Emerald Germs of Ireland (20 page)

“I promise you, Ma,” he said. “Everything will be all right from now on. You’ll see.”

It was dusk and the last flakes of snow were falling as Pat sat at the kitchen table. In the center of it stood his friend, angled drumsticks at the ready—a little bruised, perhaps but who cared! After what had seemed an absence of centuries! How magnificent life, Pat thought, could sometimes be, against all the odds, to deliver up one’s memories as pure and unblemished and pristine as they had been even in one’s dreams! He shook his head. For a tiny second, he fancied his litde friend’s right eye winked, as if to say, “Correct, Pat!”

But it was not so. But what
was
so was that they were together once more, and as he fingered the last few remaining currants of the Christmas pudding into his mouth, Pat McNab thought to himself how beautiful it was that, despite it all, the Christmas that would see both him and all the children of the world who had ever lived being happy in a way they could never heretofore have dreamed, had, against all the odds, been delivered unto them. As a tear at last came to his cheek and he nodded to a litde old soldier whose seasonal tattoo rang out now in the
closing hours of the day as Pat took up the tune and proudly sang with him a song that would be theirs for ever, the light from the Yuletide logs flickering upon his raw and glittering cheeks, as the words “pa ra ra rup pup pum pum” rang out with a lonesome majesty in the dying light of evening.

T
here are those who are quite emphatic that the genesis of what might be termed Pat’s “fevered imaginings” or the “loosing of his reason unto the terrain of untrameled delusions” was determined solely by a single encounter to which we have earlier referred and which took place upon an otherwise insignificant summer afternoon, when Honky McCool, his associate, saw fit to ply him with Mexican hallucinogenics. But, in all truth, it would be fallacious to assume that this alone could have been responsible for the extraordinary deliriums and general technicolor phantasmagoria which became an inextricable part of Pat McNab’s life around this time. To put it succinctly, these can only be properly understood when the night he received the solid blow to the head is taken into account. Which resulted in him pottering uncertainly about his immediate environment, gingerly touching the backs of chairs and repeating, “Ouch!” as he recalled the hurtful events of that dark and troubling night.

“It’s the pope I blame!” he murmured to himself as he stirred some sugar into his tea, wincing as the sharp pain stabbed him directly—yet again!—over his left eyebrow. “He shouldn’t have said it. Even if he did think it was true—he sdii shouldn’t have said it.”

What Pat was referring to was the statement which had been made by the supreme pontiff in an Italian newspaper called
L’Osservatore Romano
—reported in the
Irish Press
—to the effect that “if there were human beings on the moon, they would probably be like Adam and Eve in Paradise.” Pat cupped his hands around his blue-striped mug,
his brow furrowing as he considered, “If he hadn’t said that, I would never have started thinking about it. About it being a beautiful place and everything. Up until then—would I ever have thought about that? No. Because the truth is, I didn’t care about the moon at all. I paid no mind to it in the wide world. The very last thing I was likely to start thinking was, ‘I wish I was up there on that beautiful orb of silver. Maybe then I’d be happy.’”

Pat touched the large turbanlike bandage tentatively and felt a wave of sadness consume him. In a corner of the window, the fat lunar sphere rested impassively—untauntingly, it has to be said—observing him like a single blue eyeball.

It seemed no time ago at all since Pat had been sitting at the bar in Sullivan’s, about three-quarters of the way through his third bottle of Macardles Ale, when he looked up from his newspaper, frowned, and remarked to Timmy Sullivan, “Timmy—do you think the pope’s right?”

Timmy flicked his lower lip against the back of his front teeth, making a “plupp” sound as he narrowed his brow and said, “Right about which now, Pat?”

Pat stared into the bubbles which had assembled on the surface of his beverage. Such was the level of activity in there that new life-forms might be being born before his very eyes. A medium-sized sparkling dome of liquid went “pop!” as Pat replied, “About people on the moon.”

“I mean, Timmy,” he continued, “about them being like Adam and Eve in Paradise and so on.”

Timmy Sullivan’s reply was instantaneous and unequivocal.

“Ha ha!” he cried aloud, flicking his tea cloth across his shoulder and appealing to the other customers. “Do you hear that, lads! Sure there’s no people on the moon, Pat! Weren’t we only talking about it last night!”

Pat sighed, a litde disappointed by what he considered Timmy’s excessive and unnecessary vehemence.

“I know that, Timmy,” he nodded, “I know there mightn’t be. But I read it in the paper that the pope said
if
there was—if there was—they’d have to be like Adam and Eve were. They’d have to be like them.”

Pat was taken aback to find the barman’s face looming as if out of
nowhere before him, to the extent that one’s iris might have been the mirror image of the other.

“Where did you read that, Pat?” he heard Timmy cry, slapping his open palm onto the marble-topped counter. “Tell me now—where did you hear all this? Go on—tell me!”

Despite himself, Pat felt a lump forming in his throat as he searched for the words which would explain his case.

“I read it here—in the
Irish Pressi”
he began. “He said it in an Italian paper. He said … it said …”

Timmy Sullivan slapped the counter anew and thundered:

“Pat!
He
said!
It
said! Pat—are you going to start believing all you read in the papers? Look here, Pat! I have nothing against the
Irish Press,
and paper men have to do their job like everybody else. But I’ll tell you this, Pat—when it comes to the moon, do you know what that man knows? Do you know what His Holiness knows about that piece of rock above yonder? Do you, Pat?”

Pat lowered his head and replied softly, “No, Timmy.”

The barman’s gaze was fierce and penetrating as he wound the tea cloth about his knuckles in a gesture which might befit a prizefighter.

“As much as this backside knows about snipe-shooting,” he declared, “and do you know why that is? Do you know why that might be, Pat?”

Pat swallowed and noted with some anxiety the imprint of his fingers on the side of his glass.

“No, Timmy,” he replied, “why?”

The barman’s closed fist hit the counter with a dull “thupping” sound.

“Because they can’t, Pat!” he barked—quite shrilly. “Because they can’t! And do you know why that is, Pat? Do you know why?”

Pat shook his head. The barman leaned in close, intímate and conspiratorial. Every word seemed careful and considered.

“Because they never went! They never went near the moon!”

Pat stared at the frozen yet animated countenance directly in front of him. He felt as if he were suspended somewhere in outer space.

“Never went near it?” he croaked.

“No!” snapped the barman. “Cooked the whole thing up above in
Washington! And done it all like a film in the Nevada desert! Sure you knew that, Pat! Don’t tell me you’re going to sit there and say you didn’t know it! Weren’t we only talking about it in here last night!”

The barman swung on his heel, the stained tea cloth as some sad epaulette wilting upon his shoulder.

“I say, Josie!” he cried. “Wait till you hear this! Pat believes—”

The words leaped from Pat’s mouth as he tugged at the barman’s sleeve.

“No! I don’t!” he cried.

Every muscle in Timmy Sullivan’s body seemed to relax as he brightened and, smiling, said, “Indeed and don’t I know well you don’t! What do you take me for, Pat, huh? Do they think the people’s eejits? Do they think the people’s eejits?”

“The people’s no eejits!” shouted Josie (Jones) at exactly that moment, discarding his high stool with disdain. “The people has as much brains as any of them!”

The barman closed one eye and nodded gratefully.

“That’s right. Now you’re talking, Josie. The people has brains surely, and they’ll not be codded by the likes of these NASA boys above. Am I right? Any boy in this bar, you ask him about your iron cores, magnetic fields, or even your lunar phase. Do you think he won’t know? He’ll know all right, for he’s forgotten more about lithospheres and molten zones than Mr. Cape Canaveral Press-the-Button will ever know. Have I it right there, Josie, would you say?”

“You have it in the shell of a nut,” replied Josie, clearly pleased.

Timmy Sullivan’s eyes twinkled as he turned to Pat and said, “Now, Pat! Do you hear that!”

Pat smiled and weakly ordered another glass of Macardles accompanied by a treble Johnnie Walker whisky chaser. “Oh now but it’s a good one, boys, but it’s a good one!” smiled Timmy Sullivan as he acknowledged the signal of a dedicated customer down at the far end of the bar.

Toward the end of the evening, there were quite an amount of empty glasses on the counter in front of Pat, to the extent that he was almost invisible to Timmy Sullivan, who was darting about his premises flicking his tea cloth vigorously as he called, “Time now! Come on!
Time now, please!” Much of the frenetic activity which was proceeding around Pat was invisible to him as he, for no discernible reason, smiled vacantly to himself and searched for his cigarettes before overhearing, somewhere close by, “There he is! Say it now, why don’t you!”

Pat paused for a moment. His head seemed inordinately heavy to him. He was taken aback to see a scarlet-tinted countenance glaring lividly at him as his response—which was, “Huh?”—at last found itself.

“Go on, I tault ye! Say it now! Make a laugh of the pope now!” he heard again.

Pat’s saliva felt quite thick and sickly. “What?” he said.

“Don’t what me!” snapped the voice, harsh as rusted steel. “Don’t what me, you Protestant ye! You can drink none!”

Pat was relieved to hear the comforting, steady voice of Timmy Sullivan as his tea cloth swept into view like a flag of peace. “Ah come on, lads! It’s way past time!” he shouted, adding with a smile, “Youse leave Pat alone there now! It’s time he was off up the wooden hill! Right, Pat?”

Pat’s smile in reply was somewhat faint and sickly.

A strange placidity descended on Pat as he made his way home some time later, already having almost forgotten the unpleasant interlude, preoccupied as he was with the bluish rays of the light which was emanating from the distended orb directly above his head.

“Like some magic and mysterious light,” thought Pat to himself as he searched once more for his cigarettes. For the tiniest of seconds he could have sworn he heard voices close by. “Pah!” he murmured dismissively, inserting the Major between two fingers. But the push he felt against his shoulder soon banished the possibility of further “Pahs!” or similar exclamations of disregard.

“Say the Our Father’!” growled the voice of a familiar figure from Sullivan’s Bar.

“Aye!” exhorted its companion—a rotund figure encased in raveled cardigan and muffler—”And quick too!”

Pat did not know either man. They were not from the district. He thought, in the circumstances, that he had better comply.

“Our father who hash in handbook!” he began, somewhat clumsily, the words heavy as overripe plums in his mouth.

A smile of deep satisfaction began to creep across the visage of his interlocutor.

“You see?” he said, giving Pat another push. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“You sure did,” came the reply. “You sure did! And to think I wasn’t going t’balayve ya!”

The first blow caught Pat in the solar plexus and doubled him up helplessly. The beating which he then began to receive can only be described as merciless. A piece of stick which they found to hand—completely by accident—was employed with savage efficiency. Blow after blow rained down on the head of Pat McNab as he lay facedown in the gravel.

“Now! See how you like that, you atheist!” heard Pat in the distance, the sound of the discarded stick falling on the gravel, followed by the gallops of retreating feet and cries of, “Come on!”

It is not inaccurate to say that—inexplicably, perhaps, and clearly inappropriately—Pat now felt a strange sense of peacefulness descending upon him, as though that pale and fragile planet—the last thing he saw before his heaving lids at long last closed—had cast about him yellow nets of light and comfort, as though to draw him toward her and the man within her who forever seemed to smile.

Initially, Pat felt quite odd, and indubitably, there was a nagging sense of unease which despite himself he simply could not seem to elude. Understandable, surely, for one does not—indeed, why should one—expect the sartorial splendor emblematic of one’s dreams to be within one’s grasp in what was, in effect, but the infinitesimal fraction of a second. And yet—there he was, Pat McNab, impeccably attired in a suit of velvet plum, complete with dicky bow and cuffs of crafted lace. Equally unexpected—and with comparable alacrity—was the sight of what were literally hundreds of what in former generations might have been described as “teenyboppers” screaming with such vigor that their voices had reached an almost unbearable, unearthly pitch, hurtling as in a single wave in one direction. Ecstatic cries of, “Pat! Please! Sign my autograph book!” leaping from their lips as they wept. “Oh! If only we were old enough to get into your show at the Copacabana!” their tender young bodies collapsing into states of unconsciousness, cheeks streaking with tears. Had Bud O’Kane not appeared only seconds later, Pat would most certainly not have known what course of action to pursue.
Such a quandary as he found himself in now, he had no precedent for, and neither the firmness of purpose or language which might assist him in the negotiation of it.

Bud’s large hand almost covered half of Pat’s back as he slapped it firmly.

“Hey, Pat!” he grinned. “There you are! Look—I got some people you oughta meet. How about you drop by the Copa for a beer? That okay with you?”

At once, Pat McNab appeared to relocate his misplaced bearings. He felt comfortable with Bud O’Kane. From the breast pocket of his jacket, he produced his RayBan spectacles, reflecting a diminutive Bud O’Kane in each lens.

“Yup?” quizzed Bud hopefully.

“Why sure, Bud!” replied Pat brightly—almost incandescently, indeed!—”I don’t mind if I do!”

There were few patrons in the Copacabana Lounge at that hour but Pat didn’t mind, for right at that moment, as he twirled the angled umbrella in his turquoise-colored cocktail, he was just about the happiest guy in town. He smiled to himself as he thought, “Well, I don’t know if I’m in Paradise or not, but one thing is—it’s as close as I’ve ever come to it! And you’d better believe it!”

What Pat was specifically referring to was the luxurious spectacle of loveliness which had just strolled—strolled?—no, floated!—across the dance floor to stand directly before him. Bearing—he reflected for a second—the oddest resemblance to a woman who had once been known as Bridie Cunningham. With her copper-colored hair and freckle-splashed dimples, a creature who’d stepped from a dream.