She was driving Ben to a friend’s house, and this added journey was the cause of some irritation in her day; she had too much else to do. Though she did like the privacy of the car, the feeling of his voice coming over her shoulder as she checked the mirror and slowed to make a turn. He was up on the booster seat—Ben was small for eight—and he looked out the window at suburban streets and parked cars, while she used his mobile phone to map the route. She had it down by the gearshift, propped up on the gray plastic fascia. It was hard to read the little arrow through the disaster of Ben’s cracked screen—the thing was rarely out of his hand, unless he dropped it. Now he looked out on the real world as though mildly surprised it was there.“I don’t like Barry McIntyre,” he said.
“No? Why not?”
They had their best chats in the car. If they’d been at home, he would have said, “Dunno,” or “Just . . .” In the car, he said things like “I like boys, though. I do like boys.”
“Of course you do.”
She wondered why he couldn’t speak when they were face to face. What was it about her eyes on him that made him shrug and shift under his clothes?
“You are a boy.”
“I know that,” he said.
Of course, she was his mother, so when she looked at him she was always checking him over to adjust or admire. Though she tried not to. She really tried not to turn into the kind of woman who said, “Sit up straight,” or “Leave your hair alone.”
“Well, then.”
She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw only the side of his head. His coarse hair was darkening through the winter. In a year or two, it would be fully brown.
“I just hate basketball.”
“Do you?”
“I really do.”
Recently, he had used the word “gay” as an insult. “That’s so gay,” he’d said at dinner, and his little sister missed a beat.
“Of course you like basketball,” she said warmly. That lie.
He did not answer.
“Does Barry McIntyre play basketball?”
In the rearview mirror, she saw his hand move toward his hidden face.
“Leave your nose alone!” she said.
It was hard not to. They were so temporarily beautiful, her children. They were so perfect, and then they were not perfect. She loved them too much to let them be.
She drove on while he watched the Dublin suburbs: spring trees, semidetached houses, a bundled old citizen walking her dog. The phone app was taking her down a familiar street, though it was an unfamiliar route, one she would not have known to take herself. Ben’s friend was called Ava, and she was new. She lived in St. Clare Crescent, which was somewhere near the motorway, apparently. But they did not take the motorway; they took a network of small streets, some of which she had driven down before—this was the way to the garden center, that was the way to the dog groomer’s—without knowing that you could cross from one to the other if you turned at the right place.
“Would you rather?” Ben said, then he stopped.
If you did not let Ben know that you were listening, he would refuse to continue.
“What?” she said, finally.
And, now that he knew he had her full attention, he said, “Would you rather drink a cup of lava or be drowned in a lava lake?”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Would you rather?”
“Not this again.”
“Which?”
“You can’t drink lava.”
“Yes, you can.”
“In a cup?”
“A stone cup.”
“I’ll take the lake.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof or have a tree fall on your head?”
He was obsessed with choices, especially impossible ones.
“Neither. I would rather neither of those things happened to me.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof,” he insisted, “or have a tree fall on your head?”
Maybe he was obsessed with death itself. There was no getting out of it, one way or the other.
“Roof,” she said.
“O.K.”
“What about you?”
“Yeah, roof,” he admitted.
“Not your best,” she said.
He paused, took the challenge.
“Would you rather be stung to death by fire ants or strung up by your toes from a big crane until your head burst?”
“Lovely!”
He would keep going until she was completely stuck.
“Crane, please.”
“Would you rather drown in the dark or be strangled in the dark?”
He would keep going until she was actually dead.
“Seriously?”
“A huge dark lake full of eels.”
“Really not. Absolutely not. I would not rather.”
She was taken, as she drove, by the memory of a night swim, many years before Ben was born. It was in a lake, in the Irish countryside; a gang of them coming back from the pub, no moon, no sex, at a guess—not that morning, or the night before, when they were supposed to have their holiday-cottage sex—and she pulled her dress up over her head as she made her way, in the darkness, toward the lake. Of course there was a man in the group who was not, actually, the man she was seeing at the time; he was some other, forbidden man. And neither of these men would later become the father of the boy now sitting in the back seat. Getting naked in the deserted woodland in the middle of the night was a taunt to both of them—either one would do. It was all a long time ago.
The dress was a blue linen shift, loose and practical, her underwear possibly quite fancy and impractical in those days before booster seats and children with sleepovers and phones that told you which way to turn. Her body also a finer thing, back then, if only she had known it. And she was drunk, so the pathway down to the little boardwalk was patchily remembered, her experience at the time also patchy, though it slowed and cleared when she dropped her dress onto the still-warm wood and looked out over the water. There were turf grains in the silk of it that turned the lake brown, even in daylight. Now, at midnight, it was darker than you could imagine, so it was like a sixth sense, the feeling of open space in front of her. When she looked down, she saw the blackness gleam, like oil. She sat at the dock’s edge to unclip her fancy bra and shrugged it off. A man’s voice telling her to stop. Another man saying nothing. A woman’s voice, saying, “No, really, Michelle.” And she was in. She pushed out from the wooden lip as she dropped down into it, was swallowed in a bang of water that turned to a liquid silence, then she struggled back up to where the air began. Black water into black air.
As she rose and turned, she could feel the alcohol swell under the surface of her skin, and the water was not so much cold as numb. Or she was numb. The water slipped past her as she hauled her way through it, in a long, reaching overarm that took her away from everyone, even as she seemed to stay in the same place. She could tell by their voices that she was moving—the fragments of sound she caught as she plowed along the surface, out toward the center of the lake.
If it was the center. If it was even the surface she was swimming along. It was so dark and wet that it was hard to know if her eyes were closed or open. She was afraid that she was not quite level, as she swam, that she was tilting downward, afraid that when she turned her face up to inhale she would find only water. The shouts from the bank were more sporadic now; it was as though they had given up on her as she circled or tried to circle back toward them, because the scraps of sound gave her a sense of horizon and it was important not to lose this. She needed to know which way was up. She pulled the water along the sides of her body, and though she twisted into it as she went, she was not sure that she was making the turn. She should just stop a moment and get her bearings, but she could not stop; she did not want to. It was—this was the secret, sudden thing—so delicious. Not knowing which way was which, or where the edges were. She was dissolved by it. She could drown right now and it would be a pleasure.
She caught a flash of her white arm, a sinewy gleam that she followed—her body its own compass—until she heard, on the bank, the voice of the man she was supposed to sleep with, saw the intermittent cigarette glow of the man she was not supposed to sleep with (and never did, for some reason; perhaps she had him fully spooked). Her big statement was a little undercut, in the shallows, by the sharpness of the stones in the silt under her feet as she made her way up out of the lake, toward recrimination and cold-skinned sex.
She woke up the next morning with a start, the previous night’s slightly watery consummation already forgotten, wasted. It had happened without her. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled air into her lungs. She was alive. And she put this fact into her mind. Jammed it right in the center of her mind. She could never do that again. She was twenty-four years old, and she was giving up death. Drunk or sober, there would be no more lakes after dark.
“You know, Ben, you should never swim at night,” she said now, more than twenty years later, sitting in her Hyundai hybrid. Accelerator, brake, mirror, clutch.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
“No, really, you have to promise me not to do that, ever. Not in a lake, because there is no salt in a lake to hold you up, and especially not in the sea. You must always respect the sea. It’s bigger than you. Do you hear me? And you must never, ever swim if you have taken alcohol, or even if your friends have. If a friend has had a couple of beers when you are a teen-ager and he says, ‘Come on, it’ll be fun!,’ what do you say?”
“Would you rather,” Ben said, patiently.
“No, I wouldn’t. I really would not rather. I would not rather die one way or the other way. What is your problem, Ben?”
They were in a street of newly built semidetached houses, depressingly small and endlessly the same. Tiny gardens: rowan tree, cherry tree, silver birch, ornamental willow—a horrible pompom on a stick. She did not know what she was doing in this place. It was coming to catch her, even here. It was coming to catch her children—her own foolishness; it had followed her out of the water. The night swim was not the end of it; she had been in thrall to death for some time afterward—months, a year. Because of course you could leave the lake but you could not leave desire itself, and all its impossibilities.
Though something was made possible. Something was made real. Something was resolved by the existence of the child in the back seat.
“Would you rather,” Ben said, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“What?”
“Would you rather,” he repeated, in a forbearing way, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“That is a very good question,” she said.
“Would you rather?”
“That is a truly great question. That is the best one yet.” She reached to the car radio and switched it on, hoping to distract him.
“Is that the place?” The app told her to take a right. “Is that where Ava lives?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s your friend.”
“No, she’s not. She’s not my friend. She’s just really, really pushy.” His hand rested, in anticipation, on the overnight bag beside him as she took the turn through large, open gates into a new development.
“Is this it?”
St. Clare Close, St. Clare Court. The little maze was set around an open green space, and in the center of the green was a grand, three-story building.
St. Clare’s itself.
There it was. All this time. She had lived five miles away from here, for a decade, and had never realized it was down this road, one she passed every so often, on her way somewhere else.
She had been driven here in a taxi nearly twenty years ago, when all around were green fields. She was terrified that the driver would know from the address that she was mad, though she wasn’t properly mad; she was just quite badly broken. She was sure he would know that there was a broken human being in his cab, that he would turn to sneer at her as they went through the gates, or as they were going up the driveway past tended gardens, to this large house, this facility.
The Sisters of St. Clare and St. Agnes. Private Nursing Home.
“Scraggy Aggy’s,” as it used to be known. The bin. She had typed the address into her son’s phone and thought nothing of it.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
So that was why she had remembered the lake.
It was very strange, looking at the building from the outside. She had spent her time there in a small room and had seen the exterior perhaps twice: first in a skewed way, as she walked up the steps, and possibly once again in a backward glance when her father came to collect her. She had never gone into the gardens, which were now filled with smart new houses; it was possible that she had not been allowed. Or, more likely, she had not been supplied with clothes. She had slept a lot, or lain unmoving in her hospital-style bed. She did remember standing at a window—perhaps it was even that window on the third floor, where the building bulged out into a fat, round turret. She knew that the turret contained a flight of stairs and that she had looked out from the top of it, as a woman in a fairy tale might—though she was not in a fairy tale, she was in a fog of Mogadon, not to mention all the other junk she swallowed obediently, twice a day, wondering if she would ever, ever shit again. Nobody seemed to care about that. They cared about your feelings instead. Though “cared” was perhaps the wrong word. They observed your feelings.
“Mother,” Ben said—a word he used only when truly annoyed. She had forgotten to say “What?”
“What?” she said.
“Would you rather live in a turkey?”
“Is this the place?” she said. “Is this where she lives?”
She had slowed to a stop in the middle of the deserted street. A pair of tiny children, one of them just a toddler, were playing on the flight of broad granite steps that led up to the front door of the building that used to be Scraggy Aggy’s. The place had been turned into apartments—they probably cost a bomb. Other things came back to her as she looked at the façade: A foyer of sorts, where she had signed in. A large living room for the nuns, where her father had stood up from a chintz armchair as she walked through the door, ready to go home. It was the high-ceilinged room on the left, where the children’s mother had pinned the curtain back, to see that they did not wander far.
There had been a godforsaken day room where people went to smoke—she wondered where that was. They were all on twenty cigarettes a day, the broken ladies of the suburbs, with their trembling hands and their pretty dressing gowns. They’d sat in this stinking room, with its vinyl-covered armchairs, and looked at their wrists. She wondered who lived in that space now. Someone busy and young. Someone who put orchids on the sill of a window that had once been nailed shut. This person did not smoke. This person walked out of a lovely private flat into the public corridor where the sad people used to pace, all those years ago. Weeping, not weeping, silent, eying the pay phone.
“It’s No. 74.” Her son’s tone was one of bottomless contempt, and she saw that she had not moved, was stalled.
The toddler and the young child were actually contained by the steps, she realized. They stayed at the top, and peddled their tricycle on the flat surface. They did not approach the edge.
She had spent the past eight years of her life checking on the safety of small children.
The car rolled gently forward as Ben read out the numbers on the houses that faced onto the green: 67, 69, 71.
“Where are the evens?” she said, as they circled slowly around the back of the building as though driving into a trap. This is how her life had felt, just before it broke—everything had been too connected. And now it was happening again: the unwitting journey, the unfunny choices, the idea that her son knew, of course he did, you could smell it on her still: the brackish water of the lake.
She spotted the window of the day room, up on the second floor, and she was still up there, checking her wrists. Smoking away. Staring for weeks at a patch on the wall. Ben unknown to her. Her daughter unknown. They had not happened inside her body; they had not been born.
“There it is! Seventy-four, seventy-four!”
She stopped the car, pulled the hand brake, and twisted in her seat to look at her son, who was undoing his seat belt in the back. Ben glanced up at her, and he was beautiful. His hair needed a comb, and there was a gleam of something under his nose, but he was so very much himself. He looked at her from under long lashes, as though he had known her for a long time, and she was not inside the building. She was here now, on the outside, with him.
“Be good,” she said, as he grabbed the overnight bag and was gone. For a boy who didn’t like girls, he was quick getting to Ava’s front door.
“I’ll pick you up at eleven tomorrow.”
He came doubling back then. She thought for a moment that he wanted to kiss her goodbye, but he was just looking for his phone. She handed it through the window, then stuck her face out after it, for mischief.
“Mnnnnmm,” she said, puckering up. And he did kiss her, abruptly, before running back to the house, where Ava was now standing on the porch to welcome him in. A little blond pixie, with a sequinned heart on her T-shirt, jigging up and down at the sight of him.
The kiss was a clumsy thing. Fleshy. Swift. There was a dot of cold on her cheek, from the tip of his nose.
“Ben!” she shouted. “Hang on. Ben!”
“What?”
“I would rather have the turkey live inside me.”
“O.K.!” He took her answer quite seriously.
“No contest.”
It was just a question, she thought. And she checked the rearview mirror before pulling out.
♦
Published in The New Yorker print edition of the March, 9 2020, issue.
Vozila je Bena kod prijateljce na spavanje, i to dodatno putovanje živciralo ju je; imala je toliko toga obaviti u tom danu. Iako, sviđala joj se intimnost auta, Benov glas iza ramena kada bi pogledala u retrovizor i usporila pri skretanju. Sjedio je u autosjedalici – za osam godina, još je bio malo dijete – i promatrao kroz prozor prigradske ulice i parkirane automobile, dok je ona planirala rutu puta na njegovom mobitelu. Stavila je aparat uz mjenjač i naslonila na sivi plastični jezičac. Bilo je teško pratili malu strjelicu na ekranu kroz kaos Benovog razbijenog telefona; stalno ga je imao u rukama, osim kada bi mu ispao. Sada je gledao van u stvarni svijet kao da je blago iznenađen što uopće postoji. „Ne sviđa mi se Barry McIntyre,“ rekao je.
„Ne? Zašto ne?“
Najbolje su razgovore vodili u autu. Da su bili doma, rekao bi, „Nznm,“ ili „Tak...“ Ali u autu bi rekao nešto poput, „Volim dečke. Sviđaju mi se dečki.“
„Naravno.“
Pitala se zašto nije mogao razgovarati kada su sjedili licem u lice. Što je to bilo u njezinom pogledu zbog čega bi slijegao ramenima i vrpoljio se?
„Ti si dečko.“
„Znam,“ rekao je.
Naravno, ona mu je bila majka, tako da kadgod bi pogledala u njega, proučavala bi ga ili divila mu se. Ali pokušavala je to ne činiti. Stvarno nije htjela postati jedna od onih žena koje govore, „Ispravi se“ ili „Ne diraj si kosu.“
„U redu onda.“
Bacila je pogled na retrovizor. Vidjela je samo dio njegove glave. Kako je zima prolazila, njegova je oštra kosa postajala tamnija. Kroz godinu-dvije, bit će potpuno smeđa.
„Jedino mrzim košarku.“
„A da?“
„Da, stvarno.“
Nedavno je upotrijebio riječ „gej“ kao uvredu. „To je tako gej,“ rekao je za večerom, na iznenađenje svoje mlađe sestre.
„Naravno da voliš košarku,“ rekla je srdačno. To je bila laž.
Nije ništa odgovorio.
„Igra li Barry McIntyre košarku?“
U retrovizoru je vidjela da prinosi ruku licu.
„Ne diraj nos!“ rekla je.
Stvarno je bilo teško. Djeca su bila tako privremeno prekrasna. Bili su tako savršeni, a onda odjednom više nisu bili savršeni. Previše ih je voljela da bi ih pustila na miru.
Vozila je dalje, a on je promatrao predgrađe Dublina: proljetna stabla, dvojne kuće, zabundanu staricu kako šeće psa. Mobilna aplikacija vodila ju je poznatom ulicom, ali nepoznatom rutom; svakako ne rutom kojom bi ona sama znala voziti. Benova se nova prijateljica zvala Ava. Živjela je u četvrti Sv. Klara, naizgled blizu autoceste. Ali oni nisu išli autocestom, nego kroz mrežu uličica; nekima je vozila i prije – tu je bio put k vrtnom centru, ondje put k frizeru za pse – ne znajući da lako može prijeći iz jedne u drugu ako skrene na pravom mjestu.
„Bi li radije?“ Ben je počeo pa stao.
Ako mu nisi dao na znanje da slušaš, ne bi nastavio.
„Što?” rekla je naposljetku.
Sada, kada je imao njezinu punu pozornost, rekao je, „Bi li radije popila šalicu lave ili se utopila u jezeru lave?“
„Kriste.“
„Bi li radije?“
„Ne opet.“
„Koje?“
„Ne možeš piti lavu.“
„Da, možeš.“
„U šalici?“
„Kamenoj šalici.“
„Radije bih jezero.“
„Bi li radije pala s krova ili da ti stablo padne na glavu?“
Bio je opsjednut izborima, pogotovo nemogućima.
„Nijedno. Najradije bih da mi se ne dogodi nijedna od tih stvari.“
„Bi li radije pala s krova,“ navaljivao je, „ili da ti stablo padne na glavu?“
Mozda je bio opsjednut smrću. Nije se mogla izvući, kako god.
„Krov,“ rekla je.
„OK.“
„A ti?“
„Da, krov,“ priznao je.
„Taj ti nije bio najbolji.“
Zastao je, prihvaćajući izazov.
„Bi li radije da te vatreni mravi izgrizu do smrti ili da visiš naopačke s velike dizalice dok ti glava ne eksplodira?“
„Krasno!“
Nastavljao bi sve dok ona ne bi više znala što odgovoriti.
„Dizalicu, molim.“
„Bi li se radije utopila po mraku ili da te netko udavi po mraku?“
Nastavljao bi sve dok ona zapravo ne bi umrla.
„Jesi ozbiljan?“
„Ogromno tamno jezero puno pijavica.“
„Stvarno ne. Apsolutno ne bih radije to.“
Vozeći, sjetila se jednog noćnog kupanja, mnogo godina prije Benova rođenja. Jezero negdje na irskom selu; otišli su ondje poslije odlaska u pub, nije bilo mjeseca, nije bilo seksa, koliko se sjeća – barem ne to jutro, ili noć prije, kad su se trebali seksati na svojem 'odmoru u kolibi' – i ona je skinula haljinu preko glave dok je kroz mrak hodala prema jezeru. Naravno, bio je ondje i muškarac, ne onaj kojeg je viđala u to vrijeme, neki drugi, zabranjeni muškarac. I nijedan od njih dvojice nije postao otac dječaka koji je upravo sjedio na stražnjem sjedalu. Skinuvši se dogola pored šume bez ikoga, usred noći, narugala se obojici, bilo kojemu. Puno je vremena prošlo otada.
Haljina je bila plava, lanena, prozračna i praktična; donje rublje vjerojatno posebno i nepraktično, tih dana prije autosjedalica i djece koja spavaju jedni kod drugih i telefona koji ti govore gdje skrenuti. I njezino je tijelo tada bilo posebnije, iako to nije znala. Također, bila je pijana, tako da se slabo sjećala puteljka koji je vodio do pristaništa; jednako slabo bilo je njezino iskustvo. No sve je usporilo i postalo jasnije kada je bacila haljinu na još uvijek tople daske pristaništa i pogledala prema vodi. Svila jezera bila je isprekidana česticama treseta zbog koje se voda doimala smeđom, čak i danju. Tada, u ponoć, bilo je nezamislivo tamnije; oslanjala se na svojevrsno šesto čulo, osjećajući prostor pred sobom. Kada je spustila pogled, tama je sjajila poput ulja. Sjela je na rub pristaništa, otkopčala svoj fini grudnjak i pustila da joj padne s ramena. Muškarčev glas govorio joj je da stane. Drugi muškarac nije rekao ništa. Ženski glas: „Ne, stvarno, Michelle.“ U sljedećem trenutku, bila je u vodi. Uskočila je odgurnuvši se od drvenog ruba, a voda ju je progutala u velikom pljusku koji se potom pretvorio u tekuću tišinu. Jedva se vratila natrag gdje je zrak. Iz crne vode u crni zrak.
Kad je izronila i okrenula se, osjetila je kako joj alkohol kola pod kožom, a voda nije bila toliko hladna koliko tupa. Ili se ona osjećala zatupljeno. Voda je klizila oko nje dok se ona mukom probijala kroz nju u dugim zamasima, udaljujući se od ostalih, čak i kad joj se činilo da stoji u mjestu. Znala je da se kreće zahvaljujući njihovim glasovima – lovila je fragmente zvuka na površini jezera dok je grabila prema središtu.
Ako je to bilo središte. Ako je uopće plivala površinom. Bilo je tako mračno i vlažno da nije znala ni jesu li joj oči otvorene ili zatvorene. Bojala se da se ne uspijeva održati, da ju nešto vuče prema dolje, da kad bi podigla glavu da udahne, da bi ondje zatekla još vode. Krici s obale postajali su rjeđi, kao da su odustali od nje dok je ona plivala u krugovima ili barem pokušavala zatvoriti krug do njih; zvuci su bili njezin obzor i nije ih htjela izgubiti. Morala je znati gdje se nalazi 'iznad'. Povlačila je vodu oko sebe i, iako se okretala kako je išla dalje, nije bila sigurna da stvarno skreće. Trebala bi stati na trenutak da se snađe, ali nije mogla stati, nije htjela. Bilo je tako – i to je bilo tajno iznenađenje – neodoljivo. Ne znati gdje je što niti gdje su rubovi. Bila je slobodna. Mogla bi se utopiti u tom trenutku i uživala bi.
Gledala je bjelinu svoje ruke, žilavi bljesak koji je slijedila – njezino tijelo vlastiti kompas – sve dok s obale nije čula glas muškarca s kojim je trebala spavati, i vidjela isprekidano svjetlo cigarete muškarca s kojim nije trebala spavati (i iz nekog razloga, nikad ni nije; možda ga je potpuno isprepadala).
Njezinu je veliku gestu pomalo potkopalo nespretno izvlačenje iz jezera kroz mulj plićaka punog oštrog kamenja. Izašla je, ususret prepirkama i promrzlom seksu.
Sljedeće se jutro prenula iza sna; sinoćnje pomalo vodeno sjedinjenje već zaboravljeno, potraćeno. Dogodilo se bez nje. Sjedila je na rubu kreveta uvlačeći zrak u pluća. Bila je živa. Umentula si je tu činjenicu u um. Zabila je u sām centar svojega uma. Da više nikad nije tako nešto učinila. Imala je dvadeset četiri godine, i upravo je odustala od smrti. Pijana ili trijezna, nema više jezera kad padne mrak.
„Znaš, Bene, po noći se ne smije plivati,“ rekla je sada, više od dvadeset godina kasnije, sjedeći u svojem hibridnom autu. Gas, kočnica, retrovizor, kvačilo.
„Bi li radije?“ rekao je Ben.
„Ne, ozbiljno, moraš mi obećati da nećeš nikada to učiniti. Ne smiješ u jezeru, jer nema soli da te drži, ali pogotovo ne ni u moru. Moraš poštovati more. Veće je od tebe. Čuješ li me? I nikad, apsolutno nikad, ne smiješ plivati ako si pio alkohol, ili čak ako su tvoji prijatelji pili. Ako ti prijatelj popije par pivā kad budete tinejdžeri i kaže, 'Hajde, bit će zabavno!', što ćeš ti reći?“
„Bi li radije,“ Ben je strpljivo rekao.
„Ne, ne bih. Stvarno ne bih radije. Ne bih radije umrla na jedan ili drugi način. Što je s tobom?“
Nalazili su se u ulici punoj novo izgrađenih dvojnih kuća, depresivno malih i beskrajno istih. Sićušni vrtovi: jarebika, drvo trešnje, breza, ukrasna vrba. Užasni coflek na štapu. Nije znala što radi ovdje. Sustizalo ju je, čak i ovdje. Sustići će i njezinu djecu – njezina je glupost izašla iz vode za njom. Nije sve završilo noćnim kupanjem; robovala je smrti još neko vrijeme poslije toga – mjesecima, godinu dana. Jer naravno, možeš izaći iz jezera, ali ne možeš napustiti samu želju, i sve njezine nemogućnosti.
Iako, ipak se jest pojavila neka mogućnost. Nešto se ostvarilo. Nešto se riješilo zahvaljujući postojanju ovog djeteta na stražnjem sjedalu.
„Bi li radije,“ rekao je Ben, „živjela u purici ili da purica živi u tebi?“
„Molim?“
„Bi li radije,“ ponovio je, kao da trpi, „živjela u purici ili da purica živi u tebi?“
„To je jako dobro pitanje,“ rekla je.
„Bi li radije?“
„To je stvarno odlično pitanje. Najbolje dosad.“ Podigla je ruku prema radiju u autu i upalila ga, u nadi da će mu to odvratiti pozornost.
„Je li to to?“ Aplikacija joj je rekla da skrene udesno. „Jel' tu Ava živi?“
„Ne znam.“
„Ona ti je prijateljica.“
„Ne, nije. Nije mi ona prijateljica. Ona samo jako jako navaljuje.“ Držao je ruku na torbi, iščekujući, dok je ona skrenula i prošla kroz velike otvorene vratnice u sljedeće naselje.
„Je li to to?“
Put sv. Klare, Dvor sv. Klare. Maleni labirint kružio je oko zelene čistine, a u centru zelenila nalazila se velebna zgrada na tri kata.
Dom svete Klare.
Tu je. Sve ovo vrijeme. Posljednjih je deset godina živjela samo osam kilometara dalje, i nikad nije primijetila da je to tu, na kraju ceste kojom je prolazila svako toliko, vozeći nekamo drugamo.
Tu ju je dovezao taksi prije gotovo dvadeset godina, kada su okolo bila samo zelena polja. Bila je prestravljena da će vozač zbog adrese znati da je ona luda, iako nije bila skroz luda, samo jako slomljena. Bila je sigurna da će znati da mu u taksiju sjedi slomljena osoba, da će se okrenuti i narugati joj se kad prođu kroz vratnice, ili kad se budu uspinjali pored uređenih vrtova do te velike kuće, te ustanove.
Dom sestara svete Klare i svete Agneze. Privatni dom za odrasle osobe.
'Žgoljava Agi', kako su ga zvali. Ludara. Bila je utipkala ovu adresu u sinov mobitel bez razmišljanja.
Zato se sjetila što se dogodilo na jezeru.
Tako čudno, promatrati ovu zgradu izvana. Svojedobno je sve vrijeme ovdje provodila u malenoj sobi i vidjela vanjski dio možda dvaput: prvi put u magli, dok se uspinjala stubama, i možda opet kad je bacila pogled unatrag, na kraju, kad je otac došao po nju. Nije nikada posjetila vrtove, koji su sada bili puni novih skupih kuća; možda ih nije ni smjela posjetiti. Ili, izglednije, nije imala odjeće da izađe van. Puno je spavala, ili ležala u svojem bolničkom krevetu. Sjećala se stajanja ispred prozora – možda je čak bio onaj prozor na trećem katu, ondje gdje je iz zgrade stršala debela okrugla kupola. Znala je da je u kupoli stubište i da je s vrha stubišta gledala van, kao lik iz bajke – iako, nije živjela u bajci, živjela je u magli Mogadona, i hrpe ostalog smeća koje je poslušno gutala, dvaput dnevno, pitajući se hoće li ikada više srati. Nitko nije mario za to. Marili su samo za osjećaje. Iako, 'marili' ne bi bila prava riječ. Promatrali su osjećaje.
„Majko,“ Ben je rekao; tako ju je zvao samo kad je stvarno bio iznerviran. Zaboravila je reći, 'Molim?'
„Molim?“
„Bi li radije živjela u purici?“
„Jel' to to?“ rekla je. „Ava tu živi?“
Bila se zaustavila usred prazne ulice. Dvoje sićušne djece – jedno je tek puzalo – igralo se na širokim granitnim stubama što su vodile do vrata zgrade nekoć zvane Žgoljava Agi. Pretvorili su je u stambenu zgradu; stanovi vjerojatno koštaju kao suho zlato. Dok je promatrala fasadu, dolazili su joj i drugi prizori: svojevrsna recepcija, gdje se upisala. Velika dnevna soba koju su sestre upotrebljavale, gdje je njezin otac sjedio u cvjetnom naslonjaču; naglo ustao kada je ona ušla u sobu, spreman da je odvede doma. To je ona soba s visokim stropom s lijeve strane, gdje je sada majka djece sa stuba razvukla zastore da ih može vidjeti.
Bila je ondje i zapuštena zajednička soba gdje su ljudi odlazili pušiti – pitala se gdje se ona nalazi. Sve su dimile dvadeset cigareta dnevno, slomljene dame predgrađa, sa svojim drhtavim rukama i finim kućnim ogrtačima. Sjedile bi u toj smrdljivoj sobi s plastičnim navlakama na foteljama, i promatrale svoje zglobove. Pitala se tko je sada živio u tom prostoru. Netko mlad i pun energije. Netko tko je stavio orhideje na dasku prozora koji je nekoć bio zaključan. Ta osoba nije pušila. Ta je osoba izašla iz divnog privatnog stana u javni hodnik gdje su nekad, prije svih tih godina, hodali tužni ljudi. Plačući, ne plačući, u tišini, pogledavajući telefonsku goovrnicu.
„Broj 74.“ Benov ton odisao je neizmjernim prijezirom, i onda je vidjela da se nije ni pomaknula, zapela je.
Shvatila je da je ono dvoje dječice zapravo zaštićeno stubama. Držali su se vrha, prčkali po svojem triciklu. Nisu bili ni blizu rubu.
Provela je posljednjih osam godina svojeg života provjeravajući sigurnost malene djece.
Auto je polako nastavljao naprijed, dok je Ben naglas čitao brojeve na kućama preko puta zelene čistine: 67, 69, 91.
„Gdje su parni brojevi?“ pitala se, dok su polako zaokretali iza zgrade, kao da idu ravno u zamku. Tako joj je i tada izgledao njezin život, tik prije no što se raspao – sve je bilo previše povezano. I sada se ponavljalo: ovo nenamjerno putovanje, bizarni izbori, pomisao da njezin sin nekako zna, naravno da zna, još uvijek je zaudarala na slankastu jezersku vodu.
Spazila je prozor zajedničke sobe gore na drugom katu, i vidjela sebe kako gleda u svoje zglobove. Puši. Tjednima bulji u točku na zidu. Ben joj je još bio nepoznat. Njezina kći nepoznata. Nisu se još bili dogodili u njezinome tijelu; nisu se još rodili.
„Eno je! Sedamdeset četiri, sedamdeset četiri!
Zaustavila je auto, povukla ručnu kočnicu i okrenula se da pogleda svojeg sina na stražnjem sjedalu, dok je on otkopčavao sigurnosni pojas. Ben je pogledao u nju, i bio je prekrasan. Kosa mu je bila zamršena, i nos mu je curio, ali bio je tako svoj. Gledao je u nju ispod dugih gustih trepavica, kao da ju oduvijek poznaje, i ona više nije bila u toj zgradi. Sada je bila ovdje, vani, s njime.
„Budi dobar,“ rekla je, a on je zgrabio torbu i otrčao. Za dečka koji nije volio djevojčice, stvarno se žurio stići Avi.
„Pokupit ću te sutra u jedanaest.“
Odjednom se okrenuo i potrčao natrag. Na trenutak je pomislila da ju je htio poljubiti za rastanak, ali samo je tražio svoj telefon. Dodala mu ga je kroz prozor, i onda isturila obraz, tek tako.
„Mmmmm,“ rekla je, napućivši usne. I poljubio ju je, na brzinu, i potom otrčao natrag prema Avinoj kući. Ona ga je čekala na trijemu. Mala plavokosa vila sa šljokičavim srcem na majici. Počela je cupkati kada ga je vidjela.
Njegov je poljubac bio nespretan. Mesnat. Brz. Osjetila je hladnu kap na obrazu s vrha njegovog nosa.
„Bene!“ poviknula je. „Čekaj, Bene!“
„Što je?“
„Radije bih da purica živi u meni.“
„OK.“ Shvaćao je njezine odgovore vrlo ozbiljno.
„Bez daljnjeg.“
Obično pitanje, pomislila je. I bacila pogled na retrovizor prije no što je krenula.
She was driving Ben to a friend’s house, and this added journey was the cause of some irritation in her day; she had too much else to do. Though she did like the privacy of the car, the feeling of his voice coming over her shoulder as she checked the mirror and slowed to make a turn. He was up on the booster seat—Ben was small for eight—and he looked out the window at suburban streets and parked cars, while she used his mobile phone to map the route. She had it down by the gearshift, propped up on the gray plastic fascia. It was hard to read the little arrow through the disaster of Ben’s cracked screen—the thing was rarely out of his hand, unless he dropped it. Now he looked out on the real world as though mildly surprised it was there.“I don’t like Barry McIntyre,” he said.
“No? Why not?”
They had their best chats in the car. If they’d been at home, he would have said, “Dunno,” or “Just . . .” In the car, he said things like “I like boys, though. I do like boys.”
“Of course you do.”
She wondered why he couldn’t speak when they were face to face. What was it about her eyes on him that made him shrug and shift under his clothes?
“You are a boy.”
“I know that,” he said.
Of course, she was his mother, so when she looked at him she was always checking him over to adjust or admire. Though she tried not to. She really tried not to turn into the kind of woman who said, “Sit up straight,” or “Leave your hair alone.”
“Well, then.”
She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw only the side of his head. His coarse hair was darkening through the winter. In a year or two, it would be fully brown.
“I just hate basketball.”
“Do you?”
“I really do.”
Recently, he had used the word “gay” as an insult. “That’s so gay,” he’d said at dinner, and his little sister missed a beat.
“Of course you like basketball,” she said warmly. That lie.
He did not answer.
“Does Barry McIntyre play basketball?”
In the rearview mirror, she saw his hand move toward his hidden face.
“Leave your nose alone!” she said.
It was hard not to. They were so temporarily beautiful, her children. They were so perfect, and then they were not perfect. She loved them too much to let them be.
She drove on while he watched the Dublin suburbs: spring trees, semidetached houses, a bundled old citizen walking her dog. The phone app was taking her down a familiar street, though it was an unfamiliar route, one she would not have known to take herself. Ben’s friend was called Ava, and she was new. She lived in St. Clare Crescent, which was somewhere near the motorway, apparently. But they did not take the motorway; they took a network of small streets, some of which she had driven down before—this was the way to the garden center, that was the way to the dog groomer’s—without knowing that you could cross from one to the other if you turned at the right place.
“Would you rather?” Ben said, then he stopped.
If you did not let Ben know that you were listening, he would refuse to continue.
“What?” she said, finally.
And, now that he knew he had her full attention, he said, “Would you rather drink a cup of lava or be drowned in a lava lake?”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Would you rather?”
“Not this again.”
“Which?”
“You can’t drink lava.”
“Yes, you can.”
“In a cup?”
“A stone cup.”
“I’ll take the lake.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof or have a tree fall on your head?”
He was obsessed with choices, especially impossible ones.
“Neither. I would rather neither of those things happened to me.”
“Would you rather fall off a roof,” he insisted, “or have a tree fall on your head?”
Maybe he was obsessed with death itself. There was no getting out of it, one way or the other.
“Roof,” she said.
“O.K.”
“What about you?”
“Yeah, roof,” he admitted.
“Not your best,” she said.
He paused, took the challenge.
“Would you rather be stung to death by fire ants or strung up by your toes from a big crane until your head burst?”
“Lovely!”
He would keep going until she was completely stuck.
“Crane, please.”
“Would you rather drown in the dark or be strangled in the dark?”
He would keep going until she was actually dead.
“Seriously?”
“A huge dark lake full of eels.”
“Really not. Absolutely not. I would not rather.”
She was taken, as she drove, by the memory of a night swim, many years before Ben was born. It was in a lake, in the Irish countryside; a gang of them coming back from the pub, no moon, no sex, at a guess—not that morning, or the night before, when they were supposed to have their holiday-cottage sex—and she pulled her dress up over her head as she made her way, in the darkness, toward the lake. Of course there was a man in the group who was not, actually, the man she was seeing at the time; he was some other, forbidden man. And neither of these men would later become the father of the boy now sitting in the back seat. Getting naked in the deserted woodland in the middle of the night was a taunt to both of them—either one would do. It was all a long time ago.
The dress was a blue linen shift, loose and practical, her underwear possibly quite fancy and impractical in those days before booster seats and children with sleepovers and phones that told you which way to turn. Her body also a finer thing, back then, if only she had known it. And she was drunk, so the pathway down to the little boardwalk was patchily remembered, her experience at the time also patchy, though it slowed and cleared when she dropped her dress onto the still-warm wood and looked out over the water. There were turf grains in the silk of it that turned the lake brown, even in daylight. Now, at midnight, it was darker than you could imagine, so it was like a sixth sense, the feeling of open space in front of her. When she looked down, she saw the blackness gleam, like oil. She sat at the dock’s edge to unclip her fancy bra and shrugged it off. A man’s voice telling her to stop. Another man saying nothing. A woman’s voice, saying, “No, really, Michelle.” And she was in. She pushed out from the wooden lip as she dropped down into it, was swallowed in a bang of water that turned to a liquid silence, then she struggled back up to where the air began. Black water into black air.
As she rose and turned, she could feel the alcohol swell under the surface of her skin, and the water was not so much cold as numb. Or she was numb. The water slipped past her as she hauled her way through it, in a long, reaching overarm that took her away from everyone, even as she seemed to stay in the same place. She could tell by their voices that she was moving—the fragments of sound she caught as she plowed along the surface, out toward the center of the lake.
If it was the center. If it was even the surface she was swimming along. It was so dark and wet that it was hard to know if her eyes were closed or open. She was afraid that she was not quite level, as she swam, that she was tilting downward, afraid that when she turned her face up to inhale she would find only water. The shouts from the bank were more sporadic now; it was as though they had given up on her as she circled or tried to circle back toward them, because the scraps of sound gave her a sense of horizon and it was important not to lose this. She needed to know which way was up. She pulled the water along the sides of her body, and though she twisted into it as she went, she was not sure that she was making the turn. She should just stop a moment and get her bearings, but she could not stop; she did not want to. It was—this was the secret, sudden thing—so delicious. Not knowing which way was which, or where the edges were. She was dissolved by it. She could drown right now and it would be a pleasure.
She caught a flash of her white arm, a sinewy gleam that she followed—her body its own compass—until she heard, on the bank, the voice of the man she was supposed to sleep with, saw the intermittent cigarette glow of the man she was not supposed to sleep with (and never did, for some reason; perhaps she had him fully spooked). Her big statement was a little undercut, in the shallows, by the sharpness of the stones in the silt under her feet as she made her way up out of the lake, toward recrimination and cold-skinned sex.
She woke up the next morning with a start, the previous night’s slightly watery consummation already forgotten, wasted. It had happened without her. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled air into her lungs. She was alive. And she put this fact into her mind. Jammed it right in the center of her mind. She could never do that again. She was twenty-four years old, and she was giving up death. Drunk or sober, there would be no more lakes after dark.
“You know, Ben, you should never swim at night,” she said now, more than twenty years later, sitting in her Hyundai hybrid. Accelerator, brake, mirror, clutch.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
“No, really, you have to promise me not to do that, ever. Not in a lake, because there is no salt in a lake to hold you up, and especially not in the sea. You must always respect the sea. It’s bigger than you. Do you hear me? And you must never, ever swim if you have taken alcohol, or even if your friends have. If a friend has had a couple of beers when you are a teen-ager and he says, ‘Come on, it’ll be fun!,’ what do you say?”
“Would you rather,” Ben said, patiently.
“No, I wouldn’t. I really would not rather. I would not rather die one way or the other way. What is your problem, Ben?”
They were in a street of newly built semidetached houses, depressingly small and endlessly the same. Tiny gardens: rowan tree, cherry tree, silver birch, ornamental willow—a horrible pompom on a stick. She did not know what she was doing in this place. It was coming to catch her, even here. It was coming to catch her children—her own foolishness; it had followed her out of the water. The night swim was not the end of it; she had been in thrall to death for some time afterward—months, a year. Because of course you could leave the lake but you could not leave desire itself, and all its impossibilities.
Though something was made possible. Something was made real. Something was resolved by the existence of the child in the back seat.
“Would you rather,” Ben said, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“What?”
“Would you rather,” he repeated, in a forbearing way, “live in a turkey or have a turkey live inside you?”
“That is a very good question,” she said.
“Would you rather?”
“That is a truly great question. That is the best one yet.” She reached to the car radio and switched it on, hoping to distract him.
“Is that the place?” The app told her to take a right. “Is that where Ava lives?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s your friend.”
“No, she’s not. She’s not my friend. She’s just really, really pushy.” His hand rested, in anticipation, on the overnight bag beside him as she took the turn through large, open gates into a new development.
“Is this it?”
St. Clare Close, St. Clare Court. The little maze was set around an open green space, and in the center of the green was a grand, three-story building.
St. Clare’s itself.
There it was. All this time. She had lived five miles away from here, for a decade, and had never realized it was down this road, one she passed every so often, on her way somewhere else.
She had been driven here in a taxi nearly twenty years ago, when all around were green fields. She was terrified that the driver would know from the address that she was mad, though she wasn’t properly mad; she was just quite badly broken. She was sure he would know that there was a broken human being in his cab, that he would turn to sneer at her as they went through the gates, or as they were going up the driveway past tended gardens, to this large house, this facility.
The Sisters of St. Clare and St. Agnes. Private Nursing Home.
“Scraggy Aggy’s,” as it used to be known. The bin. She had typed the address into her son’s phone and thought nothing of it.
“Would you rather?” Ben said.
So that was why she had remembered the lake.
It was very strange, looking at the building from the outside. She had spent her time there in a small room and had seen the exterior perhaps twice: first in a skewed way, as she walked up the steps, and possibly once again in a backward glance when her father came to collect her. She had never gone into the gardens, which were now filled with smart new houses; it was possible that she had not been allowed. Or, more likely, she had not been supplied with clothes. She had slept a lot, or lain unmoving in her hospital-style bed. She did remember standing at a window—perhaps it was even that window on the third floor, where the building bulged out into a fat, round turret. She knew that the turret contained a flight of stairs and that she had looked out from the top of it, as a woman in a fairy tale might—though she was not in a fairy tale, she was in a fog of Mogadon, not to mention all the other junk she swallowed obediently, twice a day, wondering if she would ever, ever shit again. Nobody seemed to care about that. They cared about your feelings instead. Though “cared” was perhaps the wrong word. They observed your feelings.
“Mother,” Ben said—a word he used only when truly annoyed. She had forgotten to say “What?”
“What?” she said.
“Would you rather live in a turkey?”
“Is this the place?” she said. “Is this where she lives?”
She had slowed to a stop in the middle of the deserted street. A pair of tiny children, one of them just a toddler, were playing on the flight of broad granite steps that led up to the front door of the building that used to be Scraggy Aggy’s. The place had been turned into apartments—they probably cost a bomb. Other things came back to her as she looked at the façade: A foyer of sorts, where she had signed in. A large living room for the nuns, where her father had stood up from a chintz armchair as she walked through the door, ready to go home. It was the high-ceilinged room on the left, where the children’s mother had pinned the curtain back, to see that they did not wander far.
There had been a godforsaken day room where people went to smoke—she wondered where that was. They were all on twenty cigarettes a day, the broken ladies of the suburbs, with their trembling hands and their pretty dressing gowns. They’d sat in this stinking room, with its vinyl-covered armchairs, and looked at their wrists. She wondered who lived in that space now. Someone busy and young. Someone who put orchids on the sill of a window that had once been nailed shut. This person did not smoke. This person walked out of a lovely private flat into the public corridor where the sad people used to pace, all those years ago. Weeping, not weeping, silent, eying the pay phone.
“It’s No. 74.” Her son’s tone was one of bottomless contempt, and she saw that she had not moved, was stalled.
The toddler and the young child were actually contained by the steps, she realized. They stayed at the top, and peddled their tricycle on the flat surface. They did not approach the edge.
She had spent the past eight years of her life checking on the safety of small children.
The car rolled gently forward as Ben read out the numbers on the houses that faced onto the green: 67, 69, 71.
“Where are the evens?” she said, as they circled slowly around the back of the building as though driving into a trap. This is how her life had felt, just before it broke—everything had been too connected. And now it was happening again: the unwitting journey, the unfunny choices, the idea that her son knew, of course he did, you could smell it on her still: the brackish water of the lake.
She spotted the window of the day room, up on the second floor, and she was still up there, checking her wrists. Smoking away. Staring for weeks at a patch on the wall. Ben unknown to her. Her daughter unknown. They had not happened inside her body; they had not been born.
“There it is! Seventy-four, seventy-four!”
She stopped the car, pulled the hand brake, and twisted in her seat to look at her son, who was undoing his seat belt in the back. Ben glanced up at her, and he was beautiful. His hair needed a comb, and there was a gleam of something under his nose, but he was so very much himself. He looked at her from under long lashes, as though he had known her for a long time, and she was not inside the building. She was here now, on the outside, with him.
“Be good,” she said, as he grabbed the overnight bag and was gone. For a boy who didn’t like girls, he was quick getting to Ava’s front door.
“I’ll pick you up at eleven tomorrow.”
He came doubling back then. She thought for a moment that he wanted to kiss her goodbye, but he was just looking for his phone. She handed it through the window, then stuck her face out after it, for mischief.
“Mnnnnmm,” she said, puckering up. And he did kiss her, abruptly, before running back to the house, where Ava was now standing on the porch to welcome him in. A little blond pixie, with a sequinned heart on her T-shirt, jigging up and down at the sight of him.
The kiss was a clumsy thing. Fleshy. Swift. There was a dot of cold on her cheek, from the tip of his nose.
“Ben!” she shouted. “Hang on. Ben!”
“What?”
“I would rather have the turkey live inside me.”
“O.K.!” He took her answer quite seriously.
“No contest.”
It was just a question, she thought. And she checked the rearview mirror before pulling out.
♦
Published in The New Yorker print edition of the March, 9 2020, issue.
Vozila je Bena kod prijateljce na spavanje, i to dodatno putovanje živciralo ju je; imala je toliko toga obaviti u tom danu. Iako, sviđala joj se intimnost auta, Benov glas iza ramena kada bi pogledala u retrovizor i usporila pri skretanju. Sjedio je u autosjedalici – za osam godina, još je bio malo dijete – i promatrao kroz prozor prigradske ulice i parkirane automobile, dok je ona planirala rutu puta na njegovom mobitelu. Stavila je aparat uz mjenjač i naslonila na sivi plastični jezičac. Bilo je teško pratili malu strjelicu na ekranu kroz kaos Benovog razbijenog telefona; stalno ga je imao u rukama, osim kada bi mu ispao. Sada je gledao van u stvarni svijet kao da je blago iznenađen što uopće postoji. „Ne sviđa mi se Barry McIntyre,“ rekao je.
„Ne? Zašto ne?“
Najbolje su razgovore vodili u autu. Da su bili doma, rekao bi, „Nznm,“ ili „Tak...“ Ali u autu bi rekao nešto poput, „Volim dečke. Sviđaju mi se dečki.“
„Naravno.“
Pitala se zašto nije mogao razgovarati kada su sjedili licem u lice. Što je to bilo u njezinom pogledu zbog čega bi slijegao ramenima i vrpoljio se?
„Ti si dečko.“
„Znam,“ rekao je.
Naravno, ona mu je bila majka, tako da kadgod bi pogledala u njega, proučavala bi ga ili divila mu se. Ali pokušavala je to ne činiti. Stvarno nije htjela postati jedna od onih žena koje govore, „Ispravi se“ ili „Ne diraj si kosu.“
„U redu onda.“
Bacila je pogled na retrovizor. Vidjela je samo dio njegove glave. Kako je zima prolazila, njegova je oštra kosa postajala tamnija. Kroz godinu-dvije, bit će potpuno smeđa.
„Jedino mrzim košarku.“
„A da?“
„Da, stvarno.“
Nedavno je upotrijebio riječ „gej“ kao uvredu. „To je tako gej,“ rekao je za večerom, na iznenađenje svoje mlađe sestre.
„Naravno da voliš košarku,“ rekla je srdačno. To je bila laž.
Nije ništa odgovorio.
„Igra li Barry McIntyre košarku?“
U retrovizoru je vidjela da prinosi ruku licu.
„Ne diraj nos!“ rekla je.
Stvarno je bilo teško. Djeca su bila tako privremeno prekrasna. Bili su tako savršeni, a onda odjednom više nisu bili savršeni. Previše ih je voljela da bi ih pustila na miru.
Vozila je dalje, a on je promatrao predgrađe Dublina: proljetna stabla, dvojne kuće, zabundanu staricu kako šeće psa. Mobilna aplikacija vodila ju je poznatom ulicom, ali nepoznatom rutom; svakako ne rutom kojom bi ona sama znala voziti. Benova se nova prijateljica zvala Ava. Živjela je u četvrti Sv. Klara, naizgled blizu autoceste. Ali oni nisu išli autocestom, nego kroz mrežu uličica; nekima je vozila i prije – tu je bio put k vrtnom centru, ondje put k frizeru za pse – ne znajući da lako može prijeći iz jedne u drugu ako skrene na pravom mjestu.
„Bi li radije?“ Ben je počeo pa stao.
Ako mu nisi dao na znanje da slušaš, ne bi nastavio.
„Što?” rekla je naposljetku.
Sada, kada je imao njezinu punu pozornost, rekao je, „Bi li radije popila šalicu lave ili se utopila u jezeru lave?“
„Kriste.“
„Bi li radije?“
„Ne opet.“
„Koje?“
„Ne možeš piti lavu.“
„Da, možeš.“
„U šalici?“
„Kamenoj šalici.“
„Radije bih jezero.“
„Bi li radije pala s krova ili da ti stablo padne na glavu?“
Bio je opsjednut izborima, pogotovo nemogućima.
„Nijedno. Najradije bih da mi se ne dogodi nijedna od tih stvari.“
„Bi li radije pala s krova,“ navaljivao je, „ili da ti stablo padne na glavu?“
Mozda je bio opsjednut smrću. Nije se mogla izvući, kako god.
„Krov,“ rekla je.
„OK.“
„A ti?“
„Da, krov,“ priznao je.
„Taj ti nije bio najbolji.“
Zastao je, prihvaćajući izazov.
„Bi li radije da te vatreni mravi izgrizu do smrti ili da visiš naopačke s velike dizalice dok ti glava ne eksplodira?“
„Krasno!“
Nastavljao bi sve dok ona ne bi više znala što odgovoriti.
„Dizalicu, molim.“
„Bi li se radije utopila po mraku ili da te netko udavi po mraku?“
Nastavljao bi sve dok ona zapravo ne bi umrla.
„Jesi ozbiljan?“
„Ogromno tamno jezero puno pijavica.“
„Stvarno ne. Apsolutno ne bih radije to.“
Vozeći, sjetila se jednog noćnog kupanja, mnogo godina prije Benova rođenja. Jezero negdje na irskom selu; otišli su ondje poslije odlaska u pub, nije bilo mjeseca, nije bilo seksa, koliko se sjeća – barem ne to jutro, ili noć prije, kad su se trebali seksati na svojem 'odmoru u kolibi' – i ona je skinula haljinu preko glave dok je kroz mrak hodala prema jezeru. Naravno, bio je ondje i muškarac, ne onaj kojeg je viđala u to vrijeme, neki drugi, zabranjeni muškarac. I nijedan od njih dvojice nije postao otac dječaka koji je upravo sjedio na stražnjem sjedalu. Skinuvši se dogola pored šume bez ikoga, usred noći, narugala se obojici, bilo kojemu. Puno je vremena prošlo otada.
Haljina je bila plava, lanena, prozračna i praktična; donje rublje vjerojatno posebno i nepraktično, tih dana prije autosjedalica i djece koja spavaju jedni kod drugih i telefona koji ti govore gdje skrenuti. I njezino je tijelo tada bilo posebnije, iako to nije znala. Također, bila je pijana, tako da se slabo sjećala puteljka koji je vodio do pristaništa; jednako slabo bilo je njezino iskustvo. No sve je usporilo i postalo jasnije kada je bacila haljinu na još uvijek tople daske pristaništa i pogledala prema vodi. Svila jezera bila je isprekidana česticama treseta zbog koje se voda doimala smeđom, čak i danju. Tada, u ponoć, bilo je nezamislivo tamnije; oslanjala se na svojevrsno šesto čulo, osjećajući prostor pred sobom. Kada je spustila pogled, tama je sjajila poput ulja. Sjela je na rub pristaništa, otkopčala svoj fini grudnjak i pustila da joj padne s ramena. Muškarčev glas govorio joj je da stane. Drugi muškarac nije rekao ništa. Ženski glas: „Ne, stvarno, Michelle.“ U sljedećem trenutku, bila je u vodi. Uskočila je odgurnuvši se od drvenog ruba, a voda ju je progutala u velikom pljusku koji se potom pretvorio u tekuću tišinu. Jedva se vratila natrag gdje je zrak. Iz crne vode u crni zrak.
Kad je izronila i okrenula se, osjetila je kako joj alkohol kola pod kožom, a voda nije bila toliko hladna koliko tupa. Ili se ona osjećala zatupljeno. Voda je klizila oko nje dok se ona mukom probijala kroz nju u dugim zamasima, udaljujući se od ostalih, čak i kad joj se činilo da stoji u mjestu. Znala je da se kreće zahvaljujući njihovim glasovima – lovila je fragmente zvuka na površini jezera dok je grabila prema središtu.
Ako je to bilo središte. Ako je uopće plivala površinom. Bilo je tako mračno i vlažno da nije znala ni jesu li joj oči otvorene ili zatvorene. Bojala se da se ne uspijeva održati, da ju nešto vuče prema dolje, da kad bi podigla glavu da udahne, da bi ondje zatekla još vode. Krici s obale postajali su rjeđi, kao da su odustali od nje dok je ona plivala u krugovima ili barem pokušavala zatvoriti krug do njih; zvuci su bili njezin obzor i nije ih htjela izgubiti. Morala je znati gdje se nalazi 'iznad'. Povlačila je vodu oko sebe i, iako se okretala kako je išla dalje, nije bila sigurna da stvarno skreće. Trebala bi stati na trenutak da se snađe, ali nije mogla stati, nije htjela. Bilo je tako – i to je bilo tajno iznenađenje – neodoljivo. Ne znati gdje je što niti gdje su rubovi. Bila je slobodna. Mogla bi se utopiti u tom trenutku i uživala bi.
Gledala je bjelinu svoje ruke, žilavi bljesak koji je slijedila – njezino tijelo vlastiti kompas – sve dok s obale nije čula glas muškarca s kojim je trebala spavati, i vidjela isprekidano svjetlo cigarete muškarca s kojim nije trebala spavati (i iz nekog razloga, nikad ni nije; možda ga je potpuno isprepadala).
Njezinu je veliku gestu pomalo potkopalo nespretno izvlačenje iz jezera kroz mulj plićaka punog oštrog kamenja. Izašla je, ususret prepirkama i promrzlom seksu.
Sljedeće se jutro prenula iza sna; sinoćnje pomalo vodeno sjedinjenje već zaboravljeno, potraćeno. Dogodilo se bez nje. Sjedila je na rubu kreveta uvlačeći zrak u pluća. Bila je živa. Umentula si je tu činjenicu u um. Zabila je u sām centar svojega uma. Da više nikad nije tako nešto učinila. Imala je dvadeset četiri godine, i upravo je odustala od smrti. Pijana ili trijezna, nema više jezera kad padne mrak.
„Znaš, Bene, po noći se ne smije plivati,“ rekla je sada, više od dvadeset godina kasnije, sjedeći u svojem hibridnom autu. Gas, kočnica, retrovizor, kvačilo.
„Bi li radije?“ rekao je Ben.
„Ne, ozbiljno, moraš mi obećati da nećeš nikada to učiniti. Ne smiješ u jezeru, jer nema soli da te drži, ali pogotovo ne ni u moru. Moraš poštovati more. Veće je od tebe. Čuješ li me? I nikad, apsolutno nikad, ne smiješ plivati ako si pio alkohol, ili čak ako su tvoji prijatelji pili. Ako ti prijatelj popije par pivā kad budete tinejdžeri i kaže, 'Hajde, bit će zabavno!', što ćeš ti reći?“
„Bi li radije,“ Ben je strpljivo rekao.
„Ne, ne bih. Stvarno ne bih radije. Ne bih radije umrla na jedan ili drugi način. Što je s tobom?“
Nalazili su se u ulici punoj novo izgrađenih dvojnih kuća, depresivno malih i beskrajno istih. Sićušni vrtovi: jarebika, drvo trešnje, breza, ukrasna vrba. Užasni coflek na štapu. Nije znala što radi ovdje. Sustizalo ju je, čak i ovdje. Sustići će i njezinu djecu – njezina je glupost izašla iz vode za njom. Nije sve završilo noćnim kupanjem; robovala je smrti još neko vrijeme poslije toga – mjesecima, godinu dana. Jer naravno, možeš izaći iz jezera, ali ne možeš napustiti samu želju, i sve njezine nemogućnosti.
Iako, ipak se jest pojavila neka mogućnost. Nešto se ostvarilo. Nešto se riješilo zahvaljujući postojanju ovog djeteta na stražnjem sjedalu.
„Bi li radije,“ rekao je Ben, „živjela u purici ili da purica živi u tebi?“
„Molim?“
„Bi li radije,“ ponovio je, kao da trpi, „živjela u purici ili da purica živi u tebi?“
„To je jako dobro pitanje,“ rekla je.
„Bi li radije?“
„To je stvarno odlično pitanje. Najbolje dosad.“ Podigla je ruku prema radiju u autu i upalila ga, u nadi da će mu to odvratiti pozornost.
„Je li to to?“ Aplikacija joj je rekla da skrene udesno. „Jel' tu Ava živi?“
„Ne znam.“
„Ona ti je prijateljica.“
„Ne, nije. Nije mi ona prijateljica. Ona samo jako jako navaljuje.“ Držao je ruku na torbi, iščekujući, dok je ona skrenula i prošla kroz velike otvorene vratnice u sljedeće naselje.
„Je li to to?“
Put sv. Klare, Dvor sv. Klare. Maleni labirint kružio je oko zelene čistine, a u centru zelenila nalazila se velebna zgrada na tri kata.
Dom svete Klare.
Tu je. Sve ovo vrijeme. Posljednjih je deset godina živjela samo osam kilometara dalje, i nikad nije primijetila da je to tu, na kraju ceste kojom je prolazila svako toliko, vozeći nekamo drugamo.
Tu ju je dovezao taksi prije gotovo dvadeset godina, kada su okolo bila samo zelena polja. Bila je prestravljena da će vozač zbog adrese znati da je ona luda, iako nije bila skroz luda, samo jako slomljena. Bila je sigurna da će znati da mu u taksiju sjedi slomljena osoba, da će se okrenuti i narugati joj se kad prođu kroz vratnice, ili kad se budu uspinjali pored uređenih vrtova do te velike kuće, te ustanove.
Dom sestara svete Klare i svete Agneze. Privatni dom za odrasle osobe.
'Žgoljava Agi', kako su ga zvali. Ludara. Bila je utipkala ovu adresu u sinov mobitel bez razmišljanja.
Zato se sjetila što se dogodilo na jezeru.
Tako čudno, promatrati ovu zgradu izvana. Svojedobno je sve vrijeme ovdje provodila u malenoj sobi i vidjela vanjski dio možda dvaput: prvi put u magli, dok se uspinjala stubama, i možda opet kad je bacila pogled unatrag, na kraju, kad je otac došao po nju. Nije nikada posjetila vrtove, koji su sada bili puni novih skupih kuća; možda ih nije ni smjela posjetiti. Ili, izglednije, nije imala odjeće da izađe van. Puno je spavala, ili ležala u svojem bolničkom krevetu. Sjećala se stajanja ispred prozora – možda je čak bio onaj prozor na trećem katu, ondje gdje je iz zgrade stršala debela okrugla kupola. Znala je da je u kupoli stubište i da je s vrha stubišta gledala van, kao lik iz bajke – iako, nije živjela u bajci, živjela je u magli Mogadona, i hrpe ostalog smeća koje je poslušno gutala, dvaput dnevno, pitajući se hoće li ikada više srati. Nitko nije mario za to. Marili su samo za osjećaje. Iako, 'marili' ne bi bila prava riječ. Promatrali su osjećaje.
„Majko,“ Ben je rekao; tako ju je zvao samo kad je stvarno bio iznerviran. Zaboravila je reći, 'Molim?'
„Molim?“
„Bi li radije živjela u purici?“
„Jel' to to?“ rekla je. „Ava tu živi?“
Bila se zaustavila usred prazne ulice. Dvoje sićušne djece – jedno je tek puzalo – igralo se na širokim granitnim stubama što su vodile do vrata zgrade nekoć zvane Žgoljava Agi. Pretvorili su je u stambenu zgradu; stanovi vjerojatno koštaju kao suho zlato. Dok je promatrala fasadu, dolazili su joj i drugi prizori: svojevrsna recepcija, gdje se upisala. Velika dnevna soba koju su sestre upotrebljavale, gdje je njezin otac sjedio u cvjetnom naslonjaču; naglo ustao kada je ona ušla u sobu, spreman da je odvede doma. To je ona soba s visokim stropom s lijeve strane, gdje je sada majka djece sa stuba razvukla zastore da ih može vidjeti.
Bila je ondje i zapuštena zajednička soba gdje su ljudi odlazili pušiti – pitala se gdje se ona nalazi. Sve su dimile dvadeset cigareta dnevno, slomljene dame predgrađa, sa svojim drhtavim rukama i finim kućnim ogrtačima. Sjedile bi u toj smrdljivoj sobi s plastičnim navlakama na foteljama, i promatrale svoje zglobove. Pitala se tko je sada živio u tom prostoru. Netko mlad i pun energije. Netko tko je stavio orhideje na dasku prozora koji je nekoć bio zaključan. Ta osoba nije pušila. Ta je osoba izašla iz divnog privatnog stana u javni hodnik gdje su nekad, prije svih tih godina, hodali tužni ljudi. Plačući, ne plačući, u tišini, pogledavajući telefonsku goovrnicu.
„Broj 74.“ Benov ton odisao je neizmjernim prijezirom, i onda je vidjela da se nije ni pomaknula, zapela je.
Shvatila je da je ono dvoje dječice zapravo zaštićeno stubama. Držali su se vrha, prčkali po svojem triciklu. Nisu bili ni blizu rubu.
Provela je posljednjih osam godina svojeg života provjeravajući sigurnost malene djece.
Auto je polako nastavljao naprijed, dok je Ben naglas čitao brojeve na kućama preko puta zelene čistine: 67, 69, 91.
„Gdje su parni brojevi?“ pitala se, dok su polako zaokretali iza zgrade, kao da idu ravno u zamku. Tako joj je i tada izgledao njezin život, tik prije no što se raspao – sve je bilo previše povezano. I sada se ponavljalo: ovo nenamjerno putovanje, bizarni izbori, pomisao da njezin sin nekako zna, naravno da zna, još uvijek je zaudarala na slankastu jezersku vodu.
Spazila je prozor zajedničke sobe gore na drugom katu, i vidjela sebe kako gleda u svoje zglobove. Puši. Tjednima bulji u točku na zidu. Ben joj je još bio nepoznat. Njezina kći nepoznata. Nisu se još bili dogodili u njezinome tijelu; nisu se još rodili.
„Eno je! Sedamdeset četiri, sedamdeset četiri!
Zaustavila je auto, povukla ručnu kočnicu i okrenula se da pogleda svojeg sina na stražnjem sjedalu, dok je on otkopčavao sigurnosni pojas. Ben je pogledao u nju, i bio je prekrasan. Kosa mu je bila zamršena, i nos mu je curio, ali bio je tako svoj. Gledao je u nju ispod dugih gustih trepavica, kao da ju oduvijek poznaje, i ona više nije bila u toj zgradi. Sada je bila ovdje, vani, s njime.
„Budi dobar,“ rekla je, a on je zgrabio torbu i otrčao. Za dečka koji nije volio djevojčice, stvarno se žurio stići Avi.
„Pokupit ću te sutra u jedanaest.“
Odjednom se okrenuo i potrčao natrag. Na trenutak je pomislila da ju je htio poljubiti za rastanak, ali samo je tražio svoj telefon. Dodala mu ga je kroz prozor, i onda isturila obraz, tek tako.
„Mmmmm,“ rekla je, napućivši usne. I poljubio ju je, na brzinu, i potom otrčao natrag prema Avinoj kući. Ona ga je čekala na trijemu. Mala plavokosa vila sa šljokičavim srcem na majici. Počela je cupkati kada ga je vidjela.
Njegov je poljubac bio nespretan. Mesnat. Brz. Osjetila je hladnu kap na obrazu s vrha njegovog nosa.
„Bene!“ poviknula je. „Čekaj, Bene!“
„Što je?“
„Radije bih da purica živi u meni.“
„OK.“ Shvaćao je njezine odgovore vrlo ozbiljno.
„Bez daljnjeg.“
Obično pitanje, pomislila je. I bacila pogled na retrovizor prije no što je krenula.
Translation commentary
Katja Knežević
Translation is the most intimate relationship a reader (because what is a translator if not primarily a reader?) can have with a text. There is an assumption of trust that the translator has to honour, because the author who does not speak the target language is not there to give their stamp of approval. The author is dead, and the translator is left alone with their instincts and the best of intentions. When translating, we immerse oursleves into the story and then try to recreate it in the exact same way, but at the same time completely different. It is like being given a perfectly constructed coffee table, and a separate set of materials with which you build another coffee table, made out of different parts, but ultimately serving the same purpose. The table has to hold the coffee cups, fit into the room and not draw too much attention to itself.
In 'Night swim', the discrepancies started already with the title. It is translated as 'Noćno kupanje', which actually means 'Night bathing'. However, in Croatian, we use 'kupati se' (to bathe) also when we mean to swim in the sea or a lake, and the phrase 'noćno kupanje' has become established to mean a night swim (and even skinny dipping). The other challenges I faced revolved largely around syntax – Enright's sentences flow in waves; just as you think a full stop is coming, there is another addition, a small comment, led by a comma or a semi-colon. Croatian does not shy away from long sentences, but the structures are often different. I struggled with keeping the same flow, but achieveing it in ways that would feel more natural.
Another small nuisance were toponyms. According to an intricate web of sometimes seemingly arbitrary rules of the Croatian language, I was not supposed to translate 'St. Clare Crrescent', 'St. Clare Close' and 'St. Clare Court'. However, I was supposed to translate 'The Sisters of St. Clare and St. Agnes'. Had I followed the rules, the story would have collapsed like a failed soufflé, because the emotional connection would have been gone. Since I wanted to bring the reader closer to Michelle, I opted for translating everything. That brought along the second challenge: the choices I ultimately made for 'crescent' ('četvrt', which means 'neighbourhood' or 'block' in US English), 'close' ('put', which means 'pathway') and 'court' ('dvor', which thankfully matches in meaning) are not exactly the same things in the two languages; however, if I had chosen the exact translations (in particular, for the first two, 'crescent' and 'close'), they would not have meant anything to a Croatian reader because they would not use those words in urban nomenclature.
The hardest part of translation is when you see exactly what a word or a sentence is supposed to convey, but find yourself unable to use the same words in the target language because then the meaning would be different. A good example was the description of the dress Michelle wore at the lake: 'a blue linen shift, loose and practical', translated: 'plava, lanena, prozračna i praktična' (the direct translation: 'blue, linen, airy and practical'). First, the term 'shift' does not have an equivalent in the Croatian language, so I immediately abandoned it – I figured it made more sense to illustrate what the dress feels like instead of searching for a noun at all costs. Second, the word 'loose', had it been translated verbatim, would to a Croatian reader signal rather that the dress was perhaps damaged or revealing. To kill the two birds with one stone, I opted for 'prozračna', which means 'airy', and is often used in Croatian to describe clothes which feel breathable (like a shift dress does). An additional fortuitous effect of that translation is that of sound: in the original, 'linen shift, loose' produces a nice subtle alliteration of 's', 'sh' and 'l'. Although not with the exact same sounds, in Croatian (prozračna i praktična') the alliteration is achieved with 'p', 'r' and 'č'. In that way, we give the text back that which we had to take away elsewhere.
Meaning trumps precision and the translator's most demanding duty is to know what sacrifices to make, and how to make up for them.