baby mind.
“Well, your Lordship, there is no silence like a woman’s silence, do you agree? And no standing there like a woman’s standing there like a monument out of Stonehenge. The mean temperature dropped in the room so quick I suffered from the polar concussions, as we call it in our house. I did not dare turn to confront the Beast, or the daughter of the Beast, as I call her in deference to her mom. But finally I heard her suck in a great breath and let it out very cool and calm like a Prussian general. ‘That woman is naked as a jay bird,’ and ‘That other woman is raw as the inside of a clam at low tide.’
“‘But,’ said I, ‘these are studies of natural physique by a famous French artist.’
“‘Jesus-come-after-me-French,’ she cried; ‘the-skirts-half-up-to-your-bum-French. The-dress-half-down-to-your-navel-French. And the gulping and smothering they do with their mouths in their dirty novels French, and now you come home and nail ‘French’ on the walls, why don’t you while you’re at it, pull the crucifix down and nail one fat naked lady there?’
“Well, your Honor, I just shut up my eyes and wished my ears would fall off. ‘Is this what you want our boys to look at last thing at night as they go to sleep?’ she says. Next thing I know, I’m on the path and here I am and here’s the raw-oyster nudes, your Honor, beg your pardon, thanks, and much obliged.”
“They do seem to be unclothed,” said the old man, looking at the two pictures, one in either hand, as if he wished to find all that this man’s wife said was in them. “I had always thought of summer, looking at them.”
“From your seventieth birthday on, your Lordship, perhaps. But before that?”
“Uh, yes, yes,” said the old man, watching a speck of half-remembered lechery drift across one eye.
When his eye stopped drifting it found Bannock and Toolery on the edge of the far rim of the uneasy sheepfold crowd. Behind each, dwarfing them, stood a giant painting.
Bannock had got his picture home only to find he could not get the damn thing through the door, nor any window.
Toolery had actually got his picture in the door when his wife said what a laughingstock they’d be, the only family in the village with a Rubens worth half a million pounds and not even a cow to milk!
So that was the sum, total, and substance of this long night. Each man had a similar chill, dread, and awful tale to tell, and all were told at last, and as they finished a cold snow began to fall among these brave members of the local, hard-fighting I.R.A.
The old man said nothing, for there was nothing really to say that wouldn’t be obvious as their pale breaths ghosting the wind. Then, very quietly, the old man opened wide the front door and had the decency not even to nod or point.
Slowly and silently they began to file by, as past a familiar teacher in an old school, and then faster they moved. So in flowed the river returned, the Ark emptied out before, not after, the Flood, and the tide of animals and angels, nudes that flamed and smoked in the hands, and noble gods that pranced on wings and hoofs, went by, and the old man’s eyes shifted gently, and his mouth silently named each, the Renoirs, the Van Dycks, the Lautrec, and so on until Kelly, in passing, felt a touch at his arm.
Surprised, Kelly looked over.
And saw that the old man was staring at the small painting beneath his arm.
“My wife’s portrait of me?”
“None other,” said Kelly.
The old man stared at Kelly and at the painting beneath his arm and then out toward the snowing night.
Kelly smiled softly.
Walking soft as a burglar, he vanished out into the wilderness, carrying the picture. A moment later, you heard him laughing as he ran back, hands empty.
The old man shook his hand, once, tremblingly, and shut the door.
Then he turned away as if the event was already lost to his wandering child mind and toddled down the hall with his scarf like a gentle weariness over his thin shoulders, and the mob followed him in where they found drinks in their great paws and saw that Lord Kilgotten was blinking at the picture over the fireplace as if trying to remember, was the Sack of Rome there in the years past? or was it the Fall of Troy? Then he felt their gaze and looked full on the encircled army and said:
“Well now, what shall we drink to?”
The men shuffled their feet.
Then Flannery cried, “Why, to his Lordship, of course!”
“His Lordship!” cried all, eagerly, and drank, and coughed and choked and sneezed, while the old man felt a peculiar glistering about his eyes, and did not drink at all till the commotion stilled, and then said, “To Our Ireland,” and drank, and all said Ah God and Amen to that, and the old man looked at the picture over the hearth and then at last shyly observed, “I do hate to mention it—that picture—”
“Sir?”
“It seems to me,” said the old man, apologetically, “to be a trifle off-centered, on the tilt. I wonder if you might—”
“Mightn’t we, boys!” cried Casey.
And fourteen men rushed to put it right.
Tomorrow’s Child
He did not want to be the father of a small blue pyramid. Peter Horn hadn’t planned it that way at all. Neither he nor his wife imagined that such a thing could happen to them. They had talked quietly for days about the birth of their coming child, they had eaten normal foods, slept a great deal, taken in a few shows, and, when it was time for her to fly in the helicopter to the hospital, her husband held her and kissed her.
“Honey, you’ll be home in six hours,” he said. “These new birth-mechanisms do everything but father the child for you.”
She remembered an old-time song. “No, no, they can’t take that away from me!” and sang it, and they laughed as the helicopter lifted them over the green way from country to city.
The doctor, a quiet gentlemen named Wolcott, was very confident. Polly Ann, the wife, was made ready for the task ahead and the father was put, as usual, out in the waiting room where he could suck on cigarettes or take highballs from a convenient mixer. He was feeling pretty good. This was the first baby, but there was not a thing to worry about. Polly Ann was in good hands.
Dr. Wolcott came into the waiting room an hour later. He looked like a man who has seen death. Peter Horn, on his third highball, did not move. His hand tightened on the glass and he whispered:
“She’s dead.”
“No,” said Wolcott, quietly. “No, no, she’s fine. It’s the baby.”
“The baby’s dead, then.”
“The baby’s alive, too, but—drink the rest of that drink and come along after me. Something’s happened.”
Yes, indeed, something had happened. The “something” that had happened had brought the entire hospital out into the corridors. People were going and coming from one room to another. As Peter Horn was led through a hallway where attendants in white uniforms were standing around peering into each other’s faces and whispering, he became quite ill.
“Hey, looky looky! The child of Peter Horn! Incredible!”
They entered a small clean room. There was a crowd in the room, looking down at a low table. There was something on the table.
A small blue pyramid.
“Why’ve you brought me here?” said Horn, turning to the doctor.
The small blue pyramid moved. It began to cry.
Peter Horn pushed forward and looked down wildly. He was very white and he was breathing rapidly. “You don’t mean that’s it?”
The