Niall Williams - History of the Rain

Here is the place where the ground was soft and his feet slid down.

Here is the brown suck hole where the river comes around and swallows itself.

Here is Aeney’s rod, found in the rushes.

Here, three days later, his right sneaker.

There, my shining brother was gone.

‘There is no Heaven. How can there be? Think about it. For starters, if all the good people there have ever been are already there, how big would it have to be? Second, what a social nightmare. It’d be like all the good characters in all the books in the ultimate library of the world left their books, stepped out of their stories and were told just mingle . Anne Archer and Jim Hawkins, Ishmael and Emma Woodhouse. How mad would that be? Dorothea, say hello to Mr Dedalus. What could they possibly say to one another? It’d be excruciating.’

Vincent Cunningham just sat there looking down. His mother died when he was eight, about six months before he proposed to me for the first time, and, like The Monkees, he’s a Believer. He has Heaven the Standard Version that we learned in school pretty much tattooed on his soul. It’s wings and angels for him, plenty of harps, which I personally can’t stand, and those white cotton clouds that have no rain in them but let you lay back like lounge chairs so you can have your feet up and watch the saints come marching in.

‘Sorry, but there is no Heaven,’ I whispered. I didn’t want Mam downstairs to hear. I think in a vague way Heaven sustains her and that, although she doesn’t want to consider the detail and she’s too busy just trying to keep us afloat in this world, she’s sure it lies ahead, like Labasheeda when in the river-fog the road is blind.

Vincent Cunningham said nothing.

‘Okay, say there is. Tell me then, in Heaven who cooks the food?’

His hazelnut eyes came up to me. ‘There’s no food. You’re never hungry.’

‘Thirsty?’

‘No.’

‘That’s disappointing. What’s TV like?’

‘Ruthie.’

‘Is Heaven God’s Most Boring Idea? Is that why He keeps it out of sight?’

‘It’s not boring.’

‘So what do you do ?’

‘You don’t need to do anything. You’re just happy.’

‘Well, I won’t see you there so. I won’t be going. Thank you.’

‘You can’t say no to Heaven.’

‘I just did.’

It took him a moment. ‘RLS believed in Heaven,’ he said. ‘You said so.’

‘That was Vailima, Samoa.’ It was a quote from RLS my father had written on the back of an envelope that I found inside his American copy of Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinths (Book 2,999, New Directions, New York): The endless voice of birds. I have never lived in such a heaven. RLS . Because of its strangeness, because it was in my father’s hand, and because found writing has a curious potency, I had showed it to Vincent. ‘You think when we die we go to Samoa? What should I pack?’

‘You’re terrible.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes. No. Yes.’

‘Look, I have an advantage over you. I’ve thought it through. There is no Heaven. So, I’m just saying, if you’re expecting to see me there, if you’re thinking once you arrive and get over the preliminaries — Hi Peter, wings, harp and whatnot — that you’ll head out and find me and propose, let me just say you’ll be disappointed.’

He didn’t say anything to that. The eyelashes went down. I was cruel to continue, but you already know I did. ‘The tunnel of light people say they see? Just your peripheral vision shutting down. Your brain dies with floods of light. It’s not a place, it’s just chemistry. You’re the engineer, I’m the Swain. I’m the one supposed to be partial to the outlandish. Nobody believes Milton’s Heaven, nobody believes Dante’s. When Dante arrived he said his vision was greater than his speech, so he stopped describing, thank you very much, which tells you he didn’t believe it. Not really. Because even Dante knew, there is no Heaven.’

That, I thought, was the end of it. I’d turned my hurt around to hurt him and he looked down at his long-fingered hands and said nothing. He was wearing his socks, his wellies downstairs after crossing the flood. The socks made him look defenceless, the way they do on boys. The rain drove down on us, the skylight streaming. I wished the night hadn’t been so long. I wished I’d slept.

‘All right,’ Vincent said, ‘let’s say it’s just a story.’

And he’d got me there. He knew it. You could tell from the look on his face. ‘It’s just a story,’ he said, ‘but, Ruth, you believe in stories.’ He smiled that smile he’s planning to use on Saint Peter. ‘All it takes is a leap of faith,’ he said. He actually said that, knowing that if there was one thing Swains know, it was how to leap. ‘Take the leap.’

Then we both heard Timmy and Packy come in downstairs. They said something about the flood and where they had had to leave the ambulance, and how now they were planning to stretcher me across the water. Mam came up the stairs. Vincent Cunningham stood in his socks and looked that look that wanted to say Ruth, you won’t die, you won’t , but because Mam was there it didn’t come out in words. ‘Well,’ he said, and then shot up his right hand, palm out, a sort of paused wave or Stop or I Swear and I saw his eyes were shining and knew he wanted to grab me up in his arms and probably actually kiss me but he just said, ‘I’ll be seeing you.’ Then he turned and was gone and to Vincent Cunningham I did not get to say goodbye.

After the river took him Aeney became huge. He was big as the sky. He was in every corner of our house. He was at the kitchen table for every meal, came and went on the stairs, blew down the chimney in smoke, rattled the windows, and rained without end. He kept his clothes in the chest of drawers, his mug in the press, his wellies at the back door. He was everywhere. He was in Huck’s brown eyes looking at you with grave and patient and exhausted asking. He was in his schoolbag thrown in the corner and gathering a pale sheen of dust, the creases first like wrinkles and then the whole of it, solemn and undisturbed, laying on the floor and becoming ghost. Aeney was on the road running. He was pulling blackberries in blackberry season. He was in the cuck-oo of the cuckoo that could never be seen but was somewhere on the top of the highest tree, looking down and singing its two-note song that could be joyous or plaintive depending. He was in Treasure Island . He was at our birthday, bigger and sadder for being present but not having presents. He was first one awake at Christmas, last one to come inside the year it snowed. He was in the final visit of the Aunts. He was in the fields and in the village and at the sea. He was in the river.

The only place he was not was in Faha graveyard.

You think you won’t survive it. You think there’s a crack right down your face and down your body and it’s so deep the pieces of you will fall apart in the street when someone says his name. You think it can’t be true, you think it was a bad dream and you’ll wake up any moment. You think it can’t have been as simple as that. Why one day, that day, did it just happen ?

And why is the world continuing? How can it? How can the radio be on and the kettle coming to the boil? How can the hens need to be fed?

You go to bed and you lie there and you listen across to his room for him. You listen for the way he breathes when he sleeps and you don’t, the pulse and breath and clock of him, that was annoying sometimes but was just over there, had been since always, had been since before this world, and now the emptiness of it pulls at you and wants to suck you away and you think Okay let me die tonight I don’t care .