XVIII
Shapeless figures dancing on tremendous stilts, on the brink of an abyss, to the sound of rocks being tumbled about below, in the darkness, everything immense and dark and resounding, everything without shape or meaning, gloom and preponderance, yawning, yawning abysses full of frozen fog, cliffs gliding away when touched, leaving no foundation, an endless wandering through space, through screeching winds and … crash.
Gypo awoke with a snort, perspiring with his nightmare, terrified.
The old woman had at last awakened him by squeezing his nostrils between her fingers. He sat up, looked about him and saw her. He saw her weird and pale, with her white hair streaming. He was going to strike her in terror, thinking her an ogre from his dreams, when she spoke.
“They’re after ye,” she hissed. “They’re after ye. They’re on the stairs.”
He listened. There was nothing. Not a sound. What? Just a whistle of the wind on the roof. Ha! Something creaked. Was it the bed? No. Trup, trip, r-r-rip. Somebody had slipped on the roof.
Gypo bounded from the bed to the floor in one leap. He stood motionless, crouching forward, panting, with dilated nostrils. A sound came on the stairs outside the door. Somebody on the stairs said: “Hist!” Then utter silence. Gypo stood transfixed, still wet with the perspiration of his nightmare.
Then he moved noiselessly to the fireplace and picked up the tongs. It slipped from his fingers as he rose and rattled to the stone hearth. He whirled about to the door with an oath. Simultaneously the door was flung wide with a bang. Three flashes of light came before his eyes from the doorway. As he rushed headlong towards them there was a deafening roar. Three men had fired together at him. Then there was chaos.
As he dashed across the floor to the landing, he felt a sting like frostbite in his thigh. Then he saw their terror-stricken, mad faces. He recognized two of them, Mulholland and Hackett. The third man was Curley. When he closed with them and felt his giant hands on the soft warm flesh of their bodies he breathed a sigh of satisfaction.
Somebody fired again, unintentionally, in the struggling mass on the landing. It must have been Curley. For his thin voice screamed querulously after the explosion, “God have mercy on my soul!” Gypo smelt burning under his armpit as his head was bent down to mobilize his spine strength.
Then the banister gave way with a crash of breaking wood. The four men went down, without a cry. Their fists thudded with dull sounds as they struck blindly at one another in the dark.
They fell on the next landing. Gypo and Mulholland were on top. Mulholland had his right knee on Curley’s back. He was cool with the mania of death-terror. He bared his teeth and raised his pistol to fire into Gypo’s open mouth. But Gypo rammed him with his monstrous head.
Mulholland was hurled backwards like a gymnast, head over heels, heels over head. He brought up on a black sheepskin carpet outside a tenement door in the far corner. He lay with his knees to his chin, perfectly quiet. The pistol shot splashed through the whitewashed woodwork of the ceiling. The pistol jingled to the floor.
Gypo scraped around on his hands and knees in the darkness. He groped for the two men who lay beneath him. He felt their rumps, their backs, their thighs, in a wide sweep of his hands. Their bodies were lax and soft like the carcasses of dead things. One of them sighed and turned over. Gypo rose to his feet. Without looking anywhere he rushed for the stairs and leaped down.
Halfway down the last flight he paused and tried to think. But he drew his hand over his eyes and shook his head.
“It’s no use. It’s no use,” he said aloud.
There was a great din of disturbed people in the house above him.
He reached the hallway. Through the open door he could see the street outside. The dawn had come. The air was grey, cold, empty and silent. He marched steadily to the door. His body was very cold. And his mind was dead. Cold and dead. Dead and cold.
A stream of red blood trickled down over his right boot from the wound in his thigh. Another stream trickled along his right ribs. He did not know. He was cold and dead. Dead and very cold.
He stopped in the doorway. His eyes expanded. A last passion made his body rigid. He roared. He had seen Gallagher standing against the church railings across the road, with his hands in his raincoat pockets, smiling insolently.
Gypo descended the five steps to the street at one bound. Then as his right foot landed on the pavement there was a rapid succession of shots. They came from all sides. Three of them entered his body. Without bringing his left foot to the pavement he jumped again into the air, with his two hands reaching out and his face turned upwards, in the earnest attitude of a symbolic dancer.
He hurtled out into the street, hopping on staggering feet, writhing and contorting. Then he fell to his knees. He groaned and fell prone.
He struggled up again, looking wildly around him, holding his bowels with his hands. Gallagher was there in front of him, smiling dreamily now, with distant, melancholy eyes.
Gallagher shrugged himself and turned away sharply to the right.
Gypo wanted to go after him. But he no longer knew why he wanted to go after him. His eyes were getting dim. His body was cold. Cold and dead.
Grinding his teeth he got to his feet. He threw out his chest, shrugged his shoulders and walked ahead like a drunken man. He walked slowly straight ahead, straight, stiff, swinging his limp hands slowly.
He walked through the iron gateway of the church, along the concrete path to the door. He had to crawl up the steps on his knees. Blood was coming up his throat.
Reverently he dipped his hand into the holy-water font. He wet his hand to the wrist. He tried to take off his hat in order to cross himself. His hand pawed about his skull, but his fingers were already dead. They could not grip the tattered hat. He tried to cross himself. Impossible. His hand could not reach his forehead. It went up halfway and then fell lifelessly. It was a ton weight. He strode to the left. He staggered through a narrow Roman door. He was in the church.
It was a great high room, curtained with silence. At the altar, away in the lamp-lit dimness of the dawn, a priest was saying Mass. The droning sound of the words came down the silent church, peaceful, laden with the quaint odour of mystery, the mysterious calm of souls groping after infinite things. All round the church the people knelt with bent heads and faces wrapt in prayer for infinite things. Sad, haggard, hungry faces wrapt in the contemplation of infinity, wafted out of the sordidness of their lives by the contemplation of infinite things.
Peace and silence and the quaint odour of mystery and of infinite things.
Deep, long, soft words murmured endlessly in a silent place. Mystery and the phantoms of death breathing faint breaths.
Mercy and pity. Pity and peace. Pity and mercy and peace, three eternal gems in the tabernacle of life, burnished ceaselessly with human dust.
From dust to dust.
Gypo’s eyes roamed around the church. His eyes were very dim. There was a blur before them. He thought he saw somebody whom he knew. He was not sure. Yes. They were looking at him. There, on the left, on the other side of the aisle. It was a long way off. What? Frankie McPhillip’s mother!
He set out, with a great sigh, towards her. He fell in a heap in front of her seat. He raised his head to her face. He saw her face, a great, white, sad face, with tears running down the fat cheeks. He struggled to his knees in the aisle before her. People were rushing to him talking. He waved his hands to keep them away. It was very dark. He swallowed the blood in his mouth and he cried out in a thick whisper:
“Mrs. McPhillip, ’twas I informed on yer son Frankie. Forgive me. I’m dyin’.”
“I forgive ye,” she sighed in a sad, soft whisper. “Ye didn’t know what ye were doin’.”
He shivered from head to foot and bowed his head.
He felt a great mad rush of blood to his head. A great joy filled him. He became conscious of infinite things.
Pity and mercy and peace and the phantoms of death breathing faint breaths. Mercy and pity and peace.
“Lemme go!” he cried, struggling to his feet.
He stood up straight, in all the majesty of his giant stature, towering over all, erect and majestic, with his limbs like pillars, looking towards the altar.
He cried out in a loud voice:
“Frankie, yer mother has forgiven me.”
Then with a gurgling sound he fell forward on his face. His hat rolled off. Blood gushed from his mouth. He stretched out his limbs in the shape of a cross. He shivered and lay still.