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“But you will! Listen!” The old man whispered. “See that clump of Irishmen hurrying to get off the island before it sinks? They’re bound for Paris, Australia, Boston, until the Second Coming.
“Why all the riot to get out of Eire, you ask? Well, if you got your choice Saturday night of, one, seeing a 1931 Greta Garbo fillum at the Joyous Cinema; or, two, making water off the poet’s statue near the Gate Theatre; or, three, throwing yourself in the River Liffey for entertainment, with the happy thought of drowning uppermost, you might as well get out of Ireland, which people have done at the rate of a mob a day since Lincoln was shot. The population has dropped from eight million to less than three. One more potato famine or one more heavy fog that lasts long enough for everyone to pack up and tiptoe across the channel to disguise themselves as Philadelphia police, and Ireland is a desert. You’ve told me nothing about Ireland I don’t already know!”
I hesitated. “I hope I haven’t offended you.”
“It’s been a pleasure, hearing your mind! Now, this book you’ll be writing. It’s … pornographic?”
“I will not study the sex habits of the Irish, no.”
“Pity. They are in dire need. Well, there’s Dublin, straight on! Good luck, lad!”
“Goodbye … and thanks!”
The old man, incredulous, stared at the sky. “Did you hear him? Thanks! he said.”
I ran to vanish in lightning, thunder, darkness. Somewhere in the noon twilight, a harp played off key.
On and off the boat train and along the rainy streets by taxi, I finally signed in at the Royal Hibernian Hotel and telephoned Kilcock to see how I might find the Devil Himself, as the reception clerk put it while handing my luggage to the bellboy, who shuddered me by elevator up to my room to plant my luggage where it wouldn’t take root, as he said, and backed off from me as if he had searched a mirror and found no image.
“Sir,” he said. “Well, are you some sort of famous author?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Well.” The bellboy scratched his head. “I been asking around the pub and the lobby and the kitchen, and no one ever heard of you.”
At the door, he turned.
“But don’t worry,” he said. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
The door shut quietly.
I was suddenly mad for Ireland or the Whale. Not knowing which, I grabbed a cab that veered through streets filled with tens of thousands of bicycles. We headed west along the Liffey.
“Is it the long or short you’d want?” asked my driver. “The long way around or the short arrival?”
“Short—”
“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.
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