The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien Page B

members were done for. Sometimes it was a knife already dipped in poison and normally used to cut meats, while more often it was in the wine, laced with arsenic, which was tasteless and without smell. Naturally, suspicion began to spread, which is why the unfortunate eunuchs and servants were made to taste the wine first. Craftily, goblets had been set in a particular place for the doomed. Suspicion was such that kings and queens were ever cautious. King Henry IV of France was so afraid of being poisoned that he cooked his own eggs on his own little portablestove and drew his own water from the Seine. Napoleon believed there was arsenic in the wallpaper in his prison cell in St Helena, and believing he would die from the gaseous fumes, he insisted on being moved to another cell.
In an old Norse saga, a certain tribe ate a mushroom that was so lethal, it caused disorder in the mind and deprived them of their true feelings. They went wild and even the princes, to whom they were bonded, were terrified of them. They stopped at nothing. They bit their own shields, they uprooted trees and slaughtered all before them. The Berserks they were called.
‘Crikey, a Berserk,’ Cliodhna said and we all turned round and there was a strange guard in uniform, coming up the hill, bawling his head off. The Doc got up and told us to get on with our picnic and then he hurried down the slope and they met halfway.
*
‘What are you doing out here in this wood with these children?’ the guard asks in a broad country accent. He is red and breathless from the climb and is a cocky young pup, a bit overweight and trussed into his uniform. He repeats the question, only more threateningly and soon Dr Vlad realises that this accidental encounter could land him in treacherous waters.
‘We were having a nature class … we studied the various attributes of different trees and I told the children the particular medicinal value.’
‘You need a Garda clearance to take children out.’
‘Well, I was not aware of that …’
‘Only parents, grandparents and teachers are allowed to bring children out … it’s the law here in this country and we take itseriously,’ his interrogator said, bristling now with the importance of his own authority. The questions are not so much asked as pelted at him. Who is he? Is he a schoolteacher? Under whose authorisation has he embarked on this?
‘I am Dr Vladimir Dragan. I have lived here for several months and practised as a healer in the town.’
‘Oh, one of the New Age quacks,’ the oaf says with a sneer and then asks if he has the qualification to be a healer and certificates to prove it.
The doctor is telling himself to maintain composure at all costs. He looks down and at that moment a juicy pink worm is wriggling its way over a bit of fallen bark to get to its prey and he has a terrible instinct to tread on it, to squash it just as he would like to squash this upstart. He pictures his grandfather’s sabre sinking nicely into the folds of that thick neck. He has begun to perspire and blames the humidity. What humidity, he is asked.
‘Let me see your identity,’ and carefully from his wallet he retrieves the documents that he has always carried, including an ID card and driving licence. He watches every muscle in the oaf’s face as he reads, peering into it as if to find something incriminating. Then he is asked to turn around, for the guard to study him sideways, look behind his ears, compare the man standing in front of him to the man in the passport photograph. Pernickety to the last. He knows the type, he knows all the types. A few years further back and he could have had him executed.
‘You know you have broken the law,’ he is told.
‘Mea culpa.’ He is at his most beholden now, wipes his face with his handkerchief and comments once again on the hot day.
‘There’s a nice westerly breeze,’ the oaf says and then asks ifthe schoolteacher, who allowed him to take this nature walk, had Garda