The Fall of Light

by Niall Williams

  “You must eat me,” he said, and stabbed a thin iron spike clean through his heart.

  They did not eat him but took all of his clothes, his blankets and scarves. Under Finbar’s direction they distributed these to the very young and old gypsies until they were like deeply padded polar creatures and not even their faces could be seen. The starving horses they released and watched as they made slow, terrified progress away down the road. Then they pushed Masso’s caravan over the edge of the road and it crashed and splintered and echoed as the only sound of man in those mountains.

  They endured another seven days and nights. Finbar Foley became their leader without election or discussion. He told them to gather six in a caravan and embrace each other’s bodies as if in the strongest grip of passion. He told them to lock their lips and breathe into each other and seal there the energy of life in one long and continuous circuitry of warm air.

  The caravans lay in the snowy pass, and within each of them the gypsies embraced. Young and old clung to each other and worked an elaborate puzzle of connection so that no part of man or woman was left untouched. Giggles, groans, moans, and other sounds travelled the length of the caravans and into the white air like the ghosts of pleasure. And then there was silence.

  Years later, when the grandchildren of those gypsies told it, the snow would fall faster and faster. Each flake would become larger, they would spread their arms to show, and the snowflakes would transform until they were wide as sheets unpacked and tossed from some chest in the heavens. The gypsies would hear them fall upon them. In the darkness of their caravans they would sense the weight of whiteness thump as though it were landing on their spirits. Then by the magic of such memories, and the inheritance of the inexplicable that was theirs, the gypsy grandchildren would tell how the snow sheets defied science and were not cold but warm. The heat inside the hoops of canvas grew. Those who had prepared themselves for death and were starved and frozen into stilled pose as in some collapsed mosaic of byzantine intricacy now moved their limbs. They stretched as the blood warmed and ran into their toes. Their faces felt the breath of those next to them. Their eyes dribbled a rheumy warm fluid and then their noses, too. Sweat flowed off them and the heat was such that in their delirium or fever they rose and threw off the layers of clothes they were wearing and fell to the most passionate and sexual loving that surpassed even their own dreams. The caravans steamed. The young writhed upon each other. The leathery skin of those gypsies old and long travelled softened like apples in October and filled the air with the fruitful scent of remembered Indian summer. Whether the gypsies were dead or dying, they could not be sure. Whether this was the hereafter or they were being granted a final night of loving on the farthermost edge of life seemed equally likely, and they did not question it.

  Their grandchildren would pause there to allow the story its own room in the minds of those who listened. And then, at last, they would tell its outcome, how the sheets of snow over the gypsies’ heads had been melted by body heat. The sweat that dropped through the floorboards of the caravans made a river in that mountain pass and carried the snow away upon it. Then when the temperature inside the caravans grew too great, the canvas had been thrown back and the green world revealed. They had survived, and when their bodies cooled and they put on their clothes and looked away from each other with low abashment, there remained the feeling that Finbar Foley had saved them. He walked along the line of them and shook each by hand and kissed them. Then he told them that without horses they could take only the best caravan and that each should put within it what was most precious and the men would take turns pulling it back down the mountain into France.

  So they left there, walking out of the blizzard in the cold of dawn, a ramshackle collection of gypsies pulling a single caravan toward the dream of spring. At their head was Finbar Foley, and on the seatboard of the caravan sat the mer-girl Cait, pregnant at last with Foley twins.

  7

  Francis Foley and Teige and the young girls Deirdre and Maeve were similarly journeying. They crossed the open green land of Tipperary in the mild weather that followed the snow. The girls sat mute and impassive on the cart, and behind them at a small remove followed the O’Connor dog. When the cart slowed, so did the dog. When it stopped, the dog stood in arrested pose and watched from a short distance and then sat upon the grass verge of the ditch to wait. The young girls did not pay it any heed and seemed themselves, whether by sympathy, grief, or chance, to have acquired their mother’s dumbness. They stared at the road. They ate their food in a trance and were like creatures fallen from another world. Their eyes could not be met. When Teige brought them the bowl of their dinner and was careful to kneel to their level to speak in his softest voice, the girls’ eyes looked elsewhere. In the night Francis told Teige in whispers that they must expect it would take time. They were lying in a field on the blankets they had brought from the O’Connor house. The night sky was starless and the darkness falling in a fine mist. For an hour each had lain there awaiting sleep, listening to the small noises of the night and hearing the dog sneaking closer in the dark.

  “It will be a while,” Francis said.

  Teige lay and did not move. He was trying to understand how his father knew in the dark that he was not sleeping.

  “Yes,” he said at last.

  It was a conversation like that, fragments of speech and response separated in the dark sometimes by pauses so long as to make each statement seem the end or beginning, or the inconsequential ramblings of the last awake.

  “Those girls will come through it, though.”

  The old man paused. His voice was low and edged with desperation. Teige heard him swallow nothing. The soft rain fell on them. In the dark the dog arrived at the cart where the girls were sleeping.

  “They seem like birds,” Teige said, “stunned and fallen down in the grass. Why will they not say anything?”

  The sky was moonless and the world seemed lost and without light.

  “They will,” Francis said after a time. “They will come through.

  “They will,” he said after another moment.

  Teige said nothing. He knew his father was speaking not only of the girls, but of the terrible plight of orphans that weighed on him, filling the space about him with memories. Where were his other sons? Where was Finan gone? Had he really killed that man? Where were Finbar and the gypsies? What corner was Tomas vanished into, and why had he not returned? Where, oh where was Emer?

  “We will give care to them,” the old man said when he had recovered. “We will bring those girls with us to this island, Teige. Yes. We will.”

  If he said more, Teige did not hear him, for he fell asleep even as the dog claimed its place on the cart between the two girls and lay with low moans, hunting in its dreams the ghosted scent of its vanished master.

  In the morning they moved on again and the dog resumed its place a little ways behind. Teige drove the pony and cart and the two O’Connor girls sat upon it still like the daughters of Lot. The Foleys crossed the Shannon at a bridge and made their way across the County Limerick and into Clare. Sometimes the road they travelled gave way to such mud that the pony could not pull through it and Teige and Francis both had to pull and push, making slow progress with the girls useless to help and the dog watching from the ditch. The farther west they travelled, the higher the mud on the axle of the wheels.

  In the late afternoon they came upon a farmer with a black cow in the road. In that season before the beginning of new grass, he was allowing her the poor grazing of the ditch outside his fields. Francis called to him a greeting, and the man acknowledged him with the kind of low-voiced circumspection that seemed habitual there. When he could no longer avoid conversation the farmer asked them where they were going. The old man told him they were heading to the town of Kilkee in the west to see if there was news of his eldest son. The farmer nodded. He placed his hand on the backside of his cow. The cow did not move. She was thin and pregnant and exhausted. T
he farmer moved his mouth about as if trying to find some difficult word there. He looked over the ditch at the wet fields. He said a sound that was not a word, and then at last brought himself to ask them if they wanted food that night.

  They ate in a small cottage that was unlit by any lamp even after darkness fell. There was a shadowy gloom there to which their eyes became accustomed. The woman of the house was robust looking with greying curls that fell down her cheeks. There were the shapes of a half dozen children standing. The O’Connor girls sat amongst them on a bench and ate the potatoes and potato bread and winter cabbage and drank the buttermilk but did not speak. The farmer did not speak either and only made low, guttural noises of response when Francis addressed him. His wife answered instead. She seemed lightened by their company, and it was apparent that the dour farmer had invited the Foleys there as a peace offering against some earlier argument with his wife. He had brought them to disprove his meanness, though he would not burn a lamp.

  “You’re like people who’ve seen a lot,” the woman said. “I’ve seen no place but this parish and not even the farthest ends of that.” She glared down the table at her husband, who did not raise his eyes to her.

  “We’ve seen enough,” Francis said. “But few places with the charity and welcome of your house.” He looked over at where she was standing by the deal dresser in the darkness. He nodded to her his thanks and was not sure if she saw him or not. The children who were standing along the length of the table had finished eating and were waiting to see what their father might leave on his tin plate. The youngest of them was aged about four. Teige watched as the man sopped milk in a semicircle with the butt of his potato bread. There was a half of it left. He sopped the milk thrice and ate it. Then he took the second half of the butt and circled the hollow of the plate again, although it seemed already dried. This too he mouthed. Then he stood up, stepped back, and went from the cottage. The children scrambled forward amidst the shouts of their mother and found of the nothing he had left crumbs and flakes of food not enough to nourish mice but small trophies to them as they fell at each other and toppled noisily onto the ground. The O’Connor girls watched this in some alarm at first, and Teige saw their faces and motioned them not to be worried. Then the mother of all those children assured the girls too and watched not without glee or pride as that mob of hers, boys and girls alike, tussled and squirmed and cursed and were general entertainment. A short time after, the farmer came to the door. His face was twisted like a rag.

  “Come,” he said, “now.”

  The Foleys and the eldest boy followed the farmer to the cabin. There a lamp had been lit. On a damp bed of mucked rushes the exhausted black cow was labouring. The farmer held the light high and they each saw the shine of her, the gloss of effort leaking out through her hide. Her eyes were wild and the pull and blow of her breath uneven and rasping like some faulty mechanics. The farmer hung the lamp on the wall, then brought up from the ground a length of thick rope.

  “She won’t do,” he said to none of them in particular. “You’ve pulled a calf?” he asked Francis Foley.

  “I have, and many, but she’s not ready.”

  “She’ll die.”

  “She won’t,” Francis said.

  “She’s older than that boy,” the farmer said, nodding toward Teige. “We’ll pull her now.”

  He ran his hand along the back of the old cow, but in her terror and hunger and weakness she frighted and turned sharply in the byre and knocked the farmer sideways against the wall. He cursed her with a kind of exaggerated violence, then stepped forward again and this time thrashed at her with the rope like a whip. He made connection to her backside only twice and she bucked and moved in a quick-trot directly at them. The boy jumped in against the stone wall of the cabin. Teige was pushed by his father sideways and felt the side of the cow against him as she passed. She reached the far wall and moaned. Then she bellowed loudly and arched her great head and roared once more. Pig squeals came from the next cabin over. The farmer strode up and whipped at her again. He shouted at her to stop that and be quiet, but she was still not finished bellowing and had her face now against the old door.

  “Don’t, she’ll push the door out. Wait!” Francis called, but the farmer was not to be deprived of his chance to whip her again. The rope flew back and was in midcurve high in the air when Francis stepped up and grasped the farmer and held him hooped in his arms. The man wriggled and cursed and tried to stamp on the other’s foot, but he could not break free, and the son, watching, allowed a crooked smile to slide over his mouth as though at a circus.

  “Let me off!” the farmer shouted, but Francis Foley held him and kept him there imprisoned and told Teige to see to the cow.

  Teige moved forward with his hands out wide and whispered sounds.

  He said over and over words that sounded like a sea.

  The cow had her back to him. The place where she had been whipped had welted in two clean lines. Still Teige whispered the sea until it was all about them and the farmer in Francis Foley’s arms quietened. Teige was next to her now, and the noise he made became instead a low moan that was almost unvoiced and sourced in some deeper part of his insides below his larynx. He came about until he was before her, then licked his fingers and held them out and touched them against her foamed mouth. And she did not back away. The old cow stood in the low light with Teige putting his fingers inside her mouth and moving them within her mucus. The boy gasped at it. The farmer remained quiet. He watched as though at a dream. Then Teige licked his other fingers and, after withdrawing one hand, slid the other there, and the cow puzzled on them and turned her tongue upon them. Then Teige withdrew his moist hand and brought it down her back and softly inside her. He was knelt on the rushes, his head against her steaming flank and a hand inside her. She stood still some moments, her mouth working as though at the memory of her mother’s udder. Then, very slowly, Teige moved his weight down along her and pressed his right hand deeper inside to feel for the calf. Sharp smacking sounds of suction and fluid escaped. She stood for him. His arm was lost inside her now and was vanished up to his elbow. The others watched his face in the lamplight for signs of what he found. But for a time they could not tell, and Teige said again the sound of the sea and the low moans which spoke only to the cow. Blood and a heavy blackish stuff leaked there. The cow groaned. The boy’s face was a white moon against the wall. Teige turned his hand inside her and twisted his elbow around until it was facing the thatch. Then back again. A spasm travelled through her. She lifted her left hind leg and made a tiny kicking flick at nothing. A foamy sweat rose in separate places on her black hide. Then Teige began to withdraw his arm from inside her. He did so in slow stages, waiting and then pulling, easing his way from the depth of her as his arm came back out into the lamplight with skeins of blood flecked upon it and a transparent film of membrane. His arm withdrew as far as his wrist and then stopped.

  “How is she, Teige?” Francis asked him.

  “Backward. But she’s here now.” And again he made the sound of the sea. And while he was making it he withdrew his hand another piece and the bone white tips of the calf’s hind hooves appeared where they had pierced through. The farmer went to step forward.

  “No, wait.” Francis Foley’s hand was on his shoulder. “You’ll start her. Teige knows. Wait.”

  Teige’s bloodied hand was free in the air and the calf’s legs were out as far as the shins.

  “Now, quickly,” Teige said, “or the hip will lock and the calf will die.” And before another minute had passed his father and the farmer and the farmer’s son had come and the rope had been secured over the hooves and the calf pulled free onto the rushy floor. Teige bent to blow in its nostrils. The black cow turned her head and made a moaning. Francis moved his hand on her swollen udder until the beistings came and Teige and the farmer lifted the calf upright in the world for the first time. It stood and toppled like a thing of sticks. Now its forelegs were fixed solid and its hind bu
ckled, and now the opposite. It tottered and was for a time like an imperfect creation. The men came and steadied it and held its mouth in place, where at first it would not suck. Milk squirted and oozed out over it. Driblets ran across the calf’s mouth but not into it. Teige had to slip his thumb in the side of the mouth and accustom the tongue and wait until the calf discovered sucking and could then have the hand-warmed teat wedged in its mouth.

  The men stood back. In the yellowy light of the lamp they watched with the same mute reverence as was since time began. The calf milked at the mother and twice pushed its head quickly against the bulge of her udder for more.

  “Tell your mother we have a heifer calf,” the farmer said. His son nodded and ran out. Still the two men and Teige stood. Teige’s clothes were wet and stained. His father looked at him and had to blink his eyes then for the power of pride that coursed through him. Then he looked up at the old timbers of the roof and the thatch as though seeing through them and beyond into the heavens and the stars.

  When the cabin door opened, the woman of the house appeared and she looked at the calf and the black cow and said, “Well, ye did well and thanks due to these strangers.” She smiled briefly at her husband, and he made a timid return of the same. Then she looked at Francis and Teige, and in the stillness of the cabin the intake of her breath was audible. She saw them for the first time in the light.

  “It’s yourself again,” she said.

  Francis turned to her. Her face showed she was astonished.

  “You,” she repeated.

  “You have seen me before?”

  “Yes. Only you were younger. Four days ago or so, wasn’t it? On the road.” She stopped suddenly and became thoughtful; her hands came to her mouth and pulled at her lower lip.

  “Perhaps it was a man like me?” said Francis, and he came forward excitedly and took the lamp from the wall and held it next to his face.