Carta Issue One

Carta Magazine of Literary Prose Issue One

© Trinity Publications 2018

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To frame a philosophy capable of coping with men intoxicated with the prospect of almost unlimited power and also with the apathy of the powerless is the most pressing task of our Time.

Bertrand Russell

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Editorial

In May 2016, the American novelist Jonathan Franzen appeared on a celebrity charity edition of Jeopardy, the popular US quiz in which contestants must frame their answers within the construction “What is…?” to score points. On the show, Franzen was asked “whether he thought Twitter was trivializing social interaction”. To this he readily agreed, arguing that the social media platform “crippled real, complicated conversation”. According to Franzen, “Real conversations … must have a thesis, a counter-thesis and a synthesis.”

While Franzen’s prescription of a Hegelian antidote to the superficiality of online communication is more urgent now than ever, a television game show hardly represents the ideal context for this message. There is something disingenuous and unsettling about an avid chronicler of today’s techno-consumerist malaise voicing his lament on a scripted quiz show. The diagnostician became a symptom, occupying a self-defeating position which could only have been rationalised away in the name of increased promotion for Franzen and his views, or simply extra money for the 4iii

American Bird Conservancy, his chosen charity. Ends justifying the means, as ever.

Nevertheless, it is hard not to feel a little Franzen-esque amid the vaudeville of Trinity’s literary scene. It has become increasingly difficult to imagine that long-form prose — short stories, essays, book excerpts — will not look somewhat absurd beside editorials which comprise a few quotes from a well-known figure’s back-catalogue drooped about the page. Such works would seem no less like oddballs in these contexts than that serious writer describing Hegelian dialectics under the lurid lights of a happy hour quiz.

Which brings us on to our new publication, in which we would like to house these oddballs. An asylum, if you will.

But as with most asylums, there is no one identifiable madness in the inhabitants themselves — the pieces are, by all accounts, fantastically thoughtful and cogent works of literature. Their sequestration here is instead demanded by the prevailing tastes, or more accurately prejudices, of the culture found outside.

In this culture, poetry preponderates; but in a way which we suggest points to something more dispiriting than shifting literary vogues. We are in dangerous territory here, for reactionary condemnations of the new and avant-garde are as old as literature itself. One need only read a passage of G. K. Chesterton’s criticism to know that the pitfall of every critic in his time is to inveigh against what is known as “modern”, only to advocate a return to the old ways: formalism, respectability, a revival of tradition and the iv5

classics. However, we do not protest a modern sensibility but a postmodern one, and at that its aimless and ongoing degeneration.

A glance at most of the poetry featured in independent publications around Dublin will confirm this. There is a malaise at work, and not the sort of malaise out of which emerges a Renaissance or an Enlightenment. The work found in these publications does not strive towards common understanding, meaningful communication between people, or argument. Instead, we get: found poems; treatments of trauma concerned only with stylish presentation; and weary musings which say less about the poem than they do the poet. This is a malaise in creative discourse which stops, as any discourse does, with the belief that there is either nothing more to say, or that there is nothing that can be said. All that is left to write, then, is the outworking of the subject as some literary Narcissus; self-perceiving, selfinvolved and, ultimately, only of interest to itself.

The central premise behind this malaise is that experience is not communicable. One of the defining features of our era is that there is no longer a common set of values, or even facts, held by everyone in society. In their absence we, secure in our own self-selected worldviews, are locked in prisons of individuality within which we can only create art about ourselves.

In response to these stultifying literary conditions, we should instead look to precipitate the emergence of a truly universal means of communication. It is our belief that a revival in clear, engaging prose will provide an essential 6v

break with the impoverished present of unimaginative poetry and worthless experimentation.

For most students, prose is the (hidden) backbone of their textual experience: student media, lecture slides, emails, essays, books and textbooks are all written and therefore consumed through prose. This functionality is not, as some might argue, a decisive check on the artistic capabilities of prose, but proof of its endless application. At any moment in time, a student is most likely learning, exchanging, and thinking in prose. The idea that there is no open, noncompetitive platform for students to share art wrought from the everyday language of life is a damning check on the opportunities we might ever have as a community of people to understand one another.

It should hopefully become clear throughout Carta that what we wish to insist on — to borrow a phrase applied elsewhere to the criticism of Walter Benjamin — is ‘the communicability of experience in spite of itself.’ No matter how ineffable experience may seem, or how self-defeating it might be to talk about it, this is nothing more than the task of the writer. Indeed, it goes some way in explaining Franzen’s incongruous behaviour on TV: the insistence on communication, in spite of everything, even when that communication has itself become logically untenable.

We are proud to say that every piece printed here takes up the task of generating meaning line after line wholeheartedly.

Though exemplifying a range of impressive techniques, each writer can ultimately be found asking questions about what it is to be human; or, in the case of our featured essay, what vi 7

it is to have a soul. And if we have learnt one thing from watching over old episodes of Jeopardy, it is that answers must always come in the form of questions.

Christian Moore and Harry Downes 1st October, 2018

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Contents

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Boys Will be Boys

Catherine Hearn

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The Truth About James Masterson Liam Whelan

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The Spirit of a Face

Maya Bushell

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12/09/18

Sinéad Barry

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The Sacred and The Human

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Float

Rory O’Sullivan Christian Cowper

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Boys Will Be Boys Catherine Hearn

Sweat crawled in rivulets down Richie’s back. The

city, although packed with people, moved as though time had slowed down. Everyone stuck to the small pockets of shade cast by tall monuments and shop fronts, so that the large main square remained deserted, the sun beating blankly on the smooth grey stone. It was the summer of 2014 and Munich was holding its breath, sweating, heaving, hoping.

Richie sat under an awning which provided little relief from the heat, sipping a pint of Puntigamer and barely listening to the inane chatter of his two mates, who sat across from him.

“I know you’re lyin’ Fitz, I know it. There’s no way you got off with her. She was a solid nine. Would’ve been a ten, if she hadn’t been absolutely plastered in make-up.”

“I did. How many times do I have to tell ya? Listen, it doesn’t even matter whether you believe me or not, ya sap.”

“Where was she this mornin’ then?”

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“She LEFT. She left before the rest of ye woke up!”

Fitzy’s voice had gone up an octave, and its pitch, combined with the heat, was doing very little to help Richie’s hangover.

“Lads.” His voice was quiet but they both looked over immediately. “Would ye ever give it a rest? My head is bangin’.” He stretched and took another sip of beer. “Do either of ye have a smoke actually?”

“Yeah here, take one of these,” replied Shane, proffering a pack of Marlboro Lights to a grateful Richie. The dull ache behind his eyes receded as he smoked, and he relaxed back into the wicker chair to take in his surroundings. It was only two in the afternoon and the pub was already full. Most of the other patrons were dressed in German football shirts with flags around their shoulders or painted onto their faces.

They all chattered away in their musical Bavarian dialect, probably discussing the previous matches. Germans took their soccer seriously.

They had flown out to Munich on a whim; him, Fitzy and Shane. Watching the last game at the pub, Shane had joked that they should buy one-way tickets to Brazil for the final, that the atmosphere would be electric. Fitzy had laughed, but Richie was struck by an idea.

“Well Brazil is a bit unrealistic —” he began.

“A bit unrealistic? Well I certainly don’t have a spare five grand or so rattling around in my account, do you?” Fitzy interrupted, still laughing. Richie glared at him until he shut up.

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“What I was going to suggest was a little trip to Germany instead. Atmosphere is bound to be stellar there as well, isn’t it?”

He sat back, gratified by the look of delight which had replaced Fitzy’s normally gormless expression.

Shane had already gotten his phone out, and was looking at flights.

“Yeah they’re not too bad. About one-fifty return to Munich.”

“I say we go,” Richie declared, draining his pint.

“What about time off? I already used up all my holidays on the Alicante trip.” Fitzy looked anxious again. He worked on the production line of a biscuit factory, and his supervisor was an infamously horrible woman. Richie had always thought of her as one of those power-hungry career women who break balls just to prove they are worthy of the same respect as men. It never worked, though, did it.

“Tell her you’ve a family emergency. Make something up. Be grand.”

Fitzy seemed appeased. He trusted Richie.

“I’ll talk to Ross, sort out days off for us.” Richie was addressing Shane now.

“Thanks,” was all Shane said, his eyes still locked on his phone. Richie and Shane both worked for a phone company, but Richie was Shane’s boss, something they always laughed about although Richie thought he saw mutiny in Shane’s eyes whenever anyone brought it up. They had practically grown up together, the three of them, had gone to the same primary and secondary school in the small town of Ballingrange.

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Richie had wanted to leave Ballingrange behind, but when the Leaving Cert results came out his plans were scuppered.

He had always taken his natural intelligence for granted, and had depended on it to see him through to NUIG to do arts, but a sixth year spent drinking and getting with girls had gotten in the way of that. He had considered repeating, but couldn’t bear the humiliation of it. He took a job on the factory floor and worked his way up, Shane following predictably in his footsteps. Fitzy had stuck with his summer job, and five years later he was still packing up boxes of digestives. They were best mates, indestructible. Still, Richie often thought about how he had blown the chance to leave his dusty midlands town, and his two best friends, behind.

He was leaving the town temporarily though. Next thing they knew, they were in Dublin Airport, taking Snapchats of their pre-flight pints with the caption ‘lads on tour’ and getting so wasted that they nearly missed their boarding call.

A day later, there they were, hungover under the Munich sun.

“You want something else? Another beer?” A sallowskinned girl was standing over their table, one hand on her hip, the other stacking up their empty glasses. Now she, thought Richie, was definitely a ten. He shaded his eyes against the sun and looked at her properly: hair plaited, hung like a rope over her shoulder, wide and warm eyes.

And her body… Richie glanced over at his friends, who were trying their best not to stare.

“Yeah, another round would be great. Please.” He gave 13

her what he considered his best smile, a cheeky kind of grin.

It amazed him how much could be communicated through the set of someone’s mouth or the flash or their eyes. She gave an embarrassed laugh.

“Ya of course, no problem,” she said, turning away.

“Jesus she was fairly decent, wha?” Shane’s eyes followed her as she walked.

“She looks a bit like Laoise Ryan,” mused Fitzy, “remember her?”

Richie did remember. Laoise Ryan had been his first love, not that he’d ever admit that to anyone. She had gone to school with them, and Richie had admired her from afar for three years but failed to ever ask her out. Her limbs were long and rangy like an athlete’s and her eyes were a kaleidoscope of colour; sometimes brown, sometimes gold, sometimes green. He had loved her with the kind of nervous intensity that only fourteen-year-old boys are capable of, an intensity that no one had taught him how to express. So he teased her instead, shouting raw comments about her body as she passed him in the corridor, pushed on by his friends’ ensuing laughter. He grew aware of her presence on the pitch at lunchtimes, and would attempt to perform a soccer trick, or, failing that, beat up a first year in a bid to get her attention. Her eyerolls and haughty stares stung him like physical blows. The summer after fourth year, she returned to school looking skinny and strung out. Her eyes didn’t seem to change anymore but remained a constant, dull brown. Midway through the year, her parents pulled her out of school and lunch tables buzzed with speculation and 14

snippets of overheard teachers’ conversations: Anorexia, basically lost her mind, making herself throw up in the toilets, special hospital up in Dublin, attention-seeking slut, poor girl, poor family. Richie heard the rumours with a faint and horrifying sense of guilt for the comments he had once thrown at her. But it surely wasn’t his fault? She must have known it was all just a joke. And, comforting himself with this, he pushed the feeling deep down inside, swallowing it, forever hating the taste of it.

“Before she went mental and started throwing up, obviously,” Fitzy continued, laughing before lighting up another cigarette.

“She didn’t go mental, for fuck’s sake. She was sick, wasn’t she?” The words were out of Richie’s mouth before he could shove them back in. His two friends stared at him, surprise etched on both of their faces.

“Well yeah, I suppose,” Shane conceded, “but I never liked her anyway. She always seemed a bit stuck up.” There was a beat of silence as Shane and Richie regarded each other across the table.

“Here, what time is this match starting anyway?” It was obvious Fitzy wanted to change the subject. Richie decided not to get into it with Shane. It was too hot for a row, apart from anything else.

“Half eight, far as I know.”

“Lovely. Plenty of time to get nice and smashed.” Fitzy beamed at them.

That’s exactly what they did. They ordered round after round, pausing only to eat and take Snapchats. The waitress 15

with the plaited hair had stopped serving their table, but Richie could see her now and again in his peripheral vision.

Just before the match was due to start, Shane’s girlfriend rang him. Scowling, he pressed the phone up to one ear and stuck his finger in the other.

“But I text ya… Yeah I know but sure we’re in a pub…

The match is about to start… No ‘course not, I just forgot… I better go… Ok yeah I love you too… Bye bye bye.”

Richie and Fitzy smirked at him and started to make kissing noises.

“Jesus lads would ye ever grow up, acting like a pair of five-year-olds.” Shane shook his head.

“Ara relax man, we’re only slaggin’ ya.” laughed Richie, but Shane’s words had penetrated his drunken stupor. They did act like five-year olds. Shane had been with Jenny for two years, but neither Richie nor Fitzy had ever had anything like a long-term relationship. Richie started picking apart his beer mat. Fuck it. He had hit that stage of drinking when the negative thoughts started creeping in, and he hated it.

He turned his attention to the big screen, where both teams were lining out. The excitement in the room was pitched; all eyes were trained on the screen, all phones were stashed away. Time moved differently during those ninety minutes, and Richie could feel himself become part of the collective consciousness which surrounded him, willing the German team on. A woman bit down on her lip so hard it started to bleed. One man was crying silently. They won by a goal, and the three Irish men integrated themselves seamlessly 16

into the celebrations. They sang until they were hoarse, arms around shoulders of people whose names they didn’t know and would never learn. They drank so much it seemed to hang over them like a fog as they moved from pub to sweaty, thumping club. Richie had no idea where they were, or how they’d get back to their hostel, but those problems seemed small and far away. All that mattered was the heavy bass and the swaying room and his friends, the absolute two best friends in the whole world. He told them this, something he’d normally never say, and their response was a sweaty and putrid embrace as they jumped around like animals. Richie felt a wave of something other than love at that moment, a reaction to all the different spirits bubbling up in his belly.

“I’m goin’ to the jacks,” he shouted over the music, “wait here for me, will ya? Right here.”

Fitzy and Shane nodded their assent and clapped him on the back. He found the toilet and tried to throw up, but nothing would come. He returned to the dancefloor, but couldn’t see his friends anywhere. After pushing through the bodies, he gave up and stumbled out into the cool relief of the night. He tried to call them, but they wouldn’t pick up.

Fuck, was all he could think. He wandered along, keeping to what he thought were the main streets, hoping something would start to look familiar. Without warning, another wave of nausea hit him, and he ducked down an empty side street.

He began retching into the gutter, his insides turning out, the skin on his head stretching as he convulsed.

“Ist was los?” He heard a soft voice behind him say.

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“Brauchst du Hilfe?” He turned to see a girl peering at him, frowning with concern. He realised with a jolt that it was the hot waitress from the bar.

“I’m sorry… I don’t em… ich bin no Deutsch?” Richie said feebly, and the girl laughed.

“Hey, I recognise you! You were at the bar earlier, right?”

Her English was flawless, her accent almost completely neutral. “You need something? You want me to call your friends?”

“Ehm, no I tried, they’re not picking up.” His mouth was dry, hands shaking. “You don’t have any water on you by any chance?”

“Water? No,” she looked conflicted, “but the bar is right here, I could return, just for a moment…” her voice got quieter, almost like she was speaking to herself. Richie looked up, and recognized the bar where they’d been drinking earlier. She must have just gotten off work. “Come on,” her tone was decisive. She helped him up, and unlocked the door of the pub, before turning off the alarm. Richie sat himself down on one of the bar stools, and she set a glass of tap water in front of him. He gulped it down gratefully.

“You’re English?” She arched an eyebrow.

“Irish,” he replied.

They talked back and forth about the match, Munich as a city, Ireland. Richie began to sober up, and he was doing the calculations in his mind as they spoke. She had remembered him from earlier, when he had clearly caught her eye, and she had led him here, to this dark, empty bar where it was just the two of them, alone. She was having a beer while he 18

sipped his water, leaning into him as they spoke. Her breasts were straining through her shirt, and her plaited hair was loosening across her face.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” He told her in a low voice, interrupting whatever she’d been saying. She darkened but didn’t reply. He leaned in and kissed her, and she kissed him back for a moment before pulling away.

“Gross!” She laughed, “you’ve just thrown up everywhere.” Richie had the decency to look abashed, but it didn’t stop him trying again, more forcefully this time. His hands roamed over her body greedily, and to his surprise all he could think about was Laoise Ryan, and how she had rejected him in school. Not that she’d even rejected him, because he’d never actually asked her out, but still. Shane was right. She’d been a stuck-up bitch. She’d gotten what she deserved. This was the trajectory of his thoughts as he forced open the top button of the waitress’s jeans. He heard a cry, but it seemed to come from a distance. Then, with a mighty shove, he was thrown back against the wall, head still spinning with lust and the jagged edges of memories.

He looked up to find her standing across from him, chest heaving, her t-shirt ripped. Her face was stained with tears and she was shaking.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was a whisper, which proved far more disturbing than if she’d shouted.

“I… I…” Richie looked down and realized his fly was open. He zipped it up hastily and looked around the room searchingly, as though the answer to her question was lying somewhere, just out of reach.

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“Get out,” her voice was firmer now, “get the fuck out of this bar.”

He left, emerging into the pale dawn. He expected to feel ashamed, would have welcomed a dose of shame prickling along his skin, but all he felt was a roaring sense of injustice.

Something that should have been his, warped and lost again.

His head rung with words: rapist, sexual assault, sexual deviant. None of them felt sufficient. Then, louder: asking for it, tight clothes, attention-seeking whore, frigid slut, stupid bitch. And these words were richer, juicier, easier to grasp. He took out his phone and dialled his sister’s number.

She answered, her voice thick with sleep.

“Richie? Why are you calling me? It’s four in the fucking morning.”

“Yeah, I- I’m sorry. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

Her tone changed immediately. “Why, what’s wrong?

What happened?”

“No no, nothing, I’m grand… They won the match. We had a mad night, and I’m just heading back to the hostel now.”

“Where are the lads?”

“Ah, I lost them in the club. I think Fitzy was tryin’ to get with some girl. I don’t think he was having much luck.

They’ll probably be passed out cold when I get back.”

“That sounds about right,” she laughed, “what are ye like?

Ah sure, boys will be boys I suppose.”

“Yeah,” he replied, and relief washed over him like rain.

“Boys will be boys.”

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The Truth About James Masterson Liam Whelan

Had I been given a choice, James Masterson would

never have become my flatmate. The accident of our living together came about when I arrived late to my first year of college, after a holiday with my father in Venice and Genoa.

Finding myself unprepared for the Dublin property market, I spent a week with an uncle and then moved in with James, the first person to reply to my frantic emails. He was back in Mayo on the day I arrived but had left the keys in Spar.

The flat was nearby, on Erne Terrace Rear, facing the DART bridge that shuddered as trains passed from Pearse Station.

It was as though I had tried to make myself ill that morning, drinking coffee after coffee with breakfast and persisting afterwards in reading on the coach. Between my shirt and my spine a nauseous sweat had taken up, and the keys felt strangely cold in my hands. I wanted to shower and to eat, nothing more.

I reached the place, then, already harried beyond bearing.

I was inclined to ignore the boy who stood watching my 21

struggle with the lock, but when he laughed I shot him a glare.

“Who are you, then?” he asked, meeting my gaze. He was redheaded and no older than twelve.

I answered with my eyes on the keys.

“Oisín. I’m moving in here.”

“Ah, Oisín, who’s moving in here.” In the silence that followed he began to drag a pebble over the footpath beneath his plimsoll.

“Are you Jim’s friend, then?” he asked.

I supposed “Jim” was the James I’d been emailing — was this a younger brother? The key turned in the lock and, nudging the door open with my shoulder, I regarded the boy carefully. He was wearing shorts even though it was a cool September evening, and his stalk-like limbs were downed with faintish hair. Was he waiting to be invited in?

“No,” I said, stepping inside, “I don’t know Jim at all.”

The door fell shut. Besides a coat hung on the back of a chair and a frying pan upturned on the draining board, the bungalow looked exactly like the pictures I’d seen. A train went by across the way, and the house shook very gently.

*** The only time I saw James outside was when we first met and stepped out for a smoke together, in the days before we dropped the pretense of not smoking in our rooms.

“I tried to call you, to tell you I’d be up today, but my phone was out of battery,” he said.

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“No bother,” I replied, “I’ve just been settling in here anyway.”

We stood alongside each other, leaning against the wall and blowing our smoke into the September afternoon. The bungalow — our bungalow — was a low, white building, whose broad skylights, though piercing the place at times with brilliant light, did little to dispel an air of long-ingrained austerity.

“See that?” he asked, pointing at the blurry wall of the bridge across the way.

I said I didn’t have my glasses on.

“The graffiti.”

He crossed the road towards the wall and I followed.

His clothes, I noticed somewhat guiltily, were distinctly unfashionable: he was wearing a Mayo GAA jersey and chunky Nike trainers from the late noughties.

“ISLAM IS EVIL” was written across the brickwork in dark green paint, and responses spread out underneath for and against the motion. James hunkered down next to the wall and squinted up at my face, watching for a reaction.

The sky that day was blue and cloudless and I felt, as he raised a hand to shield his eyes against the light, that I was being tested in some obscure, inscrutable manner. I smiled openly but said nothing, and James straightened up, his T-shirt catching briefly on a paunch above his belt.

“Every morning someone’s added something new. It’s like a little debate on the wall.”

I was baffled. “Did you write any of it yourself?”

He tapped his nose and said something that was lost as a 23

train moved overhead.

“What was that?”

He waved in dismissal, dropped his cigarette and trod on it.

“I’m going to head in now.”

James kept to his own room. Mostly, I had undisturbed use of the kitchen-cum-sitting room, but if I arrived home from college to find him on the sofa dressed only in his pyjamas, he would usually chat with me for a minute or two before finding some pretext to leave. I thought, however, that I detected a kind of loneliness about the boy. When I came home some evenings the light in my bedroom was on when I knew I’d left it off, and my bed smelt faintly of his damp, biscuity odour. Other times I found him half-drunk, poised on the arm of the sofa with chubby delicacy, his eyes almost closed — a profane Buddha — and a flagon of cider in front of him. I’d enter, his eyelids would flutter, and he’d rise and grope his way to his room.

The second time I met Rob — though at the time I didn’t know that was his name — was in my sitting room. I had woken up late and was in a rush to meet a friend for breakfast on Nassau Street. My bedroom was adjacent to the front door, and I was pulling on a hat between the two when I spotted the red-headed boy shuffling on our sofa.

“Hello,” I said. He flinched in surprise, contracting at the knees and shoulders.

“Hi.” The boy was shy this time, and restless, zipping and 24

unzipping his hoodie with pale fingers. He seemed familiar with the place despite his nerves, and his sloe-dark eyes, searched the room and avoided my own, reflecting a steady intimacy with all they passed over. I was about to speak when James appeared in his bedroom doorway, wearing shorts and a vest, a thermos in his hand.

“Alright, James?” He nodded, said good morning but did not look me in the eye. Suddenly I had the impression that it was I, not the boy, who was the intruder. I left — but dawdled outside, listening. At first I heard nothing; then a hiccup of suppressed laughter made me move on.

My interest in James was growing unabated. I shared wild speculations with my friends. But each time I thought I’d summed James up, discovered him, I was frustrated by some single fact that wouldn’t tally, some little flaw that belied my theory. I was ashamed, in a way, of my suspicions, but my shame was of the kind that, as it repels, enthralls. The air of perversity his name suggested, I wondered, was it properly his or mine? My self-suspicion grew, and a childhood memory of imaginary friends on whom I’d foisted my own transgressions articulated itself darkly in my mind.

By mid-November, I realised James and I had a mutual friend: a coursemate of James’s and a College society head.

I arranged to meet him on the pretext of organising an intervarsity quiz.

“Just a bit weird,” he said, smiling sympathetically, when I mentioned James. He took a draught of his pint and ran his 25

thumb along his lower lip. Car headlights swept the stainedglass windowpanes, and their red glow briefly suffused his soft-boned, grey-hued face. From a darkened alcove an American’s voice rose, laughing, to a whinny.

“You see, some of the girls on our course reckon he’s a bit of a creep. Not that he’d do anything or say anything, you know, nothing like that: just the way he looks at them.”

I said I’d not seen him act at all strangely, but then I’d never seen him around girls. My friend smiled.

“Nah,” he said, “I reckon he’s actually harmless enough where girls are concerned. I think — and not a word to himself, obviously — I think I’d be more careful if I were you.” His eyes measured me. I knew what he was suggesting, and didn’t like it, so I had a sip of my drink and tried, with tact, to change the subject.

Despite all of this, I found it hard to remain completely cold towards James. My personality, I’ve realised, has always been characterised by the uneasy coexistence of sympathy and fastidiousness. My sympathetic side rushed out to James, embraced him, as it did all the put-upons of the world. But my fastidious side, perceiving the sordidness with which it had been forced to commune, only bristled with disgust and redoubled its disdain. I once came close to asking James about his personal life — but the thought of his becoming vulnerable before me, implicating me in his troubles, maybe even crying, repulsed me with the strength of instinct. My pity tormented me with disgust, my disgust with pity. And as I got on with my life, James moved about the house like a 26

guilty conscience I lacked the courage to relieve.

*** Later that November, I met one of our neighbours as I was leaving the house. He was tall and broad, in his mid-twenties, with a veiny, equine neck.

“You live here? In number nine?”

His breath steamed in the air.

“I do,” I replied. “Are you nearby or?”

He ignored me: “You Jim?” “Oisín. James is my flatmate.”

“Your friend,” he raised a gloved finger to my face, “is a fucking creep. What’s he after, spending all his time with a twelve-year-old?”

A reply suggested itself.

“I don’t like it either — and I’m the one who has to live with him.”

My discomfort was exaggerated. The existence of an improper relationship between the pair was, I admit, one of my early theories concerning James’s behaviour, but it was one I’d since abandoned as improbable. As I’d hoped, though, my disavowing James made the man soften, and made me the conduit, rather than the object, of his anger.

“Tell that sicko to make some friends his own age. Say I’ll put him in hospital if I see him near Rob again.”

He walked heavily on and I steadied myself against the door.

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I was unsurprised, given this altercation, to find that the stretch of wall opposite our front window was soon decorated, in familiar green paint, with the words “GET OUT SICK FUCK”. If James understood this warning, however, he gave no sign of it. I suppose in hindsight, that it was remiss of me not to pass on the message Rob’s brother had asked me to deliver. Though I once attributed this omission of mine to all manner of virtues on my part (tact, compassion, sensitivity and discretion among them), I now feel able to admit that my primary concern in making the decision — as in countless others I have made — was the avoidance of discomfort. I considered it needless discomfort, arising from a private spat. And the remedy for spats, I reasoned, was simply to ignore them to death.

One day not long after this, James suggested we have dinner together. We were in the sitting room.

“We don’t have to go out for it or anything,” he said. “We could just cook here. I’m sick of Tesco ready-meals.”

He was making a rollie as he spoke, straining, I thought, to sound nonchalant.

“Tonight?” I asked.

“If it suits.” He glanced at me, then licked the glued edge of his rolling paper and smoothed it inexpertly down.

I was considering going to Doyle’s and might have invited him along, but I knew the presence of our mutual friend, illdisposed as he was towards James, could prove awkward.

“James, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve an assignment due first thing tomorrow, and even if I do get that done, I promised 28

some friends I’d meet them for a drink.”

I paused, again considering inviting him. He nodded like he knew what I was thinking.

“Anyway,” I said, “I’d better head. Dinner sounds good, though, can we do it later in the week?”

I was already up, taking my coat from the hook and pulling my arms through the sleeves.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, no problem. Good luck with the work.”

“Nice one,” I said, opening the door and stepping out. “See you later.”

I arrived to the pub early, and had a pint for myself at the counter while I waited for the others. James was on my mind, and as I drank I wrought excuses. I owed him nothing. He was a flatmate, someone I split the rent with, not an actual friend. Fuck, if he was suicidal or something, of course I’d do more for him — but he was just lonely. And how many lonely people were there in Dublin? The intimacies of others were things I’d long avoided.

We drank, when everyone arrived, in a room by the stairs.

There were nearly a dozen of us. At one point James’s classmate leaned towards me, his forearm planted on the table for balance, and spoke into my ear above the noise.

“Any news on your flatmate, the old lecher?”

“None,” I said. I found it strange that he thought to mention him again. “I’ve not seen much of him lately, to be honest.”

He pulled his face away from my ear, then leaned in again.

29

“And you’re not complaining, I’d say, ha? You’ve been careful like I said?”

“I have,” I said, “absolutely.”

It seemed he expected me to say more, and the drink made me talkative, so I continued, raising my voice.

“To be honest, I wouldn’t mind moving out. He makes a bit of nuisance of himself around the place.” I felt I was lying as I uttered these words — I’d never really considered moving out — but the idea, once voiced, took on a glamour of its own, and the prospect of moving out, of shutting the door on James and the bungalow for good, spread out before my eyes with great vividness.

My friend lapsed into meditative silence, and in the lull I tried to engage with the main conversation — but a few minutes later he nudged me, and said he’d been thinking about my “flatmate situation”.

“And, Oisín man, I have you sorted. I’ve a friend who has a room — you two would be perfect together, genuinely perfect.” He pulled a phone from his pocket and told me to copy down his friend’s number. I finished my drink, and soon left for home.

Later, when I was trying to explain things to myself and others, it was my hat — the infuriating stiffness of the thing, which refused to stretch past my numbed earlobes — to which I attributed the distraction that prevented me from noticing, until I almost stood on it, James’s body. It lay in our open front door. The head was resting on the lino flooring, and his nose was bloodied. Over the right eye a livid shadow 30

had spread, capillary-webbed. His left eye was glassy and open. A groan, a pained human groan, is in itself a perverse thing to delight in; but when one came at that moment from James’s engorged lips, I could have kissed them. He said my name.

*** I was conscious when James’s parents arrived of the bloodstains he had left on the floor. Though I was never formally interviewed by the Gardaí (no charges were ever brought), I had a fairly clear idea of what must have taken place that night. After I’d left for Doyle’s, James had gone to call on Rob, I reasoned, and there received a hostile reception.

Whether or not James had then said anything to enrage Rob’s brother, I never knew, but something — madness, probably — prompted him to follow James home and, on the threshold of our house, batter him. I relayed, of course, precisely none of this to his parents. He was awake now, in hospital, talking, and how much he chose to tell them about the incident, and the reasons for it, was a decision all his own.

They smelled, like him, of biscuits and of buses, and his father held awkwardly away from him a yellow rain poncho that dripped onto the floor. None of us addressed the fact that they had interrupted me in the act of moving out (What else could I have been doing? They had caught me, lugging suitcases out to a running taxi, at the front door). I offered a sweaty hand in turn to each of them and tried to look each 31

earnestly in the eye.

“James,” I said, “he’s ah- he’s doing so much better, I’ve been told.”

“Yes,” his mother nodded, enthusing excessively for my sake, “the doctor said that in a few weeks he’ll be as good as he ever was!”

“Well,” his father modified, sliding a woolen jumpersleeve further up his forearm, “not as soon as that, maybe.”

In his voice was a mild rebuke, and he seemed silently to add, Nor as good as that, maybe, either.

I shifted awkwardly on my feet, and said goodbye.

I felt small and impotent as I set the last suitcase down in the boot. I remembered, clearer now, the sense of vast and grave betrayal with which, as a child, I’d first dimly conceived of my toys, my wooden tools, as things necessarily fake: useless and derivative of some genuine, adult article. And the mute anguish I’d felt then in my throat, and the rage at the real adult world of weight and consequence, seemed somehow, in the taxi, to descend on me again.

32

The Spirit of a Face

O

Maya Bushell

lena did not feel that if God really could see into her heart, He would find a truly good person. She feared He might find every bit of unpleasantness coiled tightly around itself pretending to be anything but what it was. But she wasn’t sure.

This was a question that occupied her mind while at work when it was slow, when she stood at her till in the supermarket and watched through the front window as nothing in particular happened outside. Occasionally, a plastic bag might swoop by, floating freely like a dislodged feather. A car might pull up to the kerb or a child run down the sidewalk; nothing that ever lasted more than a few seconds. Her heart swelled at moments such as these but shrank just as quickly when they ended.

During uneventful shifts Olena would create distractions for herself. Recently, she had begun taking stickers from the nearby fruits and pressing them to the rubber mat of her station’s conveyor belt, watching them dive beneath the metal flaps only to come round a few moments later. The endlessness of such activities satisfied her greatly and she 33

found herself trying to create them often. On windy days she hung her washing out and sat watching it flap incessantly, its weight pulling the nylon cord taut between the poplar trees. In spring, when the creek behind her house grew with rain, she would lie in the grass just above its bank and listen for hours as the water rushed over the stones and swept away winter’s remains.

When Olena revisited these moments at work she lost consciousness of her surroundings and left customers confused and her manager exasperated. She would inevitably find herself relieved from check-out duty and sent into the stockroom to refill the citrus crates. Such tasks never bored her, as she delighted in arranging the fruit within the plywood boxes, all the while considering whether the dimpled skin of lemons was similar to that of her cheek.

Oftentimes she would slip one of the smaller fruits into the pocket of her polyester apron and bring it to the bathroom with her. There, she would stand in front of the mirror and hold the lemon to her face, comparing the texture between the two. She could never decide how similar the peel and her skin actually were, but questions without answers had never bothered her. They kept her mind occupied while she stocked the bread shelves and eyed the mistake in the tile patterning in front of the meat counter: yellow, red, yellow, yellow, red, yellow. It relieved her to find disorder; perfection had always made her nervous. She appreciated chairs that were slightly askew and dishtowels that didn’t hang straight. She sewed curtains with holes in them so the sun would always find her face before she woke.

34

12/09/2018 SinĂŠad Barry

The first time he noticed me I was reading Lolita on

the tram. My tattered boots were resting on the edge of the seat in front of me, toes pointed inwards. He caught a flash of my face as I turned a page impatiently, my brow furrowed deeply: half in concern, half in concentration. It was only out of the corner of his eye that he saw me. He looked down, then back up again, intrigued by this young stranger.

I attempt to imagine a face for this man and the image dissolves.

That night, I dreamt my house transformed into a boat. The red brick appeared especially still in the darkness and the house was kept perfectly intact. From a hanging lampshade in the living room, a blurred line was cast upon the water below. I stepped out through the front door and onto the deck, watching my house mirrored perfectly on the black pool.

Always in dreams there is that sense where you don’t remember how exactly you got there, or even where there is. I arrived at the bow and a cloud of anxiety suddenly 35

descended over the picture, which would remain until I moved the boat. That there could be a reason for this didn’t occur to me: an oar had appeared on my right and I began to row.

Handle back to me, then down and out (arms straight).

Dip the hands so the blade comes right up. Out as far as you can go and then hands back up so the blade can slice finely, grab the water and pull. Switch sides and repeat.

Now you’re moving.

It was cold, and straggles of hair irritated my eyes, but we were moving and the worry was subsiding. The bow of the boat cut through the water and we glided along the canal together, unvexed by solitude.

The scene began to melt slowly, then quickly, like oil sliding down canvas. Although my feet stood firmly on the wooden deck, and the house still lured behind me, the water was different now. I realised that it was no longer the water of the Liffey’s canal, but a wide stretch of the Shannon.

The night was tumbling backwards into a deep red dusk and a line of herons fell onto the horizon as if on command.

The brilliant colours of the sky slowly saturated the water beneath, and as I edged closer and closer to the pressure point of waking, I was confronted with a toppling sense of warmth. Falling forwards onto my knees, the bright line of water sliced through my eyes until I thought the whole red world might burst.

Perhaps it did burst, and I, curled and overheated in bed, was just a part of its debris. Or perhaps the scene just dissipated when I stopped concentrating. Either way, there 36

was that mysterious sense of longing and upset that follows a beautiful dream, as if we don’t belong in this stubborn world. I was awakened by the vividness of the dream and longed to return to it; a place where I could be an instrument, not a note, no matter how anxiously I performed.

To empty my mind I stepped out of bed for some water.

My glass was held in a loose grip that mapped my wander with splatters of little droplets on the wooden floors until I opened, only slightly, a window in my room to smoke.

The sight of my reflection in the dark window surprised me. I edged closer, examining every freckle, blemish and straggle of baby hair veiling my face. I noticed that my makeup was slightly smudged under my left eye and my lips were painted with the residue of red wine. I hoped it looked sexy in a lost kind of way. I remember wondering if one can look beautiful if nobody sees them.

I never saw much worth in appearing beautiful by myself. Vanity is most dangerous when hidden, indulged, in the home, in dreams, in the image that appears in a shard of glass. And yet, it held strange validations. I focused on the window and tried to look past my reflection, seeing a darkness that made my white face all the more prominent.

After throwing the cigarette, I waited by the window and watched until the first hint of dawn touched my skin.

I blinked, took off my clothes, and fell into bed.

37

The Sacred and the Human: Dante and the crisis of the modern humanities Rory O’Sullivan

Over the past few decades, the number of students

taking humanities subjects has steadily declined. The number of English majors in the United States has halved since 1990, while uptake of Philosophy courses has fallen by a third.1 In Ireland, as enrollment for arts courses has dropped, so have their minimum CAO point requirements.

Governments and universities are funneling investment away from the humanities and into STEM and business subjects. While underfunding has forced Trinity’s School of English to reduce its undergraduate tutorials per term from 12, to 10, to 7, the university is currently investing in three different large-capital projects for STEM and business.2 This, even though Trinity consistently ranks higher for English Studies worldwide than for any STEM or business subject. The behaviour of third-level administrators is already replicated in the attitudes and decisions of parents 38

and students. A question to a higher-education expert in a recent Irish Times article reads: My daughter will be attending the Higher Options careers advice event in the RDS this week. She wants to explore a range of arts degree programmes. Given the constant encouragement from government and industry to apply for courses in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), is she selling herself short?3

This is one of many code-reds that there’s a crisis in the humanities. And just as an economic crisis should inspire a change in economic policy, this situation should make us sit down and think. The strength of popular aversion to the humanities, combined with the aggression of governmental strategies to dismantle them, makes the crisis among the greatest that the humanities have faced since the Renaissance.

The humanities have nothing to offer a school-leaver who believes she should choose the degree that will give her the most secure job. To a government official, wondering why he should pay for someone to study Aristotle instead of training new entrepreneurs, the humanities have no case.

Certainly, Aristotle can teach students to think critically.

But compared to the sciences, which can build motorways and cure disease, and to business, which teaches someone to market and produce products that will bring money into the economy, ‘critical thinking’ and ponderous philosophising are near-useless skills.

The crisis in the humanities today is that they’re not 39

useful, not in the direct way that other subjects are. A useful graduate will either contribute to the economy or somehow make people materially better off. According to this definition, humanities faculties have tried to succeed by producing graduates who can write and think critically.

The useful humanities graduate will be able to write clear Powerpoints for businesses and think creatively because of long days in college spent reading Joyce, the argument goes.

This could well be right. However, it fundamentally relegates the humanities to a distinct third place in importance below business and the sciences. Worse, it would have us turn the humanities subjects into writing and critical-thinking courses, essentially technical subjects, bearing little relation to the disciplines from which they originated. Aristotle would be read no more, except by oddballs and scientists looking for a laugh.

There’s nothing wrong with usefulness, in the literal sense of the word. But we’ve all settled on a different definition of usefulness than the one for which the humanities were designed, one that ignores their vital role in human thought.

We need to challenge this definition and, more importantly, challenge the thinking behind it. It originates in a dangerous and dramatic reversal in how we in the West conceive of what it means to be a human being.

In the twenty-first century, we understand ourselves best as bodies and consumers. The great economic, anthropological, and scientific theories that inform the decisions of our governments take as their base assumption the idea that our minds and decisions are largely motivated by 40

some combination of sex, self-interest, and social ideologies created by the powerful people who lived before us. Our governments prioritise the material well-being of citizens and exclude most other things. Marxist and Foucauldian ideological theories characterise language and culture as nothing more than weapons of the powerful. Game theory models, market-structure models, all-important macroeconomic models; all build their calculations and predictions on the assumption that everyone’s purpose in this world is to maximise their individual utility.

We’ve shifted from a concept of human-ness that gives ascendancy to the mind to one that subordinates the mind to the body. Ask yourself, what is sacred in a human being?

We no longer have an answer. The word “sacred” even makes us slightly embarrassed, just like the words “divine” or “wisdom”. Instead of imagining ourselves as made in the image of a God, we see in ourselves the image of an animal.

The best way for us to refocus our view of ourselves is by turning to the humanities. They’re the only group of disciplines capable of setting current ideologies against past ones and revealing our common-sense assumptions to be as shallow and contingent as they really are. The more that we subscribe to the reductionist view of human nature and cull whatever isn’t useful, the more we obscure our path of escape from that very mode of thought.

I say all of this as a kind of preface, a way of allowing myself to say what I think about Dante Alighieri and his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, and how it relates to the 41

modern condition of the humanities. Now more than ever we should read Dante. Not patronisingly, as we read so many texts from the past, but as our contemporary. We should read Dante as someone whose poem would be of near-equal value if it had been written last week or last year. Not only is this possible, but it should be done, without making any excuses for him and with no qualifications except that to do this we must let go of our own temporal nativism.

I make this claim about Dante despite having no religious faith, very limited Italian, and no claim of expertise in the ins-and-outs of 13th-century Europe. Dante is about as distant from me as any writer I’ve ever read. He can be boring, often factually incorrect, and sometimes shockingly unempathetic in his treatment of others. But it’s because his thinking is so antithetical to our own that, when it finds the right words, it speaks with incredible force. The verses roll on, canto after canto, and carry us on a journey designed to reveal our own souls to us.

Dante’s Comedy contains views of the world and humanity’s place in it that underpinned the establishment of the studia humanitatis: the studies of humanity. The original studia humanitatis were grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy. All, incidentally, have a corresponding domain in Dante’s Paradise. The story of the humanities is long and complicated, and the golden generation of Italian humanist thinkers would come after Dante, but both they and he believed that the purpose of the humanities was to cultivate the parts of oneself that are sacred. With intense study and reflection, we can refine our ability to reason, 42

separate our will from our desires, and connect more deeply to the beauty of God’s created world.

This is really an Augustinian idea. Today we imagine that faith and belief are the same thing, but for these thinkers faith isn’t a kind of thought. It arises from our contact with the universe like a spark from flint. Through faith, we can embrace the natural beauty and order of the universe, move with it like two wheels in equal motion, and then create a substance which Dante says to St. Peter is an ‘argomento de le non parventi’, a ‘proof for the things not apparent’. The humanities were for making minds stronger and, ultimately, for the study of beauty.

I say Augustinian, but Dante barely mentions Saint Augustine. The core framing of the Comedy instead follows the model offered by Dante’s last guide, the medieval theologian St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Clairvaux was a key proponent of contemplation, a concept developed by his friend Hugh of St. Victor, which was essentially a schematisation of the process St. Augustine describes in the Confessions. We first examine ourselves for the ways in which we have offended God, and atone for them, and then devote ourselves to an appreciation of God’s grandeur through rigorous training of the various faculties of the mind. The idea is that we try to liberate the mind from the body and then set it upon the world. From one of St. Bernard’s sermons: The first stage of contemplation … is to consider constantly what God wants, what is pleasing to him, and what is acceptable in his eyes. We all offend in many things; our 43

strength cannot match the rightness of God’s will and cannot be joined to it or made to fit with it. So let us humble ourselves under the powerful hand of the most high God and make an effort to show ourselves unworthy before his merciful gaze .... Thus having made some progress in our spiritual exercise under the guidance of the Spirit who gazes into the deep things of God, let us reflect how gracious the Lord is and how good he is in himself.4

Fall first, and then rise. For Dante, contemplation is a process of descent and ascent, most explicitly in Cantos XXI and XXII of Paradiso, where we see the contemplative souls climbing up and down Jacob’s Ladder. The whole structure of the Comedy follows St. Bernard’s model. A plumbing of the depths of human evil and injustice, followed by a cleansing, and finally an ascent imbued with the grandeur of God. The intellectual and the moral parts of the soul are equal in the Comedy. They are both parts of the soul.

The souls in Hell have all sinned either by putting greed and bodily desires before the mind or using the mind to deceive others and serve their own bodily self-interest.

They’re all unrepentant; Buonconte da Montefeltro, whom Dante encounters in Canto V of Purgatorio, is saved even after a life of sin, because he breathed with his last breath the name of Mary. The bar is low, but none of Hell’s souls could clear it - so much so did sin enslave them.

It is freedom from sin that Dante seeks in Purgatory. The first character he and Virgil meet is Cato, the gatekeeper of Purgatory, the great Roman symbol of freedom. In Canto II 44

they witness an angel on a barge depositing the new souls to the bottom of the mountain. “In exitu Israel de Aegypto”, they sing; it is Psalm 113 in the Vulgate, celebrating the freedom of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. Purgatory ends with Dante becoming weightless, or ‘puro e disposto a salire a le stelle’ - ‘pure and ready to ascend to the stars’.

Dante seeks this liberation, too, in The Inferno. The souls are tortured and dismembered, stung by insects or burning in fire, hacked apart by demons. Despite their mutilation, Dante finds that they’re often eloquent and considered. They all want to be remembered. Their minds are what remain in them.

There’s a famous verse of Dante’s that puzzled me for quite a while, and I wanted to share my solution with you before we go back to thinking about the present, with its constant demands and valuations. In Canto XVII of Paradiso, Dante meets an ancestor, Cacciaguida, who prophecies his future exile from Florence. The verse: Tu proverai come sa di sale Lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle Lo scendere e ‘l salir per l’altrui scale.

You will found how much like salt Is the taste of another man’s bread, and how hard is the way Going down and up another’s stairs.5

This is one of the most celebrated verses in the Comedy, but 45

it doesn’t seem to make much sense. Salt usually tastes good, and stairs aren’t often difficult to climb. But pull back from the images and look at the tapestry of Paradiso. The poem repeatedly tells us, following the Gospel of John, that food for the body is inadequate because it will leave us hungry again, but food for the soul will fill us forever. The stairs, like the ladder, mirror the descent then ascent of contemplation; many translators mistranslate this, swapping ‘ascent’ and ‘descent’, but Dante puts them in this order for a reason.

In the next verse he describes how Dante will “cadrai”, fall in, with evil and ignorant people, people of “bestialitate”, bestiality or animal-like savagery. Cacciaguida is saying that Dante’s exile will damage his soul. The essential comedic element of the Comedy is that its existence guarantees that despite this Dante’s soul will be saved. And so will ours, if we read him, and through some intense reading develop our minds enough that we can look cleanly upon the world.

It’s dangerous to talk of souls these days, because it causes people to take you less seriously. The poles of our thinking have flipped since Dante’s time, and almost no one wants to see things revert. I’ve had three conversations in the last few weeks with people from very different backgrounds who said that they wished Saint Augustine had never existed.

They see people like Dante as world-haters, ashamed of themselves, warped, repressed and constricted in their thought. True, Saint Augustine’s ideas have caused a lot of damage; but if the planet continues to heat up then our ideas will do far more damage to this world than his. So maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to point fingers.

46

I’m not suggesting that we should all become Christians.

Dante’s conception of humanity left out a lot of important things. However, we should realise that our current one does as well. The idea of the sanctity of the human mind has done more for civil rights and human dignity than any of the sciences. It was science that claimed that slaves come from a different species, that women and certain races are innately inferior, that homosexuality is a psychological disorder. It was the Puritan colonists of America, on the other hand, who most vociferously opposed slavery, and Baptists in the South who gathered around Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement. All doctrines and ideologies can champion and degenerate the cause of human dignity.

Everywhere in the world there have always been people who believe they know everything, and who use that conviction to benefit themselves and hurt others. The concept of the sacred, the thing beyond comprehension in us all, has long been a check on their power to inflict suffering.

It’s also driven people to do many terrible things. But so has everything else. No person or system of thought can ever fully have justice on their side.

Of all the people who have ever lived on earth, we are in the best position to see that. We have access to thousands of years of documented history and literature spanning the cultures of seven continents. And even then, we’re still destroying the humanities, our political systems, and the whole planet, because we imagine that we’re somehow better than all these things and have nothing to learn from them.

47

As articulated by Dante, the humanities were originally a way of tying together the whole world in a tradition of faith, study and human dignity. Only the elites could use them fully, but almost everyone had some access to them, at festivals and in churches. Now, with the collapse of the soul as a major part of Western thought, we have lost all those things. For the people who want to save the humanities, to save the bedrock values of human dignity and liberty, there is one solution. We must ask, openly and without cynicism, if there is a way to reconcile the sacred with the human.

Endnotes

1 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-humanitiesface-a-crisisof-confidence/567565 2 I include in this: Trinity Business School; E3; and the Grand Canal Innovation District — https://www.tcd.ie/estatesandfacilities/estates/ projects/ — https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/trinity-unveilsplans-for-grand-canal-innovation-district-centred-on-a-new-campusin-the-heart-of-dublins-docklands/ 3 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/ask-brian-my-daughterwants-to-study-arts-is-she-wasting-her-time-1.3620626 4 St Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo 5, “On the words of Habakkuk 2:1” (4–5) 5 I copy Dante’s text as it appears in the editions of the poem by Robert and Jean Hollander. All translations are my own.

Robert and Jean Hollander, The Inferno (New York, 2000) / Purgatorio (New York, 2003) / Paradiso (New York, 2007)

48

Float Christian Cowper

I learnt a lot at school. My first day at St. Dolen’s

Academy was when I was eleven years old waiting patiently in the rain, part of a queue of children overshadowed by a mighty and ancient cathedral. I couldn’t see the top of that cathedral, even when I looked so far up that the back of my head nearly touched my neck. I was surrounded on three other sides by tall buildings which were similarly old. The sky above these was visible but thick with clouds.

Since I’ve left school, I’ve come to associate September skies with sun, but I remember then it was grey. The air somehow smelt grey too, like the leaves on the floor which had already begun to lose their colour. Around me stood children shuffling on the gravel, scratching their new brown loafers. We said nothing but looked around awkwardly now and then. Some of us shivered, I think.

I don’t remember much about what the other children looked like, but I can tell you that there was something vaguely similar about them all. Perhaps it was the rustling of their new shirts or their hair, which amongst all of them 49

had the unmistakable mark of a mother’s styling: smart and tidy, but now losing shape in the rain. Maybe the similarity came from how they all held the same gait of slouched backs and loose limbs. We were all waiting for somebody to do something to us.

“We’ll soon knock that out of you,” came the bleak voice of our Master. He walked along the line of freezing boys and gazed above their heads like ghosts were far behind them.

He had one of those bodies that suits always appear too tight for, as if it was somehow constraining all his power.

His eyes, too, had this strange look that they were not one thousand years in the past. He’d have suited a world freed from civilised dress and the pretensions that came with it, but here, all those opportunities had passed: we were what was left. He trooped to the head of the queue, and then stopped abruptly.

“Right, everybody into the Cathedral. Quick now.” The boys stumbled into life, muttering pithily and shaking themselves for warmth. We began to move as a tightlypacked unit towards the Cathedral, some of us occasionally stumbling to avoid another boy. The rain had got heavier; the clouds from which it fell seemed to linger just above us. The boy in front of me fingered at his hair as he walked, trying hopelessly to get it back into shape for Assembly. Creamy trickles from the mesh of rain and hair gel ran down his forehead and he screwed his eyes in pain. The scent of wet chemicals smelt like those communal showers you find in campsites, never quite clean. I didn’t say anything though. It was more important to look anonymous amongst the crowd 50

than to complain. When I walked up to the Master, who was standing beneath the Cathedral door, I tried to stare into the distance like him. “Quick”, he ejected. “Quick.”

I thought I’d got past, but as I approached the door I found my arm snatched from behind. While I struggled instinctively, the hand that grabbed me remained completely still. I’d been removed into my own space with such calm force that I might have been teleported. Looking down at me was the Master, his jacket straining to fit his arms. “Yes, you boy,” he said flippantly. Beside me the children continued to trudge into the Cathedral, not asking questions. One or two of them jolted their heads when I was taken. But once they registered that there was no threat to them, they continued on their way.

I looked meekly up at the Master. He was so tall up close I don’t think I could even really see the top of his head, only the bottom where his teeth were. He stood firm, seemingly unaffected by the bolts of water that splattered onto his shoulders. I wriggled again but found no looseness in his grip. This time he noticed my attempt. “Don’t,” he paused, breathing, “try to break out.” I had no hope of escape, I realised, until he was finished.

It must have been the shock, because I suddenly felt the urge to cry. I tried to hold back but I think a few tears rolled down my eyes, undetectable in the rain. He didn’t notice anyway, which was what was important. After that, it was a bit easier to speak.

“Why?” was all I could manage, looking at him as he forced me away.

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He opened his mouth to reveal grinding teeth. The question had angered him; he didn’t understand what possessed me to ask such a thing. His top lip quivered as he tried to contain himself.

“Don’t ask questions. You’re coming with me.”

I tried again, stuttering: “What?”

It was really the same question as before, but it was the best I could do.

If he noticed my mistake, he didn’t show it. He turned from the Cathedral and, grasping my back and shoulder, pushed me away from the boys still queuing for Assembly.

None of them acknowledged me except a little rattish child who stood half a foot or so shorter than the rest. He turned his head towards me as he walked, making eye contact for the briefest of moments before being combed back into the tide. He might have smiled at me because I felt a little more comfortable after that, even though the Master’s grip hadn’t loosened; but if he didn’t smile he gave me that impression anyway. The whole situation seemed a little more funny to me, a little more ridiculous.

As I was being led through the courtyard, my shoulder began to feel a bit crushed where the Master’s hand was, but this wasn’t painful so much as odd-feeling. When we reached the entrance to one of the buildings, he launched me by the arm towards its door. I didn’t really feel like he’d attacked me, though; more that I’d been on some funfair ride, jolted around, uncomfortable, but still safe. I stopped before the door and turned to look up at his face. He was still snarling, trying his best to look threatening. He pointed 52

to the door. “Go in there.”

“No.” And I smiled.

Now I know exactly where my stubbornness comes from.

It wasn’t from that boy, exactly, but from an event which, when I think back on it, was pretty remarkable. The rain was still smacking down, but — and I hadn’t known they could get this close before — a rainbow had formed right behind the Master. I mean, right behind him, and it framed him perfectly under its arch so that he was bathed in flamboyant colours — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet — all over his face and his suit, so that he looked like a fairy or hobgoblin. With the rainbow up that close, everything around him had exploded into those colours: the gravel, the rain, even the Cathedral. It had been summoned for me. I don’t know by who, but I know it was for me.

Maybe the Master knew something about this because the only attempt he made to get me back under command was completely feeble. His mouth started to quiver again but much more violently than before, so violently that droplets of water actually came splashing off his top lip onto his boots. As they sprang away they twinkled for a second in the air, lit up by the rainbow. “Get,” he said, letting out an audible whimper after he hit the ‘t’. “Get,” he continued, but then paused. He started to shiver, which made his tie swing around a bit. I didn’t bother to respond to that interjection anyway, because it was pretty obvious that I wouldn’t be following him anymore.

Without fully noticing it, I saw that I was looking down on the Master, whose eyes were now full of tears. It didn’t 53

occur to me at first that this was strange, but then I realised that my feet were no longer touching the ground. I’d started to float up into the sky. I must have been up there for a while because I can’t see how he could have broken down as quickly as he did. I would like to say it felt fantastic or liberating, but I wasn’t really concentrating on that at the time. My attention was dominated by the quivering man below gushing with tears.

The rainbow remained in front of me though, but I’d now risen close to the height of the lowest clouds, which were still sending down their rain. I stretched my hand out to touch one, and it felt fresh and clean as I let the droplets splash off my palm. They split into little shards of water when they touched me and drifted below, until, as I kept rising, I couldn’t see the droplets hit the ground anymore; instead they descended like feathers, sparkling beneath the rainbow’s light.

Eventually, I came up out of the clouds at a point where I was level with the Cathedral. I saw the sun above me burning strongly and I knew it was sure to evaporate the clouds below in no time at all. Sure enough, in five or six seconds the clouds had cleared completely, and I was left looking down on a beautiful sunny day. It took a bit longer for the rainbow to dissipate because, obviously, it’s the light of the sun that actually creates the rainbow. But, after a while, that went too, and I was left flying about alone in the sky. I took some time to explore the Cathedral’s highest towers up close and then, before I descended, made a point of taking in the view of Bristol. People had begun to flock to 54

College Green in the sun and the skaters were out by Tesco too. On my left side I saw the river, which might have been a little swollen from the rain, flowing peacefully towards the Cotswold Hills.

Then, taking a deep breath, I descended slowly to where I’d been queuing to get into the Cathedral and landed with a slight bump on the gravel. There was nobody around; they were all still in the Cathedral for Assembly. Nobody could have seen what happened with me and the Master. I assume that after I floated away he went in for Assembly too, but I never found out — it didn’t really matter anyway. I smiled to myself with calm satisfaction, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my back, and checked my timetable to see what the first lesson was.

As for the Master, well, he didn’t bother me again. I never had any classes with him so we weren’t close together anyway, and I was lucky because even though he had a reputation around a lot of the school, I knew he wouldn’t dare go near me.

I had a terrific time for the rest of my school days anyway: played for the football team, got decent enough grades, even went to Edinburgh and studied Biology. Really, they were the most average school days you could imagine for a kid.

Nothing like that ever occurred again. It was just funny that it was on my first day.

I found out about what happened almost by accident, waiting for an appointment at the GP. There wasn’t much to read, so I opened up the pages of the local rag. The Evening Post isn’t the most exciting paper at the best of times, and 55

there was really nothing that grabbed my attention at all, until, on page four, I saw it. And a name jumped out at me: Nicholas Rawnsley. Master Nicholas Rawnsley. And then I remembered that day. I hadn’t thought about it for years.

It’s amazing how something from your past can jump out of you all of a sudden and bite you on the neck. Until then, I had never really processed what had happened to me all those years ago.

But, you know, since I read that article, I’ve started to feel like I’m not really here at all. Sometimes I can swear that I’m still looking down on that splendid view of Bristol with the clouds clearing beneath my feet and the wind blowing at my back. I know for sure that’s where I really am, but then somebody says my name or I start to swerve in the car and I’m brought back to Earth. What’s really strange isn’t these visions, though, but something else that’s been happening. You see, if I get emotional now (and I’ve never been an emotional guy in the past) some power swirls in me again. When the wife says something cruel or the kids don’t talk to me or I’m stuck in another queue of traffic — well, I wouldn’t really notice these things before, but now I get a very definite sensation from them. I’ll catch myself drifting off and a moment later — and, please, you have to understand this — I’ll look down at my feet to find that, without really noticing it, I’ve started to float away again.

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The Contributing Writers

CATHERINE HEARN is a recent graduate of English and German.

Christian COWPER is a third-year student of History.

LIAM WHeLAN is a third-year student of English.

MAYA BUSHELL is a third-year student of

English and History of Art & Architecture.

RORY O’SULLIVAN is a fourth-year student of Ancient Greek.

SINÉAD BARRY is a third-year student of English and Philosophy.

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The Editorial team

Christian Moore is the Founding Editor Harry Downes is the Co-Editor Sam Murphy is the Contributing Editor Aoife Donnellan and Maya Bushell are the Design & Layout Editors The Carta staff acknowledges Trinity Publications and Digital Print Dynamics for making this issue possible. Email carta.magazine@gmail.com with any queries, prose related or otherwise.

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