25 de julio de 2008

THE DEAD # 2: ALL THE LIVING AND THE DEAD


"How poor a part I've played in your life. It's almost as though I'm not your husband, and we've never lived together as man and wife. What were you like, then? To me, your face is still beautiful, but it's no longer the one for which Michael Furey braved death. Why am I feeling this riot of emotion? What started it up? A ride in the cab? When not responding when I kissed her hand? My aunt's party? My own foolish speech? Wine, dancing, music?

"Poor Aunt Julia... That haggard look on her face when she was singing Arrayed for the Bridal. Soon, she'll be a shade too, with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. Soon, perhaps, I'll be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, the blinds would be drawn down, and I'd be casting about in my mind for words of consolation. And would find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes. That will happen very soon.

"Yes, the newspapers are right: snow is general all over Ireland. Falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, softly upon the Bog of Allen, and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.

"One by one we are all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

"How long you locked away in your heart, the image of your lover's eyes when he told you that he did not wish to live? I've never felt like that myself towards any woman, but I know that such a feeling must be love. Think of all those who ever were, back to the start of time. And me, transient as they, flickering out as well into their grey world. Like everything around me, this solid world itself, which they reared and lived in, is dwindling and dissolving.

"Snow is falling. Falling in that lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lays buried. Falling faintly through the universe, and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

(The Dead, John Huston, 1987)