First Love [written 1946; publ. 1973] (Syrens Edn. [Penguin] 1994)

Some Extracts

Note on title: Christopher Ricks observes that, in More Pricks Than Kicks (1934), Belacqua quotes Tennyson’s verses: ‘Deep as first love, wild with all regret; / O Death in life, the days that are no more!’ (Ricks, Preface, First Love, 1994 Edn., pp.vii-viii. For full text, see RICORSO Library, “Irish Classics” [index]; or, go direct [infra].

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must. The smell of corpses, distinctly perceptible under those of grass and humus mingled, 1 do not find unpleasant, a trifle on the sweet side perhaps, a trifle heady, but how infinitely preferable to what the living emit, their feet, teeth, armpits, e, sticky foreskins and frustrated ovules. And when my father’s remains join in, however modestly, I can almost shed a tear. The living wash in vain, in vain perfume themselves, they stink. Yes, as a place for an outing, when out I must, leave me my graveyards and keep - you - to your public parks and beauty-spots. My sandwich, my banana, taste sweeter when I’m sitting on a tomb, and when the time comes to piss again, as it [4] so often does, I have my pick. Or I wander, hands clasped behind my back, among the slabs, the flat, the leaning and the upright, culling the inscriptions. Of these I never weary, there are always three or four of such drollery that I have to hold on to the cross, or the stele, or the angel, so as not to fall. Mine I composed long since and am still pleased with it, tolerably pleased. My other writings are no sooner dry than they revolt me, but my epitaph still meets with my approval. There is little chance unfortunately of its ever being reared above the skull that conceived it, unless the State takes up the matter. But to be unearthed 1 must first be found, and 1 greatly fear those gentlemen will have as much trouble finding me dead as alive. So 1 hasten to record it here and now, while there is yet time:]

‘I associate, rightly or wrongly, my mearriage with the death of my father, in time. That other links exist, on other levels, between these two affairs, is not impossible. I have enough trouble as it is in trying to say what I think I know.
  I visited, not so long ago, my father’s grave, that I do know, and noted the date of his death, of his death alone, for that of his birth had no interest for me, on that particular day. I set out in the morning and was back by night, having lunched lightly in the graveyard.’ (p.3.)
 
Hereunder lies the above who up below
So hourly died that he lived on till now.

The second and last or rather latter line limps a little perhaps, but that is no great matter, I’ll be forgiven more than that when I’m forgotten. (pp.4-5.)

[...] in reality she was a most tenacious woman. She came back next day and the day after and all went off more or less as before. Perhaps a few words were exchanged. The next day it was raining and I felt in security. Wrong again. I asked her if she was resolved to disturb me every evening. I disturb you? she said. I felt her eyes on me. They can’t have seen much, two eyelids at the most, with a hint of nose and brow, darkly, because of the dark. I thought we were easy, she said. You disturb me, I said, I can’t stretch out with you there. The collar of my greatcoat was over my mouth and yet she heard me. Must you stretch out? she said. The mistake one makes is to speak to people. You have only to put your feet on my knees, she said. I didn’t wait to be asked twice, under my miserable calves. I felt her fat thighs. She began stroking my ankles. I considered kicking her in the cunt. You speak to people about stretching out and they immediately see a body at full length. What mattered to me in my dispeopled kingdom, that in regard to which the disposition of my carcass was the merest and most futile of accidents, was supineness in the mind, the dulling of the self and of that residue of execrable frippery known as the non-self and even the world, for short. But man is still today, at the age of twenty-five, at the mercy of an erection, physically too, from time to time, it’s the common lot, even I was not immune, if that may be called an erection. It did not escape her naturally, women smell the rigid phallus ten miles away and wonder, How on earth did he spot me from there? One is no longer oneself, on such occasions, and it is painful to be no longer oneself, even more painful if possible than when one is. For when one is one knows what to do to be less so, whereas when one is not one is any old one irredeemably. What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland, such is my considered opinion, this evening. When she had finished and my self been resumed, mine own, the mitigable, with the help of a brief torpor, it was alone. I sometimes wonder if that is not all invention, if in reality things did not take quite a different course, one I had no choice but to forget. And yet her image remains [...]’ (pp.13.)
 
‘It was in this byre, littered wit dry and hollow cowclaps subsiding with a sigh, at the poke of my finger, that for the first time in my life, and I would not hesitate to say the last if I had not to husband my cyanide, I had to contend with a feeling which gradually assumed, to my dismay, the dread name of love. What constitutes the charm of this country, apart of course from its scant population [16], and this without the help of the meanest contraception, is that all is derelict, with the sole exception of history’s ancient faeces. These are ardently sought after, stuffed and carried in procession. Wherever nauseated time has dropped a nice fat turd you will find our patriots, sniffing it up on all fours, their faces on fire. Elysium of the roofless. hence my happiness at last. Lie down. all seems to say, lie down and stay down. I see no connection between those remarks. But that one exists and even more than one, I have little doubt, on my part. But what? Which? Yes, I loved her, it‘ ’s the name I gave, still give alas, having never loved before, but of course had heard of the thing, at home, at achool, in brothel and at church, and read romances. [...].’ (pp.16-17; quoted [in part] in Colm Tóibín, ‘New Ways to Kill Your Father: Historical Revisionism’, in Karl-Heinz Westarp & Michael Böss, eds., Ireland: Towards new Identities?, Aarhus UP 1998, pp.28-36; p.34; citing First Love and Other Shorts, London: Calder 1973, pp.1-30; p.21.)
 
Lovers’ groans are so alike, and lovers’ giggles. [...] A fat lot of help it was when, having put the question to her, I was told they were clients she received by rotation. I could obviously have got up and gone to look through the keyhole. But what can you see, I ask you, through [31 ] holes the likes of those? So you live by prostitution, I said. We live by prostitution, she said. You couldn’t ask them to make less noise? I said, as if I believed her. I added, or a different kind of noise. They can’t help but yap and yelp, she said. I’ll have to leave, I said. She found some old hangings in the family junk and hung them before our doors, hers and mine. I asked her if it would not be possible, now and then, to have a parsnip. A parsnip! she cried, as if I had asked for a dish of sucking Jew. I reminded her that the parsnip season was fast drawing to a close and that if, before it finally got there, she could feed me nothing but parsnips I’d be grateful. I like parsnips because they taste like violets and violets because they smell like parsnips. Were there no parsnips on earth violets would leave me cold and if violets did not exist I would care as little for parsnips as I do for turnips, or radishes. And even in the present state of their flora, I mean on this planet where parsnips and violets contrive to coexist. I could do without both with the utmost case, the uttermost ease. One day she had the impudence to announce she was with child, and four or five months gone into the bargain, by me of all people! She offered me a side view of her belly. She even undressed, no doubt to prove she wasn’t hiding a cushion under her skirt, and then of [32] course for the pure pleasure of undressing. Perhaps it’s just wind, I said, by way of consolation. She gazed at me with her big eyes whose colour I forget, with one big eye rather, for the other seemed riveted on the remains of the hyacinth. The more naked she was the more cross-eyed. Look, she said, stooping over her breasts, the haloes are darkening already. I summoned up my remaining strength and said, Abort, abort, and they’ll blush like new. She had drawn back the curtain for a clear view of all her rotundities. I saw the mountain, impassible, cavernous, secret, where from morning to night I’d hear nothing but the wind, the curlews, the clink like distant silver of the stone-cutter’s hammers. I’d come out in the daytime to the heather and gorse, all warmth and scent, and watch at night the distant city lights, if I chose, and the other lights, the lighthouses and lightships my father had named for me, when I was small, and whose name I could find again, in my memory, if I chose, that I knew. From that day forth things went from bad to worse, to worse and worse, Not that she neglected me, she could never have neglected me enough, but the way she kept plaguing me with our child, exhibiting her belly and breasts and saying it was due any moment, she could feel it lepping already. If it’s lepping, I said [33] it’s not mine. [...]’ (pp.32-34.)
 
What finished me was the birth. [...] It went to my heart to leave the house without being put out [...; 34] As long as I kept walking I didn’t hear them, because of the footsteps, But as soon as I halted I heard them again, a little fainter each time, admittedly, but what does it matter, faint or loud, cry is cry, all that matters is that it should cease. For years I thought they would cease. Now I don’t think so any more. I could have done with other loves perhaps. But there it is, either you love or you don ‘t.’ (End; pp.34-35.)

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