Cave (eBook)

Kevin Barry (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
128 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-39942-0 (ISBN)

Infos

An unforgettable black comedy from one of Ireland's most beloved writers (author of Night Boat to Tangier and City of Bohane). We were the last two bucks of the McRaes left standin' . . . And the McRae name had gone back for a long time around these hills . . . Oh, for decades and centuries unending, the rain that fell on these hills fell only to spite the McRaes . . . High in the mountains of south County Sligo, the McRae brothers are sleeping rough. Stuck in a dead zone and running out of road, Archie and Bopper have only each other to rely on as they try to restart their van, their lives and their Wi-Fi connection. And then there's the local police sergeant who is becoming more and more interested in their lives . . . The Cave was first produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in June 2025.

Kevin Barry is the author of the story collections 'Dark Lies The Island' and 'There Are Little Kingdoms' and the novel 'City Of Bohane'. He has been awarded the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the Authors Club Best First Novel Award, and has been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Prize and the Hughes ### Hughes Irish Novel of the Year. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, and many other journals and anthologies.

Textauszug

Black. Silence.

Now a caption is projected. It reads …

13 desperate scenes
from the lives of the mcraes

It fades out, and is replaced by another caption …

Scene One – A Dead Zone in Sligo

Caption fades out.

Slowly, the lights come up …

We are high in the mountains of south County Sligo, and the wind swirls ominously across a bleak and desolate plateau.

Now this place would seriously rattle you – if you weren’t of an even temperament, you might fuck yourself into the void altogether. Nobody, in what follows, is of an even temperament.

Stage left is the entrance to a large cave – it looks like it might be big enough to house a family. We cannot see inside the cave; we see just its dark maw opening into the mountain. A primeval feeling.

On the rough ground surrounding the entrance to the cave there are signs of an encampment …

Just beyond the maw of the cave there is a fire-blackened barrel, with briquettes and insta-logs and diesel cans lying about.

Downstage right, and side-on to the audience, is a very fucked-up and rust-bitten white van with no plates. Cables lead from the van’s bonnet and are attached to a small generator. A domestic socket extension lead is in turn plugged into the genny.

Far stage right, beyond the van, there is the sense of the plateau’s edge: it’s a sheer drop, an expanse of blackness, a VOID.

The wind swirls and whistles but now it dies down a little. The lights come fully up. There is a scatter of distressed birdsong. A sad grey morning dawns.

To greet the morning, a man crawls out of the cave on all fours – this is Archie McRae, forties. He wears a shiny Penneys suit over a V-neck jumper and a pair of cheap plastic trainers. No T-shirt under the jumper.

He pauses his crawl and looks up – still on his fours – and considers the sky. It is desolate and wintry in the Sligo mountains. It is the month of May.

Archie crawls on again. He looks like he’s after a night of the horrors. He reaches the van, still on his fours, and he gets up onto his knees and attaches a trembling paw to the door handle.

He struggles to raise himself off the ground but he slips and falls onto his backside.

He breathes deep, he digs deep, and he tries to rise up again … but he falls onto his backside again.

He sticks at it – God loves a trier – and he attempts to raise himself once more … and now, after an almighty struggle, he manages to open the door and he hauls himself up into the van. Thanks be to Jesus.

Archie sits at the wheel. He takes a few deep breaths to steady himself.

Archie Am I right in myself yet?

He shakes his head in answer to this question.

Indeed and I am not.

Still, he tries to work up a fit of enthusiasm. He slaps his hands together and settles to his task.

Right so …

He attempts to turn over the engine – it sputters and scratches but it won’t start. He pauses in his effort and lays his head on the wheel and begins to sob.

He looks up from the sobbing. A swoon passes across his face as he remembers something … And now he starts to sing a sweet old children’s song from yesteryear – ‘Morningtown Ride’ by The Seekers.

Alerted by the song, a second man emerges from the cave – it’s the brother …

Bopper McRae, forties, has managed to stand up on his two feet. He wears a tattered old blanket wrapped around himself. He looks like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards, the hair all crazy and askew.

He gazes over at Archie with a look of pity and annoyance blended. He’s had enough of this messing.

As he continues to sing, Archie eyes Bopper warily, and he sees that he is not taken with the song. So he continues to sing it, and more loudly, in defiance …

Archie has a crow’s voice but the singing refreshes him. He has another go at starting the engine – it sputters and scratches, sputters and scratches.

Bopper shakes his head and steps back into the cave, as if all this is just … fucken … hopeless.

But precisely as he disappears from view, the engine finally catches and starts with a great throb of life and the genny judders to life also.

Bopper is quickly back out of the cave …

… just as Archie, with a look of triumph about him, climbs down from the van, which he leaves running.

Ignoring Bopper, he walks back into the cave – he is proudly upright now, moving confidently on two jaunty feet – and he quickly re-emerges with an iPhone and a charger.

He goes and attaches the charger to the socket extension on the genny and he plugs in the iPhone.

Bopper continues to look at him – he huddles deep inside his blanket and nervously bounces from one foot to the other.

Archie stares at his phone as it starts to pick up juice. He looks back at the brother and shakes his head at the state of him.

You’ve a shockin’ IRA kind of a look to you this mornin’, Bopper McRae.

Bopper looks down at himself, considers the blanket, shrugs. He wraps it around himself tighter.

The iPhone’s light comes on as it picks up juice. Archie holds the phone high and squints at it.

He puts it down again, now utterly desolate, and looks over at the brother.

No coverage.

Bopper turns and kicks the lip of the cave in frustration. He turns back to Archie.

Bopper These hoorin’ hills …

Archie Oh, these hills is the curse of it, Bop …

Bopper … and I’ll tell you ’nother thing?

Archie Go on?

Bopper The fucker responsible for the roll-out of the rural broadband ’round here would want to be strung up from a pole and flayed.

Archie Now for you.

Archie holds up the phone again, shakes his head.

Nothin’ on the coverage front … Which means we have NO IDEA what she’s up to.

Bopper None whatsoever!

Archie She could be attached to the big-arsed fuckbag of the Costellos, for all we know?

Bopper He could be on his knees proposin’ to the girl, Archie! Outside in fucken California!

The brothers start to pace, in contrary directions to each other, crossing at the middle.

And here’s us …

Archie … the misfortunate McRaes …

Bopper … wearin’ the few rags of sleep we’d have to our names …

Archie … and we’re supposed to be dealin’ with this kind of messin’?

Archie stops up, arrested by a pleasant thought.

Though … I suppose another way of lookin’ at the ‘no coverage’ situation, Bopper, is that we’re … yunno? … that we’re …

Bopper … we’re?

Archie We’re safe from it all … for a while … when we’re up here …

He forlornly holds up the phone for a last look at it: nothing.

… in the dead zone.

Bopper stops up – he sees the sense in this.

Bopper I s’pose so, yeah.

Bopper drifts off sadly into the cave; Archie goes stage right and stares for a thousand yards over the void. Checks the phone for time. Mutters to himself –

Archie Quarter to nine of a mornin’ … School day … The poor mother with bags like graves under her eyes … A slice of toast on a fork up against the bars of the Superser …

Bopper slouches back out from the cave. He’s dressed now...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.7.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Dramatik / Theater
• ISBN-10: 0-571-39942-8 / 0571399428
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-39942-0 / 9780571399420