Colm Tóibín - The Master

THE MASTER

A must read. Colm Tibn has not only written a spectacular novel he has found a way to pay tribute to Henry James. We should all be so gifted and so lucky
Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

Ultimately, it is the essence of Henry James which Tibn resurrects in this brilliant novel
The Times

It is hard to imagine an admirer of Henry James not being gripped by this novel a work of literary devotion by a writer who is himself a master of plush prose and psychological nuance
Sunday Telegraph

One of the most remarkable novels of the year
Sunday Herald

The Master gives us a genuine intimacy with one of the people who might have been Henry James
London Review of Books

In The Master, [Tibn] brings James to life in a way that no straight biography could
Esquire

There can be few contemporary novelists capable of sustaining this sort of psychological probe over an entire novel, and Tibn does it with great artistry and conviction
Spectator

Tibn catches expertly the complexity of Jamess fate, his reticence, his ambiguous longing for love and his withdrawal from the prospect of it A bold tribute to a writer whom serious artists still acknowledge as The Master
Irish Times

A superlative book
Scotsman

Full of insights, sharp cameos and tender perceptions of the anguished reticence of a man of feeling who did not dare to commit himself to physical love
New Statesman

In The Master, Colm Tibn takes us almost shockingly close to the soul of Henry James and, by extension, to the mystery of art itself. It is a remarkable, utterly original book
Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours

The Master is a terrific book
Daily Telegraph

Enthralling Tibn displays in a manner that is masterly the wit and metaphorical flair, psychological subtlety and phrases of pouncing incisiveness with which a great novelist captured the nuances of consciousness and the duplicities of society
Sunday Times

C OLM T IBN was born in Ireland in 1955 and lives in Dublin. He is the author of four novels, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona, The Sign of the Cross and Love in a Dark Time.

Also by Colm Tibn

FICTION

The South

The Heather Blazing

The Story of the Night

The Blackwater Lightship

NON-FICTION

Bad Blood:
A Walk Along the Irish Border

Homage to Barcelona

The Sign of the Cross:
Travels in Catholic Europe

Love in a Dark Time:
Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodvar

Lady Gregorys Toothbrush

First published 2004 by Picador

First published in paperback 2004 by Picador

This electronic edition published 2008 by Picador
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ISBN 978-0-330-47353-8 in Adobe Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-47352-1 in Adobe Digital Editions format
ISBN 978-0-330-47355-2 in Microsoft Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-47354-5 in Mobipocket format

Copyright Colm Tibn 2004

The right of Colm Tibn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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F OR B AIRBRE AND M ICHAEL S TACK

CHAPTER ONE

S OMETIMES IN THE NIGHT he dreamed about the dead familiar faces and the others, half-forgotten ones, fleetingly summoned up. Now as he woke, it was, he imagined, an hour or more before the dawn; there would be no sound or movement for several hours. He touched the muscles on his neck which had become stiff; to his fingers they seemed unyielding and solid but not painful. As he moved his head, he could hear the muscles creaking. I am like an old door, he said to himself.

It was imperative, he knew, that he go back to sleep. He could not lie awake during these hours. He wanted to sleep, enter a lovely blackness, a dark, but not too dark, resting place, unhaunted, unpeopled, with no flickering presences.

When he woke again, he was agitated and unsure where he was. He often woke like this, disturbed, only half remembering the dream and desperate for the day to begin. Sometimes when he dozed, he would bask in the hazy, soft light of Bellosguardo in the early spring, the distances all misty, feeling the sheer pleasure of sunlight on his face, sitting in a chair, close to the wall of the old house with the smell of wisteria and early roses and jasmine. He would hope when he woke that the day would be like the dream, that traces of the ease and the colour and the light would linger at the edge of things until night fell again.

But this dream was different. It was dark or darkening somewhere, it was a city, an old place in Italy like Orvieto or Siena, but nowhere exact, a dream city with narrow streets, and he was hurrying; he was uncertain now whether he was alone or with somebody, but he was hurrying and there were students walking slowly up the hill too, past lighted shops and cafes and restaurants, and he was eager to get by them, finding ways to pass them. No matter how hard he tried to remember, he was still not sure if he had a companion; perhaps he did, or perhaps it was merely someone who walked behind him. He could not recall much about this shadowy, intermittent presence, but for some of the time there seemed to be a person or a voice close to him who understood better than he did the urgency, the need to hurry, and who insisted under his breath in mutterings and mumbles, cajoled him to walk faster, edge the students out of his path.

Why did he dream this? At each long and dimly lit entrance to a square, he recalled, he was tempted to leave the bustling street, but he was urged to carry on. Was his ghostly companion telling him to carry on? Finally, he walked slowly into a vast Italian space, with towers and castellated roofs, and a sky the colour of dark blue ink, smooth and consistent. He stood there and watched as though it were framed, taking in the symmetry and texture. This time and he shivered when he recalled the scene there were figures in the centre with their backs to him, figures forming a circle, but he could see none of their faces. He was ready to walk towards them when the figures with their backs to him turned. One of them was his mother at the end of her life, his mother when he had last seen her. Near her among the other women stood his Aunt Kate. Both of them had been dead for years; they were smiling at him and moving slowly towards him. Their faces were lit like faces in a painting. The word that came to him, he was sure that he had dreamt the word as much as the scene, was the word beseeching. They were imploring him or somebody, asking, yearning, and then putting their hands out in front of them in supplication, and as they moved towards him he woke in cold fright, and he wished that they could have spoken, or that he could have offered the two people whom he had loved most in his life some consolation. What came over him in the aftertaste of the dream was a wearying, gnawing sadness and, since he knew that he must not go back to sleep, an overwhelming urge to start writing, anything to numb himself, distract himself, from the vision of these two women who were lost to him.