The Black Soul by Liam O'Flaherty

Author:Liam O'Flaherty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cities and the American Revolution
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1996-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

2

At Rooruck spring does not die. Like a river seeking the ocean, it gathered strength and beauty each day from its staggering frozen birth until it passed majestically into the luxuriant bosom of summer. Rooruck changed hour by hour, minute by minute, with each rush of the wind, each westward leap of the sun, each thud of the sea against its cliffs. The hungry black earth grew green with dewy grass. Sharp-pointed buds edged their way timorously through the hard soil of the tilled fields. The wind and rain descended softly on the crags and fields, whispering to the life that was coming from the womb of the earth. The air was fragrant with a sense of joy. It was like hearing good news of a loved one. Lambs frisked in the fields among the crags above the village, their growing wool already hanging from their sides in zigzag ringlets. Calves were rushing about stupidly, their tails in the air. The people began to laugh and look about them happily, their crops sown. They had already eaten eggs in homage to Crom for all the lives that had been born to them, from their sheep and cattle, on the day that Christians call Easter Sunday. One could almost hear nature clashing cymbals, urging life to grow. Beautiful, hard, grey spring life at Rooruck that swelled the chest and put steel into the eye and a warlike song in the throat. Full-grown spring at Rooruck that robbed men of fear and weakness.

Little Mary was as happy as the lark that rose each morning to sing from her grassy nest in the clover field beneath the cabin, where those furry-headed young larks were hugging one another. Now everything was plain to her. She could see the expanse of the future rolling itself out before her, and always she and her lover walked hand in hand across it. Every other year at the end of spring she had set a goose to hatch. But that year she did not. She had already cut herself adrift. She was waiting eagerly for her lover to say ‘come,’ waiting to fly with him over the sea. When they embraced she would look in his eyes and say, ‘I wish we were together away from everybody.’ And he would say, ‘So do I, dearest,’ and then bite his lips, for he feared that final step that would make him hers.

Nature tugged at his heart, urging him to be a man and take her with him out into the world, but his intellect refused to move in response to nature. ‘How could I support her?’ it would say. And then, ‘What the hell do I want her for, anyway? I’m not going back into the world for anybody.’ And his fear of having to go back to the struggle of life kept him in torment, preventing him from loving her. Every time he embraced her, the thought was constantly in his mind that she was trying to use him for her own purposes, selfishly.

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