Redemption - Leon Uris [128]
Hugh Dalton told me that the human system shuts down on learning of the death of a loved one on the outside. Otherwise, the pain would not be bearable.
Conor sat on the edge of his cot in his dungeon cell in a torpid state, neither dead nor alive, giving off no signs of collapse or survival.
Hugh Dalton said that in this state the mind no longer makes conscious decisions. It is now that the inner truth of the man comes through. Either he has an unconscious will to live or an unconscious will to die. The body is comatose, the spirit decides.
For nearly four months Conor Larkin sat thus. Hugh Dalton suspected that Conor was going to survive simply because, by this time, those men who were bound to die were already dead.
In a sudden flash of sanity Conor spoke his first words. He cried for Dalton and told the warder to have him taken to the padded cell and chained so he would not destroy himself.
The dangerous moment had come with the lifting of the veil and the onrush of reality, of the vision of his beloved’s slain and mutilated body.
The following weeks he was in and out of madness. Awakening to what had happened…going crazy…being restrained until he fell limp.
Slowly, he realized he would neither will himself to death nor take his own life and he had to bear the torment. Beginning then and for years to come he never went to sleep without praying that God would bring him death during the night.
As he returned to life, Conor made things hell for the governor of Portlaoise and for Warder Hugh Dalton.
First, he refused to wear prison clothing on the basis that he was not a criminal but a political prisoner. The Governor had his bed and all furnishings removed from his cell and left him with only a blanket. He ripped out a hole in the center for his head and slept on a stone floor for the three winter months.
Shortly after he won that round, he declared a hunger strike for books and the ceasing of all humiliating behavior toward him. This one nearly did him in. He lost so much flesh he was able to see through his own eyelids while they were shut. With fear of the consequences of Conor’s death, the British ordered the Governor to submit once more.
God’s meanings began to become apparent to me! Conor Larkin was not performing a role before an audience to promote and magnify his heroism. All that Conor Larkin ever was, was an extraordinary human, an Irishman, one Irishman who had had enough. God didn’t make Conor a hero or any other man a hero because they bluffed their way to heroism.
God compelled the true and unvarnished heroes to undergo superhuman feats of heroism because God had instilled in them part of His own soul and spirit.
Only through the example of a hero can ordinary common men like me even realize the power of the extraordinary man. Only through such heroes can common men like me be moved to aspire and emulate.
His anguish and his triumph arose from truths he came into the world with. He won his ordeal. In the end, Conor Larkin was able to endure more punishment than the British could inflict. He laid upon them a moral and spiritual defeat. His spirit triumphed over their armies.
It made all of us in the Brotherhood examine ourselves and understand the sacrifice and dedication needed if we were to have any chance to declare our freedom against an enemy of immense power. Would we find enough men and women to follow in his footsteps?
Could we, always weaker in arms, eventually triumph by sheer force of our righteousness? The nonrecognition of British institutions on Irish soil and acts of disobedience became a canon of faith for breaking the yoke of the colonizer.
Did we as a people have the stuff to pay the ultimate price?
* * *
First among those to be broken by Conor’s valor was Warder Hugh Dalton who never got over the abuse poured on the republican prisoners. Conor forced him to consider his thirty years of kissing British ass…and to what avail…a small pension coming up and a life to live out, full of disgust with himself.
Knowing