by Dermot Healy
There were many variants of the Salmon of Knowledge, Jonathan Adams found, as he began to search for the definitive version among the prose poems.
Some told of the beginning of great rivers. Of waters breaking down from the side of a mountain to make a sea. Others, of the reaching of enlightenment. Just as the halibut has the thumb mark of Christ upon it, so the salmon, he heard, bears the print of some long forgotten pagan who invested there under its fin a knowledge that concerns itself with the duality of things, the eternal going away and the eternal return.
The salmon carries this knowledge to and fro through the great seas of the world, and it can be released by the merest touch.
All knowledge, says the salmon, is a journey.
Such a salmon had eluded the fishermen for days by pretending to be a sun-shadow on the floor of the river. Eventually it was trapped on the banks of the Boyne after an arduous seven-year search of the waters; the fire was built up and the hero Aengus was ready for enlightenment. His slave Fionn dragged in wood for burning. Aengus prepared himself assiduously, he cleared his head of all material pleasure. He accepted that whatever would happen that day was the fate intended for him. Then as the fire took he awaited the knowledge. But such knowledge does not come so easily to the one who craves it. Aengus was lying back basking in the smell of the fish, and thinking of the great wonders within reach when he heard a sharp yell. It was the hero’s helper who had found enlightenment. For when Fionn touched the fish to see was it done, the scales of the cooked salmon adhered to his thumb. With a screech he reared back in fright, licked his fingers and the knowledge, as he leapt madly about, entered his soul.
So Fionn outwitted Aengus, though not deliberately.
Neither man was ever the same after. Aengus could not be consoled. This is the way it is with such knowledge – it comes to those who least expect it, and the first lesson such knowledge teaches is to console those who have not got it. Aengus was ready to do murder. Fionn had immediately, with humour and tact, to mollify him. Amelioration was necessary.
Fionn turned into a girl.
But this was no help. For Aengus fell in love with Fionn. Every step of the road she took, there was Aengus behind her. When she lay down to sleep Aengus was there beside her. When she went behind the bush Aengus was there before her. Aengus’ tone, that was once manly, became a long ingratiating whinge. It struck Fionn that the knowledge given her by the salmon was not knowledge at all if it be used only to console. She thought hard on this as she lay in her woman’s form by a small fire lit convenient to a salmon pool. And Aengus’ beady eye on her in the dark. She realized that such knowledge could only be gained by a long and dangerous trek into the world alone.
She must leave her master, though the master barred her every escape. She must learn to control her passion and her vulnerability. She tossed and turned, and sighed. Putting one responsibility against another, she was saddened by the fact that such knowledge meant the end of friendship. They were then on the side of a highland in Knockbride. She made her decision. The sun was rolling across Meath county when Fionn turned into a bird, flew straight up, and braked a minute overhead. Aengus rose to his feet. The walls of his stomach shook like the walls of a tent in a high wind. Then, with a neat jig of its arched shoulders, the swift fell into a low skim and went out of sight.
Aengus, greatly troubled, searched the sky for the place where the black-nosed swift, a moment before, had been.
“Take her away,” said Jonathan when he saw the nurse at the end of his bed.
It can happen anywhere, so Aengus tried to explain. But no one would believe him. Ever since he’d returned alone, the people believed he’d killed his servant Fionn. In trying to tell the truth Aengus aged considerably.
Every man he met he told his story to, over and over, and it benefited him nothing. Who wants to hear one man’s side of the story? What enlightenment is there in that? So, Aengus, perplexed and giddy, returned to the banks of the Boyne and counted the sun-shadows and noted the odour of his stools. It was here that he heard another version of the Salmon of Knowledge. A stranger came. He was from Dromohair. Aengus, glad of a listener, immediately began to tell his tale, how he had caught a fish after five years fishing the shadows, cooked him and then his manservant had stolen the knowledge. The cur, the Leitrim man said with a generous curse, may lightning strike the high hole of his arse! Amen, said Aengus. And worse still, the man Fionn had turned into a girl so that he fell in love with her, not knowing if he loved her because she was a woman, or because she possessed the knowledge he craved. And worst of all, before he could assimilate all this knowledge, the girl had gone and turned into a bird.
Now, here I lie, said Aengus, heartbroken.
It all depends, said the Leitrim man, whether the salmon is coming or going. He pondered the waters. You might well have encountered the dying salmon. The stranger considered the woe of that concept. He continued: To the man who interrupts the passage of the dying salmon, the knowledge will be of a sad variety. It explains the curse of what can never be attained.
Aengus clicked his tongue.
If you chance to encounter the dying salmon nothing further can be added to your learning, the sage from Leitrim continued. You will have arrived without journeying.
Poor Fionn, said Aengus, relieved.
For, you see, such a fish is tired and is about to shed his skin.
He appeared about to moult, said Aengus, now that I mind it.
Far better, nodded the stranger, that you find a salmon setting out on its journey so that your quest may concur with his.
Aye.
Then, instead of the fish, it is you turns out of the mouth of the river into the sea.
Oh wonders.
The Atlantic lies ahead of you.
I see it.
And the sure knowledge that the journey through the unknown leads to the known.
Good night! Aengus exclaimed.
So the sojourn in the familiar leads back to the strange.
It does. Certainly, Aengus extolled joyfully.
The journeying is the quest.
Aha! Well, now! And Fionn?
He shall never know human shape again. He may turn into what he is not. That, the knowledge will allow. He can be a girl today, a bird tomorrow. A fir tree the day after. He can exhaust all possible shapes but can never return to be a man again.
Aengus whistled. Poor Fionn, he said, thinking how easily it might have been him.
But Fionn, contrary to what was being said of him, discovered that his journey, in fact, was an attempt to find the size and the range of his consciousness.
Then came the day that he understood what language was – a bridge between the flesh and the spirit.
At the beginning, he’d thought the range of meaning extended to the supple body of the woman he’d been given to escape Aengus’ wrath. Then in turn, he found it only covered the little black-nosed shape of the bird he’d taken to escape Aengus’ fumbling in the dark and the burden of his love. Now, having on successive days become a doe, a fir and a blackguardly dog, he found that the memory of others contributed to what he now was, a horse quietly steeped in a manmade field on Aran. Around him goats were singing. Each mouthful of grass he knew meant a day’s work by someone in the past. The very earth his hooves stood on would have come here by boat from the mainland. The seeds of the grass he now ate would have been carefully fed into the new seaweed-nourished soil one at a time. This, the man he had once been knew. Not only that but all he looked on he considered first as Fionn would, then as the woman did, as the bird, the tree, the doe, the dog and lastly the horse. It was the horse ate the grass but it was Fionn himself had sown it. His consciousness now extended through all he had seen. But there was loneliness in this condition. And that was when Fionn considered Fionn.
He wanted to talk to someone. And that is why the farmer who saw the strange beast nosing round the spring meadow found himself impelled to approach. With each step forward
the farmer took, the more he found himself grow elongated. The spell of the animal was one of the obliteration of self. Still the islander was driven forward. At last the horse lifted a keen sad eye, brown as a turf bank. The man stood there, quite alone, reflected in a deep pool. A ripple of anticipation went across the flanks of the horse. But, try as he might, Fionn could not enter the farmer. There were two things at odds – Fionn could not return to another man’s shape, only his own.
He whinnied his despair.
Nor could he really abandon the physical presence of the horse. He had become an animal for all time. He farted loudly.
Ya bould crature, said the farmer, I thought you had me.
The night was white and warm as milk just squeezed fresh from the udder. The Leitrim man had been entertaining Aengus for days with tales of the salmon, but Aengus grew tired of his company and wished the fellow would move on now that he had learnt from him all he needed to know.
In his heart, Aengus was set on capturing a further salmon, but wanted to carry out the act alone, seeing what had happened the last time. Every time a fish broke the waters of the river he’d turn the conversation to anything but what was uppermost in his mind. And invariably what he chose to speak of was intended to go against the grain of his companion. And so they argued over the concept of possession.
As dawn broke, a cow, staring impassive and steadfast ahead, floated past on a raft. A man, the island farmer, equally wrapped up in what lay beyond, sat at its front legs. This vision, in the mist of dawn, silenced the two men.
What was that? asked Aengus.
It was the cow, replied the Leitrim man.
The raft moved out of sight, the mist lifted and in the river the last of the Milky Way hovered. I never thought to see the cow here, the Leitrim man observed. Aengus, chided by such knowledge, let the new information filter through, but he was deeply troubled by the sight of that majestic creature, camouflaged to pass unseen on pastureland, float by. He was not to know that he had espied Fionn in a different role, and what plagued him was the cow’s refusal to turn and admit, even by a quiet lowing, to his existence.
He stood up, unsure and afflicted by some grave loss.
This is the water on which the cow first appeared, nodded the Leitrim man.
So it was to be. The river became known as the Boyne, taking its name from Bo, meaning cow, and the Milky Way, known as Bru an Boinne, the path of the cow.
We should have killed the man, said Aengus, and eaten the cow.
There’ll be more, replied the Leitrim man.
Aengus lay down heartened by the prospect of sleep, his need of argument sated. In some stories, said the Leitrim man, the salmon turns into a young woman who instructs the traveller in the nature of his quest, and sets him a series of tests concerning the logic of the mind and the magic of the senses. Because the traveller is usually a man and the salmon a woman, he is enthralled by her. He thinks of her as cara m’anam, friend of my soul.
The Leitrim man put his hand to his head and continued talking as he lightly stroked his forehead. He thinks from her he will learn all the secrets of knowledge, said Leitrim, especially the secrets of womanhood which have always been denied him since time eternal.
Her secret wish is to have her youth returned to her. But he has no knowledge of this. Or pretends he has not. He accepts the nature of the journey she sets him without question, for this is all part of a quest he must undergo.
A wave of nostalgia overcame Aengus. He listened as one does to a voice reaching across from a further shore.
As did Jonathan Adams. In the version that was being read to him by Catherine, the hero has completed two of the burdens laid on him by the curse of the woman, and, disconsolate and dejected, he sets out on the third. The world through which he wanders is a world where nothing is as it appears. All the ancient stones have crosses chipped onto the spirals to announce that Christ is in the land. All have been exorcized. Writing, which threatens memory, has made its appearance. Animals and humans in one last pagan frenzy are constantly interchanging shapes – I become you, and you become me. And the greatest mistake is to treat any man as a man only, or any woman as a woman only, for each has access to many roles, so many of the traveller’s trials have concerned the humiliations he has undergone because of his prejudices.
Everyone is jealously succumbing to each wound made. It struck the traveller that he was re-journeying through the life of the young woman. She must have been through all this, he thought. Then, to keep himself going he recreated her in his own mind as he had first seen her. When she had changed from fish into woman, and now flitted to and fro in a sacred place in his consciousness. It was a long journey. Then he came to a place which reminded him of home. It felt like Ireland. He was not sure that this was a pleasant thing. He was afraid to be seen. It struck him that while he was seeking knowledge, other people were expending theirs. He had not been listening. He’d been off in the sensual world. The last thing the traveller was conscious of was his intelligence. It was a thing you did not admit.
These are all fine thoughts, he said to himself, no mention of the madness lurking in the heart. Sadly there, but rightly there.
Yes, thought Jonathan, and he dallied on a word that carried within it another word, and then another, so that the old scholar had to start all over again from the very beginning, making as he did a further version while sharp rain slanted over the Mullet.
All of a sudden, the traveller found himself outside the Tower of Babel, which, by virtue of that quest, was home. The red roof and timber walls of Cullybackey were instantly familiar. Each person he overheard talking was making sense, perfect sense, as he stood outside listening. He was astounded by the understanding and intelligence of the speakers within. Things must have changed while I was away, he said to himself.
It was for him a religious experience.
Jonathan Adams felt long-lost Presbyterian genes begin to surface in his consciousness. Now I will know whether the body is the source of evil! Into his eyes passed the distant lights of Dissenter, Calvin and Jesus Christ, then the brightly-featured faces of his daughters. He wished the traveller through the door.
I have found home at last, said the traveller.
But on entering the Tower he encountered nothing but chaos and pandemonium and total indifference. The speech he intended to make to the scholars within froze on his lips. His heart beat wildly as he strayed into the eye of the hallucination. In fright he thought he would never get out. First he tried in vain to talk to the people there collected in Irish. But all were busy in various languages of distress. Out of a sense of duty he continued to seek their attention. He saw the open door, but thought he would never make it. Yet, with perfect ease, he saw himself walk through the wall that only existed in his own mind. He emerged to find that the chaos made perfect sense again. This made him re-enter the Tower once more, even though some part of him screamed no. Again he strove to preach the word that could not be uttered. To give some form to that which cannot be said. But now the confusion was even more intense. His chin shook uncontrollably. His bowels pounded. This drove him outside, where again he overheard reasonable arguments in Latin, Greek and Hebrew from those within.
They spoke of the sanctity of life, of everlasting life, of violence and peace.
He entered again, like a swimmer going down for the third time. And he would have remained like this forever, going to and fro, if, when he emerged humiliated the next time, another man – a traveller also – had not come and stood enthralled by the perfect sense the babblers made within the Tower.
For a few minutes the two strangers stood together listening to the sensible thoughts, arrayed in the finest language, concerning each speaker’s argument for continued occupation of the island.
Like the traveller before him, the newcomer became hypnotized by the pure disparity and common sense of the voices. Inside the perfect version of the story existed. Perhaps this man was set upon the same quest, sent by the
same woman, our traveller thought. The newcomer, looking transcendent and at peace, entered the Tower of Babel. For a while our man stood there waiting to be possessed once more, but suddenly he was released from that fate. The arrival of the other man had allowed our traveller to journey on. He had been released. Someone else had taken his place. Glad of his freedom, he left the other stepping to and fro between the arguments of normality and madness till some other poor traveller might come in his turn and relieve him.
Maisie found her husband’s eyes upon her.
She stopped reading.
“It must be dreadful,” said Sergeant Adams, “to step out into space.”
The traveller comes next to a mountain covered here and there with low shrubbery. Overhead stands the lark, fluttering and whistling to the sheepdog, till suddenly she drops loose-winged like a fallen leaf to a place it appeared she had not been guarding. The lark protects by singing above what is not her home. The lark, like a poet, sings not of this place beneath but of over there hidden in the high grasses.
So the story diverged.
The traveller takes the goat’s path up the small mountain and arrives to a copse of ash trees and whitethorn. As he penetrates the copse he finds release from the sun and hears the murmur of a stream. In time he comes to a pool dappled with sunlight and leaves. He takes his rest there.
Thinking on his quest he leans forward to drink and sees the sudden flash of the salmon.
Entranced, he watches the pool. Then, in the dark depths, he sees the salmon, the white-bellied pig, turn again. The hero is overcome by a form of sensual melancholia. He realizes the quest that the woman has set him has led back to her. He grows frightened and wrings his hands.
Now I have to face my destiny, he thinks, and this woman may refuse me peace.
Then, what he has to do grows as clear as day. He decides to stay up all night by the pool. But first he must deny himself sleep, for one of the temptations put in the path of knowledge is weariness. So he washes his body in the stream. Next, he must make sure not to catch the reflection of his own face in the pool, else he will lose sight of the fish. So he tells the fish how beautiful she is. Lastly, he must not think of his earlier achievements.