Cassandra Voices

Category: Literature

  • Candidate for the Roberts Prize

    It was an honour to be elected. I was on the faculty at Inchfield, and seized the opportunity to work under specialist in topologic geometry, Professor Knowlton. Five years later, I was working on a level nearly lateral to his, which earned me the invitation to an informal gathering in his garden. This is where he and a select few would deliberate over nominees for the prestigious Roberts Prize in Mathematics, and who would be awarded its substantial cash prize. Seeing as that year, it was Knowlton’s privilege to judge.

    Having been to Knowlton’s house before once or twice, I’d a cursory acquaintance with his unkempt hedges, substantial brick residence, and an older son who had since entered a foreign university. Knowlton seldom mentioned his younger son, who was mentally deficient.

    We settled at a mosaic table on a piazza, near enough to the French doors that Mrs. Knowlton could handily supply us with coffee and its accompaniments. As I anticipated, Dr. Fuller kicked off the meeting by hammering his preference for a member of his own staff. And though the lad in question had been nominated by someone else, we were gratified when Morris, whose field is probability, grilled Fuller. “Yes, yes, of course he’s all those things, but isn’t he also in fact, your godson?”

    The laughter that ensued provided Sorensen an opportunity to introduce his own protégé, an emeritus in Arizona whose research with Euler circuits had thus far attracted only local attention. Sorensen’s a sucker for obscure underdogs. For example, from an array of composers that including Sorensen, no more than six other human beings have ever heard of, like one would a boutonnière, he’ll select his current favorite. He amuses me so much, that I was quite preoccupied when from around the corner came Knowlton’s younger son, to sidle up behind me.

    Slight, and fair haired, Donald was perhaps sixteen at the time. I suppose he chose me because I was the youngest at the table, and because I always greeted him with a smile. He touched my collar and whispered loudly, “Mis’er Irving, come with me. I want to show you something.”

    “Later, Donald” I murmured. But his expression, eager to the point of pain, got me off my chair, and excusing myself. However the frowning Knowlton was quick to chastise his son. “Donny, go away. Mr. Irving and I are talking.”

    Donald displayed a particular kind of fear, hurt, and anger which alarmed me. His expression reminded me of a childhood playmate whose father drank. But for the moment reassured by the bland face of Prof. Knowlton, I followed Donald.

    The boy led me back around the corner he’d come from, and via a side-door, in to the house. He then took me up a flight of stairs to his room, which, bare of the expected zoological, mechanical, or academic clutter, was very tidy. And taking from under his bed, a battered spiral notebook, he passed it to me.

    I leafed through the early pages full of penciled numbers, by no means neat, but not illegible. Some basic problems in addition and subtraction. But impatient, he snatched the book and thumbing deeply into it, then handed it back, pointing to an area on the left-hand page. Obedient, I looked only to find before me, his wobbly notation of the Fibonacci Sequence. That plaything of the best minds in each century, encrypted by Nature in cauliflowers and pine cones—1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21…

    Smiling I pointed to the sequence, and when Imurmured its terms, his own face spread with corresponding joy. “Yes, one an’ two, then two an’ three, then three an’ five…”

    Noting that his written sequence ended at 89, I pointed to the last terms. “Fifty-five and eighty-nine?” Blinking, he grimaced, and pressing fingers, which twitched, to his jaw, he retreated.  I waited while, with his skull in both hands, he sat on the smooth white bed.

    “A hun’red and forty-four!”

    I tried to smile, suddenly aching that this devoted mathematician should have to strain so hard to take the first steps of the science. He was still frowning and holding his head, as I continued to leaf through the later pages.

    “A hun’red and forty-four, Mis’er Irving, is twelve twelves,” said Donald. Dismounting from the  bed, he took the book, for the purpose of indicating another sequence: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25…

    Again, I was arrested by the point where the sequence stopped.

    “Fourteen times fourteen?” I murmured, almost at once regretting that I had. Retrieving the book, with a fresh frown, he retreated to the bed, and began drawing little squares and dotting them. I bent over him to see and realized that he was solving the problem through a crude yet ingenious system of incremental multiplication, similar to a written abacus, which I could only imagine he had invented himself. He seemed to have no notion of the usefulness of place value and columnar operations.

    “A hun’red and ninety-six,” he produced at last, straightening.

    “Who taught you to do this?”

    He blinked.

    “Donald, did your mother teach you to add fourteen fourteens like that?”

    “No.”

    “The one, two, three, five, eight, did your mother teach you that? Did anyone teach you that?”

    “No.”

    “Would you like to have someone teach you about numbers?”

    “No,” said Donald.

    “Have they tried?”

    “My math is different,” said Donald.

    I’’m not proud of it, but to be sure that Fuller wasn’t getting anywhere with his prodigy I needed to go back downstairs, and that’s where I went.

    Though Knowlton’s sarcastic appraisal lowered my estimation later, Gening, a statistician for whom I had the greatest respect in those days, was holding the floor when I arrived. In fact, as he laid out the merits of a statistician in Washington, it occurred to me that he possessed all those qualifications himself, only more so. Statistic analysis has never been my strength, and I have, perhaps exaggerated, respect for people who master standard deviation at an earlier age than I did.

    When Donald came up behind me again, his hand touched my collar just at the same moment that Knowlton snapped, “Donald!” Out-of-place against a noble old hawthorn hedge, the boy was wilting before my eyes, which prompted me to rise and, once more, follow him.

    Donald did not take me upstairs, but only out of earshot. “Mis’er Irving,” he said, “You di’n’t stay for what I wanted to tell you. Daddy’s judging the Roberts Prize for math. I want to enter wit’out him knowing. I can’t enter if he knows, you know. It wouldn’t be fair to the others.”

    “Donald, you have to be nominated, you see. That’s what those other mathematicians are here for today, to help your daddy pick somebody good out of the ones that have already been nominated.”

    “But they haven’t picked yet, have they?”

    “Well, no.”

    “Then couldn’t you nominate me, Mis’er Irving?”

    At this moment Ivy, the Knowltons’ maid, came in. “Mr. Irving, Mr. Knowlton begs you not to pay any mind to Donald. He’s been moody all week. Mr. Knowlton’s specially anxious to have your thoughts on the selection.”

    I hadn’t known how much I’d been hoping to hear this until it presented itself.

    “Certainly, Ivy. I’m coming.”

    I had my own definite idea about a candidate, but wouldn’t have brought it up without this encouragement. Silently thankful for Donald’s interruption, I took my iron-filigree chair and began.

    “What seems to me,” and gazing at each face, I saw how my sententious tone caught them by surprise, but they remained attentive to me, “is that we’ve an almost equal array of accomplishments before us. Who can say which achievement will really mean more to the science, and to progress. Which will really find its most useful expression, in the future? Burkhardt’s circuits? Pauley’s conchoidal surfaces? Who can tell? What we can estimate now, right here, is the human contribution, the dedication, the labor, that a particular candidate puts into their field. Begin with the expenditure of time. I happen to know that Tillson, for example…”

    Every face turned to the French doors, behind which were sounds of struggle, Ivy’s breathless protests, and Donald’s urgent, partly muffled exclamations.

    “Ivy! What’s the boy doing?” demanded Knowlton with an expression of stern distaste.

    “Oh, he won’t… won’t… stay inside like you asked,” she answered.

    “Donald!” barked Knowlton. “Stay inside, for heaven’s sake. Give me half an hour!… Ivy, tell him I’ll walk with him after…” and raising his watch,“three, we’ll go to the duck pond at three o’clock.”

    “No!” Donald’s protest was clearly audible. “I have one thing to say to Mis’er Irving, one thing! Mis’er Irving don’t mind, ask him, he don’t!”

    “Donald,” Knowlton’s voice adopted a tone I would not have defied as a boy, “Mr. Irving does mind. He is here on business. No, Irvie, please,” as I must have started to get up and go to the boy. “Donald, this isn’t like you. Why don’t you go upstairs and draw in your sketchbook for awhile?”

    The inner rumpus subsided. Ivy must have persuaded Donald to go upstairs. Frightened that my little opportunity would be lost, I frantically tried to pick up my thread, but picked up something quite unconnected, as in my nervousness, I blurted it out.

    “Knowlton, who teaches Donald his mathematics?”

    The broad, avuncular face was caught with surprise. “Donald? No one! They tried, years ago. Kate tried so hard back then. Hired a specially trained teacher from the elementary school. A tutor from the staff at her own girls’ college, stewed over the times tables with him herself for hours. It was no use. I doubt he can do more than addition on his fingers. We gave up when he turned twelve.”

    I stared into the mosaic tabletop,  as I felt my face became bright red. It must have been the sun on my neck that let me feel it. Looking up, I saw what none of the others could. Donald leaning out of a second-floor window, and waving his notebook. He pointed at me, then at himself. and nodded.

    “Mr. Irving,” Benedict’s smooth, cultured diction interrupted, “You were speaking of a ‘human contribution.’ Permit me to remind you that the true measure of the human contribution of a mathematician is his contribution to humans. The significance of discovery, be it scientific, mathematical, or any sort, lies exactly in the degree to which it can be appreciated and put to use by the human community. That is the purpose of the Roberts Prize. It is a social recognition, paid in hard social and economic currency, awarded in a structured scientific community.”

    I was distracted by Donald disappearing into the window and slamming it shut.

    “So that,” I rejoined weakly, “if one had to deliberate awarding either Newton or Leibnitz a prize for the discovery of calculus? The criterion wouldn’t be who had worked longer, or harder, or more independently. But only who published, got it out there, for human consumption, first.”

    Benedict seemed taken aback, but soon replied,“Isn’t that, Irving, the only honest way?”

    “But suppose we found a lost medieval manuscript that described calculus. One that had been lost since it was made, that had never done a soul any good. Would it be a scientific achievement?”

    Knowlton, of all of them, seemed readiest to agree. “Benedict! Think, man! A medieval Newton!”

    I looked up and saw a light, that pensive face regarding me through the window. The head that independently endeavored in a science which I suppose had been a source of torment to him. The head which produced that little system of symbolic multiplication, by a labor I simply couldn’t imagine.

    “No,” conceded Knowlton, laying his hands on the mosaic tabletop. “You’re right, Benny. It’s a social enterprise. Art is in the eye of the beholder.” He turned to Fuller. “Tell me again about the algorithm Beckridge used.”

    “Bother the Roberts Prize,” I grumbled. And it is then, that I left my chair.

  • Poetry – Kevin Higgins

    After Recent Unfortunate Results

    Next election onwards,
    there’ll be a second vote for those
    who turn up with, under their arm,
    a print copy of one of the larger newspapers
    and answer a few unobtrusive questions
    to prove they’ve consumed it correctly.

    A third for those who also present receipts
    that show they’ve dined sufficiently
    in restaurants with at least four stars,
    and a note from the maitre d
    that they know their way around the cutlery.

    A fourth for the lucky few in possession – to boot –
    of a ticket for one of those pampering spas
    at which one temporarily discards
    worldly things to have one’s darker parts
    irrigated of all subversive thoughts.

    So when all’s said and counted,
    people who shouldn’t matter
    can go back to not mattering.

  • Poetry – Oliver Tickell

    Five Poems

    trampled, rain-sodden the leaves
    brown, green, yellow and
    a crimson gilded

    wings flapping to the wind
    above the trees
    the joy of the storm pigeon

    juicy and sharp
    the first few blackberries
    summer’s sweetness yet to come

    bounteous blackberries along the brook
    warm and sweet they meet my lips

    purple stained, thorn pierced
    still my hands reach out for more
    juice-swollen berries

     

    Oliver Tickell is a writer, journalist, poet, and former editor of The Ecologist, living near the river Thames in Oxford

     

  • Poetry – Haley Hodges

    Make of me, too, a microcosm

    Make of me, too, a microcosm—
    Merger, marry, manifest
    As the bridegroom, as the stone-melted
    Heart. Move but do not remove me, for monsters
    Maraud in madness here, and we meet
    Mettle to mettle about the place. But you—
    Magnificent as mystery, as morning, you
    Are mooring the ship of me, mastering the maze
    Of my malaise to run like marrow through bronze
    Bones, an unmappable river overlapping the
    Mayhem. You mumble or hum of Spring-things,
    May-things made for me, mighty and bright
    As midnight meteor, final as eucatastrophe
    Mounting in stillness. You dip Ursa Major
    Into the pail with a wink milky as motherhood:
    Come meadow, come minnow, come maple
    And mink, come drink, (you say) come marvel!
    Our blue marble maiden—mess though she may be—
    Her majesty is mineral-deep! Minstrels sing it and mages
    Know it. Myriad music still marks her mind, her memory,
    Music of mending and meaning, naming and being—
    Music of mackerel meandering, matter and mass,
    Metaphysical music marching from moment to minute
    To minute and back in a palindrome line, meticulous
    And light as a match, hatchling fresh. You say much more,
    All unmeasurable, and to the unending moment of you I say:
    Make of me, too, a magic.

  • The Club

    Part I

    “DON’T QUIT” My father’s mantra was taped to the dull beige wall above his bed. Its edges were a little worn after being ripped down from one hospital wall and taped to another, for years. Deafening was the respiratory wheezing which somehow managed to be erratic and yet, constant at the same time. As a family, we were drowning in an aching cesspool of disease, but it defined that life was still present. It defined that my father was still alive. So we sat. We waited. Held on to each breath. Hour after hour. Night after night. For the better part of those last three months. The reality was, if not in the physical sense, in an emotional one, I’d been there for seven years.

    That hospital was an all-too-familiar environment. Homey to us all. The room scattered with bits of our life. A keyboard, magazines, photos, Dad’s guitar, a soapstone carving of a seal he was crafting. It was all there, in an attempt to provide us any peace. The doctors and nurses, porters and administration, housekeeping and parking attendants, other patients and their visiting families. Everyone within that sphere were part of what was to us, “home.”

    Better than sleeping upright in the chair, or awake and listening to my Dad struggle for breath, was the penthouse stairwell landing. It morphed into a makeshift sleeping area we siblings fought for, and as the youngest, most often I lost.

    It had been seven years since we got the news. My mother and father were in the hospital room. While out in the dim hall, I waited. Glancing around at the sterile surroundings, I was excited to see my father again, but nervous. Why were we in this strange place? He’d been tired and required some tests. Whatever that meant.

    “Your father has cancer.” Those were the words.

    “Can I catch it?” I asked.

    “No.”

    I wondered what cancer was. It made Mom’s eyes puffy. She’d been crying. She was sad. At Daddy’s side, I held his hand, like I always had. Squeezing my little fingers, he looked into my eyes and smiled. My mother held his other hand, small gasps escaping her lips, and tears in her eyes.

    “Your Dad will have some treatments to make the cancer go away,” they said. “He will be losing his hair.”

    HALT! I was horrified. What did they mean “lose his hair?” Why? Where was his hair going? Dad would be bald?

    “It could come back in any color.”

    “Like pink, or purple or red or blue?” I quizzed.

    “Sure!”

    Dad’s hair didn’t matter, but I knew by the look in their eyes, and their strained voices, that something was wrong. All attempts to convince me made it more obvious that life would never again be the same. At age six I was unable to comprehend the scope of sadness that would become our reality. From this moment forward, the course of my life would be altered. Forever.

    He was given thirty days to live. My mother was just thirty-six and would be left to raise a family of five alone. Then, during the subsequent seven years, in cycles of thirty to ninety days, he was given additional time to live. It would prove to be an unimaginable journey: fear, insecurity, loneliness, lack of identity, hardening, pain. The canvas appearing bright, a guise brimming with fun, friends and popularity, Yet, the brush strokes, and the mediums were layered; opaque textures veiling a stark and sombre reality.

    Dreading the last buzzer of the day at school became a mainstay. What would I come home to? I turned age seven, eight, and nine. The years went on, and some questions remained the same, some changed. Would I end up all alone? Would that old lady with the weeping mole be my nanny once again, or would I be shipped off to whomever would take me? I wondered this knowing I might be with them for more than a month. Ages ten, eleven, and twelve passed, and the pain continued. Would my parents be home, or would the chemo-induced nightmare have Dad slumped over the porcelain, convulsing, heaving, and regurgitating nothing again? Would he remember me today? Would he get lost driving, if he could even drive? Would Mom be crying? Of course, she always cried. And would the ambulance be backed up to the door with Dad crawling to the stretcher, as a form of pride? At age 13, I wondered would Mom survive? Would I?

    He was dead. My father. Lifeless. Hollow. Dead. Dad died from a harrowing seven-year battle with cancer. A battle I would ultimately recognize as being a significant moment in my own life. It would serve as a catalyst for the person I became. Silent. Sober. Glazed, I sunk into a therapist’s worn velvet sofa, deep in that tearstained domicile of heart wrenching human agony. Behind a calm façade, the only evidence of anguish I saved for that lacerated outlet of my pain, were the petals of a crimson poinsettia. Sympathetic yet, clinical, I felt my therapist’s analytical eyes summing me up. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted a reprieve. Wanted to melt into the blueness of his sofa. Blend into his flat, silent walls. Walls which had absorbed the malaise of multitudes.

    That excruciating sound had ceased. The agonizing gasps for life that accompanied each passing second for the past month stopped. That last breath of life had taken him with it, leaving a silent, still, deserted form laying there. My Dad was dead. I didn’t know it then, but I was now part of a club. A club that I’d find out, in later years, was unlike any other. Neither prestigious, nor chic, it was nevertheless a club. It was a club that would give bearing, and direction to the future me. The club would open doors. And these doors would lead me into the lives of others.

    Part II

    Club Life. Who are we but an assemblage of clones. Xeroxed human forms convinced that by seeking individuality, we don’t exploit its very existence. As club members, we attend the club of the moment, striving to be a part of the in-group; a clique, attempting to carbon copy the look, speech, smell, and thoughts of others. Lost in a sea of conformity, we’ll adapt to anything familiar for that feeling of wholeness. Righteousness. Acceptance. Gregarious sheep, we follow our instinct to flock, and when separated from the group, we become agitated and crave safety from lurking predators who may challenge us, or our character. We search for the lead sheep to follow down the road. The road to conformity right over an imminent cliff at the peril of what makes us unique. Original.

    We could choose to believe that we are beautiful. Singular individuals. Designed to be a happy result. An impeccable concoction of experiences that when blended together become our life as we know it. Like a recipe, we are just ingredients, temperatures, measurements, outer elements, and mediums, and who is cooking. All these play a role for the outcome of the dish that is this life. Our ingredients and our process contain variables both habitual and fortuitous. Making each and every decision, experience and moment, directly affect the core of who we become. Internally. Externally. These uncertainties and variables add the fundamental flavour and the texture to our souls. Our lives mould us into who we will be.

    So, let’s talk food, spices to be specific. For the most part, spices are added in small, portions. Sometimes so insignificant they are invisible to the eye. When blended, they often vanish. Yet their potency and flavour are a game changer. How much spice, tasty or disgusting has been added to the lives of others and while unaware of why, still we somehow sense something in their presence.

    Some ingredients seem similar. But there exists a vast difference between, vinegars for instance. Selecting white, cider, malt or balsamic, would we then pour the potent fluid directly from its bottle, or over a fire, find its thick sickly sweet reduction? Faced with different conditions, the same ingredient reveals otherwise hidden characteristics from the inside, out.

    Measurements; a pinch, an ounce, a cup; the abundance of an ingredient or lack thereof can build or destroy what we perceive as the expected end result. Do we have enough? Is it too much?

    And who is cooking in your kitchen? Is that a Three Star Michelin Chef preparing avocado mousse with green pistachio oil, garnished with fleur de sel?  Or is it Grandma’s loving hands putting her warm heart fondly in to preparing her mother’s, age-old family recipe of roast beef and mashed potatoes? Then there’s the fifteen year old kid slinging burgers at the local drive-thru, just to make a buck.

    How’s the heat? Low and slow? Is the lid on or off? Are we baking or grilling over mesquite on the barbeque? Have you tried deep fried? Is stuff sautéed on the stovetop or simply served, cold and raw? An utter absence of heat changes everything. Regardless of method employed, each element plays an intrinsic role in what will be plated and served to please or repulse one’s appetite. And at the end of the day all we can say is that dinner is served, or Bon Appetit!

    As humans full of a variety of ingredients; mediums, measurements, methods and so forth, we differ and yet find what we share in common. Lonely in our fight to be profoundly unique, conversely, we crave to fit in and be part of a group. We want a club that will unify us. Bring us together in a harmonious and understanding manner, and thus the recipe.

    The universal understanding of clubs comes decked out in the all-knowing perceived costume of book clubs, tennis clubs, rotary clubs, dance clubs, bike clubs, yacht clubs, even golf clubs. But the clubs in disguise that resonate in all of our lives each and every day are blatantly obvious yet not drafted or defined. These are the clubs of reality, the clubs of experience, the clubs of heartache, sorrow, joy, bliss, danger, and courage, LIFE.

    These clubs build the foundation within us to erect relationships with others based on empathy and understanding of shared mutual knowledge and experiences. These clubs categorically hoist us into levels of sameness. Ultimately allowing us to relate with one another in a way that can be truly understood. The clubs become a vast and endless springboard to deeper relations. Club menus adorned in new attire are decorated and large; lost a parent club, pregnant club, married club, divorced club, singles club, couldn’t have a child club, owned a business club, the LGTBQ club, been an addict club, had a daughter club, had a son club, had a sister club, was abused club,  lost a job club, went bankrupt club, made a million club, survived cancer club, chronic pain club, attended university club, wrote a dissertation club. I think you get the picture.

    Part III

    It was overcast when I left my scheduled ultrasound, childless, except for the unborn one inside me. I was enjoying every moment of being seven months pregnant with my second. A clingy camouflage dress did anything but that for the basketball-esque lump that bulged beneath it. I ran my hands down and around us both, saying, “I love you.” I even pressed on its body parts. Hoping to awaken our little one. Feel those movements that made me feel so whole. So beautiful. So utterly complete. Growing at the proper pace, meant together we were squished behind the steering wheel, in order for my feet to touch the pedals. But these nuances are nothing. These petty discomforts, which arise with pregnancy, pale in comparison to being a conduit of life.

    Had I seen a penis? Was it a boy or girl? Would it go to an Ivy League school? Questions about my unborn child played out in my head as I drove down the street that afternoon. Wait, would my little girl adjust or object to her new room? Her new sibling? And what about the nursery? What about the crib? The decorating around it was nowhere near complete. There would be plenty of time for that, although I anticipated an early arrival. This would be a carbon copy of my previous little miracle who entered the world two weeks early. I had so many questions and thoughts. So much newness, I was about to burst.

    In a couple of months, we’d have two children. Two years apart. Perfect! Oh and I wouldn’t split my love. There was enough of me to go around! I would DOUBLE my love. Yes. It would all be perfect. U2’s song, “It’s a Beautiful Day” played on the radio. I sang along. Well, the words I knew. “It’s a Beautiful Day, don’t let it get away, it’s a Beautiful Day, don’t let it get away.” “You’re on the road but you’ve got no destination you’re in the mud mmm mmm mmm . . . you’ve been all over and it’s been all over you.”

    I hummed and mumbled through the rest. It was perhaps a grey day, but it was still beautiful to me. Seemed I always left those ultrasounds in such a euphoric state, after observing the little life inside me. A life I had played a major part in creating. And for those nine precious months, I took seriously and welcomed all responsibility for controlling the wellbeing of this little miracle inside me.

    The phone in my lap vibrated before it rang. Competing with Bono’s, “What you don’t have, you don’t need it now,” my husband answered my singsong hello.

    “Honey, great news! Your doctor just called and has the results from your ultrasound.”

    Thump, thump, thump. Heart pounding. Pounding. I veered off the road. I wanted to back up, Wake up. Start the day anew. You don’t get results from ultrasounds unless they are bad. And no, not personal calls from your doctor, only minutes afterward. I couldn’t hear anything. The world spiralled around me. I needed air. At that moment, I knew. All those hopes and dreams I’d entertained in my head moments before, of my unborn child, would NEVER be. I knew.

    The five days to follow were some of the most agonizing, I’d ever experienced. Ultrasounds. Amniocentesis. Internal exams. External prodding. Counselling. Tears. Decisions. Conclusions. Devastation.

    Four days later, I huddled with my husband in the boardroom of a hospital in another city. White walls surrounded the big brown table where we sat on insignificant office chairs forged from metal and woven fabric. Other than that, the room felt empty. Lifeless. Not counting the dozen or so medical professionals gathered to go over the prognosis, answer any questions and hear our decision.  Considering that my husband chose to leave it in my hands, head and heart, our decision was actually mine.

    Introductions were made after everyone was seated. Dr. Jones. Dr. Ramirez. Dr. Denard. Dr. Hall. There was a blur of specialists, a handful of nurses, a couple of psychologists and some pre-med students. Inconsequential formalities. My heart was pounding again. I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry.

    The professionals spoke. “Your son.” A son! Son. “Severe heart defects.” Their mouths moved but the words were muffled. Muted. The cold, rawness of the first words spoken “Your son. Severe. Heart. Son. Defects. Son. Severe. Son,” skipped like a scratched vinyl record. “His chances of survival through the birthing process are next to none, if he lives that long. Upon birth he’ll need an immediate heart transplant only possible in select hospitals thousands of miles away. You’d have to relocate for quite some time. That heart may be rejected, that is if we can find a heart for him. He’ll need more transplants as he grows. Chances. A son. Survival. Immediate transplant. Relocate. Thousands of miles. A son rejected.” For what seemed like an eternity, the whirlwind was spinning. And then it stopped.

    The room held a thunderous silence. I looked out at the blank faces staring back at me. I felt so small. Why couldn’t they make my decision? Why did it have to be me? I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice cracked. Breathe, breathe, breathe, I told myself, clearing throat again. “I want to terminate my pregnancy.”

    I said it. Said the words I did not want to say. But knew I had to. The words I had prayed to receive. And then I heard the sighs. Sighs of relief. Escaping the mouths and hearts of everyone in the room. Sighs offering me comfort about a decision well made. We left the hospital. Silenced. Dispirited. I would return to the hospital at 9:30 the following morning to voluntarily end the life of my child.

    We’d stayed at the same hotel, a year prior, during my husband’s heart surgery. It felt comfortable. Homey. They addressed us by name, and we were treated well. For me, the hotel held many memories. My first experience there had been a private party with a rock band on their world tour. Then a “Bride-to-be” wedding gala and the list goes on. It was a place where the infamous and “B” actors stayed while shooting on location. Falling in to conversation with them in the elevators or the lounge happened all the time. To be honest, the sheer retail therapy available; shopping at close proximity and bag drop at my fingertips, would’ve been a draw. But that night, thoughts so banal, didn’t enter my mind.

    They gave me drugs to aid my sleep that night and maybe I did. Don’t know. Had to remind myself to breathe. Just breathe. Deeply. Inhale. Exhale. BREATHE. Faith Hill’s lyrics ran through my head, “Caught up in the touch, the slow and steady rush. Baby isn’t that the way love is supposed to be? I can feel you breathe. Just breathe.”

    Unable to sleep any longer, it was early the next morning, when we went downstairs for breakfast. Happier times had been had in this very restaurant for us. This not being one of them, and well aware I’d need superhuman strength for the self-administered labour, I ordered Eggs Benedict.

    Nearby a man and a woman sat together, laughing over their coffee. I’d never been so desperate for a laugh, myself. But her laugh was so familiar. Familiar enough to make me look up. And I realized it was the actress who had played Marion Cunningham, the perfect mother from the television show, Happy Days. How many hours of my childhood had been spent, after school, sprawled on a bean bag chair enjoying the Cunningham family and their antics, while my parents were away at the Cancer Clinic? It is then I smiled. Because, like some kind of surrogate mother who had been there for me before, she made me feel safe. She’d no clue about who I was. Of the trauma I was facing. Nor how, at that moment, she gave me, in a small way, a glimmer of hope.

     

    When it was time, we drove to the hospital. I needed to take anything and everything I could from this moment. I needed to remember every detail. I wanted my senses to never forget. With chunky crimson red boots, I was again wearing my camouflage dress. It wasn’t a maternity dress. Simply a stretchy form fitting, high necked, short sleeved, three quarter length dress. Of ever so slightly see-through fabric. I felt good in this dress. Even though it was the same dress I had on when they told me the news. Out of what I was about to experience, I was desperate to accentuate any ray of light I could. And if some trivial piece of fabric could boost my senses even an iota, I was going to take it.

    Hand in hand, we walked through the doors. The only brightness in a flatly lit room were the walls lined with colorful paintings and clay works by young children. The smell was that ever present hospital smell. Clinical, yet sort of stale and so familiar from my past, that oddly I found some comfort in it. Behind a desk, where we would register, sat two ladies. One was on the telephone. I’m pretty sure her unlucky colleague was wishing she’d been the one on the telephone too, after she greeted us with an appropriate, “Good morning. Can I help you?”  “Uh yes, I am here to…” Someone stepped in for me, as I broke down. We were then ushered to an elevator.

    Stepping out, we turned left twice, circumnavigating a maze of linen carts in the hallway to the room where I would give birth to my son. A room that felt forgotten. Obscure. Hidden. It was like a place to hide a dirty little secret. Inside, medical instruments hung on its walls which were white. The bedding was bright on a lone single bed. There were dismal peach coloured drapes around a window with no view. The room was brighter than its small, dull and grey bathroom with just a toilet, sink and an emergency pull cord.

    The alternatives to inducing my labour had been discussed and it was agreed that I would take part in a study. Meaning, throughout the day, I would insert a series of pills. Vaginally.  Labour to ensue. And like the beginning of a bad joke, a couple of doctors, an intern and two nurses entered the room. After signing the forms, I was handed a package of pills and told to go into the washroom to insert one. I was then told I could leave the hospital, but not to venture far. In case my labour came on too quickly. And oh yes, try to keep calm. In a daze, and for lack of anywhere else to go, we hit a nearby shopping mall. Aimless, we wandered the halls, to buy nothing. Looking, we saw nothing. Listening, we heard nothing. Thinking, we tried hard not to feel. My emotions were so contradictory, so raw. Wanting to experience everything, and at the same time, nothing.

    Blessed with a high pain threshold, the intensity I am capable of enduring is legendary. To my amusement, after our first child, my husband said, “I’ve a new respect for you. Bet I could take an axe to your leg and you wouldn’t flinch.” That labour lasted thirty-nine and a half, (Can’t miss that half) hours. And except for short intervals, with all I had, I was pushing for four. Well this was no different.

    Soon enough, mental torment became secondary to physical agony. The pills were working.

    And this labour began with a vengeance. Because this baby wasn’t entering our world to stay, I’d expected the labour to be less severe. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

    My husband wanted to return to the hospital, because the labour was so severe, but I insisted we keep walking. Non-contracting moments were filled with emotion. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Not yet. Didn’t want to lose this feeling of my son inside of me. Didn’t want to lose part of myself. I wanted to continue talking to him. Playing with him. Moving his little body about me and rubbing love all over him. Desperate, I didn’t want to let go of the hopes and the dreams. I didn’t want to make my decision a reality.

    Excruciating, when the contractions came, my head went somewhere else. Breathe, Breathe, Breathe. I was stubborn. I would not go. Not yet. We walked out to the truck, where I couldn’t stop crying. Looking at my despondent husband, I knew it was he who could take no more.

    I didn’t care. Body and soul, I was in my finest form, with no intention to vacate either. And loving myself pregnant, the occasional whimper escaped me, but louder was the emotional pain. We drove back to the hospital parking lot, only to sit in the truck for as long as I could convince him to stay. Walking back through those doors, going up in the elevator, and down the dingy hallway, again we skirted around the linen carts and entered the white room in the hospital’s most remote corner. Pausing every 45 seconds or so to breathe through the pain, indeed we had succeeded in arriving. To my son’s birthplace, where he would also die.

    I wasn’t dilating. The nearby nurse monitored my progress and though attentive, my husband was terrified. Now clothed in a dreadful blue hospital gown, I lay in the white linen of the bed, trying to find calm. Embracing these last moments with the child within and praying for the strength to deal with it all. Breathing through the pain that would not give me a moment’s peace, as hour after hour flew by and yet, time stood still.

    Nurse on one side and husband on the other, I was escorted to the washroom numerous times, to relieve the enormous pressure on my poor bladder. In my modesty pleading that they leave me alone. Time and again the routine was the same. Until the last time which differed, in that as I sat down, the labour pains came. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I had an urge to push, just as a wave of nausea washed over me. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do this. Was I supposed to push? At that moment my world changed.

    “Oh my God! What is happening to me?” Feeling something. I screamed, “Help me, help me, someone, please help me! God, help me!” Between my legs, I saw my son’s small hands grasping at my legs. He was out. He was flailing beneath me. I only heard my own screams. “Anyone. Somebody hold me. Take me away. I need to die now. He’s alive. He’s not supposed to be alive. Oh my God, what have I done?” In seconds the nurse and my husband were there. Alarms sounded, and people came running.

    Told to hold my baby, that they might get me back in bed, I didn’t want to. I couldn’t touch him, I was afraid. Managing to get me and my son onto the bed, they then cut the umbilical cord. I so wished the noise in this hospital would stop. Not realizing the noise was me, screaming.

    The life that called my body home had moved out. After no more than a few minutes of chaos everyone left, and I lay there alone. Empty. Hollow.

    Dismal and omniscient, the peach-coloured curtains were now closed. And as though choreographed, a dark grey shadow cast itself against them, making the room more muted and mundane than before. It was like the natural light of a foggy day and this broken only by a tiny beam of electric light coming from beyond the bathroom door. Where moments before, I’d borne my son. The blue gown I wore was wet. Blood-soaked, it lay limp and lifeless over an abandoned abdomen, and almost as dreadful was a deafening silence that echoed between the four walls of my room. Tormented I asked myself, “Why was my child moving? Why was his heart beating? Why was my son alive?”

    The door to the hall opened and there he stood. My husband. With a nurse, he entered the room. Holding my son. Swaddled in the satin and flannel blanket his Grandma had made just for him. Taking the baby in to my arms, I wept. My soul ached with so many questions that still went unanswered. I had to stay in the moment. This one moment in time I knew would end without any kind of closure. There would be nothing more than this.

    We spent the next three hours alone with our son. His small chest was moving rhythmically but with no breath. I held him and told him stories of his sister and the life he would have had. Pum pum. Pum pum. Pum pum. He was perfect. Small, but perfect, and his skin was slightly transparent. He had little fat on his body. His heart continued to beat and mine was beating faster. His long delicate fingers wrapped around mine as I held him. I tried to make each and every piece of him a photograph in my memory, a keepsake of my son. A son I would never see again. Pum pum. Pum pum. I apologized to him and told him how much I loved him. He had the sweet aroma of all newborns. That scent bottled, would be an immediate success. Why wouldn’t his heart just stop beating? Damn. Why wouldn’t mine?

    We lit a candle, named our son and the hospital’s pastor blessed him. I felt peace for a moment. However, that peace was short lived. Quickly kyboshed, it was absorbed by one resounding question. A question lurking, to which I needed an answer. Due to severe heart defects, I had made the difficult decision to end my son’s life. Yet he’d been born with a beating heart, and three hours later as I loved him in my arms, it continued to beat.

    That day stands alone for leaving me emptier than anything I’d ever encounter. Equipped only with my previous life experiences, I’d entered an unknown abyss, and come out hollow, yet grown. And I didn’t want to belong to this. Nobody asked if I wanted to be a member. But that was the day I joined another club.

  • How Can Something So Wrong, Feel So Captain Sensible?

    Stone Roses turned the stereo up a few notches, saying to to her sister, ‘That’ll teach you.’

    Smiths turned from the window to reply. ‘Teach what? That White Riot by The Clash is a good song? I already know that. It’s my album, remember? I taught you everything you know. And now Stone Roses, I’m teaching you to turn that bloody music down. Things are kicking off down below on the streets, Man.’

    Stone Roses upped it one more notch, before swiftly switching the music right off and into a nothingness where the sounds of a real riot took over the small airspace of their seventh floor apartment on Church Street in Manchester. Plonking herself down on the sofa, she rummaged for the TV remote.

    From the window, where she stared manically down on all below, Smiths said, ‘Is that Captain Sensible turning on the TV? We already know what they’re going to say’ll just rile us up. It’ll make us angry, Stone Roses. Do you really want all that in your eyes now? Venting fears? Doubts? Hatred? Do you?’ Stone Roses sat back deep into the comfort of the sofa, and folded her arms after she’d switched on the television.

    ‘Yes, I do!’

    For a second or two, Smiths stared at her sister’s nose and then said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Suit yourself.’

    ‘I always do.’

    ‘I know.’

    ‘Bitch.’

    ‘Slapper.’

    Gazing downwards, Smiths got lost in the streets below, where men, women and children were milling about the place, in an excited state of consciousness. Rising up, it seemed from the shackles of capitalism. At long last! But damn them, she thought. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. To take this form. Unable to grasp at anything solid or primary, her mind swam in strong currents of emotion. It was spinning.

    What they were after was goods, from the shops, she surmised. The meretricious glitter of a consumer society. So they wouldn’t storm an apartment complex, where there was no shop. The Arndale was up the road, and they’d go for that, she was sure. Spinning. It was then that she was awoken from what felt like a reverie by her sister’s sobs.

    Turning, she saw her there, still on the sofa, but now silent. Like transparent worms, the tears streamed down her face, while trying to hold it in, she sniffled. Smiths closed the window and sat down beside her. A strong arm went around Stone Roses, to transfer some warmth.  ‘What’s wrong? It’ll be alright you know. They won’t get in to us. They don’t want people. They want shiny things. Status symbols.’

    Tears still pumping out of her eyes, Stone Roses stood up to take three soft steps towards the television screen and kneel before it, pointing. ‘Look at the people being interviewed. The shop owners. Hear those accents? Recognise their aggression? All the tell-tale signs?’ Smiths now stood, suspecting what would come hurtling at her, hot and heavy. Knowing her sister only too well, she braced herself.

    Stone Roses said,‘Their accents! Their manner! Superciliousness directed at a certain section of society! At us! These shop owners castigate rioters as just plain dumb scumbags. They called us that when we were growing up as well, Smiths.’  Smiths tried to wrap another arm around her in vain. ‘Stone Roses, come on. Sit down. We’ll put on a DVD. Take our minds off the whole thing, you know? Like old times.’

    Animated by her own words now with every passing sentence, Stone Roses even appeared to become physically bigger in the fading light. ‘All those times I felt small in their presence. Really only in their presence. Granted, I never spent too long in there, but..but.. I wouldn’t have been able to withstand it anyway. Brought up under the yoke of their putative superiority. ‘I know it’s wrong. Oh so very wrong, to feel like this, Smiths. But how can something so wrong, feel so Captain Sensible? When I see those infuriated middle-class faces so upset on the telly, it makes me feel glad. And I’m not ashamed of these feelings any more. I see their anger and I want to laugh. I want my fist in the air, in triumph. In revenge for my youth. Our youth, Smiths. Everybody’s youth!’ At this, Smiths stood back watching her sister’s subsequent tears collect on her chin.

    Then she said, ‘It’s alright. I know what you mean. But it’s not good for the soul to ponder such things. Those thoughts will kill you. Because you can’t win. Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think. Get out of this moment. Sprint! Put on that Damien Dempsey album. Take your French pencil out and draw to his lyrics and chord progressions like you usually do. Don’t dwell on this, Stone Roses, please! Float, with Damo, instead?’

    Stone Roses’ tears were arrested by a sudden spark in her eyes. Adulterated thoughts coursed through her veins, and spread so quickly, she knew exactly what came next. What had to be done. Hands thrust into her pockets, she frog-marched over to Smiths. ‘Come on! We’re going downstairs. We’re joining up. Let’s steal back a little dignity. To make the heart strings go zing! Like that old song. The Clash song. You already know all the words backwards at this stage. The lyric made real flesh and blood, come to life.’

    She nearly walked through Smiths, as if she were a ghost. ‘Are you coming?’

    ‘No. Sit down. Calm yourself.’

    ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Smiths. Tweak your own nose, not mine. Blame it on the posh doctors of our youth who played Rugby for Ireland. The ones who called us lazy scumbags, and thus, wouldn’t treat us properly. The ones who’d no respect for patients carrying a medical card, yet on all their earnings had never paid any tax, themselves. Ah, good old Dublin. The good old days.’

    ‘But we’re in Manchester, England now. Across the Irish sea!’

    ‘It’s the same here. Look down at the street, yourself. The people feel the same pain. Maybe they don’t know it consciously, but they do. Come on. Feel the noise! Can you? Or don’t you dare?’

    Yes, Smiths knew Stone Roses only too well. So she walked to the door of the living room, as if going to the toilet. Upon opening it, she stood in the hallway, where she locked it firmly behind her. Realising what had just happened, Stone Roses rushed up to the locked door and banged her arms against it, while Smiths shouted through the keyhole. ‘Direct, non-violent peaceful protest. That’s how we’ll do it, Stone Roses. Not rioting in the streets. You know that. Relax there now, Child. Write some poetry and a literary, yet bitter, autobiography, it’s the only way.’

    In a torrent, Stone Roses drummed her hands against the door. She shouldered it. Elbowed it. Bummed it. And in lashing out at every splinter within its essence, released herself. Next up she whacked her head against it until blood oozed.

    Now back at the window, she looked down on the riot. Inhaling all its unbridled and cacophonous fumes, she smiled before running again headlong at the door and whacking herself once more. And again. Enjoying herself. And again. Rejoicing.

    ‘Now is the time Smiths. Can’t you see? Now is the time to get our own back. It’ll feel good and silky. Open the door!’

    ‘That’s not revenge. It’s just lashing out.’

    Stone Roses wiped the blood from her face with water from the kitchen tap, until the bleeding had just about stopped. She then lashed herself against the door once again, laughing inside and out. Rapping on the door three times, she asked ‘Remember Robin Hood? Well, that’s what we’re doing.’

    ‘You’re not doing anything. It’s them, Stone Roses.’

    ‘And Jesse James. Riding Black Bess. Like Dick Turpin Highwayman. That’s us. Stand and deliver! Us. Robbing the rich, to give to the poor. And oh look at the multitudes of the poor, stretched out on that rack, down below.’

    It was this comment that stabbed Smiths. So easily unsheathed, because Stone Roses knew it for the weapon it was. Right there and then, on the spot, Smiths restrained herself from unlocking the door, to go in, and ram her point home with her fist.

    Her turn now, Smiths kicked the door and head-butted it too when she said, ‘Robin Hood and Jesses James are stories, Stone Roses. They’re just stories. Outside the legends, these people were murderous thieves. Scumbags in real life. They took from the rich alright. But giving it back to its rightful owners, the poor? They forgot all about that, while they drank, raped and stabbed themselves into folklore.’

    Stone Roses knew she had her. Dabbing the blood on her face with a disintegrating hankie, she stood back from the wall and spoke calmly,‘That’s where you haven’t really understood the situation, Sis. Make no bones, you’re the person in this equation with the brain. You should be getting this. Even I know those Robin Hood stories are there, not because they’re true, but because they’re what people want to believe.

    ‘People believe in the romance of robbing the rich to give to the poor because that’s what they dream of, and by believing, they give their consent to a notion that it’s right and proper order to rob the rich and give to the poor. It’s allowed. Everyone has already cheered this past the finishing line a long, long time ago. That’s one hundred per cent. No one can argue. It’s justified and ancient. Rob the rich, and give their money to the poor. The real facts don’t matter. Only the goal and dream of ultimate justice. I think another chap with a beard said similar things in Galilee a long time ago too, Stone Roses. Do you not remember all those sermons on Sunday, when they weren‘t molesting us?’

    Everything went quiet in the hall. Ten seconds passed, before the door unlocked, and in walked an exasperated Smiths who, when she reached Stone Roses, whipped out her hands with the intention and enough sheer brute force to strangle her.

    ‘Wrong. Wrong. Wrong! You’re staying put, right here in this apartment, even if I have to strangle you to sleep, myself. The peaceful way is always the best! The peaceful way…’

    And with that, they rolled about on the floor for a while.

    ‘Jimmy would say you know. Didn’t realize you and Big Brother were such bosom buddies these days. He’d love you saying that, right about now. Probably salute your common sense.’

    Yes, Big Brother would crack up watching it all live on the T.V. back home in Dublin. And he’d spontaneously combust into a million rags like confetti as he shouted, ‘Shoot the scumbags! Shoot the scumbags! Shoot them! Why aren’t they shooting them? Why?’ he’d be screaming.

    He’d always wanted to get out. Be like the posh ones. Never did though. Uncle Tom. To ground control. But ground control wasn’t listening to him.’

    Smiths said, ‘You’re right. Come on, let’s go out and do a bit of rioting with the best of ‘em. Revenge eh? You can’t beat the feeling. Big Brother will be watching alright. He’ll see us,’ said Smiths. ‘Yes, he will,’ answered Stone Roses. ‘Big Brother will see us. We’ll wave to him from the heart of the riot. Flick the Vs. Hey! Ho! Let’s go!’

  • SIDE EFFECT

    SIDE EFFECT

    So few cars on our Manhattan street
    Pigeons leaving nests that swirl between
    Highrise ledges, fearless land to eat
    Any mid-street grain or scrap they glean.

    Told to stay at home most acquiesce.
    Now we learn how unbeknownst we spare
    Our New York as we’re emitting less
    Long-lived greenhouse gases in the air.

    Same in Paris, London, Madrid, Rome.
    If our frenzied whirl restarts, when pressed
    To create more jobs and we leave home,
    Will we foul then worse our global nest?

    Covid fear amends our habitat –
    Nature’s own backhanded caveat.

    Micheal O’Siadhail’s The Five Quintets was published in 2018, he now lives in New York.

    Image: Constantino Idini

  • The Musical Duel of Apollo and Pan

    Pan’s Song

    Your rule has lapsed Apollo, all narrative is dead,
    You said true form is timeless, but they chose me instead,
    My pipe has no rhythm, but is easy on the ear,
    A great tumult rise in ecstasy, precisely as you feared,
    It’s true you had your time,
    But as samples, your’s is mine,
    The young are running in the wood,
    Arm and arm, as they should,
    That measure gave no pleasure,
    And with rhyme we divine,
    The inkwell has run dry,
    Dance along with your lyre.

    Lyre lyre lyre lyre lyre lyre lyre

    Why endeavour to fix what is beyond repair?
    The dancer knows it, but does not despair.
    Such concepts as justice permit, the mighty to inflict,
    Pain and suffering, so desist, with your rule of the fist!

    Virtue hardly nurtures,
    Such beauty as you speak.
    We must dance Now,
    Not ask ourselves How.
    Nature is our calling,
    All cities are appalling;
    Let us grow our hair,
    To show we don’t care,
    For our time on earth is short,
    Let us shed blood as we ought,
    Laugh, love and lustre,
    Not your cerebral bluster,
    Intuition is my mission, and tradition,
    I have no time for your addition;
    I trust in the Earth,
    And embrace the dirt.

    Apollo’s Song

    I now appeal to all who wish to learn,
    The crafts which make of life a pleasurable span,
    Or seek refuge from the beasts of prey,
    In glistening cities of men who sing my name,
    And communicate in tongues glorious refrain,
    As without laws to curb the passion’s rule,
    Their lives are spent in dreadful misery;
    Instead I pray they last the course and take,
    Such lessons only I may give as these.

    Oh Pan you fool your passions rule your wits;
    The muck of earth becomes a curse to those,
    Who call civilisation their home.
    To Pythagoras I brought my gift the lyre,
    And from my precious instrument there came,
    A lesson mathematical giving,
    To all who wished to build, precious insight;
    Even the stars above obeyed my rule.

    And yet I shed these tears as well you see,
    For man is not a worthy pupil still,
    He lies and cheats and shapes belief to suit,
    Vainglorious aims, intrigues and stratagems;
    His wiles would make a god despair;
    A time of expertise is passed indeed,
    And shallow intellects run wild and mock,
    The light of knowledge that I handed down.

    And Pan you should recall the contest when,
    Old Timulus adjudged my song above,
    Your playful lute. Alone was Midas struck,
    He swooned with crass desire and came unstuck,
    And grew a pair of ass’s ears to show,
    To those who may assume your song superior,
    A fate unkind for foolish thoughts as these;
    To all I urge be careful what you wish.

    Feature Image: Jacob Jordaens: Apollo as Victor over Pan (1637).

  • The Ninth Rose

    In an undisclosed year, Decency took something marvelous away from me, and by extension away from you. Away from… I want to say, everybody. Decency took it, and left me…decency.

    Decency now obliges me to make fiction of this, and set it far away and long ago, but how I want to blast that for the sake of its long debt to me, Seifert!* Hmm, Decency. Alright, then.

    Long ago and far away, in an Eastern European country called…

    (My own Soviet-bloc memento, from a time when we spoke in parables, is a little mental collection of those fictional Eastern European countries. Syldavia. Borduria. Rovenia. But I’m not going to use any of those; I’ve sworn off that, as you’ll see.)

    In an Eastern European republic, called Padobron, at a pivotal juncture for me, when I was celebrating the derring-do of my expulsion from the Narodna Misočana Technical University (expulsion had become a countercultural badge of honor) the question of how to get a job was just beginning to grow on me, someone called Jaromir Seifel published something good. Something which everyone said was good, but which betrayed his true greatness by being first, published over-the-table by a state-owned press, and second, not as great as he was.

    Small, in every way, our coterie was one of young people thrown together for being delivered by the same midwife, or confirmed in the same parish, or expelled for exhibiting the same cheek, or stuck in the same tavern-corner because they have the same feeble ideas of looking grown-up at twenty, but who believe that they’ve coalesced at the draw of stars and gods, through possessing a similar gallantry, genius, and destiny.

    That May, my peers, whose dreams were to either reform or undermine collectivism, if not get a job within it, attributed to me a certain dashing, because of my expulsion, and because I wrote things, copied them by hand, and circulated them as if they were dangerous, like an authentic counterculture. I think the writing and the expulsion melded in their minds (though I was not, in fact, expelled for writing, but because of an uncle’s alleged black-market prosperity) and that they accorded me a position among them, rather like Seifel’s among the real writers and agitators. Seifel’s must have been the one because, though I had never mentioned him, when his Eight Roses appeared, Miroslav Kinsky and Petra Raha both told me separately that they thought I should read it, that I would like it. I learned later that neither of them had read it.

    Well, what do you think I did? I bought The Eight Roses. I carried it quite proudly under my arm, with the spine showing nicely. I was only sorry it was so narrow; people might have to stop me, stoop, and stare to read it. Well, I was a little sorry, too, that the cover was such a hideous pink, like unhealthy skin. But I carried it, first to the “Golden Shield,” where I could casually let it be seen by two comrades in a corner, drinking a cheap wine our self-conscious slang referred to as ‘rope,’ and then home, for I was honest enough to read alone.

    I read it. I was prepared, you know, to adore it, and I did. To the very last page, until, I saw what it might have been.

    I don’t know how to talk about this. Love was never my strong point; I once described a man I was besotted with by saying, “In his striped sweater he looked like a large Easter egg,” and thought I was being poetic. When I want to talk about what happened in the blank space under the last words on the last page of Seifel’s The Eight Roses, my pen becomes enormous and my brain feels like the sort of thing you would serve in thin slices on a canapé tray. But allons! Seifel would be equal to this, so I will. On the page…

    Oh, it was bigger than Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs, deeper than Meung’s Romance of the Rose, more universal than Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex; more romantic than Keats, tougher than Kafka, more acute than Tolstoy. I didn’t know all those names then, but I knew a thing that I knew was greater than all of them; since then I have known those names and something of what they are, but I have never known the thing of which I speak. I felt it then, and what I felt most certainly about it was that it was real. However clumsy, I would get it on the paper, it was real: what The Eight Roses would have been if Satan had never fallen. Don’t misunderstand me: I still adored The Eight Roses, and that’s why this thing was so big.

    The thing was The Eight Roses, it was what would burst out of The Eight Roses if I could somehow slit the chrysalis. The huge joke was that Seifel had never known it was there. That was as plain as the sun; for if Seifel had known it was there, he would never have written the thin little state-approved thing with its hideous pink cover. Seifel was a genius, everybody knew that; he could have pulled it off. But he had dashed off this Eight Roses thing on table-napkins, probably, and sold it to the National Scholastic and Aesthetic Press, probably to pay his rent, and was probably flirting with his housekeeper while he scribbled the last chapter with his left hand. Even the title was botched. If he had written it two inches further into his peripheral vision, he would have noticed that good poetics, numerology, theology, plot dynamics, or even floristry would have made it either seven or nine roses. But no. He had eight.

    I was stunned, goosepimpled, teary, prayerful with my gift. I wanted to kiss Seifel’s hands and put my wet face against his knees. I wanted him to lay his hand on my head and bless me, like Haydn blessing young Beethoven. He would see, he alone would see now, before it had pages and flesh, the great soul of my conception; he would laugh and be glad, though he had only been its modeler, that someone would bring the true Eight Roses into the world. I felt that Jaromir Seifel must have a rich, deep laugh, and a kindly, rounded face, lined from a thousand smiles. My writing hand curled. Before I knew what I was doing, I had piled ink, pens, my ragged notebooks on the tea table I used as a desk. The cleanest notebook was folded open before me, and I had written the date. Then…

    Something was wrong, but not nearly so wrong as what was right; an inexorable force moved my hand to the left margin, my pen formed I,n, space, f,i,v,e…

    The wrong thing, pain and roar, rose in my hand to snatch that first line from me. I wrote laboriously, shoving on my pen like Tepl’s Plowman of Bohemia.

    “In five hundred lifetimes Mařek Klubaš would never see again what he saw now.”

    The sensation was as if the bare lightbulb had fallen from its socket and exploded on the floor. I leaned forward, crouching over that single line like some terrible wound. For I posessed that greater Eight Roses, but the world could only have it at the price of my crime. This line was the identical line with which Seifel opened his Eight Roses. And this was not the only line of mine that would be identical with his. The first. The fifth. The eighth. The whole third paragraph… For Seifel was a genius, and even his garbage was partly immortal. This would be no wholly original cousin to Seifel’s book; the daughter could never be less than half her mother. That date I had dashed onto the top-right of the page got tattooed backwards across my hot, sticky cheek.

    When I was upset, I had an unfortunate habit of pinching and rolling the skin on my upper arms, which left them blotched and bruised purple that night. As I lay on the floor with my feet on the bed, Barbora, my chaste, almost viceless, older sister, who was working at one of the electric plants then, came home and cooked something. She tried to get me downstairs to eat what she had prepared, and vaguely I remember that she entered my room very late, on one of her raids for my cigarettes, which she despised. Rooting through my handbag and both coats, she might have frisked me too, for all I did about it. I must have known when she fell asleep because later I remember suffering and even rationalizing out loud a bit.

    So sure was I that Seifel would more than forgive me, I even wanted to give him the manuscript and beg him to publish it under his own name; I knew his upright soul wouldn’t do that, and although my huge, Beethoven-sort of ideas earlier would have considered joint publishing a condescension on my part, with the novel so much nearer now, in my fingertips, I was suddenly humble and realistic, and afraid that Seifel, the great Seifel, wouldn’t let his name stand by mine on anything. I was ready to write the thing and ask questions later, but both times I sat up at the tea table again, where that wrong thing, painful and roaring, stood between me and my Eight Roses. Seifel’s words would come next—only two words—and then mine, but I couldn’t write those two. I said them over and over. I said that second line to myself; it was beautiful when it first came to me, but I gave it a touch of assonance, switched a synonym, moved a verb, and it was even more beautiful. I chanted it to myself, under my breath, and the third sentence tripped after it like an obedient little sister; but I had to stop, because those three together broke my heart and I would have died

    I sat Seifel in the broken swivel-chair opposite my bed, and said I wanted to approach this individually, head to head. We were alone with eons of space around us. What would it mean, if I took his clay pinch-pot ? Such a nice one! The best a pinch-pot could be—and made an Attic vase of it? Love! Miracle! Fate! Of course Seifel could see that. He was so understanding. He winked at me. Individual, elemental, primal, me and Seifel. There was nothing wrong at all. The sweat dried on my temples. We had been born for this, he in 1901 and I in ’38, so that he could write a little outline called The Eight Roses and I could make of it a lifegiving epic called, The Nine Roses. We would undermine Totalitarianism and fire noble, honest brains to seize the hour and steer democracy, social justice, and agrarian abundance. We would finally say what the haunted eyes of frescoed saints had wished the stuffy priests could. People would one day forget us, but humanity would ever be drawn into nobler lines. Again my face wanted to press Seifel’s knees.

    I was at the tea table.

    Pain. Roar. Wrong.

    Seifel and I were not alone with humanity. Something that was never quite humanity gazed reproachfully on us, with their own just claims…the artists. For centuries, emaciated savantes had trudged penniless back to their shabby lodging houses because some plump profiteer was turning out penny broadsides of their intellectual property, pocketing everything with full blessing of the inept Law. What I found pain and wrong, was their long deferred hope of just protection. If even one copy of this epic, and even my inebriation knew it would cost something to print a tome of the size this would be, changed hands for a koruna, and Seifel, the most deserving artist of Padobron, would be robbed; his deep, thoughtful eyes—oh! I could see the tired, pathetic lines around them—would still smile on my work, would lose every pinprick of reproach in a selfless, true artist’s rejoicing at my victory, but I would be damnable. I may have knelt by his swivel-chair to ask his forgiveness; I don’t remember, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

    Then, I could only go to him, Pán Jaromir Siefel of…wait, where did he live? Torný Street? And ask permission; like a hopelessly infatuated ragpicker going to ask for a Duchess’ hand. I could have bawled. The Duchess, of course, fully deserved my humiliation and my absurd, mad courtship, but I could not bear the inevitable rejection. Gallantry was hard and could bear it, but Love was soft and couldn’t. Too much was at stake for grandeur.

    Maybe I did bawl; I don’t know.

    Wouldn’t he give me full permission? In original and onionskin, signed and filed with the Department of Trades Protection? If I begged and orated, if I showed him five pages of prospective…? I was ashamed to fall back on this, but I was a girl, if a plain one, and very young; perhaps he would feel some gallantry—Wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he?

    Would he? What if he really had written it for his rent, and I came along, offering to outwrite and outsell him with his own book? What if he felt he couldn’t afford to split royalties on its improved revision? Or what if he only believed I would ruin it ? Thought me a…

    Starstruck, egotistical, talentless, deluded…

    Nineteen-year-old.

    I was a nineteen-year-old. Oh, pain!

    Unfortunately for that sickly pink book, my eyes fell on it at exactly that moment. How I hated it. Not what was in it. I hated Seifel, at the top of his career (I felt then that anyone who could publish articles in the Brava was at the top of his career), daring to dash off something so beneath his abilities and its own potential, to unload it on a literate, intelligent population, cased in airtight legal protections to keep earnest, less-endowed artists from ever achieving with it, what its semi-occasional flashes of genius taught them to love and long for. Oh, I hated his complacency. I hated his flirting with that fat housekeeper, I hated his hand paying the rent, I hated the half-koruna I had paid for the pink heartbreak.

    I held it between my two hands. Never before or after was The Nine Roses so near me. Again it’s hard to talk about what The Nine Roses was, perhaps because the pain or longing was so acute that it is unconsciously suppressed. I know that one of the principal characters was a woman. I think she was to have been very important, and I know that she was only, in the vaguest way, suggested by ‘Marie Kepys’ in The Eight Roses, that she was profoundly, fundamentally different, not opposite, just so different that they must have been born in different spectrums of light. But for all that, I can’t remember anything about that woman. I know her name was Karoline Svít, that her hair was yellow, she was twenty-six years old, had ancestry in the mountains of northeast Padobron. That one side of her lower lip looked larger than the other, and that when she was nervous, she would blink a lot; but what she was—oh, it was stupendously human and yet inexplicable, unpredictable, something that blasted Determinism to bits, and yet, I don’t remember a thing.

    Another character was deterministic, kind of a foil, who would be involved in a tragic devolution of some sort—obviously he was Heinrich Räder from Eight Roses, and I have to admit now, even with that neurotic curtain drawn across the shining glory of The Nine Roses, that he may have been its weakness, because I was too young to write tragedy well. But I am not sure of that. I’m surer, even now, of the greatness of that Nine Roses than of anything I’ve learned about writing since, which is a lot, at least compared to what I knew then.

    It wasn’t Seifel across from me in the swivel chair then, it was humanity, posterity, and Art. Not the artists, but Art, with her own peremptory, maybe holy, demands, which were not the demands of the artists at all. Art sat in the swivel chair and smiled at me, her own old, youthful, smirking, blessing smile; my shoulder muscles finally released. I smiled too, with my head hanging to one side. The Nine Roses was not mine, had never been; it belonged to Art, loaned to me by her inscrutable purposes, and it was my part only to act, beatify the world, and disappear. The disappearing part especially soothed me. It seemed perfectly fitting and reasonable, just then, that if I produced the miracle and then disappeared, there would be no crime; I didn’t wonder how I would disappear…a galloping consumption, I suppose? An open manhole? This death-wish absolved me, to the extent that absolution is a psychological event, and I returned to the tea table.

    I wrote only that second line, and not all of it, in its entirety. It was not a roaring, painful wrongness that stopped me; it was quiet, weakening my pen-hand. I turned around.

    I was a bad Catholic then, a worse one later, and a poor one now; but God was in the swivel chair, and He was with the artists, the law, and the blasted State. I felt my own fists against my eyes.

    You may have noticed that a good deal of that night is unclear to my memory, but the next part, unfortunately, is not. I was so tired and so…, I put the pen down, closed the notebook, stood, pushed my stool in, and pulled the light-cord. That was the end of The Nine Roses.

    On pensive nights sometimes, I used to try to bring it back. Especially May nights like that one. More than once I walked into the Golden Shield with that hideous pink book under my arm, stood around, wandered back to our east-bank apartment, read the whole thing in one sitting, and stared at that last page, for minutes, more minutes, and then finally, a few more minutes. I don’t really know why I tried, knowing all along that it would never… Well, I used to wonder how the copyright would expire, cutting some unconscious inhibition that was keeping The Nine Roses from me. I even calculated its life-expectancy more than once; after the Berne Convention, it was based on Seifel’s plus fifty years… and he lived to be quite old. I’m even surprised I’ve outlived him. I don’t begrudge him for it.

    In the seventies, I began to hope someone would find nine roses in eight, in some other century when Seifel’s work would be as free as air. But slowly I realized that the only person who would ever find it, was the one who found it that May night. What I saw was so tightly bound to what I was, to going in the Golden Shield, to my expulsion, to Miroslav and Petra, and the exact figure that Seifel was in Padobronsky culture just then, and the exact thoughts that went through my head reading his book, and the exact sickly pink shade of the cover of that particular edition. Perhaps someone reading some other genius’s potboiler will be gifted with an analogously grand reproduction. There are lots of those books about. As for The Eight Roses, I saw a used copy for sale in London a few years ago. Not in English; it was never translated, and it surprised me tremendously. Its copyright will undoubtedly outlive its sales. I think it’s out of print, unless a passage in that new Seifel anthology counts.

    If this story comes to you just when a similar prospect is facing you, (and how can I forbid such a miraculous coincidence, when it has happened to me?) how shall I advise you? I could hardly urge, Write! I, who backed down, cringing and purehearted, from the stare of God that night.

    But I know God now, Seifel better, the law and what the law is for. The only thing I don’t know better is an epic novel called The Nine Roses.

    I regretted it for decades. I still do! But something different is precious to me now, as precious as the best Art was to me then. Perhaps not as precious! for I shall never feel so strongly again. Perhaps more precious than my estimates are : less storm and more truth. What I cherish now is the nineteen-year-old that pulled the light cord and went to bed, walking carefully around the broken swivel chair. Perhaps I understand God better, as I am more like Him.

    For surely only He, who alone besides myself knew The Nine Roses, would say, “The girl is better than the book.” In that moment I chose to make art of myself. Was it worthwhile, for the sake of one night’s low-grade, possibly naïve morality, to give up what I still, only I!, know to have been so great? To throw away what so plainly told me it was bigger than the Nibelung, for a simple, few minutes’ act of elementary acceptance and approval? To forego a thousand master strokes in oil, for a single blunt stroke at human spirit?

    Again and again I cannot answer it, as an artist. But an artist did not sit last in my swivel-chair.

    Tonight, it is with a wonderous joy, I feel again something like that last page of Eight Roses. Not very like, for I do not feel in such storms now. But wonder, excitement, a glimpse of something better behind something good. That perhaps…

    Oh, it is hard to write, my pen is enormous, and my brain is like…

    Yes, that God, who sat in my swivel chair that night, holds a small, ugly, loved, but utterly unrealized work under His arm; that he will one day slit it and release the real…

    I cannot say. He alone knows what it will be.

    *Jaroslav Seifert was a writer, around whom revolved a competitive literary scene, made up of young people moving within the 1950s Czech counterculture.

  • Spent Batteries

    The shop sign was in a Youghal side street, and it said Afro Crafts and Groceries. The right half of the window displayed cooking oil, tinned spices, bottled sauces and small bags of beans and lentils. On the left, a selection of small paintings of village and river fishing scenes, were cramped by colourful patchwork, miniature handcarved drums, wooden masks, animals and human figures. The carving of a village woman carrying a water jug on her head jolted Hal’s memory. Dark as the one his Dad had kept on the mantelpiece.

    “Let’s come back here tomorrow, after a day at the beach,” Hal suggested to Jeanette. During the drive to the caravan they’d rented in Ardmore, though it was thirty years ago, Hal told her about his father’s stint as a volunteer agriculturist in Tanzania.

    The following day, after a swim and a stroll, Jeanette ambled off on her own. The Afro Crafts and Groceries was open and empty, in the after dinner shade. Among the groceries were Barry’s Tea, tins of sardines and processed peas. Packets marked Siucra, shared shelves alongside cane sugar from Mauritius. Bags of maize meal, couscous and soya beans proclaimed the shop’s African dimension, and even more so the display of wrapped frozen cuts of goat, oxtail and whole bream in the display freezer. Hal selected a plastic jar of mild Caribbean curry, and a small tin of Kenyan pineapples; souvenirs that would not go astray in his Cork kitchen cupboard.

    Placing the items on the counter beside the cash register, he headed over to browse the alcove laden with crafts.

    First he flipped through a colourful bundle of batiks decorated with a motif of women and men at work, and wild animals. The wood carvings showed skill, but some of the masks erred on the side of kitsch.

    Stretching deeper into the window, he lifted out the black ebony carving of a woman balancing a water jug on her head.

    “From south-central Tanzania, Bwana. She is taking water from the river to her hut in the village.” The African shopkeeper now appeared quietly at Hal’s side.

    “Made from a single piece of timber?” asked Hal, turning the figure he held upside down, and fingering the varnished grain of the heavy base.

    “From a tree trunk. They first cut the local forest trees and chop the branches for firewood with pangas.”

    “And the trunks?”

    “Two men sawed these tree trunks. Kazi kweli – lots of work, we say in Kiswahili. But the carvers pay them, some local, some in other places of Tanzania, such as Kondowe.” The shopkeeper smiled faintly after his burst of English fluency. “You want other carvings? Some more I have in boxes behind.” nodding towards an open rear door.

    “This woman with the water pot interests me.”

    A holidaymaker entered the shop and began browsing around, which brought the African shopkeeper back to his cash desk.

    Hal recalled snatches of conversation with his father. Peter Sheridan hadn’t opened up often about his East Africa days. He and a young British volunteer had driven around in a 4-wheel drive Toyota pickup. If they didn’t have bundles of timber, pipes or cement in the back, they took on casual passengers: pedestrians flagged them down, on the way to Kilosa or on the potholed dirt roads to distant Dar-es-Salaam. The isolated town itself, offered limited craic.

    “My late father did agricultural work in Tanzania in the late sixties, helping small farmers with livestock and growing food.“ Explained Hal, approaching the cash register once the only other customer had left.

    “Kazi ya maendeleo – development work, as we say.“ The African’s eyes brightened as he extended his hand. Hal grasped it. “There were some young wageni –  foreigners-  in the town near our village. They worked for the British company.”

    “Voluntary Service Overseas: VSO. They recruited from Ireland too,“ Hal elaborated. He raised the wood carving still in his left hand. “He brought back something like this from a place called Tar… Tarande, I think.“

    “You mean Tarandawe? Kweli kabisa!“ Dropping any semblence of formality, the shopkeeper stared Hal in the face.

    “Tarandawe, as you say. Some hours drive south of Kilosa, beside a tributary of the Rufiji river. He said there were elephants in a forest upriver.“

    The African’s demeanour changed from surprise to certainty. “The Mindenzi is a small river near our village and passes through the forest into Rufiji. The men hunt small animals there but that government does not allow to kill the elephant.“

    “Any more carvings like this?“ Hal stood the pot-carrier on the counter, beside the tinned pineapple and plastic curry jar.

    “You must ask Margarethe. She stays at the hostel for asylum seekers. Her friend sends boxes from Tanzania. Her village was in the district where the VSO company put down water pipes for the shambas – small farms.“

    “You’re both from the same area? Did you know each other before coming to Europe?“ Assuming they were asylum seekers, Hal kept the questions general. No need to pry.

    “I have a Portuguese wife, and passport of Portugal. Margarethe and myself, we were strangers, but many from Tarandawe went down to Cabora Bassa to build a big dam for electricity on Zambesi River in Mozambique. Few escudos and hard work. Margarethe’s mother cooked posho for the workers and the little girl just played with other children.“

    “Did Margarethe’s father work on the dam?“

    The African hesitated. “She never knew her father. Her mother was… alone. I became like her uncle. We could sometimes collect firewood, but the Portuguese soldiers supervised. We feared their rifles. Soldiers shot freedom fighters in the forest.“

    Hal paid for his goods and asked the whereabouts of the asylum hotel. At the Cork end of town, it was a B & B cobbled together by the amalgamation of two adjoining houses. In a grassy front garden, he spied two rustic benches and a garden table. An Asian child peddled a plastic tricycle around a mother, absorbed in her embroidery, on the patio.

    A girl helping in the kitchen told Hal that Margarethe was away visiting friends in Cork, so he took the telephone number and walked back to meet Jeanette near the old clock gate on main street.

    During Sunday lunch with his mother and younger sister at the family home, Hal mentioned the Afro shop coincidence. Had Dad mentioned much about Tarandawe village? His mother denied that his talk had been anything but technical: damaged irrigation pipes, difficult road conditions, and the odd reference to wildlife and vegetation.

    “The volunteers found Tarandawe a lonesome spot. Drinking weekends in one or two decrepit bars and dancing freestyle on the bar floor with anyone around to the accompaniment of scratchy Congolese rumba music. The music got weird whenever batteries ran down. No electricity, so tilley lamps and candles lit up the gloomy nights.“

    “The one luxury he brought to Africa was his shortwave radio. Listened to it a lot in the dark evenings.“ Hal was happy to add one of the few details his dad had told him as a child. “Must have used up a lot of those batteries, too. Social life must have been pretty zero for young white fellows?“ Hal mused.

    “That’s why VSO field officers came their way twice a year in a Land Rover, bringing tinned food, wine and old newspapers. Volunteers had an annual expenses-paid get-together in Dar, and bunked down at each others’ houses during holidays.“ Hal’s mother shuffled in her armchair. “Your Dad did his development bit, saw a few sights, and came back. Then he met me at a co-op dance in Mitchelstown.“

    As his mother flipped through a Sunday supplement, Hal fetched the old photo album and pored over the ageing black and white snapshots of people. His father and an English mate posed with them. There were photos of working farmers and a longshot outside Kanjenje Bar in the village, looking like something out of a wild west film, except for the tropical flowers and palms. Among holiday snaps in faraway Dar es Salaam, there was one of his dad with two African men beside the bar entrance. Another was a closeup of his father standing at the same spot, next to a young village woman in a patterned headscarf.

    A couple of weeks later, Hal phoned the Youghal hostel and asked for Margarethe. “Miss Sichalisi hasn’t returned from the Afro grocery yet. She helps out there unofficially, until the Dublin officials decide on her application. When he inquired if she would be at the shop on the following Saturday, The response was, “Probably.“

    On a dry morning in Youghal, Hal parked his car, then strolled to the shop. The African man was again at the cash register, and introduced a fair-skinned woman who looked to be in her forties. “My wife Francesca,“ he said, after shaking hands. “We first met in Cabora, before she fled back to Tarandawe, after freedom fighters started moving against Portuguese soldiers. We got married and flew to Lisboa. But now we are trying for a new life, in Youghal.“

    “My contacts in Lisbon and Maputo send us the foodstuffs, and also some crafts. Margarethe gets the wood carvings through associates in Dar. Come into the back room and meet her.“ Explained Francesca before she led Hal into a storeroom with wall shelves and boxes.

    “Odi. Margarethe,“ Francesca called.

    A woman, wearing a short sleeved red chemise over smart white slacks, entered through the doorway from a kitchenette. She had to be in her late twenties, just a few years junior to Hal. Her fawn colored curls complemented a caramel complexion, interrupted by patches of paler pigmentation. Not nearly as dark as her older African “uncle,“ Magarethe extended her hand as Francesca introduced, “Mr. Hal is from Cork city. He likes the Tarandawe wood carvings.“

    “I have to be in the shop, so you can show Mr. Hal the new stock from Dar,“ suggested Francesca, before she left them alone.

    Margarethe unloaded several carved objects from a packing case, for Hal’s inspection.

    He picked up a carving of a woman with a water pot on her head. “My father told me that many villages in Tanzania have no piped water.“

    Her eyes were on the carving as Margarethe answered, “African women have walked to rivers and water holes for thousands of years. Our village was near the river. The women got water and washed clothes at the river bank.“

    “Was it the Mindenzi River?“ asked Hal, eager to show an informed interest.

    At this, Margarethe’s polite reserve dissolved, and eyes sparkling, she placed the bust of a bearded old man on the table. “Mindenzi. You know it? No, it was a smaller river that soon joined Mindenzi. A British aid company brought pipes. Our villagers dug trenches. My mother helped, and so my grandparents had water for the kitchen. But still the women go to the river to wash clothes.“

    “Your uncle mentioned the Mindenzi, last time I was here. He says it flows through Tarande.“ Hal knew he was once more mispronouncing the name of the place.

    “Tarandawe“ corrected Margarethe, “is the market village of the district. The foreign workers lived there.“

    “My late father, Peter…Peter Sheridan, worked for VSO… the British aid group, in Tarandawe. It was about thirty years ago. Perhaps he helped your mother and others to lay those water pipes.“ Hal was looking directly at Margarethe now. Her left hand  went up to her cheek, before it covered her mouth in an attempt to conceal the soft sigh she emitted. Dabbing under her eyelids, she excused herself, producing a paper tissue from her handbag. Once composed, she looked at Hal. “My mother took me, as a child, to Cabora Bassa. She cooked for the workers. My friend, now Uncle Josam, was there. Sometimes we returned to our village for holidays. You are Hal… Sheridan?“

    Hal nodded.

    “Then you are the son of Bwana Peter, the white boy that drove the Toyota truck?“

    “My father Peter worked in Tanzania after graduation. Yes, Peter Sheridan – he died of cancer in 1998. He was a volunteer in Tarandawe. After a two-year stint he came back to Cork.“

    “My mother, she passed away, so I came to Europe with the help of Josam and Francesca. I think I am now home – if the Dublin office gives me a residence permit. With God’s help, here is my home.“

    Hal selected two carvings of water pot women, and another of a giraffe.

    “I’d like to come here again with my fiancé, Jeanette. We could take you to a restaurant. I’m curious to know more about Tarandawe and my father’s time there.“

    Hal paid Francesca at the cash desk. As he turned towards the exit, Margarethe offered him a business card.

    “I am sure we will meet often.“ She smiled as Hal stuffed the card unread into his shirt pocket. She followed him out and extended her hand in farewell. “You are welcome here always, Hal. Always,“ she said, sounding almost like a sister.

    Back in the Cork flat, Hal put the carvings on his mantelpiece. Sipping lager from a stem glass, he withdrew the business card from his shirt pocket. At the left edge, he saw a silhouette of a palm tree, with Afro Crafts & Groceries prominently centered in green capital letters. Underneath appeared the rubric Manager: Francesca da Silva. In smaller print, at the bottom of the card, Hal read a second rubric – Craft Sales Agent: Margarethe Sichalisi-Sheridan.

    Garreth Byrne worked in schools and promoted agriculture in East & Central Africa, and later taught English in China. He now lives in Leitrim and has no African progeny to declare.