Irish Literature - House of Mourning and Other Stories

Shankeys live whatever you do. You’d be found with the fishes in the morning.’
    Plaster of Paris statues of Our Lady of Medjugorje were placed by a tree near the off-licence where Delvcaem was murdered.
    Our Lady of Medjugorje had been appearing to a group of young adults of Delvcaem’s age in the Croatian village of Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, since June 1981, telling the visionaries that these were her final appearances on earth, and despite the subsequent war, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were still making their way there.
    Bunches of red carnations on the tree the way bunches of sea asters grow on the sea cliffs in north Kerry in autumn.
    When women threw themselves off the Metal Bridge bunches of flowers would be left in the bushes at Thomondgate Dock.
    Even the black Our Lady of Montserrat found her way into the tree by the off-licence.
    Girls in shell-pink exercise suits, black leggings with their skirts, scarlet ankle boots, Playboy Bunny earrings, belts with Playboy Bunny buckles—diamanté bunnies with magenta eyes—silver kewpie dolls, with wine-or blue-coloured glass flowers on their pinafores, around their necks, studs in pierced cheeks, hoop earrings like Rihanna, kept vigil, carrying the flowers of autumn—Michaelmas daisies, asters, heliotrope, veronicas, clematis, knotweed.
    ‘In Rama was there a voice heard . . .’
    I walk away from the house of mourning.
    ‘JCB’ by Nizlopi plays from a car stereo.
    Some boys are roller-blading.
    Others are having a water-balloon fight.
    In good summers you see the half mourner butterfly—after the black-and-white dress worn in the period following full mourning—on the buddleia that grows in abundance by the walls here.
    Bobby Dazzler . . .
    Delvcaem in his Confirmation jacket; Delvcaem in paisley-pattern neckerchief, Delvcaem in Ordinary Boys diamond-pattern sleeveless jersey; Delvcaem in pink-and-silver party styrofoam Stetson for his eighteenth birthday; Delvcaem with naked torso in hipster-level jeans, Le Coq Sportif boxers showing, naval-length chain, slight advertisement of pubic hair; Delvcaem with Adolf moustache; Delvcaem in space-age sunglasses and black boots with white laces; Delvcaem in Liverpool jersey with Carragher on it.
    The Severn estuary has the second-highest tide in the world.
    There were packets of Embassy Regal cigarettes scattered in the back seat of small-town south Wales-boy Richey Edwards’ car when it was found.
    The Shannon is in spring flood and at Curragower Falls boys in wetsuits, where Delvcaem is not included, brave kayaks through the tide.

Essex Skipper

    Traveller’s joy on the hedges becomes old man’s beard in the autumn.
    When I was a boy my father gave me a collection of art books, loose reproductions going with them.
    One of the reproductions was The Drunkenness of Noah by Michelangelo—a naked, wreathed youth, whose own genitals are showing, covering the nakedness of Noah who has a wine jug alongside him, the youth’s head turned back to a naked young man who is gloating over Noah’s embarrassment.
    Men known as breeches-makers were employed by the Vatican, I tell the two boys who are visiting me—one of whom looks like a Cyclops or a myopic pine marten—to cover the nakedness of Michelangelo youths— ignudi —with ribbons, drapery, entire garments.
    But this one escaped.
    I tell them the story as they look at the painting:
    As an old man Michelangelo was walking through the snow to the Coliseum when Cardinal Farnese accosted him and asked him why a man of his age was out in the snow.
    ‘To learn something new,’ was the famous reply.
    Giovanni Bellini, from whose mastery of light the hour of the day can be deduced, gave a version of old age in those loose reproductions: Noah with beard of ermine and baby-nakedness.
    The boys also look at Mary Cassatt’s Mother and Child : naked American he-child who looks as if he’s destined for a career in the navy.
    Mary Cassatt took her influence from Correggio, I tell the boys.
    In Chapter 14 of Mark, Christ is deserted by all except a boy wearing nothing but a linen cloth who follows Him as He’s being taken away, gives Him the cloth and runs away naked.
    Correggio painted this scene but the painting is lost.
    There’s a copy of it in Parma; boy with vermilion cloak on his shoulder being pursued by a soldier in an indigo cuirass.
    The following Monday the guards investigate.
    A young detective in black jobber—half-boots—pays attention