The Hawkman

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

  Once in the castle, the people forgot their names, and the names of their loved ones, as they were drowned out in their memories by the sublime song of the pearls. They lost all sense of direction; they no longer knew the inside from the outside; the present from the past; up from down. They spent their days pacing in circles, some wider than others, depending on how long they had been there. At first they would avail themselves of the kitchens and dining halls, but as the past faded into the air they could not remember the routes to these facilities, and they would waste away, until they were skeletons. Wherever they dropped, they would be absorbed into the floors and walls, so the entire structure would be reinforced with human faults.

  Only a very small few, those with the stoutest memories for faces and landscapes, were not seduced into this waking ignorance. When they deigned to look into a mirror, or out of a window, they couldn’t help but see the old world that had brought them to this point: the mud and wrinkles, broken down shacks and scars. Yet they were also imprisoned in this arrangement, by order of the man, who had elevated himself above his benefactors by virtue of a throne of pearls. Those who could hold onto their memories of life before the pearl castle were quickly drafted by the boy into becoming navigators, for only they could pilot themselves and others to the exits, or lead newcomers safely past the entrances. One would have thought that the dazzle of the pearl palace would have held a firmer grip upon those who were so enraptured by it, but instead those who could withstand its charms found themselves in a more pervasive limbo brought on by their self-awareness.

  The man was able to resist the lure of the trap he had inadvertently built. But it was his plight to look after his admirers, to follow them as they became befuddled and frustrated. He found himself turning cruel and impatient, as his creation threatened to master him through a different method. The navigators peeved him frequently, and, when they did, he would remove a pearl, and another, from the rooms where they slept until that room had dissipated into silence and nothingness. The navigators had begun refusing his demands to be escorted to the edge of the pearl civilization, where he might leap into heaven, or have a running start ahead of the other penitents. He longed to be released from his duties, but he too had been burdened with the indignities of age: growths on his face, the downturn of his grin, the loss of teeth. He saw this not in the mirrors but in the faces of his visitors as he approached, and derived from this that he would never return to live off dirt and grass, and the occasional flesh of an animal.

  The navigators pushed back against the man’s pleas to be taken to the top of his palace, for no one can be led to the afterlife; reaching it is, and must be, a far more subtle test of will and endurance than having the means of hiring a guide. The navigators also feared too many of the visitors would lock onto the man’s idea and follow him as he was escorted to the rim of the final, tallest tower—to the last tangible surface on the earth’s sphere. Would they ever be persuaded to go back? There could never be room enough at the top; this they would see, if not remember. Some might intuit that they had reached the apex of their lives without comprehending how they had landed at this point. They would strand themselves like some sort of lost species. Others would leave and discard the adventure, only to hold onto a nagging sense that they had missed something. They might torture themselves for a lifetime, even more so than the agony they put themselves through on the lower floors. Who knew that the entrance to the hereafter would be so fraught and dangerous?

  The man and the navigators came to an impasse. The navigators were too much like the man, who had made himself king, believing they had bested the creator whose ingenuity had granted them, purposefully or not, status. The king and the navigators, and those visitors who had unknowingly consented to becoming victims, alternately chased or evaded one another, and the king pursued his project of dismantling the rooms where the navigators gathered. He undid entire flights of stairs, wings, and landings. Whole sections of the palace might have been lost forever, if not for the speechless human bone assimilated as the visitors succumbed to the hypnotic hold of the pearl material. The castle became an even more confounding structure, a scaffold that afforded views to the madness taking place within.

  Finally, when all the starving visitors had collapsed, all of the pearls had been detached, the navigators cornered, and the king stranded at the very spot where that rainbow had ended, the bones that had been floors and walls fell on the pearls haphazardly strewn about, until the entire thing and all the people were crunched into a powder. It is the same kind of powder now used to tamp down the sound and scent of the most wretched among the dead. In paupers’ graves, submerged beneath with the broken backs of people and pearls.

  Ten

  Mr. Sheehan had also changed over the course of Miss Williams’s convalescence, in manner if not in appearance. He remained steadfastly quiet but less silent, in the language he must have developed between himself and the authorities. He acknowledged the doctor and nurses with nods of his head, and offered his hand in greeting to male visitors, including the reverend and the president of the historical society. To women, such as Miss Williams’s colleagues, he bowed. His yellow eyes kept watch on every movement in the room and on her bed, Miss Williams noticed, but with less of the varnish that had once made its stare so threatening. He was a constant presence, and yet when he took her on those painstaking walks down the floor of the infirmary, he was more distant than he ever had been.

  When they had been together in the cottage, Miss Williams had tried to intuit the wanderings of Mr. Sheehan’s mind. She had failed, and this was the punishment; in the infirmary he was as much of a puzzle to her as he had been at their first meeting. She could know only how easily he met her pace, as he escorted her through the halls to the college’s gardens; he did not rush or risk the slightest hint of impatience. She could know only how carefully he held her hands, whether they were on one of their walks or she was laying on the cot, and he was seated beside her. She could know only the soreness and fatigue he must have bitten off to continue supporting her at that leaden pace. She could know only that whatever his own suffering during the war, it had been lobbed off, discarded for a while, to attend to her suffering because there was possibility in it. The possibility of recovering, which did not necessarily belong to his own trials.

  Her deliberate gait, the effort she put into each footfall—no matter how difficult—Sheehan took joy in them, because he was convinced she would come back to herself. She would be restored in place and prominence. It was all that he wanted, even for himself, once he repatriated. After the handwritten letter from King George was thrust into his hands, his welcoming committee boiled down to a pair of functionaries, a major and his secretary from His Majesty’s Army.

  His debriefing lasted for days, it seemed, in the Dover barracks. In some ways the British officers were no different from the Germans in the beginning, with their emphasis on names: the enlisted and officers, those he encountered in the camps but at peacetime could not be accounted for among the dead and injured. Then the names of other Irish with whom he might have colluded. It was a fact that the Germans gave the Irish preferential treatment.

  But those two men, the major and his secretary, knew the answers to the questions they put to him before they started: the succession of camps, whether there were other Irish, what the International Committee of the Red Cross had so scrupulously observed in each setting. The major and his secretary also had what the Germans documented, with their impressive single-mindedness: acts of insubordination carried out by English prisoners, himself included. But the Germans didn’t keep records, the men said, of their murder and neglect. Sheehan did not answer, because in either case, they had all the information they could ever need. They wanted him to help them make sense of it.

  They had at their fingertips the date and location of where he was taken prisoner; Sheehan was the only prisoner taken that day, behind the enemy lines at LaVentie, on the Franco
-German border. What was lost on the major were the circumstances. Had Sheehan been separated from his unit? So far from any target or strategic point . . . But there the major stopped. No one wanted to make an accusation outright. He’d rather Sheehan simply confess it.

  Sheehan again remained silent, because just what would he confess? The cold, watery meals he ate; the sleep that by turns never came or, on some nights, overwhelmed him; the damp and infested barracks and cells that sheltered him. He knew the major’s inference: Sheehan spending the war in relief and luxury while other men were fighting in the trenches, sleeping on their feet, rummaging for scraps, shooting, bayoneting, getting shot at, bombed, being sewn back together only to be sent out there again, their bodies the fodder that would outlast the Germans. Men such as himself were shuttled about as if a baton, or, better yet, a stick in a bundle, unceremoniously passed from one cart to the next, until the wheels were worn down to their axles.

  Sheehan watched in his silence as the major repeatedly fingered his Lord Kitchener moustache. The secretary, who had also adopted Lord Kitchener’s squint, fiddled with his glasses. They did not want to hear about who refused to work in the camps, and so were hauled off to harsher conditions. They wanted to know who moped, who feared the possibilities awaiting him in solitary and so attempted nothing. They wanted to know who lapped up the perks the Germans offered the Irish in the camp: more blankets, private rooms in warm huts, real trestle beds, the chance to wear civilian clothing. Some even stayed in hotels and were given revolvers. Wasn’t that for a brigade of Irish the Germans were recruiting?

  Hadn’t he been to the Limburg camp? Of course not; it said as much in his records. The major and his secretary seemed otherwise convinced. The major waved a piece of thin, almost transparent, paper in Sheehan’s face; Sheehan’s first instinct was to grab at it, at the thing that he knew to be words. But his hands would only leave greasy smears on the page, and the words, should he read them aloud, would come out as mere dregs and drivel of the maelstrom in his ears. To speak them; to give a definitive “No!” would be useless.

  He did not respond, but the pair attempted to remain right regular chaps, jovial and welcoming. The major raised his voice, the better for Sheehan to hear him. But Sheehan knew better than to trust the mirth of the British; it was always followed by some brutal mischief, like the edge of a penny rubbed against the scalp. The major slowed his speech, asked if he’d like an ear trumpet. Was he deaf from the shelling? Or perhaps just a touch hard-of-hearing?

  Sheehan shook his head, and the major graciously continued with his pestering. He needed to know how to evaluate Sheehan’s situation, whether to provide him with a train ticket, or vouchers for food and shelter, a new suit of clothes. Where would he go? Back to Gloucester? On a boat to Dublin? He’d get a right bang up reception there, wouldn’t he? Had to hand it to the balls on those Micks, undertaking treason just as the whole western world was collapsing. Gave us a good scare, the major and his secretary agreed. They wanted to know if he had any relatives close by, a mate or some fellows? Sheehan wondered if the major was simply looking for more Irish to prosecute, or if he was truly suggesting he call on family to help. Perhaps the major was suggesting one to accomplish the other.

  The major asked him about work. Sheehan showed the men his hands, because with their files, they might have known what his hands meant. How early in the trenches, he practiced against his thighs, or blankets, the walls of the billets. He sometimes thought of when he would be reunited with his instrument. But once Sheehan’s hearing was shot, he did not think as often on it. Once his hands took on the appearance of any other soldier’s, scalded with rashes. There was nothing wrong with them time and a few ointments could not correct, the major suggested.

  In that room with the major and his secretary, Sheehan considered rising to the occasion, explaining the depth of the damage, how his hands felt as if they had been sheathed in a new kind of undergrowth, but instead of stems and leaves, it was composed of sand or glass. On his right hand, the index finger had lost all authority in its extension, and on his left, the ring finger jettisoned its obedience. Within the hide that had been substituted for flesh, his bones and muscles now worked according to their own agenda. In both his pinkies, there was not pain, but forgetfulness, and it traveled through his wrists, to his elbows, and finally his shoulders. His arms would have been paralyzed if not for the routine in the prison camp of grasping, throwing, and shoveling—the blood and blisters that had become part of the limbs’ automatic responses.

  But if he said anything, if he swept up the description of one of his symptoms into a single word or phrase, what would happen? The sounds would go on too long, as if they had been commandeered by the bells in his ears. Or a word might fail, before he could complete it, be diced by the high whine that was the continuous background to his intentions. To say anything was to invite more disorder, to lose whatever control he had over his own person. He opted to say nothing, again.

  The major advised that he attempt keeping accounts, running a cash register—a clerical position, nothing too physically taxing. Any number of businesses would take him on, or he could try to return to his teaching, occasionally performing, if anyone would have such a taciturn fellow as a musician.

  The major next offered him money—not real money, but vouchers—for a training course, new clothes, a different existence. Sheehan thought he had not been afraid during the war—all that was wanted then was his body. Now, at peace, there was so much more to sacrifice. The major and his secretary wondered between themselves whether he should see a doctor; they might have even put the question to him directly. Finding a doctor for him, however, might lead to hospitalization, and hospitals were already overburdened, as one could easily imagine. There was nothing physically wrong with him, if he was not deaf. Obstinacy was not among the symptoms of shellshock or barbed wire psychosis, though perhaps they should be. But that was not their department, amending those regulations.

  The secretary was cleaning his glasses with an Army-issued handkerchief and his own breath when he suggested that their subject might want to write about his experiences, if not speak. So they left him alone in a different room, at a desk, with several pieces of bright white paper, a pot of ink and a pen. Sheehan ran his hands over the paper repeatedly, as if it were the fine coat of an animal whose home—air, water, land—was not entirely clear. Because it was cold, as though it had clearly survived various travails, and almost wet, it soothed his finger pads to rest on it. His story must have been of some worth since the Home Office thought to expend such resources on it. But the only marks left there were those that his skin had impressed upon the page. They were faint, like a relief upon a wall the elements are intent on erasing. Once placed into a folder, into a filing cabinet with other folders, the pressure on them to disappear would be too strong to resist. Sheehan counted on that occurring.

  Sheehan wrote, “I am not able to recall the events you inquire after.” He remained in the room until the secretary returned to retrieve him. He was taken to other rooms, the last being an improvised barber’s shop in a hangar that had the terrible effect of redoubling every sound beneath its ceiling. The secretary motioned for him to take one of the barber’s chairs, but he was adamant, shaking his head as he kept his hands on his ears. He was removed from the hangar as a cadre of similarly hirsute men filed in, bright and eager, apparently, for their shearing. Because of his refusals he was denied a full new uniform, with the honors he had earned replicated in ribbons and medals, in which to travel home. He was not given a voucher for new clothes, and the train ticket only took him home as far as where he enlisted.

  In Gloucester, there was no one waiting for him at the station. A Salvation Army captain found him a wool suit to wear. The fabric had him twitching as if he had been infested again. He walked to the music school, a steady march over which he recognized the flat he had rented, the pub where he took his evening meal. Finally, the
school itself, where he might have just as well lived, before the war. There was a letter waiting for him.

  From his mother. Through the haze and clatter, he recognized her handwriting on the envelope. Don’t come back, it said. It’s not safe. Between the police and the Republicans, there’s no room for a turncoat soldier. If you turn up at Summer-hill, I’ll chase you to Howth or Kingstown. At least there you might find a ship that’ll bear you away. You are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, but I’ll do it still. I must, I’ve got the good of your brothers and sisters to consider. And the neighbors, and for everyone you’d ever known or loved or laid your eyes upon. For the love of Mary and all the saints. Don’t come back, she had written.

  He tried to imagine the words in his mother’s voice, though it was difficult, with all the furor and commotion the shelling had put into his head. He wanted only in that moment to recollect it fully so he might better judge the urgency she had invested in her writing. People said Catherine Carey possessed but an ordinary voice, serviceable though rough for choir, uninterested in harmonizing. People did not approve of its depth in a woman, how content it was within its limits, though that was its strength, the foundation of its confidence. At home, in a session, Catherine’s voice was gallant, as if it were a flag raised in battle, its shadings and range like the tension in the canvas. Contralto was the term he learned to apply to it, so rare in its fortitude. But the letter from her hand was unfamiliar to his memory, so reedy and weakened, slashes and tears rented in its fabric.