Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  —

  As Clay had asked, I did go out to Silver.

  I went there many times, often with Claudia Kirkby.

  Tentatively at first, my father and I traded stories—about Clay as both son and brother. And I told him what Clay had asked me to, about the last time he saw Penelope—as the girl she once had been. Our father was mostly astonished.

  At one point I nearly told him; I nearly said it but kept myself back:

  I know now why you left.

  But like so many other things, we can know it but leave it unsaid.

  * * *

  —

  When they tore down the Bernborough Park grandstand, and replaced the old red rubber track, we somehow got the date wrong, and missed the inglorious moment.

  “All those beautiful memories,” said Henry, when we went there to see the pieces. “All those gorgeous bets!” Those nicknames and boys at the fence line—the smell of never quite men.

  I recalled the times Clay and I spent there, and then Rory and stopping him and punishment.

  But of course, it’s Clay and Carey there.

  It’s them I imagine best.

  They’re crouched together, near the finish line.

  It was one more sacred site of his, left hollow without him in it.

  * * *

  —

  On the topic of sacred sites, The Surrounds, however, remains.

  The Novacs have long left Archer Street, for a life back home in the country. But as councils go, and construction work, too, The Surrounds hasn’t yet been built on; and so Carey and Clay still own that place, at least according to me.

  To be honest, I’ve grown to love that field, most often when I miss him hardest. I’ll wander out back, usually late at night, and Claudia comes to find me. She holds my hand and we walk there.

  We have two young daughters, and they’re beautiful—they’re regretless; they’re the sound and color of being here. Would you believe we read The Iliad to them, and The Odyssey, and that both of them learn the piano? It’s me who takes them to lessons, and we practice back here at home. We’re here together at the MARRY-ME keys, and it’s me who watches, methodically. I sit with the branch of a eucalypt, and stall when they stop and ask me:

  “Can you tell us about the Mistake Maker, Dad?” and of course, “Can you tell us about Clay?”

  And what else can I do?

  What can I do but close the piano lid, as we go in to face the dishes?

  And all of it starts the same.

  “Once, in the tide of Dunbar past…”

  The first is Melissa Penelope.

  The second is Kristin Carey.

  * * *

  —

  And so it then comes to this:

  There’s one more story I can tell you now, before I can leave you in peace. To be truthful, it’s also my favorite story, of the warm-armed Claudia Kirkby.

  But it’s also a story of my father.

  And my brother.

  And the rest of my brothers, and me.

  * * *

  —

  See, once—once, in the tide of Dunbar past, I asked Claudia Kirkby to marry me; I asked with earrings and not a ring. They were just small silver moons, but she loved them, she said they were something. I wrote her a long letter, too, about everything I ever remembered, about meeting her; and her books, and how kind she had been to us Dunbars. I wrote to her about her calves, and that sunspot, center-cheek. I read it to her on her doorstep, and she’d cried and she’d told me yes—but next, she already knew.

  She knew there would also be problems.

  She could tell from the look on my face.

  When I told her we should wait for Clay, she squeezed my hand, and said I was right—and like that, the years climbed by. They climbed by and we had our daughters. We watched everything form and change, and though we feared he would never come back here, we thought waiting might just bring him to us. When you wait you start feeling deserved.

  When five years had passed, though, we wondered.

  We’d talk in the night, in our bedroom, which had once been Penny and Michael’s.

  Eventually, we came to a decision, after Claudia finally asked me:

  “How about when you turn thirty?”

  I agreed, and again, the years went by, and she even gave me one extra; but thirty-one, it seemed, was the limit. There hadn’t been a postcard for a long time by then, and Clay Dunbar could have been anywhere—and that was when finally I thought of it:

  I got in my car and drove there.

  I arrived in the night in Silver.

  I sat with our dad in his kitchen.

  As he’d often done with Clay, we drank coffee, and I looked at that oven, and its digits, and I stayed and half bawled and I begged him. I looked out across the table:

  “You’ve gotta go out and find him.”

  * * *

  —

  As soon as possible, Michael left the country.

  He took a plane to a city and waited.

  Every morning he went out at dawn.

  He got to the place at opening, and left in the dark at closing.

  It was snowing there then, it was freezing, and he got by with some phrases in Italian. He looked lovingly up at the David; and the Slaves were all he had dreamed of. They were fighting and struggling, and turning for air, as they argued from out of the marble. The Accademia staff got to know him, and they wondered if he might be insane. Being winter up there, there weren’t many tourists, so they noticed him after a week. Sometimes they gave him some lunch. One evening they’d had to ask—

  “Oh,” he said, “I’m just waiting….If I’m lucky he might just come.”

  * * *

  —

  And so it was.

  Every day for thirty-nine days, Michael Dunbar was in Florence, in the gallery. It was incredible to him, to be with them so long—for the David, those Slaves, were outrageous. There were times when he drifted off, too, just leaning as he sat by the stone. It was security who often woke him.

  But then, on that thirty-ninth day, a hand had reached out for his shoulder, and a man was crouched above him. There was the shadow of Slave beside him, but the hand on his clothing was warm. His face was paler, and weathered, but there was no mistaking the boy. He was twenty-seven years old, but it was something like that moment, all those years ago—Clay and Penelope, the bright backyard—for he saw him how once he was. You’re the one who loved the stories, he thought—and it was suddenly just a kitchen, as Clay called out, his voice so quiet, from the dark toward the light.

  He kneeled on the floor and said, “Hi, Dad.”

  * * *

  —

  On the wedding day we couldn’t be sure.

  Michael Dunbar had done his best, but we hoped out of sheer desperation, more than any real hope at all.

  Rory would be the best man.

  We all bought suits and nice shoes.

  Our father was with us as well.

  The bridge was a constant build.

  The ceremony would be in the evening, and Claudia had taken the girls.

  In late afternoon, we assembled—from oldest to youngest: me, Rory, Henry, Tommy. Then Michael had come soon after. It was all of us here on Archer Street, suited up, but ties were loosened. We were waiting, as we had to, in the kitchen.

  There were moments, of course, when we heard things.

  Whoever went out came back.

  Each time was met with “Nothing,” but then, Rory, last hope, said:

  “That.”

  He said:

  “What the hell was that?”

  * * *

  —

  He’d considered going mostly on foot, but he caught the train and bus. On Poseidon Road, he got out one st
op early, and the sun was warm and friendly.

  He walked and stopped, he leaned at the air—and quicker than he’d hoped or imagined, he stood at the mouth of Archer Street, and there was no relief, and no terror.

  There was knowing he was here, he’d made it.

  As always, there had to be pigeons.

  They were perched up high on the power lines, as he came to our front yard. What else could he do but walk on?

  He did and soon he stopped.

  He stood on our lawn, and behind him, diagonally, was Carey’s house, where she’d stood with the cord of the toaster. He almost laughed when he thought of our struggle here—the violence of boys and brothers. He saw Henry, and himself, on the roof, like kids he once knew and had talked to.

  Before he realized, he’d said the word “Matthew.”

  Just my name and that was all.

  So calm and so quiet—but Rory had heard—and we stood up, together, in the kitchen.

  * * *

  —

  I’m not sure I can ever explain it, or have a hope or a Je-sus Christ.

  God, how do I get this right?

  So all I can do is punch harder here, to give you it all as it was:

  See, first we all ran to the hallway, and ripped the fly screen clean from its hinges—and there, from the porch, we saw him. He was down on the lawn, dressed up for a wedding, with tears in his eyes, but smiling. Yes, Clay, the smiler, was smiling.

  Amazingly, no one moved closer:

  All of us, totally still.

  But then, quite quickly, we did.

  Me, I took a step, and from there it was suddenly easy. I said Clay, and Clay, and Clay the boy, and the gusts of my brothers swept past me; they jumped the steps of the porch, they tackled him down to the lawn. They were a scrum of bodies and laughter.

  And I wonder how it must have looked then, to our father, a mess at the railing. I wonder how he must have seen it, as Henry and Tommy, then Rory, all finally climbed off my brother. I wonder how it must have been to watch, as soon they helped him up, and he stood and dusted himself off, and I walked the last meters to meet him.

  “Clay,” I said. “Hey, Clay—”

  But there was nothing else now I could say to him—as this boy, who was also the man of this house, allowed himself finally to fall—and I held him, like love, in my arms.

  “You came,” I said, “you came,” and I held him so hard, and all of us then, all men of us there, we smiled and cried, cried and smiled; and there had always been one thing known, or at least it was known to him:

  A Dunbar boy could do many things, but he should always be sure to come home.

  There would be no Dunbar boys, no bridge, and no Clay without the toughness, laughter, and sheer collective heart of Cate Paterson, Erin Clarke, and Jane Lawson—all of them clear-eyed and truth-telling. All of them Dunbar boys themselves. Thank you for everything.

  To my friends and colleagues: Catherine (the Great) Drayton, Fiona (Riverina) Inglis, and Grace (PP) Heifetz—thank you for hanging in. Thank you for your willingness to age a decade or so in those Spartan days of reading.

  Tracey Cheetham: If 2016 could happen, so could this. The finest from across those bridges.

  Judith Haut: Very few people have withstood my idiocy more than you. It’s the Arkansas in your blood. Thanks always for your love and friendship, no matter the river or city.

  William Callahan: You may never know what you are to this book. You were there to carry me up. You bribed me out of Hades.

  Georgia (GBAD) Douglas: Ultimate penultimate. I’ll miss our hart-to-harts. Infuriatingly right. T-shirts might yet be made.

  Bri Collins and Alison Kolani: Both perennial saviors, both masters; irreplaceable.

  To these stalwarts (a truly great word), thank you for helping this last decade, and in some cases more recently:

  Richard Pine, Jenny Brown (the Kindest of All Time), Kate Cooper, Clair Roberts, Larry Finlay, Praveen Naidoo, Katie Crawford, Kathy (the fixer of anything) Dunn, Adrienne Waintraub, Dominique Cimina, Noreen Herits, Christine Labov, John Adamo, Becky Green, Felicia Frazier, Kelly Delaney, Barbara Marcus, Cat Hillerton, Sophie Christopher, Alice Murphy-Pyle, and (geniuses) Sandy Cull, Jo Thomson, and Isabel Warren-Lynch.

  To these people, never underestimate the friendship and camaraderie you’ve given both me and this book:

  Joan DeMayo, Nancy Siscoe, Mandy Hurley, Nancy Hinkel, Amanda Zhorne, Dana Reinhardt, Tom and Laura McNeal, Andy, Sally, Inge, Bernd, Leena, Raff, Gus, Twain, Johnny, and TW.

  Special mention to:

  Blockie: For walks with Floyd; for listening. Picasso. All roads lead to Huddart.

  Angus and Masami Hussey: Game-changers, life-changers, the best of different continents.

  Jorge Oakim: I’d climb any wall, anywhere. Thanks for everything.

  Vic Morrison: Not only for music and piano-moving (and tuning) advice, but for a lifetime of art and risk, and the story that led to the Slaves.

  Halina and Jacek Drwecki: For love and arguments over the ins and outs of Polish, and for stories of camps and cockroaches: so big!

  Maria and Kiros Alexandratos: For first talks on bridge-building.

  Tim Lloyd: For help and advice on all things equine, not least driving me around Otford, finding something approximating a mule.

  HZ: For typically wry advice on roughing up the German language.

  Zdenka Dolejska: For that one line of Czech…Every little bit counts. Thank you.

  Jules Kelly: Secret keeper extraordinaire.

  The mysterious Frau H.

  And Tim Smith: For all the inspiration, and for waiting in the water.

  To the other mz: Decades don’t just disappear. They disappear like this. Thanks for making me see what life would be like without finishing. As always, you were the difference.

  Lastly, to all readers everywhere: It’s nothing without you. Thanks for all of everything.

  mz

  © ELENA SEIBERT

  MARKUS ZUSAK is the bestselling author of six novels, including The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger. His books have been translated into more than forty languages, to both popular and critical acclaim. He lives in Sydney with his wife and two children.