Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan

by Ruth Gilligan

  And they didn’t stop, this barrage of ideas. Instead they mingled with her sweat, an endless flow, as her muscles softened and her shoulders peeled back from where they had been hunched for months now, maybe even for years, all the tension of herself and of the Emergency too, unfurling like the wings of the yellow butterfly that flickered on the air between her and her stranger.

  She stopped to watch it for a moment, a pale spark against the gross expanse of brown and green and grey.

  ‘Or what about a man who digs up relics from a bog, ancient bits of junk, until one day he finds the body of a swan, buried deep? And when he unearths it, the bird comes back to life and flies away, bright white into the sun?’

  At this last one, the stranger stopped his digging altogether. He looked at her until she stopped hers too.

  ‘That…’ he said, his tongue faltering on the words. A smudge of black had caught on his lip as if he had been eating the sods. ‘That is bloody beautiful.’

  By the last day, her exhaustion was complete, her body battered from the work and the utter disbelief. She looked around. The land had been annihilated – giant holes where you could see the layers perfectly, like a pile of mattresses stacked high – lie down and get your best sleep.

  But despite the ache in her limbs and the dizz in her head, Ruth insisted on cooking a last supper for them all – a final feast for the weary volunteers. The rusty kitchen only had one sink, one set of utensils, but she told herself she wouldn’t make a fuss; said a quick prayer and carried quietly on.

  The cabbage was on the boil and the bit of mutton was pinking up, so she just had the spuds left to do when she heard him come in. ‘Need a hand?’ Her stranger stood in the doorway, his legs far too tall for the rest of his body.

  ‘You’re very good,’ she said, noticing a blush for the praise. ‘But it’s all right – only the potatoes and then— ’

  ‘But you need some help,’ he said, taking a step closer. ‘It’ll be easier if there’s the pair of us.’ This time, it wasn’t a question.

  So they stood in silence as they peeled the thick skins in ribbons, the coolness of the lumps bliss against the blisters on their palms.

  Two hours later and the dinner tasted lovelier than any Ruth had ever prepared. She licked her fingers clean, one at a time, no pain in the knuckles at all, only the taste of the bog from underneath her nails, coarse grains she worked away with her tongue.

  It was a damp morning to see them off. A soft day, as the saying went. Joe wished them a million thanks before the bus pulled out and pointed them home, a different breed than they had been just days ago.

  Despite the thick of her sleep last night, Ruth’s body still buzzed, her fingers fidgeting almost as much as her skull. Next to her she could feel the heat of the stranger. Bone then skin then blouse. Jumper then skin then bone.

  She realised she didn’t even know what he was called.

  They hadn’t spoken all morning, the loom of reality keeping them firmly shtum. And yet, even still she could hear a mutter off him as they went, reciting the names of each village that they passed:

  ‘Kilbeggan.’

  ‘Tyrrellspass.’

  ‘Rahincuill.’

  And what about two lovers who don’t share a language so just keep repeating place names to one another, back and forth, back and forth, the only thing they need?

  She smiled. She knew she was being ridiculous now, the week obviously driven her crazy; daft enough even to let herself, just for a moment, imagine her Tateh’s pride. And she must have been distracted with the thought when the bus pulled into Dublin, because she suddenly found herself asking what she didn’t even mean to ask: ‘Do you… fancy a cup of tea?’

  The surprise in his eyes was only half of what she felt.

  She shook as she climbed the stairs and stabbed the ancient key into the Chubb like she meant it harm. ‘I’ve no milk,’ she said as they entered. ‘So are you all right with honey and lemon?’ She filled the kettle and turned on the gas; the bar heater too. She sensed him watching as she glanced around the room.

  Home.

  The piles of paperwork were cuddled with dust. Folders. Books. Bulk-bought pencils. The museum of a life led only for others. She saw her Crosley radio squat atop the desk. Her fingers tingled for a go of the knobs, a bit of noise to soak the silence up.

  But as soon as they sat down her stranger was back on the questions. ‘And love, I’ve been meaning to ask. Those stories you have, where… where did you get them at all?’

  She blew on her tea to give her somewhere to look. Love. That word he kept dropping in without a second thought.

  ‘And of course, we forgot the one about the Golem,’ she said finally, swerving the conversation back. ‘The man made out of clay.’

  ‘Ah, but maybe it was peat!’

  She smiled, the repertoire between them as if they had been practising all their lives – the one she almost felt she’d been waiting for. And it was so familiar, so natural, that she didn’t notice the drift of time; didn’t even notice the sudden wet of her lips and the taste of second-hand tea, her mouth wide with a hunger she barely recognised. Next she felt hands as they moved across her blouse and down, gently between her legs, her very first time – a woman of her age! But there was too much death, she told herself now as she began to pant the air between them, too much death going on whereas this here was the opposite, the heat of their skin and the tangle of their limbs knotting tighter and tighter until they reached a better place – a Paradise maybe, or a Tír na nÓg, where no one ever grew old; never knew harm or pain, or even a Fifth Province where the stories all came together, faster and faster, higher and higher until she felt. Herself. Say yes.

  She woke just as the day was becoming itself again. She lay on her side, letting her eyes take it in. His arms. His toes. Her compass on the floor, the face smashed and the needle out. It must have fallen from her pocket last night.

  She closed the door behind her as quietly as she could. She unlocked her bike and cycled SouthEast, down past the harbour and the pincer of piers, the clink of boats like glasses in a pub making a toast to better times.

  She arrived at the Forty Foot faintly flushed. The bathing areas jutted up between the rocks, while above, the yellow stone of the Martello Tower curved around, the empty windows staring across the grey wobble of the Irish Sea. There was no sign of the Mailboat yet; no, still too early for the letters of the day.

  Ruth plunged herself into the water, the bubbles rushing to her ears. Her costume billowed out from her body, a drooping silhouette, but she stayed down, feeling the last of the peat dissolve from her scalp, little trails of brown that marbled up to the surface. It felt like a Mikveh, she thought to herself; a conversion into something that was still too early to name.

  She cycled back along the Main Street of Dún Laoghaire, that mouthful of a town. After Independence it had been renamed from ‘Kingstown’ – how did the Brits fancy pronouncing that, eh? Monkstown was next, then Seapoint and Blackrock, all the empty barrels left outside the pubs like offerings to the night Gods that they may be replenished. She hadn’t had a Guinness since Harry, not even a half, though it was strange to think of him on this morning of all.

  She reached Bretzl’s Bakery just as Barty Miller was unlocking the door, the smell of fresh bread hawing out onto the street.

  ‘Early for you this morning, Ruth?’ There was a scratch on his lip where he must have cut it shaving.

  ‘A touch.’

  ‘Big day of births ahead, is it?’

  ‘Ah sure… we’ll see.’

  The bagels’ poppyseeds were still piping from the oven, a rough smattering over the rationed flour like a brail that would scald the fingers off you. She paid for two, scrunched the neck of the paper bag and shoved it deep into the corner of her basket; felt a pang of hunger which meant the morning was finally co
ming to pass which meant, of course, that he might be awake by now and dressed. And gone.

  She thrust against the pedals up the rest of the hill. Her thighs were stiff as anything from the dig, but also (a body makes it difficult to pretend) from last night too; almost as if the whole week had been training her for that.

  She pedalled harder past the canal, a memory of the energy; kisses that Morse-Coded her neck and a voice that mumbled as he found his way inside. Until she asked what he was saying and he said a story, he was telling a story. For their baby, he said, their legacy that would be left behind long after they were gone, a root dug deep into Irish soil so that they could never ever be forgotten, never be anything other than—

  She heard the blast long before she saw it.

  Her bike chucked itself to the ground as the sky erupted, a spray of black and grey like a fall of murdered birds. The dust was everywhere, coating the Little Jerusalem streets, the cries of terror muffled deep beneath.

  Ruth closed her eyes and felt a throb in her stomach. It was as if a bomb had gone off in there as well.

  She stood up, ignoring the sting in her knees. She left her bike and began to move through the smoke towards the centre of the chaos, a left and a right and then there was Clanbrassil Street, or at least, what remained.

  The terrace had a lump missing. A giant chunk, three-houses long and gone. Ruth reached for something to steady her legs. She found a postbox behind her, smooth and green, the letters inside still safe. The Mailboat would be docking soon, she thought, making waves across the bay.

  The crater in the street was vast, a jag of brick at either end. One, two, three front doors missing, including her own, and nothing but nothingness instead, the house’s innards sprayed everywhere like some grim afterbirth. Only, behind the gauze of smoke Ruth saw that, actually, the cut-off points at the end of the gap weren’t quite spot-on. Because if her eyes were right then there it was – half her house, still standing! A line down the middle like a rip or a border with one side perfectly fine and the other… the other…

  ‘Ruth! You’re all right!’

  ‘Oh thank God, we had ourselves convinced…’

  The neighbours arrived now in their flocks, but she kept moving, looking down and going careful where she trod.

  ‘It is the Nazis, Ruth! They found us! Knew exactly where to aim!’

  ‘I told you we should have left, Daniel. This is just the beginning, you mark my words.’

  She stepped over a chair smashed on its side; a pile of crockery shards like an argument around a table.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to the cantor. The Rabbi’s on his way.’

  ‘I had a dream last night about this, you know?’

  The crush of glass and wooden slats; splinters up into her soles.

  ‘We need the Golem to come and save us.’

  ‘Do not be silly, what we are needing is a boat. Leave the same way we came!’

  Ruth stopped now and bent down, reaching for the ground. She felt the groan in her stomach come again. Hunger, yes, but something else; something very new. She picked up a rock, one from amongst the millions, and rolled it over in her fingers, still warm, the dust settling its way into every groove.

  She turned away to find her bicycle. If she hurried she could make it back to the Forty Foot before the morning punters arrived, to see if this thing would float.

  In the end, she never found him.

  By the time her neighbours picked her up from the water’s edge, the terrace had been cordoned off, declared unsafe. She searched all over the city. The hospitals. The morgues. Ran her fingers over records until the ink had smudged off into the rims round her nails.

  Without his name, though, there was nothing to be done.

  Nobody.

  Eventually, the Germans issued an apology for the bomb. They said it had just been an accident, meant for the London Blitz; said that the radar or maybe the bad weather was to blame. But at least, thanks be to God (and to Der Führer, of course), nobody had been hurt. No, no bodies had been found.

  Ruth hated herself for the hint of pride she felt when the articles appeared in The Irish Times – her very own story, written down at last – a petty consolation. But when she read them through she discovered they hadn’t even mentioned her name. No, really there was no trace of her at all.

  Soon after, the silence of neutrality returned, the Emergency forgotten once again. Instead, there were new stories to read about – Cork United winning the League of Ireland; five cases of Foot and Mouth; the death of a certain Mr Joyce, a festival of mourning where all the restaurants in Dublin served kidneys and gizzards, strange things Ruth had never tasted in her life.

  In the absence of anything else, she carried on with her work. She had managed to get a little room in the Rotunda staff quarters, happy at least to soak up the air of birth not death, the screams of new life ringing through the night. And maybe it was the sound alone that started the notions off – she wasn’t sure, it was still far too soon to tell. But she couldn’t deny that below the sadness there was just the hint of something else; the offchance of a miracle that had planted its seed and the first shoots beginning to creep up.

  ‘Penny for them?’

  The voice made her jump, there in the hospital foyer. The place was quiet, the afternoon lull – the babies taking naps inside and out, biding their pre-dinner time. She was on her way to the Common Room for a sup of tea and maybe one of those biscuits that had been touched by too many fingers. Her appetite had been on the up of late.

  But now her boss’s smile touched her instead. ‘Sorry,’ it said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ Despite his many years Bethel Solomons had managed to keep a kindness in his face. A missing tooth. The jaunt of a dicky bow, his chins all wrapped up like a gift.

  ‘No, no, my mistake,’ Ruth flustered. ‘What can I do you for, Sir?’ calling herself to attention. She had to be sure to keep her notions to herself, at least for the time being.

  ‘I only wondered how you were getting on? Any news on the house? Progressing nicely?’

  She flinched ever so slightly under the flurry of questions, unused to them all over again.

  ‘Well… there is talk of restoring it,’ she tried. ‘The terrace, like. They’re having some fundraising events at the Shul. But I don’t know, I wouldn’t like to put people— ’

  ‘Ruth, that bomb was a blow on us all.’ The Master’s tone came sterner with the interruption. ‘On the entire country, all right?’

  She tried to nod. To stay calm. But even the word itself sent her head spinning off. Bomb. Because it had been such a simple day before that – the bus journey back from Clara; the weather and the shudder and the offer to come up – out of character, certainly, but still. Then there had been the tea with honey and lemon, and then the kiss – oh yes, she could still remember the kiss, all right; could practically feel it, imprinted on her mouth. And then there had been other things too, better things, a buzz that ran through her body so loud that eventually she could no longer hear herself think, no longer ask why she was even here any more except that she had nowhere else to go and no one else to talk to; no connection to the place except some ideas that were barely hers to begin with; nothing to leave behind or prove that she had ever even been, unless of course… unless now… this…

  He caught her arm as she buckled, saving her from the whack of the tiles. Already they were stippled with dents, years of faints from the other expectant mothers.

  ‘Ruth? Is everything all right?’

  Still Dr Solomons held her as she stood, slowly. She placed her hand upon her stomach.

  ‘Can I get you something? Good God, girl, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

  But of course, she knew she had seen a ghost; had made love to one too. So now she only smiled and told the Master that he was very kind, but that she was grand – just a
bit lightheaded, that was all – she had been feeling under the weather all week. And with a final goodbye she made her way to the ladies’ room, trying not to rush; trying, very hard, to keep calm. She locked herself in the stall and sat down. She closed her eyes and waited.

  Eventually she opened them again.

  She stared at the blood like she had never seen it before in her life. Her spine sluiced ice. She had been six days late.

  She leaned forward and held her forehead in her hands, waiting for the moment to pass. The dizziness. But most of all the embarrassment; the double-dose of shame going harsh on every limb. She thought of her shift in twenty minutes and the hundreds of women upstairs – younger women – each one laid out in their wards with their husbands and their monitors, ready for the next big step.

  But for her, she knew now – or really, she had always known – there wouldn’t be anything else.

  No, no baby.

  No story.

  No legacy.

  Just a family who had arrived to Ireland once upon a time and then left again in the very same way.

  North.

  South.

  East.

  West.

  Never once looking back. A broken finger and a broken heart; a divot from a ship crashing into a port; a mark that had faded away over the years.

  Ruth let go of her head as she stood, smoothing her smock nice and flat. She flushed the toilet twice, just to be sure, yanking the chain with each hand. But when she checked again there was nothing left behind – not a single trace. As if, really, she had never even been.

  August

  By the time August arrived I couldn’t feel a thing. They say the cold can get into your bones, so I don’t know – maybe the muteness can too. There was no real sadness; no shame; not even a sense of failure for the things I had, or had not, done. Nothing. Like actually, my body had drowned a death in that scuzzy lake after all.

  Inside the House, though, the story was very much alive.