by Oisín Curran
Accident
Waiting room
Planet
Refugee
Bird, axe, feathers…
The images soothe me. They’re like polished stones, all surfaces, no pain or dizziness, only dim heartache. The ache of the missing whole. They are pieces of some larger picture, some other story. What story do they belong to? My story. What is my story? It’s still out of reach, but the ache of missing it restores me, drives away nausea.
Chisolm plays the piano and looks at me. So does her otter. Friendly? Unfriendly? Can’t tell. I look away when they look.
The pounding of claps jumbling in every direction woke me to the concert barn.
The show was over and Willard was taking his bow. He had failed to blow up.
The gunpowder was a dud, said Apollo with disgust when I came upon the siblings in the crowd. Willard has survived, but not for long, Artemis vowed. Not for long.
Iris found me and hustled me from the barn, desperate to clear out in advance of solicitous querying from all the concerned citizens who had been alerted to her condition by Willard’s pre-concert announcement.
How dare he, she muttered as I struggled to keep up with her down the hill. How dare he, I would never ask for charity.
I couldn’t tell if she was speaking of Willard or of Myles for disclosing her diagnosis. Maybe both. In any case, we’d left Myles behind—a familiar scenario in that Myles moved always according to his own timetable. If he found himself in convivial conversation with plenty of chatting to be had, he was not about to cut such parlance short simply because Iris wanted to go home, as she typically did. Nor was Iris prepared to wait for him to bring his discourse to a close, since she’d heard it all before and, in any case, on this particular evening she had reason to be pissed at him. And as per usual, I was enlisted to accompany her home, which was fine with me as there were books to be ingested. This evening I was re-reading Treasure Island. But the day must have gotten the better of me, for I had barely tucked myself into bed and cracked the volume before my eyes began to close and I found myself rocking in bright water.
I help Quill in the kitchen. Because she found me, Quill thinks she needs to take care of me. Rook is her assistant. Before letting me work in the kitchen, Rook trims and washes my hair, washes my face, clips my nails.
Where are you from? he asks.
I don’t know, I say. He looks at me and smiles. Not really a snarl, I realize, more of a sad smile and also somehow bright. He has crooked teeth and a crooked nose and all in all it’s a nice face. Quill thinks so. I see her looking sideways at him, surprised, as if she forgot why she wants to look.
And everybody knows Rook loves Quill. He hides it, but can’t. They fight about everything—how to chop vegetables, how to cook rice, if the sky is clear or cloudy. Sometimes the fights get bigger. Quill walks away with dark eyes darker. Rook follows, saying he’s sorry, even though he’s not sorry.
I ask Rook why they fight.
You know, he says.
Maybe, but not really, I say.
It’s because, he says bitterly, Quill is engaged to Severn and she won’t break it off.
Why not?
But he stalks away without answering.
In the following days, they fight on, but when somebody else fights them, the gap between them seals shut.
One morning a small, jittery man comes to the galley door. He wants to talk to Quill about onions.
You’re using them too quickly, he says. The ship will be entirely onionless in a matter of weeks. Do you propose to provoke ship-wide scurvy?
Quill’s small, round brown face turns red.
You can call yourself third mate if you want, she says, But you’re a fool!
Rook steps between them.
Nolan, this was your mistake, he says. If you had paid any attention to the supply list we gave you, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Nolan talks about statistics and budgets and then stops because he sees me. His eyes widen and he smiles. His teeth are white and straight. He shakes my hand slowly. His hand is thin and strong.
So pleased to meet you, he says, staring at me.
I hate him.
I don’t like onions, I say. Does that help?
He smiles again. He laughs. It’s a big laugh. He backs out of the galley.
Land! somebody shouts from the crow’s nest, and rings the bell.
Another island. Engines cut, anchor down, and Severn and Rook board the launch.
Hot wind chops the waves white. White clouds in the blue, blue sky. The island is also white—short white houses on top of white cliffs that fall down into a green valley. Quill looks through a telescope. She says the valley is full of vineyards and the streets of the clifftop village have cafés where people drink wine.
I hope this is the place, she says.
But it isn’t. Severn and Rook come back frustrated. The people on the island laughed at them when they said what we’re looking for.
It doesn’t exist, they say.
And when Rook told them about the island where we’d just been, they laughed again.
That doesn’t exist either, they said, and went back to drinking their wine.
Now everybody on board the Lizzy Madge looks at each other.
If the island that we saw does not exist, says Nolan, Then that is the island we seek.
Obviously, says Chisolm. She says it quietly, but everybody hears her. And I see she’s looking at me again. Everybody is.
Captain Severn orders the boat about on a return course. The crew runs.
Chisolm walks to me. Her otter follows.
How did you know? she asks. Her otter climbs onto her shoulders. Its long whiskers twitch.
There’s something in her voice, some kind of sound she’s trying to keep out of it. She’s close to me, staring. I can’t tell what’s going on behind those grey hawk eyes and I don’t care. At least, I don’t think I do, although I probably should.
I’m not sure, I say.
She doesn’t move, her eyes don’t move. Her face doesn’t move.
Then she turns suddenly and walks away. She touches Severn’s arm as she passes him. The otter slides down and circles his feet. Severn stops what he’s doing and follows Chisolm. It looks like he doesn’t have a choice, like he’s miserable. As he goes, his blue eyes turn to Quill, who stands in the stern of the boat with her back to him, watching the island get smaller. For a moment I can see her as he might see her, a young woman with long hair so smooth it looks like tea coming out of a spout. Come to think of it, her skin is smooth and tea-coloured too.
Quill is Chisolm’s daughter, says Rook, who’s suddenly next to me. His voice sounds like acid, and when I turn I see that his face is twisted more than usual. He must have seen the way Severn watched Quill.
They don’t look like each other, I say.
No, says Rook. Very different types too. Quill is Quill, of course, as you know. But Chisolm—well, you saw. She was measuring your soul for drapes.
Does Quill know about that? I ask, pointing my chin after Chisolm and Severn, who have now disappeared from view.
Rook shakes his head silently.
Why don’t you tell her?
He smiles at me sadly and shakes his head again. Then he rolls a cigarette, lights it, and strolls over to lean against the gunnel next to Quill.
That island might not have been the one we were looking for, Rook says, But its geology seems to have been influenced by the lost civilization in question, for, according to the ancients, that original language had both a hieratic and demotic form—the demotic was spoken by the human tongue but the hieratic was written on the landscape in shadows and light, in waterfalls and birdsong or the crashing of waves. The outcropping and cliffs of the island have been subtly altered in ways characteristic of this lan
guage, to speak more clearly to the stars. And this might have been neither capricious poetic whimsy nor metaphysical gesture, but rather mercantile semaphore, or better yet, all three.
Does Rook even know what he’s saying? I think he doesn’t. I think he’s saying anything besides what he feels. Or maybe he’s saying what he feels but in a very strange way. Or maybe he’s saying that he can’t say what he feels or that the only way to say it is this.
And surely, he goes on, It was the very capaciousness of such signifiers that allowed the local maritime demotic tongue to grow into a polyglot composed of borrowings from every other language in the world.
But no, says Quill, It is precisely not a patchwork language, but rather a direct descendant of the original demotic from which all others were born. It bears all the signs of that mercurial first language whose grammar shifts like a tide, whose relationship between word and the object it names is barely symbolic, can alter at any moment, and is, more often than not, invented on the spot. This language could be called Greek or English, Chinese or Hebrew, for one could read a text or listen to speech in any of those languages. Even, for instance, the most banal advertisement can be reread in the original demotic as something else entirely—a prayer, a love song, a lament, or a shopping list. Its rules are elastic, intuitive, yet rigid in as much as, from moment to moment, there are accurate and inaccurate means of expression.
Quill is pretending she doesn’t understand what he’s trying to say, or maybe she’s not pretending. Maybe she has no idea what’s going on.
Rook turns away from the island and throws four knives in the air. The knives are long and sharp. They flash as they turn before he catches and tosses them back up one by one in a wheel of blades. Rook says he understands this language to be synthetic, declined with the classic cases of nominative, accusative, genitive, and so forth.
Blablabla! I wait, hoping to hear him break through his own word shield, hoping he’ll say what he needs to say.
Indeed, Quill says, It is, and yet its categories are more numerous than one expects and very different, for there are no genders nor are there quantities. And the declensions are composed musically—a word spoken in the lowest register is, as one might expect, Subterranean; in the highest register it is Extraterrestrial; soft utterance is Angelic; mouthed speechlessly it is Divine; spoken glottally with mouth hanging open it is Organic; and the Synthetic is indicated by a nasal tone.
My head hurts, heart falls.
And in written form? Rook asks as a knife falls and stabs the deck.
The categories are indicated by colour and letter shape, Quill says, still looking back at the island.
But, Rook says, Can any of this be counted on? For surely there were no primary documents in existence and only the commentaries of learned antiquarians relying on hearsay and legend.
Rook winks at me as he says this and I realize he’s not going to say anything. All this has been a way of not saying it. Not because he fears revealing himself, but because he fears hurting her.
But when Quill turns and lowers her binoculars, she says, Rook, I know very well that you already know all this.
Does she know, then? Does she understand?
You were drawing me out, she goes on, To flatter me, but I went along with your game because it was not for your sake that I was speaking, it was for the girl.
And she looks at me and smiles.
Girl?
From his position wedged under the station wagon, my father’s astonished voice shot up through the tangle of pipes, wires, and engine block. I explained impatiently that before I was born I was a girl. I couldn’t blame him for being surprised. My girlness in the story was an element that arrived as an unlooked-for twist even to me, its author. But once revealed, it seemed inevitable, even logical. Yes, inescapably logical when it comes right down to it. There was no response from Myles as he wrestled with the bolt on the oil pan, cursing gently and exhorting the object to capitulate. I watched his feet, which were all that were visible of him. They jerked and twitched with effort. At length he noticed my silence, remembered where we were, repeated the word Girl in a bemused tone, and then urged me to carry on. But the spell had been broken. I switched off the tape recorder he had placed on the engine block under the open hood. The bleary sun had set, and a thin, cold drizzle began to fall out of the darkness. Myles declared his need for a flashlight and a larger wrench.
I covered my head with my coat and hurried to the shack where Myles kept his tools. He called out to my retreating back that the wrench could be found just inside the door, to the left, above my head, the flashlight should be on the table saw. My spirits, already low, fell to the level of the mud I splashed through, for even in daylight I found my father’s instructions rarely helpful and the navigation of his tool shed a fruitless exercise. I entered the door, bumping into an old window that had been enthusiastically purchased at a recent garage sale. Having broken a pane, I carefully collected the pieces, my fingers bitter in the damp cold, and stacked the glass in a corner, catching now the roar of my father’s voice impatiently demanding to know what was taking me so long. I called back that I was looking, but all the while I pondered whether he had said to my left and up or up and to my left, and was that left as I entered or as I exited. These subtle variations should not have made a difference in a space equivalent to the interior of a car and yet the truth was that no level of descriptive precision could have helped me in that bedlam.
The spotty light cast by the fading flashlight (which I had found not on the table saw but on the vice) shone on jumbled stacks of old jam jars full of unsorted rusting nails, bolts, and screws removed from salvaged wood by me over the course of tedious, sweaty afternoons. Suspended from the rafters were squares, levels, cords, and chains in such profusion that proceeding in any direction was hazardous to the skull. An array of circular saws were strewn in varying degrees of disrepair, and on the narrow rocking surface of the table saw sat Myles’s antique power sander, a device with which he accomplished tasks that ordinarily entailed the use of five or six other tools. The distant thunder of his voice reached me again and I slumped, sensing defeat, but I could not return empty-handed. My forehead cracked against a dangling pipe wrench, but as wrenches went, this one was out of the question since I knew it to be useless from previous attempts to proffer it as a substitute (why then it persisted in that shed, I don’t know). No, this time the best I could do was a hammer—known to my Grandfather, Padraig, as a Chicago screwdriver. It had been Padraig who replaced its cracked handle with a stick of whittled wood only a few months earlier during one of his month-long stays.
Though billed as vacations, these were, I would later learn, rest cures or, more precisely, dry spells. Once a year he was packed off to our remote spot far from bars or stores or drinking friends, and though from time to time he would press some money into my hand and propose that I ride my bike to the nearest vendor for a fifth of rye or gin or whatever was on offer—a scheme whose unfeasibility due to my minority age I was forced to explain repeatedly—for the most part he puttered away with apparent contentment, repairing tools and building benches and coming into the house at regular intervals to sit down and await the preparation of his breakfast, his lunch, his tea, his supper, all of which was resentfully served to him by my mother, who found his patriarchal expectations of her only slightly less irritating than my father’s assumption that she would fulfill them.
And after he had finished his boiled egg, his toast, and his tea, he would launch into his repertoire of stories, buttonholing whomever was in range—usually me—with tales of hierophantic saints capable of covering whole islands with their miraculous cloaks, or tossing their walking sticks thirty miles without breaking a sweat, or he told of cannonballs bouncing into an ancestor’s backyard, gone astray from a furious naval battle between a Spanish galleon and a British man-of-war, or of famous revolutionary martyrs hunted, hung, shot, or b
eheaded. And best of all, and most repeated, were accounts of tricksters he himself had known—men who used their wits to outmanoeuvre the overlords—buying property they could not buy through proxies, hunting animals they could not hunt by wearing disguises, finding hidden glens to make the whisky they were forbidden to make. In those years I still listened with great curiosity, and it was not until much later, when I had heard them all many times repeated, that I began to humour the teller, or to quiz him for further details, or to simply switch channels to my own interior monologue. But on one occasion he startled me with a story never before told and never repeated.
I remember that it was a summer night and that a thunderstorm was grumbling in the distance. Iris and Myles were at the kitchen table with someone—maybe Bill and Bernadette. Padraig sat in the rocking chair near the screen of an open window, and I perched nearby on a stool. We sat there together watching the lightning, and in the silences between thunderclaps we could hear mosquitoes clamouring at the screen. And Padraig abruptly began to say that he’d gone on a pilgrimage in Ireland three times, fasting for three days each time while marking the Stations of the Cross on his knees and muttering the rosary through the night in the Basilica. And all the while asking: should he go to America? But God gave him no answer. He asked his parish priest, who was not encouraging. He asked a Monsignor, who was similarly dissuasive. He had a wife and six children; he had a job at a time when jobs were scarce in the republic. Not only that, it was a government job—he was a member of the gardai, a cop. That was secure employment. But the pay was poor and he kept failing the advancement exams. Above all, he loathed policing—handing out fines to teenage girls for cycling after dark without a bike lamp, ensuring farmers were keeping the bracken weeds out of their fields, ferreting out illegal poitin stills, shutting down pubs for operating after hours—it was petty stuff when he was longing for adventure. He’d grown up hearing of neighbours who had made a fortune in the Yukon and come back loaded with gold. His own uncle had been a Forty-Niner before heading north and now they said he owned most of British Columbia. Most of British Columbia and a good deal of Alberta to boot. Padraig wanted to give it a go. So he climbed Mount Errigal, the tallest peak in Donegal. At the top he said a rosary in each of the four directions, according to the pilgrimage instructions. He took in the view flung down before him—green fields and stone walls shooting out to the brutal North Atlantic. Then he descended. Halfway down he bent to pick up a jacket he’d left on his way up. As he did, he felt God speak to him. The answer, at last.
