Galway

by Matthew Thayer

  Bolzano: “Swimming?”

  Hunter: “Oh yes, quite a bit of swimming–in ice cold water. The majority of our route takes us along an underground river. It’s all quite dangerous, but to my mind, well worth the effort.”

  Bolzano: “You are off your rocker if you think I will risk my life to ogle a few chunks of quartz. Whom do we summon for rescue in the event of a cave-in?”

  Hunter: “You won’t need rescue, I’ll be there.”

  Bolzano: “I am not going.”

  Hunter: “Salvatore, hear this! You will accompany me, willingly or otherwise. If we perish, we’ll leave this world together.”

  Bolzano: “Is that what this is? A suicide pact?”

  Hunter: “No, damn you. Are you too obtuse to understand? I need to share this with another human. Nobody but me has ever seen the bottom of this cave complex, or ever will! How about this? If you are not impressed, if our father and son adventure does not meet your incredibly high standards, then I will carry you out of the fucking hole on my goddamn back. Would that make you happy?”

  Bolzano: “All right, all right, I will go.”

  Hunter: “Bloody right you will. And you’ll enjoy it. Trust me.”

  Bolzano: “Yes, sir.”

  Hunter: “Fucking imbecile. Goose Goose’s stew has at least another hour to cook. Follow me. We’ll climb down to the third chamber and see if any of my ropes survived the rodents and mildew.”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  “Climb up after you feel the jolt,” Father said. “Your suit and the distance should shield you, but to what degree I am not sure. If by chance you do conk out, it shan’t be for long. We’ll have more than enough time for a nice meal–and to see if Mumbles has anything worth borrowing. Wait here.”

  My suggestion to leave the clan in peace, observe them at a respectful distance, had been dismissed out of hand.

  “Sod that,” he growled, adding a little zap of electricity to make me jump. “You’ll be surprised how much you enjoy rooting through their belongings, discovering what treasures they have hidden inside their secret pockets. It’s also a gas to watch them wake up, oh yes, always interesting that. A regular Rorschach test. As they come clear, their eyes tell all. Do they care more about themselves or others? You can see it. What do they find most disconcerting, waking with wet pants or a raging hard-on? Sharpen your proverbial pencil and take some notes, boy, you’ll make scientific history.”

  Once again, Father’s assessment was remarkably spot-on. It was interesting to frisk Mumbles and his people. Apart from a spare spool of cordage and a bit of salted fish, we did not steal anything but their privacy. At least, I did not. Some valuables were hidden as Father predicted, and some worn proudly as necklaces, bracelets and bangles woven into clothes and hair. The clan’s catalog of assets included an assortment of Venus statuettes, rough jewels–mostly diamonds, opals and emeralds–carved ivory, petrified, opalized dinosaur teeth and pristine drops of golden amber, nearly every one featuring an insect or sprig of fern frozen for eternity. Tucked in leather scrips tied around waists were the usual assortment of skinning flints, ivory fish hooks, needles and twine. In the miscellanies department, women tended toward pretty shells, bright feathers and jewels, while men preferred secret stashes of food and pornographic carvings.

  Wrapped in fur and secreted at the bottom of his traveling pack, Mumbles kept a quintet of carved ivory boxes fitted with matching lids. The lids fit snugly enough to hold intact five different powdered substances. When I asked what they contained, Father feigned ignorance, said it could be healing herbs or poison strong enough to bring down mammoth. I declined his magnanimous offer to take the first taste, then watched in shock as he dipped a fingernail in a tray of red dust and snorted it up his nose.

  “I wonder what treasure Mumbles traded for cinnamon,” he mused between sneezes. “Probably that pretty daughter who’s missing. You don’t often see cinnamon this far north. Want it?”

  Again, I declined. We put the boxes back in place and settled in for a lovely meal of venison stew, dried radishes and shelled hazel nuts. Toward the end of my third course–I had been ravenously hungry–the largest members of the clan exhibited their first signs of rousing.

  “Be a good lad and drop a couple hot rocks into each bag,” Father ordered. “Their stew has grown cold.”

  After three days as a minaret with little to zero control of my actions, I considered it a small victory his order came verbally and not via some radio signal. The natives generally team together with forked sticks to convey their glowing rocks, a tricky process often punctuated by shouts and people dancing out of the way of errant firebombs. I plunged my gloved hand directly into the coals and felt not one degree of pain as I carried the rocks to the leather bags and plopped them into the mix.

  I was licking gravy from my sleeve when the eyes of a stocky, blond-haired lass, some sort of nursemaid who had fallen asleep while suckling two babies at one time, chanced to flutter open. She had perhaps several seconds to see my distended, bearded face floating in the cave before my visor closed and I drifted into nothingness. The poor girl blinked her eyes several times in wonder. Looking around to see if anyone had shared her vision, she found the rest of her clan asleep.

  “Where did this blanket come from?” She pondered. “Why are the babies and I covered?”

  I am sure she had many questions, but instinct made her waddle straight to the cook bags. Leaving the urchins in the dirt, casting her head back and forth like a feral soul who knows she will be punished for this sin against clan, she gorged. Dipping both hands into the stew to dredge for choice morsels, the girl fed at the trough, barely slowing to chew.

  Second to wake was an alpha male who promptly rolled his sleeping mate onto her back, spread her legs wide and began humping like a steam-powered piston. The wife roused next, and once her head cleared a bit, she began matching her man’s rhythm as they galloped toward what their descendants will one day refer to as a “simultaneous orgasm.”

  Mumbles and the babies were last to rise. By then, the food was nearly spent, and there had been three fights, two fucks and a surprising amount of petty thievery. I wonder if Father’s knockout sauce always causes this temporary stripping away of social mores and personal boundaries, or it was a reaction he chose for tonight’s entertainment. I must remember to ask when he is in a better mood.

  Our spelunk to the Crystal Cave of Doggerland was intended to be a grand father and son adventure, something akin to our long-ago scuba diving excursions to the flooded lagoons of Old Venice. Father expressed such fond memories of our dives to Rialto Bridge and the Doge’s Palace, I could not help but wonder if we had been on the same vacations. Did he have another son named Salvatore who loved to scuba? My recollections center on how the silted water obscured visibility of the historic sites, which was positive in a way, for what we could see was so depressingly sad. Drowned bridges, buildings and statues flecked with seaweed and coral. The footsteps of Vivaldi, Marco Polo and the great merchants of Venice had been washed away forever. I usually bobbed to the surface full of melancholy, but evidently Father had enjoyed our dives immensely. On the first leg of our descent, Venice and the lagoons were all he wanted to talk about.

  Whether it was my ambivalence or other factors that turned his smile upside down, I cannot say.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Hunter: “You must admit, you were a bit of a Nancy Boy as a lad.”

  Bolzano: “’Nancy Boy?’ What in the world are you implying?”

  Hunter: “A priss, a boy who prefers dolls to guns.”

  Bolzano: “Boys with guns are often shot and killed.”

  Hunter: “What do boys with dolls get?”

  Bolzano: “If personal experience may serve, they have intercourse at an early age.”

  Hunter: “Would I remember the poor lass who popped your cherry?”

  Bolzano: “Proba
bly.”

  Hunter: “Wasn’t one of your cousins was it?”

  Bolzano: “No, at least not my first time. Do you remember an upstairs maid named Daniela?”

  Hunter: “Weren’t they all named Daniela?”

  Bolzano: “How many did Mother dismiss in the middle of the night?”

  Hunter: “The plain girl?”

  Bolzano: “I did not consider her plain at all.”

  Hunter: “You played dolls together?”

  Bolzano: “I helped Mother and Daniela construct their apple dolls for the notorious Christmas centerpiece. You must remember those dolls?”

  Hunter: “Who could forget?”

  Bolzano: “Well, in my recollection, they are the only dolls you ever saw me handle.”

  Hunter: “And they got you laid?”

  Bolzano: “Let us call them cogs in a grand plan.”

  Hunter: “You seduced that poor woman and got her fired.”

  Bolzano: “Sadly, Daniela’s life was far from the last I would ruin.”

  Hunter: “Enough dithering. You jump first.”

  Bolzano: “Are you coming?”

  Hunter: “Right behind you.”

  From the log of The Hunter

  (aka – Giovanni Bolzano, Dr. Mitchell Simmons)

  Ethics Specialist

  Snarky Salvatore, if he wasn’t of my own blood, I would push the clod headfirst down a hole and leave him to rot. Why must it always be such a test of wills between us? Even back when he was a wee tyke, the boy was forever pushing my buttons, testing my limits.

  Sal has expressed no appreciation for the effort I have put into making this excursion special. When he isn’t moping and refusing to speak, he’s dropping bombshells from our past. For more than two centuries I have carried the guilt of Daniela’s dismissal. She was the daughter of a friend, and sadly her banishment cost her family its entire water allowance. The fact that the Bargantinis of Milano dried up and blew away has weighed heavily on my conscience for years.

  She was a quiet girl with peasant features. The details of her face have grown vague, but I do recall the flush of her cheeks. She rebuffed my advances for months before I finally talked her into the sack. We only bonked several times, and were always quite discreet, so I was surprised the night my wife charged into my chambers and insisted we fire the “awful Bargantini slut.” She leveled no charges my way and I had the good sense not to confess to anything. She said the girl must go, and off she went.

  Now I find the dismissal was the fault of my good-for-nothing son. It wasn’t his first brush with trouble and far from his last. Salvatore was just getting started. How many times did I bail my son out of jail, or pay bribes to keep him employed? How much shame did he bring down upon our family? There is no way to measure, but the answers are “too many” and “too much.”

  The influence of Leonglauix and others has helped the boy make strides toward becoming a man. In spite of his overall whining nature and tendency toward sloth, I see momentary flashes of potential. If I didn’t, he would not be alive.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Bolzano: “Oh my goodness, look at the size of these teeth.”

  Hunter: “That’s nothing.”

  Bolzano: “Nothing?”

  Hunter: “Just wait.”

  From the log of Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  Father extolled the wonders of the Crystal Cave of Doggerland one too many times along the trail. I began to grow wary. The sheer amount of hyperbole, generously spiced with promises that I would thank him in the end, fueled my skepticism. Of course, after being bound inside a jumpsuit and kidnapped, could you blame me for feeling peevish?

  Now, having cast my own two begli occhi on the site, I will allow that, if anything, Father’s boasts were too tame. He claimed he lacked words to sufficiently convey its grandeur, and he was correct. Sitting before my computer, I also find myself at odds while trying to string together the appropriate superlatives to define a stroll through several hundred million years of fossils turned to jewels.

  Holy macaroni! As that is my best stab thus far, I shall start at the beginning and give my vocabulary a few laps to warm up.

  The third chamber required a bit of tricky downward free climbing to gain the faint path across its powdery floor, but it was not until the fourth that we faced our first major obstacle. Father said the shaft was the point where even the most intrepid Cro-Magnons or Neanderthals were forced to turn back. By his estimate, the precipice is visited by firebrand-carrying natives once or twice each year.

  Ringed by sheer limestone walls worn smooth by water flow, covered by a vaulted, cracked ceiling rife with gray stalactites and hundreds of colonies of hibernating bats, the 50-meter-diameter hole was within centimeters of being a perfect circle. Our tunnel was one of many to intersect the honeycombed shaft, dozens of dark mouths reflecting in the mirrored waters of an inky pool at the shaft’s bottom.

  Though pitch dark, every surface in the cave’s interior was evenly illuminated by the optics in my visor. Father could probably see as well or better. My equipment allowed me to gauge the water’s depth before our 20-meter plunge, and also plot the route of my ascent to the opening where our tunnel’s gradual, downward grade through time resumed.

  I believe it was midway between caverns four and five when we began spotting bones and teeth turned to opals. Many walls and sandy stretches of the underground cavern’s floor were awash in glittering swirls of green, blue, red, yellow and all the other colors of the geologic rainbow. Each time I slowed to behold a prehistoric crocodile’s jawbone, a jeweled pinecone, or glistening line of an extinct herbivore’s vertebrae, Father grew more frustrated.

  “Come on, this is nothing,” he tisked impatiently. “We can stop on the way out if you still want to.”

  “But....”

  “But nothing. Son, you’re concentrating on small potatoes. Let’s move it along!”

  By the end of the second day we had covered roughly 17 rigorous kilometers and were, according to Father, within “shouting distance” of the final chamber. Air temperature and conditions in the cave had gone from dank cold to uncomfortably hot, and oxygen levels had dropped considerably. If not for our modern equipment it would have been impossible to function, let alone breathe. I imagine that was part of the message Father was hoping to convey by trapping me in this damn suit. To his credit, despite the tension flowing between us, he did make an effort as tour guide.

  “If you care to look above you, Salvatore, you will discover the relief of an impressively toothy son of a bitch.” Father pointed to the blue-green skull of one of Tyrannosaurus Rex’s not-so-distant cousins.

  Millions of years ago, the monster must have perished along the edge of a marsh, or perhaps in a narrow tar pit. The skeleton became encased in sediment that was to be compressed by the millennia into dense limestone. At some point, fissures appeared in the limestone to allow silica solutions to seep down into places where the bones and teeth were preserved. As the organic materials slowly dissolved in the solutions, they created molds for the silica to settle, and thus form opals. Not only are the opal fossils perfect castings, Father says they contain traces of the animal’s remains. Harder bits must have been last to succumb, and the softest first. The uneven development results in textures and swirls inside the glowing jewels, windows into what made these ancient monsters tick.

  Erosion exposed a nearly perfect cross-section of the dinosaur, which measured 24 meters from head to toe. What little boy hasn’t been awed by Rex’s giant, rectangular head, as well as intrigued by its spindly little forelegs? To see such an intact fossil in real life, one turned to glittering opal, was an extreme pleasure.

  “Didn’t I tell you it got better? Now aren’t you glad you came?”

  “As if I was given a choice in the matter.”

  How could I not be thrilled by the experience? But that did not mean I must indulge Father with praise. His sil
ly Scottish accent and selfish need to be the big man grated on my nerves. The two of us had never spent much “quality” time together. There was reason for that. Mixing Father and I together is akin to blending olive oil and balsamico. We never stay blended for long. As my silences grew, so grew his desire for me to proclaim wonder and appreciation at every turn. He would have milked warmer compliments from a clam. What can I say, we Bolzanos put the D in dysfunctional.

  Angling downward through millions upon millions of years, growing ever warmer, our tunnel carried us below the strata of bones and teeth to ones glittering with fossilized snails, mollusks and oddly shaped sea invertebrates. This truly was another trip through time.

  Father was seated atop a flat rock when I joined him at the rim of our journey’s largest and most foreboding sinkhole yet. “This is where things become interesting,” he said with a chuckle. “You can give me the silent treatment all you want, but there is only one way down and one way back up. Do you want to listen to what I have to say now, pup?”

  Rather than a mirrored surface of a lake, the bottom of this chamber was a mix of cinder cones, sulfur pools and bubbling mud pots venting steam. Even my jumpsuit could not shield me from the stench of sulfur.

  “We’re close to the volcano here, or at least an arm of it.”

  “A volcano?”

  “What else did you think was making it so bloody hot? Satan? Did you think we had reached the depths of Hell?”

  “You do not need to be an asshole about it, Father, just tell me what is going on.”

  Though I could not see the features of his face, his clipped tone told me I had struck a nerve.

  “OK, smart man, here’s the plan. We are going to take the ropes you have been carrying in your fucking backpack and we are going to scale down to that ledge you see on the left. From there, we’ll work our way to the chamber floor. Don’t fall.”