The Pig Comes to Dinner (20 page)

The relation of the ball to the paddle, the interdependence of the arm and the eye, the role of both as servants to the brain, the coordination of all the elements involved— every aspect of the game was closely observed, minutely analyzed, and subject to constant experiment. Also, it didn't hurt that she had a highly developed habit of concentration. Bit by bit her game—almost imperceptibly—improved. The points her husband earned with his unrepentant slams were conceded. But there came a time when he made fewer and fewer of them. When Kitty won for the first time, Kieran rejoiced. When she began to win two out of five, then three out of five, he, in turn, was proud of his wife—even as he was bewildered by what he thought was an inexplicable diminution of his own powers.

Then Kieran, without full awareness, set out on the path along which his wife had already advanced. He, too, took into account sophistications latent within the game that he, in his brutality, had long ignored: a practiced spin on the ball, a quick flick of the paddle at just the right moment, a twist of the wrist, a judgment of the eye too quickly made for conscious credit, and, most pleasing of all, a heightened sense of the woman opposite him, her skills and her determinations, her cunning response to his every move, her relentless insistence that she give him all she had.

The game had a purpose beyond the heated pleasure it unfailingly aroused. At times in counterpoint, at other times in accompaniment to the rhythms of the game, husband and wife would take advantage of this time together to discuss— with digressions into argument or explanation, reasonings or intractabilities—subjects of common interest. With Kitty at her computer or in her garden and Kieran in his kitchen—to say nothing of his attention to the cows and the orchard and the fields—time together was limited. Conversation was thus all the more welcome when the paddles were taken in hand, the ball put into play, and enterprises of great pith and moment could be addressed without the possibility of one or the other stalking off in a fit of intransigence.

It had been during a game earlier in the summer that Kitty had informed her husband that the castle might well be lost, and he, respecting this method of communication even in so fatal a circumstance, kept the ball moving, as did his wife. Once in a while a serve was postponed briefly for questions, but not for answers. But then, the first half of the first game had threatened to become desultory, its customary verve drained by the possibility of losing the roof over their heads, the ground beneath their feet, and the castle stones they had come so readily to love. At one point, Kieran had seemed deliberately to place a shot so Kitty could make a telling return—an attempt perhaps to cheer her up, to compensate for a tragedy for which no compensation was possible—so Kitty had slashed at the ball, driving it back to Kieran, who, out of habit, responded to the corrective emanations projected by his wife and spun the ball so that it dropped just on Kitty's side of the net, making a return impossible. From then on they proceeded to a five-games-to-three win in Kieran's favor, each game an honorable win for the victor, an honorable loss for the loser.

Also, as the games played themselves out, Kitty, her temperament disciplined by the needs of the contest, was able without advancing into paroxysm to put forth the perfidies of Lord Shaftoe and the law's complicity in their expulsion. Kieran, no less than his wife, took out his disbelief, his execrations, and his oaths, on the demands of the ball that, it seemed, never ceased to require his attention. The shared satisfactions of Kieran's win had helped temper the fury and outrage that would have consumed them both had they gripped the paddles and insisted that nothing
—nothing—
would deny them the full pleasure of their sport or distract them from the exercise of the conjugal exchange and its attendent conversations that the game had become.

The day for the feasting was fast approaching. Kitty took the ball lightly in her left hand, careful not to pinch the celluloid. She must not dent the surface and disqualify the ball from further participation. This was the last undamaged ball; both she and Kieran had forgotten to arrange for a fresh supply. That this should inhibit their game had been considered, then dismissed.

They would play as they had always played, and the ball would have to take its chances. If they had not completed the designated discussion by the time the game was over or the ball broke, they could repair to the scullery, where a chessboard had already been set up in anticipation of any drastic eventuality. Kitty made the serve. Kieran made the return— and the game began.

“Have you given enough thought to the pig?” he asked.

“Enough for what?”

“Enough to agree with me.”

Pock-pock, pock, pock-pock-pock
went the ball, back and forth over the net, Kieran and Kitty each performing a dance choreographed by the other, stepping backward, moving forward, shifting to the right, to the left, leaning over the table, drawing back, the paddled hand gesturing with a quick grace that seemed at times to be of Hindu origin. After Kieran had accumulated five points to his wife's one, Kitty said, “That we're supposed to eat it?”

“We've certainly fattened it enough.”

“Being fat is not the issue.”

“We certainly can't give people a skinny pig.”

“There are other pigs. Lolly has enough to convince me more often than not that she's really Circe, and Aaron had better watch out. Although to turn my nephew into a pig should be well within anyone's competence.”

The score rose to twelve-seven, Kitty's favor. When Kieran started closing in at thirteen-eleven, he said, “Well, she's done the next best thing. More to her advantage I should say.”

“Oh?”

“I was driving by yesterday, and there was Aaron in front of me on the road, herding the pigs from here to there, wherever that might be.”

“Aaron?”

“Aaron.”

“Lolly's changed him into a swineherd? Well, considering his gifts as a writer, he's ascended to a far higher calling.” Kitty had backed to the wall, positioning herself for the good whack that sent the ball at the speed of a humming bird over to her husband. Kieran simply leaned forward and, with an expert twist of the paddle, plopped the ball just over the net. It fell like the droppings of a low-flying gull. “It gets better than that,” he said.

“Tell.”

Kieran waited until they changed serves. “It's Lolly who's now the writer. She's writing a novel.”

Kitty let out an almost triumphant guffaw. This supposedly startling news failed in every way to astonish her, much less affect her game. All during her long “best girl friend” association with Lolly McKeever, Kitty had had to hear the woman's amused disbelief at whatever difficulties Kitty might be confronting with her writing. “What are you talking about?” she'd say. “Who can't write a novel? I'd write one myself if I had the time. Who wouldn't? Who couldn't?”

On occasions such as these, Kitty would draw upon her limited fund of pity and her ample fund of disdain, and choose, for Lolly's sake and for the poor woman's survival on this earth, to simply respond, “Of course. Your swine are far, far more important.” And now poor Aaron, promoted to swineherd, had finally given Lolly her longed-for opportunity.

Kitty's only gesture had been to back herself against the wall. And her only words were, “I can hardly wait.”

Before she could make the serve, Kieran said, “Aaron admits he's relieved he doesn't have to write anymore. Only too happily has he passed the burden on to his wife.”

Kitty made the serve. It went past the table, past her husband, into the wall behind him. While Kieran was retrieving it, she said, “Which means Aaron's the one to pick out the pig for the famous feast observing our loss of the castle.”

“I don't see why that will be necessary, to pick out one of theirs.” Kieran flicked his wrist and sent the ball to the table's edge. “We have a winning candidate already in residence. It's a way of keeping the event completely within the family.”

As if to cry out in protest at the mere suggestion of such a possibility, a piercing scream that modulated into a shriek, then toned back to a scream, came through the open window. Kieran hit a net ball. Kitty let it stay where it was. “The pig,” she said.

“Someone must be slaughtering it even as we speak.”

Kitty went to the window.

Kieran picked up the ball. “We can't stop every time the pig decides to vocalize.” When Kitty said nothing, he asked, “Is someone looking at it cross-eyed? That's all it takes on most occasions.”

“One of the cows seems to have its hind legs stuck in a hole.”

“That is not a cow's complaint we're hearing.” He, too, went to the window.

In a field on the far side of a stone wall was a cow with, indeed, its hind legs down in a hole too narrow for it easily to pull itself out, try as it might. And the pig had taken up its cause. There the animal was, off to the side of the cow, snout raised heavenward, addressing in sounds no deity could ignore its plea for immediate deliverance. The plight of its companion was obviously more wounding than the slaughterer's knife or even the herder's switch or, to note the ultimate provocation and response, impatience when being served its dinner.

The cow, for all its difficulties, had adapted to the inconvenience and, as if performing an exercise at which it was quite adept, kept trying to free its legs at measured intervals, resting between attempts, then taking up again the movements as if it were offering a satisfactory demonstration of its skills. It seemed, even, that all was being done at the pig's insistence. The pig would shriek; the cow would move its hind legs. The two beasts had formed a partnership and devised this cunning entertainment, the cow—to the best of its abilities—dancing, the pig providing the accompaniment.

When Kitty and Kieran arrived at the scene after climbing a somewhat challenging stone wall, nothing had changed. The cow went through the prescribed motions, driven on by the pig's incessant screams and cries, the sounds and movements now set in a series of repetitions that brought to Kitty's mind an opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson she'd seen in Brooklyn while studying at Fordham.

“I'll need a spade,” Kieran yelled, barely making himself heard over the pig's continuing contribution to the cacophony, “to make the hole larger. So it can get out.”

“Does that mean I should go get one?” Kitty unintentionally, but not without some satisfaction, managed to pitch her voice to the key—possibly B-flat—also employed by the pig.

“I'll go. You stay here. Try to calm things down.”

“How?”

“A blunt instrument strategically placed between the pigs ears might help.”

Kieran climbed back over the stone wall, not without difficulty. He wasn't out of training, but the wall was a bit high and the stones so expertly placed that a toehold was far from easy to find. Twice he slid back down. After the second slide, Kitty yelled, “Maybe I should go.”

After a quick glare directed into his wife's eyes, Kieran gained the summit and jumped down on the far side. Kitty remonstrated with the pig, as she felt it her duty to do. When this failed to effect any diminuendo she repeated the phrases, this time in English instead of Irish. This excited the pig to even greater attainments, now surpassing the stratospheric heights any coloratura might envy, and with an increase of power. The animal was obviously equipped with the muscular control, the glottal chords, and the head resonance necessary for vocal feats of this kind. Kitty quickly switched back to Irish, but the pig was beyond placation and bellowed without the least indication of either failing stamina or damaged equipment.

The cow, the better to appreciate fully the pig's display, stopped its futile attempts at freedom and, facing forward, gave its complete attention to the swinish ostentations it had inspired. It seemed no longer to require liberation but was more than content to listen, asking nothing of the world other than this manifestation of unrelenting prayer on its behalf. To demonstrate its approval, it swished its tail and flicked its ears.

Then the screaming stopped. After such a sudden cessation, Kitty's first thought was that the axe had descended and that when she turned from the cow, she would see, bloodied on the ground, the pitiful pig. But when she did turn, the pig had lowered its head and was snouting the grass. There, near a hedge, was Taddy, looking down at the pig, observing closely the twitching and snuffling, then the digging down into the turf and the uprooting of clumps of clotted sod. It was then that Kitty realized that the pig had somehow divested itself of its ring. It had dug the hole the cow was stuck in and could now devastate the world at will.

When Taddy raised his head he looked not at Kitty but at Brid, who was standing in front of the cow. The young man's wounded neck seemed now to have been chewed, as if the noose had not been content to burn into the sweet flesh but had insisted on nibbling at its handiwork, feasting on the welts and reddened nubs. The rope's first purpose had apparently been not to hang or break the neck and choke the throat but to open the skin and make available these meaty morsels to satisfy an appetite that demanded death only so it could then proceed to devour the spoils of its slaughter. Taddy, bewildered and mournful, stared at Brid. Immediately the gaze deepened to the look of a man observing an object of such absolute love that his entire being became suffused with a quiet sorrow that could well be more an ache than a yearning. There he stood and seemed to wait for Brid to possess him, or he to possess her, to take her within himself and hold her gently in his heart, in his soul, Taddy and Brid. Brid and Taddy.

That Kitty could do nothing to assuage his grief brought to her a grief of her own, also quiet and sadly resigned. Brid, more concerned about the cow than about Taddy, watched the beast unprotesting in the hole the pig had no doubt dug for it. The girl was agitated by her helplessness, clasping and unclasping her hands, bringing them up to her chest, then parting them only to clasp them together again and press them even more diligently against her breastbone. First she would look at the captured hooves, then at the swollen udder resting on the ground, then at the cow's head and the soft unquestioning eyes. Finally she saw Taddy. Her agitation ended. Slowly she lowered her hands, rested her arms at her sides, and returned his gaze. She, too, no less than he, became still so that her love and his could join without impediment, her mournful sorrows not for herself, but for him—and his not for himself but for her.