The River Capture

by Mary Costello

  What thought makes Luke smile?

  The thought of some PhD student presenting to his or her professor a thesis proposal entitled ‘Thank Syphilis for Ulysses’.

  Why does Luke think himself lucky?

  Because it’s on the rise again and he, Luke, an MSM, could’ve been riddled. Maeve had a dose of thrush once; he had to anoint his member with ointment. No cup overfloweth.

  Directing his gaze out the window, what posture does he adopt?

  He straightens up, flexes his facial muscles by opening wide his mouth, first vertically, then horizontally, closes his left eye and holds that position, then reopens it and closes his right eye. The purpose: to check for slack or paralytic flesh in his face; to check the status of the vision in his left eye whose sight he is certain is deteriorating. A word, parallax, comes to mind. He opens his laptop and Googles the word.

  The results?

  Out of a total of over 32 million results, and after trawling through several pages, he chooses – owing to the attractive and vaguely familiar title – a link to an excerpt from ‘The Story of the Heavens’ by Sir Robert Ball:

  We must first explain clearly the conception which is known to astronomers by the name of parallax; for it is by parallax that the distance of the sun, or, indeed, the distance of any other celestial body, must be determined. Let us take a simple illustration. Stand near a window from whence you can look at buildings, or the trees, the clouds, or any distant objects. Place on the glass a thin strip of paper vertically in the middle of one of the panes. Close the right eye, and note with the left eye the position of the strip of paper relatively to the objects in the background. Then, while still remaining in the same position, close the left eye and again observe the position of the strip of paper with the right eye. You will find that the position of the paper on the background has changed. As I sit in my study and look out of the window I see a strip of paper, with my right eye, in front of a certain bough on a tree a couple of hundred yards away; with my left eye the paper is no longer in front of that bough, it has moved to a position near the outline of the tree. This apparent displacement of the strip of paper, relatively to the distant background, is what is called parallax.

  What conclusion regarding this result does he arrive at?

  That this definition of parallax is not now the one he wants; that what he wants is a more symbolic or metaphoric, or even simpler definition. That he can consult an online dictionary or trawl through the other results to find a more favoured definition. That he can find the same word with a thousand different faces. That this surfeit of instant online information feeds a certain need, a hunger, but such instant gratification leaves him unsatisfied, like eating fast food or wearing cheap clothes, because such easy acquisition of knowledge lacks the awe, the pleasure of serendipity, the sense of award that real learning brings. He could learn Latin and Greek online, become proficient at astronomy but he knows something would be missing: the connection, the immersion, the thoroughness and warmth and civilising effect that real-life interaction with learned teachers brings. This thought similar, he thinks, to the belief he once held that babies born using IVF – humans incubated in test tubes – were missing out on something essential, the soul maybe, in the act of creation.

  What urge is he fighting?

  The urge to log on to his Gmail account and check if Ruth Mulvey has emailed.

  How does he abate this urge?

  He lights a cigarette, takes two drags, leaves it on the ashtray and then types the words ‘world news March 1965’ into Google. From millions of results he reads two articles, the first on the slaughter in Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, 7 March, the second on the civil rights’ march led by Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery on Tuesday, 9 March. He searches again, typing the words ‘Ireland news March 1965’. There is no mention of a breach of promise court case. Among the more interesting results is the report that, under the new Vatican II rules, Masses were said in the vernacular for the first time in Ireland that month.

  In order to occupy his mind and so desist from scouring the internet for material related to Ellen and Mulvey’s court case, what does he do?

  For an unspecified number of minutes or hours-and-minutes he reads three segments – pages 776 to 789, pages 818 to 846, pages 862 to 867 – in the penultimate episode of Ulysses.

  What excerpts does he favour and/or consider exceptionally clever or witty?

  Bloom’s account of the journey of Dublin’s municipal water as it flows down from Roundwood reservoir through subterranean aqueducts and pipeage to Stillorgan reservoir and onwards through a system of relieving tanks, weirs and street pipes into the tap in the kitchen of 7 Eccles Street; his meditation on the constellation of stars, the likelihood of the inhabitability of planets other than Earth by an anatomically different race of beings to human, and the possibility of the moral redemption of said race by a redeemer; the description of his fantasy home – a thatched two-storey dwellinghouse of southerly aspect with an orchard, tennis court, shrubbery, rockery, summer glasshouse etc. (the replica of which Luke spotted in the Burren); proof that Bloom advocated, instigated and supported programmes of rectitude since his earliest youth; the reason for his smile if he had smiled as he entered the matrimonial bed; the justification for the retribution he would hypothetically mete out to the matrimonial violator who had earlier occupied the matrimonial bed.

  By what is Luke startled?

  By a heavy thud on the window, the sound of an object unexpectedly colliding with the glass. Judging it a soft-bodied living creature by the sound of the impact and the instant painful sensation (which he now concludes must be mirror-touch synaesthesia) gripping his own body, he stands, leans over the desk, peers out. Lying on the gravel about thirty inches from the wall and at an angle of approximately forty-five degrees from the windowsill, is the body of a bird, a baby tit lying on its side, its legs horizontal to the ground, the pale down of its underbelly ruffling lightly in the breeze. He watches and waits, his fingers a-tremble, hoping it has just knocked itself out briefly. Sighing audibly in an effort to trick his body into shedding its sympathetic pain and his mind into asserting a robust masculine nonchalance, he draws back from the window, crosses the room, walks to the front hall and exits the front door. He bends to the bird. The eyes are open but the bird is dead. As he considers various means of removing it (the shovel from the fireside companion set in the drawing room being the first and favoured option), its eyelids blink. A wing twitches. A foot stirs. The bird is trying to die. Or trying to rise. He strokes its fur, lifts it gently, propping it upright on its belly-body. The bird sways, then the whole body shivers almightily. From the corner of his eye Luke registers Paddy’s approach. Another shiver, a wing twitch, an eye blink. The head turns twenty to thirty degrees to the left, eyes blinking urgently. Luke stands, turns, grabs Paddy by the collar and hauls him roughly across the gravel, around the corner to the old kitchen, then pushes him inside and bolts the door.

  And the tit?

  On his return the tit is still propped on its belly, head turning right and left, more alert. As he watches, it rises shakily on thin legs and turns until the tail is where the head was and vice versa, and it turns again and seems to be looking at him. He steps away. Another movement – so swift that he barely catches it – and an upward motion and a diagonal flight across his sight path and the tit is gone, out over the lawn.

  How does Luke occupy himself for the evening?

  At 6.20 p.m. he switches on the hot water immersion. He brings a bowl of dry dog food soaked in water out to the old kitchen for Paddy, refills his water bowl at the tap in the yard, and spends a few minutes rolling a tennis ball across the floor towards him. He returns to the house, re-emerges with a tin of cat food and spoons out the contents onto the ground in three little mounds as the cats swarm around his legs. He fills two old fertiliser bags with logs, places them on the wheelbarrow and wheels them to the front door. From the flowerbeds, right of the front door,
he breaks off four stems of Salvia and pulls five Shasta daisies. He carries the flowers inside, arranges them in a glass vase with water and leaves them on the hall table.

  As he stands admiring the flowers, by what is he again startled?

  By the ringing of his phone.

  The caller?

  Ruth.

  Do they talk?

  Yes. She, in a state of distress, tells him she knew nothing of her father’s engagement to Ellen until she read his email. She then called her mother, who confirmed her knowledge of her father’s engagement, that her father had not loved ‘the woman’ and that ‘the woman’ had sued him for breach of promise. Her mother knew nothing about anonymous letters or rumours of a child and is now very upset. She finds it hard to believe Ruth’s father would behave like that – as indeed Ruth does. My father was a kind man, she says. There must be more to this than meets the eye. She pauses, and then twice says his name urgently, Luke, Luke, and asks if he is there.

  Luke’s response?

  His hand grips the phone tighter. He takes a deep breath and asks if she read the documents he emailed her.

  Her reply?

  She did. She says her father must have believed what was written in the anonymous letters. He must have had reason to believe they were genuine and their contents true.

  What is Luke tempted to do?

  To hang up.

  Does he?

  No. Instead he reminds Ruth that none of the contents of the letters were true, they were all fabricated, that Ellen begged her father to believe her and trust her and not some anonymous letter-writer. Ruth says this happened almost fifty years ago, these were other people’s lives, other people’s mistakes. He counters – not other people, your father. What he did to Ellen marked her life for ever. Your father, he says, went on to have a life, he went on to marry and have a family.

  What happens then?

  Back and forth they go. He says, she says. Tempers flare. The gulf widens.

  Relay the final moments of the conversation.

  ‘Why do I feel like I’m being judged,’ she says, ‘and punished for something I didn’t do? I’m being punished for the supposed sins of my father.’

  ‘You’re not being punished. This is hard for me too. But I have to think of Ellen now. I cannot desert her. I cannot betray her.’

  ‘Betray her? What about me? Is this it? You always talk about being open and honest with each other and now I’m shocked at how final you sound, how unfair and judgmental!’

  ‘And I’m shocked at how little compassion – how little mercy – you have for an old woman who was put through hell by your father! Put yourself in her shoes for a minute, Ruth. Then put yourself in mine.’

  And then?

  He hangs up, switches off his phone and tosses it on the chaise longue. Angry, shocked, rattled, he sits looking from him for an unmeasured period of time.

  As the anger abates, what happens?

  Tears fall.

  On what does he ponder?

  On the word ‘mercy’. On Ruth. On the supposed sins of her father. On the loss of her. On the image of her at the other end of the phone. On her suffering. On her mother’s suffering. On the balance sheet of love. On the charge sheet of feeling. On what makes one kind of love more worthy than another. On what places romantic love, in the eyes of society, above the love of an elderly relative. On how the hands of fate can reach across fifty years and stick a knife in him and her and her and her. On the countless difficulties of relationships. On the merits of a solitary life. On the greater possibility of living a good life alone. On the greater possibility of living a spiritual life alone. On how best to occupy himself for the evening and banish from his mind all thoughts of a single, solitary fateful future.

  How does he occupy himself for the evening?

  At 7.35 p.m. he enters the drawing room, removes the ashes from the ash pan, arranges wood on the grate, switches on the lamp over the piano, stands at the mahogany cabinet for several minutes considering the purple velvet case containing his grandmother’s set of apostle spoons, the master and the twelve, sitting snugly inside. He goes upstairs and, in the bathroom, shaves, showers, shampoos his hair. After drying himself, he flosses and brushes his teeth, trims his nose hair, clips his toenails. He enters the bedroom and dresses in pale blue boxer shorts, a brown silk shirt, jeans and brown leather moccasins.

  Occupied thus, on what does he ruminate?

  On the pleasures of the night ahead. On the probability that Paddy will object to his early lock-in by barking. On the glow of the evening sun on his skin as he dresses and on the foresight of the nineteenth-century architect to situate dual-aspect windows in this room. On the heredity law that states it takes three generations to make a gentleman. On the myth that it takes three generations to lose a fortune. On the ruthless forces that drive the universe. On the swampy nature of the human mind. On the river capture. On the tsunami that knocked the earth six and a half inches off its axis and moved Japan four metres closer to the United States. On the realisation that Ulysses is probably the only book, Bloom the only character, and Joyce the only author whose company he would never willingly relinquish. On the likelihood that Joyce named his daughter for St Lucy, the patron saint of eyesight, and not Lucia di Lammermoor, who went mad. On the prevalence of syphilis among geniuses and the likelihood that the rogue bacterium gnawed at their brains and lured them into deeper and darker recesses of the unconscious from where they unearthed deeper and darker contents than they would ever have unearthed sans spirochete. On the surprising drop in temperature in the drawing room for this time of year as night falls. On his failed attempt to read even the first chapter of the Quran. On the imp of the perverse. On the unwelcome coincidence and provenance of the Mulvey name with the other Mulvey and his lingual penetration under the Moorish wall. On the different tempos of time and how gravity warps time – how, for instance, if one lives on a ground-floor apartment one ages slightly less rapidly than the neighbour in the penthouse; and why it is estimated that by the age of eight we have, subjectively, lived two-thirds of our lives. On the predilection for and the preponderance of American catchphrases, coined words and acronyms such as 24/7, my bad, natch, OMG, FYI, ATM, LMAO. On the phonetic, syllabic and rhythmic assonance between the acronyms for his personality type according to the Myers-Briggs typology test (INFJ) and the Latin abbreviation for King of the Jews (INRI). On the period some years ago when, after reading all the novels of John McGahern and Edna O’Brien, he was convinced the two writers had conducted a clandestine love affair and the evidence of the affair was embedded in cryptic passages and codes in their novels. On his youthful intimations that he possessed within him, among other gifts, the germ of a great scientific truth – a sign or formula or compound containing the key of life, the code to everything – and that this formula was ordinary and simple – simpler than Pi or E=mc2 or the Fibonacci sequence – and close at hand, already existing in nature, something right under our noses – carbon or iron or zinc, a nutrient in clay or some common fungus. On the moments when he was convinced he was approaching this scientific breakthrough, and it was only a matter of time before the answer was dropped down to him or arrived in sleep and he would wake up, and reveal the code of everything to everyone.

  Does he still believe in the existence of such a key or code to everything?

  He has a hunch it is in water. That the simple hydrogen-oxygen compound in its purest, uncontaminated state contains the nucleus within which lies the quantum code for everything – the key to life and matter. For a time he became briefly enthralled with the experiments of Masaru Emotu, who claimed that water molecules are affected by human words, thoughts and intentions, and that, when frozen, water forms beautiful or ugly crystals depending on whether beautiful or ugly, positive or negative words, thoughts and intentions are focused on it. These claims were subsequently discredited for lacking scientific publication, peer review and scientific provability.

  Pseudoscience and
quackery, then, no scientific evidence to support his hunch?

  No. However, according to New Scientist, researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany, have since discovered that the structural memory of water persists on a picosecond timescale, a picosecond being one thousandth of one billionth of a second. If water retains traces or memories or records or resonances – or whatever water’s equivalents to traces, memories, records and resonances are – of what it has passed through or of what has passed through it, then who knows what else it retains, or what else may yet be discovered about water and its properties.

  What, in his opinion, caused his youthful intimations to dim and pass and what attendant emotions did their passing give rise to?

  The dimming is due partly to the speed with which theoretical physics, experimental physics, biophysics, particle physics, astrophysics, quantum physics, molecular physics and all the biologies have advanced in the second half of his life to date, his copious reading of theories of the multiverse, string theory, supersymmetry, the phenomenon of quantum entanglement and quantum spin, the search for the god particle in a suburb outside Geneva, and the fact that what once was science fiction has now become science – all of which sate his curiosity and provide answers to questions which previously triggered the intimations. Due partly too to his own circumstances, the course of his own life and his familial responsibilities. The attendant emotions: disappointment and occasional resentment that he has not been part of the scientific community and such scientific investigations; relief, because of a niggling concern about his mental health due to the fact that those soarings – of which the intimations and illuminations were part thereof – came perilously close to the deranging altitudes to which manias ascend; a humbling admission that the unravelling of nature’s secrets will take place in minds far superior to his own; feelings of conflict due to the belief that, as the scientific world moves ever closer to explaining everything, mankind may be slipping closer to extinction, that man is nearly done in this existence and the dissolution of the self is at hand; the belief that there will be nothing left for him to reveal, and no place left where he can soar or shine, has led him to feel or possess or become, in recent years, a flattened spirit, a loss of self-esteem, a growing bitterness, a private resentment, a fragile ego, an approximate man.