Free TransAtlantic by Colum McCann Page B

order, Christian imperative. Wine was served on a large silver tray. He politely declined. He wanted to know more about the rumors of underground forces. Some of the faces around him smarted. Perhaps he could be told more of Catholic emancipation? Had they read O’Connell’s fervent denunciations? Was it true that Irish harpists once had their fingernails plucked so they could not play the catgut? Why had the Irish been deprived of their language? Where were the votaries of the poor?
    Webb took him out onto the verandah by the elbow and said: But Frederick, you cannot bite the hand that feeds.
    The stars collandered the Wexford night. He knew Webb was right. There would always have to be an alignment. There were so many sides to every horizon. He could only choose one. No single mind could hold it all at once. Truth, justice, reality, contradiction.Misunderstandings could arise. He had one cause only. He must cleave to it.
    He paced the verandah. A cold wind whipped off the water.
    —They’re waiting for you, said Webb.
    He reached out for Webb’s hand and shook it, then went back inside. A chill went around the room from the open door. They took their coffee in small china cups. The women were gathered around the piano. He had learned how to play Schubert on the violin. He could lose himself in the adagio: even in the slowness, they were thrilled by the deftness of his hands.
    THEY CONTINUED SOUTH . Just over the River Barrow they took a wrong turn. They entered wild country. Broken fences. Ruined castles. Stretches of bogland. Wooded headlands. Turfsmoke rose from cabins, thin and mean. On the muddy paths, they glimpsed moving rags. The rags seemed more animate than the bodies within. As they passed, the families regarded them. The children appeared marooned by hunger.
    A hut burned at the side of the road. The smoke looked like it was issuing from the ground. In the fields, near stunted trees, men stared balefully into the distance. One man’s mouth was smeared with a brown paste: perhaps he had been eating bark. The man watched impassively as the carriage went by, then raised his stick as if bidding good-bye to himself. He staggered across the field, a dog padding at his heels. They saw him fall to his knees and then rise again, continuing on into the distance. A dark young woman picked berries from the bushes: there was red juice all down the front of her dress as if she were vomiting them up one after the other. She smiled jaggedly. Her teeth were all gone. She repeated a phrase in Irish: it sounded like a form of prayer.
    Douglass gripped Webb’s arm. Webb looked ill. A paleness at his throat. He did not want to talk. There was a smell out over the land. The soil had been turned. The blight had flung its rotten odor into the air. The potato crop was ruined.
    —It is all they eat, said Webb.
    —But why?
    —It’s all they have, he said.
    —Surely not.
    —For everything else they rely on us.
    British soldiers galloped past, hoofing mud up onto the hedgerows. Green hats with red badges. Like small splashes of blood against the land. The soldiers were young and frightened. There was an air of insurrection about the countryside: even the birds seemed to howl up out of the trees. They thought they heard the cry of a wolf, but Webb said that the last wolf had been shot in the country a half century before. Creely, the driver, began to whimper that perhaps it was a banshee.
    —Oh, quit your foolishness, said Webb. Drive on!
    —But, sir.
    —Drive on, Creely.
    At an estate house they stopped to see if they could feed the horses. Three guards stood on the gate. Stone-carved falcons at their shoulders. The guards had shovels in their hands, but the handles of the shovels had been sharpened to a point. The landlords were absent. There had been a fire. The house smoldered. Nobody was allowed past. They were under strict instructions. The guards looked at Douglass, tried to contain their surprise at the sight of a