Shannon (32 page)

The sun came out now and then, and after a steady two hours of walking he saw, to his right, in the near hinterland, some houses. Across the fields he heard music;
So early in the day?

He left the path, walked across a field toward the houses, and found a lane. From an open door came the bright sound. When he looked in, he wasn't surprised to see the musicians from the circus, sitting in somebody's kitchen, playing merrily away. Enda waved and beckoned. On a
table sat great plates of sandwiches and mugs of tea in a kitchen full of people.
The archbishop will ask, “Is that all they do all day? Do they work? Do they have jobs?”

Sincere and ardent, the husband and wife of the house welcomed Robert. Whiskey was poured; Robert pushed his glass discreetly toward Jarlath, who obliged. Food came in mountains: sandwiches thicker than Bibles, slabs of dark, almost black, raisined fruitcake, huge mugs of tea.

“You could use that to practice your diving in,” said PaulTom.

Robert sat there for hours. The musicians played without a break. Others arrived, with pipes, a fiddle, tin whistles, and a skin drum.

“That's a bowrawn?” he said to its owner.

“Good man yourself,” said the drummer.

For hours on end, merry or slow, vivacious melodies filled the air and made the world better. The music thrilled Robert— thrilled him in a way that ran through his nerves like tiny bolts of lightning. He stared at the musicians’ hands— the fingering so fast he could almost not follow it. He stared at their faces— the closed eyes, the little half smiles of bliss. He stared at the instruments— the shiny buttons of the concertina, the dull color on the drum's parchment where it got struck oftenest, the proud strings of the fiddle, stout and taut against the flashing bow.

Most of all
he felt
the music in his ears,
he felt
the notes bouncing into his brain. Note followed note. The tunes were like chains of laughter, and his thoughts began to tumble like acrobats. Colors filled his mind, and a lightness came to him, a lightness of mood that he now knew had been absent for some time. He wanted to dance.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, Robert reluctantly left the music house. Nobody wanted him to go; they begged him to stay. Men in the kitchen stood up and shook his hand. Women folded banknotes into their handshakes—”Pray for us, Father, won't you?”—and the three musicians, Enda, Jarlath, and PaulTom with their happy faces, said, “Keep in by the wall, Father,” and went on playing.

In no more than an hour, Robert arrived at the destination addressed in his letter. Easy to find in tiny Drumsna— Miss Dillon in Lanesborough had said that her brother lived “in the best house in town.”

A small man in the formal garb of a city priest— black suit, full stock, and high stiff round collar— answered the door knocker. Robert handed him the letter from his sister. Father Dillon read it on the doorstep and said, “Who are you?” He had a voice high as a boy's.

Robert reached into his rucksack and took out the Sevovicz letter. The priest read this letter too and said, in some doubt, “I suppose you'd better come in.”

He showed Robert into a surprisingly elaborate drawing room and said, “Wait here.” After a few minutes he came back, sat down opposite Robert, and said, “Now, what can I do for you?”

Robert said, “I'm traveling through Ireland in search of the Shannon family.”

“But why have you come to my door?”

“Your sister. Her letter.”

“Is that the only reason?” His suspicion could be calculated by weight.

“Yes.”

“Tell me who this Sevovicz is. I never heard of him.”

Robert explained— not that he knew much— the archbishop's coadjutor position with Bishop Nilan in Hartford, Connecticut.

“So he was sent there by the Vatican?”

“Yes, Father.”

The well-dressed priest said, “I see. So—were you sent here by the Vatican?”

“What?”

“There are some very bad people in the Vatican.”

Robert began to rise from his chair. The priest said, “Where are you going?”

“Father, I am not a Vatican spy.”

The little man shot out of his chair and grasped Robert's arm. “Please don't go.” And in a massive blurt he added, “I want you to hear my confession.”

Robert looked down at him. “Father, I'm not here as a priest. I do not even have faculties, permissions, for my priestly duties. And I'm certainly not here on behalf of the Vatican or anyone else.”

How Dr. Greenberg would have cheered! “When he argues with you, tell me,” he said one day to Sevovicz. “That's an early sign of recovery:
when a patient resists a criticism, or himself criticizes, or raises a challenge.”

A wave of tiredness swept over Robert. He returned to his chair, sat down, and closed his eyes. Within minutes he had fallen into one of his deep sleeps. The little priest sat watching him. After some time he tiptoed from the room and returned with a green plaid rug. He draped it gently over Robert's body, tucked it under his chin, drew down the blinds, and went out.

An hour later, Robert awoke in darkness. For several moments, the memory of where he was and how he had got there didn't come back. And then he recalled music and sat up. He registered the room, took in the rug, and began to come back to the world.

Through the ajar door he saw a glimmer of light and rose to follow it. It took him to a dining room, where Father Dillon and another priest sat in silence, eating and reading. A third place had been prepared at the table.

The dapper little man stood up and said, “This is Father Madden; he shares the house with me. I'm the senior curate and he's the junior curate.”

Father Madden had eyes like a bloodhound, which gave him the loneliest expression in the world. He shook hands without looking at Robert, or standing up, and pointed to the place ready for their guest.

Feeling oddly at home in this replication of parish atmosphere, Robert sat down. Father Dillon served him food: a wide pork chop an inch thick, with a yellow vegetable that Robert had never tasted before, and ten small potatoes.

“D'you drink a glass of wine at all?” said the little priest.

“No, it'll be lemonade,” said the lonely priest.

“A good guess,” said Robert.

“I was telling Father Madden about your ancestors.”

“I'm afraid to tell you, Father,” said the lonely priest, “that the only Shannon I ever knew was the one I swim in. I suppose everybody makes that joke to you.”

Father Dillon said, in his boy's voice, “While you were resting, I looked at some of the parish records. We had a very careful parish priest here— he died about eight years ago— and he kept everything in alphabetical
order. There was never a Shannon born here, and never a Shannon buried here.”

“Do you know what the name Drumsna means, Father?” said the lonely priest. “It means a humpy place where people go swimming.”

They chatted easily throughout dinner, and Robert asked how far he had come toward the source of the Shannon.

“They call it the Pot,” said the dapper one. “The Shannon Pot.”

“You want the town of Swanlinbar,” said the lonely priest. “No, you don't. Go over the mountain. Go up through Ballinamore.” He looked at Father Dillon, made up his mind about something, and said to Robert, “Look. I'll take you there myself.”

Dinner finished slowly; the priests shared a bottle of wine and then took a cognac each. Robert drank what they called lemonade, a sweet, fizzy red drink that burbled in his nose. Father Madden excused himself, saying, “We'll leave early in the morning, ‘tis a long enough drive.”

When Father Madden had left the room, the little priest drew his chair closer to Robert.

“Tell me now, do you know Cardinal O'Connell at all?”

Robert said, “He ordained me.”

“Now he's a man I'd like to meet. A misunderstood man, by all accounts.”

Robert flinched. Father Dillon put out a hand, then drew it back. His face became suddenly painful.

“I— I wish you could hear my confession.”

For an endless moment they sat and looked at each other. Finally Robert touched the little priest's arm.

“Father, nothing is easy.”

“But America is a big place; this place is as small as a pocket. And ‘tis a pocket full of nails.”

H
is Eminence took a famous vacation every summer. Each priest and prelate under his command knew when he was away;
The Boston Globe
published it, part of the image making. Sevovicz took advantage of Cardinal O'Connell's absence and dropped by the residence (which also housed the church offices). He pretended that he wanted to pay his respects to His Eminence and seek his advice while passing through.

While there he engaged in conversation with the priests in the chancery where the money was reckoned. Sevovicz called down great praise upon them for the “financials”—as he saw them— of the archdiocese. They barely knew him, but they had heard about “some weird Polish coadjutor down in Hartford.”

He charmed them; he discussed episcopal finances knowledgeably— as indeed he might, given his experience— and they felt complimented by his observations; this man understood, he perceived. Easily he brought the conversation around to the names of laymen who supported the archdiocese and how they helped His Eminence.

Sevovicz took them into his confidence with a confidential worry regarding Bishop Nilan's generosity. Hartford needed an objective eye.

Now that Providence, Rhode Island, influenced Hartford less than it used to, perhaps their contacts knew somebody helpful. They pointed him in the direction of the accountant and gave him a letter of introduction.

Next morning, Robert and Father Madden climbed into a beautifully painted and polished pony trap with gleaming harness. A basket of food sat at their feet, along with Robert's rucksack.

“If you want to follow on your map, Robert, we're going away from the Shannon to get to the Shannon Pot. We'll go on better roads, up toward Leitrim, cut across to Ballinamore, and come back through Swanlinbar. We might stay the night in Drumshanbo, I've a house there.”

When they had traveled for about five minutes, Robert asked, “How long have you known Father Dillon?”

The priest scarcely allowed him to finish. “Robert, Ireland is a very small country.” Saying which, he closed his mouth in a line and looked straight ahead.

They veered onto another road, heading northeast, a small narrow road with stunted trees bent in from the west. Although they had left the river behind, the land began to fill with water; lakes shone everywhere, some bright, some gunmetal in color, some dark as a frightened eye. They turned west again, down a steep slope, and then up a steep incline on a road barely wide enough for their little carriage. On a high rise, Father Madden reined in. Out under a remote sky, they overlooked many of the small lakes, with not a house in sight.

“We might as well have a nice view if we're going to eat. We're in Keshcarrigan. If you were a crow you'd fly straight up there”—the priest pointed north—”and you'd land in the Shannon Pot.”

The skies darkened from the west as they ate. Rain swept in, heavy deep rain, lashing the horse, filling the trap with water. They moved from their pleasant view and pulled in under a tree, where they sat and watched as the rain grew ever heavier. Morose and silent, the lonely Father Madden gazed into an unseeable distance. The temperature dropped. A troubling smell floated across the fields, and Robert sniffed.

“You're smelling sulfur. This land is full of brimstone. There's places here could be the door into Hell.”

In an hour the rain had merely increased, so they sat yet another hour. Finally the priest said, “I can't take you there today. We'll go to Drumshanbo.”

Robert, simply to relish the word, murmured, “Drum … shan … bo.”

“Drum,
the back;
shan,
old;
bo,
a cow.”

“The back of the old cow?”

“That's her,” said the priest; he had a perfect wart like a tiny drum at the corner of his mouth.

The rain soaked them to the skin. As the horse galloped along, pulling the light trap easily and well, the rain intensified, falling in sheets heavy as blood. Robert had no hat, and he fancied that he felt streams flow down his head and his body into his shoes. Father Madden's hat became sodden; water flowed from its brim onto his knees, so he took it off.

An hour or more later, down among houses again, they swung through a gate and into the dry warmth of an open-doored barn. “I live here,” said the priest, and never spoke again. He led Robert indoors and upstairs, indicated an empty room.

Robert set down his rucksack. He found towels; he would have welcomed a bath, but the house had neither running water nor electricity. When he had changed he went to his door and called, but nobody answered. Down in the hallway, he called again and got no answer. He walked from room to room, upstairs and down and found nobody. Downstairs, in the kitchen, he searched for food and found cold chicken in a pot. He helped himself and drank some water.

The pictures on the walls, the letters on the hall table, the appointments of the house— everything told him he had come to a parish house. For curates, obviously; a parish priest's house would surely have been more opulent.
No American priest would live like this. And I still have the smell of sulfur in my nose.