by Colum McCann
Cigarette smoke lingered in the air. She rounded the back of the cottage. A woman. Plainclothes. The whistles still came in short, sharp bursts.
A loss had lodged itself inside her. Rebecca gestured for the cigarette, drew long and hard on the filter. It tasted foul, heavy. She had not smoked in many years.
—He’s deaf, you know, she said, blowing the smoke sideways.
A tenderness shone in the detective’s eyes. Rebecca turned back into the house, pulled on her coat, walked out the front door and down toward the cliffs.
A helicopter broke the dark horizon, hovered for a moment right above the cottage, its spotlight shining on the stone walls, until it banked sharply and continued up the coast.
She joined the searchers. They went in groups of three, linking arms. The land was potholed, hillocked, stony. Every now and then she could hear a gasp from a neighboring group when a foot rolled across a rock, or a lost lobster pot, or a piece of rubbish. The stone walls were cold to the touch. The wind ripped under a sheet of discarded plastic. Tiny tufts of dyed sheep wool shone on the barbed wire: patterns of red and blue.
Along the coast small groups zigzagged the distant beaches in the last of the light. Dozens of boats plied the waves. The bells on the ancient boats tinkled. A Galway hooker went by with its white sails unfurled. A fleet of kayaks glided close to the shore, returning home.
The moon rose red: its beauty appeared raw and offensive to her. She turned inland. Two detectives walked alongside. Rebecca felt suspended between them. Cones of pale torch beam swept through the gathering darkness.
At an abandoned home, roofless, hemmed in by an immense rhododendron bush, a call came over the radio that a wetsuit had been found, over. The male detective held a finger in the air, as if figuring the direction of the wind. No, not a wetsuit, said the voice, high alert, no, there was something moving, high alert, stand by, stand by, there was something alive, a ripple in the water, high alert, high alert, yes, it was a body, a body, they had found something, over, a body, over.
The detective turned away from her, moved into the overgrown doorway, shielded the radio, stood perfectly still in the starlight until the call clarified itself: it was a movement in the water, discard, they had seen a seal, discard the last report, only a seal, repeat, discard, over.
Rebecca knew well the legend of the selkie. She thought of Tomas zippering his way out into the water, sleek, dark, hidden.
The female detective whispered into the radio: For fucksake, be careful, we’ve got the mother here.
The word lay on her tongue now: mother, máthair, em. They went forward again, through the unbent grass, into the tunnels of their torches.
—
ALAN’S CLOTHING WAS FOLDED on the wicker chair. His knees were curled to his chest. A shallow wheeze came from the white of his throat. A note lay on her pillow: They wouldn’t let me sleep in Tomas’s room, wake me when you’re home. And then a scribbled Please.
They had called off the search until morning but she could hear the fishing boats along the coast, still blasting their horns.
Rebecca took off her shoes, set them by the bedroom fire. Only a few small embers remained, a weak red glow. The cuffs of her jeans were wet and heavy from the muck. She did not remove them.
She went to the bed and lay on top of the covers, pulled up a horsehair blanket, turned away from Alan. Gazing out the window, she waited for a bar of light to rise and part the dark. A torchlight bore past in a pale shroud. Perhaps there was news. At the cliff he had twirled the imaginary cane. Where had he learned that Chaplin shuffle? The sheer surprise of it. The unknowability. Unspooling himself along the cliff.
From the living room came the intermittent static of the radios. Almost eighteen hours now.
Rebecca pushed her face deeper into the pillow. Alan stirred underneath the sheets. His arm came across her shoulder. She lay quite still. Was he sleeping or awake? How could he sleep? His arm tightened around her. His hand moved to her hair, his fingers at her neck, his thumb at the edge of her clavicle.
That was not sleep. That was not sleep at all.
She gently pushed his arm away.
Another torch bobbed past the window. Rebecca rose from the bed. A gold-backed hairbrush lay on the dressing table. Long strands of her dark hair were tangled up inside it. She brushed only one side of her hair. The damp hem of her jeans chilled her toes and she walked toward the wicker chair, covered herself in a blanket, looked out into the early dark.
When dawn broke, she saw the door open slightly, the female detective peeping in around the frame, something warm in the eye-flicker between them.
Alan stirred, pale in the bed, and moaned something like an excuse. His pinkish face. His thinning hair. He looked brittle to her, likely to dissolve.
In the kitchen the kettle was already whistling. A row of teacups were set along the counter. The detective stepped forward and touched her arm. Rebecca’s eyes leaped to catch hers, a brief merged moment.
—I hope you don’t mind. We took the liberty. There’s no news yet.
The presence of the word yet jolted her. There would, one day, be news. Its arrival was inevitable.
—We took one of Tomas’s shirts from the wash basket.
—Why? said Rebecca.
—For the dogs, the detective said.
Rebecca wanted suddenly to hold the shirt, inhale its odor. She reached for the kettle, tried to pour through the shake in her hands. So, there would be dogs out on the headland later. Searching for her son. She glanced at her reflection in the window, saw only him. His face was double-framed now, triple-framed. Out on the headland, running, the dogs following, a ram, a hawk, a heron. She felt a lightness swell in her. A curve in the air. A dive. She gripped the hem of the counter. The slow, sleek slip of the sea. A darkening underwater. The shroud of cold. The coroner, the funeral home, the wreaths, the plot, the burial. She felt herself falter. The burst to the surface. A selkie, spluttering for air. She was guided into a chair at the table. She tried to lean forward to pour the tea. Voices vibrated around her. Her hands shook. Every outcome was unwhisperable. She had a sudden thought that there was no sugar in the house. They needed sugar for their tea. She would go to the store with Tomas later. The newsagent’s. Yes, that is where she would go. Inland along the bend of narrow road. Beyond the white bungalow. Crossing at the one traffic light. Walk with him past the butcher shop, past the sign for tours to the islands, past the turf accountant, past the shuttered hotel, the silver-kegged alleyway, into the newsagent’s on Main Street. The clink of the anchor-shaped bell. The black-and-white linoleum floor. Along the aisle. The sharp smell of paraffin. Past the paper rack set up on lobster pots, the small blue-and-orange ropes hanging down, old relics of the sea. She would walk beyond the news of his disappearance. Bread, biscuits, soup. To the shelf where the yellow packets of sugar lay. We cannot do without sugar, Tomas, second shelf down, trust me, there, good lad, get it, please, go on, reach in.
She wasn’t sure if she had said this aloud or not, but when she looked up again the female detective had brought one of Tomas’s shirts, held it out, her eyes moist. The buttons were cold to the touch: Rebecca pressed them to her cheek.
From the laneway came the sound of scraping branches. Van doors being opened and closed. She heard a high yelp, and then the scrabble of paws upon gravel.
—
SHE SPENT THAT MORNING out in the fields. Columns of sunlight filtered down over the sea. A light wind rippled the grass at the cliff edge. She wore Tomas’s shirt under her own, tight and warm.
So many searchers along the beaches. Teachers. Farmers. Schoolchildren holding hands. The boats trawling the waters had trebled.
At lunchtime, dazed with fatigue, Rebecca was brought home. A new quiet had insinuated itself into the cottage. The policemen came and went as if they had learned from long practice. They seemed to ghost into one another. It was almost as if they could slip into one another’s faces. She knew them, somehow, b
y the way they drank their tea. Food had arrived, with notes from neighbors. Fruit bowls. Lasagna. Tea bags and biscuits. A basket of balloons, of all things. A scribbled prayer to Saint Christopher in a child’s hand.
Alan sat down next to her on the couch. He put his hand across hers. He would, he said, do the media interviews. She would not have to worry about it.
She heard the thud of distant waves. The labored drone of a TV truck filtered down from the laneway.
A Sunday newspaper called, offering money for a photograph. Alan walked to a corner of the cottage, cupped his phone, whispered into the receiver. She thought she heard him weeping.
Pages from the Israeli novel were strewn across her desk. Scribbles in the margins. Beside the pages, Mandelstam’s memoir lay open, a quarter of the way through. Russia, she thought. She would have to tell them in Vladivostok, let them know what had happened, fill out the paperwork. The orphanage. The broken steps. The high windows. The ocher walls. The one great painting in the hallway: the Bay of Amur, summertime, a yacht on its water, water, always water. She would find the mother and father, explain that their son had disappeared swimming on the western seaboard of Ireland. A small apartment in the center of the city, a low coffee table, a full ashtray, the mother wan and withdrawn, the father portly and thuggish. My fault. I gave him a wetsuit. All my fault. Forgive me.
She wanted the day to peel itself backward, regain its early brightness, its possibility, its pour into teacups, but she was not surprised to see the dark come down.
Alan sat in the corner, curled around his phone. She almost felt a sadness for him, the whispered sweetheart, the urgent pleading and explanations with his own young children.
She totaled up the hours: forty-eight. That night, lying next to him, Rebecca allowed his arm across her waist. The simple comfort of it. She heard him murmur her name again, but she did not turn.
In the morning she rose and walked out behind the house, the dew wet against her plimsolls. The television truck hummed farther up the laneway, out of sight. She stepped across the cattle grid. The steel bars pushed hard into the soles of her feet. A muddy path led up the hill. The grass in the middle was green and untrodden. Moss lay slick on the stone wall.
A piece of torn plastic was tangled in the high hedges. She reached in and pulled it out, shoved it deep into her pocket: she had no idea why.
Water dripped from the branches of nearby trees. A few birds marked out their morning territory. She had only ever driven this part of the laneway before. It was, she knew, part of an old famine road.
Rebecca stood a while: the hum from the TV truck up the road seemed to cancel the rhythm of the sea.
She leaned into the hard slope of the road, opened the bar of the red gate, stepped over the mud. The bolt slid back perfectly into its groove. She walked the center grass up and around the second corner to where the TV truck idled against the hedges. Inside, silhouetted against a pair of sheer curtains, three figures were playing cards. The curtains moved but the figures remained static. Across the front seat a man lay slumped, sleeping.
A small group of teenagers huddled near the back of the truck, sharing a cigarette, their breath shaping clouds of white in the cold. They nudged each other as she approached.
She stopped, then, startled by the sight. Alone, casual, adrift. He sauntered in behind the group, unnoticed. A brown hunting jacket hung from his shoulders. A hooded sweatshirt underneath. His trousers were rolled up and folded over. The laces of his boots were open and the tongues wagged sideways. Steam rolled off him, as if he had been walking a long time.
His mouth was slightly open. His lip was wet with mucus. Mud and leaves in the fringes of his hair. Under his right arm he carried a dark bag. The bag fell from his arm, and he caught hold of it as he moved forward. A long, gray stripe. The wetsuit. He was carrying the wetsuit.
Sh’khol. He had not yet seen her. His body seemed to drag his shadow behind him: slow, reluctant, but sharp. She knew the word now. Shadowed.
The door of the TV truck opened behind her. Her name was called. Mrs. Barrington. She did not turn. She felt as if she were skidding in a car.
She was aware of a bustle behind her, two, three, four people piling out of the truck. The impossible utterance of his name. Tomas. Is that you? Turn this way, Tomas. A yell came from the teenagers. Look over here. They had their phones out. Tomas! Tomas! Turn this way, Tomas.
Rebecca saw a furred microphone pass before her eyes. It dipped down in front of her, and she pushed it away. A cameraman jostled her. Another shout erupted. She moved forward. Her feet slipped in the mud.
Tomas turned. She took him in her arms. A surge of joy.
She held his face. The paleness, the whites of his eyes. His was a gaze that belonged to someone else, a boy of another experience.
He passed the wetsuit to her. It was cold to the touch and dry.
—
THE NEWS WENT AHEAD of them. The cheers went up as they rounded the corner toward the garden. Alan ran along the laneway in his pajamas, stopped abruptly when he saw the television cameras, grabbed for the gap in the cotton trousers.
Rebecca shouldered Tomas through the gauntlet, her arm encircling him tightly, guiding him to the front door.
In the cottage, a swathe of light dusted the floor. The female detective stood in the center of the room. Her name badge glinted. Detective Harnon. It struck Rebecca that she could name things again: people, words, ideas. A warmth spread through the small of her back.
A smell of turf smoke came off Tomas’s clothing. It was, she later realized, one of the few clues she would ever get.
The cottage filled up behind her. She saw a photographer at the large plate-glass window. All around her the phones were ringing. The kettle whistled on the stove. A fear had tightened Tomas. She needed to get him alone. The photographer shoved his camera up against the windowpane. She spun Tomas away as the flash erupted.
Morning light stamped itself in small rectangles on the bedroom floor. Rebecca closed the window blinds. The helmet was lying on the bed. His pajamas were neatly folded and placed on a chair. She ignored the knocking at the door. He was shivering now. She held his face, kissed him. He looked away.
The door opened tentatively.
—Leave us be, please. Leave us be.
She touched the side of his cheek, then shucked the brown jacket from his shoulders. A hunting jacket. She checked the pockets. A few grains of thread. A small ball of fur. A wet matchbook. He lifted his arms. She peeled the sweatshirt up over his head. His skin was tight and dimpled.
A piece of leaf fell from his hair to the floor. She turned him around, looked at his back, his neck, his shoulder blades. He was unmarked. No cuts, no scrapes.
She looked down at Tomas’s trousers. Denims. Too large by far. A man’s denims. Fastened with an old purple belt with a gold clasp. Clothing from another era. Gaudy. Ancient.
A bolt of cold ran along her arms.
—No, she said. Please, no.
She reached for him, but he slapped her hand away. The door rattled again behind her. She turned to see Alan’s face: the stretched wire of his flesh, the small brown of his eyes.
—We need a male detective in here, she said. Now.
—
IN THE HOSPITAL IT was still bright morning and the air was motionless in the low corridors and muddy footprints lay about and the yellow walls pressed in upon them and the pungent odor of antiseptic made her go to the windows and the trees outside stood static and the seagulls cawed up over the rooftops and she stood in the prospect of the unimaginable—the tangle of rumor and evidence and fact—and she waited for the doctors as the minutes idled and the nurses passed by in the corridors and the trolleys rattled and the orderlies pushed their heavy carts and an inexhaustible current of human misery moved in and out of the waiting room every story every nuance every pulse of the city pushing up against the wired windows peering in.
—
THE WATER POURED HARD and clea
r. She tested its warmth against her wrist. Tomas came into the bathroom, dropped his red jumper on the floor, slid out of his khakis, stood in his white shirt, clumsily working the buttons.
She reached to help, but he stepped away, then gestured for her to leave while he climbed into the swimming togs. So, he wanted to wear shorts while she washed him? Fair enough, it was appropriate, she would let him.
The house was quiet again. Only the sound of the waves. She keyed her new phone alive. A dozen messages. She would attend to them later.
She returned to the bathroom with her hands covering her eyes.
—Ta-da! she said.
He stood there, pale and thin in front of her. The swimming shorts were far too tight. Along his slender stomach she could see a gathering of tiny, fine hairs that ran in a line from his belly button. He hopped from foot to foot and cupped his hands over the intimate outline of his body.
He had been untouched. That is what Detective Harnon had said. He was slightly dehydrated, but untouched. No abuse. No cuts. No scars. They had run all manner of tests. Later the detective had asked around the village. Nobody had come forward. There were no other clues.
They wanted him to come in for evaluation the following week. A psychologist, she said. Someone who might piece together everything that had happened, but Rebecca knew there’d never be any answers, no amount of probing could solve it, no photographs, no maps, no walks along the coastline. She would go swimming with him again, soon, down to the water. They would ease themselves into the shallows. She would watch him carefully negotiate the seastack. She would guide him away from the current. Perhaps some small insight might unravel, but she was aware that she could never finally, fully understand.
The simple grace of his return was enough. I live, I breathe, I go, I come back. Nothing else. I am here now, that is all.
Rebecca tested the water again with her fingers. She helped Tomas over the rim of the tub. Goose bumps appeared on his skin. His ribs were sharp and pale. He fell against her, stepped out. He groaned. The wet of his toes chilled her bare feet. She threw a towel around his shoulders to warm him, then guided him back toward the water. He placed both feet in the bath, and let the warmth course up through his body. He cupped his hands in front of his shorts once more. She put her hand on his shoulder and, with gentle insistence, got him to kneel.
