In a town on Ireland’s west coast on All Souls’ Day, Marcus Conway hears
“the bell
the bell as
hearing the bell as
hearing the bell as standing here
the bell being heard standing here
hearing it ring out through the grey light of this
morning, noon or night
god knows
this grey day standing here and
listening to this bell in the middle of the day, the middle of
the day bell, the Angelus bell in the middle of the day, ringing out
through the grey light to
here
standing in the kitchen
hearing this bell
snag my heart and
draw the whole world into
being here”
A flood of associations begin, drawing from Marcus’s past, as he stands in the house he has lived in for twenty-five years with his wife, Mairead, a teacher, the house where they raised their two children, both living on their own—Agnes, an artist, and Darragh, a bit of a wanderer, working in Australia.
The time is after the economic collapse that hit Ireland brutally. Marcus wonders why human beings can’t anticipate such disasters but he might ask the same about his own town, Louisburgh, where suddenly many people have become violently ill, including his wife: vomiting, diarrhea, an inability to keep food—even water—down. After days, and 300 people sick, the source is identified as “coliform Cryptosporidium, a viral parasite which originates in human faecal matter,” prompting Marcus to ponder how this could ever have happened.
It wasn’t food poisoning as Mairead initially thought from a meal…