Boy in the World. Niall Williams

       ONE

      Iamu.

      Strange sound. African sound.

      Three syllables. Iamu.

      In the brief stillness of morning the boy stood and studied himself in the mirror. Beneath a lank fringe of black hair his brown eyes examined their reflection, as if for secrets. The pale brown of his skin, the prominent angle where his cheek seemed now to emerge more clearly, the darkness of his eyebrows, the squat saddle of his nose, these things he considered. The secret the boy sought was who he was to become. With the fingers of his two hands he touched the skin about his jaw to see if there was sign yet of any beard.

       Will I be bearded?

      Maybe, maybe that roughening was something starting. He turned his head this way and that to look at himself sidelong.

      ‘I am you,’ he said aloud, turning back to face the mirror, allowing himself to pose with pretend confidence. But almost at once the boy in the reflection lowered his eyes and the confidence crumbled like a mask made of flour.

      ‘Are you all right in there?’ From just outside the bathroom door a man’s voice called hesitantly. And with even greater hesitation, as though the subject were one of tremendous delicacy, he enquired, ‘Are they fitting?’

      ‘Yes,’ the boy said. ‘Yes, they’re fine.’ But in fact the new shirt and jacket and trousers bought for his Confirmation that morning were still hanging off the towel rail.

      ‘Grand, grand. I’m not rushing you,’ said the man. ‘There’s plenty of time. But if anything needs adjusting. Oh, and I will do your tie, don’t worry about that, all right?’

      ‘Yes,’ said the boy, ‘fine, thanks.’ He could feel the pale grey eyes outside watching the door.

      ‘So, whenever you’re ready.’

      The old man moved away. He himself was already changed into a white shirt and blue suit trousers, and the tight black shoes he wore only for weddings and funerals squeaked off into the kitchen. Through the house now he had last-minute jobs of preparation, counting chairs for guests later, arranging glasses and bottles, gathering stray items of clothing that he and the boy allowed to lie around the house in the ordinary course of their living.

      In the bathroom the boy was standing with his two hands pressing down on either side of the sink, looking at himself. It was not because he was vain, not because he often looked at himself in this way, or because he thought himself in any way worth looking at. Rather it was the very opposite, because to himself it seemed he had until that very morning been almost invisible. He had not really thought about what he looked like, or whom he looked like, or what changes were happening in the map of his face. Nor had he thought about what lay ahead for him. Not really. But in the week at school just finished, with the preparations at their most intense, this was the thing the Master had emphasized.

      ‘You are not boys and girls any longer,’ he had said. He had a voice more aged than himself, sounds frayed and whispery from the smoking of his youth and the whiskey of his middle life. But still he could be firm. He knew a way of telling things that made the words seem important so that even those who paid no attention to spellings or History or Maths paid attention now.

      ‘You came into this school as boys and girls, but in a week you will be gone.’

      There was a broken line of grins along the back row.

      ‘Yes. When you see me again, in a short time, in a very short time, you will think to yourselves: how old the Master has become. You will think, how very grey is his little bit of hair, how crooked and stooped he seems.’ Here the Master had stooped crookedly and peered out half-blind and the class had laughed. ‘He who once was so large and full of knowledge to me, so wise,’ he continued, ‘will be no more the Master but just an old man. Soon, very soon; in fact for some,’ and here he had looked directly at the boy, ‘this has begun to happen already; you will meet me and think how little