A Country of Eternal Light

by Darby Harn

  “I’ll be fine,” I say.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  I see how the Russians look at her. Saidbh. They’re staying. “How many Americans are there up at the B&B?”

  “A dozen, like. I don’t know.”

  “I want you to go up there, Aoife. I want you to take all the Americans up the old way to the monastery.”

  She goes tense. “Mairead…”

  “You stay there until I come back to get you.”

  “Send Saidbh. I’ll go with you.”

  “I’m trusting you to do this.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “The Russian thinks youse were married.”

  “Gavin isn’t here,” I say. “He can’t hurt him.”

  Her arms coil around me. Her fingers clutch the dry paper of my scrubs. Her nails sink into my skin.

  “I’ll stitch them up,” I say. “They’ll be on their way.”

  “I can’t believe it…”

  I kiss her cheek. “They’ll be gone tomorrow.”

  She rolls on top of me. Her weight, her heat pressing into me and if she could, she’d never let me go.

  “I love you,” she says.

  I kiss her. “Don’t start.”

  The sky in the west takes on the hue of raw meat. Aoife is slow up the high road to the B&B. I stand with the dog outside the home as she vanishes to a silhouette against the evening.

  I can’t swim.

  All my life on an island and I’m no better than a cat. This raft goes over on a wave and I’ll be with you. I should want this. I should be glad I’ve no choice but to go out to what has to be certain death, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to leave. I want to stay, and keep to the death I had planned.

  Somewhere, God is laughing.

  Yelchin sloshes back to me. “In.”

  The raft scrapes against the vanishing pier. The Russians no weight in it. Their submarine is a few miles out in Galway Bay. There and back, he says. And then they go.

  I toss the bag holding what’s left of the home’s supplies into the raft. “I’m not kissing anything to make it better.”

  He makes this frown, Yelchin. His whole face wrinkles. “You – dusha. Spirit. Make good sailor.”

  “I don’t suppose you have women sailors anyways.”

  “Not on submarine.”

  He’s just going to let me go. They’re just going to leave.

  The motor of Colm’s car echoes off the emptied buildings of Kilbanna. He pulls up right at the end of the pier. He gets out with his took kit and a bottle of whiskey.

  “Good,” he says. “You’re still here.”

  “We leave now,” Yelchin says.

  “I know you lads probably have a taste for vodka, but let me tell you, you’ve not had a drink in your life ‘til you’ve had Irish whiskey. Keeps your warm. Keeps you moving.”

  Yelchin reaches for the bottle. “Spasibo.”

  Colm tucks the bottle in his tool kit. “I figure you boys can use a hand. I’ll take a look around. See what I can do.”

  What are you doing, Colm.

  Yelchin laughs. “You? Fix sub?”

  Colm shrugs. “Wires are wires.”

  “We have engineer. We have electrician.”

  “That’s as maybe. I’m coming.”

  The smile drains off Yelchin’s face. “No room.”

  “I’ll take a look.” Colm slaps his hand on Yelchin’s back and moves him back to the raft. “We’ll have a nice, stiff drink. It’s the least I can do for such fine guests as yourselves.”

  Yelchin’s in the raft. Colm’s in the raft. Like that, I am and we’re drifting away from the pier. The island. That dog. He runs down the pier, chasing us like he’ll leap into the water after us but he stops. He sits there, head crooked in confusion. This whine coming out of him. The island recedes, a tide I expect to come crashing back in but it never does. The light of distant fires twinkle from the shrouded peak of Inishmore. They shrink, and vanish in fog. I’m going the wrong way. The raft lifts under a swell and I come crashing down inside it hard. Water soaks me head to toe. Colm grips my hand.

  He smiles, but it’s no ballast.

  All of the Russians have some type injury.

  Cuts and bruises, mostly. A few broken arms. Legs. Collarbones. I set what I can and make do with a folding split meant for an arm. Yelchin doesn’t say how they came by their injuries. I don’t ask. There isn’t room for questions. The sub like the hollow of a bone. A mute, fluorescent green tint to everything, even the metal, like we’re inside some morgue you see on the telly. Valves barnacle the bulkhead. All these boxy gauges, piled on top of other. The interior reefed in kit. Switches. Knobs. Caged light bulbs. The whole thing dripping with condensation.

  I skin some fish they’ve caught. Soaked with radiation, I’m sure. Everything we’ve been eating and drinking since the lights went out probably. So it is. After, I scrub the paring knife in the mess. I think about tucking it up the sleeve of my sweater. What would I do with it. Who do I think I am. Crewmen watch me. They stare. Some of them, it’s easy to know what they’re thinking. That stiffness in their face. Others are just sore for home, I think. Girls like me dead now. Wives. Sisters. Mothers. I am all of these girls to them and they want to fuck me. They want to hug me, save me, bury me for later. They want to be boys again, but they’ve done their boying and all that’s left is for me to clean up after them.

  Yelchin comes in the mess. “Ah. Ryba. Stay. For dinner.”

  “We’ll be getting back,” I say. “It’ll be dark soon.”

  He pats the seat next to him. “Stay.”

  After dinner, the Russians pile up in the mess. One of them has a guitar. He plays some Russian songs that are sad, if loud. Blood Eyes glares at me. The smell of burnt fish in the air.

  Colm covers his mouth as he whispers to me. “It was a Brit sub. The Russians took a torpedo. There’s no leaving for them.”

  Yelchin claps with the music, leaned back in his chair, foot up on the table. He passes a cigarette around with the others. A couple of them nod off to needful sleep.

  I lean forward, my head down. “Did they get the Brits?”

  “They did not.”

  The Brits are still out there. They could be hunting for this Russian sub right now. They won’t give a toss who’s on it.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say.

  The boy with the guitar comes over to me. He presses the thing into my hands. “You,” he says. “You.”

  “Thank you, no.”

  Yelchin’s eyes light up. “You sing?”

  “Not really. Not anymore. We should be going.”

  “Sing. Sing for me.”

  He’s not exactly asking. Christ. I take the guitar. I sing I’ll Tell Me Ma. I’ve not sung for anyone besides you in ages. As kind as the guitar is to my fingers, I can’t go on.

  “We should call it a night, I think.”

  Yelchin offers me a cigarette. I can’t stand the things, but I take it. “You good singer. I like.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You singer? Make record?”

  Records, he says. “I never did.”

  Smoke funnels out his mouth. “My mother was nurse.”

  “Was she?”

  “How you say… pediatric?”

  “What’s your mother like?”

  He laughs. “Not good fit for babies.”

  “Oh. Well. It takes a certain nature.”

  “You have mother’s nature.”

  “Kind of you to say.”

  “You – children?” I just shake my head. “My boys. Eleven and twelve. Strong boys. Fun – funny? Funny boys.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You no children? With American?”

  “He’s left, I’ve told you.”

  Yelchin nods. “He leave you? Your husband?”

  “He’s not my husband. It’s none of your business.”

  “He run,” Ye
lchin says. “Like coward. Americans – cowards.”

  “He was going home to his family. To the States.”

  “The States…” Yelchin lights another cigarette. He roasts the end over the flame slow like. Lord God. He’s gone. They’re all gone. “Island your home?”

  “I want to go now.”

  He puts his hand to his heart. “Odessa.” Tears flood his eyes. He flicks away the ash. “Very much we want to go back. We no go back now. No one go home.”

  This chill that’s been hanging around finally sinks in.

  Colm stands. Stretches. “Been a lovely evening. We’ll be off now. You lads help yourselves to the rest of that whiskey.”

  Yelchin just goes on. “We not start this. We defend ourselves. Da? What happens now – not personal. My obligation to my men. My family.”

  “But we didn’t…” What did I do with the knife. Why didn’t I bring the knife with me. “I don’t know about any of this, we didn’t know any of this had happened. He’s not here.”

  Yelchin nods, like he understands. “He run, your American. He hide. Da? But he suffer as I suffer. He lose as I lose. I take his family, as he take mine.”

  It’s so calm, the way he says it. So matter of fact, like. Unfortunately at this time you do not meet the minimum criteria in order to live. Our apologies. Have a nice day.

  I shake my head. “The residents need my help.”

  “You help my family.”

  The sound is so loud I’m inside the gun barrel, like. I didn’t see Yelchin draw his gun. Colm plops back down to his chair. This look on his face, like someone’s just told him his son has died. His shirt goes red. The white in his beard.

  “Colm…”

  Yelchin points the gun at me.

  Mo leanbh. Mo stór.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The sea explodes inside the mess.

  Yelchin vanishes in the flood. The sub feels like it’s coming apart. Lord God. I grab Colm. Choking blood. I drag him behind me into the press of men through the portal out the mess. The light gone from green to red. Water up to my waist. Dead cold. My elbows bruise against the wall. We’re listing.

  We’re sinking.

  The fuck is going on. I’m under water. I lose Colm. Every dive below a dive into sharp glass. A tangle of arms and legs and belts and slings. I scratch. I kick. I claw. My hand gets around the hilt of a knife in someone’s boot. The water goes dark. I surface. Just enough room for me to breathe. I’m freezing. I’m drowning.

  I can’t swim.

  Get out. You have to get out. I pull myself along all the greebles on the bulkhead back to where I think the bridge or whatever the fuck it is was. However I got in here. How did I get in here. Colm. Where are you. Thunder in the water. Muffled screams. The thrash of drowning men. I keep following the sailors in front of me, bobbing up every minute or so for air and the sailors in front of me disappear.

  The sub disappears.

  Water burns in my lungs. My feet touch something. The sub. Oil clouds the water. The ink of my own blood. All this way. All those starts to never finish. There is no letting go. There is only the loosening of your dead fingers as the current rips you away from the thing you’ve held most dear.

  Mo leanbh. Mo stór.

  I am caught. This force pulls me like a lure upwards and the steel rung of a ladder descending down through the parapet of the sub jabs me in the ribs. I recoil into the water. The tide sweeps me back in and I grab hold of the rung and hold on with everything I have left. Every muscle in my body is frozen and yet I shake from the cold so much I can barely climb the rest of the way. Waves crash against the sinking submarine, blasting whatever strength I’ve got left right out of me.

  I keep moving.

  This muscular, determined force seizes me and I move, rung to rung. Minutes and waves between each one. I surface. I shout. I scream. The most honest sound I ever make. Colm is on the ladder above me, white as a cloud. One hand on a rung, one hand with a death grip on my jacket.

  “Colm…”

  “Go,” he says.

  The raft floats on the water close, tethered still to the outside of the parapet. I pull myself along the cable connecting them in and I climb in. I reach back for him.

  He’s gone.

  Colm. The parapet sinks. The raft going with it. Lord God. This bleeding cable. I can’t undo it. I hack at it with the knife. I hack and hack and hack until the cable breaks. The cord lashes me across the cheek and I fall back in the raft, alone.

  I crawl back to the motor. I yank hard on the pull cord. The engine sputters. There’s no fuel left. Water and steam geyser into the air. The submarine a whale, surfacing but she sinks. The sea gurgles. Men scream. Torpedoes streak under the raft like sharks. The sea heaves and I fold in with the curve of the raft. The darkened island expands out along my view. The tide takes me out into the bay.

  Declan.

  I scream for you. Let my voice be the fuel to get back to you. I’m going out. I’m too far now. The arms of the island open to the emptiness of the sea. There’s no way I’ll last out here. Maybe the tide will sweep me back. I try to use my arms to paddle. The cold shrinks me back into the raft. There’s nothing else for it. I try again. Come on. You can do this. You’ve got to do this. The raft lifts under a swell and I come crashing down inside it hard. I’m soaked. Head to toe.

  The island reduces in the distance. So does my hope.

  This deep cold sinks into my bones.

  The way it did the house when I was a girl and the heating would go out. If you didn’t get in the anti-freeze before the first frost, the heating would go and there’d be one part, this little blower kind of thing you’d have to go to Galway to replace. An entire day gone to it. Up at seven Da would be to catch the ferry and then all day to wait to come back in the afternoon and it would be seven at night when he’d come in the front door. I always wanted to go with him to the mainland. Take me, Da. Ma never let me. Such a fearful woman. Her fear strong as karst stone.

  Mo leanbh. Mo stór.

  A rainstorm wakes me. The morning shy. The world only the sea. The tides heave in anger. I am thrown. Where am I. Gavin. I’m in his shirt but it’s so heavy with wet and I can’t get warm. I curl up in my own arms. Gavin. You’re holding me. Running your hands through my hair. I’m in your lap, in front of the fire.

  Keep me warm, Gavin. Keep me close.

  The day dies in red haze. Night falls on me and I’m lost again in darkness. A day. A day off the island now. They must think me dead. Hold on. I’m coming back to you. eclan. I’m coming home, I swear to God. I wish I had one of your little boats with me now. A way back to you. I try to paddle again, but I’ve no sense of where I am or where the island is and I’ve no energy in any case. I’m a lump of ice in a freezer. My arms like weights tied to my body and I sink into the raft, in and out of consciousness. My mind goes to better places. Sitting in the chair with you singing you to your sleep.

  Seoithín, seo hó, mo stór é, mo leanbh

  Mo sheoid gan cealg, mo chuid gan tsaoil mhór

  I wake in an inch of water. Sleep a distant country. I am lost between worlds. Stiff with cold. My body aches. I struggle to lift my head above the edge of the raft. Nothing but water. Endless water. I think I’ve gone out to the ocean. The raft will drift all the way to Norway, if it stops at all. The Arctic, like.

  I’m finished.

  Maybe I’ll go around the south of Ireland, to Dublin. I’ll find Gavin there, at the airport. We’ll steal a plane, and he’ll fly it back to the island and they’ll all be waiting for us on the tarmac. Aoife. Ma. Colm. Saidbh. Eithne. Loads of people. Just like a movie. Roll credits. Take me back to Dublin. I’m never long in Dublin.

  I’m in Dublin.

  I’m walking the couple miles from Heuston Station down the quays to the boat. I need the air and the life back in my legs after the train from Galway. I’ll make the walk faster than the buses, besides. The ghosts of truant buses, all No. 13, flicker in windows of
the empty storefronts on Dame St. Grocery bags and crisp wrappers everywhere. What does it matter collecting trash now? Paying taxes? We’ve just learned our doom and straight off we’re done with the maintenance of life. The veneer of civilization. The stillness of the island grates at me most days, but the closer I get to the city center, the queues waiting for me I know at Connolly, the train waiting for me and this pain waiting for me, I miss it. I miss the quiet. The expectation of the expected. The vastness of our isolation.

  Trinity springs up out of the knotted streets at the pitted core of Dublin. The age of the place compels. The seeming permanence. Everything old fascinates me now. I ask the skinny bloke with his Morrissey coif at the ticket desk for the library if he’ll just let me in for a minute, to see if the smell still lingers. That ancient musk of the old books going to dust on the shelves. Something is comforting in that: even as what was precious decayed, it did so naturally. With purpose.

  “They emptied her out three weeks back,” Morrissey says, leading me through the barren gift shop up the stairs into the Long Room. The creak of the floor under my feet echoes through the hollowed chamber. “It’s been loads of vandals ever since the news. They moved all the books somewhere safe.”

  “Safe? Where’s safe?”

  People brush past me in the piss of a July rainstorm out front of the library. Students. Tourists. Going on about their business like nothing’s happened. What’s happened. A few months ago some scientist sent a tweet. Rogue black hole in solar system. Pluto already gone. #thetruth. Then the next thing you know the President of the United States is sweating through her top in front of some green screen running the same computer animation of the black hole chomping through the solar system like the fucking Pac-Man.

  Three years, she said. We have at best three years.

  I wind down toward O’Connell, determined to make the boat for Liverpool. A half day at sea, and then. A woman comes at me on Westmoreland, holding a half-eaten chocolate bar. A baby wrapped up in a pillow sheet slung over her shoulder, the same fabric as the scarf around her head. I can’t make out her accent. Latvia. Estonia. Ukraine. One of those places.