Great Irish Short Stories (33 page)

“Old Paddy is dead,” the sergeant said in a stern tone.

The Pedlar became motionless for a few moments on hearing this news, with his shrewd blue eyes looking upwards at the sergeant’s face from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows. Then his heels began once more to beat their minute tattoo and his fingers moved tremulously along the surface of the blackthorn stick, up and down, as if it were a pipe from which they were drawing music.

“I’ll ask God to have mercy on his soul,” he said coldly, “but I won’t say that I’m sorry to hear he’s dead. Why should I? To tell you the honest truth, the news that you bring lifts a great weight off my mind. How did he die?”

He again laughed drily in his throat, after the sergeant had told him the manner of old Moynihan’s death. His laughter now sounded gay.

“It must have been his weight that killed him,” he said, “for John Delaney, a carpenter that used to live in Srulane long ago, fell down at that very same place without hurting himself in the least. It was a terrible night, about forty years ago. Delaney was coming home alone from a funeral at Tirnee, where he had gone to make the coffin. As usual, he was dead drunk, and never let a word out of him as he fell. He stayed down there in the hole for the rest of that night and all next day. He crawled out of it at nightfall, as right as rain. That same Delaney was the king of all drunkards. I remember one time he fell into a coffin he was making for an old woman at . . .”

“I must warn you,” Sergeant Toomey interrupted, “that Paddy Moynihan made certain allegations against you, in the presence of Joe Finnerty here, shortly before he died. They were to the effect that you had . . .”

“Ho! Ho! Bad cess to the scoundrel!” The Pedlar interrupted in turn. “He’s been making allegations against me all his life. He’s been tormenting me, too. God forgive me! I’ve hated that man since I was a child.”

“You’ve hated him all that time?” said the sergeant.

“We were the same age,” said The Pedlar. “I’ll be seventy-nine next month. I’m only a few weeks older than Paddy. We started going to school on the very same day. He took a violent dislike to me from the first moment he laid eyes on me. I was born stooped, just the same as I am now. I was delicate into the bargain and they didn’t think I’d live. When I was seven or eight years old, I was no bigger than a dwarf. On the other hand, Paddy Moynihan was already a big hefty block of a lad. He was twice the size of other boys his own age. He tortured me in every way that he could. His favourite trick was to sneak up behind me and yell into my ear. You know what a powerful voice he had as a grown man. Well! It was very nearly as powerful when he was a lad. His yell was deep and rumbling, like the roar of an angry bull. I always fell down in a fit whenever he sneaked up behind me and yelled into my ear.”

“That was no way to treat a delicate lad,” said the sergeant in a sympathetic tone. “It was no wonder that you got to hate him.”

“Don’t believe a word of what he’s telling you,” said Finnerty to the sergeant. “Paddy Moynihan never did anything of the sort.”

The Pedlar again became motionless for a few seconds, as he looked at Finnerty’s legs. Then he resumed his dance and turned his glance back to the sergeant’s face.

“He did worse things to me,” he said. “He made the other scholars stand around me in a ring and beat my bare feet with little pebbles. He used to laugh at the top of his voice while he watched them do it. If I tried to break out of the ring, or sat down on the ground and put my feet under me, he’d threaten me with worse torture. “Stand there,” he’d say, “or I’ll keep shouting into your ear until you die.” Of course, I’d rather let them go on beating me than have him do the other thing. Oh! God! The shouting in my ear was a terrible torture. I used to froth at the mouth so much, when I fell down, that they thought for a long time I had epilepsy.”

“You old devil!” cried Finnerty angrily. “You should be ashamed of yourself for telling lies about the dead.”

“Let him have his say,” the sergeant said to Finnerty. “Every man has a right to say what he pleases on his own threshold.”

“He had no right to speak ill of the dead, all the same,” said Finnerty, “especially when there isn’t a word of truth in what he says. Sure, it’s well known that poor old Paddy Moynihan, Lord have mercy on him, wouldn’t hurt a fly. There was no more harm in him than in a babe unborn.”

“Take it easy, Joe,” said the sergeant. “There are two sides to every story.”

Then he turned to The Pedlar and added:

“’Faith, you had cause to hate Moynihan, all right. No wonder you planned to get revenge on him.”

“I was too much afraid of him at that time,” said The Pedlar, “to think of revenge. Oh! God! He had the life nearly frightened out of me. He and his gang used to hunt me all the way home from school, throwing little stones at me and clods of dirt. “Pedlar, Pedlar, Pedlar,” they’d shout and they coming after me.”

“Musha, bad luck to you,” said Finnerty, “for a cunning old rascal, trying to make us believe it was Paddy Moynihan put the scholars up to shouting “Pedlar” after you. Sure, everybody in the parish has shouted “Pedlar” after a Counihan at one time or other and thought nothing of it. Neither did the Counihans. Why should they? They’ve all been known as “The Pedlars” from one generation to another, every mother’s son of them.”

The sergeant walked over to the open doorway and thrust his head into the kitchen.

“Leave the man alone,” he said to Finnerty.

The fireplace, the dressers that were laden with beautiful old brown delft-ware and the flagged floor were all spotlessly clean and brightly polished.

“Ah! Woe!” The Pedlar cried out in a loud voice, as he began to rock himself like a lamenting woman. “The Counihans are all gone except myself and I’ll soon be gone, too, leaving no kith or kin behind me. The day of the wandering merchant is now done. He and his ass will climb no more up from the sea along the stony mountain roads, bringing lovely bright things from faraway cities to the wild people of the glens. Ah! Woe! Woe!”

“If you were that much afraid of Moynihan,” said the sergeant, as he walked back from the doorway to The Pedlar’s stool, “it must have been the devil’s own job for you to get revenge on him.”

The Pedlar stopped rocking himself and looked up sideways at the sergeant, with a very cunning smile on his little bearded face.

“It was easy,” he whispered in a tone of intense pleasure, “once I had learned his secret.”

“What secret did he have?” said the sergeant.

“He was a coward,” said The Pedlar.

“A coward!” cried Finnerty. “Paddy Moynihan a coward!”

“Keep quiet, Joe,’ said the sergeant.

“I was nineteen years of age at the time,” said The Pedlar, “and in such a poor state of health that I was barely able to walk. Yet I had to keep going. My mother, Lord have mercy on her, had just died after a long sickness, leaving me alone in the world with hardly a penny to my name. I was coming home one evening from Ballymullen, with a load of goods in my ass’s creels, when Moynihan came along and began to torment me. “Your load isn’t properly balanced,” he said. “It’s going to overturn.” Then he began to pick up loose stones from the road and put them into the creels, first into one and then into the other, pretending that he was trying to balance the load. I knew very well what he had in mind, but I said nothing. I was speechless with fright. Then he suddenly began to laugh and he took bigger stones from the wall and threw them into the creels, one after the other. Laughing at the top of his voice, he kept throwing in more and more stones, until the poor ass fell down under the terrible weight. That was more than I could bear. In spite of my terror, I picked up a stone and threw it at him. It wasn’t much of a stone and I didn’t throw it hard, but it struck him in the cheek and managed to draw blood. He put up his hand and felt the cut. Then he looked at his fingers. “Lord God!” he said in a weak little voice. “Blood is coming from my cheek. I’m cut.” Upon my soul, he let a terrible yell out of him and set off down the road towards the village as fast as he could, with his hand to his cheek and he screaming like a frightened girl. As for me, ’faith, I raised up my ass and went home happy that evening. There was a little bird singing in my heart, for I knew that Moynihan would never again be able to torture me.”

“Right enough,” said the sergeant, “you had him in your power after that. You had only to decide . . .”

“Best of all, though,” The Pedlar interrupted excitedly, “was when I found out that he was mortally afraid of bees. Before that, he was able to steal all my fruit and vegetables while I was out on the roads. It was no use keeping a dog. The sight of him struck terror into the fiercest dog there ever was.”

“You wicked old black spider!” said Finnerty. “Why do you go on telling lies about the dead?”

“Keep quiet, Joe,” said the sergeant. “Let him finish his story!”

“All animals loved Moynihan,” said Finnerty, “because he was gentle with them. They knew there was no harm in him. Children loved him, too. Indeed, every living creature was fond of the poor old fellow except this vindictive little cripple, who envied his strength and his good nature and his laughter. It was his rollicking laughter, above all else, that aroused the hatred of this cursed little man.”

“So you got bees,” the sergeant said to The Pedlar.

“I bought three hives,” The Pedlar said, “and put them here in the garden. That did the trick. Ho! Ho! The ruffian has suffered agonies on account of those bees, especially since the war made food scarce in the shops. Many is the good day’s sport I’ve had, sitting here on my stool, watching him go back and forth like a hungry wolf, with his eyes fixed on the lovely fruit and vegetables that he daren’t touch. Even so, I’m glad to hear he’s dead.”

“You are?” said Sergeant Toomey.

“It takes a load off my mind,” The Pedlar said.

“It does?” said the sergeant.

“Lately,” said The Pedlar, “I was beginning to get afraid of him again. He was going mad with hunger. You can’t trust a madman. In spite of his cowardice, he might attack me in order to rob my house and garden.”

“Was that why you decided to poison him?” said the sergeant.

The Pedlar started violently and became motionless, with his upward-glancing eyes fixed on the sergeant’s chest. He looked worried for a moment. Then his bearded face became suffused with a cunning smile and his palsied limbs resumed their uncouth dance. The metalled heels of his boots now made quite a loud and triumphant sound as they beat upon the flagstone.

“You are a clever man, Sergeant Toomey,” he whispered in a sneering tone, “but you’ll never be able to prove that I’m guilty of having caused Paddy Moynihan’s death.”

“He was in your house today,” said the sergeant.

“He was,” said The Pedlar.

“Did you give him anything?” said the sergeant.

“I gave him nothing,” said The Pedlar.

“You might as well tell the truth,” said the sergeant. “When the doctor comes back this evening, we’ll know exactly what old Moynihan had for his last meal.”

“I can tell you that myself,” said The Pedlar.

“You can?” said the sergeant.

“He burst into my kitchen,” said The Pedlar, “while I was frying a few potatoes with some of the bacon fat that I collect in a bowl. “Where did you get the bacon?” he said. He loved bacon and he was furious because there was none to be had in the shops. “I have no bacon,” I said. “You’re a liar,” said he. “I can smell it.” I was afraid to tell him the truth, for fear he might ransack the house and find my bowl of bacon fat. Then he’d kill me if I tried to prevent him from marching off with it. So I told him it was candles I was frying with potatoes. God forgive me, I was terribly frightened by the wild look in his eyes. So I told him the first thing that came into my head, in order to get him out of the house. “Candles!” he said. “In that case, I’ll soon be eating fried potatoes myself.” Then he ran out of the house. I locked the door as soon as he had gone. Not long afterwards, he came back and tried to get in, but I pretended not to hear him knocking. “You old miser!” he shouted, as he gave the door a terrible kick that nearly took it off its hinges. “I have candles myself now. I’ll soon be as well fed as you are.” He kept laughing to himself as he went away. That was the last I saw or heard of him.”

“You think he ate the candles?” said the sergeant.

“I’m certain of it,” said The Pedlar. “He’d eat anything.”

The sergeant folded his arms across his chest and stared at The Pedlar in silence for a little while. Then he shook his head.

“May God forgive you!” he said.

“Why do you say that?” The Pedlar whispered softly.

“You are a very clever man,” said the sergeant. “There is nothing that the law can do to a man as clever as you, but you’ll have to answer for your crime to Almighty God on the Day of Judgement all the same.”

Then he turned to Finnerty and said sharply:

“Come on, Joe. Let’s get out of here.”

Finnerty spat on the ground at The Pedlar’s feet.

“You terrible man!” he said. “You wicked dwarf! You’ll roast in hell for all eternity in payment for your crime.”

Then he followed the sergeant down along the narrow flagged path that divided the garden.

“Ho! Ho!” The Pedlar cried in triumph as he stared after them. “Ho! Ho! My lovelies! Isn’t it great to hear the mighty of this earth asking for God’s help to punish the poor? Isn’t it great to see the law of the land crying out to God for help against the weak and the persecuted.”

He broke into a peal of mocking laughter, which he suddenly cut short.

“Do ye hear me laugh out loud?” he shouted after them. “No man heard me laugh like this in all my life before. I’m laughing out loud, because I fear neither God nor man. This is the hour of my delight. It is, ’faith. It’s the hour of my satisfaction.”

He continued to laugh at intervals, on a shrill high note, while the two men went down the flagged path to the gate and then turned right along the road that led back to Moynihan’s sordid cottage.

“Ho! Ho!” he crowed between the peals of laughter. “I have a lovely satisfaction now for all my terrible shame and pain and sorrow. I can die in peace.”