The Black Snow by Paul Lynch

belly just to think of it. And here he was now stumbling nervous in her arms as if he could fall any moment. You can dance the sky, she said, but down here you’re all left feet. The big brute hands on you.
    The newness of another body in the plain sight of an evening. And the things you lose later on–the sense of space betweenbodies. How aware she was of the spaces between them–at the other side of the room by the table pouring tea. One cushion apart on the sofa. Dancing, the heat of her palm pressed against his. Eye to eye so close she could just about see herself in the dark centre of his pupil, a shadowy thing trying to find form within him. And the way his tanned skin gleamed in that fading light was still impressed upon her as if that moment of him had been conserved in perfect form within her not subject to time or forgetting. And as she saw him now in the yard with his stoop it came to her in a vision, the span of his entire life before her, and she saw in that moment the coming of his old age, his fading splendour, and what she felt then came up out of her unexpected, a surge of pity strong and true, and something else, a moment of white love that escaped from her like a bird.
    He stood in his own dark, the night sky cloudless and bright with the distant beauty of stars that shone for him a measure of time impossible for his mind to see. To get away from all things. To slide out from under what was and disappear into the cool of the dark, reach the place of sound receding a soft and distant ping. The Austin was low on petrol but he took it anyway and drove it into town, parked it outside the saddler’s shop. Stood out of the car buckled darkly against the glass. Inhale of shoe leather and crinkled echoes of laughter from up the street. As he turned he saw a man coalesce slowly from a lane, the figure lopsided and coming towards him inebriate, some slop form of human that turned out to be the saddler. He watched the man come to a stop looking down upon his huge waist, trying slowly to belt his trousers. The leather long enough for four widths of him and Barnabas watched him in wonder, saw how he had to loop thebelt around his girth twice and then the long struggle to buckle it, the saddler making a low groaning sound all the while as if this single moment was not a man at his most ordinary but the lowest of him.
    A chalk-dust moon lay scattered upon the street and Barnabas made towards The Bridge bar, heard rise from it an assault of loud laughter, knew it to be Fran Glacken. Three youths that hovered by the doorway looked at him. They held cupped in each hand a fag and their faces were hid under their caps. One of them spoke. Yes, sir.
    Yes, boys, he said.
    The youth stepped forward. Ye wouldn’t go in would ye and get us a wee naggin? He held out a note.
    Barnabas shook his head. What makes you think I’m going in?
    He walked past them up the street until he came to the door of another public house, a place called Tully’s. He stood and listened to its quiet for a moment. The place was crouched and dark and the air hung with turf must. In the corner glowed a sunken fire. As he came towards the counter a fat yellow candle guttered at him, stood in a solid pool of its own waste. There was standing room for no more than ten men and he saw two youngsters at the bar near hid in their own smoke. They talked quietly between themselves and he did not know their faces, figured them for farm labourers. The wooden stool complained when he drew it back and he nodded to the barkeep. Yes, Annie, he said. The old woman eyed him without smiling. He saw in her face an appointment with death, the impress of her skull through paper skin, cheeks like sundered sails from the loss of her teeth. Safeguarded in her eyes though was a fighting spirit. She slid off a stool to fix him a pint and watched him slake it intwo long drinks. He wiped his chin with his sleeve and looked at her. She took the glass and refilled it and put it