Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart

I heard of men who were planning to travel to Western Europe. I asked them how this could be done and they gave me a piece of paper with names, addresses and numbers. That was four years ago. When I first reached Ireland I learned quickly how best to find employment. I took from others words and phrases that served me well for a while: off the books, under the table, on the queue tee . One man can learn some trades by watching another closely. I worked in two cities and then came to this village. There was work here and the air was sweet. I worked for Pokey Burke for nearly two years. Now I use the money I had saved for food and to pay my rent and I work some days for the foreman again. Bobby. He calls me the best of the ‘see too’ boys. I don’t know what this means. I smile and nod.

I have learned the roads around this village. I know the way to a quay, on the edge of a lake of placid water. There are wooden seats at this quay to sit on and look at the water. The evening sun turns it to a glistening, dazzling thing that has no place on this dull earth except in that short time before sunset. That light is a trick: if I were to swim to it or row out to put my hand upon it, it would be gone as I approached and there would be only dark, cold water in its place. Across the bay there is another place, identical to the one where I sit. When the air is moist the distant bank becomes magnified and seems closer, as do the dark hills behind it. When the air is dry it moves away, and could be another country, across a sea. When it looks to be a distance that I could easily swim, I think of myself trying and of being seized halfway by a tightening of the muscles in my arms or legs. Or by the panic of the realization that I had misjudged the distance, that I had been tricked by the landscape and the light. No one on the shore would see that I was struggling; no one would hear me cry for help.

The road from the quay is steep and winding. Houses are hidden at the end of long avenues, lined with ancient trees, where I imagine families have lived, son after father, for years and years. These people are fixed, rooted, bound to a certain place. I think of my father’s camp and the moving of the herds across thousands of miles of openness. I think of returning home, and how I would be a burden and a shame to my family. At the cattle station I would ask in which direction I must walk to reach my father’s camp and the men there would ask, with disgust upon their faces, why I had returned. My father and mother would not embrace me. I’ll stay here. I have the roads to walk and the clear air to breathe. I have the quiet lake and the light that dances on the water.

I walked once from the house where I live, before I had learned the way the roads lie and the way that this land can turn around on itself. I was tired of the men in the house; they were drinking and shouting through all the hours of the night and singing songs loudly of their different countries. A neighbour came to the door of the house and I heard him saying the baby, the baby. The other men quietened and became sullen. Without songs, they drank more deeply. I decided to walk towards the rising sun. I crossed the road, away from the rows of houses of light timber and thin blocks and entered a field ringed by trees. There was a river at the far side of the field. My eyes were deceived again and I walked into a wet hollow in the field’s centre and over a small rise and then down towards the river. Cows were standing at the muddy edge, drinking. They were fat and contented, full to bursting, waiting to be milked. The grass here is thick and long. I envied them. I found a way across the river over rounded stones and climbed the shallow far bank. I kept true east across more fields and decided to make for the foothills of a small mountain where I had heard there was an old silver mine. I thought that by the time I had reached those hills and sat for a while and walked back that the other men would be asleep and I could have a Sunday afternoon of peace. I would make my food and drink tea and look for words that I knew on a newspaper.

I walked for hours and became lost. The fields dipped and rose and all looked alike. The hills seemed to draw no nearer. I came to a public house on a roadside. The Miner’s Rest, it was called. Where is this place? I asked a man inside. Shallee, he said. I was walking, I am lost, I said in English. He seemed to understand my words. Where you from, boy? Khakassia, I said. Where the fuck is that? Siberia, I said. Jaysus friend, you sure are fuckin lost! And he roared with laughter and the others in the bar laughed as well and I don’t know why but I felt at once safe and foolish and I laughed with them as they slapped my back. A man played a fiddle. He had a serious face but his music was full of joy.

At the next week’s end, Pokey Burke gave me a lift to the house I shared. I had just finished shoring the foundations of a large house that would never be built. I have great time for you, he said, you’re a fabbeless worker. I don’t know what fabbeless is. I know I owe you a few bob, he said. I understood this. I’ll sort you out next week, okay? Sort you out means pay you in this land. He looked at me and smiled as he drove. I knew he was lying. I knew I would not see him again. But I said okay, Pokey, okay, and I smiled back, and my stomach lurched as he drove too fast down into a valley that I didn’t know was there.

THERE ARE FORTY-FOUR houses in this estate. I live in number twenty-three. There’s an old lady living in number forty. There’s no one living in any of the other houses, just the ghosts of people who never existed. I’m stranded, she’s abandoned. She never has visitors. I should go down to her, really. When Daddy and me went in to the auctioneers to ask about these houses, they let on they were nearly all sold. I wanted a corner house with a bigger garden, but the guy started fake-laughing, as if I was after asking for a solid gold toilet or something. He had at least half a jar of gel in his hair. I’ll see what I can do, he said to my chest, in a martyred voice. He shook his head and sighed and said we’d have to pay the deposit that day. He said he couldn’t promise us any of the houses would still be available the next day. I believed him, even though I should have known better. Daddy got all worried and flustered then, and drove like a madman back to the Credit Union to get me the cash. I’d love to go in to that auctioneer now and kick him in the balls.

Poor Daddy. He comes up here nearly every day. He walks up and down the rutted avenues. River Walk. Arra View. Ashdown Mews. He tuts and shakes his head at the boy racers’ tyre tracks. He tries to pick up every fag butt and beer bottle. He looks in the gaping, empty windows; he scowls at the houses’ spooky stone faces. He hums and whistles, and curses now and again. He slashes at weeds with his feet. He kicks at the devouring jungle. He’s like an old, grumpy, lovely Cúchulainn, trying to fight back the tide. The only men in my life are my father and Dylan. It’s not fair on them or me.

It was a few months before we copped on to what was after happening. The builder was gone bust. My house and the old lady’s were the only ones he could finish, because we were the only ones who’d paid. We heard he’d put all his money into some stupid thing to do with a fake island or something out in Dubai. Now he’s made a run for it. He’s lucky, Daddy says, because if I ever get my hands on him I’ll kick the living shit out of him. Daddy never talks like that. He must be really, really mad. Imagine if anything happened to him; I’d never get over it. Gaga, Dylan calls him. He stands at the sitting room window every morning, shouting Gaga, Gaga, Gaga. When he sees Daddy’s car, he goes mad. He’s a scream.