Year of the Beast

by Steven Carroll

  Maryanne looks at the rubber mask, then at the doctor. ‘More!’ she pleads. ‘More!’

  The doctor weighs the matter.

  ‘Damn you! Damn, damn, more …’

  Sighing, sweat dripping from his forehead, he reluctantly reaches for the mask and once again places it over her mouth. And once again the room goes hazy. Katherine’s voice is distant, the pain retreats. The mask is taken from her face; she starts to push again. She pushes and heaves, gripping the bed sheets, tears pouring down her cheeks, screams, distant and near, filling the room. This time she can just bear the pain. And so she pushes and pushes again. And just when she tells herself, again, that there isn’t anything she wouldn’t do to get this child into the world, she feels sure there’s nothing more she can do. They’re stuck, and they’ll stay this way. Stuck. Just when she’s thinking all of this, she hears Katherine’s voice. Calling to her, calling out that she can see the head. She can see it! The baby is coming. Push, push! Like you’ve never pushed before. Now. This is it! Push!

  Katherine’s voice, the doctor’s, both combine, calling out to her, a chorus of crying and yelling. Katherine is telling her that the head is coming, the shoulders, the baby is coming. It’s ready. Here it comes. Push, push. And suddenly, as if a giant boulder has just rolled from her, fallen from her, she feels the weight leave her, the burden pass from her, and feels someone’s hands, the doctor’s or Katherine’s, she can’t tell, pulling the child from her into life, and straightaway hears its birth cries, either in protest or relief. Joy or despair. Or all at once. And who could blame it?

  She opens her eyes. And there it is. A miracle. Covered in blood, eyes blinded by the light, the child wails in Katherine’s hands as she holds it up for Maryanne to see.

  ‘A boy!’ Katherine cries, joy splashed across her face as if she has just given birth herself. ‘It’s a little boy. A dark-haired, beautiful little boy!’

  And right away Maryanne is crying again: from relief, exhaustion, joy, sadness, she just doesn’t know. Just let the tears come, a wise voice inside her says. Don’t ask why. And just as the pain was like nothing she has ever felt, these tears are like no tears she’s ever shed. So, this is it. This is how we all come wailing into the world. This is nature: bloody and brutal and unbowed. Pushing on through the pain. On and on. Doing what it does. And as Maryanne sinks into the bed it is with more than relief; it is with an almost vacant feeling that her job is done. And nature, nature doesn’t even turn to acknowledge her as it leaves the room. She has merely done what any animal does without thinking: pushed through the pain, then got on with things. The tears stream down her face and she doesn’t bother to wipe them aside. You did it, old girl. You did it.

  Katherine washes the baby, chanting and crooning as she does so. ‘Beautiful little boy. Look at that hair! Beautiful, beautiful … Now go to Mama, little boy. Go to your mama.’

  When Maryanne takes the baby she knows the moment is real, but there is still a part of her drugged self that imagines it might yet be a dream. The weight she carried round all year, the swelling she took everywhere, the dome she led with when she walked the streets, now lies in her arms and she knows her job is not over; it is only just beginning. The child opens his eyes briefly, closes them, then falls into a deep sleep, exhausted by the sheer effort of getting himself born. She holds him a little longer – his nose, ears, fingers, all perfectly formed – gazing upon him in disbelief, the well of tears inside her drying up. And as much as she might tell herself that this is just nature getting on with things, she is also cradling something that is almost impossible to comprehend. Where did you come from, little one?

  Her eyes droop. A wave of exhaustion sweeps through her. The doctor takes the baby from Maryanne and passes him to Katherine, who places him in a crib beside the bed. The baby is sleeping. The bed is drenched, the child’s private, liquid heaven now a bloody mess all around her: soaked into the sheets, and dumped in a bucket. She’s vaguely aware of Katherine changing the bed, moving her about, washing her, changing her, but it’s all still drugged and distant as though she were watching everything, not experiencing it. The lamps are dim, the room hazy. She leans her head back on a fresh pillow, lies on clean, crisp sheets and feels herself enveloped in comfort. She could sleep for days. The baby is beside her, within arm’s reach. Mother and child, all the world she needs.

  She drifts in and out of sleep, her eyes closed. Screams and protests float in from the street, both distant and near. The beast has been quiet all day; now the beast is roused. For whatever reason, it is baying. The sound of fighting enters the quiet calm of the sleepy room. Of course, the pubs are closing. The beast is spilling onto the streets in drunken chorus. It craves something, and it doesn’t know what but it craves it all the same. She is vaguely aware of the voices of Katherine and the doctor in the hall. She is alone with the child. The room shadowy, the corners dark. Mother and child float in some starless space, open to the world. The street sounds, near and far, gather. Somewhere there is the sound of breaking glass. The lamps are dim, the room dark. Dark and open to whatever is out there.

  And suddenly she’s convinced that something is out there. Lurking. Hiding in the darkness. Watching, waiting. Something is lurking there in a dark corner of the room. The beast … the beast is coming. Muffled talk from the hallway floats over her like talk in dreams. The baby sleeps beside her. The room floats in darkness. There in the room’s dark corners, the beast is lurking. Crouched in darkness. Invisible. But there, she knows it is.

  And then she sees it. Watches it step from the shadows. Slouching forward from the darkness towards her, scales glowing in the dim lamplight. Head raised. Eyes shining. Mesmerising. The beast itself. She watches, spellbound, as it rears and stands on two scaly, thick feet. It craves something … but it knows not what. It moves towards her and the baby, silent, light on its feet, a towering thing that somehow fits into the room. And straightaway she knows that it’s not her that it wants, but the child. And she tries to raise herself in the bed, to do battle with the thing like the heroes and heroines of old, but can’t. She can’t lift herself, she can’t move. And as much as she wants to scream, no sound comes from her. It nears: a giant, a towering thing. Eyes red and shining and flashing. She can neither raise herself nor call out. She is stricken. And the beast is now beside her. No, no, no … Mute cries fall silently in the room. No, you don’t; I won’t let you …

  The beast looks down at the sleeping child, less than an hour old, sleeping the deep sleep of the newly born. The beast beholds it, eyes shining, then stares directly at Maryanne. I have come, it says. You made me, you created me, you conjured me up from darkness, from the pages of your storybooks and histories and drawings. You called, and I have come. How could I not?

  And with this, the beast leans over the crib and gently lifts the child and holds him in its scaly arms, looking down in wonder upon him. The child shines. He is calm, at peace. Serene. Sleeping the deep sleep of the newly born. The beast is gentle. Careful. It cradles the baby, the shining one, then looks at Maryanne. You made me. You called, you conjured me up, a beastly thing, and I have come. But see, do you see that there is yet some good in the beast? Some beauty buried deep inside, some goodness just waiting to be released. And you have called it forth. Do you see, it says, there is yet some good in your beast?

  It places the child back in the crib, gazes upon him one last time, as if gazing upon the blessed, heavenly state denied all beasts: a heavenly state half-remembered, as though it too once knew such grace, then turns away and lumbers towards the dark corner of the room from which it emerged, where it dissolves into inky blackness. The baby sleeps. The room regains its quiet calm.

  Maryanne’s eyes open. She is aware of movement in the room. Katherine is beside her. She is checking the baby, making him secure. And as she does, Maryanne raises her head to watch her with the eyes of a sleepwalker. Back to sleep, Katherine says. Back to sleep. Maryanne lets her head fall back into the pillow: so
ft and crisp and clean. Her eyes close, sleep overwhelms her. Drugged, glorious sleep. She gives in. Sleep, Katherine is whispering, smoothing her brow. Sleep, sleep …

  The deepest, the heaviest sleep of her life, so heavy she feels the whole weight of her body sinking into the bed, is broken by an unfamiliar sound. Cutting and shrill. Her eyes open to darkness before her mind is properly awake. There is an animal in the room, its cry sharp and urgent.

  It seems, at first, to come out of a darkness thousands of miles away. Distant and out of reach. Beyond her. And yet she must close that distance. It is a cry, distant and alone, that is also a call. Is there anything out there? She turns her bedside lamp up, and tiny fingers, tiny hands, rise from the cot beside her, testing the darkness, and straightaway Maryanne’s hand reaches out, closing the distance, grasping those little fingers, and the baby’s hand seizes hers with an iron grip. Such strength. Such will. You, the cry, the grip of the hand, says. You!

  She lifts the baby from the cot and cradles him, releasing her breast as she does. And the baby seizes upon her breast with the same fierceness with which he seized her hand. He knows exactly what to do. His will to live won’t be denied. Nature will do what nature does. The baby’s lips fasten onto her nipple, his hands grasp the breast. Mine, he says. Mine, as he draws the milk from her. And in that instant the baby’s lonely cries that called from thousands of miles away are silenced. And straightaway she knows that she can bear being alone. Not lonely, but alone. She is accustomed to it, even prefers it. She can bear her own solitariness, but not her child’s. Just as she can bear her own pain, but not her child’s.

  At first feverishly, then slowly and steadily, the baby draws the milk from her. She feels the life draining from her into the child. Gladly. And oh, the bliss of simply lying there in the semi-darkness of the room, silence outside, feeling the baby’s lips fastened to her nipple, and the baby’s hands clasping her breast in such a way that says: this is mine, not to be negotiated nor gainsaid. Mine. And she gives it gladly, all she has. All she can. Unstintingly. And in that moment all distance is vanquished. Mother and child are one. The lonely cry is silenced. And the child knows that there is something, someone, out there in the darkness after all, to seize upon and grasp and feed from, and knows that he is not alone.

  Slowly, like a tender lover’s, the child’s lips fall from her nipple. His hands fall from her breast. Sated. At last. Once again ready for sleep. But before he does, his eyes open, seemingly staring at her, then looking around the dim room. Seeing what? Blurred shapes, half-light? Hints of things and objects he will one day put a name to: Mama, breast, lamp? Dark, light? Day, night? Who knows? Only the child, and the child will forget. Then his eyes close, satisfied, and he drifts off.

  An exhausted, sweet calm sweeps over Maryanne. A calm, a blessedness, the likes of which she has never known. This world they have created is all the world she needs. And she feels a kind of beauty. Not in her face or her figure or the grace of her gestures. But simply in how she now is. And so too there is beauty around her: in the child, the rose beside her in a vase, the early-morning chorus of birds in the street. All transformed by a child’s birth. And this calm, this world that is enough in itself, where mother and child are one, is a sudden outbreak of peace. And a separate one: in which the beast cradles the child, the streets are quiet, the ghouls are gone. All is changed. And she knows she will not give this world up, this world that they have created together, for anyone or anything.

  And so she sits up in bed, the child cradled in her arms, deep in sleep, the honeyed glow of the lamp lighting the room, exhausted but at rest.

  ***

  Victor is born. That is one way of putting it. Of imagining it. For who she was, this Maryanne, and what she thought and how the child (who will not stay Victor for long, for the schoolyard will call him Vic) appeared to her are the things that were never recorded. What she thought and felt in her heart can only be imagined.

  And as Michael walks from the airport to the train that will take him into the city of Paris, he can’t help but think that the whole of his father’s life was already curled up inside the baby Vic, just waiting to unfurl with the years, for he knows those moody, brooding eyes (which he has inherited), just as his grandmother may well have read in them the kind of child she cradled: all there in the eyes of the one-day-old baby. Vic’s life. All our lives. Tales already written.

  And at the heart of Vic’s tale is a young woman who has not yet been born or entered the story. But soon will. Complete, ready to step into the tale when her time comes, she waits in a dance-hall dress, all light and laughter. Her name is Rita. Michael’s mother. Waiting to be met at the end of a troubled decade in a dance-hall dress. Vic and Rita, Rita and Vic. The egg is hatched. A story begins. And will all that follows that first meeting, in a noisy, crowded dance hall just a few miles from where Maryanne lies cradling the child, come to life as though already written? An unhappy marriage, an unhappy family? A moody son, with his father’s moody eyes. Each of the players stepping into the roles that were just waiting to be stepped into, and rarely, if ever, stepping out of them. And if Michael’s mother, waiting at the end of a line of calendared years, had known any of this, known what was in front of her (the miserable, drunken nights; a miserable, drunken Vic, forever the fatherless child, conceived in the back room of a country school house), would she have turned and walked straight out of the dance hall, the light and laughter still in her eyes? But still there for someone else, not Vic: another Rita, another story? Would she have turned her back on that age-old battle of light and darkness and walked out there and then? Or would she have been drawn to Vic’s brooding darkness all the same, and he to the light? And would they later tell themselves that among the struggle and the hurt and the damage they did to each other (and which they couldn’t help but pass on to their moody-eyed son) as they stood in the inevitable rubble of an unhappy marriage, would they tell themselves that there was an intensity, a pitch of joy there too that they would never have known otherwise? While, at the same time, asking themselves if that is really enough to be left with after all they’d gone through?

  Michael, with thoughts of the grandmother he never really knew and of his day-old father and the image of his young mother weaving in and out of each other, suddenly remembers a line of poetry by one of the new poets, about how parents pass on their failings and miseries to their children, even though they don’t intend to. But isn’t it the case? For all the best intentions, isn’t it just the case? Like all these thoughts it simply pops into his head, drops in like a surprise visitor at the front door. He stands, half smiling, half mulling over the lines, in front of the train-system map and keys in his destination. It is a small everyday magic show he has read about and that he has been looking forward to, for with his touch, every stop along the way to his destination lights up and glows, indicating the route his train will follow. The journey he is about to take, already charted. His suitcase is beside him as he waits on the platform: notes, drafts of this and that family tale, an old typewriter – the world of the dusty suburb on the very edge of the city that they all eventually landed in, travelling with him. He takes his finger off the trainline map, the spot worn with years of repeated pressing, and the lights charting his journey go off. No longer visible, but already charted. We’ll see. He turns from the map and enters the crowd, seeking out his platform.

  ***

  With the tenderness of the beast itself, Maryanne lowers the baby into the cot beside the bed. Tucks him in, secures him. And straightaway the child, sensing security all around, falls into the deep sleep of innocence. A whole life in front of him. And if she were to say anything to Michael, currently making his way through a crowded train station, she might well say no. There are no lives already charted with the symbolic neatness of a trainline directory. No fates to be met. Not really. That’s too much like Hardy, like Tess. Too final. Too neat. No, no fates to be met, only made. And just the beautiful or the unbeautiful unk
nown stretching before the child, the adventure of life in front of him.

  Maryanne resumes the place she has occupied these last few weeks, happily confined after all, sitting up in bed, writing paper and pen in hand and begins: Dear Victor …

  It is a short letter. The baby is born, the baby is healthy, the baby sleeps. She’d like to write about gardens and birds and flight – and back rooms and brooding eyes. Light and darkness. Dark and lightness. But although these are the thoughts that preoccupy her, she realises that she really doesn’t know Victor well enough to indulge such an impulse. And this is why such things are never recorded. For that kind of confession, she decides, you need to know the person you are writing to, and she concludes that she doesn’t know Victor. Not that well. Their meetings were brief. And apart from the one occasion when Victor forgot himself and pronounced her beautiful, they spoke little of the things outside the room. Whenever she asked about his life, he went silent. These things, his silence said, we do not talk about.