Redemption - Leon Uris [90]
Liam held up his hand and waved as Rory came down the gangplank. He realized that his brother was taking his son’s heart with him back to Ireland and one day his son would go looking for it.
Part Three
Dweller
on the
Threshold
31
Dublin, 1908
Ah Rorylad,
The long way home is done.
Since we all must learn from each journey, I have made discoveries of the utmost importance. My thoughts are far from original, but the journey was new to me. To be homeward bound, no matter what tragic memories you have harbored, is unlike any voyage a man can ever make.
In a manner of speaking Ireland is no different than any other place except a few more sorrows and a few less joys, but Ireland is my life, my joys and my sorrows.
Why is it so, Rory lad? What is the terrible beauty of one’s country? The fields are still wretched with rocks, its cities impoverished, its wards filled with cholera and tuberculosis, the justice from its overlords a folly…yet, my feet on Irish soil says my goodself and Ireland are one.
My dear cobber, Seamus O’Neill himself, was back from the Boer War to greet me. Himself is a noted journalist and remains an aspiring playwright and a dandy about Dublin.
I found myself now able to speak of the shirt factory fire without half destroying myself. Then came the most gripping of fears, my first trip back to Ballyutogue. One cannot divorce one’s self from one’s country, and his childhood is the soul of it. I walked through the old cottage and fields and forge in a highly emotional state, and I lingered for many hours at the family graves.
Dear Brigid has become the keeper of our ashes. Your aunt’s loveliness has flown. For years my ma wanted to coor her land with our next door neighbor’s, the O’Neills. Brigid seems likely to go into a loveless marriage with Seamus’s older brother, Colm, a blister of a man, and they’ll have acreage to brag over. He’s a twit with a smelly old dog at his feet, a smelly old pipe in his mouth, and the smell of booze from his innards. Although there is yet time for Brigid, I’m certain their bed will be barren.
Brother Dary now studies at the big seminary at Maynooth. He will be a people’s priest and be loved because he will reason and not oppress. I pray God there is room for him in the Church.
Dary and Seamus and I returned to our lives bittersweet. It has been four decades gone, but the famine still hovers over Ballyutogue.
Aye, the great hunger has made an eternal mark on our people, destroyed dreams, stripped us of our manhood, dispersed our seed. When I left Ireland I saw a broken people, shorn of the will to protest, subjugated, a down-spirited paddy.
But now Dublin bursts with the Gaelic revival. New political parties, parties truly representing Irish longings, have joined the cause.
The most terrifying of my fears are now laid to rest. I feared I would live out my time watching Ireland go from nowhere to nowhere, and the unwritten words as well.
See now, Rory, what I can’t tell you about was my chilling meeting with Long Dan Sweeney, who has returned to revive the Irish Republican Brotherhood, of which I am now a secret member.
Ah Rory, Long Dan is the revolution that is! His old face is like candle wax, his skin an unhealthy pallor and his face in crags and slits as too much life on the run will do to a man. Time and British justice have knocked him about to where he is a cynical eccentric.
I’m bursting to tell you what I can’t tell you. Two thousand guns are hidden in England and aye…your Uncle Conor has been charged with the mission of smuggling them into Ireland!
Your first dozen books are on the way. Fill yourself with them.
Remember kindly the two major points of my visit. Namely: when your opponent paws with his left jab, you come under him and belt him to the ribs with a right, then duck out of the way always circling right.
Secondly, be tender to the girls. Always make them feel like a queen, particularly after you’ve made love.
Your loving uncle,
Conor
32
If Atty was doing a play,