Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

The gypsies of Elihah had remained on in that rainy island for so long that they grew to know the ways of the natives. They knew the sympathy for outlaws that endured there in the hearts of men, and the evergreen curiosity of people to know what the rest of the world was like. And so they traded not only in tin and copper, but in stories too. They learned a version of the native language. In it they told stories to those who would come to their caravans and peer in at Mara, the bearded beauty, or at Petruk, a giant who ate the branches of elderberry, and in the conjuring of places far away they could retouch their lost origins. They told of countries they knew but in truth had never seen, though they could describe them in such vivid detail that the listeners walked away with the dazzling vision of places more strange than fairy tale. In all of their tales the heroes suffered outrageously, there were wrongful rulers, and fierce oppression, exiled wanderings in strange lands, floods and famine. These were the stories the natives enjoyed, and the gypsies could link one to the other like threads in a fabric, making the tapestry longer and longer until it threatened a kind of madness. For only they knew that the telling of stories could rob the world of life and make time vanish. And so, though the story might be yet in its vast middle, an hour before sunrise the lamp was always turned down, the listeners sent away, and the curtains of the caravan drawn.

Such was their way. Although they did not follow the calendar, the gypsies knew the customs of their year. And on the morning they fished the Foleys from the Shannon River they were on their way to the last races of October held on the sands of the Atlantic. They had already been to the horse fairs that marked the end of grass and were leading a new pony. On that shoreline in the dawn there were thirty or so men, women, and small children gathered as the brothers were pulled ashore. They spoke their own language in quick, guttural phrases and cut the fishing lines with knives in their belts. The men had black curls and smoky eyes and wore tattered shirts of once bright colour now open to the rain. The fingers of their hands were aged by the endlessness of the earth they had travelled, the muddied rutted roads, trackless bog, and rock-strewn fields. Their women stood behind them with arms crossed. They were strangely beautiful in everything but their teeth, and made of their gaping, blackish smiles a sensual virtue, painting their lips in vivid reds and opening them wide in a way that suggested they could swallow the world. They wore jewels and chains and bangles and brooches that were not seen yet in that part of the country. They had combs of tortoiseshell in their hair and wore skirts over their skirts that filled out the lower half of their figures with bounty and made their movements slow and swaying as if walking in another time. The children were like the ghosts of children. They appeared in brown-and-grey rags, thin and wan and dirty, their grave doomed eyes like pools of ink in which no expression could be read save that of mistrust, for death had moved recently among them. Their long arms hung limply. The rain ran down their faces.

The brothers were unhooked. They lay on the mud banks and looked at the faces peering down at them. The rain fell into their mouths, tasting of blood. In the breaking light the storm rumbled and retreated begrudgingly. Then a large woman with a green shawl stepped forward and told the men to take the boys to shelter.

In three caravans they were laid on cot beds and undressed. The twins were kept together. Though they were living, they imagined they might be dreaming and did not protest when the gypsy women took off their clothes and laid them naked on coarse blankets that smelled of hazel and hawthorn. The Foleys’ senses were sharpened by the nearness of death. They came back to air like fish flapping in the bottom of a boat. They caught the deep and heady perfumes of the women in their nostrils, felt their heads swirl, and fell asleep once more.

While the four brothers slept, the women watched them to see the shape of their dreams and the men gathered and spoke excitedly of the catch the river had yielded. The gypsies read the adventures of every day for the secret code of the world and knew that the fish-men had come to them not by chance, but by design. For here was the answer to the question they had asked the universe.

For, you see, the gypsies had had sixteen horses. From one of the diminished northern tribes who had travelled to the fairs from Donegal for the last time, they had bought a white pony that was wild and fast. This they had watched and roped and lunged and groomed and fed the berries of the year and the stolen hay of those farms they passed. In the evenings by fires of fresh ash that cracked and spat, they had told each other stories of its future. They told the legends of the races not yet run but which had flashed before them all with the startling clarity of episodes of clairvoyance. They envisioned how Mario, their champion horse-boy, would ride the white pony bareback on the horseshoe bay of Kilkee in Corca Baiscinn, how he would cling to the mane and slice the air on his way to victory. The women had rocked in their places on the ground, swaying softly backward and forward to the words of their men as white ponies ran across their minds and won the fortunes that would make easy the winter. By the low burning of the end of the fire they had lain down to love in blankets that smelled of smoke and horses, caressing each other’s thighs as though they were the glistening flanks of the steeds of victory. Then, in the morning, the world spoke to them. Mario fell ill during the night. He ran a fever and could not get up from his bed. His breathing was thin with a disease they did not know. The diphtheria made his throat narrow as though a leather thong were wedged inside it. His eyes watered a yellowy mucus. The gypsy women had gone out and gathered the flowers of the hollyhock and leaves of coltsfoot and made him a tea. They had made a poultice and placed it on Mario’s throat and sat in the dead air of the caravan. They sung softly as was their custom, a singing that was neither song nor hymn but a wordless prayer that belonged to their own great-great-grandmothers. It was the low music of despair and sounded out from that caravan to the rest of them with the dread knowledge that the boy was dying. The women sang on through the night and watched the dim light of the boy’s life flicker around beneath the canvas. When, near daybreak, the light slipped away, the boy was dead. The women stopped singing. The hush travelled out across the camp and the men spilled their drinks into the fire. They sat with stones of silence hanging from their necks. On the long rope that linked them, the horses neighed and beat the muddy ground and twisted their necks about as if to see one who had passed. When the light had come up enough to force the men to see each other’s faces, they moved away. They suffered a double grief, for beyond the ordinary loss the boy had been their talisman. They felt the guilt of those who imagine they have tempted fate by dreaming too hopefully of the future; it was as though they had brought the illness upon him through the outrageous good fortune of their dreams. Four days later, three more of the gypsy boys had died. The low singing sounded each night then, and the gypsies wondered if they had ridden into a valley of bad spirits. When the fourth boy died, Elihah announced they must leave there. They marked the place by scorching the ground so that others might know it was the site of death; then, fearing the disease would not leave them but would chase their vanity, they had released the white pony.

No more of them had died. They had journeyed onward towards the races with no rider and no pony and no intention of entering the sports. They had gone there rather as a form of purgation, as though they bore witness to something larger than themselves, and the final act required of them was to watch the races Mario should have won.