Green Shadows, White Whales

“That’s expensive,” interrupted my driver. “Long is cheaper. Conversation! Do you talk? By trip’s end, I am so relaxed I forget the tip. Besides, it’s a map, chart, and atlas of Liffey and beyond that I am. Well?”

“The long way around.”

“Long it is!” He kicked the gas as if it needed awakening, skinned a dozen bicyclists, and sailed out to snake the Liffey and mind the air. Only to hear the motor cough and roll over dead, just short of Kilcock.

We peered in at an engine long gone in mystery and leaning toward the tomb. My driver hefted a large hammer, decided against giving the engine a coup de grace, slung the hammer aside, and walked to the rear of the taxi to detach a bike and hand it over. I let it fall.

“Now, now.” He reinstalled the vehicle in my hands. “Your destination’s but a short drive down this road.” He shook the bike. “Climb on.”

“It’s been a few years …”

“Your hands will remember and your ass will learn. Hop.”

I hopped to straddle and stare at the dead car and the easy man. “You don’t seem upset …”

“Cars are like women, once you learn their starters. Off with you. Downhill. Careful. There’s few brakes on the vehicle.”

“Thanks,” I yelled as the vehicle rolled me away.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_57c71d87-cdff-530a-b8a3-bef467ce79fa)

Ten minutes later, I stopped at the top of a rise, listening.

Someone was whistling and singing “Molly Malone.” Up the hill, wobbling badly, pedaled an old man on a bike no better than mine. At the top he fell off and let it lie at his feet.

“Old man, you’re not what you once was!” he cried, and kicked the tires. “Ah, lay there, beast that you are!”

Ignoring me, he took out a bottle. He downed it philosophically, then held it up to let the last drop fall on his tongue.

I spoke at last. “We both seem to be having trouble. Is anything wrong?”

The old man blinked. “Is that an American voice I hear?”

“Yes. May I be of assistance …?”

The old man showed his empty bottle.

“Well, there’s assistance and assistance. It came over me as I pumped up the hill, me and the damned vehicle”—here he kicked the bike gently—“is both seventy years old.”

“Congratulations.”

“For what? Breathing? That’s a habit, not a virtue. Why, may I ask, are you staring at me like that?”

I pulled back. “Well … do you have a relative in customs down at the docks?”

“Which of us hasn’t?” Gasping, he reached for his bike. “Ah, well, a moment’s rest, and me and the brute will be on our way. We don’t know where we’re going, Sally and me—that’s the damn bike’s name, ya see—but we pick a road each day and give it a try.”

I tried a small joke.

“Does your mother know you’re out?”

The old man seemed stunned.

“Strange you say that! She does! Ninety-five she is, back there in the cot! Mother, I said, I’ll be gone the day; leave the whiskey alone. I never married, you know.”

“I’m sorry.

“First you congratulate me for being old, and now you’re sorry I’ve no wife. It’s sure you don’t know Ireland. Being old and having no wives is one of our principal industries! You see, a man can’t marry without property. You bide your time till your mother and father are called Beyond. Then, when their property’s yours, you look for a wife. It’s a waiting game. I’ll marry yet.”

“At seventy!”

The old man stiffened.

“I’d get twenty good years of marriage out of a fine woman even this late—do you doubt it?!” He glared.

“I do not.”

The old man relaxed.

“Well, then. What are you up to in Ireland?”

I was suddenly all flame and fire.

“I’ve been advised at customs to look sharp at this poverty-stricken, priest-ridden, rain-filled, sleet-worn country, this—”

“Good God,” the old man interjected. “You’re a writer!”

“How did you guess?”

The old man snorted, gesturing.

“The country’s overrun. There’s writers turning over rocks in Cork and writers trudging through bogs at Killashandra. The day will come, mark me, when there will be five writers for every human being in the world!”

“Well, writer I am. I’ve been here only a few hours now and it feels like a thousand years of no sun, only rain, cold, and getting lost on roads. My director will be waiting for me somewhere if I can find the place, but my legs are dead.”

The old man leaned at me.

“Have you begun to dislike your visit? Look down on?”

“Well …”

The old man patted the air.

“Why not? Every man needs to look down on someone. You look down on the Irish, the Irish look down on the English, and the English look down on everyone else in the world. It all comes right in the end. Do you think I’m bothered by the look on your face, you’ve come to weigh our breath and find it sour, measure our shadows and find us short? No! In fact, I’ll help you solve this dreadful place. Come along where you can witness an awful event. A dread scene. A meeting of Fates, that’s it. The true birth-place of the Irish … Ah, God, how you’ll hate it! And yet …”

“Yet?”

“Before you leave us, you’ll love us all. We’re irresistible. And we know it, More’s the pity. For knowing it makes us all the more deplorable, which means we must work harder to become irresistible again. So we chase our own behinds about the country, never winning and never quite losing. There! Do you see that parade of unemployed men marching on the road in holes and tatters?”