The Wonder(49)

“You will not, you goblin girl,” said Lib. Were the O’Donnells and their friend Flynn wondering at all this mirth coming through the wall?

“I will so,” said Anna.

“Lib.” The word came out of her on its own, like a cough. “Lib’s what I was called.” Rather regretting telling her already.

“Lib,” said Anna with a satisfied nod.

It was sweet to hear it. Like childhood days, when Lib’s sister still looked up to her, when they’d thought they’d always have each other.

She pushed the memories to arm’s length. “What about you, have you ever had a nickname?”

Anna shook her head.

“You could be Annie, perhaps. Hanna, Nancy, Nan…”

“Nan,” said the girl, sounding out the syllable.

“You like Nan best?”

“But she wouldn’t be me.”

Lib shrugged. “A woman can change her name. On marriage, for instance.”

“You were married, Mrs. Lib.”

She nodded, wary. “I’m a widow.”

“Are you sad all the time?”

Lib was disconcerted. “I knew my husband less than a year.” Did that sound cold?

“You must have loved him,” said Anna.

She couldn’t answer that. She called up Wright in her mind; his face was a blur. “Sometimes, when disaster strikes, there’s nothing to be done but begin all over again.”

“Begin what?”

“Everything. A whole new life.”

The girl absorbed that notion in silence.

They were half blinded when Kitty carried in the flaring lamp.

Later, Rosaleen O’Donnell came in with the Irish Times that John Flynn had left. Here was the photograph of Anna that Reilly had taken on Monday afternoon but changed into a woodcut, all the lines and shades cruder. The effect unnerved Lib, as if her days and nights in this cramped cabin were being translated into a cautionary tale. She confiscated the folded page before Anna could see it.

“There’s a long piece below.” The mother was quivering with gratification.

While Anna was brushing her hair, Lib went over to the lamp and skimmed the article. This was William Byrne’s first dispatch, she realized, the one quoting Petronius, thrown together on Wednesday morning when he didn’t have any solid information about the case at all. She couldn’t disagree about provincial ignorance.

The second paragraph was new to her.

Of course, abstention has long been a distinctly Irish art. As the old Hibernian maxim goes, Leave the bed sleepy, leave the table hungry.

This wasn’t news, Lib thought, only chat; the flippant tone left a bad taste in her mouth.

Those metropolitan sophisticates who have shed their Gaelic may need to be reminded that in our ancient tongue, Wednesday is designated by a word that means “first fast,” Friday by “second fast.” (On both these days, tradition holds that impatient infants are to be let cry three times before getting the bottle.) The word for Thursday, by delightful contrast, means “the day between fasts.”

Could that all be true? She didn’t trust this joker; Byrne had erudition enough but played it for laughs.

Our forefathers had a custom of (in the Hibernian idiom) fasting against an offender or debtor, that is, starving conspicuously outside his door. Saint Patrick himself is said to have fasted against his Maker on his namesake mountain in Mayo, with noted success: he shamed the Almighty into granting him the right to judge the Irish in the Last Days. In India, too, protest by means of doorstep fasting has become so prevalent that the Viceroy is proposing to ban it. As to whether little Miss O’Donnell is expressing some juvenile grievance by passing up four months of breakfasts, dinners, and suppers, this correspondent has not yet been able to determine.

Lib wanted to throw the paper in the fire. Had the fellow no heart? Anna was a child in trouble, not a joke for the summertime entertainment of newspaper readers.

“What does it say about me, Mrs. Lib?”

She shook her head. “It’s not about you, Anna.”

To distract herself, Lib glanced at the headlines in thick black, matters of world importance. The general election; union of Moldavia and Wallachia; Veracruz besieged; ongoing volcanic eruption in Hawaii.

No use. Lib didn’t care about any of it. Private nursing was always narrowing, and the peculiarity of this particular job had intensified the effect, shrinking her world to one small chamber.

She folded the paper into a tight stick and left it on her tea tray by the door. Then she checked every surface again, not because she still believed there was some hidden cache that Anna crept out to eat during the nun’s shifts, but just for something to do.

In her nightdress, the child sat knitting wool stockings. Could Anna have some unvoiced grievance after all? Lib wondered.

“Time to get into bed.” She beat the pillows into shape so they’d keep the girl’s head up at the correct angle. She made her notes.

Dropsy no better.

Gums ditto.

Pulse: 98 beats per minute.

Lungs: 17 respirations per minute.

When the nun came in for her shift, Anna was already dozing.

Lib found she had to speak, even though the woman resisted her every overture. “Five days and four nights, Sister, and I’ve seen nothing. Please tell me, for our patient’s sake, have you?”