The Night Swimmer

by Matt Bondurant

  Praise for The Night Swimmer

  “Mr. Bondurant skillfully conjures the elemental world his characters inhabit.”

  —The New York Times

  “Evocative and often lyrical in its descriptions of Ireland’s landscape, lore, cadences, and character . . . Bondurant’s portrait of Highgate, the novel’s Prospero, is unforgettable.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “It’s a rare writer who can turn the hypnotic euphoria of endurance sports into a moving literary experience.”

  —Outside magazine

  “Bondurant has given us a group of characters full of life and danger. . . . This is a story that will stay with you.”

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “But when Bondurant explores what it is like to push yourself to the brink, whether with physical activity, drugs and alcohol, or lust, he captures an intensity of experience the reader won’t soon forget.”

  —BookPage

  “[A] dark and fleetingly mysterious novel.”

  —Library Journal

  “The Night Swimmer is intriguing, seductive, treacherous, and frightening. Bondurant’s writing is so beautiful, poignant, and poetic that the book is worth a second read.”

  —Lynne Cox, author of Swimming to Antarctica and Grayson

  “Before you plunge into The Night Swimmer, be forewarned: there will be ghosts (and goats), and Gaelic spells cast by black waves of invisible power. But mostly you will be dazzled by the sheer force of Matt Bondurant’s storytelling. In prose as rugged as Ireland’s coastline and just as enchanting, Bondurant has offered up a breathtaking story of what happens when dreams come true and hearts are unbridled.”

  —Betsy Carter, author of Swim to Me and The Puzzle King

  “Lush, brutal, and otherworldly, The Night Swimmer is completely transporting. This darkly beautiful love story—set in Bondurant’s distinctively captivating and merciless coastal Ireland—will pull you under.”

  —Julianna Baggott, author of Girl Talk

  Also by Matt Bondurant

  The Wettest Country in the World

  (also published as Lawless)

  The Third Translation

  Thank you for purchasing this Scribner eBook.

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  Contents

  PART I: DARTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  PART II: A POURED PINT

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  PART III: A POEM

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About Matt Bondurant

  A Scribner Reading Group Guide

  For Stacy

  PART I

  DARTS

  Sitting in a chair on the stones before the house drinking Scotch and reading Aeschylus, I think then of how we are gifted. Of how we have requited our appetites, of how we have kept our skin clean and warm and satisfied our various appetites and lusts. I would not want anything finer than these dark trees and this golden light. I read Greek and I think that the advertising man across the street may do the same; that given some respite from war and need the mind, even the mind of the ad salesman, inclines to good things. Mary is upstairs and I will have my way here, very soon. This is the sharp thrill of our mortality, the link between the rain-wet stone and the hair that grows from our bodies. But it is while we kiss and whisper that the children climb onto a stool and eat some sugary sodium arsenite that is meant to kill ants.

  The most wonderful thing about life seems to be that we hardly tap our potential for self-destruction. We may desire it, it may be what we dream of, but we are dissuaded by a beam of light, and change in the wind.

  The Journals of John Cheever

  Prologue

  Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practiced swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it?

  Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

  It began with a dart, a pint, and a poem, three elements that seemed to demonstrate the imprecise nature of fate. When Fred stepped up to the line, the dart held loosely in his hand, you could see in the way he carried his body the assurances of a man who was well prepared. Fred was always lucky, but to say that now seems to remove something essential from him. In fact it is Fred who should be telling you this story, as he was the one preparing for this all along. Not me.

  * * *

  The judges in green suit jackets stood by with clipboards and the rest of us, the other contestants, the wives, girlfriends, family, and other various hangers-on, quietly drank our free pints of Murphy’s in a cavernous pub in the city of Cork, Ireland, 2002. There were thirty candidates in the first round, drawn from thousands of entrants. The contestants seemed all cut from the same mold: all men, between the ages of twenty-five and forty, with that bearing, look, and attitude you see in bars all over America and the world; a sort of studied nonchalance, an ease with the environment of drink and bar sport, the verbal acuity, the ability to hold drunken court. Average, unaffected attractiveness, most a bit on the portly side. Roughly manicured facial hair. The kind of men who excel at giving toasts at a wedding. Fred loved to give a toast almost more than anything. He coached me through one I gave for my father’s retirement party.

  Under a minute, Elly, that’s the key, he said.

  We devised a simple recipe of amusing story, then heartwarming anecdote, finished with a touch of personal sentiment. Neat as a pin: laugh, cry, cheer.

  The Murphy’s contest was a sort of dilettante’s challenge, which suited my husband. Fred moved between interests like an errant housefly, but he had a focus of attention that was astonishing and exasperating, like the boy so enamored by the spider that he doesn’t feel the rain. The first prize was a pub in Ireland, title and deed.

  * * *

  It was a common enough dream for young Americans of a certain set: by moving into a mostly imagined past, represented by Europe, we could recapture something we so desperately wanted in the present. Or simply a way out of the meat grinder of the suburbs. We named our place in Burlington Revolutionary Road, a joke that no one got as far as we could tell. It was Fred’s idea. Fred always wanted to admit our hypocrisy and failings. He could have been a champion medieval monk, so adept he was at self-flagellation. Fred felt if we got it out in the open, acknowledged our defeat, then it wouldn’t turn out so badly for us.

  By the time he won the contest Fred was nearly crushed by the six years he’d worked in corporate training. When he started at the company, fresh out of graduate school, they were still using paper handouts and the same binders on memo writing they had used in the 1970s. Fred came into the Burlington headquarters with effective ideas and churned out a few PowerPoint presentations, and in a year he was the senior consultant in charge of product development, creating a new line of semina
rs, communication presentations, and short talks on effective e-mail writing strategies. We bought a house near the lake in Burlington and settled in. I got a part-time teaching job and spent most of my time swimming in Lake Champlain. I’d come up the road from the lake and Fred would be out on the deck mixing a pitcher of margaritas, some kind of meat sizzling on the grill. It was a good life. We should have considered what it was we were giving up when we moved to Ireland.

  * * *

  One evening Fred’s father called us from a seaplane, circling over our neighborhood. He was looking for a place to land.

  Anyplace to get a steak in this town? he shouted over the drone of the engine.

  Fred was half in the bag, crouched by the fireplace with the phone contemplating building a fire while I lined up a couple shots of Patrón with salt and lime. This was the year before Fred won the contest, and it was a night when it felt like the world was going to sleep, a sensation as calm and benevolent as stretching out in a length of warm salt water.

  Dad? Fred said into the phone.

  I need landing coordinates, his father shouted.

  We could hear the whine of the seaplane outside as he banked above the lake, coming low over the trees. Too low, it seemed, and for a moment I thought of the providence of power lines, water towers, other tall structures.

  You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, I said.

  Fred waved me off, a slice of lime in his hand.

  Do you see the marina? That’s your best bet. We’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.

  I was always amazed how Fred would spring into action whenever his father called. He had taken to spending most nights wearing headphones hunched at his computer for hours in a kind of priestly attendance to solitary ritual, listening to obscure Internet radio stations, typing whatever came into his head. Fred was a big bear of a man, but at his desk he looked like a little boy sitting in a tiny chair, surrounded by tiny furniture, a tall pint glass of bourbon on ice beside him. He swayed with his eyes closed, tapping away at the tiny keyboard, composing long strings of nonsense.

  Like automatic writing, he would say, flushed and grinning, massaging his sore ears. Like Yeats. The Order of the Golden Dawn.

  We did the shots of Patrón and slipped on our raincoats. It was October, and the cold was coming down from Canada like whitewater, and the lake effect spiked the moisture content. In another few weeks it would be snow, and by December the lake frozen in the shallow bays.

  Better bring the bottle, Fred said.

  It was pouring when we reached the marina and the lake was flat and oily black, perforated by the fine mist of rain, and I considered the possibilities of hurling myself into that darkness, the weight of my coat and boots, the flight and suspension, my hands dividing water.

  Hamilton Frederick Bulkington Jr., or Ham, as everyone called him, was coming in too fast. The plane sashayed across the water toward the dock, the back end swinging around, spraying water in sheets. Fortunately, the marina was empty of people, but the slips were still full and the gas dock had a few boats tied up. At the last possible second Ham spun the plane around and blasted the engines, then killed the motor and coasted in. By the time the tail section bumped on the dock, he was climbing along the pontoon, a leather valise in one hand and a massive hard-sided gun case in the other. He shook hands with Fred then handed him a line to tie off. He had gained weight since I saw him last, and the flesh was loose around his chin and ears, but he still looked like a man cut away from the stake. His charcoal pin-striped suit hung on him like a sweater on a dog. He turned and smoothed back his thin swatch of hair, the rain pouring off his face, and addressed me.

  Elly. You look fit as ever.

  Fred hefted the gun case.

  What’s this?

  Thought we’d do a bit of duck hunting, Ham said. First thing in the morning we’ll knock some down.

  You can’t leave the plane just tied up here, I said.

  This is a hell of a spot, Ham said, addressing the dark expanse of the lake.

  Ham wanted dinner so we hustled off to the truck and Fred drove us into Burlington, to a new eco-friendly café built into the cavernous exposed brick cellar of an old timber warehouse.

  Ham set his valise on the bar and took off his coat as we waited for a table. His shirt was stained down one side with something brown and fetid. He ordered us single-malt scotches, something Fred and I hated, and we clinked glasses with the somber formality of a doomed business transaction.

  When’d you get the plane? Fred asked.

  A guy I know lets me borrow it.

  Do you have a license? I asked.

  Not needed, he said slowly, in this kind of situation.

  What kind of situation?

  Ham waved his arms at the scene around us, as if to say, this.

  He put his hand on Fred’s shoulder, something I’d never seen him do, and looked him straight in the face.

  I’ve got something for you, Ham said, grinning. Something for my son, Hamilton Frederick Bulkington the third. And for the next Bulkington to come along, eh?

  Fred blushed, surprised and clearly uncomfortable. For years Ham had barely taken an interest in Fred and now he was lobbying for progeny? We all looked away and took a swig of our drinks. Ham rattled the ice in his glass, trying to get the bartender’s attention.

  We got a booth by the wall. Our waiter, a young woman with dreadlocks erupting from her head stood by with her hand-whittled pencil stub, her eyes glistening and shot through with crimson. Ham perused the menu with obvious disdain. It was printed on triple-recycled paper with root ink, making it hard to read.

  What’s this shit? Ham said.

  I got it, Fred said, and ordered a few rare grass-fed porterhouses, curried potato salad, and a bottle of heavy merlot. Ham was trying to light a cigarette with a packet of damp matches. Fred rapped his knuckles and pointed to the no smoking sign that was carved into the golden maple table in six-inch letters.

  I’ve got decisions to make, Ham said to me. But first, the ducks. Four a.m. You have a suitable dog, yes?

  No, I said. No dog.

  Well, Ham said, with a note of asperity in his voice, someone is going to have to go in to retrieve. You up for it, Elly?

  Fred laughed. I didn’t see the humor and I put the toe of my Wellington into his kneecap, making the recycled silverware jump on the table.

  Ham frowned and reached over to stroke my forearm, something he liked to do.

  My favorite newt, he said, our family amphibian.

  I’d like to see you get in that water, I said. You haven’t the bottle for it.

  Ham drained his glass and nodded.

  Right you are there, Elly.

  He ran his fingers along my skin. His eyes were like pinpricks of black, star-shaped and sunken.

  That’s why we need you.

  * * *

  I have skin like a walrus. I have a condition called congenital hypodermic strata. Essentially it is a thin, even layer of subcutaneous fat deposits under the skin all over my body, all the way down to my fingers, giving my skin a dimpled surface. This fat layer makes my total body fat around 32 percent, which is quite high for a woman of my weight, and my body density is precisely the same as seawater, which gives me loads of natural buoyancy. I’m no Lynne Cox, but I can stand water most people can’t. Lynne Cox swam from Alaska to the Soviet Union in 1987 with no wet suit, five miles in forty-degree water. There is only one other known person who can survive water that cold, and that is an Icelandic fisherman named Dahlen who in 1963 swam a mile to shore from his capsized boat in Baffin Bay.

  For everyone else, anything near forty degrees Fahrenheit without a serious wet suit would feel like a million burning shocks in every pore. After five minutes your limbs would begin to lock up, the blood retreating furiously into your heart. Your lips would draw back, your mouth convulsing for air, and the exposure could cause your teeth to freeze and shatter in your skull. A few more minutes and you would enter accelerated hy
pothermia, your heartbeat going adrift until you went into full ventricular fibrillation, your heart literally tying itself into a tangled knot in your chest.

  I guess I’m lucky that the fat layer is thin and spread so evenly. You couldn’t tell unless you touched me, and I am told that it doesn’t feel unpleasant, just like someone with goose bumps. For the first few weeks we were together Fred thought I was always cold, and I let him believe it, playing along and shivering with what I thought was charming, girlish delight. I couldn’t pull that off for long, especially after the November afternoon when on a dare I dove into a lake in Massachusetts, Fred standing on the dock in his sweater and boots. But he came to love my skin, the feel of it, the same way I came to love the swatch of hair on his chest and his oniony smell.

  My skin has helped to make me a good swimmer, as does being six feet tall with the wingspan of an albatross, but I can’t say I’m glad to have it. I have coat-hanger shoulders, my deltoid muscles like loaves of bread. Fred always liked to stroke the striated fibers of flat muscle that spread from my waist, like butterfly wings, he said. Of course I wish things were different.

  * * *

  By the end of dinner and our fourth bottle of wine it was clear that Ham and Fred were planning on drinking straight through to morning. They ordered dessert and then pulled out the bottle of Patrón. I abstained and asked the waiter to bring over four liters of distilled water with a wedge of lime. When she brought the water in carafes I stood up and chugged each one without stopping, making my stomach and bladder swell like a frog. Then I went to the bathroom to pee and wash my face and get ready to drive the Land Rover home. In the bathroom mirror my face looked hard and dry, my nose and cheeks inflamed, my pupils spinning disks. I dunked my head in the sink and tied my wet hair back in a ponytail. I was about to turn thirty, and so much about our lives was going to change. I closed my eyes and thought of the lake.

  * * *

  Anyone who has swum in a pool understands the palpable difference between the sensations of swimming in a few feet of water and in twelve feet or more. It shouldn’t feel different, but it does. It is the knowledge of that vastness beneath you that cannot be shaken or forgotten, something about the drastic proportions and ratios involved. To be nothing more than a speck, a mote of flesh, traversing a vast expanse of water, a long line of horizon, and to feel at once buoyed by the bubble of elements, hundreds of feet from the bottom, is a sensation that I think must be close to flying, like a great soaring seabird, wide-ranging and steady above the clouds.