THE BLUR’S OVER. We’re on the pier as dusk dims the Dunmanus Bay, Lorelei, Rafiq, Marinus, six Icelanders, Zimbra, and me, and it’s actually happening. We had to leave Mo up at my gate ’cause the path down’s too crumbled away for her ankle. Her brave face and the kids’ gasps and tears have given me a taster of my own very near future. “Wrap up well,” Mo had told them. “And wave at Dooneen Cottage as the ship leaves the bay. I’ll be waving back.”
The patrol vessel’s half hidden against the darkening mass of Mizen Head. Only a few spots of light mark its position. On any other evening there’d be skiffs and dinghies taking a closer look at the incredible steel visitor, but today people’re still too occupied with, and too traumatized by, the aftermath of the violence in Kilcrannog, so the Icelandic vessel sits there undisturbed.
Marinus’s sea chest is being loaded back onto the launch moored to the concrete pier. It now contains the kids’ clothes as well as the Eagle of the Ninth books, Lorelei’s box shrine, her fiddle, and Rafiq’s box of fishing floats and hooks—Marinus assured him the salmon fishing in Iceland is world-class. Rafiq’s key to Dooneen Cottage is still around his neck, by accident or design I don’t know, but it’s his. He picked up two white pebbles from the strip of beach by the pier, I noticed, and put them in his saggy coat pocket. Then the three of us hug, and if I could choose one moment of my life to sit inside of for the rest of eternity, like Esther Little did for all those decades, it’d be now, no question. Aoife’s in here too, inside Lorelei, as is Ed, as is Zimbra, with his cold nose and excited whine. He knows something’s up. “Thanks for everything, Gran,” says Lorelei.
“Yeah,” says Rafiq. “Thanks.”
“It was my honor,” I tell them.
We separate, at last. “Take care of them,” I tell Marinus.
That’s why I came, he subreplies, and says, “Of course.”
“Say bye from me to Izzy and the O’Dalys and … everyone,” says Lorelei, her eyes streaming, not with the cold.
“And from me too,” says Rafiq, “and tell Mr. Murnane sorry I didn’t get my fractions homework done.”
“Tell them yourselves,” says Marinus. “Via the tab.”
I can’t say “Goodbye” because that word’s too painfully final, but I can’t just say “See you then” because when will I ever see these precious people, really, in the flesh? Never again: That’s when. So I just do my best to smile as if my heart isn’t being wrung out like an old dishcloth and watch as Lorelei and Rafiq are helped aboard the launch by Lieutenant Eriksdottir, followed by the youthful ancient Marinus. “We’ll thread you once we’re safe ashore at Reykjavik,” he calls up to me from the boat. “It should be the day after tomorrow.” I call back, “That’s great, do that.” My voice is thin and stretched, like a violin string wound too tight. Rafiq and Lorelei look up from the deck, not sure what to say. Marinus subwishes me, Good luck, Holly Sykes, and I sense that somehow he knows about my resurgent cancer, and my huckleberries in their childproof canisters, stowed safely for if and when. So I just nod back at Harry Marinus Veracruz, no longer trusting my voice. A tall marine unmoors the boat and hunkers down in the prow. Owls in the Knockroe pines hoot. The outboard motor is ripped into life. The noise jolts Lorelei rigid and alert and she’s scared now, and I am too. This is the moment of no turning back. The launch pulls away from the pier in a tight curve. Lorelei’s hair streams across her face. Did she remember her woolly hat? Too late now. Above Knocknamadree Mountain on Mizen Head swim a pair of blurry overlapping moons. I wipe my eyes on the cuff of my ratty old fleece and the two captive planets become one again. Pale gold and badly scratched. I shiver. We’re in for a cold night. Now the launch is skimming off at full speed over the dark and choppy water, and Rafiq’s waving and Lorelei’s waving and I’m waving back until I can’t make out the figures in the noisy blue murk anymore, and the white wake from the outboard engine is widening behind the launch … But not for long. Incoming waves erase all traces of the vanishing boat, and I’m feeling erased myself, fading away into an invisible woman. For one voyage to begin, another voyage must come to an end, sort of.
For Noah
Acknowledgments
Michel van der Aa, Lisa Babalis, Tom Barbash, Nikki Barrow, Avideh Bashirrad, Manuel Berri, Dominika Bojanowska, John Boyne, Adam Brophy, Ken Buhler, Amber Burlinson, Evan Camfield, Gina Centrello, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Noah Chasin, Kate Childs, Rachel Clements, Patrick Cockburn and his book The Occupation, Toby Cox, Louise Dennys, Walter Donohue, Margaret Drabble, Susan Fletcher, Dominique Fortier, Kirsten Foster, Daniel Galera, Tally Garner, Claire Gatzen, Sam Greenwood, Dominic Gribben, Sophie Harris, Aleksandar Hemon, Kazuo Ishiguro, Susan Kamil, Trish Kerr of Kerr’s Bookshop Clonakilty, Jessica Killingley, Martin Kingston (founder of Kilcrannog), Katie Kitamura (sorry I woke Ryu), Hari Kunzru, Seth Marko, Nick Marston, Sally Marvin, Meri? Mekik the Treasure Hunter, Mrs. MacIntosh, Katie McGowan, Caitlin McKenna, Jan Montefiore, Ray Murnane, Neal Murren, Lawrence Norfolk and family, Alasdair Oliver, Hazel Orme, David Peace, Thomas E. Ricks’s Fiasco, Wendell Steavenson’s The Weight of a Mustard Seed, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Lana Wachowski, Bing West’s No True Glory, Camilla Young. Apologies to anyone I’ve overlooked—it’s my memory, not ingratitude.
Thanks to Kathleen Holland Designs for crafting Jacko’s labyrinth.
Singled-out thanks to David Ebershoff, Jonny Geller, Doug Stewart, and Carole Welch.
Final thanks to my family.
BY DAVID MITCHELL
THE BONE CLOCKS
THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET
BLACK SWAN GREEN
CLOUD ATLAS
NUMBER 9 DREAM
GHOSTWRITTEN
THE REASON I JUMP (TRANSLATOR, WITH KA YOSHIDA)
About the Author
DAVID MITCHELL is the award-winning and bestselling author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, and Ghostwritten. Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Mitchell was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2007. With KA Yoshida, Mitchell translated from the Japanese the internationally bestselling memoir The Reason I Jump. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.
davidmitchellbooks.com
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