The Dream of the Celt: A Novel (43 page)

According to Alice, the most notable change was in the Catholic Church. The hierarchy and most of the clergy always were closer to the pacifist and gradualist theses, more in favor of Home Rule for Ireland and John Redmond and his followers in the Irish Parliamentary Party than the separatist radicalism of Sinn Féin, the Gaelic League, the IRB, and the Volunteers. But since the Rising, this had changed. Perhaps the religious conduct of the insurgents during the week of fighting had an influence on this. The testimonies of priests, among them Brother Austin, present at the barricades, buildings, and places transformed into rebel centers, were conclusive: they had celebrated Masses, offered confession and communion, and many combatants had asked for their blessing before beginning to fire. In all the strongholds the insurgents respected the leaders’ categorical prohibition against consuming even a drop of alcohol. In the periods of calm, the rebels kneeled and prayed the rosary aloud. Not one of those executed, including James Connolly, who had proclaimed himself a socialist and was known as an atheist, had failed to request the assistance of a priest before facing the firing squad. In a wheelchair, still bleeding from the bullet wounds he had received in battle, Connolly was shot after kissing a crucifix handed to him by the chaplain of Kilmainham Prison. Since May, Masses of thanksgiving and homages to the martyrs of Easter Week proliferated throughout Ireland. There was not a Sunday when the priests in their sermons at Mass did not exhort the faithful to pray for the souls of the patriots executed and buried in secret by the British army. Sir John Maxwell had made a formal protest to the Catholic hierarchy, and instead of giving him explanations, Bishop O’Dwyer justified his priests, accusing the general of being “a military dictator” and acting in an anti-Christian manner with the executions and above all his refusal to return the bodies of those shot to their families. That the military government, sheltered by the suppression of rights under martial law, would have buried the patriots in secret to avoid their graves becoming centers of republican pilgrimage caused indignation even among sectors that until now had not seen themselves in sympathy with the radicals.

“In short, the papists gain more ground every day and we Anglican nationalists are shrinking like
La Peau de chagrin
, that novel by Balzac. All that’s missing is for you and me to convert to Catholicism too, Roger,” Alice joked.

“I already practically have,” replied Roger. “And not for political reasons.”

“I never would. Don’t forget, my father was a clergyman in the Church of Ireland,” Alice said. “Your converting doesn’t surprise me, I’ve seen it coming for some time. Do you remember how we joked with you at the gatherings in my house?”

“Those unforgettable gatherings,” Roger said with a sigh. “I’m going to tell you something. Now, with so much free time to think, on many days I’ve added it up: where and when was I happiest? At the Tuesday gatherings, in your house on Grosvenor Road, dear Alice. I never told you, but I would leave those meetings in a state of grace. Exalted and happy. Reconciled with life. Thinking, ‘What a shame I didn’t study, didn’t go to university.’ Listening to you and your friends, I felt as distant from culture as the natives of Africa or Amazonia.”

“Something similar happened to me and them with you, Roger. We envied your travels, your adventures, your having lived so many different lives in those places. I once heard Yeats say, ‘Roger Casement is the most universal Irishman I’ve known. A real citizen of the world.’ I don’t think I ever told you that.”

They recalled a discussion about symbols, years earlier in Paris, with Herbert Ward. He had shown them the recent casting of one of his sculptures he was very pleased about: an African sorcerer. In fact, it was a beautiful piece that, in spite of its realistic character, showed everything secret and mysterious in the man, his face covered with cuts, armed with a broom and a skull, conscious of the powers conferred upon him by the divinities of the forest, streams, and animals in whom the men and women of the tribe trusted blindly to save them from spells, diseases, fears, and to put them in touch with the afterlife.

“We all carry one of these ancestors inside us,” said Herbert, pointing at the bronze sorcerer who, with half-closed eyes, seemed enraptured in one of those dreams into which infusions of herbs plunged him. “The proof? The symbols we pay homage to with reverential respect. Coats of arms, flags, crosses.”

Roger and Alice disagreed, claiming that symbols should not be seen as anachronisms from the irrational era of humanity. On the contrary, a flag, for example, was the symbol of a community that felt solidarity and shared beliefs, convictions, customs, respecting individual differences and discrepancies that did not destroy but strengthened the common denominator. Both confessed that seeing an Irish republican flag waving in the wind always moved them. How Herbert and Sarita had mocked them for that statement.

When she learned that while Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a good number of Irish republican flags had been raised on the roofs of the Post Office and Liberty Hall, and then saw the photos of buildings occupied by the rebels in Dublin, like the Imperial and Metropole hotels, with flags at the windows and parapets that blew in the wind, Alice had felt a lump in her throat. That must have caused endless joy in those who experienced it. Later she also learned that in the weeks before the insurrection, while the Volunteers were preparing homemade bombs, sticks of dynamite, grenades, pikes, and bayonets, the members of
Cumann na mBan
, the women’s auxiliary, were gathering medicines, bandages, disinfectants, and sewing the tricolor flags that erupted on the morning of Monday, April 24, on the roofs of central Dublin. The house of the Plunketts in Kimmage had been the most active workshop for weapons and flags for the uprising.

“It was a historic event,” Alice declared. “We abuse words. Politicians especially apply the word
historic
to any piece of foolishness. But those republican flags in the sky of old Dublin were historic. It will always be remembered with great fervor. A historic event. It has gone around the world, darling. In the United States many papers published it on the front page. Wouldn’t you have liked to see it?”

Yes, he would have liked to see that too. According to Alice, more and more people on the island were defying the prohibition and placing republican flags on the façades of their houses, even in Belfast and London, pro-British citadels.

On the other hand, in spite of the war on the Continent, with disturbing news every day—military actions produced dizzying numbers of victims and the outcome was still uncertain—in Britain many people were prepared to help those deported from Ireland by the military authorities. Hundreds of men and women considered subversive had been expelled and were now scattered throughout Britain, ordered to settle in remote localities and, in the great majority of cases, without resources to survive. Alice, who belonged to humanitarian associations that were sending them money, foodstuffs, and clothing, told Roger they had no difficulty collecting funds and help from the general public. In this, too, the participation of the Catholic Church had been important.

Among the deportees were dozens of women. Many of them—Alice had spoken personally with some—in spite of their solidarity, held a certain rancor toward the commanders of the rebellion who had made it difficult for women to collaborate with the insurgents. And yet almost all the commanders, willingly or not, eventually admired the women in the strongholds and made use of them. The only one who flatly refused to admit women into Boland’s Mill and all the neighboring territory controlled by his companies was Éamon de Valera. His arguments irritated the militants of
Cumann na mBan
because they were conservative: a woman’s place was in the home and not on the barricade, and her natural tools were the distaff, pots and pans, flowers, needle and thread, not the pistol or the rifle. And her presence could distract the combatants, who, to protect her, would neglect their obligations. The tall, thin professor of mathematics, leader of the Irish Volunteers, with whom Roger had often spoken and maintained an abundant correspondence, was condemned to death by one of those secret, hasty courts martial that tried the leaders of the Rising. But he was saved at the last minute. At the very moment when, having confessed and taken communion, he waited with complete serenity, a rosary between his fingers, to be taken to the back wall of Kilmainham Gaol where the shootings took place, the court decided to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment. According to rumors, the companies under the command of Éamon de Valera, in spite of his complete lack of military training, acted with great efficiency and discipline, inflicting a good number of losses on the enemy. They were the last to surrender. But the rumors also said the tension and sacrifices of those days had been so harsh that at one moment his subordinates in the station where his command post operated thought he was losing his mind because of his erratic behavior. His was not the only case. In the rain of lead and fire, without sleep, food, or water, some had gone mad or suffered nervous breakdowns at the barricades.

Roger had become distracted, recalling the elongated silhouette of Éamon de Valera, his solemn, ceremonious speech. He noticed that Alice was referring now to a horse, with feeling and tears in her eyes. The historian had a great love for animals, but why did this one affect her in so special a way? Gradually he understood that her nephew had told her the story. It dealt with the horse of one of the British lancers who, on the first day of the insurrection, charged the Post Office and were driven back, losing three men. The horse was shot several times and collapsed in front of a barricade, badly wounded. It neighed in terror and piercing pain. It managed at times to stand, but weakened by loss of blood, fell again after attempting to walk a few steps. Behind the barricade an argument broke out between those who wanted to kill it so it wouldn’t suffer any more and those who opposed this, thinking it would recover. Finally, they shot it and had to fire the rifle twice to put an end to its agony.

“It wasn’t the only animal that died on the streets,” said Alice, distressed. “Many died, horses, dogs, cats, innocent victims of human brutality. Many nights I have nightmares about them. Poor things. We humans are worse than animals, aren’t we, Roger?”

“Not always, darling. I assure you some are as ferocious as we are. I’m thinking about snakes, for example, whose venom kills you slowly, as you gasp for breath. And the
candirú
fish of the Amazon that enters your body through the anus and causes hemorrhages. In short …”

“Let’s talk about something else,” said Alice. “Enough of war, battles, the wounded, and the dead.”

But a moment later she told Roger it was amazing how support for Sinn Féin and the IRB was growing among the hundreds of Irish deported and brought to British prisons. Even moderates and independents, and known pacifists, were affiliating with these radical organizations. And a great number of petitions were appearing all over Ireland asking for amnesty for the condemned. In the United States, too, in all the cities where there were Irish communities, protest demonstrations continued against the excesses of the repression following the Rising. John Devoy had done fantastic work and succeeded in having the best of North American society, from artists and entrepreneurs to politicians, professors, and journalists, sign the petitions for amnesty. The House of Representatives approved a motion, written in very severe terms, condemning the summary death sentences for adversaries who had surrendered their weapons. In spite of the defeat, things had not gotten worse with the Rising. In terms of international support, the situation had never been better for the nationalists.

“The visit has run overtime,” the sheriff interrupted. “You have to say goodbye now.”

“I’ll get another permit, I’ll come to see you before …” Alice said and then fell silent, standing up. She had turned very pale.

“Of course, Alice dear,” Roger agreed, embracing her. “I hope you do. You don’t know how good it is for me to see you. How it calms me and fills me with peace.”

But it didn’t happen this time. He went back to his cell with a tumult of images in his mind, all related to the Easter Week rebellion, as if the memories and testimonies of his friend had taken him out of Pentonville Prison and thrown him into the midst of the street fighting, into the din of battle. He felt an immense nostalgia for Dublin, its buildings and redbrick houses, the tiny gardens protected by wooden fences, the noisy streetcars, the misshapen neighborhoods of precarious dwellings and impoverished, barefoot people surrounding islands of affluence and modernity. How did all that look after artillery fire, incendiary bombs, collapsed buildings? He thought of the Abbey Theatre, the Olympia, the warm, fetid bars smelling of beer, the conversations throwing off sparks. Would Dublin be again what it once was?

The sheriff didn’t offer to take him to the showers and he didn’t ask him to. The jailer looked so dejected, his expression so detached and absent, he didn’t want to bother him. It made Roger unhappy to see the man suffering in this way, saddened he could do nothing to lift his spirits. Violating regulations, the sheriff had come twice to his cell to talk at night, and each time Roger had agonized at not being able to give Mr. Stacey the serenity he was searching for. The second time, like the first, he had spoken only of his son, Alex, and his death in combat against the Germans in Loos, the unknown place in France he referred to as if it were a cursed spot. Once, after a long silence, the jailer confessed to Roger how bitter the memory was of the time he whipped Alex, still a little boy, for stealing a pastry from the bakery on the corner. “It was wrong and should have been punished,” said Mr. Stacey, “but not so harshly. Whipping a young boy like that was unpardonable cruelty.” Roger tried to reassure him, reminding him that he and his siblings, including his sister, were sometimes hit by Captain Casement, his father, and they had never stopped loving him. But was Mr. Stacey listening to him? He remained silent, ruminating on his pain, his respiration deep and agitated.