The Empty Family

Stories

Colm Toibin

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781439149836
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

The bestselling and award-winning author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín, returns with a stunning collection of stories—"a book that's both a perfect introduction to Tóibín and, for longtime fans, a bracing pleasure" ( The Seattle Times ). Critics praised Brooklyn as a "beautifully rendered portrait of Brooklyn and provincial Ireland in the 1950s." In The Empty Family, Tóibín has extended his imagination further, offering an incredible range of periods and characters—people linked by love, loneliness, desire—"the unvarying dilemmas of the human heart" ( The Observer, UK). In the breathtaking long story "The Street, " Tóibín imagines a relationship between Pakistani workers in Barcelona—a taboo affair in a community ruled by obedience and silence. In "Two Women, " an eminent and taciturn Irish set designer takes a job in her homeland and must confront emotions she has long repressed. "Silence" is a brilliant historical set piece about Lady Gregory, who tells the writer Henry James a confessional story at a dinner party. The Empty Family will further cement Tóibín's status as "his generation's most gifted writer of love's complicated, contradictory power" ( Los Angeles Times ).

The Street

Malik stood in the corner by the drawer where the cash was kept while Baldy counted the day’s takings. He tried to look humble but also alert as Baldy, without once looking up, spoke to him for the first time since his arrival. He told him that he could have a half-day free every week until he was trained and then maybe a whole day. Malik nodded and stayed still and then nodded again in case Baldy turned in his direction, or in case one of the other barbers in the Four Corners was watching. They all claimed to dislike Baldy, but Malik did not think he could trust any of them.

Baldy was gruff. When they had met at the airport in Barcelona a few weeks earlier, he had not even said hello to him. When Malik had tried to explain the long delay in Madrid, Baldy had not paid him the slightest attention, he had turned and walked away, having brusquely indicated that Malik should follow him. Then he had walked impatiently out of the airport building towards the car park. As he drove into the city, Baldy had talked business into a tiny mobile phone that he attached to his ear and in front of his mouth and had not said a word to Malik.

Malik remembered how dark and frightening the city seemed. Baldy had eventually pulled up outside a tall old building in a narrow street and motioned to Malik from the front seat that he should take his bag out of the car. With Malik standing on the pavement beside him, Baldy rang a bell beside one of the doorways and shouted a name when someone answered through an intercom. Then, without a word, he got back into the car and drove away. Malik had waited alone in the street until a man came down and accompanied him upstairs to his quarters. The time waiting had frightened him even more than the arrival in Madrid.

Malik was surprised at the idea that Baldy thought he would ever prove himself as a proper barber. Although he was becoming more confident at the practice sessions, the others still laughed at his awkwardness. He found the machines difficult. One night the previous week, for example, they had let him give a full haircut using the electric shears and Salim had taken photographs of the result to amuse everyone. Some of the cut was far too tight, but in places Malik had left tufts of hair uncut.

Malik began sweeping until the floor was clean and then moved towards the door and stood close to it. He found a newspaper on a chair and folded it neatly. He wondered if he should do something else and tried to look busy, even though it must be obvious, he thought, that he was not busy. Baldy, he saw, was adding up the number of customers who had come to the Four Corners that day and what each had paid. When he had finished this, he put the euro notes into his back pocket and left the coins in the drawer. Then he walked out of the Four Corners without speaking.

The atmosphere changed as soon as Baldy left. One of the barbers went to the cassette player and turned up the sound. Malik thought for a moment that he might go and sit down, but then he worried that Baldy might suddenly return and catch him doing nothing. He went into the back room and checked the towels and then came out again into the shop, where there were still two clients having haircuts. The other barbers were chatting and cleaning up. He leaned against the wall and watched them. He thought that some of them resented his sullenness, his silence.

He wondered what they all did with their day or half-day free. He had never heard anyone saying that they went anywhere or did anything. It struck him that the only thing he could do was spend his free half-day sitting beside Super at the cash register in the supermarket a block away on the same street as the Four Corners. He had met Super on his second day in the street, when he was sent to get tea. Super was the first person to call him by his name and ask him questions about himself. If Super was busy, he thought, he would help him out; if the supermarket became quiet, he would sit and listen to Super’s commentary on those who passed in the street, or on his regular customers, or on what was happening in the world.

Later, as the shop was getting ready to close, he was glad when no one suggested that he continue his training. He waited with them until the last customer had gone; then he joined them as they walked back to the house, being careful to say nothing, and not seem to listen too closely to any of them, in case they picked on him or laughed at him. He looked forward to getting into bed and feeling alone there in the darkness; the very thought of that pleased him and made him feel almost comfortable and happy.

One day he explained his fears to Super that he could not seem to learn as the others had learned and he noticed how attentively Super listened, how much he wanted to know the names of all the barbers and what each one had done or said. He waited for Super to give him advice, or predict what was most likely to happen, but Super said nothing, just looked out the shop window into the street. Since the supermarket was open late, he went there sometimes for a few minutes after work but Super was not always free to talk to him, as there were other men, who looked up in surprise when Malik approached and grew silent as Super indicated that he was busy and suggested that Malik return some other time. The men, most of whom had beards, did not seem like customers and Malik wondered who they were. They were older and seemed serious, like businessmen or mullahs.

Malik did not move beyond the street and he liked how gradually he was becoming known as he made his way to the supermarket to buy milk or soft drinks or tea. He enjoyed being greeted and saluted. And there were other things too that made him feel comfortable. Even though eight of them shared the room, for example, he learned that he would not need to lock his suitcase, he was assured that no one would touch it. One night, when one of the other lodgers wanted to move his suitcase for a moment, he came and asked permission. He realized that they all kept money and photographs and other private things in their cases, fully confident that no one would go near them.

He noticed too that each of them had something special, a camera, a Walkman, a mobile phone, a DVD player, that set them apart and that they lent out as a special favour, or at particular times. Only Mahmood owned nothing. Mahmood worked hard and spent no money because he wanted desperately to go home. Some of the others, he told Malik, spent half their earnings on phone calls home. He had never called his wife even once, he said, not even for a second. He would not waste the money and it only made him sad.

Each morning, except Saturday and Sunday, Mahmood left early to deliver butano. He carried the heavy bottles of gas up narrow staircases. And then in the afternoons he took care of all the laundry in the house, leaving clothes clean and folded on each bed, never making a mistake. And in the evening he cooked, charging less than even the cheapest restaurant in the street.

Malik liked Mahmood from the beginning and liked having his clothes washed by someone he knew, and laid on his bed as though he were equal to the others. He also liked the food Mahmood cooked. But more than anything he was intrigued at how single-minded Mahmood was, how determined he was to go home.

It was Super also who warned him not to wander in the city. The locals were not the problem, Super said, and not even the tourists. It was the police you had to be careful of. In this street and the few around it, Super assured him, they would stop only blacks, but in other streets they could easily mistake you for a Moroccan.

“Why do they not like Moroccans?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but they don’t,” Super said. “They just don’t. And they don’t like Africans either. They like us because we just do business, that’s all we’re here for.”

Under the counter Super had a collection of magazines with photographs of the prisoners the Americans held in Iraq. Malik had seen the pictures on television; he had noticed that no one wanted to talk about them. Each time the television in the house had shown the naked figures being tormented by the American guards, for example, his fellow lodgers had watched in complete silence. When the news moved on to some other item, they still did not speak but simply stared straight at the television for a while.

When he went through the pages of the magazines with Super, neither of them said anything either; instead, they looked at each picture slowly, letting their eyes take in every detail. It was the one with the big black dog that Malik remembered most; that was what made him most afraid. At night sometimes he thought about it, and the sharp teeth of the dog and the crouching prisoner tied up made him shiver.

Super reminded him of men in his village at home who could be found after prayers at the mosque gathered in a small group having earnest discussions, or who would visit a house if someone was in trouble. He had a way of becoming quiet and looking serious.

One day as Malik and Super observed Mahmood banging a piece of metal against the butano cylinder to let customers know he was in the street, Malik told Super how great it was that Mahmood would have plenty of money when he went home because he worked so hard. Super listened and said nothing for a moment.

“No, he won’t have a penny when he goes home,” Super said. “Not a penny. They did all the paperwork for him and got him his visa and paid his fare. He is saving to pay them back so he can go.”

“Pay who back?”

“The same people who paid for you,” Super said.

“You mean Baldy?”

“Baldy works for them too.”

At night sometimes Malik lay in the dark thinking of the vast city around him, its night sounds seeping in. He had learned some words of the language and wondered how he might learn more. Even if he never became a barber, he thought, they would always need someone to sweep and clean. He would never go too far beyond these few streets, he was sure, but he relished the idea that other, different people lived in the city, people whom he would never meet or even see. Maybe in a while he would try just the next street. He imagined taking one street at a time, just as he imagined learning a few words every day. And maybe after a month or so, he would summon up the courage to ask Baldy which half-day he could have. It was not too bad, he thought, as he curled up in the warm bed and waited for sleep to return.

Once a month he went to the locutorio the others used and phoned Fatima, as he had arranged to do before he left. She owned the stall that sold live and dead chickens in the market and she knew his father, who often passed by. Malik asked her always if there was any news and she said no, and then he told her what news of his own he could think of, but it was never much. Then he said that she must be busy and she said she sometimes was. And then he asked her to pass on the news to his father and his sister that he had phoned and that he was well. And she agreed that she would. The phone call cost him less than five euros if he stayed on for under three minutes.

Malik looked forward to the quiet time when everyone was asleep and he was woken by some stray noise. It could be anything: the noise of a motorbike on the street below and then that noise fading into the distance, or one of the others who shared the room groaning in his sleep or saying a few words that made little sense, or someone talking or shouting below the window, or the men who came to hose down the streets or the truck that came to collect the garbage. On nights like this he thought that, despite the trials of training to be a barber, he was glad to be in Barcelona, happy to be among strangers and away from everyone he knew.

And when the morning broke in Barcelona the eight in Malik’s room, and the three in the room at the back, had to use the single bathroom. They never queued, and there was never a rule about who went first or who waited until the end. If someone was in a hurry or late, however, he could make that clear to the others and he would be let go next. No one ever stayed too long in the bathroom, just time enough to use the toilet and the shower and maybe shave and then dry off and come back and dress. Everyone kept their underpants on, or their pyjamas, or a towel around their waist, as they got ready for the day.

Some of them had their own prayer mats and they prayed in the mornings while everyone moved busily around them. But Malik did not pray. Since his mother had died, there had been no one in the house to tell him to pray and so he had got out of the habit.

But Super, he knew, prayed and sometimes Super would read him a few lines of the Koran and ask him to repeat them and he would do so. He liked the words and often tried to remember them.

Some days were slack. There was usually a strange empty hour in the morning when there were no customers and they all had to watch out in case Baldy pounced on the place. He would demand that the barbers stand behind their chairs as though waiting at that very moment for the arrival of a customer. But mostly Baldy was too busy, they all said, selling mobile phones at the lowest price.

Malik usually kept his eyes on the door and the window. Although he knew some of the people who passed, because they were customers at the Four Corners or they came to buy groceries at the supermarket or consult with Super, he was careful never to greet them with anything more than a nod of recognition. He did not want to be seen not working even though he had nothing to do most of the time.

They had given up for the moment, it seemed, trying to teach him to cut hair; he was hopeless, they said. The fun of watching him make a mess of someone’s hair and the pleasure of laughing at him as he grew more nervous and agitated had lost its initial charm. One or two of the barbers treated him now with blunt indifference or mild irritation and soon, even Super agreed, his utter uselessness would come to Baldy’s attention and no one knew what might happen then. But, for the moment, Baldy seemed to notice nothing, and when Malik waylaid him one day and asked him if he could have Tuesday afternoons off as his half-day free, he agreed immediately.

Although Super had warned Malik not to go too far beyond the street, to stay close to where there were other Pakistanis, Malik worked out that it was safe to wander one block on each side. He moved carefully, often doubling back and stopping, noting the number of stores selling mobile phones, hoping not to bump into Baldy and ready to veer into the shadows if he did. He wished he had a phone of his own, because no one minded you standing on the street staring at them or their store as long as you were talking on a mobile phone.

One day when Baldy arrived in the Four Corners, he came right up to him as all the customers and barbers watched.

“What are you looking at?” Baldy asked him.

“I’m not looking at anything,” Malik replied.

“Well, don’t. Don’t look at anything, you little maggot. Get on with your work! What do you do anyway?”

Malik did not reply.

“What do you do anyway?” Baldy repeated. “I don’t know why we have you here. We’ll have to deal with you one of these days. Do you hear me?”

Malik did not reply.

Later, when he told Super what had happened, Super said that he thought it sounded serious. He or one of the other men would try to talk to Baldy, he said, but he was not sure what the result would be.

Malik concentrated on small things so that he would not worry too much about Baldy. He made sure now that he did not linger in the streets even on his half-day free in case Baldy spotted him.

One day soon afterwards Baldy came into the Four Corners looking for him.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I am here,” he said.

“I know where you are,” Baldy replied.

Baldy went over and checked the ledger and the drawer where the cash was kept.

“Super says you are intelligent,” Baldy said. “But I have never seen any sign of it.”

If Baldy had called him lazy he would not have minded. He might seem lazy because he usually had nothing much to do. But he did not want Baldy to say that he was not intelligent.

“I don’t see the slightest sign of i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Flap
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Silence
• The Empty Family
• Two Women
• One Minus One
• The pearl Fishers
• Barcelona, 1975
• The New Spain
• The Colour of Shadows
• The Street
• Acknowledgements
• ‘House of Names’ Excerpt
• Back Flap
• Back Cover