TransAtlantic: A Novel

by Colum McCann

Moments later he heard a shriek from the house and saw her emerge in a rush of hair and apron and clothes pegs. She ran towards the washing line, and yanked the last of the sheets, looked wildly about.

  Gerald’s car was pulling along the laneway, beeping. The Senator stepped out from among the trees. Gerald had rolled down his window and was grinning now.

  —Meet the Senator, he said.

  —Ach, sure, look at his shoes, she said. What’ve ya done to the poor man?

  —My fault entirely, said the Senator.

  —I’m Sheila.

  —Pleasure to meet you.

  —He let you walk through the field?

  —Not exactly.

  —He’s never had any sense, our Gerry.

  She took him by the elbow and guided him towards the house. He cleaned his shoes carefully on the dark mat, then stepped through the scullery and along a tiled corridor in his stockinged feet. A warmth rolled from the large red stove. A smell of recent cooking. Simple crockery on shelves on the wall. In the front room, three quiet children gathered around a television set. A game show. They wore their pajamas. Sheila called out to them. Her voice was high and sharp. The children snapped the television off and stood up to attention, reached out to shake his hand. Freckled. Towheaded. He got down on one knee in front of them and knuckled their shoulders.

  He asked their names: Cathal, Anthony, Orla. A sharp absence flooded through him: he showed them a picture of Andrew but they couldn’t comprehend it; they glanced at the picture, said nothing.

  He was guided to the kitchen table and he could hear the high whistle of the kettle already going. Gerald sat across the table from him, his hands folded, his face in a generous grin.

  Moths crossed the mouth of a lamp on the far side of the room. The wallpaper was patterned with flowers. On the sideboard sat a row of photographs. In several of the photos there was a young man, longhaired, handsome. He seemed to disappear from the photographs: the man reached a certain age and then was gone. A sudden worry flooded the Senator: perhaps Gerald’s brother-in-law was involved with the Troubles somehow? Maybe there had been a murder. Perhaps a conviction somewhere. A shooting. An internment. He felt a rod of fear stiffen his shoulders. Perhaps he had done the wrong thing entirely, walking through this field, entering this farmhouse, taking off his shoes. Perhaps others would claim he had an allegiance. He wasn’t sure now how he could possibly extricate himself. All his time here, a series of careful choices. How simple it was to put a foot wrong.

  A set of headlights swept across the ceiling. The darkness had fallen so very quickly. Cars on the outside road. Maybe they had been followed. Someone taking photographs perhaps. There was a gap in the curtains, for sure. He turned his body sideways to the window. He put his hand up to his face. Another sweep of headlights went through the room. He cursed himself, knotted his hands tight.

  He saw Gerald’s sister step out from the kitchen towards him. Her figure was small, slim, lithe. Her face clarified when she stepped beyond the doorway. Something hard about her eyes. He was surprised by a body odor that rolled from her. Sheila ran her hands along the sideboard. Then she stopped a moment and touched one of the photo frames.

  —We lost him about six years ago now, she said.

  —Excuse me?

  —My husband.

  —I’m sorry.

  —The North Sea, she said.

  Sheila flicked a quick look at the children who were gathered on the carpet near the bay window.

  —He was working in the oil fields.

  She lowered her voice again.

  —We don’t talk about it much in front of the wee uns, she said.

  He felt a surge move through him. A gust of thanks. Sheila had intuited his brief terror. He wanted to grasp her hand. The happiness of being wrong. The affirmation of it. But what could he say? He had assumed the worst. Ireland. Always the worst.

  He flicked another look out the window.

  —Do you mind if we close the curtains, Gerald?

  He wanted to sag back in the chair and relax. Amid the teacups and the crockery. He could be cynical tomorrow: always time for that.

  He brought the cup to his lips. Already a small skin of cold had formed on the surface of the tea. He glanced at the mantelpiece clock. It was almost ten thirty. Sheila put the kettle on again. The Senator stretched his legs out in front of him. He heard the children moving about on the carpet, whispering amongst themselves. There was something funny at hand, it seemed. Their famous visitor. His American accent? His bearing? The way he dunked his biscuits in his tea perhaps? They were giggling now and he saw a sternness move across Sheila’s face. She glared at her children. They fell quiet. A small curtain seemed to cross her eyes, too.

  She cut another slice of fruitcake. Gerald plugged in the electric fire. He had yet another story to tell. The Senator glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. At eleven in the evening he stood to say good-bye. Again the children giggled.

  He reached across to shake hands, but instead she pulled him towards herself in the manner of someone familiar. He thought she was going to kiss him on the cheek.

  —You want me to darn that? Sheila asked quietly in his ear.

  —Excuse me?

  Another whisper.

  —Ye’ll not be taking your shoes off in Stormont, now, will ye?

  He glanced down to see the hole in the heel of his right sock. She was laughing now, her face tilted up at him.

  —It’ll only take me a wee minute, she said.

  Later that night on the phone to Heather all he could hear was the laughter down the wire from his wife, and three days later, in an express package that had to be opened and examined by the secret service, five new pairs of plain gray socks, none for Saturdays or Sundays, simply because she wanted him home.

  HE SHIFTS HOTELS on the fifth night. There have been rumors and bomb scares. Another strong hint at an assassination attempt. In the morning, he packs his pajamas, his toothbrush, his extra clothes, and in the evening the security team move him across to the Hilton at the waterfront. From there he will go to his favorite, the Culloden.

  Little matter. All his time is in the Stormont offices now. Those dark corridors.

  On the phone he talks to Blair and Ahern. President Clinton, too. A letter of best wishes arrives from Nelson Mandela. A handwritten note from Václav Havel. Late in the evening, he and Holkeri pace the halls. Light leaks from under doors. Whispers in the back shadows. Waiting for new drafts of sentences, paragraphs, whole documents to come their way. He is reminded of salmon moving the wrong way up against the water. The Kennebec. Its intricacies. The swift curl at the mill. Patches of light in the eddies, standing waves.

  WHEN THE DIPLOMATIC pouch arrives from London on Sunday night—two days late—his heart falls through his chest. Strand Two. From Ahern and Blair. He knows the very moment he reads it that it will not work. He gathers with de Chastelain and Holkeri and their staff. A chill coming in on the weather. There is a Frost poem from school days. Whose woods these are I think I know. He hears it again, distantly, brokenly. Miles to go before I sleep. There are times he wishes he could knock an absolute simplicity into the process. Take it or leave it.

  He has read whole volumes on the philosophy of nonviolence. How peace had to be understood in all its moral dimensions. The proper coexistence of all existents. The excluded middle ground. The surpassing of personality. The vanity of cultural superiority. The tension between individual conscience and collective responsibility. The need to proclaim again and again what has already been said.

  Later, at the press conference, he holds up his hands in a gesture of calm. He has practiced this. There is an art to it: keep the hands open enough not to frame the face, spread the fingers wide in a gesture of appeasement. The ability to deflect a question without swatting it away. He allows a long silence before answering. Speaks evenly, calmly. Moves his gaze around the room. Slowly. Judicially. He tries not to adjust his glasses on his nose—too much a gestur
e of fabrication. He already knows he will absorb the blame. It is his delay, his fault, his carelessness. No matter. They must go on.

  He thanks the prime ministers and government officials. They deserve a lot of praise. Tremendous effort. Energy. Concentration. Ardor. Grace. We urge everyone to proceed. Common sense dictates. Discussions are ongoing. Can you rephrase your question? That assertion, sir, is incorrect.

  Flashbulbs pop. A mobile phone rings. A frisson of nervous laughter skitters around the room. He keeps his answers vague. Tiptoes around the truth. He is careful not to let the politeness reel off into anger. His job is to tamp the confusion down. Return again to the moment of simplicity. Reiterate what they came for. The people of Northern Ireland have waited long enough.

  What they need are the signatures. After that, they will negotiate the peace. Years of wrangling still to come, he knows. No magic wand. All he wants is to get the metal nibs striking against the page. But really what he would like now, more than anything, is to walk out from the press conference into the sunlight, a morning and evening jammed together, so that there is rise and fall at the same time, east and west. It strikes him at moments like this that he is a man of crossword puzzles, pajamas, slippers. All he really wants is to get on a plane to New York, enter the lobby of the apartment on Sixty-Seventh Street, step into his own second chance, that proper silence of fatherhood.

  HE WRITES HEATHER an email to say that he will be home soon. Easter Saturday at the latest. He is careful with the note, in case it is intercepted. No flourishes. No professions of love. He clicks Send, and then goes for a walk in Lady Dixon Park in the middle of the night, amongst the roses, rolling a pebble along at his feet, his security detail behind him, matching him step for step.

  It is a photo that’s used in the newspapers a few days later. For the Easter editions. The Senator rolling a stone with his foot. In the gloom. Away from a cave of light. On Good Friday itself.

  Nothing, in Northern Ireland—not even the obvious—ever escapes attention.

  IT IS AS if, in a myth, he has visited an empty grain silo. In the beginning he stood at the bottom in the resounding dark. Several figures gathered at the very top of the silo. They peered down, shaded their eyes, began to drop their pieces of grain upon him: words. A small rain at first. Full of vanity and history and rancor. Clattering in the emptiness. He stood and let it sound metallic around him, until it began to pour, and the grain took on a different sound, and he had to reach up and keep knocking the words aside just to get a little space to breathe. Dust and chaff in the air all around him. From their very own fields. They were pouring down their winnowed bitterness, and in his silence he just kept thrashing, spluttering, pushing the words away. A refusal to drown. What nobody noticed, not even himself, was that the grain kept rising, and the silo filled, but he kept rising with it, and the sounds grew different, word upon word, falling around him, building beneath him. And now—at the top of the silo—he has clawed himself up and dusted himself off and he stands there equal with the pourers who are astounded by the language that lies below them. They glance at each other. Three ways down from the silo. They can fall into the grain and drown, they can jump off the edge and abandon it, or they can learn to sow it very slowly at their feet.

  A RUMOR OF morning hangs faint on the sky. He wears his thick gray overcoat, his scarf, a plain wool hat. He does not wear a flat one for fear he will appear partisan. The confounded demands of peace. He drives towards Stormont, taps Gerald on the shoulder just as they pull in.

  —You sure, Senator?

  He sees security men scurry into position the moment he gets out. The cold stings his cheeks. The dawn holds the prospect of rain. He leaves the car door slightly open, just in case. The men and women are ranged around barrels, warming their hands. They raise their heads at the sight of him. They have gathered so many candles, burning all night. Against the wall, rows and rows of flowers. How is it possible to speak of the dead? He has imagined the troubles of these people. A sort of ghosthood. How many nights have they sat outside these gates, waiting? Shopkeepers. Plumbers. Musicians. Butchers. Tinsmiths. Professors. Their blights and difficulties. He is at home amongst them. A teenage girl with a shine of sadness in her eye. A man pulling down the shabby hood of his coat to speak. Aye, Senator. What about ye? Frosty enough for ye, hai? Reporters jostling their way through the crowd. A Muslim woman in a headscarf: even she with an Irish desire. A longing spreading through the raw cold. Murmurs moving amongst them.

  At the edge of the crowd, he stops. He is not quite sure if it is she or not. Her face in the distance. He peeks over a row of shoulders. The movement of the crowd. The sway. At the edge of the barricades. In a wheelchair. Wrapped in a couple of blankets. He gently parts the crowd and moves towards her.

  —Morning.

  —Hello, Senator.

  Her name, briefly, escapes him. From Stranmillis. Lost her grandson.

  —No tennis today?

  —Thought I’d come for the final set.

  —Oh, well, we hope it’s that, he says.

  —Game and set, anyway, Senator.

  —So far.

  —Make it happen for us, she says, and she pauses a moment: Please.

  He nods. The plaid blanket pulled up to her neck. Ninety years old at least. How can she possibly be out in such weather? It strikes him how easy it is to say yes, yes, he will make it work, he will do everything in his power to make it work. But it is out of his hands now. It does not belong to him: it is the property of others.

  —Thanks for coming out, Lottie.

  —Good luck, Senator.

  —Thank you.

  —Senator. My daughter. Hannah. Have you met her?

  —Yes, of course.

  A younger version of Lottie, really. Late fifties or sixties. An energy to her, a flair.

  —We can’t thank you enough, Senator, says Lottie.

  —It’s nothing, he says.

  —Oh, it’s something, it surely is.

  Lottie turns in her chair, pulls off her glove, and extends her hand towards him and says: You don’t know what this means, Senator.

  —I’ll do what I can.

  He is guided back towards the car and for some odd reason—he is not sure why—he slides into the front seat beside Gerald and he puts his hand on the dashboard as if this is a border to cross, a place he will not come back from. The car eases through the gates and the barrier is pulled down behind him. You don’t know what this means. Perhaps she is correct—he has spent all this time not truly knowing what it means. Now, it means everything. He will see this through now. To the bitter end. He will not back down. He hears another shouting behind him, a chant, and the bash of a lambeg drum.

  He is dropped off in front of the building. He tells Gerald to go home and get some rest, but he knows full well that his driver will remain in the parking lot, the seat of the car extended backwards, the radio clicked on, steam from the heat gathering on the windscreen, turning and squirming in the small space.

  Up the steps he goes, into the drab office block. A heaviness in the corridors. He walks along, shaking hands, touching shoulders. He knows every single one of their names. They are polite, deferent—scared, too. If they are to own it, they are also the ones to lose it. A valuable thing. Once in a thousand years. Peace.

  He takes the stairs to the third floor. The stairwells reek of cigarette smoke. In his office he cracks open his window.

  News comes later in the morning. A murder in Derry. A member of the paramilitaries. The statements are out. The press releases. The men of violence. Pointless retaliation. Trevor Deeney. Sitting in a car beside his wife. Shot point-blank. For what reason? Is there ever a reason? There will be retaliation. Already promised. This murder, too, is retaliation. Murder the murderers. Deeney’s brother opened fire in a bar called The Rising Sun. No end to the ironies. He leans his forehead against the desk. Strapped to a wheel, we shall not break.

  Si vis pacem.

  He reaches
for the phone. We cannot let this happen, he says. We must make a sharp statement. Draw a line. Show no fear.

  Para bellum.

  He walks from office to office. Works on the press release. They are all in agreement: nothing will derail us now. We have come too far. Enough is enough. No surrender. We own that dictum now. It is ours. No. Surrender.

  Later the news reaches him that Bertie Ahern’s mother, in Dublin, has died. Still, the Taoiseach will arrive by helicopter later tomorrow. Blair, too, will arrive with his convoy. The power brokers. The figureheads. The men who have inherited it. All of them will be in one place. In the one building. Primed. There is talk of a thousand journalists now, too. A thousand. It stuns him. From all corners of the globe. He must coordinate it now, this endgame. No matter what. He sits at his desk, uncaps his fountain pen. There can be no discussion of a pause or break. I intend to tell the parties that I won’t even consider such a request. There’s not going to be a break, not for a week, not for a day, not for an hour. We’ll either get an agreement or we’ll fail to get an agreement.

  He cracks the window further. A sea-wind. All those ships out there. All those generations that left. Seven hundred years of history. We prefigure our futures by imagining our pasts. To go back and forth. Across the waters. The past, the present, the elusive future. A nation. Everything constantly shifted by the present. The taut elastic of time. Even violence breaks. Even that. Sometimes violently. You don’t know what this means, Senator.

  For the next two days he will hardly sleep, hardly eat. No hotels even. He refuses to leave the office. He will sleep at his desk. He will wash at the hand basin in the small bathroom. Run the water. Tap the soap dispenser. Wash his hands thoroughly, methodically. Splash water on the back of his neck. Walk back along the corridor. Meet with Hume and Trimble. Listen carefully to their every word. Good men, both. The linchpins of the process. And he will spend hours on the phone with Clinton. Examining the very minutiae of the process. The dream of it all. The parade of footsteps along the corridor. Draft and redraft. He will beg the civil servants not to leak the documents. He will stand at the photocopy machine himself. Just to guard the memos. He will even number the copies. Walk up and down the stairs. From the canteen to his office, and back. Visitor after visitor. Party leaders. Representatives. Diplomats. Civil servants. He will feel as if he has had the same conversation a dozen times, two dozen. He will catch himself in midtalk, wondering if he has said this same thing just seconds before. A flush of blood to his cheeks. An embarrassment. Searching for new ways to say the exact same thing. He will listen for a riot, another murder, a bomb blast. On the radio. The television. At the gates even. None will come. Just the constant knocking on his door. Trays of sandwiches. Pots of tea. He will hear the sirens roar out the window. The cheers and the booing. The letters slipped in under the door. The whispered moan of prayers. The uneaten trays of food. Claire Curtain. Lottie Tuttle. Sheila Whelan. All the bits and pieces of his days. His desire for sleep nearly as powerful as his desire for peace. He should call her. Has he called her? Her voice. His breath. Andrew. Sleep.