The Fire-Eaters

“Aye. Just like McNulty. There were lots of them in those wild days. Fakes and fakirs and magic men. Dervishes and quacks. Miracle makers. We found them in the markets, on the roadsides, at the frontiers. Mebbe it was all the wars and disturbances that brung them out. And mebbe there was them among them that could work true magic and make true miracles come to pass. But poor souls like McNulty sat at their feet while the sun glared down and the bullets rattled and the bayonets stabbed and the bombs fell and the sun blazed down and the skin got scorched and the brain got melted and the heart got broke. This is where McNulty comes from, son. From a mad mad time before your time, from a time of bloody blasted war.”

  He opened my window, lit a cigarette.

  “And I was there as well,” he said. “And for one as old as me it's not so long ago, and it drove us all a little mad and a little sad and left us all with partly broken hearts.”

  He breathed smoke out into the air above the lane. He reached out and stroked my face.

  “Must seem another age to you,” he said.

  “Aye,” I said, and it did: so far away, so long ago.

  The light was falling. I switched the Lourdes light on. I looked down at the black-and-white boys on the beach and in the pines, at the magic men. The photographs were like windows into ancient places. And my dad had been there. He read my thoughts.

  “It'll be different for you,” he said. “You can do anything. You can go anywhere. The world is yours. You're privileged and free.”

  We both turned our faces to the sky.

  “As long as there's no war,” he said. “As long as there's no more of that stupidity.”

  I reached into my pocket and touched the broken heart.

  “Please, God,” I said inside myself. “No more bombs, no more wars.”

  “Please, God,” said Dad. He put the gas mask back into its box, touched Mary's halo, then put his arm around me. “We can't be that stupid. Not again.”

  Inearly bumped into him behind the beach café. I was out thinking I'd find Joseph. We nearly hit each other but we swayed apart. He looked at me, then dropped his gaze.

  “Oh,” he said. “It's you.”

  “Aye.”

  He started moving on.

  “Joseph's all right,” I said quickly.

  “Is he?”

  “He likes to be tough, that's all.”

  “Or stupid,” he muttered.

  I took a step toward him.

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing.”

  He started to move on again.

  “We'll be going to the same school,” I said.

  “Will we?”

  “Aye. Yes.”

  “Sacred Heart.”

  “Yes.”

  He tapped his foot on the café wall, knocking sand and coal out of his sandals.

  “Me name's Bobby,” I said. “Robert.”

  “Is it?” he said.

  “Yes. And you're Daniel.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “That's good to know,” he said.

  “I live back there, look. That one.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  I was about to tell him where he lived, but I didn't. We looked at each other.

  “Have you been here long?” he said.

  “Forever.”

  “That's long.”

  The pigeons clattered over us.

  “It's OK here,” I said. “Some say it's the back of beyond, but …”

  “That's what my dad says. But he says that's why he likes it. He's thinking about making a book about it.”

  “What kind of book?”

  “Photographs. He says he wants to catch it before it changes.” He regarded me. “Maybe he'll put you in the book.”

  “Me?”

  I tried to imagine a book with me in it. Me playing in the pines with Joseph. Me standing in the sea with Ailsa. Me sitting by the fire with my mam and dad.

  “He's a lecturer,” Daniel said. “He does history of art at the university. My mum does English.” He smiled. “What do your parents do?”

  “Me dad's a fitter in the yard.”

  “The yard?”

  “The shipyard. It's at Blyth. It's a little one for little ships. Little trawlers, tugs, that kind of thing. He's on holiday just now.”

  “And your mum?”

  “Me mam?”

  “Yes.”

  I shrugged.

  “Dunno,” I said. “Looks after us and that.”

  We stood there, like we wondered was there anything else to say. I looked at his striped T-shirt. There was a badge on the heart side with a symbol on it. He saw me looking and held it with his fingers.

  “CND,” he said.

  “I know,” I lied.

  “It's the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.”

  “I know,” I lied.

  “Do you keep up with things?” he said. “With current affairs, world events?”

  “Dunno,” I said.

  He looked at the sea. Dark clouds were heaping up on the horizon.

  “When does it get really cold?” he said.

  “Eh?”

  “It's the North. We thought it'd be winter already but it's not, is it?”

  “It'll come.”

  I thought of the winds that would lash at their big new windows, the waves that would crash within yards of it. I thought of whirling sleet and snow and hail and sand. I thought of the ice that once came to settle on everything, even the beach, even the fringes of the sea.

  “We came from Kent,” he said.

  “The Garden of England.”

  “That's right. I didn't want to come but we had to.”

  “We read about it in the juniors. Hops and orchards and a long growing season.”

  “It's beautiful. I don't suppose you've been there.”

  “No.”

  “Have you traveled?”

  “Me dad's been to Burma. And me mam's been to Lourdes.”

  “Ah.”

  “She saw a man cured there. He'd been on crutches for ten years. He threw them away.”

  “Did he really?”

  “Aye. It was a miracle.”

  We were silent again; then he shrugged and continued on his way. I measured myself against him as he passed. I clenched my fists. I wondered how I'd do if I ever had to fight him.

  “See you,” I said.

  “Yes,” he answered. “I'll see you.”

  One night that week I woke in the dead hours. Couldn't sleep. Prayers and hymns were running through my head. I switched the Lourdes light on. I put McNulty's silver coin there, and the tanners from Ailsa's dad. Mary looked down on Bernadette and on these offerings below her. I tore out a page from my notebook. I put Ailsa's broken heart on it and drew the other half of the heart so that it looked healed. I drew a CND symbol on another page. I wrote the words:

  Please. Do not let us be so stupid. Never again. Amen.

  I folded the page into quarters and tucked it under the lamp.

  I opened the window and breathed the sea and the night. Nothing moved against the stars.

  What was the sound that mingled with the turning waves? The voices of wailing sailors? The whistling of breath in Dad's throat? Jazz?

  “Please,” I whispered.

  In the room next door, Dad started coughing.

  I left the light on. I lay down again. Dad went on coughing; I gazed into Mary's face.

  “Please,” I whispered. “Never again.”

  Dad stopped. We slept in peace.

  That Sunday Dad and I went to early Mass together; then we waited outside the Rat. We ate the bread and hard-boiled eggs we'd brought to break our fast. It was a cold, white morning. Dad had his heavy brown herringbone coat on. We heard a hooting and whistling and creaking of wings and then a flight of geese appeared below the clouds, flying southward in a great wide V.

  “They're leaving early,” said Dad. “Mebbe they smelt something coming on the wind.”
/>
  Soon the bus came and we sat at the back and rattled toward Newcastle. I crossed my fingers, hoping that McNulty would be there again.

  “Will he recognize you?” I said.

  “Who knows? It was a long time back. And I don't think he recognized me even then.”

  He smiled.

  “More likely he'll know you, son—his bright assistant from just a week ago.”

  We came to the city's heart. We got out by the monument, below the angel. Dad nodded a greeting to the stone soldiers and the names as we walked by.

  “Angels!” he hissed.

  “Angels?”

  “I saw no angels, Bobby. I saw nothing leaning down to help. All I saw was struggle and pain and young lives blighted. Bloody war's got nowt to do with angels!”

  The stillness and silence of a Sunday hung over everything. Quiet streets. Nothing open. Newspaper sellers stood at the street corners. On the front page of the People, matched photos of Kennedy and Khrushchev stared out with a fake tear in between. A WORLD TORN IN HALF, the headline said. A few buses, hardly any cars. Many pedestrians like us were heading down toward the quay. Our heels clacked and echoed on the pavements.

  “It's cold enough,” said Dad, and he shuddered, and pulled his overcoat close as an icy drizzle started.

  We followed the steep downward curve of Dean Street. High buildings of blackened stone loomed over us. There were archways and dark stone stairways cut into them: Dog Leap Stairs, Break Neck Stairs, the Black Gate, Amen Corner. Beyond them, St. Nicholas' bells began to ring.

  We turned the final curve. Clouds rested on the high arch of the bridge. Hidden seagulls squealed. Steam and smoke rose from the stalls. The river was swollen, oilylooking, seemed hardly to move.

  We paused at a joke stall and laughed at the fake boils and warts, the monkey masks, the nails that could appear to pierce fingers, the packets of fart powders, bottles of smells. We walked on and a Gypsy came to us and showed us a twist of paper in her cracked palm.

  “A cure for all ills,” she whispered.

  She opened the paper, showed the seeds and broken leaves inside.

  “Take it, sir,” she said. “It was picked by a Gypsy beneath a full moon.”

  I moved away, but Dad hesitated. She touched his hand.

  “It cures the blood, the breath, the skin, the eye, the brain,” she said. “It heals the heart.”

  She held him. “Name your illness, sir.”

  He shook his head. She placed the twist of paper in his hand.

  “Take it, sir.”

  He licked his lips, shrugged and passed a coin to her.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. She looked into my eye. “You will be lucky in love,” she said. “And that's for nothing.”

  She turned and went away.

  Dad put the mixture in his pocket. He looked down.

  “Always the same, eh?” he muttered. He tried to grin. “You can never get away from them, eh?”

  He lit a cigarette. We twisted our way between the stalls. We laughed at the ancient bearded man swigging cider, who carried the sandwich board:

  REPENT. THE DARKNESS IS BUT A BREATH AWAY.

  We saw no audience, we heard no voice demanding that we pay.

  “Mebbe he's moved on,” said Dad. “Mebbe he was only passing through.”

  Then we saw the plume of fire leaping upward beneath the bridge.

  “Or mebbe he's come back,” said Dad.

  The fire leapt again.

  “This way,” said Dad, and we walked toward the flame.

  “It's really him,” breathed Dad. “Who'd believe it, after all these years?”

  I teetered on tiptoes and tried to see through the crowd. Dad lifted me up. There he was, below the bridge, half naked and eyes blazing as before. He had a pair of burning torches. He ran them back and forward across his skin. He sipped from a bottle, breathed across a torch, and the fire leapt from his lips. The air was filled with the stench of fire and paraffin.

  He ran the flames across his skin again.

  “Who could dare to touch the fire?” he snarled. “Who could dare to eat the flames? Who could dare such madness?”

  He plunged a torch into his mouth and extinguished it. He plunged the other torch into his mouth and extinguished it. He opened his mouth and gasped smoke. He lit the torches again. He breathed fire again, a great high spreading flag of it.

  “Lethal,” whispered Dad.

  I looked at him.

  “There's many lost a lung, many lost a life from fireeating. Breathe in when you should be breathing out and…”

  McNulty glared. He roared. He held the torches at arm's length and turned his face to the sky. He ran the torches swiftly across himself.

  “In the greatest of the fire-eaters,” he said, “you cannot see where the fire ends and the man begins.”

  He plunged the torches into his mouth and drew them out again, still burning.

  He looked at us, more gentle.

  “Pay,” he said. “What would you pay for such a feast? What would you pay to let McNulty do these things? Pay! Get your money out and pay.”

  He swallowed the flames and put the torches out. He pushed his stick and sack at the crowd. Many dropped coins in, many backed away. Many sniggered and twisted their faces and shook their heads.

  “What's next?” he called. “The chains or the needles? More fire? Are we ready for more fire?”

  He saw me, perched there over Dad's shoulder. He narrowed his eyes, pondered, as if trying to remember me. He pushed his way toward us, demanding and gathering coins. He shoved the sack at us. Dad dropped a coin in. I slithered down from Dad's shoulder.

  “Hello, bonny,” said McNulty.

  “Hello,” I softly said. “There was an angel at your side,” he said. “I remember. All done up in red.”

  “Me mam. She's at home.”

  “That's good. Me mam wrapped up safe and warm at home,” he said. He looked at Dad, looked away. He hugged himself. “These is days of bitter cold. You noticed that, my bonny?”

  “Aye.”

  “You hear the whispers on the water?” he said. “You hear the thunder in the skies?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then it's mebbes nowt. Just McNulty and his great bamboozlement.”

  He leaned close to my ear. He cupped his hand about my shoulder. Dad held me too, and others gathered close, trying to listen to this meeting between the fireeater and the boy, but it was as if there were just the two of us lost together there on the quay.

  “Oh, bonny,” he whispered. “Just watch and listen and hear the slapping of the water and the tolling of the bell.”

  “It's just the river and the mist and a warning bell.”

  “Hear the thundering deep inside the clouds.”

  “It's just an airplane, Mr. McNulty.”

  He caught his breath, closed his eyes, tilted his head, peeped out again. He leaned close, as if I could listen to the noises in his head.

  “Hear the yelling and rampaging deep inside my skull.”

  “I hear nothing, Mr. McNulty.”

  “Is that true? There's nowt outside? Just peace and quiet? Mebbe it's so. Mebbe McNulty's just too much alone, my bonny boy, and he needs a lad like you to be beside him. Come and help us, bonny. Come and open that box for us again.”

  “McNulty,” said Dad.

  McNulty's eyes swiveled toward him.

  “Do you remember me?” said Dad.

  No answer.

  “We were in Burma, McNulty,” he said. “We came back on the boat together.”

  “I remember nowt,” said McNulty. “I remember that days is light and nights is dark and that the year turns round us like a wheel.” He jabbed his sack at Dad's chest. “Money out and pay.”

  Dad dropped a coin into the sack.

  “We were in Burma,” he said. “We were in the war, McNulty. When we went out, we were hardly more than lads. When we came back—”

  “I remember no
wt. There was days of fiery heat and now there's days of icy cold. I was young and now I'm old. I remember this boy was a help to me and there was an angel at his side and I hear the booming and the thundering in the skies. Help us again, bonny?”

  “I helped you,” said Dad. “Remember? You were on the stairs. They'd beaten you.”

  “Look at this one,” said McNulty.

  He ran his hand across the picture of a woman tattooed on his upper arm.

  THERESA was written under it. TRUE FOREVER.

  “Who's this?” he hissed. “I look at her and look at her and get no answer.” He rubbed the ink as if trying to rub it away. “Who's this? How did this get on us?” He touched the other tattoos. “And this one, and this one. Where did these come from?”

  He reached to me again. He cupped my face in his fingers. His body stank of kerosene and fire.

  “I'm like a little bairn. I remember nowt. I know that you were here with us before, and there was an angel all in red, but past that there's just darkness and silence and a great nowtness, going on forever.” He sniffed. “I smell fish and salt on you, bonny.”

  “The sea. We live beside it. Keely Bay.”

  “Lucky boy. Don't get on them boats, though.”

  “And you,” said Dad. “Where do you live, McNulty?”

  “On the ground.”

  “Where do you sleep?”

  “On the ground. In holes, in doorways and alleyways. In the dark where nobody passes. And I wander.”

  He kissed me quickly on the cheek.

  “The sea,” he said. “Mebbes one day I'll come wandering past your place. Keep your eyes peeled. Listen out for us.”

  He looked at our audience. He glared. They shrank away. They laughed. He jabbed his sack at them. He moved away from us. Dad caught at his elbow and he turned and looked into Dad's eyes and there was a yearning in him, as if he wanted to stay with us, talk with us, as if he wanted to stop being McNulty with his stick and sack and his instruments of torture. But he broke away. He hurried to his wheel. He lifted it to his knees. He lifted it into the sky and rested it on his skull and he stamped the earth as he bore its weight and teetered and searched for a place of balance. Soon the wheel thudded back down to the cobblestones and it shattered when it fell.

  “Poor soul,” said Dad.

  And McNulty was lost in himself again. He wept over the broken wheel. Then he opened his box. He took the skewer out. He shoved it through his cheeks. He grunted and hissed and his eyes were filled with fight and fire.