To View From All Sides
From “Segovia,” by Billy O’Callaghan:
He’d been kind. They talked about meeting later, for dinner, and when she seemed reluctant he said that he’d come anyway, because he had to eat, and that if she felt like it, if she’d slept or rested enough, she could still choose to join him. He hoped to see her, he said, just before opening the door; he would be very glad of her company. And the food here was worth trying because it would give her a true flavour of the place. She had sat on her side of the bed, not looking at him, looking at the floor, the bare varnished boards made of old weed knitted together, and said that she might be down if, as he said, she could get some sleep, but that he should not expect her, and that he shouldn’t wait, or read anything into it if she didn’t appear. He wouldn’t, he said, holding on to a dignity that no longer much mattered, but he’d be there from about nine o’clock onwards, either in the cafe or in the hotel’s bar, and he’d continue to hope.
It’s an amazing feeling that accompanies this question about an author’s work: How did they do that?
Billy O’Callaghan leads me repeatedly to that moment of awe. Every sentence he writes flows smoothly into the next; every paragraph begins and ends when it should. He places his characters in the most appropriate spots, and they always act and speak like their lives were scripted by a craftsman.
O’Callaghan writes without gaps. At the switch between one passage to another, I’m always left wondering how he formed such delicate touch into these most tumultuous and confusing moments of his characters’ lives.
Look above at how he moves this woman (his narrator) and man (her lover, this night) through awkward and tentative speech and action following their intimacy in “Segovia.”
This pair has just met and chose to share themselves with one another. They show signs of it being good and a precursor to something more (“he would be very glad of her company”), yet they also show a melancholy in its aftermath (“She had sat on her side of the bed, not looking at him, looking at the floor”).
They dance around the idea of meeting again that evening. She says she “might be down” to the restaurant to have dinner. He hedges his bets, calling upon the “true flavour of the place” as perhaps a bonus that might aid her decision to meet with him again.
They’re both happy and hopeful but at the same time unsure and wavering. It makes me wonder about the past and future of their lives as much as it has me consider the present.
Personally — knowing the rest of the story up to this point — I felt sad, a little, for the both of them. Their circumstances you should explore in the full piece suggest that this night could have been more exciting. The found themselves together through a greater portion of loneliness than of joy.
One emotion, though, does not define this night.
O’Callaghan wraps everything here in a sort of exposition-with-dialogue style that speaks to all sides. He lets you see the room from all angles.
From one vantage point, I get to absorb the honest emotional summations of the narrator in phrases like “He’d been kind” and “[he shouldn’t] read anything into it if she didn’t appear.” From another post, I get to hear the man say that he’d be present “from about nine o’clock onwards” and that “he wouldn’t” read anything into her possible absence, but that he would “continue to hope.”
I must apply myself as the reader, however, to gather their specific feelings and words from the paragraph’s phrasing.
O’Callaghan lets this post-intimacy steep in its own uneasiness by never letting the scene commit either to direct exposition or outright dialogue. The mixed moments like “she said she might be down if, as he said, she could get some sleep” give the impression that this pair is listening to each other throughout their collective tiptoeing around the room. She hears him even if she’s looking at the floor, and he hears her even if he’s headed to the door.
In the fog of whether or not they will extend their togetherness, I must look through the fog of the way this parting sits on the page. It’s both opaque and clear, struggle and comfort, want and need. And O’Callaghan has these elements exist together, all at once, pulling me into these characters’ lives as I must sit to carry the weight of how he presents them.