World Without End, Amen

by Jimmy Breslin

The place was silent. Dermot swallowed the pint of stout. When he put the glass down, the old man with the flesh hanging from his neck said, “Tell me.”

  “Yes?”

  “Is Jimmy McManus’s ass still so fat?”

  The barman said, “The last time the fat fucker was in here, his wife come in after him and he told her to fuck off, he wasn’t leavin’. So she punched him right in the ballocks. He fuckin’ well moved then.”

  They spoke with straight faces. The barman reached out and started shaking hands. Dermot went under his coat and came out with the pistol. The old man reached for it.

  “You O’Neill?” Dermot said.

  “Aye.”

  O’Neill had a face like a cell wall. Gray hair was combed straight back. Dark-brown eyes looked right at Dermot but were seeing things that were a thousand miles away. The chin was square. When O’Neill stuck the chin out, the flesh under the chin grew taut. O’Neill seemed to know this. He kept pushing the chin out.

  He took the pistol and handed it to the kid. The movement of O’Neill’s hand, deliberate, nearly exaggerated in its slowness, was familiar to Dermot. The kid with O’Neill shook like he had been in an accident. From drink and no sleep and excitement, Dermot guessed. The kid fumbled the pistol under his suit jacket. He went past Dermot without looking and walked out the door.

  O’Neill lifted his glass. A little of the pint dripped onto the cuff of his jacket.

  “Goddammit,” O’Neill said. He put the glass down and took out a handkerchief and carefully wiped the cuff. The jacket was gray tweed which once was good.

  He put the handkerchief away and picked up the glass. He stared at Dermot over the glass. Dermot knew the style by heart. He held out his glass for another pint.

  “How long’d they have you for?” Dermot asked.

  “Seven years. The Crumlin Road jail. Four the first time, three more in 1960.”

  “Rough.”

  “It’s a cold place, that.”

  He stepped back from the bar. “I’m best gone from here now.”

  “Take care,” Dermot said.

  O’Neill stared, the eyes not blinking, and he nodded and walked out. Dermot had seen a kid named Ryan in court one day who could have been the guy’s younger brother. The kid Ryan had held up a doctor in his house on 110th Street in Forest Hills. In the middle of the holdup the dry-cleaning man came to the door. This kid Ryan answered the door, paid the dry-cleaning man four dollars, and shut the door as if nothing were going on. If the dry-cleaning man had said one word out of line he would have had his head blown off. When Irish eyes are smiling. Somebody should do a song about Irish with cuckoo eyes. Dagger eyes.

  When the old man left, Dermot asked who he was. “That man is the Assistant Chief of Brigade Staff, Second Battalion, Provisional Brigade, IRA,” the barman said.

  “What does he do with a job like that?” Dermot asked.

  “He does what the job requires,” the barman said.

  “He arranges funerals for fuckin’ policemen,” the man in the plaid cap said.

  Dermot got up and walked to the door and looked out the window. In the doorway directly across the street from the saloon entrance, a guy of about twenty leaned in a doorway with his hands in the back pockets of his dungarees. A cigarette came straight out of his mouth. He looked up the street at the Falls Road. On the sidewalk in front of the doorway next to the saloon, two women stood and talked. The heaviness made their cloth coats, very old coats, stretched and shiny across their rears.

  A little boy was in the middle of the street. He had long hair that was in knots as much as it was curly. He wore an imitation-leather zipper jacket. Short pants ended at the tops of his thighs. Black rubber boots flopped against his legs. His legs were thin and dirt-streaked. He ran up to a rock and kicked it, the right leg coming across the left in a soccer kick. A dog with a rib cage showing through a black coat trotted after the rock, picked it up, and stood in the street trying to chew the wet rock.

  The day had turned into a haze that was almost a drizzle. Nobody else was out on Leeson Street. But feet hung from every doorway. Feet in ripped sneakers, shoes that once were the mother’s; feet in rain boots, feet in low shoes with dirty ankle socks. As you looked up the street in the haze, the doorways and the feet sticking out of them—three and four and five pairs of feet sticking out of each of the tiny doorways—started to come together. There was the feeling that if the sun came out, the houses would empty and you’d suffocate on the street from the smell of all the people and their clothes.

  Dermot turned back into the saloon. Nobody was talking. The barman rubbed his hand over the side of his face, the heavy beard scratched loudly. The man in the plaid cap put his pint glass down; it made the noise of a thrown rock. The mother’s uncle swallowed. The sound of the swallow started in the back of his gums came next from the top of his throat, ended with a clunk in the bottom of his throat. Everybody made noise breathing. At first, it sounded like four or five people hurt in an emergency room, but as you listened it grew to a steam pump. Dermot tried to talk to the old man nearest him. He had an enamel insignia held to the lapel of his suit jacket with a safety pin. The safety pin kept the lapel bunched up. The insignia was a green disk with a silver harp on it. Dermot asked the old man what the insignia was for. Long, watery eyes came up from the stout and focused on the lapel. “Ah dunno,” he said. “I just found it on the road and I got a friend to run a wee pin through it and I wear it.”

  Which ended that conversation. The sound of breathing rose again. Dermot was finishing the pint when there were voices outside and the door opened and people came in.

  “Hel-lo,” the first one said. He had long sideburns and curly hair and he was slouched over, but he walked quickly.

  “Ah, there’s Jerry,” the one who came in next said. The barman nodded to her. She swung as she walked, her hands stuck into the pockets of a navy-blue wool parka. Black hair fell behind her into the hood. Rain and mist had trickled color through her face. She was in her early twenties and she was tall. She came into the space next to Dermot and she was so busy saying hello to each of the old men, her eyes filled with energy, head moving, mouth in a smile that was almost a laugh, that she did not notice how everybody was looking at her. She went from one to the other and now the eyes looked right at him. Her chin made a little half-smile. It is the same facial motion you use in New York when you are asked to do something hard and you say, “Gee, I don’t know.” In Ireland, it is the way they greet. somebody they don’t know.

  Another girl, thirty probably, with straggly light hair and a few freckles on her forehead had come in too. She was with a guy who was much younger. He stood back against the wall, his wet hair hanging into the thick glasses he wore.

  “Gentlemen,” the one with the sideburns said. He rubbed his hands and looked around at everybody.

  “Liam?” the bartender said to him. Liam looked at the ones with him. “Vodka,” the dark-haired girl said. The other girl and Liam ordered the same. The dark-haired girl turned around. “Damien?”

  The one against the wall shook his head no.

  “Oh, come on now, Damien.”

  “I don’t prefer anything.”

  She turned her back to him and picked up her glass of vodka. “Damien, are you not comfortable here?”

  Damien muttered something as he was turning his head to look at the door. Dermot didn’t hear what he said, but the girl did and she broke into a laugh. Her laugh was like a hand reaching around the room and poking people. Everyone laughed with her.

  “What did he say?” Dermot asked her.

  She turned to Damien. His face was solemn and his eyes very wide. Between syllables of her laugh she said, “Damien, tell the gentleman what you just said.”

  “They’ll have our balls,” Damien said.

  “Damien is scared to death of being castrated by the Prods,” she said.

  “They will, too,” Damien said.

  The barman was almost smiling
. “They think they can do it.”

  “Isn’t he safe on this street?” Dermot asked.

  The mother’s uncle made a noise. “There’s no safety around here,” he said.

  “Fookin’ millions of Prods all around us,” Damien said.

  “And they could come swarmin’ down the block just to castrate you,” the dark-haired girl said.

  “I got nothin’ else,” Damien said. He was holding himself. “If they take it off me, I just as soon go kill my fookin’ self.”

  The dark-haired girl exploded into more laughter. “He means it actually,” she said to Dermot.

  Damien tapped her on the arm.

  “Do ye not have a few bob, Deirdre?”

  “Yer fookin’ not on,” she said.

  “I’ve a few quid,” Liam said.

  “Ah, that’s very good,” Damien said.

  “Ye are a fookin’ greedy bastard, so ye are,” Liam said.

  Dermot said to the girl, “Where do you come from?”

  “Derry. We’re not from Belfast.”

  “I notice you don’t talk like the other people here.” They spoke with more lilt than the Belfast people in the bar.

  “Derry people speak differently because Derry should be the capital of Donegal, and that is part of the Republic of Ireland,” she said. She had very little accent as she spoke. From going to schools, Dermot thought. She pronounced “fuck,” the one most used word in Northern Ireland, as “fook,” which is how Dermot had heard it in Dublin. “You see Belfast is good Unionist,” she said. “Good Scottish Presbyterian. You can go to a wee little town out in the country and people talk with more Belfast than anything else. Then you can go to another wee little town that are only eleven mile away and the accent changes considerably and you would think you were in one of the counties in the South.”

  Dermot could feel he was looking at her too much, so he held his hand out to Liam and said, “Say, my name is Dermot Davey.”

  “Ah hah,” he said.

  “I’m just here from New York having a drink. This is my mother’s uncle, Mister James Meehan. He lives near here.”

  “Ah hah,” Liam said. He nodded pleasantly, his eyes were friendly. He went no further.

  The dark-haired girl took out a box of cigarettes, pulled a few up, and reached past Dermot to offer them to the mother’s uncle and the old man with the pin. The man with the pin took one. He said thank you, and she gave him the little nod and smile. She offered one to the barman, who said no, and then held out the pack to Dermot.

  He grabbed one and said thanks and she gave the little nod and half-smile and turned to the people with her. They all were smoking. He held out his lighter for her, but she didn’t notice it. She was striking a box match.

  “How’s your drink?” Dermot asked.

  She held out the glass. “I believe it’s brilliant.”

  “Have another one then,” he said.

  Her eyebrows raised and her eyes looked right over the glass at him while she drained the glass and held it out to the barman.

  Dermot asked Liam if he’d care to have a drink.

  “No, I have too much to do,” he said. He waved his hand at the others. “They’ll keep you busy, however.”

  The four of them were wearing small red-and-gold insignias. Dermot leaned over to look at the one pinned to the girl’s coat. The insignia was made of a gold profile of a man’s head. The lettering under it said 1870—NEVER! The man, bald and with fierce eyebrows, looked exactly like Lenin.

  “Who’s that?” Dermot said.

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t know?”

  “I tell you the truth, to me it looks like Lenin.”

  “Well, it is.”

  Dermot pulled his head back. “What do you have that for?”

  “Labour Party,” she said.

  “Oh, for a second there I was going to say—”

  “Say what?”

  “Well, what am I supposed to think, I just come here from New York and I see somebody wearing a pin with Lenin on it.”

  “If I were civilized,” she said, pronouncing each word slowly, “I would think that the person with the pin was interested in working-men and -women.”

  “Yeah, but the Labour Party isn’t the Communist Party.”

  “Ah dunno, I guess you could call us Communists. Although we’re a bit more radical than Communists, you know.”

  Larry put his hand on Dermot’s arm and said, “I want to take a walk around and look up a few people.”

  “Well, go ahead.”

  “Don’t you want to come?”

  “I’m fine here,” Dermot said. He poked Larry’s father.

  “Oh, I can see you’re interested in the old man here,” Larry said. He was smiling. His father chuckled.

  “No, I just want to talk to her.”

  “Don’t even try,” Larry said. “We’re always arguin’ with them. All they do, the whole fuckin’ lot of them, is talk, talk, talk. Every time we advocate doin’ something all they want to do is talk about it.”

  Larry walked out, and Dermot turned back to the girl. He tapped her on the back. “Let me ask you something.”

  She was watching his face closely. “Look at you, you look like you’re afraid the pin is going to bite you. If there’s any way to scare an American to death it’s mention the word ‘Communist.’ ”

  “I’m just wondering,” he said. The drink was pushing the words along, but he kept going. “I was just wondering if you understand Communism.”

  “Understand what about it?” Her eyes were wide and her mouth was parted just a little. Even with the heavy parka coat she had on, you could almost see her body coiled.

  The drink pushed the words out again. He pointed to the old man with the harp insignia pinned to his lapel. “Well,” he said, “he’s wearing an insignia and he doesn’t know what it stands for.”

  She let out a shriek.

  “She reminds me of the woman, just got killed by the Gaelic football field,” the mother’s uncle said, pointing at her. “Shot her right through the top of the head, everybody said they used an airplane to do it.”

  “When was this?” she said to him.

  “Oh, this past riot. They had a pillbox on the field and they shot Lewis guns all night.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Yep, used to shoot all night. One night here the wee child run out of the house onto the field. The women went chasin’ after the wee child. The woman was bendin’ over to pick up the wee child when they opened up with the Lewis gun. Shot her right through the top of the head while she was bendin’ over.”

  “That’s fine, that’s fine,” she said, taking her drink.

  “You see, when she bent over the shot went through and laid her head all open. But we thought when we first seen it, the head laid open right to the brain, you know, we thought they’d shot her from a bloody plane.”

  “That’s fine, that’s fine,” she said.

  “Bloody Black and Tans,” he said.

  “They’re the worst, I hate them myself,” she said. She smiled. That seemed to take them off the other subject, so Dermot said to her that Leeson Street seemed like a crowded place to him.

  “In this immediate area there are one thousand houses,” she said. “Best put it at two thousand couples in the houses. Because the people are Catholic, it doesn’t take a wizard to estimate thirty thousand people live right around here.”

  “How can anybody live in places this small?” he said.

  “And who informed you they were living?” she said.

  “I guess they’re not,” he said.

  “Neither are your Negroes in America,” she said. Dermot felt a little burn run through him.

  “The people here keep having children?” he said.

  “Aye, children, children, children,” she said.

  “Nobody practices birth control?”

  She laughed. “Birth control? With Father McPriest breathing down your bloody neck?”

/>   “Why don’t they tell the priests to get lost?”

  “Some of the women would love to,” she said.

  “Then why don’t they?”

  “They wouldn’t know what to do after that.”

  “Wouldn’t know what?”

  “They don’t have a clue, not a clue,” she said.

  “Get somebody to tell them.”

  “Who’s going to tell, a girl? Her mother who had nine?”

  “Go out and buy a woman’s magazine, it’s all in there, isn’t it?”

  “The people here live on eleven pound a week,” she said. “A magazine costs two bob. Most of the people here see meat once a week. Every week they come down to the last day and a half, probably the last two days, with no food in the house. No food for anybody. Perhaps a few scraps for the children. So now, who is going to spend two bob to learn how to commit a mortal sin?”

  “Are you a Catholic?” Dermot asked.

  She looked at him very coolly. “Can you not be a Catholic and a Communist too?” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t know, leave me alone, I’m here from New York and I’m just having a drink, and if I say six more words, you’re going to claw my eyes out. Let me finish my drink and get out of here alive.”

  “Ah, we’re not that mean,” she said, smiling. She was relaxed.

  “What brings you here from Derry?” he asked.

  “Questions, questions, you Yanks ask personal questions every half second. Next you’ll be asking me what I do for a job.”

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  She clapped her hands and laughed.

  “And how much money do I get and what address do I live at and what kind of car do I drive?”

  She was saying it with some lightness, but he was still that half step behind her. He motioned to her to drink up.

  They didn’t talk for a while. Then she said, “Well, I can tell you what type of employment I’m not allowed to have.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Can’t teach.”

  “Because you’re a Communist?”

  “Because I wrote a poem in my last semester at Queens and the Bishop shit himself when he read it.”

  “Then teach in other schools,” he said.

  “Not if you’re Catholic. You can only teach in Catholic schools.”