But now he had Dempsey, and if he had to become this man—his true self, the self he hid from Alice—in order to keep his family safe, then he would do it. The farm was his heaven. He was willing to risk hell later for it. Hadn’t he always been a brute? Or was it Black Frank who had made him a brute, and set him on this path? It was under his tutelage, after all, that Cronin had learned the uses of violence. Back home, before he went to Cork city, his mother had called him the gentle giant. When the recruiters from the British army had come to town looking for men to send to the trenches in the Great War, they had picked him out of the crowd straightaway. But no, he said, he wasn’t the military type. He couldn’t point a gun, pull a trigger—anyone in town would tell you the same. Not Tom Cronin. Sure, there were boys in town who were messers and scrappers and they’d picked plenty of fights with Tom when he was a lad. But they learned quick that if you pushed Tom to his limits he would flatten you. He never started fights, but he sure knew how to finish them.
The recruiters had an easier time with his brother, Jack, who was older and more restless. Christ, he was hard bored living in Glengarriff. Jack took the king’s shilling and the promise of a new house on his return, but within a month he was dead. The recruiters came back to try again, to see if Tom didn’t want to get revenge on the Turks for what they’d done to his brother. Only it wasn’t the Turks whom Tom wanted his revenge on. He would have torn the recruiters to shreds if it weren’t for the cries of his mother, but still he roughed them up enough that he had to leave town or else see the inside of a jail for years to come. Suddenly his mam was transformed from a spitfire widow with two grown sons still under her roof to a shrunken old woman with one son buried under foreign soil and another disappeared into Cork, a city big enough for a man to get lost.
A friend of his uncle’s landed him a job as a groundskeeper at the university, and it was there that Frank Dempsey began to give a shape to the anger that Cronin carried for the loss of his brother. Cronin knew it wasn’t the Turks who were responsible for the dissolution of his family, and from Frank Dempsey, a kind of man whom Tom had never encountered in Glengarriff, he acquired a narrative for fitting it all together, a history that stretched back centuries. Hadn’t this sort of thing been done over and over again to men just like Tom’s brother? Weren’t they always the ones who paid the price? And now Tom had a chance to take part in a struggle against history, to put an end to the endless reaping of the Irish. Cronin’s mother might have seen her youngest as a gentle giant, but that’s not what Frank Dempsey saw. He looked into the eyes of Tom Cronin and knew he could unlock a terrible energy.
Frank spoke to him in low tones, invited him into his home, prepared him, pointed him in the direction he needed to go. And with each operation that Tom completed, it was Frank who was there to praise him or upbraid him—whatever was necessary to keep him resolute in the cause in which Frank said he was playing such a grand part. But Tom knew he was doing it at the expense of his own soul. Every man grabbed, every shot fired—it reduced him. Frank couldn’t see it or wouldn’t believe it. He was proud of what Tom had accomplished in the struggle against the old history, and in service to a new history.
Then, before the struggle was over, it was over. The war and Tom’s part in it was supposed to free everyone—all of Ireland—from the yoke that had led his brother to his death. But here was Frank telling him that they had done all they could for now. That Collins had signed the treaty, and they would deal with the north and the question of full independence later. That what they had won was enough, for now. Except that wasn’t what Cronin had given away his soul on behalf of. How do you trade your soul for a partial victory? He could not stomach it. And when the others who felt the same way got their hooks into Cronin, it was easy to turn him. He had already half turned himself.
Now, almost twenty years later, he had to admit that this was who he was. Black Frank hadn’t made him into a brute. It had always been inside him. Frank had just seen that and at least had directed Cronin’s grim energy toward something worthwhile. Wasn’t it good to fight for freedom? For the rights of a people denied their dignity for centuries? The fact that Cronin later put this same energy into the service of a man like Gavigan—that wasn’t Frank’s fault. This was entirely of Cronin’s own making. And now here he was, still in service to Gavigan, to his system of debts and punishments. Alice said he wasn’t this man anymore, but look how easily he had slipped into his old skin.
DEMPSEY DIDN’T SAY a word as they crossed the park, and that was a small blessing. There was nothing a man in his position could say: the wheedling, the false bravado, the efforts to build goodwill, were a waste of breath. Not that Cronin hadn’t heard it all. Whether men raged or keened prayers to the Blessed Virgin for her intercession, they all met the same fate.
The car emerged from the park and began working its way to the garage where Cronin would deposit Dempsey and be done. Cronin hadn’t even bothered with a blindfold—Dempsey wouldn’t be telling any stories, not once Gavigan was done with him. Cronin would have to pat him down when they arrived, just to be on the safe side, though something about Dempsey suggested he was not only unarmed, but completely unprepared for what was coming.
A late train could have Cronin back at the farm before midnight. He would walk from the depot, he had decided, hoping that an hour in the country air would leech the city out of him and give him time to assume the mask of the man Alice believed he could be. Once he was back on the farm, he could climb into bed next to Alice and wake to a hot sun and day of work. He hadn’t had a decent night of sleep since he’d arrived in the city, holed up as he was at a cheap dive west of Columbus Circle, within spitting distance of his old haunts and the Plaza Hotel, too. The room held little more than a cot, with a washstand and a basin in one corner. Mounted on the wall was a small mirror set in a tarnished gilt frame, and next to the washstand a single chair that a previous tenant had begun to paint canary yellow, only to lose interest or find other lodgings before he could finish.
What business would Dempsey leave unfinished? He was a young man, and given his start in life—good parents, educated people with a fine house near the university—he should have done so much better than this. Gavigan said he was a killer, with a trail of bodies to prove it, but though the color had returned to his face, Dempsey’s eyes shone like a frightened rabbit’s. Cronin hoped that fear would make him smarter, or at least less foolish, about what was to come—even if all that remained to him was the comportment he brought to his own death. With some effort, Cronin again choked down whatever part of himself felt sympathy, or responsibility, for what would become of Francis Dempsey.
FIFTH AVENUE
MICHAEL AND YEATS WATCHED as Francis and another man climbed into the back of a black sedan. In the moment before Francis disappeared into the car, his head swiveled side to side, searching, almost frantic. Michael stood on the bench and tried to catch sight of the car, already lost in the crush of traffic. “Where is he going?” Michael said. “And where’s the girl? Oh, why can’t you be a proper ghost and fly after him?”
Yeats ignored Michael and peered at the scrum of cars on Fifth Avenue. He had appeared on the bench with Michael shortly after Francis and the girl had gone inside the museum. He seemed disappointed that he had missed the chance to meet another of Francis’s lady friends. “Who was that rough-looking chap with your brother?” Yeats said. “Someone you know, or—”
“I don’t know anyone,” Michael snapped. “Not here, and not in my own past.” The exhaustion he felt earlier had not entirely left him, and the sting of losing Eileen for reasons he could not recall ached like a fresh wound. The hotel seemed a long way off, and after a last glance at the avenue, he stepped from the bench to the sidewalk. He dug into his pocket for the business card of the hotel and held it up for Yeats to see. “Do you suppose we should use this again?”
“No, I do not suppose,” Yeats said emphatically. “Your brother has proven himself to be entirely un
reliable. If we are ever to make progress, then you and I must take matters into our own hands.”
Michael stared blankly. “Progress toward what?”
“The question of my being here. Of my being at all.”
“We’ve been abandoned in the middle of the city and you want us to crack the meaning of life, is that it?”
“There is a reason why I am here and why only you can see me.”
“Why must there be a reason?” Michael said, exasperated.
Yeats seemed genuinely startled. “I can’t believe I have to explain that to a seminarian.”
“I am having a difficult time accepting that there is a reason—not just a cause, but a reason—for why I cannot hear or speak. This is what God wants for me?”
“Who said anything about God? The spiritus mundi is bigger than any notion of God. Even the idea of God is a part of the great spirit of the world.” Yeats ran his palm over his forehead and up the crown of his pate. Wisps of white hair sprang in unruly directions as his hand passed over them. Michael could sense his frustration. “I am offering you a quest for truth—an opportunity to tear the veil that divides life from death. To glimpse the universal memory that binds us all. And you propose we waste our hours in a gilded cage waiting for your brother to return from his latest assignation?”
Down the block, an older woman crossed the street, holding the leash of a small dog. Looking first at her and then at Yeats, Michael had to wonder whether he was the woman or the dog.
“Mr. Dempsey, my condition and yours require exploration, and there are people in this city who could be of assistance—better, certainly, than that chess-mad doctor your brother brought you to see. During my last visit to this city—made when I was among the living—I met many accomplished mediums. One in particular, a woman called Madame Antonia, had an acute spiritual sensitivity.”
“So just fly away without me. Find the nearest crystal ball and start gabbing.”
“I would like nothing better, but I remain linked to you.”
“And you think a medium can tell you why we’re stuck together?”
“Madame Antonia can tell us many things. She also happens to be a specialist in psychical healing.”
Michael thought of the bed, the sofa, and the thickly upholstered armchair by the window. He was knackered, and the hotel offered so many places to sleep. But Yeats was right. They were surrounded by mysteries whose solutions could not be found in the hotel. “Fine,” he said, “but it’s not my psyche that needs healing. It’s my ears.”
THEY HAD NO business card with Madame Antonia’s name and address, and Michael was not going to try pantomiming Take me to a medium to a cabdriver. Yeats had a dim memory of Madame Antonia living in the Italian Quarter, as he called it, and an even dimmer memory of this neighborhood being in the opposite direction of the Bronx. An open-topped double-decker idled in front of the museum, slowly taking on passengers, and Michael proposed that they join the queue. When he reached the front of the line, Michael began dumping coins into the till until the driver waved him aboard. He found a seat on the upper level, in the front, and as the bus stuttered its way down Fifth Avenue, he could see the hotel drawing into view. At least they were going in the right direction. From his vantage point he was able to retrace his steps from the Saturday promenade with Francis, and to point out to Yeats the Harpies, the red-stone church, Atlas shouldering the hollow globe. He had expected Yeats to be more impressed by this hodgepodge of myth, story, and symbol, but Yeats seemed too wrapped up in his plans for communing with Madame Antonia. He could only sniff at the statues.
Michael left Yeats to whatever spiritual navigation he was conducting and let himself enjoy the view. Clouds scudded overhead, as if leaping from one tower to the next. As the bus passed the Empire State Building, the city began to change: the buildings were just as densely packed but not so gargantuan, five or six stories instead of thirty or forty. Gone were the gold-lettered shop signs and the windows full of diamonds and silk gowns. They were moving into a place of work, of commerce without glamour. The intersections became crowded with pushcarts, taxicabs, delivery trucks, and people—always so many people—with a hard cast to their eyes.
The bus lurched to a halt, beset by an ever-swelling crowd that filled the streets. The people all seemed to be moving in the same direction, toward a diagonal boulevard that branched at the next intersection. Somewhere there was a parade, a rally, a demonstration. Michael saw men in the crowd carrying placards but their messages of support or protest flowed across the boards like liquid Sanskrit.
“I’ve been thinking,” Michael said. “About the reason for our being linked together. Would you care to hear my theory?”
Yeats looked at him peevishly, then waved his hand in a Proceed, proceed sort of way.
Michael proceeded: “As far as I can say, I am Michael Dempsey, raised in a small town in the center of Ireland, and until recently a seminarian. However, everything about my current reality—the clothes, the hotel, being in America—argues that I am not Michael Dempsey. Or not that Michael Dempsey. What if I was switched by some act of metaphysical sleight of hand, Prince and the Pauper–like, from one world to another—so that right this moment, there’s a well-born Michael wondering how he ended up typing letters to the Holy See for Brother Joseph Mary at the seminary?”
Yeats tented his fingers over his nose, his deep-in-thought pose. Michael wanted Yeats to know that he was in earnest. That he wasn’t codding. The bus lurched again and came to a halt. The crowd had swollen and from his perch at the front of the bus, Michael could see nothing ahead but the tops of cars frozen in place, even as the traffic lights winked from red to green.
“Oh, it’s hopeless,” Yeats said.
“You don’t think much of my theorizing, then?”
“Not that,” Yeats said. “This omnibus. It will be hours before it can get us ten feet closer to our destination.”
Taking the lead, Michael disembarked directly into the crowd, then wound his way to the sidewalk. Bodies were packed tight: pedestrians, marchers, onlookers. He imagined the air must be resounding with car horns and curses, chanting and cheering, the grinding of gears and the patter of voices in a hundred—no, a thousand—different conversations, just on this one city block. But all of it passed for him in the same cotton-filled bubble. He sometimes wondered if his feet were even touching the ground. Just as it occurred to him that he had lost Yeats, the poet was there at his left elbow. They walked by rows of shoe-repair and fabric stores, delicatessens and taverns, barbershops and a five-and-dime.
As they fell into step, Michael continued: “This is the part where you come in, Mr. Yeats. We’re both in transit from one world to another; from one Michael to another for me, and from life to death for you. We’re like two fellows who meet in a train station, each waiting to catch a different train.”
Yeats smiled—grudgingly, it seemed, but it was the first time Michael had been able to elicit a grin from the old poet. “You are making progress,” Yeats said. “You’re becoming quite the freethinker. And we are making progress, too. Madame Antonia is this way: I can feel her. A genuine psychic is like a beacon visible to travelers on the spiritual plane.”
“We’re back to the spiritus mundi, aren’t we? Well, if you can get us to your Madame Antonia, you’ll make a believer out of me.”
“It’s no wonder you left the seminary,” Yeats said. “You haven’t an ounce of faith in you.”
“I left because—”
The reason, the exact moment, the impetus for all that was to come—it was just out of reach and fogged around the edges. This much he knew: He was in a large room with others dressed like him. Black cassocks, a blackboard, a bald priest, black-bound books open on the desks, black type on white pages. A spring day, one of the first truly warm days of the year, and inside were stone walls and philosophy but outside the sun was blazing and the hills were patterned in green. Another priest, with a paltry spray of red hair, was at the door.
He was speaking to the bald priest, who looked directly at Michael and indicated with a curling of his finger that Michael was to rise and—
“I was summoned,” Michael said. “Someone came for me and I was sent out.”
“Expelled?” It was the most interested Yeats had seemed in Michael’s schooling.
“I don’t think so. I was sent for, then sent back. My throat was raw and tight. I could taste salt.”
“Sad tidings?” Yeats said. “Perhaps some bit of bad news?”
Michael waved a hand to ward off any interruption. He was so close. He pressed his hands over his eyes. One moment of stillness. That would be enough to bring it all into focus. His feet moved automatically beneath him, as if each step were taking him closer to the edge of the pit in the center of his memory. He was about to peer into it and see what had been hidden from him all this—
With a rattling crash, Michael collided with a man stacking crates of oranges in front of a grocery store. Michael windmilled his arms and for a moment managed to keep his footing, but then he stepped on one of the oranges and went sprawling into a box of apples. Fruit rolled in every direction: there were apples in the gutter; oranges were juiced under the wheels of passing cars. Michael was laid out on the sidewalk, his palms and knees badly scuffed. Before he could right himself, the grocer, a big man with a boxer’s nose and the arms of a comic-book hero, hoisted him up by the collar. Michael crossed his arms in front of his face to ward off the punch he feared was coming, but the man kept shaking him while his jaw opened and closed in what even Michael could tell was a torrent of curse words. Michael’s collar tore loose from his shirt and when the grocer made a grab for his arm—the final prelude to a punch—Michael wriggled free of his jacket and dashed for the intersection. The traffic was against him but he turned his head right-left-right and plunged forward. He was not hit by a cab or flattened by a lorry, and when he reached the next sidewalk, he pressed on, weaving through men and women caught up in the late-afternoon bustle. Only after he crossed the next street did he pause to look behind him. There was no sign of the grocer. Michael slumped against a streetlight, his lungs burning and his stomach ready to empty itself.
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