One brief comment before I begin this latest chapter: the character of Lee is based on a real person I encountered in my teens. I was in the pub with my parents around Christmas-time. I was quite disturbed to find an old man who took pop culture so seriously, as I thought old men were above that.
As they left the pub, Dean was already regretting his rush of blood to the head. He was less worried that Paddy might lead him into some den of iniquity, than that the poet might turn out to be a crashing bore. After all, he had all the signs; an eagerness to talk about himself, an obliviousness to irony, a lack of inhibition, and a dozen other little indications. Who walked up to strangers in pubs and invited them to buy self-published poetry? Dean had often wished for that kind of self-confidence. But he’d also noticed that the people who possessed it were very often lacking in discretion, tact, restraint, sensitivity, and many of the other traits he found highly desirable in an acquaintance, never mind a friend.
The longer he hung around Paddy, the more embarrassing it would be to break away. But he couldn’t do it right now, after agreeing to go with him.
“Where are we going?”, he asked.
“This poetry isn’t going to sell itself. Don’t worry, we’re not going to go thirsty either.”
That was an understatement. Over the next four hours, Paddy led him into seven different pubs, followed by two house parties. Dean had never been on a pub crawl before. He couldn’t tell whether Paddy even considered this a pub crawl, or whether it was simply an ordinary night for him. Certainly, they ran into friends of the poet in most of the pubs they entered.
It had often occurred to Dean that his whole reality was mediated to him through television and movies. He suspected it was the same for everybody else. As they trekked from pub to pub, Dean imagined himself inside a movie or TV show montage, and wondered what song would be playing over it. “Seven Drunken Nights” by the Dubliners? No; the subject was right, but the tune was too laid-back. “The Rocky Road to Dublin”, the perennially popular Irish folk ballad describing a country bumpkins misadventures on his way to the capital city? The lyrics didn’t really fit, but the rollicking rhythm would create the right atmosphere. Or perhaps he would take the rock ‘n’ roll route. “The Boys are Back in Town” by Thin Lizzy was an obvious choice. Too obvious?
“How many hot chocolates can you drink, my man?”
Dean smiled. “There’s no limit.”
“You’ll blow up like a balloon.”
“I’m halfway there already”, said Dean. He didn’t like making jokes about his weight-- he wasn’t fat, he thought, but he was getting there. Still, he’d rather make the joke himself, than wait for someone else to do it.
“Have a proper drink man,” said Paddy, who was already half-drunk. “Have a pint. You’re not a teetotaller, are you?”
“No”, said Dean. “But I’m working tomorrow.”
“Big deal. Have a pint.”
“I’ll have a brandy.”
Paddy cheered. They were in a dark, pokey little pub called Costigan’s. They’d progressed from the suburbs to the city by now.
“This guy told me I was a hypocrite and that I lived by the rules like everybody else”, said Paddy, after he’d ordered the drinks. He was talking to an old man who was sitting at the bar with them, and who Paddy seemed to know quite well. His name was Lee.
“I never said that”, said Dean.
“Do you know what I did?”, asked Paddy. “I stood on the table and I told everyone in the pub they were sheep and they were frightened to live their lives the way they wanted. You should have seen the face on this guy. They threw us out straight away.”
“You’re an awful man”, said Lee. His voice was thin and wheezy, and his face was sunken and lined. His grey hair was limp and stringy, and on the whole he looked as though he might not make it through any given night. “Hey, did I tell you that I got a first edition of Paul McCartney’s first solo album, on Ebay?”
“Yeah, you did”, said Paddy. He turned to Dean and said: “Lee is a Beatles maniac. All he ever talks about is the Beatles.”
“Ah, come on, that’s an exaggeration”, said Lee, but he didn’t seem displeased at the remark. He beamed as though it conferred a kind of distinction. “Do you like the Beatles?”
“Sure.”
Lee raised a fist in the air, almost jubilantly. “They were the best! The music now is a load of nonsense. I mean, listen to this”. He raised his hand in the air, to indicate the rock music that was playing around them. Dean didn’t recognize the song or the band, although to his ear it sounded quite Beatle-esque.
“The happiest day in Lee’s life was when Sgt. Pepper came out”, said Paddy. Now there was a hint of irony in his smile.
“I remember listening to that album”, said Lee, staring solemnly at Dean, “and thinking This is it, the world is never going to be the same. This is the revolution right here, on this record.”
Already, Dean had noticed a common link between all Paddy’s friends; they all seemed to be cheering on the revolution, although the nature of the revolution was rather vague.
“Well, I don’t think the world ever was the same”, said Dean. He didn’t want to get into an argument about the social and cultural legacy of the Beatles. His own assessment, briefly put, would be: great band, terrible legacy.
“But it wasn’t the revolution we were looking for”, said Lee. He looked so forlorn Dean couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. “And do you know who I blame?”
“Don’t tell me”, said Dean. “The Catholic Church?”
“No”, said Lee, “sure amn’t I a Catholic myself? I go to Mass every Sunday. No, I’ll tell you who I blame. Yoko bloody Ono!”
His fist was raised in the air again, and his lips were quivering. He looked absolutely livid.
Perhaps there should have been something comical in the sight, but Dean didn’t feel like laughing. It was worse than ridiculous that a man in his sixties or seventies should be brooding over the break-up of a rock band more than forty-five years ago. A man of that age, he thought, should be gently contemptuous of pop culture, reading old books by the fireside, drinking whiskey, and dispensing sage advice to the young people.
“Good man”, said Paddy, clapping Lee on the shoulder. “I’m going to move on and see can I shift some of these books down the street.”
And so they did. Whether it was to the imaginary music of Dubliners or Thin Lizzy, the montage went on. Dean wasn’t drinking hot chocolate any more. Everywhere they went, Paddy seemed to sell a half-a-dozen of his poetry books. Perhaps it was the self-assurance with which he approached people. They’d bought them before they knew what they were doing, it seemed. He signed each on with great care and attentiveness.
They spoke to a young man who owned an organic farm on the outskirts of Dublin, and who asked Dean if he had any idea what he was putting into his body every day. They spoke to a member of the Socialist Worker party who was animated about the sufferings of the Palestinian people. They spoke to a couple of radical feminists-- Dean couldn’t tell whether they were a couple in more senses than one. But they certainly didn’t fit the stereotype of the ugly bra-burner-- they were both utterly gorgeous, making Dean feel doubly intoxicated every time they leaned towards him, to make themselves heard over the loud music.
“Feminism isn’t about hating men”, said Camille, the blonde. “You’re just as much a victim of the patriarchal system as we are. All the rubbish about stiff upper lip and being an alpha male and boys don’t cry. Is it any wonder men are killing themselves all the time?”
“Nobody ever told me that boys shouldn’t cry”, said Dean.
“Well”, said Camille, with a dizzying smile, “that’s only because of feminism.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. Not that he even wanted to get into a debate. In fact, he avoided it all night, just listening to the ramblings of various radicals, sometimes nodding vaguely as though in agreement. What did it matter? Would he even want to change their minds? Wasn’t the world more interesting for these amiable ideologues? And they were amiable. Dean’s worries about being pumped for money were wide of the mark. Everybody was pressing drink on him, including Paddy.
“One of my teachers had a hangover every single day of the week. And he was my best teacher by miles. Come on, have another.”
All of the radicals he met that night seemed to believe two things with absolute conviction. One was that society, at the moment, was morally and spiritually bankrupt. The other was that a better world, perhaps even a paradise, was just around the corner. The viewed the present with the utmost cynicism and the future with the most extravagant optimism, and they didn’t seem to see anything unreasonable about this.
“Tell me, Dean”, asked Paddy, pouring him a cup of coffee in a flat somewhere along the Liffey quays. There were about fifteen people sitting in the living room, some of them on the floor, and Dean wasn’t sure who the tenant was. “What do you think of my poetry? Honestly?”
Honestly, Dean thought it was mediocre at best. But he would never have said that. “I think it’s very….very fresh, very direct. I like that. What was that line about the incense?”
“You shower God’s love like incense on
The good, the bad, and everyone”, quoted Paddy, promptly. “This guy is a devout Roman Catholic”, he said, pointing towards Dean, and looking towards a red-headed woman who was drunker than either of them.
“Fair play to him”, she said. “I love Jesus. Do you know that Jesus speaks to me?”
There were six or seven people sitting at the table. Everybody else was sitting on the floor, looking through a stack of DVDs and giving their opinions on each. Nobody at the table expressed the slightest scepticism at the red-head’s claim.
“People laugh at all that moving statues stuff”, said another woman, a plump blonde girl with a strong rural accent. “But my mother swears blind she saw a statue of Our Blessed Mother crying. And I believe her.”
Even though Dean was drunk, and even though he was on an emotional high from all the attention he was getting-- much of it from attractive women-- he remained as introspective and self-aware as ever. He knew that, in circumstances like this, once his usual shyness and inhibition was overcome, he was tempted to the opposite extreme. It was like a dam breaking.. He saw this happening, but he decided to go along with it.
“Something weird happened to me today”, he said, looking around the table.
They all looked at him, expectantly, eager.
“I was in the bath”, said Dean. “Nobody else was in the house. I heard a voice.”
“What did it say?”, asked the red-headed woman.
“Take up your cross”. It felt delicious just to admit it.
“Whoah”, said a young chap with kind eyes and long dark hair, who was smoking something that wasn’t tobacco. “What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know”, said Dean. “But I have this cross that I bought in a craft fair a few years ago. About shoulder height. It kind of spoke to me. I’d just been talking about it with my friend. And I’ve been throwing out pretty much everything I own, but I didn’t want to throw that out.”
Another long silence. Along with the blessed relief of getting this off his chest, Dean was flattered by the intense interest on everybody’s face.
“That means something”, said the red-headed woman. “I don’t care what anyone says. That means something.”
“It’s trippy”, someone said, in an entirely approving voice.
“I don’t know”, said Dean. Neither the atmosphere nor the drink could silence his scepticism. “The thing is, I heard voices before. In my teens. My parents sent me to a psychiatrist about it. They put me on medication.” His voice was shaking now. “I used to hear a voice telling me that I was loved, that I was a child of God. My parents thought I was going crazy.”
“So what?”, asked Paddy, passionately. “Crazy...that’s just a word. So-called sanity is just...just another system of control. How do you know God isn’t speaking to you?”
“Yeah”, said several people, enthusiastically. Somebody even clapped.
There was a heavy knock on the front door, a knock that signaled displeasure. It was well past two a.m.
“Here we go”, said Paddy, with visible disgust. “The pillars of the community. The respectable citizens” He seemed to have forgotten Dean’s story already. Dean was still shaking.
A skinny girl with long brown hair, who must have been the tenant, left the room. There was a brief and low-voiced conversation outside. A few minutes later, she reappeared, and said “We’d better break it up, guys.”
There were a few groans, and a few giggles, but everybody immediately began to gather up their things. In groups of two and three, they began to leave. Everybody was hugging each other. Dean found himself being hugged by several beautiful women, which only added to his excited spirits.
Last of all, Dean and Paddy left. Paddy still seemed disgusted by the fact that someone had complained. He was very drunk. He muttered about it all the way downstairs, and as they were walking away from the apartment building, he suddenly stopped, turned around, and began to shout up at the windows.
“Fascists! Nazis! Bunch of soulless, lifeless zombies! Go stick your pension plans and your fitted kitchens where the sun don’t shine!”
Dean stood there, transfixed, not knowing what to do. Within a moment, faces appeared at every window; and within another moment, a large man was running towards them, at alarming speed.
Paddy took off. Dean was amazed at the speed with he he moved. Within a few seconds, he had disappeared around a corner.
The man looked after Paddy a moment or two, and then began to bound towards Dean. Dean realized that he would have no idea which of them had been hollering, and he looked hopping mad.
He turned in the opposite direction to Paddy, and began to run. Although it was the early morning, there was still a fair amount of people around. They watched him with unfeigned amusement as he tore along the riverside. The man behind him was still shouting, and showed no sign of giving up.
After two or three minutes of this, something whistled past Dean’s ear. He looked around. The man had finally come to a halt, and he was making a rude finger gesture to Dean, and shouting something indistinct. But it was plain to see he had given up the chase, and after a few moments he began to walk away.
Dean jogged around a corner, just to be safe, and then bent over, his hands on his knees, gulping in the night air. When was the last time he had run like that? Had he ever run like that before? He didn’t even care if there was anybody staring at him right now.
Still...it had been a wild night. The kind of wild night he’d always felt bad for missing out on. Even now, he felt a certain glee about it.
After about five minutes, when his breathing had returned to something like normal, he hailed a passing taxi, and sat in silence as the car moved through the early morning streets. “Rhapsody in Blue” was playing on the radio. Dean reflected, not for the first time in his life, that music never sounded better than when it was being played in a taxi, long post midnight, as it cruised through deserted streets.
“Working tomorrow?”, asked the taxi-driver.
“Yeah”, said Dean. “Going to a conference, actually.”
“Hoh-hoh!”, replied the taxi-driver, in a voice of amused sympathy. “Good luck with that, buddy.”
He took Dean right to his front door. Dean wondered if he was staggering as he unlocked the door and made his way upstairs. He decided he wasn’t, and felt rather disappointed.
After brushing his teeth and climbing out of his clothes, he set three different alarms on his mobile, five minutes apart from each other. Three hours of sleep would have to do.
Within moments, he was asleep.
But it wasn’t a dreamless sleep.
It was a grey winter’s morning. Dean had always liked a grey winter’s morning, but this morning was...unnatural. It was darker than it should be, as though the sky was full of ash.
He was standing in a suburban street, somewhere in Dublin. He didn’t know where. There were people lining the pavements, looking at him. Other people were looking out from the windows of the houses around him.
Dean was holding the cross, the cross he had bought at the craft fair. It was bigger than it was in real life-- it stretched over his head now. But it felt no heavier.
Take your cross, said a familiar voice, and he knew without any shadow of a doubt that it was his guardian angel.
Dean looked to his left. Holly was standing there. She was dressed in an old-fashioned way, like a woman in some old photograph in Erin’s Pride.
“What should I do?”, he asked.
“Take your cross”, she said, smiling at him solemnly. She looked so beautiful.
He began to walk. As he did so, something strange happened. Light began to stream from the cross. Not just ordinary light, but a kind of golden light, like candle-light multiplied by a hundred. It hung in the air behind him as he walked.
And it wasn’t just light. A scented mist was wafting from the cross, too. It took a few moments for him to realize what it was. It was incense. You shower God’s love like incense, he remembered. The odour was absolutely heavenly, like the smell of pure goodness.
He realized that the people around him, lining the pavements, were making a lot noise. Some of them were cheering, applauding, reaching their arms out towards him beseechingly. Others were screaming, and their faces were twisted with hate.
Lee, the old man who loved the Beatles, was one of the latter group. He was shaking his fist, and shouting, “Yoko Ono!”.
Something whistled past Dean’s air. Then something else, and something else. But he kept walking.
The cross was getting heavier and heavier. Eventually, he had to stop.
Holly was standing in front of him. She was pointing to the left. Dean followed her finger, and saw a red-brick house that somehow filled him with dread. He looked back at Holly. She was smiling serenely, but tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“You need to go in”, she said.
“I don’t want to.”
“You need to.”
Reluctantly, he walked to the red-brick house, up the steps to the front door, and rang the bell. The crowds around him had disappeared, all of a sudden. It was horribly quiet, as though the world was frozen in suspense.
A man with a cruel, fleshy face and sad eyes opened the door. He looked nervous and eager at once. He led Dean into the hall, and further into a book-lined sitting room, full of expensive-looking decorations and handsome furniture. A radio was playing, and Dean heard a chanting that he couldn’t make out, but which seemed ancient beyond words.
The man lifted his arms. “Bless me”, he said, in a desperate voice. “Bless me”.
Dean lifted his arm to bless, but then he heard another ringing at the door. The owner of the house turned white at the sound, and Dean felt frozen with terror. He knew it was him. It was the gunman. And he remembered exactly who it was now. It was--
The screeching of a mechanical alarm filled his head, and Dean awoke his heart pounding. The room was bright with pale sunlight.
It was morning. It was time to get up. The end was not yet.
Monday, February 17, 2020
Monday, February 10, 2020
The Cross: Chapter Three
Here is the third chapter of my unfinished (and most likely never-to-be-finished) novel The Cross.
Re-reading it, I've realized that this chapter owes a heavy debt to Roger Buck's novel The Gentle Traditionalist-- to be specific, this very excerpt which Roger published on his blog. All I can say is that it wasn't intentional, and that I only plagiarize from the best!
Outside, Dean’s sense of unease at the Mormon’s words began to dissipate, and another of the strange waves of excitement he’d lately been feeling took hold.
He’d always hated the early hours of evening. He thought of it as the bottleneck of the day. As a child, he’d come to dread it as the time his father would come home tired and cranky from work. His mother would be irritable because his father was cranky. And he would be the butt of it all. After his father had showered and eaten, however, his mood would be much improved. The atmosphere of the whole house would lighten.
In Ireland, the Angelus bells were played at mid-day and at six o’clock in the evening on RTE, the national public service broadcaster. It had been like that for all Dean’s life, though the God-bashers were pushing harder and harder to have the practice discontinued. It was sectarian, they said. It was an infringement on the right of the non-religious, they said. Of course, Dean was all in favour of the practice. Never agree with the God-bashers, that was his principle. But the truth is, he didn’t like the Angelus bells at all. They reminded him of this hated time of day.
Even now, with his parents in their graves, he hated the early evening. Everybody seemed tired, worn-out, worn-down, for those interim couple of hours. Some people loved spectacular sunsets, but Dean detested them. He liked early morning and he liked night, but he hated the in-between time, when the colours of the sky seemed to be running into each other like melted ice-cream.
He pondered this for a moment, as he looked around the street. A man and a woman were passing on the other side of the road, the woman on the man’s arm, both of them obviously heading out for a night of enjoyment. They were dressed to impress. The woman had obviously spent a considerable amount of time on her make-up, hair and clothes. Her high heels went clack-clack-clack on the pavement. Dean had to stop himself from staring at her. She was a vision of femininity, and she strode down the street like a queen..
Dean liked that. He liked women to be feminine. He liked to see a woman on a man’s arm. He’d listened to so many talking heads, on TV and in lecture halls, trying to convince him that androgyny, gender-bending and the various new forms of sexual identity were exciting and interesting and full of potential, and that all the old gender stereotypes were dull and stultifying. But the sight of a woman on the arm of her chevalier made all that seem like so much hot air.
Yes, he liked things to be fully themselves. Day or night, but not half-and-half. Man or woman, but not something in between. There were exceptions to this rule, but not very many.
He followed the couple down the street, since he was heading the same way, savouring the sound of the high heels clacking on the pavement. Other sounds of the young night excited him; a young man calling down from an upstairs window, to his friend on the street; the theme music of a popular chat-show floating from a living room window, conjuring thoughts of a family around the goggle box, of cups of tea and slippers and all things comfortable; the sound of a car pulling out of a driveway, further along the street. After the evening doldrums, the city was coming to life again, getting its second wind.
He wondered idly if the snazzily-dressed couple were heading to the Comet, like him. But they turned down a side-lane, and he walked the rest of the way by himself. He thought about the Mormons. Were they still hard at work? Would their conversation with him be the most memorable part of their day’s evangelizing? He rather vainly hoped so.
The Comet wasn’t busy. It was very rarely busy. This was the main reason why he went there. People said busy pubs had “atmosphere”. Dean didn’t see the appeal in fighting for a seat, battling to get the barman’s attention, and using a filthy bathroom (in his experience, most bathrooms in busy pubs quickly became filthy). The Comet was plush, quiet and clean. Even when he wanted voices and life around him, as he did tonight, he didn’t want too many voices or too much life.
He spotted that his favourite place was available-- a cosy nook, just underneath a decorated pub mirror. As usual, he spent a few moments staring into the pub mirror, admiring its florid and ornate decorations. He liked the golden glow of the pub lights in its glass.
He left his copies of Erin’s Pride, along with the pamphlets the Mormons had given him, on the table, to mark his place, and went to the bar.
“Evening” said the woman at the bar. He didn’t know her name, but they sometimes exchanged small-talk. She was a tall, dark-haired young woman with a sharp expression. Dean always assumed she was doing a PhD somewhere.
“Hello” said Dean. “Hot chocolate, please.”
The woman laughed. “I think we serve you more hot chocolate than everybody else put together. Lots of marshmallows, right?”
“You got it”, said Dean, in a feeble American accent. “Well, it’s no surprise I keep ordering it. This place has the third best hot chocolate in the city.”
“The third best?”
“Yes, the third best. The Sandwich Shack in Glasnevin has the best. And Doherty’s hotel in Pearse street has the second best.”
“You should write a guide to hot chocolate in Dublin. Anything else?”
“Not for now. Thanks.”
He carried his hot chocolate back to his nook, walking slowly. Dean was afflicted with the compulsion-- which was partly a habit, and partly a principle-- of ‘drinking in’ his surroundings wherever he went-- especially when he had seen them many times before. It had started in school, when an art teacher had been teaching them about the Georgian architecture of Dublin city centre, showing them slides of brickwork and plasterwork and lintels, the projector screen glowing deliciously in the darkened class-room. “So next time you’re waiting for a bus in Parnell Square”, she’d finished, “actually look at the Georgian buildings around you, and don’t just moan about the bus being late.” Dean had felt an extraordinary stab of shame at the words. He’d pictured a glassy-eyed slob standing on the bus-stop, whinging about the lateness of the bus, completely blind to anything around him. How despicable!
So now he walked slowly through the pub, stopping to look at the framed pictures of the wall.
He paused before a framed copy of the 1916 Proclamation, the document which had been issued by the rebels against British rule in Ireland in the Easter Rising of that year. Patrick Pearse, the leader of the Rising, had read the document aloud to the small crowd gathered outside Dublin’s General Post Office, which had just been occupied as the headquarters of the rebellion, on the first day of the rebellion. It was Ireland’s own Declaration of Independence, its ringing phrases constantly quoted in editorials, speeches and opinion pieces. Around the margins of the text, black and white headshots of the seven signatories had been inserted. The pictures were so familiar that Dean couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t seen them; seven men, unsmiling, serious, frozen forever as Posterity would remember them. They had the look of stern patriarchs, even though most of them had died young.
He moved on. Here was a sepia photograph of Puck Fair, one of Ireland’s most famous agricultural fairs, in some distant year. Here, a small watercolour landscape showing the Burren, a rocky area in the west of the country. After these, a series of caricatures, culled from some newspaper, showing Dublin eccentrics of the twentieth century. There was Johnny Fortycoats, a tramp from the middle of the last century who was known for his many coats. There was Bang-Bang, a harmless crackpot who would pretend to shoot passers-by in the street, with the words, “Bang bang! You’re dead!”. There was Sergeant “Lugs” Brannigan, the large-eared sergeant of police who had become a legend for his non-nonsense approach to policing, as well as his rapport with the ordinary people of Dublin. Dean always liked looking at these pictures, although it made him rather sad that there were no Dublin ‘characters’ in his time-- unless gangsters, junkies and aggressive beggars might be called characters.
Back at his table, he sipped his hot chocolate, and looked at the pamphlet the Mormon had given him. The cover showed a group of smiling young adults, representing several different racial groups, and bore the caption: “Is There More to Life?”. He opened it. It read: “Career. Shopping. Holidays. Television. Sport. Hobbies. We fill our lives with these things, but is it enough? Don’t you find yourself thinking you were made for greater things?”
Dean sighed and put the pamphlet aside. Its blandness offended him. Where were all those wonderful Mormon pictures of a pale-skinned Jesus standing against a spacey, intergalactic background? Or a picture of the angel Moroni appearing to the young Joseph Smith? Why did everything have to be soft-soaped these days?
He opened a copy of Erin’s Pride at a random page, rejected the first article, and the next, and then stopped at an article about Patrick Pearse, the leader of the 1916 Rising. He had always been interested in Pearse; a poet, schoolmaster, and Irish language enthusiast who had been executed at the age of thirty-six.
The article was several years old. It was written before the centenary of 1916 had been celebrated, the year before. It read: “In only a few years, we will be commemorating the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Doubtless, there will be much debate over how it should be commemorated; whether it should be celebrated for its idealism, acknowledged as the birth of the modern Irish nation, or deplored for its violence. The anniversary will also bring more attention to the life of Patrick Pearse, the leader of the Rising and the President of the Provisional Republic the rebels proclaimed.
“Pearse’s paradoxical and enigmatic personality has fascinated biographers for generations. He was mysterious even to himself, and seemed fascinated by his own character. He was a shy, introverted personality who ended up leading a violent rebellion and being executed by firing squad. He was well aware of this dichotomy in himself, expressing it in these memorable words: ‘Two things have constantly pulled at cross-purposes in me: one a deep homing instinct, a desire beyond all words to be at home always, with the same beloved faces, the same familiar shapes and sounds about me; the other an impulse to seek hard things to do, to go on quests and fight lost causes. And neither thing, neither the quiet home life nor the perilous adventure, has ever brought me any content.’ “.
Dean looked up from the page, excited. It was not the first time he’d read these words, but encountering them unexpectedly gave them an additional power. To seek hard things, to go on quests and fight lost causes...how those words stirred his blood, filled his soul with vague but powerful yearnings, with a hunger to go on some quest and fight for some cause!
Once again, he felt the sense of excitement that had been welling up in him lately, the strange feeling that something new and wonderful and terrible was around the corner. It was hard not to be carried away by the notion.
He looked around the pub, which was no fuller now than when he’d come in. There were five or six groups sitting at different tables, along with a handful of people at the bar. Their voices drifted towards him, relaxed midweek voices. Voices in the air had always been Dean’s favourite sound. He looked at one particular group-- two middle-aged men and a woman, the two men dressed in cosy sweaters, the woman wearing a robin-red cardigan. They had kind eyes and looked completely comfortable with each other. Above them, a silent television was showing the chat-show whose theme music he’d heard earlier. All around Ireland, in thousands of living rooms and pubs, people were watching the same chat show, as though the country was one big family.
The scent of hot food from the kitchen, the golden glow of the lamps, the relaxed murmur of conversation, the comfortable thought that there were hundreds of other pubs like this all over the country; all this filled Dean with a deep sense of….what? Joy? Peace? Something in between them?
Was modern Ireland really so bad after all? Didn’t the great tide of ordinary life-- childhood, school, friendship, romance, marriage, children, sickness, all the rest-- surge on, much the same, year after year, generation after generation? Was his nostalgia misplaced, after all?
He looked up at the television screen. Now a man in a colorful dress, with fake breasts and extravagant make-up, was talking to the host. Dean recognized him as Miss Marbles, the drag queen. He seemed to be everywhere these days. Although the sound was down, it was obvious that he was engaging in his usual sexual innuendoes. It was obvious from the effeminate hand gestures he was employing, and the faux-shocked expression on the host’s face.
Dean looked back at the group he’d just been watching. The woman was watching the screen. She had a smile on her face, an amused smile. But was it Dean’s imagination, or did she seem uneasy?
Was Miss Marbles a Dublin eccentric of today? Was he the Johnny Fortycoats or the Bang Bang of this era? The very idea depressed Dean. There was an innocence about Bang Bang pretending to be a cowboy and “shooting” people in the streets. There was no innocence about a man with fake breasts making smutty puns.
“Hey, man, do you want to buy a book of poems?”
Dean looked up, startled. A man in a battered pair of jeans, an open leather jacket, and a rumpled striped shirt was standing over him. He looked to be in his thirties or forties, and had a weather-beaten appearance. His tousled hair was a dark brown, and he sported a heavy moustache that seemed to belong to a different time, though Dean wasn’t sure what that time was.
He was holding aloft a pamphlet with the title Kiss the Darkness, and an inky drawing of a woman kissing a shadowy figure on the cover. The name Paddy Crean was written in bigger type than the title. In one hand, he carried a shopping bag, doubtless with more copies of his collection.
“Sure”, said Dean. “What does it cost?”
“It costs whatever you want to pay me”, said Paddy, laying down his shopping bag and taking off his leather jacket, much to Dean’s dismay.
“No, no, I hate that”, said Dean, surprising himself by his own outspokenness. He was rarely outspoken. “Just give me a price, and I’ll pay it, or not.”
“How can I put a price on my poetry?” asked Paddy, with surprising earnestness. His voice was deep and rough, but still rather melodious.
“Well, why do you expect me to put a price on it, then?”, asked Dean.
“Tell you what”, said Paddy. “Give me a tenner.”
“Fine”, said Dean, taking out his wallet. He handed over a ten euro note, which Paddy casually laid on the table beside him. He laid the pamphlet on the table, opened the first page, took a pen out of his pocket, and asked: “What’s your name?”
“Dean”.
“This is the one hundredth copy I’ve sold”, said Paddy, scribbling an inscription.
“I’m honoured”, said Dean, not knowing what else to say. For a moment, he thought his light irony would sound like sarcasm, but Paddy seemed to take it as nothing but his due.
The poet handed the pamphlet to Dean, with a ceremonial air. At least there was nothing bashful or thankful about his manner-- Dean hated to be embarrassed by overdone gratitude
“This is my fifth collection. I wrote it in Pennsylvania, London, Madrid, the Orkney Islands, and Indonesia. Three broken hearts-- one of them mine, two of them other peoples’. One arrest. One bike accident. Two riots. My major themes in this collection are human freedom-- well, that’s a theme in everything I write-- the prison of convention, the need to be yourself, the pain of love, the love of pain.”
Dean was fascinated. Who volunteered conversation about the themes of their own poetry, to a complete stranger? Well, obviously this chap did. He opened the pamphlet, flicking through it till he came to a poem called “Father Gerry”. Paddy was gesturing to the barmaid. Dean read:
God speaks to me through you, oh Father,
Oh man of God and man of men.
You shower God’s love like incense on
The good, the bad, on everyone;
And in those deep dark eyes, oh Father,
What galaxies are in those eyes!
“Drink?”, asked Paddy, prodding Dean on the hand with his finger.
“No, thanks.”
“One Bulmer’s then, sweetheart. Ah, I see your reading “Father Gerry”.
“Nice to read something positive about a priest, for a change”, said Dean, looking up. The poetry was no worse than he’d expected.
“Priests have a hard job”, said Paddy. “I have a lot of time for priests. I’m not going to hold them responsible for all the sins of the Church.”
“What do you mean, the sins of the Church?” asked Dean.
Paddy looked taken aback. Dean was used to seeing that look, whenever he defended the Catholic Church. “Oh man”, he said. “Where do I even begin?”
“I don’t know”, said Dean. “Where do you begin?”
“Raping children, and burning heretics, and supporting the Nazis, and persecuting queers, and having all that obscene wealth when there’s people going hungry in the world.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah”, said Dean, taking a sip from his hot chocolate to hide his irritation. Should he launch into a debate with this guy? Was it worth it? The man was so self-confident, self-righteous. His own timidity made such clashes excruciating. “I don’t believe all that stuff. The Church is no worse than any other institution, and better than most.” Even in his own ears it sounded feeble.
“I agree with you, buddy, I agree with you”, said Paddy, leaning forward. “I’m against all institutions. They’re all as bad as each other. Get rid of them all, that’s what I say. Thanks, sweetheart”. This last was addressed to the barmaid, as she placed his cider on the table. The poet watched her walk back to the bar, openly ogling her.
“What are you, an anarchist?”
“That’s just another word”, said Paddy, before taking a deep and appreciative draft of his cider. He wiped his mouth. “Anarchism. Communism. Fascism. Liberalism. Catholicism. Buddhism. they’re all just words. I’m into revolution.”
“That’s a word, too”, said Dean, beginning to enjoy himself, now the spotlight was off his own beliefs. “And I thought that a poet would like words.”
“A poet knows that words are mysterious”, said Paddy. “You can’t define them. You can’t limit them. They leak out all over the place. That’s the whole beauty of poetry.”
Dean didn’t say anything. He had to admit it was a good point. He’d already made up his mind that the poet was full of hot air, and he was somewhat taken aback.
“Well, poetry is poetry”, he said, eventually, when he realized Paddy wasn’t going to speak again. “Writing a poem and running a country are two different things. You can’t write legislation in poetry.”
“Why not?”, asked Paddy, quite passionately. “Why not? You’re wrong, man. Government is poetry. Religion is poetry. Sex is poetry. Everything is poetry.”
“The world would fall apart if everybody thought like that.”
“No, it wouldn’t, man. You’ve just been brainwashed. Brainwashed all your life. Sold all these rules. Go to school. Go to college. Get a job. Get a house. Get married. Have two point four children. Watch TV. Have a heart attack aged sixty-four. Pay your insurance, vote for some politicians who’s just the same as all the others, read the newspapers--”
“What’s wrong with all that?”, asked Dean. “Sounds OK to me.”
“You may as well be dead!”, said Paddy, banging his fist on the table. A group at another table looked up. “We’re sent into this world to live, man. To make the most of every day, every moment. To give the finger to convention. To burn brightly until we’re burned out.”
“You mean you want everybody to be like you”, said Dean. “That sounds boring to me.”
“I want everyone to be themselves”, said Paddy. He seemed to have no idea that Dean was playing with him. He was taking the exchange deadly seriously. “I don’t want them to be slaves to convention.”
“Are you not a slave to convention?”, asked Dean.
“No, man, I’m not.”
“Well, how aren’t you a slave to convention?” We’re all slaves to convention. Why shouldn’t we be?”
Paddy stared at Dean for a few moments. He had deep, dark eyes. Right now they were full of emotion.
“Watch this, man”, he said.
He finished his cider in several long gulps. Dean watched him, curiously.
When he’d finished the cider, Paddy stepped on his chair and then onto the table. He waved his arms and began to shout, “Hello! Hello! Everybody! Everybody!”
Dean was gripped by alarm. What the heck had he done? This was going to be mortifying, that was sure. Already everybody in the pub was looking at Paddy.
“I have an announcement to make!”, shouted Paddy, holding his cupped hands to his mouth like a loudspeaker. “You are being lied to! You are being lied to by the government! You are being lied to by the Church! You are being lied to by big business! There’s more to life than this!”
People were laughing now. A few people were cheering ironically. The dark-haired girl at the bar was making her way towards them.
“Life can be beautiful! Life can be free! Life can be poetry!”.
“You forgot to take your tablets, mate”, somebody said. Everybody laughed.
“Alright”, said the barmaid, tapping Paddy on leg. She was smiling.“Fun’s over. Public announcement is over. Get out.”
Paddy climbed down from the table, took the young woman’s hand in both his own, and planted a lingering kiss on it. “Anything you say, my sweet little blossom.” The girl didn’t seem displeased by the gesture, though she continued to point towards the door.
“OK?”, Paddy asked Dean. “Is that unconventional enough for you?”
“Bravo”, said Dean.
“Well, are you just going to let me get kicked out on my own, or are you going to come with me?”
“Where are you going?”
“Who knows? Wherever my feet take me.”
Dean looked at this cup of hot chocolate. There was a little bit left in the bottom. He took a long swig. “OK, then”, he said, rising up from the table.
Maybe this would be his adventure.
Re-reading it, I've realized that this chapter owes a heavy debt to Roger Buck's novel The Gentle Traditionalist-- to be specific, this very excerpt which Roger published on his blog. All I can say is that it wasn't intentional, and that I only plagiarize from the best!
Chapter Three
He’d always hated the early hours of evening. He thought of it as the bottleneck of the day. As a child, he’d come to dread it as the time his father would come home tired and cranky from work. His mother would be irritable because his father was cranky. And he would be the butt of it all. After his father had showered and eaten, however, his mood would be much improved. The atmosphere of the whole house would lighten.
 |
| Dean is played by Dirk Benedict |
Even now, with his parents in their graves, he hated the early evening. Everybody seemed tired, worn-out, worn-down, for those interim couple of hours. Some people loved spectacular sunsets, but Dean detested them. He liked early morning and he liked night, but he hated the in-between time, when the colours of the sky seemed to be running into each other like melted ice-cream.
He pondered this for a moment, as he looked around the street. A man and a woman were passing on the other side of the road, the woman on the man’s arm, both of them obviously heading out for a night of enjoyment. They were dressed to impress. The woman had obviously spent a considerable amount of time on her make-up, hair and clothes. Her high heels went clack-clack-clack on the pavement. Dean had to stop himself from staring at her. She was a vision of femininity, and she strode down the street like a queen..
Dean liked that. He liked women to be feminine. He liked to see a woman on a man’s arm. He’d listened to so many talking heads, on TV and in lecture halls, trying to convince him that androgyny, gender-bending and the various new forms of sexual identity were exciting and interesting and full of potential, and that all the old gender stereotypes were dull and stultifying. But the sight of a woman on the arm of her chevalier made all that seem like so much hot air.
Yes, he liked things to be fully themselves. Day or night, but not half-and-half. Man or woman, but not something in between. There were exceptions to this rule, but not very many.
He followed the couple down the street, since he was heading the same way, savouring the sound of the high heels clacking on the pavement. Other sounds of the young night excited him; a young man calling down from an upstairs window, to his friend on the street; the theme music of a popular chat-show floating from a living room window, conjuring thoughts of a family around the goggle box, of cups of tea and slippers and all things comfortable; the sound of a car pulling out of a driveway, further along the street. After the evening doldrums, the city was coming to life again, getting its second wind.
He wondered idly if the snazzily-dressed couple were heading to the Comet, like him. But they turned down a side-lane, and he walked the rest of the way by himself. He thought about the Mormons. Were they still hard at work? Would their conversation with him be the most memorable part of their day’s evangelizing? He rather vainly hoped so.
The Comet wasn’t busy. It was very rarely busy. This was the main reason why he went there. People said busy pubs had “atmosphere”. Dean didn’t see the appeal in fighting for a seat, battling to get the barman’s attention, and using a filthy bathroom (in his experience, most bathrooms in busy pubs quickly became filthy). The Comet was plush, quiet and clean. Even when he wanted voices and life around him, as he did tonight, he didn’t want too many voices or too much life.
He spotted that his favourite place was available-- a cosy nook, just underneath a decorated pub mirror. As usual, he spent a few moments staring into the pub mirror, admiring its florid and ornate decorations. He liked the golden glow of the pub lights in its glass.
He left his copies of Erin’s Pride, along with the pamphlets the Mormons had given him, on the table, to mark his place, and went to the bar.
“Evening” said the woman at the bar. He didn’t know her name, but they sometimes exchanged small-talk. She was a tall, dark-haired young woman with a sharp expression. Dean always assumed she was doing a PhD somewhere.
 |
| The girl at the bar is played by Kate Beckinsale |
“Hello” said Dean. “Hot chocolate, please.”
The woman laughed. “I think we serve you more hot chocolate than everybody else put together. Lots of marshmallows, right?”
“You got it”, said Dean, in a feeble American accent. “Well, it’s no surprise I keep ordering it. This place has the third best hot chocolate in the city.”
“The third best?”
“Yes, the third best. The Sandwich Shack in Glasnevin has the best. And Doherty’s hotel in Pearse street has the second best.”
“You should write a guide to hot chocolate in Dublin. Anything else?”
“Not for now. Thanks.”
He carried his hot chocolate back to his nook, walking slowly. Dean was afflicted with the compulsion-- which was partly a habit, and partly a principle-- of ‘drinking in’ his surroundings wherever he went-- especially when he had seen them many times before. It had started in school, when an art teacher had been teaching them about the Georgian architecture of Dublin city centre, showing them slides of brickwork and plasterwork and lintels, the projector screen glowing deliciously in the darkened class-room. “So next time you’re waiting for a bus in Parnell Square”, she’d finished, “actually look at the Georgian buildings around you, and don’t just moan about the bus being late.” Dean had felt an extraordinary stab of shame at the words. He’d pictured a glassy-eyed slob standing on the bus-stop, whinging about the lateness of the bus, completely blind to anything around him. How despicable!
So now he walked slowly through the pub, stopping to look at the framed pictures of the wall.
He paused before a framed copy of the 1916 Proclamation, the document which had been issued by the rebels against British rule in Ireland in the Easter Rising of that year. Patrick Pearse, the leader of the Rising, had read the document aloud to the small crowd gathered outside Dublin’s General Post Office, which had just been occupied as the headquarters of the rebellion, on the first day of the rebellion. It was Ireland’s own Declaration of Independence, its ringing phrases constantly quoted in editorials, speeches and opinion pieces. Around the margins of the text, black and white headshots of the seven signatories had been inserted. The pictures were so familiar that Dean couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t seen them; seven men, unsmiling, serious, frozen forever as Posterity would remember them. They had the look of stern patriarchs, even though most of them had died young.
He moved on. Here was a sepia photograph of Puck Fair, one of Ireland’s most famous agricultural fairs, in some distant year. Here, a small watercolour landscape showing the Burren, a rocky area in the west of the country. After these, a series of caricatures, culled from some newspaper, showing Dublin eccentrics of the twentieth century. There was Johnny Fortycoats, a tramp from the middle of the last century who was known for his many coats. There was Bang-Bang, a harmless crackpot who would pretend to shoot passers-by in the street, with the words, “Bang bang! You’re dead!”. There was Sergeant “Lugs” Brannigan, the large-eared sergeant of police who had become a legend for his non-nonsense approach to policing, as well as his rapport with the ordinary people of Dublin. Dean always liked looking at these pictures, although it made him rather sad that there were no Dublin ‘characters’ in his time-- unless gangsters, junkies and aggressive beggars might be called characters.
Back at his table, he sipped his hot chocolate, and looked at the pamphlet the Mormon had given him. The cover showed a group of smiling young adults, representing several different racial groups, and bore the caption: “Is There More to Life?”. He opened it. It read: “Career. Shopping. Holidays. Television. Sport. Hobbies. We fill our lives with these things, but is it enough? Don’t you find yourself thinking you were made for greater things?”
Dean sighed and put the pamphlet aside. Its blandness offended him. Where were all those wonderful Mormon pictures of a pale-skinned Jesus standing against a spacey, intergalactic background? Or a picture of the angel Moroni appearing to the young Joseph Smith? Why did everything have to be soft-soaped these days?
He opened a copy of Erin’s Pride at a random page, rejected the first article, and the next, and then stopped at an article about Patrick Pearse, the leader of the 1916 Rising. He had always been interested in Pearse; a poet, schoolmaster, and Irish language enthusiast who had been executed at the age of thirty-six.
The article was several years old. It was written before the centenary of 1916 had been celebrated, the year before. It read: “In only a few years, we will be commemorating the centenary of the 1916 Rising. Doubtless, there will be much debate over how it should be commemorated; whether it should be celebrated for its idealism, acknowledged as the birth of the modern Irish nation, or deplored for its violence. The anniversary will also bring more attention to the life of Patrick Pearse, the leader of the Rising and the President of the Provisional Republic the rebels proclaimed.
“Pearse’s paradoxical and enigmatic personality has fascinated biographers for generations. He was mysterious even to himself, and seemed fascinated by his own character. He was a shy, introverted personality who ended up leading a violent rebellion and being executed by firing squad. He was well aware of this dichotomy in himself, expressing it in these memorable words: ‘Two things have constantly pulled at cross-purposes in me: one a deep homing instinct, a desire beyond all words to be at home always, with the same beloved faces, the same familiar shapes and sounds about me; the other an impulse to seek hard things to do, to go on quests and fight lost causes. And neither thing, neither the quiet home life nor the perilous adventure, has ever brought me any content.’ “.
Dean looked up from the page, excited. It was not the first time he’d read these words, but encountering them unexpectedly gave them an additional power. To seek hard things, to go on quests and fight lost causes...how those words stirred his blood, filled his soul with vague but powerful yearnings, with a hunger to go on some quest and fight for some cause!
Once again, he felt the sense of excitement that had been welling up in him lately, the strange feeling that something new and wonderful and terrible was around the corner. It was hard not to be carried away by the notion.
He looked around the pub, which was no fuller now than when he’d come in. There were five or six groups sitting at different tables, along with a handful of people at the bar. Their voices drifted towards him, relaxed midweek voices. Voices in the air had always been Dean’s favourite sound. He looked at one particular group-- two middle-aged men and a woman, the two men dressed in cosy sweaters, the woman wearing a robin-red cardigan. They had kind eyes and looked completely comfortable with each other. Above them, a silent television was showing the chat-show whose theme music he’d heard earlier. All around Ireland, in thousands of living rooms and pubs, people were watching the same chat show, as though the country was one big family.
The scent of hot food from the kitchen, the golden glow of the lamps, the relaxed murmur of conversation, the comfortable thought that there were hundreds of other pubs like this all over the country; all this filled Dean with a deep sense of….what? Joy? Peace? Something in between them?
Was modern Ireland really so bad after all? Didn’t the great tide of ordinary life-- childhood, school, friendship, romance, marriage, children, sickness, all the rest-- surge on, much the same, year after year, generation after generation? Was his nostalgia misplaced, after all?
He looked up at the television screen. Now a man in a colorful dress, with fake breasts and extravagant make-up, was talking to the host. Dean recognized him as Miss Marbles, the drag queen. He seemed to be everywhere these days. Although the sound was down, it was obvious that he was engaging in his usual sexual innuendoes. It was obvious from the effeminate hand gestures he was employing, and the faux-shocked expression on the host’s face.
Dean looked back at the group he’d just been watching. The woman was watching the screen. She had a smile on her face, an amused smile. But was it Dean’s imagination, or did she seem uneasy?
Was Miss Marbles a Dublin eccentric of today? Was he the Johnny Fortycoats or the Bang Bang of this era? The very idea depressed Dean. There was an innocence about Bang Bang pretending to be a cowboy and “shooting” people in the streets. There was no innocence about a man with fake breasts making smutty puns.
“Hey, man, do you want to buy a book of poems?”
Dean looked up, startled. A man in a battered pair of jeans, an open leather jacket, and a rumpled striped shirt was standing over him. He looked to be in his thirties or forties, and had a weather-beaten appearance. His tousled hair was a dark brown, and he sported a heavy moustache that seemed to belong to a different time, though Dean wasn’t sure what that time was.
 |
| Paddy Crean is played by John Cusack |
He was holding aloft a pamphlet with the title Kiss the Darkness, and an inky drawing of a woman kissing a shadowy figure on the cover. The name Paddy Crean was written in bigger type than the title. In one hand, he carried a shopping bag, doubtless with more copies of his collection.
“Sure”, said Dean. “What does it cost?”
“It costs whatever you want to pay me”, said Paddy, laying down his shopping bag and taking off his leather jacket, much to Dean’s dismay.
“No, no, I hate that”, said Dean, surprising himself by his own outspokenness. He was rarely outspoken. “Just give me a price, and I’ll pay it, or not.”
“How can I put a price on my poetry?” asked Paddy, with surprising earnestness. His voice was deep and rough, but still rather melodious.
“Well, why do you expect me to put a price on it, then?”, asked Dean.
“Tell you what”, said Paddy. “Give me a tenner.”
“Fine”, said Dean, taking out his wallet. He handed over a ten euro note, which Paddy casually laid on the table beside him. He laid the pamphlet on the table, opened the first page, took a pen out of his pocket, and asked: “What’s your name?”
“Dean”.
“This is the one hundredth copy I’ve sold”, said Paddy, scribbling an inscription.
“I’m honoured”, said Dean, not knowing what else to say. For a moment, he thought his light irony would sound like sarcasm, but Paddy seemed to take it as nothing but his due.
The poet handed the pamphlet to Dean, with a ceremonial air. At least there was nothing bashful or thankful about his manner-- Dean hated to be embarrassed by overdone gratitude
“This is my fifth collection. I wrote it in Pennsylvania, London, Madrid, the Orkney Islands, and Indonesia. Three broken hearts-- one of them mine, two of them other peoples’. One arrest. One bike accident. Two riots. My major themes in this collection are human freedom-- well, that’s a theme in everything I write-- the prison of convention, the need to be yourself, the pain of love, the love of pain.”
Dean was fascinated. Who volunteered conversation about the themes of their own poetry, to a complete stranger? Well, obviously this chap did. He opened the pamphlet, flicking through it till he came to a poem called “Father Gerry”. Paddy was gesturing to the barmaid. Dean read:
God speaks to me through you, oh Father,
Oh man of God and man of men.
You shower God’s love like incense on
The good, the bad, on everyone;
And in those deep dark eyes, oh Father,
What galaxies are in those eyes!
“Drink?”, asked Paddy, prodding Dean on the hand with his finger.
“No, thanks.”
“One Bulmer’s then, sweetheart. Ah, I see your reading “Father Gerry”.
“Nice to read something positive about a priest, for a change”, said Dean, looking up. The poetry was no worse than he’d expected.
“Priests have a hard job”, said Paddy. “I have a lot of time for priests. I’m not going to hold them responsible for all the sins of the Church.”
“What do you mean, the sins of the Church?” asked Dean.
Paddy looked taken aback. Dean was used to seeing that look, whenever he defended the Catholic Church. “Oh man”, he said. “Where do I even begin?”
“I don’t know”, said Dean. “Where do you begin?”
“Raping children, and burning heretics, and supporting the Nazis, and persecuting queers, and having all that obscene wealth when there’s people going hungry in the world.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah”, said Dean, taking a sip from his hot chocolate to hide his irritation. Should he launch into a debate with this guy? Was it worth it? The man was so self-confident, self-righteous. His own timidity made such clashes excruciating. “I don’t believe all that stuff. The Church is no worse than any other institution, and better than most.” Even in his own ears it sounded feeble.
“I agree with you, buddy, I agree with you”, said Paddy, leaning forward. “I’m against all institutions. They’re all as bad as each other. Get rid of them all, that’s what I say. Thanks, sweetheart”. This last was addressed to the barmaid, as she placed his cider on the table. The poet watched her walk back to the bar, openly ogling her.
“What are you, an anarchist?”
“That’s just another word”, said Paddy, before taking a deep and appreciative draft of his cider. He wiped his mouth. “Anarchism. Communism. Fascism. Liberalism. Catholicism. Buddhism. they’re all just words. I’m into revolution.”
“That’s a word, too”, said Dean, beginning to enjoy himself, now the spotlight was off his own beliefs. “And I thought that a poet would like words.”
“A poet knows that words are mysterious”, said Paddy. “You can’t define them. You can’t limit them. They leak out all over the place. That’s the whole beauty of poetry.”
Dean didn’t say anything. He had to admit it was a good point. He’d already made up his mind that the poet was full of hot air, and he was somewhat taken aback.
“Well, poetry is poetry”, he said, eventually, when he realized Paddy wasn’t going to speak again. “Writing a poem and running a country are two different things. You can’t write legislation in poetry.”
“Why not?”, asked Paddy, quite passionately. “Why not? You’re wrong, man. Government is poetry. Religion is poetry. Sex is poetry. Everything is poetry.”
“The world would fall apart if everybody thought like that.”
“No, it wouldn’t, man. You’ve just been brainwashed. Brainwashed all your life. Sold all these rules. Go to school. Go to college. Get a job. Get a house. Get married. Have two point four children. Watch TV. Have a heart attack aged sixty-four. Pay your insurance, vote for some politicians who’s just the same as all the others, read the newspapers--”
“What’s wrong with all that?”, asked Dean. “Sounds OK to me.”
“You may as well be dead!”, said Paddy, banging his fist on the table. A group at another table looked up. “We’re sent into this world to live, man. To make the most of every day, every moment. To give the finger to convention. To burn brightly until we’re burned out.”
“You mean you want everybody to be like you”, said Dean. “That sounds boring to me.”
“I want everyone to be themselves”, said Paddy. He seemed to have no idea that Dean was playing with him. He was taking the exchange deadly seriously. “I don’t want them to be slaves to convention.”
“Are you not a slave to convention?”, asked Dean.
“No, man, I’m not.”
“Well, how aren’t you a slave to convention?” We’re all slaves to convention. Why shouldn’t we be?”
Paddy stared at Dean for a few moments. He had deep, dark eyes. Right now they were full of emotion.
“Watch this, man”, he said.
He finished his cider in several long gulps. Dean watched him, curiously.
When he’d finished the cider, Paddy stepped on his chair and then onto the table. He waved his arms and began to shout, “Hello! Hello! Everybody! Everybody!”
Dean was gripped by alarm. What the heck had he done? This was going to be mortifying, that was sure. Already everybody in the pub was looking at Paddy.
“I have an announcement to make!”, shouted Paddy, holding his cupped hands to his mouth like a loudspeaker. “You are being lied to! You are being lied to by the government! You are being lied to by the Church! You are being lied to by big business! There’s more to life than this!”
People were laughing now. A few people were cheering ironically. The dark-haired girl at the bar was making her way towards them.
“Life can be beautiful! Life can be free! Life can be poetry!”.
“You forgot to take your tablets, mate”, somebody said. Everybody laughed.
“Alright”, said the barmaid, tapping Paddy on leg. She was smiling.“Fun’s over. Public announcement is over. Get out.”
Paddy climbed down from the table, took the young woman’s hand in both his own, and planted a lingering kiss on it. “Anything you say, my sweet little blossom.” The girl didn’t seem displeased by the gesture, though she continued to point towards the door.
“OK?”, Paddy asked Dean. “Is that unconventional enough for you?”
“Bravo”, said Dean.
“Well, are you just going to let me get kicked out on my own, or are you going to come with me?”
“Where are you going?”
“Who knows? Wherever my feet take me.”
Dean looked at this cup of hot chocolate. There was a little bit left in the bottom. He took a long swig. “OK, then”, he said, rising up from the table.
Maybe this would be his adventure.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Days of Boredom
Long-term readers of their blog (may their sufferings be rewarded in Heaven!) will know that I often write about days-- those units of time into which the week is divided, those islands of wakefulness between sleep and sleep.
My fascination with days manifests itself in many ways. One is the writing of a daily diary which has continued unbroken since June 24th (the Feast of St. John the Baptist, and the date on which I proposed to my future wife) 2015. I've been writing it in Gaelic for a considerable time now. Bad Gaelic, but Gaelic nonetheless.
My favourite film of all time is Groundhog Day, partly because of this fascination with days. I did intend to watch it on Groundhog Day itself (which was last Sunday), but my DVD player is broken and none of the TV channels I can get were showing it (strangely enough).
Another way in which my fascination with days manifests itself, more recently, is subscribing to an "On This Day" email, from this website.
The most interesting thing about today's email is how little actually happened on February the Fifth, the Feast of St. Agatha, through all the long ages of the world.
Here are the top events the compilers of the website found for today:
1576 Henry of Navarre (later Henry IV of France) abjures Catholicism at Tours
1885 News of the fall of Khartoum reaches London
1885 King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal colonial possession
1969 US population reaches 200 million
No insult to Henry of Navarre, or to enthusiasts of the demographic history of the USA, but this seems slim pickings indeed in terms of world history and culture. This date has come around every year since the beginning of recorded history. Really, nothing more notable happened in all those years?
Reader, do you think I'm complaining about this? On the contrary, it delights me. It's yet another example of the spaciousness of life.
I was inspired to do an internet search for "the most boring day in history". I didn't find that, but I did find (arguably) the most boring day of the twentieth century: April 11th, 1954. A general election in Belgium was, apparently, the most newsworthy event. (It's amusing it should be Belgium. Peter Hitchens has disputed Belgium's reputation as a boring country, but the reputation certainly exists.)
For the same reason, the phrase (and the concept) of a "slow news day" has always delighted me.
For the same reason, this account of a visit to Shipea Hill (at that time the least busy train station in Britain) is one of my favourite blog posts of all time.
What would life be if it was thrills all the way? But even to say that is to suggest that slow news days, sleepy train stations, and so forth, are simply recuperative, or a kind of necessary contrast to all the good stuff. And I won't have that. They have their own unique poetry, in themselves.
This is one of the reasons I fear (and resist, as best I can) a globalized world, and a twenty-four hour society, and a pure meritocracy; because I believe mediocrity, boredom, and obscurity add vastly to the richness of life.
My fascination with days manifests itself in many ways. One is the writing of a daily diary which has continued unbroken since June 24th (the Feast of St. John the Baptist, and the date on which I proposed to my future wife) 2015. I've been writing it in Gaelic for a considerable time now. Bad Gaelic, but Gaelic nonetheless.
My favourite film of all time is Groundhog Day, partly because of this fascination with days. I did intend to watch it on Groundhog Day itself (which was last Sunday), but my DVD player is broken and none of the TV channels I can get were showing it (strangely enough).
Another way in which my fascination with days manifests itself, more recently, is subscribing to an "On This Day" email, from this website.
The most interesting thing about today's email is how little actually happened on February the Fifth, the Feast of St. Agatha, through all the long ages of the world.
Here are the top events the compilers of the website found for today:
1576 Henry of Navarre (later Henry IV of France) abjures Catholicism at Tours
1885 News of the fall of Khartoum reaches London
1885 King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal colonial possession
1969 US population reaches 200 million
 |
| Henry of Navarre |
Reader, do you think I'm complaining about this? On the contrary, it delights me. It's yet another example of the spaciousness of life.
I was inspired to do an internet search for "the most boring day in history". I didn't find that, but I did find (arguably) the most boring day of the twentieth century: April 11th, 1954. A general election in Belgium was, apparently, the most newsworthy event. (It's amusing it should be Belgium. Peter Hitchens has disputed Belgium's reputation as a boring country, but the reputation certainly exists.)
For the same reason, the phrase (and the concept) of a "slow news day" has always delighted me.
For the same reason, this account of a visit to Shipea Hill (at that time the least busy train station in Britain) is one of my favourite blog posts of all time.
 |
| Shipea Hill railway station |
This is one of the reasons I fear (and resist, as best I can) a globalized world, and a twenty-four hour society, and a pure meritocracy; because I believe mediocrity, boredom, and obscurity add vastly to the richness of life.
Chapter Two of The Cross, my Fragment of a Novel
(Apologies for the formatting mess when I posted this originally-- I didn't look after hitting "post". But I'm intrigued it got a fair amount of views and nobody pointed it out!)
He stood at the top of the stairs, staring down towards the front door. The hall light was off and the silhouettes of two men were thrown upon the frosted glass.
Dean had no idea who was standing there, but he was glad of their presence. Right now, he wanted to think about anything except the voice he’d thought he’d heard. He almost bounded down the stairs.
As he was pulling the door open, he thought of the nightmare that he’d had so often. One person shot before me, and then the gunman turning towards me….two men...but the thought was so swift, there was no time for fear.
Two young men in white shirts, dark trousers, and backpacks stood on his doorstep. They wore badges on their shirts that announced them to be Elder Cinard and Edler Barton. Both were sandy-haired, with tight neat haircuts.
“Hello” said Elder Cinard. He was the taller of the two, and ruggedly handsome. “We’re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, and we’d like to talk to you about our faith in Jesus Christ. Can you talk right now?”
Normally Dean would have sent them away, politely but firmly. But now he said: “Sure. How are you doing?”
“Pretty good”, said Elder Cinard. “What’s your name?”
“Dean. Look, do you want to come in?”
He stepped back and ushered them into the hallway. As he did so, he remembered all the jokes he’d heard about the Jehovah’s Witness who finally gets through the front door and doesn’t know what to do next. But the Mormons didn’t seem at all taken aback..
“Come into the kitchen. Would you like a cup of....juice or milk or something?”. He’d almost suggested a cup of tea, forgetting that they were forbidden such beverages.
“Juice would be nice”, said Elder Cinard. They sat down at the kitchen table, looking around them in the way everybody does when they enter a strange room.
“Have you just moved in?”, asked Elder Barton. Like his companion, he spoke with an American accent. Dean would not have been able to identify the region.
“Ha, no. I’ve just been having something of a clear-out. Orange juice, is that OK?”
“Sure. Thank you. Did you make that, sir?”
Dean looked around. Elder Cinard was looking at the cross, which was still leaning against the wall.
The sight of the cross had a strange calming effect on Dean. His heart had stopped racing minutes before, but he’d still been feeling agitated, warding off emotions that he thought had been left in the past. He couldn’t haven’t said why the crudely-made cross should have quelled his agitation, but it did.
“No, that wasn’t me. I bought that at a craft-fair. I don’t know who made it. Here you go.”
“Thanks”, said Elder Barton. “Sir, do you believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ?”
“Yes, I do. Can you eat biscuits?”
“Sure. Are you familiar with the teachings of the Church of the Latter Day Saints?”
“A little bit. I’m actually a religion teacher myself.”
“That’s cool”, said Elder Cinard. “What religion do you teach?”
“The Catholic religion”, said Dean, as he filled the kettle for the umpteenth time that day. “But I teach about other religions too. Including yours.” He leaned against the sink, crossed his arms, and looked more closely at the two young men. Elder Barton was not as classically handsome as the other, but there was an intelligent light in his eyes. Both of them, despite their smiles, seemed rather wary.
“Well, we want to share the gospel of Jesus with as many people as we can”, said Cinard. “It’s brought so much happiness into our lives, we really want other people to experience that happiness.”
“OK”, said Dean. He wondered if he should get into a debate with these boys. He was a religion teacher, surely he should be able to give them a run for their money, to beat them at their own game?
He realized, however, that he didn’t want to. He’d heard that Mormon missionaries were encouraged to avoid debates. He didn’t want to scare them away. Right now, he was very happy for their company.
Besides...he liked talking to them. There was something about their eagerness, about the atmosphere they carried around with them, that appealed to him greatly. He found it strangely comforting.
“Can I ask you guys a question?”
“Sure.”
“What kind of a reaction do you get here?”
Both of the young men laughed. For all their perky appearance, there was a note of weariness in their laughter.
“I mean, it’s pretty good most of the time”, said Cinard. “People are very polite, very friendly. A lof them are very disillusioned with...organised religion.” Dean could tell that he’d been about to say “the Catholic Church”.
“Do you get any abuse?”
“No, sir, not really. Some people are a bit...abrupt. But most people are pretty good.”
Dean contemplated the two fresh-faced young men, conscious of a certain envy. He couldn’t even imagine walking up to a stranger and talking about God, or Jesus, or religion, or anything like that. It would be so embarrassing.
“Have you actually...well, have you actually convinced anyone?”
There was a long silence. The two missionaries looked at each other. “Uh, we try not to concentrate on numbers”, said Cinard. “All we can do is share our testimony and the rest is up to the Spirit.”
“A good few people have taken books and pamphlets and give us their contacts”, said Barton. He had a pleasant voice, pronouncing every syllable distinctly. “They told us they’d ask God in prayer whether the Book of Mormon is a true revelation of Jesus Christ. If they do that in sincerity, we believe they’ll be won for Christ.”
“Even if they don’t do that for weeks, months, years from now”, said Cinard. “All we do is try to draw people to the Spirit.”
“Can we give you a copy of Christ’s latest revelation to the world?”, asked Barton. He was already reaching into his backpack, which was lying at his feet. “We believe that this book answers all the deepest questions of human life.”
“Well, I’ve been trying to get rid of stuff”, said Dean. The kettle began to whistle-- possibly his favourite sound in the whole world. He liked especially the way it reverberated in the almost-empty kitchen. “I’d rather not take anything extra.” What he didn’t tell them was that he’d already thrown out a copy of The Book of Mormon, given to him by a previous missionary. He’d planned to dip into it-- he was a religion teacher, after all-- but he’d never got round to it.
“That’s cool”, said Barton. “Well, maybe you’d like to take a pamphlet?”
“Sure”, said Dean stirring his tea. “How long have you been...missioning?”
“Four months now”, said Cunard.
“And how long are you going to be doing this?”
“Two years, if the Spirit wills it.”
“Two years!”, repeated Dean. “And that’s full-time?.”
“Yes sir”, said Barton, smiling. “It’s tough but it brings us a lot of joy. We’re bringing Jesus Christ into peoples’ lives.”
Dean watched the two boys, thoughtfully. Two years of speaking to strangers about God. Two years of knocking on strangers’ doors. Two years of polite or not-so-polite rebuffs. It was unthinkable to him. What had he ever done for his faith, that was anything like this?
“I admire you guys a lot”, he said, carrying his tea to the table, and sitting down. “I could never imagine myself doing something like that.”
Cinard was biting on a biscuit. Dean wondered if these kids had enough to eat. He’d heard that they funded their own missions.
“It’s not by our own power”, said Barton, passion steadily entering into his voice. “It’s the power of Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ is in your heart, you want more than anything else to share him with the world.”
Something about these words made Dean feel a mixture of emotions; excitement, jeaousy, defensiveness, and God knew what else.
“But how do you know you’re right?”, he asked, defensiveness coming to the fore. “There are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Evangelicals, every sort of religion out there telling people that they only have to pray and God will answer them. Well, I’m not sure what Muslims say, but it’s probably something like that.”
“Every religion has elements of truth to it”, said Barton, so mechanically Dean suspected it was a stock answer. “But only the Church of Latter Day Saints has the fullness of truth.”
“But how do you know? Because you pray?”
"Yes!”, said Barton, with surprising ardour. “There is no other answer. We could argue about Scripture verses and philosophy all day long, but nobody ever comes to faith in Jesus Christ through argument. God speaks to their hearts, that’s all.”
“Well,”, said Dean, smiling, “God speaks to their hearts through the Catholic faith, too, doesn’t he?”
There was a moment of silence. The sound of an ice-cream van drifted from far away. It was playing Pope-Eye the Sailor Man..
“Sir, we respect your religion”, said Barton, speaking softly. “We respect everybody’s religion. But I have to say we’ve found a great spiritual emptiness in this country. I see big churches on every street, but does anybody go to them?”
“Sure they do”, said Dean. “I go to church. I go to Mass.”
“Well, I think that’s wonderful, that you’re seeking Jesus Christ. But if the Catholic faith could satisfy the human heart, why have the Irish rejected it?”
Dean didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure what to say.
“I think there’s wonderful Catholics and wonderful priests and there’s so much good in the Catholic church”, said Barton, who was speaking quickly now, with the energy of his own excitement. “But after the death of the last apostle, every church fell into apostasy. I don’t hold it against your priests or against any Catholics. They’ve just never heard the pure gospel, the reconstructed gospel. How could they know? They’re doing their best.”
Dean was doing his best to hide his reactions. The young Mormon was so confident now, he found himself almost going along with him, against himself.
“Hundreds of thousands of Catholics go to Mass in this country every week”, said Dean, trying to sound just as confident as Barton. “Have you even been inside a Catholic Church?”
“No, sir”, said Barton. “We have not. And I do believe you that all those people go to church. But, even if they go to church, is Jesus Christ really in their hearts and souls? Does he fill them with joy? Does their faith overflow into their lives? I don’t see it. I don’t hear it.”
“Well, the Irish are very shy”, said Dean, laughing. He was feeling frustrated, and trying to hide it. “We don’t really like to talk about things like religion. We’re not into the whole Hallelujah stuff”. He waved his palms in the air, in a lame imitation of a TV evangelist. “That’s not our style.”
“And I totally respect that, sir. Absolutely. But we’ve been for months now and all I’ve felt is a great spiritual darkness.” He was speaking with even greater conviction now, almost with an air of agitation. “The Irish are angry at the Catholic Church, angry at God, angry at the government, angry at everything. It seems to me like they’re hungering, hungering for spiritual food, but they can’t find it.”
“Don’t believe half of what you hear Irish people say about the Church”, muttered Dean. He heard truculence in his own voice.
“No, sir, I don’t”, said Elder Barton, leaning forward. “I’ve met some Catholic priests and I think they’re good men. But even with them, I sense this darkness, this hollowness. I mean, why should that be the symbol of our faith in Jesus Christ?”
The Mormon was pointing at the cross, leaning against the wall.
“Because our Lord died on it”, said Dean. “Because it was the means of our salvation.”
“But why would you concentrate on pain and death? I believe in the risen Jesus, the Jesus who lives!” Now Barton’s voice had risen almost to a cry. “I feel like the Irish people have had death and suffering and pain for centuries and centuries, in their politics and their religion, and now they’re saying, “No more! No more pain and suffering!”. Elder Barton crossed his hands in the air, making a gesture of denial.
“So what do they choose instead?”, asked Dean. “Shopping? Consumerism? Drugs? Sex? Rock and roll?”
“I agree with you”, said Barton, nodding his head emphatically. “They’re looking in all the wrong places. That’s why I want to help them find the true path. This.” He reached into the backpack, and raised a copy of The Book of Mormon aloft. Its gold lettering glinted in the light falling from a lampshade above the table.
“Well”, said Dean, suddenly feeling a great reluctance to argue any further with the kid. “I admire you for it. I don’t agree with you, but I admire you for it.”
“Sir, will you pray to the Spirit to know whether the truth of Jesus Christ is revealed in this book?”, asked Elder Barton, obviously sensing that the audience was drawing to an end.
“I’ll pray to God to know the truth”, said Dean, with deliberate ambiguity.
The Mormons finished their juice, and Dean shook their hands again. They asked for his telephone number. He gave them his email address. They gave him some pamphlets. Within a few more minutes, they were on their way.
Dean sat in the empty kitchen, finishing his tea, staring out into the garden. Dusk was falling slowly. He wondered what the Mormons had thought of him speaking to them in his bathrobe. That he was clinically depressed, perhaps?
He felt agitated. There was something real about the young Mormons, something horribly impressive and challenging. He didn’t believe their religion. Not for a moment. He’d actually studied it in some depth many years ago. It was fascinating, but none of it rang true to him. The Trinity, three separate beings? God once having been a man? Men themselves to become like God? No, no, no. That was incoherent.
But the fire they’d brought into his house...he imagined that St. Paul and the other apostles must have carried that kind of fire with them through the ancient world, the world that had never heard of Christ. They came to preach to him. All day long he heard people trying to sell something to him, but these Mormons came into his home with the single purpose of saving his soul. While everybody else around him seemed hellbent on convincing him he had no such thing in the first place. Or, if he did, that it didn’t need saving.
He looked at the digital clock on his oven. It wasn’t even eight o’clock.
He looked at the cross lying against the wall. Take up your cross. Of course he’d imagined it.
He thought of Holly’s face, of Elder Barton’s intense brown eyes. He felt restless.
He went upstairs and began to get dressed. He’d decided he wasn’t going to stay in tonight, after all. He was going to go down to the Comet.
He stood at the top of the stairs, staring down towards the front door. The hall light was off and the silhouettes of two men were thrown upon the frosted glass.
Dean had no idea who was standing there, but he was glad of their presence. Right now, he wanted to think about anything except the voice he’d thought he’d heard. He almost bounded down the stairs.
As he was pulling the door open, he thought of the nightmare that he’d had so often. One person shot before me, and then the gunman turning towards me….two men...but the thought was so swift, there was no time for fear.
Two young men in white shirts, dark trousers, and backpacks stood on his doorstep. They wore badges on their shirts that announced them to be Elder Cinard and Edler Barton. Both were sandy-haired, with tight neat haircuts.
“Hello” said Elder Cinard. He was the taller of the two, and ruggedly handsome. “We’re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, and we’d like to talk to you about our faith in Jesus Christ. Can you talk right now?”
Normally Dean would have sent them away, politely but firmly. But now he said: “Sure. How are you doing?”
“Pretty good”, said Elder Cinard. “What’s your name?”
“Dean. Look, do you want to come in?”
He stepped back and ushered them into the hallway. As he did so, he remembered all the jokes he’d heard about the Jehovah’s Witness who finally gets through the front door and doesn’t know what to do next. But the Mormons didn’t seem at all taken aback..
“Come into the kitchen. Would you like a cup of....juice or milk or something?”. He’d almost suggested a cup of tea, forgetting that they were forbidden such beverages.
“Juice would be nice”, said Elder Cinard. They sat down at the kitchen table, looking around them in the way everybody does when they enter a strange room.
“Have you just moved in?”, asked Elder Barton. Like his companion, he spoke with an American accent. Dean would not have been able to identify the region.
“Ha, no. I’ve just been having something of a clear-out. Orange juice, is that OK?”
“Sure. Thank you. Did you make that, sir?”
Dean looked around. Elder Cinard was looking at the cross, which was still leaning against the wall.
The sight of the cross had a strange calming effect on Dean. His heart had stopped racing minutes before, but he’d still been feeling agitated, warding off emotions that he thought had been left in the past. He couldn’t haven’t said why the crudely-made cross should have quelled his agitation, but it did.
“No, that wasn’t me. I bought that at a craft-fair. I don’t know who made it. Here you go.”
“Thanks”, said Elder Barton. “Sir, do you believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ?”
“Yes, I do. Can you eat biscuits?”
“Sure. Are you familiar with the teachings of the Church of the Latter Day Saints?”
“A little bit. I’m actually a religion teacher myself.”
“That’s cool”, said Elder Cinard. “What religion do you teach?”
“The Catholic religion”, said Dean, as he filled the kettle for the umpteenth time that day. “But I teach about other religions too. Including yours.” He leaned against the sink, crossed his arms, and looked more closely at the two young men. Elder Barton was not as classically handsome as the other, but there was an intelligent light in his eyes. Both of them, despite their smiles, seemed rather wary.
“Well, we want to share the gospel of Jesus with as many people as we can”, said Cinard. “It’s brought so much happiness into our lives, we really want other people to experience that happiness.”
“OK”, said Dean. He wondered if he should get into a debate with these boys. He was a religion teacher, surely he should be able to give them a run for their money, to beat them at their own game?
He realized, however, that he didn’t want to. He’d heard that Mormon missionaries were encouraged to avoid debates. He didn’t want to scare them away. Right now, he was very happy for their company.
Besides...he liked talking to them. There was something about their eagerness, about the atmosphere they carried around with them, that appealed to him greatly. He found it strangely comforting.
“Can I ask you guys a question?”
“Sure.”
“What kind of a reaction do you get here?”
Both of the young men laughed. For all their perky appearance, there was a note of weariness in their laughter.
“I mean, it’s pretty good most of the time”, said Cinard. “People are very polite, very friendly. A lof them are very disillusioned with...organised religion.” Dean could tell that he’d been about to say “the Catholic Church”.
“Do you get any abuse?”
“No, sir, not really. Some people are a bit...abrupt. But most people are pretty good.”
Dean contemplated the two fresh-faced young men, conscious of a certain envy. He couldn’t even imagine walking up to a stranger and talking about God, or Jesus, or religion, or anything like that. It would be so embarrassing.
“Have you actually...well, have you actually convinced anyone?”
There was a long silence. The two missionaries looked at each other. “Uh, we try not to concentrate on numbers”, said Cinard. “All we can do is share our testimony and the rest is up to the Spirit.”
“A good few people have taken books and pamphlets and give us their contacts”, said Barton. He had a pleasant voice, pronouncing every syllable distinctly. “They told us they’d ask God in prayer whether the Book of Mormon is a true revelation of Jesus Christ. If they do that in sincerity, we believe they’ll be won for Christ.”
“Even if they don’t do that for weeks, months, years from now”, said Cinard. “All we do is try to draw people to the Spirit.”
“Can we give you a copy of Christ’s latest revelation to the world?”, asked Barton. He was already reaching into his backpack, which was lying at his feet. “We believe that this book answers all the deepest questions of human life.”
“Well, I’ve been trying to get rid of stuff”, said Dean. The kettle began to whistle-- possibly his favourite sound in the whole world. He liked especially the way it reverberated in the almost-empty kitchen. “I’d rather not take anything extra.” What he didn’t tell them was that he’d already thrown out a copy of The Book of Mormon, given to him by a previous missionary. He’d planned to dip into it-- he was a religion teacher, after all-- but he’d never got round to it.
“That’s cool”, said Barton. “Well, maybe you’d like to take a pamphlet?”
“Sure”, said Dean stirring his tea. “How long have you been...missioning?”
“Four months now”, said Cunard.
“And how long are you going to be doing this?”
“Two years, if the Spirit wills it.”
“Two years!”, repeated Dean. “And that’s full-time?.”
“Yes sir”, said Barton, smiling. “It’s tough but it brings us a lot of joy. We’re bringing Jesus Christ into peoples’ lives.”
Dean watched the two boys, thoughtfully. Two years of speaking to strangers about God. Two years of knocking on strangers’ doors. Two years of polite or not-so-polite rebuffs. It was unthinkable to him. What had he ever done for his faith, that was anything like this?
“I admire you guys a lot”, he said, carrying his tea to the table, and sitting down. “I could never imagine myself doing something like that.”
Cinard was biting on a biscuit. Dean wondered if these kids had enough to eat. He’d heard that they funded their own missions.
“It’s not by our own power”, said Barton, passion steadily entering into his voice. “It’s the power of Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ is in your heart, you want more than anything else to share him with the world.”
Something about these words made Dean feel a mixture of emotions; excitement, jeaousy, defensiveness, and God knew what else.
“But how do you know you’re right?”, he asked, defensiveness coming to the fore. “There are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Evangelicals, every sort of religion out there telling people that they only have to pray and God will answer them. Well, I’m not sure what Muslims say, but it’s probably something like that.”
“Every religion has elements of truth to it”, said Barton, so mechanically Dean suspected it was a stock answer. “But only the Church of Latter Day Saints has the fullness of truth.”
“But how do you know? Because you pray?”
"Yes!”, said Barton, with surprising ardour. “There is no other answer. We could argue about Scripture verses and philosophy all day long, but nobody ever comes to faith in Jesus Christ through argument. God speaks to their hearts, that’s all.”
“Well,”, said Dean, smiling, “God speaks to their hearts through the Catholic faith, too, doesn’t he?”
There was a moment of silence. The sound of an ice-cream van drifted from far away. It was playing Pope-Eye the Sailor Man..
“Sir, we respect your religion”, said Barton, speaking softly. “We respect everybody’s religion. But I have to say we’ve found a great spiritual emptiness in this country. I see big churches on every street, but does anybody go to them?”
“Sure they do”, said Dean. “I go to church. I go to Mass.”
“Well, I think that’s wonderful, that you’re seeking Jesus Christ. But if the Catholic faith could satisfy the human heart, why have the Irish rejected it?”
Dean didn’t reply. He wasn’t sure what to say.
“I think there’s wonderful Catholics and wonderful priests and there’s so much good in the Catholic church”, said Barton, who was speaking quickly now, with the energy of his own excitement. “But after the death of the last apostle, every church fell into apostasy. I don’t hold it against your priests or against any Catholics. They’ve just never heard the pure gospel, the reconstructed gospel. How could they know? They’re doing their best.”
Dean was doing his best to hide his reactions. The young Mormon was so confident now, he found himself almost going along with him, against himself.
“Hundreds of thousands of Catholics go to Mass in this country every week”, said Dean, trying to sound just as confident as Barton. “Have you even been inside a Catholic Church?”
“No, sir”, said Barton. “We have not. And I do believe you that all those people go to church. But, even if they go to church, is Jesus Christ really in their hearts and souls? Does he fill them with joy? Does their faith overflow into their lives? I don’t see it. I don’t hear it.”
“Well, the Irish are very shy”, said Dean, laughing. He was feeling frustrated, and trying to hide it. “We don’t really like to talk about things like religion. We’re not into the whole Hallelujah stuff”. He waved his palms in the air, in a lame imitation of a TV evangelist. “That’s not our style.”
“And I totally respect that, sir. Absolutely. But we’ve been for months now and all I’ve felt is a great spiritual darkness.” He was speaking with even greater conviction now, almost with an air of agitation. “The Irish are angry at the Catholic Church, angry at God, angry at the government, angry at everything. It seems to me like they’re hungering, hungering for spiritual food, but they can’t find it.”
“Don’t believe half of what you hear Irish people say about the Church”, muttered Dean. He heard truculence in his own voice.
“No, sir, I don’t”, said Elder Barton, leaning forward. “I’ve met some Catholic priests and I think they’re good men. But even with them, I sense this darkness, this hollowness. I mean, why should that be the symbol of our faith in Jesus Christ?”
The Mormon was pointing at the cross, leaning against the wall.
“Because our Lord died on it”, said Dean. “Because it was the means of our salvation.”
“But why would you concentrate on pain and death? I believe in the risen Jesus, the Jesus who lives!” Now Barton’s voice had risen almost to a cry. “I feel like the Irish people have had death and suffering and pain for centuries and centuries, in their politics and their religion, and now they’re saying, “No more! No more pain and suffering!”. Elder Barton crossed his hands in the air, making a gesture of denial.
“So what do they choose instead?”, asked Dean. “Shopping? Consumerism? Drugs? Sex? Rock and roll?”
“I agree with you”, said Barton, nodding his head emphatically. “They’re looking in all the wrong places. That’s why I want to help them find the true path. This.” He reached into the backpack, and raised a copy of The Book of Mormon aloft. Its gold lettering glinted in the light falling from a lampshade above the table.
“Well”, said Dean, suddenly feeling a great reluctance to argue any further with the kid. “I admire you for it. I don’t agree with you, but I admire you for it.”
“Sir, will you pray to the Spirit to know whether the truth of Jesus Christ is revealed in this book?”, asked Elder Barton, obviously sensing that the audience was drawing to an end.
“I’ll pray to God to know the truth”, said Dean, with deliberate ambiguity.
The Mormons finished their juice, and Dean shook their hands again. They asked for his telephone number. He gave them his email address. They gave him some pamphlets. Within a few more minutes, they were on their way.
Dean sat in the empty kitchen, finishing his tea, staring out into the garden. Dusk was falling slowly. He wondered what the Mormons had thought of him speaking to them in his bathrobe. That he was clinically depressed, perhaps?
He felt agitated. There was something real about the young Mormons, something horribly impressive and challenging. He didn’t believe their religion. Not for a moment. He’d actually studied it in some depth many years ago. It was fascinating, but none of it rang true to him. The Trinity, three separate beings? God once having been a man? Men themselves to become like God? No, no, no. That was incoherent.
But the fire they’d brought into his house...he imagined that St. Paul and the other apostles must have carried that kind of fire with them through the ancient world, the world that had never heard of Christ. They came to preach to him. All day long he heard people trying to sell something to him, but these Mormons came into his home with the single purpose of saving his soul. While everybody else around him seemed hellbent on convincing him he had no such thing in the first place. Or, if he did, that it didn’t need saving.
He looked at the digital clock on his oven. It wasn’t even eight o’clock.
He looked at the cross lying against the wall. Take up your cross. Of course he’d imagined it.
He thought of Holly’s face, of Elder Barton’s intense brown eyes. He felt restless.
He went upstairs and began to get dressed. He’d decided he wasn’t going to stay in tonight, after all. He was going to go down to the Comet.
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