by Colum McCann
Douglass was glad now of the green slicker and the hat. He realized after a few miles that the hat shaded his face almost completely, that nobody on the roadside could discern who was underneath.
The city seemed to stop at a brick warehouse and then suddenly there were trees. The road curled and whipped out into parcels of green. They passed a stagecoach, waving at the passengers arrayed along the side. The coach was piled high with boxes and suitcases. It looked as if it might totter over. They inquired after the maid but nobody had seen her.
Douglass remained shaded beneath the brim on his hat.
—Fine weather, he said through the light rain.
He could not shake the American out of his accent.
—Indeed, sir, for a Yankee.
The Jennings sisters smiled as they pulled away from the stagecoach. He tried to gallop ahead of them, but the sisters were more than capable: they braided around him, spurred him on.
In the countryside small ribbons of smoke curled up in the air. He was amazed the way the poor Irish lived underground. He could see their hovels from the road, built from turf and sticks and mounds of grass. Their fields were tiny. So many hedges. An occasional run of stone wall. The children looked like remnants of themselves. Spectral. Some were naked to the waist. Many of them had sores on their faces. None had shoes. He could see the structures of them through their skin. The bony residue of their lives.
He cast his mind back to Dublin and the little boy who had welded himself to his shoulder. It seemed so long ago now. The people didn’t frighten him anymore. It was not so much that he had become immune, it was more that he knew he would not be harmed. He wondered what might happen if this road ran into a road in Baltimore, or Philadelphia, or Boston, how the people might meld into each other.
He wanted now to find Lily, to wish her a truly safe journey. He spurred his horse on. They found shapes on the road, shadows, but none of them were the maid.
In the small villages the rain kept curiosity at bay. They rode out into the beauty of the dripping fields. The sound of the hooves like pistolfire. A rainbow hung on the sky. They halted their horses under a hazel tree where someone had built a low bench. Isabel unwrapped the sandwiches and took a flask of tea from her saddlebags. She had even brought cups. Her sisters sat on the bench. They melded well with Isabel: they were prettier and quieter, as if required by some strange law to balance her out. It was, the sisters agreed, a daring adventure, but they should not go too much farther. It was already near lunchtime. They would never find Lily now.
—We have plenty of time, said Isabel. It’s early yet.
—My sister has a mind of her own. Unfortunately she lost it a few years ago.
—It’s ten miles to Cove. And ten back, said Helen.
—We’ll lose the light.
—Oh, please do come. Please.
The road had become busier with stagecoaches and jaunting cars loaded with cases. The families had their eyes set on the distance. Their children were bundled into grim strips of blanket. The wooden tongues of the cars groaned. The carriages swayed in the ruts. The horses looked bound for the yard. They were bent over with the work of keeping to the road.
The Jennings sisters galloped west, then south. It was, said Charlotte, a prettier journey, and quieter, too. The road rambled and turned. Still, there were families upon them, all heading south, gathering, small rivers.
They asked in vain for any sighting of the young maid. The closer they got to the sea, the more the roads thickened with leaving. Vendors had set up stalls against the hedges. Families were hawking the last of their possessions. Douglass and the sisters had to slow their horses down to get through the crowds. All manner of things for sale. Fiddles, inkwells, pots, hats, shirts. Paintings strung on the hedges. Curtains hung from the branches of trees. Pieces of cloth with half-moons, the once-gaudy colors faded with time. A beautiful silk dress, embroidered with thin strips of gold, draped sadly over the seat of a jaunting car.
They pushed their horses on through, towards the cliffs that overlooked the harbor.
A man came towards them. He wore two boards draped across his shoulders, tied with a string. On it were the prices to Boston, New York, Newfoundland. He called out the prices in a singsong. Some children tugged at his pockets. He slapped them away.
The crowd grew so thick that they had to dismount to guide their horses.
A young priest walked among the crowd, looking for the sick. To administer the Last Rites. He was fingering rosary beads as he went. He glanced at Douglass. They had never seen each other before, but for a brief moment they both thought they recognized one another and they stopped to say something, but nothing came, no words between them.
The priest stepped away, under the overarching green branches of a tree where a child’s clothes hung limp.
—Father, said Isabel. Excuse me, Father.
The priest turned and stepped towards them. His eyes were huge and tired. He pulled the rosary beads tight around his fingers. His face sharpened. His voice was bitter. No, the priest said, he had not seen anyone answering to Lily’s description. He toed his foot into the mud, as if he might find her there. He turned then and spat into his hands. No, he said again, sharply.
The priest went on, calling to the people around him in the Irish language.
Isabel shivered and touched the neck of her horse. Douglass pulled his hat down further and guided his horse away by the reins. The sisters, too, had fallen into a reverent silence. The wind came off the sea and rose up to meet them. The harbor curved like a question mark. A dozen or more wooden ships were dotted on the water below. A small, sad flotilla of masts and tightened sails. Their names scrubbed off by the waves.
They walked their horses to within ten yards of the edge of the cliff. The town itself lay below them like a twitching thing. The thatch of the roofs. The bend of the trees. Carriages moving like small insects along the waterfront towards the square. Douglass knew what chaos lay down there, what desires, what fevers. Yet it was immense with beauty. The town of Cove genuflected to the water. Birds flew ravenously around the cliffs, weightless on the updrafts.
He wrapped the reins around a tree and walked to the edge of the cliff. He took off his hat. The wind and rain rang fierce around him. It took him a moment to realize that Isabel was at his side. The two sisters remained behind, perched now on their horses. The pale of the waves came upon the shore below.
Isabel twined her arm around his. Her face against his shoulder. He was aware of the sisters watching. He wished he could gently prise her from him, but she stayed there, looking down over the town.
Soon the sun would fall and the sea darken and all the land about them would go cold.
IT WAS LATE afternoon by the time they found Lily. Rainsoaked and shivering on the pier. Her head shawled, her body mummied into a coat. She had bought her ticket and was waiting for the morning boat. She would not look at them, her face drawn in some private anguish.
Douglass and the two sisters stood apart. They watched as Isabel bent down in front of Lily. A supplicant. They looked as if they were praying together.
Isabel had brought a few days’ worth of food. Wrapped in a blue teacloth. Bundled and tied. She pressed it gently into the young girl’s arms. She reached inside her coat, brought out a number of folded bills that she quickly stuffed into Lily’s palm. Douglass felt a chill. He watched as Lily moved her mouth but did not seem to say anything. What words went between them? What silence? There was a howl from a nearby shop. The screech of a woman. The thump of a fist. A din of laughter from a public house. From somewhere distant came the sound of a mandolin.
Isabel peeled her gloves off, and pressed them, too, into Lily’s arms. Then she reached inside her own coat and fumbled at her neck. A brooch of some sort. She handed it to Lily. The girl smiled. Isabel leaned forward and embraced the maid, whispered something in her ear. Lily nodded and pulled the shawl tight down over her head. What thoughts trembled there? What fiercene
ss had brought her here?
Douglass felt rooted to the ground. It was as if he could not even pick up his feet. He longed for the warmth of a fire. He pulled his collar up and coughed into it. He felt his breath bounce back towards him. Negro girl. Ran away. Goes by name Artela.
Isabel glanced over her shoulder and called out to her sisters. They brought her horse forward. Her long dress was muddied at the hem. She wiped her feet against the cobbles and climbed demurely to the saddle, spurred the horse through the thronged streets. They moved through the town, past an auctioneer’s shop, and away.
THE PRIEST WATCHED them crest the hill. There was a long scar of dark mud along the side of his soutane where he had slipped and fallen. He still held the rosary beads in his fist, though they were looser now, they jangled at his hip. Isabel raised her hand in parting, but the priest did not respond. He followed them metronomically, his head turning, the rest of his body clamped in place. Then he strode away through the wet grass towards the fires.
THE HORSES DRIPPED with exhaustion. Skittishly they moved through the dark. It was already well beyond midnight when they got home. Mr. Jennings was waiting in the yard. He had prepared food and hot drinks and blankets. The yard was a commotion.
When Douglass put his foot to the cobbles his knee half-buckled underneath him. He was given a candle and a blanket. He trudged indoors. His shadow multiplied upon the stairs.
That night he could not sleep. Towards daylight he went downstairs to the quiet of the library. His knees ached. His shoulders felt welded to his neck. He entered the room quietly. Isabel was sitting in the corner, in the gloom. She looked up to see him come in: it was his ritual to use the ladder to move himself along the bookshelves. He waited a moment in the doorway, stepped across, took her in an embrace. Only that. He held his hand at the back of her hair. He hesitated a moment. She sobbed. When he pulled away, the shoulder of his shirt was wet.
ON HIS LAST morning in Cork, Frederick Douglass took a jaunting car, alone. The horse seemed to yield to him. The reins felt soft in his hands. He went southwest of the city and strolled the strand. Quiet here. No emigrant ships. The tide was out and the beach was penciled by a series of soft sand ripples. Perfect echoes, one after the other, stretching out to the shadowfold of the horizon. No sea anymore. Just cloud. He felt a pang of homesickness: it reminded him so much of Baltimore.
When he placed his foot down, the water squelched beneath the sole of his boot. A brief imprint. The ground felt mobile beneath him. He lifted his foot and watched the water leak away, the sand rebound. It was a thing to do over and over again, footprint after footprint.
The sand apparently stretched for miles, but Isabel had told him to be careful, the area was renowned for its swift, quiet tide. The water could insinuate itself secretly, rush in, turn, surround him, and he would be trapped. He found it hard to imagine. It looked, to Douglass, so very peaceful.
He bent down and in the rippled layers noticed a number of tiny crabs pedaling their legs in the sand. He lifted one onto the palm of his hand. The creature was almost translucent, its eyes high and unwieldy. A fiddler crab, perhaps. It ran to the edge of his fingers, hesitated, returned. He moved his arm in the air and the crab scuttled to the high part of his wrist. Douglass dropped it down into the sand again where it burrowed and hid. How quickly it disappeared.
He noticed a number of women farther out on the strand, stooping to collect shells. They wore long headscarves and carried straw baskets on their backs. Searching for food. He had read in the newspapers that the blight was worsening, that the price of flour had doubled within a few days, that stocks of corn were lower than ever. It was only hoped that the next year’s crop would not fail.
Douglass walked along the shore. A tall-masted ship clung to the horizon. He watched it go. When he looked back towards the strand again, the women seemed to have disappeared into the earth. Only their dark overcoats could be seen. Every now and then they bent downwards, stooping in rhythm for whatever it was they might find.
1998
para bellum
HE EMERGES FROM THE BRIGHT ELEVATOR. MOVES THROUGH the marbled lobby towards the revolving door. Sixty-four years old. Slender. Graying. A slight strain of yesterday’s tennis in his body.
A dark blue suit jacket, slightly rumpled. A pale blue sweater underneath. Slacks creased. Nothing brash, nothing showy. Even the way he walks has a quiet to it. His shoes sound clean and sharp against the floor. He carries a small leather suitcase. He tilts his head towards the doorman who leans down to take the case: just a suit, a shirt, a shaving kit, an extra set of shoes. Under his other arm he keeps his briefcase tight.
Through the lobby quickly. He hears his name from several angles. The concierge, an elderly neighbor on the lobby couch, the handyman cleaning the large glass panes. It is as if the revolving door has caught the words and begun to let them spin. Mr. Mitchell. Senator. George. Sir.
The black town car sits idling outside the apartment building. A little shiver from its exhaust. A relief floods through him. No press. No photographers. A hard New York rain, so different from the Irish kind: hurrying itself along, impatient, dodging the umbrellas.
He steps out into the afternoon. Beyond the awning, an umbrella is held aloft for him and the car door is opened.
—Thank you, Ramon.
There is always a moment of dread that there might be someone waiting inside the car. Some news. Some report. Some bombing. No surrender.
He slips into the rear seat, lays his head against the cool leather. Forever an instant when he feels he can turn around, reinvent. That other life. Upstairs. Waiting. He has been the subject of many newspaper columns recently: his beautiful young wife, his new child, the peace process. It stuns him to think that he can still be copy after so many years. Captured on camera. Pulled through the electronic mill. His caricature on the op-ed pages, serious and spectacled. He’d like a long sweep of silence. Just to sit here in this seat and close his eyes. Allow himself a brief snooze.
The front door opens and Ramon slides into the seat, leans out, shakes the umbrella, glances over his shoulder.
—The usual, Senator?
Almost two hundred flights over the past three years. One every three days. New York to London, London to Belfast, Belfast to Dublin, Dublin to D.C., D.C. to New York. Jetliners, private planes, government charters. Trains, town cars, taxis. He lives out his life in two bodies, two wardrobes, two rooms, two clocks.
—JFK, yes. Thank you, Ramon.
The car shifts minutely underneath him, out onto Broadway. A familiar sudden loss, a sadness, the sorrow of a closed vehicle, moving away.
—Just a moment, Ramon, he says.
—Sir?
—I’ll be right back.
The car eases to a stop. He reaches for the door handle, climbs out, perplexing the doormen as he hurries quickly through the marbled lobby, into the elevator, his polished shoes clicking, carrying the rain.
THE NINETEENTH FLOOR. Glass and high ceilings. The windows slightly open. Rows of long white bookshelves. Elegant Persian rugs. An early lamp lit in the corner. He moves quietly over the Brazilian hardwood. A collision of light, even with the rain coming down outside. South to Columbus Circle. East to Central Park. West to the Hudson. From below he can hear the Sunday buskers, the music drifting up. Jazz.
Heather stands in their son’s bedroom, hunched over the changing table, hair pulled high to her neck. She does not hear him enter. He remains at the door, watching as she pulls together the velcro of the diaper. She leans down and kisses their son’s stomach. She undoes her dark hair and leans again over the child. Tickling him. A giggle from the baby.
The Senator remains at the bedroom door until she senses him standing behind her. She says his name, unlatches the child from the changing table, swaddles the boy in a blanket. She laughs and steps across the fine carpet, still carrying the soiled diaper.
—You forget something?
—No.
He kiss
es her. Then his son. He pinches the boy playfully on the toes. The roll of soft skin at his fingers.
He takes the diaper—still warm to the touch—and drops it in the diaper pail. Life, he thinks, is still capable of the most extraordinary quips. A warm diaper. At sixty-four.
Heather walks him back to the elevator, takes the flap end of his suit jacket, draws him close. The scent of their son on both their hands. The elevator cables pitch their mourn.
WHAT SHE WORRIES most of all is that he will become the flesh at the end of an assassin’s bullet.
SO MANY MURDERS arrive out of the blue. The young Catholic woman with the British soldier slumped over her child, a hiss of air from the bullet wound in his back. The man in the taxicab with the cold steel at his neck. The bomb left outside the barracks in Newtownards. The girl in Manchester thrown twenty feet in the air, her legs separating from her as she flew. The forty-seven-year-old woman tarred and feathered and left tied to a lamppost on the Ormeau Road. The postman blinded by the letter bomb. The teenager with a six-pack of bullet holes in his knees, his ankles, his elbows.
When she was with him in Northern Ireland, last July, it chilled Heather to see wheeled mirrors being slid in under the car before they drove off. George said it was just a formality. Nothing for her to worry about. He had an air about him, a midcentury dignity that dismissed most danger.
She liked to watch him in a crowd. The way he could forget himself, dissolve and allow everyone else a sense of their own importance. He believed in people, he listened well. Nothing false or politic about it. It was simply the way he went about things. He disappeared amongst them. His tall hunch, his glasses. Even the fine cut of his suit would vanish. Sometimes she could find herself looking for him, and he would be tucked in the corner, talking with the most unlikely of people. He was given to sudden, close leanings. A touching of arms. An unexpected laugh. It unnerved his bodyguards no end. It didn’t matter whom. It was his failure, too, of course: the inability to say no. So hard for him to turn away. An old-fashioned politeness. His New England air. She would watch the party drift: a small pool of water, unknown to itself, shifting sideways. More and more people gathering around him. At the end of an evening she would watch him try to row himself out: that hopelessly surrounded swimmer, bashful now, ready to leave, tired, trying to pull himself up from the deep end, eager not to disappoint.