The River Capture

by Mary Costello

  At what point does he urinate?

  At approximately three-quarters of the way up the avenue, under a beech tree, he stops, opens his fly and, letting out a low moan of relief, he urinates in a hot steady stream.

  What urination practice does he now recall?

  The male Muslim practice of sitting down while peeing as extolled to him by Rachid, the twenty-eight-year-old Libyan IT engineer he met in the Front Lounge bar one Saturday night in June 2007, and who, on three occasions, he kissed and fondled (and only kissed and fondled) in his (Rachid’s) apartment in Monkstown, Rachid being a semi-celibate, fully conflicted gay man. Luke had assumed the sitting-while-pissing was practised out of consideration for women but learned that the practice is intended to safeguard men from urine soiling, the smallest trace of urine on the person or clothing of a Muslim being, according to the hadith of the prophet Muhammad, one of the greatest impediments to entering Heaven. No more hygienic a man than Rachid has Luke ever known.

  Was Rachid circumcised?

  Yes. Rachid’s shyness and body modesty combined with (a) Luke’s reluctance to cause embarrassment and (b) the mental image of the infant Rachid’s genital mutilation prevented him from further enquiry or comment. In a light-hearted discussion on the topic weeks later he informed Rachid that the divine prepuce, aka the carnal bridal ring of the holy Catholic apostolic church, which was preserved in the village of Calcata near Rome for centuries, went missing in 1983.

  Was Luke in love with Rachid?

  Yes. From the moment, in Rachid’s apartment, he caught a glimpse of him through a half-open door, praying. With his pure heart, simple truths and naïve beliefs he reminded Luke of no one more than Josie. I could convert to Islam, he offered, if it helps? He meant: if it helped Rachid to love him. Dear Luke, he replied, in your heart you are already Muslim, insha’Allah. Anyway, he said, you would be reverting, not converting – reverting to the original state to which your soul was destined. Luke was a little in love with Islam too. For some time after he ceased seeing Rachid he continued the practice of sitting while urinating.

  What aspects of Islam was he in love with?

  The practice of Zakat, the obligation to give ten per cent of one’s wealth to the poor. The practice of eating only with the right hand, and using the left only to clean oneself in the toilet (this too he practised until he didn’t). The belief that there are a hundred names for God; that if you loan to Allah a beautiful loan He will return it tenfold; that the reason birds sing is to praise Allah. The story concerning Muhammad’s kindness to animals as relayed by Leopold Bloom when he sees a tabby on a windowsill on Cumberland Street: the prophet, on finding a cat asleep on his mantle, cut a piece off the garment so as not to disturb the sleeping cat. The story concerning Muhammad’s kindness to his fellow man as relayed to Luke by Rachid: every day, for years, Muhammad’s neighbours dumped their rubbish outside his door, and every day Muhammad disposed of it without complaint. Then one day, finding no rubbish outside his door, Muhammad ran, worried, to the neighbours’ door, thinking they must be ill. Rachid told a story about himself, too: whenever he received sweets from his father as a small boy, he ate half of them and put the other half aside for Allah.

  To what are Luke’s eyes drawn as he zips up?

  To the cracks and fissures on the east-facing wall of the house. To the sprigs of wild rocket sprouting at intervals from these new cracks and fissures.

  What causes him to frown?

  Concern that the appearance of these new cracks is evidence that the foundation of the house has been compromised as a result of his own actions six summers ago.

  What happened six summers ago?

  Josie died. In the days following her funeral Luke investigated the enigma of the partly concealed Georgian windows at the lower-ground level of the house. With no other evidence of the existence of a basement – no door or stairway or other customary means of access to a basement – these windows had always baffled him. His hunch was that during construction of the house in the 1830s, the basement area was never fully dug out and cleared of earth, but was left as it was, incomplete.

  Was there a concealed basement?

  Yes. The day after Josie’s funeral he descended the stone steps that led from the back door down to garden level and with a pick-axe and sledgehammer he broke open a hole in the wall under one of the mysterious windows, then gouged at the wall around the window, loosened the frame and, as night fell, removed the sash window in two sections. Inside, he found a high bank of earth. On the second day he dug like a madman. With shovel, spade and wheelbarrow, blood, sweat and tears, and Josie always on his mind, he carved a path into the bank of earth and dug through the dark centre of the house until he could go no further. On the third day he hired a mini-digger and a driver and two local lads from the town and they brought out earth and dislodged stones that were packed hard to almost ceiling height, and for the first time in one hundred and seventy years, daylight, fresh air and human activity entered those dark musty chambers. Every day they dug and filled wheelbarrows and brought out earth and, slowly, three large cave-like rooms with flagstone floors and load-bearing walls revealed themselves. In the evenings, dirty, sweaty and with aching bones, Luke and the men sat out on the front lawn drinking beer and eating supermarket pizza dickied up with extra cheese and onions by his mother and served on a wooden chopping board. On Saturdays and Sundays he toiled alone, stripped to the waist, maniacal in his grief. At night, his mind raced with plans and high hopes for this newly discovered space – the hosting of weddings, literary festivals, yoga weekends, retreats. Occasionally, niggling worries that he had not engaged an engineer to verify the safety of the structure surfaced. One night, when the work was complete and the space cleaned, he brought down a kitchen chair and a power cable and strung up lights and sat in the underground cave watching his shadow dance on the walls.

  What image is suddenly called to mind now?

  The image of his child-aunt Una in a white dress and veil on the occasion of her First Holy Communion in 1938, the photograph of which he found in an envelope in the furthest corner of the dark, angled, low-ceiling space under the stairs on the morning he commenced work on the basement. Unsmiling, with full lips and an intense determined gaze (of what? – holiness or defiance or knowledge?), her pale wide face still haunts him.

  What other remnants of this child-aunt did he find under the stairs on that morning six years ago?

  Her school satchel, which, after seventy years in the dark, he brought out into the hall light. Fashioned from recycled leather, as evidenced by the awl-bored holes of previous stitching, it had a rudimentary metal buckle and a crude leather tab sewn on with crooked stitches. Old mould stains had accumulated on the stiff unforgiving leather. He had an image of her father, perhaps, late at night under candlelight, working on the satchel, or the local cobbler, surgeon to old shoes and satchels, pushing a needle through the tough leather, pricking and prodding his fingertips, going to the bone. There, waiting for her on the kitchen table the next morning, all hers. When he opened the rusting buckle that day, minute ferrous flakes fell on the carpet. A silence of pity fell on him. He lifted out the contents – books, copybooks, a pink pencil stump, the point roughly pared with a knife or blade. He read the titles. Léightheoirí Proinnias Naomhtha, An Dreoilín; Drámaí Scol, Íosogán, Pádraig Mac Piarrais; Plain Song for Schools, Part Two; Grammar; Stair na hÉireann; Tír-eolas na hÉireann; Brown & Nolan’s No. B School Jotter; The ‘Eclipse’ Exercise Book with the name ‘Una O’Brien’ and a date, 24.10.40, on the perforated line at the bottom. A scrapbook covered in embossed wallpaper contained pieces of fabric, sewing samples displaying the hemming stitch, top-stitch, buttonholes, each sample labelled and dated from 13 June 1940 to 11 December 1940.

  Why were his hands shaking?

  At the realisation that hers – his child-aunt’s – were probably the last hands that touched those pages. That she had probably arrived home from school on the day of the
Christmas holidays in December 1940, and flung the satchel under the stairs, not needing it again until a few weeks later. Molecules of her sweat, her touch DNA, still detectable on the strap.

  Did he read the contents of the jotter or copybooks that morning?

  He leafed through a mix of essays, sums, grammar exercises and a night-time prayer in the jotter. Neatly written joined handwriting, the capital letters extending to the top line, the ticks and corrections marked up in a teacher’s red pen, now faded to pink. Essay titles, in chronological order: The Wood in Winter, St Rita, Sun Down, Lourdes and Bernadette, History of the Danes, Oíche Shamhna, Rubber, Eight Sentences on Diarmuid. In the copybook, a mix of English, Irish and geography exercises: Meaning of the poem ‘Adare’; Counties of Ireland, Lessons We Learned, Ports of Ireland, Pattern Day; an Irish grammar exercise on the Tuiseal Ginideach; a letter to a friend dated 5 December 1940; a second essay on Winter.

  What impression of his child-aunt did he form from her writings?

  That she was a child of earnestness, innocence, sincerity, obedience, compliance, adherence to religious practice; one who possessed an average intelligence and a certain formality; a neat handwriter.

  What were the final entries?

  19 December: Winter is the saddest season of the year because its birds are gone to distant countries at the most time we want them. The woods in Clonduff look very dreary because their beautiful clothes are withered and they are cold and bear and always shivering.

  20 December: Mary Mother, fold me tight, In your arms throughout the night. Guide me on my shadowed way; Shield me till the dawn of day. Guide me till the dark is past. Bring me to God’s home at last. Amen.

  What penny suddenly drops now?

  The startling coincidence that his child-aunt Una and his beloved James Joyce both departed this world in January 1941, Una at approximately 11 a.m. GMT (assuming death occurred on impact) on the first day of the month, James at 2.15 a.m. CET on the thirteenth day of the month; Una in west Waterford, James in the Schwesternhaus vom Roten Kreuz in Zurich; their departures separated by eleven days, fifteen hours and fifteen minutes and by a distance of 1289 kilometres over land and sea. The further realisation – accompanied by a racing heart – that at the approximate time his child-aunt was penning those final exercises in her jotter Joyce had recently arrived in Zurich and installed his little family in the Hôtel Pension Delphin, sick and broken and preoccupied with Lucia, spending the days before Christmas wandering in the snow along the Zurichsee or watching the water at the confluence of the Sihl and Limmat rivers. Both man and child oblivious to the disaster that was floating close. Luke is confounded that, despite the innumerable occasions that the words ‘January 1941’ crossed his mind and tongue throughout his life, he had, until this very moment, failed to notice this coincidence.

  What images flow from this coincidence?

  Two souls alighting from two recently rendered unconscious temporal abodes, one situated at the bottom of a brick-walled well, the other on a bed in a dimly lit hospital ward, one prone, the other supine. Each soul then ascending the stratospheres, moving through dark space, in and out among the cold stars, passing each other at intervals until Joyce’s soul, moved by curiosity and a vague memory of other small souls, reaches out to the little girl and, hand in hand, they roam the heavens, in among the Moons of Jupiter, over the Rings of Saturn and when they orbit planet Earth he points at the dot that is Dublin and tells her of its beauty and eccentricities and he dances a little jig and sings a little ditty and she laughs till she cries at his quirks and his quarks and his puns.

  What other images flow from this coincidence?

  The grave at Fluntern. The white skin. The darkness within. The military blood. The spirochete still at last.

  Who calls Luke’s name as he approaches the front door?

  Brian Lynch, stepping up into the cab of the John Deere in the adjoining field, his hand in descent following a salute.

  How does Luke respond?

  He moves his head and body ninety degrees to the left and raises his hand in a reciprocal gesture, the glimpse of Brian Lynch reminding him of his attractiveness and causing him to surmise that if he, Luke, were a woman, he would surely give thought to the handsome babies Brian would sire, and with this thought he then recalls the occasion, years ago, when Brian and his father brought a maiden heifer over to their yard to be serviced by their bull, aka the Master, and the two young boys stood watching as the Master was led into the pen and sniffed around the heifer for several minutes until finally he mounted her, at which point Luke’s father reached in and with his bare hand guided the Master’s pizzle into the heifer. Baculum baculorum!

  Stepping into the hall, what does he do?

  He dials Ruth Mulvey’s number.

  Does she reply?

  No, the call goes to her mailbox. He listens to her voice, then hangs up, his heart pounding, his hand trembling, a thousand thoughts and feelings swarming his mind.

  What kind of thoughts and feelings?

  Confused, conflicting, oscillating thoughts. He wants to see her. He does not want to see her. He wants to talk to her. He does not want to talk to her. He wants to tell her everything. He wants to tell her nothing. He loves her. He doesn’t know her. He knows her thirty days. He knows her one hundred and thirty-one hours.

  What does he do?

  He puts the phone in his pocket, sits on the green velvet chaise longue, removes his shoes, reclines his back and stares at the framed picture on the opposite wall above the fireplace, judging – not for the first time – the frame too narrow for the picture.

  What does the picture depict?

  In a dark, gloomy, navy-blue watery underworld a frogman is suspended in a diagonally descending diving position.

  What is the picture’s provenance?

  Luke bought the etching, entitled Diving for Pearls, at a charity art exhibition in the hospice in Harold’s Cross on his way home from work on 5 December 2004. Cost, remembered: €170. Artist’s name forgotten, but handwritten on a label stuck to the back of the picture.

  What other watery image now comes to mind?

  The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife that he once came upon in a book on (mostly lesbian) Shunga in Watkins Books on Cecil Court in London. The image was of a woman in a sexual pose with two octopuses, a daddy octopus and a son octopus, the daddy performing cunnilingus on the woman and the son fondling her mouth and nipple. Tentacles all over her body, the mollusc sucker’s mouth buried in her furry vulva, the woman apparently in raptures. Intelligent creatures, octopuses, they can think for themselves. Tentacle touch must be delicious for a woman. All touch is delicious.

  Following contemplation of the picture, what does Luke do?

  He rises, walks along the back hall into the kitchen, begins to pack the letters and files into the plastic bag. He pauses mid-task, glances across the room at the empty fireplace, then completes the task and leaves the bag of files on the floor, propped against the wall. He empties the coffee pot, refills it and puts it on the hob to brew.

  What significance attaches to the coffee pot?

  It is a Bialetti Rainbow 3-cup in light blue (with an accumulation of coffee stains running vertically from the lid downwards), a gift from Ruth Mulvey after the glass beaker of his previous cafetiere broke, purchased on Thursday, 28 June in TK Maxx, Cornmarket Street, Cork.

  While the coffee brews, what thoughts on the subject of chance occur to him?

  In a town with a population of 759, of unknown male/female ratio, what were the chances that he and she would meet and, worse, be unknown to each other up to then and, worse still, fall in love? What were the chances? But the thing about chance that he has always known – chance or risk or probability – is its absolute truth. Truth is told clearly in probability and the beauty of that truth is that it is logical. Why, given all the possibilities, only one outcome actually happens? But a thing only needs to happen once to prove probability. In the very long run, ever
ything happens, everything is inevitable. Why are we surprised by this?

  After pouring his coffee, what does he do?

  He lifts the plastic bag containing the files onto the table, selects four items (the notice of motion, one anonymous letter, the gynaecologist’s report and the newspaper clipping) and photographs them with his phone camera. He brings his phone to his study down the hall, uploads the photographs to his laptop, opens his Gmail and composes an email to Ruth Mulvey:

  Dear Ruth,

  I tried to call you earlier. I discovered today that your father was once engaged to Ellen. He broke off the engagement and humiliated her by making false accusations against her and spreading lies. He said he had received anonymous letters claiming she had a child in America. She had no option but to take him to court to clear her name.

  I didn’t believe Ellen at first. It seemed too far-fetched. But she showed me the legal files – the letters, the court documents, the newspaper reports from March 1965. Ellen O’Brien, Ardboe House, Clonduff is the Plaintiff, and your father, Maurice Mulvey, Curraboy, Clonduff is the named Defendant. I have them here. I’ll photograph and attach some for you. There’s no doubting the truth of all this.

  Needless to say, I knew nothing, and I’m assuming you didn’t either and this will floor you as much as it has me.

  Ellen is very distressed. My heart is breaking thinking of all she has suffered. Her whole life was blighted as a result of what happened. There are probably still people around who believe the lies he told about her.