Singing My Him Song. Malachy McCourt

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СКАЧАТЬ on the way here I was thinking that should I someday own a hostelry such as this, and if you were a habitué, it occurred to me that I should extend to you unlimited credit.” He always did speak in flowery terms, which amused me when he was conning other folks, but, as usual, I was in a financial clutch and not in a mood to be so conned myself.

      “You don’t have a saloon,” said I. “And I’m not a habitué, and you owe me seven hundred dollars, which needs paying now.”

      He slowly shook his head and assumed a disbelieving and disappointed look, and said, “I never thought I would see the day when my friend Malachy McCourt, bon vivant, man of letters, compassionate friend of the needy, would descend to the dungiest depths of sordid commerce by demanding filthy lucre from a man who disdains such transactions. If you persist in your demands I shall have no choice but to leave these premises and, when I do, I assure you I shall never grace your porte cochere again!”

      Jim stalked to the door, opened it, turned dramatically, and, in stentorian voice, he bellowed, “And furthermore, FUCK YOU!” He marched off into the night, leaving me with the gob agape and somehow feeling that I was guilty of something.

      That other Limerick git, Richard Harris, had just finished playing King Arthur in the movie version of Camelot. Harris had grown up among the toffs in Limerick, not part of my crowd, but I’d encountered him there once, in a game of rugby, and he had been among the Irish and British actors that made my first bar, Malachy’s, home base. In a fit of noblesse oblige he now decided to once again move among us common people.

      Wearily he told me he’d had his fill of the chicanery and falsity of Hollywood and the acting profession and that what he would like to do is work for me as a bartender. So it came to pass the man got behind the stick with another stalwart man, Jack Sandon, a fine barkeep, who never removed the cigarette from the corner of his mouth even to deliver the most stinging of insults.

      Harris poured with abandon and without measure and never seemed to take money from any of the clientele, and there were many more than usual, as word got out and the dazzled came to gaze at this movie star boniface. One eve, a couple of cheery and quite inebriated elderly ladies told me that my bartender was a very nice young man as he refused payment for the bottle of Dom Perignon they had imbibed. The hand was clapped to the forehead on receiving that piece of news.

      But at the end of the week the King was surfeited with serving hoi polloi and gave me notice that he was quitting and going back to London. None too soon, sez I to myself. But there had been a deal. Harris had instructed Jack, my other barman, to write down all that he gave away, and at the end of the week he gave a check to Jack to give to me after he had left and that check covered all of what I had thought were free drinks. A generous man.

      I continued my brooding through all of it, and couldn’t see any way out of the dilemma of making the living. Running a public house (from which the word pub arises) means you are open to the public, and have to be prepared to greet any and all who walk through the portals, be they drunks, arseholes, fools, convicts, prostitutes, Wall Streeters, laborers, cadgers, the sad, the bad, the glad, and, horror of horrors, the boring. One of these had gotten my ear one quiet night, and was describing his work as a salesman of steel products and proudly showed me his business card, which was made from rolled steel. That was it, too much for me, so I hied my way to the back room to get away from the rigor mortis of his talk.

      I was alone in the back room a little while later, dozing at the table, when I heard a commotion and a voice shouting in the bar, followed by a gunshot. A small parade entered the back room, where I had placed myself under a light so as not to startle the gunman. The little procession consisted of Jack Sandon, barman Ally Cobert, a serious waiter, the hilarious Bob Boland, who was also a waiter, a customer lady, some unknown man, and a young scion named Thomas Fortune Ryan, all with arms and hands well up into the air. They were followed by two lads of African-American descent carrying guns, who made loud and frequent reference to the fact that all of those in the assembled group had had some kind of sexual relations with their mothers.

      We were seated at the various tables and told to keep our hands in sight. One of the gunslingers sat guard whilst his pal went out front to get at the cash register. The conversation did not touch on anything of importance, no reference to current affairs, theatre, or literature. Indeed, it was more demanding. Orders, in fact, emanating from our hold-up man. To wit, “Empty your motherfucking pockets,” to the men, and “Gimme that purse, bitch,” to the only woman in the group.

      The cash register ransacker came back swearing that he couldn’t open the motherfucking thing and some motherfucker better come and open it or some motherfucker was going to have his motherfucking head blown off. Jack offered to do the job for him and, while they were out of the room, Fortune Ryan asked our captor if it were permissible to smoke.

      “Go ahead,” sez the gunman.

      Fortune R. picked the cigs out of his shirt pocket and, being a well-bred lad, offered one to the armed friend, who seemed highly offended that anyone would think he was a smoker. Ryan apologized for his assumption and timidly asked if the man had a match. The lad raised the pistol and told Ryan to put the cigarette in his mouth and it would be lit with a bullet.

      Jack returned, along with the other fellow, who complained about the paucity of money in the register, and then shouted at Bob Boland to stop looking at him, and fired a shot past his head into a mirror to emphasize his point. We all looked pointedly elsewhere. Then we gallant six were herded into the cellar as the duo announced they were going to work Jack over until he revealed where the rest of the money was concealed. I said there was no more money, and I should know, as I ran the joint. The cold rim of a gun was placed at the right side of my head an inch from my eye and it was pressed hard into the skin.

      I couldn’t help but think that a simple pressure on the trigger was the next step, and that through that cool barrel would travel a sheathed bullet at a great blasting speed, entering my head, tearing and rending the flesh, the bone, and the brains, scattering them and splattering them on floor, walls, and ceiling.

      Closing my eyes, I said good-bye to Diana and Siobhan, Nina, and Malachy, but my good-byes were interrupted by a snarling voice ordering me down the stairs, still alive, to my astonishment. I’d always wondered what I’d do when faced with the possibility of immediate death. Some people say you’d pray, beg for forgiveness, beg for your life, plead with God to save you, but I found myself strangely without fear, as if this were happening to someone else, a trifle curious to know what it is to be shot and to die.

      In the end, the bandits didn’t beat Jack, as they finally got the idea that there was no more dough, and off they fled into the night. Ally Cobert promptly locked the front door after them, which led Jack to ask him if he’d ever worked in a stable. Then, when the police arrived and asked how much money had been stolen, Bob Boland told them not much, but I’d written them a check for the rest.

      Despite the fist-sized cloud of Vietnam, hanging low and menacing on the horizon, the sixties had come up smiling, with JFK and the charming Jacqueline riding waves of adulation from cheering and cheery crowds everywhere. Yes, we’d had the Bay of Pigs, but that was wriggled out of and had been planned by the Eisenhower crowd, egged on by Nixon. There were some nasty confrontations in the segregated South, but President Kennedy kept the lid on that boiling pot, and on Khrushchev, and on anything else unpleasant brewing in the world or beyond, as the Mayoman said.

      I was in my monastic bed in the apartment above Himself when the phone rang around noon on November 22, 1963. ’Twas the soft-spoken Diana asking if I’d heard any news on the radio about the president being shot. My tendency is always to move into comforting mode, so I said it was probably a mistake and that there would be clarification very soon.

      It СКАЧАТЬ