Irish Journal (8 page)

You can call this rain bad weather, but it is not. It is simply weather, and weather means rough weather. It reminds us forcibly that its element is water, falling water. And water is hard. During the war I once watched a burning aircraft going down on the Atlantic coast; the pilot landed it on the beach and fled from the exploding machine. Later I asked him why he hadn’t landed the burning plane on the water, and he replied:

“Because water is harder than sand.”

I never believed him, but now I understood: water is hard.

And how much water can collect over three thousand miles of ocean, water that rejoices in at last reaching people, houses, terra firma, after having fallen only into water, only into itself. How can rain enjoy always falling into water?

When the electric light goes out, when the first tongue of a puddle licks its way under the door, silent and smooth, gleaming in the firelight; when the toys which the children have left lying around, when corks and bits of wood suddenly start
floating and are borne forward by the tongue, when the children come downstairs, scared, and huddle in front of the fire (more surprised than scared, for they also sense the joy in this meeting of wind and rain and that this howling is a howl of delight), then we know we would not have been as worthy of the ark as Noah was.…

Inlander’s madness, to open the door to see what’s up outside. Everything’s up: the roof tiles, the roof gutters, even the house walls, do not inspire much confidence (for here they build temporarily, although, if they don’t emigrate, they live forever in these temporary quarters—while in Europe they build for eternity without knowing whether the next generation will benefit from so much solidity).

It is a good thing always to have candles, the Bible, and a little whisky in the house, like sailors prepared for a storm; also a pack of cards, some tobacco, knitting needles and wool for the women; for the storm has a lot of breath, the rain holds a lot of water, and the night is long. Then when a second tongue of rain advances from the window and joins the first one, when the toys float slowly along the narrow tongue toward the window, it is a good thing to look up in the Bible whether the promise to send no more floods has really been given. It has been given: we can light the next candle, the next cigarette, shuffle the cards again, pour some more whisky, abandon ourselves to the drumming of the rain, the howling of the wind, the click of the knitting needles. The promise has been given.

It was some time before we heard the knocking on the door—at first we had taken it for the banging of a loose bolt, then for the rattle of the storm, then we realized it was human hands, and the naïveté of the Continental mentality can be measured from the fact that I expressed the opinion it might be the man from the electric company. Almost as naïve as expecting the bailiff to appear on the high seas.

Quickly the door was opened, a dripping figure of a man pulled in, the door shut, and there he stood; with his cardboard
suitcase sopping wet, water running out of his sleeves, his shoes, from his hat, it almost seemed as if water were running out of his eyes—this is how swimmers look after taking part in a life-saving contest fully clothed; but such ambitions were foreign to this man: he had merely come from the bus stop, fifty paces through this rain, had mistaken our house for his hotel, and was by occupation a clerk in a law office in Dublin.

“D’you mean to say the bus is running in this weather?”

“Yes,” he said, “it is, and only a bit behind schedule. But it was more of a swim than a drive … and you’re sure this isn’t a hotel?”

“Yes, but.…”

He—Dermot was his name—turned out, when he was dry, to know his Bible, to be a good card-player, a good storyteller, a good whisky-drinker; moreover, he showed us how to bring water quickly to the boil on a tripod in the fireplace, how to broil lamb chops on the same ancient tripod, how to toast bread on long forks, the purpose of which we had not yet discovered—and it was not till the small hours that he confessed to knowing a little German; he had been a prisoner-of-war in Germany, and he told our children something they will never forget, must never forget: how he buried the little gypsy children who had died during the evacuation of the Stuthof concentration camp; they were so small—he showed us—and he had dug graves in the frozen ground to bury them.

“But why did they have to die?” asked one of the children.

“Because they were gypsies.”

“But that’s no reason—you don’t have to die because of that.”

“No,” said Dermot, “that’s no reason, you don’t have to die because of that.”

We stood up; it was light now, and at that moment it became quiet outside. Wind and rain had gone away, the sun came up over the horizon, and a great rainbow arched over the
sea; it was so close we thought we could see it in substance—as thin as soap bubbles was the skin of the rainbow.

Corks and bits of wood were still bobbing about in the puddle when we went upstairs to the bedrooms.

10
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FEET IN THE WORLD

To take her mind off her worries, the doctor’s young wife had begun to knit, but she soon threw the needles and ball of wool into the corner of the sofa; then she opened a book, read a few lines, shut the book again; she poured herself some whisky, pensively emptied the glass in small sips, opened another book, closed that one again too; she sighed, reached for the telephone receiver, replaced it: who was there to call?

One of her children muttered in its sleep, the young woman walked softly across the passage into the children’s bedroom, covered the children up again, smoothed sheets and blankets on four children’s beds. In the passage she stopped in front of the large map which, yellow with age, covered with mysterious signs, looks almost like an enlargement of the map of Treasure Island; surrounded by sea, the mountains dark brown like mahogany, the valleys light brown, the roads and paths black, the little cultivated patches around the tiny villages green, and everywhere the blue tongue of the sea thrusting into the island in bays: small crosses: churches, chapels, cemeteries; little harbors, lighthouses, cliffs—slowly the woman’s forefinger with
the silver-lacquered nail moves along the road by which her husband left two hours ago: a village, two miles of bog, a village, three miles of bog, a church—the young woman crosses herself as if she were really driving past the church—five miles of bog, a village, two miles of bog, a church—a sign of the cross; the filling station, Teddy O’Malley’s bar, Beckett’s shop, three miles of bog—slowly the silvery fingernail moves across the map like a shiny toy car, until it reaches the Sound where the thick black line of the highway swings across the bridge to the mainland, while the road her husband has to take, now only a fine black line, follows the edge of the island and in places coincides with the edge. The map is dark brown here, the coastline jagged and uneven like the cardiogram of an irregular heartbeat, and someone has written with a ballpoint on the blue of the sea: 200 feet—380 feet—300 feet, and next to each of these figures is an arrow to show that the figures apply not to the depth of the sea but to the height of the cliffs, which at these places coincide with the road. Time and again the silvery fingernail halts, for the young woman knows every step of the way; she has often accompanied her husband on his calls at the only house along that six-mile stretch of coast. On sunny days tourists enjoy this drive, with a slight shiver at being able for several miles to look down perpendicularly from the car onto the writhing white sea; a moment’s inattention, and the car will be wrecked down there on those cliffs where many a ship has foundered. The road is wet, strewn with stones and rocks, covered with sheep dung at the places where the old sheep trails cross the road—suddenly the fingernail halts: here the road descends steeply into a little bay, rises again on the other side: the sea roars into a canyonlike gorge; it is millions of years old, this rage that has eaten deep in under the rocks—again the finger halts: here there used to be a little cemetery for unbaptized children; a single grave is still to be seen, bordered with pieces of quartz: all the other bones have been carried away by the sea—the car now carefully crosses an
old bridge that has lost its railing, it turns, and the glare of the headlights reveals the waving arms of waiting women: in this remote corner lives Aedan McNamara, whose wife is expecting a child tonight.

The doctor’s young wife shivers, shakes her head, walks slowly back to the living room, piles on more peat, pokes the glowing embers till the flames leap up; the woman reaches for her knitting bundle, throws it back into the corner of the sofa, gets up, goes over to the mirror, stands there for half a minute in thought, head lowered, suddenly throws back her head and looks into her face: with the heavy make-up her child’s face looks even more childlike, almost like a doll’s, but this doll has four children. Dublin is so far away—Grafton Street—O’Connell Bridge—the wharves; movies and dances—the Abbey Theatre—every weekday morning at eleven, Mass at St. Theresa’s, where you have to arrive early to find a seat—with a sigh the young woman goes back to the fireplace. Must Aedan McNamara’s wife always have her children at night and always in September? But Aedan McNamara works from March to December in England, comes home only at Christmas, for three months, to cut his peat, repaint the house, repair the roof, do a bit of furtive fishing along this rugged stretch of coast, to look for jetsam—and to beget the next child: so Aedan McNamara’s children always come in September, around the twenty-third: nine months after Christmas, when the great storms come, and the angry foam makes the sea snow-white for miles. Aedan is probably now standing at a bar in Birmingham, anxious like all expectant fathers, cursing the obstinacy of his wife, who refuses to budge from this solitude: a dark-haired, defiant beauty, whose children are all September children; among the dilapidated houses in the village, she lives in the only one that has not yet been abandoned. At this spot on the coast, whose beauty hurts because on sunny days you can see for twenty, thirty miles without a human habitation: only azure, islands that are not real, and the sea. Behind the
house rises the bare hillside, four hundred feet high, and three hundred paces from the house the coast falls a sheer three hundred feet; black, naked rocks, gorges, caves penetrating fifty, seventy yards into the rocks; from which on stormy days the foam rises up threateningly, like a white finger, the storm carrying the joints away one by one.

From here, Nuala McNamara went to New York to sell nylons at Woolworth’s, John became a teacher in Dublin, Tommy a Jesuit in Rome, Brigid married and went to live in London—but Mary clung doggedly to this hopeless, lonely spot, where every September for four years she has borne a child.

“Come on the twenty-fourth, Doctor, around eleven, and I guarantee you’ll not come in vain.”

In ten days she will be walking with her father’s old knobbed stick along the edge of the steep cliffs, watching out for her sheep and for those articles which for coast-dwellers are a substitute for the sweepstake (in which of course they also have a ticket), with the sharp eye of the coast-dweller she will be looking for jetsam, reaching for the binoculars when her predatory eye detects from the outline and color of an object that it is not a rock. Does she not know every boulder, every chunk of rock, along these six miles of coast—does she not know every cliff at every tide? In October alone of last year, after the great storms, she found three bales of crude rubber; she hid them in the cave above the highwater line where centuries ago her ancestors hid teakwood, copper, brandy kegs, whole ship’s equipment, from the eyes of the coast guards.

The young woman with the silvery nails smiles, she has had her second whisky, a large one, which finally allayed her anxiety; you just have to stop and think after every sip: this firewater affects you not only in depth but also in breadth. Has she not herself borne four children, and has not her husband already returned three times from this drive through the September night?

The young woman goes back into the passage, listens through the open door once again to the quiet breathing of her children, smiles, places her silvery fingernail once more on the old map, moves it forward while she calculates: half an hour along the slippery road to the Sound, three-quarters of an hour to Aedan McNamara’s house, and if the child really does come punctually, if the two women from the next village are already there—perhaps two hours for the birth; another half hour for the cup of tea, which can be anything from a cup of tea to a hearty meal; another three-quarters of an hour and another half hour for the drive back: five hours altogether. John left at nine, so around two she ought to be able to see the headlights of his car where the road comes up over the hill. The young woman looks at her watch: just past twelve-thirty. Once more slowly with the silver finger across the map: bog, village, church, bog, village, a barracks that has been blown up, bog, village, bog.

The young woman returns to the fire, puts on fresh peat, pokes it, stands thinking, reaches for the newspaper. On the front page are the personal announcements: births, deaths, engagements, and a special column called “In Memoriam”: “In memory of dearly beloved Moira McDermott, who died one year ago in Tipperary. Kindly Jesus, have mercy on her soul. May you who think of her this day address a prayer to Jesus.” Two columns, forty times, the young woman with the silvery nails prays “Kindly Jesus, have mercy on him—have mercy on her” for the Joyces and McCarthys, the Molloys and Gallaghers.

Then come the silver weddings, the rings lost, the purses found, official announcements.

Seven nuns going to Australia, six going to North America, smiled at the press photographer. Twenty-seven newly ordained priests smiled at the press photographer. Fifteen bishops advising on the problems of emigration did likewise.

On page 3 the stud bull who carries on a line of prize-winning pedigree bulls; then come Malenkov, Bulganin, and
Serov—turn to the next page; a prize-winning sheep, a garland of flowers between his horns; a girl who won first prize in a singing contest showed the press photographer her pretty face and her ugly teeth. Thirty graduates of a boarding school met again after fifteen years: some of them have put on weight, others stand out tall and slim from the group, even in the newspaper picture their make-up is clearly visible: mouths like India ink, eyebrows like delicate forceful brush strokes. The thirty women were assembled at Mass, at tea, at the evening rosary.