The Gamal (22 page)
Count the hours that you sleep
Count the light years there to here
—Cool.
—Maybe you could go up a bit at the end.
Sinéad hummed what she meant and James found it on the xylophone for her.
—Exactly that, said Sinéad.
There was the bones of a new song by the time we went away that night, whatever use it was to them or anyone else. It was one of the fairly shit ones.
I could get pages right now where she wrote down the words of that song. I have them. No good in them being in her room and the gardaí and her family going through them like any of it was their business. Detective Crowley found some of them in my room once. He goes,
—How did you get your hands on these?
—She gave them to me.
—I don’t think she did, he goes. Did you go to her house and take them out of her room?
—No, I said.
—Someone got into her room and took stuff when there was no one at the house.
One thing I didn’t like about Detective Crowley was the way he’d stare at you. He was fierce ignorant.
I’ve lots of bits now in my room in hiding places. Found an old newspaper with a picture of me in it. I was standing on the river bank looking out at the river. There was big writing on the page saying something not very nice about me but not saying I was a killer. And then under was the article. Bullshit isn’t it?
‘I think he was kind of obsessed with her,’ one local added. ‘He used to follow her around the place always. And when she was working in the pub he was the whole time there. It was unhealthy now to be honest, if you ask me like. I don’t know whether or which but it was unhealthy, that’s all I’m saying.’
Heard my mother that time telling my father that she thought it was Beatrice Coyle was after saying that cos she was a known backstabber and Norma Kelleher seen her talking to a stranger that looked like a journalist.
Saucis
Was weird the way music was to me then. When I think of it now I must have missed an awful lot of television for nothing except stupid songs. Programme on there today about all the different ways that animals see and smell and hear. Wondered if there was a better way of seeing than us humans have. Or do some people have a better way of seeing than other people? Some people are colour blind. Got on fine I suppose ’til they invented paint. When I taste an orange I wonder is it the exact same taste you get when you have one.
And saw a documentary about tribes. This old fella, the chief of the tribe told us all about the
Saucis
which is a kind of evil spirit that comes when people are asleep and sucks out their brain and their insides and replaces them with grass. Makes people evil and they cause other people around them to become sick or they can cause them to have no luck hunting for food. And the worst thing is they don’t even know the
Saucis
has come and sucked out their brain so they’re acting away all normal. It’s only certain gifted people in the tribe who can see that they’ve been paid a visit by the
Saucis
and they inform the others so they can kill them and eat them. He said that human flesh tastes just like something but I can’t remember what it was. I’d never heard of it anyhow.
But this chief said that he had the gift. He could tell. He’d got the tribe to kill and eat eleven people over the years. Some of them were from neighbouring tribes. Some from his own tribe.
Then they spoke to a fella of about thirty whose brother was visited by the
Saucis
and had to be killed. His girlfriend from a neighbouring tribe became sick and died and the leader of that tribe came and said that her boyfriend had been visited by the
Saucis
and would have to be killed and eaten. They had no option only to hand him over. There was tears in his brother’s eyes when he was describing his brother being taken away. Nice carry-on isn’t it?
The shit we know is unbelievable so it just shows you that half the bullshit we know is only so that we can feel right about living the way we do and truth don’t have much to do with it or about just as much as the
Saucis
sucking people’s insides out has to do with truth. I hope that sentence wasn’t too long and confusing for you. Sentences are a pain in the hole and that’s half the problem. Every word we ever invented and the ways we have to make them mean stuff is only there cos it made us live and feel right about the way we live. And all our clever words are really just the same as a dog barking when it comes to the truth. I seen Teesh in the pub yesterday cos I went in after a match with my father. Teesh was there like the whole parish just plain forgot what a cunt he is and he in the pub with other fellas having the craic and all I can see is monkeys grooming each other cos David Attenborough said once the stronger the alliances the longer they spend grooming and it’s the same with lads in the pub.
I first knew for sure there was evil in this world when I woke up in Snoozie’s house – I think Racey might have been there too or maybe she was above in the cot with Dinky or maybe she was with some other lad that night, they were always blowing hot and cold those two. Anyhow the rest of us were asleep in the living room of the house. I woke up anyhow and it was early. Probably about ten. The rest of them were still asleep. There was this documentary on and this woman was talking to the man. He was asking her about long ago when her little girl went missing. She was only ten years of age. And how the papers all thought her mother’s second husband had killed her or something. Later on then they caught Myra Hindley and whatever her man’s name was and this woman had to identify her child by the tape recording Myra Hindley and your man made when they were taunting her and torturing her and raping her and teasing her and she crying mad and calling out for her mammy the whole time. She had to listen to the tape that went on for sixteen minutes. The woman looked sixty about. Maybe older. Said all she wanted was to die. That’s all she’s ever wanted since she heard the tape and knew her little girl was dead and how she died. She just wanted to be dead and to be with her and she prayed every day for God to take her. Seemed unreal to me. I knew that no matter what happened in my life I’d never feel pain like that woman had. You’d wonder what has suffering got to do with pain. And how has the pain of one person got anything to do with the pleasure of another person. And can you feel other people’s pain?
Sadism
N. 1.
psychol.
; hurting others for sexual pleasure; the gaining of sexual gratification by causing physical or mental pain to other people, or the acts that produce such gratification 2. being cruel for fun; the gaining of pleasure from causing physical or mental pain to people or animals 3 cruelty; great physical or mental cruelty [Late 19thC. From French
sadisme
, named after the Marquis de Sade.]
Amazing some of the things people needed to invent words for.
Is there a part of everyone that likes to see people suffering? Like people who buy newspapers. I remember my cousin when I was small hitting me with a golf club and just looking at me when I was crying, like ’twas entertaining or something. Kids like to see other kids get in trouble in school. Makes small little smirks appear that they have to smother with the muscles of their cheeks. I seen it a million times. A pretty little girl had her face beaten with stilettos in some place in Europe by other girls so she would stop being pretty.
Anyhow I suppose after watching that programme that morning and the suffering of the girl’s mother and the evil of Hindley and your man, it changed the way I thought. Became watchful. Vigilant. Noticed more.
And maybe that’s when I started to realise that all the music stuff with Sinéad and James was only silly in the face of real life.
Sinéad and James and me we spoke about music. It wasn’t just listening to it or making it. Talking shit talk instead of getting on with our lives.
—Do you enjoy singing such a sad song and feeling so sad like? James goes one time in the library.
—Dunno. Kind of.
—Weird, isn’t it though?
—I suppose yeah. Don’t lose any sleep over it pet!
—Maybe it’s like a problem shared kind of thing maybe. Even when you’re on your own listening to it. It always comes from another, goes James.
—What about singing or playing a tune on your own?
—Oh yeah, said James.
There was silence for a bit while we were thinking, then Sinéad goes,
—Maybe there’s always a chance that someone will hear.
Sinéad went to the record player then and puts on a Sam Cooke record and she grabbed James and went dancing. ‘Twisting The Night Away’ was the song. One of her shoes fell off when they were spinning around the place. It was weird to see the sole of it worn just like an ordinary person’s shoes. At the end of the song they fell on the couch laughing and panting and the rhythm of their breathing was nice to listen to. Getting slower the whole time and the giggles coming and going until it was silence again except for the quiet crackle of the needle on the spinning record. I took the needle off the record then and then James goes,
—Some music is fearful then though.
—Maybe nice music is like . . . the opposite of fearful sound . . . like the opposite of the roar of a tiger or something.
—Yeah maybe.
—Couldn’t imagine a tiger making beautiful sweet music before biting your head off.
—No.
—So like we’re supposed to not like a tiger’s roar cos it’s dangerous.
—But it’s a horrible sound anyway.
—Horrible to us, James said, cos that’s how we survived. Any idiots who were attracted to a lion’s roar would have had their heads taken off.
—So are you saying that it only sounds rotten to us but if you weren’t made of meat it might sound nicer?
—Ha! I dunno . . . maybe.
—That’s silly. It’s a horrible sound anyway whether people hear it or not. But music was used like by warriors wasn’t it? To like intimidate and scare the enemy.
—Yeah.
—Would make them feel closer together too like. As a group. Stronger like.
—Yeah.
—And like territorial. Like birds.
—I guess. Makes you want to move too. Like a march.
—Yeah.
—I wonder what’s the opposite of a tiger’s roar, James asked.
—Kate Bush, said Sinéad.
James found her favourite Kate Bush song on the piano and she sang. Write the Kate Bush song ‘This Woman’s Work’ in here please.
I wondered where Sinéad summoned this sadness from and she singing this song. It was like she’d lived a thousand lifetimes. Buried a thousand daughters and a thousand sons. Maybe the sixteen years of her somehow had access to another memory. Through the music isn’t it? A thousand thousand thousand lifetimes back maybe and maybe even more and to a different creature yet. Us once.
Mass
The mother’s making me go to Mass now again. It’s half five in the morning now and Mass is at eleven in the morning. But I’m not tired anyhow. In Mass I always go up the balcony so I can look down at the back of all their stupid holy heads praying away mad and picking their noses or their holes. I used to try and block out Father Scully’s voice going on and on but it was hard cos he went on and on cos he was only an old bollicks. He’d shout and roar from the pulpit with the big angry red head up on him. When he wasn’t throwing abuse at the Catholics of the parish he spent his days walking around the place reading the Bible. You could see him anywhere just reading it. Well if it was raining you couldn’t see him anywhere reading it. But when it was dry you could see him sitting on the street bench across from Roundy’s. Or walking around the churchyard taking slow small steps and never taking his head from the pages. Like he was a piano being pulled along by a rope. Our own moving statue. And all his stupid sermons were the same. He’d vomit out all the bits in the Bible that he’d read the week before but it was always the same bits that proved that the devil was a terrible fucker and tell them all how the devil had woven his evil ways into all their lives and God wasn’t one bit happy with them and that there’d be hell to pay. In hell.
He didn’t think much of young people. Vice had them. Vice grip.
He stopped me being an altar boy long ago cos I was shit cos I’m a gamal. The altar boy at Mass has to ring the bell at four very special times during the Mass. When I was on I forgot to shake the bell at the special times. But I remembered to shake it at the wrong times. At five wrong times. You should have seen the faces on all the people in the church and they trying not to laugh. Snorting same as pigs some of them and they trying to hide their faces by ducking behind the person in front of them or pretending to wipe their noses with their hankies.
