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Icarus

Volume Sixty-OneIssue One

November 2010

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StaffEditors

Deputy Editor

Copy-Editor

Deputy Copy-Editor

Design and Layout

Artwork

Administrative Staff

Joanne O’Leary Sue Rainsford

Jonathan Creasy

Fionnuala Barrett

Dominica Williams

Eoin Nolan

Kerstina Mortensen

Tim Smyth Gráinne Clear

Special Thanks to:Darryl Jones, Diane Sadler, everyone in the English Department of Trinity College Dublin, everyone at DU Publications, family, friends and well-wishers.

Icarus is funded in part by a grant by the DU Publications committee and by a grant from the TCD School of English. Icarus is a fully participating member of the Press Council of Ireland. Serious complaints, or indeed serious compliments, can be made to: The Editor, Icarus, House 6, Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Submissions of poetry, prose, drama and artwork can be made to:

icarusmagsubmissions@gmail.com

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ContentsEditorial......................

---Poetry---

Cædmon......................Inside the Ivory Hive...Dawning......................English Class...............For Ophelia .................First Love ...................Dún Aonghusa ............The Voice ....................Dragon Burger.............

---Prose---

The Long Finger ..........Knock on Wood............Chapter Forty..............Frederick B. Benway....

---Drama---

Child of Lir..................

------

Biographies .................

Page 4

Page 6Page 7Page 8Page 9Page 10Page 11Page 12Page 14Page 15

Page 16Page 24Page 31Page 36

Page 41

Page 47

.............Conor Leahy................ Breda Joy.... Arthur BroomfieldLinnea Inga Haviland....... Kate McNamara........Patrick O’Dwyer............Andrew King.........Dimitri Polozov........... Jeff Becklund

.............David LynchMonkia McGreal Viola...................Sam Coll........... Cathal Wogan

Clara Kiyoko Kumagai

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Editorial“...we cannot grasp anything human, unless we start from the feel of the sacred.” − Carlo Levi

After the colourful, vintage charm of last year’s wonderful anthology issue, Icarus, Volume 61, Issue 1, may seem a little quiet, somewhat austere or full of echoes. It can be hard to begin to build, from something which feels so much like a pinnacle. This volume is a sort of beginning, and our hope is that it is worthy to stand alone. The objective in putting this issue together was to aim for simplicity, to allow the literary texts themselves to carry the burden of the fascination. Icarus is a student publication but its history and position in the literary culture of this country ensures it carries with it an expectation. It is difficult to balance prestige with the aesthetic of a college magazine; we frequently find ourselves confronted with smatterings of brilliance straining to be worthy artistic offerings. In this issue we have found in each piece of writing, that flash of something exceptional or, as Levi would have it, something “sacred”. If art is a way of ordering our perceptions of what it is to be a human being, then each piece here represents a voice, calling out to its other, and that is you, the reader. As editors, if we have done our job, then our presence is imperceptible and the work addresses itself directly to its audience.

That said, it is important that we acknowledge the contribution of our wonderful team, without whom this issue would not have taken shape. We are blessed with scrupulous copy-editors and a diligent deputy editor for whom no task is too big or too small. We would also like to thank our superb graphics and layout person, who persevered through everything from our indecision over the shade of cream in the paper samples, to our quest to find the perfect font. He has been the bodily manifestation of patience and good humour.

We feel that the poetry, fiction and drama pieces here represent a constellation of the best that Trinity has to offer (and what it has to offer is much). In reading this, we hope that you will uncover in the works what endeared them to us, and appreciate their inclusion in the issue.

...Oh be droll, be jolly, and be temperate! Do not

frighten me more than you have to! I must live forever. − Frank O’Hara, “The Critic”

Joanne O’Leary Sue Rainsford

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Cædmon,Who whispered once into the panther’s earA necessary song. And so it goesThat even that was tempted to the tonsure.

Who leads one to resent the yellow sky,The silver lakes at Whitby, the tall rain,And all such doctrine of the light and air.

Who knew when Death, like an enormous bird,Would bear him off, and therefore curled his tongueTo the Viaticum. Or so they say.

Cædmon,Withered limbs are filling up.A thirsty frost resolves itself.Don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking to you.

Conor Leahy

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Inside the Ivory Hive A guard in yellow and black hoversabout the open mouth. Pass through.Cast the tumult behind you:a poppy shedding a papery petal.Hear the hum. Feel the cobblesundulate underfoot: petrified eggs.In her dim chamber with minionsshadowed round her, the queendrowses under pollen hues. Workersteem over dense combs, shelf on shelf.A golden apple of spun honeygapes with holes: honied birdsongtrickles from filigreed beaks.

Breda Joy

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Dawning It may have been in his blue phase,in the way that things make senseto us eventually,the white-skimmed cones that helater called peakswere high enough to be trivial,that he pondered the absenceof detail,the formlessness of the chora. All this matters, he thought,as he gazed at the blue haze,from these beginnings.

It was then he saw the lightthat may have been suntaking issuedefining the mountain topscrubbed and shapinga reality that made himfeel at home.

Arthur Broomfield

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English ClassEye right sun iceend spill sow L,ado nut seawhite each ears tillmeat ewe rear wrightWatt ear adoon lead tough aletat pay per two.

Eye git some ad,beak us use E,et al. mix purr factsince two me.

Linnea Inga Haviland

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For OpheliaYou were in my dream (or nightmare).We were in the kitchen, yellow tablecloths,blue napkins, silverware newly polished, andyou were at the hob, making pancakes becausethey were my favourite, with batter spatteredon your red plastic-cloth apronwith the loaves of bread pattern,and when you turned to me with my plate,your face was blank.

Not blank, exactly. You had no face, andtear-streaked featureless skin asyou handed me my breakfast.I did not ask you if you were all right.I ate because you fed me, and then I spilled maple syrup over our yellow tablecloth,and

you stood there and I knewthat if you had a mouth you wouldhave made a high-pitched sound,breathless, hysterical ...

and I ignored you and dampeneda yellow striped clothand mopped up the syrup.

When I awokemy pillow was drenched.

Kate McNamara

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First LoveShe must have seen me first from the dancefloor because by the time I saw her from the balcony, she had already turned away.

Patrick O’Dwyer

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Dún AonghusaLank, dank, bead-streaked hairis yanked back with fist gripped intent –a sacred strength.Such inexorable force can onlybe subconscious,lurking beneath the inquisitivetip of some farmer’s spade.A singing, wince-heaved flashcuts arc-ways through the flame-lit night of ritual mysteriesand well-kept histories.We are all farmers, pagans, fír bolg,this waiting race of ours,renting space between those wind-smoothed stones,piled as expertly as star-packed constellationsor turf stacks.Worm-like, this place of traditionis a U-shape in wet cow dung.It has been raining for millennia here.Sky-watching has become a sense,an organic growth of ceremony.An eye-gaping stare, scarlet shot,shiver stuck and socket shocked,glimpses itself in the constant, steely now of sight.

A blade is the briefest of mirrors.

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Ocean air stings in gasping lungs.Soft earth gives way like neck skin,falling in fleshy lumps with greatbig splats and intermittent grunts.

When the sun comes up it is done.

There is no more West.The rocks and wet rubble of ourbackward glances have used themselves upon an unfinished circuit of cliff-edged time.Red spreads flowingly,flooding out like the blood strained cloudsof the East in the morning.An Atlantic mist is rolling off the waves.A harrow striped field isemptying veined,torc twist and filigreed.An open throat leaksits ancient colloquy acrossan ageless grass.That which remains isthe seagulls’ to finish,spread-winged,circling.

Andrew King

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The VoiceThe voice elusive up the scaleGoes slipping through the silent sea,The golden sand is mixed in there With stranger’s prophecy.

The voice, unbroken hair weaves From throat to throat, and you By danger choose to breathe it in, By knowledge, let it through.

The voice – untravelled path, the gates Unopened, locks unturned, My melody had stripped down bare Of sounds, when passed beyond.

And you bring all to sacrifice To moments’ birth, and each Sweet clap of thunder in your heart And every patch of every light Spin out within your reach.

Dimitri Polozov

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Dragon BurgerHe said, “I am driving these draggling disasters” – as fundingprecipitates from Mayor’s hall

to central hatcheries, waddingmuslin gauze through emptydraglet sockets – “she only loves

that which she cannot see,” he said, the draglet’s dimdiaphanous eye-sacks alreadysliverbound, suffused in oil,in saffron, salted kitchen-roundsat Celia’s restaurant, 22nd Ave –downtown LA. Conveyored upside-down as meatling agates, hanginghapless, poulet-plucked,her arson’s loin deep-breaded,basted, butter-bound, at last this breed confined –Industrially tooth-infested farms to drive his dragoness back down,with plate and fork and supper tie, She – duly digested.

Jeff Becklund

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The Long Finger

I was performing some entirely innocuous teatime duty, and

within five or six seconds my finger lay before me on an ice-bed

of reddening glass. It was the little finger of my right hand, that

stunted and mostly redundant digit ignominiously referred to as

the “pinkie”, and it had been cleanly severed just below the knuckle

(the web of skin connecting this area with that of my ring finger,

which I’d always felt looked more pronounced and amphibian on

me than on other people, came out rather more raggedly). Given

the nature of the incident, I think it most probable that I had been

getting a glass from the cupboard when the tragedy struck. That

is to say, I might have fumbled the carving-knife while taking it

from the drawer, for example, but this scenario fails to explain the

bloodied glass all over the worktop, the fragments glistening like

moisture on the leaves in the salad bowl to my immediate left, the

crystal salting on the beefy-looking stump from which the finger

had until very recently projected. I’d obviously dropped the vessel

and failed to remove my hand from the blast radius in time. Yes,

I think I can safely establish this as the likeliest case. It does,

however, seem an absurdly cruel whim of chance that a piece big

enough and sharp enough had come flying at such a great velocity

that it could part flesh, bone and tendon like a guillotine, and that

my little finger had put itself in the way of this piece at such an

angle that a perfect, one hundred and eighty degree slice had been

inflicted. But these things happen in middle-class family kitchens

every day of the week. There are statistics.

My uncertainty about an event that one imagines should be etched

in my memory for the rest of my life may be put down to the

suddenness of the shock I experienced. My memory works from

this simple model: as all experience is stockpiled in the form

of memory as soon as it is undergone, memory then must be a

continuous process, like writing on a blank scroll that extends

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until madness or death clips it short (you’ll note my debt to Locke

here). When something really seismic happens (I can only assume

that losing my finger counts as “really seismic”, as it is probably

the most important thing that has happened in my life so far and I

have nothing else to compare it to), a little spasm jogs the writing-

hand, as it were, and an ink-blot too heavy for the paper to fully

absorb is deposited and sits there, damp, opaque and sticky. The

event in question has been obscured in this way, and I can only

sidle around it as around a winter rock-pool, afraid to dip my toe

in. This theoretical model, by the way, is of my own devising, and

I can’t be sure that it’s anything other than bullshit. It’s not like

it’s been peer-reviewed by a jury of my peers, so the last thing I

want is anyone going away and applying it to his or her own life

and circumstances. In fact, it might be best to forget everything

I’ve just said, but not yet, as it is essential to an understanding of

what I have to say next.

What I have to say next is this: although, as outlined, an honest

dissection of the sequence leading up to the partially analogue

state in which I now find myself is plainly not possible, I feel I

have enough information (based on a close exegetical analysis of

the script legible immediately before the line goes steaming gaily

into the inky vortex [ahoy!] ahead) to extrapolate, to hypothesise

what probably did happen.

Drawing a glass from the dark recesses of the inner cupboard,

where the no-longer-new wood’s new-wood smell has gone musty

and stale, I hold it in a sort of loose perch between my fingertips

(the little finger itself, ironically, is not in use, but stands back on

its own in a dainty crook) and lift it out. It slips due to the foolish

laxity of my grasp (my hands seem to the only physical part

of me that turned out aesthetically well and I like to accentuate

their length and porcelain boniness by using them with what I

imagine is a supple and slightly louche grace, though they have

begun to decline of late, with warty clusters and a pelt of prickly

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fuzz appearing) and I throw back my arms instinctively. But the

crash does not come. The glass hits the worktop on the rim of

its thicker base and bounces. The sound of the impact is flat and

sad, like dentures clamping together, or a cheap biro making a

full stop. The glass is airborne again, intact, and I am still acting

unthinkingly. I reach out to snatch it, but at the crucial moment,

my awareness, or whatever you want to call it, bifurcates and

becomes a sort of colloquy (this is visibly apparent from my

memory-script, where the line doubles up slightly to form a

palimpsest). This colloquy, though very long and involved – being

at first an exhortation on the part of my upper-echelon psyche to

pause and consider the dangers, then segueing into a debate on the

philosophical import of chance and inevitability that employs all

sorts of Socratic rhetorical devices before descending into the kind

of frankly childish point-scoring to-and-fro of which the Sophists

would have approved – occurs in a tiny flash, a synaptic flicker

that is nonetheless too slow. I have attempted quite literally to

seize the moment, and have failed; the glass shatters as my fingers

close around it, in fact I can feel, can apprehend utterly the cool,

precious solidity of its form in the split-second before it bursts into

shrapnel. (I am reminded of a computer-generated graphic of the

Big Bang on a documentary I once saw, in those pre-nine-fingered

days that are distant now as a dreamlike and irredeemable phase

of my life. A core of energy. Whole galaxies erupting. How the

pure thought of God and God alone produces tangible effects in our

world, the narrator said. It was not an objective documentary.) A

particularly large and vicious-looking piece might have caught the

bulb-light briefly, whitish-yellow and very bright like celestial pus

or something, but this may be a reconstruction too far, a dramatic

addendum dropped from these calmer heights of the aftermath.

All this, as I’ve said – and, assuming it happened like that at

all – took place in only five or six seconds; it is astonishing that

consciousness even had the opportunity to creep in. Yet it did.

There is little it cannot do. The hand, darting out, does not suddenly

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retract or even stop; its deceleration is almost

imperceptible; but there is, on the infinitesimal

timescale, enough of a lag between hand and

vessel to count as a massive overshoot

from the perspective of, say, a dead skin

cell cushioned by an air molecule. In fact,

I believe that, having recovered from my

hesitation (the voice of reason retreated as

quickly as it had popped out to relieve itself

against the wall of my cerebrum – damned

lot of good it did anyway), I actually tried

to compensate by bringing the hand downward

and on to the glass, instead of just forward and

into it, and the inevitable result was that I lent the

offending shard a lot of extra force to work with. Sort

of like running into a bullet. Not a great analogy – a

bullet will do as much damage whatever the velocity and

orientation of its victim, whereas my action may well

have made the difference between an ugly flesh

wound and complete surgical amputation

– but you see my point, you see the

absurdity of the whole thing. At the

end of the day, you have to laugh, like

this: “ha ha ha!” But I didn’t laugh.

I think, when I first saw the finger

on its ice-bed of reddening glass like

an organ awaiting transplant or a

milky little prawn on a platter in

the supermarket, I think I was about

to laugh then, but I choked back the

first “ha!” just as it was leaving my

throat. I don’t know why I did this;

probably for the same reason

that I didn’t catch the

glass, and if you or

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I could explain and remedy this, we could, I imagine, make a lot

of money by selling it in a bottle as a bona fide brain tonic. Don’t

contemplate – activate! Seize the moment! Kiss the girl! Punch the

teacher! Say your name! Laugh the laugh! Catch the glass! Such

slogans, I’ll admit, tread too precariously the line between the

banal and the hysterically off-putting, but that sort of catchy talk

was never something I was very good at anyway.

I am, you see, frequently defeated by my own voice. There is,

at any rate, a certain inconsistency between it and speech as it

originates in my mind, as though the job of connecting the two

with all those delicate bundles of nerve-fibres had been botched.

Which surely isn’t a rare occurrence, considering the intricacy of

the task. On my first day in one of the various schools I attended

as a boy, the teacher asked me my name and I couldn’t answer,

because I forgot it – literally forgot it. Can you believe that? It

was at the tip of my tongue, as they say, and then I experienced

this sudden rush of image and language to my brain that detailed

minutely all the different ways in which the situation could turn

ugly, in which I could irritate the teacher and/or make a fool of

myself – and my name just evaporated. Gone. I scrambled to recall

it but couldn’t get past this grey, humming treacle that had started

filling up my head so much that I felt sure it must be dribbling

out my ears. Unfortunately I had, by that stage, already opened

my mouth and was calling up a vague mass of sound from the

bottom of my larynx to shape into the word I had already lost

and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I just sat there for

what felt like ten minutes going “aaaaahhhhh” into the face of

the teacher like she was a doctor examining my tonsils. She was

really quite a pleasant old lady. I was very young at the time. I

was no more than fifteen. Or sixteen. Her name was Mrs Cregan,

and when she became angry, which, to be fair, was not very

often, two grey-white foamy flecks collected at the corners of her

mouth. I still cannot think of a rational, biological reason for this,

unless it was a defence mechanism left over from some previous

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evolutionary incarnation that manifested itself more obviously

in her than in most others. Eons ago those flecks might have

prefigured a dousing with noxious or caustic fluid. On this occasion

she only shouted at me, or at least began to shout (thinking I

was being obstreperous and insubordinate by going “aaaaahhhhh”

right into her face) before seeing the unbridled horror burning

in my eyeballs and realising that I could not help it, that I had

something wrong with me, perhaps mentally and permanently,

and she turned away and returned to the top of the class as if

to carry on with what she’d been saying before the awful thing

happened. Every freckled, fluffy and high-boned face in the room

had turned to stare at me. Pink spots appeared on Mrs Cregan’s

cheeks. She was profoundly embarrassed for me, but I didn’t want

her embarrassment. I wanted to shout my name and then laugh,

“ha ha ha,” and run right up and punch her squarely in the jaw.

I would have done it too, only again something held me back.

People always said I was a procrastinator, and I thought, “What a

pointlessly and appropriately long and windy word to use for that

condition that so afflicted me. Brilliant!” I almost got a kick of it.

Then I was reading about eunuchs, the Persian guards who had

to be neutered so they could supervise the harems with an eye to

nothing but professionalism – discharging nothing but their duty –

and I came across the word “castration”, and it chimed instantly

in my head with “procrastination”, and somehow the whole thing

did not seem so amusing any more. Old sayings such as “a stitch in

time saves nine” have, since then, left a bitter taste in my mouth.

It was Mrs Cregan’s face that first occurred to me on seeing my

severed finger lying there on the worktop. Angry spittle-face, quick

dissolve to fright, to sympathy, finally to distaste before turning

back to the blackboard, everyone else’s face turning the opposite

direction in counterpoint that would have been neat were it not

so sickening. Aaaaahhhhh. Not the happiest of memories; perhaps

that’s why my instinctual laugh died as quickly to what sounded

like a strangled scream, and why everything in my field of vision,

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the entire kitchen, in fact the whole damned world, seemed to turn

pale and liquid and bleed away like a picture on a cinema screen

whose reel has caught fire. Everything except for the glass, the

worktop, the finger. These retained utterly their definition, their

autonomous and external thing-ness, that property that a wise

man once called quidditas – although I might be getting confused

here. It’s very possible that I misread this, or didn’t come to any

comprehension of it at all, mistaken or not. Was it Aquinas? I

try to read the philosophers, the historians, the critics, the great

classicists. I am very diligent. Nonetheless I often wonder what

value I get out of them. There seems to be little in there that I can

actually apply to urgent and human situations, such as the one in

which I now find myself. At most I can frame the world in terms of

what I read. Which is okay. It allows the world to become detached

and drift away, but only to a degree: though I remain comfortably

on the dock, the vessel (which is a word applicable to glasses as

well as to ships) cannot strain beyond the length of its thick, taut

hawser.

I am encased within my skull. I want the world to go away. It grows

faint, but its proximity taunts me, beckons me. I am happiest when

alone inside a warm room at night, in winter, with nothing but

empty blackness outside the window. The Mrs Cregan incident is

only one of many that I could focus on; but my memory-page at

that point is torn, so deeply scored is the text, and I fall through.

They say to me, “Carpe diem, man, don’t think so much, live in

the moment.” But they don’t realise that I do, that I know nothing

else. For every moment is endless, is an eternity of consciousness

I can’t escape.

So, I was performing some entirely innocuous teatime duty (we’ll

say, for argument’s sake, that I was getting a glass from the

cupboard, but the eyewitnesses’ reports will no doubt confirm this

for us), and I ended up a finger short, a digit down. It does not

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sound so cataclysmic when put in those terms, but really, it is

extremely painful. The pain, in fact, is just now kicking in: a dull,

hot pulse that grows steadily stronger like approaching drums,

accompanied by blood-flow in crimson sync with its rhythm. It

is difficult to say how much time exactly has passed since the

point of amputation itself, but I would estimate it at 0.45 seconds

or so. It has been a long split-second, even for me. Reasonably

interesting, not particularly helpful or educational, but diverting

at the very least. It has made for about three sentences’ worth

of actual written material on the memory-page (for the line, once

again, comes struggling out of the ink-blot, like a primordial being

from the swamp), which should give you a rough idea of the

sheer quantity of conscious experience that is compressed into

the cursive scratched in blue-black Parker Quink upon that paper.

The moment, I feel, is coming unstuck; time is shifting onwards;

I can even see their faces, hazy and featureless in the corner of

my eye, as they begin their pale turn from the dinner table by the

doorway. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. My

evening’s leisurely schedule is ruined. I will spend the night in

A&E and require regular check-ups in the coming days and weeks.

My dressing will be bulky and malodorous and will render simple

tasks, like showering or taking glasses from cupboards, difficult

indeed. My finger might not be beyond saving, provided they get

it stitched back on swiftly enough. Every moment now is precious.

My nine digits mock me. “A stitch in time saves nine.” Ha! The

little pun, though weak and nonsensical under scrutiny, tickles me

just right and, laughing, I turn to face the music.

David Lynch

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Knock On WoodFour fifty-two. Half an hour until my train leaves. I place my

lecture notes inside a manila folder.

“Hey, Professor!” A tall, lanky boy addresses me. Bright student –

Jones is the name.

“There’s a penny on the floor, Professor. Aren’t you going to pick

it up?”

An attractive girl also lingers, listening.

“Well, Jones, if you’d been paying attention in class today, you

wouldn’t need to ask,” I reply. Girl smiles at Jones, egging him on.

“Oh, I was, Professor. But I don’t see the big deal in a few harmless

superstitions or religious practices, like picking up a penny for

good luck or saying your prayers at night. Don’t you ever do those

things? You know, just in case?”

Four fifty-seven.

“In case of what, is the real question, Mr Jones.” Overcoat on, I

walk through the door.

“In case you’re wrong, Professor,” Jones calls after me. “In case

you’re wrong about the lot of it.”

Five thirty. I sit in my seat, rigid as the train races along. I smooth

out the wrinkles in my black suit, and I fold my legs. I unfold my

legs. I open my briefcase and extract Augustine’s Confessions; I

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pull a white piece of paper from between its pages and examine

the writing on it: “Reading for the Eulogy”. Her eulogy.

Five forty. I spy a shiny penny on the dirty, carpeted floor. I recall

Jones’s words: just in case. Arrogant son of a gun, I think as I

stare absently at the penny. It attracts me. Distracts me. The train

continues to press forward.

Five seventy-five. Just pick up the penny, I hear Jones say.

Five seventy-six. There is no such time as five seventy-six, I tell

him.

Five seventy-six and a half. We just think there is no such time

as five seventy-six or five seventy-six and a half because the

Sumerians could only count so high on their fingers. Imagine if

they’d had six fingers on each hand when they invented time – one

hour would have ninety minutes instead of sixty!

A female laughs in the seat behind me. Jones’s girl.

Five seventy-seven and fifteen seconds. So really, Professor –

Jones drawls as he leans over the seat – there is quite possibly a

seventy-sixth minute in every hour. Let’s be inclusive, shall we?

Jones bends down toward the penny, his face grinning like a joker

on a playing card.

Perhaps, I say, that isn’t a penny at all. Maybe it’s a Haitian

gourde and has been left as a gift to the voodoo spirits.

Jones inspects it more closely, his smile waning. He sees now, as

carpet fades to dirt under the coin, that it is the face of Toussaint

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L’Ouverture and not Abraham Lincoln.

Jones raises his hand.

Yes, Jones – I signal him to speak.

What’s it been left for, Professor, he asks.

Just in case, I say.

Can’t we pick it up anyway, he pouts.

No – see Jones, if we do, the gods will be angry, they will think we

have become arrogant.

But you don’t believe in superstitions, Professor, Jones says. He

moves down the aisle, dangling my watch between two fingers as

he holds it high. I look down at my naked wrist.

Five eighty-three, Professor, he says, and crumbles the watch in

his hand. Then he opens his fist and lets the cracked bits float

down like pixie dust.

I jump up – step on a crack, break your mother’s back. The girl

laughs again.

I don’t believe in superstitions, I say, and I reach for the penny

before turning defiantly to face Jones and the girl.

But Jones is gone, and she is different, and I am spinning a web

of gossamer, hanging from the doorstep of a whitewashed house.

I try to stop weaving and swing out of the sun, which reflects off

the cobalt blue of the sea, but I am caught in the sticky strings that

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surround me. I want to wind my spindly legs into the silvery trees

and stick my fangs into their olives, letting dark green oil slide

down my hairy face. But I can’t stop twisting the delicate threads

together. She has tricked me and Jones was her stooge.

I stare at her while I work, hating her. She rests her head upon her

staff, bronze helmet pushed back. Sweat drips down her tanned

face, and she wipes it away with a fold of her white robes. An owl

flies around her head and then descends to perch by her side. The

owl hoots, and I wonder why there are owls in such a place of sun

and heat – I thought these creatures lingered more amid the firs

and not the cypress. And now I see that I was blinded by this coin,

blinded into seeing sun and sky when really, as I look closer, I see

copper and ore. And this woman wears not white for wisdom, but

rather white for death.

Her helmet is gone, replaced with dark tresses that fall over her

shoulders and cover most of her face. She stands in the middle of

a narrow road, which curves and bends away from me. Both her

nightgown-like dress and her face are as pale as winter, and she

glistens with rain. The sound of drums pounds around us like feet

stomping as the wind whistles and dances over the land; and I

can smell the burning peat from the blackened bog which lies over

yonder, over fields sectioned into squares, like a colour-swatch of

gradient greens.

Myself once more, I stand hypnotised by the woman before me: I

know of her kind, and I know what she signifies, and my bones feel

brittle in my body as if I were already in the ground. Just then,

she screams, a scream like the baying of hungry wolves and the

cawing of vultures rolled into one single sound. The scream evolves

into a baleful moan and continues uninterrupted until I hear the

beat of horse’s hooves behind me. I turn to face the dark-clad rider,

and I shout, Horseman, pass by! My command echoes in the open

air and the screeching stops; and I know then that it has been the

28

sound of

my own shrill voice all along.

I turn to face the woman, and she glides toward

me and places into my arms a baby, bundled in

blankets, then dissolves away in the encircling fog.

A gust of wind twirls me around, I feel the icy burn of

snow beneath my feet, and the world has become white.

The sky is laden with heavy clouds, ready to tip to one side

and pour down more ice and snow.

I peer at the baby girl. She is young, I know, because the words

“not yet forty days” have been stitched onto her bib. I hear the

crunch of snow and immediately I run forward, stumbling over

mahogany and gold painted icons that stick out of the snow

like dominoes. I hurtle toward the entrance of a cave, hushing

the child’s cries, trying to save her from unfettered souls. I hug

the bundle tightly as I enter the dark cave. But pain pierces

my chest and the baby is gone. I clutch at what is left in her

place: a smoothly carved wooden cross with ends sharpened

to a point. I look around and realise that I have not entered

a cave, but come upon a forest.

As if on cue, a shadowy line of people processes silently

toward me. I try to run, to scream, to hide, but the cross

I hold has pinned me down with its sharp ends. The

shadow-people come closer, their features hidden

by long robes. I turn when they reach me,

falling into line, holding up the cross as if

chains of steel pull at my arms and feet. A

stifling burlap robe rests on my

29

shoulders, and I fall deeper and deeper into dread. I close my eyes

and pray, pray like prayer is a rope that will entangle me and

carry me away from this, pray to her, the one who taught me how

to pray, pray like a believer in the traditions of those who came

before.

When I finally open my eyes, the forest has vanished. The spray of

salty air and water hits my face; it is a warm touch and the salt

tastes sweet not sour. The shadow in line ahead of me turns and,

taking my cross, hands me a green coconut the size of my head.

She then takes a machete and chops off the top, sticking in its

place a straw and umbrella.

No longer are the shadow-people cloaked in heavy robes; their

faces are covered in masks of peacock plumes and sequined

sparkles. I hear the strings of instruments, the shaking of cha-

chas, the soft tinkling of a piano, and a harmony floats toward me,

nudging my hips and feet back and forth in a rhythmic motion.

The immense figure of a man shines on top of a hill in the distance,

arms outstretched, and I think this must be heaven but don’t dwell

long, for the music is my dance partner and leads my thoughts

and movement.

A woman approaches me, and she sways to a drum’s muted taps.

Grabbing my shoulders, she kisses me three times on alternating

cheeks then sashays away. Three times and the bossa nova fades

into the wedding march; three times and the coconut in my hand is

replaced with a flower bouquet. I drop it and run, but my feet hit a

cold stone floor, and I am moving down the long aisle of a church,

dark wooden pews flanking my sides.

A priest comes toward me, smiling, a copper plate of Eucharistic

hosts in his arms. I grab at the bread and begin to nibble, careful

to bite only around the sides, while a woman wearing a sign that

says “mother-in-law” smiles in approval. The gothic arches of

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the church rise up around me, and an organ blasts a chord as

curtains are drawn back from the altar to reveal a crucifix. It is

a familiar sight – until the head of Jesus rises up and motions to

me, beckoning me over to him with a nod and a jerk.

I cover my eyes with my hands, pulling at my hair as the organ

stops and a clock strikes, a clock I know at once is the old family

grandfather. But that timepiece hasn’t worked for years.

I uncover my eyes and find myself in the library of my parents’

house. Amidst the dark shelves of thick volumes stands the clock,

upright and proper like an English butler. I run from the room

into the foyer, up the wide staircase, through the heavy double

doors that lead into my mother’s bedroom. The bed is not empty

but a white sheet is drawn up, covering the occupant’s face like a

smudge on a photograph.

Oh God, I cry, let it not be true!

I trip as I run back out the door, falling down. As I get up, I see

that I have not run through a doorway, but rather under a tall

ladder with broken rungs, which reaches toward the sky. I cower,

head in my hands, trembling in my own skin, rocking back and

forth, squeezing my fingers so tightly that they begin to bleed, and

I repeat the prayer my mother, my dear mother, taught me as a

little child, saying it over and over: hail Mary, hail Mary, hail Mary.

And that’s when I spot it, untouched, shiny, on the dirty, carpeted

floor.

Monika McGreal Viola

31

Chapter Forty (of The Abode of Fancy)

Tadhg O’Mara was not an alliteration addict. He favoured as-sonance and internal rhymes, such things as were subtler, a novice in his art no more, thriving on his newfound beggar-

ing life. As he bided his fallow time on Dublin streets while waiting for his daughter’s wedding, new harmonies and verses filled his crazy head, ones which he longed to write down, if he could only find a suitable surface. Stealing a can of spray from some dopey thugs, he contented himself awhile with scrawling his words on the forum of the city’s walls, his utterances mere squibs amid the graffiti of delinquent juveniles. But his poems were always washed away by the officious authority’s rain, and he mourned to see his greatest works vanish as they were wiped, our literature’s loss.

Skulking one day in St Patrick’s Close where he licked his wounds, he looked up and saw the grammar school right by, the country’s eldest, 1432 founded, an ugly building of two unlovely floors, doors a muted hue of blue, white walls grubby, windows oft broken by balls, humble in the cathedral’s shadow, as if abashed. On a daily basis, tourist buses would noisily invade the tranquil place, ge-riatric creatures clambering out to take snaps, often interacting awkwardly with surly students stubbing out ciggies. Where better than a school to seek paper, cunning O’Mara thought as he rose and strode over.

In his second floor office, the inscrutable headmaster Mr Bevis sat writing at his desk. From time to time his stern mono-brow would twitch, or his eyes blink. Periodically, he gave a detached glace to the TV monitor on his shelf, giving him a coolly omniscient view of the gates, of all that entered or exited through them. And when he saw the ragged Tadhg ambling through, he thought it incumbent upon him to raise the alarm upon the hobo’s arrival. But this he failed to do, since he was too busy contemplating what he would write in the Patrician, the school’s annual magazine. A maths teacher, he found doing sums and juggling figures so handy a way of warding off emptiness. So it was his practice to make his Patrician piece replete with number, the number of students and of staff, the number who had sat the Junior Cert and the Leaving Cert, average results obtained compared to average

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obtained nationwide, and so on ad absurdum, cause of the lonely pride of Mr Bevis, who smiled as he forgot about the vagabond’s invasion below, and busied himself with enumerating more scores on his tedious office’s abacus.

Meanwhile the poet O’Mara had found an entry, and wandered timidly around the corridors where all the lockers were bust and broken, climbing the stairs on his quaking feet, ears perking up to hear a portentous voice from behind the door of Room 3, the voice of a shaman or magus, a reassuring sound that spoke of perpetuity, and would blather on forever till crack of doom and dying breath. Tadhg O’Mara, entranced, bent and skulked at the door, and applied his better eye to the keyhole, and his pupil swam about, to take in the bewitching scene within. A geography class was in progress. A crew of sullen sixth years lay at their desks in stupor and gloom. Some passed notes. Some (not many) made notes. Some whispered gossipy nuggets to each other. Some doodled on their desktops. Some fiddled with their mobiles. And still others slept and dreamt, for the narcotic babble of their teacher’s voice, launching forward on its barrage of turgid verbiage, was as lulling as the beating of a mother’s heart to the ears of a slumbering baby, a lazy child lying within her womb, awaiting embarkation on the voyage of birthing.

And Tadhg’s eye swivelled in his peephole, to regard the man who sat in the front.

This was Mr Joe Bassoon, slouched in his soft seat in state of grace, the salt of earth and pride of our race, eyes shut, his head thrown back, and if ever his eyes were opened, it was the ceiling that most met their gaze. On that celestial ceiling there are no stars for him upon to glare, though evil stains are aplenty there (and perhaps visionary Bassoon could in such stains discern an epic battle to enchant Homer or Virgil). A set of glasses are put on and off according to his mood, which were many, changeable as the tides and times. Sometimes he stood and on the whiteboard made messy marks, diagrams, graphs, queer figures. Some students, in love with learning in a

33

little way, woke long enough to copy crudely, before sinking back to bog that beckoned ever ere they lay.

Mr Bassoon had other tricks up his sleeve. Often he would drop his marker, and down on knees he would go to retain it. Often he would find his marker defunct, and class he would be obliged abandon for a few minutes (he lived for such minutes) in a feverish hunt for one that did function. Sometimes he would direct attention to some passage in the textbook. More often, minutes would pass (sacred minutes) as trawling through the textbook he riffled searching for this passage earlier earmarked, ever since long lost. The stream of words pour out unceasing ever more, fast-flowing as babbling brooks of yore, his voice entrancingly lyrical once one adapts to its rhythm, its cadences curious, its frantic leaps and dips, punctuated by the odd sharp splatter of “HEY-HEY-HEY”s, curt ejaculations of “Pay attention”, and the blue moon-rare reminder that one had better smarten since one would some day on this material be tested.

And he spoke of: Lakes and Rivers; Terminal Moraines and Truncated Spurs; Cirques and Corries; Life Expectancy and Birth Rate; Hanging Valleys and Cwyms; Processes of Erosion and Deposition, Fluvial, Glacial or Marine; V-Shaped and U-Shaped Valleys; Population Cycles and Economic Prosperity; Birth Rate and Death Rate; City Planning and Urban Land Use; the Rock Cycle and the River Cycle; the Demographic Transition Model and the Art of Sketch-Map Drawings; Agriculture and Aquaculture; Core and Peripheral Regions; Developed and Developing Economies; Physical and Human Processes; Climate Change and Ozone Depletion; Desertification and Deforestation; Plate Tectonics and the Mechanics of Continental Drift; Earthquakes and Volcanoes; Monsoons and Hurricanes; and all such things pertaining to our planet.

But sometimes Mr Bassoon would lose the thread of his talk. And in the groping hiatus in time’s ticking, he grew aware of the yawn-ing abyss surrounding him, the deadness of the minds he was try-ing to teach. And at such terrible times, he would, despairing, cry, “I’m speaking into a void!” or fall to doleful muttering, I am not here to entertain you, children, and however dull one finds this material, one had better take it on board, as one will, some bright June day, have to answer questions on it in a wee something we in the business call the Leaving Cert. All right? Still other times,

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he would explode, his wrath a thing triggered by insolent sniggers, whispers of messers at the back giving him good cause to crack. And he would burst, and roar, stand and wave arms wildly, ruddy face darkening to an apoplectic purple. And all would shut up and be silent. And then, as a summer shower, it would fade, and be gone as quick as it came. And perhaps one only dreamt it. For our Joe Bassoon was a very dream of man.

And spying O’Mara marvelled at the keyhole, having found a muse of sorts, the perfect sort of dulled adventurer whose eyes were glazed with fairy’s dust, about whom he yearned to compose an epic. And he wondered what Bateman thought of as he spoke.

For Mr Bassoon’s mind wanders in a distant corridor. He contemplates the prospect of the happy family awaiting him come today’s dying – with wife, the smiling Sara, and two pretty daughters. A man amongst women, in his home his voice softened, losing that quality of aria it possessed while on duty. He became normal, or nearly, a god with divinity relinquished. And he worries for an impending PE class, where he will throw to the lads a ball, and he will stand in goal, filling it with all his soul, swamping entire the puny goal, putting his heart into his part, spurring them on with rallying cries of “Look alive, child!” And he frets also, so good a man and mild, about the article he must write on behalf of his friend who has retired, a certain George Corbett, a level-headed saint. For our Jim also holds proud post of editor of the Patrician, no mistake, the man’s a magician, who decides what goes in and what goes out, shaping a story out of the random errata of the year’s occurrences, and there is much left with that for him to do prior to publication, articles yet to be written, and photos yet needing taking, and blank space to fill, and ink to spill, a lesser soul would be shaken, but not our Joe Bassoon, god in man.

And outside Tadhg grew all the more excited, and began to itch to create from this material presented, so banal yet so magical, confronted with this clay he barely could see, and he wondered upon his hero’s origins, as if his ancestry alone would explain him.

From the rebel county, come from Cork, that was plain: one heard it in the accent’s dips and lilts, brewed in Cork a changeling child stolen by the fairies, for rumour had it among his more lyrical pupils that he had been snatched from the cradle all too early, kidnapped by the Pooka who brandished visions before his eyes,

35

replacing him with a mad foundling who stammered like beetroot, odd in the head from that day to this, seeking treasure he never found, waving his hands and shouting to quiet the voices in his ear, whose utterances sometimes made him laugh at nothing, amused by empty air.

And the words of a terse haiku suggested themselves to Tadhg, expressed in uncharacteristic English as if breathed over his shoulder, little words which nonetheless said a lot about the power of Bassoon, and of the forces that chose him as their channel:

Time slowed, reality bent, On and on the Bassoon went, An old bore, hell-sent.

An imperfect work – pity about the many syllables that comprised “reality”, they rather upset and spoilt the shape. But in the midst of the forming, a tap on stooping O’Mara’s shoulder forbade him further follow the muse’s dictation. Wrenched from the keyhole by the scruff of the neck gruffly, he found himself at the mercy of Mr Bernard Moran, a melancholic Irish teacher who was passing, who felt it his beholden duty to boot the hobo off the premises. Tadhg protested in Irish, claiming he had found a kernel of a masterpiece embedded in the most innocuous of places, to which Mr Moran barked back, in the like lingo, that he had no time for bullshit. He carried the poet downstairs again, and flung him past the gates onto the Close where he landed. And so his poem was lost. Miffed, he shrugged as the gates were shut upon him, resigned to walk away alone again.

And upstairs within, Mr Bassoon turned over a page of the sacred textbook of magic, and bade his class do likewise, and all surged from their slumber to turn over the sheet, expelling dust as the spine was snapped and its drying glue peeled off in miracle shapes, turning over the textbook’s pages like the great world spins, as the eye of the sun swings, just as a giant rolls over on his side as he sleeps, to contemplate another golden corner of the canvas of his heaven’s bed, another piece of the panorama in which he lies.

“Now children. Let us consider south-eastern County Wexford for a bit, shall we?”

Sam Coll

36

Frederick B. Benway and the Void

The dulcet tones of real class ring through the room. Crystal glasses, fine porcelain plates and sterling silver are the instruments clinking the dampened clinks of fine dining

among those of who are entitled to dine finely. This is consumption and ritual. This is the luxurious evening meal.

A dining room is the setting. There are walls and a ceiling of some kind of impenetrable black. They are obscure and indefinite, perhaps not even tangible, but they exist as blackness. The only firm sight along the perimeter is a small brown door that is somehow fixed in the opaque abyss. It swings back and forth, never revealing anything but blackness, as food and drink arrives and the discarded remnants of that sustenance leave in the hands of the Waiters. Scattered around the room on a red plane of carpet are tables clothed in immaculate white silk. Around those tables, the People occupy soft candlelight that perpetually burns low but is never extinguished. The light goes no further than the area inhabited, not daring to touch the dark expanses of the Void.

Sitting on cushioned leather that, almost inevitably, is of an absolute black, the People eat and drink. They exist and consume.

The Women are ageless by their own design. They project maturity that is immeasurable by the quantitative scale of years, but can only be measured by the qualitative scale of pinched savoir-faire. Each sports her finest gown; all of them are structurally identical, and radiate different shades of red, red and red materials. Plunging necklines reveal enough to catch the eye, to publicly flirt with the idea of manifested sexuality through implicit rather than explicit communication. Their faces are a slop of red lipstick and black mascara on what may once have been blank, porcelain canvas. Assorted jewels dangle from their ears and around their necks, melting with the gravitational pull from below, as if longing desperately to get away from what they hang from. There is little behind cold eyes.

For each Woman there are several Men. The Men all wear the compulsory black tie dining regalia of black dinner jackets, black trousers, black shoes, white shirts and black bow ties. They smile

37

benignly at each other, sharing winks, nods and knowing looks. Wry torsion of the cheeks follows stray glances at forbidden fruit. Stains of red wine colour their lips and years of fine food have plumped their stomachs and faces slightly, enough to distinguish them as distinguished. Some chew the ends of smoking cigars, some intermittently slick back their hair in a conscious expression of nonchalance, some swirl glasses of wine or snifters of cognac to show that they have the Knowledge. They exude a sickly stench of class, societal decay and rotting flesh.

There is chat, small talk and the obligatory hollow laughter that such banal exchanges require. Smartly spoken parties negotiate their conveniently flexible valuations of and opinions on morality, sin, virtue, taste, sexuality, politics and dollars between mouthfuls of crimson nectar and golden brown. The oral defecation of slithering dames and dukes, whores and whores or, as they might prefer, ladies and gentlemen; it is insatiable. And while it never threatens to boil, the soundtrack of the scene simmers incessantly like a quietly furious beehive that is casually pondering an explosion amongst its collective.

On the plush carpets underfoot, carpets of the hottest rouge, the terrified feet of terrified men scamper to the tunes composed by the darting reptilian tongues of the commanding gentry. For fear of death by unemployment or fish knife, these tiny men, wearing nothing but black bow ties around their necks, conjure magnificent and exotic cuisine for the pleasure of those with the gold. These men, the Waiters, are homogeneous products.

The Waiters are altogether hairless and exquisitely tanned, like honey-stained mahogany that has aged beautifully. Their slim and supple limbs quietly glisten in the warm glow of the candles. Brilliant white eyes shine from the sunken recessions of their sharp faces, eyes only punctuated by grey irises and black pupils. Their cheekbones are distinctively pointed and their lips are thin and brown, forming the narrow slit that would be a mouth, if one could call it a mouth. Across their depilated heads and curving necks there is not a single wrinkle or furrow. Indeed, the only mark upon their respective persons is between their legs, lonely atop their thighs. The Waiters do not bear genitalia, only a clean, vertical

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scar that is common to each.

Were they not so short in stature, the Waiters would look unhealthily thin. Not much higher than the tables they tend to, they are perfectly proportioned to serve their function. On the balls of their bare feet, they move in fluid locomotion, back and forth between the animals they feed and the small brown door away in the blackness. They bob and weave efficiently around the People, the tables and chairs, fully aware that if they make a single mistake, if they so much as whisper, they will disappear from the room by one means or another. Following disappearances, another Waiter replaces the previous Waiter. This new Waiter will in turn hold the same fear of his own death by disappearance and, indeed, that time will come. This chain continues infinitely.

A small round table is at the centre of the room this evening. Three Men sit around it. They swill claret and deliberate over cigars as wide as fists, seeming to hover in the very faint haze of their own very faint crapulence. Two of these Men are Characters. One of these Men is Frederick Balthazar Benway. He speaks.

“The worm.” Benway orders the worm. His accomplices nod to the attending Waiter in agreement. The Waiter ghosts away silently.

Benway’s voice is shapeless caramel. It has an ambiguous quality that is indefinable. It adapts to any situation without his conscious effort. No certain accent can be grasped from his lips, nor can any regular human tonal inflections be properly identified. Rather, it is as if his words are always presented for the interpretation of the audience, the abstruse nature of his elocution somehow encouraging whatever aural reception appropriate to his cause. His actual words mix formal speech with casual utterances as he draws from all sorts of lexica to create his own subtly distinct manner. His unique patois cannot be placed.

At this point in the scene, Benway continues to seduce the attention of his lapdog consorts with a tale of a past love.

“… I was on the way up at the time. It was back when I was selling dollars for doubloons, and rubles for pesos; I was cutting it out real fine, you know. But I knew this girl. Her name was Samantha, or Cassandra, or Jane, or something. I don’t remember now, it doesn’t really matter. It was peachy.

“She had a place I’d go to see her at and we had a time. We

39

used to go to the theatre to watch movies, or we’d get dinner somewhere classy. Sometimes we’d just walk for hours without saying anything, just walking along in the rain or the sunshine, or under the stars. I don’t mind telling you this, my friends, fine gentlemen that you are, that this girl was quite dear to me.”

Of course, as Benway makes this hollow gesture to tonight’s bright lights, they almost squirm with an orgasmic rush that starts in the depths of their loins. They refrain from nodding along to his story, just for a moment, just long enough to close their eyes and savour his latest words. For their friend Benway to verbally afford them such status, as his friends, is almost fantastic. To be let into his life like this is a sign that he really accepts them.

However, in contrast with what Benway may say, he does not have any friends. Benway has flocks of accomplices, herds of acquaintances and swarms of connections, but he considers none of these in terms of any kind of personal relationship. Every person is a means and Benway is the end. While each Man and Woman in the Void considers Benway a friend, envious of those he shares his evening with now, he does not reciprocate in kind.

“So Annie, or Martha, eventually she left her job. She had been an air hostess or a schoolteacher. I was making plenty of money so she decided to nail a coat hook into my forehead and call me a home. You know how it goes.”

For dramatic effect, the careful actor in Benway chuckles from his stomach and then lowers his head slightly. He softly traces the fingers of his right hand back and forth over his forehead, as if to massage the faded scar of a coat hook wound that never actually existed. He grimaces and shakes his head to snap himself out his carefully pensive moment of introspection, reverting to tenderly fondling the stem of the crystal chalice before him, as those listening silently will for him to continue. Measured pause complete, he continues in his rhythmically flowing oratory that, by this stage, has attracted considerable attention throughout the Void.

“Well, it goes down, you know. I began to notice that her golden locks were all bottle blonde, real dirty like. And her little dog, Pepe or Jose, I think, something anyway, he never shut up. That dog, it used to leave hair all over the back seat of my car. There was a time when she insisted it went everywhere we went. That rat dog really got on my wick, you know.

40

“She eventually pipes up with what had been on her mind. She says that all I cared about was making money, and that she didn’t care for my drinking either. I wasn’t looking after her properly, she thought. Sure, I had to tell her that, only for the pleasures of a cool beer or a fine wine, I would have killed her and that rat dog already. I didn’t mean it. As I said before, this girl was quite dear to me, but these are the things you say in the heat of it all, you know. There was red mist between us.

“So she tells me to get out of her sight right there. Never let it be said that Frederick doesn’t know when to take a step back. You have to give a woman her space, you know. Sensitive creatures, precious. I said I was sorry, said I didn’t mean to be so short with her, and that I didn’t mean what I said. I told her that I’d be back the next day to patch things up with her. I’d get her a bunch of daisies, you know, and we could share a bottle of wine. Everything would be rosy.

“So I thought about her all the next day. I strolled along the boardwalk picking my mind. In the late afternoon I picked up a bunch from Patty’s on my way to her house. Well, I never really thought that it was going to work out. I had this nagging feeling that we were star-crossed, you know. I’m not a superstitious type of guy but, I don’t know, I had a feeling. Maybe it was just a hunch, or maybe it was all the smoke.”

Benway cracks a sparkling yellow smile and shakes his head. He looks around, inviting The Void into his past.

“So I pulled onto the street where she lived and, sure as day, there were guys from the fire department spitting all over a real blaze. I mean, these flames were huge, and the water didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. It was terrible.

“But, you know, life goes on, doesn’t it? So I left the daisies with one of the firefighters, something for his wife, or something, I don’t know, and headed over to Phillie’s for a cup of coffee.”

The Void is rendered silent for a second. Uncomfortable smiles, all hoping to be the right reaction for Benway. Dinner is served.

Cathal Wogan

41

Child of Lír[CHILD is an old lady, homeless, grimy, tattered. She is dressed in grubby white clothes and wears a battered red hat.

CHILD shuffles onstage slowly, with a rocking, tired gait. She mumbles to herself, the mumbling developing into clearer words. She speaks to herself, still; it is like her muttering has become audible and understandable.]

CHILD: And I shall be condemned to wander for nine hundred years, three hundred on O’Connell Street and three hundred on Grafton Street and three hundred along the canal that runs along Baggot Street and Portobello and Rialto and on and away. You’ll see me, mumbling and plucking, a gone lady in grubby whites, exiled from home and hearth. And I shall pace and wobble up and down and around my little streets until my time is up and I am saved. Saved by what, I don’t know, I wasn’t told that, I should have been, I think, because how else am I to know what it is I am searching for most endlessly? Surely more than spare change, surely more than a doorway that will be undisturbed, surely more, surely there is more. I cling to the hope of salvation, of a saviour whom I shall know by a glance, and who shall know me, and see me, and save me. And they will know me, because I am most uncertain of me knowing them or him or her, now. Because I don’t know what it is that shall mark them. Because I can only believe that I will be seen for what I am, rather than what I appear to be.

[People begin to come onstage, making a street, walking with various speeds but all with purpose. CHILD wanders amongst them, shuffling slowly and aimlessly. She begins to beg, trying to catch people’s eyes as they hurry past her.]

CHILD: ’Scuse me – spare some change – please – just for a cup of tea – spare some change – please –

[Most ignore her, some mutter “sorry”. A man hurriedly drops some coins into her hands, walks on.]

CHILD: Thank you, thank you …

[CHILD looks at the coins in her hands, holds one up before her gaze.]

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CHILD: I cling … to the hope of salvation. Hope, I saw once, was depicted by a man with an anchor, because hope is like an anchor, because it keeps you strong and holds you tight and weighs you most solidly down. The hope my fingers scrabble against is no such thing, it is far too tremulous, it is a paper weight, it is a bag of flour, perhaps, or a glass bottle filled with sand. It barely keeps me here, just about presses the soles of my feet to the stamped ground to keep me from blowing away. Because I can’t rely on other people to hold me fast, not any more. Sometimes I wonder if I have become a ghost, if I had died a quiet doorway death and my ghost had woken up and walked the streets as usual. And that is why nobody can see me, nor hear my voice, nor feel the tremble of my touch.

[She sits, takes off her hat and places it before her feet. Enter OISÍN, an old homeless man, a drunk, sober now.]

CHILD: Oisín.

OISÍN: How are ya, Child?

CHILD: Hungry. Cold. Lonely. The same as ever I’ve been.

OISÍN: [He sits beside her] Ah, stop. Yer alright. It’s only October. Not that cold. Yet. Just wait a month. Then I’ll listen to ya talkin’ about the cold. Then we’ll have long chats about the freezin’ nights.

CHILD: Have you a drink?

OISÍN: Not yet I don’t.

CHILD: If you find one, come back to me.

OISÍN: Give me a couple o’ euro and I will.

CHILD: Well –

OISÍN: Ah, go on. Please. The world’s too sharp fer me right now. I need to soften it round the edges a bit.

CHILD: You’ll get into trouble if your edges are too soft.

OISÍN: I’m not trying to melt meself. Just round things out. Cushion

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the corners. [Pause.] I’m goin’ to the hostel tonight anyway. Have to be on good behaviour.

CHILD: [Handing him some coins] All right. Here.

OISÍN: Ah, cheers. I’ll give you a slup to keep you warm. You should come with me to the hostel though, really.

CHILD: I’m fine outside.

OISÍN: I know you’re fine, you’ve always been all right. Dunno how.

CHILD: Practice. And time.

OISÍN: Yeah, plenty o’ time. Years and years.

CHILD: And years and years on top of that.

OISÍN: Child, how old are ye?

CHILD: Eight hundred.

OISÍN: [Laughs] All right. And what’s changed the most in Dublin over eight hundred years?

CHILD: [Thinks hard] The money.

OISÍN: The money?

CHILD: Yes.

OISÍN: Not the people? Or … the clothes, or the phones, or the cars?

CHILD: Clothes are always the same, just give it twenty years and it’ll be back in style. And traffic’s always been bad, horses and carts and people and buses. And people … change the least out of all those things. But money – that’s changed a lot. What are we on now? Shillings?

OISÍN: Euros.

CHILD: Ah yes. That’s the one. I can’t keep up.

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OISÍN: You were old, then, when I was still young.

CHILD: You weren’t young that long ago.

OISÍN: No, I know. I dunno how this happened. This oldness. It mugs ya, these wrinkles and this grey hair.

CHILD: You fall to the ground and when you get to your feet all your years have caught you.

OISÍN: [With a short laugh] Yeah. Something like that.

CHILD: Do you miss it?

OISÍN: What? Miss what?

CHILD: The land of youth. The land of pleasure and happiness and beautiful people.

OISÍN: Ah, that place? That wasn’t a real place. It was a dream, maybe. Or a wish or somethin’. [Pause.] But yeah, I miss it. Whatever it was. Wouldn’t mind goin’ back.

CHILD: And what would you do there?

OISÍN: Stay! [Laughs. After a moment] And not make mistakes. Not end up here. Not end up like this.

CHILD: Not fall off your horse?

OISÍN: My horse? My high horse, maybe. [Silence.] Not have her leave me.

CHILD: Niamh.

OISÍN: Her name was Sarah.

CHILD: No, it was Niamh. Of the golden hair.

OISÍN: She’d brown hair. [Pause.] Her name was Sarah.

CHILD: That’s not the way the story went. Maybe you’ve forgotten.

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OISÍN: Forgotten? How could I forget? You don’t know what ye’re talkin’ about, so just leave it, alrigh’?

CHILD: All right. All right.

OISÍN: It’s not alrigh’, how could it be alrigh’? Ye don’t know me and ye don’t know what’s happened to me, so don’t act like ye know better than me!

CHILD: I know the story –

OISÍN: The story! Ye’re always talkin’ on about stories! Tellin’ them and retellin’ them, thinkin’ we’re people in them, thinkin’ they’re real –

CHILD: They are!

OISÍN: They are not! How does pretendin’ we’re in a story make it better?

CHILD: I’m not pretending!

OISÍN: Maybe ye’re not, ’cause ye’re crazy and ye believe it.

CHILD: [Consciously controlling herself] I am not crazy.

OISIN: O’ course ye are, why would ye be here if ye weren’t? And don’t spin me tales about exile and betrayal and all those other things ye say put you out. We’re on the streets fer a reason, and that’s ’cause we’re crazy with drink or crazy with drugs or crazy ’cause of what other people have done to ye. That’s it. I don’t know what ye’re crazy with, ’cause ye’re quiet-crazy, but ye’re crazy still. Ye’ve been on these streets for years and years, beggin’ and mutterin’ to yerself and watchin’ people dodge away from ye, from the mental old woman. Why else would ye be here? [Pause.] Why else would I be here?

[Silence.]

CHILD: There’s nowhere else for us to be. We’re stranded here.

OISÍN: Maybe. [Silence. Then gets up.] I’m goin’ to go find that drink. I’ll see ya. Later. Maybe. [Leaves.]

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CHILD: [Watching him go] He’ll not be back. That’s all right. If he’s forgotten. If he wants to forget. [Pause.] We are stranded here. He was young and in the land of the young and then he fell from his horse and he aged and he forgot. And he wants to forget. Many many do. [Pause.] There were others with me, eight hundred years ago. My brothers. The three of them and the one of me. All exiled from a broken home, cast out in jealousy and in spite and hate and left … We stayed together and ate what we had together and we slept all in a huddle of blankets and newspapers together. We sang together, on the street, sang laments and refrains and sorrows in harmony and pennies would be thrown at our dirty feet. But then – then – I don’t know when – they trickled away. They got lost in between the cobbles before Front Arch, or dizzied by the traffic lights on O’Connell Street, or slipped into the grimy waters of the scummed canal. I don’t know. They have gone. They are gone. I wonder, sometimes, if they have been saved; but then why would I have been left behind? And I wonder some other times if they have been damned, but then why would I have been left behind?

[CHILD gets to her feet laboriously.]

CHILD: But I have been left behind. And I am alone. And sometimes it is unbearable. [Pause.] But then … then other times … on days when the sun shines and banishes the greyness and gilds Dublin into a bright place, and the streets are filled to buzzing and steps spring and there are preachers who speak from their blazing frantic souls and I hear the pigeons in the gutters – I have such a vision of the street as the street hardly understands. [Pause.] And I think that one more hundred years will be bearable, just barely bearable. Just one hundred more years. And then someone will see me and something will happen and I’ll wander no more by myself; perhaps I’ll wander with company. Perhaps Oisín will return to Tír na nÓg and I’ll go with him. And that’ll be the end of the stories. That’ll be the end.

[CHILD begins to mutter incomprehensibly to herself again, begins to shuffle again until she is offstage.]

Clara Kiyoko Kumagai

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ContributorsPatrick O’Dwyer is an MPhil student in Creative Writing. Feedback to odwyerp1@tcd.ie

Andrew King is a Senior Freshman English and History student. He has been writing prose and poetry for some years now with varying degrees of optimism and pessimism, and is much honoured to be appearing in Icarus this year. Feedback to andrewbking@hotmail.com.

Kate McNamara wishes bubbles lasted as long as balloons. Her current favorite word is moodle. Feedback to throwmyshoeboing@eircom.net.

Dimitri Polozov is an MPhil student in Music and Media Technologies.Feedback to acceleratedublin@gmail.com.

Conor Leahy is a Junior Sophister English Studies student. He is currently spending the year studying at Berkeley, California. Feedback to leahyco@tcd.ie.

Breda Joy is a journalist in Killarney, Co. Kerry. She is currently on leave to study for an MPhil in Creative Writing in Trinity. She writes fiction and poetry. Feedback to joyb@tcd.ie.

Linnea Inga Haviland was born in Gothenburg, Sweden on the second of July 1990. She is a Junior Freshman at Trinity studying Film Studies and English Literature. She has a cat called Felix and enjoys baking, as well as going to museums, concerts and the cinema.Feedback to havilanl@tcd.ie.

Jeffrey Becklund likes this. Feedback to becklunj@tcd.ie.

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Dr Arthur Broomfield has had poems published in Poetry Ireland, Cyphers, The Sunday Tribune, The Honest Ulsterman and other journals. He is a Beckett scholar and is writing a book on the works of Samuel Beckett, which is expected to be published next Autumn. He teaches English and History and lives in Co. Laois. Feedback to broomfield.arthur@gmail.com.

Monika McGreal Viola is doing an MPhil in Irish Writing at Trinity and is originally from Washington, DC. Feedback to moviola@tcd.ie.

David Lynch is a Junior Freshman studying English and Philosophy, and is not named after any surrealist film directors. Feedback to dlynch6@tcd.ie.

Cathal Wogan is a Film Studies student who spends far too much time playing Tiger Woods games on the Playstation. Likes: Robbie Fowler and writing about class struggle. Dislikes: hummus and waiting. Feedback to woganca@tcd.ie.

Mortimer Summerlise likes the scent of the heather and gorse and the aura of his little piece of peace. Feedback to collsj@tcd.ie.

Clara Kiyoko Kumagai is a Senior Sophister Drama and English student who is, despite appearances to the contrary, from Co. Galway. She was drawn to writing because reality is just too much for her at times and would like to dedicate her piece to her mother’s cookies, which have helped her through many a rough patch.Feedback to kumagaic@tcd.ie.