AN IMPOSSIBLE ASCENT (for Dicko)

An impossible ascent. A sheer icy sheet. An insurmountable tombstone punctuated only by danger spots: Dead Man's Traverse, Skull Crag, Hypothermia Pass, Howling Drop. Climbers have a name for this place. They call it The Way of Thanatos, Thanatos being the personification of death. All who attempted it retreated, perished, or, most ignominious of all, perished whilst retreating. Limp cadavers dangle from the lips of the overhangs. This is the graveyard of mountaineering's elite. The best of them met their end here: Brompton, Ferris, Clanton, Spellman. The frozen screaming faces on their crystallised remains - a warning from above. 'Go back, go back', they wail, their shrill voices mingling with the shrieking wind, but I was not dissuaded. I could do this. I was certain. What's more I could do it without the required boots and gloves, cords and carabiners, quickdraws and harnesses, picks and axes. I had all I needed. I was wearing my warm crombie and I had my cans. 

Yes, all I really needed was my cans. Six LCL, six Dutch, that should see me right. 'Don't do it Mr. Fugger!' they said, 'it's suicide!', 'you'll end up like Dicko!' I told them I'd be OK. I told them I'd be better than OK. I told them I would be the first to reach the top. 'Ah, fuck it lads, I'll be up it in no time. It'll be a laugh', were my exact words followed by the pop of a tab and the fizz of the first sup. It would be, to quote myself again, 'a piece of piss'.

Acute gusts stabbed at my face as I approached the base of the cruel slab - a physical assault by a psychotic Jack Frost. The wind is this mountain's murder weapon of choice. It prizes fingers from their purchase and throws climbers down from the heights. I laughed. I was warmed by the booze. Thanatos had not reckoned on a challenger armed with cans. Trusty cans, loyal and true. They will always see you right. A dozen 500ml 5% portions of masculinity's lifeblood. Oh yes, the cans were the game changer.

I attempted to set my shoe in what I thought might pass for an initial foothold. It was slippery and shallow and my foot failed to grip. I searched for another starting point but it was the same. It was like glass. I sighed in irritation and muttered an obscenity. I tried to find another foothold and then another but the pattern kept repeating. It occurred to me that I might have underestimated my geological nemesis. The fact that I would have to make the ascent single handed (I needed a free hand for my Dunnes Stores holdall of intoxicating equipage) was not going to make my attempt any easier. It began to seem as if it might be no use. Still, I persevered. I kept trying for at least three to four minutes as my small audience tensely observed. Finally I cursed out loud and turned away from the source of my frustration. I was done. The Way of Thanatos had defeated me. Like all men, I was not up to the task. I felt such shame, not just personally but for our species as a whole. Nature had issued us a challenge and I wondered if we would ever meet it. I thought it would be me. I thought I was the man. Alas, no. I was just a bit pissed really.

'Ah fuck that', I said and proposed we return to the chalets and see if the bar was still open. The others agreed and placed comforting arms around my shoulders as we trudged away. I turned once more as we left. I turned back and saw The Way of Thanatos smugly regarding my retreat. Nature mocking. God taunting. I vowed to one day return. I would be back another day but not with cans. Not cans, no, but something else. Something far better. I would bring a quarter of hash and some 'yokes'. Dropping an E would be mad half way up that bastard. It would really enhance the buzz and I'd feel extra good when I reached the summit and danced upon it. Big fish, little fish, cardboard box. I'd probably bring a few valium too, in case I encountered a detoxifying drop in serotonin during the descent. Best not to forget about the way down when you're coming up. That's what my mate Dicko always used say. He was a bit of a climber too but sadly brained himself during a failed ascent of a bus shelter near Kimmage industrial park. He was never the same after that. Not the man he used to be. He's no longer fit for work and his long suffering mother has to spoon feed him and give him baths in case he drowns.

Yes, I will return and defeat this mountain and I will dedicate my victory to Dicko. I will write his name in the snow with piss so God will see it when he looks down from above. A sweet revenge on God for endowing us with the hubris that is so often our undoing. A sweet 'fuck you' for providing us with the booze and pills that lead us to our ruin. Yes, I will be back and I will do it for Dicko. For now I will return to shelter and get a few down me and see what comes of the rest of the night. I'm sure more adventure awaits. We men are all about adventure. Thanatos has its way and we have ours.

THE DIVIL

In the days when I was a man of the cloth I would bless the dying before they passed on and I’d often be called out at all hours to do so. It was on one such night that I met him. ‘Who?’ you ask. I’ll tell you but brace yourself before I do. Are you prepared? Right. I met the Divil.

In this account, the one I am about to relate, you will hear how I got the better of the Divil but this was so to his annoyance that he later returned and got the better of me and the holy church itself.

Twas a dark and stormy night, the roof rattled and nervous cows could be heard berating the elements from the surrounding sheds. I was in the vestry drinking cans when the call came. ‘Father Fugger, you must come, my father has taken a fall on the road and I fear it may be his last.’

I got into my automobile and took the road out of Nathaer. It was at the junction where you turn for Gooly that the Divil stepped out in front of the vehicle. He looked square at me. Square at me mind, not in a triangular or roundabout circular way. You could tell it was the Divil because it wasn’t anyone else.
‘Are you the Divil?’, I asked.
‘I am that’, said the Divil.
‘And what is it you’d be wanting?’ I asked again, as a kind of follow up question.
‘I intend to impede your progress so that I may lay claim to the soul of the man who took the fall upon the road’, said the Divil.
‘And what if I say that you will not impede my progress?’ I asked in response to his second answer, the one he just gave.
‘I will call you a fucker’, said the Divil.
‘I do not like that’, I told him.
‘Few do’, he said and laughed a fierce laugh that I could only describe as fierce and would be reluctant to lay any other adjective before it.

I considered saying a few decades of the rosary but there was not time for that so I drove over the Divil and reversed upon him also. I repeated this vehicular grievance somewhere between fifteen and twenty times, maybe more than that. The Divil howled like cat in the act of Godless congress.
‘You have been run over now’, I said to the Divil.
‘I have noticed that and it vexes me greatly’, replied the Divil.
‘Am I safe to continue my errand?’ I requested of him.
‘You are that for I am royally fucked now here on the road and doubt I will ever rise again but let me inform you now that I will have revenge upon yourself and your institution’, he said to me and I drove away.

I reached the man who had taken the fall on time and gave him the rites and watched as he ascended to heaven. ‘I see before me the Lord God and several dead celebrities’, he said before he died in peace. I returned to the vestry to resume the drinking of cans.

Upon arrival at the vestry, I found the Divil taking a shite in the tabernacle.
‘I saw you mangled and banjaxed upon the road, what are you doing here?’ I asked him.
‘There is many of me and that was only one of the many of me that you did injure upon the road’, the Divil informed me.
‘Will you desist from befouling the tabernacle?’ I asked of him.
‘I will not’, he said.
‘And why will you not?’ I asked because this had clearly become a conversation of sorts.
‘Because it pleases me’, he said.
‘Is there anything I can do to stop you?’ I asked then, another question because this night required many.
‘You must give me your cans’, said the Divil.
‘I will not give you my cans because they are an immense source of pleasure to me’, I told the Divil.
‘Well’, he said, ‘if you will not give up the cans perhaps you will give up your vows to prevent me depositing another sulphuric log into this most holy of cabinets’.
‘That I will not do either’, I said to the Divil.
‘Then perhaps you will give me your video cassette with the Ukrainian twins in the bath’, bargained the horned menace (i.e. the Divil).
‘I have no such video cassette’, I said.
‘You do indeed and watch it often’, he pointed out.
I could not lie again for to lie to the Divil is to play by the rules of the game that it his intention to make you play by the rules of.
‘You may have the tape’, I said to the Divil and went and got it for him and he took it and, the next day, posted it to the Bishop who requested I leave the parish and be replaced by another who was said to have had a great fondness for young people. It was this fondness that brought about a scandal that saw mass attendance in the locality fall by some considerable measure. The Divil did indeed have his revenge and cannot be bested long. I know that now and it is for that reason I have become his servant. All hail the Divil! The Divil is great! Let’s hear it for the Divil!

That is the end of my story. I will now resume the drinking of my cans. Good day to you.