Carnivalesque

by Neil Jordan

  And what of Burleigh and Andy, bouncing and rattling around in the mirror of themselves? Well, the less said the better, one supposes. They rolled and their reflections rolled with them. To be constantly circling in a circle of oneself is a kind of hell, but there was another hell coming.

  The carnies had pushed, they had toiled mightily, off the tarmac of the old Liscannor Road, crushing the old drystone wall bordering it, on to the rocky fields, and it bounced for a while, needed some encouragement again and they tired for a bit until they saw, as a revelation of kinds, where they were heading. But it wasn’t a revelation; there was a feeling of ‘of course’ about it. Of course, there was only one place this jubilant rolling could end; there was only one home for this giant rusted ellipse, this metal construct like a 2,000-pound bomb, but much more difficult, and in an odd way much more fun, to roll. The thin, wavering edge of cliff with nothing beyond it. The roar of the Atlantic beneath. Of course. Wouldn’t it be fun to see it tumble, rock a little bit on the cliff’s edge, as if there was no option but to fall, but as if, in a mute, gravitational horror of falling, it did its best to resist taking the final plunge? So they pushed, all hands together now, just this little bit more lads, and demolished the protective fence as if made of matchsticks, and the warning signs placed there by the Board of Works; they pushed, carnies, roustabouts, bachelors and bachelorettes, and a loud cheer went up as it made its final roll.

  It hit the water at the gravitational speed of 9.81 metres per second and vanished from sight in a great volcanic plume of spray.

  The mirrors began to warp and bend as they plunged downwards. Burleigh saw himself not so much ageing as reverting to a primordial version of himself. Walter had called it Mulciber, all those years ago, ‘who was headlong sent with his industrious crew, to build in hell’. The reversion was rapid and the terror unimaginable and Burleigh saw, as the mirrors finally shattered, the reflection of an infinity of Mulcibers and he knew, before the waters foamed and spun him, that seven infinite bad-luck years would be their lot.

  For the ocean, Dany realised from above, is the ultimate cleanser. He saw his own body bob to the surface, far far below. He had not so much killed himself, he realised, as cleansed his body for a proper burial.

  49

  There was a small graveyard on a soft, descending field of grass, more a fall than a field, since it blended almost imperceptibly into the untamed wilderness of gorse and heather that led to the mound of Howth Head. This graveyard had an oddity about it, in that none of the gravestones were standing. There were no sandstone crosses tilted with age and ivy, no recent black-marble monoliths from the nearby monumental sculptor’s. There were even no mute, granite angels, arms crossed, wings chipped, eyes staring blindly at the sarcophagus behind or below. No, there was nothing to interrupt the view of the suburb of Sutton below and the flecked white wilderness of the Irish Sea, other than the souls that wandered through it, searching through the uncut grass for the flattened plinths of their loved ones, or bent in memory, whispering some version of a prayer, at the graves they already knew. Either by the diktat of the municipality or the parish, every grave here was an almost buried plinth, laid flat in the irregularly cut grass. All the accidental poetry of commemoration, beloved wife of, fondly remembered by, life everlasting, face to face, had to be read standing, gazing down, or kneeling, wiping the detritus of whatever season had passed, spring, summer, autumn, winter, from the plinth at the visitant’s feet or knees. And that’s where he saw her, his mother, standing first, a sad bouquet of flowers in her hand, then kneeling by the new marble slab which read: ‘James and Andrew Rackard, dearly beloved of Eileen . . .’

  He was as surprised by the sight of his name, chipped by an unknown hand into the black marble, as he was by the sight of her, unseen by him. Andrew. And he wondered what anagram Mona would have made of that. No Dany now, no Ynad; only one rearrangement of the letters leapt out at him: wander. Which seemed, on balance, appropriate to what it was he had become. He would wander, he knew, from his carnie home wherever it settled, for a day, a bank-holiday weekend, a week, but if there ever was to be a return, it would only be to there. Or maybe to here, to watch his mother bend over that plinth in some kind of beloved remembrance. Her grief was, like most of her other emotions, succinct and contained. She laid the sad bouquet directly over his name but he knew from her dry eyes that she felt she had lost him a long time before. Before the Dewman, before the carnival cataclysm, before the death of her half-beloved husband.

  But he knew, following on from that knowing, that that very fact meant he would never leave her. There was a robin, flitting between the buried gravestones, from flower to withered flower. He remembered his shapeshifting father, all the trauma of his battle, his fight, his warp-spasm with him, and he performed another warp and found himself inside that robin, in that carnie way, and skittered forwards on tiny, clawed feet. He took a leap then, from a fresh carnation on to her hand that was smoothing whatever leaves had obscured his stone of remembrance.

  ‘Mother,’ he whispered.

  He saw her surprised eyes, looking down at the feathered interloper on her ring finger. And a tear finally willed itself from her grey eyes. It gathered from a dim mist into clear water and fell and touched his robin’s breast.

  ‘Don’t cry, Mother.’

  He would wander, he knew that, as befitted his new anagram, but could always return to her. In a daydream, one of those sudden fancies that happens on a busy street, she would turn and see an overhanging alleyway in shadow, and for some reason think of him. And he would be there. On the bus journey home, her hand brushing the fog of the breath-misted window, she’d glimpse a figure departing from the light of a streetlamp. And she would think of him. At night, most of all, tossing alone in her bedroom, desperate for sleep, through her half-closed eyes she would glimpse his blurred shadow. And she would find sleep then, and he would be there.

  50

  They reached the land of the gentians that autumn. The barest remnants of snow on the peaks, calcified into thin crusts; the unbearably thin high mountain air, their trucks spluttering through the vertiginous passes with barely enough engine oil to reach Xlala, where the throat singing of the monks echoed through the empty valleys. This was a journey towards some kind of renewal, a respite before the rigours of winter, which they would spend in the plains far below them, a few rough fields adjacent to the motorway, the large high fence between them and it, the scuffed Mongolian grassland where the lions could run wild.

  Père Barnabas, the order’s ancient superior, stood in the bell tower and watched the tiny curls of exhaust wend their way through the twisting road far below him and imagined a parasite inching its path, slowly and inexorably, through an intestine. Oh, they would arrive, whatever mishaps delayed them on the way. Zaroaster would get to work with his greasy toolkit whenever an engine sputtered and died; if a wheel jammed in the apex of a turn, Monniker would be only too happy to exercise his herculean abilities; he could carry the convoy on his back if necessary, truck by crumbling truck. In fact, if the trucks fell apart completely, the entire carousel of carnies would make it to the summit, each in their own specifically magical way. Yes, they would arrive; Barnabas would feed them the ritual bowls tinctured with the ancient mildew that it was the order’s duty to preserve and to refine into the true, the essential spice. And the conversations would begin. Confessions, more like it, as each carnie spilled out their soul to him and to whichever other of the elders were willing to lend an ear. A long exhale of allegory, fable, minute and particular invention of the past years’ histories, all of it imaginary, none of it true. And this past year’s history would involve the tale of a boy who had wandered, whose name sounded suspiciously like Wander, into a mirrored maze and set in motion a train of events that would have apocalyptic consequences. The day, the year, the carnival and all of the infinite possibilities of the mildew were saved by this boy who had, in turn, now as befits his name or an anagram of it, chosen to g
o on wandering.

  Living was not enough for them, these carnies, they had to lie about it. Although they would swear it was truth, on ‘their child’s life’, though Barnabas knew they had none. On their souls, though his suspicion was that they had none either. They had a different organ to the soul, more like a liquid muscle that reflected and shimmered and mirrored the world around in ways of unbelievable complexity, as if some uncaring god had poured this liquid down their throat at conception and smiled at the thought of them living with it forever afterwards. Never forget, he told himself, that however tough these carnies seemed, however well-schooled they were in the lessons of endurance, however spectacular their gymnastic abilities, their tremulous depth of feeling laid them open to emotional agonies he could hardly imagine. So he listened, and he begged the other monks to listen and told them listening was a poor price to pay for the pleasure of watching Mona, airborne and released from all pretence, winging her way round the high alpine peaks. The spectacle of Monniker, climbing the glass-like surface of the Meikaster face, ropeless, clad only in leather drainpipes, his inhuman muscles bulging as his hands struggled to find another grip. Quite apart from the salient fact that the carnies brought with them their yearly tribute of harvested mildew.

  So Père Barnabas gripped the ancient rope that was smoothed by generations of hands before his and pulled. The great bell swung on its mount, to the left and the right, three times before the tongue hit the dented surface and its metallic boom echoed through the valleys and the crusted snow-capped peaks. The eerie drone of the monks below paused for a moment, as if stunned by the sudden sound, then redoubled its throat music, creating a choral bed to the continuing boom. On the Meikaster peak, three buzzards took to the air, circling in the thermal winds above them. A chamois deer lost its footing, startled by the sound, and sent gravel tumbling down the slope below. And down in the grassy valley, a herd of gold-coloured musk spread across what was left of the plain.

  The pale disc of the autumn sun had almost lost itself behind the distant misted peaks when they finally arrived. The vehicles trundled through the underpass, belching their brown-purple smoke, and arranged themselves in a clumsy half-circle in the abbey forecourt. The carnies got out, one by one, their faces pinched in the sudden cold, their breath billowing outwards from their shivering mouths. Thirty-seven dark-hooded figures moved through the abbey arches, each proffering a steaming bowl of welcome. And the carnies reached out their grateful hands for what they knew was the drúcht, the mildew, the only memory left to them of the Land of Spices.

  Also available by Neil Jordan

  The Drowned Detective

  Jonathan is a private investigator in a decaying eastern European city, consumed by his work and his failing marriage. Approached one day by an elderly couple, he is presented with a faded photograph of their daughter, missing for nearly two decades. Troubled by the image of the little girl, who was the same age when she vanished as his own daughter is now – he is compelled to find her.

  But one night, soon after taking on the case, as he walks across the bridge spanning the river that divides the city, he encounters a young woman crouched at the foot of a stone angel – a woman who suddenly leaps into the icy water below. Without thinking, Jonathan plunges after her, and is soon drawn into her ghostly world of confusion, coincidence and intrigue, and the city he thought he knew turns strange and threatening.

  Haunting and deeply moving, The Drowned Detective is an intoxicating, atmospheric exploration of relationships, lies and betrayal – confirming Neil Jordon as a master storyteller and a vital literary voice.

  ‘Haunting … Jordan has a light touch and a clear eye on matters of the heart … A tour de force’ Eoin McNamee, Irish Times

  ‘A strange and potent novel’ Teddy Jamieson, Herald

  ‘Jordan is excellent on the anatomy of jealousy … A metaphysical thriller with a supernatural twist where what matters most is mood … An evocative sense of absence and loss’ Times Literary Supplement

  Click here to order

  http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-drowned-detective-9781408865170/

  First published in Great Britain 2017

  This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  © Neil Jordan, 2017

  Neil Jordan has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

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  ISBN 978 1 4088 8138 5

  eISBN 978 1 4088 8136 1

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