Free The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien Page B

little ones for the children. In our quasi-mysticism, that surely has not completely abandoned you, the book you will never write will be full of cries. The lamentations of the dead, seeking their others in the underworld, not knowing if those others are already dead, or still in the zone of the living. Yes, a Book of the Night. As you exit the world stage, with the Angel of Death waiting to settle your account, or as you put it to the children in the forest, earlier today, for the cosmic payback for evil that has been done, even you will tremble. Goodnight my friend and brother, and Viva Sarajevo.’
He wakens, ready to deny, to refute, to attack, but they have all gone, instead there is a big black dog rolling its tongue along his forehead, big larruping licks, and as he goes to strike at it, it too disappears, vanishes into the shadows.
Then he opens his eyes to a night of such infinite calm, stars numerous and bathed in gold.

The White Mist
His name is on everybody’s lips, Dr Vlad this and Dr Vlad that. He has done wonders for people, women claiming to be rejuvenated, just after two treatments. It is tantamount to a miracle, what he has done for Hamish’s wife. She suffered from seizures and they had tried several doctors, including a specialist in Dublin but with no luck. They were told that her illness was psychosomatic and in part, caused by their winding each other up.
There, in his clinic, having been stone silent for the first twenty minutes, the wife was taken with one of the very seizures they had come to discuss with him. She fell to the floor and her husband rushed to hold her. Dr Vlad took control. He said, Don’t hold her … it ties her down. What they had to do was allow her to lie on that floor, watch over her to contain her and just be present. In that way, the fit would subside of its own accord, which it did. She was then given a thorough examination, with Hamish waiting outside and the conclusion was that her condition was neurological because of her being allergic to many things. It was quite an unusual case. He proposed various remedies – lymphatic drainage twice monthly, sulphur and magnesium baths regularly and a very specific diet. She was to avoid foods with preservatives, cleaning fluids and soap powders with any chemical and public places where rooms or curtains had been sprayed. She began a hermetic regime, no longer going to her weekly hairdresser’s or to any cafe, but according to Hamish, she had begun to smileagain and they believe she will be one hundred per cent cured in a time. Like Jesus, Dr Vlad will soon be walking on water.
Since the evening in the Castle I had only glimpsed him, passing up or down the street or in the river, in the very early morning, gathering stones for his healing massages. It happened without my knowing. A fixation. I began to dream of him.
In the very first dream he walked brazenly into our kitchen and took Jack’s favourite coffee mug off the dresser where it always hung. A white china mug, a shaving mug, with side handles and a fading gold crest at the rim. We searched everywhere, indoor and outdoor, in the shed and even in the holes in the hedges, where it might have slipped down. In the dream, Jack said that this was serious and the culprit would have to be found. I had a sense of him knowing that I was party to the theft.
In another dream, he was delivering me of a child, in my own bedroom. It was slippery and he eased it carefully out, every little twist so slight, until it was freed, and then he slapped it smartly for the circulation and I heard its cry. A piercing cry and one that I could not forget. Our bairn, our traitor-treasure. He held it up for me to see, Jack in the bed beside me.
*
It was the mist that did it. A white mist, like a winding muslin, enfolds our part of the world from time to time. Sometimes it occurs in the night, other times in the very early morning. It breaks boundaries, so that adjoining counties are as one. I was