The Moth and the Candle

The parish church of St. Sepulchre Without looked even older than its three hundred years as the scaffolding went up around the exterior walls . The blocks of granite which had gone into its original construction were now covered with an iridescent green mould, harmless in itself but in these circumstances looking like a skin cancer to which the old building had finally succumbed. The windows of the church had long been boarded up and the lock on the front gate was so rusted the foreman of the demolition crew had been obliged to cut if off. St. Sepulchre Without was an ancient parish, part of the medieval city. Despite this the destruction of the parish church had provoked few objections even among the ever vigilant and vocal preservation societies which jealously guarded the physical memory of Dublin’s past. Perhaps the lack of any noteworthy architectural features in the design of St. Sepulchre Without meant that its disappearance was regarded as not being of any great significance? It seemed that no one knew nor cared to know.

Whatever the reason the demolition of what had been up until relatively recently a protected structure had gone very smoothly to this point. Legal permits had been granted, the planning process had been observed to the letter, the construction company had even gone so far as to include the local community figures in the process of deciding on the best use of the land post development, a cursory yet very useful tool in marketing the development as being ‘integrated’ within the fabric of the local community. Cynical perhaps but certainly effective. And now the diggers and JCB’s and hard men with calluses on their fingers and nailbars in their palms stood in the old graveyard. The men made jokes and blew on their hands in the icy morning wind, waiting for the order to begin. The foreman, whose name was James Carey, glanced at the slightly cracked face of his father’s watch and nodded. He began to shout orders to the crew and they responded, practised in their motions. One of the men swung himself up into the cab of small crane. From the end of the crane’s arm a large rusted wrecking ball hung limply, suspended by a series of chains. As the crane’s engine was started blackened fumes belched from its exhaust, the first of the morning, and settled over the unkempt rose bushes behind it like a gaunt mist. The crane began to swing to and fro and the ball moved in concert.
Carey looked on, gauging the distance and the height of the swing. He saw the rusted ball, pregnant with age and destruction, lurch towards the west wall of the old church and in a split flash heard a voice scream in agonised despair. He twitched and spun, clapping his hands to his ears and screamed in response. The muscles of his abdomen and chest spasmed violently, pulling at his breath giving him no time to let common sense come to bear. He heard he heard he heard...nothing. A clutch of workmen regarded him with baleful curiosity as he writhed and pawed at the ground, a bull gone insane in his death throes. When he let his hands fall to his sides they called over to ask him what the matter was. But he could not tell them. He opened his mouth to explain but nothing came out. He knelt on the damp ground in front of the church gates and tried to say his piece. He sucked hard for air, for the air to breathe let alone speak and once more the workmen asked what the matter was. He did not respond, merely shook his head and rose to his feet. His skin was the colour and consistency of putty by the end and his knees shook. He motioned to the gangers to get on with it, contriving to suggest that they were in some way remiss by paying him any attention at all. He did not explain what had happened. How could he, he didn’t understand it himself. How could he tell the hard, unblinking men that worked these crews that in the instant before the wrecking ball fell he heard the church scream in mortal pain?

As bricks fell in uneven numbers and the screaming grew louder and louder Carey began to walk around the site in little jerks and shuffles, his face a rictus mask of horror and joviality. Each time a piece of the church was torn or pulled out his body danced a little dance of darkness and hell until in one bursting rush he raced to the cab of the wrecker and hauled the operator out by main strength. He pulled at the ignition keys, scrabbling and shut the machine off. The workmen looked up, by now more irritated than curious. Carey clambered on top of the wrecker’s engine block and called to them. Each of them looked at one another and eventually they trod warily over to listen to what he had to say. Carey twirled his fingers in the air, pulling that which was not there, the crowd’s gasping adoration, out of the very air and he seemed to draw sustenance from this, the quivering and shaking of the past few moments gone, power flowing into his every muscle and sinew. He spoke of time and the past, of how spaces within settlements became sacred, of what remained of them after they were used, of how people viewed the creation of the city as a process akin to human biological development, he spoke of the city as a body deploying metaphor in his quest to get his audience to understand, he wanted them to feel like he felt, to know the bones of this place they called him, to know it in their head and in their hearts.....

He continued on in this vein for several moments. The work gang waited for him to get to the punchline but as time passed it became clear that this was not some complicated practical joke and that he wasn’t drunk and when Carey picked up a crowbar and began smashing at the controls of the wrecker’s cab, roaring about the damage it had done, it became abundantly clear that he had gone insane. Carey struggled with the hands holding him back, spitting and biting, kicking out furiously, all the while demanding that they heed his words. Eventually the Guards arrived along with an ambulance. Carey’s wife, a tall gaunt woman dressed jarringly in bold colours, was called. She didn’t know what to do with him any more than the gangers had but in the end he was forcibly sedated and was put in the back of the ambulance. All the way there he kept saying to the paramedics, that “I heard it, I heard it but I couldn’t answer the questions” although no one could work out what, if anything, he meant by it.