Free Saints and Sinners by Edna O’Brien Page B

grandchildren slept," and then lunged fiercely, as Jack caught her, repeating the same phrase over and over again, "It's all right ... it's all right ... he's history now ... he can't harm us anymore."
    The police cars had arrived, and big burly men, in a lather of curiosity and vindication, hurried to look at
    the assassin, in whose bloodied death they rejoiced. "What goes around comes around," one said repeatedly.
    Those that had been first on the scene were told to drive to the police station in the town, while Jack, Wynne, and Mona were ordered back to the hotel for interrogation.
    Jack and Wynne hurried on, as the dopey girl and a boy came out to meet them, clinging to each other for protection. Mona lagged behind, dreading their questions and their abhorrence of her. It had begun to drizzle. A brooding quiet filled the entire landscape and the trees drank in the moisture. There would be another death to undo his and still another and another in the long grim chain of reprisals. Hard to think that in the valleys murder lurked, as from the meadow there came not even a murmur, the lambs in their fetal sleep, innocent of slaughter.

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Plunder

    ONE MORNING WE wakened to find that there was no border —we had been annexed to the fatherland. Of course we did not hear of it straightaway as we live in the wilds, but a workman who comes to gather wood and fallen boughs told us that soldiers had swarmed the town and occupied the one hotel. He said they drank there, got paralytic, demanded lavish suppers, and terrorized the maids. The townspeople hid, not knowing which to fear most, the rampaging soldiers or their huge dogs that ran loose without muzzles. He said they had a device for examining the underneath of cars—a mirror on wheels to save themselves the inconvenience of stooping. They were lazy bastards.
    The morning we sighted one of them by the broken wall in the back avenue we had reason to shudder. His camouflage was perfect, green and khaki and brown, the very colors of this mucky landscape. Why they should come to these parts baffled us, and we were sure that very soon they would scoot it. Our mother herded us all into one bedroom, believing we would be safer that way—there would be no danger of one of us straying and we could keep turns at the watch. As luck had it, only the week before we had gathered nuts and apples and stored them on wooden trays for the winter. Our mother worried about our cow, said that by not being milked her poor udder would be pierced with pain, said the milk would drip all over the grass. We could have used that cow's milk. Our father was not here, our father had disappeared long before.
    On the third morning they came and shouted our mother's name—Rosanna. It sounded different, pronounced in their tongue, and we wondered how they knew it. They were utter hooligans. Two of them roughed her out, and the elder tugged on the long plait of her hair.
    Our mother embraced each of us and said she would be back presently. She was not. We waited, and after a fearful interval we tiptoed downstairs but could not gain entry to the kitchen because the door between it and the hall was barricaded with stacked chairs. Eventually we forced our way through, and the sight was grisly. Her apron, her clothes, and her underclothes were strewn all over the floor, and so were hairpins and her two side combs. An old motorcar seat was raised onto a wooden trough in which long ago she used to put the feed for hens and chickens. We looked in vain through the window, thinking we might see her in the back avenue or better still coming up the path, shattered, but restored to us. There was one soldier down there, his rifle cocked. Where was she? What had they done to her? When would she be back? The strange thing is that none of us cried and none of us broke down. With a bit of effort we carried the stinking car seat out and threw it down the three steps that led from the back door. It was all we could do to defy