Part IV, Tablets 9-11
9.
Time heals all wounds. At least, that’s what some jerk said. For Conn, time helps. Helpful too would be a change of scenery. At some point during the dark days and irredeemable nights since Dirk’s accident Conn has felt a hypnotic, magnetic pull to visit his uncle. County Mayo. The Wild Atlantic Way. Why not?
The ancient widower lives alone at the foot of Pádraig’s Mountain. Conn has made the Atlantic crossing several times. Last time, he skipped Dublin and flew directly to the Shannon. The drive up the Atlantic coast reminded Conn of Mr. Toad’s wild ride. Small car, narrow winding streets, and oh, minor detail, they drive on the wrong side. Better stick to just one pint with lunch then.
Conn stopped in Ennis for a sandwich and a cuppa. An obvious outsider. It was not an uncommon feeling. Back in the States a jazz musician, perhaps well-known in offbeat circles, is just a ghost of esoterica. No one ever stops Conn on the street and shrieks, Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Oh man, your solo on Someday My Prince Will Come changed my life. Okay, it did happen once at city college and occasionally at shows, but not from Johnny On-the-Street.
So when those kind but remote West Irish eyes stared at Conn, he thought, you’ve got until sundown, mister. And it happened in that Ennis sandwich shop. The comely lass behind the counter watched him shyly as he waited bemusedly for his order. Still got it. He took the paper bag and hot tea, said thanks, and walked past inscrutable faces into the thick Clare air. In his mind’s eye, she smiles and watches the handsome older man disappear. A knowing, loving smile. Who really knows what anybody else is thinking?
Sitting in the jet cabin somewhere over the Atlantic, Conn remembers. The liquor warms his tongue and he remembers. He ate that sandwich alone in his rental, parked expertly on a lovely meadow overlooking the Cliffs of Moher. Rain drummed on the windshield. Tourists from every corner of the globe brightly clothed in plastic clicked their point-and-shoots. A few professionals worked their telephoto lenses underneath clear plastic coverings. He locked the car and walked the wet, sandy paths along the edges of the earth. He stood facing the Atlantic for some time. Salt breezes kissed and slapped his cheeks. He looked for the exact line that separates ocean from sky. Alas, it was not the day to find it.
The Irish customs agent studies Conn’s passport. Frowns. Looks up at Conn and holds the passport up as if trying to compare the photo of the scowling man with the scowl itself.
“Trust me, it’s me.”
“Yeah? Trust, he says. That’s what all the crooks, say. Sure, come in, sir, we trust ye.”
Conn looks at the agent’s five o-clock shadow. His jaw looks blue like a cartoon.
“What brings you to Ireland, Mister, er, Silverhorn.” He taps the passport. “Grand name.”
“Family.”
“You seem pretty sure of yourself, I’ll give you that. Drivin’?”
“Stopping at the agent after the interrogation.”
“And do you realize, Mr. Silverhump, we’re on the other side? Matter of fact, if you’re motorin, I may as well stay off the road.”
Conn doesn’t reply but takes his passport back.
“Just a bit o craic, sir. Happy days!”
He stops in Ennis. The mom-and-pop sandwich shop he remembers is no longer there. Subway. He spits. Figures.
10.
Near Ballinrobe, Conn stops at Carney’s. Black-and-white photos of muscular horses race along the wainscoting. He approaches the bar whistling Green Acres.
“Ah, ‘s the music man. Whistling tunes. What’ll it be, love?”
“Guinness.”
The hostess puts her cigarette in a tray, exhales a prodigious cloud of blue tobacco smoke, and pulls the tap over a sparkling clean glass. They wait a moment for the black liquid and tan foam to separate and settle. The scarred and veined hand, skin like thin translucent paper, scoots the glass toward Conn.
“Americ-e?”
“That obvious?”
“Well, yer accent holds no secrets. And i’s saison ye plastic paddies come back to splash yer cash. . . . Off the beaten path tho —”
“I’m looking for my uncle’s place. Can you help me?”
He explains where he thinks he’s going. She interprets, admonishes, and offers to correct. He takes a damp napkin and ballpoint from the bar and writes her comments in illegible scrawl.
She pours another and says, “You. Are. A real charmer, sir . . . blue just breat’ing t’e same air as ye.”
“I lost someone and . . .”
“Wife?”
“Never married.” Conn pushes the empty glass away and takes the new. “No kids, no wife, no family, no nothing.”
“But yer uncle.”
“Right.” He takes a long draft from the glass and wipes his mouth with his sleeve.
“A man needs a family.”
Conn sighs. He leaves a brass coin embossed with a harp on the bar.
The day is growing dark when he gets behind the wheel. But he doesn’t move. For some time, frozen in the driver’s seat, he stares into the redness of the brick wall of the public house. The redness that deepens until it reminds Conn of sand-soaked blood.
11.
Conn’s uncle slaps his back. Hard.
“Jesus, you trying to burp me?”
Laughter. “Oh, no, it’s just grand to see you my boy. Just grand.”
Notwithstanding the hostess’s guidance, Conn still got lost. Confused, slightly discomfited, in the dark, as it were, Conn phoned from a stately hotel overlooking Clew Bay. Don’t move, I’ll come to you.
They sit across from each other at a small table in the quiet of the hotel’s dining room. It could be the library in the Lord’s country house. The carpet is a deep jade color, thick, dark and beautiful. It comforts the soles even through shoes. Every inch of dark mahogany shows a lovely grain under high gloss. There is no hurry.
“I stopped at Carney’s.”
“Ah, explains everything.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure, you got lost.”
“Things just . . . look different at night. In the dark.”
“Sure. Real country dark. Too much city life my boy.”
“The hostess gave me stick for being a bachelor.”
“Made an impression I gather. Always do.”
“Bloody cheek for one thing —”
“You’ll have to forgive her, eh? Besides, she’s truth telling. There’s not much other than family.”
Conn quotes the hostess, “‘A man needs a family.’ What about you?”
Conn’s uncle considers the question. Turns it over in his mind but doesn’t answer.
“Do you think she meant companionship or something else?”
“You lost a friend, eh?”
“I did. Kid came by for lessons. Good kid. Smart kid. Lonely.”
“Got you feelin’ more isolated than ever.”
“I guess, and thank you, by the way.”
“You question life. Is that it? What is life anyway? Am I right?”
“If you say so.” Conn finds this line of questioning tiresome and tries to imagine what rests in the dark beyond. A rolling expanse of green. Invisible now. The mountain looms beyond. Black mountain, black night. O mountain, bring me a dream.
“You don’t believe in heaven, I take it.”
There seems to be a sea between them, golden uncle and silver nephew. Waves of tension, give and take. A past almost unknowable in its rich melodrama. The sea ebbs and flows. Pulls each toward and then away from the other.
Conn answers, “No, I don’t. Why should I?”
“Let me ask you then, why is there something,” Conn watches his uncle’s slight, pale hand sweep before him, “rather than nothing?” The hand rests again on the polished table. A conduit of purplish blood pulses faintly underneath the hairless skin.
“It’s a matter of private, personal belief, what can I say? You asked.”
“Belief. People now’days believe in science. Science tells us why things do what they do. No, no, it’s not true. See. We can observe how things seem to work. But no one knows why.”
Conn blinks absently.
“We have an explanation for physical laws, yes? But who can tell us why such laws exist in the first place? The first cause. Remember?”
“I remember learning about Aristotle from nuns. But nothing I’ve seen in my sixty-five years leads me to believe there’s anything other than reversion to unconscious.” Conn closes his eyes for what seems an eternity.
“North Africa?”
“I was thinking . . . unanswered prayers at Kasserine —”
“— including yours, no doubt. But I’ll see your war and raise you mine. Ypres. The GPO. Four Courts. Kerry.”
Conn raises an eyebrow, side-eyes for eavesdropping patrons, and clears his throat.
His uncle continues, “Whose side could God possibly be on?”
“— shh —”
“There’s nothing to fear here. Look. Even if you don’t put faith in individual immortality . . . doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
Conn looks for someone to take their order.
“Conn. Look at me. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument, you’re correct. I’ll never see my wife again. You’ll never see your mother. Or your father, or your friend. Ever again. Anyone for that matter. Does that mean there’s no purpose? That we should end the journey before it begins? Of course not.”
“It’s in our nature, though, to want more. More than this. Not only that. I mean, why wouldn’t accident or negligence be just as likely as elegant design?”
“Listen to me. Every September, beautiful trees shed their leaves. Each leaf withers, falls, goes dry, brittle, and is blown along the wind. Do we say, this leaf has a soul? Does this leaf go to heaven? Of course not.”
“This is working, really cheering me up.”
“You can be sarcastic all you want but I’m being perfectly serious.”
Conn starts to question the wisdom of imposing his own doubt on a fellow traveler so close to journey’s end.
“And every March the trees bud and blossom anew. Regeneration. Why would it be any different with people? Does it matter why seasons come and go?”
“So you don’t believe either then?”
“I didn’t say that. I rather like the idea of doubt. Embrace it. It’s honest. Doesn’t mean there’s no moral good or lack of purpose. Read the sermon on the mount, read the parables. Take those with you. Practice those lessons. But forgive yourself for leaving behind the cold comfort of judgment, everlasting life, world without end. Live in the moment and don’t look back.”
Conn remains silent, watchful.
“My point is this. What you do here matters. Even if life is a bubble on a stream that bursts — a fleeting moment — it’s not meaningless. You are a child of Nature. You write odes and apostrophes to Purpose. What other purpose could there be but comfort, care, nurture, love? What else can you give someone but wisdom, understanding, forgiveness?”
Conn says nothing.
“See? You lost someone and you say, this is it, I’m done. I’ll drink myself to death or speed into a nice Irish oak or walk into a bog. All done. But you miss the point. My dear boy, you’re still missing the point. You have a gift. You have so many gifts. Music. Wit. Experience. Empathy. Soul. Breath. You think those are just for you? Son, those are for others too. Stop being selfish. You say the universe is absurd, unjust, unloving, empty. Maybe, at day’s end, that’s you.”
Conn can’t help but sense the pressure building inside himself.
“Take our tree. Don’t be discouraged because its leaves die. That’s the way of all things, how could you possibly change that? But what you can do, you can tend the tree, you can love it, you can appreciate it for what it is, its sublime beauty. Put aside your fears of what happens to you. Embrace your role as custodian. Ensure the proper regeneration. That way, son, we live on. We live on.”
Conn pulls a white silk handkerchief from the coat draping the chair back. He covers his face, hiding his eyes, for one solitary, drawn-out moment.
“Son. I don’t believe it’s in your nature to give up. Not at all. You cannot give up any more than the sun could stop burning. Now that you’ve realized your purpose how could you? There’s simply too much to do.”
The sunshine warms the apartment. The windows in the living room are open and fresh air passes through. Up rise the sounds and smells of the city. Car horns. Baking bread. He sits alone on his couch practicing scales. Joyous, nimble fingers work the well-oiled valves. The facility with which he plays, the clear bright notes of the horn, the breath that moves it all; each mingles with the symphony outside and sings to where the blue begins.
