The Last Storyteller

  They took the bride to the pirate ship, and they sailed away with her. Her husband languished ashore. Oh, yes, he went to the authorities, but they told him that they could do nothing, and that unless he were to charter a shipload of even more bloodthirsty pirates, there was no chance that they could see of him ever getting back his bride.

  A few days later, a messenger came to the bridegroom’s door. He gave the weak fellow a package. It contained the left ear of his bride, with a note from Wong Kiu: “You need not mourn. Now she is not so beautiful anymore. She will be my servant for the rest of her life.”

  Again the authorities said they couldn’t help. And again the bridegroom, who could well have afforded it, did nothing—he didn’t charter a ship and muster his own pirate gang. And his bride, the prettiest girl on the coast of the South China Sea, was never again seen in the port of Macao.

  Or was she? The bridegroom grew old and sad, as weak and indecisive men do. As his energies declined, so did his industries. He took to sitting on the street corner, hoping to see his bride one day, hoping that she would come back to find him.

  Did she? He said she did; he said that she had begun to haunt him, that every night she came to him in dreams, that she stood across the street from him and called to him, but that he could never hear what she was saying. And so he sits where you saw him, sad and despondent, and I expect that you will now go and look at him again, now that you know his story.

  71

  Throughout his telling, John Jacob tended his baking. He refurbished the fire, and heaped its new embers on the lid of the bastible pot. More than once he took his great watch from his vest pocket and checked the time.

  Again my eyes devoured him. He had indeed lost no height on account of age; my first impression had remained accurate. And the quality of his clothes: certainly he dressed like an Irish countryman, as did my father, in tweeds and brogues, but not even Harry MacCarthy, who believed, he said, “in put-put-putting money on my back,” had as good a tailor. Or taste; this man dressed like an aristocrat.

  That day, he wore a three-piece suit of brown herringbone tweed, a silver watch chain, a shirt of soft gray wool, and a cream tie with brown pheasants. In his breast pocket he wore a great gray handkerchief with white polka dots. And, over thick-knit gray socks, brown brogue shoes with enough strength to march him to Antarctica.

  “The funny thing is,” he said, as he sat down one last time, “I have a story that was told to me in North Clare, up near Ballyvaughan, that has all the echoes of that story. About a woman who was kidnapped the week after her own wedding and taken out to sea, where she lived on a fishing boat for the rest of her life. Never came ashore. Never wanted to come ashore. And when she was an old woman and they brought her to the hospital in Galway, and the nurses got to talking to her and one nurse began to realize who the woman was, she asked her about having been kidnapped and why she didn’t ever want to come ashore, and the woman said that she’d always been waiting for her bridegroom to come and get her.

  “And you find that kind of motif in stories all over the world. Although the other one is the more common—the girl being married against her will, and her true love gallops into the church or the castle and whips her up onto his saddle and they ride away, happy ever after. I have dozens of those stories. And I was in a village in Sweden one year where they assured me that the very same thing had happened there the year before.”

  72

  Those bushy white eyebrows—he looked like a cartoon professor.

  “Mr. O’Neill, why did you select that tale now? Out of all the stories you could have told me?”

  “Didn’t James teach you? ‘Never ask the poet, always ask the poem. Never ask the painter, always ask the picture. Never ask the storyteller, always ask the story.’ ” He rose from his chair. “I think our staff of life is ready.”

  He took the bread from the oven, stuck a knife in it, peered at the blade, and smiled. Then he turned to me and said, “The Macao story didn’t end there.”

  I had put away my notebook; I retrieved it.

  “Was there a ghost?” I asked.

  “I’m glad you believe in them.” He shook his head. “I can’t say. Tell me what you think.” He smiled at the puzzled look on my face and completed his story:

  I thanked her for her tale and rose to take my leave. There was a red sun going down into the water. She said to me, “Will you?” I looked as though I didn’t know what she was talking about, and I said, “Will I what?” She said, “Will you now go and look at the sad man?” and I said that I didn’t see how my curiosity could be stopped. She held up a hand to halt me, she leaned forward into the fullness of the light, and she pushed her hair to one side to show where she had lost an ear.

  We ate the bread, with butter and honey melting on it. I complimented him—and tried to drag him back to the Macao story and his reason for telling me.

  “James didn’t tell me,” he said, “about your tenacity.”

  “You find me tenacious, Mr. O’Neill?”

  “I think you should now begin calling me ‘John Jacob,’ ” he said. “After all, we’re not going to fall out.”

  I wanted to say “Thank you” but couldn’t find the words. So I ate some more bread.

  “This is delicious.”

  “Good,” he said.

  We cleared the dishes from the long table in the kitchen. In the renovation of the house he had kept the more aggressively modern sights away from the traditional. The sink, the electric stove, and all other such conveniences lived in a scullery, what he called “the back kitchen.” Together we washed and dried cups and plates and knives with butter and honey on them, and I felt so comfortable beside him.

  “Macao,” I said, thinking aloud. “And you speak Chinese. And I don’t.”

  “But you know a special language,” he said.

  “English. Like everyone. And I still have a lot of my Irish.”

  “No,” he said. “Always look to the words. And the great language that you know is seanchas.” He pronounced it twice; the second time he dragged it out: shan-a-kuss. “It means ‘knowledge of the old ways.’ That’s a language unto itself.”

  “Hence, naturally,” I offered. “Seanchai—shan-a-key. One who knows the old ways.”

  He laughed. “Others give it different nuances.”

  73

  Controls fail. Even my delay mechanism crashes. And then I drink. Hard. Unless I can grab myself in time. I came away from his house with two reactions: annoyance and fear. The old sorcerer—he had bamboozled me again. How did he know the life I was living?

  When good advice makes you afraid, you’re in trouble. James’s mantra came hurtling back: Stories are where you go to look for the truth of your own life.

  The tale of Macao had splayed me. John Jacob O’Neill had just told me a story about a weak man who wouldn’t or couldn’t reclaim the woman he loved. I needed help. But from whom? Following a blind instinct, I drove to Dublin and knocked on a door.

  “Have you been expecting me?”

  She said, “No,” but the word had some room in it.

  “Meaning?”

  “You didn’t ask me if I’m surprised,” she said.

  “All right. Are you surprised?”

  She laughed. “That’s better. And the answer is ‘Not at all.’ Does that surprise you?”

  “So you were expecting me?”

  “Oh, stop fencing and come in,” she said.

  Jimmy had said that she lived alone. And I had seen her forthrightness. She could afford to be direct; Jimmy had said that she had been left comfortably off by her parents. She had stayed so well in my mind that it made emotional sense to meet her again.

  “You haven’t asked me,” she said, as she led me to her kitchen, “whether I’m pleased to see you.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Tea or a drink?”

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  “Is that what your problem is?” she said. “Tha
t you can’t ask for what you want?”

  I didn’t answer, just stood there, large as a lump in her kitchen. She filled a kettle, plugged it into a hefty black outlet, and threw a switch big enough to inaugurate a dam. And then I said, “Everything in me is blocked. I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  “Give me your coat.” Does nothing faze her? “My God! The weight of this thing,” she exclaimed, and she hung it on the newel post of the staircase. The coat’s folds sank to the floor like a tired widow.

  “Now.” She stood with her back to the stove, waiting for the kettle. “Let’s clear this up. Do you understand the difference between not expecting you and not being surprised?”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it. What puzzles me is that you aren’t pressing me on the point.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Try something,” she said. “Anything. We’re neither of us fools.”

  “All right. So why aren’t you surprised?”

  “That’s better,” she said. “I thought you had some guts in you.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  “It’s what people say about you.”

  “Now I’m the one who’s surprised.”

  “The only one,” she said. “Remember I said I wasn’t surprised.”

  We both laughed; I could hear the ice breaking and the floes drifting away. She held her arms out wide, as a sign of peace. “Relax, Ben MacCarthy.”

  “Is that an order or a project?” I said.

  “Dora Fay is an old family friend,” she said. “Now will you relax?”

  I gaped at her. “What?!”

  The kettle began to sing its little song; she let it grow shrill. With her back to me she prepared everything, then sat at the table.

  “By the way, where did you pick up that worm Bermingham?”

  “Dora Fay baked this cake,” I said.

  Marian Killeen nodded. “I can’t bake. Simply unable to. I can cook, though.”

  “I met him in a pub in Urlingford. He had been following me, looking for me. And we got dragged into a strange kind of fiasco.” I told her the story, including the legend of Malachi MacCool.

  “Dora says that you’re a man to whom things happen,” Marian Killeen said. “And not all of them good.”

  “A long time ago, Miss Fay kind of saved me,” I said.

  “I know. And she wants me to do it now.”

  “Dear God!”

  “All right,” she said. “Full confession. I was intrigued by you when I met you with Bermingham. I had already seen you.”

  “Where?”

  “Beside Dora. At James’s funeral. And at the party that night.”

  “How come,” I said, edging toward being irked, “I didn’t see you?”

  “You don’t notice women,” she said. “That’s what Dora says.” To stop my protest she put a hand on the back of mine, an electric touch. “It’s all right. I know why. I know a great deal about you. In fact, Dora admits that she kept you and me from meeting all these years.”

  “I didn’t know a word of this.”

  “Of course you don’t. Women have so little influence in the world that they have to invent secret powers. And you’re a man around whom that kind of thing happens.”

  “Am I?”

  “I believe in things getting paid back,” said Marian Killeen. “I believe that if you trust it, that life will give you what you want, provided it’s healthy and good and does the opposite of harm.”

  “Whew! That’s some faith.”

  “Now.” She leaned forward, her eyes flowing into mine. “Can you do this? Can you figure out why you’re here? And can you also determine what it is you’ll take from me? What it is I can give you and what you can give me?” She had the clear punctuation and emphasis of the very assured. “While you’re thinking about it, let me tell you about the belief that life will give you what you want.”

  I said, “Hold on, hold on. Go back to Miss Fay. Not wanting us to meet and now wanting us to meet.”

  “Don’t interfere with my stride when I hit it.”

  I leaned back to listen. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  I should feel bewildered, but I have no right to be. After all, I’m the one who came here. Just listen now, see what she has to say. For once in your life, flow with the stream.

  “You have to know what you want. The Chinese have a proverb: ‘There are two things in life that are difficult—knowing what you want and getting it. And of these, the former is the more difficult.’ Ever hear that? No? Well, you have now.” She had a good, strong grin that puckered her nose.

  I have heard it, but I don’t want to complicate things. Is this going too fast for me?

  She held her hands out flat on the table and drew a deep breath.

  “For reasons that will become plain to you”—she glanced up at the clock—“in half an hour or so, you’ll know that I’m going to keep no secrets from you. I’ll answer any question you ask me. If I can.”

  “I don’t know what to ask,” I said.

  “Very well. I’m in charge.” She settled into her command. “My beliefs first. Payback and how it happens. And how to get what you want. I have a good life, as you can tell. I’m more or less my own boss, I love my work, and I have this house and enough money for the rest of my life. My first twenty-eight years, though, were rotten. My father and my mother fought all the time and they used me as a go-between and a punching bag. How I survived I don’t know. You’re looking at a miracle.”

  I said, indicating the house and its comforts, “So this is your payback?”

  “They died,” she said. “In a car crash. Both drinking. My guess is that they had a fight and that she wrenched the wheel. I saw her do it many times. Terrifying.”

  “Did they die at the same time?”

  “Instantly,” she said. “Ask me what I felt.”

  “What did you feel?”

  “Relief.”

  She wore no rings but had perfect fingernails, painted a strong pink. Her eye contact never wavered: straight into mine, almost defying me to look away. Now and again her gaze flickered down toward my mouth.

  “Did that make you feel guilty?”

  “Not many men would ask that question,” she said. “Dora Fay said you were smart.” I raised a querying eyebrow, and she continued: “Dora says that she kept you from me for years because she thought I would get hurt.”

  I sat up. “Why did she think that?”

  “Calm down, Ben MacCarthy, no need to get het up. She meant that I might want to get involved with you, but that you never had any intention of looking at any woman other than the wife you lost.”

  “She told you that?”

  Marian Killeen nodded. “Loud and clear.”

  “But if that’s the case—”

  She finished the question for me, as she often would. “If that’s the case, why does she want us to be in contact now?” And she paused, her gray eyes searching me.

  “Exactly. Why now?”

  “I can only repeat her words. She wants me to ‘take you in hand’—that’s the phrase she used.”

  “Take me in hand?”

  She nodded. “Yep.”

  “Did you ask her what she meant by that?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “What did she say?”

  Marian Killeen sat back and measured me with her eyes. For a moment or two she said nothing, and then she nodded her head slowly.

  “She said that was up to me. And she said that I’d know what to do. And she was right.”

  74

  When I awoke, I knew at once where I was. The day had long ended. In the window I could see a streetlamp’s yellow glow. Light danced on the ceiling from a fire, lit while I was asleep. She saw me raise my head.

  “What time is it?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  “I mean, how long did
I sleep?”

  She said, “Five hours. Give or take a few minutes.”

  “Jesus.”

  “You slept like the dead. I watched you.”

  “Have you been here all the time?”

  “Apart,” she said, “from tending the fire.”

  She added, “We have to have rules.” I said,

  “Fine by me.”

  “There’s only one rule,” she said. “Nothing but kindness.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said.

  We rose and went downstairs, each proclaiming ravenous hunger. She cooked omelettes with bacon and cheese and made mugs of strong tea. I found my courage and told her the Macao story.

  “Am I that sad and dreary man? That’s what I ask myself.”

  A silence fell; Marian broke it.

  “Ask it.”

  “What?”

  “Ask the question you’re wanting to ask. Which is, why did you come here?”

  Conceding with my palms turned up, I said, “Very well. Why?”

  “You should be able to answer your own question.”

  I took my time. Then I said, “I think I know.”

  She looked at me, her gaze level and intelligent, and still with the blush of the bedroom on her cheeks.

  “Go on.”

  I said, “But it’s corny.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Is there something in there about making—” I paused. “Don’t know how to put this.”

  “Try. I won’t laugh.”

  So I said, “Is it—was it—is it—” I stopped, half-laughing.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” she said, reaching across and taking my hand.

  “Is it about making me a man?”

  “No. You have two children. It’s about reminding you.”

  “Of what?”

  Now she took her time. “I know your story,” she said. “I know it in detail from Dora. She has talked to me about you so often. She says you’re impossible to care for. That you won’t allow it. And that you’ve forgotten what care feels like on the receiving end.”

  I said, “I certainly recognize the word as she uses it.”