The Best Travel Writing, Volume 11

by Rolf Potts

  As the day wore on the wind, pushing whitecaps into the harbor, made the boats bob wildly at their moorings. In the pubs the fishermen’s voices got louder and their tales grew taller. Until, as was so often the case in Ireland, the past and the present mingled—the borders of each obscured by drink.

  By late afternoon what had been a soft mist turned into light rain. When I passed by Hayes’ Pub, on my way back from another run to the shop before service, I could see a fire blazing in the grate and I heard a bodhrán drum and a couple of fiddles warming up. Across the street, both Casey’s Bar and Maloney’s pub were packed with people. Their windows fogged over with the damp heat of the bodies pressed inside.

  I wondered if no one seemed worried about the storm because all the men were safe ashore. Even the older villagers, who were sensible and thoughtful folk, did not seem concerned. I knew that most houses had open fireplaces with “back boilers”—a clever system that used ordinary hearth fires to heat the house’s hot water tank and sometimes the central heating too—and I found myself questioning the wisdom of having replaced ours with a more efficient gas-fueled system for the restaurant when we’d moved in.

  I tried to take solace in knowing that the colorful buildings huddled together on Main Street had been built with outer walls three feet thick to withstand the weather. Those closest to the harbor had their backs to the sea and the others, like ours, their backs to the hillside. For hundreds of years, I reminded myself, these houses had endured Atlantic gales and still they stood, resilient and cheerfully candy colored.

  On the hillsides across the harbor, windows that had been dark turned yellow and in the village earth-scented peat smoke, puffing up chimneys, drifted down and slid along the streets like low lying fog or wispy ghosts. I was pleased to see that the white fairy lights, which I’d wrapped around the potted bay trees on either side of the front door of the restaurant, looked bright and festive in the gathering gloom. I ducked up the alleyway and in through the side door.

  The kitchen was warm and smelled of roasting garlic and freshly baked rosemary bread. Francis, wearing a long apron and his chef whites, was just finishing his mise en place for service. He looked up when I came in but didn’t stop speed-slicing vegetables with his Nakiri knife (one of his many impressive kitchen tricks that made me nervous).

  “Did they have everything?”he asked.

  “They did.”

  I set the bags of groceries down on the counter. Overhead I could hear the pitter-patter of a toddler’s feet running fast toward the bathroom.

  “Brilliant! Thanks.” Francis said. Then he smiled at me, his beautiful blue eyes holding my gaze for too long, while he julienned more vegetables into thin matchstick strips without looking down at his hands.

  “Stop it!” I said. Then, trying not to laugh I turned my back to him and began unpacking the bags.

  I’d walked many cliff paths in Ireland before falling in love. Some were easy to get to, but not the one that enchanted me the most. To get there from Dublin I had to take a train into the west and hitchhike from the station. When my last ride deposited me on an empty country road at the foot of sloping farmers fields, “For the love o’Jaysus mind yerself!” I’d climb up and up through tall green pastures—keeping an eye out for roaming bulls—until I reached the top, where the land dropped away, and I stepped out onto the wet grassy path that edged the Cliffs of Moher for almost five miles. Running all the way along the western edge of County Clare, from Nags Head to O’Brien’s Tower where the magnificent sheer gray cliffs rose up to their full dramatic height, 700 feet above the Atlantic’s white-and-black blown waves. So spectacular and shocking are they that Hollywood director Rob Reiner came here, to the far west of Ireland, to film “The Cliffs of Insanity” for his cult classic film, The Princess Bride.

  The precipitous drops at the boundaries of Ireland are magnetic; they pull some and repel others. On the Cliffs of Moher there was no gentle slope to sit on. The cold Atlantic did not glitter and the shrieking call of thousands of seabirds was as sharp and loud as the wind. Still I was drawn to them. From the highest point I would find myself searching the horizon for a glimpse of the New England beach where years before I’d sat, digging my feet deep into the cool soft sand, and staring longingly across the sea towards Europe. But America was too far away and I could not see it.

  On days when the wind blew too strong to walk along the cliffs, I would climb up as far as I could. Then, standing in a farmer’s field, I’d close my eyes, lift my chin, and lean into the wind. I would lean into it the way, in a few years’ time, I would lean into love—with my arms out stretched like wings and only the tips of my toes still touching the land. And I would stay like that, hovering, until the wind shifted and dropped me to the ground.

  Sometimes, when I was feeling brave, I’d lie flat on the ground, below the wind, and inch forward on my belly until I could see over the cliff’s grassy lip to where kittiwakes and razorbills nested in the vertical rock face. Where nimble wild goats climbed out along slender shale and sandstone ledges. The birds were beautiful, the way they took to the air, but watching the goats walking along the precipice frightened me. People jumped from cliffs like these. I’d heard about women mostly, some with children in their arms, some with babies in their bellies.

  There were myths that swirled about these cliffs. My favorite was about a beautiful mermaid, the Mermaid of Moher, who was tricked into marriage with a local fisherman when he stole her magic cloak so she could not escape. She stayed land bound, with her husband and children, until one day she found the cloak that he’d kept hidden from her. Then, without a word, she put it on, left her family and slipped forever back into the sea.

  Years later, after my sons were born, the entry to the cliffs near the sleek new visitor center had been blocked with warning signs, memorial plaques, and bouquets of wilting flowers. And folks began to agree that now only crazy people climbed past the barrier to walk the ancient way—crazy people and intrepid tourists. But I still wandered the cliff edge as I always had. And, in the throes of motherhood myself, I would imagine the mermaid riding seaward on the waves and wonder, could her children could hear her singing?

  By six o’clock the rain was coming down in big wet drops and the wind blew it hard against the restaurant’s plate-glass windows. Inside the dining room was humming, the tables filled with people, each in their own candlelit world of convivial conversation, secret glances, or awkward silences. Sometimes a laugh or guffaw, “Ah, gw’on!” escaped into the room and the other diners, smiling, turned to look.

  Our restaurant was at its best on nights like this. When it was dark and cold and wet outside so that you only wanted to be indoors where it was warm and lit and welcoming. Where you could sit by the fire and order crocks of spicy seafood stew and pints of foamy stout. When the burgundy walls glowed with pretty colored light cast by stained-glass wall lamps and the slate floor disappeared into shadows as the firelight, picking out their bright patterns, turned the carpets into floating soft stepping-stones across the dining room.

  As soon as one table was cleared and reset, it was seated again. A steady stream of customers jostled with each other at the door to get their names on the wait list so they could nip across the road into Maloney’s Pub for a pint while they waited. When a table became available, one of the busgirls dashed across the wet street, jumping over puddles, and made her way through the crowded pub shouting out the name of the next party on the list.

  “Now, would ye say that the venison is a tough piece of meat? Would ye say it was tough, like?” the old man at Table 10 was asking.

  “Oh no,” I said. “The chef has slow cooked and marinated it so it’s quite tender.”

  “Is it a good size chop though?” he asked, lifting up his hard hands and miming in the air for me the size he thought the chop should be. “How big would ye say it t’was, now?”

  “I don’t know about you, Pat,” his sturdy wife interrupted, “but I can’t say I’d fancy
any of that now; t’would be like eating Bambi!” She laughed. Then, snapping closed her menu, ordered.

  “Right so, first I’ll have the leek soup. Then I’ll have the roast chicken,” she said, settling back into her chair. Then, as though confirming with herself that she’d made the best possible choice, “Yes,” she said, “that t’would be lovely.”

  I thanked her, tucked the menu under my arm and turned back to her husband.

  “And for you sir?”

  Overhead I heard a thud, the sound of something falling, then a pause and then a toddler’s howl. The man pushed the open menu across the table towards me and tapped at the page with a short square forefinger.

  “What sort of potatoes did ye say those were again?”

  I made an executive decision. I promised to bring him the traditional three types of potatoes with his main course no matter which entrée he chose— at no extra charge! When he finally decided, settling on a filet, well done (which I knew would annoy the chef), I went into the kitchen with the order ticket and called it out to Francis, whose head was bent in concentration over dishes he was plating. His hands paused mid-air when I said, “filet, well done,” but only for a moment. Then I handed over the ticket, dashed out the side door and ran, through the wind and the rain, up the back steps to our apartment to check that all was well with the children.

  By 9:00 the wind was gusting in short sharp bursts and rainwater was flowing like a stream down Main Street. I was on my way to Table 12, balancing a potentially lethal tray of flaming Sambuca shots with three lucky espresso beans in each, when the lights flickered. Then went out. A collective gasp swept round the room. Outside it was pitch black; the electricity had gone out throughout the village. Tabletop candles made small pockets of flickering light around the dining room and the fire threw quivering shadows across the walls.

  Then the wind came. Prowling down the street. Snarling, it knocked over the bay trees and rattled the front door; trying to get in. When it couldn’t, it groaned and pressed itself up against the plate glass windows, almost as though it were peering in, looking for someone—the couples sitting by the windows leaned back. So physical was its presence that I fancied I might have been able to decipher a face, were it not for the rain and the darkness in which it hid.

  In the void beyond the wind we all heard a rumbling. A dreadful low lament, like wailing, coming closer and closer. An impossible sound—roaring like a dragon off the bay. I felt goose bumps rising on my arms and the back of my neck prickled. “Tonn Clíodhna!” I heard someone whisper. And in the dark and the silence, we all listened hard to what we did not want to hear.

  There are many versions of the story of Tonn Clíodhna or Cleena’s Wave. The one I’d heard was that Cleena, queen of the South Munster fairies, was a banshee, a woman from the fairy hills, and a foreigner. She’d come to Ireland from fairyland, fallen in love, and drowned while sleeping on the strand near Glandore Harbor. In death her mournful voice became a wave, one of the legendary Three Waves of Erin: Tonn Tuaithe in County Derry, Tonn Rudraidhe in County Down, and Tonn Clíodhna in County Cork. A mythic, haunting, anguished wave whose loud woeful sound had for centuries forewarned local inhabitants of impending death and tragedy.

  And death did seem to come easily and often in the west of Ireland. Coastal churchyards were dotted with worn gray tombstones and mossy Celtic crosses that read: “Captain,” “Mariner,” “Drowned with Son,” and “Lost at Sea.” In the waters off our village alone eighteen ships had slipped below the rocky waves. Beneath the charming blue of Bantry Bay thirty boats lay sunken in their graves. And beyond the craggy cliffs of Baltimore lay the rotting bones of forty-four more.

  Fishermen, drunk or sober, drowned in the harbor or at sea. Farm accidents snuffed out children’s bright spark. Grandfathers died from “the cigarettes,” and lonely people from “the drink.” It seemed that barely a month went by when we did not shut the restaurant’s outer wooden doors and draw closed the curtains—the windows all up and down Main Street shuttered tight like the eyes of the dead—to show respect for slow, black funeral corteges passing on their way to and from St. Brigid’s church.

  Across the street, I saw the lights flutter then come on in Maloney’s Pub. Then ours did too. The Van Morrison CD started playing again, picking up where it had left off, and then, as quickly as it had come the wind moved on, whirling and whooping down Main Street, and was gone. Leaving behind just the wet black night.

  In the dining room, everyone was quiet. Then it was as though the façade of adulthood slipped away and we were children again—grown men and women sputtering and laughing: relieved and a little bit embarrassed at having been so frightened.

  When the last customer left, Francis and I wrestled the battered bay trees inside. Then pulled closed the double doors and slid the old cast iron lock into place. Upstairs, we gathered up the children and carried them into our bed. Where we hid under piles of feather duvets.

  Outside the storm raged on and I slept fitfully, listening to the wind calling. Is that Cleena or my child crying? I drifted in and out of dreams. What was it the poet from Michigan said? Something about measuring spoons . . . indeed, ridiculous!

  In the middle of the night, when the baby woke to be fed, the rain was still crashing against the house in waves and the wind rubbing its back upon the windowpanes. With all of us in one big bed and the baby drowsing at my breast, it felt to me as though we were adrift, a family lost at sea. And in many respects we were, an urban fledgling family adrift in the wild Irish countryside.

  I lay awake thinking of a story I’d heard about two Dutch tourists being swept off the Cliffs of Moher. A strong gust of wind swirled up and over the precipice, raced across the fields, flattened the grasses, and with nothing to stop it, scooped up the tourists and flew off with them. Up and up they went, soaring like sea birds out over the edge of the land, the wind swinging the Dutchman up and down on currents of air high above the crashing Atlantic. Then, unexpectedly, dropped them into the sea.

  In the morning, it was not the wind, but human voices that awakened me. The clamor and bang of men tossing empty metal kegs onto the sidewalk across the street. Isaac was awake too and together we climbed down from the bed and went hand in hand out the back door to see what the storm had wrought.

  Outside it was wet and cold. The green grass and trees and dripping ivy leaves glistened in the sun and overhead a soft breeze sent white clouds sailing across a sea blue sky. I rolled the bottom of my flannel pajamas and walked to the top of the garden where I could see down into the village where the pink and blue and pale yellow houses were still standing, the smooth water on the bay sparkling.

  There would be time to put the kettle on for tea so I lingered, breathing deep the briny air and stretching—swinging my arms as though I were swimming. I watched my son rummaging. In the garden there was red-brown seaweed. Isaac picked it up to show me. And when I turned to go back inside I was surprised to see, beside our kitchen door, bright red winter roses full blooming in the sun.

  K. M. Churchill is a writer, world traveler, and award-winning restaurateur. Her work has appeared in Harvard University’s Charles River Review and the cookbook anthology, Newburyport: Portrait of a Restaurant and online at Nowhere Magazine. She is a member of AWP, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and is currently working on her food/travel memoir, Salmon Cakes and Saints: Three Years, Two Toddlers and One Restaurant in Ireland. She now lives with her husband and two teenage sons on the seacoast of New Hampshire.

  LANCE MASON

  The Train to Harare

  Reflecting on Africa, circa 1988-1998.

  In Africa, we are all children. Everything is new, and everything is old. The sapling sprouting among the creepers is new; the forest, old. Though the baby in the kaross sling is new, his tribe is old. The dawn’s breeze swirls the dust over the Magadigadi Pans and is gone, but the ancient dust remains, the scorched powder of a continent’s bones.

  The heat of the
Kalahari, thick and mighty across this sweep of gasping desert, has a life force of its own. Like an animal, it waits, resting, through the African night. But with the day it stirs, and grows with the sun, gathering power like a sky-borne fist. It stalks you as you move, watches for weakness. If you stumble, it will thrash you. Show frailty, and it will murder you. Still, this is Africa, and there are many ways to die. This is known, but no one knows Africa.

  From the Gabarone railway station, Sunday morning, late October, the sky grades from ink to plum to, in the east, vermillion. Botswana is well into the dry season. Hundreds of miles north, in the Okavango Delta, the hippo drags the smooth barrel of his belly through the mud-strewn grass, along the swampy troughs that lead from pool to pool, stream to stream, all of them shrinking. He, like the elephant and the antelope, follows the receding water, still taking life from the rains that came but now have fled.

  But that is north, up where the rivers spilling out of Angola form that broad, fecund, swampy paradise on the skirts of the Kalahari. Here in the south, across the border from Johannesburg, all is parched. The heat grips its human victims, threatens to grind their strength to sand against the desert’s stones. Threatens to, but doesn’t. For the Africans are at one with the heat, as though with that animal that could kill you and eat you but doesn’t because you are one with it. As strong as the heat is, the Africans are stronger.

  It was 1988, and I was in Botswana absorbing the hospitality of friends who worked there. It was one of many such trips I would take—and still take—moving, exploring, untangling the twisted shoelaces of my life. I had been up with Dan to the Delta, seen the hippos and the marabou storks and the tsessebe, the malachite kingfisher and the bat-eared fox and the mud-encrusted, blunt-brained Cape buffalo, black-eyed and brutish.