This Is the Way, page 14
Arthur didn’t say nothing. He had his hands on his knees, his head was low.
Ah Arthur don’t let me down says Judith and the group laughing around her.
Ah leave him be if he doesn’t want to do it says Pam.
You’ll need to get over your shyness Arthur if you want to perform in front of others says Judith isn’t that right Anthony.
All a sudden he stood up. Everyone sat back in their seat. He put out his arm and pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and turned his hand so the palm was toward the ceiling. I waited for words about Redmond or Leonard Andrew but he did not say any words about no one he made a noise like an engine a whine and he says missus missus.
Then Roy took a post card from his shirt he said was from Don after he got married. He says listen to this, Konstantinopol with a K the twentieth of May. Dead to the world. No infernal muezzin cries to wake us. The air is pregnant with the smell of rose and saffron.
Judith says in my ear why don’t you guys go and make yourselves comfortable in the room upstairs I have ready for you.
Professor Michael came over the other side of me, put his hand on my shoulder. He says to Judith is the DVD player still hooked up in the room.
We went up to a room the very top of the house, under the beams, Professor Michael showed us. There was a bed made up and a couch made up as a bed. Me and Arthur sat the end of the bed and Professor Michael put a DVD in the machine. He could not get it to work, he pressed the buttons, then he got it to work. He says you’ll enjoy this film both of you. Judith wouldn’t be very happy about me saying this but she took her play pretty much from this film. Just watch it and you’ll have no problems. The film is based on a book but I wouldn’t torture you by giving you the book. He says enjoy it now and make yourselves comfortable up here. The couch is very comfortable, my son has slept on it he says.
He went out the room and down the stair and the film was playing.
We did not like the film. It was about a man, Redmond, who went to fight in the war. When he went to the war we turned the film off, it was a boring film. We stayed sitting on the bed. We listened at the noise down the stair under the floors. The group were talking again, they were talking loud. The voices came through but we could not hear the words. We sat ten minutes looking at the television that was turned off and listening to the noise down the stair.
I seen a door to another room, I went over to it. I looked at Arthur, he was not looking at me, he was not interested, he was looking at the wall. I turned the handle of the door and went in the room, it was a room had a rotted wood window the glass in it wrinkled. The room was full of green plants, their sleeping leaves were on my hand. I looked through the window I seen the lights of other houses in the dark. I came back in the bedroom I says to Arthur do you think everyone else in all the other houses is sitting in groups like Judith and her friends.
I pulled out the chair was under the table where the television was sitting, I sat in the chair.
Arthur was flat on his back on the bed, his eyes were open.
He says where will we go.
We sat on the seat and lay on the bed and listened to the voices coming through.
8
There is a very interesting story about our people. I think of this story now I think of my mother starting again with an old story of hers. That is what this story is, it is another start to another story. I think of this story I think of my father. I think of him kissing his left thumb. He is looking to the sky and now he is turning his nail and crossing his head, his lip and his heart.
I think of him standing in a field. He is stripped to the waist and the last of the challengers is lying pounded in the dirt. I see him walking away and the crowd cheering him hitting him on the back, the crowd passing money under his head and the crowd dying away around him and him walking on and looking at his thumb, his left thumb, and seeing it bitten and bleeding and dirt in the wound and him spitting it clean and licking it clean and his tongue shaking and his hand shaking and him hearing a voice, a calling, saying this is not for your people this is for me and taking off his belt and hitting a stone and hitting a stone and walking and hitting a stone and hearing no more of the fighting or the old ways I have a special path for you.
I think of the men that came to the Cliffs to take Teresa back. I see them pulling her, peeling her away from that unnatural mark. They are haring off through ploughed black muck and hanging drizzle, they are going over tar past yellow teeth and yellow lights to the mountains.
I think of Aaron the southpaw. I think of that weapon he had. Coiled to spring it was said.
I hear the words of the Gillaroo spiking the Sonaghan saying they are a people always pointed the wrong way.
And I think of Arthur and I think of his hand and I think of his scars, and I think of the time I first heard this story of our people, sitting in Judith’s garden, and all a sudden I knew it all I thought, why this terrible wound was done to him, why he had this terrible fucking monkey hand, it was clear as if it was sitting in front of me.
It was a time it was quiet, there was no talking loud. There were none of the others, there was just Judith myself and Arthur. We were seated on wood chairs at a wood table under a heater. We had not taken heavy drink. It was a beautiful clear evening and the ducks were disappearing from the country over our head.
Stories of the Sonaghans came out our people’s mouth and were said to Judith’s father. They been through many mouths and the last mouth was Judith. We learnt Judith had a mouth on her indeed. She had caused a lot of harm to her father in his life time but she was making up for it after he was gone. She been a bad daughter she said, she would have thrown herself through glass she would have taken a sharp bit of glass she said.
Will you go on out of that talk says Arthur.
She had her troubles like the rest of us, but the trouble she was when she was a young one and she was wild was serving her to the good now she said, although it was a pity her present troubles were out of her hands to mend because she loved a married man and he would not leave his wife but that was a different story she said.
Let me get this straight she says you two are uncle and nephew through via because of whom.
But anyways she was the way she was back then she said.
She says I caused my daddy such grief when I was young but he was a fine man. I’ve come to realise that I am my father’s daughter, we are the same person. He was pushing the boundaries and I could not appreciate it at the time. In fact he was so much more daring than me, he was a pioneer and a radical. You would have liked him fellas. He touched everyone he met, he was a great listener, he knew where the soul and salvation of this country was, that was his greatness.
He had worked like Judith in a university and many years ago he went out in the field and he spoke to the native people of this country. He set out to write down every part of our culture, he filled note books with wisdom and story and song. He thought it was important in a time when no one else did. Judith was working through the note books, copying the stories, bringing them into the store of knowledge. There were such riches it was the most enjoyable work she ever done she said.
She had the note books out from a box on the table. They were in the damp in her attic too long and they had mushrooms on them once but it was not the note books themself was important it was what was in them was important.
Where were you from originally she says.
We came out of Melvin I says.
Melvin the same as the Gillaroos Arthur says.
That’s right says Judith, she says Melvin.
She been on the look out for stories about the Sonaghans and she found our name all through the note books, but we are one of the biggest names through the country and through England.
She read words in the note books, she said about wagons and tents and the Blessed Mother tinware panboxes churching and ringworm and seeing pooka in farm yards.
Do you know about these things she says.
I heard of some of them says Arthur.
She put the note books to one side and she stirred up out her seat and twisted the handle on the heater, made the flame glow bright and blue. Now she says.
Arthur says can you lower that flame.
I’ve only just turned it up she says.
No can you bring the pole down to a lower height so’s the flame is close to us he says.
No I can’t says Judith, it’s at a fixed height.
No bother, no bother says Arthur.
I think of our stories now I think of an old man saying them because they are stories older than Judith and older than them books. They are stories could have been said by the man said to Judith’s father the stories but they are stories could have been said by a man going back further than that. They are stories for wild bright sparking fires and dying clear low fires.
The Sonaghans were the fish were put in the lake in Melvin by God himself so it goes. He put them in one by one with his own hand. The left hand is the Devil’s hand and God would not use his left hand and he put the Sonaghan fish in the lake by holding the fish tight in his right hand. When he was holding the fish in his right hand his thumb pressed in their left side and when he let them go in the lake the mark of God’s thumb was burnt in the Sonaghan fish’s left side as the sign they were the fish were from God. When the Sonaghans grew to people the mark of God stayed with them on their own thumb. Because the mark of the thumb of God was on the left side of the fish, when they grew to people it was on their left thumb that the Sonaghans had the mark of God. Favoured was the word, chosen was the word.
They are words would be said by the old man jumping off his seat on the ground, he has only two teeth there is smoke and buckets near him. He spits on the ground he says and we are the ones is chosen by the Lord the others is dirt. He laughs loud showing the old holes in his teeth. He says you see it today and it’s the special sign of the Sonaghan so it is. Look at any of our left thumb. Take a look at me own look at it. See it now. The print on it is different to the print on all me other fingers and the other thumb see it. See it he says.
In her garden under the heater in the dark Judith says come now and look at this. She opened one of the books on the table on one of the pages. I seen the two thumb marks of a man must have been made using burnt wood. One was written left underneath it the other was written right.
See how the lines in one print are so different to the lines in the other says Judith.
The right one was loops getting smaller and smaller one inside the other, the left was different it was true.
It’s an S shape do you see says Judith.
I could see it clear now it was pointed to me yes it was an S shape. I looked at my own thumbs I seen the exact same, something I never seen before. My right thumb was loops, even my fingers was loops, but my left thumb was an S. The lines of it gathered at the top and moved together in a swerve and back and back out again. I was standing under this gas heater and lamp looking at it, Sonaghan or sinner I did not know.
Judith says well Arthur let’s see yours.
Arthur says I don’t have it.
She remembered his hand was deformed, I’m sorry she says.
But Arthur opened his left hand anyhows. The thumb that was his toe didn’t look sore no more but it looked strange still. It still did not look like the thumb of a person it looked like the thumb of a monkey, looked like a toe what it looked.
I seen Judith was embarrassed was the look, she was shamed.
Arthur says see maam not every one of us gets it.
9
There were men in the work one of the days they wanted to talk to us all. They were in clothes made from toilet paper, was tissue was said. I says to someone what is it about they said the men said we were to work normal they would be around to every one of us and talk to us one after the other.
I was working normal, I was at the press. Later in the morning one of the men came to me he says how are you. He says can we have a minute with you sir.
I seen they were taking people in a room, he took me in the room too. The blind in the room was shut and the light was on. The man says take a seat.
The man did not say anything to me he says only can you stretch out your hands good man.
He said to me to hold my hands up and open and flat. He looked at the tops of the fingers he says can I see the other side, he looked at the other side too.
Good he says.
There was a black box in the room it had a gap in the side of it, the man said to me to put my hands in the gap. He turned off the light in the room then I seen my hands in the gap in the box were lit up in a blue colour. I got a strange feeling looking at my hands. The man pulled in in the seat beside me he looked in at my hands too. They did not feel like my own hands, I was floating around them.
The next bit of it the man turned the light in the room back on. He says keep your hands in the machine for a moment. He says now take your hands out of the machine and try not to touch anything as you do so. Keep them hovering in the air like a magician or like this like a dove good man he says.
The man went to the box he took up the paper at the bottom of the gap my hands were in. He crushed the paper and threw it in the bin. He took off the gloves he was wearing he put them in the bin too. He put on new gloves. He pulled more paper from a pipe he put a sheet of this paper on a table.
He says float your hands above the paper and try not to touch it if you can.
My arms were sore and my hands went down.
He says try not to touch the paper if you can.
The man opened a box. He had glass and wool in it. He took a stick from a glass, he rubbed the stick over the palms of my hands and up my fingers and thumbs. He touched the stick off a bit of cloth twenty times.
He says I’m sorry about this, he took a needle from the box as well.
I says I don’t want you sticking needles in me.
He says I won’t be sticking any needle in you. He says I’m just going to give your nails a quick clean it won’t take long.
He went under my nails with the needle, I did not like it one bit.
When all of it was finished the man said to me to wash my hands well and he showed a way to wash my hands.
I says I know how to wash me hands I don’t need to be told it.
He says you must take time to wash your hands and you must wash every part of your hands.
I asked them on the floor when the men were gone who else got their hands looked at the same as me. There were eight of them on the floor all of them had their hands in the box but it was only me got their nails cleaned out got told the way to wash their hands. I could not work for the rest of the day my hands were shaking I was angry.
I went up to Mylo was how angry I was. The thing I seen about his office was how clean it was, I never seen this before. There were things gone from it, things put away, the walls smelt of fruit.
Mylo was angry too he says I know I know.
He said to me to take the rest of the day off work I was disgusted I was with the men, treating me like this.
It was the Thursday of that week I came to the factory and there didn’t look like nothing wrong outside of the place and then I seen things were wrong inside of it. In two seconds I seen things were not normal, nobody was working, you would have thought there was something going to happen. People been saying things were bad a long time but it didn’t stop them doing their work, now all things were stopped, something was wrong.
I says to the girl Lorna what’s wrong.
Lorna says it’s not good I says what is it she says we’ll hear soon enough.
I seen my press it was turned off, I seen all the machines on the floor they were turned off.
We were waiting on the floor we looked up at Mylo’s office. We were looking for a change in the light, something moving. A fella came on the floor he said he looked in the store room and other rooms he couldn’t find Mylo nowhere. He said he would go up to Mylo’s office he says this is not on. He went up the steps and in Mylo’s office then he came out.
No one there he says.
We were stood about, there were doors into machines and we wondered did we have to start turning off lights. Somebody says take what you can, charge your phones, but nobody moved, nobody took anything was said serious, even jokes were said.
Then Mylo came in the main door his coat still on him. He was sweating but he was smiling, his brown hair was blown.
He says sorry.
We waited for him to say something but he was breathing heavy. We waited for him to breathe normal and steady then we seen the smile go from his face. We lowered our face to look in his eyes, he would not look in our eyes. The group of them went toward him, I stood where I was. They put their arms around him, he fell into them beside him, in their arms he went, they caught him. He floated, he was loose, they walked with him to the other side of the floor. I seen him he was crying he says I have let you all down. They put him on a seat they says Mylo things will be okay. Someone fed him a bar and put their hand under his chin to catch the crumbs then someone took him to a pub.
We sat about outside saying I don’t know about it. We were all out of a job and people were shocked. Where would we go they were saying. Someone said we would all get jobs again, we said where. He says I’ll get all of you jobs. Someone else said what about Celestina who was touched. The boy who brought Celestina to work and home every day brought her home he said he would talk to her mammy. Someone other says I’m going to the pub with Mylo, that is the right idea. Everyone said goodbye to everyone else, people were squeezing the others’ shoulders, but nobody moved, they all stayed and talked, nobody could believe it what just happened.
I could not stand about hearing this the whole day, I got in my car. I didn’t like it my job was gone but I would get another one I’d get it on my own. I came out the industrial estate I says there are some of them will not get jobs again, there are some are handicapped. I came up the fly road I went in the sheets of water. It did not feel natural to be going home to the house this time, I said I would drive. I came on to the motor way my tyres were purring. I didn’t like music but I put on the radio I heard men and women talking, they were talking about animals having sex. Mylo was going to get it from his missus now I says. Deserved it he did, it was funny but it wasn’t funny. He was cheating on her or if he wasn’t cheating on her he was thinking about cheating on her with the one in the window. He should have been thinking about his business I says. Too much going on for these people isn’t no one like me going to help themself clinging to these people isn’t that right I says I will go until I hit the buffers all of them, all them country people on the roads.
