The Fall of Light by Niall Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

the
     stars, and into rooms that offered themselves like nervous debutantes, hoping for approval. He stood in the bay window and
     saw in the stellar light the long view down the garden. He saw it the way it was meant to be seen, and in those moments, hearing
     his own breath sighing in the empty house, he was struck with a cruel knowing of how completely he had surrendered his soul.
     Bulbs of anger exploded inside him. He was in the middle of his life and realized how much of it was lost. He touched the
     smooth painted sill with his fingertips, then he crossed the dark room and looked out at the western view of the rosebed,
     the eastern view of the boxwood. He moved from room to room to see out through each of the windows, and as he did, his rude
     boots making creaking noises on the floors, he felt a tightening in his heart. The whole country is a jail, he thought. They
     have us prettying it up for their visits, and they never even come. He was in the library looking outward, and when he turned
     away from the garden view in anger, he saw behind him the great brass-and-wooden contraption that was the telescope.
    At first he did not even know how to look through it. He did not know about angles or focus, but he knew the stars he had
     learned for Emer. The moment he touched the telescope, his life had already begun to change. For he was at once reminded of
     his courtship, of the innocent nights beneath the sky when he and she had imagined the world spread before them. It was a
     memory made bitter now He turned his eye to the glass and looked up into the clouds.
    It was three nights later before the skies were clear and Francis saw Venus from the library. He saw it and stared. He watched
     it with the kind of wonder children know and was still watching the stars when the light of the dawn thinned them into nothing.
    When he told Emer, he thought there might be conjuring magic and it would return them to the early days of their life together.
    “I have seen Andromeda,” he told her in the dark of their low bed. “Will you come and see tomorrow night?”
    “You shouldn’t be in there,” she said.
    “There are more stars than you can see with your eyes. They are like stars kept from everyone, like ones not for our viewing
     but only His Lordship.”
    “Francis.”
    “Don’t tell me we were not meant to see them.”
    “You will be caught and we will be thrown out on the road.”
    “Will you come with me tomorrow night and see them?” He leaned over and touched her arm in the dark. He brought his hand up
     to her hair.
    She let the silence answer for her. She lay motionless and felt her life was about to come asunder. She thought of her father
     and his discipline and pride and how he had instilled in her a sense of who she was; they were not people who broke into the
     houses of landlords. There was nothing moving. Francis and Emer heard each other breathe and heard the breathing of the children
     in the vast stillness that fell out of the stars. At last, when he could bear no more the emptiness between them, Francis
     urged her again.
    “Come tomorrow night. You’ll see then.”
    She said nothing at first, for she was afraid. But he stroked her cheek then, and whether out of fear or frustration or the
     feeling of loss that was deep within her, she said angrily: “I don’t want to see them, my feet are cold. What do I want seeing
     stars for?”
    She thought it would end there. He drew away his hand. She turned her back to him in the bed.
    “You want to see them through the telescope.”
    “I can see them from my own window,” she grumbled.
    “It’s not—”
    She sat up suddenly and turned to him. “You’re a foolish man. Oh God, you are. And what if you were found? What if you were
     seen there, then what? We’d be thrown back on the road, that’s what, think of that, will you? Or you’d be taken off to gaol,
     for what? For stars!”
    Her words crossed the darkness like spiders and stung his