Free Sunrise with Sea Monster by Neil Jordan Page A

in the straw, drawing their long knees towards their chins. I
     take the scrap of paper he gave me from my pocket. I am several seconds and maybe an eternity too late since his blood has
     spread a pool as large again around his body, but I read it anyway. Because I could not stop for death — He kindly stopped for me.
    They rough you up, Pat?
    The Welshman talks between wheezes. I remember my split lip and for a moment am glad of it.
    A little, I say.
    And what did they want?
    Wanted to know what brought me here, I tell him.
    You find out anything?
    Like what?
    What's going to happen to us.
    I shake my head to intimate infinite possibilities, then turn back to the window.
    When did they come for him? I ask.
    Just before you came in.
    He coughs again, then stares at me.
    You know something, don't you, Pat.
    What could I know? I ask him.
    You tell me.
    In the night his shadow edges over to my bed, invisible hands are laid upon my shoulder and his voice whispers, you cannot
     sleep, Irlandes, like me, neither. His ghostly syntax is as misplaced as ever. I turn, about to brush him off but see nothing there. Soft moonlight
     coming through each window and the figures huddled in the straw around the walls. It comes to me suddenly, with an odd, perfect
     clarity, that all of us could die here. Our release would be too troublesome, and once released we would have tales to tell.
     The Welshman snoring, his broken nose pointing towards the ceiling, the two Germans, their hair indistinguishable from the
     straw, the Jewish boy from Turin, all beyond the help of ordinary discourse. I think of us joining that realm below the waves
     and fall asleep dreaming of the Abwehr officer plucking us from a row of hooks from which we swing, gently, in the morning
     light.
    And I am called to him next morning. The same two guards, through the triangle of the early morning light, walking me with
     the same brutal insouciance through the vaulted tomb. The German sits and smokes, questions as before. Nothing will do for
     him but some answers, so I reply, inventing a past that might satisfy him. Yesterday's outburst was just that, an outburst,
     I tell him. But what you want is the truth. The word seems to satisfy him and he nods. How does the son of an Irish reactionary
     find himself in Republican Spain?
    My father's world, I tell him, was an unfinished one. I joined the Republican movement to bring it to some conclusion. His
     revolt had been stillborn, dissipating its energies in the nonsense of a Civil War. The State resulting from it was one of
     paralysis, echoed in himself. I became his nemesis, his alter ego, took up the gun he'd dropped and made it my own. The divisions
     in Europe echoed ours, or was it the other way round, I forget now, but it seemed important at the time to make them my own.
     So here I am.
    And what now? he asks.
    What about now? I reply.
    Where do your sympathies lie?
    Where they always did, I say. With the Republic.
    Irish or Spanish?
    Both, I say.
    But the one you said is stillborn and the other you know is finished.
    I am Irish, I say. I live in realms of pure possibility.
    Representations have been made, he says, and I can only act on them under certain conditions.
    Who made these representations? I ask.
    To repeat myself, that is irrelevant. I can only act on them under certain conditions.
    What conditions are they? I ask.
    We have contacts with some members of your movement. We need to expand them.
    You want me to collaborate?
    Phrase it as you want. To quote your movement, England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity.
    And what precisely is England's difficulty?
    That remains to be seen.
    My father, I tell him, would be most unhappy with this turn of events.
    Why?
    Look at it through his eyes, I say. He arranges for diplomatic pressure to be exerted to free his wayward son. His son will
     only be freed on conditions that make him more wayward.
    Everything has to be paid for.
    Perhaps, I tell him, but my answer