The Black Snow: A Novel

by Paul Lynch

  Billy stood up and shrugged and bent for his schoolbag. Aye, whatever.

  Don’t you whatever me. Barnabas grabbed him and began to ruffle his hair with affection and the boy resisted against him, broke free with a staring red face. Leave off, would ye. He went out the door.

  The air between Barnabas and Eskra a delicate thing that could bear little pressure upon it. He went out to the yard and closed the back door behind him. She began to clean about the house, went to the back door and opened it again, drafts of cool air bellowing into the room that fluttered the pages of a recipe book on the table. She went to the radio and turned the dial and stood a moment to listen. Could not recall what it was she heard, but the music brought suddenly a dim memory from childhood. A brass band in a park. Musicians in black. Sitting beside her father. Her mind grasping for details that were lost to her, faint smells found of roasting peanuts. The music on the radio swelled and subsided and left her holding the ghost hand of her father, and she stood there, saw herself as a child, felt herself as a child, felt for a moment grief for the loss of her old self.

  She took the sweeping brush and went to the front door and opened it. Heard on the breeze a distant dog’s woofing, a high octave of birdsong. Caught the music of the bees and heard it off-tune, an odd discordance. She swept up the hall and went into the kitchen for the brush and pan. She found the brush in the turf bucket and shook her head at Barnabas leaving it there like that, the man was unbelievable, began to nose about for the pan, found it behind the back door nestled against the shotgun. She took the brush and pan to the hall and bent to the small hill of dust and dog hair and she went outside with it to the hedge and bent and lowered the dirt into the thicket. She walked back to the house and it was then the strange music of the bees reached into her. She began towards the side of the house, her head cocked to listen better, wondered what it was that made so strange their droning. She came closer and what she heard was shrill and worrisome and what she saw was not seen until she was upon it, until she lifted the hive roof. What she had heard and believed to be the bees were not bees at all and that few of her bees were living. In that small moment of time she saw the carcasses of her hive strewn about, the mesh floor some mediaeval orgy of body parts like the leavings of a battlefield blooded. Bee wings torn off and strewn about to catch the light in their tiny way and shine it silver, pieces of black bee legs like loose strands of tobacco, thoraces disembodied and heads rolled as if they had been beheaded, and in a way they were, and she saw most of the bees’ abdomens were missing. What bees were left complete were lying on their backs as if astonished at such butchery, and the insects that had invaded murderous for her bees filled her ears with violence–a plague of wasps that swung dangerous, made fizzy the air. In that moment she lost her mind to them, batted her hand at the wasps, a movement that was reflex and helpless, and the draft of her hand brought the insects upon her. A pail of wasps rose up narrow-waisted, swung at her with their stingers. They broke the white seal of her arms, the skin that lay thin on her hand bones, the delicate arch of her neck, pierced the promenade of her forehead, the plash of perfect skin between the eye and eye-bone. She felt the pain pulse white lightning in her eye and then thicken until it was felt in the whole of her head. She batted blindly, uselessly, staggered backwards the hot pain like pokers scalding the insides of her and her mind fell away from her. Jagging breaths and backwards then and she lost her balance and hit the ground, wasp venom ferrying itself within her, her-lips-her-skin-her-limbs thickening with it, and the strength gone out of her arms and she lay there on the green grass involuting and useless.

  The spring sun shone and from the sky came chill drafts that made the leaves tremble. Out of the sky came a cabbage butterfly, a dark blind eye on each of its white wings and it beat the air briskly, fluttered high a soft kiss to reach the branch of an ash. And when it had rested a while upon a greening new leaf, it dived itself back down, its wings held over its head in the poise of a fallen angel. In the moment he came for her he saw the butterfly upon her, resting serene on the curve of her waist, a white orchid. Bent and took her in his arms.

  He watched her open one eye, the other lidded swollen, a marbling of red and blue and she murmured to him my bees are lost. What he heard was a mesh of words unintelligible, her bottom lip fattened and her hands and arms and throat puffed up. Upon her forehead was a swell like she had been felled by a stone. He heard in her breathing a wheezing and he put his fingers onto the ashy of her skin, took her inside and sat with her by the bed until Billy came home from school. Sent the boy off for the doctor.

  He went outside and walked slowly towards the hives, saw the place was devastated, heard a quiet that was total. Later, he told her they were all gone, the larvae and the eggs all taken and the honey was eaten also. She did not speak, lay there inert with one eye open towards the ceiling and then she turned away from him. He went into the kitchen and took from the press a number of blue glass bottles and he filled them with sugar water, hung them around the hive, put them inside the house, upon the deal table and on the sills of the windows, put two each side of her in the bedroom, hung them outside around the house. Later when he went to check on them he saw those placed by the front of the house held dead or drowning wasps in their dozens. He stared into a trap and felt pure disgust. Something else unsettled him. What he sensed perhaps was in the air itself or in his tasting of it, an odd and faint pungency, and when he looked up from the trap he knew that the world was askew to them, that somehow they had fallen out of kilter with what was, some invisible order, and he could not understand what for or how so. A whirling universe of chaos and dark and the light bending sharply away from it, could sense as if a door just opened to him the nature of the trap greater than he had ever imagined.

  Two days later she rose to a yellow afternoon that lit the room. The house so quiet with all its windows closed she could hear above all else her heartbeat. She stood in front of the mirror and saw her face had lost its shape. She dressed with care and went downstairs and bent to tie her shoelaces and found her fingers hurt. What had to be done now was resolute inside her, had formed into a solid visual shape as she had lain there. Through the mesh of pain in her body she saw it. Now I know what’s going on. My family. She sleeved her coat and stole out the front door and did not look towards the ruined apiary, could hear Barnabas banging something in the back yard as she ghosted out the gate. What kind of evening it was she paid no heed and as she walked past Peter McDaid’s house he saw her from the field and waved meekly and saw the wave unmet, watched her pass down the lane. She met the main road and began to walk in the direction of the town, began moving her fingers through the hurt, sucked on her swollen lip as she walked, ran her tongue over the place where the venom had been entered.

  Fir trees banking up a hill to her right netted the last of the daylight and thickened the air with resin. When the road met a stone culvert she took the left past it, a rutted lane that leaned down a hill and bent around a corner. Halfway down she met the white of a house. Did not knock to enter, opened the latch of the door without stopping and walked in. When she stood in the room she saw in it few furnishings and that nobody was home. A rocker with worn arms sat beside a fire that looked a good while dead. On the air the stench of the unwashed, while hung from a rafter above the fireplace was a black fowl. She looked in the second room. A brass double bed with a single blanket. A thickening of that stale smell. She began to look about the house for her missing white sheets, found nothing.

  As she came towards the town she walked past people who knew her–an old woman called Mrs Doherty who slowed to talk and looked at her aghast when she saw the state of Eskra’s face, the fattened lip, the lowering swell of her forehead, her left eye askew. Eskra marching past her, walking with her hands fisted and burning, felt a swelling and heaviness in her legs. How she must have looked to others she knew too well from the way their eyes fell upon her, two men staring hard from the back of a passing cart. Across the tow
n centre she marched towards the double-door of a pub. One door shut and the other open to a cramped foyer and she stepped into that dark and opened a frosted-glass lounge door. A grey and greasy window lit the bar and she stood in its watery shadows, the counter to her right without a bar keep and a turf fire burning. A table of three men stirred by the door to gawk at her, one of them leaning over his drink with his finger in his nose. The mouth of the man closest to her fell open when he saw her face, lifted his foot off a stool. Eskra saw what she came for at the far end of the room.

  Baba Peoples sat with her back to the door beside an old man and woman. There was meekness in the way they were, hunched and no talk out of them and their hands were cradling their drinks. Eskra came behind Baba Peoples and closed a fist around a length of her thinning hair, yanked her backwards off the stool, began to drag the woman across the room like a sack. An odd sound left the lips of the old woman, a muted shriek that sounded more animal than human while she kicked her measly legs uselessly beneath her. Eskra dragging the old woman towards the door and one of the men stood quick and came behind Eskra and took a hold of her shoulders, tried to swing her away, forced her to let go of Baba Peoples. The old woman scrambling to her feet and as she moved Eskra shook free of the man and hit Baba Peoples a slap hard on the cheek, could feel in that slap how brittle were the woman’s bones. The old woman flew from the slap and when she got up from the ground she took in the grotesque swells of her attacker. Her eyes shook with startle. Eskra’s voice reaching up into a yell. You little tormentor. You’re no better than a witch.

  The man who stood behind Eskra took her firmly by the arm and she tried to pull free but couldn’t. The barman appeared squat and bald and began shouting. Hold on there now, he said, his face reddening, but he did not come between them. Eskra shook herself free and stared at her restrainer as if daring him again to touch her, and she turned around and faced Baba Peoples. A voice rose up from behind her. She’s only an old woman. What in the hell did she do to ye?

  Eskra turned to the table and pointed to Baba Peoples. She’s been tormenting my family. This last two months now. Doing things to us. She’s been holding us to blame for the accident that killed her husband. This woman is bitter and twisted, no better than a little witch.

  Faces turned to watch the words register on the face of Baba Peoples and she stood in that glare smaller than she ever stood, her failing grey hair unkempt over her face. She stared up at Eskra, took a step towards her, spoke then with unexpected defiance. I did no such thing, Eskra Kane. To ye or yer family. Yer making it all up.

  Eskra’s voice became cat spit. Listen to you and all your lies. You little fucking child hag. You did to my bees and you did to my family. And I know you did to our dog.

  The old woman took another step towards Eskra and reached her hand into her dress pocket, produced a small seamstress scissors. She held it in the air before Eskra and stood defiant. The barman shouted firmly at her. You put them scissors away, Baba Peoples. The old woman leaned towards Eskra. I resent what yer sayin, Eskra Kane. I never done nothing to yer family other than ask ye for money. And got none. Now say it to me again, woman. Call me a liar.

  Eskra grew more vexed. The lies out of your mouth. Admit the things you have done. You’re trying to drive us out.

  All eyes in that room were upon the two women, the eyes of the men watching each other, watching the women, eyes that spoke of a wariness of interfering, while some of those eyes took from what they saw a strange enjoyment. As they stood there in that room the hand of Baba Peoples rose up quick with the scissors and it came then towards her own head and they watched in mute horror as the other hand followed, took in her fingers a sheaf of her own thin hair, how she defiantly cut that lump of hair to the skull. She dropped her hand and the cut hair slid off her head and fell with a flutter to the ground. The barman gasped and a stool behind Eskra screeched and a voice shouted out to stop her. Baba Peoples spoke again. Let her say it to me again. Go on, say it, Eskra Kane. Call me a liar.

  She held the scissors ready and the barman red-faced moved towards her but Baba Peoples turned and warned with her free hand for the man to stop. Eskra eyed her venomously and her voice when it came out was belling. What a display, Baba Peoples. You should be ashamed of yourself. You can do all you like to your hair but you and I know the truth.

  As she spoke the old woman struck the scissors to her hair and with each strike made a ruin of her head, savaged the hair off herself until she stood in the middle of that room balded. She stood pointing her yellow eyes at Eskra while Eskra eyed her back, the old woman’s scalp faintly shining in the greased light and tufted. Then the old woman spoke.

  I hope ye are happy now, Eskra Kane. I hope ye sleep well tonight. And I’ll tell ye another thing that ye do not know. That dog of yers was got by a farmer, I won’t say who it was, because his lambs were being slaughtered by your dog.

  She watched as her words entered through Eskra’s eyes, saw the woman’s eyes flutter in confusion. Turned then and put the scissors in her pocket and righted her stool and sat down to her drink, the back of her head appearing to every one watching as some strange and shining defilement. Eskra standing in the room, everybody else in that room watching her, and they saw the way then she hesitated before them, that what began to alight her eyes was doubt, that the other woman’s actions had spoken a greater truth, and as Eskra turned to leave the bar she felt a pure and bottomless dread, that from the way the people were now looking at her, she was the person being judged.

  That crazy Masher bastard kilt my dog I know it, and he won’t rest till he gets me, who knows what he’ll do next. I carried this truth in me for weeks after the fire like a curse and then one day I says it to the auld doll, it just falls out of me so it did. I tried to tell her it was The Masher that done in Cyclop and that he started the fire to get back at the old man for having him sent away to the mental home but she just shakes her head at me. That boy she says is locked up in the asylum forty miles away and he won’t be getting out probably never, that is the sad way of these things. Why couldn’t she listen? What went on with Molly the Moss in the forest were all his fault, he was just leading me on. He was behaving all natural like it was something he normally done and I suppose I was pretending that it was all normal to me too. We went looking for her to tell her to keep her mouth shut after she seen us when we left the car in the field and it was like she was waiting for us. We walked past her house real slow and she came outside and followed us and we nodded for her to come for a walk. Her hair like twirly auld straw and them big blue ringy eyes on her and something brazen in her bearing. In the blue of her skin she always looked frozen. The Masher kept on giggling and whispering to me saying she’s wild stupid and we gave her a fag and the three of us smoked with her walking behind us. We’re looking at her and she looks at us and says what did you think I was going to tell? I would never say nothin. We traipsed about the place, out around the edges of her grandfather’s fields and then we went up the hill into the planting. The Masher was hooting laughing when we got into the trees and his voice was ringin the tops of them and he was as giddy as a dog with two dicks showing off. It began to darken a wee bit the further in we got and we got to where it was a good bit darker than daylight the trees so thick, and it was as good a place as any and then we just stood there all awkward. The Masher bends to the ground and picks up the branch of an old tree and he starts banging it off a trunk and it makes cracking sounds that echo in little shocks. I’m standing there with my hands all stupid and start looking up at the trees looking for birds or whatever making awkward conversation and then she just says I’m wild tired so I am, and she lies down on the forest floor on top of all them needles. When we go to her them needles are stuck to her hair and they are stuck to the undersides of her arms and when she lifts up her dress up to her neck you could see them stuck to the back of her whole body and the two of us we start kissing her tits laid bare they were to the world. Her breasts small doughy r
ises and we’re just lying there licking at her and she’s lying there not saying a word with her arms by her side like she doesn’t want to touch us. And then I don’t know why or what came over me but I just reached and pulled her dress all the way off, I didn’t even think about it none. And I can see her now all whitely laid out and the bluey rings around her nipples and the tuft of hair between her legs like the wee head of a baby. Her knickers had come off and the way she stretched her arms back to allow the dress to come off made me think she liked what we were doin to her. It felt like heaven and hell right then the way we just stayed there licking at her a pair of scrawny cats to the buttermilk and I was too nervous to do anything else, the closest I’d got to a girl before was feeling Mary Laffin’s tit through a jumper. That time was only a grab and as I lay there over her with my two hands flat on the ground feeling a soreness in me wrists from the leaning and me knees getting wet from the moss I could hear the silence of the place over us, the thick quiet of the trees listening and then the hoot of a bird overhead watching us no doubt too and wondering at the weird sight of us. And I didna care if anybody saw us and a hunger came over me like fire something strange. I sucked away on her tit and did not notice that he was away up off her and when I looked up it was too late and my heart leapt out of my chest when I saw him standing between her legs with his cock freed out of his trousers. He veered it towards her and stuck it at her and there was something wrong with him and then he began to shudder and he was done before he even got it in. The Masher on his knees lookin like a fool and she let out a high-sounding laugh at him and then she took a hold of me in that same moment and unbuttoned me and guided it into her my mind going into a pure whiteness and I heard her make a small pig squeal as it went in. A voice trying to scream inside of me it were wrong and I knew through and through it were and I couldna stop even though I hated the pure sight of her, the silly wee bitch, and when we were done the place’s quiet like the wind that’s died after a storm. And I saw then that The Masher while I was up on her had run away in shame and that was the last time I seen him till he came up to my house with the iron bar. The all-white of her laid out like snow and the way then she looked at me after we were done with it, a long soft look she gave me, and I pure as hating her.