Brida: A Novel

  She could not have said how much time had passed before she found herself back with that luminous being inside the circle she herself had drawn. She had known love before, but until that night love had also meant fear. That fear, however slight, was always a veil; you could see almost everything through it, but not the colors. And at that moment, with her Soul Mate there before her, she understood that love was a feeling completely bound up with color, like thousands of rainbows superimposed one on top of the other.

  "How much I missed simply because I was afraid of missing it," she thought, gazing at those rainbows.

  She was lying down, and the luminous being was on top of her, with a point of light above his left shoulder and filaments of light pouring forth from his head and his navel.

  "I wanted to speak to you, but I couldn't," she said.

  "That was because of the wine," he replied.

  The pub, the wine, and the feeling of irritation were now but a distant memory to Brida.

  "Thank you for the visions."

  "They weren't visions," said the luminous being. "What you saw was the wisdom of the Earth and of a distant planet."

  Brida didn't want to talk about that. She didn't want any lessons. She wanted only what she had experienced.

  "Am I full of light, too?"

  "Yes, just as I am. The same color, the same light, and the same beams of energy."

  The color was golden now, and the waves of energy emerging from navel and head were a brilliant pale blue.

  "I feel that we were lost and now are saved," said Brida.

  "I'm tired. We should go back. I had a lot to drink, too."

  Brida knew that somewhere there existed a world of pubs, wheat fields, and bus stations, but she didn't want to go back there; all she wanted was to stay in that field forever. She heard a distant voice making invocations while the light around her gradually faded, then vanished completely. An enormous moon lit up the sky, illuminating the countryside. They were naked and in each other's arms. And they felt neither cold nor shame.

  The Magus asked Brida to close the ritual, since she had begun it. Brida pronounced the words she knew, and he helped where necessary. When the last formula had been spoken, he opened the magic circle. They got dressed and sat down on the ground.

  "Let's leave this place," said Brida after a while. The Magus got up, and she followed. She didn't know what to say; she felt awkward, and so did he. They had confessed their love to each other, and now, like any other couple in those circumstances, they were embarrassed to look each other in the eye.

  Then the Magus broke the silence.

  "You must go back to Dublin. I know the number of a taxi firm."

  Brida didn't know whether to feel disappointed or relieved. The feeling of joy was giving way to nausea and a throbbing head. She was sure that she would make very bad company.

  "Fine," she said.

  They turned and walked back to the village. He phoned for a taxi from a telephone booth. Then they sat on the curb, waiting for the cab to arrive.

  "I want to thank you for tonight," she said.

  He said nothing.

  "I don't know if the Equinox festival is just for witches, but it will be a very important day for me."

  "A party is a party."

  "Then I would like to invite you."

  He made a gesture as if wanting to change the subject. He must have been thinking the same thing she was: how hard it was to leave your Soul Mate once you'd found them. She imagined him going home alone, wondering when she would come back. She would come back, because her heart was telling her to, but the solitude of forests is harder to bear than the solitude of towns.

  "I don't know if love appears suddenly," Brida went on, "but I know that I'm open to love, ready for love."

  The taxi came. Brida looked again at the Magus and felt that he had grown many years younger.

  "I'm ready for love, too," he said.

  The sunlight poured into the spacious kitchen through the sparkling clean windows.

  "Did you sleep well, love?"

  Her mother put a mug of tea down on the table, along with some toast. Then she went back to the cooker, where she was frying eggs and bacon.

  "Yes, I did, thanks. By the way, is my dress ready? I need it for the party the day after tomorrow."

  Her mother brought her the eggs and bacon and sat down. She knew that something odd was going on with her daughter, but she could do nothing about it. She would like to talk to her today as she never had before, but she would achieve little if she did. There was a new world out there, a world she didn't know.

  She was afraid for her daughter because she loved her and because Brida was alone in that new world.

  "My dress will be ready, won't it, Mum?"

  "Yes, by lunchtime," her mother replied. And that made her happy. At least some things in the world hadn't changed. There were certain problems that mothers continued to solve for their daughters.

  She hesitated, then asked:

  "How's Lorens?"

  "Fine. He's coming to pick me up tomorrow evening."

  She felt simultaneously relieved and sad. Problems of the heart always bruised the soul, and she thanked God that her daughter had no such problems. On the other hand, that was perhaps the one area on which she could advise her, love having changed little over the centuries.

  They set off for a walk around the little village where Brida had spent her childhood. The houses had remained unchanged, and people were still doing the same things they always had. Her daughter met a few old school friends, who now worked either at the village's one bank or at the stationer's. They said hello and stopped to chat. Some said how Brida had grown, others how pretty she looked. Around ten o'clock they dropped in at the cafe her mother used to go to on Saturdays, before she met her husband, in the days when she was still hoping to meet someone and be swept up in some whirlwind romance that would put a stop to the endless identical days.

  She looked at her daughter again as she told her the latest news about the various people in the village. Brida was still interested, and this pleased her.

  "I really do have to have the dress today," Brida said. She seemed worried, but that couldn't be the reason. She knew that her mother would never let her down.

  Her mother decided to take a risk and ask the kind of question children always hate, because they're independent, free, and capable of solving their own problems.

  "Is anything worrying you?"

  "Have you ever been in love with two men at once, Mum?" There was a defiant note in her voice, as if life had set its traps only for her.

  Her mother took a bite of her cake. A distant look came into her eyes, as she went off in search of a time that was almost lost.

  "Yes, I have."

  Brida stared at her in amazement.

  Her mother smiled and invited her to continue their walk.

  "Your father was my first and greatest love," she said, once they'd left the cafe. "And I'm still very happy with him. When I was younger than you are now, I had everything I could have dreamed of. At the time, my friends and I believed that love was the only reason for living. If you failed to find someone, then you could never claim to have realized your dreams."

  "Stick to the point, Mum." Brida was impatient.

  "I had other dreams, too, though. I dreamed, for example, of doing what you did, going off to the big city and discovering the world that lay beyond my village. The only way I could get my parents to accept my decision was by telling them that I needed to follow some course of study that wasn't available locally.

  "The sleepless nights I spent, thinking about how to broach the subject with them. I planned exactly what I was going to say and what they would say in reply and how I would answer."

  Her mother had never spoken to her like this before. Brida felt a mixture of affection and regret. They could have enjoyed other such moments, but they were both too caught up in their own worlds and their own values.

 
"Two days before I was going to talk to my parents, I met your father. I looked into his eyes and saw a special light there, as if I'd met the person I most wanted to meet in the world."

  "Yes, I've had the same experience."

  "After I met your father, I realized, too, that my search was over. I didn't need any other explanation of the world. I didn't feel frustrated to be living here, always seeing the same people and doing the same things. Every day was different, because of the great love between us.

  "We started going out together and then we got married. I never talked to him about my dreams of going to live in a big city, of discovering other places and other people. Because suddenly, the whole world fitted into my village. Love became my explanation for life."

  "You mentioned someone else, Mum."

  "Let me show you something," her mother said in reply.

  They walked to the bottom of the steps that led up to the Catholic church in the village, and which had been destroyed and then rebuilt over the centuries. Brida used to go to mass there every Sunday, and she remembered that, as a child, climbing those steps had been really hard. At the beginning of each stretch of balustrade was the carving of a saint--St. Paul to the left and St. James to the right--rather worn by time and by tourists. The ground was covered in dry leaves, as if autumn were about to arrive, not spring.

  The church was at the top of the hill, and it was impossible to see it from where they were because of the trees. Her mother sat down on the first step and invited Brida to do the same.

  "This is where it happened," she said. "One afternoon, for some reason or other, I decided to come here to pray. I needed to be alone, to think about my life, and I thought the church would be a good place to do so.

  "When I got here, however, I met a man. He was sitting where you are now, with two suitcases beside him, and he looked totally lost, desperately leafing through the book he was holding. I thought he must be a tourist in search of a hotel and so I went over to him. I even started talking to him. He seemed a bit startled at first, but then he relaxed.

  "He said that he wasn't lost. He was an archaeologist and had been driving north--where some ruins had been found--when the engine packed up. A mechanic would arrive soon, and so he'd decided to visit the church while he waited. He asked me about the village and the other villages nearby, about historic monuments.

  "Suddenly, all the problems I'd been grappling with disappeared as if by magic. I felt really useful and started telling him everything I knew, feeling that the many years I'd spent in the region at last had some meaning. Before me was a man who had studied peoples and societies, who might hold in his memory, for the benefit of future generations, everything I'd heard or discovered when I was a child. That man sitting on the steps made me understand that I was important to the world and to the history of my country. I felt necessary, and that's the best feeling a human being can have.

  "When I'd finished telling him about the church, we went on to talk about other things. I told him how proud I was of my village, and he responded with some words by a writer whose name I don't recall now, something about how understanding your own village helps you understand the world."

  "Tolstoy," said Brida.

  But her mother was still traveling in time, just as she herself had done one day, except that her mother didn't require cathedrals adrift in space, subterranean libraries, or dusty books; she needed only the memory of that spring afternoon and a man sitting on the steps with his suitcases.

  "We talked for quite a while. I had the whole afternoon free to spend with him, but since the mechanic might arrive at any moment, I decided to make the most of every second. I asked him about his world, about excavations, about the challenges of spending his life looking for the past in the present. He spoke to me of the warriors, wise men, and pirates who had once inhabited our country.

  "Before I knew it, the sun was low on the horizon, and never, in all my life, had time passed so quickly. I sensed that he felt the same. He kept asking me questions to keep the conversation going, not giving me time to say that I had to leave. He talked nonstop, telling me all about his experiences, and he wanted to know everything about me, too. I could see in his eyes that he desired me, even though, at the time, I was nearly twice the age you are now.

  "It was spring, there was a lovely smell of new things in the air, and I felt young again. There's a flower that only blooms in the autumn; well, that afternoon, I felt like that flower. As if, suddenly, in the autumn of my life, when I thought I'd experienced everything I could experience, that man had appeared on the steps purely to show me that feelings--love, for example--do not grow old along with the body. Feelings form part of a world I don't know, but it's a world where there's no time, no space, no frontiers."

  She remained silent for a while. Her eyes were still far off, fixed on that distant spring.

  "There was I, like a thirty-eight-year-old adolescent, feeling that someone desired me. He didn't want me to leave. Then all of a sudden, he stopped talking. He looked deep into my eyes and smiled. It was as if he'd understood with his heart what I was thinking, and wanted to tell me that it was true, that I was very important to him. For some time, we said nothing, and then we said good-bye. The mechanic had still not arrived.

  "For many days, I wondered if that man really had existed, or if he was an angel sent by God to teach me the secret lessons of life. In the end, I decided that he had been a real man, a man who had loved me, even if only for an afternoon, and during that afternoon, he'd given me everything he had kept to himself throughout his whole life: his struggles, his joys, his difficulties, and his dreams. That afternoon I gave myself wholly as well--I was his companion, his wife, his audience, his lover. In a matter of only a few hours, I experienced the love of a lifetime."

  Mother looked at daughter. She hoped her daughter had understood, but deep down, she felt that Brida lived in a world in which that kind of love had no place.

  "I've never stopped loving your father, not for a single day," she concluded. "He's always been by my side, doing his best, and I want to be with him until the end. But the heart's a mysterious thing, and I still don't really understand what happened that afternoon. What I do know is that meeting that man left me feeling more confident, and showed me I was still capable of loving and being loved, and it taught me something else that I'll never forget: finding one important thing in your life doesn't mean you have to give up all the other important things.

  "I still think of him sometimes. I'd like to know where he is, if he found what he was looking for that afternoon, if he's still alive, or if God took his soul. I know he'll never come back, which is why I could love him with such strength and such certainty, because I would never lose him; he had given himself to me entirely that afternoon."

  Her mother got up.

  "I'd better go home and finish making your dress," she said.

  "I think I'll stay here for a while," Brida replied.

  She went over to her daughter and kissed her fondly.

  "Thank you for listening to me. It's the first time I've ever told anyone that story. I was always afraid I might die without having done so, and that it would be wiped forever from the face of the Earth. Now you will keep it for me."

  Brida went up the steps and stood outside the church. This small, round building was the pride of the region. It was one of the first places of Christian worship in Ireland, and every year, scholars and tourists came to visit it. Nothing remained of the original fifth-century structure, apart from some fragments of floor; each destruction, however, had left some part intact, and so a visitor could trace the history of the various architectural styles that made up the church.

  Inside, an organ was playing, and Brida stood outside for a while, listening to the music. Everything was so clearly laid out in that church; the universe was exactly where it should be, and anyone coming in through its doors had no need to worry about anything. There were no mysterious forces far above, no Dark Nights that called
on one to believe without understanding. There was no more talk of burning people at the stake, and the religions of the world lived together as if they were allies, binding man once more to God. Her island was still an exception to that peaceful coexistence--in the North, people still killed one another in the name of religion, but that would eventually end. God had almost been explained away: He was our generous Father, and we were all saved.

  "I'm a witch," she said to herself, struggling against a growing impulse to enter the church. Hers was now a different Tradition, and even if it was the same God, if she walked through those doors she would be profaning the place, and would, in turn, be profaned.

  She lit a cigarette and stared across at the horizon, trying not to think about these things. She thought, instead, of her mother. She felt like running back home, flinging her arms about her neck, and telling her that in two days' time she was going to be initiated into the Great Mysteries of witchcraft, that she had made journeys in time, that she had experienced the power of sex, that she could guess what was in a shop window using only the techniques of the Tradition of the Moon. She needed love and understanding, because she, too, knew stories she could tell no one.

  The organ stopped playing, and Brida once again heard the voices of the village, the singing of the birds, the wind stirring the branches and announcing the coming of spring. At the back of the church, a door opened and closed. Someone had left. For a moment, she saw herself on a Sunday in her childhood, standing where she was now, feeling irritated because the mass was so long and Sunday was the only day when she was free to explore the fields.

  "I must go in." Perhaps her mother would understand what she was feeling, but at that moment, she was far away. There before her was an empty church. She had never asked Wicca precisely what Christianity's role had been in everything that happened. She had a sense that if she walked through that door, she would be betraying all her sisters who had been burned at the stake.