Ciaran Carson steps into the room after stepping out
to have a smoke. He is wearing his old glasses, and a suit just as old.
Energetically talking the moment he enters, it is almost as if he has suddenly
started speaking his thoughts, continuing a conversation he was having with
himself outside in the autumn air. Everything he says is like this; when he
speaks, he is really just thinking out loud. There is no filter, and sometimes
no direction, yet you learn all the same.
It is he who brings our attention to his brown tweed
suit, although I had noticed it already. Heavy and ugly, I cannot think where
Ciaran buys his clothes, and I cannot imagine a day where the suit he is
wearing would be fashionable. What interests me most about the suit, however,
is how poorly it seems to fit him; when he sits, his trousers ride up a good
three or four inches, revealing hideously ugly teal socks.
He takes his jacket off, because it is warm in the
little room. Beneath the heavy jacket is a vest of the same material, and a
blue tuxedo with red buttons by the wrists. On his elbows are those armbands I
sometimes see in old movies, the ones reporters wore. He holds up the jacket
for us and explains that the suit he is wearing originally belonged to a
Colonel, and that there is a lapel inside of the suit that gives the date the
suit was completed. He wonders aloud if it is the suit that makes the man and,
if, in donning this suit, he has become the colonel.
The suit came to him through eBay, which supports him
in his writing habit. When writing The
Pen Friend he bought 254 fountain pens, and for his newest book, he bought
vintage suits—
Ciaran has remembered the point in his memoirs, and
rummages around in his brown leather satchel for a dozen or so cards. He passes
them out, and I look carefully at mine. Join
us to celebrate the launch of EXCHANGE PLACE, it reads.
“Sorry about the late notice,” he says, “I ought to
have given it to you last week.”
For weeks he has been talking about this novel,
although he has never mentioned it by name. Instead he spoke of fairies, of fetch, your doppelganger. What would it
mean to see another image of yourself walking through the streets of Belfast,
like Mark Twain’s The Prince and the
Pauper. Would it be frightening? Exhilarating? He claimed to be working on something
with this very idea at the heart of it, and here it was, in my hand.
“There’ll be free wine,” he says, smiling, his eyes
intent and large. If I did not know him, and understand what that look meant,
it would have reminded me of a madman. As it is, he jumps up with his hat and
pretends the Colonel has possessed him, and we laugh freely. Suddenly he
remembers we had homework due, fairy tales, and he picks me to read mine aloud.
As I do so, crawling along slowly, making sure I enunciate and speak loudly so
the class can hear and understand me, I am rewarded with his muffled laugh.
“I want to let you know, Bekah,” he says, “that I
laughed when I first read this. It’s filled with black humour,” which is one of the highest compliments an Irishman
can give, that I looked at death and laughed to spite it. As the saying goes,
if something tragic happens in Ireland, the very next day, there’ll be a joke
about it.
Muriel’s Café Bar is by the Prince Albert Clocktower,
the one that is rumoured to lean from the weight of too many prostitutes. It is
a long walk, at least forty-five minutes, and I was not sure which of the small
alleys and lanes it was down. I know more of how Belfast is laid out than I
ever did of home, or even Livonia; but it is still a surprise to turn the
corner and see it, full already of cheerful people, and my laughing professor.
I have brought along Hannah and Victoria, because I
know that they will drink the wine I will not touch, and because I am afraid to
go so far by myself. We step up to Muriel’s, and there sitting outside on the
patio is Ciaran Carson, smoking and laughing. His hat is on the table before him,
and he is leaning back in his chair the way a cat will arch its back in the
sunlight. Suddenly I remember that today is his birthday; he is 64 years old.
We step inside. I have never been to a book launching,
and am suddenly self-conscious and wary. I wanted to come, so much; but now I
am here, I am at a loss. I look around, and try to grab my bearings. It is hard
to concentrate in the dim light of pubs, and hard to get my grip on a small room
teeming with people. But even in the yellow half-light, I can see quite plainly
Muriel’s own special touch: hanging from the ceiling, as if on a clothesline,
are strings of pants, all of them bearing the name of a brand of cider, or the
name of the pub itself.
Directly to my left are two women selling copies of Exchange Place, and then a staircase
leading upstairs. In front of me are the tables, and then an almost museum-like
wall, with white paper mache heads bearing hats tucked into the wall, and bolts
of cloth. The effect makes Muriel’s seem older, and more like a museum. To my
left is the bar itself, gleaming, with wine glasses hanging from the ceiling.
I buy a book, suddenly keenly aware of my American
accent, and then lead Hannah and Victoria to the bar. It is red wine they are
giving away tonight, and we watch the bartender deftly take the bottle and pour
it into a thin tin tube, which measures out the wine, and then slips it into
the wineglass. When our turn comes, the bottle has run dry, and so I watch his
slim fingers deftly turn a corkscrew and pull the cork out of a new bottle. Out
comes the little tin tube, and he pours three glasses, pulling them from the
ceiling above as if he is picking flowers. One of those glasses, I assume, is
for me, but I leave it lying there, feeling a little pang of guilt. I hope the
wine won’t be wasted.
They take the drinks outside. It is a beautiful day in
Belfast. It has not rained in four days now, although you can tell the rain is
waiting to break. But for now the roads are littered with yellow leaves, who
drift down on the tail of the wind and try to nestle in your coat, and although
the light is not as soft and yellow as it is at home, this is what Belfast has
to offer, and I will accept it. The weather today is especially fine; I am
sweltering in my coat, and wish I had just left it at home.
Hannah and Victoria sip their wine, and I work up the
courage to ask my professor for his autograph. I do not think there is a way to
do this gracefully; but I manage to find that courage somewhere inside of me, and
I approach his table. He checks the spelling of my name and signs the book, but
he writes my classroom nickname, won because I am the second of the Rebekahs in
my class. It sounds false on his tongue, and on everyone’s but my sister’s.
Bekah. Half a shekel. Good to have you as
a student, he writes, and he dates it, signs his name, and adds the
location: Belfast.
A table has opened up nearby, and we sit there.
Victoria is giving us a spirited rendition of the Resident Evil series. I am
thumbing my way through the book. It begins in first person, and ends in third—I
notice, only because Ciaran brought it up in class today. It starts with a man
and a lost notebook, and the day he was writing in it; and the first concrete
location is Muriel’s bar. That’s the mark of a novel, my literature professors
would say; real, concrete places. Never underestimate the author’s use of real
places. Take a look at Moll Flanders, they say, as I stifle yawns; look at her
in this passage, circling Newgate. This is her descent into hell.
I push away the voices of my inner critics, and flip
to the last page. I always read the first and last lines before anything else.
The last line rarely contains any spoilers, and I can tell by how it sounds
what type of book this will be. The last words in this book weigh heavy, but at
the same time I could laugh: The words
kept on, appearing from nowhere. This, too, is something Ciaran has been
speaking of for two weeks now.
“Hey,” a boy—a man—suddenly says. It is addressed to
me; his black eyes have not met either Hannah’s or Victoria’s. This is unusual
on about a thousand different levels, and shocks me, so all I can manage in
reply is a long, drawn-out, “Heeeeyyyy,” back. Finally it clicks: this is
Aleksander from Creative Writing class. He has come to Professor Carson’s book
launch, too.
Aleks is tall and dark, with short black hair and
glasses remarkably like Professor Carson’s. His trousers are black, and his
sweater is black, with buttons on the left shoulder. The effect is remarkably
Russian, for a German exchange student.
“When did you get here?” he asks. Now that I know him,
I am relaxed, and his accent falls cleanly on my ears. When a German speaks
English, it is the closest thing to an unbothered, Midwestern accent in the
world. It is not hard to listen, or understand, as it sometimes is with the
Irish, and I do not need to concentrate to understand his words.
“’Bout ten minutes ago,” I say.
“And you’ve already had a glass of wine?”
He is looking down at the table, where an empty
wineglass is sitting before me. Whoever vacated the table left it, and I didn’t
bother my head about it—because it makes it seem that I fit in. Perhaps it
worked a bit too well. I fumble, and forget how to speak, and I really wish I
was a couple of miles away. “It’s more of a decoy,” I manage.
I have no idea how he takes this, but he smiles
politely, and goes inside to get his own drink, before coming out to roll a
cigarette. I watch closely, half-listening to Victoria. I have never seen
anyone roll a cigarette. The bag he takes the tobacco from reads SMOKING KILLS
in great white letters, but he takes a small amount of the brown strands and
puts them in clean white paper. He starts to smoke, and we fall into
conversation about Ciaran’s book. I show it to him, and watch as a glowing
ember from his cigarette flakes down by Hannah’s wineglass. I imagine my book
old, and yellowed, smelling of red wine and rolled cigarettes, which somehow is
a cleaner, softer scent than the pre-rolled ones of America. I wonder if they are
any healthier.
Soon we are all inside of the cramped little pub.
Ciaran is on the stairs, next to his publisher, a woman in a beautiful blue
dress with polka dots on it, whose face is obscured from view. She introduces
him, and Ciaran introduces himself as no one else can: by playing on his
tinwhistle. We listen to him recite two translated poems thereafter, all about
the exchange of place, of men’s eyes looking at you from the horse, and the
horse’s eyes looking at you from the man. Finally he reads some of his own book,
just a paragraph or two, and finishes with another tune. Behind me are a group
of all, laughing men, friends of my professor; they laugh and cheer at
everything he says. My own little group of students laugh, too. It is
impossible not to find his eccentricities endearing.
“It’s also Ciaran’s birthday,” the publisher
announces, “Will you join me all in singing the traditional song?” And the pub
is suddenly roused and singing. Someone brings out a cake, and Ciaran blows out
the candles, embarrassed. “You can have it,” he says, ducking back outside,
where it is safe.
We stay for a slice of cake, and then go to Crescent
Church for iCafe. It is quiz night, and we have been promised pizza. “I feel so
literary,” Victoria says, smiling, and Hannah agrees.
For the quiz, we divide into groups. There are two
Irish with us, and then Mel, Intan, Daniel and James. We name ourselves 50
Shades of Brown; I’m not exactly sure why, but I assume it is because we are so
many different countries and skin colours. They keep us dancing to Gangam
Style, and test our knowledge; Daniel and James, from Africa, know most of the
answers. For one of the challenges, we must construct an animal out of a latex
glove, two balloons, tape, and a newspaper, and we create a peacow named Ralph,
an imaginary creature that fiercely annoyed the dreadlocked man behind us.
“It’s neither dolphin nor camel!” he says, but he
laughs in spite of himself.
Somehow we win, and our prize is a large tub of
chocolate. We divvy it up between ourselves, and I take the tub home. Mel and I
sing “We Are the Champions,” through the streets of Belfast, and anyone
watching would think we were completely plastered. But tonight I do not care. I
am too happy to care.
