The Black Snow: A Novel

by Paul Lynch

  In the hours of day he could hear Billy making noise downstairs, the boy trying to keep the house going. The pump in the yard made its bird squeak and he could hear every few hours the opening and closing of the stove door, sometimes noises of cooking. The boy kept the radio on and let it run all day and every few hours he would appear with food speaking kindly, slices of buttered bread and tea, and the boy attempted to make soup and he cooked spuds and brought them up to the room steaming but the plates and bowls piled up beside the bed and the food went barely eaten. In the evenings Billy skulked softly in the room watching his father, afraid to open the curtains and when the man was sleeping he drew the covers over him. In the thin lamplight he saw himself a spectral figure upon the wall, did not know what it was like to watch a man dying but thought it might be something like this. Wondered if a grown man could die from hurt. He urged his father to drink some tea, to sup on water and after a while Barnabas would put his mouth to a cup. The lost child eyes of his father. The boy tried to talk about his mother but Barnabas guarded his silence as if his mouth had been bouldered up to keep in the dead and he did not hear how the certainty of being that was held in the boy’s voice began to escape out of him. The boy hovering unlit amongst the shadows of the room, fear gnawing deeper into him.

  The days swung loose around the house and then a night beamed a full moon oblivious, beamed again half hid in cloud and less the figure of what it was. He could hear the boy’s breathing as he stood behind the door, hear the soft moan of wood as Billy stood at the top of the stairs, holding still in the dark afraid to make noise or take what was circling in his mind and let it speak. And when Billy went into the room later and spoke to Barnabas he did so quietly, spoke as if he were afraid his words would shatter what was left of the man. After he spoke he heard not a sound and he shook his father’s shoulder with both hate and affection and he saw then that his father was asleep and the words that passed his lips went unheard, the shapes sounded by his voice uncoupling into silence.

  Barnabas dreamed he was working again at great heights, stood on high steel and in each and every such dream he faltered, fell the long fall. Three times he had that dream and awoke from it sodden and helpless. And then he awoke and heard the drum of rain on the roof, noticed that his mouth was arid. He sat up and listened to the rain, heard when it stopped the house fill with silence and he spoke to himself. I’m not dying. The radio was off and he heard no sound of Billy and he reached for his water and saw it was finished, stuck his tongue up into the glass. He swung out of bed and stood on weak legs, began to walk as if his legs were new to him, padded downstairs in bare feet. Every room silent in the hand of the cold while his breath rode the air before him. Into the kitchen. Saw the place distressed as if a fight had occurred, a chair lying broken on the floor and an empty bottle of whiskey sideways on the table. He righted the bottle and called out to the boy. When he opened the fire he saw it had long gone out, saw on the table beside the whiskey a plate with food beginning to moulder. Called out to the boy again but was met with no answer. He went to the water jug and shook it and saw it was empty and he called out again, heard his own voice faltering, cleared his throat. Billy. Where are you? He went outside with the jug. Lost to whatever it was the time of day.

  He found fuel for the fire and lit it, watched how it danced newborn upon the wood and held his hands over it. I hope that boy’s not gone after her. How far will he get like that? We’ll go together and bring her back. That is what we will do. The room began to spread with heat. Afternoon and he found only the dust of tea leaves in the tin so he drank hot water instead. A stale heel of bread to chew on. He tidied away the pieces of the broken chair and fed them to the fire save for the chair’s seat that was too large to fit into the stove. He went upstairs to the room and went to the drawer in the dresser where all their money lay hid in a biscuit tin but when he opened up the box he saw all of the money was gone. His voice a whisper. Eskra. He sat down on the bed and held his head in his hands, stood again and began to look through Eskra’s things, saw she had taken little with her but that her valise in the press was gone. He sat back down upon the edge of the bed. Wept.

  Downstairs and he put on his hat and he went out to look for Billy. That boy lying some place silly drunk. He called about the yard and walked down the road until he came close to McDaid’s and then he turned back. Billy. He went to the chicken coop and saw the birds had fled, had not been fed in days, one lone chicken wandering the far edge of the field, went over and rescued it. He felt about for eggs, found one and then another, stomped back towards the house. The eggs stood on end in water but he was too hungry to care, watched the water foam over the top of them, stood at the window peeling the shells. The albumin white rubber in his mouth. Through the window he saw the horse waggling its head up the side field. That animal unfed and how long. He put on his welly boots and went back out, walked through the dim day up the field. Billy. The horse came towards him and shook its head with welcome and he took it by the halter, began to walk it to the stable. How long you out here, horse? Eh? What is a horse to do? The horse sounded brightly upon the flagstones and he saw how the byre stood bare to the day in its shape of rough stone, roofless, waiting for him to return and finish it, and he walked the horse into the barn door and stopped. Held in that gloom of horse dung and web and must and a faintly reaching daylight was something else, the sensation that came to him of a person, and as soon as he was aware of it he turned and saw, let the horse’s halter drop, saw held in a shell of grey light the limp hands of Billy as he hung lifeless from the roof, and something collapsed in Barnabas’s mind for he turned then and walked the horse back out, walked it towards the field, let it loose, watched it roam towards the trough unfilled but for what rain had fallen into it and he stood watching the sky his mind darker than all things made of weather and anything else that stood under the sun.

  McDaid was on his haunches unrolling wire when he looked up and saw the form of Barnabas taking shape through the trees, the man staggering down the road, coming near to his house. He stood quietly and backfooted into the wood. Lambs spangled snow-white around him and his left foot began to itch in his welly boot. He leaned against a tree, pulled out his foot to scratch it, saw Barnabas disappear and appear again at the edge of the field. The way he stood like he had a heap of drink in him, his hands making dumb fists and calling out to McDaid, squinting, could not see him. McDaid watching him, saw Queenie watching Barnabas, hope to fuck that dog will not give me away. How it seemed that Barnabas could barely speak. Heard in his voice a desolation that reached into the sky and fell silent and it was then that he wanted to go to him but would not, not until that man addresses the misunderstanding between us, watched as Barnabas turned and stumbled away.

  Out of the house plodfoot he came with an old milking stool in his hand. Stood outside the stable and looked at the sky. Strange clouds. They stood over the land shaped in clusters of near-hexagonal cells, each cloud heavy at the centre with dark. Their outer parts were fringed with an electric light. He saw blue sky hovering behind the parts that did not touch as if waiting to break through.

  He did not want to go in.

  Upon the flagstones he watched a devil-wind whip together a vortex union of grass and leaves, a moment of pure concentric energy that rushed them into violent being, a dancing circle that danced and danced until the circle fell broken, grass and leaves blowing in different directions away. He puzzled on it for a moment as if he could read some meaning from it. He ground down on his teeth and went into the stable and stood the stool in front of the boy’s bare bluing legs. He laid his coat out upon the floor for him. When he stood on the stool he saw the rope behind the throat, a goddamn double granny knot did the thing. He closed his eyes as he reached with a knife to cut the rope. What came from his own throat as he cut was a freak animal sound and he opened his eyes to catch the falling dead weight, laid the boy gently on his coat. He cut the noose free from his neck, bent to the ground and lift
ed him. He carried the body out into the day and stood grim in the shadow of the byre, the body’s stiffness having passed so that the body fell loose in his arms. My dear boy. He could not stop his mind becoming vivid, pictures and smells of Billy as a young child feather-light in his arms, carrying him up to bed, a sick child a few years later, worn out from fever all hot skin and his small hands curling and clutching at him tightly never wanting his father to leave him. My dear boy. What he carried now in his arms was as heavy as all the clay of the earth and his heart the equal of it.

  He did not know what to do so he laid him out on the deal table, made a pillow for the boy with his coat. His breath stalled into a terrible silence and then he let it out, his breath a cold and haunted face. Could feel against the flat of his hand Billy’s cold skin, could feel the rough texture of his hair, smoothed with his thumb the boy’s blue eyelids. The diagonal rope burn on each side of the boy’s neck and soft light pressing through the window caressed his face, made him seem serenely beautiful, the bluing lavender of his skin, such lightness an unjust beauty. Barnabas stood over the boy and wanted to speak but his mouth was filled as if he had opened it to a scarp of loosed earth that pitched into him, clumped his tongue, stuck to his teeth, began to fill up the insides of him.

  He lifted his boy up and held him longer than any time he held him alive since he was an infant, his tears warm on the boy’s cold cheek.

  He kicked something skidding under the table and he bent down to retrieve it. A black notebook. When he opened the cover he saw Billy’s scrawl on it. Wondered why it was on the floor and then he knew what it was, the boy drunk beyond caring. He took it to the stove and opened the door, saw the fire reduced to a depressed red slump. He fed the fire turf and threw the diary in on top of it, closed the door and sat broken on the range chair. Suddenly he snapped back up. He opened the stove door and reached in and took hold of the notebook through smoke, saw it was not yet burnt. He collapsed into the range chair and opened it, the boy’s scrawl a strange mix of small and capital letters, saw the notebook was filled with a confusion of entries and stories. He began to read and in his heart he feared it was a violation but could not stop. What he read placed Billy’s voice into his mind in the purest form. He heard him in a way he had not heard him while he was alive and the strength of the boy’s voice through each word struck him weighted with the full of the boy’s being.

  Hours passed. Flies began to appear around the table and he stood up and batted at them with his fists. When he looked again from the range chair their number had multiplied. He looked at them appalled for what they were wont to do, how they moved in black flits around the room, arced and alighted, flew away again to fill the space with their sickly buzzing. He saw them gather at the window nosing at the pane as if they could see a path out into the wider daylight, the drizzling rain, buzzing their way frantic at the glass without knowing it was the limit of their nature to be able to see outside but not to be able to pass through the window. He began to see a different picture of what had caused the fire as he read the boy’s words, saw it puzzle together, keeping that Masher boy hid, that’s what was going on, and it seemed to him a perfect picture.

  An evening of two suns. Those strange cellular clouds had been scattered west by a wind that left the sky with what seemed like blue smoke. Upon it rolled a penny moon magnified and aflame. It made a fool of the waning sun and its flames sent filigrees of light into the sky, cast everything around it with a magnificent burnt-orange. There was within him now a rage, an anger basic and fundamental to the nature of what it was that made him, and he let himself ride its fierce energy. Walked through the rear gate and left it lying open. Behind him the gate finally gave up and slumped towards the earth. Through barren back fields he walked with his fists balled watching inward dark visions that came to him unbidden and he let them roam, those animals of a fiercer nature, his vision narrowing down so that he ceased to see what direction he took, ceased to see the land before him or what was underfoot, ten thousand wet tongues of grass reaching for his ankles, thistles spiking at the sky. The vanishing shape in the grass of his foot. Overhead a skim of dark birds passed with a great whoosh. He walked down a triangular field that narrowed to a rope-tied gate and he entered now into one of Fran Glacken’s fields, the soaking bottoms of his trousers cold against his leg as he swung himself over the gate. Marched through a long slanting field shaped like a sickle, the earth freshly ploughed, stomped the soil under him slow and heavy like sand under his boots. The land leaning down and baywater a short distance away reflecting that smoke-blue evening light and what seemed like those two suns shimmering on its surface. Over the water a lone gull sobbed and jooked sharp for a flint horizon. Down the sloping land till he saw the isolate shape of Pat the Masher’s house.

  He walked in the door, stood in the man’s kitchen, saw it was empty, took in the deepening strange smell, boiled cabbage and meat and other things he could not name, the unique smells of another. What was in him now needed letting out and he walked into the other room, saw Pat the Masher asleep on a chair, his hands shaped into useless fists on his lap, his jaw hung loose. There was serenity in his being and it slipped off him like a mask when he awoke, Barnabas standing over him with a fist balled the diviner of all malice. What Barnabas saw alight the man’s eyes when he awoke was puzzlement, his brow lowering to thicken over his eyes, and then the wide startle of fear. Barnabas’s voice coming at him sea-tidal and what he saw in Barnabas’s eyes made him speechless, the animal shape of the man over him. Where is that fucking bastard son of yours? Where are you hiding him?

  As Barnabas spoke he wavered a red fist before the man and The Masher opened his mouth but no words would come out. Barnabas pulled him out of the chair by his shirt but the mechanics that brought The Masher to standing ceased to work and he fell limp like a rag doll. Barnabas grabbed him by a ruck of his shirting and dragged the man out of the house, dropped him in the yard beside an old potato digger livered with rust, its giant wheels lying useless like discarded Grecian suns. He leaned down into him so close he could almost see the other man’s thinking.

  Where is he, Masher? You fucking hid him, didn’t you? Oh yes you did. Now tell me where he is. He burnt down my byre and took away my farm and now he’s kilt my son.

  The man’s face puzzled and he went to speak but he could not find the words and Barnabas beat him twice with his fist in the forehead. The man took the beating uselessly and his head fell loose to the floor and then Barnabas lifted him up again. Tell me, he said. Something then in The Masher came to life and he began to struggle and they turned about and he swung a fist up that made a perfect blow to the side of Barnabas’s head. Barnabas staggered rearwards, lost his footing, fell in a helpless slow fashion upon the potato digger. The old metal rang from the bang of his skull and for a moment there opened up a terrible silence, Barnabas lying there stupid and mute, his eyes stunned, The Masher standing over him in horror with his hands to his head, watching the dark blood come.

  You stupid man, he said. See what you done to yerself.

  The Masher turned and paced about the yard and he came back to Barnabas and leaned in again. His eyes shaking. That boy of mine, he said. His voice broke and his mouth fell loose but the power to speak was propelled by some last wind within him. He shook his head at Barnabas again. That boy of mine, Barnabas. He was kilt. Died weeks ago at the hospital. Took a bad beating at the asylum though they say he took a fall. Buried him in the asylum graveyard before I even got to hear. Twas the priest drove me up.

  Barnabas trying to stand, his mind faltering, his hand to the soft and bloody part of his head, his body a tree riven in two places so that he began to see in double. He could not see where The Masher had gone. Could see hardly anything at all but for snatches of the evening light as he stood bent against it, the sensorium of his mind coming undone to a dazzling dark that sought to spread like ink within and consume him. He tried to speak, could taste himself in his mouth in new ways, clump of
tongue-flesh rolling loose in his mouth, and a stumbling then towards the fence. Fell over it, began to move a wambling pack beast up the field, a mountain rill in the back of his mouth trickling iron blood. Back-bent and heaving. Blinking against the unseen light. His mind become animal instinct, a place of pure survival.

  He made his way slow up that hill, the world an unearthly sloping while he tongued his wet blood mouth. Colding fingers. He found his way into the sickle field, walked till the nausea defeated him and he bent over and vomited food and blood, and when he stood back up he saw in his split vision his handprints as they had pressed into the earth.

  An almost sparkling white hotness.

  Shivering when his shadow fell in the door.

  He made his way through the kitchen blind and past the point of grief. Did not stop to take in the shape of his son, took the stairs hands and knees drooling blood upon the boards towards the bedroom dark. Grasped off the chair a towel and when he lay down on the bed he put the towel under his head roughly folded. Lay there shivering in the long shadow of the bed while the night opened like a mouth from a dream.

  Drifting then into a tangle of strangeness and what came to him was a talking in dream tongues, crazed stranger faces, a howling wind of pain. The nausea in his belly rose again and he awoke and was sick all over himself and when he lay his head back to rest and put his hand to his head he could feel his hair cotted with blood, the softness at his skull quietly weeping. He did not understand. He wanted to apologize.