And sometimes they imagined her top, in her porch or in her house or standing by the roadside in the rain. Cò a th’ann? they heard her call in their imagination and in their dreams. Cò a th’ann? Cò a th’ann? Who’s there? Who’s there? And one night they dreamed they heard themselves answer. ’Se mi-fhìn they heard themselves say as with one voice. It is myself.
My father and his brother never again spent a week on the green hills of Canna. Perhaps their lives went by too fast or circumstances changed or there were reasons that they did not fully understand themselves.
And one Sunday six years later when they were in church the clergyman gave a rousing sermon on why young men should enlist in World War I. They were very enthusiastic about the idea and told their parents that they were going to Halifax to enlist although they were too young. Their parents were very upset and went to the clergyman in an attempt to convince him it was a mistake. The clergyman was their friend and came to their house and told them it was a general sermon for the day. “I didn’t mean you,” he added, but his first success was better than his second.
They left the next day for Halifax, getting a ride to the nearest railroad station. They had never been on a train before and when they arrived, the city of Halifax was large and awesome. At the induction centre their age was easily overlooked but the medical examination was more serious. Although they were young and strong, the routine tests seemed strange and provoked a tension within them. They were unable to urinate in a bottle on request and were asked to wait awhile and then try again. But sitting on two chairs wishing for urine did little good. They drank more and more water and waited and tried but it did not work. On their final attempt, they were discussing their problem in Gaelic while standing in a tiny cubicle with their legs spread apart and their trousers opened. Unexpectedly a voice from the next cubicle responded to them in Gaelic.
The voice belonged to a young man from Canna who had come to enlist as well but who did not have their problem. “Can we ‘borrow’ some of that?” they asked, looking at his full bottle of urine.
“Sure,” he said, “no need to give it back,” and he splashed some of his urine into each of their waiting bottles. All of them “passed” the test; and later in the alleyway behind the induction centre and standing in the steam of their own urine, they began to talk to the young man from Canna. His grandfather owned the store in Canna, he said, and was opposed to his coming to enlist.
“Do you know Alex?” they asked and mentioned their grandfather’s formal name.
He seemed puzzled for a moment and then brightened. “Oh,” he said, “Mac an Amharuis, sure, everyone knows him. He’s my grandfather’s friend.”
And then, perhaps because they were far from home and more lonely and frightened than they cared to admit, they began to talk in Gaelic. They began with the subject of Mac an Amharuis, and the young man told them everything he knew. Surprised perhaps at his own knowledge and at having such attentive listeners. Mac an Amharuis translates as “Son of Uncertainty,” which meant that he was illegitimate or uncertain as to who his father was. He was supposed to be tremendously talented and clever as a young man but also restless and reluctant to join the other young men of Canna in their fishing boats. Instead he saved his money and purchased a splendid stallion and travelled the country offering the stallion’s services. He rode on the stallion’s back with only a loose rope around its neck for guidance.
He was also thought to be handsome and to possess a “strong nature” or “too much nature,” which meant that he was highly sexed. “Some say,” said the young man, “that he sowed almost as much seed as the stallion and who knows who might be descended from him. If we only knew, eh?” he added with a laugh.
Then he became involved with a woman from Canna. She was thought to be “odd” by some because she was given to rages and uncertainty and sometimes she would scream and shout at him in public. At times he would bring back books and sometimes moonshine from wherever he went with the stallion. And sometimes they would read quietly together and talk and at other times they would curse and shout and become physically violent.
And then he became possessed of Da Shealladh, the second sight. It seemed he did not want it and some said it came about because of too much reading of the books or perhaps it was inherited from his unknown father. Once he “saw” a storm on the evening of a day which was so calm that no one would believe him. When it came in the evening the boats could not get back and all the men were drowned. And once when he was away with the stallion, he “saw” his mother’s house burn down and when he returned he found that it had happened on the very night he saw it and his mother was burned to death.
It became a weight upon him and he could not stop the visions or do anything to interfere with the events. One day after he and the woman had had too much to drink they went to visit a well-known clergyman. He told the clergyman he wanted the visions to stop but it did not seem within his power. He and the woman were sitting on two chairs beside each other. The clergyman went for the Bible and prayed over it and then he came and flicked the pages of the Bible before their eyes. He told them the visions would stop but that they would have to give up one another because they were causing a scandal in the community. The woman became enraged and leaped at the clergyman and tried to scratch out his eyes with her long nails. She accused Mac an Amharuis of deceiving her and said that he was willing to exchange their stormy relationship for his lack of vision. She spat in his face and cursed him and stormed out the door. Mac an Amharuis rose to follow her but the clergyman put his arms around him and wrestled him to the floor. He was far gone in drink and within the clergyman’s power.
They stopped appearing with one another and Mac an Amharuis stopped travelling with the stallion and bought himself a boat. He began to visit the woman’s younger sister, who was patient and kind. The woman moved out of her parents’ house and into an older house nearer the shore. Some thought she moved because she could not stand Mac an Amharuis visiting her sister, and others thought that it was planned to allow him to visit her at night without anyone seeing.
Within two months Mac an Amharuis and the woman’s sister were married. At the wedding the woman cursed the clergyman until he warned her to be careful and told her to leave the building. She cursed her sister too and said, “You will never be able to give him what I can.” And as she was going out the door, she said to Mac an Amharuis either “I will never forgive you” or “I will never forget you.” Her voice was charged with emotion but her back was turned to them and the people were uncertain whether it was a curse or a cry.
The woman did not come near anyone for a long time and people saw her only from a distance, moving about the house and the dilapidated barn, caring for the few animals which her father had given her, and muffled in clothes as autumn turned to winter. At night people watched for a light in her window. Sometimes they saw it and sometimes they did not.
And then one day her father came to the house of his daughter and Mac an Amharuis and said that he had not seen a light for three nights and he was worried. The three of them went to the house but it was cold. There was no heat when they put their hands on the stove and the glass of the windowpanes was covered with frost. There was not anybody in any of the rooms.
They went out into the barn and found her lying in a heap. Most of the top part of her body was still covered by layers of clothes, although the lower part was not. She was unconscious or in something like a frozen coma and her eyes were inflamed, with beads of pus at their corners. She had given birth to twin girls and one of them was dead but the other somehow still alive, lying on her breast amidst her layers of clothing. Her father and Mac an Amharuis and her sister carried the living into the house and started a fire in the stove and sent for the nearest medical attention, which was some miles away. Later they also carried in the body of the dead baby and placed it in a lobster crate, which was all that they could find. When the doctor came, he said he could not be certain of the baby�
�s exact time of birth but he felt that it would live. He said that the mother had lost a great deal of blood and he thought she might have lacerated her eyes during the birth with her long fingernails and that infection had set in, caused perhaps by the unsanitary conditions within the barn. He was not sure if she would live and, if she did, he feared her sight would never be restored.
Mac an Amharuis and his wife cared for the baby throughout the days that the woman was unconscious, and the baby thrived. The woman herself began to rally and the first time she heard the baby cry she reached out instinctively for it but could not find it in the dark. Gradually, as she recognized, by sound, the people around her, she began to curse them and accused them of having sex when she could not see them. As she grew stronger, she became more resentful of their presence and finally asked them to leave. She began to rise from her bed and walk with her hands before her, sometimes during the day and sometimes during the night because it made no difference to her. And once they saw her with a knife in her hand. They left her then, as she had requested them to do and perhaps because they were afraid. And because there seemed no other choice, they took the baby with them.
They continued to bring her food and to leave it at the door of her porch. Sometimes she cursed at them but at other times she was more quiet. One day while they were talking she extended her hand with the long fingernails to the face of Mac an Amharuis. She ran the balls of her fingers and the palm of her hand from his hair down over his eyes and nose and his lips and his chin and down along the buttons of his shirt and below his belt to between his legs; and then her hand closed for an instant and she grasped what she had held before but would never see again.
Mac an Amharuis and his wife had no children of their own. It was thought that it caused a great sadness within her and perhaps a tension because, as people said, “It’s sure as hell not his fault.” Their childlessness was thought also to prey on him and to lead to periodic drinking binges, although he never mentioned it to anyone. For the most part, they were helpful and supportive of each other and no one knew what they talked about when they were alone and together in their bed at night.
This, I guess, is my retelling of the story told by the young man of Canna to my father and his brother at a time when they were all young and on the verge of war. All of the information that spilled out of him came because it was there to be released and he was revealing more than he realized to his attentive listeners. The story was told in Gaelic, and as the people say, “It is not the same in English,” although the images are true.
When the war was over, the generous young man from Canna was dead and my father’s brother had lost his leg.
My father returned to Kintail and the life that he had left, the boat and the nets and the lobster traps. All of them in the cycle of the seasons. He married before World War II; and when he was asked to go again, he went with the other High-landers from Cape Breton, leaving his wife pregnant, perhaps without realizing it.
On the beach at Normandy they were emptied into ten feet of water as the rockets and shells exploded around them. And in the mud they fell facedown, leaving the imprints of their faces temporarily in the soil, before clawing their way some few feet forward. At the command they rose, as would a wave trying to break farther forward on the shore. And then all of it seemed to happen at once. Before my father’s eyes there rose a wall of orange flame and a billowing wave of black smoke. It rose before him even as he felt the power of the strong hand upon his left shoulder. The grip was so powerful that he felt the imprint of the fingers almost as a bruise; and even as he turned his searing eyes, he fell back into his own language. “ Cò a th’ann?” he said. “Cò a th’ann? Who’s there?” And in the instant before his blindness, he recognized the long brown fingers on his shoulder with their pointed fingernails caked in dirt. “’Se mi-fhìn” she said quietly. “It is myself.”
All of the soldiers in front of my father were killed and in the spot where he stood there was a crater, but this was told to him because he was unable ever to see it for himself.
Later he was told that on the day of his blinding, his grandfather, the man known to some as Mac an Amharuis, died. Mac an Amharuis was a man of over a hundred years at the time of his death and his eyes had become covered with the cataracts of age. He did not recognize, either by sight or sound, any of the people around him, and much of his talk was of youth and sex and of the splendid young stallion with the loose rope around its neck. And much of it was of the green island of Canna which he had never literally seen and of the people riding their horses at Michaelmas and carrying the bodies of their dead round towards the sun. And of the strong-willed St. Columba determined to be ascetic with his “back turned on Ireland” and the region of his early love. And of walls of flame and billowing smoke.
When I began this story I was recounting the story which my father told to me as he faced the green hills of Canna on the last day of the lobster season a long time ago. But when I look on it now I realize that all of it did not come from him, exactly as I have told it, on that day. The part about seeing his grandfather in the barn and much of the story of the young man from Canna came instead from his twin brother who participated in most of the events. Perhaps because of the loss of his leg, my fathers brother became one of those veterans from World War I who spent a lot of their time in the Legion Hall. When he spoke to me he had none of the embarrassment which my father sometimes showed when discussing certain subjects. Perhaps my father, by omitting certain parts of his story, was merely repeating the custom of his parents who did not reveal to him at once everything there was to be shown.
But perhaps the story also went into me because of other events which happened on that day. After my father had finished, we started our engine and went into the wharf. By the time we arrived, the MacAllesters had gone and many of the other men as well. We hoisted the lobsters to the wharf’s cap and I looked at the weight that the scales showed.
Whether the buyers noticed the concealed lobsters behind the crate we were never to know, but they said nothing. We unloaded our traps on the wharf and then climbed up the iron ladder and talked casually to the buyers and received our money. We planned to come back later for the lobsters behind the crate.
There were still other fishermen about and most of them shared my father’s good mood because they were glad that the season had ended and pleased to have the money which was their final payment. Someone offered us a ride in a truck to the Legion and we went.
The Legion Hall was filled with men, most of them fishermen, and the noise was loud and the conversation boisterous. Towards the back of the hall I noticed Kenneth MacAllester with a number of his relatives. Both of us were underage but it did not matter a great deal. If you looked like you were old enough, no one asked any questions. My father’s brother and a number of our own relatives were at a table in the middle. They waved to us and I moved towards them. Behind me, my father followed, touching my belt from time to time for guidance. Most of the men pulled in their feet as we approached so that my father would not stumble. The crutch my uncle used in place of his missing leg was propped up across a chair and he removed it as we approached and leaned it against the table so that he could offer the chair to my father. We sat down and my uncle gave me some money to go to the bar for beer. Coming back, I passed another table of MacAllesters. They were relatives of our neighbours and although I recognized them I did not know them very well. One of them said something as I passed but I did not hear what he said and it seemed best not to stop. The afternoon grew more boisterous and bottles and glasses began to shatter on the cement floor. And then there was a shower of droplets over our head.
“What’s that?” said my father.
Two of the MacAllesters from the table I had passed were throwing quarts of beer to their relatives at the back of the hall. They were standing up like quarterbacks and spiralling the open quarts off the palms of their hands and I saw Kenneth reach up and catch one as if he were a wide receiver.
The quarts, for the most part, stayed upright; but as they revolved and spun, their foaming contents sprinkled or drenched those seated beneath them.
“Those bastards,” said my uncle.
The two of them came over to the table. They were about thirty and strong and heavily muscled.
“Who are you talking to?” one of them said.
“Never mind,” said my uncle. “Go and sit down.”
“I asked you a question,” he said. And then turning to me he added, “I asked you a question before too. What’s the matter, can’t some of you hear? I just thought that some of you couldn’t see.”
There was a silence then that began to spread to the neighbouring tables and the conversations slowed and the men took their hands off their bottles and their glasses.
“I asked you your age,” he said, still looking at me. “Are you the oldest or the youngest?”
“He’s the only one,” said the other man. “Since the war, his father is so blind he can’t find his way into his wife’s cunt to make any more.”
I remember my uncle reaching for the bottom of his crutch, and he swung it like a baseball bat from his sitting position. And I remember the way he planted his one leg onto the floor even as he swung. And I remember the crutch exploding into the nose and mouth of the man and his blood splashing down upon us and then the overturning of tables and chairs and the crashing of broken glass. And I remember also two of the MacAllesters who were our neighbours reaching our table with amazing speed. Each of them went to a side of my father’s chair and they lifted it up with him still sitting upon it. And they carried him as carefully as if he were eggs or perhaps an object of religious veneration, and the men who were smashing their fists into one another’s mouths moved out of their way when they saw them coming. They deposited him with great gentleness against the far wall where they felt no harm could come to him, bending their knees in unison as they lowered his chair to the floor. And then each of them placed a hand upon his shoulder as one might comfort a frightened child. And then one of them picked up a chair and smashed it over the head of my cousin who had his brother by the throat.
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun Page 16