Irish Journal (13 page)
While almost all European countries fear a labor shortage, and many are already feeling it, here two out of six, three out of eight brothers and sisters know they will have to emigrate, so deep-rooted is the shock of the famine; from generation to generation the specter takes its terrible toll; at times one would like to believe that this emigration is some sort of habit, a duty they take for granted—but the economic situation really does make it necessary: when Ireland became a Free State, in 1923, it not only had almost a century of industrial development to catch up with, it had also to keep pace with new developments; there are scarcely any cities, or industry, or any market for the fish. Sean and Sheila will have to emigrate.
18
FAREWELL
It was hard to say good-by, just because everything seemed to point to its being necessary: our money was all gone, new money was promised but had not arrived, it had turned cold, and in the boardinghouse (the cheapest we could find in the evening paper) the floors were so sloping that we seemed to be sinking headfirst into bottomless depths; on a gently slanting roller coaster we glided through the no-man’s-land between dream and memory, across Dublin threatened by the chasms around our bed, which stood in the middle of the room, the noise and the neon lights of Dorset Street surging round us; we clung to one another; the children’s sighs from the beds against the wall sounded like cries for help from a shore we could not reach.
In this no-man’s-land between dream and memory the entire contents of the National Museum, to which we returned every time the clerk at the post office told us our money had not arrived, became as distinct and rigid as the displays in a waxworks; as on a ghost train in an enchanted forest, we plunged headfirst into it: St. Brigid’s shoe shone silvery and delicate out of the darkness, great black crosses consoled and
threatened, freedom fighters in touching green uniforms, puttees and red berets, showed us their wounds, their identity papers, read farewell letters to us in childlike voices: “My dear Mary, Ireland’s freedom …”; a thirteenth-century cauldron swam past us, a prehistoric canoe; gold jewelry smiled, Celtic clasps made of gold, copper, and silver hung like innumerable commas on an invisible washline; we floated through the gate to Trinity College, but this great gray place was uninhabited save for a pale young girl who sat weeping on the library steps, her bright green hat in her hand, waiting for her sweetheart or mourning his loss. Noise and neon lights coming up from Dorset Street rushed past us like time that at moments became history, monuments were pushed past us, or we past them: men made of bronze, solemn, holding swords, quill pens, scrolls, reins, or compasses; women with stern bosoms plucked lyres, their sweet-sad eyes looking back through the centuries; endless columns of young girls dressed in navy blue stood in rows, carrying hurling sticks, mute, serious, and we were afraid they would raise their sticks like clubs; closely surrounded, we swept on. Everything we had looked at was now looking at us: lions roared at us, gibbons leaped across our path, we were carried up the giraffe’s long neck and down again, out of his dead eyes the iguana reproached us for his ugliness; the dark water of the Liffey, green and dirty, went gurgling past us, plump seagulls screamed, a lump of butter—“two hundred years old, found in the bog in Mayo”—floated past us like a lump of gold; with a smile a policeman showed us his Rainfall Book; for forty consecutive days he had written an o, a whole column of them, and the pale girl holding the green hat was still weeping on the library steps.
The waters of the Liffey turned black, carrying history out to sea like flotsam: archives with seals hanging from them like sounding leads, treaties with ornate initials, documents heavy with sealing wax, wooden swords, cardboard cannons, lyres and chairs, beds and cupboards, inkwells, mummies with their
bandages loosened and, dark and flapping like palm fronds, drifting through the water; a streetcar conductor cranked out a long paper curl from his ticket-mill, and on the steps of the Bank of Ireland an old woman was sitting, counting dollar bills, and twice, three times, four times, the clerk at the post office returned and, with a sorrowful expression, said behind his wicket: “Sorry.”
Innumerable candles were burning in front of the statue of Magdalene the red-haired sinner, the backbone of a shark swam past us—it looked like a windsock—swayed, the cartilage broke apart, the vertebrae rolled like napkin rings one by one into the night and disappeared; seven hundred O’Malleys marched past us, brown-haired, white-haired, red-haired, singing a hymn of praise to their clan.
We whispered words of consolation, clung together, were borne through parks and avenues, through the gorges of Connemara, the mountains of Kerry, the bogs of Mayo, for twenty, thirty miles, always afraid of coming across the dinosaur, but all we came across was the cinema standing in the middle of Connemara, the middle of Mayo, the middle of Kerry: it was built of cement, the windows smeared with thick green paint, and inside the cinema the projector buzzed like an angry captive beast, buzzed Monroe, Tracy, Lollobrigida onto the screen; on our railway of green shadows, still fearful of the dinosaur, we passed between never-ending walls, so far from the sighs of our children, came back to the suburbs of Dublin, past palms, oleanders, through rhododendron woods, headfirst; the houses grew bigger and bigger, the trees taller and taller, the gulf between us and the sighing children broader and broader; the gardens grew till they were so big we could no longer see the houses, and we plunged into the delicate green of infinite meadows.…
It was hard to say good-by, although in the morning, in the clatter of daylight, the landlady’s rough voice swept
up the flotsam of our dreams like rubbish, although the tok-tok-tok-tok from the passing bus startled us, sounding so deceptively like a machine gun being fired that we thought it was a signal for a revolution, but Dublin had no thought of revolution; it was thinking of breakfast, of horse races, prayers, and celluloid shadows. The rough-voiced landlady called us to breakfast, glorious tea flowed; the landlady sat with us in her dressing gown, smoking, and told us about voices that plagued her at night, the voice of a drowned brother calling for her in the night, the voice of her deceased mother reminding her of the vows of her first Communion, the voice of her deceased husband, warning her of whisky—a trio of voices, heard in the dark back room, where she spent the whole day alone with bottle, melancholy, and dressing gown.
“My psychiatrist,” she said, suddenly lowering her voice, “claims the voices come out of the bottle, but I’ve told him he’d better not say anything against my voices, for he lives off them after all. You wouldn’t like,” she said in an altered tone, “you wouldn’t like to buy my house? I’ll let you have it cheap.” “No, thank you,” I said.
“Too bad.” Shaking her head, she returned to her dark back room, with bottle, melancholy, and dressing gown.
Downcast by the “Sorry” of the post office clerk, we went back to the National Museum, from there to the art gallery, descending once more to the dark crypt of the mummies which a visitor from the country compared to kippered herrings; our last pennies went on candles which quickly burned down in front of the colored pictures of saints; we walked up to Stephens Green, fed the ducks, sat in the sun, listened to Crimson Cloud’s chances of winning: they were good. At noon large numbers of Dubliners emerged from Mass, spreading out into Grafton Street. Our hopes of a “Yes” from the post office clerk remained unfulfilled. His “Sorry” had become more and more depressed, and he was not far—it seemed to
me—from opening the cash drawer and giving us a loan from the Postmaster General; at least his hands twitched toward the drawer, and with a sigh he replaced them on the marble counter.
Luckily the girl with the green hat invited us to tea, bought the children sweets, placed some fresh candles in front of the picture of the right saint, St. Anthony, and when we went back to the post office the clerk’s smile beamed at us all the way across to the entrance. He cheerfully licked his fingers, counted the notes out onto the marble top, in triumph: once, twice, several times, he gave us the money in small bills because he enjoyed counting it out so much, and the coins fell with a silvery tinkle onto the marble; the girl with the green hat smiled: hadn’t she placed the candles in front of the right saint?
It was hard to say good-by; the long rows of girls dressed in navy blue, carrying hurling sticks, were not threatening now, the lions had stopped roaring, only the iguana continued to reproach us with his dead eyes for his ancient ugliness.
Jukeboxes boomed, streetcar conductors cranked out long paper clouds from their ticket-mills, steamers hooted, a light wind came from the sea, many, many barrels of beer were heaved into the dark bellies of ships, even the monuments were smiling; the darkness of the dream had been lifted from quill pen, reins, lyre, and sword, and it was only old evening papers that were floating out to sea on the Liffey.
In the new evening paper there were three letters to the editor demanding Nelson’s downfall; thirty-seven houses were offered for sale, one was sought, and in a tiny place in Kerry, thanks to the activities of the local festival committee, there had been a real festival: sack races, donkey races, rowing competitions, and a slow-bicycle race, and the winner of the sack race had smiled at the press photographer; she showed us her pretty face and her bad teeth.
We spent the last hour on the sloping floor of the boardinghouse bedroom, playing cards as if we were on a roof—there were no chairs or table in the room; sitting among our suitcases, the window open, teacups beside us on the floor, we chased the knave of hearts and the ace of spades through the long rows of their kind, the cheerful noise of Dorset Street surging round us; while the landlady stayed in her back room with bottle, melancholy, and dressing gown, the chambermaid smiled as she watched us play.
“That was a nice one,” said the taxi driver who took us to the station, “a delightful one.”
“Who was?” I asked.
“The day,” he said. “Wasn’t it a beauty of a day?” I agreed; as I was paying him I looked up, along the black front of a house: a young woman was just putting an orange milk jug out onto the window sill. She smiled at me, and I smiled back.
EPILOGUE—THIRTEEN YEARS LATER
In the thirteen years—a baker’s dozen—that have passed since this book was written, Ireland has leaped over a century and a half and caught up with another five, and it is high time for me to close my file on Ireland, postpone my visions of writing another book about that country until some distant date in the future, and quietly allow my accumulating notes to disappear into the sewing basket. One of these notes, which crops up four times, gives me a good idea of how Ireland has changed; it is a memo headed: The Dogs of Dukinella—the first is dated 1958, the three others 1960, 1963, and 1964, but by 1965 there was no further need for me to make the same note again, for the dogs of Dukinella were no longer doing what, until 1964, they used to do at least once and often several times a day when I drove through the village to the beach: no longer do they run alongside the car, dangerously close to the bumper, a new dog from property to property, from wall to wall, each one picking up the barking of the previous one like relay runners; they don’t run after any cars at all, I suppose they are used to them by now, and perhaps this tells the whole story. Long ago, because I loved their enthusiasm, their temperament, and their intelligence, I smuggled the dogs of Dukinella into a story that has nothing whatever to do with Ireland but a great deal to do
with Germany. There are a number of other disturbing memos that keep coming to light: The People in the Settlement, or: Sunday Mass in Front of the Valley School; the sewing basket is full.
Thirteen years later, in an Ireland that has caught up with two centuries and leaped over another five, it would no longer occur to me to have a Red Indian drop from the sky, and Limerick is no longer the Limerick of 1954. Very well, then. Moreover, to my regret but not to that of most Irishmen, nuns have practically disappeared from the newspapers; other things have disappeared too: the safety pins and the smells, the latter again to my regret but not to that of most Irishmen, for I have not only a very good nose but a keen sense of smell, and a world without smells is less to my liking than a world where they still existed. And a certain something has now made its way to Ireland, that ominous something known as The Pill—and this something absolutely paralyzes me: the prospect that fewer children might be born in Ireland fills me with dismay. I know: it’s all very well for me to talk, it’s easy for me to want them in large quantities: I am neither their father nor their government, and I am not required to part from them when many, as they must, start out on the road to emigration. Nowhere in the world have I seen so many, such lovely, and such natural children, and to know that His Majesty The Pill will succeed where all the Majesties of Great Britain have failed—in reducing the number of Irish children—seems to me to be no cause for rejoicing.
During these thirteen years something much worse has happened: because I have read a great deal about Ireland, I know a certain amount, one might even say a lot, about it, yet it is not by any means enough; my innocence is a thing of the past, and still my guilt, my knowledge, are inadequate. I have also read a great deal of Irish writing, and this utterly un-uniform unity that is Ireland has spoken to me most clearly of all through its literature. Beckett, Joyce, Behan—all
three are intensely, almost outrageously, Irish, yet each is far removed from the other, farther than Australia from Europe. It is almost impossible to say anything about a country in which such an extraordinary character as Parnell could flourish and be betrayed—and how he was betrayed; or Biggar, the member of Parliament who, I feel, might be called the real inventor of the theater of the absurd: by declaiming meaningless texts he brought the English Parliament to a standstill for hours, for days, at a time; a country in which another no less extraordinary character flourished: Michael Collins, the “laughing boy,” who was probably also betrayed. Finally it was Irish poets who began and finished something that seemed rather touching at first but did not end touchingly; it was madness, what they did, but in its madness more realistic than what was begun by that aging intellectual called Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov. Eighteen months before Lenin took over the remains of an empire, the Irish poets were scraping away the first stone from under the pedestal of that other empire which was regarded as indestructible but has since turned out to be far from it. A monument to one of these poets, Thomas Kettle, bears the words: