Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

There was suddenly a renewed urgency. The camp came alive with the business of preparing for the races. A group of the gypsies came to Teige and stood about him and nodded. They smiled brown, gap-toothed smiles at him and said nothing. Then when he walked across the field leading the pony, they followed like designated escorts of Fate. There were other races and other horses for the gypsies to run, but it was upon the white pony they would gamble the wealth they had gathered over the previous year. They moved down to the beach, where the wind blew the sand against their ankles and made powdery falls of each hoofstep. The sky was full of quick-moving cloud, the sea brilliant. Soon there were more than two hundred gypsies and their number swelled with the population of Kilkee spilling down toward the beach to watch. Dogs galloped in crazy circles with lolling tongues and flapping ears. Boys ran along the sand before the event and mimed horses they rode in ghost races. Girls looked for the ones that they had danced with in secret the night before and blushed when they could not tell which one or ones they were. All knew it was the beginning of the end, that when the exotic visitors left, winter would be upon them with the colour and excitement of those days and nights passing into memory.

A way was cleared across the white strand. The gypsies had sticks they stuck into the sand. These were topped with ties of red and yellow cloth and made a start and finish. In the clarity of the daylight then all the gypsy tribes were revealed, some one-eyed, some crippled, misshapen, round-shouldered, black, toothless, grin-faced, narrow-eyed, lipless, and handsome. Teige looked about at them as though looking at company kept in dreams. He saw his brother Finbar draw aside the mer-girl called Cait and take her away from the races down to the shore. He did not see Finan and did not know that that brother was already on his way out of the town, that he had suffered deeply pangs of remorse and guilt, faced the violence that had arisen within him, and experienced a grim revelation that he must give his soul for the one that was perished. Teige did not know Finan was already gone, was already fissured from the family and lost to the obscured and traceless domain of zealots, that he was heading for the port of Cork and thence to the continent of Africa to begin work in the service of God. Out of some desperation, Teige imagined that perhaps at last Tomas might arrive, that the road that wound down to the shore would shortly be dusted with the charge of his horse. But it was not to be, and soon Teige could look nowhere but at the pony. He stood beside her and kept her calm while the noise and excitement grew around them. The first races happened, accompanied by wild frenzy. The gypsies had the habit of spitting, jeering, throwing small handfuls of sand at the horses of other riders. They made sudden large gestures, flinging both hands upward like pantomime salutes to a rash, inexorable deity, startling the horses and making the whole scene skitter sideways.

The white pony threw her head up and down, and Teige laid his arm over her and made a matching nodding motion and then blew his scent once more across her nostrils. He had a rope halter but did not pull on it. When the pony moved about to evade the scene, he stepped to meet her chest and was there in her view. He did not look at the men or ponies he was to race against. Instead he made the world small until within it there was nothing but his eyes and those of the pony. And he was standing so, his head upon the long white nose, when those gypsies that were self-appointed his guardians came and told him it was his turn.

Teige walked the pony through the crowd. They were a blur of colour as though his eyes were teared or blinding, and he saw no face he recognized. Then there was a gypsy standing by him with hands cupped for his foot, but Teige did not need him and swung up and onto the pony’s back. Still he did not look at the other horses. He leaned forward and patted the pony’s neck and spoke gently. There was a rope held raggedly across the way. Then a roar. The rope fell. There seemed a long pause, like a rip occurring in the fabric of time, and though the gypsies screamed and the riders crouched in a forward lurch, the horses did not race away. There was a fractured instant in which nothing happened and the horses intuited the race that had arrived before them and were in the very motion of the first leap forward. It was as if the whole crowd inhaled at once and the poor and tattered, the small farmers and fisherfolk gathered there, were stilled momentarily and framed so as in a picture. Teige would recall the scene for his lifetime. He would recall the snapped moment, though he was not even aware of seeing it at the time. He was sensing the way across the broken sand. He was breathing over the pony’s ears, and then somehow he knew that the race was on and the rhythm of it flowed through him like second nature. He became that strange oneness with the animal that was at once apparent to all there. He rode as though he were part of the horse. He was crouched and low, and his face was pressed forward and white where he galloped in the flying sand and spray. They were in the lead before the halfway turn and already the gypsies of his caravans were screaming and jumping along the inner edge of the course. There was a brown gelding at his side, and a sleek black animal foaming just behind it. But in the flash that was the race, Teige barely saw them. The pony plashed the shallow seawater into a fine whiteness that rose majestic and ephemeral. The splash and speed made the scene shimmer and perhaps was part of the reason why suddenly the gypsies saw the ghosts. At first they were the figures of the other horses in the race, and then behind them, and coming in a horde from the deeper sea, the charging shapes of a thousand more. They galloped out of the ocean and thundered down the bay. The gypsies all saw them at once and thought to run for they would not survive the stampede. Then they saw their own grandfathers as young boys with shiny black hair and flashing teeth and how they clung to the manes of the ghost horses and rode wildly along next to the boy Teige at the front of the race. They all came forward in one great mass, splashing high the water and getting closer and closer. Then, the moment the pony crossed the finish line, to the gypsies’ eyes it became two. Without breaking stride, the ghost of itself parted to the left and was ridden out into the sea with the boy Mario on its back and all the other grandfathers and spirit horses following behind until vanishing into the waves. The gypsies shouted and surged. Teige felt their hands grasp his legs, and then he was toppled over into their arms and borne shoulder-high over the throng. He saw the sky and the white clouds in swaying, bumping motion like the world coming to an end. Hands flew up and touched him. They patted against him and fell away, and more pushed forward and did the same. He thought to get down and set off at once, but his will was not his own and he was carried along down the beach at Kilkee and the sky spun about and his heart raced with victory. He was caught up in it, and as the gypsies raced him along on their shoulders and threw him skyward and caught him and threw him up again, he did not know whether to laugh or cry.

And three years passed.

The stars rose and fell across the sky and told their timeless stories. But of Francis Foley and his sons in this time there is little recounted. They are like ones that have slipped inside a pause in the story. As if nothing good can be told and it is better for the silence to enfold them.