He must kill the love within himself, she says. The King has to kill the love inside in order to kill his own son.
The opera keeps reminding her of her own family, thats why shes so keen on seeing it again. Its the story of every family, she tells me. Thats why Don Carlo has remained so popular over the years, because we can all read our own lives into the story, its universal. Every time she goes to see it she cannot help thinking of her own father and what happened to her brother, her little brother. Its the power of the drama that makes you think its your own story which is being portrayed on stage, she says, you become part of whats happening right in front of your eyes. She says her imagination is too big. Shes like a girl again, watching the story of her family unfolding around her. Shes so taken by the opera each time that she can see her brother coming back to life on stage. Her father killing the love inside himself. Her brother being taken away in the end. And shes completely helpless, trapped in her seat, listening to the music. Theres nothing she can do to intervene.
We used to go to the theatre together, the odd time in Dublin. She would be given complimentary tickets and ask me to go with her, as a companion. We would have an early meal somewhere and get to the theatre with time to spare so she could meet people. You could see them nudging each other, the lips moving. She would disappear into the crowd, pulled along by one handshake after another, passed on from one group to the next, until she needed to escape. Just when they were beginning to tell her something about herself that she already knew, she would point to me standing at the bar and tell them that she had somebody waiting for her. All these theatregoers she knew, I wouldnt have a clue who they were, other writers, journalists, TV personalities, faces that everybody knows. What I remember most is people coming up to her at the interval saying they had read her book. And she would hunch up with all that praise, like a light was hurting her eyes. A woman once turned around and stood right up in her seat and reached back across two rows to shake her hand and say thank you. Thats all the woman said to her, thanks, for being so honest, for being herself, for writing the story of her life and her family without hiding anything.
It was mostly families we talked about in Berlin. We talked about Don Carlo and fathers and mothers and brothers. We talked about men and women and aunts and uncles and children and Jesuits and love and weddings and life and friends and lovers, the whole lot, I suppose. The things that happen in families. Which includes almost everything, doesnt it? We were going around the city looking at the sights and telling each other these stories. Family stories and love stories come right and wrong, she said.
Is love still a good word for love, she asked me at one point. I mean, how can you answer that? Of course its still a good word. Its the best word there is for love. What other word is there that would work any better? Chemistry? She said they were always making young words out of the old words, changing the meaning so you dont recognize them any more. And love is one of those words like home and hope and passion, all those words that people never put back in the right place, she said.
I think being away in Berlin allowed us both to be quite open with each other. It helped us to forget what was happening to her, it was all on hold. There was a comfort in not having to think about what was imminent, I suppose. As long as we kept moving and telling each other stories, as long as the streets were going by and we had all these family things to talk about. I think it was not having to explain anything that made it easier to explain everything, if you get me.
4
Shes on a lot of steroids to help with her breath-ing. Shes searching in her see-through bag and takes out some medication. She reads the label and drops it back into the bag. She holds up the bag and looks inside. Because its easier to find things like that from the outside. She reaches in with her hand once more and takes out other medication, then looks at the label and drops that back into the bag also. Its hard to know if shes picking out the same one each time or if theyre always different.
She said your life is a pair of lungs. Time is a pair of lungs. Could that be right? Youre only as good as your lungs and her lungs had run out of time, something like that she said.
She described to me what its like going into hospital for a breathing test. The nurse gets you to sit down in front of a machine called the pulmonary function test. You put your lips around a nozzle that looks like a gum shield attached to the machine, then the nurse tells you to take in a deep breath until your lungs are completely full up and you hold it for as long as possible. Then you blow all the way out until your lungs are completely empty. And when youre ready, she said the nurse says it all like a breathing song. Take in a deep breath, all the way in, right up to the top of your lungs and hold it, hold it, hold it, she says, hold it, hold it, very good, now blast all the way out, all the way, all the way, keep going, she says, all the way, all the way, all the way, keep going, every last bit, very good, excellent, well done, she says, until your face has gone all red from the effort and the nurse tells you to relax and breathe in normally and lets try that again, one more time.
As well as the steroids, shes also taking painkillers. And theyve given her Xanax, too, so she can relax and sleep at night.
At the hotel she told me that she was afraid sometimes. Im afraid of drowning, she said. Im afraid my lungs will fill up and then Ill drown. Thats what happens, you know, when you get pneumonia, its like drowning. Im afraid of drowning alone, she said. The Xanax was meant to stop all that anxiety. She said it makes you more like yourself, back to the way you were before, the real yourself. Because she was worried, naturally, and she found it difficult to concentrate. Apart from a few articles in the newspapers, I think she had trouble absorbing too much news. She was more interested in seeing things first-hand now, listening to people. She couldnt write. She didnt see the point in putting things down any more. She had no time for things that were made up, she couldnt read a novel or watch a movie, for example, there was no time for anything invented.
Only Don Carlo, because it was so personal to her.
She offers me a Xanax in the car, as if I need it. She starts laughing and shaking her see-through plastic bag around. Like shes offering around mints or chocolate. Here, would anybody like a Xanax? Manfred ignores her. Hes in his own world and remains focused on the driving. Anyway its not something that should be given to a person operating machinery. I dont need one either, but she says it will do me no harm, why not? So I take one for a laugh, see if it does anything for me.
I tell her that my daughter, Maeve, is getting married.
Thats great news, Liam.
She thinks Im obsessed with my daughter. She doesnt like me going on too much about Maeve all the time, I can understand that, because she has no children herself and this whole father and daughter thing gets to her a bit. I think it makes her feel excluded. She usually tells me to shut up. So I give her the details in brief, the wedding is planned for August.
Thats very soon, she says.
Youll be getting an invitation, I tell her.
Thanks, she says.
And then I realize what Ive just said. Theres not a hope in hell of her being able to attend the wedding. Maybe its the Xanax. It must be making me feel more like myself.
Im coming, she says.
But its three months away.
Ill be there, Liam. Whether Im dead or alive. Where are they having it?
It seems like the future has abandoned her, all these things carrying on in her absence.
The wedding, Liam? Where are they having it?
On the farm, I tell her, his farm, Shane. Its his mother and father, theyre very keen to have a wedding on the farm. They have these great barns and the ruins of an old church on their land. They want to have the wedding in the old ruins and then I suppose theyre intending to get a marquee, just in case of the weather. Its a fully working farm, with live cattle and so forth. But knowing Shane, he will get that all fixed up, taking into account the wedding guests and their clothes and shoes, I would imagine. At least, that is what theyre talking about.
A farm wedding, she says. I would love to be there.
A farm wedding, she says. I would love to be there.
She once showed me a photograph of herself when she was the same age as Maeve. No more than twenty-four years old, twenty-five at the most. With lots of curls. It was taken before she went to London, before she worked as a chambermaid, when she was getting out, leaving her family and her country behind. With no fear and no idea what was coming. I wish I had met her then, the life in her. She must have been great fun in that photograph, full of danger and up for anything, all kinds of things not even thought up yet. The look in her eyes. Staring right at you. I think it was the eyebrows you noticed most. Striking, you would have to say, drawn by a child. Her eyes look like they had great questions to ask.
She has the same eyes in Berlin. They are the eyes of a twenty-four-year-old girl, with the eyebrows left intact, even though all her hair is gone from radiation and her lungs are working very hard and she cant get enough air to say all the things she still wants to tell me.
She talks about a place she once went to which was great for the lungs. The salt mine she went to visit in Romania, in Transylvania. It was an active salt mine, fully operational, but all the people with bad lungs came there because the salt dried the air for them. Thats when she was travelling with Noleen. Herself and Noleen, they travelled all the way down from the Ukrainian border, right down to Tirana and back around the coast to Italy.
Lots of people told them to go to the salt mine. Patients with pulmonary trouble came from all over the country, all over the world in fact. People even asked them where they were from, as if they had come especially for their lungs, all the way from Ireland. She told them she had lungs like a damp cottage and they said she had come to the right place. Its a famous mine, she says, like a place of pilgrimage without prayers, with the same air temperature day and night. She describes the trucks carrying out boulders of stone-white salt, and the people coming to inhale and straighten out their shoulders. Lots of people in wheelchairs. Grandmothers and all. Even people who were off the cigarettes having a cigarette, why not? Because the air was so clear it was crackling in your nostrils, she says. Whole families going for a picnic down there with fold-up chairs and a portable cassette player making hardly any noise because the place was so big. All the children breathing up and down and playing football in a huge underground stadium, she says. With floodlights. And goal posts marked out on the salt walls.