Here Are the Young Men (18 page)

‘Don't kid yourself,' he said. ‘Part of you, the
honest
part of you, would love nothin more than if I went and topped meself. That'd be excitin, that would be a good story to tell people, it would make ye more interestin. Something to tell girls to make them fall for ye: “Oh, it's rough, me friend hanged himself.” You'd love it if I went and killed meself.'

I
looked away.

‘Just as I would love it if you went and did yourself in,' he added.

‘Fuck off, Rez,' I said. ‘I was only tryin to talk to ye. I won't bother any more.'

‘Yeah, well don't fuckin bother,' he sneered. ‘All I asked was what ye thought of the music.'

‘It's not music, it's just noise. Anyone can make a racket like that, and then just stick on the worst quotes ye can find. It's just fuckin lazy.'

‘It's not lazy. It's just honest. That's the only way to get through to people any more and make them feel something. Everything else is just some fuckin false memory that ye get from a car ad or somethin. Do ye know what I mean?'

‘No.'

‘I mean, like, ye can't trust anything else, emotional songs or melodies or anything like that, anything with feelin in it, cos it's all part of the system, it's all been fed to ye by these fuckers who only want ye to keep consumin things and not cause a fuss and …'

He frowned, angry at not being able to articulate himself better. I glowered at him, hurt and furious, relishing his confusion.

I said, ‘It sounds to me like you hardly know what you're talkin about, Rez. You're inventin some political statement or whatever just as an excuse to make something dead vicious. It's just cruel, that's all it is. You're just wallowin in all this misery and hidin behind some concept. That music is more like something Kearney would make. Maybe you're not that different from him. At least Kearney is honest about what he's into.'

The comparison incensed him. ‘Well fuck you then, why don't you fuck off and make something decent, since it's so easy for you to criticize?'

‘Fuck off yourself.'

I remained in my seat, tense and shocked. We had never fought like this before.

‘
I'll go then,' I said.

‘Yeah, off ye go,' he replied.

‘Thanks for the smoke,' I said, ridiculously.

I was out the door and thirty metres down the road when I heard him racing after me. He caught up with me, panting.

‘Listen, I'm sorry Matthew. I'm sorry man. I didn't mean it, I just felt a bit, I don't know, insulted or something, or trapped.'

Now there was something pathetic to him. I had the sense that he really didn't want me to go, and that if I did, it would be disastrous.

I sighed. ‘Look, forget about it. Ye can't be talkin to me like that, though. I was only askin ye if you were alright.'

His face darkened like he was going to snap again. ‘I am alright,' he said, but then he made a visible effort to smile and soften his tone. ‘Look, come on back to the gaff, we'll have another spliff. I'll nick some of me da's vodka and we can have a drink. I'm sorry man, I was just bein fuckin ridiculous.'

We walked back to his house together. Rez actually seemed to lighten up a bit after that. He even made a few jokes and did impressions of some of the teachers, like in the old days. He flailed his gangly limbs about while telling an anecdote from the couch, and after a while he had me cracking up, like there wasn't a thing in the world wrong with him, and our nasty argument of earlier seemed to be forgotten about completely.

We listened to Nine Inch Nails and Orbital and played a game of
Zero: Retribution
(Rez had borrowed the game from Kearney while he was in the States). An hour before his ma came back we opened the windows to air out the room and get rid of the hash smell. He poured some tap water into the vodka bottle, refilling it to where it was before we'd started lashing into it. Then I said goodbye and walked home, stoned and drunk, thoughtful and confused at once.

29
|
Matthew

I didn't call Jen after what had happened in her bedroom. The thoughts of it filled me with such shame, I couldn't bear to face her again. Besides, I had no doubt that she was secretly hoping I'd leave her alone – who would want to stay with a guy who couldn't please a woman?

On Thursday evening I was sitting in my room, looking out the window, worrying myself into depression over my penile affliction. My mobile started ringing. I looked at the screen: it was her. I placed the phone back down on the desk beside my bed and let it ring. Eventually it stopped, only to start again a few seconds later. After it had rung out for the second time, it didn't ring any more.

       

The next day I phoned Scag. I wasn't sure if he had meant it when he'd said to give him a shout sometime, but today I couldn't sit at home and wallow. I needed to be out, getting annihilated and forgetting all this crap. It was too miserable.

‘
Story, Matthew,' said Scag when he picked up. ‘Good to hear from ye, bud. Are ye lookin for a few yokes, is it? I'm afraid there's a bit of a drought on at the moment, sunshine. What about a bit of speed?'

‘Em, the thing is, I wasn't actually lookin for any pills. I was just, ye know, givin ye a shout, seein if ye wanted to, like, meet up or something.'

There was a pause, then Scag said, ‘Sure thing bud. We should meet up for a bit of a chinwag, have an oul smoke, see if we can get to the bottom of this thing once and for all, know wharray mean?' He laughed like Dustin the Turkey: ‘Hua hua hua.' There was something mad about him, but basically Scag seemed alright.

‘So what's the craic with ye these days, then?' he said. ‘Are ye still refusin to work?'

‘Actually I got a job. Just doin a few hours a week down in the garage around the corner from me. It's dead handy. The best thing about it is that I don't actually have to do any work. Or at least, I don't do any work.'

‘Fair enough, man, fair enough. Like I told ye, just don't get into bed for less than ye got out of it for. So c'mere, are ye doin a line these days?'

I was puzzled. ‘What, ye mean cocaine?'

‘No, no. Not cocaine, I mean, are ye seein a bird. Doin a line.'

‘Oh. Well, em, I was yeah, until recently. But it's, ah, I don't think it's goin anywhere.'

‘Ah well mate. Fishes in the sea and all that. Know wharray mean? But c'mere, I'm just here in town havin a smoke and a can with a few old pals.' I presumed he meant junkies or winos. ‘I'm in Dublin Castle. Stall it in and we'll have an oul chat.' He paused. Then, ‘Have ye got a few quid on ye for a can or two? I'm a little bit skint to be honest with ye.'

‘Yeah. Well, I mean, I can get a bit of drink … I'll jump on the bus now and see ye in there in half an hour.'

‘Grand, yeah. I'm wearin me gold suit and a top hat, so ye can't miss me.'

‘
Yeah?'

‘Yeah.' He cackled and I heard the old friends in the background guffaw along. Even their laughter sounded slurred. ‘C'mere Matthew,' he said, ‘I reckon we've been havin a bit of an Iraqi summer here in Dublin: it's a little bit Sunni, but mostly it's Shi'ite!' The chorus of laughter flared up again. It was cheering me up to talk to Scag.

I went upstairs to my bedroom and stuffed whatever money I could find into my pocket. Then I thought I could do with a little more – you never know where we might end up – and had a quick rummage in Fiona's room to see what I could borrow, but she never had any money because she was only fifteen and hadn't worked a day in her life. I gobbled a big bowl of Frosties to keep me going, then wrote a note to my parents saying I was going out and would more than likely stay with a friend. I put on a jumper and went to leave.

On the floor under the letterbox there was another postcard from Kearney. Fuck this, I thought, picking it up. The picture was of a little smiling girl with blonde hair, looking into the camera, full of trust and warmth, on the grass of some city park, next to monuments and a duck pond. I turned it over.

greetings infidel,

dry youre eyes Matt – ill be home very soon. Roll out the red carpet mofo. lissen man Ive' seen sumthing over here your not going to beLEAVE!!! trust me blood u aint never seen shit like this before. Ill tell u when i get back but put it this way it makes that stuff we seen with the little girl look like CHILDS PLAY!!!!

Dont trust Whitey

The Kronic

I shoved the postcard into the pocket of my jeans, and left.

       

Scag
was in the public gardens of Dublin Castle, by the big grassy circle outside the Chester Beatty Library that was designed to look like a Celtic symbol or something. As I approached I saw him standing beside a bench, engrossed in telling an anecdote to, as I had guessed, a pair of shabby alcos who sat on the bench and watched him. It was a warmish summer's day but Scag still wore the black, fingerless glove on his left hand he'd had last time, and the black leather jacket.

‘Ah Matthew, me oul flower,' he called when he saw me. ‘Nice to see ye again, man. I thought you'd left me behind in the world. Me more tender feelins were bein hurt.'

‘Yeah, I'm sure they were,' I said, laughing.

‘These are me mates, Patser and Alfred.'

I shook their hands, and Alfred, a grizzled, badly dishevelled wreck probably in his fifties, said in an almost genteel English accent, ‘Here ye go, lad. Get some of that into ya.' He passed me a flagon of cider and I drank some, worried about what kind of diseases swarmed on his cracked lips and gums, but not wanting to seem snobby. You probably had to allow for these things, hanging around with Scag.

Patser, the other alco, shook his head, coughed like there was a swamp in his throat and said through his beard, ‘So you've found another one to take under your wing, Scag. Some lost soul lookin for a father figure, is he? Ye never never learn. Pray God he doesn't end up like the last one.'

Scag looked at him, amused and about to say something. But just then, two tall, obviously foreign girls walked by, in their twenties and both beautiful. The two alcos and I just watched longingly as they passed. But Scag called to them: ‘How are yis doin, ladies?'

They looked back at him, unsure, not stopping but slowing down a little.

‘
Are yis havin a nice time?'

They nodded. One of them was frowning, but in a curious way, with a faint smirk on her face. The other one was trying to keep walking, but Scag saw his chance and consolidated the advantage.

‘Come on over, we don't bite, like. Where are yis from, girls? We were just havin a little smoke, sure come on and talk to us for a bit.'

Forced by common manners to reply to his question, the girls finally stopped walking.

‘Norway,' they said together.

‘Ah, Norway – the land of Mr Hans Christian Anderson, if I'm not mistaken. Would yis believe I used to live in Oslo?'

‘No,' said the more mistrusting of the two. She had a pale, smooth-skinned face and wavy blonde hair. She wore a white pullover and torn jeans. She was very stylish, I thought. Both of them were. Though not in the boring, fashion-victim way.

Grinning more openly her friend said, ‘Actually, Hans Christian Anderson was from Denmark.'

‘Oh yeah, of course!' said Scag, only fractionally discouraged. ‘I must have been thinkin of Knut Hamsun – now he's definitely Norwegian. Do yis know him? He wrote
Hunger
. It's a book about my life story; this lad comes to a foreign city and does fuck all, and he has no money and goes round the bend a bit. It's a great book.'

The thing about Scag was, he really seemed fairly well read, despite all the junkie stuff and the criminality.

‘I've heard of it,' said the girl with the grin. She was tall and slender with long limbs and dyed red hair, and even prettier than her friend.

‘Yeah well, yis should read it,' Scag said. ‘It's a Norwegian classic, ladies.'

I looked on, impressed, as were Alfred and Patser who, unlike Scag, seemed to shrink and fixed their eyes on the ground when the girls finally decided to come over and give us – or give Scag – the time of day.

I
was wondering if Scag really had lived in Norway when the dyed-redhead asked him the same question.

‘Yeah, I did. Lived in a squat there for a few months in around eighty-nine. Denmark as well. There's a lot goin on in Denmark.'

‘Yeah, I have a few friends who squat in Copenhagen,' she said.

They talked about that for a few moments. Then Scag turned to his two alco friends and said, ‘Right lads, I'll love yis and leave yis, I have to be gettin on. I shall be seein yis soon.'

And with that we found – the two girls and I – that we were following Scag, being led out of Dublin Castle and down Dame Street, and across into Temple Bar. He kept up a steady flow of verbiage to ensure neither girl had time to question what they were doing and slip from his grasp.

‘It's a lovely afternoon, girls,' he said as he weaved us among the cobblestoned alleys of Temple Bar. ‘It would be a sin not to make the most of it by sittin out and havin a pint in a nice oul beer garden. Am I right or am I right?'

We let him lead us through the laneways until, a few minutes later, we found ourselves in a pub. Scag slapped his hands on the bar and said, ‘So, ladies and gents, what'll it be?' It was as if we had arrived there magically, having had no say in the matter ourselves.

The girls said they'd have pints of Guinness, and I said the same. I guessed what was coming next. The barman started pouring the pints and then said, ‘Fourteen euro forty, please.'

‘Fuck!' said Scag, making a show of pulling his wallet open and peering into it. Lo and behold, it was empty. ‘I've only got fifty pence. I thought I had another twenty bills on me.'