The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  Michael was snapped from his reverie by a sound. The old man cleared his throat and before Michael could react—the Noise was coming, he was sure of it—the old man spoke. “Are you going to stay in bed all day?” The man’s voice was scratchy, as if from disuse. He cleared his throat again.

  “Are you going to scream at me?” Michael said.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “No. But that’s what you do.”

  “I hardly think so.”

  “But—on the boat.”

  “I was speaking then, just as I am now. Perhaps you weren’t ready to hear me.”

  Michael considered this. He rapped his knuckles against the headboard. No sound. “So why are you the only one I can hear?”

  “I don’t know,” the old man said. “But you are apparently the only one who is aware of my presence. Here and on the ship, I pass unseen and unheard.”

  Michael sat up fully in the bed. Someone had dressed him in pajamas. He didn’t remember dressing himself before bed, and now that he thought about it, he didn’t remember arriving at this new place. There was the boat, then the car, the city streets, the light glancing off the windows on the tall buildings, the lurching stop-and-start of the car in traffic—more cars than Michael had ever seen—and then here he was.

  “May I ask a question?” Michael said.

  The old man raised his eyebrows. He was open to questions.

  “Are you a ghost?”

  The old man looked startled, as if the thought had never occurred to him. He held up his hands, examining his palms and the liver-spotted skin that lay creased along his knuckles. He stood and crossed the room to where the morning sun backlit the drapes. Through a gap where the drapes parted was visible a broad swath of green, the tops of trees, and an expanse of lawn that stretched into the distance. The old man gazed out the window for a moment before turning to face Michael. “I’m not comfortable with that term,” he said. “But I think that’s the simplest answer.”

  Something about the way sunlight hit the man’s face connected the pieces in Michael’s jigsaw memory. He had seen this man before—not in person, but somewhere. It had been a photograph in a newspaper. A large picture, black-bordered and surrounded by type.

  “Hold on, now,” Michael said. “Are you Mr. Yeats, the poet?” William Butler Yeats—Nobel laureate, spiritualist, and one-term senator of the Irish Free State—had died in France in January. His picture had been in all of the papers.

  The old man seemed to consider this question with great seriousness. He looked out the window at the riot of green and the brick-and-stone towers that picketed each side of the park. “I was,” he said as if astonished by this news. “And now I am again. Or perhaps I have always been—it’s a difficult question.”

  “One more,” Michael said. “If you don’t mind.”

  Yeats shrugged.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “That,” Yeats said, “is a question I cannot answer.”

  FRANCIS KEPT PROMISING Martin a big surprise, but already, every step on the way was like something out of a dream: His brother shows up out of nowhere and tells him that his father is dead, and suddenly they are in a taxi bound for the Plaza Hotel, all while Martin in his exhaustion was teetering between drunkenness and incipient hangover. With each city block, the soft hands of gin and vermouth loosened their tender hold on his head and surrendered him into the rough grip of a vindictive headache.

  A white-gloved hand, a sleeve swaddled in gold braid—this is what Martin saw when they came to a halt under the Plaza’s dark blue awning. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and peered up at the stairs leading to the front doors, each flanked by a man in the hotel’s gold-and-blue livery. He wished he’d had a few more hours of sleep, wished he’d shaved before they left the Bronx, because he must look like a man who’d been through the wringer. But here at least he could be grateful for the quality of his clothes; these were not doors that a man entered without a high gloss on his shoes and a knife-edged pocket square. He gave his hat a rakish tilt, hoping to make himself appear less like riffraff and more like some dissolute playboy returning to his bed after a night in one of the city’s private casinos.

  As Martin prepared himself for this masquerade, Francis gave him a shove. “Step to it,” he said. “And for Christ’s sake, mind your manners. They all think I’m a feckin’ peer.” All that time in jail and Francis still said feckin’—a child’s curse, the thing you said when you feared your granny might be in earshot.

  Francis glided through the front doors without a glance at either of the doormen. Martin was pulled along in his brother’s wake, his fingers at the brim of his hat in a quick show of thanks.

  The lobby was a blur of mosaic tile and gold-veined marble columns. They stopped briefly at the bronze-backed front desk, where in a bristling Scottish burr Francis requested, and was handed, the key to his room. As the doors to the elevator spread wide, Martin’s eyes darted to its operator, then to Francis. The operator’s uniform matched the doormen’s—gold braid, brass buttons, epaulets—but his hat wasn’t the mock sea captain’s topper that the outside men wore. The elevator man’s was a smaller affair, like one belonging to a bellhop in a movie, or an organ-grinder’s monkey. Poor sot, Martin thought.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” the operator said as the doors closed.

  “Seventh floor, my good man.” Francis fixed his eyes on his reflection in the polished surface of the interior door.

  The Scottish accent, the “my good man”—it was too much for Martin. “Christ, Franny. What’s this all about?”

  Francis raised one eyebrow and with a slight upward tic of his chin indicated the elevator operator. “All in due time,” he said, pronounced it as “Aul en doo taim.”

  “What you’re up to? New York. The Plaza. This can’t be real.”

  Francis gave the operator a conspiratorial wink. “It’s quite simple,” he said. “His Lordship decided you were having too much fun in the Colonies. Hard liquor. Loose women. Fast horses—but not quite fast enough, eh, my boy?” He winked again at the operator, playing to his audience of one, before returning his attention to Martin. “As the hunting season had come to a close, I was dispatched to collect you and return you to the bosom of your family. And not a moment too soon, by the looks of you.” Francis reached for the lapel of Martin’s jacket, rubbed the cloth between his fingers, and smirked. “Yes,” he said, “a sea journey is just the thing to restore a man whose luck and good health have deserted him—don’t you agree, my good man?” he asked the operator.

  The operator looked startled. “Well, sir, I’m not much for seafaring—”

  “Yes, quite,” Francis said. “My sentiments exactly.”

  “Is that your big surprise?” Martin said. “That you’ve escaped from the madhouse?”

  “Fitzwilliam, please,” Francis said, “you know what the doctors have said about losing your temper.”

  The operator announced their arrival and drew open the doors. Francis dug into his pocket and withdrew a coin, which he placed with some ceremony into the smaller man’s palm. “I trust I can be assured of your discretion concerning my brother’s condition,” he said. “I wouldn’t want loose talk to jeopardize his… prospects.”

  “Of course, sir,” the elevator man said. “No loose talk, sir.”

  “Splendid.” Francis took Martin by the arm and escorted him into the hallway. He waited for the doors to close, for the hum of the motor at the top of the shaft, before addressing his brother. “Look here,” he said. “If you’re not going to play along in front of the hired help, then you can at least keep your gob shut.”

  MARTIN HAD SEEN plenty of hotels. During his early days in America, he had barnstormed with territory bands, playing grange halls, mountain resorts, beachside dance halls, and country clubs all across New England, the Catskills, the Poconos, and the Jersey Shore. The sleeping arrangements were like barracks—four men to a room, often two men to a bed. The m
usicians crashed from sheer exhaustion after a day on the road and a night of playing sweet, hot, and everything in between for a pack of sweating small-town jitterbugs. But even those crummy rooms were a treat: no bandleader would spring for a hotel unless they were booked for a two- or three-night stand. Mostly they played one-nighters, and that meant they finished their set, struck the bandstand, stowed the instruments, and got back on the bus for the long ride to the next town. Martin slept sitting up, head to the window, or else leaned forward with his head pressed to the back of the seat in front of him. He was stiff and sore all the time, and the only remedy for the ache of the long nights and the cramped quarters and the lousy road food was the short spell onstage giving the locals more than they could handle, sending them home more wiped out than the band.

  Now Martin played nightly in the lounge of the Kensington Hotel, just a few blocks south and west of the Plaza. The Kensington was quality, but it wasn’t the Plaza. The walls here were as pale as the sand on a secret beach. The hallway carpets, pretzel-patterned in red and gold, gave a spring to a man’s step. The world outside might still be hanging on by its fingernails but inside the Plaza all was safe and serene, and that was a luxury.

  Francis fit the key into the lock and paused. “Ready for your surprise?” he said.

  “Just open it up.”

  He turned the knob and stepped through, waving one arm like the ringmaster in a circus. Martin followed the sweep of his hand and there on the sofa was his brother Michael. He knew from Michael’s letters that he was no longer a boy—boys didn’t fill their typewritten correspondence with references to the Seven Sorrowful Mysteries—but this older version of Michael looked like he hadn’t grown so much as been stretched into a taller, ganglier version of the boy Martin had known. Michael’s attention was focused on a gaudy gold-and-white chair in one corner of the room. He seemed to be rehearsing a part in a play, running through a silent pantomime of hand gestures and cocked-head glances. Martin called out his brother’s name, but Michael ignored him. Martin repeated himself, louder this time, and clapped his hands together. “Michael!” he said. “Is it really you?”

  Michael’s gaze remained fixed on the empty chair.

  “You didn’t think I’d come all this way and leave him rotting in that poxy monastery?” Francis said.

  “Michael,” Martin said again, and then turned to Francis. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He can’t hear a thing,” Francis said. “Deaf as a post, and all because—”

  Michael suddenly wheeled around and, seeing Martin, shook himself like a man coming out of a dream. A look of confusion gave way to a smile that bloomed across his face. He leaped off the sofa and pulled his brother close.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Martin returned the embrace. “It’s good to see you,” he said, then stepped out of the hug and took Michael’s face in his hands. He leveled his gaze at his brother and repeated, slowly: “It is so good to see you.”

  Michael nodded, his eyes shining with tears, and slapped Martin on the back.

  “Franny, what the hell?”

  “I told you I’d explain it all in due time.”

  “Will you stop it with the due time—what in hell happened to Michael?”

  Francis crossed the room. On a silver tray, a decanter and an ice bucket flanked a huddle of highball glasses. “Care for a drink?” he said.

  “It’s ten in the morning,” Martin said.

  “So that’s a no?” Francis lifted the lid on the ice bucket. “Can you believe it? No ice. Plaza Hotel, my arse.” He filled one of the glasses halfway and settled himself on the sofa. Like the other furniture in the room, it was upholstered in white and trimmed in gold. The cushions were so thickly stuffed that Francis barely dented the surface. He stretched one arm along the back of the sofa, a pose that suggested confidence, even nonchalance. “Don’t hesitate to pour yourself a small one if you feel the need. And I’ll apologize in advance for the quality of the liquor. I’d have asked for Powers, but it would have blown my cover, so I told them to bring Scotch.”

  “Franny,” Martin said, “for Christ’s sake—”

  Francis held up one hand. “What happened was this.”

  IT STARTED WHEN a note from the parish priest in Ballyrath reached Mountjoy informing the prison’s governor that Francis Dempsey Sr. had died. Loads of men had been denied furlough for a mother’s burial or a daughter’s wedding, but unbeknownst to Francis, the governor made arrangements for him to attend the funeral. When it was settled, he called Francis to his office, a sternly whitewashed room around which were hung lavish still lifes, all painted by the governor’s wife. Francis did not know why he had been summoned, and as he watched the overhead light play off the older man’s bald dome, he considered who might have informed on him, and for what real or imagined offense. After a final jagged signature, the governor placed his pen on the blotter and turned his attention to Francis.

  “Inmate,” he said. “I regret to inform you that your father has died. Mountjoy Prison is sorry for your loss.”

  “My father? But how—”

  “No talking, inmate,” said the warder at his side.

  “Are you mad?” Francis was addressing both of them: the governor with this story about his father; the warder for saying he couldn’t speak at a moment like this.

  The warder reached for the short truncheon he carried on his belt, but the governor waved him off. “You have been approved for a furlough,” he said, “to attend your father’s Mass of Christian burial.”

  Francis struggled with the basic facts that had been presented. His father? Dead? But how, and when? The governor, who was not in the habit of offering condolences, recited the details not of his father’s demise, but of the furlough itself. They were to depart in the morning at half six and were expected to return that same night. Francis would be permitted to wear the clothes held for him in the storeroom, which were the clothes he had worn when he was processed into Mountjoy, but he would be required to have his hands shackled during the duration of his time outside the prison walls. If he made any attempt to escape or in any way delay his return, he would face the full force of disciplinary action: solitary confinement, a month on the paltry No. 1 Diet, and additional time added to his sentence.

  At the end of this recitation, the governor turned toward Francis. “Understand one thing, inmate: This isn’t for you. It’s for your father. You’re a disgrace to his good name.”

  This was the last in a chain of half-sensical comments directed at Francis about his father during the time he spent in Mountjoy. Most of the old-timers had given him a wide berth, muttering about Dempsey this and Dempsey that. Francis had assumed there was something about himself that rubbed the codgers the wrong way. More than once, he would put the question to a man: What problem have you got with me? Most would cut their eyes and shuffle off; others would tell him, I’m not afraid of you, so you know. It was the raving of lunatics, men who had spent too much of their lives staring at prison walls. Their only fun was in taking the piss out of the younger ones.

  Francis arrived for the funeral in the back of a car from the Mountjoy motor pool driven by a warder who had complained bitterly through the hours it took to ply the winding country roads connecting Dublin to Ballyrath. The warder was a city boy, and every glimpse of cottage or pasture sent him into fits of boredom, rage, and derision. The pastor wouldn’t allow a shackled man to serve as pallbearer, and after much hectoring (by the pastor) and grumbling (by the warder) and chafing of wrists against iron (by Francis), the handcuffs were removed. Francis took his place at the casket, where he was given a rough embrace by Michael, who had been granted a day’s leave from the seminary. It was the first time the brothers had seen each other in the flesh in almost two years. Michael’s eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, but he gave his brother a wan smile. Michael looked so small, as if he were melting from the pain of losing his da. Francis stretched out his arm and wrapped it around his brother’s shoulde
r, pulling him close, something he couldn’t have done with handcuffs on. He had spent a year and a half locked up in a cage made of stone and steel, and when he could finally stretch his arms it was only because his father had died. He couldn’t make sense of that. His father couldn’t be dead, because as long as he had known him, his father had always been alive. In that grim logic of grief, he caught himself wondering what his father was going to do when he found himself in that coffin. There would be hell to pay, that was for sure.