“I am sorry. I did not realize this was something that mattered so much to you, or I never would have—”
“Of course it’s something that matters to me!” she said. The moonlight showed up the tears on her face. “Ryan, you don’t understand anything! You were angry for half an hour this morning when I just mentioned your parents.”
“I told you, I wasn’t angry with you.”
“Then who were you angry with?”
“No one. I wasn’t. I don’t want to discuss this, please.” And then she saw the tears in his eyes, threatening to fall. “I don’t want to discuss it,” he repeated. He looked away and raised his hands to his head as though in exasperation. “Anna, why do you have to bring all this back to me?” he said. “I’m not going to explain the history of my life to you. And if I was, I would have to know where your grandmother got that necklace from first.”
“Why?” she said, more quietly. The moon disappeared behind a cloud, and in the darkness they were separated.
“I can’t explain,” said Ryan’s voice. “I wish I could, because—” He paused. “I want to tell you. Honestly, I do.”
In the darkness, his hand found hers. “Then tell me,” she said.
And then someone was calling from the lighted window. “Ryan, come in! Now. Straightaway.”
They looked at each other for a minute. Then Ryan turned. “I have to go.”
He glanced back once as he walked away from her; then his uncle called again and he broke into a run toward the house.
Anna turned and walked away down the beach, without looking back. But she could still feel exactly how his hand had caught hers, like a lasting imprint on her palm.
I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, when Father Dunstan came in, so at first I did not see him. I was thinking that the last time I had lain here, which seemed to me so recent, was back in the days when I used to be the Leo that I was—the ordinary boy who had a brother called Stirling. And now, so soon—three days later—I was an only child who had lost a brother. That wasn’t really me. It was so sudden. It was not just Stirling who was gone. I was not myself anymore. I had lost a part of my identity—a large part. I was forgetting who I was. I had only ever been Leo in relation to Stirling. I had a strange feeling that I was a lost soul, in the wrong situation, in the wrong body. I did not recognize myself in the mirror. Everything was different.
Father Dunstan shut the door, and I heard him and sat up. “Sorry, Leo,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you.” I swung my legs over the side of my bed, rested my elbows on my knees, and stared at him. He drew the chair round so that he could sit in front of me. “I wanted to ask you about the service,” he said. “Your grandmother and I both thought it would be nice if you said something.” I gave him a questioning look. “Perhaps you could take one of the readings from the Bible, or you could talk before the service starts. I know that it would be difficult, but you were the one closest to Stirling in the world, and those who loved him would like to hear what you have to say about him. I know that it is difficult at the time, when something like this happens, but people often regret not taking their chance to do this.” He looked uneasy when he saw my face. “Could you do one of the readings, perhaps?” I just went on looking at him. “Of course, you do not have to. Think about it, that’s all.” I nodded reluctantly.
“Leo, there was something else,” he said. “You are not talking.” I shook my head. “Remember, the longer you go on with something like this, the harder it is to stop it.” I stared at him and said nothing. “And it can lead to misunderstandings. Sometimes it is better to talk about things rather than contain them.” When still I did not reply, he spoke again. “How about if you agreed to speak now, and we talked about this, and then after that, if you still think it is the right thing to do, you can remain silent again?” He did not understand. “Will you write, then? I want to speak with you.” I nodded eventually, though I did not want to write. That was not the point. The point was that I did not communicate at all.
“Here,” he said, handing me a pencil from his pocket and a crumpled piece of paper. “Why are you not talking?” he asked me.
“Why the hell is it your business?” said the voice in my head.
A lot of reasons, I wrote, my hand trembling from the pressure I exerted on the pencil. The lead broke.
He took a penknife out of his pocket, sharpened the pencil silently, knocked the shreds of wood onto the floor with the back of his hand, and then, handing it back to me, said, “What kind of reasons?”
So I don’t have to answer stupid questions, I wrote.
“Any others?”
I am tired with words, I wrote. There are not enough.
“Not enough for what?” he asked.
To say what I want to say.
He sat silent for a moment. Then he said, “You know, Stirling would not necessarily wish you to do this. Perhaps he would have preferred you to speak, if only for the sake of supporting your grandmother and reading at his memorial service. He would want you to do what is right.”
“How dare you say that?” said the voice in my head. “When you just said, the moment before, that I was the closest to Stirling in the world. How can you know what Stirling would have wanted?”
Anyway he is dead so he will not know, I wrote.
“Do you think that?” he asked quietly. “Do you not think that he can see you, or know what you are doing?” I didn’t answer.
“Often it seems the right thing to do, to become absorbed by a vow like not speaking,” he continued. “But it might actually be a trap, preventing you from getting back to normality.”
How can I get back to normality? I wrote.
“Normality may have to be redefined,” he said. “But eventually, though it does not seem like it now, you will get back to some degree of ordinary life.”
So I should talk?
“That is up to you,” he said. “Only, I think that Stirling would be glad that you spoke for the sake of others, rather than angry that you broke the promise.”
We sat in silence. I traced a line on the paper from one corner toward the other, but it never got there and I gave up and dropped the pencil. “Are there any other reasons that you decided not to talk?” he said. “As a sort of punishment, perhaps?”
He waited, but I did not pick up the pencil again and answer him. “It’s important to remember that there is no reason for you to be punished, Leo,” he said eventually. “You were not to blame for Stirling’s death, and punishing yourself for it will do no good.” He looked at me.
I picked up the pencil again and wrote, You can’t make me talk.
He sighed. “I know it, Leo. But I think that it would be the best for you. How about if you talked only when it was necessary? Only when you need to communicate. You don’t have to talk about your feelings. You could just answer questions people ask you, for example.”
Sometimes I don’t want to answer. Then what?
“You could just say so.”
I will think about it, I wrote.
“Thank you, Leo,” he said. “Thank you. Good lad.”
“Don’t patronize me,” said the voice in my head.
“Sorry,” he said, seeing me frown. “But thank you. And about reading at the service … I would like you to do it. I really would. Stirling would have too, I think.”
I said I’ll think about it, I wrote, and then I shoved the paper and pencil back at him and lay down on my bed and turned to the window. He bent down to pick up the pencil from where it had fallen. “Thank you, Leo,” he said. I bit my lip to keep back a loud sob until he had left.
I did think about speaking at the service. I went to Stirling’s grave the next day. I sat at the end of it and looked at the wooden cross with Stirling’s name and wondered what I should do. Suddenly he was cut out of my life, where once he had been so important, and I could no longer do anything for him except the dull, dead things—taking a bunch of flowers, clipping the grass on his g
rave, or perhaps speaking at his memorial service. I wanted so badly to talk to him, like I used to. He was the only one I ever really talked to. I wanted to ask him if I should read at the service, like I would have done before.
“What should I do, Stirling?” I asked, in my head. There was no answer. “What do you think I should do?” I imagined him as he was when we laughed about something, or when he asked me a question, or when he talked about the Bible. What would he have said? “Should I speak at your memorial service, Stirling?” There was a silence that was not just the lack of response; it seemed the opposite of a response. “This is stupid,” said the voice in my head, and I went home.
Grandmother was not there. I assumed that she was downstairs in the bathroom or out at the market, perhaps. But there was nothing to do at home, and when a couple of hours had passed, and I had checked that she was not in the building or the yard or the bathroom, and a storm was rising outside, I decided to go out to look for her. I wrote a note—Grandmother, Gone to look for you. I will be back—and left it on the table.
It was beginning to rain. It had been raining on and off since I had got back from the barracks at Ositha. Clouds had been gathering all day, and suddenly they burst. Thunder and lightning cracked against the buildings, as if they were an enemy force attacking the vulnerable island city. I did not know where I was going, but I concentrated hard on thinking about where Grandmother would have gone, and I thought, strangely, of school. There was no reason for her to have gone there, but I went west anyway.
I cannot remember walking through the city, but I remember running up the street toward school. The rain was falling hard, and the lightning flared against the buildings. I could hear shouting and laughter and someone chanting a song. It must be afternoon break, I realized. That school was still going on seemed to me stupid. But they were all there in the yard, those boys I used to know.
I suddenly saw Grandmother silhouetted against the fence. She was staring into the yard. A couple of the younger boys were glancing at her uneasily. I ran up and touched her arm. “Harold?” she asked. I shook my head and tried to pull her away. She was talking to me urgently, but I could not understand.
“North!” said someone then, and I realized it was Seth Blackwood crossing the yard at a jog. I went on trying to pull Grandmother away. “Why haven’t you been in school?” he called. “ We were all wondering. It isn’t your brother, is it?”
I did not answer. Seth reached the fence and looked through it at me. “You should take this lady home,” he said, lowering his voice. “The teachers are edgy these days, because of the assassination attempt and the situation with the war, you know.” I must have looked blank, because he started telling me about it—about how a madman had tried to assassinate Lucien, and after that my platoon had been sent back to school with all the other cadets. I didn’t listen to much of it. But I remembered suddenly what had happened at Ositha and what the sergeant had said about prison. I did not want to meet any of the teachers.
I prized Grandmother’s fingers from the fence and steered her away. She began to sing as we walked. I motioned to her to be quiet. She was not watching me. She started muttering something to herself, and her eyes darted as she talked, as if there were demons in her. I almost spoke, but I bit back the words and pulled her by the hand, and she followed me.
“You should talk,” said the Voice. “You should talk to her.” I ignored it. I heard someone shouting behind us, maybe Seth Blackwood, or else one of the teachers. I pulled Grandmother into a run, though she could hardly manage it.
Somewhere on the way home, she came back and began asking me what was happening. But I could not speak. I went on dragging her along behind me.
When we got home, I bolted the door. Then I fetched a piece of paper and explained. I told her everything, even that she had been calling me Harold.
“Is this true?” she said when she had read it. She put her hand to her head, looking frightened. “I have no recollection … I cannot remember what I did…. I went out to go to the graveyard after you had left … but beyond that, there is just darkness.” She sat down heavily opposite me at the table. “I think I had an idea that Stirling had been kept in late. I wanted to go and fetch him.” She began to cry then. “Leo, I fear that I am losing my mind.”
Perhaps it is only because of Stirling, I wrote. You are not old.
“I am sixty-five, Leo. That’s old. And then where will you be?”
Where will I be when?
“When I am dead.”
You are not going to die, I wrote. You are just upset.
“You’re probably right,” she said, but she still looked frightened. “At least I have never done this before.” I didn’t tell her about the time at the graveyard, when I was back from Ositha. I didn’t see any benefit in it. “I’ll ask Father Dunstan when he comes tomorrow,” she said, and pretended to put it out of her mind.
Father Dunstan told Grandmother not to worry. I don’t think that he could have told her anything else. I said it wasn’t madness, but I think now that it was. Why not madness? I was losing my own mind in those days. It’s easy to do. Easier than going on living, pretending everything is still as it used to be.
Father Dunstan asked me again about speaking at the service. I agreed, reluctantly, to take one of the readings. “Thank you, Leo,” he said. “It would mean a lot to Stirling.” I didn’t know how I was going to speak, but I knew that I was going to manage it somehow. I had to do it.
The next day was worse. I woke early, before the sun had risen, and the very darkness of the room and Stirling’s empty bed and the shadows in the corners made me suddenly wish that I could die rather than count the seconds until sunrise. I lay there and wished again and again that I had run faster, until I almost thought that I had, and then I remembered that I hadn’t and that was the reason for Stirling’s death. I cried for hours. I got up pale and sick, with swollen eyes and a heavy heart. I looked in the mirror and wondered dismally how I had ever thought myself handsome.
Grandmother asked me to go to the market. We were almost out of food. “How are you, Leo?” asked Mr. Pearson at the fruit and vegetable stall. “And how is your brother, little Stirling?” I couldn’t speak. “What is it?” he asked, seeing me struggling with the tears. “Are you unwell?” I waved my hand to dismiss the question, and hurried away before anyone saw the tears fall.
There was nothing to do in the house. In Stirling’s Bible, I found the passage that I was supposed to read for the service, thinking to practice it. But I began to cry again, because in the front of the Bible was written, in my father’s own hand, To Stirling on your christening. May you grow up safe in the light of God’s law. With all our love, Mother and Father. I remembered him writing it, for one thing, when Stirling was still a baby; and for another thing, all of them—Mother and Father and little Stirling—were so far away. And it hurt to see his stupid wish, that his son could be kept safe, because no one could be kept safe by God’s law alone. Because God was in heaven, and we were on earth, and he could not reach out to us even if he wanted to. And God liked to test people, to see what it took to break them. And God’s law is not a light, I thought. It’s a burden that none of us can lift. If people try, it only crushes them.
The worst thing was thinking of Father and Mother, in Alcyria or further away, who thought Stirling was still safe. They had left him when he was two years old. Father was a wanted man and they had to escape quickly; they were going to send word in a month or two, to tell us to follow. If they did, it never reached us. Grandmother thought they must have been caught crossing the border, and she would not let us set out after them. She was convinced that they were dead.
I hadn’t looked after Stirling for them as I should have done. Mother wouldn’t have let him catch silent fever. Father would have run all the way from the eastern hills, no matter how tired he was.
I read through the passage that I was supposed to speak, and tried to imagine how I would read it. But I w
orried now that I would break down and cry, break down at the front of the church, and everyone would see me. So I shut the Bible and sat and stared out the window at the unchanging view, until Grandmother cooked dinner. I hardly ate anything. I felt guilty that I was nervous about reading at the service. But it was not just reading; it was the whole thing. Everyone would be staring at me, watching how I reacted, and it was our last chance to say goodbye to Stirling forever.
“Help me, Stirling,” I said in my head that night, unable to get to sleep for worrying. “Help me. I can’t read. I just can’t. I won’t be able to speak.” I tried to imagine Stirling’s answer, but it was no good. Stirling thought of kind things to say, and wise things, and I couldn’t think of those things myself. “I wish you were with me, Stirling,” I said in my head. “I never realized how much I need you.” I knew he couldn’t hear. I cried myself to sleep.
I dreamed that I was standing at the front of the church, but I was dumb. As if I had silent fever. No words came from my mouth, no matter how much I tried to talk. And then I dreamed that I was falling into Nothing, and woke up shivering and sweating.
But when I eventually drifted back into sleep, I had a completely different dream. I was sitting opposite Stirling at the table, and it was snowing outside, like it had in December, when the fire drove out the early shadows and I began to teach him to read. He handed me the Bible and pointed to a passage, and I read it. “ ‘And I saw a new heaven, and a new earth …’ ”
“How did you learn to read so good, Leo?” he said when I finished, and I heard his voice so clearly that I thought he must really be speaking to me and woke with a start. I was smiling when I woke. And then I remembered. Perhaps it was stupid, but for a moment, although I knew he was dead, I didn’t feel as if he was gone.
At the front of the church, standing at the lectern in the colored light from the window, I spoke the last words: “ ‘And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’ ” There was a silence, and my footsteps echoed as I walked back to sit down. Maria, at the back of the church, began to cry. I sat down again in the front pew, beside Grandmother, and she took my hand. “You make me proud, Leo,” she whispered.
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