Box after Matches

          Cycling is new to me. I did not cycle in Poland. I think I would have been afraid to cycle in front of people there, here, it does not matter, I am not of the people. I worked for a long time in a shop. ‘No Polish in the aisles! You’re in Ireland now, speak English!’, the manager would say, ‘fuck you’, we would say, in Polish of course. He learned a little Polish and I was the unlucky one who discovered this fact. I got fired. I met up with the people I worked with there for a long time after but I was not able to afford the rent anymore in the big town with the big shops so I was given a house in a village. I took the bus from the village to meet up with my work friends at the weekends. I would sleep on their couches. I would stay there all weekend. They got sick of it and I stopped visiting. My nickname at work was ‘Box after matches’, it’s the literal translation of how you would say an empty box of matches in Polish. I said it on a night out when someone broke a tooth whilst trying to open a beer bottle, I wanted an empty box of matches to put the tooth in but I was trying to ask for it quickly so I translated it directly. The Irish people thought it was very funny. I know it was funny too, but it was a shit nickname.

          My house in the village is small and old. But big for me on my own, it’s social housing, they try to use up all these empty houses that no one wants in out of the way villages, by putting people like me into them. One side of the house is very warm because there is an old man living next door who always has a fire lighting, in the middle of the summer even. The other side is cold because the old person died and the house has been empty for a few years. I sleep in a bedroom on the warm side during the winter and I switch to the cold side in the spring. I remind myself of the dogs we had when I was a child. They would sleep in the kennel all winter but then a night would come where they would not want to go into the kennel and we would chain them up instead, in the shade of the lean-to where we kept our chopped wood. We would always mark this as the changing of the seasons, when the dogs decided to move to their summer palace we would joke.

          There is a shop across the road from me. It’s a medium-sized shop and it is expensive. I don’t have a car so I cannot drive to the cheap German shops. My tastes are simple, I can live happily on bread and cheese and I pick the mushrooms that the Irish are scared of when they are in season, they have a wood full of great mushrooms but they will only eat the white ones that look like ones they buy in the shop. Before I came to Ireland, I thought the Irish people were in tune with nature and that they lived off the land and that everyone had horses and hens, that is not true. I also thought that they drank a lot. It is true that they drink too much but Poland is not very different. Beer is a problem for me. I drink too much but I cannot afford to drink as much as I want, especially when there isn’t always cheap beer - in the expensive shop I have to shop in. Beer is too expensive in the pub and I don’t like the pubs in this village, they are not friendly, or if you are in there late, they are too friendly and people ask lots of questions and put arms around you. I don’t want that. I just want to drink beer. 

          I walk a lot. I try to get to five o clock in the evening, winter or summer, like someone who still has a job, before I have my first drink. There is a big long footpath to nowhere on both sides of the village, it is three kilometre from one end to the other. I walk it every day, at least once. There is a park with lots of equipment and very few children. They also have exercise machines that no-one uses. One day a woman’s handbag got stolen from the park, she had left it at a bench when her child had fallen off a roundabout. I know all about it because the police brought me to the police station for questioning after it happened. They told me that they knew I watched people and their belongings. I told them I did not. They told me that they knew I followed women. I told them I did not. They told me that they knew I had a record in Poland. I told them I did not.

          A teenage girl stole the handbag. Her mother found it in her bedroom and told the police. They tried to find out if I knew the teenage girl but I did not. After that, some people in the village started saying hello to me - because they felt guilty, I guess, they were trying to say sorry with ‘hello’. It made me feel good for a little bit, to be acknowledged. It was a bad thing too though, because I knew what they were ready to think of me now. I had thought no-one cared that I was a man who went for walks and cycles but it turned out you could not be a man who went for walks and cycles without being a weirdo or a thief. I’d rather be a thief, if I had to choose, but I’d prefer to be neither. I don’t’ look at anyone now. I didn’t think I was looking a lot before, but I try not to look now in case I was looking at everything and everyone before. Before I was just living here, walking and drinking beer, and it was fine, I was that person in the village. Now I don’t feel like I’m a person in the village; I feel like a body after a person.

           The taps in my house drip, but plumbers are very expensive. My landlord tells me they are expensive, but I tell him he will save money if he fixes the taps; after all, he is the one who pays the bills. That’s environmental bullshit he thinks and he says that I’m not even the one paying the rent so I shouldn’t be bothering him about small things. So, I hear the taps dripping, all the time.
I have net curtains that stop people from seeing in but let me look out. They’re like bars on the windows. I like to get out but it is harder since the handbag. Winter is the worst. In the summer I cycle early in the morning, before it is busy, out of the village and up a nearby hill. On top of the hill is a picnic bench and I sit there and watch the world, sometimes all day long. I try to feel part of the natural world by listening to birds and sitting still long enough for wild animals to pass me. I have fleeting moments of success; Rabbits, a fox, rats. One day I saw a mink and thought that he did not belong here either. I walked to the mink, but they are vicious creatures, he snarled at me until I flinched, then he fled. I stopped going to the hill after that.

          I’ve stopped speaking to the women in the shop. I just buy and leave. They got the message after only a day. They’re probably happier not to have to strain to hear and half-shout ‘HA?’ at me. It was always the same conversations anyway, weather, jealous of my beer, someone I did not know was dead.

          I don’t have credit in my phone. I speak to the mirror sometimes to make sure I still can.

          I’ve decided to stop eating.

          It is five a.m. My door is rarely knocked on. My stomach is a burning pit. I have not eaten in four days. The knock is weak but insistent. I have ignored the door before but something makes me get up. I open the door and there is the old man who keeps my winter palace warm.

- Hello

- Hallo

          We have saluted each other in the past, if we are at our doors, but once we are away from our doors we are free to ignore. This is the first time we have spoken. I hope he is not sick, he looks worried and relieved. I lick my lips and speak.

-Are you alright?

          - I am, I am, I’m only here, and tis none of my business but, I hadn’t heard you leave the house in a few days and I wanted to make sure you were alright.

          We can hear each other through the walls.

          - It’s just you’d usually be out early. I’d be awake anyway you know. I’d hear you head off. And I didn’t there for the last few days so I just wanted to make sure you’re not sick or anything. I know you don’t have family local.

          - My family are in Poland. Thank you.

          - You look a bit poorly. Come in with me and have a cup of sugary tea.

          - I cannot intrude on you.

          - Well, I can’t come in here to a cold house so you’ll have to come with me.

           I followed him out my door. It was natural to just follow him in his door. His house is like a sauna. He keeps his kitchen dark, like me, people will look in if you turn on a light. I am drinking sweet tea and eating buttery toast. It would be rude not to. He seems excited to have me in his house. Jittery. I speak to put him at ease.

           - Your house is very warm. You know, I don’t have to turn on my heating because of it. So, thank you for that.

          - When you get to my age, you can’t stop feeling cold, when I was young, I’d stifle in here. I bet you’re roasting.

          - I am, I am roasting! But it is nice. It’s like a sauna. People pay money to go to them.

         - A sauna! Ha? That’s gas. How long are you living in Ireland now?

          And I answered that. And all the other questions. The Irish ask a lot of questions. And he asked me to help him move a press two days later and paid me with a bacon and cabbage dinner and that was all it took for me to start filling up with myself again.




Mike Guerin is a writer from the mountainous uplands of North Cork in Ireland. He won the Bryan McMahon short story award in 2022. He has had writing included in several journals both nationally and internationally.