The Body Beautiful

By Cormac MacConnell

MY daughter Ciara came back from the Holy Land, arriving into Shannon full of tales about the peaceful beauty of Jordan and the amazing redrock city of Petra and the strange feeling you get when you stand on the banks of the Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus Christ and, just to keep the stories running, because I was enjoying them, I drove her back to Galway City on the Monday morning because I was off duty.

I relaxed in my old haunts, knowing that two sons would pick me up later in the evening and bring me home to a warm bed and a good breakfast. So I relaxed fully. 

When you man the Graveyard Shift in a radio station as I do you do not have too many evenings in a good pub – which is where, of course, I finished up in mellow mood – and I made the most of it, drifting through the evening gently, meeting old friends. Sitting on familiar bar stools in familiar corners. Nice and slow. 

And it was sometime in the middle of the night I again met McAndrew the philosopher. I have not seen him in maybe 10 years. He does not be in Galway all that much nowadays, no more than myself. We ordered two pints.

He’s not a professional philosopher, McAndrew, not in that sense. He travels all over Europe, actually, doing major repairs to marine engines and such and is, I believe, hugely respected in his trade and profession. 

But he is a tribesman whose mother came from Aran and whose father once shared a whiskey with James Joyce and Nora, and he’s a philosopher all right. He also has an eye in his head like a mountain hawk looking for his breakfast.

I think we were on the second pint when the chat got interesting. We had already brought each other up to date on our lives since we met last as two widowers walking a bit on the wild side.

We’ve both settled since and we told each other about family things, and I dealt in some length with Ciara, my youngest, standing the day before yesterday at the place where John the Baptist did what he did. And then McAndrew went into his philosophy bit. I always found that interesting.

“Where are you living now, Cormac?”

“I told you, sure, down in Clare.”

“No, I mean, where are you? Where are you really?”

“Well, to the best of my knowledge, I’m sitting here beside you in Murphy’s pub in Galway.”

“Sure, man, that’s only your body, that’s only the battered old envelope that carries your spirit within it. Where are you now, inside that envelope? Are you mostly down below your waist, where you used to be, or have you gone upstairs a bit? That’s what I mean. Steady yourself now. Where are you exactly?”

You see what I mean about McAndrew. That’s no ordinary question at all.

I mean, up until that question, I’d always thought of myself as the whole package, if ye know what I mean, arms, legs, mouth, nose, these fingers, whatever organs there are. But there’s a question now, and a concept, that makes you consider the cap of your pint for a while before replying.

“I think,” says I, “since you do put it like that, that I’m to be found sitting on a wee bench inside my head at a spot just behind my eyes and between my ears. Around there somewhere.”

“Good man,” says McAndrew, smacking his lips and his fingers together with satisfaction. “Good man yourself. There’s a lot of good men and good women too, for that matter, that can’t answer that question at all. 

“And tell me this now Cormac, do you ever get up offa that bench and thank your body for carrying you around all these years without letting you spill out? Do you ever get it serviced? Do you go to the doctor for checkups for it? Are you treating it any way gentler now than you used to?”

“Dammit,” says I, “now that you mention it I don’t and I never have. I never took it to a doctor in my life. I never needed to have it transported to the hospital, thank God, because, dammit, I never looked at it that way before. 

“I suppose, God knows, between smoking and the few pints and late nights for years I haven’t been fair to the cratur’ at all.” (Remember I’ve had a few pints at this stage and that’s how it became easy to think of the mortal bit of myself as a cratur’!)

“You have time,” says McAndrew, “to mend your ways.”

And do ye know what he told me? He told me he takes a special shower every Monday morning without fail, before his breakfast, and says thanks to his body for getting him through the week and the weekend. 

He told me he has expensive oils and stuff like that, and he does spoil his old body with suds and bubbles and good hot water and actually talks to it. 

He has had two operations in his time and he touches the scars on his belly and chest and asks his the body how things are faring within. He asks is there anything he can do to help! 

He got a message back, he swears, about six years ago, to lay off the cigarettes and he heeded it at once. On another occasion a leg complained and he got a varicose vein attended to inside the fortnight.

In return, he said, he has never been in such harmony with himself in his life. He feels as good as when he was 35, even though now he’s nearly 70!

He had to go home before me. We parted with regret and our two bodies shook hands.

I did some deep thinking after he’d gone, waiting for my sons, and thought the man made a lot of sense. When the lads came in I bought them a pair of pints but did not mention the conversation to them because, in fairness, they are still too young to understand stuff like that. I’ll tell them about McAndrew in maybe 10 years. 

We stayed until closing time and I think they thought I was drunk for sure when I got up from the stool to go home.

That was because I slapped myself on the left backside and said, “Body, fair play to you. Now would you mind telling those two legs to bring me towards home in a straight line!”