“In Tóibín’s skillful hands, what unfolds is a seamless and ultimately moving portrait of a fading era.”

—The Boston Globe

“Tóibín takes us almost shockingly close to the mystery of art itself. A remarkable, utterly original book.”

—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours

Also by Colm Tóibín

FICTION

The South

The Heather Blazing

The Blackwater Lightship

The Master

NONFICTION

Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border

Homage to Barcelona

The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe

Love in a Dark Time

Title Page

Copyright

SCRIBNER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1996 by Colm Tóibín

SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tóibín, Colm, 1955-
The story of the night: a novel/Colm Tóibín.—1st Scribner trade
    pbk. ed.
p. cm.
PR6070.O455S76 2005
823'.914—dc22 2005042492

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-8464-6
ISBN-10: 0-7432-8464-X

Dedication

in memoriam, Gerry McNamara

PART ONE

During her last year my mother grew obsessive about the emblems of empire: the Union Jack, the Tower of London, the Queen, and Mrs. Thatcher. As the light in her eyes began to fade, she plastered the apartment with tourist posters of Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard and magazine photographs of the royal family; her accent became posher and her face took on the guise of an elderly duchess who had suffered a long exile. She was lonely and sad and distant as the end came close.

I am living once more in her apartment. I am sleeping in her bed, and I am using, with particular relish, the heavy cotton sheets that she was saving for some special occasion. In all the years since she died I have never opened the curtains in this room. The window, which must be very dirty now, looks on to Lavalle, and if I open it I imagine there is a strong possibility that some residual part of my mother that flits around in the shadows of this room will fly out over the city, and I do not want that. I am not ready for it.