We're delighted to present an extract from I Am Lewy by Eoghan Ó Tuairisc, the debut title from Bullaun Press, a new independent publishing house based on the Aran Islands.
This is the first appearance in English of six-year-old Lewy and his unique, impressionistic account of a tumultuous few months in the early 1920s - a vivid, warm voice brought to us from the Irish by Mícheál Ó hAodha in this translation of Eoghan Ó Tuairisc's classic novella, An Lomnochtán (1977).
At the fair with his demobbed, slightly shellshocked father, under his seamstress mother's table while she measures the clients, minding his siblings on the Green across from the Workhouse, entangled with memories of 'Brazenface’ Rosaleen McNally in the Enclosure by the Earl’s Wood, and the skeleton in the sandpit, Lewy tries to get his head around it all...
In this extract, our protagonist is in hospital in Galway after breaking his arm...
The murmuring of men in the Ward water lapping in his memory, the voices drowned out in the silence, drowned out in the white twilight, there were no curtains on the big windows, the long hours without the clock stretching out on him, his back relaxed shifting on the pillows, the Book in his left hand propped on his chest, a big black book. An irritated H'm from the Nurse when she glanced at him. He was waiting on the words, losing himself in the strangeness of the story. Now the Lord said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, kin-dred kind-red, and from thy Father’s house, Faw-dur’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee. Kind. Red. Colour in the words, danger, some story happening far away.
He looked over in the man’s direction, the man who gave him the book to read, beside him, bed in the corner, he was a silent lump under the white bedclothes, whiteness and blueness in his face in the window-light, he wasn’t dead because his beard was quivering, dozing. Mister Sinkler. He didn’t have a broken arm or leg, the nurse put a screen around him when the Doctor came in.
The Doctor, thank God he wouldn’t come till tomorrow morning, he had the long white Sunday to go. The pain asleep, waiting, the right hand a heavy weight strapped to his chest, the Doctor would give the arm an unmerciful tug, working the elbow, the Nurse holding down his feet, his teeth gritted tight to keep the moaning inside him. Padda Conneela let a shout out of him when they came to him, the Nurse was angry, Well what soort ov a babby. From Mweenish.
Padda Conneela in the bed to his right-hand side, looking at the colour pictures in the comic he gave him, Tiger Tim, he wasn’t able to read it. A red undergarment wrapped like a shawl around him covering his broken hand, the left one, he fell in the boat on the sea, fish, shoes on him for the first time and he slipped on the timbers. He didn’t wear any trousers, not drawers even, when they were let out walking in the Hospital yard. He said that boys at home didn’t wear trousers until they were grown up and going to school. They didn’t have Nuns, they didn’t have Mixed Infants. His way of talking was strange too. I falls in de boat. Mweenish, a place, the smell of the sea and an accent from back west in the storied mist far away. How does you breaks your wan Loodeen. He blanked out the question in his mind, him lying on the ground, his right hand twisted and bent where it shouldn’t have been, drooping down, him propping it with his left hand into his Mother inside.
His Father would laugh when he told him the funny things Padda Conneela said. Far away the street and the smoky mist above the houses, forgotten almost. Mister Sinkler drew the picture for him, that’s Ireland, that’s the Ocean, a small spot in the middle of Ireland, that’s the Town, a small spot out near the sea that’s Galway where the Hospital is, a small spot far out on the coast, rocks and sand in it, that’s Mweenish. A hundred miles from one small spot to another. A shilling a mile, the car bouncing over the potholes in the road, a hundred shillings, he’d give them to his Mother to buy a Celtic Cross from Kerrigan the Stonemason and to erect it in the Graveyard.
He raised up his two knees, the big black book slipped down off the quilt and fell with a thump onto the floor, the Nurse would be mad. He tried to shift his body over to the edge of the bed, his left hand dangling, the pain woke up, he heard the Ah sounding in his throat the painful veins in his elbow throbbing, in his chest.
Another day, the fresh air all around, himself and Padda Conneela out walking through the Hospital yard, a tree, paving stones and a high wall. The clothes felt strange to him, the short pants on, a big coat down to his calves, the American coat with a velveteen bonnet his Mother made for him from the Weldon’s Ladies Journal, the Nurse gave his fair hair an unmerciful brushing down to his shoulders, she didn’t understand a thing. Padda had no trousers on him, underpants on him, a shirt, a jumper, a red undergarment over the lot, one sleeve hanging loose, his hair was shaved to the scalp, except for a small jet-black fringe to the front drooping.
Not a living creature in sight, they were alone hand in hand out walking. They found one another’s voices strange, small clear voices falling on the silence, hanging in the air, it had the colour of honey on it, their frail shadows tangled on the paving. What’s dat Padda? De windy. But in your place. An fhuinneog (1). How’d you say it’s open. Tis not. Spose it was. I suppose it’d be ar oscailt (2) but dat’d be a dure (3). An if it was broken. Oh damn but my father would be raging at me.
(1) 'an fhuinneog’: ‘the window’ in Irish
(2) ‘ar oscailt’: ‘open’ in Irish
(3) ‘a dure’: a door
I Am Lewy is published by Bullaun Press
