Shannon

  In 1922 not many people— certainly not in Ireland— warned of the health dangers of drink. Men drank too much and they died, end of story. Michael the Lion's intake, half a bottle of liquor a day, might not have seemed untypical among the 40 percent of the male population who drank. Being a sweet and gentle creature, and never too agitated, he stood in little danger from his consumption of alcohol. The greatest excitement in his life came from his wife's baking or from the occasional stimulation of a Yank asking to climb the branches of the family tree. He had never been struck a blow in his life. And he had never known great physical exertion, not even as a schoolboy when he had sauntered as others ran.

  When he looked into Mr. Vincent's eyes and listened to the soft words spoken with more menace than the hiss of a snake, Michael the Lion's heart seized.

  “Okay,” said Mr. Vincent to the man turned chalk-white and sweating and convulsing in the chair, “you're not much help.”

  And Michael the Lion died.

  Outside, Squirt couldn't be seen. Mr. Vincent looked into the pub, found him, tiptoed in, and overheard Squirt saying to the assembled drinkers, “He's following another Yank that came through. Plenty of dough. You should see the roll.”

  When he felt the spiky tap on the back of his head Squirt downed his drink. Outside, he pushed back the strong and angry words.

  “But you're up to something, aren'tcha?” he said, with an air of cunning.

  Squirt's senses had been slightly blunted by the two fast whiskeys, and therefore he didn't pick up on the warning signs. Indeed, he pressed on.

  “Lookit. If you're after some trick or something and there's money in it, I'm yer man.”

  Mr. Vincent said, “Squirt, lean your bicycle against the wall. Stand over here.”

  He motioned to the square yard of ground just in front of him. Squirt stood as bidden, and the big man caught Squirt's hair viciously with one hand and with the other drew a pointed fingernail down the length of Squirt's exceptionally long nose.

  “No talking about my business,” said Mr. Vincent. “To anybody. Ever.”

  At the last moment he increased the pressure, split the skin to blood, and then pinched the extremely sensitive tip of the nose at the point where the nostrils met. Squirt yelped with pain.

  Contrary to what he had said, Robert did not stop writing. A few sentences some mornings, a few pages other mornings; words continued to pour out of him, bringing fatigue by every nightfall. But a notable change had begun to take place in him, a steadiness in mood and a sharpness.

  Ellie observed it but took care not to comment.

  As a result, she had a new concern— that he might go too far and destabilize himself again. She fashioned a ploy; she planned a long day away from the house. It was time for a journey that Robert had already tried to make, to the Shannon's source.

  She called him at six in the morning and he rose immediately. The weather seemed to have settled beautifully. With much wisecracking from her, and uninterrupted normality from Robert, they prepared a picnic and set off. Ellie handled her car with immense skill, far superior to Maeve MacNulty's wild swinging across the roads.

  That day Robert found once more that his recent-memory faculties had improved. He recalled this road with the gunmetal lakes, the sulfur smell, the rain on his bare head, the bloodshot, bloodhound eyes of the morose, lonely priest. This time, however, the journey got him where he wanted to go.

  On the road to Swanlinbar they turned left and began to climb. On small lanes and tracks, between high hedges and then out into breathtaking open country, Ellie slowed down to five miles an hour so they could hear each other speak.

  “This road doesn't know it's a road,” she said. “I hope we don't break a spring. Or a vertebra.”

  “Will they improve it?” asked Robert.

  “They say they will. I doubt it. Their idea of improving anything is to look at it and talk about it and go away and have a drink. Anyway, a lot of people in Ireland think that motorcars are only a fad and we'll get over it.”

  Soon she had to stop. All pretext of a road surface had vanished, so she parked on the smoothest place she could find.

  “We have about a mile to walk,” she said. “And we'll take our food with us. There's people around here would steal a rash off your skin. These are the Cuilcagh Mountains.” She had pronounced it carefully: “Kwil. Ka.”

  He asked, “What does it mean?”

  “Look down at your feet.” He looked. “What color is the stone?”

  He bent and picked up a pebble. “It's like chalk.”

  “That's it,” she said. “It's the Irish word for chalk.”

  They trudged happily through moorland, which turned into meadow. High skies took clouds across the sun now and then, and the patches of sunlight warmed their shoulders. Cows looked at them but did not feel moved to rise from their pools of grass. The meadow grew poorer: Clumps of mauve sedges interspersed with thin swaths of hay coarse grasses, and a straggly hedge of thorn to which some white blossom still clung. Far ahead of them, at the eastern top corner of the moor, stood a grove. They trudged through the spiky grass.

  “Here we are,” Ellie said at last. “The Shannon Pot. The bottomless pool.” She stopped herself from adding, One of millions in Ireland.

  Within the grove lurked a stand of water, from which a clear stream flowed over a brown bed. Dense bushes crowded low to the water's edge. No life could be seen in the pool, it was too dark. Now and then a lazy bubble rose in the center, as though an underwater giant burped.

  Robert stood and looked. “It's wonderful,” he said.

  Ellie said nothing, allowing him to impose his own vision on this modest blotch of water, smaller than a village duck pond.

  “This is charming,” he said. “Since I was a boy I've dreamed of this.”

  “Well,” she said, and grinned, “I'll show you a boy's trick. Grab a fistful of grass.”

  They threw their fistfuls and some leaves into the pool, which swallowed them. Down, down, the green matter swirled out of sight, as though sucked beneath the surface of the water.

  “Come on,” she said, and led Robert away from the pool, past some limping old fir trees and blasts of thorny yellow furze, to where a wide stream poured out of a rocky slot in the side of a knoll. “Stand here and watch.”

  A few moments later the bright waters carried their leaves and grass out into the world again. They had been taken underground into the source of the Shannon and sent down a hidden cascade, to emerge on the side of the hill. Ellie led the way back to the pool, just in time to chase some inquisitive calves and birds off their food.

  At the time of Robert's visit to Ireland, many discussions boiled among Europe's intelligentsia as to the possibilities and limitations of friendship between men and women. Some opined it impossible to have a true friendship between a man and a woman because natural forces would prevail, pressed habitually from the man's side.

  Others deemed it entirely possible, calling it a purer form of human connection and one that ought to be diligently pursued. On the chalky mountainside by the Shannon's source that day, it could be argued that both schools of thought had a presence.

  In reverse. On the one hand, there sat a young woman, buxom and energetic, full of her own natural forces and appetites, compelled by and desiring the man opposite her. On the other hand, he, emerging slowly from a state of severe damage, had as yet no sexual personality— and in any case had originally elected a celibate life.

  They ate lunch. The day took on that Mediterranean warmth that is sometimes, almost freakishly, found in Ireland. Together, like a couple who have long known each other's movements and decisions, they cleared the remains of the meal and repacked the bags. This left the rug clear.

  Ellie stretched out. Robert remained sitting, gazing for a while at the low stony hills to the north, his face as open and calm as a flag of peace. Presently he lay down beside her, while she continued to lie on her back. He had not given a thought as
to what would happen when he met Nurse Kennedy; he had had no such capacity. Nor had he surveyed or judged the life he had been living with her for several weeks now. He had merely taken everything as it came to him, never consciously acting in any way that he thought might be expected of him; he had been as spontaneous as a child.

  Indeed, he wouldn't have been able to define, if asked, what he might have thought was expected of him— by her or by anybody else. His abiding feelings, once he had retrieved some faculties, had to do with recovery, and he had wrapped that set of demands inside his quest for the river of his name.

  She, however, lay there as on wires. What if he touched her— even by accident?

  And then he did touch her— on the side of her face, very carefully. Not only that, he kissed her. He bent down and kissed her cheek. He put no pressure into the kiss— it was the kiss of an amateur, a boy's first kiss, the lips together, the angle set awkwardly across her jaw. Then he kissed her again on the cheek, a little longer but not long at all. And then he lay down beside her and fell asleep.

  To the two kisses Ellie offered no response. She forced away the desire to engage with him and lay there, feeling the sensation of his mouth on her cheek. Her response was a far cry from the sudden turning around to meet him that she felt like doing, and the wild eating of his mouth.

  Aware that he could sleep for hours, she allowed him half an hour or so and then awakened him gently. For a moment he took in the clouds, the grove, the meadow, the cattle. Then he rose, gathered the rug and the bags with her, and began the happy walk back to the car.

  What had happened? That question clanged around in her head like a stone in a bucket and came to no rest. She looked across at him from time to time as they walked through the grass.

  This fine man might now return to the world in a different shape, a different calling from the one he had been following when he went away. If he did return to normal, and if he didn't find his vocation again, what then? How would he spend his life? Could I spend it with him? I will. By Jesus, I will.

  Nuns love archbishops, even one as unusual as Anthony Isidore Sevovicz. He rolled up to the convent in Portroe and was accommodated in the same room given Robert Shannon.

  By the time he rang their doorbell, Sevovicz was fidgeting with excitement. He had met the postman with the bottle-glass spectacles, still fixing his gate. Sevovicz had ground his motorbike to a halt on the roadside and the man had squinted at him.

  “Where is the River Shannon?” asked Sevovicz.

  “There,” said the man, pointing. “It flows through that lake.”

  “Where does it go from there?”

  “Down that way,” said the postman pointing south the way Sevovicz had come, “and up that way,” pointing north.

  Sevovicz hauled out his map. “What is the name of this lake?”

  “Derg. The Red Lake.” The postman took out his cigarettes and offered the packet to Sevovicz, who declined. But the postman lit one anyway and said, “D'you know how the lake got its red name?”

  “No,” said Sevovicz.

  “Well,” said the postman. “ ‘Tis a long story.”

  “I cannot wait to hear a long story,” said Sevovicz.

  “Oh,” said the postman. “I'll hurry up, so. A woman bled to death over there,” he said, pointing to the far bank. “She was a witch and they cut her throat and threw her into the lake. And when she was drowning she gurgled out the words that the lake'd be cursed and the water from her throat'd turn the lake red forever.”

  Sevovicz looked at Lough Derg and said, “It isn't very red now.”

  “It is sometimes,” said the postman. “You'd have to be here when ‘tis red to see it.”

  “I'm not very interested,” said Sevovicz.

  The postman said, “What are you interested in?”

  “I'm trying to find a young American priest who was walking the riverbank.”

  “Oh, yeh,” said the postman. “He borrowed my bicycle. I'll tell you where to find him; he's staying with the nuns over in the convent in Portroe.”

  “How far away is that?”

  “Ah, you'll be there in an hour or less,” said the postman.

  Archbishop Sevovicz waved goodbye to his unreliable witness and, heart in mouth, rode hard to Portroe. It felt right— Robert would stay in a convent— familiar ground. He was safe!

  In Portroe he discovered that Father Shannon had indeed come through and had indeed stayed.

  “Oh, several weeks ago, Your Grace,” said Sister Rosario, “and are you the same man who wrote that beautiful letter, Archbishop Sevvyvicks?”

  “Sev-oh-vitz.”

  As he climbed the stairs to his room, Sevovicz shook his head in sorrow. He washed, rested, and appeared for dinner to a circumstance in which he never felt easy— a roomful of eager nuns. His performance skills came to his aid; he regaled them with gossip. Popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, monsignors— he knew them all and he told story after story. Before the evening had ended he had begun— almost— to enjoy the convent. More precisely, he had begun to enjoy himself.

  The nuns gave him what little information they had about Robert— including a reproach. Father Shannon had disappeared too early in the morning to say the convent Mass. Sevovicz made a vague excuse for his young protégé— and then found himself unable to escape the same obligation.

  Next morning at breakfast after Mass, the nuns handed him on.

  “Oh, you will love Clonmacnoise, Your Grace. It's the cradle of the Irish Church. And,” said the nuns, “you have to meet Mr. and Mrs. Mullen. They live right there. We sent Father Shannon to their house.”

  Sevovicz gave expansive thanks, elaborate and gracious. They had, though, one more “gift”—they took him to see Sister Luke and the butter making.

  The chemistry failed. Sister Luke refused to emerge from the cubbyhole at the back of the dairy. She put her head out for a brief moment, said loudly to Sister Rosario, “I don't like the look of the man,” and closed the door. The Archbishop of Elk heard— and understood— every word she had said in her broad open accent, and he had to continue on his way unapprised of the miracles of Portroe butter.

  Ellie drove them slowly back down the chalky tracks to the “good road,” as she called it. “Everything here is run on comparatives,” she said. “A good road is a road that doesn't have mine shafts in it.” By now she had begun to feel a need to share with Robert everything she knew about herself. Aware that his back hadn't yet the strength for such weight, she contented herself with offering parts of her past.

  She showed him the house where her father was born— three generations of doctors. On the wall she pointed out where the builder had scratched the date 1715 and Ellie said, “Think of what this house has seen. My father used to say that nobody in Ireland had any need to learn Irish history. We all lived it, and we live it all the time.”

  She told him how her family had prospered. “Swanlinbar was a spa town, a mineral spring. People came here from as far away as London to take the waters. But the waters were horrible, and they all got ill. My grandfather and my great-grandfather were the only doctors in the place. They made a fortune.”

  She paused, thoughtful. “I often wonder if my great-grandfather came here because he knew the water was horrible.”

  She laughed, then paused, thoughtful again. “Now that I think of it, maybe he knew what the water was like and started the spa in the first place.”

  She drove to a long low house with a thatched roof just outside the town. “This is like a postcard,” she whispered.

  An old man, sitting outside his door, waved.

  “Dominic,” called Ellie, “I brought you a visitor.”

  They sat and chatted. Dominic never took off his hat; Ellie went into his house and made tea.

  When she came out she said, “Dominic, you shouldn't have the chickens in the bed. I'll have to get you a wife.”

  “If it's not going to be yourself,” he said, “you need't go to
the trouble.”

  In the car, Ellie had briefed Robert. As a young man Dominic told stories for a living, especially in the winter. He worked for a farmer down in Virginia, County Cavan, and when the work dried up he went walking. In his head he carried a store of old tales that he had heard in his own home— because long ago, he said, both grandfathers had told stories by the fireside with grandeur and style.

  The two grandfathers would visit at the same time on a Sunday afternoon, the one visiting his son, the other visiting his daughter. By six o'clock, thoroughly warmed in the veins, they would begin their alternating tales, surrounded by their adoring grandchildren, of which Dominic Brady was one. Each old man had sufficient respect for the other to keep the stories short, fifteen to twenty minutes or so.

  To this storehouse Dominic added a new collection, because he always invited the people of the house he was visiting to tell him a story. He gathered hundreds of their tales, and though many of them fused inside his brain, he kept the great ones sufficiently apart to be able to tell them again and again.

  “Do you know what Father Robert's surname is?” asked Ellie. “He's called Robert Shannon.”

  Dominic almost took off his hat.

  “You'll have to tell him the story of the Shannon,” she said.

  “I'll do anything for the woman I'm mad about,” said Dominic. And to Robert he added, “This woman saved my life, and she won't marry me. You could marry us here now, couldn't you, Father?” And he winked.

  “Come on now, Dominic,” Ellie said. “You've a good audience here.”

  She sat in her chair and arranged herself as though about to listen long and enjoyably. Robert took his cue from her and made sure he could see Dominic's face. Dominic rubbed his hands, cleared his throat, took a few seconds of silence, and began his tale.

  “When you live by a river you're always watching it. You watch it flowing, you wonder if it flowed as fast or as slow yesterday or last year. And you throw a stick into it, to see where the river takes it. There goes that stick, you say to yourself, bobbing and dancing and thrashing down the stream like myself traveling across my own life. You're hypnotized, mesmerized by looking at the current.