No Country: A Novel (17 page)

“I am afraid of him, Papa Brendan,” she said not letting me go.

I knew better than to tell the child that nothing was wrong and met her eye directly. “I will be very careful from now on,” I promised.

But my heart sang. She had called me what she would call me for the rest of my life: Papa Brendan, a name she had devised herself.

•  •  •

T
HE SUN DISAPPEARED
for a week after that day, and we felt the cold wind’s edge whenever we ventured on deck. In the hold, we were a new village now, and indulged in idle talk. Many of the women sought each other out, at first based on whether they had been neighbours, talking of old days, often about times when their husbands were just boys looking at them. They were momentarily happy, even as they sat in this dreary transit, recalling that old life now past redeeming with any coin they could muster. Mr. O’Flaherty seemed to be reading his battered copy of Seneca over and over, while some would sing, our Maeve not the least among us. But whenever Ruairi and Jamie Egan broke into song, it was a matter of loud cheer down in the hold, their voices twining
like a silver and a golden cord, making their song twice sweet. Mr. Rafferty would clap and stamp his feet until well after the others had stopped. One particular evening the brothers sang:

On the Curragh of Kildare and the boys will be there

With their pikes in good repair, says the Sean Bhean Bhoct . . .

What colour should be seen where our fathers’ homes have been

But our immortal green, says the Sean Bhean Bhoct,

Yes old Ireland will be free from the centre to the sea

Ah hurrah for liberty!

And just as they ended, we were surprised by another voice behind us. It was Mr. Lewis. His clear baritone was a thing of wonder, and the musty hold which we had all cursed seemed to cradle and caress the beauty of his voice in its hollow. The old song “Eibhlin a Run” became a haunting call of the soul, and when he went on to “The Parting of the Friends,” I sank into silence.

“And are you thinking of my father?” asked Maeve, leaning into my arm. I nodded, not trusting words.

“I hope someone sings that song to him,” she said. For a moment, I thought that dead Maire Aherne herself had sent her the words, if such were possible.

We were brought back to the present by the loud wrangle, for some had suggested “The Lamentation of Deirdre,” but Mr. Sweeney gruffly rejected it saying, “Nay, nay, none of that Leinster mooing—let’s have ‘Ruairi of the Hills’ right away, what say ye all?” Without waiting, he launched with tuneless vigour into the lines, while everyone shook with laughter. It would take more than that to silence him, for he sang manfully to the end.

So our merriment ran. When we finally stopped, all we could
hear was the soughing of the cold wind, the slap and cough of Atlantic seawater, as we settled to sleep.

•  •  •

S
EVENTEEN DAYS INTO
our voyage, the great swells on the ocean turned choppy, and the hold wheezed and groaned as if it too felt the cold. The stormy troughs made the ship glissade down hills of water, to be struck by some mighty hand that sent a shudder through the beams and a terror in our bones, and heart-stopping moments when walls of surrounding water seemed to be closing in on our little wooden world, before the ship like a cornered animal in its burrow turned and seemingly leapt to escape.

The hatches were battened down, the portholes spurting sea-water like hoses—so these were closed off. The hold became foetid, and all of us felt like animals shaken convulsively on our way to slaughter, the floor slippery with vomit and human detritus. During this first onslaught of storm, Mr. Lewis was flung down by a sudden buffet and, losing his footing, crashed against a beam. He cried out in pain, and whimpered with every lurch. Only after the storm passed did we find that he had crushed his collarbone.

A number of us in the hold beat upon the shut hatches, called out, and banged as hard as we could with whatever we had, our fists, pewter plates, until finally they were opened. We emerged on deck, gasping and coughing, spumes of vapour trailing from our mouths because the weather had turned chill, something we had not been aware of in the crowd and close of the hold.

The air felt blessed, but the sea was not calm, resembling a vast pot of water about to boil. The clouds were looming low. The crew laughed at our discomfiture and informed us that a worse
buffeting awaited us. Down we needed to go and the dreaded boards closed shut upon us again, they shouted at us, for the deck would be awash with waves, and anything not battened down swept to sea.

On deck, Mr. Lewis, who had stood quietly beside me, listening to them, breathing sibilantly with pain, suddenly began to climb the stairs towards the captain’s deck. We looked on in surprise, as nobody had access to it without permission. He hauled himself on to the rail, face drawn and pale. Abruptly he turned, then flung himself into the sea and was immediately lost to sight.

Many rushed to that part of the deck-rail to see whether he would surface. For my part, I stood rooted where I was. Mr. O’Flaherty said bleakly, “Come, Brendan.” Holding Maeve’s hand, he returned to the hold. I followed in silence.

In less than an hour came the second storm, screaming over us, tearing at the ship with an ululating sound, and the pitch and the roll began—and with it, the retching and moaning in the hold. By noon it was the very picture of hell with all its suffering. The hollow sound of weeping filled the space. At one period—perhaps ’twas our ship in the eye of the storm—there was a strange calm.

“Mamma, Mamma,” called a child’s voice in a whisper, “are you dead, Mamma?”

•  •  •

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
when the hatches were opened, I helped Maeve and Mr. O’Flaherty to the deck. The unseasonable sun erased the last of a hovering mist on the tranquil waters as if the storm had been a bad dream. The others began to emerge like the dead revived, peering into the growing radiance of the sun and
the easy puff of the sails soaring overhead. Then they brought out the dead: an infant of the Behans; Mr. Rafferty, the itinerant farrier from Cliffoney, his many journeys now over; old Mrs. Snow. Finally emerged Mr. Sweeney, his wife’s limp body cradled in his arms.

Once the bodies were, with a short prayer, resigned to the waters, a huge quarrel broke out. A cooking vat and meager provisions appeared: smelly, mouldy, and far short in weight and expectation. I was amazed to see Mr. Sweeney, dumb with grief at his wife’s death, become vociferous about this cheating by the captain, and demand to get his due. Will, the sailor, stood casually next to me, but I turned away in a weariness of spirit. He had slipped an unspoilt biscuit into my pocket. I gave it to Maeve, who began to eat it surreptitiously.

Our Maeve had the frail resilience of a sapling, but Mr. O’Flaherty seemed dazed and somewhat deaf for the ordeal. There had been little mention of God so far, except to take His name in despair or anger. We had no one to say Mass on board, and I wondered if that familiar and comforting ceremony could have cast its soothing unction on my trammeled soul. When I mentioned this to Mr. O’Flaherty, he stared long through the porthole into the tilting sea and muttered, “Pray within your heart, Brendan, if that is the medicine you need.” I was perturbed by his tone, but he smiled bleakly at me and looked away.

I always lived with faith in God. I had not examined my faith in this dark hold, or before, in the deaths and hungers: I saw only the hand of man. But now the dark night of my soul came upon me not in the depth of all the suffering. It did not come to me unawares, but like a brother who sat by me in full sight. All the beauty I had lived amid, or imagined, seemed tainted.

I sat on the warming deck and closed my eyes, worn out in spirit. The air smacked of the earlier chill, but the sun was full on my face. In my torpor, I heard the clack and rattle of the sea-heavy ropes on the board-planks as the crew worked. In that bright and hungry day I fell into a deep sleep. I dreamt of County Sligo and its hungry and the dead, and the wandering cadavers all over our Ireland. The picture of my friend Malachi O’Toole’s body, wrapped in his soiled green horse-blanket, came back to me—and his two-year-old daughter too, a month after their cottage was tumbled—crack-lipped and sharp-boned in mortal hunger. My faith was faltering, whimpering for breath. The stone and dirt on which I had walked in those last days in Ireland had no part of You whatever—these had been dirt and stone itself and nothing else—and even the magical moon above, only a dead stone in Your sky, forever in silent gong proclaiming Your criminal absence.

All Your loveliest miracles, Lord, revolve around food. On the arid stretches under glittering desert stars beyond the parted Red Seawhere, stamping the Egyptian soil from their feet, the faithful partook what You provided from thin air. At Cana. On the beach by the Sea of Galilee. The last simple and Lordly Supper . . . Are we not Your children too, with equal need for sustenance?

To be deep drowned by the Flood, to be swirled by an engulfing fire—ah, that is grand, Lord, but to be eaten away by the slimy blight, its rheumy stench foetid in the nose—ah, Lord—that is a low trick. And You, our glorious Lord, are turned into a dastardly gombeen, trashing our lives and forcing our faces into our hunger-retching and gut-drool, left with nary a scrap of dignity, on a soiled and soggy floor.

Do we not try, Lord, to make our own tiny Eden with whatever
we can—and do You not, dread Lord, drive us out? A safe home and a mouthful are so little to ask. Why do You in Your heaven resent our frail homes, and Your howling winds rage against our humble hearths?

I was startled awake by a shout. The seamen with the others on deck crowded the starboard deck, and then the larboard: a gigantic whale had crossed our wake, spouting its way, and then disappeared from sight.

All the sailors said that it was an omen of bad luck.

•  •  •

T
HE HOLD, AS
the one futile lantern swayed in a corner, was dim. I noticed Miss Theodora Snow sitting next to White Danny, who had given her a morsel; she was pretending indifference, gnawing what she clutched in her narrow fist, while White Danny’s arm wound like a serpent about her waist. Her sister sat apart, anger and helplessness written on her face. Then I saw Danny leaning, as if unintentionally, against Miss Mary. She shrank from his touch and tried to shift, but there was little room. I was startled by Maeve’s angry cry. She had sprung up.

“Get away from them,” Maeve lashed, blazing at Danny. “My da Padraig will strangle you dead and throw you into the sea!” Then she added in a fierce whisper, “He is waiting for me in America.” Her tender childhood had fallen away from our Maeve, her small back rigid as a provoked cat’s, hackles rising.

Danny slid back into his corner among his mates. I was about to speak when I felt a hand clutch me, and turned to look at Mr. O’Flaherty, who made a small gesture for silence.

“What will happen when we reach America, and no Padraig?”
I whispered to Mr. O’Flaherty, beginning to understand her wound and her sword.

He shook his head, not inviting words.

•  •  •

I
OBSERVED WITHIN
myself a growing dislike for food, though I needed it for sustenance. I ate hurriedly, like a man who will walk quickly on thin ice because he must, neither enjoying the walk nor the unreliable process; ’tis such miserable matter on which our existence stands. It did not escape my pale gaze that a resentful anger returns with hunger, obliterating the little pleasure of food a few hours ago.

On the days when the sea was comparatively calm, a large cauldron was set on deck for gruel to be made. On this particular day, we all crowded around as the odd vegetable, sundry morsels, various grains were tossed in and stirred. Such was the hunger that Mr. Behan plunged his bowl in, impatient of the slow boil, to devour the half-cooked slop. When three or four others did so, complete pandemonium broke out, all semblance of order and fairness jettisoned.

The captain and the crew began to berate us at first, then stood apart, enjoying the mayhem among the wretched. With the greatest contempt for myself, I too plunged into the melee and snatched some victuals. I had two other mouths to provide for who would otherwise remain unfed. I could barely pour the unspeakable fluid down my throat. But I learned a great lesson. I had grimaced as I forced the slop into my mouth, but then I saw Maeve’s eyes on me. She flashed me a conspiratorial smile and ate without any fuss or show of disgust. I knew what an effort it cost the child to keep her
countenance from betraying the least distaste. Within this child, there was growing a young woman with a brave heart. And all it took was twenty-three days of this dreadful voyage.

Sailing with us was the captain’s prize pig, which I was told he intended to sell in Canada for a stud animal—a huge beast, gargantuan and pink. I had noticed it when I had first got on board. Also, there were a couple of goats, for the captain fancied a little milk, like a new baby. Pigs and goats were the only creatures, sailors told me, to eat any muck given them, and no matter what battering the high seas dealt, the goats could be counted on giving milk. During the period of the rough seas, the sailors had forgotten to feed them for several days. We heard the occasional squeal or snort but had sunk into such a state of the primitive that these seemed no different from our guttural oaths of discomfort. Today a hue and cry rose when one of the sailors had gone to the captain’s deck outside his cabin, perhaps to milk the goats, and set off a hullabaloo. The enormous hog in its desperate hunger had turned on the goats and savaged them for a grisly meal.

It was unthinkable for any of us to climb to the upper deck on pain of flogging. But Mr. Behan, phlegmatic though his nature appeared to be, led a crowd up the stairs. Before the amazed captain could utter a word, he reached in the filthy straw and withdrew dismembered parts not devoured entirely by the pig. Amid a great huzzah of joy, he flung the meat, hooves and all, barely skinned, into our pot and started such a wild dance around it—and so savage, joyous, and threatening it looked—that the captain was scared silent, although he followed Behan with baleful eyes, as if Mr. Behan himself had slaughtered his goats. We waited eagerly on deck for this windfall repast.