On Canaan's Side

  ‘All right?’ he said, rising like a bear. ‘Can’t tell you, Lilly, how sorry I am, how sorry we all are.’

  ‘Thanks, Detective,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  *

  So I eked out the dollars, and my baby grew inside me. How is it that we do not feel less lonely for the presence of our children? I think I thought that the little life gathering force and purpose inside me would assuage all my troubles. But it was fearsome lonely in the old bed, when there was no Joe with his long limbs stretched out, the feet hanging over the end of the bed, the cigarette in his mouth, gassing away about everything and nothing. And it was quiet, so quiet, all that summer, in the house, the cheap clock on the mantel timidly ticking and chiming, almost embarrassed to be breaking the convent-like silence. Every morning without mercy I threw up into the toilet-bowl, I retched so hard I thought my baby would pop out my mouth.

  I risked a letter to Annie, though I hated the thought I might stir the dark man again. But I had to think, it was so many years later now, decades later, surely those old orders must be falling away. Surely even assassins grew older, indifferent to vanished causes. I prayed so. I wrote to Annie at the last address I had for her, telling her my story, more or less, and a couple of weeks later picked up her reply from the post office, still not daring to supply an actual street address. She told me that things were not going well for her, she had had to throw in her lot with our cousin Sarah Cullen in the townland of Kelsha, little farm, bed, and all. She also for good measure filled me in further on my father, telling me his pension after independence had gone mysteriously awry, and he had been obliged to throw himself on the mercy of the new state. Now she described his grave for what it was, a pauper’s one. Maybe her own increasing poverty, and single state, had worn her down, and she had reached the hard nubs of certain truths. Maud, she said, much to my alarm, though married to her painter and with two sons, had lost a little girl to scarlet fever, and having buried her in the angel’s acre in Glasnevin, where all the little ones of Dublin were put, had taken to her bed, and had not risen out of it for some years. Annie did not believe there was much wrong with her, except her head was not strong enough to endure her loss. This was all terrifying enough, and yet I pored over the letter even so with a strange gratitude, eager for details, no matter of what nature. I longed, longed to be home, out of this American chaos, and back in an Irish chaos I understood better, and would not be so alone in. And yet I sensed in my sisters a huge loneliness, each in her own way. I could imagine from all she said that Annie had no money at all, and yet she included in her letter a folded red ten-bob note. The bank on the corner gave me four dollars for it. I was so grateful to her for it, and wrote to thank her. That letter received no answer that I knew of.

  I was about five months along now and thought I was doing quite well. I could just manage the rent on the house, and to feed myself. I went to the big Italian market once a week, and the wonderful ladies there filled my bag with spuds and carrots and the like. There was a butcher down there, Mr Donelli, who was a great expert on the cheap cuts of meat, because his customers didn’t buy much else. I had all of Cassie’s teaching to make me adept at cheering up these items with a bit of clever cooking. I was cooking for my child, I thought. I was setting out my meals, and had the magical sense that there, right in the heart of me, my little one was joining me in the repast. I used to chuckle to myself, thinking about it, I hardly know why. I was one of those daft women who talk to their bellies. When the baby moved the first time, as I was lying half-asleep on the bed, my eyes opened wide, and I could feel a sort of bright light as decent as the sun burning softly through me, through my breasts and my loins, a sort of wild happiness in the guise of light. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was as if some person inside me was signalling to me. I am here. Maybe in truth I didn’t feel any the less lonely, but I certainly felt fiercer. If any demon, devil or evil person had come near us, I might have torn out their throats.

  So I was classing this as doing quite well.

  Then I got a letter. The postman brought it, right to the door. It was in a scrawly black writing I knew. Out of the blue, the untrustworthy blue.

  I had to fish into my box of things just now to find it:

  Dear Lilly,

  I am writing this to you without return address. I want you to know the rumors that Mike Scopello told you about and threatened to tell the cops are not right. I know for a sure cert if I stood before a judge and jury they would find me innocent. Anyway Lilly the reason why I went is not the rumors. I cannot even write it down here. Now I am writing this and my next thought is how much that I love you. Nothing is bigger than that. The thought that comes next is of what is in you. Our baby. I will send you money every month as long as I know where you are and can send it without seeming to send it from anywhere. I pray God who understands everything will forgive me.

  Joe.

  Then he wrote in Xs and Os like a child and then he crossed them out.

  I got in touch with Mike Scopello. He hadn’t come near me in my present predicament. He too had thought Joe was dead, killed in the explosions. Now it looked like Joe had only used that as a cover. Mike said, yes, he had threatened Joe that he would bring his suspicions to the police. They already had the licence plates business on record, the mysterious presence of Joe’s auto at two of the murder sites. He said Joe was very worried, very black and angry about it. He swore blind he had had nothing to do with the murders. It was all coincidence, he said, about the damn automobile. He seemed really shocked, said Mike, which had thrown Mike a bit.

  The thing was, Joe was telling the truth.

  Just about the same time as the letter came, just a few days later in fact, it so happened the actual murderer was discovered, and he confessed all. It was some mad Swede from Illinois. It was in all the papers. Joe was sure to read about it, I thought.

  Mike Scopello came back over as soon as he heard and said he was sorry he had suspected Joe. He said, anything he could do, he would. I didn’t know what to say. I asked if there was any way we could get a message to Joe. He said no one would find Joe Kinderman. I begged him to try.

  ‘I will try,’ he said. ‘And if there’s ever anything you need, anything at all, you just ring that number. I don’t feel good about this at all. Not one bit. And you expecting makes it all the worse.’

  Even so, he said he would have to let the station know that there had been a letter, and that therefore Joe was still alive somewhere. I knew that meant there never would be a pension. But I thought, it doesn’t matter, Joe will come back now.

  Then after a good many days, beginning to despair, I read his letter again. It was right there. He had already told me, it wasn’t the rumours had made him go. I cannot even write it down here. Write what down?

  It was something else was keeping him away it seemed. That he couldn’t say.

  It was nearly twenty years before I found out what that was, and I don’t know if I understood it even then, or understand it now.

  And whether he could not risk the sending, or thought better of it, or his letters went astray, I never did find a letter from Joe with money in it, so I suppose that first and only letter, which I have kept – and have been copying out here, and marvelling at his atrocious spelling, and correcting it – was not all honest. Why had he left me, why had he left us? I thought about that, full with child. I thought about that. An anger flooded through me such as I had never known, even when Tadg was murdered, or anything else that had happened to me in my life. I had never been brought so low that I had cursed at someone, even, God forgive me, cursed at God. But I cursed at God and Joe that time.

  *

  Whatever society the human creature finds itself in, it tries to live in it. We desire so greatly to be respected. Otherwise even wide gardens and palaces are a sort of prison. I didn’t think there was going to be a lot of respect for a single woman with a child. It wouldn’t look right, plain and simple.

  But Mike
Scopello seemingly couldn’t shake off the feeling he was somehow responsible. Even though I said a half-dozen times he was not, he made it his business to try and help me. When I went into the maternity hospital, he told them he was my brother, and when Ed was born, contrived to delight in the birth of his nephew. He brought me flowers and cards and all the news of the city, and many nights he sat in by my bed, talking quietly. The other women were charmed by him, never questioning how an Irish woman and an Italian man could be sister and brother.

  His new plan was to drive me up to Washington, where his real sister lived.

  ‘Why would your sister be happy to see a stranger with a newborn baby?’

  ‘She’s a saint,’ he said. ‘I’ve been suffering from her saintliness all my life.’

  When Ed was strong enough, he was to fetch me from the hospital in his automobile, just as family might.

  *

  The appointed day came, and I wrapped Ed in his blanket, and fetched on what finery I could muster of my own. I kissed some of the other women and said goodbye and even thanked the nuns. I stepped out into the winter air and the cold of the night gave me a fright. It was a heavy, damp cold, that had come up from the lake. There was a powdery snow blowing about and everything was eerie and strange. It was a shock to hear again the huge surging movement of the city. I could see automobiles pouring in great black snakes on the distant roads along the lake. I went on down the granite steps, afraid of the frost and the approaching darkness, one arm clutching Ed. The cold had already laid a tiny rheum of ice on his face, deep though it was in the blanket.

  I stood out on the sidewalk on weakened legs and waited for Mike. Good as his word, it wasn’t too long before he pulled into the kerb. I thought I recognised the automobile.

  ‘Get in, Lilly,’ he said, leaning over and pushing the passenger door open, ‘for the love of God. It’s warm in here.’

  ‘Thank you, Mike, thank you. Is this Joe’s car?’ I said, settling in, gratefully. I felt Ed’s tiny self stirring in the blanket. At least I hadn’t killed him.

  ‘It is. I bought it off the pound for a couple of dollars. He left it parked down by the railway station. I thought, I’ll buy it, and give it back to him if he turns up.’

  ‘You weren’t able to trace him so?’

  ‘Not a sign of him. All I can say, he is somewhere in America. I guess he changed his name again. Who knows?’

  Then Ed woke up properly and started to cry for milk. I put his tiny mouth to my breast.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mike, embarrassed as hell, but putting up with it. ‘Okay, okay. Washington, DC. Here we come.’

  *

  Mr Dillinger did come after all. I hadn’t been expecting anyone. I had seen no one for a couple of days, and thought that was right and proper. Sympathy has its term. They had done their duty, and a thousand times more. But he had been in New York, he said, attending to his new book. He said he was very excited about it, and also full of dread. He laughed heartily at his own two-headed self.

  It was already dark when he arrived. There was a bird, most likely a marsh owl, calling out on the potato fields somewhere. I answered the door to him and we stood in the salty night air and listened to it. Mr Dillinger has travelled everywhere on the earth by all accounts. There is hardly a valley he has not peeked into, hardly a desert he has not endured. But tonight on the porch he declared this spot of God’s earth – whether he meant my house or the Hamptons in general, I could not tell – balanced in that moment in a state of earthly perfection. I asked him did he think it was ‘unobjectionable’. He laughed at the odd word, and said yes, that expressed it perfectly.

  Then he moved into the strange gear of condolence. His body hunched, and he took one of my hands in his big hands. His long face, like a challenging sheer rock, pitted and lined, seemed to narrow further, and he leaned in.

  ‘I would be honoured if you would allow me to dedicate my new book to the memory of Bill. Do you think that would be possible? I know it is a big thing to ask. I would just put In memoriam W.B.’

  ‘Put William Dunne Kinderman Bere,’ I said, ‘put his full name.’

  ‘Will I? Then I will. I will do so. I will do so.’

  I was tearful as I brought him inside, but the hall was dark and I could conceal my tears. I sat him down as always, and made tea, as always, though it was getting so late. My brain was rushing with gratitude, and though Mr Dillinger could not know it, a doubt came into my mind for the first time.

  I had acquired great strength, I suspected, from my resolve not to live on. Mr Dillinger had shown me an example of the enormous effect of courtesy brought to the act of remembrance. Suddenly I was wavering. Now, sitting here, writing this out, I am not so sure. But for those moments he had brought me back to the pact we make with life. That we will see it through and live it according to the length of time bestowed on us. The gift of life, oftentimes so difficult to accept, the horse whose teeth we are so often inclined to inspect.

  Then, his great action done, he relaxed. His very bones seemed to soften and he lay back in the chair. There was an old song that used to be sung by my brother Willie, called ‘The Spanish Lady’. In it there’s a line sung by the man in the song, who has told us about the great beauty of the Spanish lady, a harlot in Dublin, years before. And now, he says, ‘age has laid her hand upon me’. Age has not laid her hand on Mr Dillinger.

  Willie sang that very song at a singing competition organised by the Capuchin Friars down by the river Liffey. Luckily the song is so mysteriously worded that an innocent listener would never know the poor Spanish lady was a harlot. He had a heart-rending voice, and even when he was only seven and did not know what the words of a song meant one way or another, could make people cry with his singing. Who should I see but the Spanish lady, washing her feet by candlelight?

  But Mr Dillinger was telling me a story about his days in China as a young man. It was his first voyage out of America, and he had acquired a great wish to see Peking and the Great Wall. He received permission to do so only after an enormous effort. In Peking he met a young man who came from northern China. Mr Dillinger struck up a friendship and was asked if he might not like to journey home with the young man. It was a part of China apparently that had not seen a Western person in two generations. They boarded a rackety old train dating from colonial times, belching great plumes of steam. On the way he was obliged to eat from the stalls on station platforms, cooked insects, scorpions and the like, which Mr Dillinger found delicious, if a little numbing on the tongue afterwards. With great difficulty the young man explained to him that he was not meant to eat the tail. Mr Dillinger became ill, and retreated to the primitive lavatory on the train, with that hopeless sickness that descends when the body has been poisoned. As he strained and despaired, cursing his wish to see China, he became dimly aware of a small screeching. His bowels loosened, exploded, but relief was his. When he opened the door, there was a tiny woman, screaming at him, tinily. He had been defecating while they stood at a station, a terrible sin. He felt the deepest shame.

  When they reached the home of the young man, he was heartily welcomed. The young man’s family stood around him, and touched Mr Dillinger’s face, and climbed up nearer him on boxes, trying to match his great height. He was given the best bed in the house, and he was feeling fine again. How extraordinary to be in such a place, he thought. In a wooden house, in a wooded valley of almost violent green, heaped up to the very heavens. It was beautiful, austere, and silent. Then his door opened and a woman came in, the grandmother of the young man. It was dark in the room and he could barely see her. She was talking in Chinese, and gave him a little box, and was gesturing to him to eat, but Mr Dillinger didn’t dare do so, because of his recent illness. The old lady went away very disgruntled. In the morning he went out into the daylight with the little box, and looked in. It was a white moth with its wings removed, still alive, a great delicacy, the young man said, and a great honour to be offered it. He really should have taken the r
isk of eating it, the young man said. Again, great shame.

  Here Mr Dillinger stopped. He smiled a rather private smile in the gloom of the kitchen, perhaps a gloom equal to that vanished Chinese gloom.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, as if this were the moral of his story, ‘it is dangerous to be honoured.’

  PART THREE

  Thirteenth Day without Bill

  It’s nearly two weeks since Bill was buried, according to Mr Eugenides’ calendar. Every Easter he hands them out. Vangelis Eugenides, prop. With pictures in it of the islands, Paros, Naxos, Sifnos – you can sail among the islands all year, in Mr Eugenides’ calendar. His own home town, not very beautiful to the stranger’s eye, and on the mainland, always gets April, when, he says, he misses his homeland most. Then he is thinking of the wild flowers lining the stony ways.

  I had a good thought this morning about Mr Nolan, I must guard against that. It is something to do with the two weeks. I have been making an effort not to think about him, to banish him. I have refused to mourn him in any way. I have not wanted anyone to mention him to me, especially Mrs Wolohan, who probably thinks I am doubly bereft, why would she not? But I was suddenly sorry he was gone. A simple emotion, like a dog might have. There was a huge wall built against feeling that, but I felt it. I was thinking of the first time I met him, in the house where he died, a man in his late fifties, smoking a short slim cheroot, with his hair still brown, more or less, but shaved tight, like a military man. I thought he might have been somewhere, Korea maybe. He looked like he had come in a long way, from a war or a wilderness anyhow. With his boxes and books and gun-cases, all more or less as he had put them the day he had moved in, and never moved or improved as far as I ever saw. Sitting in his canvas chair, properly a beach chair of some sort, looking very serious. Mr Wolohan had sent me over to him, I had to search for the house among the spread of small dwellings along the Sag Turnpike, where many of the gardeners and other men offering labouring services lived. It was to tell him he would be starting Monday. A vanished Monday in the lost history of Mr Nolan in his prime.