5

The Hannaville cemetery is simple but pleasant-looking and not badly kept. Jonathan’s grave lies near one edge of it under a cedar tree; he would have liked that, I think. But we had difficulty finding it. Claire stayed in the car, and Atlas had quite a struggle pushing my wheelchair over the grass. Sarah’s gravestone stood up brave and strong, a solid slab of granite with her name and dates on it and a fond, if somewhat sentimental, message.

‘Where’s Jonathan’s grave?’ I said.

‘I dunno,’ Atlas said, peering down at the ground. ‘Gotta be here somewhere.’

‘He starved himself to death, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah. Old Irish custom. Awful.’

There was no stone to be seen. I leaned down over my chair and ran my hands through the grass; the edge of a concrete brick showed just above the ground. I looked up at Atlas.

‘Well, yeah, you see—’ he began, embarrassed. Then he broke a twig off the cedar, lowered himself to the ground and began to scrape. The ground gave way after a bit, and as it did it revealed a succession of eroded letters that spelled out JONATHAN.

‘Wouldn’t even drink water,’ Atlas said, continuing to scrape. ‘Every couple of days I brought down four, five liters of saline and the tubing. Jesus, he looked miserable. Old Mundt didn’t believe in any of it, and I was only a pre-med student – Damndest thing, right at the end, dad started plucking at the sheets. I said to Mundt, “What’s he doing?” Mundt said, “Dying.” But I never saw anybody else pluck at the sheets like that – like he was picking up bugs off them.’ Atlas sighed. ‘But at least the poor bastard died hydrated.’

Squinting from the height of my chair, I could see something on the concrete brick that might once have passed for CARRICK. No inscription, no dates.

‘Good God, Atlas—’ I began.

And my uncle, who had so patiently spoken into my tape machine all day the day before, who had given me the memoirs he valued so much even though he could not read them – my uncle who had never before said a harsh word to me – suddenly grew angry.

‘You think you understand everything, but you understand nothing at all,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll tell you. The human body is a wonderful thing. Just because you sit in a wheelchair doesn’t change that. I’m a drunk: that doesn’t change it, either. Life clings tight to its shape. Look in the mirror. Day after day, year after year, there’s hardly any change at all. That’s you: wrinkles, gray hair, what the hell – you can see it’s you. I can see it. And yet every bone, every muscle, every patch of skin, tendon, blood vessel – every single particle – is being destroyed and replaced right as you look. Surface calm – and a mad scramble of activity underneath. So dad suffered. But think of the performance! Incredible! The shape, the form, the pattern – all unchanged and yet not one single molecule of what was you seven years ago is part of you now. What do you want? Eternal permanence?’