A Painful Case Page #3

"A Painful Case" is a short story contained within James Joyce's acclaimed collection "Dubliners." The story revolves around Mr. Duffy, a man leading a life of rigid routines and solitude. His life takes a turn after he forms an intellectual and emotional bond with Mrs. Sinico, a married woman. When their friendship inching towards a romance disrupts his structured life, Duffy abruptly ends their relationship. Years later, he learns about Mrs. Sinico's tragic death, which forces him into a confrontation with his own loneliness and the pain caused by his inability to connect deeply with others.

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crossing the lines late at night from platform to platform and, in view
of certain other circumstances of the case, he did not think the
railway officials were to blame.

Captain Sinico, of Leoville, Sydney Parade, husband of the deceased,
also gave evidence. He stated that the deceased was his wife. He was
not in Dublin at the time of the accident as he had arrived only that
morning from Rotterdam. They had been married for twenty-two years and
had lived happily until about two years ago when his wife began to be
rather intemperate in her habits.

Miss Mary Sinico said that of late her mother had been in the habit of
going out at night to buy spirits. She, witness, had often tried to
reason with her mother and had induced her to join a league. She was
not at home until an hour after the accident. The jury returned a
verdict in accordance with the medical evidence and exonerated Lennon
from all blame.

The Deputy Coroner said it was a most painful case, and expressed great
sympathy with Captain Sinico and his daughter. He urged on the railway
company to take strong measures to prevent the possibility of similar
accidents in the future. No blame attached to anyone.

Mr Duffy raised his eyes from the paper and gazed out of his window on
the cheerless evening landscape. The river lay quiet beside the empty
distillery and from time to time a light appeared in some house on the
Lucan road. What an end! The whole narrative of her death revolted him
and it revolted him to think that he had ever spoken to her of what he
held sacred. The threadbare phrases, the inane expressions of sympathy,
the cautious words of a reporter won over to conceal the details of a
commonplace vulgar death attacked his stomach. Not merely had she
degraded herself; she had degraded him. He saw the squalid tract of her
vice, miserable and malodorous. His soul’s companion! He thought of the
hobbling wretches whom he had seen carrying cans and bottles to be
filled by the barman. Just God, what an end! Evidently she had been
unfit to live, without any strength of purpose, an easy prey to habits,
one of the wrecks on which civilisation has been reared. But that she
could have sunk so low! Was it possible he had deceived himself so
utterly about her? He remembered her outburst of that night and
interpreted it in a harsher sense than he had ever done. He had no
difficulty now in approving of the course he had taken.

As the light failed and his memory began to wander he thought her hand
touched his. The shock which had first attacked his stomach was now
attacking his nerves. He put on his overcoat and hat quickly and went
out. The cold air met him on the threshold; it crept into the sleeves
of his coat. When he came to the public-house at Chapelizod Bridge he
went in and ordered a hot punch.

The proprietor served him obsequiously but did not venture to talk.
There were five or six workingmen in the shop discussing the value of a
gentleman’s estate in County Kildare. They drank at intervals from
their huge pint tumblers and smoked, spitting often on the floor and
sometimes dragging the sawdust over their spits with their heavy boots.
Mr Duffy sat on his stool and gazed at them, without seeing or hearing
them. After a while they went out and he called for another punch. He
sat a long time over it. The shop was very quiet. The proprietor
sprawled on the counter reading the Herald and yawning. Now and again
a tram was heard swishing along the lonely road outside.

As he sat there, living over his life with her and evoking alternately
the two images in which he now conceived her, he realised that she was
dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a memory. He
began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have
done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he
could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him
best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how
lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that
room. His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to
exist, became a memory—if anyone remembered him.

It was after nine o’clock when he left the shop. The night was cold and
gloomy. He entered the Park by the first gate and walked along under
the gaunt trees. He walked through the bleak alleys where they had
walked four years before. She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At
moments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his.
He stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he
sentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.

When he gained the crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked
along the river towards Dublin, the lights of which burned redly and
hospitably in the cold night. He looked down the slope and, at the
base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures
lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed
the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life’s
feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her
life and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame.
He knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him
and wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life’s
feast. He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river, winding along
towards Dublin. Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of
Kingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the
darkness, obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight;
but still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine
reiterating the syllables of her name.

He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding
in his ears. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He
halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not
feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He
waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was
perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he
was alone.
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