by Kalyan Ray
I sailed away, dry-eyed and in silence, from Sligo harbour on the twenty-fourth day of November of 1847, from this beloved corner of the earth, knowing I would not see this shore and green ever again. It was soon to become the shadow land I would walk in my restless slumber.
III
therefore I have sailed the seas
Brendan
Rose of Erin
Every day upon the earth I had marveled at the height of the sky. Now I was aware of awesome depth. What a great, grey thing the ocean was under us!
Mr. O’Flaherty liked being on deck, craning his thin neck and noting the wind, the slant of the sun, the sails. But on bad days, with waves slapping the ship about, its bucking and swaying, heading down and sidling up, the juddery movement would bring a groan to his lips though he would sit by the porthole and, never mind the odd spray, close his eyes and doze himself into submission.
To our front and behind were the Behan clan, the father, mother, their two unwed daughters, four dour sons, their wives, and their numerous children. It was as if County Sligo had emptied itself of all Behans. When the children got restive and began to bother each other, the women would slap the ones next to them, irrespective of who was to blame, “Joe, Teddy, Molly, Jock, Pat, Willy,” and with each name went a hearty smack, followed by yowls, “But I’m Jack, and I didn’t,” and so forth. Sometimes one of the Behan men absently swatted a whining child—“Stop that, Peter”—and the child blubbered, “But Peter’s dead. I’m Davy. Molly pushed me,” followed by silence and Davy whimpering.
On the other side of the hold next to a porthole, huddled three young men. I did not know all their names. One among them, White Danny as his friends called him, had hair that hung limp as kelp but ghostly white. Under invisible brows stared his eyes, which were pale blue, his lashes thick, long, and colourless. His raw red-rimmed lids reminded me of a vicious rabbit with its sharp buck-teeth, for these he had too. He would flick a pink tongue against his lips so thin that his mouth looked a wound. I noticed that he would, whenever his fellows dozed between their endless card games, piss out the porthole. This Danny would keep staring in our direction, at Maeve.
At the back of us there were other families, including one of the few Anglo-Irish families I knew in Sligo. They were two thin girls, Misses Mary and Theodora, and their mother, Mrs. Felicita Snow, who used to keep a fine shop selling lace in Sligo Town and bought the lace my poor mamma made. She nodded at me, as if acknowledging me in her dainty shop, a worn beauty, gone sad and haggard, and obviously on her last legs, but a lady for all that. Miss Mary was the one who looked after all their needs, while pale Miss Theodora, the younger sister, seemed tainted with the gaiety of the doomed.
But few looked as wan as Katie Sweeney, whose sturdy husband carried her on deck and walked with her up and down, as effortlessly as if he were carrying a baby. Even when the spray rose, and others took refuge down below, he would cover himself with a thick shawl and sit with her on his lap if she were content. He sat steady no matter how the sea rocked the ship.
The sailors, a rough lot, all blurred together for me, except the one called Will Hayward, whose bronze curls and lithe walk set him apart. I was too shy to look at him or talk, but he was among those who distributed the first rations, and more than once gave me four pieces of black bread, although we were three. The first time, when I looked up in some confusion, he smiled and moved on. I was stricken with guilt and a thrill. No one had noticed. Mr. O’Flaherty was gumming down his slice, and I hid the extra one in my shirt and shared it later with Maeve. Mr. O’Flaherty took half the day getting the best of the hard bread by soaking it in a bit of water.
We had been told casually on Sligo quayside itself that we were to bring with us as much food and provision as we could, as if in our homes we had full larders to choose from. According to Lord Palmerston’s declarations, seven pounds of weekly provision per person would be provided. Mr. Behan said that this was seven pounds more than what he was providing his family on their days of starvation. But we discovered soon enough that we were to be given just two pounds or less of mouldy biscuits and such—per week. The water was unspeakably foul. Although we hated the stormy weather, we sucked on the wet canvas or gathered rainwater to drink. I was certainly grateful for my two bottles.
The characters of the people in the hold became clearer and stark in such proximity. Mrs. Snow never ate a crumb until her daughters did. She held herself that ridiculously erect, planting herself as a frail screen between herself and White Danny. When one of the Lewis children fell asleep, seasick and nauseated, still holding his morsel, Danny prised it on the sly and devoured it. It was a small enough morsel, but if the Lord in Heaven was not like another absentee landlord—for which thought let Him forgive me—then a fiery bed is made and waiting for Danny Soames.
What distressed me most were the unsanitary conditions, men and women indiscriminately using either of the slop-holes at the far ends, the detritus falling into the sea. We used as little paper as we could, sacrificing one of Mr. O’Flaherty’s books for the purpose. It was John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, starting from the conclusion and worked our way towards Locke’s opening argument. We hoped to reach Canada before we needed to use the Dedication.
There was an unwritten sort of rule that when the ladies went, the men either did not go at that time, but if perforce they had to, would only use the larboard one. But the card players would crowd around when some of the young women had to relieve themselves, causing them much discomfiture, and themselves indecent pleasure. When Mr. Sweeney bore his wife to the back, he would spread his shawl across her, and look about fiercely, and none dared say anything in jest or look thither.
Very early one morning I heard Maeve rise and make her way to the slops. Needing to go too, I rose to follow her. Up there lurked Danny with Miss Theodora Snow. I was confounded by such unseemliness, but he did not meet my eyes and scurried away, smirking. I wondered what Maeve had seen, and resolved to keep an eye on him, for there surely was a sickness in that Danny’s mind. Once in a while he would steal a glance at me, his shoulders silently shaking in mirth at this sordid sport.
The next morning was cold but sunny, so we were all on deck, basking in the mild sun and steady wind. Perched on the broad railing of the deck, I leant against some rigging, swaying lazily with the motion of the ship. I must have dozed when suddenly came a violent shove. What primordial instinct it was, I do not know, but my hands flew out, one of them finding the rigging ropes in a desperate grasp. Dangling, I could see the churn of water, and out of the corner of my eye, glimpsed a pale hand pull quickly away. I hauled myself back and crouched on the deck, shaking. Maeve caught me around the neck fiercely, weeping and shuddering, and I held her to me.
“I am afraid of him, Papa Brendan,” she said not letting me go.
I knew better than to tell the child that nothing was wrong and met her eye directly. “I will be very careful from now on,” I promised.
But my heart sang. She had called me what she would call me for the rest of my life: Papa Brendan, a name she had devised herself.
• • •
THE SUN DISAPPEARED for a week after that day, and we felt the cold wind’s edge whenever we ventured on deck. In the hold, we were a new village now, and indulged in idle talk. Many of the women sought each other out, at first based on whether they had been neighbours, talking of old days, often about times when their husbands were just boys looking at them. They were momentarily happy, even as they sat in this dreary transit, recalling that old life now past redeeming with any coin they could muster. Mr. O’Flaherty seemed to be reading his battered copy of Seneca over and over, while some would sing, our Maeve not the least among us. But whenever Ruairi and Jamie Egan broke into song, it was a matter of loud cheer down in the hold, their voices twining like a silver and a golden cord, making their song twice sweet. Mr. Rafferty would clap and stamp his feet until well after the others had stopped. One particular
evening the brothers sang:
On the Curragh of Kildare and the boys will be there
With their pikes in good repair, says the Sean Bhean Bhoct . . .
What colour should be seen where our fathers’ homes have been
But our immortal green, says the Sean Bhean Bhoct,
Yes old Ireland will be free from the centre to the sea
Ah hurrah for liberty!
And just as they ended, we were surprised by another voice behind us. It was Mr. Lewis. His clear baritone was a thing of wonder, and the musty hold which we had all cursed seemed to cradle and caress the beauty of his voice in its hollow. The old song “Eibhlin a Run” became a haunting call of the soul, and when he went on to “The Parting of the Friends,” I sank into silence.
“And are you thinking of my father?” asked Maeve, leaning into my arm. I nodded, not trusting words.
“I hope someone sings that song to him,” she said. For a moment, I thought that dead Maire Aherne herself had sent her the words, if such were possible.
We were brought back to the present by the loud wrangle, for some had suggested “The Lamentation of Deirdre,” but Mr. Sweeney gruffly rejected it saying, “Nay, nay, none of that Leinster mooing—let’s have ‘Ruairi of the Hills’ right away, what say ye all?” Without waiting, he launched with tuneless vigour into the lines, while everyone shook with laughter. It would take more than that to silence him, for he sang manfully to the end.
So our merriment ran. When we finally stopped, all we could hear was the soughing of the cold wind, the slap and cough of Atlantic seawater, as we settled to sleep.
• • •
SEVENTEEN DAYS INTO our voyage, the great swells on the ocean turned choppy, and the hold wheezed and groaned as if it too felt the cold. The stormy troughs made the ship glissade down hills of water, to be struck by some mighty hand that sent a shudder through the beams and a terror in our bones, and heart-stopping moments when walls of surrounding water seemed to be closing in on our little wooden world, before the ship like a cornered animal in its burrow turned and seemingly leapt to escape.
The hatches were battened down, the portholes spurting sea-water like hoses—so these were closed off. The hold became foetid, and all of us felt like animals shaken convulsively on our way to slaughter, the floor slippery with vomit and human detritus. During this first onslaught of storm, Mr. Lewis was flung down by a sudden buffet and, losing his footing, crashed against a beam. He cried out in pain, and whimpered with every lurch. Only after the storm passed did we find that he had crushed his collarbone.
A number of us in the hold beat upon the shut hatches, called out, and banged as hard as we could with whatever we had, our fists, pewter plates, until finally they were opened. We emerged on deck, gasping and coughing, spumes of vapour trailing from our mouths because the weather had turned chill, something we had not been aware of in the crowd and close of the hold.
The air felt blessed, but the sea was not calm, resembling a vast pot of water about to boil. The clouds were looming low. The crew laughed at our discomfiture and informed us that a worse buffeting awaited us. Down we needed to go and the dreaded boards closed shut upon us again, they shouted at us, for the deck would be awash with waves, and anything not battened down swept to sea.
On deck, Mr. Lewis, who had stood quietly beside me, listening to them, breathing sibilantly with pain, suddenly began to climb the stairs towards the captain’s deck. We looked on in surprise, as nobody had access to it without permission. He hauled himself on to the rail, face drawn and pale. Abruptly he turned, then flung himself into the sea and was immediately lost to sight.
Many rushed to that part of the deck-rail to see whether he would surface. For my part, I stood rooted where I was. Mr. O’Flaherty said bleakly, “Come, Brendan.” Holding Maeve’s hand, he returned to the hold. I followed in silence.
In less than an hour came the second storm, screaming over us, tearing at the ship with an ululating sound, and the pitch and the roll began—and with it, the retching and moaning in the hold. By noon it was the very picture of hell with all its suffering. The hollow sound of weeping filled the space. At one period—perhaps ’twas our ship in the eye of the storm—there was a strange calm.
“Mamma, Mamma,” called a child’s voice in a whisper, “are you dead, Mamma?”
• • •
THE NEXT MORNING, when the hatches were opened, I helped Maeve and Mr. O’Flaherty to the deck. The unseasonable sun erased the last of a hovering mist on the tranquil waters as if the storm had been a bad dream. The others began to emerge like the dead revived, peering into the growing radiance of the sun and the easy puff of the sails soaring overhead. Then they brought out the dead: an infant of the Behans; Mr. Rafferty, the itinerant farrier from Cliffoney, his many journeys now over; old Mrs. Snow. Finally emerged Mr. Sweeney, his wife’s limp body cradled in his arms.
Once the bodies were, with a short prayer, resigned to the waters, a huge quarrel broke out. A cooking vat and meager provisions appeared: smelly, mouldy, and far short in weight and expectation. I was amazed to see Mr. Sweeney, dumb with grief at his wife’s death, become vociferous about this cheating by the captain, and demand to get his due. Will, the sailor, stood casually next to me, but I turned away in a weariness of spirit. He had slipped an unspoilt biscuit into my pocket. I gave it to Maeve, who began to eat it surreptitiously.
Our Maeve had the frail resilience of a sapling, but Mr. O’Flaherty seemed dazed and somewhat deaf for the ordeal. There had been little mention of God so far, except to take His name in despair or anger. We had no one to say Mass on board, and I wondered if that familiar and comforting ceremony could have cast its soothing unction on my trammeled soul. When I mentioned this to Mr. O’Flaherty, he stared long through the porthole into the tilting sea and muttered, “Pray within your heart, Brendan, if that is the medicine you need.” I was perturbed by his tone, but he smiled bleakly at me and looked away.
I always lived with faith in God. I had not examined my faith in this dark hold, or before, in the deaths and hungers: I saw only the hand of man. But now the dark night of my soul came upon me not in the depth of all the suffering. It did not come to me unawares, but like a brother who sat by me in full sight. All the beauty I had lived amid, or imagined, seemed tainted.
I sat on the warming deck and closed my eyes, worn out in spirit. The air smacked of the earlier chill, but the sun was full on my face. In my torpor, I heard the clack and rattle of the sea-heavy ropes on the board-planks as the crew worked. In that bright and hungry day I fell into a deep sleep. I dreamt of County Sligo and its hungry and the dead, and the wandering cadavers all over our Ireland. The picture of my friend Malachi O’Toole’s body, wrapped in his soiled green horse-blanket, came back to me—and his two-year-old daughter too, a month after their cottage was tumbled—crack-lipped and sharp-boned in mortal hunger. My faith was faltering, whimpering for breath. The stone and dirt on which I had walked in those last days in Ireland had no part of You whatever—these had been dirt and stone itself and nothing else—and even the magical moon above, only a dead stone in Your sky, forever in silent gong proclaiming Your criminal absence.
All Your loveliest miracles, Lord, revolve around food. On the arid stretches under glittering desert stars beyond the parted Red Seawhere, stamping the Egyptian soil from their feet, the faithful partook what You provided from thin air. At Cana. On the beach by the Sea of Galilee. The last simple and Lordly Supper . . . Are we not Your children too, with equal need for sustenance?
To be deep drowned by the Flood, to be swirled by an engulfing fire—ah, that is grand, Lord, but to be eaten away by the slimy blight, its rheumy stench foetid in the nose—ah, Lord—that is a low trick. And You, our glorious Lord, are turned into a dastardly gombeen, trashing our lives and forcing our faces into our hunger-retching and gut-drool, left with nary a scrap of dignity, on a soiled and soggy floor.
Do we not try, Lord, to make our own tiny Ed
en with whatever we can—and do You not, dread Lord, drive us out? A safe home and a mouthful are so little to ask. Why do You in Your heaven resent our frail homes, and Your howling winds rage against our humble hearths?
I was startled awake by a shout. The seamen with the others on deck crowded the starboard deck, and then the larboard: a gigantic whale had crossed our wake, spouting its way, and then disappeared from sight.
All the sailors said that it was an omen of bad luck.
• • •
THE HOLD, AS the one futile lantern swayed in a corner, was dim. I noticed Miss Theodora Snow sitting next to White Danny, who had given her a morsel; she was pretending indifference, gnawing what she clutched in her narrow fist, while White Danny’s arm wound like a serpent about her waist. Her sister sat apart, anger and helplessness written on her face. Then I saw Danny leaning, as if unintentionally, against Miss Mary. She shrank from his touch and tried to shift, but there was little room. I was startled by Maeve’s angry cry. She had sprung up.
“Get away from them,” Maeve lashed, blazing at Danny. “My da Padraig will strangle you dead and throw you into the sea!” Then she added in a fierce whisper, “He is waiting for me in America.” Her tender childhood had fallen away from our Maeve, her small back rigid as a provoked cat’s, hackles rising.
Danny slid back into his corner among his mates. I was about to speak when I felt a hand clutch me, and turned to look at Mr. O’Flaherty, who made a small gesture for silence.
“What will happen when we reach America, and no Padraig?” I whispered to Mr. O’Flaherty, beginning to understand her wound and her sword.
He shook his head, not inviting words.
• • •
I OBSERVED WITHIN myself a growing dislike for food, though I needed it for sustenance. I ate hurriedly, like a man who will walk quickly on thin ice because he must, neither enjoying the walk nor the unreliable process; ’tis such miserable matter on which our existence stands. It did not escape my pale gaze that a resentful anger returns with hunger, obliterating the little pleasure of food a few hours ago.