The Truth About Love (5 page)

        FOUR

The letter lies on my study table. My father’s handwriting has always seemed to me to be in exquisite contrast to his character. It is spidery-light, as though the writer cared more about the hieroglyphics than the content; a deception, for few men weigh their words or their actions more carefully than my father.

September 18th, 1962

Dear Thomas,

I have taken a long time to reply to you. It is always an exercise in exactitude to write to you in English, which would now seem to be your chosen tongue.

And I send this letter to Ireland, your elective country of exile, to which, driven by grief and anger, you have retreated. I use the word “retreat” with the care for language that befits the son of a respected lexicographer. I also note, with some satisfaction, a certain genetic imperative in your own missive, indeed in all your work. I accede, Thomas, to your wish to have access to my notes on the subject of Ireland. I have, after all, abandoned the subject.

The title of my book on Ireland was to have been “The Weapons of the Country.” I have collated my notes under three headings: Language; Love; Memory. They have been forwarded to you separately by parcel post. We are an efficient nation. It is our secondary characteristic, perhaps. Secondary characteristics when applied with concentrated power to a cause, whatever the nature of that cause, have played a greater part in history than is ever allowed. The secondary characteristic of the Irish? I leave that to you, Thomas. The Irish mind was formed in the ancient language of the Celt. Its roots, as you are aware, are Sino-Indian. Perhaps, therefore, the Irish mind is partly an occidental mind? Mr. Yeats has something to say on the subject. The English language, however, a gift foolishly handed to them by the British, but on the point of a sword, has been wielded by the Irish with exquisite ferocity against their old enemy. Remember, it is their first weapon.

I now accept that, as you intimated in your letter, I have always been rather wary of writing this book. Perhaps I felt a certain sensitivity in acknowledging that I first visited Dublin in 1939–40 for the purpose of a (comparatively modest) undertaking in espionage. Which failed. It is true we were outmanoeuvred, thwarted by those who, in understanding the nature and the language of treachery even better than we did, quietly and effectively subverted our plan to subvert the IRA to our own cause. Hitler’s decision, driven by geography, made strategic sense. The outcome, however, is often determined by a nation’s historical memory. In the case of Ireland the symphonic note of their national dirge creates a tinnitus of the soul. They were deaf to all else.

Finally, in relation to this book may I challenge you as to the purity of your own timing? What has happened to your planned second book on Gottfried Benn? Why desert Benn? You have much to say on the subject of the divided self, and Benn’s autobiography
Doppelleben
is of historical as well as literary importance. So why do you dedicate yourself to a book on Ireland? It is less than five years since Heinrich Böll published
Irisches Tagebuch
, his partly enchanted impression of his many visits to Galway’s Achill Island, a work I regard as more provocative than its rather anaemic title would suggest. However, it is the teller not the tale. Why now? Could it be that you desire to become further lost in the history of another country? You should remember that Paul Celan, whom you admire and who remains my obsession, kept faith with language and the German language “through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech.” That he should honour this belief in its power though both parents perished in the labour camps compels me to examine unceasingly the shattered silence of his work.

To family matters—briefly. You enquire as to my health. You were always courteous. My death is not imminent. It is, however, a discernible shape on the horizon. We need not be more dramatic. To Heinrich. He has again separated from Carlotta. Perhaps you are already aware of this? It is possible he sees himself as an Houdini of the heart, endlessly tying and untying himself. He returns, I believe, because in the taming of Carlotta’s wildness he is as close to virtue as he will ever come. Vice may bind but its shackles rust. “Does one bring up sons to have them ruined by a woman?”—your mother’s cry after the announcement of this too-young engagement. It is very difficult to see one’s son choose a woman like Carlotta. Your own choice of Veronika brought for a time the deepest joy to us both. I will not go further. I am not a sadist. While Heinrich is a constant source of worry, I am at ease with him. With you, Thomas, I have always experienced a certain tension. It existed even before the estrangement that followed Frederick’s death and Veronika’s collapse, and later, of course, her death. Poor Frederick. Poor Veronika.

You should marry again. You should have another child. Perhaps you will regard this advice with contempt. Perhaps you will interpret it as an encouragement to predatory love. You have deeper knowledge of this subject than many men. Ethics and love? Are there ethics in love, Thomas? Again, a question to which you are perhaps best equipped to give an answer, having destroyed your family for Mrs. Calder, as she calls herself now. Legitimately, I know. Though not in my eyes. I remain bitter. Forgive me. I have again into your current unmarried state obtruded. The siege is over I assume? You have admitted defeat? Mrs. Calder is reluctant to take possession of her territory? Perhaps I am wrong in this. No? Again, forgive me. The cry of the father through time.

Your father,

Erik

On re-reading this letter I note its lack of warmth. Not a surprise to either of us. As a gesture I gift you my first edition of A. M. Sullivan’s 1868
Speeches from the Dock
. It will be sent separately to you. Only in Ireland could a book with such a title become a bestseller. It may help you understand the essence of their “holy hatred”—John Mitchel’s phrase. He was exiled in shackles. Holy hatred: start from there. Erik

        FIVE

My monthly chess game with Bishop Fullerton presents not only an intellectual but a philosophical challenge to him. Since over 90 per cent of the population is Roman Catholic, and thus his spiritual authority is rarely challenged, he relishes the occasional doubter. His little “Doubting Thomas” joke, however, has been dropped, to our mutual relief.

I check the fire and then the supper arrangements. Linen napkins, to the laundering of which Bridget pays such attention, cover in their starched perfection two plates of sandwiches and one large silver platter on which rests a ginger cake that Bridget has baked for the bishop especially. This minor feast has been carefully set out on a side table, “in case the bishop gets hungry after the game.” Which he always does. He is, I think, a permanently hungry man and souls alone do not satisfy him. We start at nine-thirty. He has dined earlier, as have I, yet the sandwiches and cake remain essential. Bridget has today made her own brown bread and soda bread. Some time ago she had been informed by the bishop’s housekeeper that he regards country butter with particular favour. I loathe it. The guest’s desires, how ever, are paramount. So after my monthly chess game with the bishop I will eat, for politeness’ sake, at least one cold-meat sandwich made with Bridget’s soda bread—the thin-slicing of which she has informed me is difficult—and I will watch the bishop devour the rest.

I see the lights of a car. Our evening is about to begin. Bishop Fullerton will have been driven from the Bishop’s Palace, as it is known, to Lake House at no doubt excessive speed by Eamonn McNamara. Eamonn, who has acquired a reputation for “foot-on-the-accelerator madness,” pulls up with a flourish, his arrival signalled by the screech of brakes. He leaps from the car and with a slight incline of his head, not exactly a bow, he opens his passenger’s door and guides the bishop out of his jet-black, newest-model Mercedes.

“Good evening Thomas! How I look forward to tonight’s challenge. I must warn you, Thomas, I’m geared up. Isn’t that right, Eamonn? I’m geared up for victory.”

“You are, Bishop, you are indeed. Oh yes, Mr. Middlehoff, tonight’s the night.”

“Good evening, Eamonn.”

“Now Eamonn, you go home to Margaret and the children and shall we say eleven-ish? Is that all right, Eamonn?”

“Of course, Bishop.”

As Eamonn executes one of his top-speed mechanical pirouettes and races down the drive Bishop Fullerton smiles indulgently and progresses down the hallway, the skirts of his robes almost touching the wainscoting. In the study he settles into his usual chair.

“Ah this room! How I admire this room. I admire this house. I always did. You did well to buy it. Poor Edmond Pennington. I know he’s taken up his estates in England—all very grand, I’m told—but I feel certain that even after all these years he longs for Lake House. Still, primogeniture, that somewhat brutal system of inheritance the British practise, might make one a little ambivalent about the untimely death of a childless elder brother. Or is that uncharitable of me? Ah, what a great fire Bridget makes. The Irish love a fire. Have you noticed, Thomas?”

“Indeed.”

“I hear Tom O’Hara came to see you.”

I sigh. What more can I do? The information system in an Irish town would put the British Secret Service to shame, and frequently did.

“Yes.”

“Surprising. Coming to see you. I mean, he hardly knows you. We’re all trying to help him. He’s busy saving Sissy, I suppose.”

The bishop, who is possessive by nature, does not, I think, like to contemplate the dilution of his exclusive relationship, as he sees it, with “The German” by even the possibility of a friendship that I might develop with one of his parishioners. Particularly one who is grieving and should rightly find all the comfort he needs in his belief in God and in the support of God’s emissaries of whom, in this town, the bishop is the most exalted.

“And his children.”

“Yes. But Sissy, she’s the one.”

There is always a certain relief in the discussion of another’s tragedy. Sympathy flows like a balm between those who speak of tales of agony to which they have been but distant witnesses.

“Are you saying a man can only save one person at a time, Bishop? Even a father?”

“I’m not wise enough for these things. I try, of course. Marriage is a mysterious country to me. I always felt the climate would be too intense and the language rather difficult to learn. My guidance is in theological matters, sometimes in matters of philosophy but not in matters psychological.”

“Whiskey?”

“Thank you!
Uisce beatha!
The water of life. To you, Thomas, and to chess and to conversation. I often think, Thomas, that it’s the conversation that I most appreciate about these monthly jousts.”

He beams at me.

“I’m not the Pope, but sometimes my flock listens to me as though every word is spoken
ex cathedra
. It’s a heavy responsibility. This is only a chair from which I pronounce when I’m here with you.”

He is pleased with his little joke and continues, “My flock rarely challenges me.”

“The sheep rarely challenge the shepherd.”

“Sheep, is it? How little you know us Thomas. They do not challenge me in religious debate, but they can slip under the net.”

“Or pen.”

“Oh very good, Thomas, very good. Yes, they can slip away from me. This green velvet winged beauty,” and he pats the chair, “I wish I could have one like this in the Palace. But as I told you, my predecessor Bishop Heggarty was rather austere. Got rid of quite a lot. So it’s difficult for me to go out now and acquire such a piece. It would look too opulent. Send out the wrong message. We’re an army. And in public, indeed even in private, we’re mostly on parade. Forgive the military analogy. When I was training for the priesthood the lecture that made the most impression on me emphasised that ‘sinners have in a sense lost their way, like soldiers marching in the army of God—who perhaps went AWOL and then couldn’t find their way back.’ It was given by the then Bishop of Galway, as I recall. He was speaking to the assembled first-year students. ‘Sin,’ he said, ‘is indeed like getting lost in a maze and each way you turn you can’t get out. That’s the habitual sinner for you: lost in a maze.’ And some bright spark had piped up ‘no sense of direction’ and we all laughed. He did too. Loud, booming laugh as befits a bishop, eh Thomas?”

“Indeed.”

“When we’d calmed down a bit the Bishop looked at us all. Right round the room you know—catching each lad’s eye, so to speak. ‘Exactly, gentlemen, exactly,’ he said. ‘Gentlemen,’ that got us, the word ‘gentlemen.’ ‘Bear in mind, my young sports, that you’ve got to have journeyed somewhere before you’ve a sense of direction to lose. You’ve come, most of you, from country towns and villages or farms on the edge of nowhere. You’re barely out of your teens and we’re going to turn you into commanding officers of the souls of others. That’s our task here in Maynooth, to turn a bunch of youngsters into soldiers of the Lord and I’ve as much trouble, I can tell you, as any Sergeant Major.’ We laughed, but we didn’t forget it. We knew we’d have power, great power over men. The greatest. The power of forgiveness or not: ‘Whose sins thou shalt forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins thou shalt retain, they are retained.’ Power! That’s what he was telling us we had. And that people would obey.”

“Is it not possible that much of the obedience is driven by fear?”

I carefully position the chessboard between us and set up.

“Fear and love perhaps, Thomas. Not a bad combination, as Machiavelli would agree. You look surprised. We are not completely unaware of Machiavelli here.”

“And I would say that God is more feared than loved here.”

“Do you not fear where you love, Thomas?”

I pause. I do indeed fear where I love.

“I see where you have led me.”

“Checkmate! As you usually say to me.”

“Congratulations. Do you believe every sinner can be saved and every non-believer is a potential convert?”

“That’s the business.”

He parries well. We have got our rhythm now and I enjoy the sparring.

“Profitable?”

“Very. Spiritually, Thomas, spiritually. The Irish Catholic Church is not now, nor has it ever been, corrupt. May I just say how I admire your taste in whiskey. You’ve gone native, as they say. Very good. Though I see you keep the other as well. You’re a careful man. I have had a difficult, very difficult, day. I decided to talk to the Brothers Enda and Rory—to others, but mostly to them—at the college. They taught the O’Hara lad. Science and History and English. They teach with passion. Too much, according to some, particularly May Garvey and Bogus Brogan—they’re neighbours of the O’Haras. Do you know them?”

“I have met Mr. Brogan once—at the funeral.”

“Ah—well, they’re a bit competitive with each other. May writes a bit. She resented the small success Dennis Brogan had a year or so ago and she started to call him Bogus Brogan, and it stuck. Bogus takes it in good heart. But they’re both on the same side when it comes to the teaching of history. She had to give up teaching when she got married, but does a bit, helping before exams, and Bogus teaches out at St. Patrick’s. Anyway, after my conversation today I think with a few of the Brothers she may have a point. Still, I’m aware that a shadow of shame can fall on men in a country that has been long over-run—a feeling that somehow they should have prevented the humiliation. Such a nation needs its heroes as it builds itself from scratch. Which Ireland has done. You’ll give us that, Thomas—yes?”

“It is a great achievement.”

“Yes, we’ve done very well. Church and State have created a philosophically and spiritually united country. Much of that has been achieved in less than forty years. Much of it due to an outstanding education system based on the Christian Brothers and the nuns. We rely on their vocations. They’re clever men: redoubtable Brother Gogarty, for example—brilliant man. I was talking to him today—double first in mathematics from UCD. He should have been a Jesuit, of course: would have suited his mind better. God works in mysterious ways. I managed a quick chat with Brother Anselm Corrigan who teaches English to the younger boys—reluctantly nominates William Shakespeare greatest playwright while implying that his mother might have been Irish! Joke, Thomas, joke.”

And he roars again like a satisfied lion. He is after all king of the spiritual jungle here. His laughter has the explosive quality he believes suitable to a bishop and to which I have had to make adjustment since my first alarming experience of its reverberation. He will now wish to develop his theme. The game will commence late this evening. I will, however, still find it difficult to resist the temptation to dispatch him with speed. Good manners demand that I do not make too obvious my superiority at the game.

“But it’s Brothers Enda and Rory I really wanted to talk to. That pair—they were twinned at birth—when God made them he matched them. Do you know that expression, Thomas?”

“No, it is new to me.”

“Take it as a gift, Thomas …” With a sigh he continues, “Well it’s the first week back. The pupils have had a terrible shock; we’ve all had a terrible shock, of course. There are rumours—oh, not many—and some disquiet, I suppose you could call it. About such matters we are normally silent here, having learned perhaps that it is wiser. Still, you know, an explosion—such a thing has a kind of aftereffect. That resurgence of trouble in the North a few years ago—that was a surprise, I suppose you could say—well it’s now virtually petered out. There’d been decades of peace in a reasonably contented Republic, civil war behind us and the North—no pleasure you know, but settled into a waiting game—as we saw it anyway. I always say that history will give us the North. A confusing phrase but you know what I mean. The British always leave in the end. Time is on our side.”

I try to resist all conversations about history, whether ancient, medieval or modern. I will write my book and remain silent. Whereof we cannot speak, we sometimes write.

“… though from what I’ve heard Brothers Enda and Rory believe time needs a bit of help, a kind of hurry-up message. They’re from Ballinasloe. It’s a great little town, Ballinasloe. I’ve got distant cousins there, the McGreevey twins. Grand lads—discovered their vocation for the priesthood in the same year Brothers Enda and Rory went off to training college to become Christian Brothers. It was bumper year, that year in Ballinasloe. Brother Enda’s vocation is, he believes, a more passionate calling than most—that his vocation empowers him to create the future soul of his country. Though he’s no Joyce. Thank God. He is a fanatical teacher. A powerful man in a community, particularly here. ‘You only get one chance with a boy to send them out blazing with love of their country,’ he declared, and admonished me to remember, a little impertinently I felt but I let it go, what Pearse said, that ‘the Irish mind is the clearest mind that has ever applied itself to the consideration of nationality and of national freedom … It was characteristic of Irish-speaking men that when they thought of the Irish nation they thought less of its outer forms and pomps than of the inner thing which was its soul.’ Brother Enda’s right, of course, it’s all about the soul, though his tone was a little arrogant. And a bishop must encourage humility.”

Here he smiled. The smile of a fat man is often less open to misinterpretation than that of a man whose skin is drawn tight over angular features, as mine is, yet there remains something sly in his expression.

“So I thought I’d bring him down a peg or two. I mentioned … oh, I don’t remember how,” he smiles again, “but I managed to bring in Brother Gogarty’s first in mathematics: not normally our forte. He didn’t like that.” And the bishop relished the memory of his small triumph and continued, “Well that started Brother Enda! The Pearse quotations tumbled from his lips: ‘ “An heroic tale is more essentially a factor in education than a proposition from Euclid!” Tell that to Brother Gogarty, Bishop.’ ‘But sure you see him all the time Brother Enda, you tell him.’ ‘I will,’ he said, ‘and I’ll remind him of Pearse on the subject of Lady Aberdeen’s mathematical abilities.’ Do you know that quote, Thomas?”