The Shortest Day

by Colm Tóibín

It was important, he would explain to the first-year archaeology class, not to embellish or imagine anything. The job of an archaeologist was to make known only what can be proved. The rest was idle speculation.

A few times over the years, when he had bowed his head at the Consecration of the Host at Mass, he had realized how hard it would be for an archaeologist of the future, on finding the ruins of a Catholic church, to guess what the faithful had believed.

Dalc was the sole member of the dead gathered in the burial chamber who had the power to wander in the world.

We do not connect with mortals, in the same way as eternity does not wish to connect with time.

all disagreements, like all versions of time, circled each other, uncertain which was the line and which was the space through which the line was etched.

All three shared a great-grandmother, who was the woman to whom Dalc had spoken a century earlier.

“I respect the spirit,” she said. “It is distant from us, as it should be. We must keep away from the spirit. The spirit woman ordered me not to tell the world about the light coming into the burial chamber. She spoke as though much depended on this. No one belonging to me will betray her. She offered me a long life and happiness, but that made no difference. The important thing is: I made her a solemn promise.”

We do not want the world of time to impinge on the world we have made, we who have moved out of time.”

“Because we must all know our place in the great scheme of things. We respect mystery and silence and spirit.

But she was always aware that she lived in a place that was inhabited by the dead as much as by the living, the dead who had crossed the line many centuries before, people long forgotten.