At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [21]
At the front row, Jim was wedging his flute in its sock, a sewnup sugar-sack on which his father had stencilled Master James Mack, Esqr. There was more chaffing behind which he strained to apprehend. A boy randled metallically, “I think I think I smell a stink, I think I think I do.”
Fahy, the ugliest of his schoolfellows, added, “Something fierce in here whatever it is.”
Surreptitiously Jim wiped the wet patch on his breeches where his neighbor’s flute had dripped.
“Worse than a cheeser.”
“No,” said Fahy. “Less than a cheeser, it’s the dungman’s monkey.”
A hand from behind landed on Jim’s shoulder. It stiffened like a vaulter’s pole. He had time to glimpse a cloudy, mismatched suit sail by, then a kick in its leg sent Fahy’s case scattering.
“Gabh mo leithscéal,” said Doyler when he landed. “That’s excuse me in our native tongue.” He thrust the bits of his flute in his jacket, cocked an eye at Jim, then strode out the passage, lurching once, twice, as he went.
“Class of gouger they’re letting in now.”
“A stinker and a cripple.”
And Fahy said flatly, “That one’s not long for this band. No, nor long for this world.”
Jim stared toward the door, moving his lips to the Gaelic phrase. He believed Doyler had uttered something more while he clambered past. It had sounded again like What cheer! The mix of quaint and Gaelic struck him as fantastical in the school commons.
“Mr. Mack?”
“Yes, Brother?”
“Close your mouth, boy. You’re not in training for a fly-paper. Kindly do the honors and collect me the music. I’ll be waiting within.”
A head leant into Jim’s ear and uttered the one word, “Suck.”
“I heard a coarse word and mention of smell this evening,” Brother Polycarp said when they were alone in his monastery room. “Was it you, Mr. Mack?”
“No, Brother.”
One eyebrow drolly lifted. “Who was it so?”
“I didn’t hear, Brother.”
“A vilipendence about the new boy, no doubt.”
Jim’s face perked at the word.
“The new curate was very insistent he be let in. Why would you say that was?”
“I wouldn’t know, Brother.”
“There’s moves afoot. The new curate speaks Erse. Did you know that? An Erse-speaking priest. Wouldn’t you think they’d get the Latin right first. The inflexion one sometimes hears is deplorable. All chees and chaws like an ice-cream vendor out of Napoli.”
Jim finished lighting the candles. Grease had spilt on his finger and he rubbed it now with his thumb. Particles fell like dandruff to the floor.
“He’s a decent enough mouth on the flute, I’ll grant, for all he’s not a college boy. Howsoever, there is a certain redolence.” The eyes yellowly closed, whitely opened. There was intimation of humor in the thirsty wax of his face. Muscles strained and opened till a wheezing noise let out. “The ars musica,” he said with lubricious intonation.
He picked up some music he had been studying, fetched a sigh, replaced it on his table. “On that subject St. Augustine as always is enlightening. Feast Day?”
“August twenty-eight.”
“What he says, inimitably, is: ‘There are those who can break wind backwards so artfully would they sing.’ Dates?”
A brief hesitation. “Three-five-four, four-three-o AD.”
“The anno Domini is unnecessary. A supererogation in the instance of a saint.”
“Yes, Brother.”
The brother was shifting through the folds of his soutane in search of the slip for his pocket. Unbidden otherwise, Jim stood and waited. He could never be sure if Brother Polycarp liked him, or, if he liked him, was it for company or play. It was a trust of sorts to be the audience of these remarks. But was he trusted to share their scandal, or merely not to repeat it? His eyes roamed the scanty room, its whitewashed walls, crucifix over a bed perfectly if thinly made. In the corner, the little grotto to Mary, Our Lady of Presentation. Smell of Macassar from the grey-sleeked head of the brother.
He took Jim for Latin, and on those mornings when he ran a fever and his hands shook with the strain he had Jim stand up and read page after page of Virgil.