Days Without End: AN IRISH TIMES BEST IRISH BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

by Sebastian Barry

The old ships started to bring ruined people to Canada, people that were so hungry they might eat each other in the holds. I am not saying I saw that. But I was thirteen or so and I knew in my heart and soul I had to flee. I crept onto one of those ships in the darkness. I am telling this best I can. It’s long ago, before America. I was among the destitute, the ruined and the starving for six weeks. Many went overboard, that’s how it was. The captain hisself he died of fever, when we reached Canada we were a ship without a steward. Into the fever sheds with us and that’s where hundreds died. I’m just writing all this down. The point is, we were nothing. No one wanted us. Canada was a-feared of us. We were a plague. We were only rats of people. Hunger takes away what you are. Everything we were was just nothing then. Talk, music, Sligo, stories, future, past, it was all turned to something very like the shit of animals. When I met John Cole that’s who I was, a human louse, even evil people shunned me and the good had no use for me. That’s where I started. Gives an idea of the victory meeting John Cole was. First time I felt like a human person again. And that’s enough of that, I say, I don’t want to say no more. Silence. I only say it because without saying I don’t think anything can be properly understood. How we were able to see slaughter without flinching. Because we were nothing ourselves, to begin with. We knew what to do with nothing, we were at home there.