The Night Stages (25 page)

“Yes,” said Kieran, remembering his father’s dependability, how those balloons had to be launched each day at an exact time, without exceptions. His mother’s voice came back to him then, the words suddenly clear.
He launched them even on the day of my death
, his mother whispered, reminding him,
even then. And the day he discovered my death as well
. “Yes, that too,” Kieran added, looking away into the fog.

“What too?” asked Kirby.

“Nothing.”

“Well, nothing is the right place to start when it is extreme velocity you’re after.” Kirby stood, ready now to allow the monks into the conversation.

“The last verse of a poem I wrote,” said Kirby, “but useless without the melodious Irish I wrote it in. Of late, I have been composing poems of farewell to everything I know, animate and inanimate, in event of my death. You look surprised? You are correct: I have no intention of dying any time soon.
But I have been intimate with so many things, so many, it will take decades for me to give everything its due. I began with the first thing I remembered: a cup that my own children have since used. After that it was a particular flagstone on the floor. We had a flagged floor, you see, many did not. And that flag’s still there up at Cill Rialaig, though the rest of the house is in ruins. Nothing ruined about the view out the window though, and there is a poem about that as well. You would be wise to try some poetry yourself, to say in your mind during the race. The old ones could compose and then memorize twenty thousand lines at a time. I have not yet decided whether you should compose before … out on Skellig Michael, for example … or during the race. Perhaps both. A dreadful pity that you don’t have the Irish. But perhaps this English language serves you better, though
that
is difficult to believe.”

Kieran found himself focusing on the man’s face, the intensity of his eyes. He knew he himself would not be composing poetry. “What race?” he asked.

Kirby looked surprised. “The Rás Tailteann, of course,” he said. “Davey allowed as you’re the only one for it, though you’ve only two years to train. It is a hard thing, the Rás, but you are the only one for it. All around Ireland, you’ll cycle, stage by stage. By the time you’re fitted up and strong enough for it, the Rás will be in its third year. The first one was a glorious free-for-all with the boys from Tipperary quarrelling with the boys from Mayo, and everyone quarrelling with the Ulster Constabulary in the North. But the
third Rás will be more settled-like, more dignified. And it is important that you win.”

Kieran was silent, not knowing what to make of this. He had never thought about winning anything.

“With that in mind, I make an appointment with you to meet me at the pier Thursday next, seven in the morning, and we will set out. You must get Gerry-Annie to pack enough bread and cheese, some apples as well” – he laughed – “for the donkey.”

Kieran remained silent, not wishing to verbally comply. And yet he knew he had already decided to go.

“But Tadhg out on the end there” – Kirby gestured once again toward the road Kieran had chosen – “will have more advice to give you on this and various other important subjects. He is a great one for the advice, Tadhg is, being the last old man of Europe and all, as he’ll undoubtedly tell you himself. Off you go then, off to Bolus Head. Stop by the collapsed Anchorite site on the way, if you can find it. There are some huts there looking toward the sea, and a little chapel as well, though it is all just piles of stone now.” He looked toward the west. “And once you get up there far enough, you’ll come to a green road you’ll want to take for the view of the Skelligs that can be had from there. There is an abandoned barracks as well.” Kirby paused. “In fact, you won’t be able to take that road, now that I think of it. Its gate will almost certainly be closed against you.”

Kieran sat on the leather seat of his bicycle and Michael Kirby gave him a push as he headed up the hill in the mist. As
he drove his feet into the pedals, he heard Kirby call after him. “No one has been able to get it open,” he shouted, “no one.” And then as if an afterthought, “Until Thursday.”

This is what Kieran could not see as the road under his wheels rose through the haze toward the top of the headland. He could not see Ballinskelligs Bay, or Horse Island curving like a smile in its centre, or the old castle walls on a smaller island near the shore. He could not see the ruined abbey or the many graves that surrounded it, the cliffs that stood angry and dark, and the inlets that narrowed toward hidden sea caves. He passed between the few huddled houses of Cill Rialaig, where the sound of soft Irish voices and the smell of turf mingled with the crunch of his wheels on loose stones. A little farther up, he slipped by large shadows in the shape of gables: the ruins of a previous Cill Rialaig, whose citizens, years before, had walked away; driven mad, some said, by the wind. Minutes later the shape of a small National School was evident. The yard, which hugged the road, was filled with the singing racket of children out for recess. As he pedalled past, the sound of the master’s hand-bell was in the air and the children fell silent.

When he rounded a bend that took him higher again, the fog began to thin. Kieran could now pick out the features of the landscape on either side of him, though he could still not see the ocean, which, though breathing noisily below, remained invisible. The dark exclamation mark of a standing stone in a
downward-sloping field caught his attention, and then another, several yards away. He stopped, dismounted, leaned the bicycle against a wall, and climbed the stone stile into the site.

He had always avoided such places. The death of his mother was knit into his memory of visiting St. Brendan’s Well on Valentia. And yet, these stones before him now seemed benign. He half expected his mother would speak to him here, but she did not. Instead it was the girl who came into his mind.
Leave a token now
, she said,
leave a love token
. He pictured her in his brother’s arms and was angered by the persistence of her image, as if she were pestering him in some way or another. Still, fumbling in his pocket he found the shell of a snail he had picked from Gerry-Annie’s wall the previous day, and he placed this on the oratory steps. Sensing, as he did so, how foolish he would seem to the girl, could she see him doing this, he quickly left the place and remounted his bicycle.

Alone on the road Kieran considered the mysterious third Rás, how the fact of training for it was emerging from the mist and tapping him on the shoulder, what Kirby had said; the conviction in him! It was as if Kirby had been intimate with him for years and was certain of exactly what it was he should do. He looked down at the bicycle, and as he did a flicker of what he would later come to know as ambition moved through his nervous system. But the sensation was so foreign to him he couldn’t say precisely what it was. Only that he was happiest when he was on the bike with the road gliding under him.

As he moved upwards and away from the Anchorite ruins, the fog lifted sufficiently so that he could see the end of the headland. One arm of the road bent to the left and ended at a small farm, the shape of the house only faintly visible through the fog along with the lines of ancient and irregular fields filled with the soft, pale smudges of sheep. Just in advance of this, the green road Michael Kirby had spoken of climbed to the height of land where the barracks squatted against the sky, a vaguely rectangular shape. Kieran predicted that the view from there could not be had on such a misty day. Another cloud of mist crept between him and the road. And then he heard the voices, tender, sorrowful, an old man and an old woman speaking Irish.

They appeared before him, emerging from the atmosphere as if at the end of a long journey. In English, the woman said, “I’ve hurt my hand and my heart trying to do it, and I cannot. And he says that he cannot.”

“I cannot,” the man said, turning to the fence that fronted the green road. “And she cannot either.” He fingered his wife’s shawl affectionately.

Kieran did not know how to respond. “Cannot what?” he asked.

“Cannot open the gate,” said the man. “It has been sealed shut forever by winds and rains. And haven’t I cattle up there going astray, right at the very end of Europe? And me, the final old man of Europe, unable to reach them, unable to go to the edge, unable to herd my own kine. There’s a pity in that.” He shook his head sadly. “I might, for all they know,
have gone to Chicago, there’s that much separation between me and them.”

“One might have calved,” said the woman.

“Yes, there might be a calf. Or one might have died over the winter. It’s a terrible thing not to know the condition of your own small herd. They are
some
beautiful, those cattle.”

Kieran dropped his bicycle on the road and sprinted toward the gate. There was this fierce desire in him to rescue the man’s cattle. “I will climb the fence and bring them down to you.”

“Ah no,” said the man, “it’s myself they know. They, being the final cattle of Europe, out there on the farthest western edge of everything and all, would never permit themselves to be driven by any other.”

Kieran was grasping the gate so tightly he could feel the roughness of it pressing into his palm.

“I live down there,” the old man continued, throwing his arm behind him toward the houselike form that Kieran had previously noticed, two fields from the road, “and those cattle know that. My name is Tadhg and I live with my wife, Tadhg-Sheila” – he bowed ceremoniously in her direction –“and those cattle know her as well. Those cattle want nothing to change; I can assure you of that. And they are lonely for me, by now, those cattle. No stranger could console them. They’ve been waiting for a terrible amount of time.” He sighed. His wife bent her head and examined the hand she had hurt, wincing as she did so.

Kieran had never felt strong. He was small, but some said, Kirby had said it, wiry. Suddenly, in the face of the
couple’s sorrow, there was this eager potency in him. He grasped a large stone at the side of the road, ran to the gate, and, lifting his arms over his head, pounded the orange-coloured latch for what could have been minutes, or could have been hours: he would never be able to accurately say later. At last the bolt fractured and the gate sprang open.

The woman let out a cry, whether from gladness or from shock Kieran could not decide.

Then she began to sing, or to pray, in Irish.

The man walked toward him with his hands in the air, jubilant. “What you have done for us! What you have
done
for us! I thank you! My wife thanks you. The beautiful final cattle of Europe thank you! The last pasture at the very end of Europe thanks you!”

Kieran was silent. Opening the gate had taken more strength than cycling Ballagh Oisin Pass at full speed, and he was gasping for air.

“I have some advice for you, boy” said Tadhg. “At Puck Fair in Killorglin, there is the day of the gathering, the day of the fair, and the day of the scattering. Far too many think it is the day of the fair that is most important, and they will tell you that over and over. But Tadhg has been placed on this road to tell you that, in your life, there will never be anything more important than the day of the gathering. The anticipation, the training, the goal! The day of the fair is nothing but a pale ghost announcing the day of the scattering. If I could, I would be your coach and we would prolong the day of the gathering as long as we could, and postpone, as far as
possible, the day of the fair. But didn’t you open the very gate that keeps me here on this road where I am saying this? And now don’t I and my darling” – he touched his wife’s shawl again – “have to pass through it to greet our kine, the final few cattle of Europe that have been expecting us for so long? Goodbye my liberator,” he said, “the race is yours to do with what you will.” He took his wife’s arm and they began to climb the road. Just before they disappeared from view Tadhg turned back to Kieran, who was still recovering from the exertion necessary to move the gate. “What a fine coach I would have made, being a man with advice and all,” he called back to him, “but there is no time for that now. In my absence I appoint Michael Kirby. He’ll do the job well.”

The following week, Kieran met Kirby at Ballinskelligs Pier. Gerry-Annie had been skeptical when he told her where he was going, and didn’t hold back expressing her concern. “And you complaining about going to the church,” she said, “suddenly wanting to make this pilgrimage! It doesn’t seem likely to me with you wanting to be on the roads day after day and that bicycle under you. You’ll have no bicycle out there on the holy island. And you’ll catch your death, or be blown right off the top of it into the waves, most likely – it’s happened before, you know.” Still, she packed some bread for him, a bit of ham, and several hunks of cheese. She also placed a candle in the bag, along with a small tin containing matches. He would not tell her about the race, though it had
settled in his mind. It was only the girl, really, the thought of her waiting for him at its glorious conclusion, that made him want to do it. Or so he thought. He was still innocent of his own peculiar determination.

The day was not as fine as Kirby’s skies had predicted. When Kieran pointed this out, hoping for a reprieve, Kirby said that it was very fine indeed in relation to what he might encounter on the island. And because there was next to no wind, landing would be achievable without his much-loved boat being smashed to kindling on the rocks. While the boat heaved and dove with the swell on the journey across, Kirby identified sea birds, demanded that Kieran do the same, mildly berating him when he could not do so. How was it possible he did not even know a gannet when he saw one? The heads of seals appeared beside the boat, a staring crowd filled with curiosity. “No fish today,” Kirby called to them.

Then he turned to Kieran. “While you are there it would be good for your legs if you ran up and down the six hundred steps a dozen times a day. And don’t complain about it either, not even to yourself. Be grateful that you didn’t have to build the six hundred steps. Be grateful that those monks were such good engineers that you don’t even have to
repair
the six hundred steps these thirteen hundred years after they built them. And once you have achieved gratitude, it might be a very good idea if you thought about the other things you have to be grateful for, starting with your heart and breath. Blood and oxygen. And where does that blood and oxygen go? To your muscles, of course. Be grateful for the well-engineered steps whose
existence and persistence are sending buckets of blood and windstorms full of oxygen to those muscles. And don’t forget your bones. The cage of your ribs that holds everything together, the long bones of your legs that carry your muscles around, and this bone” – Kirby knocked on his skull – “beautifully designed to take care of the most important muscle of them all. Use that muscle when you are running.” Kirby leaned forward and tapped Kieran’s forehead. “You’ll need it to pay attention when the steps are slippery with rain, and you’ll need it when it is not raining to reflect upon all the other things you have to be grateful for. That and the naming; I want you to be able to name everything, animate and inanimate, that you cycle past, and be grateful for most of it, and outraged at that which no sane man could be grateful for. What’s that bird, by the way? You don’t know of course. Well, you will when I am finished with you. For now you must be grateful, first and foremost, that you are alive at this time and with the proper age on you, with muscles, brain, bone, blood and oxygen, and the desire in you to win this race.”