Scribd
Upload
1K views4 pages

Excerpted With Permission From "TransAtlantic" by Colum McCann. Available From Random House. Copyright © 2013.

Excerpted with permission from "TransAtlantic" by Colum McCann. Available from Random House. Copyright © 2013.

Uploaded by

wamu8850
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
1K views4 pages

Excerpted With Permission From "TransAtlantic" by Colum McCann. Available From Random House. Copyright © 2013.

Excerpted with permission from "TransAtlantic" by Colum McCann. Available from Random House. Copyright © 2013.

Uploaded by

wamu8850
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

1998

p a r a b e l l u m

E E M ER GE S F R O M T H E BR I GH T ELE VAT O R . M O V ES T H R O U GH

the marbled lobby towards the revolving door. Sixtyfour years old. Slender. Graying. A slight strain of yesterdays tennis in his body. A dark blue suit jacket, slightly rumpled. A pale blue sweater un derneath. Slacks creased. Nothing brash, nothing showy. Even the way he walks has a quiet to it. His shoes sound clean and sharp against the floor. He carries a small leather suitcase. He tilts his head towards the doorman who leans down to take the case: just a suit, a shirt, a shaving kit, an extra set of shoes. Under his other arm he keeps his briefcase tight. Through the lobby quickly. He hears his name from several an gles. The concierge, an elderly neighbor on the lobby couch, the handyman cleaning the large glass panes. It is as if the revolving door has caught the words and begun to let them spin. Mr. Mitchell. Sena tor. George. Sir.

The black town car sits idling outside the apartment building. A little shiver from its exhaust. A relief floods through him. No press. No photographers. A hard New York rain, so different from the Irish kind: hurrying itself along, impatient, dodging the umbrellas. He steps out into the afternoon. Beyond the awning, an umbrella is held aloft for him and the car door is opened. Thank you, Ramon. There is always a moment of dread that there might be someone waiting inside the car. Some news. Some report. Some bombing. No surrender. He slips into the rear seat, lays his head against the cool leather. Forever an instant when he feels he can turn around, reinvent. That other life. Upstairs. Waiting. He has been the subject of many news paper columns recently: his beautiful young wife, his new child, the peace process. It stuns him to think that he can still be copy after so many years. Captured on camera. Pulled through the electronic mill. His caricature on the oped pages, serious and spectacled. He d like a long sweep of silence. Just to sit here in this seat and close his eyes. Allow himself a brief snooze. The front door opens and Ramon slides into the seat, leans out, shakes the umbrella, glances over his shoulder. The usual, Senator? Almost two hundred flights over the past three years. One every three days. New York to London, London to Belfast, Belfast to Dub lin, Dublin to D.C., D.C. to New York. Jetliners, private planes, gov ernment charters. Trains, town cars, taxis. He lives out his life in two bodies, two wardrobes, two rooms, two clocks. JFK, yes. Thank you, Ramon. The car shifts minutely underneath him, out onto Broadway. A familiar sudden loss, a sadness, the sorrow of a closed vehicle, moving away.

Just a moment, Ramon, he says. Sir? Ill be right back. The car eases to a stop. He reaches for the door handle, climbs out, perplexing the doormen as he hurries quickly through the marbled lobby, into the elevator, his polished shoes clicking, carrying the rain.

THE N IN E TEE N TH FLO O R. Glass and high ceilings. The windows

slightly open. Rows of long white bookshelves. Elegant Persian rugs. An early lamp lit in the corner. He moves quietly over the Brazilian hardwood. A collision of light, even with the rain coming down out side. South to Columbus Circle. East to Central Park. West to the Hudson. From below he can hear the Sunday buskers, the music drift ing up. Jazz. Heather stands in their sons bedroom, hunched over the changing table, hair pulled high to her neck. She does not hear him enter. He re mains at the door, watching as she pulls together the velcro of the diaper. She leans down and kisses their sons stomach. She undoes her dark hair and leans again over the child. Tickling him. A giggle from the baby. The Senator remains at the bedroom door until she senses him standing behind her. She says his name, unlatches the child from the changing table, swaddles the boy in a blanket. She laughs and steps across the fine carpet, still carrying the soiled diaper. You forget something? No. He kisses her. Then his son. He pinches the boy playfully on the toes. The roll of soft skin at his fingers. He takes the diaperstill warm to the touchand drops it in the diaper pail. Life, he thinks, is still capable of the most extraordinary quips. A warm diaper. At sixtyfour.

Heather walks him back to the elevator, takes the flap end of his suit jacket, draws him close. The scent of their son on both their hands. The elevator cables pitch their mourn.

WHAT SHE W O RRIE S most of all is that he will become the flesh at the

end of an assassins bullet.

SO M AN Y M URDE RS arrive out of the blue. The young Catholic

woman with the British soldier slumped over her child, a hiss of air from the bullet wound in his back. The man in the taxicab with the cold steel at his neck. The bomb left outside the barracks in New townards. The girl in Manchester thrown twenty feet in the air, her legs separating from her as she flew. The fortysevenyearold woman tarred and feathered and left tied to a lamppost on the Ormeau Road. The postman blinded by the letter bomb. The teenager with a six pack of bullet holes in his knees, his ankles, his elbows. When she was with him in Northern Ireland, last July, it chilled Heather to see wheeled mirrors being slid in under the car before they drove off. George said it was just a formality. Nothing for her to worry about. He had an air about him, a midcentury dignity that dis missed most danger. She liked to watch him in a crowd. The way he could forget him self, dissolve and allow everyone else a sense of their own importance. He believed in people, he listened well.

You might also like