Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

The road west was already busy that morning with marketgoers. Drovers had been out moving with cattle since before light. Now their customers followed in their wake. There was a stream of those buyers, hawkers, gawkers, and others on foot and cart, travelling into Ennis. Wisps of straw and hay blew down the wind, the pungency of congregation of men and beasts leavened in that blustering weather. All studied the mare as she passed, but Clancy, who was returned to his taciturn manner, did not give them so much as the corner of his eye. He clucked at the horses and brought them through the town and out the farther side on the road to Kilrush. They travelled on, the blind woman seated between the two men and her son sometimes saying to her brief descriptions of what country they passed. She wore a shawl against the breeze. What visions of those she loved unrolled as the landscape passed could not be said. She sat and was like one revenant from other worlds, burdened by what she had witnessed and what could never be told. The horses clopped and beat down the road. Gusts of wind rose across the hedgerows and leaves and smaller birds briefly dallied in the polished light. At cottages along the way some had bedding and blankets out and beat at these and made thin clouds of dust in which hens scattered and flew. At others faces maybe men or women watched from just within and gave scrutiny to all without show of emotion, as if they were themselves no more than milestones and merely measured all that passed in the long continuum of human sorrow.

They went on. When they neared the town of Kilrush and the grey estuary waters could be seen, Clancy looked to Teige and gestured with a motion of his head in the direction of the island. Teige nodded in response and Clancy turned again to face the road with the woman between them none the wiser of their discourse. They came in about the town and there in its windy streets were those familiars who had seen them go and saw them return now and saw the strange woman on the seatboard. They studied her as the cart passed and asked aloud of one another who she might be and what trouble might be abrewing. Some moved along the street then after the cart as if hooked.

Down at the water’s edge by the small pier, Clancy left the Foleys. He paid Teige and told him to come back to them when he could, that there would be more work for him, and he bowed his head to the blind woman and seemed about to say something when the words escaped him. So he turned away suddenly and climbed up and clicked with his tongue and was gone. Mother and son stood there in the wind. The water slapped. Some of those who had followed down through the town stayed a short distance away and watched surreptitiously.

“We are going to the island,” Teige told his mother, “we are going to Father.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “Some say there is a curse against women there. They say—”

“We will go,” she said, and held up her head and was briefly the proud and headstrong image of her former self. She raised her hand for him to take it, and he did. And she said nothing more. Clouds fast moving swept above them. The light there came and went. Gulls and other seabirds hovered and plunged and rose again briefly dripping. The noon and afternoon passed as they waited for a ferryman to take them across. The fishing boats were long gone and had not yet returned. Only small skiffs and other canoelike boats of canvas moved on the water. One of these, piloted by a man of ragged beard and neck boils, at length arrived at the pier and Teige asked him for their passage. The fellow shrugged, as if such were not his business but rather some purgatorial labour, as if he were bound to ferry all until he died. He sat there and held the moor rope and waited while Teige tried to help his mother to board. The boat bobbed alongside them. Timbers creaked. The light was swiftly dying. The little crowd of onlookers came down along the pier.

“Where are you taking her?” one of them called. “Are you taking her out there?”

But Teige did not reply. He stood in the boat himself at last and reached his arms and told his mother to step to him. And she lifted a small blind foot and it wavered an instant before she stepped forward onto the air. Though the boat rocked, it did not capsize. The ferryman dipped his oars. Teige and his mother sat. He hooped his arm about her. The wind that was moving fast now fluttered her shawl, and soon they had left that shore that she would not walk upon again and they were out in the twisting currents of the waters where the river met the sea.

The children saw them first. They came from the raft house and ran on the shore and peered in the gray light and waved to Teige, and he called back. Before the boat had reached the shallow waters, the young girls were standing in the waves. When they saw the figure of the blind woman they hushed with the mystery and stood with their arms hanging. The pilot brought them in to where Teige stepped into the water. Then Teige reached and lifted his mother and walked in with her in his arms until he was on the pebbles of the shore. The children came about him, for it seemed a thing of marvel. When he told them this was his mother who had long been lost, the marvel seemed doubled, and some of the children laughed and spun instant cartwheels as though giddy with the turning of the world. The old woman smiled. She said she was sorry she could not see them, for they seemed so lovely, and some of them stood next to her so her hand could alight upon their heads. Their own mother came out then and greeted the Foleys and asked if they were not hungry and would they come and eat.

They went on board that creaking home of salty logs and rope lashings and sat at a table and ate the fish and potatoes and buttermilk as if in any inn. They took no notice of the breeze thrashing at the canvas and sacking coverings. The children stood along the table. Mary BoatMac came and went about them with quiet solicitude. Her husband, she said to the old woman, was gone up the river to Limerick and would be sorry to have missed her arrival. “But we’ll welcome you here any time, any time at all,” she said, and looked and her eyes watered. “Your son, Teige,” she added, “he is, he is…” She seemed to lose language adequate to her needs. “He is so good,” she said shortly then, and then said no more, for a flush of sentiment ran through her and she turned about and went out to her sister.

They ate. The children teased and pushed and made jokes. Outside the evening fell and at last Teige looked across at his mother and knew that they could delay no more.

“We must go,” he said.

“Yes.”

Then he took her hand and placed it on his arm and led her away out into the darkness and up from the shore along the stony pathway toward the tower. The wind was blowing. Clouds raced before the coming stars. Late hares fleeted and vanished. Thornbushes in their twists of growth whistled and did not move. Out in the waters nothing trafficked and the long black line of the river was slick and cold and fast moving. Teige drew his mother closer to him. The way was uneven and she stumbled. He steadied her and was moved again by the slightness of her and how the woman he had looked to as a boy was now this frailty on his arm.

“It is not much farther,” he said. “I will carry you.”

“No. You will not. I will walk to him.”

And she raised her chin and her blind eyes looked away at an angle and held so, as if seeing what he could not. She stood. He took her arm. They moved on. When they came close enough, Teige could see the glass of the telescope and he told her: “He is there. He is watching the sky.”