Mothers and Sons

by Colm Toibin

  The day was much colder than the one before and progress was much harder as the two new dogs followed phantom scents which led them off the road and high into the hills while the men had to wait for them below. Miquel’s father followed them far behind most of the time, giving no impression that he was searching for her or looking for clues as to where she might be. Miquel noticed Foix and Castellet and some of the other men glancing back at him, clearly irritated. He noticed also that their neighbours, on this second day’s searching, were more animated, seemed to enjoy shouting at the dogs, had more life in them the more time went on. Their very excitement caused his father to appear uninterested, almost bored as he trudged behind them as though his only aim were not to wet his feet.

  The two dogs, Miquel thought, had more energy than intelligence, and he wondered why Foix did not realize, as he did now, that anything buried under a mound of freezing snow would be unlikely to yield a scent. But he knew that there was nothing else he could do except move forward in what was, with the exception of fox and wild-boar tracks, a flat, virgin whiteness, seeming innocent, almost beautiful, utterly harmless, its treacherous nature lying in layers under its blank surface.

  By early afternoon they could go no further; the snow was too deep, and it was becoming hard to tell where the road ahead began to dip and rise and where the margin was and how steep the fall. The dogs, who had not been fed since early morning, were increasingly difficult; two of them from the village began a vicious fight, snarling and yelping as they tore at each other, having to be held by their owners, and then kicked into surly submission. Miquel noticed that all the men took part in separating them and holding them and shouting at them except himself and his father, who stood back watching, and he felt that this, too, annoyed the men. Thus he was glad when they gave up the search, having to wait for the two new dogs to come back from whatever vain quest they had been on, and began to make their way back. Miquel was careful to walk with the other men, stay between two of them, or close to one. His father lagged so far behind that several times when he turned his head he could not see him.

  That night his father insisted that there would be no more futile outings, that these men hated him and had spent two days uselessly walking the road merely as a way of torturing him and humiliating him. He would have no more of them, he said. In the morning, he said, they would go to La Seu, where it would be market day, whether the road was open or not; they would drive to the point where it was closed and wait there, or wade through whatever snow was blocking the road.

  Miquel, without consulting his father, left the house and called on Foix, who, when he came to the door, asked him almost aggressively what he wanted. Miquel told him that they would not be searching the next day, but going to La Seu, where they might meet people from Pallosa. They could also speak to the police. He added that he wished to thank Foix for all his help.

  ‘And your father?’ Foix asked. ‘We all know he has a tongue. Has he lost the use of it?’

  Miquel held his gaze calmly.

  ‘He is very upset.’

  Foix closed the door without speaking. When Miquel went home, he did not tell his father where he had been.

  The road to La Seu was open, but icy in stretches, dangerously so in the early morning. Miquel had slept a dreamless sleep and for the first few minutes of the day had believed that this would be another normal day in his life. The night had erased all memory of the days just passed. But his father, he saw when he went downstairs, had not slept at all, seemed worn out, stopping halfway through every sentence, having forgotten what it was he had wanted to say. His father’s sleepless state appeared to make him drive more cautiously, keep his speed down on bends and slopes. There was almost no traffic on the road. Even the main road, when they reached it, was quiet and this was unusual for a market day.

  Two weeks before this he had walked here with his mother, stood in the queue with her, noticed her snatching time from him to down three drinks, and now he and his father moved through the early hours of the market, as the stalls were barely set up, in search of someone from Pallosa or Burch or Tirvia, or any of the other villages around, who might have news of her. Miquel knew it was most likely that, because of the bad roads and the broken phone lines, no one would know anything about her, and they would have to be told, as though it were a guilty secret, what had happened, and then news would begin to spread. He thought of suggesting to his father that, instead of walking all morning through the ghostly market, they should find out if the road to Pallosa were open and go there now, consult his uncle before his uncle heard it as a rumour or a half-digested piece of news from someone else.

  They had a bocadillo in a bar. Both of them were ravenously hungry; Miquel was tempted when he was finished to say that he wanted another. He was determined to buy some food as they had been living on the eggs collected from the hens and little else for three days now. But, since his father wanted to go to the police station, he thought he would wait, have a coffee now, and eat more later, perhaps even a proper lunch. They walked past the stalls in the direction of the police station, careful to look at none of the vendors and greet none of them, since they did not wish stall-holders, who might have heard about the missing woman, to ask them about her. But they were still watching for people from the villages around Pallosa.

  As they turned into one of the side streets, having passed the bread shop, they saw Francesc, Miquel’s uncle, his mother’s brother from Pallosa, coming towards them, with his wife and a neighbouring woman. Miquel stopped immediately and let his father go forward to meet them. He stood in a doorway as he watched his father greeting them. He could see his uncle’s and aunt’s faces but he could not tell, at first, anything by their expressions. His uncle merely nodded, his aunt and the neighbour listened intently. Slowly, however, he noticed his uncle’s face darkening; it was a small change, he did not wrinkle his brow or move his mouth, but it was enough for Miquel. He knew even before his uncle spoke and shook his head and his aunt put her hand over her mouth and the other woman moved to console her, he knew that his mother had not arrived safely in Pallosa, and, from the way his uncle now seemed to question his father, he knew that his uncle and aunt had not been aware of his mother’s disappearance. He moved out of the shadows and made his way towards them.

  The road to Pallosa had been cut off for two days, his uncle said, and the single telephone line had been down. As Miquel watched him, his uncle appeared to be having trouble breathing, he was taking heavy breaths between his words, staring at the ground, his brow all wrinkled now.

  ‘And that day, the snow came down,’ he said, ‘faster than anyone can remember. We were up to our necks in it.’

  Miquel could see his uncle holding back a fundamental question as he discovered what time she had left at, who had seen her, how long she had been walking before the snow came. His uncle, it was obvious, wished to know why she had left, how they did not notice her leaving, how they did not know at what time she had taken off on such a dangerous journey, and why she was walking when there was, if she needed to go to Pallosa, a jeep outside the door. As his uncle searched their eyes, Miquel became aware of his slow realization that she had left in distress, or after an argument, and, he thought, the more his uncle seemed quietly to make a judgement, the more guilty his father and he must have appeared.

  They decided that they should walk to the police station together and declare her officially a missing person. His uncle believed that the police would then be obliged to look for her, using all their resources. His uncle, he knew, had a reputation for kindness and intelligence and, as Miquel watched him taking control, he remembered his mother’s lamenting that there was no one like Francesc in their village, to whom you could go if you had a problem.

  Close to the police station, out of the corner of his eye and then very clearly, Miquel saw Foix and Castellet standing behind a jeep in the company of two policemen. His uncle saw them too, but Miquel realized that he did not recognize them; his fat
her looked only at the ground and Miquel did not draw his attention to the presence of the villagers in La Seu.

  The policeman at the desk appeared to know about the case and told them that they would have to wait. There were only two chairs in the narrow hallway. All five of them, in turn, refused to sit down and they made an awkward grouping as policemen passed in and out, forcing them to move out of the way and stand aside. Eventually, Miquel’s aunt and her companion said they would go back to the market and meet later at the cafe beside the bread shop. Miquel said that he would go with them; he needed to buy supplies in the market. It might be easier, he thought, for his father to tell his uncle what had really happened if he were not listening. He noticed before he left how handsome his uncle was and how bright and alert he seemed as he waited in the hall. Beside him, his father looked like a poor man from a poor village, humble and uneasy in the official building in the big town.

  They walked towards the market. He knew by the way his aunt was speaking to her neighbour, arranging to separate from her briefly, that she wanted to be alone with him, and he presumed that she wanted to know what had happened. She did not have her husband’s patient ability to fathom something in full without having to be furnished with all the details. Miquel could see, her friend having departed, that she was angling now for a complete account of his mother’s last hours in the house. He decided, without knowing why, that he would not tell her.

  When she asked him if he would come with her to the butcher’s, he realized that she meant to go to the one his mother frequented, and he was not ready for the idea that they would remember him, the young man whose brother was going to the mili, and ask about his mother. He would have no idea what to say. The dream in which he was now partaking, a world of queues and shoppers and market stalls, seemed by its very vividness to preclude the possibility that the darkness of the previous few days could have any meaning, could even be mentioned. He told his aunt that he did not want to go into the butcher’s shop with her, but would meet her later as arranged with his father and uncle.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked as they stood outside the shop.

  ‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘She walked out of the village towards Pallosa.’

  His aunt sighed in exasperation.

  ‘Is that all that happened?’ Her gaze was sharp and accusatory. ‘She just walked out for no reason on a freezing winter’s day?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, she didn’t arrive,’ his aunt said.

  ‘I don’t know what we are going to do without her,’ Miquel replied.

  He knew that he had now cut off any further questions from his aunt, but saying it, allowing the note of sadness which he had struck merely as a strategy to prevent her from continuing, had had its own effect on him, and he found that he had begun to cry. He turned and walked away from her, his hand over his face so that no one could see his tears, and he did not look back.

  Later, when he came to the cafe, his father and uncle had not arrived. His aunt greeted him coldly. He ordered a sandwich and had to concentrate hard, when it came, not to grab it and eat it in a few bites. When he had eaten it, he felt once more a desperate need to order another one.

  When his aunt’s friend appeared and sat down, she examined him curiously.

  ‘I could not believe it when I saw you earlier,’ she said. ‘You look the image of your grandfather from Pallosa, it’s more than that, every single thing about you is like him. I mean even the way you are looking at me now.’

  ‘He was old when I knew him,’ his aunt joined in, ‘but I remember them all saying it. Even when you were small you did things that reminded your mother of him.’

  ‘I never met him,’ Miquel said.

  ‘Well, it’s like meeting a ghost,’ the woman said.

  ‘She never mentioned it,’ Miquel said.

  ‘I wish my husband was here,’ the woman went on. ‘He would be amazed by you, even the way you are looking away from me now, he’d be amazed.’

  ‘I suppose we all look like people in our families,’ his aunt said. ‘I suppose it’s natural.’

  It was clear to Miquel when his father and his uncle finally arrived that they had walked from the police station in silence. Miquel sensed also that his father had been asked questions which had deeply unsettled him. He could look at none of them as he sat down.

  His uncle then explained that the police would set in train a professional search, working from both villages, the one she walked out of and the one to which she was bound. They saw no reason why the family or the villagers should join them, it would be a nuisance, he said. It would begin in the morning at first light as, in his opinion, it should have begun two days earlier. But there was nothing could be done, he said, except hope that this search would yield results. Miquel almost smiled at the thought that his uncle was speaking like a policeman.

  When he and his father got home after a slow journey on the icy roads, the jeep stalling and slipping on each slope, and sliding dangerously on a number of curves, night had almost fallen. At first he did not recognize the three jeeps parked in front of their house. Everything that was happening had such newness to it that three strange jeeps meant nothing, were hardly worthy of comment. Then he saw that they were police jeeps and that there were two policemen standing at the door watching their arrival closely, having recognized them, and having, he surmised, been waiting for their return. He had not seen either of these policemen before. They nodded in acknowledgement but did not speak as they approached them. They let them pass into the house. In the kitchen, the young policeman who had come the day after her disappearance was already sitting on a chair near the window. He did not change his blank expression when Miquel turned on the electric light in the room.

  When the older policeman, who had been in their house before, came downstairs, he announced that the police were searching the house and the barns below. They could hear the sounds of heavy boots on the floorboards of the rooms upstairs. Miquel moved to go up, but the older one barred his way.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Both of you please stay down here.’

  ‘What do you think you are going to find up there?’ his father asked.

  ‘Both of you stay down here,’ the policeman repeated and nodded in the direction of the younger policeman, who stood up as if to guard the way. Miquel noticed that his eyes were duller than the last time, his hair less shiny. He responded to Miquel’s gaze with pure equanimity, gazing back without seeming to heed in the slightest way what he saw. He did not once look at Miquel’s father, who had taken a chair and was sitting at the kitchen table.

  As the older policeman left the house, they heard a noise coming from one of the barns; one of the big old doors, Miquel guessed, was being pulled back. He moved towards the window so that he could see what was happening, but quietly the young policeman motioned to him without speaking that he must stay where he was.

  ‘Are we under arrest?’ Miquel’s father asked.

  The policeman did not look at him and did not answer. He kept his eyes on Miquel and then on his father; his look had no hostility in it, it was powerful merely because it was relentlessly vacant. His face in its wilful immobility resembled a heavy white mask. He had not yet spoken to them; his voice, his accent, would tell them too much about him. Being prevented from going to the window did not worry Miquel; he knew they were not under arrest, that the search of the house and barns was a routine matter, encouraged perhaps by Foix and Castellet. The young policeman had kept him from moving, he believed, out of timidity, a fear of his superiors rather than any authority of his own. As the three of them remained there, his father slumped in his chair staring at the ground, Miquel and the policeman locked eyes and then looked away, glancing at each other again after a while, Miquel running his eyes over the young man’s body. The policeman watched him doing this with something between acceptance and indifference until Miquel stood up and went again to the window. The policeman shrugged but did not move.

&n
bsp; Miquel could see that the seven or eight policemen now gathered in front of the house had been joined by Foix and Castellet. He could not tell, however, from what direction they had come, if they had been in the barns as well. Their everyday clothes did nothing to undermine the authority they seemed to have among the policemen, who were all outsiders. They were listening closely now as Foix spoke and made gestures. Miquel’s father came to the window and watched them too, but since he had not noticed them in La Seu, Miquel realized that he would fail to grasp the significance of their standing with the police outside the door. Miquel wondered what they had said to place themselves in such a position of apparent trust. When the young policeman was finally called to join the others, he left the house without speaking, and the three jeeps drove away, leaving Foix and Castellet to walk slowly up the village in the snow.

  He and his father were alone now. Miquel did not think that any of their neighbours would come near them; they would not be needed in the search of the mountain which the police would conduct. Again, he thought that they should write to Jordi, but the letter would now have to say what he and his father had failed even to say to each other. He knew that Jordi, if he received such a letter, would have to come home, whether he got permission or not. But even if he did get permission, it would only be for a few days. Miquel imagined him arriving to find nothing, an emptiness in the house, his father reduced to silence, with nothing to do, no grave to visit, no body to touch, no coffin to carry, no words of consolation from those around. Instead, a frozen landscape and the dreaded days with no thaw.

  Miquel could not visualize Jordi’s response to a letter, he tried to picture him reading it and then moving fast from wherever he was towards them. All his life, from the time he was a small child, an injured cat or a limping dog or any sort of hungry animal would cause Jordi to panic. All through his childhood they had to prevent him from befriending stray dogs or neighbours’ cats. He had to be kept indoors when the hunters were in the forest shooting the wild boars and then dragging them bloody through the village. Away, he would miss Clua, whom Miquel and his father hardly tolerated, as much as he missed any of them. The idea that his mother might be missing or in danger would be unbearable to him; the fact that she was gone, buried deep in snow somewhere in the distance, could not be conveyed to him now. And yet Miquel also understood that not telling him, leaving him to live as though this event had not occurred, was a real piece of treachery.