The Translation of the Bones

by Francesca Kay

  This doctor was being seriously stupid, Mary-Margaret thought. How many more times did she have to tell him? Over and over again she had explained. She was a chosen one, a messenger, a dearly loved disciple. But she was the daughter of a sinner. Most people were, it was true to say, sinners, that is; she was one herself. But, unlike her mother, she went to confession regularly and was truly sorry for her grievous faults. Her mother, on the other hand, was in a constant state of mortal sin. So, in order to take away that sin, Mary-Margaret had to make a sacrifice. She knew she had to do it because Jesus had stopped talking to her from the cross. Well, He hadn’t exactly talked to her in the beginning but He had communicated His great love and she knew He had a special mission for her. When He would not give her a new sign—when He stopped, after the first time, after the veils were taken down—Mary-Margaret had been very upset, and had wondered why He was so angry and what she had done wrong. Then she understood. About the sacrifice. You know. Sometimes it was rams or heifers. Or a pair of doves. But, when it really mattered, it was Isaac. You see, Isaac was someone deeply loved. Abraham, his father, loved him. Isaac was his only son. And of course no one ever loved a heifer like they loved a child. Mary-Margaret understood that she must sacrifice a thing she loved. Which was Shamso. But she also understood that God would not let Shamso die. He had stopped Abraham in the nick of time—just as he was about to plunge his knife into the child—and Mary-Margaret knew that He would stop her too. Which He did. Of course.

  Dr. Qureshi could be quite annoying. Yes, all right, he did seem kind and he had lovely eyes but he never let you know what he was thinking. Most people, listening to a friend or hearing the kind of tale Mary-Margaret was growing tired of telling, would widen their eyes or smile or at least look sympathetic. Show that they understood what you were saying. But Dr. Qureshi only nodded. Nod, nod, nod, like a flipping eejit, whatever you did or said. And, when he wasn’t nodding, he took notes. Or asked yet another pointless question.

  What did you mean by sin? he was asking now. You mentioned that you thought you were the daughter of a sinner?

  Well, I used to think she was a widow. My mother, I’m talking about. But, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, she told me she was never married. And that makes me a sinner. In sin did my mother conceive me, and in sin was I born into this world.

  Dr. Qureshi nodded. It’s not all that unusual, he said. To have children without being married. I’m sure you know lots of single mothers. There’s no reason why they cannot love their children and take good care of them.

  Mary-Margaret nodded in her turn. She couldn’t be bothered to explain. She should have known that Dr. Qureshi wouldn’t get her point; he probably didn’t know anything about sin, considering where he came from. A shame, it was, in fact. He could be thick but he was such a nice man and she would like to think his immortal soul was safe. She would also like to think he understood about the Morrison child being sent to rescue Shamso, but she was very much afraid that he did not. It was quite complicated, when you thought about it. She wasn’t absolutely sure, herself. The eighth day had been and gone. And there was nothing, yet. Was it too hard to get a message to her, in this cold place with its locked doors? No, it wouldn’t be that—prison walls and double locks were no barrier to God. Mary-Margaret was beginning to get worried. She needed someone she could turn to, someone who would see the things she saw, unlike this doctor.

  She switched her mind to him again. Taking care of children? Loving them? What was he talking about? It wasn’t something that had ever crossed her mind. She knew about love, God’s love, the deep-down thrilling warmth she felt when she contemplated Jesus; she had felt the same warmth, or something very like it, when she cradled Shamso. Or whenever she set eyes on Father Diamond, in the old days, before he got so shirty and impatient. And, of course, she loved her mother, for she had to, it was what daughters did. It went without saying—just as mothers loved their children; it was a law of nature, like sunset in the evening, or leaf fall, or rivers staying true to the same course. It was the chief commandment. Love.

  She stopped thinking for a moment. Into her head came a picture of Fidelma at the door of her bedroom, with a padlock in her hand. Her mother, who was beautiful, until she grew so sad and fat. Did Mary-Margaret ever kiss that creamy cheek and snuggle deep into those arms? She supposed she must have done, but she could not remember. Certainly, when Mary-Margaret got big, she neither gave nor took a kiss; what an odd thing it would be for a grown girl to expect cuddles from her mother! That was for babies, surely, love didn’t come into the picture later; not in that way, the way the world took the meaning of the word. Not everybody knew love was a duty; they got it muddled up with romantic stuff—valentines and flowers.

  Hearts and kisses. Mary-Margaret shook her head to get rid of the thoughts that were swarming like flies inside it and making her feel tired and muddled. O sacred heart of Jesus, strengthen me, she said, out loud. And then, more quietly: deep in Thy wounds, Lord, hide and shelter me. She could feel tears prickling her eyes. Could she have got it wrong? Was the little boy an angel? If he were, he’d be immortal anyway, of course, but he wouldn’t necessarily come back. Not to see him in the flesh again, not to know he lived? A black thought that, so hopelessly black that it could not be borne. Mary-Margaret, willing it away, began to cry as openly and loudly as a child.

  That black thing was crouching on her face. Its foul breath blew rank on her; she was suffocating. Fidelma screamed out loud to make it go, to call for help—and her own voice woke her. She struggled to sit up. It was cruelly dark. Dead of night, she knew it must be, although she could not see to tell the time. She gasped for air. Oh, she had begun to think she would survive. Did she want to? Well, that was another question altogether. One to ask of some part of her other than her mind. And what would that be, that part that lived a separate existence, like a tapeworm in the gut or a microbe in her bloodstream; would you call it the soul? No, the spirit more like, for the soul might equally whisper words of death in the darkness of the night. Was it the spirit that forced a fisherman swept overboard to fight his frantic way up through the tar-black sea to fill his lungs with air again while another voice inside told him: hush now, sink down quietly, you will sleep soundly there, fathoms deep, among the bones of long-drowned men.

  Who knows? She had faced dying and she had been reprieved for the time being by packages of food and promises of assistance from various well-meaning bodies. Yesterday evening she had got herself into her nightclothes and her bed, feeling somewhat proud of her achievements. Now this. The black thing come again, to press her down, to fill her eyes and nose and mouth with filthy dust, as if she were a victim of live burial, helpless beneath the weight of earth above her. She had heard of bodies that, exhumed, displayed every sign of having been alive when they were laid in the graveyard six feet under. Mouths agape in horror, fingers turned to claws, their tips worn down to naked bone from scraping vainly at the lids of their own coffins.

  She remembered that she had been dreaming in the night of Mary-Margaret dying. Last week the sad-eyed doctor had assured Fidelma that her daughter would be well looked after in the hospital of the mad. We’re doing what we can, he said. She has a lawyer. While he was speaking, Fidelma had believed him. But, in the days since, with her partial recovery from shock, Fidelma had been mulling on her daughter’s plight. It was said of her that she had killed a child. Fidelma was not ignorant; she knew full well that accusations must be proved in court. Innocent until proven guilty; was that not the phrase? But a child was dead. No lawyer’s clever words could bring that child back or assign his killing to another. A child was dead. His name was Felix. And it seemed that Mary-Margaret killed him.

  Not for one moment did Fidelma think Mary-Margaret a murderer. She was quite sure that any killing done was accidental. But, try as she might, she could find no explanation for it. Nor excuse. How then would a doctor or a lawyer? Whatever arguments they made, whatever pleas for sympathy, Mary-M
argaret would have to pay for killing Felix. And she could only do that by remaining locked away, cloistered from the world, far from any child whom she could hurt, for years and years, if not for the rest of her lifetime.

  In the beginning, as the bleak reality of the situation impressed itself upon her, Fidelma was fearful for herself. How could she exist alone here, in her tower-prison, as helpless as a tortoise on its back, as a dolphin washed up on the strand? Later, she began to feel for Mary-Margaret. How would she bear her loss of freedom? A woman yet as childlike as her daughter—what would become of her behind locked doors, in the company of murderers and sinners?

  When she was carrying her baby, all that time ago, Fidelma used to worry that the unborn creature would be terrified by the small, dark space in which it found itself. She understood that a child did not miraculously gain consciousness with its first breath. What it knew or sensed or felt in its first minutes on this earth was the same as in the last days before birth. So if a baby cried for fear of darkness in the night when it was put down in its cot, would it not have felt the same fear in the womb? When it grew too big to dance and somersault in its liquid globe, when it could no longer turn, or stretch out a cramped foot, did it not experience sheer panic?

  And would Mary-Margaret feel that now in the tight cell of her prison?

  Oh God, the tight cell of a prison. Night after night Fidelma was returned in dreams to that black place, the place of punishment. Oh, you willful child, you are so bold and you must be made obedient. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, take him as your model. In you go and think on him and tell him you are sorry. Only when you’re sorry enough will I come to fetch you.

  And the shove through the dwarf-size door and the shriek of the rusting bolt jiggled into place. One last vindictive thrust to lock it tight. Dark, dark, dark; so dark it was much safer to close your eyes and keep them closed for the small light there might be behind them. When you opened them, you opened onto darkness that was hot and thick, furry even, as if you were buried by the hide of some great monster. Stone beneath you, the foundations of the building; brick around you, crumbling; the ceiling above you, close above you, arched like a slice of apple, or a rainbow, except there was no light. The vaults of the building these were, old and used for storage, but you as a child believed the bodies of other children rotted in them. Lying on the floor you reached the ceiling with your outstretched hand. You thought, what if the whole place were to tumble down and you in there, a prisoner, buried under a mountain heap of stone? What if Sister forgets that I am here? She is the harshest, her with the sharp nose and the mouth like a hen’s vent. And she is forgetful. Where did I put those keys? she’d ask. Whom did I instruct to scrape the porridge from the pot? Why, if she could not remember the words she said but seconds ago, would she not forget that she had shut a child in the cellars? There were other doors to other compartments in these cellars which were always locked. The bones of forgotten children could lie undisturbed in them for centuries as no one in the world would think to wonder that they had gone missing, or to look.

  How long would it take to die? Three days and nights, maybe, the time that Lazarus was in his grave—or was that more?—or Jonah in the belly of the whale. You could pretend this dusty tomb that you were in was actually the interior of a fish. That all around you, rather than the heavy weight of brick, was water. Cool seawater, with the sun scattering gold sequins on it and the wind that blows forever ruffling the white lace of the waves.

  Three days and nights. But you cannot wait that long. Three minutes are three hours and you know that even if she does come back for you, she will take her time. Something scuttles closer to you. Claws skitter on the stone, sharp teeth chatter, something hisses, there is hot wetness on your leg and you cannot bear this and the terror roils like storm-whipped water in your guts. It’s not a feeling, it is real; it rises up through the channels of your blood and fills your head and stops you breathing and you flail around, you are a mad thing, and you scream, but no one hears and no one comes.

  Fidelma, drowning in memories and in fear of the future, helpless under the great weight of her flesh, bereft by nightmare of the one small flash of hope that had briefly flickered, sank again into the black pit of her childhood. Now, as then, there was no way out. Then, each time—and in remembrance there were many times—the nun had come back in the end to slide the bolt out of its housing and let the prisoner go. A cobwebbed child, dirt-streaked and damp with fright and piss, sent out into the yard for the smug ones, pets of Sister, who were never caught in mischief, to deride. But now? Who would let her out? Who would understand that it was beyond Fidelma’s strength to commit herself again to the coffin of the lift? Not again, not after the long night she had spent in it, with no light, no means of communication, no prospect of rescue. A failure of power supply, she supposed it must have been, when the next day she was free and calm enough to think. But who could say that it would not fail her once again?

  She would not, in her waking mind, relive that night if she could help it. The first lurch of the heart when the lights went off and the lift machinery shuddered to a halt. The next minutes of suspense, when she waited for it to start to life again. And then the realization that something was gravely wrong. No light in the panel of buttons, no illuminated means to make the lift door open or to signal alarm. She had her box of matches, and she lit one. By its small flame she depressed the buttons. Methodically at first—doors open—doors open—doors open—and then randomly, in growing panic. Tearing at the door seal with her nails. Banging with her fist. Screaming out for help.

  It was about one o’clock on a Wednesday morning. Even in that place of restless souls, nocturnal wanderers, there would not be many who would notice the malfunction of one lift, and fewer who’d do anything about it. Fidelma, again, was trapped, as helpless as a child. She lit a cigarette to soothe her nerves. There were only two left in the packet. The smell of the man she’d been with was still sticky on her fingers, and the smell of the money he had paid her. Might her smoke swallow all the oxygen there was? Would this metal box admit a breath of air or was it airtight? Would she suck in increasingly shallow lungfuls until she had exhausted the supply? Mary-Margaret would realize she had not come home, but not till halfway through the day. Fidelma, of necessity, kept late hours and often slept till noon. If Mary-Margaret wondered why her mother stayed out at night, she never said so; probably, like all children—although she was by then twenty or so—she did not question what went on around her. In any case, she would not notice Fidelma’s absence for some time, she might even go out in the morning, taking one of the other lifts, returning only when it was too late.

  Breathing hard and braced for death, marched toward it by the drumming of her heart, Fidelma O’Reilly swam in and out of consciousness for what felt like a lifetime, in the darkness of the broken lift. Repairmen, called by the caretaker, got her out of it at some point in the morning. She must have got into it again, or another one, to reach her dwelling on the nineteenth floor. But whether or not she did, she had no recollection. The terror of the night wiped her memory of the following hours quite clean. It was as if she had been precipitated by it into a numbness that lasted a long time. Only her sense of panic was not obliterated. When she recovered, she vowed absolutely she would never step into a lift again.

  Fourteen years ago. And Fidelma had kept that vow. She made it privately; she did not discuss it with her daughter or with anyone else. If there was one thing she had salvaged from her hard life, it was pride. In the yard of the orphanage Fidelma O’Reilly, begrimed and disgraced, had held her head up high.

  She couldn’t now remember how she had told Mary-Margaret she no longer felt like going out. After a while, her staying at home was just the way things were. Mary-Margaret did the shopping, at which she soon became proficient, and went to the post office to collect their various benefits. Fidelma, trapped now in a tiny space and made desperate by confinement yet even more afraid of the one means of exit
, found some comfort in the food her daughter bought. Soft things, sweet things—white bread, chocolate sponge—that cushioned her loneliness and hunger. And her bones also. As if the food were air pumped beneath her skin to make a space around her that was hers, Fidelma ballooned greatly, and as she did, that space became paradoxically heavy, so she could hardly move. Her weight became a medical condition, with the helpful side effect of extra money and certification from the state. Having diagnosed a chronic problem and ascertained that it was manageable, relieved social workers left the O’Reillys to themselves. Disability benefits. Fidelma savagely enjoyed the irony of those words.

  She was no one’s fool. It had not escaped her that she had made a double prison for herself. Her huge bulk was a cell within a cell, an extra barrier to the outside world. So what? The world outside, nineteen floors below, that world of sour dregs and chip shops, screeching sirens, shit-smeared streets, sad gray drizzle, weary men with forlorn pricks and tightly folded dirty money, had nothing more to offer. She had her drip feed from it in Mary-Margaret. But now that line was gone. And unlikely to be back. And Mary-Margaret herself in mortal peril.

  The blackness of the thing descended on Fidelma like a pall. She jerked violently against it, seized by an overwhelming need to be up and moving, rushing round and throwing windows open, letting in a stream of cold, sweet air. A bat, a bird beating its wings against the walls of a closed room. She flung her coverings off and tried to lever herself onto her side. If she could stretch a little more, the switch on the bedside light would be within her reach. She swung her legs off the side too suddenly; the momentum brought her body with it and she fell, face downward, to the floor, the fall only briefly broken by her knees, which folded instantly beneath her, her whole weight on one buckled arm.