House of Names

by Colm Toibin

  ‘How long are we going to stay here?’

  Leander sighed.

  ‘We’re not leaving.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not until . . .’ he began. ‘Not until she dies or until she wants us to go. That’s what I promised her.’

  ‘But maybe we could find more dogs for her.’

  ‘This is where we’re staying,’ Leander said. ‘We must not think of leaving.’

  Orestes slowly followed one of the goats once Leander had left him, gauging where the cliffs were by the sound that came from the waves. Since there was a light wind rustling the leaves of the trees that grew in some abundance around the house, he tried to work out what a new sound, the sound of an intruder, might be like. He hoped that Leander would soon bring him food, something more than the bread he had now.

  When the food finally came, he ate it ravenously, wanting more, regretting that he was not at the table with the others so that he could see if there were more. And then he was alone, with the sound of the sea and the rustling leaves and the intermittent hooting of an owl, and nothing else, no other sound.

  He dozed off in the hour before dawn and woke with a start at the light. The dawn must have been stealthy, he thought, because it had not woken him until everything around was bright and there were new sounds, birdsong and a cock crowing. He sat up and listened in case there was anything else, but he did not think so. He would not tell Leander that he had fallen asleep.

  Over the next two days, as Mitros stayed in bed, or remained close to the old woman, Orestes and Leander gathered rocks and small stones. They tried to break the rocks up so that each one could be thrown a distance. At intervals, they practised throwing the stones and small rocks to hit a particular target, before building mounds among the bushes on each side of the narrow path that led to the house.

  They also began to explore the land around the house, Leander noting the fruit trees that had been recently pruned and the stone walls between fields and the animals that all seemed well cared for. He also looked carefully at the house itself and the outbuildings and stores with cured meat and grain and wood for the fire.

  ‘She could not have done this on her own,’ Leander said.

  When night fell, Mitros offered to go outside and guard while the others ate. Later, Leander would take his turn to sit through the night at the highest point, to which they had made a path marked with rocks and stones. As the old woman served them the food, he asked her if she had always been alone.

  ‘This house is filled not by me,’ she said, ‘but by the others who have gone. It is their voices I hear and I talk back to them when I can. But I don’t need to cook for them any more so the store is full.’

  ‘But where are they?’ Leander asked.

  ‘Scattered,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ Orestes asked. ‘Who lived here?’

  ‘My two sons were taken to be in the army, taken for the war, and their boats taken too.’

  ‘When were they taken?’ Orestes asked.

  ‘Some moons ago. They’re all gone and won’t be back. They left me the dogs and now the dogs are gone too.’

  ‘How many were here before?’ Leander asked.

  ‘Their wives fled with the children, including the boy with the limp, the one I loved best,’ she said, ignoring his question. ‘You are wearing his clothes.’

  ‘And why didn’t you go too?’ Orestes asked.

  ‘No one asked me to go,’ she said. ‘At a word from one of them, I would have gone. When you are fleeing in the night, no one wants an old woman.’

  She sighed.

  ‘We thought they just wanted the sheep and the goats and the chickens, the men who came,’ she said. ‘But all they wanted were young men and boats. If we had known that, we could have hidden the men. In one second, they took them and we knew they would not be back.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ Orestes asked.

  ‘They are in the war.’

  ‘What war?’

  ‘The war,’ she said. ‘The war.’

  ‘And the others?’ Leander asked.

  ‘The others were afraid to stay. Only one of them, the boy with the limp, looked behind as they set out.’

  She went silent and they ate without saying anything. When they had finished, Mitros came back in. The old woman smiled at him and tossed his hair playfully, affectionately, as she put his food on the table. He seemed to Orestes to have drifted into a realm of his own, avoiding Leander and Orestes as much as he could, and spending his time shadowing the old woman.

  The following morning, as Orestes and Leander were sitting together beside a mound of rocks, not speaking, just looking into the distance, they saw a dog slowly approaching, wagging its tail. As the dog passed, they crept into the bushes, each with a rock in his hand, Orestes sure that someone was coming and tensing himself for attack. They watched and waited, but there was no sign of anyone. The dog appeared to have come alone. Eventually, Orestes left Leander to look out and went to the house, where he found the dog with its paws on the table being petted by both Mitros and the old woman.

  ‘It’s the dog from the house. He became my friend outside the house,’ Mitros said.

  ‘What house?’

  ‘The house where the other dogs surrounded us. This fellow didn’t join them. He just wagged his tail. He’s friendly.’

  The old woman put out a bowl of water for the dog, which slurped it down quickly and then moved back again to be close to Mitros.

  When Orestes went out to tell Leander what had happened, he smiled.

  ‘Everyone likes Mitros. Except the guards. They didn’t like him. And those other dogs didn’t like him either. But the old woman likes him.’

  Before he went to rest, Leander warned Orestes to remain sharp in case the farmer came looking for his dog.

  ‘What will I do if he comes?’

  ‘Tell him that there’s a trap ahead and if he moves closer to the house it will snap shut on his leg.’

  ‘What will I do if he doesn’t believe me?’

  ‘Shout loudly and throw stones. Hit him hard on the legs with stones. Frighten him.’

  *

  Slowly, they grew used to the old woman’s house. She trained them to look after the animals and instructed them about harvesting crops and growing vegetables and managing the fruit trees. Mitros stayed with her in the kitchen when he could, going out only to collect eggs or milk the goats, accompanied always by the dog. Orestes and Leander took turns at watching through the night, three nights each in a row. Orestes became familiar with the night sounds and taught himself not to fall asleep in the hour before dawn, when he was most tired.

  He imagined sometimes that Leander and Mitros were his sisters, Electra and Iphigenia. In his dreams, he would go in search of one of them. He imagined also that the old woman was his mother. He wondered if Leander and Mitros were thinking the same thoughts as he was, and if they dreamed that this house was like their real houses and that the people they shared the house with were like the people at home.

  One morning, when he was sitting at the table in the kitchen with Mitros, with Leander standing guard in the bushes and the old woman looking after the hens, the dog began to paw the ground and look around the room expectantly. Mitros laughed and started to pat the dog on the head until its pawing became more frantic. Orestes stopped eating to watch the scene. When the old woman came in, the two boys did not even look up at her, they were so wrapped up in the dog. When she saw what was happening, she let out a scream, and then ran to the door.

  Orestes and Mitros followed her to find out what the problem was.

  ‘The dog!’ she said. ‘It means someone is coming. Get Leander!’

  Orestes had never heard her use Leander’s name before. The only name she had seemed to know before then was Mitros’ name. He ran down to where Leander was and found him sitting in the shade close to a heap of rocks. When he told him what had occurred, Leander told him to move to the other side of the path, stay c
lose to the mound of stones and do nothing. He was to wait for a sign from Leander before he threw a stone.

  They waited but no one came. Orestes was sorry that he had not asked Leander at what point he could go back to the house. He had been up all night and he was tired. When he peered across the path to the bushes, he could see no sign of Leander. He guessed that he must be waiting there, hidden, still alert. As more time passed, he was tempted to call to him, but he realized that if Leander thought that he could go then he would have shouted across to him.

  He did not see the two men approaching. Instead, he was surprised by the sound of one of them shouting as he was hit in the head by a rock that Leander had thrown. Since Orestes had kept a rock in each hand all the time, it was easy for him to move quickly. The two men, he saw, had stopped. One of them held his hands over his head. The other was looking around him, puzzled about where the rock had come from. Orestes recognized them as the guards who had taken him away from the palace.

  Orestes stood back and aimed carefully and coldly, deciding to go for the man already injured, hitting him with one rock on the head and hitting him a second later directly in the face. The other man ran in the direction of the house, avoiding the two rocks that Leander threw. Orestes took up one more rock and threw it after him, hitting him hard on the shoulder, but it did not stop him.

  Leander sprang from where he was, having removed his shirt and filled it with rocks, to follow the man. As he did, Orestes noticed that the man who had been hit was still standing. He took aim once more with two rocks, one of them smaller and sharper than the other, and hit him twice. The man fell over. Then Orestes also removed his shirt and gathered some rocks and ran onto the lane to follow Leander.

  When he caught sight of him, Leander was standing alone, having dropped the rocks. He was looking around in panic, desperately trying to see where the man he had pursued had gone. Suddenly, from the bushes where he had been hiding, the man jumped at him, one hand going for his throat. Orestes, still some distance away, reached for one of the rocks, but before he could throw it the man had managed to trip Leander over. He had something in his hand, which Orestes guessed was a knife, as the two rolled on the ground in combat.

  As he came close, he saw that the man was forcing his way on top of Leander, straddling his body, pinning one of his arms down. Leander was holding the man by the wrist as the man attempted to bring the knife down and stab him in the neck.

  Orestes dropped the rocks, aware that if he put one thought into what he should do, he would miss the chance to surprise the intruder. He tried not to make a sound as he approached, then put his hands around the man’s head, pushing his thumbs as fiercely as he could into the man’s eyes. For those seconds, it was as though he had no body of his own, no mind, nothing except the force of the thumbs. He did not breathe until he felt something give way within the eye sockets as the man let out a scream, dropping the knife and freeing Leander’s other hand.

  In one move, Leander got to his knees and, taking up the knife, began to stab the man in the chest and neck. When there was no sound from him, they laid him on his back flat out on the ground.

  ‘We have to go for the other one,’ Leander said. Orestes almost wanted to stop to explain to Leander who this dead figure was, and who his companion was – the gentler one, the one who had treated him less harshly. But Leander had already gone ahead and he had to follow.

  The man was not on the lane. They made their way forward carefully in case he was hiding in the bushes. When they reached the clearing, they saw him below them in the distance, swaying slowly from side to side, holding his head. When he looked behind and saw them, he tried to run.

  ‘Wait for me,’ Leander said as he went back to get some rocks.

  ‘We can catch up with him,’ he said when he returned. ‘Tell me when you think you can hit him.’

  Having gathered some rocks, they both went forward with as much speed as they could muster. It was clear to Orestes that their prey would not be able to outrun them, but he was worried that the man would have a knife, as his companion had. In that case, the man’s only chance was to get close enough to one of them to use it.

  Orestes decided to run faster, hoping that if he could make progress without losing any rocks, then he could stop and take aim before Leander, who was ahead of him, reached the man. He felt that he could do anything if he did not worry for a second or even calculate. His aim would be right and he would be able to judge the moment to start throwing the rocks. The man was desperate, it appeared, to get away from them, but it was still clear to Orestes that he could suddenly turn and threaten them.

  Instead of following Leander and the man, Orestes ran diagonally across the clearing where the raised ground continued. He made sure that he did not lose any rocks from the shirt that he held cradled against his chest. He ran with even greater speed when he noticed the man looking behind him again. He was calculating, Orestes thought, working out at what point he should stop and be ready to attack Leander with a knife if Leander were foolish enough to approach.

  Orestes was ready now. Having selected a rock, he took aim and threw, but the man was not running in a straight line so the rock missed him and alerted him to where Orestes was. Orestes had no choice now but to pick up the shirt filled with rocks and run as quickly as he could manage towards the moving figure. He would no longer have the advantage of the slope, but if he put all his energy into his speed he might, he thought, get close enough to throw another rock from the side, even if the angle would not be as good.

  He stopped and took up another rock. He breathed in and summoned up the same strength as when he had attacked the other man. And then he threw. The rock hit the man’s shoulder. Quickly, he chose another rock. This second one hit the man’s head, causing him to fall backwards.

  When Orestes caught up with Leander, he said nothing. They both had their eyes fixed on the figure lying on the ground. When they got closer, they could hear him moaning and gasping. Orestes put down the rocks and knelt to take one from the five or six that were left. He ran towards his victim and hit him hard in the head.

  The man was lying on his back but his eyes were wide open. When Orestes caught his desperate gaze, the prone figure seemed to recognize him and began to say something that sounded like his name. Orestes hesitated for one second before he threw another rock, splitting the man’s head open.

  Leander searched through the man’s clothes and found two knives. Orestes walked back and picked up his shirt. Then he joined Leander and they both began to pull the body towards the house, each one holding a foot, letting the head bang against the ground as they dragged him along. Since he was heavy, they stopped several times for a rest. They brought him as far as his companion, whose body was already attracting flies. They rolled each one until it was at the edge of the cliff and then they let them fall over the edge.

  ‘I promised myself that we would kill no one else,’ Leander said.

  ‘They would have killed us. They were the two men who kidnapped me.’

  ‘They’ll do nothing now. But I didn’t keep my promise.’

  As he and Leander made their way to the house, Orestes was tempted to talk about his journey from the palace with these two men, but he realized that since neither Leander nor Mitros had ever discussed the details of how they were taken away, then Leander would not want to hear about it. It was something he would have to think about on his own.

  They found Mitros and the old woman sitting at the table. The dog stood up and stretched and yawned as they came in.

  ‘He stopped pawing the ground a while ago,’ Mitros said, ‘so we supposed whoever came went away again.’

  Orestes looked at Leander, who was standing in the shadows without his shirt on.

  ‘Yes, they went away,’ Leander said.

  ‘And we heard a man shout,’ the old woman said. ‘And I said to Mitros that if that man shouts again we’ll go out and see what’s happening. But since we didn’t hear another sound we
decided to stay here.’

  Leander nodded.

  ‘I lost my shirt,’ he said.

  ‘I have cloth left over,’ the old woman said. ‘And I can make you a new one. Maybe one for each of you. It will keep me busy.’

  When Orestes glanced at Leander, it seemed that he had grown older. His shoulders had widened and his face had become more narrow and thin. He appeared taller too as he stood alone in the shadows. For a second, Orestes was tempted to cross the room and touch Leander, put his hand on his face or on his torso, but he stood still.

  Orestes was hungry and tired, but he felt as though he needed to do something more, that he would actually be pleased to spring into action if he were told that more men were coming.

  He could not stop looking at Leander as he moved shirtless in the small room. When he caught Leander’s eye, he saw that Leander too was unsettled. If the old woman had said that she needed to kill one of the sheep, or the goats, or even one of the hens, he would have been with her carrying the sharp knife. He would have been ready to help her. And so, he knew, would Leander.

  They sat at the table and ate the food the woman had prepared as if it were a normal evening in their lives. The dog watched the scene from a corner of the room, observing as usual with care every morsel of food that Mitros ate, or moving closer to him every time he coughed.

  Since they now knew that the dog would warn them of any intruders, neither Orestes nor Leander would have to keep guard during the night. Thus, on Leander’s suggestion, Orestes shared a bed with Mitros, with the dog between them. Leander slept in the next room, the old woman at the end of the house.

  During the day, they met for meals, which were cooked by the old woman and Mitros. Orestes and Leander looked after the animals and the crops, the vegetables and the trees, often working together. When all four were eating, there was never silence. They could talk about the weather, or a change in the wind; they could discuss a new sort of goat’s cheese that the old woman made, or discuss an animal or something that had happened to a tree. They could make jokes about how lazy Mitros was, or how hard it was to get Orestes out of bed in the mornings, or how tall Leander had grown. They could throw bread to the dog and laugh as it ate it greedily. But the old woman did not speak of her family who had gone, and the boys, in turn, did not speak of home. Orestes wondered if perhaps Mitros had told the old woman their story, or if parts of what had transpired had emerged in conversations between them.