The Dead Page #7

"The Dead" is not a standalone book but is the final short story in James Joyce's collection, "Dubliners". This story follows the protagonist Gabriel Conroy through a Christmas season feast, where he grapples with issues of identity and Irish Nationalism. The narrative culminates with Gabriel's profound emotional epiphany about love, mortality and the continuity of life and death, invoked by hearing about his wife's past lover who died young.

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“Very well,” said Gabriel amiably, as he took another preparatory
draught, “kindly forget my existence, ladies and gentlemen, for a few
minutes.”

He set to his supper and took no part in the conversation with which
the table covered Lily’s removal of the plates. The subject of talk was
the opera company which was then at the Theatre Royal. Mr Bartell
D’Arcy, the tenor, a dark-complexioned young man with a smart
moustache, praised very highly the leading contralto of the company but
Miss Furlong thought she had a rather vulgar style of production.
Freddy Malins said there was a negro chieftain singing in the second
part of the Gaiety pantomime who had one of the finest tenor voices he
had ever heard.

“Have you heard him?” he asked Mr Bartell D’Arcy across the table.

“No,” answered Mr Bartell D’Arcy carelessly.

“Because,” Freddy Malins explained, “now I’d be curious to hear your
opinion of him. I think he has a grand voice.”

“It takes Teddy to find out the really good things,” said Mr Browne
familiarly to the table.

“And why couldn’t he have a voice too?” asked Freddy Malins sharply.
“Is it because he’s only a black?”

Nobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the
legitimate opera. One of her pupils had given her a pass for Mignon.
Of course it was very fine, she said, but it made her think of poor
Georgina Burns. Mr Browne could go back farther still, to the old
Italian companies that used to come to Dublin—Tietjens, Ilma de Murzka,
Campanini, the great Trebelli, Giuglini, Ravelli, Aramburo. Those were
the days, he said, when there was something like singing to be heard in
Dublin. He told too of how the top gallery of the old Royal used to be
packed night after night, of how one night an Italian tenor had sung
five encores to Let me like a Soldier fall, introducing a high C
every time, and of how the gallery boys would sometimes in their
enthusiasm unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great prima
donna and pull her themselves through the streets to her hotel. Why
did they never play the grand old operas now, he asked, Dinorah,
Lucrezia Borgia? Because they could not get the voices to sing them:
that was why.

“Oh, well,” said Mr Bartell D’Arcy, “I presume there are as good
singers today as there were then.”

“Where are they?” asked Mr Browne defiantly.

“In London, Paris, Milan,” said Mr Bartell D’Arcy warmly. “I suppose
Caruso, for example, is quite as good, if not better than any of the
men you have mentioned.”

“Maybe so,” said Mr Browne. “But I may tell you I doubt it strongly.”

“O, I’d give anything to hear Caruso sing,” said Mary Jane.

“For me,” said Aunt Kate, who had been picking a bone, “there was only
one tenor. To please me, I mean. But I suppose none of you ever heard
of him.”

“Who was he, Miss Morkan?” asked Mr Bartell D’Arcy politely.

“His name,” said Aunt Kate, “was Parkinson. I heard him when he was in
his prime and I think he had then the purest tenor voice that was ever
put into a man’s throat.”

“Strange,” said Mr Bartell D’Arcy. “I never even heard of him.”

“Yes, yes, Miss Morkan is right,” said Mr Browne. “I remember hearing
of old Parkinson but he’s too far back for me.”

“A beautiful pure sweet mellow English tenor,” said Aunt Kate with
enthusiasm.

Gabriel having finished, the huge pudding was transferred to the table.
The clatter of forks and spoons began again. Gabriel’s wife served out
spoonfuls of the pudding and passed the plates down the table. Midway
down they were held up by Mary Jane, who replenished them with
raspberry or orange jelly or with blancmange and jam. The pudding was
of Aunt Julia’s making and she received praises for it from all
quarters. She herself said that it was not quite brown enough.

“Well, I hope, Miss Morkan,” said Mr Browne, “that I’m brown enough for
you because, you know, I’m all brown.”

All the gentlemen, except Gabriel, ate some of the pudding out of
compliment to Aunt Julia. As Gabriel never ate sweets the celery had
been left for him. Freddy Malins also took a stalk of celery and ate it
with his pudding. He had been told that celery was a capital thing for
the blood and he was just then under doctor’s care. Mrs Malins, who had
been silent all through the supper, said that her son was going down to
Mount Melleray in a week or so. The table then spoke of Mount Melleray,
how bracing the air was down there, how hospitable the monks were and
how they never asked for a penny-piece from their guests.

“And do you mean to say,” asked Mr Browne incredulously, “that a chap
can go down there and put up there as if it were a hotel and live on
the fat of the land and then come away without paying anything?”

“O, most people give some donation to the monastery when they leave.”
said Mary Jane.

“I wish we had an institution like that in our Church,” said Mr Browne
candidly.

He was astonished to hear that the monks never spoke, got up at two in
the morning and slept in their coffins. He asked what they did it for.

“That’s the rule of the order,” said Aunt Kate firmly.

“Yes, but why?” asked Mr Browne.

Aunt Kate repeated that it was the rule, that was all. Mr Browne still
seemed not to understand. Freddy Malins explained to him, as best he
could, that the monks were trying to make up for the sins committed by
all the sinners in the outside world. The explanation was not very
clear for Mr Browne grinned and said:

“I like that idea very much but wouldn’t a comfortable spring bed do
them as well as a coffin?”

“The coffin,” said Mary Jane, “is to remind them of their last end.”

As the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in a silence of the
table during which Mrs Malins could be heard saying to her neighbour in
an indistinct undertone:

“They are very good men, the monks, very pious men.”

The raisins and almonds and figs and apples and oranges and chocolates
and sweets were now passed about the table and Aunt Julia invited all
the guests to have either port or sherry. At first Mr Bartell D’Arcy
refused to take either but one of his neighbours nudged him and
whispered something to him upon which he allowed his glass to be
filled. Gradually as the last glasses were being filled the
conversation ceased. A pause followed, broken only by the noise of the
wine and by unsettlings of chairs. The Misses Morkan, all three, looked
down at the tablecloth. Someone coughed once or twice and then a few
gentlemen patted the table gently as a signal for silence. The silence
came and Gabriel pushed back his chair.

The patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased
altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth
and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he
raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune
and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door.

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