A Pagan Place by Edna O'Brien

Author:Edna O'Brien [Edna O'Brien]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780571282975
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2016-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

He said mice could be stopped in their tracks, mystified, by putting salt on their tails and he tried it and when it didn’t paralyse them he flung shoes, a last, every conceivable object. The doctor and he took bets as to who would make the first slaughter. They were exhilarated by it. The mice went clambering up the walls in desperate attempts to escape the various peltings. The salt cellar got emptied. A dying mouse let out a last and unbecoming screech and he asked your mother to loan him a tanner so that he could honour his debt. He was livid at having lost.

In the morning she put on her good corset which meant she was making a journey. He shaved on the kitchen table and she put saucers as protection over the milk, the butter and the sugar. He held his face sideways and drew the razor quickly over his jaw. In disposing of the lather he managed to strew blobs everywhere except in the small china bowl that she had given him for the purpose. She was fearless, taxed him with his crudeness of the night before, said he had shown his true colours. He looked at her with the razor poised in her direction, and though all of her was immobile, her Adam’s apple kept jumping up and down. When she did not cower he laughed and asked if she’d got out the wrong side of the bed. He said there was no fooling him and that to admit it that she was thrilled at the excuse of having a day out, a day in the metropolis.

When Emma appeared he was the one to suggest that she eat something and she was the one who quickly and pointedly removed the jam in order to deprive Emma of a delicacy. Alone at the far end of the table Emma chewed bread distractedly. You had this silly thought that if you met him you might fall in love with Emma’s intended and she and you would be contending for him. Your mother mixed various foodstuffs for you to give to the hens throughout the day. You wished that you could go.

He was civil to Emma. He asked was it so that the manager of a big hotel had lost his only son in a bus accident. Emma said yes. He said he heard that it was like a battlefield, all the dead bodies, all the carnage and Emma said being a bus-load it probably was.

You kept passing bread to her and when they were leaving you kissed her good-bye, anxious to give her that sign, that little token of loyalty. You tidied. You read a poem called The Hound of Heaven, how the hound of Heaven pursued a soul. You could picture the hound running round and round, tracking this soul, this Emma, fleeing it down the days and down the nights and down the arches of the years. The doctor had termed it copulation, you would look up that word in the dictionary, in the school dictionary, one day, in time to come.

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