The Dream of the Celt: A Novel

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  He did not attempt another sexual adventure for the rest of the month he spent in the Canaries, or during his trip to South Africa and the weeks he was in Cape Town and Durban with his brother Tom and sister-in-law Katje, paralyzed by the fear of experiencing again, because of his arthritis, a situation as ridiculous as the one that frustrated his encounter with the Canarian sailor in Santa Catalina Park. From time to time, as he had done so often in Africa and Brazil, he made love alone, scribbling on the pages of his diary, in a nervous, hurried hand, synthetic phrases, sometimes as unrefined as those lovers of a few minutes or hours whom he then had to gratify. These simulacra plunged him into a depressing stupor, and he tried to space them, for nothing made him so conscious of his solitude and clandestine situation, which, he knew very well, would be with him until his death.

  The enthusiasm he felt for Alice Stopford Green’s book about old Ireland made him ask his friend for more reading material on the subject. The package of books and pamphlets Alice sent him arrived when he was about to sail on the Grantully Castle for South Africa, on February 6, 1913. He read day and night during the crossing and continued reading in South Africa, so that in spite of the distance, during those weeks he again felt very close to Ireland, the one of today, yesterday, and the remote one, a past he seemed to be making his own with the texts Alice selected for him. In the course of the voyage the pains in his back and hip diminished.

  The encounter with Tom, after so many years, was difficult. Contrary to what Roger had thought when he decided to visit him, hoping the trip would bring him closer to his older brother and create between them an emotional connection that in fact had never existed, it confirmed instead that they were strangers. Except for the blood kinship, the two had nothing in common. All these years they had written to each other, generally when Tom and his first wife, Blanche Baharry, an Australian, had financial problems and wanted Roger to help them. He had never failed to do so, except when the loans his brother and sister-in-law asked for were too large for his budget. Tom’s second marriage was to a South African, Katje Ackerman, and they had started a tourist business that wasn’t going well. His brother looked older than he was and had turned into a prototypical South African, rustic, browned by the sun and life outdoors, with informal, somewhat coarse manners, and even the way he spoke English sounded much more South African than Irish. He wasn’t interested in what was going on in Ireland, Great Britain, or Europe. His obsessive subject was the financial problems he faced in the lodge he had opened with Katje in Durban. They thought the beauty of the place would attract tourists and hunters, but not many came and the maintenance costs were higher than they had calculated. They’d had many hopes for this project and were afraid that if the situation continued, they would have to sell the lodge at a loss. Even though his sister-in-law was more amusing and interesting than his brother—she had a liking for the arts as well as a sense of humor—Roger eventually regretted having made the long journey only to visit the couple.

  In mid-April he began the return to London. By then he felt more energetic and, thanks to the South African climate, the arthritis pains had eased. Now his attention was focused on the Foreign Office. He could not go on postponing the decision or requesting more unpaid leave. Either he would take up the consulate in Río de Janeiro again, as his superiors had requested, or give up diplomacy. The idea of returning to Río, a city he never liked, for in spite of the physical beauty of its surroundings, he’d always felt it was hostile to him, became intolerable. But that wasn’t all. He did not want to live duplicitously again, work as a diplomat in the service of an empire he condemned emotionally and in principle. During the entire voyage back to England he made calculations: he had scant savings, but by living a frugal life—it was easy for him—and with the pension he would receive for the years he had accumulated as a functionary, he would manage. When he reached London, his decision was made. The first thing he did was go to the Ministry of Foreign Relations with his resignation, explaining that he was retiring from the service for reasons of health.

  He remained in London for only a few days, arranging his retirement from the Foreign Office and preparing to travel to Ireland. He did this happily, but also with some anticipatory nostalgia, as if he were leaving England forever. He saw Alice a few times and his sister Nina, from whom, in order not to worry her, he hid Tom’s financial losses. He tried to see Edmund D. Morel, who, curiously, had not answered any of the letters he had written in the past three months. But his old friend, the Bulldog, would not receive him, claiming trips and obligations that clearly were excuses. What could have happened to this companion in struggles whom he admired and loved so much? Why had he turned cold? What gossip or intrigue had estranged him? A short while afterward, Herbert Ward told him in Paris that Morel, having learned of the harshness with which Roger criticized England and the Empire with regard to Ireland, avoided seeing him in order not to have to tell him of his opposition to those kinds of political attitudes.

  “The thing is that even though you don’t realize it, you’ve turned into an extremist,” Herbert said, half in jest, half seriously.

  In Dublin, Roger rented a small old house at 55 Lower Baggot Street. It had a minuscule garden with geraniums and hydrangeas that he trimmed and watered early in the morning. It was a quiet district of shopkeepers, artisans, and cheap stores where on Sundays families would go to Mass, the women dressed as if for a party and the men in dark suits and caps, their shoes polished. In the corner pub, which had cobwebs and a barmaid who was a dwarf, Roger would drink dark beer with the neighborhood greengrocer, tailor, and shoemaker, discuss the news of the day, and sing old songs. The fame he had achieved in England for his campaigns against the crimes in the Congo and Amazonia had spread to Ireland, and in spite of his desire to lead a simple, anonymous life, since his arrival in Dublin he found himself pursued by a great variety of people—politicians, intellectuals, journalists, and members of cultural clubs and centers—to give talks, write articles, and attend social gatherings. He even had to pose for a well-known painter, Sarah Purser. In her portrait of him, Roger appeared rejuvenated, with an air of certainty and triumph; he didn’t recognize himself.

  Once again he resumed his studies of old Irish. His teacher, Mrs. Temple, with a cane, spectacles, and a little veiled hat, came three times a week to give him Gaelic lessons and make assignments that she would correct afterward with a red pencil and rate with generally low grades. Why did he have so much difficulty learning the language of the Celts with whom he so wanted to identify? He had a facility for languages, had learned French, Portuguese, at least three African languages, and could make himself understood in Spanish and Italian. Why did the vernacular language to which he felt so connected elude him in this way? Each time he learned something with great effort, in a few days, sometimes in a few hours, he would forget it. From then on, without saying anything to anyone, least of all in political discussions when, out of principle, he maintained the opposite, he began to wonder whether the dream of people like Professor Eoin MacNeill and the poet and pedagogue Patrick Pearse was realistic, whether it wasn’t chimerical to believe they could revive the language persecuted and made clandestine by the colonizer, turned into the language of a minority, almost extinguished, and transform it back into the mother tongue of the Irish. Was it possible that in the Ireland of the future English would recede and, thanks to the schools, in newspapers, the sermons of parish priests, and politicians’ speeches, be replaced by the language of the Celts? In public Roger said yes, it was not only possible but necessary if Ireland was to recover its authentic personality. It would be a long process, taking several generations, but inevitable because only when Gaelic was again the national language would Ireland be free. Still, in the solitude of his study on Lower Baggot Street, when he faced the Gaelic composition exercises Mrs. Temple had left him, he told himself it was a useless effort. Reality had advanced too far in one direction to turn back. English had become the way to communicate, spea
k, be, and feel for an immense majority of the Irish, and trying to renounce it was a political whim whose only result would be a Babelic confusion that would culturally transform his beloved Ireland into an archaeological curiosity, isolated from the rest of the world. Was it worth it?

  In May and June of 1913 his quiet life of study was brusquely interrupted when, as the result of a conversation with a journalist from the Irish Independent, who spoke to him of the poverty and primitivism of the fishermen of Connemara, he decided on an impulse to travel to that region in the west of Galway where, he had heard, a more traditional Ireland was still intact and the people kept old Irish alive. Instead of a historical relic, in Connemara Roger encountered a spectacular contrast between the beauty of the sculpted mountains, the slopes swept by clouds, and virgin bogs at whose edges the dwarf horses native to the region loitered, and people who lived in ghastly poverty, without schools and without doctors, in total destitution. To make matters worse, some cases of typhus had just appeared. The epidemic could spread and cause havoc. The man of action in Roger, at times dormant but never dead, immediately went to work. He wrote an article in the Irish Independent, “The Irish Putumayo,” and created an assistance fund to which he was the first donor and subscriber. At the same time, he pursued public action with the Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic churches and various welfare associations, and urged physicians and nurses to go to the villages of Connemara as volunteers to support the scant official public health efforts. The campaign was successful. Many donations came in from Ireland and England. Roger made three trips to the region bringing medicines, clothing, and foodstuffs for the affected families. Moreover, he created a committee to provide Connemara with health dispensaries and construct elementary schools. Because of the campaign, in those two months he had exhausting meetings with clergymen, politicians, authorities, intellectuals, and journalists. He was surprised at the consideration with which he was treated, even by those who disagreed with his nationalist positions.

  In July he returned to London to see his doctors, who had to inform the Foreign Office whether the reasons of health he claimed for giving up diplomacy were correct. Even though he didn’t feel bad in spite of his intense activity in Connemara, he thought the examination would be a mere formality. But the physicians’ report was more serious than he had expected: the arthritis in his spinal column, iliac region, and knees had worsened. It could be relieved with rigorous treatment and a very quiet life, but it couldn’t be cured. And he should not ignore that if it progressed, it might leave him crippled. The Ministry of Foreign Relations accepted his resignation and in view of his condition, granted him a decent pension.

  Before returning to Ireland, he decided to go to Paris, accepting an invitation from Herbert and Sarita Ward. He was happy to see them again and share the warm atmosphere of the African enclave of their house. All of it seemed like an emanation from the large studio, where Herbert showed him a new collection of his sculptures of Africa’s men and women and some of its fauna. They were vigorous pieces in bronze and wood from the last three years, which he would exhibit in the fall in Paris. While Herbert showed them to him, recounting anecdotes, showing him sketches and small models of each one, abundant images returned to Roger’s memory of the time when he and Herbert worked for the Stanley and Sanford expeditions. He had learned a great deal listening to Herbert describe his adventures in half the world, the picturesque people he met on his Australian wanderings, his vast reading. His intelligence was just as sharp, his spirit just as jovial and optimistic. His wife, Sarita, a North American heiress, was his spiritual twin, an adventurer as well, and something of a bohemian. They got along wonderfully. They traveled on foot through France and Italy. They had brought up their children with the same cosmopolitan, restless, curious spirit. Now the two boys were at boarding school in England, but they spent all their vacations in Paris. The little girl, Cricket, lived with them.

  The Wards took him for supper to a restaurant in the Tour Eiffel where they could see the bridges over the Seine and the neighborhoods of Paris, and to the Comédie Française to see Molière’s Le Malade imaginaire.

  But not everything was friendship, understanding, and affection in the days he spent with the couple. He and Herbert had disagreed about many things but their friendship had never cooled; on the contrary, disagreements vivified it. This time was different. One night they argued so sharply that Sarita had to intervene, obliging them to change the subject.

  Herbert had always had a tolerant, somewhat amused attitude toward Roger’s nationalism. But that night he accused his friend of embracing the nationalist idea in a way that was too exalted, not very rational, almost fanatical.

  “If the majority of the Irish want to separate from Great Britain, well and good,” he said. “I don’t think Ireland will gain very much by having a flag, a coat of arms, and a president of the republic. Or that her economic and social problems will be solved because of it. In my opinion, it would be better to adopt the Home Rule of Redmond and his followers. They’re Irish too, aren’t they? And the great majority compared to those like you who want secession. Well, the truth is, none of it concerns me very much. But, on the other hand, I am concerned to see how intolerant you’ve become. Before, you gave reasons, Roger. Now you only shout with hatred against a country that’s yours, too, the country of your parents and brothers and sister. A country you’ve served so honorably all these years and that has recognized you for this, hasn’t it? It has knighted you, given you the most important decorations in the kingdom. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Should I become a colonialist in gratitude?” Roger interrupted. “Should I accept for Ireland what you and I rejected for the Congo?”

  “Between the Congo and Ireland there’s an astronomical distance, it seems to me. Or are the English chopping off the hands of the natives on the peninsulas of Connemara and destroying their backs with whippings?”

  “The methods of colonization in Europe are more refined, Herbert, but no less cruel.”

  During his last days in Paris, Roger avoided touching again on the subject of Ireland. He didn’t want his friendship with Herbert damaged. He told himself sadly that in the future, when he found himself increasingly involved in the political struggle, the distances between himself and Herbert would undoubtedly keep growing until, perhaps, they destroyed their friendship, one of the closest he’d had in his life. Am I turning into a fanatic? he would ask himself from then on, at times with alarm.

  When he returned to Dublin at the end of the summer, he could not resume his study of Gaelic. The political situation had become agitated, and from the first moment he found himself drawn to take part in it. The Home Rule proposal that would have given Ireland a parliament and ample administrative and economic freedom, supported by John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party, had been approved in the House of Commons in November 1912. But the House of Lords rejected it two months later. In January 1913, in Ulster, a unionist citadel dominated by the local Anglophile and Protestant majority, the enemies of Home Rule led by Sir Edward Henry Carson unleashed a virulent campaign. They formed the Ulster Volunteer Force, with more than forty thousand members enrolled. It was a political organization and a military force, prepared, if Home Rule was approved, to combat it with weapons. Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party continued fighting for autonomy. The second reading of the bill was approved in the House of Commons and again defeated in the House of Lords. On September 23 the Unionist Council approved reconstituting itself as the Provisional Government of Ulster, that is, separating from the rest of Ireland if Home Rule was passed.

  Roger began writing in the nationalist press, now using his full name, criticizing the Ulster unionists. He denounced the abuses by Protestants of the Catholic minority in that province, firing Catholic workers from factories and discriminating against the town councils of Catholic districts in budgets and jurisdictions. “When I see what is occurring in Ulster,” he stated in one article, “I no l
onger feel Protestant.” In all his journalism he deplored the fact that the attitude of the ultras divided the Irish into enemy bands, something with tragic consequences for the future. In another article he censured the Anglican clergy for protecting abuses against the Catholic community with their silence.

  In spite of the fact that in his political conversations he appeared skeptical about the idea that Home Rule would free Ireland of her dependence, in his articles he allowed a glimmer of hope: if the law were approved without changes that would distort it, and Ireland had a parliament, elected her officials, and administered her revenues, she would be on the threshold of sovereignty. If that brought peace, what did it matter if her defense and diplomacy continued in the hands of the British Crown?

  During this time he became closer friends with two Irishmen who had devoted their lives to the defense, study, and diffusion of the language of the Celts: Professor Eoin MacNeill and Patrick Pearse. Roger came to feel a great affinity for the radical, intransigent crusader for Gaelic and independence that Pearse was. He had joined the Gaelic League in his adolescence and dedicated himself to literature, journalism, and teaching. He had founded and directed two bilingual schools, St. Enda’s for boys and St. Ita’s for girls, the first institutions dedicated to recovering Gaelic as the national language. In addition to writing poems and drama, in pamphlets and articles he maintained his thesis that if the Celtic language were not regained, independence would be useless because Ireland would continue to be a colonial possession culturally. His intolerance in this area was absolute; in his youth he had even gone so far as to call Yeats—whom he would later admire without reservation—a “traitor” for writing in English. He was shy, a bachelor with a robust, imposing physique, a tireless worker with a small defect in one eye, and an exalted, charismatic speaker. When it wasn’t a question of Gaelic or the emancipation, and he was with people he knew well, Patrick Pearse became a man crackling with humor and congeniality, talkative and extroverted, who sometimes surprised his friends by disguising himself as an old woman who begged for alms in the center of Dublin, or a brassy young lady who immodestly strolled through the doors of taverns. But his life was characterized by monkish sobriety. He lived with his mother and brothers, didn’t drink or smoke, and had no known love affairs. His best friend was his inseparable brother Willie, a sculptor and art teacher at St. Enda’s. On the entrance wall of the school, surrounded by the tree-covered hills of Rathfarnham, Pearse had engraved a sentence the Irish sagas attributed to Cuchulain: “I care not though I were to live but one day and one night, if only my fame and deeds live after me.” People said he was celibate. He practiced his Catholic faith with military discipline, to the extreme of fasting often and wearing a hair shirt. During this time, when he was so involved in the hectic activity, intrigues, and incitements of political life, Roger often told himself that perhaps the invincible affection Patrick Pearse elicited was due to his being one of the very few politicians he knew whom politics had not deprived of his sense of humor, and because his civic action was totally principled and disinterested: he cared about ideas and scorned power. But he was made uneasy by Pearse’s obsession with conceiving of Irish patriots as the contemporary version of the early martyrs: “Just as the blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christianity, that of the patriots will be the seed of our liberty,” he wrote in an essay. A beautiful phrase, Roger thought. But wasn’t there something ominous in it?