by Karen Perry
Close by, in the warren of streets that huddle and spread over this part of the medina, is the place where Garrick had lived—the place we used to go to together. I have a fleeting recollection of lying next to him, staring up at the lazy revolutions of a ceiling fan. Immediately, I put that thought away.
Instead, I think of Harry, of his conviction in those last days of his life and how he discovered the truth purely by chance and through his own dogged determination and unshakable belief that Dillon was still alive. I try to imagine how it was for him that day on a street in Dublin when he set eyes on a boy and felt the frightening jolt of recognition. It had seemed to me a fantasy, that he was merely imagining the boy to life by virtue of the fact that his mind could not bridge the gaping chasm of loss. And I remember how I had doubted him, how my doubt had been the very worst kind of betrayal, and when I remember it, I feel the shame rise through me and I need to concentrate very hard on the ground in front of me to prevent my emotions from claiming me.
I am aware, too, that my grieving has not started yet—not properly. It lies in wait around a corner, lurking in the shadows, ready to jump out and catch me unawares. I cannot yet conceive of a world without Harry in it. For now, when I think of him, what I feel most is gratitude. All-encompassing and overwhelming gratitude. For his stubborn belief, his refusal to be swayed from the crazy notion that our boy had been stolen when everything pointed so clearly to his death. Had he not held on to that belief, had he not trusted his instincts and pursued them against all the odds, then … No. It does not bear thinking about.
Sometimes, in the nights I have spent here, I’ve dreamed that Harry is with me, and that we are lying alongside each other in a companionable silence. When I wake, it is a renewed shock to see the empty space on the pillow next to me, and in those moments, the longing I feel is achingly physical and I want to draw the covers up over my head and surrender to it all. But then I hear Martha crying in her cot and I force myself to swing my legs out of bed and press my feet into my sandals.
* * *
On the Rue es Siaghin I get caught behind a group of tourists milling about outside the Spanish Cathedral. For a moment they stand looking around themselves, consulting maps and trying to find their bearings, and the cries from the street sellers rise in pitch. The place, all at once, is too crowded, too loud and oppressive. Time to go home.
The sky above the medina is streaked with bands of gold. Gulls wheel and swoop, their echoing cries carried aloft.
I turn to go, and it is in the motion of turning that I feel it—the sense that someone is watching me, a sensation like a feather passing over the skin at the nape of my neck, goose bumps crawling over the space between my shoulders. I stop, my eyes scouring the crowd. And then I see him. Tall, rangy, his intense gaze fixed on me. That face so familiar and yet impossible. Disbelief plunges to the very depths of my stomach. Impossible. It cannot be.
He turns away quickly, pushing hurriedly through the crowd.
I need to go after him, but I am paralyzed.
I need to shout out his name, but it catches in my throat.
Emotion bubbles and roils within me, filling my inner spaces, drowning out sense and reason.
“Harry!” I call out, my voice a hoarse shout of fear.
He turns a corner without looking back.
Quickly now, I begin to move, my legs weak, my breath shallow.
A frantic impatience grows within me.
And then I turn the corner onto a street I don’t know. My eyes scan it quickly: the dusty sidewalk, the intricate wrought-iron railings that enclose balconies overhead, awnings stretching and casting the street in shadow. At every corner there is an exit—a warren of alleys shooting off into the ville nouvelle. A woman’s laughter drifts down from above. At a drain, a dog sniffs at something, the only living being here.
I stand there, looking down the empty street, feeling the pulse in my head, that rhythmic thumping, my eyes casting about, uncertain, wavering. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Grief begins to clamor at the edges of my thoughts, threatening to break through, and with it comes the doubt that clouds my judgment, telling me it cannot be—it cannot. But I am not yet ready to let the grief in. It lasts only an instant before being overshadowed by a new, insistent urgency. I suck in my breath. Then I start to run.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Karen Perry is the pen name of the Dublin-based writers Paul Perry and Karen Gillece.
Karen Gillece is the author of four critically acclaimed novels. In 2009 she won the European Union Prize for Literature (Ireland).
Paul Perry is the author of several critically acclaimed books. He is a recipient of the Hennessy Award for New Irish Writing.