Nightpiece with Figures

== NIGHTPIECE WITH FIGURES ==
=== by Frank O'Connor ===
Originally published in Guests of the Nation, by Frank O'Connor. (1931)
 FRANK O'CONNOR, author of Guests of the Nation and another volume of short stories, Bones of Contention, was born in , in 1903, and began his career with productions of Ibsen and Chekhov in his native city.
Preluded by one short squeak of its hinges,
a door opens slowly and quietly into a dark and empty barn. Framed in the
doorway is the glow of an autumn night, figured with a faint tracery of
starlight. It is evident that the barn is pitched high above some valley
because nothing obscures the lower portion of the doorway but the shadow of
heaped straw. At last, and only after a whispered conversation outside, the
upper portion too is filled, this time by a man's figure seen in dim
silhouette. He stumbles headlong into the barn, his feet catching in and
rustling the dry straw; and now the bright oblong becomes the setting for a
shadow show in which a second, third, and fourth figure take part. Somewhere
very near a cow moos, and hooves clatter with a light thud. The first man
tripping in the darkness utters an oath, and flings himself wearily on to a
heap of straw in one corner. The whispered conversation outside continues, but more
animatedly; then a light flares up and the face of a young man, dark, sardonic,
and reckless is seen, bent for a moment above the rosy vessel of his cupped
hands. He smokes, shading the glow of the cigarette as he does so. 
"What is it, Peter?" the first
man whispers from his corner. 
"Nothing, nothing. Do you want to
smoke?" 
"Not now why?" 
"We mustn't smoke inside because of
the straw." 
"Oh, is that all!" 
A second man comes and sits beside the
first, and they converse under their breath with subdued chuckles. Still
another voice is heard outside, also in a whisper, but gradually rising as the
speaker gives rein to his excitement. 
"Believe you me, comrade, that man
have us all taped. Twiced I seen him outside the gate here after dark and never
was there rhyme nor raison for his presence. I said nothing but I thought the
more. Then I got the first threatening letter I was telling you about signed
'Black Hand Gang' in red ink pretending it was blood! and three days later
comes another signed 'I. R. A.' Mind you, I had no proof it was himself that
wrote them, but I followed my natural reasoning and seduced the fact. 'So-ho!
my esteemed friend,' says I, 'this is how you carry on. But I have no cause to
be afraid of the Irish Republican Army. . . .' So I sent him a threatening
letter signed 'O. C.' letting him know pretty plain that he was being watched
too, and since that day he never darkened this gate of ours . . . never! Now
that's strange, isn't it, comrade?" 
"Yes," yawns the man who is
smoking, "ye-e-e-s, that's strange. Good God, how tired I am!" 
"Naturally, naturally. So what I say
is: You send him a letter on printed paper, paper with I. R. A. printed on the
top and see what effect that will have. Say 'You are being closely observed,'
or words to that effect; 'a trusty friend of ours has constantly noted your
movements and reported them to the proper quarter.' You see, I've thought it
out, and if you leave me wan sheet of official paper I'll guarantee to give him
many a sleepless night." 
They are interrupted by the sound of heavy
footsteps. The young men sit up and listen tensely, but the one who has been
speaking reassures them with a backward wave of his hand. Meanwhile, the slow
footsteps come nearer; they are the noisy clatter of loose footwear. The young
man Peter, who has been smoking, tops the cigarette between his fingers and
stands inside the door. A faint yellow light begins to stream around the
doorway, and as it is swung backward and forward it projects a gradually
widening circle of visibility over the loose cobbles among which the rain is
still lodged from yesterday; while, with each jolt given to the lantern, the
young men hear a loud, rhythmical sigh, a sigh that expresses habit rather than
necessity. Then a figure stands framed in the doorway, carrying in one hand a
lighted lantern and in the other a basket. The young man who is standing there,
takes off his hat and says politely, "Good night, Sister," and the
two men in the corner bend forward until their faces are revealed by the lantern,
smiling and respectful, and do likewise. 
The nun for it is a nun is dressed all in
white. She is an old woman with bright, crustlike, apple-red cheeks, and her
skirts are now drawn up about her knees. Everything she does is done slowly,
with the pronounced emphasis of old age, as at this moment when she stands
looking in, the lantern held a foot or less before her, her little blue eyes
screwed up, each inside a score of wrinkles, and her breath coming in dry,
wheezy, asthmatic pants. 
" Dia
bhur mbeatha, a dhaoine maithe" she says after a moment and the Gaelic
salutation that means "God be your life" is followed by a quaint gust
of antique mirth. 
Still chuckling she lays down her basket
inside the door, raises herself slowly with yet another sigh, and turns to the
man who has been speaking. 
"Two of the loveliest calves you ever
seen, Dan," she says. "Two little jewels, praise be to you, God! So
now that old caubogue, Jer Callaghan, won't be putting the milk of the cow we
bought from him on the Department sheet." 
"I was telling our young friends what
a grand farm we had here, Sister," he says. 
"Teh! Teh! Teh! . . . Nothing for
fifty miles around to equal it. Nothing. . . ." 
She looks at the young men, and in the
half-light which the lantern casts up on her round, red, toothless, laughing
face there is an extravagance of pride and joy. Her voice as she continues
startles them by its masculine resonance. "I don't know what they'll do
without me at all at all when the Lord God calls me home! I don't indeed know
what they'll do without me. I say to Reverend Mother when she comes round to
Galilee that's what we calls our end of the building, Galilee I say to her,
'Ach, wait till I'm growing purty daisies in the plot beyond, and you'll see
how fond of me ye were then you'll see!'" 
She is chuckling again, but continues in a
lower tone and more tenderly. 
"Ach, sure, I do be only taking a rise
out of her, boys. They're all fond of me though I speaks saucy enough to them
at times, the creatures that's when things go agin me. But then we must be
saying something, hey?" 
"We're all fond of you, Sister,"
Dan the farm labourer says unctuously, and then dodges out of the way of her
hand which she raises at him in mock indignation. 
"Ach, go 'way, y'ould hypocrite and
you're nothing else!" She turns on the young men once more, pointing a
bony forefinger at the basket. "There's bread and mate for ye there, boys,
and if ye want anything else ye've only to ask for it. And ye've my prayers as
well, so that's mate for body and soul. . . . Ye night-walking
blackguards!" 
She is off again into her deep, merry,
asthmatic chuckle. As it subsides into a prolonged fit of coughing she raises
the lantern to the handsome reckless face of the young man standing beside the
door. He is clearly the leader of the trio. 
"What's your name?" 
" Peter Mulcahy, Sister." 
"There's none of ye there I
know?" 
"No, Sister." 
"None of ye was here before?" 
"No, Sister." 
"I hope ye'll come again, God bless
ye! I'm Sister Alophonsus, and though I likes me little joke I'm a goodnatured
old woman, so I am. And I've a great gradh for anyone that lifts his hand for
Holy Ireland. My father was a friend of Bryan Dillon. Did you ever hear tell of
Bryan Dillon, young man?" 
" I did, Sister. He was the Fenian."
"So he was, the Fenian. Brienie Dill
we called him. My father the Heavens be his bed was a great friend of his.
Many's the night they talked powder and shot until the break of day. Brienie
Dill was a little hunchback, but the neatest little hunchback you ever seen. I
remember well the day he was left out of gaol, though I was only a slip of a
girl then. There was stones flying that day in the Barrack Sthream I can tell
you. . . . And my father was one of the men that buried the pikes in the
Quakers' graveyard. Did you know there was pikes buried there, young man?"
"No, Sister." 
"There was then. Pikes buried in the
Quakers' graveyard. And 'God send,' says Brienie Dill, 'God in Heaven send they
rise before the Quakers do!'" 
They all laugh at this. She laughs with
them, and shaken by her gusty mirth the lantern rocks to right and left in her
hand. Suddenly the men start at the sound of light, quick footsteps, followed
immediately by the rustling of a dress against the wall of the barn. In a
moment a second woman's figure is upon them. The light just catches the dainty
forehead and the rim of starched cloth beneath her veil. The old nun, who has
heard nothing, has just raised her apron to her eyes to wipe away the slow
tears of laughter that fill them when her arm is caught from behind by the
newcomer. 
"Don't be afraid, Sister!" a
young voice whispers good humouredly. "It's only me." 
There is something grotesque about the way
in which Sister Alphonsus proceeds to assure herself of the young nun's
identity. She lifts the lantern until it is shining full into the other's face,
and before the young nun in laughing protest has forced it aside, the men have
received a picture of her that impresses itself forever on their memories.
Unlike the farm sister she is dressed in black, and is obviously a choir nun.
Her face is unusually broad at the jaw, but this instead of making her features
appear harsh makes them appear curiously tender. Her face is almost colourless,
her nose short; her eyes are jet black under long black lashes that give them a
dreamy look; but over all her features is a strange expression which is not at
all dreamy or tender, but anxious, abrupt and painfully, sensitively, wide
awake. Yet she is very girlish, slim and sprightly; and her appearance as she
stands in the doorway suggests to the three hunted men a visionary, enchanted
youth, that wakes a sort of pang within them, a pang of desire and loss. She is
carrying some rugs on her arm and hands them to the other nun; then with one
hand on the jamb of the door in an attitude that more than suggests flight, she
looks in. 
"I must rush back, Sister," she
whispers hastily. "Good night, boys, and God bless you!" 
"Good night, Sister," they reply,
and Dan, standing in the background hat in hand, chimes in with a respectful
"Goodnight." 
"Nobody there that I know?" she
asks, delaying, her dark eyes puckered up in an attempt to pierce the shadows.
"You are all from the city?" 
"Yes, Sister." 
"How have the city fellows gone? What
about Dan Lahy? Jo Godwin?" 
" Army." 
"And Denny, Michael Denny?" 
"The same." 
"God forgive them! Anyone else of that
crowd gone over?" 
"All but two." 
"They used to stay out here in the old
days you knew that?" 
"Have you heard about Sean Clery
?" 
A sudden bitterness has crept into the
voice that speaks from the corner of the barn, a bitterness that communicates
itself immediately to the other men, and dramatises the instant in their minds
as well as in the mind of the young nun, so that her reply when it comes brims
the cup of emotion for all. 
"My sister told me. Poor Sean God have
mercy on him!" 
"God save us from our own!" the
bitter voice corrects her quietly. "Taken out the road and shot to pieces
like a mad dog! Did you know him, Sister?" 
"A little oh, yes I did; of course I
knew him when he was a boy. . . . They gave him a dreadful end. . . ." 
"It's a cruel, cruel thing, this
fighting!" the old nun puts in loudly and vehemently. "A cruel, silly
thing! They must be wicked men to do a deed like that. Ah, if they were here
now Sister Alophonsus would give them a bit of her mind, so she would!" 
"Be quiet, Sister!" the other
says fearfully. "You talk too loud you know." 
Sister Alphonsus sighs. 
"Ach, sure they don't mind how loud I
talk. They hears me talking always to the cows." 
"And do you talk to the cows,
Sister?" the young man called Peter asks, as though to change the
conversation. 
"Of course I do, talk to them. Cows
are foolish beasts they're foolisher than pigs, cows are, and you'd get no good
of them at all if you didn't talk sensibly to them and tell them what you
want." 
There is a heavy silence broken only by the
stirring of beasts in a nearby byre, and something in the silence suggests that
the young nun is suffering deeply. After a little she breaks the stillness that
has already grown too oppressive for all but the old woman immersed in her
angry maternal dreams. 
"And the people?" 
"Indifferent," says Peter
hardily. 
""Against us," says the
bitter voice from the darkness. 
"Just as it is with us here. In the
old days we were all united we knew that the boys were sleeping in the
outhouses; we sent them out food and medals and scapulars; before we went to
bed each night we said a prayer for them. Now there's no one left to pray for
you but old Sister Alphonsus and myself." 
"No one, no one!" chimes in
Sister Alophonsus. "'Tis true for you, alanna, they all reneged. But
Sister Alophonsus, the old Fenian, didn't renege. She's as true to her country
now as ever she was." 
"If you were out with us for a day or
two you'd see it all," the voice from the darkness continues. "Where
is the sovereign Irish people we used to hear so much about a year or two ago?
Sorry, Sister, we haven't any heroes left, but we can always find you a few
informers." A revolver clacks open in the darkness and the voice continues
half-humorously, "Holy Ireland! Holy , how are you?" 
"Oh, chuck it! Chuck it for Heaven's
sake!" the young man called Peter says irritably. 
"Or
A, a Dhe! Och, a Dhe!" Sister Alphonsus sighs, turning away. 
"Oh, informers, hadn't we always our
share of them?" the young nun asks quickly. "But never mind what
happens to us, never mind the people, never mind the informers! will
outlive them all." 
There is a sudden throb of male passion in
the voice, a sudden bursting out of emotions that have been too long
suppressed. 
"?" the young man in the
corner asks cynically. 
"Yes. . We haven't been the first
and we won't be the last." 
Dan, the old farmhand, weary of the
conversation that goes on so far above his head, moves away on tiptoe over the
cobbles, downhill, and watching his retreating figure sink down against the
autumnal sky she shivers slightly. 
"What are your names?" she asks
suddenly, and her voice has lost its overtone of passion. The three men tell
her their names shyly, one after another. 
"Michael . . . Peter . . . Liam,"
she repeats, letting each name sink into her memory. "I'll remember your
names, and pray that you'll come safely out of it all and be happy," she
adds as an afterthought. "And you'll pray for me, won't you? Sister
Josephine is my name." 
"And Sister Alophonsus! Don't forget
old Sister Alophonsus!" the old woman says warningly. 
"Good night, boys." 
"Good night, Sister." 
"Good night, Peter," she says
with a quick, dainty movement of her head to the young man standing by the
door; a gesture that seems unerringly to separate him from the others and
predict for him some experience richer than theirs then, as silently and
swiftly as she had come, the young nun goes. 
Sister Alphonsus, sighing with the same
antique vehemence, hangs the lantern on a hook from the low roof of the barn. 
"The light of Heaven to our souls on
the last day!" she mumbles earnestly. "... There's your rugs. . . .
The child is supposed to be nursing old Mother Agatha. She must have slipped
out when she was asleep and got the rugs on the sly. . . . Hot blood! Hot
blood! . . . She's not happy. . . . She's too hasty. I tell her not to take
things to heart so, but she do, she do! Hot blood! . . . Why should she mind
what they say to her? I've put up with them now these forty year. Forty years
on the fifteenth of February, boys, if the good God lets me live to see the
day." 
Sighing still she bids them good night in
her soft West Munster Gaelic and goes, latching the door noisily behind her.
The lantern barely illumines the little barn and the three figures stretched
upon the straw. They eat, exchanging an occasional word that does not express
at all what is in their minds. Then Peter quenches the lamp and everything is
dark and silent but for the stirring of beasts in a nearby byre. But neither
the silence, nor the fragrance of the straw on which they lie, nor the food
they have taken brings sleep to them not for a long time. 
They are all happy as though some wonderful
thing had happened to them, but what the wonderful thing is they could not say,
and with their happiness is mixed a melancholy as strange and perturbing, as
though life itself and all the modes of life were inadequate. It is not a bitter
melancholy like the melancholy of defeat, and in the morning, when they take to
the country roads again, it will have passed. 
But the memory of the young nun will not
pass so lightly from their minds. 
Category:O'Connor
Category:Published