Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

“Come on, you have to wake now. We have to go.”

She shook her head with its tousled hair. It was as if she were being asked for a dance.

“Yes,” he said. “Elizabeth, how much money have you got?”

She opened her eyes to look at him. “What?”

“How much money have you got? We have to pay, or give them something if we can’t. We have to take a train this afternoon.”

The urgency of his tone roused her.

“What are you saying?”

“We can’t stay here.”

“Yes, we can.”

“No. We have to go.” He began to gather her things that were too many now for her bag.

“Stop it. Leave my things.” She sprang from the bed and was beside him, pulling back her dress. “How dare you,” she said. She struck at him with her hand. It landed on his cheek and he stepped back and raised his two hands as if to still the angry air.

“I cannot work at the bank, Elizabeth. I have to go into the country. I have to work on land with horses. This is what I can do, you know that. We can have a good house, for our child.” He gestured right-handed to her midriff.

“What?”

“Are you—”

She shouted, “No! No, no, stop!” She turned back to the bed and threw herself upon it and wept.

Teige stood and felt the life go out of him. He put down the bag. He took off his jacket and he sat beside her on the bed and he stroked her hair. When at last she turned her wet face to him, she said: “Can we stay?”

And he answered her, “All right.”

So they did not take the train that afternoon, and Teige went down and told them at the desk of the hotel that there had been a mistake and the man there smiled and was most gracious and said how delighted they all were. The first snow flurries blew. The fire in the lobby was loaded high with logs and the scent of woodsmoke hung thickly. Elizabeth bought a coat of fur. It was made, she told Teige, from wild bears that ran about in the rest of that country. Imagine. She told him to get one for himself, but he declined. He sat in the hotel room and despaired. He went out to the outskirts of the city where the land opened and the treed skyline told of the wilderness beyond. He found a blacksmith’s yard and stables and passed some time of the day examining the horses there. He surprised the smith with knowledge of hooves and offered to help, and showed such skill as belied his fine clothes. He went there several times thereafter. When he returned to the hotel he was again in his black jacket, but his skin smelled of horses.

On many evenings the Frenchman joined them for dinner. Such was his frequency that Elizabeth and Teige were customarily seated at a table for three and sat in attendance until he arrived. Evenings when he did not come they sat muted over the noise of their knife and fork. When he did he came with many apologies and kissed Elizabeth’s hand and ordered champagne. He made jokes about extravagant heiresses with triple chins. He told stories of the glamour of New York and the fine houses he had stayed in and told too of his favoured place in that country that was called New Orleans where the ladies wore jewelled garters sent from Paris.

When they came upstairs after one such night, Elizabeth told Teige he should ask the Frenchman for a job.

“You cannot sit around forever.”

He came to her and held her about the shoulders. “Elizabeth,” he said, “I want us to leave. You know that. I want us to go west. There is—

“No.”

She spun away. She went to the dressing room. He came there and opened the door, where she was taking down her dress. When she saw him there she stopped.

“Once you wanted me to see you,” he said.

She held her hands across herself. “Please, Teige,” she said. “Go to sleep.”

She closed over the door.

The day following, he rose before her and went out across the frozen morning to visit the smith and the horses. One that had recovered from lameness he took for a ride and went out at a gallop across thinly crisp and whitened grass. The plumes of his breath and the horse’s breath were like signals of some release. The land they crossed was fresh and unspoiled and open and the sky above clear and bluer than any he had seen. He took the horse down the steep of a valley and journeyed along this until he came to a stream. He paused there and dismounted and let the horse drink and he squatted and scooped palmfuls of icy water for himself. He doused his head. He shook the wide ring of drops and then shouted out. He shouted again and the horse startled and went a few paces in the stream but intuited there was no call for fear and stood then looking sidelong. Teige stood and opened his arms and shouted again, and the shout travelled up that valley and was heard by what birds and beasts dwelled there and perhaps by these alone was comprehended.

Teige whistled and the horse came to him. He stroked its flank. He laid his forehead upon its shoulder. In fields at the north of the valley some cattle stood. A hawk high in the blue travelled a wide arc. Teige climbed on the horse and rode on. He rode all that day and afternoon. He rode along the edge of woods and stopped to smell the trees and to recall that smell from a time long ago when he and the twins waited for Tomas with a swan. He rode across the fast fading light of that winter’s day and stopped sometimes to let the horse graze and rest and to consider the world in which he found himself. Then he went on. He went in an arc no different from the hawk’s, as if upon a long invisible tethering, and by the coming of the darkness he was back at the smith’s. He returned the horse. The smith worked at a fire, hammering. He told Teige he could have the horse for little money for the work he had done. Teige said he had worked for the horses and not for payment and the man said he understood this and this was why he offered.

Teige told the smith he was unsure if he could take the horse but would return. He went back to the city on foot and his suit was soiled and worn looking, and about him was the smell of the land. He came in the doorway of the hotel and from what signals he could not say knew at once that something was awry. It was as though all were canted slightly, or a glass opaque had been placed between him and what he saw. He went past the desk, where the clerk at that moment spun to study the keys. He went up the stairs and into the room and saw at once that she was gone. Her clothes, her bag, his eyes looked for these, though he did not move. There was only her scent. Upon the bed he saw the note she had written him.

Dear Teige,

I am gone. Please do not try and find me.

It will only embarrass both of us. We are finished. It was my fault.

I have paid the hotel bill.

I wish you every happiness,

Elizabeth.

He stood and held the note and looked it over again. Then he crumpled it and threw it across the room. He went to the chest of drawers where his old clothes lay and he stripped off the black suit and put them on. With the suit bundled under his arm he left that room then and went down the stairs quickly and caught the eye of the desk clerk, who looked askance at him in that old apparel. He crossed the marbled lobby beneath the chandeliers and out to the street. There was snow trafficking in the air. Those moving in that thoroughfare were thickly coated in furs, and other heavy materials, and at once Teige had a glimpse of what the winter would be like there. He went out the way he had come. The snow fell but did not seem to land. It crossed the air and vanished when it touched the ground. Yet still more fell, spiralling in windless descent out of the evening dark. Teige turned his face to it. The stars were gone. His breath rose briefly and then passed into nothing. He went on. He walked out the end of the streets into the utter dark. The road was softened beneath him. The snow falling was visible only barely when it passed his eyes. He tramped into the night and went on out to the blacksmith’s. He found that man’s low house by the roadside and went and knocked on the door.