Birchwood

touch of solemnity to this farcical ceremony. All that crimson death sprouting around me in the sparkling green morning had made me light-headed. I could remember no prayers, and so a song, the only one I knew, had to suffice.

O there's hair on this
There's hair on that
And there's hair on my dog Tiny
But I know where
There's plenty of hair-

It cheered me up, standing there weeping and giggling, with my hands devoutly clasped, singing for my father. I know that he would have savoured the scene.

– On the girl I left behind me!

There is no girl. There never was. I suppose I always knew that, in my heart. I believed in a sister in order not to believe in him, my cold mad brother. No Prospero either, there never is. O but I so wanted to keep that withered wizard, with his cloak and his black hat, stumping on ahead of me always with his stick and his claw and his piercing eyes, leading me slowly toward that rosy grail. Now the white landscape was empty. Perhaps it is better thus, I said, and added, faintly, I might find other creatures to inhabit it. And I did, and so I became my own Prospero, and yours.

I left Papa there to put down what roots he might, and went back to the house. He too had wanted a pet homunculus to comfort him, but what a blow it must have been to realise, with sudden cold clarity-I can see him striking his forehead with his fist-that if Beatrice were to produce a child it would be half a Lawless. And what a mixed relief it must have been to discover that Beatrice was barren, for by the time that fact became plain Martha had come up trumps with her two-card trick. I wonder how many of the family knew of the misalliance between brother and sister? Granny Godkin did, but not Granda. I knew, but denied the knowledge, as Beatrice did for as long as her fractured brain would allow, and then went conveniently mad, and died caged. And Michael? O he knew, yes, yes.

They struck a bargain, Martha and Joseph, admirable in its deviousness, whereby I would stay at Birchwood to be Papa's longed-for son-a real Godkin, by god-and Martha would retire with Michael to a secret lair somewhere financed by the Birchwood coffers. There was one condition, namely, that I would be the son of the house, but Michael must be the heir. Agreed! How did they make their choice between identical twin babies? Perhaps Papa shut his eyes and stuck a pin in me, or did Martha see in Michael's puckered face a trace of that cold sly fury and recognise a villian after her own heart? I do not know, but I know that they made the wrong choices, and thereby came their ruin.

I find it incredible that Martha believed her brother to be a man of honour, although he might have been honourable but for his wicked sense of humour. It was not fondness for me, for I was a bitter disappointment, nor hatred for her and Michael, but just an unwillingness to let pass the opportunity of laying the framework for a perfect delayed-action joke that made him, on the very day of their departure, sit down to his desk and carefully inscribe my name into his will. How he must have grinned, crouched there in the gloom of his study admiring that little word and pouring out a brandy. Ah father, I loved you in my fashion.

His plan to lighten with derisive laughter the darkness of his grave went askew, for Martha began to suspect him, and came flying back to Birchwood with her claws out. She found the will, or perhaps he showed it to her, and the battle began. But she was no match for Joe. He brought forward his post humous merriment and laughed at her then. What did she want? Was it that, like me, she had to touch the house in order to believe that she existed? These questions puzzle me still, and many more. Perhaps she only wanted to fight, for while they bickered they hardly noticed that the estate was falling apart. How explain such foolishness? They were Godkins, and no more need be said.

Michael, of course, wanted to be squire, to ride on a black horse around his land and hunt the foxes and thrash the peasants. He wanted all that I had, and hated me for having it and despising it. I think he would have killed me, willingly, it would have been so easy, but something held him back, that same something which stayed the knife in my own hand when we faced each other in the murderous dark of the summerhouse, and so, instead of fratricide, he played with Martha her sly game, and between them they sent me off in search of a sister. But by then all that was Birchwood had collapsed, the Lawlesses were taking over, and Michael too had to fly. Wherever I went he was ahead of me, dogging the steps I had not taken yet. He found the circus, and joined the Molly Maguires, brought them to fight the Lawlesses, and the circus to fight the Mollies. All that blood! That slaughter! And for what? For the same reason that Papa released his father into the birch wood to die, that Granny Godkin tormented poor mad Beatrice, that Beatrice made Martha believe that Michael was in the burning shed, the same reason that brought about all their absurd tragedies, the reason which does not have a name. So here then is an ending, of a kind, to my story. It may not have been like that, any of it. I invent, necessarily.

The weather held for weeks, limpid and bright, wind all day, sun and rain and a luminous lilac glow above the trees, then the evenings, night and stars. At first the silence troubled me, until I realised that it was not really silence. A band of old women came one day and took away the bodies of the dead men down in the field. I watched from my window, fascinated. I wanted to go and help them, to say, Look, I am not my father, I am something different but they would have run away from me, horrified. The poppies languished. I worked on the house, cleared out the attic, boarded up the windows smashed during the siege, tended the flowerbeds, I do not know why. The summerhouse was invaded by pigeons, starlings, a hive of bees. I let them stay there. They were alive, and I had enough of death. Perhaps I shall leave here. Where would I go? Is that why they all fought so hard for Birchwood, because there was nowhere else for them to be? Outside is destruction and decay. I do not speak the language of this wild country. I shall stay here, alone, and live a life different from any the house has ever known. Yes.

The kitchen still bore traces of Josie's peculiar odour. I wondered if she had been a part of those rights which Cotter had come back to claim. I doubt it. She had slipped into a crevice in time and lain there until forgotten. I could no longer remember what she looked like. How many have I lost that way? I began to write, as a means of finding them again, and thought that at last I had discovered a form which would contain and order all my losses. I was wrong. There is no form, no order, only echoes and coincidences, sleight of hand, dark laughter. I accept it.

Spring has come again, St Brigid's day, right on time. The harmony of the seasons mocks me. I spend hours watching the sky, the lake, the enormous sea. This world. I feel that if I could understand it I might then begin to understand the creatures who inhabit it. But I do not understand it. I find the world always odd, but odder still, I suppose, is the fact that I find it so, for what are the eternal verities by which I measure these temporal aberrations? Intimations abound, but they are felt only, and words fail to transfix them. Anyway, some secrets are not to be disclosed under pain of who knows what retribution, and whereof I cannot speak, thereof I must be silent.

John Banville

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. The author of thirteen previous novels, he has been the recipient of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and, most recently, the Man Booker Prize. He lives in Dublin.