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GAELTACHT NOVELISTS
Micheál Ó Conghaile(Pic. Connaught Tribune)
Micheál O Conghaile was born on the island of Inis Treabhair, Connemara in 1962. Among his published works are Mac an tSagairt (Short Stories), Cómhra Caillí (Poetry) and Conamara agus Árainn 1880-1980 (literary criticism). His second collection of short stories, An Fear a Phléasc was nominated for the Irish Times award in 1997 and his novel Sna Fir won the Bord na Gaeilge award at the 1997 Listowel Writers' Week Festival. Awarded the Butler Literary Award also in 1997, his short story Father was short listed for the 1997 Sunday Tribune/Hennessy Literary Awards for New Irish Writing. Recent publications are An Fear Nach nDéanann Gáirí, a collection of short stories (2001), and Cúigear Chonamara (2003), a play.
Death at a Funeral
It would have been ridiculous for Eamon Bartley to stay ensconced in his coffin any longer. He couldn't anyway. He was far too good to have died. Every one of the merry mourners at the funeral was praising him - praising him up and down and back to front and top to bottom and arse to elbow - even those who hated his guts once upon a time; those who had it in for him due to some old dispute; those who cursed him roundly and fucked him from a height; those who didn't talk to him for yonks; those who crossed the road to avoid him, or looked right when he was on the left, or who stared at the ground if he was all around them. Every man jack of them praising him with gusto now. They were mourning him and mourning him and mourning him, they sure were.
'Eamon was all right you know, the poor fucker.'
'The whole town will miss him.'
'You could depend on Eamon, a sound man.'
'The poor soul, God love him.'
'He was kind and helpful to everybody.'
'He was all of that and more, even if he wasn't the full shilling.'
'Too true.'
'You never said a more honest word.'
'Absolutely.'
Eamon suddenly began to think that he'd be a proper fool to remain dead in his coffin any longer. Not one minute longer. Neither right nor proper nor appropriate. Besides it would be wrong to these good heart-broken people gathered around him. Maybe I'm confused, he thought to himself, or maybe I'm not the same person I was . . . in which case it wasn't me who knocked up Micil Bawn's young one at all; or broke into Mary Andy's shop and made off with two thousand pounds, or nicked the sugar lumps from the priest's tea the day he was around for the stations, or who crashed into Martin More's nice new car without tax or insurance, or who firebombed the co-op's offices when they sacked me, or who broke into the police station looking for my hooch which the bastards swiped . . .
With one vicious smash he crashed up through the brown coffin lid. Sat up. Straightened himself. As straight as a bamboo cane in a teacher's hand.
The mourners woke up in consternation from muttering their prayers. Some of them jumped out of their skins - and into others. A few of them gawped. Others seemed to run off in four directions at once as if they were doing a set dance mixed up with a waltz. The rest of them froze like icicles on a cold March day.
Eamon Bartley Coolan looked around him. And then looked slowly around him again in silence from person to person. His head and shoulders were barely up over the edge of the grave. He was grinning all over. A grin that grew until it went from ear to ear. A big, broad, stupid, crescent grin.
'Aren't you all happy that I'm alive and kicking again?' he said, buddy-like and upbeat. Then he stopped, expecting someone to say something, anything, even a stutter. But there was no answer, not a word. He broke the silence again. 'Look, even though I liked the other life better than this miserable vale of tears, I just couldn't not come back, you missed me so much. You are all so nice, so straight. Too straight and honest really. I was really touched the way you guys all said nice things about me, praising me to the skies. Every single one of you. And I felt such pity for you. Your wailing and weeping would make the stones themselves burst into tears . . . and that's why I, that's why . . . hold on a minute . . . something wrong? . . . why are you all so quiet and gawking at me with your big wide eyes . . . do I detect some misgivings or what, now that I've thrown away the shroud . . . I mean, come on, it's a bit early for me to die again, isn't it . . . but on the other hand, of course, I wouldn't like to create difficulties for any of you lot. Begging your pardon then, my friends and companions and brothers in Christ, but am I allowed to stay just a little bit longer, to live just a little bit more? Am I?'
Nobody answered him at first. Nobody spoke. They stood around like statues, like telephone poles, like stiffened stalagmites. The priest. The undertaker. The doctor. The workers. His widow. The local petty politician who turned up at every funeral with his wet handshake. Relations of all kinds. Some who had never been heard of, others who denied having anything to do with him. Toddlers and ragged urchins. Teenagers. Neighbours. People from the town. From the hills. The odd person that nobody knew . . .
'I drank fifteen pints at his wake. I'm tellin' ya. Fifteen bloody pints. I never sank my moustache into so many creamy pints, the very best of pints, for the sake of a scrounger who never spent one penny on a drink in his life, nor on anything else either until he died. Don't let him spoil our day's boozing now . . . Believe me, he doesn't deserve to live.'
'I was certain he was dead. Absolutely sure. Didn't I feel his pulse? I put my hand on his pulse three or four times, and I felt his heart, his . . . No sign of life whatsoever. One hundred per cent sure. I'd be able to recognize a dead man rather than a live one any day before anyone else . . . I have years of practice . . . Think of my reputation, my good name, my professional record . . . I'm telling you, he doesn't deserve to live . . .
'The coffin is ruined anyway. Whoever heard of a second-hand coffin? And it smells. His name and date of death finely and clearly engraved on its brass plate, all arrangements on the news and in the papers. It's not as if it could be used again. You couldn't flog a pine overcoat that somebody had already worn. It would be unlucky, unhealthy. Think of the risk. Even a live person wouldn't be happy to sit into a second-hand coffin, never mind a second-corpse coffin, never mind a dead person . . . For God's sake, he doesn't deserve to live . . .
'He never voted for me. Never. Not once. The Bartleys always stuck with the other crowd, they didn't change over when some did the time of that bother about the pot-holes and the water. When I think of all the cars we sent to bring him to the polling booth on election day. Total waste of time. Election after election. And he never once voted for me after all I did for him. And I don't suppose he's going to change his mind now with another election coming . . . On mature reflection, he doesn't deserve to live . . .
'He was a nasty bastard anyway. Frightening the shite out of me on the road coming home from school. Trying to scare me. Acting the eejit. Talking about ghosts, and hobgoblins, and fairies, all those silly things that aren't there any more. Telling stupid stories. Acting the real prick. He bullied me often enough . . . I used to dirty the bed, not sleep at night, and have nightmares because of him . . . When you think about it he doesn't deserve to live . . .
'I put ten pounds offering on his altar. Ten pounds, boy. I did, I'm telling you. I sweated blood and tears for those ten pounds, and yet I gladly offered them up to the Divine Lord because he answered my prayers . . . that I wouldn't see him sneaking past my door again . . . he was a right one . . . and may God grant that he never comes snooping around again. If I had to offer another ten pounds on his altar I'd be completely bust. No way . . . If you ask me, he doesn't deserve to live.
'He was a liar. A consummate irredeemable liar. Pretending he had snuffed it. Making fools of people. Drawing attention to himself. Throwing shapes. Acting the big cheese. Trying to show the world that we in this town are only stupid pig-ignorant blubberbrains. Well, he has another think coming, he doesn't deserve to live . . .
'I came all of seventy miles to be here at his funeral. Seventy long Irish miles neither give nor take an inch or a half-inch. My health isn't good, you know. I'm ailing myself. I've put my life in danger by coming all the way here just to see him laid out. So I could see him stone-dead before my very own eyes. I just had to. OK, so I had a face on me and we weren't talking for a long time, but I wouldn't give the satisfaction of not coming to his funeral. Seventy miles, despite my bad health . . . my rheumatism, varicose veins, blood-pressure, weak heart . . . despite my . . . ah, what the hell, he doesn't deserve to live . . .
'I'd put a bet on with the bookie. Quite simple really. Five thousand pounds. Five thousand pounds that he wouldn't make it to the end of the week. Jaysus, I'd lose everything. My house, my car, my ex-wife, the whole bleedin lot . . . Keep the final curtain down until next week and I'll have claimed my money, and I'll have made it sing . . . No doubt about it, he doesn't deserve to live . . .
'It's not him at all. Some kind of evil spirit. Some kind of malevolent changeling that causes havoc if he doesn't get his own way. He's not of this world at all, I'm more than certain of that. How do we know that he's not the devil incarnate in some kind of disguise? The spawn of Satan. He was always an Antichrist. He hasn't come back for our good, I'll tell you that . . . he doesn't deserve to live.
'Pretending all the time that he was a bit simple. A bit gaga. Nobody at home, like. I suppose he thinks now that we believe that he was that simple that he couldn't tell he should stay pegged out the way he was like any decent corpse with a wisp of sense. Like any decent corpse with any respect for the unfortunate creatures he had left behind. Himself and his stupid, inane, asshole simplicity. A bad bastardy ball-brained bollux . . . Let's be fair, he doesn't deserve to live . . .
'I'll never get the widow's pension. Fat chance as long as that fat turd is around. I'll be disgraced and mortified again like the last time when he shagged off and they called me the 'live man's widow'. We can't let him get away with it again. It would be apalling, unjust. He's a cheating lying deceiver anyway - letting on he was dead, the little shite. That was below the belt. The lying scumbag. He got his just desserts. If he crapped out as cold meat, let him stay crapped out to push up daisies like any half-decent man. It's bad enough when someone is a sly chancer in this life, but when they come back from the dead to be a sly chancer again it's ten times worse. We've yapped on long enough about him . . . he doesn't deserve to live . . .
'I got to him just in time. Just in time to anoint him. I wouldn't have, of course, if I hadn't left my fine dinner to go cold on me. I certainly wouldn't. And he wouldn't have made his last sincere confession if it hadn't been for me. A true and genuine confession from the bottom of his heart . . . real soul-searching stuff. When he was fading away and his breath coming in short wheezy gasps, I said the Act of Contrition right into his ear. I did, I did that. And before my prayer could go through his thick head and out through the other ear - puff! He popped off. Croaked. Out for the last count. But it didn't matter, I had forgiven him all his sins, even the very worst of them, every single one of them - and I can tell you they were many and varied . . . robbery, calumny, lies, cursing and swearing, blasphemy, lechery and whoring and whoring and lechering . . . Not to mention all the newfangled sins he had deliberately learned from the New Catechism. I'd be here until morning . . . or beyond.
By the time I was finished with him he was ready to go; as ready and as steady as a strong stone bridge, and maybe he was half-way across it on his journey to Paradise if the fool had only kept going . . . The next time, yes the next time, the unfortunate man may not be half as prepared. Maybe he'd be caught off guard, on the hop. And as regards the altar offerings, they were the biggest that I have ever seen for a deceased man in this diocese. He must have been held in the greatest respect, or the greatest disrespect as the case may be and people were relieved to see him gone. All those fivers, and tenners, and even a few twenties . . . and all the Mass cards . . . hundreds of them with a fiver stuck in them all. Enough money for half the devils in hell to buy their ticket to Heaven.
I'd never be able to give them all back, never - I've already booked two fortnights in Bangkok, put a fat deposit on a new car . . . and why not? An extension wouldn't be good for him anyway. More time would be bad news. I'm only for his own good. His soul was as pure and as scrubbed-clean as the new marble on a memorial monument. He wouldn't be half as ready the next time - that is, if there is to be a next time. He couldn't possibly be as prepared as he was, or his soul as ready to meet his Maker. I mean, if I was to be called out again to anoint him, I couldn't really be expected to . . . I mean, how could I believe that kind of a call. Once bitten twice shy and all that. He'd be the worst for it, he'd be the one to suffer. Another sackload of sins accumulated, one blacker than the other. God's will be done. We're only for his own good. In the name of God and of His Blessed Mother, and for all our sakes and the sake of all the saints and the suffering holy souls in Purgatory who are in torment, but most of all for his own sake, I have to say to you . . . that . . . he doesn't deserve to live . . .
- He doesn't deserve to live . . .
- Do away with him . . .
- Send him back to where he came from . . .
- Finish the job . . .
- Good riddance . . .
- For once and for all . . .
- For ever and ever . . .
- Amen.
They beat his legs. Broke his bones. Twisted his arms. Tortured his limbs. Split his skull in two places. They smeared blood on his face, on every part of him. Tore out his hair. Ripped out one of his balls. Bruised him black and blue with their boots and kicking. Stabbed him with knives, stabbed him anywhere they could find unstabbed flesh. Children spat and snotted at him . . .
After that they blessed the body.
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