After several celebratory brandies, it's easy to confuse fish with fowl, writes MICHAEL HARDING
‘MY GRANDFATHER was a priest,” the Russian woman said. And then she poured me a brandy.
We were having dinner to celebrate the Orthodox Christmas. The dining room walls were white, and the curtains were white, and the Christmas tree was white, and there were blue lights on the tree.
I said, “Pushkin was shot in the snow.”
She said, “Would you like to go to St Petersburg?”
I said, “I’d love to. I think Russian writers are very spiritual.” Then she poured me another brandy.
I said, “A theatre director once asked me to write a programme note. When I sent him copy, he said he couldn’t use it, because I had written that the work of theatre was to make the invisible visible. I even compared his actors to monks.” But since I don’t speak Russian, and her English was not wonderful, I fear a lot of meaning was lost between the two languages.
“What is your point?” she wondered.
“My point is that we Irish have lost our sense of the sacred,” I concluded. “We need you Russians to invigorate us again.” “You are absolutely correct,” she said, as she refreshed my glass with brandy once again.
“In St Petersburg,” she continued, “we believed in Father Frost, and he was invisible, although he came on Christmas night, with his granddaughter, and they always dressed in blue.” Stuffed sea bass, Russian salads and herrings wrapped in potato, onion and beetroot were spread on the table, as she poured another brandy.
“This is called heron-in-a-fur-coat,” she said, pointing at one dish.
“What a wonderful image!” I declared. “A heron in a fur coat! Dermot Healy would relish that.”
She said, “No, not heron! Herring! It is called herring-in-a-fur-coat.”
I said, “Well it is delicious.”
“Who is Dermot Healy?” she wondered, as she reached again for the brandy.
I said, “He’s a magnificent poet who lives in Sligo and when the geese come from Greenland and fly over his house he waves at them.”
“He sounds Russian,” she said.
“He sounds like Tolstoy.” I said, “He looks like Tolstoy!”
“Now we will have goose for main course,” she declared. And so we did. But we didn’t have music, which was a pity – just more brandy.
I told her that I always have music with dinner. I have an old-fashioned amplifier, and enormous speakers, which I bought in Enniskillen in 1981, the year of the Hunger Strikes. Back then I needed BBC Radio 3 to cheer me up, when the Republicans and Unionists were locked into their tedious argument about whether a boiled egg should be opened at the little end or the big end.
“Ah,” she said, “now you sound like Tolstoy.” There was a fluffy penguin, with suitcases and red sunglasses, sitting on the television set. He looked like he might be going on his holidays to the Canary Islands.
Fortunately the Russian woman was going nowhere, because she opened another bottle of Napoleon cognac. And I lay on the couch. And she tidied away the dishes. And then I noticed more fluffy penguins on the sofa, wearing sunglasses and black berets, as if they were IRA men, going home after a good bank robbery.
I asked her did she see many penguins in Russia.
“Only in zoo,” she replied.
And then we had one glass for the road, though neither we, nor the penguins, intended moving.
When I mentioned “The Recession” she said that Irish people reminded her of donkeys in Uzbekistan.
“How will the problem be solved?” she wondered.
I suggested that Ireland should introduce legislation to make all people over 75 legally dead. An Act of Parliament would do the trick. The savings on pensions and health care would be enormous. Properties would be passed on to needy children, and an eloquent amendment could be added to the constitution protecting the life of both the unborn and the undead.
Of course those over 75 would still wander around public parks, like ducks, and a small fund might be set aside for feeding them, but by and large, this single proposal would solve the entire financial debt crisis.
Then we had another brandy, and she declared that she was going to disappear, which she did, instantly, down a corridor and into her room where she sleeps in a bed that cost €2,500. I remained on the couch, and in the morning she reappeared, and made a remarkably fine soup; and I had, thankfully, only the slightest hint of a hangover.
And then I noticed more fluffy penguins on the sofa, wearing sunglasses and black berets, as if they were IRA men, going home after a good bank robbery