Irish Journal (14 page)

Died not for flag, nor king nor emperor,
But for a dream, born in a herdsman’s shed
And for the secret scripture of the poor.

I have read a lot about Ireland and learned a lot about it too, and the most important fact of all seems to me to be the one that has been “scientifically,” i.e., “objectively” confirmed by observation satellites: that the Irish live closer to Heaven than anyone else in Europe: to be precise, a hundred and twenty feet. This may offer some consolation to our mother the Church, patient and stern as she is, when the discussion of His White Majesty The Pill finds its way inexorably, inexorably, into the last provincial Irish paper, while the nuns (especially the ones
surrounded by from four to seven brothers and sisters) disappear from the newspapers. With irresistible force His White Majesty is not only approaching the incomparable beaches of green Erin but reaching the last cottage in the bog, far away in the west, where Connaught begins, where the donkeys, consumed with love, bray goodnight to one another.

I was driving right across Ireland from Dublin, westward to where the green waves beat on lonely white beaches, the day good Pope John lay dying; my car radio was not working, so along the way I asked for news at filling stations, tearooms, newsstands, and cigarette counters, and wherever that wonderful Irish ice cream is to be bought (an Irish world record that I have probably overlooked—the consumption of ice cream), and I found Ireland fully informed. Nowhere in the world, I am sure, did people listen so avidly, so breathlessly, to the news bulletins. Just before I got to Castle-bar, in a lonely wayside inn, at about nine in the evening, I felt like a drink of that miraculous potion they brew on the banks of the Liffey, and as I entered the inn I saw there was no need for me to ask about the Pope’s condition. The tears of the beer-dispensing landlady, the faces of the silently drinking men: I knew that
this
White Majesty was dead. Again: our gracious mother the Church does not, I feel, need to worry too much about the loyalty of a country that is actually her oldest and most faithful daughter, and still faithful, Celtic, like that other, Gallic daughter who, although she persists in claiming the title for herself, is no longer as faithful as all that.

People of other countries might well misunderstand or consider illogical the fact that this most faithful daughter of the Church is the classic land of strikes: the most unlikely groups—bank employees, for example—suddenly feel inspired to push through their demands for higher salaries by going on strike, and they set about it with that dogged determination that in the final analysis is the same quality that brought victory to the Irish Rebellion. It is surely an insane situation
when, in a modern country with a modern economy, checks must be accepted for weeks, for months, merely on trust; when some places—department stores, for instance—have an excess of cash that at the end of the day cannot be deposited in the bank, while others, such as automobile dealers, who work without cash, are faced with a shortage of it; it is indeed insane when a completely modern economy suddenly places itself in a position of barter and “Trust me, fellow countryman,” and it is part of such illogical insanities that, in an absurd financial situation of this kind, so-called business life does not collapse. Logicians of Continental background would sagely predict a disaster, but this did not happen in Ireland; things began to get ridiculous when—the strike went on for a long time and, like most strikes in Ireland, started off during the tourist season—people suddenly began running out of checks, and traveler’s checks were no longer presented to the bank, but strangely enough nothing “collapsed,” the situation turned into a kind of hilarious national sport that acted like a shot in the arm to the striking bank employees. An overwhelmingly Catholic country, then, in which strikes flourish as obedience does elsewhere. One man—but that was after the third pint—told me the next thing would be a strike of priests and nuns.

The thing that really prevents me from “correcting” or “adding to” what I have written about Ireland is this: I am too attached to it, and it is not good for an author to write about a subject to which he is too attached. But of course: there have indeed been many changes, and it almost looks as if during the years 1954 and 1955 we had caught Ireland at that historic moment when it was just beginning to leap over a century and a half and catch up with another five. Perhaps I can escape from my dilemma by acknowledging at least
one
omission: the fact that the world owes yet another word to Ireland—the word “lynch.” Honor and glory are due to the Irish women who bring such lovely children into the world, to the Irish tinkers, and to the fuchsia hedges—I gladly take
these three rose petals, as nostalgic as they are charming, out of the sewing basket and confess my weakness for them. And finally I must mention a railway conductor on a pilgrim train, a man whom we have much to thank for. In the English-speaking world there is a magic phrase guaranteeing immediate and unqualified assistance: “stranded family,” and on this particular Sunday we found ourselves in this felicitous situation when suddenly my car brakes totally and utterly failed, at the very moment when I was driving downhill toward a jolly, laughing horde of boys and girls on their way to a donkey race. In childish glee (how could they possibly know that my brakes had given out!) they ran right into the path of the car, waving and shouting—and I had no alternative but to drive into the nearest Irish wall and crash the car, after calling out to the family—who a moment later became a stranded family—to take cover. Now in this unusual country, which clearly has a feeling not only for strikes but also for the Sabbath, neither trains nor buses run on Sundays, and all I could do was follow the advice of a passer-by and ask the stationmaster at Claremorris if we could travel by one of the pilgrim trains (for
they
run, needless to say!). We were given permission and shown courteously, with all our baggage, into the dining car so that all the way to Dublin we could listen over the loudspeaker to a variety of rosaries, comments, sermons, and hymns; but that wasn’t what was so exceptional, nor was it so exceptional that I managed to talk the dining-car steward into letting us have a few little bottles of whisky (we had really earned it: it’s not every day that one deliberately drives into a wall); what was exceptional was the skill of the conductor to whom we paid our fares: he performed four actions simultaneously—crossed himself (while telling his beads), read a newspaper, smoked, and accepted our fares all at the same time.

For someone who is Irish and a writer, there is probably much to provoke him in this country, but I am not Irish and
have sufficient grounds for provocation in the country about which and in whose language I write; in fact, the Catholic provocation in the country whose language I write is enough for me.

Cologne, 1967
Heinrich Böll  

The Essential
HEINRICH BÖLL

“His work reaches the highest level of creative originality
and stylistic perfection.”—
The Daily Telegraph

THE CLOWN
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Afterword by Scott Esposito
978-1-935554-17-2 | $16.95 / $19.95 CAN

“Moving … highly charged … filled with gentleness, high comic
spirits, and human sympathy.”—
Christian Science Monitor

BILLIARDS AT HALF-PAST NINE
Translated by Patrick Bowles / Afterword by Jessa Crispin
978-1-935554-18-9 | $16.95 / $19.95 CAN

“The claim that Böll is the true successor to Thomas Mann can
be defended by his novel
Billiards at Half-past Nine.”
—The Scotsman

IRISH JOURNAL
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Afterword by Hugo Hamilton
978-1-935554-19-6 | $14.95 US / $16.95 CAN

“Irish Journal
has a beguiling … charm that perfectly
suits the landscape and temperament of its subject.”
—Bill Bryson,
The New York Times Book Review

THE SAFETY NET
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Introduction by Salman Rushdie
978-1-935554-31-8 | $16.95 US / $19.95 CAN

“The strongest response to modern terrorism by a serious
novelist; an artful, gripping novel.”—
Kirkus Reviews

THE TRAIN WAS ON TIME
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Afterword by William T. Vollmann
978-1-935554-32-5 | $14.95 / $16.95 CAN

“Böll has feelingly symbolized a guilty Germany doing
penance for its sins through suffering and death.”—
Time

GROUP PORTRAIT WITH LADY
Translated by Leila Vennewitz
978-1-935554-33-2 | $18.95 / $21.50 CAN

“His most grandly conceived [novel] … the magnum
opus which so far crowns his work.”
—The Nobel Prize Committee

WHAT’S TO BECOME OF THE BOY?
OR, SOMETHING TO DO WITH BOOKS
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Introduction by Anne Applebaum
978-1-61219-001-3 | $14.95 US / $16.95 CAN

“The depth of Böll’s vision into the human soul can
be breathtaking.”—
The Washington Post

COLLECTED STORIES
Translations by Leila Vennewitz, Breon Mitchell, Patrick Bowles
978-1-61219-002-0 | $29.95 US / $34.00 CAN

“This is a most impressive collection, confirming Böll’s
standing as one of the best writers of our time. It would
form an admirable introduction to his work for those
who don’t yet know it. It is the work of affirmation, for it
proclaims the values of humanity and the unquenchable
vitality of the spirit.”—
The Scotsman