Chapter 6 #23
Week 16: completion of field books. Departure.
—Conclusion of Report of Progress
Signed, Sprs. Carbury he stares at these two people, of whom he can have no recollection, taking in his father’s huge beard, his sister’s incessant fiddle-playing, with a composed and evaluating stare.
Phina has been relieved, in their absence, that he is such a quiet baby, so watchful there in his cradle, gazing intently up at the roof or the sky, or whatever happens to be above him, barely making a cry, even when he is hungry.
He reaches to grasp things in his left hand, but there are many like that, she tells herself.
Loud noises make him flinch, cause his face to pucker in shock: a door slamming in a breeze, a sudden bray from the donkey, a shriek of frustration from Enda, a bucket set down with a thud.
Nothing unusual in that, Phina says to Tomás, by the time Eugene turns two, and her husband nods, without a word, clapping his cap to his head.
Phina catches the widow with a thoughtful look on her face, singing to Eugene as he sits by her spinning-wheel, then letting the wheel slow as she says, You sing now, Eugene, on you go.
And Eugene looks at the turning of the spokes, the paddling of the treadle, but makes no sound.
Phina snatches him up, presses him to her hip, kisses his soft hair.
He is interested in what he can hear, she thinks, defensively, as she walks away, just doesn’t want to make the noise himself.
More difficult, by the time he is three, then four, for Phina to explain away Eugene’s continuing silence.
There are many theories as to why he never learns to talk.
Phina: He’s taking his time. Rose: He has me to speak for him.
The widow: There’s something stopping his tongue.
The sisters from across the estate: The faeries stole away the real child, and left this silent one in the cradle. Father Joseph: The boy is simple.
The most plausible one of all comes, surprisingly, from the younger fisherman who says, one day, when Eugene is five years old and is working hard, lifting sods from the creels on the donkey’s back and taking them, one by one, to the drying store, “He doesn’t speak because that would be letting things out, when he only likes to be taking things in. ”
Impossible for Tomás, who is nearby, helping with the turf, and Rose, who is also lifting sods into the store, to disagree with this assessment.
As for Eugene, he gives no sign of having heard the man, laying his small hands on two cuts and pulling them to his chest, but he folds it into himself, to turn over and consider later.
Eugene has a sound for assent (a rising ah-a) and another for refusal (a growling ur).
He has a gesture for hunger (a fist pressed to his stomach), for cold (arms wrapped around himself), for tired (his head lolling sideways), for affection (a hand laid on another’s cheek).
Eugene’s approach to communication is, in Liam’s view at least, one of admirable necessity and purity: the child has devised his own way of saying what he needs to say and no more.
There is no ambiguity, no dissembling about his brother: just a person’s straightforward requirements to exist.
To Eugene, the world is that which is in his immediate vicinity.
The red yarn tied to the bedpost, as a talisman for protection, and how it is sometimes seen to hang on the mattress side and sometimes on the room side; the pads of the dog’s paws, some pink and others black, their roughness, the fringe of fur that grows between them; the orange starbursts of lichen that adhere to the cottage’s external walls; the twin dark holes of the donkey’s nose, through which warm air is blown.
He likes to put the harness on the donkey, to fasten each buckle, one by one.
He likes to stand near Rose when she is stirring something in the pot because she’ll hand him a spoon to lick, and the burred grain of the carved wood is an interesting contrast to the fur of his tongue.
He likes to collect bits of coral from the strand, perfectly smooth, angular, like tiny whitened trees.
He likes to wrap himself in his mother’s shawl, if she happens to discard it on a chair, until only the top of his hair pokes out.
Words, words. How obsessed, how concerned people are with them.
Here, Eugene, eat this. Take this. Put this on.
How are you today, little man? Let that alone and come with me, hurry now, fetch your jacket.
Apple, ap-ple, can you say that for me, can you, can you try, ap-ple?
What’s the matter with him, deaf is he, simple is he, poor soul, does he not understand? What does he want, can he not hear?
Eugene hears. Eugene understands. He understands it all, every conversation, every silence, every arrangement of words and the gaps between them, every interchange, everything said and everything not said. He hears it all, sees it all but, like Bran, he has no need of or interest in speech.
He also hears things no one else does, the noises beneath: murmurs and mutterings and utterings, cries and expostulations, tales and mumblings, from the bushes and the streams and the turf and the air.
He hears that the dry-stone wall of the haggard is opposed to moss growing on its humped back, so he sets about scraping it off with a scallop shell, which causes his father to yell and grumble at him about dislodged stones, but he doesn’t care.
He senses that the stream flowing out of the copse joins the bigger streams further down the hill, but with reluctance, and that the waters hold themselves apart from each other, and separate again as soon as they reach the sea.
He feels that the bog is set against the faery fort, for reasons he cannot quite fathom, so he will never visit both in the same day.
Furthermore, he sees that his father and Liam are similarly set against each other and that the reason lies deep within them both, like a seam of glittering quartz through a rock: Eugene cannot work it out but knows that the same seam is present in both of them.
He observes Liam growing taller and taller, until his head is above Tomás’s, and he sees how Tomás doesn’t like this, it doesn’t sit easily with him.
He sees that Liam is away from the house more and more, spending long hours at the schoolhouse and more at the chapel; Liam begins to talk of a place called a novitiate, or a House of First Formation, where he wishes to go, and things called vows, which he wishes to take.
Eugene sees the prickle of blame and fury between his father and Father Joseph for this (and how Eugene dislikes the priest, with his soft yet wheedling voice, and his hands, which are always so eager to imprison Eugene’s or ruffle his hair, the chapel, which smells disturbingly of burned reeds and mildewed whitewash).
He sees that, in spite or perhaps because of his father shouting about apprenticeships and the squandering of chances, Liam will leave.
Eugene intuits that one day his brother will pack up his books and walk out the door and that he won’t ever really return, that his exit will have a finality and a closing to it.
He sees that their mother knows this and that it forces a crack through her chest, that her heart is already a little bit broken by it.
He sees that Rose will stay, willingly, and so will Enda, but unwillingly.
There are moments when he senses something coming off Enda, something like the licking tongues of flame—he pictures them as writhing, black, airy things with the shape of eels—and he knows to keep clear of her then.
He sees that when she thinks no one is looking, Enda takes Liam’s books and reads them; if anyone comes upon her, she slides them into her apron pocket.
Eugene can tell when Enda is beset by feelings so strong she cannot contain them, and he knows that, before long, she will take down her fiddle from where she keeps it above the door, so it is away from the heat of the fire and also the damp of the floor, and she will head out towards the shelter of the ring fort and she will play there, to the birds, to the tree, until she feels back in herself.
He knows this because he often follows her, keeping out of sight: he likes to hear the torrent of her music, the notes that are isolated from each other and the ones that blur together to make a grouped sound.