on its own
tracks. He floundered through pools. He struggled on his hands and
knees over waste plots. He crushed violently through holes in torn
walls. He climbed over piles of bricks, over walls, jumped into
backyards and then climbed back again into another street. He was
scratched, covered with mud, dripping wet. His eyes were bloodshot.
Then suddenly a clock struck the half-hour close by him. It was
half-past four. He stopped dead, attracted by the tolling of the
clock. It was not the sound but the remembrance it brought. He knew
that clock. It was near Katie Fox’s house where he used to sleep. He
stood in the middle of a narrow lane, with his legs wide apart and his
chest and shoulders thrust forward listening to it. His lips were
opened wide.
He stood, like an uncouth, half-formed thing, alone in the half-grey
shadows of the night, wondering at strange things.
“It’s two turns from here,” he murmured, “first to the left, then to
the right. She should be in be now. That must be three or four
o’clock.”
Now he moved carefully, listening for sounds and planting his feet
lightly, close to the side of the lane. He turned to the left, went
down fifty yards and then turned to the right. He entered a kind of
circular square, a crescent, with a church standing in the middle. He
moved around the crescent until he reached the other side of the
church. There, at the corner of a little cul-de-sac, was the house in
which Katie Fox had a room, about fifteen yards away from the church.
All the houses in the little square were tenement houses, old, dusty
and grey, tattered, sordid, with broken panes in their windows. Nearly
all the street doors were ajar. There was nothing to steal within.
Gypo deferentially tipped his hat to the church as he passed it. He
entered the doorway of Katie Fox’s house. The hallway was pitch black.
He stood for a few moments peering around in the darkness. Then he saw
a night-light on the first landing. He recognized it as the light
placed there every evening by Mrs. Delaney, who had become a religious
maniac since her son was killed in the revolution of 1916. He had been
killed while he was running along the streets, wounded, crying out for
shelter.
“If he ever comes home at night,” whispered Mrs. Delaney
confidentially to everybody, “he’ll see the light burnin’ an’ he’ll
know I’m in. God is good to His own people an’ He’ll look after me
Johnny.”
Gypo felt comforted at seeing the night-light. He moved noiselessly up
the stairs until he reached it. When he was passing it, rounding the
angle of the stairs, he paused, with his hand on the wooden banister
and looked at it. For some reason or other he tiptoed towards it,
leaned out when he was within two feet of it, and blew it out. Then he
started and looked about him wildly. It was pitch dark again.
“That’s better,” he said with a little sigh.
He mounted the stairs steadily. They remained good until he reached
the third floor. Then he had to move up a narrow, rickety, broken
stairs to the top floor, where Katie Fox had a room. He made an awful
noise, but it disturbed nobody. He heard a child crying when he got
near the top of the stairs. The child belonged to Tim Flanagan, an
unemployed man, who occupied the opposite room to Katie Fox on the top
landing. He lived there with his wife and three children. The baby had
the measles and the other two children were awake. One child was
laughing. Gypo could distinguish Flanagan’s weak, timorous voice,
trying to soothe the children.
Gypo stood outside the door to the left, Katie Fox’s door. He
listened. A shaft of light streamed through the keyhole and through a
large, round hole in the bottom of the door. A large piece of the door
had been gnawed away by a stray dog that Katie Fox brought home one
night. He bit his way out of the room as soon as he got a meal. Gypo
listened. Katie Fox was talking within. Gypo knocked.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s only me, Katie. Open the door.”
“Mother o’ Mercy,” she screeched, “it’s his ghost. It’s his ghost,
Louisa. Louisa, will ye hide me somewhere, for God’s sake!”
“Ghost yer gran’mother,” came a cracked, old voice. “Get up an’ open
the door will ye, till we see what he wants.”
“No, no—” began Katie’s voice again.
Gypo put his shoulder to the door, burst the piece of string that
fastened it on the inside to a nail in the wall, and flung the door
open wide. He stalked into the room.
At first the whole room appeared to be a blue bank of fog. Then the
blue mist dissipated gradually. The room assumed proportions. Things
swam out of the mist towards him gracefully, in the order of their
importance. First came the lamp. It was placed on the black, wooden
mantelpiece over the fireplace. It was an ordinary tin paraffin lamp,
painted red. The chimney was three-parts black. Next came the
fireplace. There was a huge, open grate, with a turf fire burning in
it. The fire was more like the remains of a funeral pyre, because the
ashes had accumulated for weeks. The flaming peat sods lay stretched
like fallen logs on the top of the great pile of yellow ashes. Next
came the bed, with Louisa Cummins lying in one corner of it.
The bed was so huge that it might be mistaken for anything were it not
supported by four thick wooden posts and had a canopy over it, at the
head, after the fashion of those beds that are called in Irish country
places “Archbishops’ Beds.” The bed-clothes were indescribable.
Everything was pitched on to the bed and everything stayed there.
Louisa Cummins lived in the bed most of the day. She had done so for
eight years, since she became “bedridden” as the result of “injuries”
received from the police, one night she was arrested on a charge of
trafficking in immorality. She was quite strong and healthy. She did
all her work in bed. The blankets were gathered about her bulky person
in the far corner, near the wall. In the other corner, Katie Fox’s
corner, there was a couple or so of tattered blankets. The foot of the
bed was heaped with junk of all sorts, from a notched mug, out of
which the old lady drank her tea, to a statue of Saint Joseph that
hung on the bed-post, suspended from a thick nail by a rough, knotted
cord. The cord was around the statue’s neck, in a noose. The statue
was not suspended there out of crude respect, as might be supposed. It
was hung there as a blasphemous protest against the incompetence of
the saint. Four years before she had made a Novena to Saint Joseph,
requesting a cure for muscular rheumatism, and because her request was
not granted she hung up the statue by the neck.
When Gypo’s eyes found her through the fog, she was hidden to the chin
beneath a pile of blankets and clothes of all sorts, up against the
wall. She lay on her side, with her white, shrivelled head ensconced
in a grey pillow, that had no case to cover it. The feathers protruded
from the pillow. The old woman’s white hair was strewn about the
pillow and the bed-clothes, like strands of seaweed floating on the
surface of a shallow sea at low tide. Her mouth was wide open, in an
ogreish fashion, displaying red gums and four yellow teeth, cropping
up at unequal distances along her jaws; four, crooked, yellow fangs.
Her eyes alone showed life and intelligence. They were small, fierce,
blue eyes, blazing with cunning and avarice.
Her body, hidden beneath the clothes, resembled a mountain that had
been reduced to a shapeless pulp by concussion.
Gypo surveyed her without any emotion. Then he looked around for
Katie. He saw her standing in the corner behind the door. She was
still dressed as he had met her in the public-house early in the
evening. But her dress had become dishevelled. Her face had changed.
It had changed in a strange manner. It had lost the careworn, pinched
expression. Her eyes were no longer tired. Her face was flushed and
full. The skin was loose. The mouth was firm, with a voluptuous
softness in the lips. Her eyes flashed bright. They had the calm
aggressiveness of healthy, energetic women, who are passing from one
success to another, the calm, aggressive flash of satisfied desire and
of vaulting ambition. While, in spite of all that, her hands,
clutching her throat, trembled in apparent terror, in contradiction to
the repose and vitality of her face. Her feet, too, danced
spasmodically.
“What’s the matter with ye, Katie?” said Gypo. “What’s that ye were
sayin’ about me ghost?”
He spoke in a hoarse, morose whisper.
“God!” exclaimed Katie.
She took her hands away from her throat and clasped them behind her
back, with the movement of one offered an objectionable thing. Then
she fled to the fire at great speed. She leaned her back against the
wall to the right of the fireplace and gaped at Gypo. She motioned to
him with her head.
“Shut that door,” she said in a whisper. “Shut the door and come in.”
Gypo turned to the door silently and began to tie the two pieces of
broken string to fasten it once more.
“Where have ye ben?” she whispered. “O, Lord! Ye put the heart
crosswise in me.”
Gypo tied the door and stalked slowly and quietly to the hearth. He
stood still, glanced towards the old woman and then looked with open
lips at Katie.
“They’re after me, Katie,” he muttered with a shudder.
There was a silence. Gypo shuddered again and sat down in front of the
fire. He sat on the floor, with his elbows resting on his knees,
stretching out his hands to the blaze.
Katie looked at him with glittering eyes. She stood against the wall,
motionless. Her face had very white beneath her crumpled red hat. Her
eyes glittered. Her upper lip was gathered together, frilled.
The old woman in the bed glanced from Gypo to Katie and from Katie to
Gypo. Her eyes danced with merriment. She kept cuddling herself, as if
in an ecstasy of enjoyment.
“What are ye talkin’ about?” said Katie at length.
“Th’ Organization is after me,” he muttered without looking at her.
“Commandant Gallagher is goin’ to plug me. I escaped outa the cell in
the Bogey Hole.”
“What are they goin’ to plug ye for? In the name o’ goodness, what are
they goin’ to plug ye for?”
Katie Fox’s voice was cold and passionless, but Gypo did not notice.
She had a queer, thin smile on her lips, but Gypo did not look at her
face. She had a flashing light in her eyes as she spoke, but Gypo had
not seen it. He was staring dreamily into the fire. He was tired out
and sleepy. There was no use keeping watch any longer. He was tired,
tired, tired. Tired and sleepy. What was the use of keeping watch any
longer? Sleep, sleep, sleep. Then he would go straight to the south.
He would rush to the south with the wind, through all obstacles.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
“It doesn’t matter what they’re after me for,” he muttered.
There was another silence.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
“They want to get me outa their way,” he mumbled again. “But they’re
not goin’ to get me. Katie, I’m goin’ to flop here for the night. I’ll
stay till to-morrow night. Then I’m going south. Here’s all the money
I have.”
He rummaged in his trousers pocket and brought out on his palm four
shillings and sixpence. He handed it to her. She approached and held
out her right hand for it, with a mincing movement.
“Gimme that money. Gimme that money,” screamed the old woman from the
bed. She struggled to sit up.
“You shut up, Louisa,” growled Gypo, half turning towards her across
his shoulder. “Shut up or I’ll flatten ye.”
The old woman collapsed, grinning. Then she caught up a stick that lay
beside her in the bed. She shook the stick at Katie Fox.
“She robs me, she robs me,” she wailed, in a thin, cracked voice.
“I’ll sleep here on the floor, Katie,” said Gypo. “Hey, Katie. I’ll
sleep here in front o’ the fire. Katie, what’s the matter with ye? Why
don’t ye talk to me?” Katie burst into laughter. She had sat down on a
low stool to the left of the fire on receiving the money. Now she
jumped to her feet and laughed. It was a queer, dry laugh. There was a
dreamy look in her eyes. She looked at the floor, wrapped in thought.
“Are ye drunk or what’s the matter with ye?” grumbled Gypo.
“There’s nothin’ at all the matter with me,” murmured Katie dreamily,
still looking at the floor.
Then she drew in a deep breath and shrugged herself. She became alive
and energetic again, wide awake, with piercing eyes. She began to talk
at an amazing speed, with her arms crossed on her breasts.
“Sure, Gypo,” she said in a loud, hilarious voice, “ye can sleep here
till the crack o’ doom if ye like. Sure enough, Connemara Maggie tole
me about Bartly Mulholland comin’ lookin’ for ye. She came into Biddy
Burke’s as drunk as a lord, an’ she outs with a yarn about Bartly
puttin’ a gun to ye’ head an’ drivin’ ye up the street in front o’
him.”
“Yer a liar, she didn’t,” growled Gypo, starting slightly.
“Maybe she didn’t say that exactly,” continued Katie, “but——”
“Did she give ye a quid I gave her to give ye?”
“A quid? Did ye give her a quid for me? Well, of all the liars! Well,
of all the robbers! Of all the dirty sons of pock-faced tailors! She
takes the cooked biscuit. Troth then, she only gev me ten bob an’ I
had to fight her for that. O’ course I’m sayin’ nothin’ about things I
might say a lot about, but——”
“Oh! less o’ yer gab,” growled Gypo, feeling behind him on the floor
with his hand. “I’m not in humour for yer gab, Katie.”
“Don’t lie on the floor,” she cried solicitously. “Get into the bed.
Lie in my corner. Don’t mind, Louisa. The corner is mine. I can let
who I like int’ it. Louisa, if ye don’t lie still I’ll lave ye for
dead as sure as Our Lord was crucified. So I will. Well what could ye
expect? An’ I’m sayin’ nothin’ now, Gypo, seein’ the position yer in,
but it’s the price o’ ye all the same. I hope ye don’t mind me
speakin’ me mind out. It’s the price o’ ye for lavin’ them that were
kind to ye, an’ throwin’ yer money away on a strap like that. But sure
me poor mother used to say, Lord have mercy on her——”
“Get outa here, get outa here,” screamed the old woman, waving her
stick.
Gypo had thrown himself on the bed on his back. The old lady began to
beat him feebly about the body with her stick. He took no notice of
her. He fumbled with the heap of tattered blankets, arranging them
about his legs.
Katie Fox caught up the tongs and approached the bed sideways, making
furtive signs to the old woman, urging her secretly to keep quiet.
The old woman subsided, muttering something. Katie went back to the
fire and put down the tongs. She continued to talk. She was rapidly
becoming more excited. Her eyes had now a look of insanity in them.
Her lips were constantly becoming wreathed with smiles, after the
manner of a lunatic who is thinking of some demoniac buffoonery in his
muddled brain.
“Though few people know it,” she cried arrogantly, looking at the
door, while she put a cigarette in her mouth, “me poor mother was a
born lady. Put that in yer pipe, Louisa Cummins, and try an’ smoke it.
Yev given me dog’s abuse since I came into yer rotten pigsty of a
room, but still an’ all ye know yer not fit to wipe me shoes. So I
don’t give a damn.”
“Yerra, d’ye hear her, d’ye hear her?” croaked Louisa Cummins.
She began to laugh, making a noise in her throat like a hen, that
quaint, cunning, querulous sound, that a hen makes at night, when
disturbed during her roosting hours.
Gypo had arranged the clothes to his satisfaction. The blankets
covered his body up to his chest. His eyes began to close. His little,
round hat still remained on his head, crushed down over his forehead.
There was a continual murmur in his brain. The sounds, the talk, the
smells about him no longer had any meaning.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Danger, fear, everything was forgotten, but his desire to sleep.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
“Yerrah, is it an informer I’m lyin’ beside?” screamed the old woman
again, trying to rise with fury. “Get out, get out. There’s blood on
yer hands. There’s——”
“Lie down or I’ll brain ye,” hissed Katie, rushing once more to the
bed.
With a weary sigh Gypo stretched out his left hand and dropped it
across the body of the old woman. She subsided under the weight of the
massive hand. It lay across her, relaxed and tired. She peered at it
curiously, around the edge of her blankets. Maybe she peered at it in
terror. Who knows what emotions were concealed behind that hideous
skull?
Gypo did not look at her. His eyes were almost closed. His nostrils
were expanding and contracting noiselessly.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Then a mad rush to the mountains.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
“Blast it for a story,” cried Katie Fox, stamping on the floor.
She walked to the middle of the floor. Then she folded her arms and
stood with her legs wide apart and her chest thrown out, gazing at the
dim wall with glittering eyes. She threw back her head and laughed.
“Amn’t I the fool?” she cried. “Oh! amn’t I the fool? Me that could
walk with the finest men in the land! Do ye know that me gran’father
was the Duke o’ Clonliffey? Do ye know that? An’ me mother was related
to royalty on her father’s side. Not to the King of England either,
but to me bould King o’ Spain, where they grow oranges an’ ye can
drink wine out of a well like water from the Shannon. Sure it’s there
where I was born an’ reared, in a palace as big as the County
Waterford, with archbishops waitin’ at table on me, with red napkins
on their arms, an’ a rale lady——”
“Yerrah, will ye hould yer whist,” piped the old woman.
She tried to brandish her stick and to disengage herself from the hand
that lay on top of her. But the hand stiffened for a moment. She was
pressed down beneath it. Then the hand relaxed again.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Gypo’s eyes opened wide for a moment. Then he closed them. Everything
in his mind became a blur. Nightmares stood massed in his brain ready
to rush in on the platform of his sleeping mind and carry on their mad
acting, as soon as his being soared off, bound in sleep. He had
already surrendered to these nightmares.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Katie Fox looked at him cunningly for a moment. Her face hardened and
her eyes narrowed to points. Then she glanced away again, towards the
wall. Her lower lip dropped. Her eyes distended. She puffed twice at
her cigarette. She began to talk again.
“I could tell ye stories about them all, Gypo,” she cried, waving her
arm wildly in Gypo’s direction. “I could tell ye, so I could, but
what’s the use of tellin’? Wha’? What’s the use of anythin’? An’ Fr.
Conroy refused to give me absolution. Well, he can go to hell. I can
get along without his absolution. I’m not afraid o’ hell. Oh, Mother
o’ Mercy!” she cried, suddenly crossing herself; “what have I said?
What——”
“Ha! Cross yersel’, cross yersel’,” croaked Louisa Cummins. “But it’s
no good to ye. Down ye’ll go. Down ye’ll go. Ha, ha, ha!”
“There’s a curse on me family, Louisa, since me second cousin the
Duchess of . . . of . . . of . . . where is that place she was Duchess
of? . . . I forget it, although I was there often with me mother. It’s
somewhere out be Killiney. Well, she put a curse on me family anyway.
She used to have thirteen monkeys sittin’ at the breakfast table with
her.”
“Yer a liar, yer a liar,” cried the old woman in a sudden fury. “She
couldn’t have thirteen monkeys. She couldn’t have thirteen. It’s them
drugs yer takin’ that’s gone to yer head. Thirteen! Foo!”
Gypo mumbled something in a tremendous whisper. Both women looked at
him. His lips were moving, but the words were unintelligible. His
massive chest heaved up to an enormous extent and collapsed again
slowly, with a great outrush of breath from the nostrils. His tawny
face stood out impassively in the glimmer of the firelight. It looked
sorrowful and oppressed.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
He was wafted away by heavy gusts of sleep, to the thunderous music of
fantastic nightmares. Primeval memories assumed form in the clouds of
sleep that pressed down about him. They assumed form and shape, the
shape of the beings that pursued him.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
His strength was becoming unbound, dissolved in sleep, loosened out
and swaying limply on vapours of sleep.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
“D’ye know what I’m goin’ to tell ye, Louisa?” continued Katie in a
low, hushed voice. “When I’m dead they’re goin’ to canonize me. Then
I’ll have a holy well out on the Malahide Road, an’ I’ll put a spell
on everybody I don’t like, an’ make them get up in the middle o’ the
night, an’ walk out barefoot to the well, to drink three cupfuls o’
the holy water. An’ never knowin’ that I’ll have it poisoned. This is
a queer world, Louisa, an’ ye’ll soon be out of it, ’cos yer——”
“Sorra a fear o’ me,” croaked the old woman. “I’ll dance on yer grave.
Ye little rip o’ divilment. Yer not the first nor the fifth that has
come into me house this ten years an’ gone the same road. No yer not.
An’ ye won’t be the last. Oho! Ye all got pretty faces. Ye all get the
fine strong men to kiss ye. But old, dirty-faced Louisa Cummins ’ll
dance on yer graves. She dances on yer graves. So she does. Now what
are ye doin’ with him? Are ye puttin’ yer evil spell on him? Informer
an’ all that he is, I’ll not let ye put yer evil spell on him. I’ll
not let ye do that. Go away from the bed.”
Katie had come to the bed and had bent down with her left ear to
Gypo’s face, listening to his breathing. She raised her face to look
at the old woman.
“He’s dead asleep,” she whispered with a smile.
“Well? Is that queer?”
“Don’t wake him while I’m gone, Louisa.”
“Where are ye goin’?”
“Mind yer own business, Louisa. I’m givin’ ye warnin’.”
“Is it to the polis yer goin’?”
“Don’t talk so loud. It’s not to the polis I’m goin’. I’m just goin’
out.”
“Ha! Yer goin’ to inform on him ye rip o’ divilment. Yer goin’ to
inform on him.”
“It’s nothin’ o’ the kind. Isn’t he an informer? Don’t make a noise.
Don’t waken him or they’ll fill ye full o’ lead when they come. I’m
givin’ ye this warnin’. Shut up.”
She moved backwards to the door, with her hand held out threateningly
towards the old woman. The old woman looked after her. Her mouth was
wide open. Her eyes roamed about. Then Katie disappeared out the door.
Her shoes went tapping down the stairs. The banisters creaked. The
room was still, except for Gypo’s heavy breathing.
The old woman remained motionless for several seconds, looking towards
the door. Then she groped for her stick and tried to rouse Gypo with
it. But Gypo’s arm still lay across her body holding it down. In his
sleep it stiffened and held her down. She peered at it and frowned.
She dropped the stick and smiled.
“Ha!” she gurgled, “she’s gone to inform on ye, me fine boyo. They’ll
soon be here after ye. Trust a woman, trust a devil. She’ll be the
ruin o’ ye, me bould warrior. An’ many’s the fine strappin’ woman from
yer own country would give her two eyes for a night with ye. An’ here
ye lie, asleep an’ weak, with the weariness o’ death on ye. Ha! The
divil mend the lot o’ ye. Ha! There ye are now. Ha! There ye are now
an’ be damned to ye. Ha! Ha!”
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Sleep and strange dreams.