The Onion Eaters by J. P. Donleavy

decapitate her toes and tits. Which my resident scientists would painstakingly suture back on. And raise her combat pay.
    ‘I’ll come back. I’ve been without an old fashioned horn up me for over three months.’
    ‘What about the scientists.’
    ‘What about them, I wouldn’t let one of them near me with their things. Sure they want to be coming at you with calorimeters, gyroscopes and with a bunch of tubes. It’s vexing enough being examined by them that I don’t have to let them up me. It wouldn’t half fill a book the goings on back there in town testing out the distillate. With the three of them sitting there in a row on a bench one hand pulling away possessed and in the other holding stop watches. Didn’t they have an innocent little girl out of a convent as an assistant measuring the amount that jumped out into test tubes. The three disgusting pagans. I’m off for to get the eggs and bacon. Will you have a fried tomato as well.’
    ‘Yes please.’
    ‘Right you are.’
    Four weeks ago tomorrow I stepped off the boat. Rode a train up along a strange bereft shore. Click clacking by estuaries, stopping in small towns. Finally to chug along a flat deserted cold grey coast. Past ruined roofless houses and wintry marshlands. Arrived at a station and went down the granite steps between the pillars, a dance hall across the street. Rented a room from a big kindly woman. In which I quietly and politely froze. Sitting by the wall at breakfast shivering under her heavy breathing ministrations. I was a stranger stared at wherever I went. Wandering the grey wet streets. Looking into a future. Dimmed by the months of dying. Watching from my pillow a young man in the centre aisle of the ward with his precise methodical ways as he declined. Visited every day by a mother who fussed and kissed him and wore big fur collars on her coat. The day before he was rolled away under a sheet he smiled and played with a jig saw puzzle. That evening I lay still with my eyes closed. Heard choirs singing. Boys in white cassocks trudging over snows with great flaming candles. Their voices rising up in the blue cold skies strewn with colder stars. Watch them. They walk on the endless white.Mountains in the distance. Follow them. Run light footed into wonder. Where there may be a hand to lay touching gently my eyes. And whispers wake with words. Lie safely wound in my arms in peace. All I am is your soul. To gather you. Now. And I knew I was going. Hearing voices. Nearby my bed. Yes we’re finding it difficult to diagnose, refuses all food, possibly an hysterical condition, he’s unconscious now, may go into coma. We don’t think he’ll last through tonight. I opened up a lid a crack. Could see three white coated figures and a nurse standing a little away from the foot of my bed. They are talking about me. And it’s touching and comforting that they are. A little group concerned while I live my final moments. I go and they stay. In this great maw of a hospital. Ward of death where the bodies are wheeled in and out. And sometimes screams echoing down the corridors. Sirens of ambulances and police cars in the night. Next to me a man swathed in bandages, only a hole for his mouth. The black nurse who goes by my bed. Stops and looks at me. Try bravely to smile. She smiles. How are we feeling today. I shake my head. And she would say have you ate anything and I would shake it no again. She said that’s not good. You’ve got to eat. Else you won’t be here anymore. I had then the strength only to raise and lower my hands on the sheet. She would pass on shaking her head. And then twenty minutes after midnight which I always knew because a whistle blew on a gasworks across the river canal, the black nurse came, stood over my bed, and looked at me. She said yes that’s what they say, you’re not going to live one more day. That’s not good. That’s bad. So I am going to cure you.
    Rose coming through the shadows holding a tray of plates