The South

by Colm Toibin

  “We’re nearly there now, aren’t we?” she said.

  “Just another bit. It won’t take us long.”

  THE SLANEY

  It was a Sunday morning in December. Katherine went down the spiral staircase from the low ceilinged bedroom to the living room below. At the back of the converted outhouse was the studio from where she could see a half mile stretch of the river. Her work of the previous month lay about the studio, resting against the walls.

  Despite the studies she had made, and despite her intense concentration day after day, painting from early morning and working long into the evening, despite this exhaustive involvement in the work, she was still unsure, she still felt that some of the work was too abstract.

  Between the outhouse and the studio there was an old building where she had stored paintings and sketches going back over thirty years. To relax for an hour or two during the day, she worked on paintings that had been half done over the years in Dublin, in the Pyrenees and in Barcelona. But she knew that eventually she would have to face the present work.

  * * *

  She wanted to have a show which was not a collection of scraps, work done in bits and pieces. It was ten years since her previous exhibition. She had shown work from Spain in the Dawson Gallery; she had been included in the Living Art in Dublin; she still had all the Ballyconigar watercolours and oils. She was ready to exhibit these watercolours and have them framed, but the oils, she believed, would take years to complete.

  The Slaney north of Enniscorthy and south of Bunclody. This was the land the English had taken over and tilled. They had cut down the trees, they had given new names to each thing, as though they were the first to live there. In the beginning she had been trying to paint the land as though it had no history, only colours and contours. Had the light changed as the owners changed? How could it matter? At dawn and dusk she walked along by the river. In the morning there was a mist along the Slaney, palpable, grey, lingering. In the evening at four when the light faded, an intense calm descended on the river, a dark blue stillness as though glass were moving from Wicklow to the sea, even the sounds then were muted, a few crows in the trees, cattle in the distance and the faint noise of water.

  * * *

  She began to work; she started to paint as though she was trying to catch the landscape rolling backwards into history, as though horizon was a time as well as a place. Dusk on the Slaney. Over and over. Dusk on the Slaney and the sense of all dusks that have come and gone in one spot in one country, the time it was painted to stand for all time, with all time’s ambiguities.

  In the distance the rebels lie bleeding.

  In the distance no one has yet set foot.

  In the distance a car is moving.

  In the distance the sanitorium at Brownswood in Enniscorthy.

  In the distance Enniscorthy Castle squats at the top of a hill.

  In the distance is the light and the darkness falling, the clouds moving, the Blackstairs Mountains above Bunclody, Mount Leinster, the full moon rising.

  * * *

  She often worked at the end of the promenade along the Slaney, near Enniscorthy. She faced down the river. She had planned twenty-four paintings and asked Michael Graves to help her stretch that number of canvases, each the same size: just under six feet in height and four feet in width. She could chart each one, first on paper with crayons and then on a smaller canvas. When the time came to paint on the big scale she did so indoors, under artificial light. She waited until the evening and worked in the studio.

  She made it clear to Richard and Deirdre that they were to visit her whenever they wished. Michael Graves had years before told her the story of the man from Porlock who had disturbed Coleridge when the poet was writing Kubla Khan in a frenzy of ecstasy and concentration. It became a joke. Clare became the little girl from Porlock and Richard the man from Porlock. Clare came after school and talked for an hour or two, or went for a walk or drove with her into Enniscorthy. She also did some painting or played in the studio.

  Richard visited at lunchtime. Katherine had taken a stereo into the studio but she never listened to music when she was working. She played some music for Richard every day. As soon as he came in she put on a record and made him guess what it was. He adopted the habit of lying on the floor dressed in his work clothes, his eyes closed, not saying anything, listening to the music. If there was a light on in the evening he would come in for half an hour and talk. Deirdre did not come unless she had a message or an excuse.

  “You’ve been so good to me since I came back,” Katherine said to her one day. “I really appreciate what you’ve done.”

  “It was the least we could do,” Deirdre said.

  “No,” Katherine insisted, “I am talking more about you, how much you have done and how good you have been.”

  “But I’ve done nothing,” Deirdre said.

  “You have. This whole studio and the outhouse were all your work.”

  “Oh I enjoyed that,” Deirdre said.

  “And also, maybe more important, is the way you didn’t try and stop anything happening. Another person would have, you know.”

  Deirdre did not reply.

  “I’m very glad you married Richard. I say that sincerely.”

  “That’s very nice of you,” Deirdre looked at her directly.

  * * *

  Before her mother died the old lady had wanted to see Richard and Deirdre and they had gone to London together. Her mother, too, had agreed with Katherine—Richard was lucky to have married Deirdre, luckier than either his father or grandfather had been with their wives. Her mother was dead a year. She had left her jewellery to Clare just as she had promised and left nothing else at all.

  * * *

  There were days when Katherine had no idea what to do. Days when the paint did nothing, when she knew there would be no point in going into the studio at night to develop the ideas she had worked on during the day. She had to learn to let herself rest and stay calm. She had to keep looking, keep watching the river, just concentrate on that. And a few times late at night, she left her flat in the converted outhouse and went back to her studio and turned on all the lights—she then would take out everything she had done, all the plans, notes, sketches and the big canvases, and she would look, and walk around the studio. There would be no sound.

  She tried to empty her mind, to let nothing in apart from seeing what was in front of her. No ideas, no memories, no thoughts. Just the things around her.

  Three or four times like this the break came. There was a way. Any mark on the canvas would be a way. A random stroke, meaning nothing, pointing towards nothing. Any colour, any shape. There must be no doubts. Thus in the small hours paintings came into being.

  The valley in red and brown, not as though it were autumn and the red and brown were the colours of the trees, but as though it were winter in red and brown. Dusk on the Slaney in winter in red and brown. The river of small pools and currents.

  The valley as though painted from beneath, as though it were a map. The curve in the Slaney snaking across the painting in every colour to re-create the water, the sky in the water and the river bed underneath. And then there was the land around, the way it had been tilled, the farmed ground. And the house her father built during the Troubles. And everywhere the sun pouring down light on the world.

  THE ROAD TO DUBLIN

  On the road to Dublin. April. Michael Graves lit a cigarette for Katherine and handed it to her.

  “Why don’t you learn to drive?” she asked him.

  “I’m too old.”

  “You’re too contrary.”

  “I’m too contrary.”

  “Sometimes I become tired driving. My back hurts.”

  “You’re too contrary,” he laughed.

  “I’m too old,” she said, “that’s why my back hurts. We’re both too old. That’s why I wish you could drive.”

  “I wish I was a maid again,” he sang. “But a maid again I never will be till
cherries grow on an ivy tree.”

  It was two weeks since all the paintings had been delivered to the gallery in Dublin. Sixteen of the large canvases were ready and framed. These paintings would fill the two rooms upstairs in the gallery. Down in the return they could hang some of the watercolours from Ballyconnigar: the small modest images of sand, sea and sky, muted, almost colourless. They made no statement, they tried nothing new, nobody could dislike them. They were competent; they had ease.

  The other work was bigger and more risky. Her chances of success were slim. She had not seen the work framed and hanging in the gallery. She had left others to arrange her work.

  “I’m nervous,” she said. “Do you remember the way Miguel used to be? I feel just like that. The week before an exhibition, Miguel always reminded me of a dog looking for a place to hide a bone, even if he had only one painting in the show. He could not keep still. You were never like that.”

  “I never put so much of myself into a painting as either Miguel or you did. I only used to worry about what would sell,” he said.

  “I’ve put so much into these paintings, I’m not sure if I’ve anything left. I’ve exhausted myself. Maybe I should have left something over.”

  Gorey, Arklow. Now the sky was completely clear. For weeks there had been nothing to do. Odd memories trickling in and Miguel back on her mind, preying on her, almost talking to her sometimes. She spoke to Richard about it one day, and once the subject was opened, they discussed it over and over. Sometimes if they had talked at lunchtime and he had to go, he would come back that evening with questions. He wanted to know when things happened, did this happen before or after this, what year was that, what were the results and consequences of various actions? Katherine left out her feelings, she told him what happened, where they had gone, what they had done, what Miguel had said, what he looked like, anecdotes, unconnected events, days. Later, he wanted her to fill these in, to add in the feeling, the colour. Did you love him then? he would ask. Or how did you feel when that happened? Or what did you think then? And these were the difficult questions.

  “It’s going to be a great day. You’ll be swimming soon,” Michael Graves said. They drove through Rathnew.

  “Not today though,” she said. “I’m afraid to go and look at the paintings. I’m not afraid of the opening. That will be bearable. There will be people I’ll have to talk to. The gallery will be full of people. I won’t know any of them and that will be even better. And there will be all that wine. No, it’s seeing the paintings I’m afraid of.”

  “Have a drink first,” he said.

  “I don’t know. That might make things worse.”

  Newtownmountkennedy. Bray. Richard and Deirdre would drive along the same road later for the opening. They had never been to one before. She was glad when they said they would not stay long; she did not want to be responsible for anyone else. She had herself and Michael to look after.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “You mean today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whatever you want to do.”

  “I want you to come to the gallery with me now.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want you to have lunch with me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then I’ll go home and I’ll meet you in the gallery later on. I’ll have to wash and change.”

  She parked in Nassau Street and they went around the corner to the gallery. It was nearing lunchtime, the streets were filling up. She went into the gallery in Dawson Street feeling that she was waiting for news: what would they look like? It was easy downstairs, as she knew it would be, to look at the watercolours.

  “You’ll have no trouble selling these anyway. If I’d money I’d buy one myself,” Michael said.

  The front room of the Taylor Gallery had six of the large paintings. What amazed her seeing them again was the thickness of the paint, how much work each painting contained, how many decisions she had made, working over and over each new change on the canvas in a way that would be impossible to repeat. And yet some strokes had been left there without any work.

  The paintings took over the room; each was the same size and depicting more or less the same landscape. But the colours were different; there was simply a mood and shape to each painting, a sense of a river flowing through well-cultivated land, a sense of similar horizons that illustrated the same place.

  The effect in the back room was even stronger.

  “What do you think?” she turned to Michael.

  “I think they’re good,” he said and smiled.

  “Let’s go before anyone sees us,” she said.

  They walked back along Nassau Street towards Lincoln Place.

  * * *

  “We haven’t seen you for a long time,” the waitress said when they went into Bernardo’s.

  “You do have a table, don’t you?” Katherine asked.

  The waitress pointed to a table against the wall and they sat down.

  “Here we are again,” Michael said. “What are we going to have?”

  The waitress came over and Katherine ordered.

  After the meal they had liqueurs and coffee. They walked back to the car.

  “I’ll see you later,” she said.

  She drove down the quays to Blackhall Place and turned up towards home.

  * * *

  The silence in the house. It struck her as she closed the door that there would be silence in the house. She put her back against the door and listened. This was what she had gained: an appreciation of the subtleties of silence, a calm joy each time she came in the door that there would be silence. She went upstairs and took off her clothes in the back bedroom and put on her dressing-gown and slippers. There was time to sit around for the afternoon, have a bath, listen to a record, think. She got some orange juice from the fridge. She lay back on the couch with a cushion under her head.

  It must have been March when they first arrived in Llavorsi. Even in the early afternoon the air had been freezing and sharp, like no air she had ever breathed before and the stream was swollen with ice just melted. It had resembled some point near the edge of the world after seven punishing hours on the bus from Barcelona, up and up, twists in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It was noon when they reached the summit after an hour’s even steeper climb and she had seen the valley down below for the first time, fertile like a promised land.

  She was afraid that day to touch Miguel or talk to him. It had been so fraught between them on the journey, it reminded her of the air in Barcelona when it became purple before a thunderstorm: a fierce tension while you waited for the rain. It reminded her of travel, of being in a strange place for the first day, walking the streets of London, Paris, Barcelona.

  It reminded her of mornings in Barcelona when she’d had no sleep, or two hours’ sleep and all she wanted was some small physical contact before falling into a day’s weak sleep.

  Her mind began to wander to the time before Richard was born, just after she was married, and it was the summer, one of those high, rich, summer days in Enniscorthy. For some reason she had had no sleep and it was early, maybe ten or half ten in the morning. She walked across the fields looking for Tom; at first her search was casual, almost indifferent but as she proceeded and was unable to find him she became more concerned and almost frantic. There was the smell of warm grass that day, all these years later she could still smell the warm grass. When she found him, she could not explain. She called him from the gate where he was standing with some workmen.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Now?”

  “Come back to the house with me. I want to talk to you.”

  “There are things to be done here. Not now.”

  “You must come now. You must come now. You must come now,” she had pleaded.

  He asked her what it was, but she insisted he come back with her and she would tell him.

  “Come upstairs,” she said.

  “What is it?” he
asked and smiled, as though puzzled.

  She came towards him; she was almost unable to breathe.

  “It’s twelve o’clock in the morning,” he said.

  “I want to make love,” she said.

  He turned away from her and began to unbutton his shirt. The whiteness of his bare back was made more noticeable by his red arms and neck. She was already naked behind him. She put her hands on her own breasts and held them. The silence between them was only broken by her breathing; he stood still for a moment when he was naked and she moved towards him and put her arms around him. After a few moments she grasped his hand and brought him to the bed. He seemed heavier, fleshier in the morning light. When she took his penis in her hand and held it he gasped for a second and his hands seemed to tighten on her back as though she was hurting him. He lay on top of her and stopped her when she tried to push his penis into her. He lay on top of her without entering her and kissed her slowly on the mouth. She detected an anxiety in him, a sort of weariness, but there was still something forcing him to go on. She kept her hand down between her legs, massaging herself with her fingers, doing what he would never do for her. After a while he came into her and moved his hands along her breasts as he began to push in and out. One hand she kept down on herself and the other she held at his neck. When he began to ejaculate she heard him breathing faster and whimper for a moment as though he were in pain. Her orgasm came after his and she began to cry out as though she was having a fit.

  “Don’t make noise,” he said to her. “Don’t make noise.”

  He put on his clothes quietly as though it was the early morning and he didn’t want to wake her. She didn’t look up when he touched her on the shoulder for a moment before he left the room. He left her to fall into a long, satisfying sleep. But for days afterwards he avoided being in the bedroom when she was there and at night kept to his side of the bed; he seemed afraid of her.

  * * *

  Over the mantelpiece now in her house in Dublin hung The Hammock, the painting she had bought from Ramon Rogent almost thirty years before. Her old teacher; she had kept the painting with her to remember him and his studio in Puertaferrisa. There was still a power in the painting which she had not observed for many years, how he had traced the twine of the hammock using every colour under the sun: yellow, pink, red, black, white. And the intricate, colourful designs on the woman’s dress and the hill behind. But governing everything was the hard light of Majorca, harder than anything in Catalonia, the soul taken out of every colour and just its dead, hard body left glinting like granite.