Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  “Do you want this thing to get home?”

  “I’d never be as lucky as that.”

  “Well, you are today,” he said. “Go on, take it.” He put the stand out and walked away. Even as the sky started storming, he watched as she went and took it. He shouted:

  “Do you know about Carey Novac?”

  “What?” she cried back, then, “Who?”

  The pain of shouting her name, but he felt all the better for it. “The lock!” he called, through the water. “It’s thirty-five-twenty-seven!” and he thought for a final moment, and swallowed the pins of rain. “If you forget, just look up The Spaniard!”

  “The what?”

  But now she was on her own.

  He watched her a moment, then gone.

  * * *

  —

  From there, there was only more rain.

  It wouldn’t be forty days and nights.

  For a while, though, it looked quite likely.

  On the first of them, Clay walked out, for the next train to Silver, but the rest of us wouldn’t allow it. All five of us, we piled in my station wagon, and Rosy, of course, in the back.

  Mrs. Chilman looked after the rest.

  * * *

  —

  In Silver, we were just in time:

  When we drove across the bridge, we looked down.

  The water bit hard at the arches.

  From the porch, in the rain, Clay thought of them; he remembered upstream, and those tough-looking trees, and the stones and the giant river gums. At this moment they were all being pummeled. Debris was flailing downwards.

  Soon the whole world was flooded, it seemed, and the top of the bridge was submerged. For days, the water kept rising. Its violence was something magnetic; it scared the absolute life from you, but it was hard to not watch, to believe it.

  Then, one night, the rain stopped.

  The river continued to roar, but in time began to recede.

  There was no telling yet if the bridge had survived—or if Clay could achieve its true finish:

  To walk across that water.

  All through the days the Amahnu was brown, and churned like the making of chocolate. But at sunrise and sunset there was color and light—the glow, then dying of fire. The dawn was gold, and the water burned, and it bled into dark before night.

  * * *

  —

  For three more days, we waited.

  We stood and we watched the river.

  We played cards in the kitchen with our father.

  We watched Rosy curl up near the oven.

  There wasn’t room for all of us, so we laid down the seats in the station wagon, and Rory and I slept out there.

  A few times, Clay went out back, to the shed, where Achilles stood guard, and saw more of the artworks in progress. A favorite was a loose-drawn sketch, of a boy in the legs of the eucalypts—until it happened, it came, on Sunday.

  * * *

  —

  As always he woke in the dark.

  Not long before dawn, I heard footsteps—they were running, they were splashing—and next I heard the car door open; and I felt the force of his hand.

  “Matthew,” he whispered. “Matthew!”

  Then, “Rory. Rory!”

  And quickly, I came to realize.

  It was there in Clay’s voice.

  He was shaking.

  * * *

  —

  The lights came on in the house, and Michael came out with a flashlight, and when he’d gone down toward the water, he soon came careering back. As I fought my way out of the car, he staggered but spoke to me clearly, his face shocked and disbelieving.

  “Matthew, you have to come.”

  Was the bridge gone?

  Should we be making attempts to save it?

  But before I could take a step further, first light had hit the paddocks. I looked in the distance and saw it.

  “Oh, God,” I said, “Je-sus Christ.” Then, “Hey,” I said, “hey, Rory?”

  * * *

  —

  By the time we were all assembled, on the concrete steps of the porch, Clay was down on the first of them, and heard himself speak, from the past.

  I didn’t come here for you, he’d said to him—to the Murderer, Michael Dunbar—but standing here now he knew different. He’d come out here for all of us. He just couldn’t have known it would hurt this much, in the face of something miraculous.

  For a second he watched the border collie, who was sitting, licking her lips—but abruptly he turned to Rory. It was years by then in the making—but he struck him back hard in the eyes:

  “Shit, Tommy, does that dog have to pant so bloody loud?” and Rory, in turn, had smiled.

  “Come on,” he said to Clay now. The gentlest I’d ever heard him. “Let’s go and we’ll see it together.”

  Let’s go to the river and see it.

  * * *

  —

  When all of us made it down there, the sunrise was in the water. The expanded river was burning; it was alight with the plumes of dawn, and the bridge was still submerged—but intact, and made of him. The bridge was made of Clay, and you know what they say about clay, don’t you?

  Could he walk across the Amahnu?

  Could he be better than a human, for a moment?

  The answer, of course, was no, at least to that final question, and now we saw it up close.

  * * *

  —

  In the last of our footsteps he heard them:

  More words they’d said here in Silver.

  I’d die to find greatness, like the David someday….

  But we live the lives of the Slaves.

  The dream was now over and answered.

  He would never walk over that water—a miracle made of a bridge—and nor would any of the rest of us; for in the fire the arches were set with, where the river and stone held him upright, was someone so true and miraculous, and something I’ll never forget:

  Of course, it could only be him.

  Yes, him, and he stood like a statue, just as sure as he’d stood in a kitchen. He was watching and chewing, and nonchalant—with that customary look in the thatch of his face—flare-nostriled, controlled to the end:

  He had water and dawn all around him; the level an inch up his legs—his hooves on river and bridge. Till soon he was moved to speak. His usual pair of questions, mid-chew, and a mulish grin:

  What? he said, from the firelight.

  What’s so unusual about this?

  If he was here to test Clay’s bridge for him—if that was why he’d come—we can only agree and admit to it; he was doing a bloody good job.

  In the end, there was one river, one bridge and one mule, but this isn’t the end, it’s after it, and here I am, in the kitchen, in the morning, with the bright backyard behind me. The sun is steadily rising.

  As it is, I really couldn’t say anymore:

  Just how long it’s been.

  How many nights have I sat here, in this kitchen that’s seen our lives? It’s been a woman telling us she would die, and a father come home to face us. It’s where Clay had the fire roared into his eyes, and that’s just a few of many. Most recently it’s been four of us; four Dunbar boys and our father, all standing, and waiting, together—

  But then there’s only this left; I sit, I’m punching away. After coming back home from Featherton, with a typewriter, a dog, and a snake, I’ve been here night for night, with everyone else asleep, to write the story of Clay.

  And how can I even begin?

  How do I tell you the after-parts, in our lives since the bridge was finished?

  Once, in the tide of Dunbar past, he came home to us here on Archer Street, then left us, we were certain, forever;
and the years brought many things with them.

  * * *

  —

  In the beginning, when we left the river, Clay had hugged our father, and kissed Achilles’s cheek. (That scoundrel out in his moment—he’d come back to us quite reluctantly.) For Clay there was uncharted triumph, such wonder at what he’d seen. Then incurable, bottomless sadness. Where did he go from here?

  Even as he collected his things—his old wooden box of memories, and his books, including The Quarryman—he looked at the bridge from the window. What good was the mark of a masterpiece? It had stood to prove all he’d worked for, and saved absolutely nothing.

  When we left, he’d held it out to our father:

  The bronze and the pale-covered book.

  “It’s time I gave you this back.”

  As he walked toward my station wagon, there was a final father’s last gasp; he ran up quickly, behind him. He said, “Clay—Clay!”

  And Clay knew what he’d wanted to say to him.

  But he knew he was leaving us all.

  “Clay—the backyard—” and Clay cut him off with his hand. He said what he’d said to him years ago; a child and not yet a bridge:

  “It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay.” But he soon added something else. “She really was something, wasn’t she?” and our father could only agree.

  “Yes,” he said, “she was.”

  When he got in the car, Clay watched us.

  We all shook hands with our father.

  There was talking, and Tommy calling Rosy, and Clay gone to sleep in the station wagon; his face against the window.

  He slept through us crossing his bridge.

  * * *

  —

  At home, it took most of a day and a night, as he and I sat in this kitchen. My brother had told me everything—of Penelope and Michael, and all of us—and all he had been with Carey. Twice I nearly broke down, and once I thought I’d be sick; but even then he’d talked on, he’d rescued me. He’d said, “Matthew, but listen to this.” He told me how when he’d carried her, she was that pale and blond-backed girl again, and the last thing she’d seen was the pegs. He said to me, “Now it’s you, Matthew. You have to go out and tell him. You have to go out and tell Dad. He doesn’t know that’s how I saw her. He doesn’t know that’s how she was.”

  When he was done, I thought of Penelope, and the mattress, The Surrounds. If only we’d burned it when we should have! God, I thought so many things. No wonder, no wonder. He was never the boy he’d been; he would leave now and never return. There was just too much of him left here: the carry of too much memory. I thought of Abbey Hanley, then Carey—and what she’d called him at Bernborough Park.

  We’d lost our beautiful boy.

  * * *

  —

  When he left, next day, there wasn’t much said, you know by now how we are. It was Clay who did the most talking, I think, for he was the one who’d prepared.

  To Rory, he said, “I’ll miss our hart-to-harts,” and there was rust and wire around him. They laughed to ease the ache.

  For Henry, it was simple.

  He’d said, “Good luck with your lotto numbers—I know you’re going to win.”

  And Henry, of course, half tackled him.

  He’d answered him, “One to six.”

  When he tried offering Clay some money, one last time, Clay just shook his head again.

  “It’s okay, Henry, you keep it.”

  And Tommy—young Tommy.

  Clay put his hands on his shoulders.

  “She’ll meet you at the thylacine,” and it was that that nearly finished us—until all who was left was me.

  For me, he was able to wait.

  Soon he’d walked between us, the way boys often do. We don’t mind touching—shoulders, elbows, knuckles, arms—and now he’d turned and faced me.

  For a while he said nothing at all; he simply made his way to the piano, and quietly lifted the lid. Inside remained her dress, and The Iliad and The Odyssey.

  Slowly, he reached in, then handed the books to me.

  “Go on,” he said, “open the top one.”

  Inside were two separate notes.

  The first was the letter from Waldek.

  The second was a little more recent:

  In case of an emergency

  (like you keep running out of books)

  There was the number, and signed, ck.

  I almost said he should give it a Goddamn rest, but he got there, easily, first.

  “Read everything she gives you, but always come back to these.” His eyes were fierce and firelit. “And then one day you’ll know. You’ll know to go out to Featherton, to dig up the old TW, but you’ll have to get your measurements right, or you might dig up Moon, or the snake….” His voice became a whisper. “Promise me, Matthew, promise.”

  * * *

  —

  And so it was.

  He left us late that evening.

  We watched him walk, down the porch, across the lawn onto Archer Street, and our lives were left without him. Sometimes we’d catch a shadow, or see him walk through the streets of the racing quarter—but we knew it was never Clay.

  As the years climbed by, I could tell you so much:

  We all had lives of our own.

  Every now and then there’d be a postcard, from places he must have worked in—like Avignon and Prague, or later, a city called Isfahan—and of course they were places of bridges. My favorite was from Pont du Gard.

  Here, we missed him with every minute, but we couldn’t help being ourselves; the years spanned out to eleven—since the day our father had come, and asked if we might build a bridge.

  * * *

  —

  For Tommy in that time, he grew up.

  He went to university, and no, he isn’t a vet.

  He’s a social worker instead.

  He takes a dog called O to work with him (you should know by now what it stands for), and he’s twenty-four years old. He works with tough, hard kids, but the lot of them love the dog. His pets all lived forever, of course, or forever until they were gone. First went the goldfish, Agamemnon, then T, the marching pigeon, then Hector, and lastly, Rosy.

  Rosy was sixteen years old when finally she couldn’t walk anymore, and all of us carried her off. At the vet it was Rory, believe it or not, who said, “I think she was holding out—waiting, you know?” He looked at the wall and swallowed. She was named for the sky and Penelope, that dog. “I think she was waiting for Clay.”

  It’s only Achilles, in Silver, still alive now.

  That mule is likely unkillable.

  Tommy lives near the museum.

  * * *

  —

  Then Henry.

  Well, what would you guess for Henry? I wonder.

  What to expect from brother number three?

  He was the first of us to be married, and would always come up smiling. He went, of course, into real estate, but not before making a packet—on betting and all he’d collected.

  During one of his Epic Books and Music Sales, a girl walked her dog up Archer Street. Her name was Cleo Fitzpatrick. For some people life just sails like that, and Henry is one such case.

  “Oi!” he’d called, and first she ignored him, in cutoff shorts and a shirt. “Oi, girl with the Corgi-cross-shih tzu, or whatever it is!”

  She put in a fresh piece of gum.

  “It’s a kelpie, dickhead—” but I was there, it was easy to see. It appeared in her black earthy eyes. Fittingly, she bought a copy of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, and came back the following week. They were married the following year.

  * * *

  —

  As for Rory, strange as it seems, he’s the one closest to our father again, and goes out quite
a lot to the bridge. He’s still as rough as guts—or rough as bags, as people like Mrs. Chilman would say—and the years have taken the edge off, and I know how he always missed Clay.

  It wasn’t long after old Mrs. Chilman died, actually, that he moved to a suburb close by: Somerville, ten minutes north. He likes to come back and sit here, though, drinking beer, and laughing away. He likes Claudia, too, and talks to her, but mostly it’s him and me. We talk about Clay, we talk about Penny, and the story is passed between us:

  “So they gave her six months—a hundred-and-eighty-odd days. Did they have any fucking clue who they were dealing with?”

  Like the rest of them, he knows what happened now, in the backyard that bright-lit morning; how our father couldn’t do it, but Clay was somehow able. He knows what happened beyond it, with Carey and The Surrounds; yet, inevitably, we always come back to it—when she told us, in here, in the kitchen.

  “What’d Clay say about that night?” he asks, and he waits a few beats for the answer.

  “He said that you roared the fire in his eyes.”

  And Rory will smile, every time. “I pulled him from out of that chair you’re in.”

  “I know,” I say, “I remember.”

  * * *

  —

  And me?

  Well, I did it.

  It only took me several months, but I’d been reading Penelope’s books—her immigrant Everests—and opening Waldek’s letter; I’d memorized Claudia’s number.

  Then, a Tuesday, I didn’t call the number at all, but walked straight into the school. She was there in the same room, marking essays, and when I knocked, she caught sight of the doorway.

  She smiled a great smile of the living.

  “Matthew Dunbar,” she said, looking up at me. She stood at the desk and said, “Finally.”

  * * *