Free As It Is in Heaven by Niall Williams Page B

taken Moira’s position at the front of the room. He was a skeletal
     man with a sharp nose and the largest Adam’s apple in Clare. He was a man who believed in men, as long as he was leading them,
     and derided Moira Fitzgibbon for her bluntness and well-meaning, and for not being at home. He held his nose high and smiled
     with narrow squints of his eyes, turning the immaculate whiteness of his soap-scented hands and letting only the rise and
     fall of his gorge betray how he disliked the company of his constituents. He was about to announce the opening of the evening’s
     concert when the figure of Moira Fitzgibbon appeared. He lifted a white hand and let the dismay suck and plunge in his throat.
     Bloody woman!
    “Moira.” O’Rourke mouthed her name without sounding it and smiled thinly as she came through the room. Stephen Griffin sat
     in a chair towards the back, and Moira Fitzgibbon walked away from him, minding the loosened heel in her left shoe and taking
     the nods and greetings of the audience, who, she realized with a flood of warmth and thanksgiving, were the people of Miltown
     Malbay, dressed in their best and looking at her like a friend. When she reached the podium at the front of the room, Councillor
     O’Rourke stepped aside slightly and hovered. Moira turned to the musicians. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “there was a man crashed
     off the road.” She motioned towards Stephen with her head; it was the smallest movement, but the musicians looked down into
     the audience all the same. They were already feeling the extraordinary electricity of that room, the heated expectancy that
     fanned upwards towards them. It was as if they were bringing music for the first time to a country long deaf and only recently
     healed, as if the notes they were about to play were the ancient medicine of youth and happiness. The Italians sensed it in
     the air like the presence of white birds; Paolo Mistra fingered his cello and felt the sweat running across his left wrist
     and down inside the cuff of his white shirt; Piero Matte moved his neck to the right before placing his violin and found the
     cords of his muscles were tightened like a boxer’s. Gabriella Castoldi looked down; she too was astonished, the simplicity
     of these people sitting there, the generosity of spirit, a man who crashed off the road and still came to hear the music?
     Tonight, if ever, please, God, she thought, may I do the music justice.

15
      Life is not simple, nor love inevitable. Stephen sat with his hands on his knees and his head stooped over. The black thinning
     mop of his hair fell forward, and when he looked down he saw the thick mud on his shoes from when he had stepped out into
     the ditch. He moved them back beneath the seat as if they were evidence against him, obscure proof that he was a misfit. It
     was a common feeling for him. He didn’t quite fit and, knowing this, took it with an embarrassed acceptance, as if it were
     an unsuitable birthday gift that could not be returned. So he sat there waiting for the concert and kept his head low between
     his shoulders.
    Then the music began.
    It began with pace and rhythm. It swept into the air like a bird with four wings, as the four musicians bowed their strings
     and released the notes that had been gathering within them all evening. The music flew through the room and filled it with
     a kind of sweet breathing that rose and fell in the breasts of the audience. They were mesmerized at once. The musicians played
     beyond themselves, and within instants of beginning they knew it was a concert they were to remember years later. They dared
     brief glances at each other; Paolo Mistra looked up from the cello into the face of Gabriella Castoldi and saw the light gleaming
     from it. They were playing Scarlatti’s Quartet in C minor, and by the time they had reached the allegro the warm air of the
     long room seemed to be dancing in white shapes above them. The room grew warmer