I had the ashes in the boot of the car. It was in the car park. I could be back in five minutes. If we tipped him into the river he’d go upstream with the certs and end up in a bog somewhere. He’d have his papers anyway. Or stuck in the bank. He might even drift up some disused sewer and spend the rest of his days hoping nobody would flush. From what the solicitor told me, that’s the way he’s lived for the past two years anyway.
At that moment I felt up. It was the end of a stressed-out week. Waking up in the morning and finding your husband dead in the en suite is no joke. He had his pyjamas down around his ankles.
What’s your name?
Saddam Hussein.
I stared at him.
My mum called me after my old dad, didn’t she? he said. That was before he was famous.
Is that true?
No. I don’t give out names. I got issues, see.
Can I call you Saddam?
He grinned. His upper false teeth fell down, and he closed his mouth quickly. After a bit of chewing, he said, Lost them before that way.
He moved away from the river wall.
I’m going to be gone for a bit. If I come back will you still be here?
That’s my bench, he said, pointing. Unless it’s raining I’ll be over there under that stairs.
I went to the police station first. I told the duty officer about my bag. He wrote it all down. He let me use the station phone to cancel the credit cards. He asked me if I had a witness. I told him about the tramp. He sighed. That’s not a witness, he said. Name? Saddam Hussein. It did not go well.
I went to the car park. The ashes were under the passenger seat not in the boot. I remember putting them on the floor. They must have rolled.
So what do we say?
The tramp looked at me. Then he composed his face in sorrow and joined his hands in prayer.
For what we are about to receive we thank thee Lord, he said. No that’s not right, he said. Hang on.
I could see he was thinking because he was chewing. I suspected he was moving his upper false teeth around. After a bit he coughed and then coughed again and said, Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, an is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he flieth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we be in death.
I stared at him. I was crying. Where did that come from?
C. of E., he said, my old dad was a vicar wasn’t he?
Your old dad was a vicar?
Why I don’t go in houses see, I got issues.
Because your dad was a vicar?
Oh yes.
My husband left me penniless, I said.
The tramp nodded at me. I like a nice chat, he said. Get things off my chest. It’s good that.
But he looked worried. He took a step backwards. He held his hand out low and flat like he was patting a child’s head.
Idle hands, he said, get on with it.
I was still holding the urn. It was surprisingly light. Is that all we come down to? I was thinking this was better than he deserved. My late husband, accountant, investor extraordinaire, hopeless case. Maybe it was better than I deserved myself. I remembered a time when we were courting. Down here at the river. We had a cardboard box of Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken. I could identify the actual spot a few hundred yards along the quay. A crow and a seagull were arguing over something. We ate the chicken facing each other, sitting on the wall like people sitting on horses. I met him at a disco. He was a smooth talker. The tide was in that time. And it was the night. I confess I was happy to have hooked a fast talker, a man with ambition. I remember he explained the stock market to me. Greasy kisses too.
Chuck it in missus, the tramp said. Get on with it.
He pointed at the urn. He was agitated, I could see that. He didn’t like me changing my mind.
I don’t want to.
Now he was shifting from foot to foot as if he was running in place but he wasn’t lifting his feet. He was looking around him. There was a thread of spit on his chin. Then he said, Discipline discipline discipline, that’s what makes a man, self-discipline yes. We had a nice house. We had a disused tennis court.
Your dad?
We had a flush WC didn’t we? He used to come in my room very late very late and examine the sheets. ‘Forgive, O Lord, for Thy dear Son, The ill that I this day have done.’ What if I fell asleep? Where was my mum you ask?
He walked away. I watched him going along the street. He was still talking. He was waving his hands. I could see he was arguing. He didn’t sit on his bench. He turned a corner. I felt I had let him down.
The sun was sinking behind buildings.
I opened the urn. It was a screw-cap. I tipped the ashes out, and the wind took them up. The ashes were a pale yellow colour. There was a man on the other bank watching me. He blessed himself. The ashes blew out along the river, and the tide carried them upstream. They were headed for the country. Ashes and paper. Like someone had thrown a fire away.
How I Beat the Devil
Paul Murray
I was ten years old when I first met the Devil, in a small village in the south-west of Ireland. My family was on holidays there; he was renting the cottage down the road from ours.
My parents were geologists, and our summer destinations were always chosen for their geological interest. If you think you can imagine a more potent recipe for boredom, then you don’t know geologists: you don’t know the endless hours of pleasure they can derive from looking at rocks, or the lengths they’ll go to find them. The so-called holiday was a daily field trip into the hills, and I, of course, was press-ganged into coming along.
In previous years I hadn’t minded; I’d traipsed along happily beside them, with my bucket and my magnifying glass. But ten is a funny age. Adolescence is still just over the horizon; nevertheless, something has changed. The glister of magic has gone from the world; it has become resistant, obdurate, like a friend that, without explanation, suddenly stops talking to you. Home seems to offer nothing but limitations, and extended periods of time spent with one’s parents no longer have the same unqualified allure – particularly if they revolve around what my mother called ‘some of the most interesting pre-Cambrian lithologies in Europe’. That week, standing around in the rain while my parents chipped at the ground with small metallic instruments, I had for the first time an overpowering wish to be somewhere else.
I knew that to tell my father I was bored would only provoke him. My father didn’t believe in boredom; he said boredom was an illusion that existed only in the minds of lazy people. Instead, when we came back to the cottage for lunch, I told them I had a sore tummy and was going to lie down. They were concerned, of course, and wanted to stay with me. But I persuaded them to go back to their work. The sun had come out at last, and the pre-Cambrian lithologies were just up the road; they could see our cottage from the hill. All right, they said, just for an hour. Through the window I watched them walk back up the lane, already lost in conversation. Then I threw off my bedcovers. I went to the back door and stood on the step, breathing in the rain. I was free.
Unless you wanted to dig up rocks, however, in this particular village freedom was of limited value. There were a couple of pubs, a shop that didn’t sell comics, a few fields of cows. There were various scenic vistas, but nothing that did anything. For an hour I wandered back and forth with a gathering sense of frustration. The trees dripped emptily, the placid chomping of the cows seemed to mock my impatience. I could hear my father’s voice in my head, telling me Everything is interesting if you look at it long enough; but I could find no purchase on this damp Arcadia, no matter how long I looked, so I gave up and went back to the cottage.
Things weren’t much better here: the TV only had one channel, and wouldn’t work with my video console. The meagreness of my own company was really beginning to distress me, and I was thinking seriously about rejoining my parents on the hill, when in a drawer in the living
room, I found a box of marbles. Although in entertainment terms these were only a marginal improvement on rocks, I seized on them without hesitation. I went out onto the lane and began to play, me against me; that’s what I was doing when the Devil came sauntering along. He stopped and watched me play for a while, and then said, ‘Wotcher.’
I knew right away who he was – knew in a strange precognitive way, the way you might arriving at some place of your ancestors, which although you’ve never been there before at once starts up an inner machinery, a series of calls and responses that fly back and forth through the silence. I wasn’t scared, but if I’d had hackles, they would have stood up. This was the old Enemy, there was no doubt about it. Still, I could see in his eyes the same rural boredom I was suffering myself: so when he asked if he could join the game for a moment, I said yes.
He cheated from the very first throw, but with such dazzling artistry that I didn’t say a word. As well as standard magicianly stuff, sleight of hand and marbles up the sleeve, he made full use of his supernatural powers. For instance, if he was on the brink of certain defeat, he’d pretend to cough and turn his threatened steelie into a worthless threesie – or a frog, or a butterfly, that would hop or flutter away; he’d alter the gradient of the road so my marble rolled off harmlessly into a tuft of grass; sometimes, when he missed a shot, he’d momentarily accelerate the revolution of the earth, creating a G-force that would cause his marble to U-turn back into mine. He made no attempt to disguise his chicanery; I wondered if he even knew he was doing it, if he realised there were rules he was flagrantly ignoring. I didn’t care: it was definitely the most interesting thing I’d seen on this holiday, and anyway at the end of the game he gave me back all the marbles he’d won from me.
After that we went into the village and bought Cokes, then went wandering down the laneways while he told me about famous figures from the past who’d sold him their souls. ‘I mean many of the names you’d expect,’ he said. ‘No one’s going to be shocked to hear Genghis Khan got rid of his soul pretty early on. But there are others in there who would really surprise you. Great leaders, thinkers, pillars of the community. People you’d feel ought to have much more of an insight into the whole thing.’
‘Why would someone sell their soul?’
‘Various reasons. Power, fame, a place in history. Frankly it’s a bitch to get into history without selling your soul.’
‘Why would they want a place in history?’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s the biggest thing they can get in exchange for their souls.’
There seemed an unsatisfying circularity to this, but before I could question him further, or ask who Genghis Khan was, he’d stopped in his tracks and was pointing at the cows in the field. ‘Will you look at these f—ing things?’
I looked at them. I couldn’t see anything extraordinary about the cows. ‘That’s my point. They just stand around all day long, chewing f—ing grass.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Their lives are f—d, that’s what’s wrong. Their lives are f—d, and they don’t even care!’ He picked up a stick and threw it at the small brindled group nearest us. ‘The f—ing farmer is going to turn you into burgers, you c—ts!’ The cows lumbered away from the stick with the minimum possible effort, resumed their rumination with their filthy tails turned to us.
‘C—ts,’ the Devil said again.
Something happened when he swore – which was often, particularly when around cows, whose peacefulness and satisfaction with their lot he seemed to take as a personal affront; the words came out muffled or smudged, like rap songs when they’re played on the radio, as if he was being censored or redacted as he spoke. I wanted to ask him about it, but I also felt it might be a sensitive subject, like a handicap.
Initially my parents were uneasy about this new association with the man from the neighbouring cottage. Then one evening the Devil called over on the pretext of borrowing a torch. He told them his name was Dave, and he worked for an oil exploration company; he feigned astonishment when he heard they were geologists, and asked if they were interested in pre-Cambrian lithologies at all. It was like watching an expert criminal pick a lock: with a handful of well-chosen questions, he had completely disarmed them. For the rest of the night, I watched as my parents jabbered away to him not only about fissures, tectonic movements, developments in the industry but also their own hopes and dreams – awards, grant applications, university contracts, things they had never spoken of to me. Desire made their eyes shine: suddenly they looked much younger, almost like children.
They must have wondered how ‘Dave’ knew so much about what it was like here six hundred thousand years ago; they must have had some inkling of who he really was, the same way I had. But perhaps adults are less attentive to the voices that murmur within – or maybe the way he lied, like the way he cheated at marbles, was so entrancing, so intoxicating, that they simply stopped caring it wasn’t true. His lies were better than truth; truth, by comparison, became something dowdy and tired and limited, like an ancient TV set with only one channel. He had the same effect on everybody. Even the taciturn locals lit up when he came into a room. It was as if he could jump at will into their heads, see through their eyes; he could intuit exactly what it was they wanted, the specific lacks and yearnings that gave them traction on the world, he could understand. That was the men; their wives, like my mother, and every other woman I saw cross his path, just simpered and giggled and twirled their hair.
One day I called to his cottage. There was no answer when I knocked, so I just went in. The Devil was watching one of those afternoon quiz shows. He seemed to know the answer to every question. ‘AQUARIUM! It’s staring you right in the face, you stupid b—d!’
‘You should enter one of those things,’ I said. ‘You’d be good. You might win, even.’
‘I’m banned,’ the Devil said darkly.
His cottage was disappointing. I had imagined a cockatrice, a three-headed dog, at the very least a few chalk pentacles scrawled on the floor, but other than some pictures of his friends from Hell, all shiny-faced and smiling, stuck to the fridge, and a slightly less antiquated television, it was exactly the same as the one rented by my family. The dullness of it nagged at me, and, after sitting on the couch for a minute or two, I asked him a question that had been on my mind for some time. What was he doing in West Cork?
‘I’m on holiday,’ the Devil said.
‘On holiday?’
‘My doctor prescribed a two-week holiday. For my ulcer.’
‘Ulcer?’
‘It’s something you get when people keep repeating everything you say,’ he said, rather shortly.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘But why did you come here? Why didn’t you go somewhere nice, like the Algarve? Or Disney World?’ For these were the places my friends, whose parents were not geologists, had gone to this summer.
‘It’s contractual,’ he said, then, seeing my blank look, expanded: ‘On business, I can go wherever I want. The Algarve, Disney World, under the sea, wherever. But leisure, that’s a different story. When it comes to my own time, “purgatorial” is as much as I’m allowed. Unimaginative, middle-of-the-road restaurants. A two-drink limit in bars. Holidays in places like this. That’s the contract.’
‘I didn’t think you’d have a contract,’ I said. I meant it in a flattering way, but it seemed to annoy him even more. ‘Of course I have a contract. You think I do this for the good of my health? You think I want an ulcer?’
‘No, but it’s sort of funny when you think about it. Isn’t it?’
‘I don’t find it particularly funny.’
‘Well, you know,’ even as I said them I knew the words weren’t coming out right, but I kept going anyway, ‘you having an ulcer and getting stressed and stuff, when you’re the one responsible for everything being like this in the first place.’
‘Ha!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh sure, I’m responsible! I invented war, and smog, and telemarketing!
And ulcers too, why not?’
‘What I mean is,’ I tried to make it sound as non-judgemental as I could, ‘you’re the one who got us banished from the Garden of Eden, which you just did because you got kicked out of Heaven, for the sin of Pride—’
‘F—!’ he yelled, springing off the couch. For the next few minutes he stormed around the room, swearing and gesticulating. Finally he returned to me. ‘The “sin of Pride”,’ he repeated contemptuously. ‘Let me tell you a few things about that little episode. God . . . God is not what you’d call reasonable. God is not a pleasant person to have to deal with. It’s very sad to meet an omnipotent being who is such a petty man.’ He frowned. ‘You’ve probably heard the saying, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”?’
This was new to me – my mother always made my lunch, and to this point hadn’t charged – but I didn’t want to interrupt, so I nodded.
‘Well, that’s God all over. Every little thing he’d do for you, he’d want something in return. Worship me. Sing my praises. Unless everyone’s constantly telling him how great he is he throws a tantrum. Dare to suggest you might occasionally like some time on your own and the next thing you know you’re out on your ear.’ I must have looked doubtful, because he said next, ‘Look at the Flood, for instance. He gets out on the wrong side of bed one morning and out of pure pique he practically destroys his entire Creation. Is that the kind of mentality you want in the guy running the show?’
‘He did invent a rainbow afterwards,’ I remembered.
‘Yeah, I’m sure all the annihilated rabbits and anteaters and whatever other completely blameless animals really appreciated that. A big multicoloured metaphor, thanks a million. That totally makes our needless deaths worthwhile.’
‘So . . .’ this time I put the question together in my head first, ‘all the bad things that happen are God’s fault? Not yours?’
The Devil began to reply, then stopped. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m not claiming to be a saint. But all I do is give people what they want. They ask, and I give it to them. When’s the last time God gave you something you asked for?’