The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry

There is a town not far off, I am told. Roscommon town itself. I don’t know how far, except it takes half an hour in a fire engine. This I know because one night many years ago I was roused from my sleep by John Kane. He led me out into the hallway and hurried me down two or three flights of stairs. There was a fire in one of the wings and he was leading me to safety. Instead of bringing me to the ground floor, he had to cut across through a long dark ward, where the doctors and other staff were also gathered. There was smoke coming up from below, but this place was deemed to be safe. The gloom gradually brightened, or my eyes adjusted to it. There were maybe fifty beds there, a long thin room with curtains drawn everywhere. Thin ragged curtains. Old, old faces, as old as my own now. I was astonished. They had lain there not too far away from me and I did not know. Old faces that said nothing, lying in stupor, like fifty Russian icons. Who were they? Why, they were your own people. Silent, silent, sleeping towards death, crawling on bleeding knees towards our Lord. A tribe of onetime girls. I whispered a prayer to hurry their souls to heaven. For I think they crept up there very slow. I suppose they are all dead now or mostly. I never visited them again. The fire engine came in half an hour. I remember because one of the doctors remarked on it. These places unlike the world, with none of the things we praise the world for. Where sisters, mothers, grandmothers, spinsters, a...