Boy and Man. Niall Williams

he fished the heavens.

      The sun shone on Jerzy Maski, lifting blocks and laying them to make rise the wall to the second floor of a new house on the outskirts of the town of Ennis. He had come from Poland a month earlier. Within two days he had a job, and was one of a crew of twenty-three that came like a dawn army in dusty cars and vans to build an estate of seventy-six houses. He was twenty-one years of age. He was fair-haired and strong, and liked to sing when he was drunk in the evenings when the eight other men in the house he shared spoke of Poland. They knew they were in the country only temporarily. They knew that after this estate there would be another, and more after that, but one day they would be told there was nothing more to build in that country. And the knowledge of that made easier the absence of Poland for Jerzy Maski. His English was poor and these people were different. This month had been his first away from Jaslo in southern Podkarpackie not far from the Carpathian Mountains. He did not mind the work, and while he was lifting the blocks and tapping them into place, while the walls were rising about him, he could forget the thing he felt most strongly. He could hide in work the feeling to which he would never confess: that if he paused long enough there would rise in his heart an unbearable longing to have his mother’s hands hold his face.

      From the upper level of scaffolding, he saw a lorry bounce over the deeply potholed entrance to the estate and his uncle Laslo called up to him to come unload. He descended the ladder swiftly and his uncle smiled at his nimbleness and strength, nodded consent to an inner argument and led the way out through the doorless hall.

      Laslo was in his late fifties and compensated for his baldness with an outrageous moustache. He smoked sixty cigarettes a day, wheezed all of his breath and joked that hell would be no difficulty because so much of him was smoke already. ‘Smoke and these boots,’ he would say, ‘these will do me in hell.’

      They crossed the packed dirt of Eden Crescent, the semicircle of walled but unroofed houses, the way randomly stacked with deliveries, pipes, rolls of insulation, white aeroboards, plastic sheeting torn open and flapping in the breeze.

      The lorry driver had already climbed down. ‘What a day. What a day what a day what a day. Cripes yes. Warmer than July, eh?’ he said, and clapped and rubbed his hands together. A short man with a ball of belly, he was red-faced and beaming. ‘Island in the sun men, am I right?’

      They looked at him.

      ‘What is he saying?’ Jerzy asked under his breath.

      ‘I have no idea. Smile at him and nod.’

      ‘And point is. Point exactly is, the world, the sun, and the layer between. That’s the point. “Are we getting nearer?” says Mickey Cotter. Nearer what says I? “Nearer to heaven or to hell,” says Mickey. That’s a point. By jingo yes. Heaven, says Ben Dack. Choose heaven. But what a day what a day. Twenty-three degrees. Two three. Dear Lord thank you very much. Go raibh mile maith agat if you’re tuned in in the Irish, eh?’

      The two Poles nodded away, and Ben Dack took this for encouragement. He clapped his hands again and said, ‘You’re doing some job with this country, men. Some job, indeed. When this country’s finished boy oh boy says he.’

      Laslo nodded, Ben nodded back. When in turn Ben looked at him, Jerzy nodded too, and then the three of them considered for a time the half-circle of house shells. Somehow a cigarette had appeared on Laslo’s lip and, hands behind his back like a general, he surveyed the field and through the thicket of his moustache softly leaked the smoke.

      ‘I’ll make a start,’ Jerzy said, but his uncle touched his arm, ‘Wait. Wait a minute. No need to rush. Take a moment. Nod again.’ Laslo extended a hand as though they were speaking about the development. ‘Good ya,’ he said and nodded.

      ‘Oh ya,’ said Ben Dack. ‘Certainly ya, most definitely ya. As the man says, you’re the men can turn fields into factories. No bother to you. And no argument from Ben Dack because stands to reason, doesn’t it, there’s more of everything now, more of us more of you more cars more money more. That’s the word, more. Eden Crescent, Eden Dale, Eden Meadows. Must be fifteen Edens in Ennis alone. By cripes. Did Ben Dack ever think he’d see it? In Ireland. Because this isn’t Poland as Josie says. And – you’ll like this – I says, isn’t it? For devilment because Josie’s a saint and you’d want to sometimes, you know, well but also my point, my point obtusely as the fella says, is aren’t all places the same and the longer the world goes ahead spinning isn’t one place spinning into becoming another and isn’t that maybe the way because that’s what Time makes of it. And so what? So Poland Ireland wherever. Irepol. You get me?’

      Laslo withdrew the cigarette and nodded.

      ‘What did he say?’ Jerzy asked. ‘He said Poland.’

      ‘He said that young man from Poland is a bull, must have women everywhere. Like his fine bull uncle.’

      ‘“Because what’s a country?” says I. And my saint Josie comes at me with that little furrow in her brow like she wants to say Ben Dack you’ve lost the last marble now. And “what’s a country?” she says and I says right exactly because look there’s no lines drawn from above. You get me? Not a single one. My point. Clear as daylight. Countries are made up. Am I right? Countries are all joined together and only pretend to be separate. Am I right?’

      ‘He is insane,’ Jerzy whispered.

      ‘Don’t whisper. Nod.’

      They nodded profusely, and for some moments made a strange triangle of mute acquiescence, and then all three looked back at the house shells and in Polish Laslo said, ‘Are they not the ugliest houses you ever saw?’

      Jerzy burst out a laugh, and Ben was pleased because the simplicity of his nature was such that he felt sympathy for all strangers and wanted them to be at ease.

      ‘With this fellow we could nod all day,’ Laslo giggled. ‘I think he would not mind.’

      ‘But our necks would ache.’ Jerzy said, and then couldn’t stop the laughter coming now. Suddenly it bubbled airily up inside him, quick bursting gasps of it, first one then another; each he tried to stop but couldn’t. Now the laughter grew upon itself and he opened wide his mouth and made a soft near noiseless wheezing as though he had a series of ‘h’s caught in his throat. He sounded not ‘ha’ but only an aspirate ‘h’ and his eyes watered with the effort. He squeezed them shut and bent forward and put his hands on his thighs and laughed down to the ground. Laslo and Ben were laughing too now, heartily, a bizarre human comedy none could explain, but as each looked at the other and had their laughter renewed they were helplessly bound. Each in their way – with shut eyes and wrinkled up nose, with mouth open and head back or tight-lipped, the chuckles snorting out – lost themselves to the laughter. Ben Dack clapped his hands. A giddy joy ran around in them, and for some time neither could they speak nor stop, but in that sunlit Eden Crescent were three men laughing in the mystery of what happens.

       TWO

      The population of Ethiopia is approaching seventy-two million people.

      In the evening after his supper, the Master sat in an armchair by the corner of the fire. While Josie was still working in the kitchen, Ben Dack was engaged in the one activity that could count as his pastime. On a large wooden board set upon the dining table, he worked at a jigsaw. Some years before he had been given one as a present and afterward out of politeness more than interest he had made it. His next birthday Josie had given him another one. She had seen the contentment he got when he tapped a piece into place and the image became clearer. So the jigsaws had continued. Ben Dack never bought one for himself and always showed surprise when it was given and always soon afterward opened the box and began. When the puzzles were finished he used wood glue and then varnish and a simple frame. So now these were the pictures that hung on the walls of the Dack house. It had never occurred to Ben to break up the jigsaws and put them back in their boxes.

      That evening the puzzle he worked was ‘The World’s