'Tis

by Frank McCourt

  Owen spoke to me next day. He said he knew he was breaking the rules but he couldn’t help talking to anyone on this ship who was reading Crime and Punishment. There were great readers in the crew right enough but they wouldn’t move beyond Edgar Wallace or Zane Grey and he’d give anything to be able to chat about Dostoyevsky. He wanted to know if I’d read The Possessed or The Brothers Karamazov and he looked sad when I said I’d never heard of them. He told me the minute I got to New York I should rush to a bookshop and get Dostoyevsky books and I’d never be lonely again. He said no matter what Dostoyevsky book you read he always gave you something to chew on and you can’t beat that for a bargain. That’s what Owen said though I had no notion of what he was talking about.

  Then the priest came along the deck and Owen moved away. The priest said, Were you talking to that man? I could see you were. Well, I’m telling you he’s not good company. You can see that, can’t you? I heard all about him. Him with his gray hair swabbing decks at his age. It’s a strange thing you can talk to deckhands with no morals but if I ask you to talk to the rich Protestants from Kentucky you can’t find a minute.

  We were only talking about Dostoyevsky.

  Dostoyevsky, indeed. Lotta good that’ll do you in New York. You won’t see many Help Wanted signs requiring a knowledge of Dostoyevsky. Can’t get you to talk to the rich people from Kentucky but you sit here for hours yacking with sailors. Stay away from old sailors. You know what they are. Talk to people who’ll do you some good. Read the lives of the saints.

  Along the New Jersey side of the Hudson River there were hundreds of ships docked tightly together. Owen the sailor said they were the Liberty ships that brought supplies to Europe during the war and after and it’s sad to think they’ll be hauled away any day to be broken up in shipyards. But that’s the way the world is, he said, and a ship lasts no longer than a whore’s moan.

  2

  The priest asks if I have anyone meeting me and when I tell him there’s no one he says I can travel with him on the train to New York City. He’ll keep an eye on me. When the ship docks we take a taxi to the big Union Station in Albany and while we wait for the train we have coffee in great thick cups and pie on thick plates. It’s the first time I ever had lemon meringue pie and I’m thinking if this is the way they eat all the time in America I won’t be a bit hungry and I’ll be fine and fat, as they say in Limerick. I’ll have Dostoyevsky for the loneliness and pie for the hunger.

  The train isn’t like the one in Ireland where you share a carriage with five other people. This train has long cars where there are dozens of people and is so crowded some have to stand. The minute we get on people give up their seats to the priest. He says, Thank you, and points to the seat beside him and I feel the people who offered up their seats are not happy when I take one because it’s easy to see I’m nobody.

  Farther up the car people are singing and laughing and calling for the church key. The priest says they’re college kids going home for the weekend and the church key is the can opener for the beer. He says they’re probably nice kids but they shouldn’t drink so much and he hopes I won’t turn out like that when I live in New York. He says I should put myself under the protection of the Virgin Mary and ask her to intercede with her Son to keep me pure and sober and out of harm’s way. He’ll pray for me all the way out there in Los Angeles and he’ll say a special Mass for me on the eighth of December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. I want to ask him why he’d choose that feast day but I keep silent because he might start bothering me again about the rich Protestants from Kentucky.

  He’s telling me this but I’m dreaming of what it would be like to be a student somewhere in America, in a college like the ones in the films where there’s always a white church spire with no cross to show it’s Protestant and there are boys and girls strolling the campus carrying great books and smiling at each other with teeth like snow drops.

  When we arrive at Grand Central Station I don’t know where to go. My mother said I could try to see an old friend, Dan MacAdorey. The priest shows me how to use the telephone but there’s no answer from Dan. Well, says the priest, I can’t leave you on your own in Grand Central Station. He tells the taxi driver we’re going to the Hotel New Yorker.

  We take our bags to a room where there’s one bed. The priest says, Leave the bags. We’ll get something to eat in the coffee shop downstairs. Do you like hamburgers?

  I don’t know. I never had one in my life.

  He rolls his eyes and tells the waitress bring me a hamburger with french fries and make sure the burger is well done because I’m Irish and we overcook everything. What the Irish do to vegetables is a crying shame. He says if you can guess what the vegetable is in an Irish restaurant you get the door prize. The waitress laughs and says she understands. She’s half-Irish on her mother’s side and her mother is the worst cook in the world. Her husband was Italian and he really knew how to cook but she lost him in the war.

  Waw. That’s what she says. She really means war but she’s like all Americans who don’t like to say “r” at the end of a word. They say caw instead of car and you wonder why they can’t pronounce words the way God made them.

  I like the lemon meringue pie but I don’t like the way Americans leave out the “r” at the end of a word.

  While we’re eating our hamburgers the priest says I’ll have to stay the night with him and tomorrow we’ll see. It’s strange taking off my clothes in front of a priest and I wonder if I should get down on my two knees and pretend to say my prayers. He tells me I can take a shower if I like and it’s the first time in my life I ever had a shower with plenty of hot water and no shortage of soap, a bar for your body and a bottle for your head.

  When I’m finished I dry myself with the thick towel draped on the bathtub and I put on my underwear before going back into the room. The priest is sitting in the bed with a towel wrapped around his fat belly, talking to someone on the phone. He puts down the phone and stares at me. My God, where did you get those drawers?

  In Roche’s Stores in Limerick.

  If you hung those drawers out the window of this hotel people would surrender. Piece of advice, don’t ever let Americans see you in those drawers. They’ll think you just got off Ellis Island. Get briefs. You know what briefs are?

  I don’t.

  Get ’em anyway. Kid like you should be wearing briefs. You’re in the U.S.A. now. Okay, hop in the bed, and that puzzles me because there’s no sign of a prayer and that’s the first thing you’d expect of a priest. He goes off to the bathroom but he’s no sooner in there than he sticks his head out and asks me if I dried myself.

  I did.

  Well, your towel isn’t touched so what did you dry yourself with?

  The towel that’s on the side of the bathtub.

  What? That’s not a towel. That’s the bath mat. That’s what you stand on when you get out of the shower.

  I can see myself in a mirror over the desk and I’m turning red and wondering if I should tell the priest I’m sorry for what I did or if I should stay quiet. It’s hard to know what to do when you make a mistake your first night in America but I’m sure in no time I’ll be a regular Yank doing everything right. I’ll order my own hamburger, learn to call chips french fries, joke with waitresses, and never again dry myself with the bath mat. Some day I’ll say war and car with no “r” at the end but not if I ever go back to Limerick. If I ever went back to Limerick with an American accent they’d say I was putting on airs and tell me I had a fat arse like all the Yanks.

  The priest comes out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, patting his face with his hands and there’s a lovely smell of perfume in the air. He says there’s nothing as refreshing as aftershave lotion and I can put on some if I like. It’s right there in the bathroom. I don’t know what to say or do. Should I say, No, thanks, or should I get out of the bed and go all the way to the bathroom and slather myself with aftershave lotion? I never heard of anyone in Limerick putting st
uff on their faces after they shaved but I suppose it’s different in America. I’m sorry I didn’t look for a book that tells you what to do on your first night in New York in a hotel with a priest where you’re liable to make a fool of yourself right and left. He says, Well? and I tell him, Ah, no, thanks. He says, Suit yourself, and I can tell he’s a bit impatient the way he was when I didn’t talk to the rich Protestants from Kentucky. He could easily tell me leave and there I’d be out on the street with my brown suitcase and nowhere to go in New York. I don’t want to chance that so I tell him I’d like to put on the aftershave lotion after all. He shakes his head and tells me go ahead.

  I can see myself in the bathroom mirror putting on the aftershave lotion and I’m shaking my head at myself feeling if this is the way it’s going to be in America I’m sorry I ever left Ireland. It’s hard enough coming here in the first place without priests criticizing you over your failure to hit it off with rich Kentucky Protestants, your ignorance of bath mats, the state of your underwear and your doubts about aftershave lotion.

  The priest is in the bed and when I come out of the bathroom he tells me, Okay, into the bed. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.

  He lifts the bedclothes to let me in and it’s a shock to see he’s wearing nothing. He says, Good night, turns off the light and starts snoring without even saying a Hail Mary or a prayer before sleep. I always thought priests spent hours on their knees before sleeping but this man must be in a great state of grace and not a bit afraid of dying. I wonder if all priests are like that, naked in the bed. It’s hard to fall asleep in a bed with a naked priest snoring beside you. Then I wonder if the Pope himself goes to bed in that condition or if he has a nun bring in pajamas with the Papal colors and the Papal coat of arms. I wonder how he gets out of that long white robe he wears, if he pulls it over his head or lets it drop to the floor and steps out of it. An old Pope would never be able to pull it over his head and he’d probably have to call a passing cardinal to give him a hand unless the cardinal himself was too old and he might have to call a nun unless the Pope was wearing nothing under the white robe which the cardinal would know about anyway because there isn’t a cardinal in the world that doesn’t know what the Pope wears since they all want to be Pope themselves and can’t wait for this one to die. If a nun is called in she has to take the white robe to be washed down in the steaming depths of the Vatican laundry room by other nuns and novices who sing hymns and praise the Lord for the privilege of washing all the clothes of the Pope and the College of Cardinals except for the underwear which is washed in another room by old nuns who are blind and not liable to think sinful thoughts because of what they have in their hands and what I have in my own hand is what I shouldn’t have in the presence of a priest in the bed and for once in my life I resist the sin and turn on my side and go to sleep.

  Next day the priest finds a furnished room in the paper for six dollars a week and he wants to know if I can afford it till I get a job. We go to East Sixty-eighth Street and the landlady, Mrs. Austin, takes me upstairs to see the room. It’s the end of a hallway blocked off with a partition and a door with a window looking out on the street. There’s barely space for the bed and a small chest of drawers with a mirror and a table and if I stretch my arms I can touch the walls on both sides. Mrs. Austin says this is a very nice room and I’m lucky it wasn’t snapped up. She’s Swedish and she can tell I’m Irish. She hopes I don’t drink and if I do I’m not to bring girls into this room under any circumstances, drunk or sober. No girls, no food, no drink. Cockroaches smell food a mile away and once they’re in you have them forever. She says, Of course you never saw a cockroach in Ireland. There’s no food there. All you people do is drink. Cockroaches would starve to death or turn into drunks. Don’t tell me, I know. My sister is married to an Irishman, worst thing she ever did. Irishmen great to go out with but don’t marry them.

  She takes the six dollars and tells me she needs another six for security, gives me a receipt and tells me I can move in anytime that day and she trusts me because I came with that nice priest even if she’s not Catholic herself, that it’s enough her sister married one, an Irishman, God help her, and she’s suffering for it.

  The priest calls another taxi to take us to the Biltmore Hotel across the street from where we came out at Grand Central Station. He says it’s a famous hotel and we’re going to the headquarters of the Democratic Party and if they can’t find a job for an Irish kid no one can.

  A man passes us in the hallway and the priest whispers, Do you know who that is?

  I don’t.

  Of course you don’t. If you don’t know the difference between a towel and a bath mat how could you know that’s the great Boss Flynn from the Bronx, the most powerful man in America next to President Truman.

  The great Boss presses the button for the elevator and while he’s waiting he shoves a finger up his nose, looks at what he has on his fingertip and flicks it away on the carpet. My mother would call that digging for gold. This is the way it is in America. I’d like to tell the priest I’m sure De Valera would never pick his nose like that and you’d never find the Bishop of Limerick going to bed in a naked state. I’d like to tell the priest what I think of the world in general where God torments you with bad eyes and bad teeth but I can’t for fear he might go on about the rich Protestants from Kentucky and how I missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

  The priest talks to a woman at a desk in the Democratic Party and she picks up the telephone. She says to the telephone, Got a kid here . . . just off the boat . . . you got a high school diploma? . . . na, no diploma . . . well, whaddya expect . . . Old Country still a poor country . . . yeah, I’ll send him up.

  I’m to report on Monday morning to Mr. Carey on the twenty-second floor and he’ll put me to work right here in the Biltmore Hotel and aren’t I a lucky kid walking into a job right off the boat. That’s what she says and the priest tells her, This is a great country and the Irish owe everything to the Democratic Party, Maureen, and you just clinched another vote for the party if the kid here ever votes, ha ha ha.

  The priest tells me go back to the hotel and he’ll come for me later to go to dinner. He says I can walk, that the streets run east and west, the avenues north and south, and I’ll have no trouble. Just walk across Forty-second to Eighth Avenue and south till I come to the New Yorker Hotel. I can read a paper or a book or take a shower if I promise to stay away from the bath mat, ha ha. He says, If we’re lucky we might meet the great Jack Dempsey himself. I tell him I’d rather meet Joe Louis if that’s possible and he snaps at me, You better learn to stick with your own kind.

  At night the waiter at Dempsey’s smiles at the priest. Jack’s not here, Fawdah. He’s over to the Gawden checkin’ out a middleweight from New Joisey.

  Gawden. Joisey. My first day in New York and already people are talking like gangsters from the films I saw in Limerick.

  The priest says, My young friend here is from the Old Country and he’d prefer to meet Joe Louis. He laughs and the waiter laughs and says, Well, that’s a greenhorn talkin’, Fawdah. He’ll loin. Give him six months in this country and he’ll run like hell when he sees a darky. An’ what would you like to order, Fawdah? Little something before dinner?

  I’ll have a double martini dry and I mean dry straight up with a twist.

  And the greenhorn?

  He’ll have a . . . well, what’ll you have?

  A beer, please.

  You eighteen, kid?

  Nineteen.

  You don’t look it though it don’t matter nohow long as you with the fawdah. Right, Fawdah?

  Right. I’ll keep an eye on him. He doesn’t know a soul in New York and I’m going to settle him in before I leave.

  The priest drinks his double martini and orders another with his steak. He tells me I should think of becoming a priest. He could get me a job in Los Angeles and I’d live the life of Riley with widows dying and leaving me everything including their daughters, ha ha, this is one
hell of a martini excuse the language. He eats most of his steak and tells the waiter bring two apple pies with ice cream and he’ll have a double Hennessy to wash it down. He eats only the ice cream, drinks half the Hennessy and falls asleep with his chin on his chest moving up and down.

  The waiter loses his smile. Goddam, he’s gotta pay his check. Where’s his goddam wallet? Back pocket, kid. Hand it to me.

  I can’t rob a priest.

  You’re not robbing. He’s paying his goddam check and you’re gonna need a taxi to take him home.

  Two waiters help him to a taxi and two bellhops at the Hotel New Yorker haul him through the lobby, up the elevator and dump him on the bed. The bellhops tell me, A buck tip would be nice, a buck each, kid.