On the day I was born my father set himself the task of learning to lip-read. Why a man so prodigiously talented in the acquisition of the earth’s languages should undertake such a challenge has always and ever baffled me. Perhaps it baffled himself. Who can say?
He never spoke of it again, so it fell to my mother to confess this strange feat many years after he had committed himself to this pursuit. There was no necessity for it. None of us was deaf, and neither was any of his family dumb. Did he wish us to be?
Could that be what he was looking for, silence? The great man of letters, celebrated the globe over, did he above all else wish to escape from our chattering and retreat where nothing could trouble him but his meanderings and motives, known only to his own sweet self? I cannot tell you an answer to that, for I failed to ask him when he was hale and hearty enough to reply. It was one of many failures which he forgave me. Indeed he forgave us all without complaint, no matter how many times we had let him down – in thought, in word, and in deed. The most benevolent of famous men, Papa.
He forgave that I was born too early. Poor Mama had such a fright. She’d firmly maintained I would not arrive until the end of August. Even September. When she started to feel sore and sick in her stomach, she cursed what she’d had for breakfast. I blame the Famine, the Irish Famine, she said, I blame it for everything that afflicts us as a race, but more than anything I blame it because I can never ever waste a morsel of food, and the consequence is I have nearly poisoned myself on numerous occasions, forcing down rancid meat a rat would not digest, and that’s what I did this morning, choosing not to throw into the bin a slice of ham but instead smothered it in butter between two bits of bread and convinced myself it was fit to eat. Look at me now, poisoned – all my own fault, don’t pity me.
Father didn’t.
And he was not going to encourage her to rant further on the Famine. It was one of her dominant topics of conversation. She could link it to every misfortune that befell our family – even Hitler. I cannot for the life of me remember how she forged a precise connection between the two, but can recall that, when she did, Papa told her she was the most ridiculous woman he’d ever married. She burst into tears as he was correcting himself and said he meant met, not married.
She took this to imply that all the years he’d kept her from a state of wedlock, they had nothing to do with his hatred of the Catholic sacrament but were merely another way of humiliating an innocent poor Galway girl who’d abandoned all to serve him, the dirty Dublin rogue.
You only wanted me for my stories, she accused him. No, he corrected her, it was to save you from the Famine. That would have been a kindness years ago in 1845, she said, are you implying I am over a hundred and I look it? Yes, he said, if it pleases you. It didn’t.
A similar row was threatening to develop on the day of my birth, 27 July. I mentioned the ham she had been wolfing, didn’t I? But did I let slip that my father had no intention of staying with her that day? No, he’d planned to go swimming, and she’d happily let him, because he always returned in peaceful mood; immersion in water seeming to placate him, as if he’d endured another Baptism, welcomed into the fold of civilised men who could show a modicum of respect to their wives. Go on, enjoy yourself, I am fine, she informed him. He believed her for there was not a chance in hell she was in labour.
But she was. As soon as Papa closed the door, she knew it for sure, yet would she give him the satisfaction of calling him back to convince him why she was so certain? How many babies had she seen born in the west of Ireland? How many women had she witnessed in the throes of their agony? Strong, strapping lassies, full of devilment and laughing fit to burst their sides. Well, boyo, birthing put a stop to their smiling.
Still, she maintained she was cut from Connemara granite. She was no soft caramel. She could endure it. And she prayed he would come back to be with her. Prayed to the Virgin most pure, Star of the Sea, pray for the wanderer, pray for me. And whether it was indeed the Virgin worked her miracle and let him hear, or whether it was he found a hole in his red swimming costume that rendered it indecent, back he came to the second-floor flat, Via S Niccolo, 30, Trieste, to find her in deepest agony. He called for the landlady, Signora Canarutto, to assist them like a good woman – for the love of the divine Jesus, my mother added, forgetting in the panic the Signora was Jewish.
Not that such things mattered in times of this nature, although when we’d last crossed the border into Switzerland my father had to convince the relevant authorities we were indeed Aryan. A long way down the line of my life till that would happen. Now the necessity was to make preparations for my birth. The presence of my papa and her neighbours calmed my mother, she said. All her life her greatest dread was that she would die alone, or, more specifically, that she would bleed to death and no one there to stop the flow. She felt sure now she would not have to endure such a death. Hence, she was more than content to let everything be done for her. Quite the lady of leisure, am I not? she joked. No one found it funny.
Of course the midwife must be in attendance, and so they fetched her, a Giuseppina Scaber. She looked like a reverend mother, but not one to put the fear of God in you, nor had she the look that, at a moment’s asking, the devil and all his demons would possess her and allow her tear you limb by limb for having the cheek to pry into what was not your business by asking for something – anything – to relieve your pain.
No such relief was forthcoming, and my mother told me she would not complain, because it was right and proper a mother be tough enough to tolerate whatever spasms, twists and turns of torture her child in the womb inflicts for its pleasure on her, since the infant is only fighting to be free and into this world, roaring its lungs out. She kept changing specific details as to how I had conducted myself through these hours of labour. The last time she talked of that day, and she does often, it would seem I leapt piping out of her, revelling in the light, beaming at the sun. I have never known a little one more in love with the first day of his existence, she’d observe, and my father, he would say, then it is a pity the same bambino was not able to settle the quarrel where the bed should be.
In Italy there is always a row brewing, and Trieste prides itself on providing its citizens with the best of rows. Something in the air, the water, or even the bread – maybe all three – ensure tempers are explosive. At first everything seemed methodical and calm, though since my mother thought there was at least another month before she would be due at the end of August, nothing really had been prepared. But Signora Canarutto was Italian, she had in her permanent possession all that could be necessary and needed for the birth of a baby. These were quietly summoned and assembled. No chance of anything going amiss. But she did not like where the bed was placed, and so much furniture surrounding it. Things must be moved.
My father was foolish enough to resist, or at least to ask why. The Signora explained that the bed had to be moved to the centre of the room, since, many years ago, it had been brought from Jerusalem. My father did not follow her reasoning. It was quite simple. As every civilised person knew or agreed upon, Jerusalem, the city of God, was the centre of the earth. So it was very important, for all manner of things, that the bed carved there centuries ago and brought by her family at great discomfort and expense no matter where they wandered, this bed must be given pride of place at all great events. The Signora had specifically placed this beautiful object in my parents’ apartment to encourage their fertility, and it had not failed them, as, for generations, it had not failed her own.
Do you mean to say, my father foolishly argued, that myself and my wife, both of us healthy as Irish trout, are only having this baby because of your bed? The Signora excused herself for her ignorance, but could he enlighten her what a trout, Irish or otherwise, had to do with this conception and delivery of a new baby? Perhaps it did, my father mused. Perhaps we were more wanton in the days of Noah’s Ark than we realise or remember. Perhaps man, woman and child were fucking fish, as there can’t have been much else to pass the time on that endless sea voyage. Perhaps we can, if truth be told, trace our descent from a single herring or salmon, and that we are all family beneath the fin.
The Signora was not sure how, but felt she was being mocked. She was certain of it when he made his next speculation. This bed, this bed elaborately carved with mermaids, with doves, with fish, even a sail – might it not be part of the timber with which aeons ago Noah made his boat? Strange things have happened, stranger things survived. Here was where our species found the necessary push and shove, the Brace yourself, Bridget, all Irish men declare to their wives before the ride – they say it all over Roscommon, my mother informed us – this bed had evolved from the boards of that celebrated ark, could it be possible? My father asked the landlady would this be a question to perplex her rabbi?
That’s when she was certain he was ridiculing her. She took no more action than to tell him it was time to join her menfolk for his evening meal and leave what work had to be done by the women. Go down now, go down instantly, there is enough food, she urged him. He offered first to give a hand moving the bed to the centre of the room as she required, but she abruptly refused, claiming it was essential only the women perform this task. My mother pointed out the heaviness of the bed, but she was scorned as a weak female. A female on the verge of giving birth, Mama retaliated, but the Signora simply observed, in her experience, pregnant ladies all had vivid imaginations and liked to fancy they suffered from every disease under the sun – hypochondriacs, that was the word she searched for. Now, she ordered, come along, put your shoulders to it, get this bed into the centre of the room.
The three of them – Mama, midwife, landlady – did so, Mama occasionally howling when one birth pang struck her more severely than others. A look from the Signora silenced her, but she was a happy woman to collapse onto the mattress, open her mouth and yell the house down at the agony in the garden she was now enduring for my sake, for my father’s sake, for his father and all the fathers who walk this earth, bestowing her curses on each and every man whose cock found its way where it had no business being, damning her son, if son I should be, emerging from her womb, to be sterile, fearing to look at a woman, let alone touch one, wishing her own mother had taken a stick the day and hour she was born herself and lashed the life out of her so that she would not have to suffer the torments of hell burning in her belly. Fetch the father, she screamed, so that I can strangle the whore’s whelp that has done this to me, I will crucify him on the Claddagh, roast the flesh off his bones on Taylor’s Hill, eat him alive through the quays of Galway, give him to me.
All this, she told me, for the pain had imprinted every word on her memory, and if she didn’t recall each word, who would? Indeed, the midwife told Mama afterwards she had been a very brave and very beautiful girl who dealt with all she’d had to suffer in a most calm and dignified manner, enduring her turmoil with true grace and devout belief in the knowledge this ordeal must pass. The landlady backed up that story, and this, I believe, must account for the confusion in Mama’s versions of my birth – how she could be at times so confident I had slipped into the world without effort or anger.
But maybe something had gone amiss. They did decide to send for a doctor, Sinigaglia, a pupil of English with my father. My mother has no recollection of a man being in the room other than a male voice wondering what it could be she was speaking when she found she was blathering to herself in what was most likely remnants of Gaelic that had lodged themselves from schooldays in her mind and would never be budged – maybe the chorus of an old song, or the Angelus they said at midday, always recited in the ancient language, an act of defiance against the English. She had gone beyond the limits of agony when my head started to emerge, and I was there, alive, welcomed, whole, into the world.
My mother wept with joy, with relief, and when Dr Sinigaglia told her I was a boy, she clapped her hands with happiness. He had not heard her diatribe against his sex, so he put this joy down to her desire she would mother a son. The midwife Scaber, she heard the applause, and my mother said she will never forget the smile they shared at their little secret. I asked her did she really mean those terrible names she pinned on me and Papa, and she assured me of course not – if she had been in earnest, she would never have let me in on what she’d said in the heat of her agony. Anyway, why was I questioning her, when she kept up the story of how little trouble I’d actually caused her, coming into this family?
Mama had this gift of causing confusion. I never knew when to believe her. My sister, I knew, never spoke the truth – she simply couldn’t. My father could only tell you the same story in sixty different versions, being averse to any single way of giving a body the beginning, middle and end of a tale, a habit inherited, he said, from his own father who never trusted any being that could not believe both sides of the same story, and Grandfather could invent as many more sides of a yarn as were necessary to account for all the dimensions you could desire. It must, you might have imagined therefore, have been some hullaballoo to come up with a name for myself, their firstborn, the carrier of all their hopes and dreams. Were there ructions deciding?
There weren’t any.
Archibald, for my father’s little brother, who died years before. Archibald, Archie. Mama agreed to this, without quarrel. She knew how much my father lamented the loss of that child, my uncle I suppose. Knowing her as I do now, I am surprised she did not murmur some objections, fearing that I would be haunted by a spirit, or that some ghostly presence might find its way inside me just for the hell of it. No such phantom was sighted, the dead boy remained in his grave. My father had his way in all respects concerning this affair, even so far as to Mama agreeing I would not be christened. Again, she surprised Papa. He expected at least a small confrontation, but none materialised.
With my mother, this might arouse suspicion, but it didn’t. He really should have comprehended that by offering no apparent resistance, she was resisting most fiercely. I caught wind of this even at a very early age when it suddenly dawned on me she could call me by another name than Archie, and this would prove to be her revolt against Papa. She would at times take an age to comb my hair, lovingly stroke every strand, kiss my scalp a thousand times and, on very rare occasions, whisper into my ear, lest anyone should catch her, There now, Michael, that’s you grand. I let this happen a few times before I cottoned on there was no Michael there – could not possibly be anyone but myself, so like any nosy little boy, I asked her, Who is Michael, Mama?
I remember this because it was the first time in my life I felt shock move through another human being. I could feel her body – do what? Sway? Stiffen? And I repeated my question, Who is Michael? She laughed out loud in a way I now, of course, recognise meant we were to share a secret I must at all costs keep from Papa. I would not be hushed, though. Who is – and before I said the name, she’d put her finger to my lips to silence me from saying it. Michael, he is your guardian angel, she told me, and a fine swagger of a celestial being he is, there at all times to protect little Archie and keep him safe. I can’t see him, I told her, and again she laughed out loud. Well, naturally you can’t, she explained, nobody is permitted to see their own, but I can see and speak to him when he allows me to. Is he beautiful? I inquired. Very much so, the picture of beauty, and pale, so pale as if his skin had never seen the sun, and I like pale men, she explained, they have the touch of death about them, God forgive me saying the like.
Does Papa see him too, the angel Michael? I innocently asked her. She tugged at my hair, hurting me a bit, taking her time before she answered. There is one thing I want you to promise me above all other promises, and if you are a good boy, you will do this – are you my good boy? she asked. I am your best boy, I assured her. Then you must never, ever let a word of this slip out when Papa is here; it is to be our big secret, and you will never let him know of it, do you swear that? she demanded. I nodded, but wanted to know why. Does Papa not like angels? He doesn’t believe in them, she explained, he doesn’t want us to believe in them either, and if he hears us talking about them, he will be very cross. Do you want to make Papa very cross? I assured her I didn’t. Good, she sighed, and I was delighted I had pleased her.
I have spent my life trying to please both of them, the parents I love but who have been very difficult people, I must admit. Their ins and outs, their whys and wherefores, they have exasperated me many, many times. With the pair of these Irish tearaways – as they both are in their very separate cases – it is as if I have been beating my head against a most resistant brick wall, one as resolute, as stubborn as the other, each knowing precisely how to infuriate a nation, as Mama sometimes says of Papa, but it is just as true of her. I try to keep the peace between them, frequently to no avail, but it is how I am and they let me do my best to appease them, without listening to me. My sister, though, my sister …
Sometimes she opens her mouth and screams. It is to stop them quarrelling, she used to claim, but now I fancy she does it just because she can and everyone must stop and listen to what exits from that roaring mouth of hers. If Papa meant it when he said he would study lip-reading, I wonder what would he make of the sounds that erupt from his deafening daughter? They each blame the other for her capacity to make our ears bleed. Your father, Papa taunted Mama, you said he had a knack of tumbling the walls of any dirt cabin if he thought he would get a drink to shut him up. Weren’t those the very words I heard you use when you yourself, my precious wife, were three sheets to the wind and proved you had a thirst to match his? Christ look down on me and forgive us all, you have a memory like an elephant and a hide like one to taunt me in this fashion, she rampaged against him. Have I not got a struggle enough on my hands dealing with that one’s fantasies and fancies without you rubbing my nose in her madness and blaming me and my breed?
That word stopped all consternation. That subject. Madness. It was used only in the most extreme circumstances. That was the rule. And as a rule, it had proved effective though nowadays it seemed to be spoken at the drop of a hat. Still and all, Papa never rose to the bait. If he might be expected to draw himself to his full height and let rip a volley of facts and figures that could prove where these streaks of lunacy stemmed from that afflicted us, then on this occasion he could not be drawn into open warfare. Best to let things stand, my mother decided – his silence alone exhausted her tonight. Were she to get into a slagging match, her head might explode.
Not that anyone would notice if it did. This would be her parting shot for the evening, but she was unprepared for my request. I asked because somehow I sensed – don’t ask me why – I would be given whatever I craved, as some way to appease me for enduring my sister’s screams. Can I have a birthday party? I looked at both of them. A birthday party, I repeated, and invite friends? Why are you looking for this? Mama demanded to know, you’ve never insisted before. Because I want to, I told her, but if I cannot have it on the exact day – if that date is not convenient for you, I don’t mind waiting, I can be patient, I spelt out to her, even for a few months – until September, the end of September, and I smiled at Papa. Why then – why wait till then? Because it is the feast day of my favourite saint – my favourite angel. St Michael.
My mother gave her loud laugh, with all the workings of the world buried in it. Could you be up to him, this fellow? Now it’s the saints and angels he wants to associate with – is that right, Archie? I tell you, she pointed at Papa, you’ve made a fine fist of an atheist out of him. At so tender an age, already he’s in communion with your enemies. Who learned him of feast days and the like? Don’t look at me. I have only been following your strict orders to keep silent on all such matters so their heads are not turned astray with such superstitious nonsense as you have declared I was taught and you were taught at your mother’s knee. Have I not had that lesson hammered into me so hard didn’t I agree my child – my son – would not be baptised at your bidding? Who’s the dictator–
You have had him christened, he said, don’t deny that; bad enough his mother subjected him as an infant to that ignominy, without her being a liar as well.
How could I be lying? When did I do it? she asked. Are you saying I arranged for him to get the sacrament behind your back? A midwife can bless a baby in danger of dying, he retorted. So you are now calling me some low class of wet nurse? I’ll pass on that appellation, she demurred, though I admit the language you subject me to hear should not be uttered in a lady’s presence. Better fit for you to be saying your prayers.
But she got no further, for he thumped the table, shouting, I’ve got you now, you’ve walked into it, you did what I accused you of doing, you had my son–
Circumcised? I did not, she denied, for I regard that as a vile and cruel act against a tiny little fellow, and look at you, a grown man touching yourself where you shouldn’t, as if I’m going to come with a knife or a nettle to sting the jizz out of you before chopping you clean.
I could never anticipate what they would find hilarious. It must be something secret shared between only the two of them. But this was one occasion when she had him in fits of laughter. He was holding himself as if his sides would split open. If they did, I imagined what would pour out of them – and for some reason I thought it might be chickens. Not china or chocolate hens but real ones, with feathers and scaly feet and eggs that didn’t break when they landed on our floor. Where did that come from? Something he’d said – something he pictured in his mind’s eye and passed it on to me, one brain leeching into the next, father to son? I never asked him, for I doubt if he’d answer, and he can’t now, lying there, waiting to die, to let go and stop listening, stop speaking, stop gabbling, stop writing. My father is a great writer, but you wouldn’t think it if you’d just recently come across him. It’s tempting to say that now at the quiet end of his days he’s keen to keep his counsel. It’s not true. He’s just tired. Exhausted. Worn to the bone. He always was. It was why he missed my party. Or threatened to.
There was cake, of course. In the shape of a clock, the hour hand pointing to my age, and the date iced on the centre of the face. This did not please my mother. She had asked for the date to be at the side, month on the right, day on the left. I thought she might relent and let the day go off peacefully. My father told her the fuss she was making over nothing was spoiling the celebration for me. She replied she had paid good money for what she’d specifically ordered, and it was not satisfactory that the bakers had failed to deliver. She had a good mind not to pay. That is how her family always dealt with the best of tradesmen Galway had to offer. By not paying them? Papa teased her, but she was not for stopping this time.
I think you’ll find that’s more your family’s failing – a bit of an allergy to settling bills, she retaliated. Jesus, if we had sixpence for every time your shower had to make a midnight flit round the streets of dirty Dublin, I’d be sitting dripping in diamonds. Don’t dare upcast, in my direction, we didn’t pull our weight in Galway. My people could face the highest and the lowest in the land knowing we owed nobody as much as a sixpence. You get what you pay for – an old saying and a true one of my grandmother’s. I said what I wanted to them baking this cake, I didn’t get that – in fact, as far as I’m concerned, I got nothing, so that’s what I’ll offer them. Let them sing for their money.
My father paid for the cake. She didn’t resist. You take the good out of everything, he chided, look at the poor child’s face, shattered. You’ve ruined the day that’s in it.
All right, she declared, for his sake I’ll cheer up, I’ll welcome his pals, the merry band of men, not one of whose parents would clean their arse with us if opportunity of such misfortune we’d meet should arise. Stop talking like that in front of the boy, he demanded. Why? she asked, hasn’t he heard much worse spewing from your filthy mouth?
I had.
It was fortunate so few of my school friends could speak any English, for there were times when some oaths and choice phrases learned from listening to both of them spilt from my lips, each accusing the other of being the source of my foul tongue. Where did your learn that mouthful? I’d be quizzed by either. I was cunning enough to catch Papa out and just tell him what he wanted. When she was in a temper, Mama would accuse me, you have neither your father’s brain nor the brawn of the men on my side of your breeding, what’s to become of you if we don’t leave you money? Not that there’s much chance of that. We have had to scrimp and save to give you this treat, so you’d better enjoy it, she threatened.
The boys came in their Sunday bests, red bow ties, little suits, socks neatly matching their black polished shoes, myself rigged out like the rest of them. Each shook my hand politely and handed me a small gift – balloons, a few books, a yellow candle for some reason or other, and, I now remember, a spinning top. I already had a smaller one, made from tin, but this was wooden and painted the colours of the Union Jack. Go on, Archie, spin it, my mother told me, and, as I recall, I did, making it whirl in the silence as we watched it rotate and rotate and rotate until it fell lopsided by my feet. Are you not supposed to make a wish on your birthday? Mama asked. What would you wish for, son?
Could I tell her any of the many things I so wanted to happen? That my sister would disappear and I would again be their only child? That I could learn the piano well enough to please Papa? Sing more beautifully to make Mama cry with pleasure and smile as if her cheeks might crack with happiness? Or be the smartest boy in the class, scoring top marks, and that way some of my schoolmates – if only one of them – might like me? For even here, at my birthday party, swimming with good things and ice cream, none of them really spoke to me. Yes, they were polite, particularly to Mama, courteous and well behaved, but they addressed their questions and answers only to each other, never to me.
Now I had no cause to complain. I was too shy to start a conversation with any. If they were ignoring me, it was because they were paying me back in the same coin as I had dealt them. And yet I was surprised my brilliant plan of taking them into our house and letting them enjoy my birthday had so backfired. If I had been lonely in their company up to now, then I would be ten times more so after today. Mama must have noticed how little rapport there existed between me and the others. She suddenly clapped her hands and said it was time for games. This provoked some cheers, not terribly hearty, more like an acknowledgement that this turn of events was to be expected, best get it over with.
Who will hide and who will seek? Mama decided: Archie and your friend – what’s your name? Federico – Federico then, hide with Archie, she commanded, the rest of you, come with me, outside to the landing and let them find a dark corner to confuse us. She marched the boys out, and Federico gave me a look of more than usual utter contempt.
– I don’t know where it would be healthy to hide in this pigsty, he declared, but if it should be necessary to squeeze in, please do not touch me.
– My home is not a pigsty.
– It smells of you, it stinks of pig, it stinks of sties. I am only being polite, in front of your mother, that I did not vomit in her presence.
– You are not polite, you are very rude, Federico.
– Yes, Archie, perhaps I am, perhaps you deserve I should be. What kind of name is Archie, anyhow?
– It is a family name.
– Not your father’s name? Is it a Jewish name? Are you Jewish?
The way Federico said that, it was like a blow in the stomach. He was eyeballing me. I was so taken aback I could not answer. Then I heard my mother calling from outside, wondering if we’d found a hiding place. Not yet, I called back. Well, hurry up, she admonished.
Federico was climbing under a table. That’s too obvious, I assured him, they’ll find us first thing. That is what I’m hoping they’ll do, he snapped back, get under. I did as he bid, and when the pack entered, I heard myself hissing at him, we aren’t Jewish, none of us.
– Your Papa does not go to Mass or take the Sacraments?
– No, he doesn’t.
– Neither does your Mama?
– Why not? Do they not believe in good God? Or do they only believe in the Jewish gods?
His hand went to my trousers and I felt him rapidly unbutton them. Boys were searching all through the bedroom’s presses and wardrobes, some even rolling under the bed. Federico had found the gap in my underwear and with some dexterity squeezed my dickybird tight. Now the gang were turning their attention to the table.
I could feel my stomach churning as he rapidly left me alone. Do up your buttons – do it quickly, he ordered, and I did so just as they snatched the cloth from the table to reveal us, him innocent as the day is long, cheering their discovery of himself and myself, me burning like the sun, breathless as if I’d run the whole way from school.
I saw where my mother had perched herself, and where she must have stood since coming back to the room. Right beside the table, hearing everything, saying nothing, daring me to tell her what we had been getting up to in the dark, and I was so overwhelmed with relief Papa was nowhere in evidence, for in ways I believed I had done to him something as wrong as Federico had done to me.
From that day on, though we said nothing, Mama would use what she learned as a threat. When I upset her, or asked for something that pained her or she did not like to give me permission to do, she would sigh and raise her eyes, saying, should we not ask Papa? She was, I felt, ever allowing me to know this could be the occasion when she might let slip what his son enjoyed doing, playing hide and seek with his friends under a table.
Even now as he is dying, is she capable of telling him? Do I want her to whisper all the secrets she and I conspired to share? For all his fame, we – his wife, his boy – we kept so much from him. At whose instigation? Her? Me? The two of us?
I cannot say for sure, and neither can she. Tonight, all these years later, she suddenly returns to that birthday party, remembering the delicious cake – was it chocolate? she asks. I think it was, I lie. And did it have birds flying on it – in icing? she wonders. It may have had, I tell her, I can’t say. She wants to know did we eat chicken or veal? There was only cake, I inform her, and ice cream, buckets of ice cream. She asks what became of them? Those boys who attended the party? Do you ever see any of them? There were so many I doubt if I’d know where they disappeared. I let her understand that none of them was very special to me.
One of them, a dark haired boy, what was his name? The best-looking, do you remember him? she wonders. Federico, I tell her, yes, I do. What became of him? He is fighting in the army, the Italian army, I say. I hope he is safe, she sighs. He will be, his type always are, I tell her. What type? she wants to know. My father saves me. From his bed he says my mother’s name. I know they are going to speak of my sister, or of dying, and I wish only to escape from either subject, so I excuse myself, saying I need fresh air.
Is such air to be found in Zurich? It is a city – in fact, the only city – where I find my lungs congest and I have to gasp for breath. Why this should be the case I struggle to discover. The people do not suffer from any lack of friendliness. By and large, they are distant but amiable enough, with splendid Swiss manners. So why then is it such an effort to walk through the streets and not feel as if I will soon expire, panting like a fish longing for salt water? And perhaps the explanation can be found when I remember another oddity – why, no matter where I intend walking, is my destination always the graveyard, where Papa will be lying, sooner rather than later? What wicked motive could be stirring deep in my brain? Am I urging him on his way and do not even realise how much I desire–
Yes, my desires, always a problem. Never satisfied, never realised, perhaps best not. As a family we have tended not to share our infatuations with the common lot of humanity. In my case this oddness first manifested itself fully when as a small boy in company with Papa, we visited my mother’s mother in Galway. Just the two of us, the menfolk – some quarrel or other, between mother and daughter, there was constant bickering in that quarter, prevented Mama from travelling that time with us back to Ireland to see her family. She would not give them the satisfaction of being first to relent once again and break breath to such a gang of shysters, as she might describe them. But they received us – the swanky, foreign boys all the way from Italy – most kindly, with a comfortable bed to share in my grandmother’s house and jars of sweet, milky tea that I revelled in like the best of all Connaught gallants, devils for the sup of the soft stuff. Those nights were my happiest, ever deep in my father’s arms, no one else to disturb our sleep. And during the days, I spent my time pursuing my first love – the most beautiful swan eyes were ever set on, that was agreed by all.
My grandmother panicked at my fascination with this creature. She knew too well the strength of such birds. Hadn’t a cousin of her own had his arm broken, a full-grown man, when in a moment of daring-do he ventured too close once to a nest. The swan beat the lining out of him, and though in company she held her tongue, my grandmother was on the side of the feathered fellow. Wasn’t the poor darling only trying to protect its young? Who wouldn’t lift a hefty wing and let fly with it, should such a weapon be in the vicinity of your fist or beak or whatever was appropriate in a fight? The woman then sensed I’d have a connection with this Hercules of the sky, inheriting, through her, an affinity with its ways and means. Best put a rapid stop to that carry on, but she was too late. It turned out the swan adored me, and I took to it.
What else could I do, so handsome and winning as it was? It walked beside me, like a pet dog. If any dared come near me, it would go most viciously for them, reserving a special savagery for my grandmother. She thought this the funniest thing in the world, complaining to the swan it was a most ungrateful beast, since she and she alone stood up for it when the cousin endured the full brunt of that strength, and he would see it put down if given a gun.
I know who’s behind it, she whispered, I know who’s hidden inside it, it’s your mother, my most unforgiving daughter, she’s crept within the skin to keep the evil eye on us, and her raging we’re having the time of our lives just to spite her. Well, let her stew. I have no fear of the same lady, and I don’t fear the swan that serves her.
What did I care if that was the case? As far as I could make out, I was far from Mama’s scheming, no matter what others made of my swan. At night it would turn into my Papa, and we would fly above the bed out the open window, over the great city of Galway and from there over the whole island of Ireland, the swan singing as my father sang beautiful arias I always believed were of his own composing, and he was more than happy to let me think so.
I have circled round the moon, he would unleash his song, I have given her my heart, and I beg her to accept that humble gift. But Papa, I heard myself asking in my dream, how can you – how can anyone live without a heart? And he had no answer, putting all his strength into this most miraculous flight, his son on his downy back.
Then I’d wake, still happy, in his arms. He would kiss me on my forehead, and say, breakfast. I’m going to eat you for breakfast. No, Papa, I would happily squeal, don’t eat me. I am a cat, he would pretend, a great hairy cat, and you are a mouse, squeal if you are a mouse. So I squealed, and he said, I hear you, little mouse, now I must catch you. No, Papa, don’t catch me, I giggled as he rolled me in his arms, I will make my granny give you breakfast, then you won’t be hungry anymore.
What will she feed me? He wanted the list. Porridge and milk, sugar and butter, duck eggs and bacon, bursting sausages, puddings of all shades and shapes, strong tea. And coffee? he asked, any coffee? Not in this part of the world, stranger, I’d repeat in my Galway voice, sounding like Mama, making him content that I remembered to include her in our game.
I walk about the graveyard in whose Swiss clay he will soon be lying, far from his own dead. He will be lonely for sure. And what is it – the first stirring of grief? – but again I feel the wind swiped out of my sails as I retch with the shock, all air in this spot is sucked out of me. Maybe it is me dying, not Papa. And I recall how strange things happen, certainly in Galway. That same visit – or was it when my mother came with us? – we heard the story of a servant girl whose mistress treated the lass so harshly she drank bleach and died, choking, cursing the cruel lady of the house.
Granny sang a lament for the poor child, bringing tears to my father’s eyes, but an aunt of Mama’s stepped in and put a stop to this maudlin come-all-ye, by observing she knew this yarn, and its ins and outs, from a very different angle. Then tell all you know, my granny demanded.
Don’t break your heart for this hussy, who went by the name of Maisie Sheehy, the aunt reported, and she was known to have led two young men sufficiently astray they left the Church and were struck down with tuberculosis as a reward for their negligence of Easter duty. Not once for the allowed time span to receive the host – the best part of four months surely – did they set foot at the altar rails. Well, they themselves, the pair of yahoos, they died roaring for the priest, as she did, the bold Maisie, whose red hair was her pride and joy, her crowning glory. She did not take her life deliberately, for it was not bleach she thought she was swigging, but the best of Limerick poitín, than which there is none finer, as a lady experienced in the consumption of strange liquids such as Miss Sheehy would know, she who could not so much drink the country as the continent – nay, the very cosmos itself – dry.
So when she thought – the man killer, that was the name we put on her and well deserved it was – when she thought she had a dose of the queer stuff in the bottle before her, didn’t she down it in one go and died on the spot, fire erupting out of her every orifice. They said she smelt of sulphur emanating even from her grave.
My mother thought this story, even for her aunt, was a bit too far-fetched. She dared to question was it true in all parts? As true as you’re sitting there, she was assured. And, the aunt continued, how do I know that? Because she is a relation of ours, you and myself, God forgive the two of us speaking ill of the woman, though she be frying in hell. We said nothing against her, my grandmother declared.
No, but you sat there and listened to me, and you never spoke in her defence, the aunt attacked, and that’s as bad as accusing her. There was a song written about that story, and if you know it, I hope to Jesus you’ll keep your mouths shut and not sing it, for they say it has the power to raise the dead, and I have no wish to come across anyone connected to these goings-on, I’ve bother of my own with corns crippling me.
What song might raise my father from his grave? Mama said she loved him for many reasons, but his voice was the greatest – that much she would admit now and forever. In Zurich, hearing German everywhere, I wonder in this year of Our Lord 1941 what crimes are committed in that language, and I soon cease from wondering, for to list the present iniquities of these sorry times, even in the innocent safety of Switzerland, I can hear my very blood itself congeal within my veins. Fear. Father had his favourite arias from Italian opera. His taste there was to be expected. Nothing too untoward would startle his listeners. While Mama loved to hear such pleasant melodies, but there was in German one song that touched her most acutely, and it was by the Austrian, Franz Schubert. Papa would sing it, and she would bend her head, her sober head I should add, for this tune had the power to still her and let her weep for all her dead.
Auf einen Totenacker
Hat mich mein Weg gebracht;
Allhier will ich einkehren,
Hab’ich bei mir gedacht.
And as he sang, she would sway her body to his music.
To a corphouse
I’ll trek my way.
Here I’ll settle,
I thought to myself.
He never chided her. Though he had little patience with her interruptions to his performance, on these occasions he would let her whispers translate.
Ihr grünen Totenkränze
Könnt wohl die Zeichen sein,
Die müde Wand’rer laden
Ins kühle Wirtshaus ein.
She let him finish that verse, and he politely waited as she lilted lowly to herself.
And though her music bore next to no relation to what had poured from his mouth, though she had little notion how the German fixed itself in its own patterns, still he let her heart crack, remembering whatever it was she did from the sorrows of her life.
Sind denn in diesem Hause
Die Kammern all’ besetzt?
Bin matt zum Neidersinken
Bin tödlich schwer verletzt.
And here it was he might expect she would stop, too damaged to draw breath, let alone speak, for when she could, that was all she’d do – speak, and he’d listen to her sore heart, repeating after each line, my father, my mother.
She would repeat the last line, adding only the words my father, my mother, your death has quite destroyed me. This was when my father would take my mother’s hand, and it was as if they breathed as one till he finished – what was it? A lullaby to bring his troubled wife peace?
O unbarmherz’ge Schenke,
Doch weisest du mich ab?
Nun weiter denn, nur weiter,
Mein treuer Wanderstab!
He knew that she would let him end in silence, for she understood only too well what these words promised. She would have stopped weeping too, and there they would sit until she would nod her head, ask him to sing that hateful ballad. I used rush from the room. As a grown man, I am deeply embarrassed to admit this, but such is the nature of our family, that if you have even the slightest acquaintance with our comings and goings, I expect to be believed when I declare that it is a true thing I am saying when I hear a piece of – what? How would I describe it? Serenade, no – shanty, definitely no – dirge? That is warmer. All I know is that since hearing this strange piece as a boy, it has the capacity to unman me. All the more so now as an adult, for it appears to have acquired the power of prophecy.
I once seriously disturbed a gathering at lunch on a Sunday afternoon by stamping my feet on the floor and shouting no, no, stop it, stop that song. It was not my difficult and demanding sister who was causing the scene. No, it was the boy, the quiet child, so silent and reclusive I might not be there in the company, never, unlike her, attracting attention to myself.
What is the matter with you, Archie? Mama looked genuinely worried. I shook my head but could not confess what troubled me, for there and then I collapsed into a convulsion of sobs, choking me, buried in my father’s lap. These did not cease, and they were of sufficient violence that Mama – I heard her crying out to Father, Jesus, Dick, what ails him, is he having a fit, could it be epileptic or what?
A medical man in the company assured her this was not the case. That particular illness was his specialist area, and I was showing no signs that I had succumbed to the disease. I could see such a look of relief cover Papa’s face that I knew I must be brave and stop this excessive display so his mind could be put to rest. When I was under control again, my father pressed me to tell what had brought about this outburst. That awful song – the Irish one about a merry-go-round, a fairground – it scares the life out of me, I confessed, and I am sorry I never admitted it to you before, but please, do not sing it.
–That’s what caused this chaos, the words of ‘She Moved Through the Fair’, is that it? Papa asked.
– It is, I admitted, I hate them, for I can see ghosts when you sing them and I think you and Mama will die soon, if I listen to them.
– Well, he’s your son all right, Papa smiled at Mama, you have him well trained to be as bad as yourself, feeling himself haunted on every occasion. Will you watch what you say in front of the boy?
– The child can’t help his own history, and don’t you deny, my good man, that on your side of his house there’s a more than passing acquaintance with those long dead and buried, she challenged him. The only thing would truly trouble me in this business is how early it’s manifested itself. Not that it should shock me. That song has always and ever been considered unlucky.
– The first time I ever heard tell of that, he admitted.
– Then you should listen, she advised him.
– And what would I hear? Tell me, he demanded. When is it unlucky to sing–
– At a wedding, to sing it at a wedding, how do you not guess that even? Mama laughed at him. It can mean the married couple have no hope of lasting together.
– He’s not at a wedding, is he? Papa observed, and he’s hardly likely at his age to be taking a wife.
– That’s exactly what worries me, she admitted, he’s young to be sensing something not right in what he hears.
This was when Father burst into song.
The people were saying no two were e’er wed,
But one had a sorrow that never was said,
And she walked away from me with one star awake,
Like a swan in the evening moves over the lake.
Is that what put the wolves howling at your door, my son? The swan, does it frighten you? Or could it be the star? he wanted to know. Sure they’re lovely and bright, stars and swans, aren’t they? Might it be the sorrow that never was said?
Will you desist from teasing the boy? Mama warned him. Look, he’s already going to bawl again.
So is it the sorrow – the sorrow never said? And what is that sorrow? Or maybe who is it would be more accurate? Could it be your sister?
Now you’re drunk, Mama threatened him, you’re very drunk, and you’re stepping well over the line that’s allowed in my kitchen. Don’t you see how you’re disturbing the child?
That’s when he’d wrap me in his arms, humming the scary song to himself, caressing my hair, kissing my head, telling me there was nothing in this world to fear, though I kept seeing ghosts as he murmured,
Last night, she came to me, my dead love crept in,
She crept in so softly, her feet made no din.
As she moved away from me, these words she did say,
It will not be long, love, till our wedding day –
It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.
On my own wedding day I kept listening to that air, though no one played or sang it. I wondered did anyone else hear it haunt the feast, or was I alone the guilty party inviting disaster on the union? At one point I looked at my mother who was looking at my bride, and I saw no malice on either expression.
That day my father kept his distance from the whole company, as if he would not know any of us had he the choice. What have I done to offend the man? my own wife wondered. I had begun to notice how she was always wondering that, always thinking she had affronted someone and now they were paying her back, no matter how much I tried to convince her this was not so.
I hoped no ill omens would befall us, and I was relieved we all seemed to be on our best behaviour. All proceeded swimmingly, despite my misgivings, until I heard out of the blue my sister shriek – Look, look up at the sky, that bird, is it an albatross?
Someone shut that stupid bitch up, my mother hissed, what is she trying to show off about now? That she knows this marriage won’t last? We all know that, fuck her, including the happy couple, don’t you?
Mama turned to us and asked, You’re well aware this cannot last?
We did not contradict her, for it didn’t last, she was correct in that then, and if she took pleasure from our misfortune, wasn’t that her nature?