The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty Read Online Free Page B

dearly, fearlessly, and indeed hopelessly, to hit her. He has no courage to feel her damp knickers again because Jonno is not there, Jonno of the apple-booty, but by the good Christ, by the dark statue of Christ in the Cathedral eyeless in the glooms, he thinks he might find the courage now to strike her, the doll, the doll.
    ‘Your own mother,’ she says, lying back in the grasses with a great relaxation and contentment, ‘that was raised by another and never had a real certificate, never had a document with her name on it in her born days, the brat of some ould piece of dacency, my ma says, that didn’t want the whore’s melt, and threw her down to the muck!’
    He stands there and strikes his own breast, strikes it again and again, for want of striking her. He has the height but that chest is skinny as her legs and it hurts him to beat there, but he needs the hurt.
    ‘You dog,’ he says, ‘you low dog on all fours, you poor fighting pup with your tail bitten off by a tinker at birth.’ This is an obscure insult, and has no force even to him. ‘Go on,’ she says, raising her dress, and she is pristine, her linens are sparkling, the evening sun shows how dandy and scrubbed she is, what a jewel she is for cleanliness, like the breast of a cat, ‘I won’t ask you for tuppence, I knew your ould joke to yourself there, aren’t we the same, the one and the same, me and your ma, go on, put that little snaily thing of yours in there that has you dizzy in the bed, nights, from steering it, and we’ll be happy. There’s nothing to happiness only generosity. That’s a lesson more than you’ll ever learn, you boyo, you poor skinny bucko, look at you, burning like the toast!’
    And off he goes right enough, stumbling, burning, fit to burn. And he thinks of the ould ones staring at his Mam in the Cafe Cairo, and by God he’ll go off to war now if there’s terrible secrets to be endured, he will. Why couldn’t his father have told him, the good man that he is? Hasn’t he told him the why and the what of many a thing, why must he hear mysteries from Tuppenny Jane? By God!
     
    His mother cuts the thick-crusted bread with her usual artistry — which is to say, she saws lightly back and forth, putting no pressure on the loaf, creating perfect slices. If his father Tom got his hands on that loaf it would be askew in a trice, in the sewing of a wren’s mitten. Jack and Young Tom mill about. Eneas watches his Mam as is his present custom. Watches and rarely speaks. He cannot gain any proper sense of her shame in his heart. He knows he must. It is the key to everything. The world seems agitated by her condition of shame right enough. He thinks he must be unsuited to the world, if he cannot understand the strictures applied to his mother. Every Saturday in the month she goes down to Athlone on mysterious business, but will never say what. There she is, quietly cutting, quietly laying each piece on the blue and white enamel plate. He could be a-dream for all he really knows. His father sits over in the corner polishing a flute with the accustomed rag and at the same time searching in the morning paper for good japes. When he finds a jape he turns about and reads it to them, bouncing himself with glee. Maybe he likes them all better these days, now everyone is up on their pins, more or less. Although soon he will up himself and wander out, into the unimaginable splendours of a Sligo night.
    Is she not still an artist among mothers, cutting that bread? He has heard Micky Moore, a boy reared up in the deepest and poorest part of the docks, who is not understood in the better shops in Sligo itself his mouth is so full of black words, called an artist on horseback, because he won fourteen races in a summer, including two at the Phoenix Park in front of the Viceroy, in the capital. An artist. His mother is an artist with the breadknife. He is estranged from her a little maybe but, he admires her. He loves her.
    He sits through