Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

Teige said nothing and the air stilled and in the stillness there was only the beating of their hearts and the rain now falling. The pony’s tail whisked the morning, her foot stamped the ground. The old man swallowed hard on the emotion that rose in his gorge, and his fists trembled. He looked away at where the spirit of the boy’s mother was watching him. And he did not strike him again.

And at last, without another word but with a grey look of shame, Teige stood up. He did not face his father, but in a flash the old man had spun him around by the shoulders and holding him there an instant shook him hard and tried to contain the desire to knock him down. In his great hands the thin boy was like a bag of things broken. He shook him and saw the boy’s spittle fly out of the twisting blur of his mouth. He saw the eyes flash past and lose their focus and sicken with fear and powerlessness. Then the vomit flew pink and curdled onto his shoulder, and he let the boy go and watched Teige fall like a rag version of himself at his feet. This was not how Francis Foley had wanted to treat his son, it was not what the old man meant or wanted to do. He told himself it was how a father had to behave, and he ignored the idea that his treatment of Teige was coloured by how much the boy resembled his mother.

“How are you going to live in the world?” he asked his son. “Tell me that. How are you going to be a man and live in the world? If your father asks you to jump with him into the fires of hell, you jump. If he asks you to swim in the sea when he knows you cannot swim and he cannot and the waters are filled with devils, you swim. Do you understand me?”

Teige did not answer. He stood up slowly, and his father pushed him ahead of him back to the pony. The telescope was wrapped in a blanket and tied on the top of all their things. There were pots and tools and wooden furniture and cloths and rugs already tattered and various sticks and irons of uncertain purpose.

“Now!” said Francis Foley, and swiped the air above the animal with the reins. They rode into the water and the whole cart swayed downriver at once. It was as though the world had suddenly been turned on its side and everything fell. The father stood and shouted at the mule and slashed at him with the reins and a leather belt and cursed the universe and cried out to Teige to keep them between the ropes. The ties he had secured snapped like the river’s toys. The whole of their belongings and the stolen telescope swung away. The animals tried to keep their direction but were pulled backward and sideways. They jumped and thrashed at the water. Then the lines that held them gave, too.

In a moment it happened. The harness to the mule broke, the cart sailed free and swung about and pressed against the rope of the bridge and snapped it. Francis cried out. In the river Teige looked over his shoulder and saw the old man falling back and clutching his precious cargo, the great telescope. Water spilled through the cart grey and fast, and the old man was kicking away at it, making a small white splashing. Teige was ahead of him then in the river. He tried to ride the pony back and over to his father but could not for the cart was floating away and was on the back of the current. And then the mule broke free of it and was swept forty yards then more and then was gone like a ghost dissolving from this world. Teige saw his father look with fury at the animal a last time, and then the telescope seemed to roll from its moorings and the old man pushed aside some of their things to keep room for it. Pots, shovels, bowls, sailed away downriver. He clung to the telescope. He saw that he was drifting from Teige and that he could not be reached and he did not jump from the raft of the cart. He defied the world to drown him. He cursed it and shook his head and shouted out something that Teige could not understand. Then Teige called to him, and his words too were lost in the rush of the river water and the deadness of that air enwrapped with scarves of mist. The father did not hear him ask where was his mother, or if he did, he did not answer. He looked back at the boy, and then the whole cart sailed down the river and into the mist and vanished out of sight.

When Teige reached the far side, none of his brothers could speak. They seemed paralyzed. They did not greet his safe arrival or move from that spot on the bank. They looked into the foggy river at nothing. It was as if their father had been erased and, momentarily, they were unsure if this was good or bad.

Teige looked back. “I knew someone would die,” he said.

There was a pause, and the brothers watched the river. It seemed to run without sound now. The twins turned and looked at Tomas.

“No one has died,” he said, “come on.”

“Come on!” said Finbar in echo and perfect imitation, and in this was joined by his twin, each of them mirrors of the elder. They mounted and rode, and Teige came with them. They galloped along the grassy western banks of the Shannon River. They rode along the edge of the first light of that morning and found that no matter how quickly they moved, the river moved quicker. They could not catch sight of the old man. All day the Shannon was sleeved in a fine mist and they could see nothing. After a mile the river was no longer even a river but had become a great lake that at first they mistook for the sea.

They rode the three horses all that day in search of their father. They scanned the grey waters where sometimes they thought they caught sight of him. At last they came to where they could ride no more and where the last sighting of Francis Foley turned out to be a singular lonesome swan riding the low waves.

“He is gone,” Tomas said.

The breath of the horses misted and faded. They sat crouched forward like ones beneath a burden. The landscape thereabouts was a green and rumpled stillness. The silence grew heavy. Then Finbar said, “He is gone to America,” and laughed a small laugh that faded away.

Finan looked at Tomas to see what he would say, but he said nothing at all.

They watched the waters.

“He is not,” Teige said at last, “he is become a swan.”

Thin pale daylight fell out of the sky. Curlews flew over the water. The wind waved the reeds in a slow rustling where Tomas feared to find the body of their drowned father. But he was not there. He looked up at the bank where Teige and the twins were then making camp. He looked out at where the swan moved in the brown waters and the evening was falling. What was he to do now? Defeat was not in his nature. Yet in a few days he had lost almost everything. The vision of their home burning flared in his mind, and he knew they could not go back there. He did not understand what had happened between his parents but from it felt an obscure guilt, as if it were the boys’ fault. He wanted to go back and could not. He had to be the man now. He stood there a time and watched the river and the darkness coming. He wanted to be able to repair their losses. He wanted to right the crooked world, to go and bring back the dead. He wanted to rescue someone. He stood and then grew restless and came up to the others.

“The place he wanted us to go was farther on,” he said. “It was at the sea that has waves. We’ll go on there tomorrow”

“We have to go back,” Teige said.

“We cannot. They will arrest us. We have to go on and find a place, and then I will go back myself,” said Tomas, looking away at the air above him as if to see how his words sounded.

Finan groaned then and rubbed at his stomach. “We have nothing left, we have nothing to eat.”

“We’ll eat the swan,” his twin answered, and grinned.