Birchwood

by John Banville

  In a clearing deep in the wood there was a ruined cottage, rubble and weeds and a rusty bedstead, and one upright wall with a cracked mirror suspended half way up it and a shaky lean-to made of branches and bits of sacking clinging to it like a faltering parasite. Amidst the weeds a fire burned under a blackened battered can slung on a forked stick, and it was over this steaming can and its intoxicating, barely familiar smell that I was bending when a pair of fierce eyes sprang at me from the dark den under the sacking.

  ‘Get your snout out of that!’

  He sat on a stone in there with his hands clamped on his knees and glared at me, a huge fellow in a tattered overcoat and a lidless high hat. Two filthy toes stuck out of his boots, and a fearful set of yellow teeth were clenched in a hole in his beard. He spat into the fire and snarled. I thought of running away, but I knew that my legs would not work.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Johann Livelb, sir.’

  ‘That's a queer class of a name. Joe what?’

  ‘Johann, sir. Livelb.’

  Suddenly he cackled.

  ‘Begod that's a mouthful all right. Sit down.’

  I crept into the hovel and squatted on the ground beside him. He looked at me silently for a moment, grinding his teeth, and then turned his eyes to the fire.

  ‘I think I'm dying, sir,’ I said.

  He nodded absently, and picked out a piece of stick from the bundle between his feet and threw it on the fire. Flames leaped up, and the stuff in the can bubbled fiercely. My stomach heaved.

  ‘Bit of grub, there,’ he observed, and looked down at me and winked. ‘Meat. Can't remember when I had it last. The country's in an awful fucking state. They're dropping like flies. Never seen the likes.’ He poured stew from the can into a biscuit-tin lid and set it down on the ground between us. I felt that I was meant to eat, yet I hesitated. I distrust such kindness, it shakes my lack of faith in human nature. He stopped chewing and glared at me. ‘Eat, will you! It's right stuff.’

  I ate. After the first mouthful I scuttled away and was sick into the weeds. My fierce friend laughed. I crawled back on all fours and tried another lump of meat. It stayed down. We finished what was on the plate, and he poured out a second helping, and that too we had soon tucked away. It left in my mouth a taste of boiled fur.

  ‘Do you know what that was now?’ he asked, wiping his beard on his sleeve. He cackled. ‘Monkey stew! Aye, that's right. Up there on the hill by the road I found it, sitting in a tree as cocky as you like eating leaves. A bloody monkey! I nearly broke my neck trying to catch it.’ He paused then and frowned. ‘Do you know, I'm travelling the roads these twenty year, but I never knew there was monkeys in this country. First I thought it was a bird or something, or a squirrel, but no, it was a monkey all right, I seen them before with them fellows with the hurdy-gurdies, dancing on a string. A tasty lad, though, what?’

  He dozed off after a while, sitting bolt upright with his hands on his knees, and I lay back against the wall and nursed my belly as it did its best to digest the remains of Albert, for Albert it must have been, the region could not boast of more than one monkey. How much else of the circus had survived? I had a vision of Mario perched in a tree, munching leaves and gibbering, or of Angel served up piping hot in a can. My friend started up abruptly and grabbed me by the throat.

  What?’ he roared, ‘what?’ I croaked at him and flapped my tongue, and he released me and passed a hand over his forehead. ‘Jesus, that was a close one,’ he muttered cryptically, and then burst into song.

  O there's hair on this

  And there's hair on that

  There's hair on my dog Tiny

  But I know where

  There's plenty of hair-

  He yawned, shook himself vigorously, and rubbed his hands.

  – On the girl I left behind me

  !

  His gaiety departed as quickly as it had come, and he began to grind his teeth again, and stared out gloomily at the frozen wood.

  This used to be my place,’ he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the wall behind us. ‘Cottage I had, grand little spot. Everything I needed, bit of game in the woods there, spuds in the back, a few head of cabbage. There was-’ Something occurred to him, and he turned to me and stuck out his hand. ‘Cotter's the name. Cotter's cottage, ha!’ Before I could shake his paw he clenched it and punched himself on the knee. ‘Them fuckers! Listen, tell me this, what harm was I doing? Christ, didn't they own half the county already, what did they want with my bit of a spot, eh? I had rights, squatter's rights! But O no, O no, the Big House wouldn't have me living in their woods, O no! You'll get shot some day, he said. By accident, he said. Accident my arse. That was the old whore himself, old Simon. Then they come and stove in the roof-and me in the bloody bed there! The fuckers.’

  He ruminated for a while in a furious silence, pounding himself with his fist, and then a small light dawned in his eyes and he bared his fangs and grinned.

  ‘But they got their comeuppance too,’ he growled, ‘aye they did. I heard about it when I was up north, her kicking off in the madhouse, and then your man getting shagged out when her crowd took over. Good enough for them, the mangy bastards. And now I'm back to claim what's mine, my rights, I am.’

  I waited for him to calm himself, and then I asked very carefully.

  ‘And what happened to…your man?’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Godkin.’

  ‘Mister Joseph? Fucked if I know. I hear they let him stay on, living in some class of an outhouse.’ He glanced at me suspiciously. ‘Why?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘Oo you jast wahndered, did you now? I see, I see.’ His teeth were out again, and his eyes gleamed. He clawed at his beard in a paroxysm of suspicion. ‘Bejesus, do you know what it is, you talk like one of them yourself. You wouldn't be coming down here to spy on old Cotter, would you, eh? That wouldn't be it, now, would it?’

  I backed out of the shelter slowly and stood by the fire watching him. He whipped off his hat and began to beat himself on the thigh with it, and muttered ruefully,

  ‘Dying, says he-like fuck!’

  He made a lunge at me and missed and stumbled into the embers of the fire, and as I turned he came up howling and coughing in a cloud of ash. I fled.

  Til get you! I'll get you!’

  At the edge of the wood I tried to leap the ditch and instead fell into it, and when I had crawled up out of the mud to the road I found myself staring into the disenchanted yellow eye of the stuffed tiger in its cage.

  36

  I WAS NOT surprised. I had known all along that in the end they would find me again. Perhaps it was that knowledge which kept me alive all that time, against all odds. Now here they were, the silent curtained caravans, the horses asleep in their harness, a life come back to claim me. The attack outside the pub had left bad bruises. Two caravans were missing, and the paint on those remaining was scorched and blistered. Windows were smashed, spokes were missing. A halfdoor hung loose on its hinges like a hand dangling from a broken wrist. The cart on which was carried the tent and tackle was hitched to the last caravan, leaving to one horse the work of two. There was something about the circus standing there silent and deserted that frightened me, a malevolence which I could not understand but only feel, and when Silas himself, hard on the thought of him, appeared around a bend, I crouched and ran to the cart and hid myself on it under a fold of the tent. I heard him shout at someone, and there was a mumbled reply startlingly close to me, and then boots rattled on the road. Mario, I think it was he, pissed against the wheel of the cart. Silas came up.

  ‘Hurry it up now, dear boy, we're on our way. Stirring times, eh?’

  Mario gave no answer, only grunted. They went away, and in a little while we moved off. The sacks under me were wet, I remember that smell, and I remember too the muffled grinding of wheels and the feeling of panic that made my rotten teeth ache as I was carried blindly into
the unknown. The journey was brief. We turned off the road on to gravel, and when I lifted the flap and cautiously looked out I saw an open gate which bore the legend, Lawless House. We crossed the lawn into a field and stopped, and there was a great deal of bustle around me. Surely now they would put up the tent, and I would be discovered, which I think would have been a relief, for I had begun to feel foolish cowering there. But my lair was l$ft undisturbed, and the desire to be discovered left me, and the fear came back. The voices and the bustle receded across the field. I waited for a long time, hearing nothing, and then suddenly there was a cry in the distance and a loud familiar crack. Vaguely I had a sense of many feet running over turf, and of storm and panic, of pain, and the voices returned shrill with terror, and Silas gasped,

  ‘Stick her in there, yes, in there-heave, damn you!’

  They were close to me now, struggling with some heavy thing. I heard Mario blubbering.

  ‘Is she dead?’ Sybil shrieked.

  ‘Shut your mouth.’

  ‘O Jesus Jesus!’

  ‘Fuck off!’ Mario roared in a voice shaking with mingled rage and hysteria. Silas clicked his tongue.

  ‘My boy, control yourself, and you also, woman. Broken eggs, broken eggs. She'll be all right.’

  ‘She will not, ‘Mario muttered. ‘She'sa dying.’

  ‘Tut, nonsense. Ah! my, this gore is frightful.’

  Again they departed. I could contain myself no longer. I lifted the flap. Angel lay on her back in the open doorway of the caravan in front of me. The top of her head was within inches of my face. Her hair was tangled and her shoulders heaved, and beyond, in the gloom, her hands with the fingers interlocked clutched her heaving belly. There was blood everywhere, in such quantity that it seemed impossible that one body could have shed so much. Suddenly she wrenched her head around and squinted at me.

  ‘You!‘she said.’Ha!’

  Her face was set in an agonised grin, but she spoke calmly, with a certain bitter amusement, indifferent to that terrible wound which she held in her hands in there. I wanted to flee, but that great heaving mound of flesh held me rooted to the spot. She turned her terrible grin away from me and said,

  ‘Rats!’

  I do not know how long we remained there locked in her dying. Across the field a battle raged. It did not seem real. Tiny figures ran and fought and hopped about, unreal. Rain fell and rattled on the canvas above me, soft spring rain. Angel began to swell, I cannot explain it, she filled the doorway until the posts groaned under the strain, and her massive trunk poured itself into every nook in the caravan, and soon the whole thing was packed with her, throbbing and heaving, rocking on its wheels. She cried out, and rose up in an arch on her heels and head, and upside down her face gaped and turned purple and her hands scrabbled furiously, scampering over her wound like animals. She shuddered and coughed, and all that shook, that flesh, fat, hair, teeth, blood, and she died snarling and laughing, and the spell broke, and I crawled out from my hole.

  37

  THE PAST COMES BACK transformed only to startle us with its steadfastness. It is our fractured vision which has transformed it. My broken kingdom all was changed and yet was as it always was. The house was in better repair, and eyed the world through its blazing windows with a steely new assurance, and there were new slates on the roof, and the garden was elegantly barbered, but these trimmings could not disguise the sad fastidious heart of Birchwood, my Birchwood. In the hall the tall clock still bravely tocked. Dead roses scattered amidst bits of a shattered bowl considered their splintered reflections in a mirror laced with cracks. A fat lozenge of sunshine sat on a chair. I could touch nothing, nothing. They had maimed my world. I climbed the stairs to the high window on the landing. Spring sunshine and shadow swept the garden, and the blood gleamed in the grass. The fountain below the window was broken. On the surface of the water a fallen sky trembled. A blue butterfly flickered across the lawn. My fists were wet. I held them up before me and stared at them with stinging eyes, unable to recognise my tears for what they were.

  ‘Make a stir, boy, and by fuck I'll blow your head off.’

  It was Cotter, perched like a ramshackle crow in the doorway of the bedroom across the landing with a shotgun clenched against his hip. He spat on the floor at my feet, and without taking his eyes from me he twisted his mouth over his shoulder and roared,

  ‘Lookat here, I have him!’

  Silas appeared behind him and stared for a moment, and then smiled, and came at me with open arms. I stepped aside. Cotter lifted the shotgun and aimed it at my head.

  ‘Will I shoot the bugger now?’ he asked eagerly of Silas, who waved a white-gloved hand at him and snapped,

  ‘Go away, you, go away!’

  He went, banging his boots on the stairs and grumbling, and Silas beamed at me fondly.

  ‘My boy, how are you? I thought you were lost to us forever. Why do you weep? Come, Gabriel, talk to your old friend. You know I never wished you harm. Gabriel?…’

  I turned away from him to the window. There were figures moving through the wood, carrying things. Silas saw them too, and sighed and said,

  ‘Burying the dead. Terrible, terrible.’ He lit his pipe and then linked his arm through mine, and together we paced up and down the landing. ‘It was terrible, Gabriel, truly awful. I didn't expect such…such… None of us expected it, believe me. You've seen those wanton creatures in their dresses? The Molly Maguires, they call them. He led us to believe they were freedom fighters, Gabriel, patriots! Ah, I should have known, but I did not.’ He glanced at me sideways and sucked fiercely on his pipe. ‘It was all his fault, you know. Such… such…’

  Such vengeance. From my lair on the cart I saw them drag old John Michael across the lawn and stand him against the glasshouse and shoot him in the face with a shotgun. I saw them cut a woman's throat. They beat and kicked and throttled the Lawlesses all to death, and Silas and the circus were in the thick of that slaughter, battling shoulder to shoulder with the Molly Maguires. And I did nothing, nothing. Silas squeezed my arm.

  ‘Come away with us, my boy. We have money now, and the caravans are loaded with provisions. No worries. It's not a bad life, you know, better than staying here. What do you say, eh? Let him have the damn house if he wants it so badly. What good will it do him-or you?’ He halted and spun me about to face him and laid his hands on my shoulders. ‘Don't be a fool, boy.’ I stepped away from him and he dropped his arms. From the garden came a low whistle. Silas glanced toward the window and fixed his eyes on me again. ‘Well?’ The whistle came a second time. I would not speak. ‘Gabriel, Gabriel, you disappoint me. I credited you with wisdom, or at least the base cunning of your class, and now here you are ready to make a fool of yourself for this…this shamblesV He peeled off his gloves and offered me his hand, and gave me a last long look in which there was mixed amusement, fondess and reproach. ‘Goodbye, my Caligula. We have one last duty to discharge, unpleasant but necessary, and then we are off. I shall not ask you again to go along with us, for I see you're determined. Farewell, my foolish Caligula. Enjoy your inheritance.’

  He turned and skipped away down the stairs, pulling on his gloves. I heard him below muttering with Cotter as they went out into the garden, and from the window I watched them set off across the field toward the caravans. Cotter plodded along on his flat feet, and the shotgun, open at the breech, flapped like a flail by his side. Silas was laughing. Even at that distance I could see his fat shoulders quiver. I began to miss him already, the sly old evil bastard. They disappeared behind the caravans, and at that moment the Molly Maguires stepped out of the trees on the drive, three stark men in tattered dresses, with cropped heads and murderous eyes, carrying shovels over their shoulders. They went down to the camp, but as they drew near it Cotter appeared again by the black caravan with the shotgun raised. Here was the last act. The gun roared twice, and two men fell, and a shovel flew up like a spear and glittered in the bright air. Cotter calmly reloaded, and the last of
the Mollies turned and ran. The dress clutched at his legs and tripped him, and, as he went down, the third blast, both barrels at once, burst open his head and sprayed the spring grass with blood. The circus moved out. Under the lilacs a figure in a white gown appeared, and a face leaned out into the sunlight and looked up at me with terrible teeth clenched in a grimace and red hair glittering.

  38

  I STUMBLED FRANTICALLY around the house barring the doors and windows. I was not trying to lock him out, but to lock myself in. From the kitchen window I peered out across the lawn. There was no sign of him now, but that absence only increased my panic. I found a malevolent friend in a drawer of the dresser, a sleek black knife, a Sabatier. The blade crooned and quivered as I drew it from its wooden sheath and tried the edge against my thumb. I fled with it upstairs to the attic and squatted there in the oniony gloom, moaning and muttering and gnawing my knuckles. The day waned. Rain fell, and then the sun again briefly, then twilight. The tenants of the little room, a brassbound trunk, the dusty skeleton of a tricycle, that stringless tennis racket standing in the corner like a petrified exclamation of horror, began their slow dance into darkness. My face with its staring eyes retreated stealthily out of a grimy sliver of mirror, and then I knew that he was in the house, for I could feel his presence like a minute tremor in the air. I waited calmly. The stairs creaked, and the spokes in the wheels of the tricycle tingled, and the door swung open. Michael, with his legs swaying and the wide skirts falling around him, stood on his hands out on the landing like a huge white mushroom upside down. I could have killed him then, with ease, I even imagined myself flying at him with the knife and plunging it down into his heart, but he was, after all, my brother.