We�d rise at four in the afternoon and start the day with sausage sandwiches or bowls of soup boiled from a turkey�s carcass, which we ate wordlessly over newspapers as the world dimmed outside the windows of that labyrinthine house. He would light a hand-rolled cigarette, scanning the page as he sucked, never exhaling.

He�d work in the bar until supper, some hurriedly cooked or acquired thing--roast meat or takeaway, burgers or a greasy curry with cardboard naan. Then he�d go back to work. Tonight is busy: families, emigrants home for the holidays, or exiles seeking company. The page tallying Christmas drinks for So-and-So from So-and-So--an account of friendship measured in booze--becomes smudged from much pencilling-in and crossing-out.

Upstairs, above the din of the punters, I wait. I read The Earthsea Quartet too quickly, eager for travel� or rather, a quest, towards which one devoted labor, intellect, will. I am restless, thinking of everything I left behind for a fortnight: research, friends, apartment, city. All the ways of Galway, travelled by foot and mind.

Around three am, I�d go downstairs and check if he was still working, and then I might have a drink, a glass of cognac, to sip in a dim corner of the pub, waiting for the last ones to leave.

Finally we�d have the late night or early morning ritual of the onion or ham and cheese sandwich, toasted, with a mug of tea, before ascending the stairs to bed, darkness all around us, and darkness beyond the windows of that house.

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