Fairytales of Dublin

Aoife awoke from the nightmare, calmly. Had it been a nightmare at all? Her body was certainly not gripped in the terrors of someone who had just been hagridden. She hadn't meant to fall asleep but her weariness had overwhelmed her. She despised it so - the reminder that she could be betrayed by her own body; that there were things she could not make it do and things which she could not prevent it from doing. In her dream, she recalled, she had been walking down a large, looming avenue. Something about it seemed familiar - like a picture-postcard -but she knew she had never been there before. It was wide and cobbled with many handsome, ornate buildings on each side of around five stories each and, curiously, each with a great many circular windows and, even more curiously, each with one large circle door. The sky above the avenue was a bold and vivid navy blue, unlike any other blue she had seen before, with streaks of pale, pink cloud like a volley of streamers above the street. Most peculiarly, though, there were giant, white bulbs of light floating lazily above - like pendant lights unconnected by chain and unpowered by anything. Surrounding Aoife on the avenue, as she walked alone, were a great many of curious, fantastical and horrific scenes. Behind her she heard a perpetual marching of booted feet trampling, and crushing, what she intuitively knew to be human bone. To her right there lay a dying pig - its face a rotting mess already infested with maggots as it squealed feebly. To her left, kneeling on the pavement there were two people - a vagabond man in tatty clothing who was bleeding from the mouth as he ate from the ground fragments of a broken whiskey bottle; and a skeletal woman wearing one torn, misshaped cut of fabric which hung immodestly from one shoulder exposing her loose skin and protruding bones as she hungrily fed handfuls of mud into her toothless mouth; ahead of Aoife - in the direction she headed there were two things. The first thing she noticed of the two, although it was farther down the avenue than the other, was a small white elephant. At this distance, the elephant could almost be mistaken for another floating bulb. Aoife wanted too reach him, and to touch him. He looked so alone up there, and she wanted to take care of him. As she quickened her pace this when she noticed the second thing. 'Thing' was the only way she could bring herself to refer to it. It was a small, pasty, hairless animal covered in blood and a thick mucus like substance. Its squeals were infinitely more jarring than the pig's and, it was only at the sight of this helpless animal wailing that she began to really notice the horror of everything else. She walked forward, still, shaking with fear but not fear of the feeble, crying animal. That, she knew, would be at peace soon. It would breathe its last breath and give up - no more pain. It was, in fact, the white elephant she was scared of, despite her compulsions to go to them. Somehow, she knew, that the white elephant would stay with her all her life and that terrified her. She glanced between the two creatures and pondered how unfair it all was. There was no redeemable value in either of them. If she went to the elephant, she knew she could never come back to the dying animal and what if the elephant didn't like her? What if she ruined his life by going to him? Think of all the pain she was capable of inflicting on him by merely walking with him down this avenue - through all of its horrors and anguish. And, of the dying animal, she thought, the only kind thing she could do for it would be to kill it now.

   Aoife left her warm bed and knelt before the large window, in her time room on Mary Street above Miss Nagles' butcher shop, breathing elongated breaths through her mouth with her nose pressed against the cold glass. She could see, peripherally, the condensation from her breath creep across the window, spreading its misty veneer , and then quickly retreating into itself-as if she were sucking it back into her steadily heaving lungs. Miss Nagles, as well as being Aoife's employer was her landlady, and a mean-spirited auld witch - such was the consensus of everyone who knew her. At her demand, it was lights out by nine o'clock every evening, and this is why - behind Aoife, atop the small breakfast table - there was a seven-pronged candelabrum burning.

   It illuminated Aiofe's room well, flooding the cramped, dusty bedsit in orange, flickering light. There was , apart from the table, a brass single bed with a trunk at its foot, an armoire and a handsome walnut bookshelf  - the only item of furniture which was not in complete ruin; did not threaten to collapse or crumble every time she put it to use. As much as she admired the bookcase, its contents - all of which she had fed into it - were what she really cared for. Her thoughts turned to William Fitzpatrick and she rose with a spring to her knees. The creaking floorboards pierced through the gentle sounds the candles burning.

   Aoife anticipated what was to happen next and, sure enough, it came: the familiar sound of Miss Nagles' broom thudding against the wall.  Aoife stood perefectly still as she listened to the auld lady's muffled, but still shrill and serrated, screeches berating through ther wall, accompanied by the pitter-patter of dust and plaster-chips snowing down upon her. She imagined she was in a snow globe - an idyllic fairytale scene, just waiting to be shaken. A pang of dread jolted Aoife as she thought this. She still hadn't decided whether or not she was going to see the woman. To take her mind from this tormenting thought she gingerly crept towards her bookshelf and examined its contents : the yellowing paperbacks, the matchstick Eiffel Tower, the oak crucifix, the music box, the paisley shawl, the ornate Oriental cigarette case - to name a few. All of these things had been given to her by William Fitzpatrick- a thieving, lying, no-good bastard by trade but a sweetheart in his private life. He was gone for good, now: arrested in Marseille for impersonating a priest and scamming hunreds of pounds. 

It had reduced Aoife to the brink of weeping for days- not because she has loved William: quite frankly she did not, and nether did he love her. William simply felt that his sins would be more easily forgiven if they were commited for someone else. It was sinful, though; there was no getting around that. 



She picked up the matchstick eiffel towerwith delicate hands. It was last spring when William visited paris. he took lodgings in the latin quarter and, under guise of a famous rich priest; he sold tonics and oils, promising eternity in a bottle, holy water, charms and medallions: he pefromed all manner of arcane ceremonies . Most of his patrons were ageing bohemians , startled by their own mortality, and poor, struggling Spaniards in such dire, miserable circumstances that he have no choice but to plead to God. William would tell stories to these people about his miracles back home. Aoife asked him once, "How can you tell all these lies?" William replied without hesitation - which led Aoife to believe that he had spun this yarn before (perhaps even to himself). "They're not lies", he said, "they're my fairytales. My fairtytales of Dublin". It was a perfectly nice thing to say, Aoife had thought, especially if you believe it.

   Aoife sat down at the edge of the bed and, after fidgeting for a while, clasped her hands on her stomach. She could feel her weepiness bubbling up again. It was true, William Fitzpatrick was a sinner, and so was she. She wondered, was there still time to repent? What about after tomorrow, if she decided to visit the woman? She pressed her clenched fist against her stomach, willing herself to burst. Too tense and agitated to remain seated, she stepped over to the bookshelf. She only half-heartedly considered reading knowing truthfully that she simply wouldn't be able to take the words in. From the little row of neatly aligned spines a few names caught her eye - Grimm, Anderson, Lang, Wilde Perrault. Once a wonderful experience - a true comfort to immerse herself in - but now the thought of reading them made her nausceous. She took down the crucifix and, with it held close to her bosom like a baby, she knelt by the window again. The candelabrums glow ensured that Aoife could see almost nothing of Marys Street below and only her own pale, frightened face and in the far distance the spire of the church. How strange it is to consider, she thought, that the woman she would meet tomorrow - if she did indeed decide to meet her - was out there somewhere, perhaps even looking up at the spire, too. How can she sleep tonight, or any other night, for that matter? It made Aoife's feel faint when she remembered that the woman only meets girls at night. She was probably meeting one now. Fingering the healthy wooden cross her thoughts turned Christ's execution. She thought of the Roman spear, penetrating his abdomen, sliding into his flesh - intimate and violating. She wondered, did he wimper like the dying pig from her dream? Did he wail like the dying animal? Or was he tranquil, like the white elephant, unknowing of pain - left alone in the distance, untouched: no agony, though nor any affection. Just quiet existence. She imagined the spearhead becoming snagged on some organ, muscle or tumour within the torso. The roman yanking his instrument out and with it, a squeaing, black and purple, pulsating mass. Aoife began hyperventalating  and pulled at her collar. The top three buttons shot across the floor like bullets, rattling like marbles. Miss Nagle could have been wailing and whacking the wall but Aoife was in such a state of anxiety that she couldn't take notice of anything out with herself. The image of Christ having the mass torn out from the smooth, shallow slit on his body would not leave her head. "It never happened", she said, "those are just fairytales." She raised a hand to her mouth and tried to drown the conflict in her head. What had she meant by 'fairtytale'? It was true, though, she thought. William Fitzpatrick went to prison for selling eternity in a bottle. His only crime was not selling it in a book - "a book of fairtytales" she said aloud - fighting every burning desire to take it back, to fall asleep and run to the white elephant.

   She tore at her clothes as her ears rung with the wailing, dying animal from her dream. "Take it back", she pleaded - hands clasped in prayer. "Take the poor creature back, I'll take the white elephant, God, please." Aoife thrashed and writhedand, suddenly, vomited on the window something like porter. Still clutching her crucifix, realising in that moment that she had made up her mind, she lost her breath completely and passed out.

   She awoke soon after and, without the light emanating from the candles anymore, she could now see through the glass of her window and onto Mary Street. Aoife peered out over the town and wondered, how can that woman out there justify her sins, as William justified his? Was charity her shield? Or was her life just a fairytale, too. She began to weep and prayed: "What am I to choose, Lord?". The horror in her bones was unbearable. Nothing would be the same after tomorrow. She took a deep breath and stifled the tears. She pulled herself up with all the grace and bravery she could feign. She looked out, once more, upon Mary street but did not see it. Instead, she saw the avenue from her dreams: the blue sky, the pink clouds, the floating bulbs and the handsome buildings but sans the horrific sights and ghastly sounds. In pleading desperation she looked up to the top of the street hoping to see the white elephant but, alas, just as she had known all along, it was the dying, frail animal lying on the road only, its wails echoing all the way to Aoife's room. That's when Aoife saw her for the first time - the woman who she was told to meet with tomorrow. The woman was haggard and bent as she walked out onto the dreamy avenue and lifted the dying animal. She held it close to her bosom and the wailing muffled before fading as she waved up to Aoife's window and crept off, animal in arms, down a jaunty alley shooting off of the avenue. At last, there was silence; and there was fog; and Aoife thought that the avenue and the woman both looked like a fairytale. Like Rumplestiltskin.