Читать книгу Walking with Ghosts - Gabriel Byrne - Страница 8

it was winter, New York. I was an exile emigrant and immigrant, belonging everywhere and nowhere at all. Home is where the heart is but the heart itself had no home. Last leaves clung to trees, the roofs of the townhouses were wet with rain, the lights of the traffic a blur of red blossoms. Buildings like huge gravestones rising into the night. In the distance the ghosts of the trade towers haunted the city.

I had rented an apartment in a skyscraper. I could see into the surrounding apartments. Sometimes I felt as if I was watching films with the sound turned off.

I have always found refuge in imagination. As a child I would escape hurt and loneliness by taking refuge in stories I would create for myself. Later as an adult when I found my identity shattered by sorrow or even success, when I didn’t know who I was, I retreated into a world of imagining.

On this evening, there were fireworks, and the world danced. The sky exploded with lights, left glittering trails behind. Twenty-three floors down stood a clothing store on the corner, and in the window’s arctic landscape, a mannequin bride stood forlorn, eyes downcast toward her artificial flowers. Her lover had fled, leaving her all alone in this alien place. Behind her, a flock of merry penguins in top hats and tails twirled canes. I imagined the sad-faced bride and her penguins dancing out of the window, down the avenue.

A balloon headed skyward as if fleeing the world below. A father spun his baby in a dance, as the mother waited a few steps further on, pram full of groceries. In the apartment building opposite mine, a boy practiced piano, flicking the pages of music in a room of pink walls and abstract sculpture. Alerted to the sounds of fireworks, he came to the balcony and was lost in wonder as the sky filled with palm trees and golden snakes, fairy dust and witches’ hair, sea creatures the color of emeralds. All falling into nothingness.

People in the street moved on, having been children again for a few moments. Opposite, an apartment was being painted by men in white overalls. I imagined them dancing in slow motion among the covered furniture to unheard music. On a balcony, a girl sat, legs atop a table, and shared a joint with her boyfriend, her face obscured by windswept hair. The next apartment, the man who never slept. At all hours of the night I would see him lean on his balcony smoking, casual as a farmer leaning over a gate. And way, way below, a man tried to capture the wind in a plastic bag.

I was about to draw the blinds.

A door in an apartment below opened. A man and a woman fell through, kissing, tearing at each other’s clothes. I hesitated, turned off the light and watched them tumble to the bed. Afterward, she walked in a sheet to the bathroom. He lay on the bed, remote control in his hand. He found a news channel. She moved from the bathroom to the kitchen, opening cupboards, taking out coffee. He lit a cigarette. She brought him a cup, took a drag of his smoke. Leaned over to kiss him. She came to the window and looked out for a moment.

Did she see me standing in the dark of my living room?

She seemed to look straight at me, then she pulled the curtain closed.

Later, I was seated at the bar of a restaurant on my block. The couple came in and sat across from me. The girl looked at me and whispered something to her boyfriend. He emptied a handful of peanuts into his mouth.

—Hey, dude we know you, right? You live in the neighborhood? No, that’s not it, it’s from somewhere else. You look very familiar.

—I got it, she said, excited. He was in a movie, right? What was the name of it? This is going to drive me crazy. It is him, isn’t it? I know I’ve seen him before.

And I’ve seen you before, I thought.

—He’s so familiar, isn’t he? she said to her man.

—C’mon dude, tell us. Who are you?

«»

I was born shortly after my parents met. They first saw one another on a night in November in 1948. My father recalled:

—I ran away from home to the city as quick as ever I could. I wanted more than just laboring for the big farmers, snagging turnips out in all weather. So I joined the army to see the world. Never got beyond Dublin, that’s how far I got. Till that night I took shelter in the doorway and your mother was standing beside me and I wanted to talk to her, but I was a bit timid and didn’t want to be too forward and I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then I saw her with no matches for her cigarette and that was my in. I knew she was for me. We got married in Westland Row church shortly after, and in less than a year, into the world we brought you.

My mother told me:

—We used to play tennis and go to dances on our nights off, at the Metropole mostly. All the nurses did. It had a grand ballroom and a good orchestra and was always stuffed to the gills. One night I was coming in on the bus to meet a few of the girls for something to eat in Wynn’s Hotel before the dance. It wasn’t done for women to be seen smoking on the bus so I hopped off a stop before the bridge. It started to rain and the next thing, I was in the doorway of a shop and rooting in my handbag for matches and this fellow in an army uniform leaned over with a match and his hand over the flame. We got talking and it turned out he was off to the Metropole as well. We danced that night and we met the next week and that was it for good and all. It was our fate to meet like that because of the rain and the matches and the Metropole and the doorway, and if it hadn’t happened like that you might not be here now. Isn’t that a strange thing to think? The way we all come into the world.

«»

—You gave the fight not to come, but out you landed in the end. And you didn’t like it one bit. The red puss on you, and the baldy head, not a lick of hair; upside down and a slap on the arse to set you roaring. O the bawls of you! The whole country kept wide awake. Three o’clock in the morning in the Rotunda Hospital there beside the Gate Theatre. Lying later on my shoulder, eyes shut tight, sleeping like a kitten. O, but a cranky lump if you didn’t get a sup of the breast.

Wrapped in the christening shawl that was my own grandmother’s—do you remember that shawl? The loveliest thing. Made by a blind nun in Scotland. My own mother was christened in it and it did duty for all six of you. Three boys, three girls. The same priest pouring the water over your heads. You the first. When I’d start to show, the neighbors would be saying, Time to get the shawl ready, Mrs. B. Six was a small family for that time. Mrs. Brown beyond had twenty-three children. The poor creature. She used to say the only holiday she ever got was the ten days above in the maternity hospital. Then back to slaving and trying to keep body and soul together and a roof over their heads.

We ferried you home in your uncle’s vegetable van, driving like a snail so as not to disturb your majesty, till home safe and sound all the neighbors come in for a good gawk with their rawmaish and pass, remarking:

The spit of his mother!

A pure dote is what he is!

And yourself there gummy and scrunched up like an old man’s fist. But Lord, you were so beautiful to me.

Always mad about the women, the soft pillows of their chests; bouncing you on their knees in your plastic knickers, teetertottering from one to the other, inhaling their sweet perfume. The widdy woman from next door singing her own favorite songs, as she would often. Didn’t like the smell of cigarettes and whiskey off the men or stubbly faces rough against your own; hairy tattooed arm inked in blue one of them had, and you’d run away from him like a scalded cat.

Next-door Peggy wheeling you in the pram along the street. She’d be showing you off like little Lord Fauntleroy; strangers gandering in at you in your pointy pink hat. You were so amazed and delighted with the world, waddling drunkenly after the birds, touching the wet nose of a dog, tasting ice cream for the first time from Peggy’s scarlet fingernail.

I remember you in the garden along the path between the vegetables. Your father digging in the black clay, and myself hanging clothes on the line, a basket at my hip and pegs in my mouth. Spying you with my little eye. Nothing would do you but eating the clay, and I had to give you a little slap. Spit that out! Bold boy. You crying, afraid, because you didn’t know that eating clay is a bold thing. Your father leaning on his spade laughing, and me carrying you upside down into the kitchen. And I locked you into the baby chair and washed your mouth and I couldn’t help smiling because you were such a good boy. Except when you did bold things.

Flowers at the edge of the grass.

—You tried to eat their colors and smells.

Clip clip, snip snip, leaves fell as my father cut the hedge. People passed on the pathway and spoke to him, smiled at him. I crawled to a ball, red on the green grass, and it moved, and I pushed it again.

I chased the sun across the garden, trying to hold its beams in my fingers. The breeze was like a small breath on my face. Voices and music streamed out of the windows of the neighbors’ houses. Children played and skipped in the street beyond. They sang:

In and out go darkly bluebells

In and out go darkly bluebells

In and out go darkly bluebells

So early in the morning.

Mother said:

—You listened to them sing, but you didn’t understand, so you’d say “dadlubel” over and over to make your own little rhyme of it.

Grass grew cold, shadows lengthened.

I remember flames leaping, lovely and yellow, up the chimney. My father played my favorite game, horsey-horsey. Bounced me up and down on his leg. First slow, then faster and faster until his horsey knees were galloping. And I held on tight to the reins of his belt, then tumbled down between his legs. I wanted to do horsey again and again. Over and over and over and over.

—A pure devil for the horsey-horsey, my father would say.

On either side of the fire sat Mother and Father, speaking to each other. Then it was up the wooden hill to “Bedford,” which is what they called the stairs and bed.

—I’d sing you a song, a lullaby, she said.

Hear the wind blow love

O hear the wind blow

Currachs are sailing

Way out on the blue.

Holy God, putting out the lights in the world and listening to the voices of all the people. Mine, too. There in stripy jim-jams, I’d kneel on the cold linoleum as my own guardian angel stood by the bed. Even if I couldn’t see him I knew he was there, wings folded to protect me from all the dangers of the night.

—Good night trees good night stars good night moon good night clouds.

Then: the scaredy-cat dark. The radio on downstairs, low sounds of voices by the fire, eyes heavy now. A dog barking in a shed next door. The long day ending as I tumbled down into sleep.

Another morning beginning.

Light and dark. Dark and light. So the days and the nights passed, and I was happy in small things as I came to know the world.

Then, out of nowhere, changes happened.

—It was almost Christmas when we moved to our new house, said Mother. Nighttime.

I remember rain slanting under the streetlights as we crossed the bridge over the river, passing strange houses, televisions turning rooms blue. Christmas trees and paper stars in hallways. Mother pushed the pram loaded with kettles and pots, rain soaking her headscarf with horses on it. Father was working late. A bus passed full of people dry and warm, rubbing the windows to look out.

—Why do we have to leave our house?

—Because. That’s the why, Father said.

—Because it’s for the best, Mother said.

—You’ll like where we are moving. There’s fields and cows and horses and shops and everything, and you can see the mountains from the back window.

—I don’t want to go.

Mother remembered that I lay down on the floor and roared and hammered the floorboards with my fists.

—The temper on you would frighten the daylight out of a person.

She pulled back the bolt of the gate and I saw the new house for the first time. It had no smile for me. She found a key under the mat and then we were in a dark hallway, loud with new silence and a smell of cold. She found a light. The walls had holes, newspaper covered the floors. I did not like this place, and I began to cry again for my old home, and my bedroom over the garden and monkey tree, the doors and the windows and the pathway and the scrapy gate and the old widdy woman and next-door Peggy.

The moon slid over the walls and down the stairs. I lay on a mattress on the floor, bundled in overcoats to keep warm. Through the window, I could make out the shape of a hill like a crouched animal, waiting to get me.

And then, my life changed again. My new brother arrived, wrapped in my hand-me-down christening shawl.

My mother said:

—And of course, what did your majesty here do? Only lie down on the floor and roar the head off yourself.

I can still see the fear in my father’s face. He ran from the room, calling for my mother.

—O Lord, o Lord, God-blessed Jesus and His holy mother, save us.

They were both looking at me with afraid faces. Then anger faces. My brother watched me too, dribble coming from his mouth. They forced a spoon into it. Then the quilt was covered in vomit.

Father held up a small bottle of turpentine.

—He tried to poison the baby.

He turned to face me. I was scared then. My mother was rocking my roaring brother in her arms, and a strange man with a black bag looked at me. He was Dr. Kelly.

—I was painting the wall, my father said, and I left the bottle of turpentine down. I turn around and I see him upending it into the baby’s mouth. What are we to do with him at all, Doctor? Father said.

—What are we to do with him at all? Mother repeated.

The man with his black bag left.

—Tell your brother you’re sorry for trying to kill him.

My brother gurgled and laughed, showing his one tooth. He didn’t mind that I tried to murder him.

«»

Every morning in childhood, the radio would wake me, its crackly BBC voices from London carried over the Irish Sea and into the kitchen. My father would talk back to it as he shaved.

—Well God bless your honor and your honor’s horse, he’d say.

Up the bare stairs he’d come, bringing tea to Mother.

—Let the dog see the rabbit.

A creaking of springs and laughter.

On this morning, Father entered my room, made the sign of the cross on my forehead to keep me safe for the day. It was September 1955, and my first day of school.

I was dressed in a navy suit and new leather boots with steel tips and a badge with a heart on my coat. I was sick with fear. My father had taught me to count with apples and to draw numbers.

—One is a line, two is a swan, three is a pig’s tail.

Now I had to go to school to learn other things. The night before, Mother made me take a bath and said that every child had to go to school.

—Why?

—That’s the why. You have to learn to read and write and add up sums so you can make your way in the world. You don’t want to grow up to be a dunderhead and not know b from a bull’s foot. Once you get a few days of it under your belt, you won’t want to come home at all, she said.

I’ll buy me child a saucepan

I’ll buy me child a spoon

I’ll buy me child a writing set

So he can go to school.

I held tight to Mother’s dress while she baked tomorrow’s bread, the sweet smell filling the house, her hands covered in flour. She made a little dough man specially for me from the leftover flour. She lit up a cigarette, and all the tension went out of her, the smoke rising like a blue ghost. I liked when she smoked because she always fell into a good humor and would tell me a story.

—Will I tell you a story about Johnny Magory? she asked. Will I begin it? Well that’s all that’s in it, she said, laughing. It was a joke story to cheer me up, because she knew I was worried about school.

In the dark morning, we waited for the bus. People stomped their feet to keep warm in the wind and rain. A broken umbrella blew along the road like a huge spider. I remembered a picture in a book once, a baby in the sky with fat cheeks who puffed at tree leaves. That was the wind baby who lived beyond the clouds. But I was big now, so I didn’t believe in the wind baby.

At last, the bus arrived. Mother and I squeezed and pushed onto the platform. The conductor with the high voice—the one everybody called Mary even though he was a man—told us:

—Come on now, push up the car there, please, ladies and germs.

And we found ourselves on the long television seat which faced everyone. I looked out at my familiar streets falling away, rain running down the windows.

My face burned because people were looking at me in my new uniform that itched my skin. I did not like to be looked at. Once, mother had to pull me out by the leg from under the bed when a neighbor called. I knew places to hide when I wanted to be alone: in the wardrobe, among Mother’s skirts and coats, breathing in camphor and the scent of her perfume, or under the stairs where the gas meter was and where mice found homes in the pockets of old coats.

My face flamed red with shame when the woman beside me, who smelled of coal smoke and perfume, smiled at me. People looking at me always made me blush. A girl once said to me, Hey, give us a light off your face for me cigarette, and everyone laughed. I pretended to laugh too.

Once, going into town to the shops with Mother, there was a man in a coat too small for him who had no socks on and shoes with no laces. He was sitting on the television seat singing a song in Irish and the whole bus clapped when he finished.

—I think you’re on the wrong bus, Brendan, said the conductor.

—Are youse not going to Crumlin? the man replied.

—Ah, no, this is the Drimnagh bus, Brendan. You should be on the number fifty.

He said goodbye to everyone as he came down the aisle.

—What age is the chiseler? he said to my mother, looking at me.

—He’s almost five.

—Long life to him, missus.

—Watch your step now, Brendan.

The driver pushed back the glass door, waiting for him to get off. The man stood on the footpath saluting like a soldier.

—God bless Brendan. People turned to get a last look at him.

—That man, my mother said, is a famous writer. And he on the wrong bus, God love him, the creature.

We came to a redbrick building and entered a long hallway. I could hear the echo of our footsteps following us; a piano, and a voice, singing. There was a window: blue and red and green, with a girl saint who looked straight at me, and Patrick Pearse the Rebel, who was executed by the British in 1916, his gammy eye turned away so you couldn’t see it.

A smell like rotten eggs came over the walls of the school on the wind. It was from O’Keefe’s yard, where they killed animals to make shoes and rosary beads. They hosed the blood off the walls. You could hear the cows and horses roaring with fear for miles.

Once, in the country at my uncle’s, I saw men pull a cow from a trailer by ropes. There was terror in her eyes and her hooves slipped, the men not caring. They hit her hard across her back and legs with sticks till they had her in the shed and she was screaming and crying in her cow way. One of them put a kind of gun to her forehead and she fell down in a twitching heap and they pulled her out along the ground, thoughtless as to whether she banged her head, laughing and joking as if her pain were nothing at all.

Sometimes, Father would bring home herring in bloodstained newspaper for dinner on the carrier of his bike. The dead eyes of the fish made me wonder if they felt pain. What a thing to be caught by a hook on the inside of your mouth, to die gasping for air, then to be eaten by a human. He fried them in flour and butter in the pan, cut off the tails and the heads, which he threw out the back door to the cat.

Often, there were rabbits and turkeys and chickens, life drained from them, hanging from a nail on our kitchen door. I stared at them, wondering if they knew they had died or whether they ever missed being alive. Sometimes, for a laugh, Mother would chase us around the house in a bedsheet waving a yellow withered claw as we laughed and screamed up the stairs and through the rooms, until she trapped us and we felt the dead claw on our skin.

I held tighter to Mother’s hand, her ring against my fingers. I was afraid I would wet myself when a nun appeared, white plastic wings out from her head, the rest of her in black. Some boys stood and stared as if they were scared, like me. Mother wet her fingers to comb my hair and pinned a Miraculous Medal to the inside of my coat.

—That’s so Our Blessed Lady will look after you and keep you safe from all harm.

The nun’s face was cross as she formed us into lines. One of the nuns held a boy by the ear.

—Get into that line you or you’ll see what’s good for you.

I hid behind Mother’s coat as the nun reached us.

—What is this boy’s name, tell me?

Mother told her.

—He has an Angel’s name, said the nun.

Mother told me once how I got my name.

—It was when you were floating inside me, in your own little world. One afternoon, I was that tired I decided to have a bit of an early lie-down. The next thing, I woke up in a kind of sweat and something made me go to the window and I saw it was already nighttime. I was cooling my forehead against the glass and didn’t it start to snow. Big thick flakes of it, falling on the trees and the grass. The whole garden white and bits of diamonds shining here and there under the light of the moon and the shadows of branches. And what did I see but a shape coming out of the snow with wings, moving silently up and down, and didn’t it land beyond on the bicycle shed. Well, the heart went crossways in me. It started tapping with a wing on the window.

Are you a ghost or what are you at all? says I.

Oh, and he gave me a smile, it was the loveliest, kindest smile I ever saw. What was he? Only an angel.

And even though he didn’t speak a word, I understood that he was telling me the name I should call you. Then he disappeared back into the snow, not a trace of him when I woke again and I looked out into the garden, true as I’m standing here, there wasn’t a trace of snow either.

So I knew that it was a fever dream I was after having. And I said your name for the first time, to myself, out loud.

The sister took me away with the waxy flesh of her hand, and when I looked back, there was only emptiness where Mother had been. She was gone.

—Do you remember? Mother said. You showed me the moon you drew that very first day, a white balloon. A man’s face in it. And a house, smoke coming from the chimney, a hill behind it and a dog in front and a monkey puzzle tree. The dog was bigger than the house and that made us laugh. And there was a river running before it. And a rain barrel to the side, a pipe coming from the roof and a tree bending over it, and a pathway with a gate to the door. Even curtains on the windows. That’s my home, you said.

We were seated, silent, row by row in a long room. A fire flamed in the corner.

On the wall, Jesus was nailed to a cross with no clothes on except for a nappy. Blood spilled from his head, hands, and feet, where nails were hammered in.

She taught us a hymn, and every morning after, we sang it, as sad-faced Jesus, who was crucified for our sins, listened.

Soul of my savior

Sanctify my breast

Body of Christ, be thou

My saving guest

Deep in thy wounds, Lord

Hide and shelter me

So, shall I never, never part from thee.

I wondered if I could climb into the wounds of Jesus for shelter, hide in there behind black-red blood.

We sing-sang at our tables. I didn’t like sums because they had no stories like Jonah swallowed up by a whale and living in his stomach for three days and nights. Or the Fenian warriors who ran from one end of Ireland to the other and only stopped for a feed of blackberries in Mullingar. I could never see numbers in my mind.

The sister would scratch marks on the page with a pen in silence as she called out our names. Her veil brushed against my face as she passed between the rows. She carried a belt, and she would slap it on the desk to make us afraid, so we dared not move or breathe. She wore a gold ring on her finger because she was married to God.

Our blessed Lord knows everything about everyone in the whole world, even your most secret thoughts. He is divine, which means he doesn’t have to go to the toilet or even eat. He doesn’t have to go to school.

—Does any boy know what a soul is? the sister asked.

We all stared back at her, afraid to say anything.

—I do, I hesitantly said. There is a factory in Heaven where babies come from, I said. They are all on a shelf and there is a little door in their backs and God puts your soul in there, it looks like the sole on a shoe, it is spotless white except for a stain called original sin which all babies are born with, and when your soul is inside you and becomes invisible you are ready to come down to the earth to be a human being.

—That’s a good answer, she said. What is original sin? she asked.

—Has it something to do with an orange? offered the Goose Gavin, who sat beside me.

—We are all born with the stain of original sin, she said, and it can never be rubbed out, no matter how much we try. Once upon a time there was a beautiful garden created by God called Eden, filled with animals and with every kind of fruit and flower. A Catholic man and a woman were put in charge, and they were our first parents. God made Adam, our father, first, out of some mud, and when he was asleep God took one of Adam’s ribs out and He made a woman called Eve, so that Adam wouldn’t be lonely all by himself. And they were as happy as anything and had everything they could ever want. The only thing God said was, Make sure you don’t eat any of those apples off that tree over there, and they promised Him they wouldn’t. But they couldn’t stop looking at the tree and thinking about the apples.

Sure one bite won’t do us any harm, Adam.

No, Eve, don’t! You’ll get us thrown out. You heard what God said.

But she couldn’t help herself and she picked the apple and had a bite. It was so delicious, she made Adam take one too, and they sat on the grass, munching away.

Suddenly, God opened up the sky and He put His head out and He had an awful angry face on Him.

The one thing I asked you not to do! he roared.

Adam and Eve started to cry and wail, but God was sick and tired of them and he pointed his finger at the gate of the garden.

Get out and don’t come back. I’m putting a curse on you to wander the world for all time. And by the way, your children will be miserable as well.

They looked down and realized they had no clothes on, and they were mortified with the shame and had to cover their private things with leaves.

That’s why the world is such an unhappy place, the sister concluded, all because of Eve making Adam take a bite of an apple. So anytime you feel sad, it’s because your soul knows it has been happy once, in the beautiful garden called Eden. We can never return because of the bad woman called Eve who tempted Adam.

—What is the Holy Ghost? she asked another day.

—Sometimes, Sister, one of the boys said, the Holy Ghost comes down on the earth disguised as a pigeon. Like the time when He was telling the Virgin Mary she was going to have a baby, because she didn’t know. The pigeon has a kind face and sits on a windowsill with a halo around his head like in our catechism book.

She shouted at him:

—The Holy Ghost is a dove. Not a common dirty pigeon off the street.

The sister told us we were lucky because Ireland is a Catholic country.

—And that’s because of St. Patrick, who is Ireland’s patron saint. When St. Patrick came to our island to convert the Irish pagans, he told them there was no such thing as the gods of wind and gods of fire who lived under the earth; that the trees and rivers had no spirits living inside them. There was only one true God, but he had two other gods inside Him called the Holy Trinity, and to show them what he meant, he held up a shamrock with the three leaves on one stem. Immediately they had faith and didn’t want to be pagans anymore. So, they converted to being Christians, which was what Catholics used to be called in the old days.

But the chieftains had one problem and they said maybe St. Patrick could help them solve it. The whole country of Ireland was infested with snakes. They were everywhere: in bushes, in the grass, in rivers, sneaking into people’s bedrooms at night and biting them so that they died in agony. So St. Patrick took a big stick and he rooted out all the snakes from where they were hiding, heaps of them, twisting and spitting venom, and he banished them all into the sea where they drowned or swam over to England and other countries.

We sang a hymn to the statue of St. Patrick:

Hail glorious St. Patrick

Dear saint of our isle

On us thy poor children

Bestow a sweet smile.

But he never smiled, just stared at the snake crushed beneath his big knobbly foot.