The Translation of the Bones

by Francesca Kay

  Milk.

  No, they don’t! Everybody falls for that, it’s silly. Can I do the whisking? I wish you were making chocolate cake.

  This cake will be green, she said, or green-flecked. I’ll make a chocolate one for you next Sunday. You probably wouldn’t want to have a chocolate cake and a chocolate egg tomorrow.

  Actually I would. But a cake next Sunday would be nice as well. Thank you. Are these stiff enough?

  Perfect!

  Stella folded the beaten whites into her mixture. Felix brushed water into yellow paint and watched the color come to life. I’ll do one with chickens, he said. Do you remember when we tried to blow the eggs? Disgusting!

  Maybe I’ll do a dragon on this one. It could be a dragon hatching. Here be dragons. You know, when people believed the earth was flat, did they think that if they got to the end they would actually fall off?

  I’m not sure what they thought. I suppose for them the ends of the earth were so remote they could not be imagined. That’s why they marked their maps: terra incognita. The unknown land. Where there might be dragons.

  But they must have had some sort of picture in their heads, Felix protested. Like, if they thought the earth was really flat, flat as a board, did they think that the water from the oceans just poured off? Or did they think that something kept the water on? A wall perhaps? Were they afraid that if they steered off course in their little boats, read the stars wrong or whatever, they might suddenly find themselves sailing off the edge into outer space?

  Stella put the cake into the oven and turned to look at her son. I wonder if they were less literal-minded than we are today, she said. Whether they believed what they had heard and didn’t stop to scrutinize the details. I mean, entirely sane and reasonable people believed all sorts of things that we find ludicrous. Pliny, for instance, the Elder, I think, described a one-legged tribe who stood on their shoulders and used their feet as shelter from the rain. Leonardo da Vinci drew unicorns. To people in the olden days, the world must have seemed so new and strange, so full of surprises, that another one or two, however improbable, hardly made a difference. We’ve lost that sense of wonder, but we’ve kept the same credulity in some ways. We accept all sorts of things on other people’s say-so. The way the Internet works, or that there was water once on Mars.

  Was there? Really?

  Come to think of it, I’m not completely sure. It was something I read recently, I can’t remember where. So, you see? I could believe that it was true and tell you, then you would believe it too, but neither of us would ever see the proof.

  But we could be wrong, because we haven’t seen the proof.

  Yes of course—we could be wrong. That’s the hazard of belief. But you can’t check every single thing that you believe independently, for yourself. A whole lifetime would be too short for that.

  That’s why I like science. It lets you look at one thing closely: wood lice.

  Yes, but even then there will always be terra incognita, undiscovered facts about a wood louse. For example, scientists the other day observed that rooks can make hooks out of wire. Once upon a time, toolmaking was one of the things that defined being human. But now we know that birds can make them too. And yet you would have thought that, after living with them for thousands of years, we’d know all there was to know about rooks and crows. Imagine. If that’s what a bird brain is capable of, what might a whale do, or even a wood louse?

  A whale would find it hard to make a hook. It couldn’t bend the wire with its flippers.

  That is a fair point. Now, that cake will be done in half an hour. Will you come and help me with the flowers?

  If I have to, Felix said. I’ll just paint a whale on this.

  Alice Armitage wondered where Mary-Margaret had gone. There was no sign of her anywhere and the kettle had not been boiled. She must have rushed off suddenly. Daft as a brush, that girl, she said. See you later, Father.

  Mary-Margaret could not have said how she got home. She remembered nothing between stumbling out of the chapel and arriving at the flat, where she found Fidelma in her usual place beside the window.

  Better weather today, Fidelma said. Sunshine, maybe. You were up betimes, this morning?

  Yes.

  Fidelma looked sharply at her daughter. Is something wrong?

  No.

  That’s good. I like it when it’s clear enough to see across the city.

  Fidelma against the window was a vast black stain. Mary-Margaret stared at her. A brooding hulk, a great black monster, a creature straight from hell. A hag in the disguise of a woman, a woman buried in rotten flesh, dressed in a black skirt and black turtleneck, dirty slippers on her swollen feet. Her legs were pillars of lard, dimpled as if by fondling fingers. She sat with them wide apart. Between them was a dark place, evil. Mary-Margaret shuddered with disgust. This foul thing was her mother. It stank of woman, wickedness and sweat. Its fingers and its teeth were stained. And it dared to smile? Its mouth opened and said something about food. This abomination, whose mouth was full of bleeding flesh, whose body had been host to filth and wickedness. This whore of Babylon.

  Then Mary-Margaret knew. She heard a voice, and it told her clearly: behold, you were conceived in sin. So clear the voice that Mary-Margaret turned to see who else was in the room. There was no one but Fidelma. The mother who had sinned. And smeared her blackness on her daughter. A daughter who now understood exactly what she had to do. I was blind but now I see; how could I have doubted you, my Lord?

  Left alone in the church, Father Diamond rehearsed the day. It was almost one o’clock. He could have a break for a couple of hours. Perhaps he ought to get himself some lunch? Technically, Lent was over; he could have some cheese or a ham sandwich. But, after forty days of abstinence, the thought of fat or flesh made him a little queasy. He imagined the feeling on his tongue, the sliminess and grease. No, he wasn’t that hungry. All he seemed to want these days were thin things, sharp things: black coffee, lime juice, Marmite, olives.

  The Easter vigil was at eight o’clock. He ran through it in his mind. The high point of the year, the great celebratory Easter Eucharist, source and summit of life, validation of the cross and triumph over death, the victory of light. Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son. It was a complex service. The blessing of the fire, the service of light, the lighting of the paschal candle, the blessing of water, the renewal of baptismal promises, the Easter Proclamation, the nine Scripture readings, the Gloria, the bells. Christ the morning star, who came back from the dead. Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah, Ezekiel: the Creation, the parting of the sea, Abraham and Isaac. Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, into the land of Moriah, upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. . . . And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife . . .

  Father Diamond missed Father O’Connor more than ever. It had been cruel of him, really, to prolong his sabbatical over Easter. Normally, it would be Father O’Connor who had charge of the ceremonies, while Father Diamond assisted. Although he would have help tonight—the neighboring parish had very generously lent him a spare Jesuit—it was not the same. As he was acting parish priest, the responsibility today was Father Diamond’s. From where he was, worn-out and full of doubt, the twenty-four hours to come were like the highest mountain and he a traveler who, with no way round, was made to climb it. Cliffs of fall, frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap may who ne’er hung there. It was a long and lonely climb.

  Father Diamond walked slowly round the church, checking every detail. The special candlestick was there, the stoup was full of water. Why was he so bleak, on this day of all days? Where was the leap of the heart, the lift of the soul he ought to feel, in the love of the risen Lord who turned mourning into dancing?

  He went into the sacristy and began to rinse out the vases which had been unused during Lent except for the Fourth Sunday. There was some consolation in the thought of flowers again. In the thought of seeing Stella. Stella admirabilis, l
ady of silences, star of the sea. He dried the vases and placed them ready for her by the sink. Then, having checked that the outside door to the sacristy was locked, he went back into the church, knelt for a few minutes at the altar, made the sign of the cross and let himself out by the main door, which he also locked.

  Mary-Margaret, back in the flat, sat down to eat beef burgers and potato wedges with her mother. She was safe if she kept her face turned from Fidelma’s. She knew that if she looked straight at her, what might seem like dribbles of red ketchup on her mother’s lips would in reality be blood. She looked out of the window instead, at the block opposite, at the immense spread of London, the intimation of green hills. What’s up? Fidelma asked, but Mary-Margaret said nothing.

  When they had finished eating, Mary-Margaret cleared away the meal and collected what she needed from the kitchen. That morning she had folded the dress into a bag with her First Communion veil. The crucial thing was to find Shamso. It occurred to her she might need rope. Where would she get that? There was nothing in the flat except some worms of string tangled in the jumble of a drawer. If her dressing gown had a sash, then that might do, but it fastened with a zip. Her mother did not have a dressing gown as far as she knew; she simply pulled an old gray cardigan over her nightdress of a morning, if the weather was particularly cold. Neither woman owned a belt. Even in her present state of mind, the thought of a belt belonging to her mother made Mary-Margaret smile. It would look like the understrap of an elephant’s saddle.

  She went back into the living room. Fidelma was smoking a cigarette. Are you making tea? she asked.

  I wasn’t going to, Mary-Margaret said, still looking away. But I will if you want.

  That would be nice. Have you got toothache?

  No. Where do you get rope?

  Rope?

  Rope. Or cord. You know.

  What do you want rope for?

  Nothing, Mary-Margaret said.

  Fidelma watched her go back into the kitchen. Ever since her teens, Mary-Margaret had had a most peculiar gait. She did not simply put one foot in front of the other, as ordinary people did, but swayed from side to side with every step, like a stamping duck, if there was such a thing. Even in the small confines of this space her daughter hustled and bustled. What was she going on about, these cords and rope? Not some grisly form of penance, Fidelma hoped.

  They used to say the priest wore a thorny rope next to his skin. The priest who ruled over the house of the sisters in the city. It was the only possible explanation for his temper. When it scratched his soft belly beyond bearing, he’d lash out at the nearest young one with his hand or tongue. At least he never lashed out with the thing itself. Fidelma shuddered. Think of it, a knotted cord, stiff with blood and the dirt of his body, black with it, like the unwashed clothes of poor men who walked the road. Not a pretty sight. Well so, he had the decency to keep it under wraps, although there were those who said he showed more of himself than any man, let alone a man who thought of himself as holy, was right to do. But never to Fidelma. Probably she was too spiny, too much of a thorn in the flesh herself, thank God. That’s what a sister had once called her. A thorn in the flesh. It was the soft ones, the pretty ones, the ones with petal mouths and fat white cheeks who got the worst of it, in those days. Fidelma was fast enough to dodge the fumbling hands. She remembered her young self. A thin and whippy girl, dark-eyed and scornful, with a mouth the sisters accused of insolence. Though sweet enough to those who kissed it.

  But even that lithe and darting girl had not been quick enough to skip away from the falling lash. Nobody was. Impartially, impersonally, the sisters doled out the punishment of beating. Well, to be fair, not all the sisters. There were one or two who would look on with pitying eyes while their sisters in Christ administered beatings to the backsides of young children, and would afterward attempt to soften the blows with a secret lump of sugar or a twist of jam and bread.

  No, it would not be fair to tar them all with the same brush. Nor the priests neither. They were not all of them devils with hands ready to thrust down the knickers of young girls or cocks twitching at the sight of little boys. But some. And all of them, it seemed, turned a blind eye to the beatings and to the worse thing the sisters did.

  Fidelma would not let herself think back to that. Instead she contemplated rope. In all the world was there a smell more lovely than the smell of tarry rope salt-steeped and drying in the sun? Those fat coils like serpents happily asleep, on the jetty of the harbor, in the bottom of fishing boats.

  Please God, I hope he did not drown. I hope he coils his ropes still, and the drops of cold seawater still fly off them like scattered diamonds as he does.

  Here’s your tea, Mary-Margaret said, putting the cup beside her. I’m off out now for a while. I’ll see you later, I suppose.

  Well, I suppose so too, Fidelma said. You’ve nowhere else to come back to, I don’t suppose. But enjoy your outing. And take care of yourself now, won’t you?

  A Saturday afternoon. Where would the Abdis be? Mary-Margaret knocked on their front door. No answer. At the shops, perhaps? She pressed the button for the lift and waited impatiently. It was almost four o’clock. She did not have much time. The lift heaved noisily upward and the door opened. A mosaic of vomit in one corner, the usual flotsam of crisp packets and sweet wrappers, the scent of stale pee. It took an age to jerk its way back down. There were children in the playground, but no Abdis. Dear God, where would they be? They never went far afield; Mrs. Abdi couldn’t manage. The park? Mary-Margaret remembered Shamso quacking. Of course. Stupid her. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

  She walked as fast as she could, half-stumbling, half-trotting down Falcon Road. The afternoon was bright and clear, a little breezy. There were white flowers on the trees in the park. A boy and his father were flying a blue kite. Out of breath, Mary-Margaret hurried to the pond. And was rewarded. There, by the edge of the water, were Hodan and Faduma, Bahdoon, Sagal and Shamso. Hodan was clutching Shamso round the waist as he leaned forward to cast his broken bread into the water. Even from a distance, Mary-Margaret could hear the noise that he was making.

  She slowed down. All at once she sensed a need for caution. As the eldest, Hodan was protective. Mary-Margaret stopped and fumbled for the purse in her shoulder bag. Oh! That was a narrow squeak; a good thing she had wrapped it in a tea towel. She had a five-pound note and four pounds sixty-something in loose change. More than enough, she thought.

  She strolled casually toward the children. Bahdoon, shaking crumbs out of a plastic bag which he had grabbed from Sagal, saw her first. She waved. Bahdoon said something to the others, who turned round. Hi, gang, Mary-Margaret said. How are you? Hi, Shamso.

  Shamso smiled his pearly smile and ran to her. She knew what he would look for. She let him search the pockets of her fleece, though she kept her bag well out of reach. Her pockets were empty but for a set of keys and some tissues.

  No sweeties! I’m sorry, Shamso. His face fell. But you could have an ice cream. Would you like that, kids? Ice cream, ice cream, the children chorused, jumping up and down.

  I saw a van by the gate into the park, she said to Hodan, indicating the direction from which she’d come. Why don’t you go and get them and leave Shamso here with me? He’ll get tired if you make him walk the whole way there and back, and he’ll slow you down. She held out the five-pound note.

  Hodan’s eyes widened with surprise. But she took the money, said something in her own language to the others, bent to give Shamso an instruction, grabbed Sagal by the hand and scampered off, with Bahdoon and Faduma on her tail.

  As soon as they were gone, Mary-Margaret picked Shamso up and ran as fast as she could toward the gate in the opposite direction. Shamso, maybe thinking this was a new game she was playing, laughed and held on tight. But he was a deadweight and soon began to squirm. Mary-Margaret put him down and tried to catch her breath. At once he ran away and she had to chase after him across the grass. How could so small
a person be so quick?

  This was a difficulty unforeseen. He was too heavy to carry all the way but he was in no mood to walk obediently beside her. At the best of times, progress with him was very slow. She seized his hand and pulled him. He resisted. Chocolate, she said. Good boy. Let’s go and buy some sweeties.

  Even so, she had to tug him and he protested loudly. It felt like a long way, alternately carrying and cajoling him while he yelled. Parents walking with their children watched her pass, giving her commiserating or condemning looks. Oh bless, said a mother with a small crowd in tow. Someone needs his nap now, don’t he!

  At the Sun Gate Mary-Margaret came to a halt. Good boy, she said again. Now she reached into her bag for the leftover packet of chocolate fingers she had taken from the kitchen. Shamso cheered up at the sight. She unwrapped the packet, tearing clumsily at the plastic, ripping the inner cardboard. Good boy. She pushed a biscuit into his mouth.

  Now that he was quieter, their way was easier, especially as the main shopping street was busy with people profiting from the long weekend. Mary-Margaret tried to look like one of them, strolling with her little son, glancing into windows. As a matter of fact there was something she had to buy, she said to Shamso.

  We don’t do rope, a woman said, in a shop called Cuisinalia. We do have culinary string. She showed Mary-Margaret a cone of string wrapped round a metal spindle. It cost £11.99 and looked too thin to tie up anything larger than a duckling.

  The flower shop, the shop with handbags that cost more than Mary-Margaret had to spend in a whole year, the shop with the posh cheese, Oxfam and the Mind shop—they were no good either. Would the butcher give her something? No harm in asking. She sometimes bought mince and sausages from him, cheaper than the supermarket.

  Cord, love? D’you mean trussing string? Doing a rolled joint, are you? Well, I don’t sell it, but I’ll let you have a bit. He cut off a twelve-inch length, and Mary-Margaret thanked him.