Monks built a hermitage on a green-black island off Ireland’s west coast called Skellig Michael. For a thousand years they lived in beehive stone huts. Someone at some point even climbed to the barely accessible peak that sticks out like a knife and sat there alone, gardening and praying. A basin carved into the lone shelf just large enough for one person to lie down probably caught rainwater for drinking, archeologists think.
I sat on the ferry to Skellig Michael next to a handsome Indian man who cracked a few jokes before the engine’s roar kept us from talking. Away from land, the waves stopped cresting white and just lolled smooth and steel grey with gannets skimming their valleys coming in and out of sight as the boat lifted and dropped. Gannets look like larger statelier sea gulls with beige-black-marked heads. They almost never die of natural causes. Age ruins their eyes till they lose depth perception, misjudge the surface, and crack their necks diving. I didn’t know what Ravi was thinking until we came back to shore, but we both watched the gannets intently.
Over scones on the pier I asked what brought him to Ireland. He said love and laughed painfully. He had grown up in poverty in southern India, gotten a good education, taken a well-paying job in Singapore, found competitive ballroom dancing, and fallen for his Irish partner. They were together until she realized she wanted to return home. He had come on a last-ditch effort to win her back, to see if maybe he too could live in Ireland. He had just seen her.
“How did it go?”
His face went somber. “We’ll see.” And he looked back out toward Skellig Michael.
