through the grease and wiped it on the sleeve of his blue workshirt, stared at me for no particular reason. Told me that half the town have their green cards or their English dole numbers by now. Nothing but old men left. All the sons and daughters coming home for Christmas, elongating their words and dropping haitches all over the place. He said he was surprised there wasn’t a row of haitches and ‘gee-whizzes’ between here and Shannon Airport.
We were silent for a long time until two stray dogs came barking through the outside yard. A black and white collie and a golden labrador with a red collar. They wheeled around down by the barn, chasing each other in tight circles, tails wagging. The old man rose up and shuffled over to the window, clacked his lips again, leaned against the frame, rolled the curtain between his thumb and forefinger, watched them. The collie cornered the labrador over by where the darkroom used to be – a burnt-out shell now – and danced ritually around her for a while, climbed up.
The old man chuckled, rubbed his hands along the curtains, and turned away from the window while they continued their bout.
‘Grand morning for the dogs anyway,’ he said.
We laughed, but his was a strange laugh that didn’t last very long. He sort of threw the chuckle out into the air and immediately swallowed it back down his saggy throat. He ambled into the pantry and got all his equipment together while the yelping rose up from outside, chopping through the dawn. Asked him did he want some company for the day but he shook his head, no. He said it’s much better fishing when things are quiet, it doesn’t disturb the big fish, they have acute hearing, they can sense a person for miles, it all has to do with wave vibrations and the motion of sound, salmon are particularly sensitive. I knew he was bullshitting, but I decided to leave him be. Down he went to the river, shouting at the dogs to clear off as he walked.
He gave a slow push to the green gate with his foot, climbed over the stile with difficulty. He has worn a path through the fuchsia bushes to the bank. The path was muddy in the middle from last night’s drizzle, and he had to straddle it at first, one foot at either side of the puddle. Then he just gave up and slopped his way drowsily through the muck, wiped his boots on the long grass. He set up his equipment and started casting away, settled himself down into the grey caisson of his loneliness. The dogs went off down the lane, stopping for another yelp of lust down by the bend, where the big potholes are.
* * *
The old man hung around Madrid in confusion until, in the summer of 1939, a soldier from Mexico – a Communist with only two fingers left on his right hand – beckoned him to another continent. Other wars had erupted all over Europe and the soldier said he knew of a place in the Chihuahuan desert where a man could get away from it all, sit and get drunk and lay a hat over his face and dream and run a full set of fingers over a bottle or a guitar or a horse or a beautiful woman.
My father wasn’t interested in horses or guitars, but the soldier carried a picture of his sister on the inside of his uniform. He held it delicately between his two fingers like a cherished cigarette, a photo of a young woman, no more than seventeen years old, in a billowy white linen skirt, flour on her hands. The photo was a good and sufficient reason for my father to latch on an impulse and go. And there’d been enough dying. He wanted to forget about Manley. Leave Europe to its bags of butchery and bones, to its internecine slaughter. He filled his rucksack with film, swapped his cameras for another Leica, a newer model, and offered the soldier a large amount of money for the shot of his sister. The photo had already grown yellow around the edges, but the soldier wouldn’t part with it. Instead, my father took a picture of the Mexican holding the picture. They were in a market area on the
We were silent for a long time until two stray dogs came barking through the outside yard. A black and white collie and a golden labrador with a red collar. They wheeled around down by the barn, chasing each other in tight circles, tails wagging. The old man rose up and shuffled over to the window, clacked his lips again, leaned against the frame, rolled the curtain between his thumb and forefinger, watched them. The collie cornered the labrador over by where the darkroom used to be – a burnt-out shell now – and danced ritually around her for a while, climbed up.
The old man chuckled, rubbed his hands along the curtains, and turned away from the window while they continued their bout.
‘Grand morning for the dogs anyway,’ he said.
We laughed, but his was a strange laugh that didn’t last very long. He sort of threw the chuckle out into the air and immediately swallowed it back down his saggy throat. He ambled into the pantry and got all his equipment together while the yelping rose up from outside, chopping through the dawn. Asked him did he want some company for the day but he shook his head, no. He said it’s much better fishing when things are quiet, it doesn’t disturb the big fish, they have acute hearing, they can sense a person for miles, it all has to do with wave vibrations and the motion of sound, salmon are particularly sensitive. I knew he was bullshitting, but I decided to leave him be. Down he went to the river, shouting at the dogs to clear off as he walked.
He gave a slow push to the green gate with his foot, climbed over the stile with difficulty. He has worn a path through the fuchsia bushes to the bank. The path was muddy in the middle from last night’s drizzle, and he had to straddle it at first, one foot at either side of the puddle. Then he just gave up and slopped his way drowsily through the muck, wiped his boots on the long grass. He set up his equipment and started casting away, settled himself down into the grey caisson of his loneliness. The dogs went off down the lane, stopping for another yelp of lust down by the bend, where the big potholes are.
* * *
The old man hung around Madrid in confusion until, in the summer of 1939, a soldier from Mexico – a Communist with only two fingers left on his right hand – beckoned him to another continent. Other wars had erupted all over Europe and the soldier said he knew of a place in the Chihuahuan desert where a man could get away from it all, sit and get drunk and lay a hat over his face and dream and run a full set of fingers over a bottle or a guitar or a horse or a beautiful woman.
My father wasn’t interested in horses or guitars, but the soldier carried a picture of his sister on the inside of his uniform. He held it delicately between his two fingers like a cherished cigarette, a photo of a young woman, no more than seventeen years old, in a billowy white linen skirt, flour on her hands. The photo was a good and sufficient reason for my father to latch on an impulse and go. And there’d been enough dying. He wanted to forget about Manley. Leave Europe to its bags of butchery and bones, to its internecine slaughter. He filled his rucksack with film, swapped his cameras for another Leica, a newer model, and offered the soldier a large amount of money for the shot of his sister. The photo had already grown yellow around the edges, but the soldier wouldn’t part with it. Instead, my father took a picture of the Mexican holding the picture. They were in a market area on the
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