Be This My Death--Or Absolution

An Irish WWI deserter returns to Dublin to find his beloved has unwillingly succumbed to the Monto District's most notorious profession: prostitution.

Be This My Death--Or Absolution

 

 

 

 

Dublin, 1919

In years she is not far along, and yet I wonder if all the weariness of this century does not belong to her. A cup of tea waits for her on the table beside her bed, where she is fast asleep. Today I have not yet drawn the curtains of heavy velveteen mauve, which block out the light of mid-day in Dublin's fair city, for I do not wish to wake her. Instead, I sit before them in the dewy half-light at my writing desk, which of late is overwhelmed with my records, things I have remembered and written down, things she has told me, or just my ideas of Dublin, to which I have returned in only this past year. Candles are burning as I look over these records. Of this city, I have found, I know little, but she knows Dublin for what it is. No one can tell the true story of this city, of life in this city, or of life in general, better than my dear Eibhlinn Mahoney.

 

Hours pass and the creamy half-light fades. These walls, from which the murky paint is peeling, this mahogany floor, the bed on which she lies, are all cast in violet darkness, and she, so pale, seems to glow in the twilight. The candles have burned down, puddled wax in their wake, and at last she stirs. There is a heaviness in her movements, a reluctance. She strains herself to sit up, and her blankets fall from her shoulders. Her back is to me, but slowly she turns, and lowers her bare white feet to the floor. From the corner of her eye she catches a glimpse of me, watching her, and she gasps. She is haunted by memory.

 

"It's only me," I say, standing. She sits at the edge of the bed, and takes the cool tea cup in her delicate hands.

 

"In my memory, Dublin has two faces," she begins to say. "One on either side of each Georgian door."

 

It is hard to say, but even in the twilight I can see tears in her eyes.

 

"One side shines in saccharrin splendor, charming the passerby with an ornate and cheerful spectrum," she continues. "The other is silent, stained in poverty and sin incarnate . . . lined in desperate innocence. I lived too much on one side."

 

"Which side, Eibhlinn?" I ask, and yet I know the answer. I walk over to her, to take the tea cup from her. "I'll get you some new." She still does not answer me. To answer would be to remind me of my part in her dark fate, and she is too kind for that.

 

"Why have you brought me here?" she asks.

 

Now it is I who cannot answer. Before I left Ireland, to fight in the Great War, I was in love with her. We were younger then, fresh faced and perhaps a little ignorant. I had grown up in Tipperary, the son of a landowning man who fled the country when hunger threatened. But I had never met hunger. I had moved to Dublin after he left, working in factories, until I had enlisted. There was never a day in Dublin I had not watched Eibhlinn, a fishmonger, wheel her barrow around the city. She was a fishmonger then, and her parents too. She is a fishmonger still, but it is more than cockles and mussels she has to offer.

 

"Well?" There is impatience in her voice.

 

"I told you I would come back for you," I said.

 

"I know what you said, Albert. And do you remember what I told you?"

 

"That you would wait . . . "

 

"Aye, all my life, if it was indeed me to whom you were coming back."

 

"But you're still Eibhlinn Mahoney," I said, though I knew what she was getting at.

 

"I'm not the same Eibhlinn, Albert," she sighs. Her chest swells. "Not anymore. She was pure and full of whimsy. I am sullied and wistful." Like a rose she seems to wilt as she says this, and she lays her head back on the pillow. "How could you still want me?"

 

"Because," I say, sitting down on her bedside and taking her hands. I am about to say, 'I love you,' but something holds me back. "Because I do."

 

I can tell she isn't satisfied with my answer.

 

"Are you curious, Albert?" she says, once again sitting up. She stands, her nightgown sheer with the candle light in the spots it hangs off her bony frame. Slowly she makes her way to the window, and pulls apart the drapes enough to show that tonight is a full moon. It's brightness washes over her and she appears a little more alive. "Are you curious to know what it was like for me, while you were gone?"

 

"Eibhlinn, I--" I am hurt by the bitterness that torments her voice.

 

"Do not apologize. It isn't your fault. This is life in my Dublin, Albert. It played out exactly the way it always does."

 

She inhales deeply.

 

"I was sixteen then, and to some that is not young. But I was young, I was unspoilt. And I loved you, Albert. I did so love you." Her voice is tremerous, and she focuses her gaze on the moon. It is a clear night. "My parents were imprisoned just before you left. My father fought in September of 13, and my mother stood behind him. I had no where to go, a rebel's daughter, and I wonder, Albert, was it me you loved, or just my voice calling out through the mists? You didn't know me."

 

"You had no where to go?"

 

"Aye, no where. I remember the morning you told me you were leaving, a soft day in June, but a cold and bitter night. I could see in your eyes there was something you had to say, but you could not see it in mine. I said, 'please don't leave me,' and you asked me to wait for you. And that brings us back to my answer, and my explanation of who I am now."

 

"I would have stayed, had I known," I say, and yet I know not if it is the truth. Over the short time I have spent with her here, she has me once again feeling that my heart is pinned to the back of my chest, I am so overcome with guilt. Not for what I have done to her, for I am in many ways innocent. But for the fact that I am selfish, that in all these years when I believed I was thinking of her, I was thinking of myself.

 

"So on that cold and bitter night, I sat beneath the overhang of the roof above a public house. I was shivering, and the overhang did little to keep out the pouring rain, and when I began to drift, I soon felt a figure standing before me. I opened my eyes, and he said to me, 'Come with me, and I'll give you somewhere warm to stay.' I was unspoilt, I should have known better and in the back of my mind I did. But I was cold. And lonely. His house was warm, alright, and his body beside me. I lost anything I might have had left that night, and for it earned a few pence. Sure it's a way of life, isn't it? But it is not who I wished to be. But that is who I am."

 

"Who are you, Eibhlinn?" I ask, and at last she turns to me, her gaze boring into mine.

 

"I'm a w***e, Albert," she says in a high voice, with all the sad intensity of the sea. She turns, and draws the curtains savagely, and makes her way out of the room.

 

 

Part Two

Dublin, 1914

 

There I am on the docks, boarding a ferry. A few hours have passed since I stood in the mist and told Eibhlinn Mahoney good-bye, that I might not see her again, but should I return, I would like to have her hand. She agreed. The mist is rising, enveloping me into a world I do not know. I will arrive in England, an Irishman in England, to fight for England, when I could fight for Ireland, because I am a traitor in so many ways. Or I am desperate. Or curious. I am all of these things.

 

I realize I don't know why I'm fighting for England, and that I'd really like to go home.

 

I realize it's too late, and that I am leaving this little green island a child, and will return--yes, I will return--a man. And then I will have Eibhlinn as my wife, and we can retreat to the country. Wicklow. Perhaps back home in Tipperary. Children will come, grow up and go away, and we will grow old in comfort.

 

Because I have a pension.

 

The War to End all Wars.

 

 

Part Three

Dublin, 1919

 

She sits up in her bed, cross legged, her night gown a blushing gossamer through which I can see her legs, and even her thighs are too thin.

 

"I remember a man who came to me for years," she begins, her mouth slightly upturned in a curious sort of grin. She holds a cup of tea in her hands, which rest on her legs. "I think I might have loved him."

 

There is a lightness about her I have not seen before, and she leans backward, at once relaxed and deeply engaged in reminiscence. It is once again late at night, and naught but candles light the room.

 

"He came to me in the first year of my profession, and he said, 'I'm growing blind, but I see you clear as day.' He didn't bother to ask how much, as so many do. He just followed me up to my room, behind that bright red door, and took a seat in the chair across from my bed. I stood and watched him, waiting for him to make the first move. 'You remind me of someone,' he said. 'She liked me to read to her. Can I do the same for you?' I agreed. Always the same book, he brought it with him everywhere. It was an old, leather-bound copy of Gulliver's Travels. I remember the scent of it." She inhales deeply. "He would read from it, every time, he would read a few pages, straining his fading eyes, before he came to me. And he was always so gentle."

 

"Tell me about that first time, Eibhlinn," I say, each syllable marked with carefulness for I wish not to offend her– I am wishing to know the man who forced her into this fate. I can't quite understand why she condemned herself to this, it is something I can't grasp.

 

"Not now, Albert. Don't make me remember. I don't want to remember. I wish I could numb the pain it still causes, and I tried. I have had my times with the drink, Albert. With other things. Fairy dusts and funny papers wrapped around magic, oh Albert, you think your travels were curious?" She leans back so far her head nearly touches the bed, and there is a strange deameanor about her. "You really don't know me, do you?"

 

"I'd like to." My voice is tainted with the tone of a beggar.

 

Of a sudden, she sits up straight, moves her feet to the floor. She places her tea on the table besideher bed. Her gown is still crumpled around her upper legs, and her slender calves glow in the candle light.

 

"The first time, I told you, it was pouring rain. He put his coat around my shivering shoulders, and I could not refuse this warmth. I followed him. To his home, curiously--yes, it was his home. There were children, perhaps little younger than myself, asleep in their beds. His wife was visiting some sister in Belfast. I was still shivering, against the fire in the kitchen, the fire I was dragged past and into his bedroom. But I was not cold for long."

 

"Were you frightened?" I ask, moving across the room and sitting softly beside her. She looks up at me slowly, her eyes round and somehow innocent.

 

"Yes. I was frightened."

 

She closes her eyes, her eye lashes casting long shadows on her face, and I think she might cry. But her eyes open dryly, as if bereft of tears, and her gaze bores into me.

 

"What do you want from me, Albert? To know me? Or to know what it's like?" She sighs, and moves closer to me. "What have you done all these years away, Albert?" She moves closer still. "Fired a few rounds?" Even closer. "Killed?" Her lips are nearly touching mine, she is so close to me I cannot see clearly, and she speaks in raspy undertones. "How many did you kill, Albert? The War to End All Wars," she muses, and pulls away.

 

 

Part Four

 

At Sea, 1914

 

I have boarded the ferry with many other men, most of them not much older than myself. We will arrive in England, to take a train. That train will take us to the edge of the British Isles, the edge of my world, where we board some boat that might take us to our deaths . . . or some far-fetched victory. I am now so frightened. I am so full of regret. I could have stayed in Dublin. A factory worker. I could have been a rebel and stayed in my own little country, in Dublin, with Eibhlinn Mahoney . . .

 

Instead, I will end up on the Western Front, maimed and dead.

 

All confidence I had earlier is dashed, and I know what I will do.

 

We at last arrive in England, and I simply run. Run and run. I don't know where I'll end up. London is large, and I will find my way. Kilburn. There are plenty of jobs on the Kilburn High Road.

 

I went from soldier to deserter in the span of a few hours.

 

Won't Eibhlinn be proud?

 

 

Part Five

 

Dublin, 1919

 

When I wake up in the early morning light, the curtains of the drawing room are still drawn. She sits at my writing desk, her face half-lit by the still-burning candles. Across the desk lies an open book.

 

"You can read?" I ask, my voice making her turn suddenly, a slight fear in her eyes that soon relaxes, wanes into something almost like irritation.

 

"You really don't know anything about me, do you?" Her words sting like little venom-dipped arrows.

 

"I've been trying to know you." I stand beside her. "You're a mystery."

 

She stands up, as tall as myself, yet a ghost of what she was five years ago. She is slight where she was once slender. There is a thinness to her cheek, and yet its color is like the white rose blushing. There is a sadness to her eyes, not a hollowness but a depth, and yet they glow like sunset on the Liffey. Her pale face and shoulders are framed by a torrent of shining ginger locks. I love her. I want to tell her, and I open my mouth to begin, but she speaks first.

 

"What do you see when you look at me?" Every syllable, spoken quickly and roughly, is brimming with despair.

"I see the woman I once loved," and still love . . .

 

"You don't love me," she whispers, and turns away from me. She walks to the curtains, draws them to let in the sun, and sits heavily back down at my writing desk. There is a change upon her, with the sun. Her posture is slumped, and I know something is wrong. I place a hand on one bony shoulder.

 

"What is the matter, Eibhlinn? Do you want to leave? I'm not making you stay."

 

"I want to stay. I want to know you, and I want you to know me . . . but I'm ill, and I should go."

 

"You--what?" Ill, I know she said. "Then stay, at least until you are better. Tell me more then, more about yourself. How did you learn to read?"

 

"Do you not remember me speaking of the man who would come to me with his supposed blindness and his book?" Again, her face is alight. "Sometimes, when I had made enough off of other men, I would ask him to teach me to read in place of payment. I know Gulliver's Travels by heart. It is the only thing I've ever read. Until I found your bookshelf, of course."

 

"You loved this man?"

 

"Aye, I did, so. The way he would stumble in--sure he was an actor the way he stumbled in. He wasn't so blind as he said. But his eyes would light up when he saw me, 'Eibhlinn, my dear Eibhlinn,' he would say, 'what chapter did we leave on?' He would read, his voice sweet, a western accent I couldn't place. Perhaps Clare. Then he would close the book, softly as he could, and place it on the table beside the green velvet chair in which he always sat, across from the bed in which I always laid, just listening. He would make his way to me, undress me silently, and kiss me, just there," she motions to the place her hip bone protrudes, "before getting to it."

 

She is silent a while, but the image plays over in my mind. An older man, I imagine, hair turning grey, setting down his book on some dusty table, in some dank old room in one of the Georgian row houses in Dublin, behind that bright red deceptive door. He makes his way to her, my love, the one I left, the one I left to fend for herself with her body alone, and he comes to her and removes her clothes. Everything is sullied in a sort of tea-stain, or sepia, a half-light, for the curtains are surely drawn, except her bare white body, glowing. He kisses her, just there, where the skin might be so soft, so white, so tender, and I wish, I do so wish, I had never left, and that she was mine all along.

 

"His wife died when she was my age, of some fever, he told me. He had spent all his life reading to ease the pain, and he said when he saw me, he couldn't resist the idea of feeling once again what it was like to be close to her. But he didn't love me. He loved her. I did love him. From the moment I met him, I wished him happiness I knew I could not bring him. I think he might have died. He stopped visiting, after a while." I have never heard a voice so somber as hers as she says this, it is as hollow as the Angelus Bell ringing over the mists before a storm. The sound of it hurts my heart. And yet, the image of her with someone else hurts me more.

 

Part Six

 

London, 1914

 

I walk up Kilburn, and to my surprise, having known not what to expect, I find a bookshop. I am drawn at once inside, being fond of reading just about anything.

 

I walk in every day.

 

By the end of the week, I have a job.

 

It isn't much of a job, organizing the books and watching each person who enters, lest they have any inquiries. I spend much of my time writing . . . my story about the war. Then Eibhlinn will be proud when I return a valiant soldier. A valiant soldier who has written a book about his trials. She will love me then, I think, and I am back to the idea of our life together, children who grow and flourish, and us, with all the crevices of long life in our faces, somewhere in the countryside.

 

I am a dreamer, but I don’t care.

 

 

Part Seven

 

Dublin, 1919

 

She mumbles in her sleep. I can hear it all the way from where I am lying on the sofa, in the drawing room. I have given her my room for sleeping. I can't quite understand what she is saying, but I can imagine it has been a long, long time since she has slept alone.

 

I wonder if she is lonely, or relieved.

 

I turn on my side, and shiver. The room is cold. Everything is overcome with the inkiness of night, and I wonder if she too feels the cold. Rain patters against the window, and I am moved to my feet. I am moved to walk across the room. I am moved to walk past the door, past the hallway, past her open door, and stand above her.

 

"Eibhlinn," I whisper. "Eibhlinn."

 

She wakes with a start, a gasp.

 

"Albert," she says, and I can hear and almost see her outline sitting up, clutching her heart. "What do you want?"

 

"Eibhlinn," I say, and this question has been on my mind, "Why did you love him? What was it about him that drew you in? His reading?"

 

"Of all the ridiculous questions," she fumes. Apparently she does not like being woken from her slumber, and I must admit I am amused. I sit down at the foot of her bed.

 

"I can read to you. I can read to you what I wrote . . . during the war." During the war indeed. "My story."

 

"Your story?"

 

"Don't you want to know?"

 

"Of course I do. I want to know everything. Oh yes, I would really like that." There is a new warmth in her voice.

 

"Right, well, I suppose we can begin tomorrow," I say, but she quickly says, "Why not tonight?"

 

"Well light a candle and I'll get my things," I tell her. I move to my writing desk as she leaves to find a match. When she returns, she lights the candle and is taken with a fit of coughing while the smoke dulls the newly illuminated room. She is doubling over with her coughing, gasping for breath, and it seems a bit excessive for the simple smoke escaping from the wick of a candle. I lead her to the bed, lay her down and she pulls the blankets nearly to her chin as her cough declines, and disappears. So I begin to read:

 

"1914 and I do believe I have lost my way. I am on the Allied Front. I am fighting for England, who suppresses my kinsman back in Ireland. I am a traitor."

 

"You're right, Albert," she says, and pauses. Right about what? I wonder. "We were supressed," she finishes in a weak voice. "All this time you were fighting for the one who held us back, who held me back, who kept Dublin in the slums despite it's glamour to the blind eye. But I know why you went. Everyone likes a bit of the unknown."

 

A bit of the unknown . . . she is so much unknown to me.

 

"Tell me what it is like to kill--to watch the life drain out of another by your own hand. . ." she says. "Is it like giving life, pouring so much soul into another you lose part of your own? Tell me, Albert."

 

Here I stutter. What can I say? I have never killed a man.

 

"I am dying, Albert," she says as easily as stating the weather. "I can feel life departing, more so every day. It's the fever. But isn't it funny?"

 

I am lost, all I can muster is, "funny?"

 

"Yes, how life causes death? How often is it that opposites cause the happening of one another? Love doesn't cause hate. I think I must leave you, lest you catch my disease."

 

She moves to stand, and I block her.

 

"No, no, please," I say, placing my hands on her shoulders. "Please stay."

 

"Why?" she asks, and with no answer, I kiss her on the mouth. She does not pull away, instead she pulls me in, kissing me back, and I am not sure if she is impassioned, or just practiced.

 

When at last she does pull away, she says, "You shouldn't want me." She sits down on the bed, and I sit beside her. She is crying now, not holding back like I have seen her on previous occassions.

 

"Why?" I am reeling inside, my stomach is all aflutter, and I only want her more.

 

"Have you ever been with a girl?" she asks, looking at me with those watery siren eyes.

 

After all these lies, about my book, about my travels, about the war, it is time for truth.

 

"No. Never."

 

"I have been with more men than I could even imagine counting, Albert. For the past five years hardly a day has gone by when I've not been stripped down and shagged senseless by all the men of Dublin, and all its visitors. I haven't the innocence you deserve, the purity. But I have been with men like you. Unexperienced and eager. Foolish and ignorant."

 

"Have you?" I can only say. My blood is rushing.

 

"Come here then," she says, beckoning me. "I'll show you." My fingers are trembling as she takes my hands, and places them on the first button of her nightgown, just above her breasts. I can hardly undo the button, I am so overstrung. There is a warmth from her skin, and a softness. I move to the second button, and the third, right in the middle of her breasts, then the fourth, and the nightgown slides from her shoulders and I can see the top half of her. She stands and the gentle fabric falls to the floor. She steps lightly out of it, and reaches to me. She is untying my belt, and before I know it, I am out of my clothes, face to face with a woman I thought I knew and don't know, neither of us clothed. She pulls me to her, and she is kissing me. She is leading me back to the bed, leading me to lie on top of her. Soon I am moving with some inherent, almost symphonic, rhythm. It is like climbing a hill, I find, step by step closer to the peak--and now I have reached it! This explosion of pleasure through every part of me! And now I know I can say what I have longed to say.

 

"I love you Eibhlinn," I breathe. "I love you." I am at the other side of the hill now, so serene I might never again stir from here, and I hear her say:

 

"This isn’t love, Albert." I am laying beside her, and she rises. "You don’t love me."
 

"But I do," I plead, and I am so confused.

 

"I should go."

 

"No." I rise, and take her gently by the shoulders. "No, there is no reason you should go." There are new tears in her eyes.

 

"I cannot stay with a man I love, who does not love me in return. I have weathered enough of that in my time, and with little time left, I should be obliged some peace."

 

"How can you say I do not love you?" I ask, dumbfounded.

 

"How can you say you do? Why do you love me? Tell me in simple words, why."

 

"You are," it is not the time to say beautiful, "wise. You know this city, this world, better than anyone. Better than I. You are warm and honest, I know you would not turn your back on me."

 

"And if one day I was none of these things? Would you love me still?" she asks.

 

"But then you would not be yourself," I say, wondering if I am digging my hole deeper.

 

"It is so sad, Albert, this world's idea of love." She sits back down on the bed, seeming to sink into herself. "Because it is nice to be around someone, because they make us feel good, they bring us pleasure, we believe we are in love. I am pretty, yes?"

 

"Indeed."

 

"And what I have just done for you was pleasant?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Pleasant enough that it caused you to say those words. But those words are not true, Albert, because love is the wish for another's well-being, far beyond the desire for your own. If you loved me, you would love me whatever I become, you would love me without regard for the physical, without regard but only in hopes of your own joy. That is love."

 

"Then if you love me, why would you leave me?" I question.

 

"You are not benefitting from my presence. I'm a w***e, Albert, a dying w***e at that. Find yourself a real lover and get on with your life." She leans back, and closes her eyes. "I love you, I always have, despite your carelessness and dishonesty. I know you didn't go to war, I know you wrote that story in your free-time. But I don't care. I love you, and that's that."

 

"How do you know those things?" I ask, feeling like my legs might collapse from under me.

 

"I know you," she says simply.

 

Never in my life have I felt more ashamed. Standing here with no clothes, I feel that clothed or not she has stripped me bare and showed me who I am. I am like so many others. So far I have gone through life thinking that existence is beautiful, that it is made to be enjoyed, and I have avoided working for it. She has worked all her life to no avail, and for it learned more than anyone in all the universities of this continent. And now I know that I do love her, if not for different reasons than I once believed.

 

"Please stay," I say. I am begging now. "I don't want to be without you. I love you, Eibhlinn. I will prove it."

 

"If you love me, you will not touch me for the rest of my days. Then I will die knowing you loved me." Her tone is sardonic, as if she does not believe I will respect these last wishes.

 

"Done," I say.

 

Tears leak through her closed eyes.

 

Part Eight

 

Dublin, 1919

 

When three weeks have passed, and I have read to her countless books, because I love her, she has not risen from her bed in four days. She has not eaten, and only taken sips of the tea I have brought her. I sit down beside her, careful to make no contact, and ask:

 

"What do you want more than anything in this world?"

 

"I want Ireland to be free," she says, "so that no one again lives on my side of those deceiving doors." She is quiet for a long while, before saying quietly, "Albert?"

 

"Yes?" I say.

 

"Please take my hand." Reluctantly, I take her hand, and there is little warmth.

 

"Thank you," she says, a slight smile on her lips. Soon, the rise and fall of her chest has stopped, and she is dead.

 

All these years I have lived a lie, in love with an idea, and not the woman who deserved my devotion. In her honor, I will join the Irish Republican Army, and free this country, be this my death, or absolution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Rachel DeHart]

I really really enjoyed this. It is well crafted and openly sad.

Thank you so much for posting this. Its wonderful.