As It Is in Heaven by Niall Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

mountain and tracked it to here, and now did not know what to do.
     Gabriella allowed herself to do nothing but smile. Briefly there was no sound, then the stillness of their being there was
     filled with the thousand minute noises of the turning world, the haw of the deer’s breathing, the ephemeral vapour of its
     presence on the mountainside uncertain as a vision, and the sound of its flanks heaving. The deer moved its right foreleg
     and the ground crackled tinnily with the stuff of ancient twigs and pine needles beneath the deep mulch of a hundred years.
     The deer lowered its neck and nosed the ground where Gabriella had walked. She saw its great muscle flex beneath the brown
     hide and knew the strength of the animal. She imagined the animal’s massive turn and bound and flight away through the mountain
     forest, the crash of alarm its charge would signal as it climbed farther and farther from the green stillness of that moment
     that was like a deer’s dream of paradise. If she moved, it would take flight and run until it arrived at last high in the
     mountain to drink the clear running water of safety.
    But Gabriella did not move. She was enchanted. She closed her eyes a moment and felt the coolness of her eyelids and saw the
     green shadows dancing beneath them. She pursed her lips to taste the moisture of the mountain forest and knew for sure that
     she was not dreaming. When she opened her eyes, she saw the deer eating the coiled peel of the clementine. It was a moment
     which she would long remember. She would remember it as the mysterious beginning of healing, the untranslatable language of
     God speaking in nature and stopping the world in a green moment.
    The deer lifted its head and looked at her. Somewhere a bird flew and the last leaves of a high tree quivered with its presence.
     The mist drifted like a veil across the little opening where Gabrielle was sitting. The deer looked away, and then back again,
     as if deciding that the strange figure of the woman might be companionable, and doubting for the briefest instant its own
     instinct of fear. Then, slowly, moving on the point of haste but not in haste, tempting the vision to transform and frighten
     it, but knowing that it would not, the deer walked away. It was three minutes before it vanished and Gabriella stood up.
    “
Grazie,
” she said, and began the slow wet journey back down the mountain.
    The following day Nelly Grant knew that Gabriella did not need the ruby grapefruit and offered her instead the fortification
     of bananas. Bananas ensure us against the suddenness of violent emotions, she told the Italian woman, and put two in her bag
     with a conspiratorial smile. Gabriella was carrying her violin case, and when Nelly asked her was she going to play, Gabriella
     said, “I need a lot of practising.”
    That afternoon she played Vivaldi in the small clearing among the trees where she had met the deer. She did not expect him
     to return, and he did not—at least not so that she could see him—but she played nonetheless, making the notes move through
     the changeless frozen time of that beautiful place where only the air and the trees listened. It soothed Gabriella to play.
     She played for an hour; she played with a flowing motion in her bow and heard the music reach a point so near to perfection
     that even she could not find the smallest flaw. Above the treetops the broken pieces of the pale sky glistened like glass.
     No clouds were moving. The air was scented with pine, and the stillness of that secret place shimmered with the music.
    When Gabriella had stopped playing and returned down the mountainside, she had decided she was going to stay and live in Kenmare.
     She did not yet know how or for how long, but as she walked along the black road back to the town and felt the rain coming
     in her face, she knew the decision was irreversible.
    It was three days before she got a job in the vegetable shop of Nelly Grant. By the time the