I’m too old to drive all the way to Dublin any more, with a delicate heart, so I stopped at Maynooth last week and got the train.
There were two women sitting in front of me discussing dogs. It started with fingernails.
The young one said, “Mammy, I’m getting me nails done tomorrow.”
“What colour?” asked the mother.
“Nude,” the daughter replied.
“That would be a good colour for the dog,” mammy joked.
And they fell silent for a long as they both gazed at their phone screens.
“Look at this one,” the daughter said. Isn’t he gorgeous?”
Mammy looked over.
“What kind of a dog is that?”
“It’s a German shepherd,” the daughter said.
“He’s too hairy,” mammy said. “And a German shepherd would shed all over the sofa.”
“Yeah, but we could get one of them Dyson vacuums.”
“That would cost more than the dog,” mammy warned.
“Or we could keep him shaved,” the daughter added.
“You can’t shave an Alsatian,” mammy said.
“He’s a German shepherd,” the daughter retorted.
“Well wherever he’s from, it’s no good, cos he wouldn’t be able to talk to you in English.”
I am happiest in a world of absurdities. My anxieties dissolve, listening to the surreal play of human instincts
And then she told the daughter a story about a neighbour who once had a German shepherd.
“And he wouldn’t obey any commands,” mammy said. “But if anyone ever spoke German to him, he was liable to tear their face off.”
World of absurdities
I dozed all the way to Connolly Station, relishing their sweet voices and lack of any rational thought. I am happiest in a world of absurdities. My anxieties dissolve, listening to the surreal play of human instincts.
“We’ll find the right one in the end,” mammy said. “Sure a little dog would lift your heart.”
I remember once getting advice from a woman about my own heart. She was an old lady who lived on a halting site and she had many cures.
“I cured a man one time who was given up for dead in Cavan hospital,” she declared.
“What was wrong with him?” I wondered.
“He was very poor with the heart,” she said. “He lived this side of Mullingar. He had a goat and a couple of little hens and he was a great man to chat.”
“And did you cure him?” I wondered.
“Oh, I cured several with the heart,” she said proudly. “And cures is not as plentiful as they were in the old days. Nowadays they are as scarce as hen’s teeth.”
I imagined the oats moving through the skin and the chest and being soaked up by the heart's blood
She looked at me and said, “But you look very poorly, sir. You look as sick as a small hospital.”
So I asked her what precisely was involved in the cure of the heart.
“Oatmeal,” she said. “I take a bit of the oatmeal, maybe two handfuls, and I put it into a cup and I put a hankie over the cup and I rub it all over the chest and lungs. And when I take off the hankie half the meal might be gone out of the cup. That’s the truth.”
The heart was low
She lifted the mug she had been drinking from off the table and held it up.
“A cup that size,” she said. “And the meal gone. It sunk down. Because the heart was low.”
“And is that the cure?” I wondered.
“Yes,” she said. “But it must be done three times. So I fill the cup with the meal again. And I bring the meal to the level of the cup. And I throw the white hankie over it. And I give it a shake. And I go all around the person’s back this time with the mug of oatmeal. And when I take off the cloth, the oatmeal is gone down again. Three times I do it. And if I done that to you, there mightn’t be a grain of oatmeal left in the cup afterwards.”
I imagined the oats moving through the skin and the chest and being soaked up by the heart’s blood like an engine clogged with oil might be dried out by the application of a sponge.
“But where did the oats go?” I wondered.
“Well, of course I never told anybody that,” she said, laughing, and clearly she wasn’t going to tell me either.
And no matter what she said about my own heart, I didn’t listen to her or take her seriously. Although years later, as I watched a holistic therapist pass crystals over a man’s body at Electric Picnic to dispel negative energy, she returned to my mind, with all the poetic charm of her ancient cures.