Читать книгу The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor - Brian O'Nolan - Страница 5

Table of Contents

The years passed slowly in this household where the atmosphere could be described as a dead one. The brother, five years older than myself, was first to be sent to school, being marched off early one morning by Mr Collopy to see the Superior of the Christian Brothers’ school at Westland Row. A person might think the occasion was one merely of formal introduction and enrolment, but when Mr Collopy returned, he was alone.

–By God’s will, he explained, Manus’s foot has been placed today on the first rung of the ladder of learning and achievement, and on yonder pinnacle beckons the lone star.

–The unfortunate boy had no lunch, Mrs Crotty said in a shrill voice.

–You might consider, Mrs Crotty, that the Lord would provide, even as He does for the birds of the air. I gave the bosthoon a tuppence. Brother Cruppy told me that the boys can get a right bag of broken biscuits for a penny in a barber’s shop there up the lane.

–And what about milk?

–Are you out of your wits, woman? You know the gorawars you have to get him to drink his milk in this kitchen. He thinks milk is poison, the same way you think a drop of malt is poison. That reminds me—I think I deserve a smahan. Where’s my crock?

The brother, who had become more secretive as time went on, did not confide much in me about his new station except that ‘school was a bugger’. Sooner than I thought, my own turn was to come. One evening Mr Collopy asked me where the morning paper was. I handed him the nearest I could find. He handed it back to me.

–This morning’s I told you.

–I think that’s this morning’s.

–You think? Can you not read, boy?

–Well ... no.

–Well, may the sweet Almighty God look down on us with compassion! Do you realize that at your age Mose Art had written four symphonies and any God’s amount of lovely songs? Pagan Neeny had given a recital on the fiddle before the King of Prussia and John the Baptist was stranded in the desert with damn the thing to eat only locusts and wild honey. Have you no shame man?

–Well, I’m young yet.

–Is that a fact now? You are like the rest of them, you are counting from the wrong end. How do you know you are not within three months of the end of your life?

–Oh my God!

–Hah?

–But——

–You may put your buts back in your pocket. I will tell you what you’ll do. You’ll get up tomorrow morning at the stroke of eight o’clock and you will give yourself a good wash for yourself.

That night the brother said in bed, not without glee, that somehow he thought I would soon be master of Latin and Shakespeare and that Brother Cruppy would shower heavenly bread on me with his class in Christian Doctrine and give me some idea of what the early Christians went through in the arena by thrashing the life out of me. Unhappy was the eye I closed that night. But the brother was only partly right. To my surprise, Mr Collopy next morning led me at a smart pace up the bank of the canal, penetrated to Synge Street and rang the bell at the residential part of the Christian Brothers’ establishment there. When a slatternly young man in black answered, Mr Collopy said he wanted to see the Superior, Brother Gaskett. We were shown into a gaunt little room which had on the wall a steel engraving of the head of Brother Rice, founder of the Order, a few chairs and a table—nothing more.

–They say piety has a smell, Mr Collopy mused, half to himself. It’s a perverse notion. What they mean is only the absence of the smell of women.

He looked at me.

–Did you know that no living woman is allowed into this holy house. That is as it should be. Even if a Brother has to see his own mother, he has to meet her in secret below at the Imperial Hotel. What do you think of that?

–I think it is very hard, I said. Couldn’t she call to see him here and have another Brother present, like they do in jails when there is a warder present on visiting day?

–Well, that’s the queer comparison, I’ll warrant. Indeed, this house may be a jail of a kind but the chains are of purest eighteen-carat finest gold which the holy brothers like to kiss on their bended knees.

The door opened silently and an elderly stout man with a sad face glided in. He smiled primly and gave us an odd handshake, keeping his elbow bent and holding the extended hand against his breast.

–Isn’t that the lovely morning, Mr Collopy, he said hoarsely.

–It is, thank God, Brother Gaskett, Mr Collopy replied as we all sat down. Need I tell you why I brought this young ruffian along?

–Well, it wasn’t to teach him how to play cards.

–You are right there, Brother. His name is Finbarr.

–Well now, look at that! That is a beautiful name, one that is honoured by the Church. I presume you would like us to try to extend Finbarr’s knowledge?

–That is a nice way of putting it, Brother Gaskett. I think they will have to be very big extensions because damn the thing he knows but low songs from the pantomimes, come-all-ye’s by Cathal McGarvey, and his prayers. I suppose you’ll take him in, Brother?

–Of course I will. Certainly, I will teach him everything from the three Rs to Euclid and Aristophanes and the tongue of the Gael. We will give him a thorough grounding in the Faith and, with God’s help, if one day he should feel like joining the Order, there will always be a place for him in this humble establishment. After he has been trained, of course.

The tail-end of that speech certainly startled me, even to tempting me to put in some sort of caveat. I did not like it even as a joke, nor the greasy Brother making it.

–I ... I think that could wait a bit, Brother Gaskett, I stammered.

He laughed mirthlessly.

–Ah but of course, Finbarr. One thing at a time.

Then he and Mr Collopy indulged in some muttered consultation jaw to jaw, and the latter got up to leave. I also rose but he made a gesture.

–We’ll stay where we are now, he said. Brother Gaskett thinks you might start right away. Always better to take the bull by the horns.

Though not quite unexpected, this rather shocked me.

–But, I said in a loud voice, I have no lunch ... no broken biscuits.

–Never mind, Brother Gaskett said, we will give you a half-day to begin with.

That is how I entered the sinister portals of Synge Street School. Soon I was to get to know the instrument known as ‘the leather’. It is not, as one would imagine, a strap of the kind used on bags. It is a number of such straps sewn together to form a thing of great thickness that is nearly as rigid as a club but just sufficiently flexible to prevent the breaking of the bones of the hand. Blows of it, particularly if directed (as often they deliberately were) to the top of the thumb or wrist, conferred immediate paralysis followed by agony as the blood tried to get back to the afflicted part. Later I was to learn from the brother a certain routine of prophylaxis he had devised but it worked only partly.

Neither of us found out what Mr Collopy’s reason was for sending us to different schools. The brother thought it was to prevent us ‘cogging’, or copying each other’s home exercises, of which we were given an immense programme to get through every night. This was scarcely correct, for an elaborate system for ‘cogging’ already existed in each school itself, for those who arrived early in the morning. My own feeling was that the move was prompted by Mr Collopy’s innate craftiness and the general principle of divide et impera.