Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

“I think I drove all night. I just kept going. Following the white lines. I got snared up on bridges. Had no idea where I was going. Soon enough the lights of the city were fading. I figured I was out somewhere way upstate, but it was the island, man, Long Island. I thought I was going west, across some great open land, where I’d work everything out, but I wasn’t, I was actually heading east along this big highway. And I just kept going. Driving and driving. Cars zipping by me. I had to keep muttering to myself and lighting matches, smelling the sulfur, to keep awake. Trying to pray. To make two plus two equal five. And then the highway ended, middle of nowhere, it seemed like, and I just followed a smaller road. Out through farmland and past these isolated houses, little pinpoints of light. Montauk. I’d never been there before. The dark got thicker, no lights at all. And it turned into this little one-laner. That’s what takes you to the end of this country, man, a tiny little potholed road that ends up at a lighthouse. And I thought: ‘This is right, this is where I’ll find Him.’

“I got out and stepped in among the dunes, along the beach. I walked about and screamed at Him, under the clouds. Not a star shining anywhere. No response. You’d expect a bit of moon at least. Something. Anything. Not even a boat. It was like everything had deserted me. And I could still feel her touch there, on the inside of my arm. Like it was deep and there was something growing there. And I’m out in the middle of an endless beach with a lighthouse twirling behind me. Thinking stupid things. The way you do. I’ll move away. I’ll give it all up. I’ll leave the Order, I’ll go back to Ireland, find a different poverty. But nothing made sense. The end of the country, man, but there was no revelation.

“After a while I gathered myself into that silence and finally I sat down in the sand and said to myself, ‘Well, maybe it will only make me better for Him in the long run, I have to fight this, battle it, use it for my own advantage, it’s a sign.’ I resigned myself to it. That which doesn’t break you, blah blah blah. I was running a fever but I left the beach, got back in the van and calmed myself down, and said good-bye to the lighthouse, the water, the east, and said it will be fine, nothing holy is free, and I drove all the way back to the flat, parked the van, fell into the lift, and closed the door. I actually fell asleep in the lift. Only woke up when it started moving. Found myself staring at the face of some frightened black woman. I scared her. I locked myself in for two days. Waiting for the bandages to blacken, y’know, that sort of thing. Waiting for it to blow over. And I bolted the chain. Can you believe that? I bolted the door shut. So much for the crap I gave you, brother, about the locks.”

He chuckled a little and a spray of headlight went across his face from the far side of the boulevard.

“The girls thought I was dead. They were banging on the door, wanting to use the facilities. And I didn’t reply. I just lay there, trying to pray for some sign of gentle mercy. But I kept seeing Adelita in my mind. Eyes closed, eyes open, it didn’t matter. Things I shouldn’t have been thinking of. Her neck. The back of her neck. Her clavicle. The side of her face in a slice of light. There she was, taking me in. And I wanted to scream at her, No, no, no, you’re just pure lust, and I’ve made a pact with God to fight lust, please just let me be, please just go. But she’s still standing there, smiling, understanding. And I’d whisper to her again: Please go. But I knew it wasn’t lust, it was so much more than lust. I was looking for a simple answer, the sort we give to children, you know. And I kept thinking that we were all children once, maybe I could return. That’s what echoed in my head. Go back to being a child. Sprint along the strand there. Up past the tower. Run along the wall. I wanted that sort of joy. Make it simple again. I was trying, really trying, to pray, get rid of my lust, return to the good, rediscover that innocence. Circles of circles. And when you go around in circles, brother, the world is very big, but if you plow straight ahead it’s small enough. I wanted to fall along the spokes to the center of the circle, where there was no movement. I can’t explain it, man. It was like I was staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sky. All this banging was still going on outside the door. Then hours of silence.

“At one time I heard Jazzlyn, you know, that voice of hers, like she just swallowed the Bronx, man, leaning in against the keyhole and screaming: ‘Okay! To hell with you, you dumbass cracker!’ It’s the only time I laughed. If only she knew. To hell with you, you dumbass cracker, I’ll piss somewheres else!’

“Then they actually got the Guards in to bash down the door. And they come rushing in, flashing badges, guns drawn. They stop and stare. Looking at me, lying on the couch, the Bible over my face. And one cop is saying, ‘What’s going on here, man? What the hell is this? He’s not dead. He smells bad, but he’s not dead.’ I’m just lying there and I swipe the Book off my face and cover my eyes with my forearm. And Jazz comes charging in behind them, saying, ‘I gotta go, I gotta go.’ Then comes Tillie with her pink parasol. Then both of them came out and started shouting. ‘How come you keep the door locked, Corrie? Asshole! That’s mean and unusual punishment. That’s the honkypox, man!’ The Guards were standing there, open-mouthed. They couldn’t believe what was going on. One of them was wrapping a piece of gum tight around his finger. He kept winding it, like he wanted to strangle me. I’m sure they were thinking that they’d done this for nothing, for a bunch of working girls who just wanted to pee. They were not happy at all. Not at all. They wanted to give me a citation for wasting their time, but they couldn’t dream up anything. I said maybe they should give me one for losing my faith and then they thought I was really off my rocker. One of them said to me, ‘Look at this shithole — get a life, man!’ And it was just so simple, the way he said it, the young Guard, right in my face: ‘Get a life, man!’ He kicked over the flowerpot as he went out the door.

“Tillie and Angie and Jazzlyn and the girls threw a ‘not-dead’ party for me. They even bought me a cake. One candle. I had to blow it out. I was going to take it as a sign. But there were no signs. I went back down the nursing home and that night I asked Adelita if she’d mind just moving the blood around a little — that’s the way I said it, ’Move the blood around a little, would you?’ She gave me that big cheerful smile and said that she was busy on her rounds, maybe she’d get to it later. I sat there, trembling with God, all my sorrows, bound up inside. And sure enough she came back a short while later. It was all very simple. I just stared at the dark of her hair. Couldn’t look in her eyes. She was rubbing my shoulder and the small of my back and even my calf muscles. I kept hoping maybe somebody would come in the door and find us, make a big stink, but nobody did. And I kissed her. And she kissed me back. I mean, how many men can say they’d rather be nowhere else in the world? That’s how I felt. That moment. That I wanted nothing but the here and now, and nowhere else. On earth as it is in heaven. That one moment. And then after a few days I started going to her house.”

“She’s got three kids, you said.”

“Two. And a husband who got killed down in Guatemala. Fighting. For, I don’t know, Carlos Arana Osorio or someone. A fascist of some sort. She hated him, the husband — she got caught up in this marriage young — and still she’s got his picture on the bookcase. For the kids to know that he exists, existed, that they had a father. We just sit there and he’s looking out at us. She doesn’t talk about him. He’s got this hard stare. I sit in her kitchen and she cooks a little and I move the food around on the plate and we chat and then she rubs my shoulders while her kids are in the other room, watching cartoons. She knows I’m in the Order, knows the celibacy rules, everything. I told her. She says that if it doesn’t matter to me then it doesn’t matter to her. She’s the loveliest person I’ve ever known. I can’t stand it. I can’t deal with it. I sit there and it’s like these blades turning in my stomach. The voice I go home to is not the voice I ever heard before. I can’t lay a hand on the old one. He’s gone. I find myself stretching out at night, trying to grab a hold of it but He’s not there. All I get is sleeplessness and disgust. Call it what you like. Call it joy, even. How can I pray with this inside me? How can I do what I’m supposed to do? I don’t even judge myself by my actions. I judge myself by what’s in my heart. And it’s rotten because it wants to own things, but it’s not rotten because it’s the most content I’ve ever been, and it’s the most content she’s ever been too, sitting there, together. We’re happy. And I keep wondering if we’re supposed to be happy. I haven’t slept with her, brother. At least not… We’ve thought about it, yes, but, I mean …”