Island

by Alistair Macleod

  “You mean dead?” they asked.

  “Well, some of them, yes,” he said, “but I mean gone from there, scattered all over the world. But some of us are here. That is why this place is called Canna and we carry certain things within us. Sometimes there are things within us which we do not know or fully understand and sometimes it is hard to stamp out what you can’t see. It is good that you are here for this while.”

  Toward the end of the week they learned that there was a government boat checking lighthouses along the coast. It would stop at the point of Canna and later, on its southern journey, also at Kintail. It was an excellent chance for them to get home, and it was decided that they should take it. The night before they left, their grandparents served them a splendid dinner with a white tablecloth and candles.

  As they prepared to leave on the following morning, the rain began to fall. Their grandmother gave them some packages to deliver to their mother, and also a letter, and packed a lunch with lobster sandwiches for them. She hugged and kissed them as they were leaving and said, “Thank you for coming. It was good to have you here and it made us feel better about ourselves.” She looked at her husband and he nodded.

  They climbed into their grandfather’s buggy as the rain fell upon them, and carefully placed their packages beneath the seat. On the road down to the wharf they passed the lane to the blind woman’s house. She was near the roadway with the two black dogs. She was wearing her men’s rubber boots and a large kerchief and a heavy rubber raincoat. When she heard the buggy approaching, she called out, “Co a th’ann? Co a th’ann? Who’s there? Who’s there?”

  But their grandfather said nothing.

  “Who’s there?” she called. “Who’s there? Who’s there?”

  The rain fell upon her streaked and empty glasses and down her face and along her coat and her strong protruding hands with their grimy fingernails.

  “Don’t say anything,” said their grandfather under his breath. “I don’t want her to know you’re here.”

  As the horse approached, she continued to call, but none of them said anything. Above the regular hoofbeats of the horse her voice seemed to rise through the falling rain, causing a tension within all of them as they tried to pretend they could not hear her.

  “Có a th’ann?” she called. “Who’s there? Who’s there?”

  They lowered their heads as if she could see them. But when they were exactly opposite her, their grandfather could not stand it any longer and suddenly reined in the horse.

  “Có a th’ann?” she called. “Who’s there?”

  “ ’Se mi-fhìn,” he answered quietly. “It’s myself!”

  She began to curse him in Gaelic and he became embarrassed.

  “Do you understand what she’s saying?” he said to them.

  They were uncertain. “Some of it,” they said.

  “Here,” he said, “hold the horse,” and he passed the reins to them. He took the buggy whip out of its socket as he descended from the buggy, and they were uncertain about that, too, until they realized he was taking it protect himself from the dogs who came snarling towards him, but kept their distance because of the whip. He began to talk to the blind woman in Gaelic and they both walked away from the buggy along the laneway to her house until they were out of earshot. The dogs lay down on the wet roadway and watched and listened carefully.

  The visitors could not hear the conversation, only the rising and falling of the two voices through the descending rain. When their grandfather returned, he seemed upset and took the reins from them and spoke to the horse immediately.

  “God help me,” he said softly and almost to himself, “but I could not pass her by.”

  There was water running down his face and they thought for a moment he might be crying; but just as when they had looked for the semen on his overalls a week earlier, they could not tell because of the rain.

  The blind woman stood in the laneway facing them as they moved off along the road. It was one of those situations which almost automatically calls for waving but even as they began to raise their hands they remembered her blindness and realized it was no use. She stood as if watching them for a long time and then, perhaps when she could no longer hear the sound of the horse and buggy, she turned and walked with the two dogs back toward her house.

  “Do you know her well?” they asked.

  “Oh,” said their grandfather, as if being called back from another time and place, “yes, I do know her quite well and since a long, long time.”

  Their grandfather waited with them on the wharf for the coming of the government boat, but it was late. When it finally arrived, the men said they would not be long checking the lighthouse and told them to go into the boat to wait. They said their good-byes then, and their grandfather turned his wet and impatient horse towards home.

  Although the wait was not supposed to be long, it was longer than expected and it was afternoon before the boat left the protection of the wharf and ventured out into the ocean. The rain was still falling and a wind had come up and the sea was choppy. The wind was off the land, so they stood with their backs toward Canna and to the wind and the rain. When they were far enough out to sea to have perspective, one of the men said, “It looks like there is a fire back there.” And when they looked back they could see the billowing smoke, somehow seeming ironic in the rain. It rose in the distance and was carried by the wind but it was difficult to see its source not only because of the smoke but also because of the driving rain. And because the perspective from the water was different from what it was on the land. The government men did not know any of the local people and they were behind schedule and already well out to sea, so there was no thought of turning back. They were mildly concerned, too, about the rising wind, and wanted to make as much headway as possible before conditions worsened.

  It was that period of the day when the afternoon blends into evening before the boat reached the Kintail wharf. During the last miles the ocean had roughened and within the rocking boat the passengers had become green and seasick and vomited their lobster sandwiches over the side. Canna seemed very far away and the golden week seemed temporarily lost within the reality of the swaying boat and the pelting rain. When the boat docked, they ran to their house as quickly as they could. Their mother gave them soup and dry clothes and they went to bed earlier than usual.

  They slept late the next day, and when they awoke and went downstairs it was still raining and blowing. And then the Syrian pedlars, Angus and Alex, knocked on the door. They put their heavy wet leather packs upon the kitchen floor and told the boys’ mother that there had been a death in Canna. The Canna people were sending word but they had heard the news earlier in the day from another pedlar arriving from that direction and he had asked them to carry the message. The pedlars and the boys’ parents talked for a while and the boys were told to “go outside and play” even though it was raining. They went out to the barn.

  Almost immediately the boys’ parents began to get ready for the journey. The ocean was by this time too rough for a boat, and they had already hauled their boat up at the end of the lobster season. They readied their horse and buggy, and later in the afternoon they were gone. They were away for five days, and when they returned they were drawn and tired.

  Through bits and pieces of conversation, the boys learned that it was the blind woman’s house that had burned and she within it.

  Later, and they were not sure just when, they gathered other details and bits of information. She had been at the stove, it was thought, and her clothes had caught fire. The animals had burned with her. Most of their bones were found before the door to which they had gone to seek escape but she had been unable to open it for them or, it seemed, for herself.

  Over the weeks the details blended in with their own experience. They imagined her strong hands pulling down the wainscotting of her own house and placing it in the fire, consuming her own house somehow from within as it was later to consume her. And they could see the
fire going up the front of her layers of dirty clothing. Consuming the dirt which she herself had been unable to see. Rising up the front of her clothing, rising up above her shoulders toward her hair, the imaginary orange flames flickering and framing her face and being reflected in the staring lenses of her glasses.

  And they imagined the animals, too. The savage faithful dogs which were twins snarling at the doorway with their fur in flames, and the lusty cats engaged in their growling copulation in the corner, somehow keeping on, driven by their own heat while the other heat surrounded them, and the bleating lamb with its wool on fire. And in the space between the walls the mewing unseen kittens, dying with their eyes still closed.

  And sometimes they imagined her, too, in her porch or in her house or standing by the roadside in the rain. Cò a th’ann? they heard her call in their imagination and in their dreams. Cò a th’ann? Cò a th’ann? Who’s there? Who’s there? And one night they dreamed they heard themselves answer. ’Se mi-fhìn they heard themselves say as with one voice. It is myself.

  My father and his brother never again spent a week on the green hills of Canna. Perhaps their lives went by too fast or circumstances changed or there were reasons that they did not fully understand themselves.

  And one Sunday six years later when they were in church the clergyman gave a rousing sermon on why young men should enlist in World War I. They were very enthusiastic about the idea and told their parents that they were going to Halifax to enlist although they were too young. Their parents were very upset and went to the clergyman in an attempt to convince him it was a mistake. The clergyman was their friend and came to their house and told them it was a general sermon for the day. “I didn’t mean you,” he added, but his first success was better than his second.

  They left the next day for Halifax, getting a ride to the nearest railroad station. They had never been on a train before and when they arrived, the city of Halifax was large and awesome. At the induction centre their age was easily overlooked but the medical examination was more serious. Although they were young and strong, the routine tests seemed strange and provoked a tension within them. They were unable to urinate in a bottle on request and were asked to wait a while and then try again. But sitting on two chairs wishing for urine did little good. They drank more and more water and waited and tried but it did not work. On their final attempt, they were discussing their problem in Gaelic while standing in a tiny cubicle with their legs spread apart and their trousers opened. Unexpectedly a voice from the next cubicle responded to them in Gaelic.

  The voice belonged to a young man from Canna who had come to enlist as well but who did not have their problem. “Can we ‘borrow’ some of that?” they asked, looking at his full bottle of urine.

  “Sure,” he said, “no need to give it back,” and he splashed some of his urine into each of their waiting bottles. All of them “passed” the test; and later in the alleyway behind the induction centre, standing in the steam of their own urine, they began to talk to the young man from Canna. His grandfather owned the store in Canna, he said, and was opposed to his coming to enlist.

  “Do you know Alex?” they asked and mentioned their grandfather’s formal name.

  He seemed puzzled for a moment and then brightened. “Oh,” he said, “Mac an Amharuis, sure, everyone knows him. He’s my grandfather’s friend.”

  And then, perhaps because they were far from home and more lonely and frightened than they cared to admit, they began to talk in Gaelic. They began with the subject of Mac an Amharuis, and the young man told them everything he knew. Surprised perhaps at his own knowledge and at having such attentive listeners. Mac an Amharuis translates as “Son of Uncertainty,” which meant that he was illegitimate or uncertain as to who his father was. He was supposed to be tremendously talented and clever as a young man but also restless and reluctant to join the other young men of Canna in their fishing boats. Instead he saved his money and purchased a splendid stallion and travelled the country offering the stallion’s services. He rode on the stallion’s back with only a loose rope around its neck for guidance.

  He was also thought to be handsome and to possess a “strong nature” or “too much nature,” which meant that he was highly sexed. “Some say,” said the young man, “that he sowed almost as much seed as the stallion and who knows who might be descended from him. If we only knew, eh?” he added with a laugh.

  Then he became involved with a woman from Canna. She was thought to be “odd” by some because she was given to rages and uncertainty and sometimes she would scream and shout at him in public. At times he would bring back books and sometimes moonshine from wherever he went with the stallion. And sometimes they would read quietly together and talk and at other times they would curse and shout and become physically violent.

  And then he became possessed of Da Shealladh, the second sight. It seemed he did not want it and some said it came about because of too much reading of the books or perhaps it was inherited from his unknown father. Once he “saw” a storm on the evening of a day which was so calm that no one would believe him. When it came in the evening the boats could not get back and all the men were drowned. And once when he was away with the stallion, he “saw” his mother’s house burn down, and when he returned he found that it had happened on the very night he saw it, and his mother was burned to death.

  It became a weight upon him and he could not stop the visions or do anything to interfere with the events. One day after he and the woman had had too much to drink they went to visit a well-known clergyman. He told the clergyman he wanted the visions to stop but it did not seem within his power. He and the woman were sitting on two chairs beside each other. The clergyman went for the Bible and prayed over it and then he came and flicked the pages of the Bible before their eyes. He told them the visions would stop but that they would have to give up one another because they were causing a scandal in the community. The woman became enraged and leaped at the clergyman and tried to scratch out his eyes with her long nails. She accused Mac an Amharuis of deceiving her and said that he was willing to exchange their stormy relationship for his lack of vision. She spat in his face and cursed him and stormed out the door. Mac an Amharuis rose to follow her but the clergyman put his arms around him and wrestled him to the floor. He was far gone in drink and within the clergyman’s power.

  They stopped appearing with one another and Mac an Amharuis stopped travelling with the stallion and bought himself a boat. He began to visit the woman’s younger sister, who was patient and kind. The woman moved out of her parents’ house and into an older house nearer the shore. Some thought she moved because she could not stand Mac an Amharuis visiting her sister, and others thought that it was planned to allow him to visit her at night without anyone seeing.

  Within two months Mac an Amharuis and the woman’s sister were married. At the wedding the woman cursed the clergyman until he warned her to be careful and told her to leave the building. She cursed her sister, too, and said, “You will never be able to give him what I can.” And as she was going out the door, she said to Mac an Amharuis either “I will never forgive you” or “I will never forget you.” Her voice was charged with emotion but her back was turned to them and the people were uncertain whether it was a curse or a cry.

  The woman did not come near anyone for a long time and people saw her only from a distance, moving about the house and the dilapidated barn, caring for the few animals which her father had given her, and muffled in clothes as autumn turned to winter. At night people watched for a light in her window. Sometimes they saw it and sometimes they did not.

  And then one day her father came to the house of his daughter and Mac an Amharuis and said that he had not seen a light for three nights and he was worried. The three of them went to the house but it was cold. There was no heat when they put their hands on the stove and the glass of the windowpanes was covered with frost. There was nobody in any of the rooms.

  They went out into the barn and found her
lying in a heap. Most of the top part of her body was still covered by layers of clothes, although the lower part was not. She was unconscious or in something like a frozen coma and her eyes were inflamed, with beads of pus at their corners. She had given birth to twin girls and one of them was dead but the other somehow still alive, lying on her breast amidst her layers of clothing. Her father and Mac an Amharuis and her sister carried the living into the house and started a fire in the stove, and sent for the nearest medical attention, which was some miles away. Later they also carried in the body of the dead baby and placed it in a lobster crate, which was all that they could find. When the doctor came, he said he could not be certain of the baby’s exact time of birth but he felt that it would live. He said that the mother had lost a great deal of blood and he thought she might have lacerated her eyes during the birth with her long fingernails and that infection had set in, caused perhaps by the unsanitary conditions within the barn. He was not sure if she would live and, if she did, he feared her sight would never be restored.

  Mac an Amharuis and his wife cared for the baby throughout the days that the woman was unconscious, and the baby thrived. The woman herself began to rally and the first time she heard the baby cry she reached out instinctively for it but could not find it in the dark. Gradually, as she recognized by sound the people around her, she began to curse them and accused them of having sex when she could not see them. As she grew stronger, she became more resentful of their presence and finally asked them to leave. She began to rise from her bed and walk with her hands before her, sometimes during the day and sometimes during the night because it made no difference to her. And once they saw her with a knife in her hand. They left her then, as she had requested them to do and perhaps because they were afraid. And because there seemed no other choice, they took the baby with them.