Falling out of Heaven. John Lynch
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Название: Falling out of Heaven
Автор: John Lynch
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780007348732
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I thought of my life, of how I had believed that I was a fortress, standing alone on the horizon of other people’s lives. I saw how much of a lie that was. I had learned the hard way. Here I was, alone, dependent on the kindness of these doctors. I thought of all the pain I had caused, the misery I had brought to my door and the doors of others. At night sometimes when I woke I would call for someone to come and sit with me. If no-one came I would lie there shivering in the dark hoping that my fall was almost at an end.
I see you as I first saw you, your eyes shining, your face offered to me as I bent to kiss it. We were in a bar in County Clare, behind us people were celebrating New Year’s Eve, and we had slipped away and left them to put the old year to bed. We stood on the small wooden pier that fronted the pub and watched the night sky turn in glitter and ice high above us.
How long ago that New Year’s Eve seems and yet sometimes in a moment when my weary spirit is caught off-guard, I taste your sweetness once more as if it was all about to happen again. I’ll be ready this time and meet you on the long pier, which divided the sea and held us and our dreams that night long ago.
‘I love you.’
‘I know,’ you said.
‘Do you?’
‘Do I what? Know that you love me?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Oh you mean…?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do I love you? What do you think?’
‘I think yes.’
‘Then you think right,’ you said.
Just after, you smiled and quickly closed your lips over your teeth, and a slight embarrassment flickered across your eyes. It was because one of your incisors was crooked, I’d seen you do it many times, most especially in company. It gave you a vulnerability that made me want you more. I remember I put my fingers to your lips and ran my thumb across them, holding your eyes.
‘But…’
‘Love isn’t just saying. It’s doing too,’ you said.
‘I love your mouth.’
‘Gabriel, I’m serious.’
‘The wow of your mouth.’
‘Gabriel?’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you listening?
‘Yes.’
‘Then show me, Gabriel. Show me.’
‘Your lips…so beautiful.’
‘Gabriel.’
‘Yes?’
‘Words are easy. I don’t want that, do you hear, I don’t want that.’
I see her holding my young body down, her hand on the nape of my neck, forcing me to spit out the prayer. I remember her body shaking as she implored heaven for release.
‘Holy Jesus, we implore you…Holy Christ, fruit of the vine…’
‘Holy Jesus,’ I said, echoing her.
‘Holy Jesus…The one true Lamb…The one true God…Enter me, Lord…Fill me with the sweet Glory of your Love…Come to me, Jesus, in Love, in Sorrow.’
‘Mammy,’ I would say. ‘Mammy.’
Her eyes would glaze over, the look I used to see in the eyes of fish I caught, as they lay on the riverbank and death passed over them. Her head would move from side to side and a film of foam would cover her lips. I would hold her hand and squeeze it until my knuckles whitened. I felt as if I was holding on to her as she dangled above a steep drop and that I was her last hope.
Then I would feel her leave me, it passed through her body and into mine, the feeling of absence, of flight. She was no longer mine; she was beyond me. She had passed into trance. Then the noise would pour from her. Words half known, bastardised and tangled, child words, woman sounds, all fell from her lips, and God, always God, the word that kept coming, kept shining through like a flame on a dark hillside. It would last for minutes sometimes, her mouth working, sweat forming in the small well between our clasped palms.
I knew better than to say anything, I just kept my head bowed and waited for the storm of words and emotion to pass. Then she would fall silent, her body flopping forward as if she was a puppet whose strings had just been cut. The first time she did it, I panicked, thinking her dead. I had grabbed her, pulled at her white face and tugged at her hands.
‘Mammy, Mammy, I’m frightened.’
Then she would sigh and open her eyes and regard me. I would see myself reflected there, I looked so small and scared.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The Lord is with us…All these things, son…All this pain…It’s sent to try us…’
‘Yes, Mammy.’
‘God sees it all…Remember that…There is nothing He doesn’t see.’
‘Yes, Mammy.’
I wanted to tell her that I understood even though I didn’t. As I knelt over her like a doctor tending a patient I remember wondering why I couldn’t see what she saw, feel what she felt. Why was I different, why had God excluded me?
‘Don’t tell your father,’ she said. She always said it.
‘I won’t.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good boy.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘What, son?’
‘That. The…praying.’
‘It’s like…’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No, son…It’s beautiful.’
‘Do you see angels?’
‘Well, not really…I see light…I see the light…’
‘What light?’
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