She stands in the middle of the darkness.
She hears a muffle of shouts from the flat below, the odd couple she rarely sees. They don’t have any children. They’ve been fighting a lot recently.
One Must Endeavour to Get Some Sleep.
No Really, Go to Sleep.
Hours chafe away, closer and closer to hangover. She sits on the wooden floor, her skin itchy with fabric softener and something almost like regret, though it is still too early to know for sure.
Eventually, the growl of the dawn begins from the street. The backwards beep of Sainsbury’s trucks. The coo of pigeons. The clatter of luggage wheels late for somewhere, anywhere else.
Slowly, she opens the door of her flat and takes the stairs one at a time. The throb of her head is brutal, the wine-soaked aftertaste. But for the first time in hours her mind is calm again, focused only on the portrait she has been composing through the night: him, waiting there, bruised and snoring against the leather headrest, until she will knock on the window and he will gasp awake with a ‘sorry’ and that, for now, will be enough – no more overreactions, no more talk – just glad they managed to save it all before it fell away.
In the communal hallway she tiptoes over the scatter of post. The cleaners’ cards. The forgotten letters, the corners crisp and white. Like after an argument once when he apologised by running her a bath filled with bubbles and a hundred origami swans that pecked at her body with their little white beaks.
She has kept them in a box beneath her bed ever since, love letters that don’t say a word.
She clicks open the latch of the front door and readies herself for the sunlight, the crush of it harsh and bright. But she promises herself that she will stare back into the street, never so happy to see that Audi S7 in all her life, the scratch-free finish and the personalised registration his parents got for his birthday:
NO4H
The naffness spelled out across the bright yellow plate:
N4FF
And a yellow reg back home in Ireland that means you can thump the person next to you whenever you spot one driving by. Because anything British deserves a bashing, apparently – the petty politics of child’s play we never quite get past.
For in the End, This May Be the Most Wonderful, Most Important Decision of One’s Life.
The parking space, though, is empty.
There is no car.
No Noah.
Not even a tiny white swan bent into place, the lines so defined that when you take it apart it can just be put back together again, in nine simple folds, exactly the same as before.
part two | Names…
1911
What about a man who names his daughter after his wife? And then the next daughter and the next one too so that when they die, he only has to engrave one name on the gravestone to commemorate them all; only has to cry out one word in his dreams?’
Ruth opened her eyes, though she had been a million miles off sleep.
All night she had been too anxious to drop off, her head frizzy on a pillow that was never quite cool enough and her mind skitty on everything the morning would bring – the morning they had all been waiting for.
Eventually, though, she gave up. She made her way to the curtains and drew one aside, just a crack, careful not to let in too much of the day. Behind her, Esther was still asleep, her breaths a slow and even whistle. It seemed the anticipation was going easier on her.
Out the window, the Cork clouds had been rinsed a gaudy shade, somewhere between an orange and a pink. Ruth thought of the rhyme they had learned at school – a shepherd’s warning, wasn’t that the one? A superstition she hadn’t heard before so she didn’t know whether to believe. But when she finally looked down to the street she realised the warning had been right, a whole other kind of anxiety waiting below.
Because the birds, it seemed, had dropped out of the sky.
There were hundreds of them, maybe even more; a plague of tattered carcasses scattered across the cobblestones, chests up and beaks apart, their wings matt and still. The wind had obviously been at them too, bluey tufts of feathers caught up in the railings, the bushes, the gutters, the lampposts, all along the terrace of redbricks they had called ‘home’ for almost ten years now. Or at least, that Ruth had called ‘home’ whenever her mother wasn’t listening.
Their eyes were still open, conker-bright and hard.
The bodies lay undisturbed. Ruth half-expected some cats. But soon the neighbours began to emerge, keen to inspect the inexplicable carnage. There were the Golds and the Epsteins – now a family of five – Leb with his tailor shop, his skinny wife and two snotty little boys. And the new baby Lottie whom Ruth sometimes looked after, a gorgeous thing who slept her way through the entire spectacle.
Ruth checked the bed behind her. Esther gave a sigh but didn’t wake.
According to the story in the Cork Examiner, the lick of bitter weather over France had scuppered the birds’ usual migratory routine. Then the darkness had been so black they couldn’t see where they were going, until the gaudy flare of the Cork City lights lured them off course and they thought they had found their way. At last!
Only now they were dead, every one, and nobody knew why.
Ruth stood by the window, her words clinging together as she tried to make sense. What worried her most was that it was some sort of omen for the big day ahead – first the shepherd’s warning and now this? All the animals, out to get them.
Inside his head must be a zoo.
Noah’s Ark, two by two!
But when she looked again she decided that maybe this was something else entirely – not a sign or an omen, but an inspiration; a chance for a bit of imagination, finally, that would make her Tateh smile. Because come on, she was nearly eighteen years of age – nearly a proper grown-up – so surely even she could manage to shape an idea from a sight as unnatural as this.
She closed her mismatched eyes and heaved a breath, willing herself to focus. First she pictured her compass, the face of it clear and smooth; the points that always kept her calm. Next she pictured her father’s face, beaming with pride. And then she focused on the little birdy bodies, the bloated chests and the snaggled claws, not a lick of blood between them as if death had just been on the air, wafted in off the Atlantic to suck their souls away.
Whataboutaflockofbirdswho–
Esther’s scream was so shrill next to her they must have heard her out at sea. Their parents came flying in, Mame first, eyes wild with fear then fury. She shook her head and told Ruth she was a brat, that she should have known better, should have just left the curtains well alone.
Hours later on the platform of the Glanmire Road train station, the creatures were still everywhere, piled black like mounds of coal; fuel for the engine’s hock.
‘From platform three, Bubbeleh, I think it is departing.’
Ruth stayed close behind her Tateh, avoiding the corpses’ stares.
‘Hurry we must. Miss it we cannot.’
But even in the panic, still she managed a little smile. Because it must have been the nerves that did it, the weight of the day ahead and the strangeness of the morning, but she hadn’t heard her father muddle his sentences like that in a very long time.
In a very long time his sentences like that muddled she him had not heard.
To a freak of climate owing, of birds a flock off course to Ireland flew.
She had done it herself when first learning English, her brain refusing to think in anything other than Yiddish so the translation always came out confused. Back to front. Hours in front of the living-room mirror willing her head the other way – the same mirror Esther pouted at daily when she thought no one else could see.
To go, I wish, to America.
‘Tickets please!’
Her father fumbled now for the pale blue stubs,
too many pockets like a magician’s coat. He had purchased the pair over a fortnight ago, as soon as he had received the invitation – the all-important letter requesting his company up in Dublin.
Ruth had read the thing front to back then back to front.
The train conductor watched them now with the usual confusion, maybe even suspicion, though Tateh’s beard was trimmed shorter than ever these days – practically the spit of the local lads. He said the old garb had been impractical for his work, and sure, a lot of the other men had started to dress more ‘native’ too, especially those with jobs in town. Dr Marcus on Grattan Street; Epstein’s Tailors on Hanover; business slow to begin with but there was no denying those patterns held their cut, boy.
Soon the conductor gave the nod and they were on, up into the chaos of the train. Ruth heard the wails of children, begging not to leave: ‘Ah why can’t we stay in Birdland forever, Mammy, pleeeeease?’
She thought of Lottie Epstein, fast asleep, curled into the shell of her mother’s collarbone.
Once the door of their compartment slid shut Ruth dismantled herself onto the seat. She was exhausted. It was only ten o’clock. She didn’t remember leaving being so hard. She pressed her olive face into the thumb-smeared window, savouring its cool. And maybe if Tateh didn’t need her she could just nap her way to Dublin – close her eyes and forget about the birds and everything that was at stake this evening – the second most important trip of their lives.
‘Aileen!’
But now there was another passenger behind her, demanding her attention; yes, always someone else to think about instead.
Aileen Doherty stood framed in the doorway, freckled from head to toe. The spots were everywhere – her eyelids, her earlobes – even the knuckles of her fingers as they held two pale blue tickets aloft.
The fingernails looked oddly naked in comparison.
Ruth could still remember the first time she had seen her classmate. It had been her and Esther’s first day at St Angela’s School for Girls, a bizarre morning for so many reasons. The whispers. The stares. The fact that they had never actually seen a nun before in their lives. But in the end it was Aileen’s appearance that had surprised the most – Ruth had never known so many freckles were possible. A bit like Tateh’s pockmarks, she had decided, only blacker, more absolute. She had wondered if they hurt.
Meanwhile, Mame had said they were just a sign of bad Irish hygiene, which in turn was a product of their alcoholism – drunkards one and all! Even though Ruth secretly enjoyed watching the clumsy ballet of their limbs every night as they stumbled home beneath the stars.
‘So tell us, Bubbeleh, is this a friend of yours?’ When she finally heard her father’s words, the first thing she noticed was they were the right way round again.
Aileen, though, was quick to have them fixed: ‘We do be in the same class,’ she warned as her own father arrived behind, a bumble and then a glare. ‘Sure, this is the girl I’m always telling you about, Da. The Lith-u-a-ni-an.’ She let the syllables drop from her lips one by one, pips from a fruit gone bad.
Lith-u-a-ni-an.
Ni-an-a-u-lith.
The five of them as disgusting whichever way you looked.
There had been other terms flung their way these past few years. ‘Bloodsuckers’ and ‘Moneylenders’. ‘Murderers’ too. ‘Jewtown’ the locals called their neighbourhood, though they claimed it was only an endearment; only a bit of craic and nothing more. At school it was usually ‘Kike’ or ‘Scab’, comments about a funny smell, and then there had been something called a ‘Pogrom’ that made Mame furious, even though Tateh said she was overreacting; said there had just been a misunderstanding and that everything was fine – better, almost, than ever.
And now he was talking again, back on the train, making jokes as only he could. ‘Well, there you are, Bubbeleh – that explains it all!’
Despite his cheer, Ruth didn’t look up. She took her crooked finger and pushed it to the side, so far it almost looked straight again. Normal.
‘I mean, the birds,’ her father went on. ‘It makes perfect sense.’ A wry smile beginning to slit across his face. ‘Because a shower of brown hailstones there must have been during the night, lethal to avians, but perfectly harmless to humans – only sticking to their skin! And tell me, Sir, do you suppose there is a special soap you could buy to help scrub them off?’
The door slammed so hard behind the Dohertys it didn’t even bounce, absolute as it sealed the division tight.
Tateh’s laughter was as sweet as a child’s. Though when it finally came, Ruth’s own was more like a cough, so grateful for the excuse of air.
‘And sure,’ Tateh carried on, giddy on the notion, ‘if The Abbey decides not to put on my play after all, we could always run a Freak Show, nu? Travel the country with our acts – The Incredible Spotted Father and Daughter!’
Ruth shook with laughter at the punch line, letting the relief take her in, even if her mind was determined to protest. Because how could The Abbey not say yes to his play? How could it possibly go wrong?
Those famous last words.
How wrong it could possibly go.
She looked out the window, still shaking, willing the last of her anxieties away. A boy on the platform flapped a handkerchief. A chorus of ads peeled away at the corners like skin.
Fry’s Cocoa!
Australia! Canada! Emigrate to Greatness!
But she wasn’t going anywhere, she promised now, restored once again. Because this was only a daytrip; only a jaunt up to Dublin and then back home by morning, just in time to tell Aileen Doherty the exciting news that her Tateh had got the thumbs up; that his play was going to be performed on the national stage, all the doubters finally shtum and his family staying put for once and for all – no matter what shower of syllables you tried to drop on them from on high.
Ruth smiled as she felt the engine begin to chug, the track speeding fast towards the North Cork hills. Before she felt something else, something a bit like a scratch; a sting from a bee she hadn’t seen.
She reached back to where she found a tiny feather on her neck, a black one that must have got stuck. She crushed it between her fingers; felt the snap of the stem. Then she flicked it away with the rest of the dirt beneath her seat where no one else would ever see.
‘Or what about a man who is famous for folding up paper into beautiful shapes? A boat. A flower. A swan. Until one day he tries it on his wife and bends her this way and that, only to break in two every last bone in her body?’
Out the window, the fields lined up one after the other like a queue. In the corners, conspiracies of horses stood gathered, swapping the stories of the day, while around them there were bigger beasts too, great black shapes hulking over the land – the outline of the clouds – God making shadow puppets that loomed for miles before they disappeared behind a wash of gorse.
Ruth sat snug in her seat, fumbling her compass.
The train ricketed along the track, the line up the country like a backbone. Or like how Tateh once told her that instead of knowing a thing off by heart, some languages say that it is ‘written on your spine’. So Ruth sighed for that now, longing for Ireland to be written onto hers. Because despite how she called it home; despite how she spoke English and read the papers and knew every scrap of local news, really this was the first time she had seen the country properly – the maps finally come true.
Of course, it was different for Tateh. These days he was travelling most of the time, thanks to his job. Or at least, thanks to the thing that put bread on the table until the playwriting sorted itself out again.
In short, until today.
Because like so many of the neighbours he had decided to become a pedlar – a wandering salesman with a pack on his back flogging bric-a-brac on credit. Geegaws to tart up the boredom. Picture frames. Linens. Religious figurines. ‘Never-nev
er’ men they were called, though Ruth never-never understood why.
Every Monday morning he would set out across the countryside as part of Jewtown’s mass Exodus, and then every Friday evening he would return again just before the sun gave up. Of course, Mame hated it, and not just because he was gone all week, or because he left spare figurines lying around their house (‘Tateh, is that sick man on the cross the one my classmates say we killed?’). But because she said it was degrading – he spent the nights in ditches, barns if he was lucky – no place for a man of his grace. Tateh, though, insisted it was perfect. Better than moneylending, and anyway, it gave him time to think, to get to know the country. To be inspired. So after that Mame’s complaints sounded closer to jealousy, a lover cast aside for an endless swathe of untrampled fields, the stench of cowshit and the bloodshot bruise of a sunset over Gortnagross.
Finally, though, he could prove that it had worked; that the epiphany had come. Because here he was, sat on a train to Dublin with the evidence clutched right up to his face.
Ruth had wondered what was keeping him so shtum; why there had been no usual flow of half-hatched ideas, skimming the air like stones on a lake.
What about…
What about…
What about…
To see which ripples took.
She stretched her neck to check which scene of the new play he was reading. Maybe it was the opener, the curtain drawn apart to reveal the beautiful Jewish heroine – a role for Esther if ever Ruth had read one. She supposed it was Tateh’s last attempt to try to get his favourite daughter to connect with the land – a gift and an apology all at once.
Or maybe it was the scene where the heroine first meets the Rathnarrow farmer and tells him of her people’s plight:
GIRL: So yes, we were only a few to begin with, but I have heard, Mr Murphy, that our numbers are beginning to grow.
PADDY: Ah, but what if there doesn’t be any more space for you, Girlie? The island will sink under the weight.
Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan Page 7