At Swim-two-birds (18 page)

Moving where? asked Casey.

We are going to a hooley, said Shorty, fill your pockets, man, and fall in. The fruits of the earth, you know.

The party then moved slowly on, the poet taking a last look at the clump where he had sat in conclave with a synod of tinkers, thimble-riggers, gombeen-men, beggars, channel-rakers, bacaughs, broom-men, and people from every walk in the lower order, singing and reciting a selection of his finer lyrics.

You in the pocket, said the poet, can you fly?

Maybe I can, replied the Good Fairy.

Would you go and tell my wife that I won't be home for dinner? Would you ever do that?

What do you take me for? asked the Good Fairy in a thin testy voice, a carrier-pigeon?

If you want to make him mad, said Shorty, call him a ferret When I called him that he gave me any God's own thanks.

Can you tell me, Mr Casey, said the Pooka interposing quickly, whether my wife is a kangaroo?

The poet stared in his surprise.

What in the name of God, he asked, do you mean by throwing a question like that at me? Eh?

I was wondering, said the Pooka.

A kangaroo? She might be a lump of a carrot for all I know. Do you mean a marsupial?

That's the man, said Slug. A marsupial.

Stop the talk, said the Good Fairy quickly. I see a man in a tree.

Where? asked Shorty.

Too far away for you to see. I see him through the trunks and the branches.

Pray what is a marsupial? asked the Pooka.

I cannot see him too well, said the Good Fairy, there is about a half a mile of forest in between. A marsupial is another name for an animal that is fitted with a built-in sack the way it can carry its young ones about.

If you have wings, said the poet sharply, why in the name of barney don't you take a flight in the air and have a good look instead of blathering out of you in the pocket there and talking about what the rest of us can't see?

If that is what a marsupial is, said the Pooka courteously, where is the difference? Surely the word kangaroo is more descriptive?

What do you take me for, asked the Good Fairy, a kite? I will fly away in the air when it suits me and no sooner. There is this distinction between marsupial and kangaroo, that the former denotes a genus and the latter a class, the former is general and the latter particular.

I don't believe there is any kangaroo in the tree, said Slug. Kangaroos don't go up trees in this country.

Possibly, said the Pooka, it is my wife that is up there in the tree. She shares this much with the birds, that she can journey through the air on the shaft of a broomstick. It would not be hard for her to be thus in front of us in our journey.

Who in the name of God, asked Shorty, ever heard of a bird flying on a broomstick?

I did not say my wife was a bird.

You said she was a broomstick this morning, said the Good Fairy, a shank, that's what you called her.

What I was talking about, said the Pooka slowly, was kangaroos. Kangaroos.

It might be a bird in the tree, said Shorty, a big bird.

There's a lot in that, Slug said.

Very well, said the Good Fairy in a displeased way. No doubt I was mistaken. It is not a man. It is a tit. A tit or a bloody wren.

Shorty with a quick gesture gripped his six-gun.

Is that the tree you mean, he shouted, that tree over there? Is it? There's something in that tree all right.

The Good Fairy nodded.

Answer me, you bloody little bowsy you! roared Shorty.

Be pleased to answer yourself less vigorously, said the Pooka nervously, there is no need for language the like of that. That is the tree he means. I felt him nodding his head against my hip.

Well why couldn't he say so, said Shorty, taking out his second gun.

If I get out of this pocket, said the Good Fairy in a thin voice; I will do damage. I have stood as much as I will stand for one day.

Come down out of that tree, roared Shorty, come down out of that, you bloody ruffian!

Keep your dander down, said Slug, you can't shoot anything that's sitting.

Whatever it is, observed the poet, it's not a man. It hasn't got a trousers on it. It's likely a marsupial.

I still fail to see the distinction, said the Pooka quietly, or why marsupial should be preferred to the more homely word.

If you don't come down out of that tree in two seconds, bellowed Shorty with a cock of his two hammers, you'll come out a corpse in three! I'll count to ten. One, two….

I'm glad I have no body, said the Good Fairy. With that demented bully flourishing his irons every time he gets the sight of something he can shoot, nobody is safe. The term kangaroo, being the lesser, is
contained
in marsupial, which is a broader and more comprehensive word.

Five, six, seven…

I see, said the Pooka, you mean that the marsupial carries a kangaroo in its pouch?

T
EN
, said Shorty in decision. For the last time, are you coming down?

There was a gentle rustle in the thick of the green branches, a slow caress like the visit of a summer breeze in a field of oats, a faint lifeless movement: and a voice descended on the travellers, querulous and saddened with an infinite weariness, a thin voice that was occupied with the recital of these staves:

Sweeny the thin-groined it is
in the middle of the yew;
life is very bare here,
piteous Christ it is cheerless.

Grey branches have hurt me
they have pierced my calves,
I hang here in the yew-tree above,
without chessmen, no womantryst

I can put no faith in humans
in the place they are;
watercress at evening is my lot,
I will not come down.

Lord save us! said Slug.

Shorty waved his guns about him in the air, swallowing at his spittle.

You won't come down?

I think I know the gentleman, said the Pooka courteously interposing, I fancy (it is possible that I may be wrong) that it is a party by the name of Sweeny. He is not all in it.

Do I shoot or don't I, asked Shorty presenting the orb of his puzzled face for the general inspection of the company.

Do you mean the Sweenies of Rathangan, inquired the Good Fairy, or the Sweenies of Swanlinbar?

Keep that bloody gun down, said Casey sharply, the voice that spoke was the voice of a bloody poet. By God I know a bloody poet when I hear one. Hands off the poets. I can write a verse myself and I respect the man that can do the same. Put that gun up.

I do not. replied the Pooka.

Or the flaxen Sweenies from Kiltimagh?

It's an old man, observed Slug, and you can't leave a man roosting in a tree like that. After we're gone he might get sick or have a fit or something and then where are you?

He might puke his porridge, said Shorty.

Not them either, said the Pooka courteously.

Then the MacSweenies of Ferns and Borris-in-Ossory?

With these words there came the rending scream of a shattered stirk and an angry troubling of the branches as the poor madman percolated through the sieve of a sharp yew, a wailing black meteor hurtling through green clouds, a human prickles. He came to the ground with his right nipple opened to the wide and a ruined back that was packed with the thorns and the small-wood of the trees of Erin, a tormented cress-stained mouth never halting from the recital of inaudible strange staves. There were feathers on his body here and there, impaired and shabby with vicissitude.

By God he's down! shouted Slug.

I don't mean them either, said the Pooka above the noise.

Then the O'Sweenies of Harold's Cross?

Jem Casey was kneeling at the pock-haunched form of the king pouring questions into the cup of his dead ear and picking small thorns from his gashed chest with absent thoughtless fingers, poet on poet, a bard unthorning a fellow-bard.

Give him air, said Slug.

Will you walk over there, said the Good Fairy to the Pooka, the way I can see this man that has been bird-nesting?

Certainly, said the Pooka courteously.

What is the man's name, asked the Good Fairy.

The Pooka made a sharp pass in the air with his thumb, a token of annoyance.

Sweeny, he answered. There is only one remedy for a bleeding hole in a man's side – moss. Pack him with moss the way he will not bleed to death.

That's the number, said Slug, plenty of moss.

Damp sponges of lichen and green moss were plied in the gapes of Sweeny's flank, young shoots and stalks and verdure, in his ruined side till they were reddened and stiffened with the bleeding of his thick blood. He fell to muttering discordant verses.

As I made the fine throw at Ronan
from the middle of the hosts,
the fair cleric said that I had leave
to go with birds.

I am Sweeny the slender-thin,
the slender, the hunger-thin,
berries crimson and cresses green,
their colours are my mouth.

I was in the centre of the yew
distraught with suffering,
the hostile branches scourged me,
I would not come down.

You're all right man, said Casey with kindly pats of his hand on the mossy side, you'll get over that. You'll be all right, don't you worry.

A bullet would put him out of his pain, said Shorty, it would be a merciful act of Providence.

I wish to Goodness, said the Pooka with a courteous insistence, that you would replace that shooting-iron and repress this craving for bloodshed. Can you not see the poor man is unwell?

What is wrong with him? inquired the Good Fairy.

He took a sore fall, said Slug kindly, he might have broken his bloody neck, eh, Mr Casey?

He might have split his arc, said Casey.

Maybe he is drunk, suggested the Good Fairy, I don't believe in wasting my sympathy on sots, do you?

There is no harm in an odd drop now and then, replied the Pooka, drink in moderation is all right. Drunkenness, of course – that is another pair of shoes altogether.

The invalid man stirred in his earthen couch and murmured:

Our wish is at Samhain, up to Maytime,
when the wild ducks come
in each dun wood without stint
to be in ivy-trees.

Water of Glen Bolcain fair
a listening to its horde of birds,
its tuneful streams that are not slow,
its islands, its rivers.

In the tree of Cell Lughaidh,
it was our wish to be alone,
swift flight of swallows on the brink of summer –
take your hands away!

It's drink all right, said the Good Fairy, leave him be.

Nonsense, man, said Slug, a little touch of fever and the best will rave, the strongest will go to the wall with one little dart of double-pneumonia, I had an uncle once that was shouting the walls of the house down two hours after he got his head wet in a shower of rain, Has anybody got a thermometer till we take his pulse?

Would a sun-glass be of any assistance to you? inquired the Pooka politely.

A shandy is what he wants, said the Good Fairy, a glass of gin and a bottle of stone beer, a curer.

That'll do you, said Casey, help me with him, somebody. We'll have to bring him along with us, by God I'd die of shame if we left the poor bastard here on his tod. Give us a hand, somebody.

I'm your man, said Slug

Together the two strong men, joyous in the miracle of their health, put their bulging thews and the fine ripple of their sinews together at the arm-pits of the stricken king as they bent over him with their grunting red faces, their four heels sinking down in the turf of the jungle with the stress of their fine effort as they hoisted the madman to the tremulous support of his withered legs.

Mind his feathers, said Shorty in a coarse way, never ruffle a cock's feathers.

The madman fluttered his lids in the searchlight of the sun and muttered out his verses as he tottered hither and thither and back again backwards in the hold of his two keepers.

Though my Sittings are unnumbered,
my clothing today is scarce,
I personally maintain my watch
on the tops of mountains.

O fern, russet long one,
your mantle has been reddened,
there's no bedding for an outcast
on your branching top.

Nuts at terce and cress-leaves,
fruits from an apple-wood at noon,
a lying-down to lap chill water –
your fingers torment my arms.

Put green moss in his mouth, said the Good Fairy querulously, are we going to spend the rest of our lives in this place listening to talk the like of that? There is a bad smell in this pocket, it is not doing me any good. What are you in the habit of keeping in it, Sir?

Nothing, replied the Pooka, but tabacca.

It's a queer smell for tabacca, said the Good Fairy.

One and sixpence I pay in silver coin for an ounce of it, said the Pooka, and nice as it is for the wee pipe, it is best eaten. It is what they call shag tabacca.

Notwithstanding all that, said the Good Fairy, there is a queer hum off it It would be the price of you if I got sick here in your pocket.

Now be very careful, said the Pooka.

Quick march my hard man, said Casey briskly to the king, put your best leg forward and we will get you a bed before the sun goes down, we'll get a sup of whisky into you to make you sleep.

We'll get you a jug of hot punch and a packet of cream crackers with plenty of butter, said Slug, if you'll only walk, if you'll only pull yourself together, man.

And getting around the invalid in a jabbering ring, they rubbed him and cajoled and coaxed, and plied him with honey-talk and long sweet-lilted sentences full of fine words, and promised him metheglin and mugs of viscous tar-black mead thickened with white yeast and the spoils from hives of mountain-bees, and corn-coarse nourishing farls of wheaten bread dipped in musk-scented liquors and sodden with Belgian sherry, an orchard and a swarm of furry honey-glutted bees and a bin of sun-bronzed grain from the granaries of the Orient in every drop as it dripped at the lifting of the hand to the mouth, and inky quids of strong-smoked tabacca with cherrywood pipes, hubble-bubbles, duidins, meerschaums, clays, hickory hookahs and steel-stemmed pipes with enamel bowls, the lot of them laid side by side in a cradle of lustrous blue plush, a
huge pipe-case and pipe-rack ingeniously combined and circumscribed with a durable quality of black imitation leather over a framework of stout cedarwood dovetailed and intricately worked and made to last, the whole being handsomely finished and untouched by hand and packed in good-quality transparent cello-phane, a present calculated to warm the cockles of the heart of any smoker. They also did not hesitate to promise him sides of hairy bacon, the mainstay and the staff of life of the country classes, and lamb chops still succulent with young blood, autumn-heavy yams from venerable stooping trees, bracelets and garlands of browned sausages and two baskets of peerless eggs fresh-collected, a waiting hand under the hen's bottom. They beguiled him with the mention of salads and crome custards and the grainy disorder of pulpy boiled rhubarb, matchless as a physic for the bowels, olives and acorns and rabbit-pie, and venison roasted on a smoky spit, and mulatto thick-lipped delphy cups of black-strong tea. They foreshadowed the felicity of billowy beds of swansdown carefully laid crosswise on springy rushes and sequestered with a canopy of bearskins and generous goatspelts, a couch for a king with fleshly delectations and fifteen hundred olive-mellow concubines in constant attendance against the hour of desire. Chariots they talked about and duncrusted pies exuberant with a sweat of crimson juice, and tall crocks full of eddying foam-washed stout, and wailing prisoners in chains on their knees for mercy, humbled enemies crouching in sackcloth with their upturned eye-whites suppliant. They mentioned the leap of a fire on a cold night, long sleeps in the shadows and leaden-eyed forgetfulness hour on hour – princely oblivion. And as they talked, they threaded through the twilight and the sudden sun-pools of the wild country.