World Without End, Amen

by Jimmy Breslin

  “Are you? Where?”

  “Queens.”

  “Oh, Queens. Of course. How’d you get caught in there? Seeing the relatives here?”

  “I don’t even know. But I know it’s the last time.” Dermot gulped most of the new drink and did not gag.

  “Did you have to fight yourself?” Donahue said.

  “All hands were used,” Deirdre said.

  “Every lad,” the mother’s uncle said.

  “They miss himself somethin’ terrible,” she said, slapping the mother’s uncle on the back. “But we had to get him evacuated. For Jesus’ sake, they were going bloody crazy searchin’ for a wee dangerous gunman with a bad leg.”

  “Ah hah!” the mother’s uncle said. He was drinking all over the place. “Give ’em the warks with a Wabley!”

  “Liam been in?” she said to the bartender.

  “Which Liam?”

  “Liam Quigley.”

  “No.”

  “Has Pauline looked in, then?”

  “Which Pauline?”

  “Pauline Duddy.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll have to find them.”

  She sat on the barstool facing Dermot, with her back to three men. They were talking about shooting and killing.

  “You know.” He leaned on the bar and looked at the drink.

  “What?”

  He drank his drink.

  “My fucking head hurts,” he said. “Jesus Christ almighty, it’s a good thing they didn’t break it open. Christ, I got hit a couple of real whacks.”

  “You were fantastic,” she said.

  “And what did you say about it?” he said.

  She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “And you never said a word of thanks about how I tormented the eejits and got you out.”

  “I was too worried about myself.”

  She clapped her hands and laughed, with a cigarette sticking out of her mouth. He took the cigarette out of her mouth and kissed her. It started as the same kind of things she had done, but then right away he was pressing full on her mouth and her eyes closed and her mouth opened, and then she pulled away. Her head was on his chest. He held her left hand and ran his thumb over the top of it. It was cold and rough and red-spotted, but there was feeling coming out of it. He took a drag of her cigarette and held it up to her. She closed her eyes and took a long pull on it. They finished a drink and were into another without talking.

  “I’ve got to find them,” she said.

  “We got all day or all night, whichever it is now,” he said to her.

  “No, I’ve got to.”

  “What for?”

  “Because I’ve to meet a barrister. I’ve to be in court in Derry on Wednesday.”

  “What for?”

  “For the usual reasons. Justice. Fairness. Protection of the rights of society.”

  “You have to testify?”

  “In my own behalf.”

  “What for?”

  “Riotin’, that’s a serious thing here, you know. Major transgression.”

  “What rioting?” he asked.

  “Be so many I can’t even recall,” she said. “Let’s pass that on. Where are you going now that you’ve found out Belfast is so lovely?”

  “I’m going to see relatives in Bundoran.”

  “Bundoran, is it? Who is it you have there?”

  “My name. Davey.”

  “We’ve a Davey in Derry. Name of Finbar. Is that any of yours?”

  “It could be.”

  “He lives on Wellington Street. In the Bogside. It’d have to be him, you know. The Davey on Wellington Street is the only Davey I know of. In Derry the big names are Doherty, Quigley, and Harkins.”

  “Maybe I’ll look him up.”

  “Well, it could be on your way to Bundoran, Derry is. You could go right through it, you know.”

  “Then maybe I’ll look him up.”

  “Whichever,” Deirdre said. “Right now, I’ve to be goin’.” She put the glass down and stood up. He took out money for the bartender.

  Outside it was starting to rain. In an old taxicab, rain spilled down the inside of one window which was loose. They went back over the low bridge by the railroad station and came onto a street lined with undamaged shops. The cab let them off at a corner with a pub on it. The rain was heavy. The pub was closed. “Sunday, Sunday,” Deirdre said. “Come on, we’re just goin’ down here a couple of houses.” She started running down the side street. Lightning turned the sky yellow behind a white-gray rain and there was a huge thunderclap. They pushed into the doorway of a shop. Deirdre held his hand tight. Thunder, lightning, the millionth of a second, there is not time to be forgiven or beg. You go as you are. A policeman walks in security. He dies in the street with his blood as his penance. Lightning on a street far from home is different. It is a good way to get to Hell.

  Again a bolt of lightning exploded through the rain.

  “Christ’s sake, that was close. It must have hit the end of the street,” Dermot said.

  “In actual fact, it’s beautiful. It is these guns human beings carry around that frighten me. Ugly stupid things. The arrogance of the devil in them. I have life and death over you because I have this bloody gun. That is the sin of sins.”

  With a crash, the rain became hail. It barraged the street for minutes. They got back in the corner of the entranceway.

  “It must be comin’ down from sixty thousand feet,” she said.

  They stood together without talking while the hail became even stronger, turned into sleet, and came back to rain. The deep part of the rainstorm cut them off from everything, the two of them alone in the doorway. She began to hum, a high whine, the wet black hair against her white face.

  “When I was a wee girl I used to love rain like this. I’d stand waitin’ at the door for it to fill up the streets. We had no drainage, you know. The second it stopped I’d be out with my bicycle riding through the water. Dirty street water and I loved the splash it made.”

  “We used to sail sticks,” he said.

  She smiled and kept humming. “I could make the biggest splash with my bike because I used to hold one foot against the front tire and send water scootin’ out to the side.”

  She began humming again. With her wet black hair on her white face and humming her tune in her whine, he did not like it when the rain began to stop. She led him out of the doorway and down to the houses.

  She went through the gate of the third house. The front door was open. She called, “Hel-loo,” as she came into the dark house. Nobody answered. She snapped on a light in the front room. It was a room almost big enough for an American house. A low couch, pillows for sitting on the floor, and a table with a typewriter and a pile of books and papers. A Che Guevera poster on the wall. A big poster covering the wall from ceiling to the floor almost. The guy and his beard all in black, the rest of the poster bright red.

  “What’s he for?” Dermot asked.

  “Ah dunno. Do you not like it?”

  She had her head cocked a little and her eyes alive and her mouth just that little bit open, the way she did when she first came into the saloon.

  “He’s fine with me,” Dermot said. “I’m more worried about you. Get that coat off or we’ll both catch pneumonia.” He had his coat off, the inside of it damp on his hand. He reached for hers. She was unfastening the toggle buttons. She held her arm out and half turned away from him to help get the coat off. He kissed her through the wet hair on the back of her neck. He kissed her again on the side of the neck. She lifted her face, her eyes closed, he put a hand on her shoulder, the black sweater wet and cold from the rain-soaked coat, and she turned into him and the coat was on the floor and they were in each other’s arms kissing. He reeked of whisky, cigarette smoke, coal, and so did she. Beautiful bones under beautiful white skin, beautiful wet black hair. He held her tighter and kissed her more. She stopped and put her chin on his shoulder. He kept kissing her on the neck.

/>   “Actually, I’m uncomfortable wet,” she said.

  “What makes you think I’m going to leave your clothes on you?”

  She made a face like she was horrified. She smiled, kissed him, and stepped away. “I’m more afraid of bronchial pneumonia than bein’ ravaged.” She went upstairs and he could hear water running in a tub.

  “I was just wondering,” Dermot called up.

  “Wondering what?”

  “About the woman. Martin. If the kid had only done what I told him.”

  “We did our stint,” she said.

  “I just wish I could’ve stopped the goddammed kid from getting outside.”

  “You did your stint, you were fantastic and let’s get on to something better,” she said.

  The door upstairs closed. He went up and sat on the edge of a bed. In the room across the way the walls were covered with drawings kids had made in school. He threw his suit jacket on a chair. He sat until he heard moving in the bathroom. Water was running again. He went out in the hallway by the bathroom door. Inside she was humming in that whine.

  She came into the hallway with a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. She was in an old long blue robe. He reached for her and she ducked her head. He was going to pull her into the bedroom. He reached again.

  “You’re a fookin strangler!”

  “Come here.”

  “No, no, no. Bloody strangler, that’s what you are. Here, here you are. I drew a bath for you, you know.”

  He started tugging on her arm.

  “Oh,” she said, “I know what you want to do. You want me to take a bath with you. Is that not what you want?”

  The embarrassment was all over his face. When she saw it, her eyes widened and danced.

  “Oh, come, that’ll be super. We’ll bathe together.”

  In his embarrassment, he backed off without knowing he was doing it. She laughed and her finger came out and poked him in the stomach.

  “Do you still believe the Redemptorists?” she said.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Go on,” she said. “You don’t turn down hot water for anything. Go ahead. I’m goin’; nowhere.”

  She stepped past him toward the bedroom.

  “Worry over nothing,” she said. “We’ve all got good wartime morals here.”

  Before he got into the bathtub he took a toothbrush from the sink and covered it with toothpaste that tasted like ammonia. He worked on the teeth. The mucilage went away. He lowered himself into the tub. He wanted to get in, get right out, and then be with her. He thought about the blue robe opening from the waist, sliding open across long smooth thighs. The thought went all through him. He settled deeper into the water.

  11

  HE WOKE UP WITH the water lukewarm. He pulled the plug and got out. He had a towel around him when he heard the voices downstairs. Two, three different voices. A girl, not Deirdre, laughed. Dermot slapped his hand against the bathroom wall. Fuck it. He got dressed quickly and fished through a bureau just inside the bedroom until he found clean socks. He came downstairs. The ones who had come into the saloon on Leeson Street with Deirdre were sitting around. Dermot couldn’t remember the names. Deirdre introduced him again. Pauline was drinking wine on the floor. Liam, the smart one, was on the couch on one side of Deirdre. Next to her, on the other side, was a new one. He had one eye closed while he took a long drag on a cigarette. He had a sharp nose with a narrow face running down past it. He raised his head to exhale smoke. His eyes, set deep, darted away when Dermot looked at them. Across the room, at a cluttered table, a black-haired guy smoked while he scribbled on a notepad.

  “This is Ronald,” Deirdre said, introducing the one sitting next to her. Dermot did not like the way she introduced him.

  “Wash Belfast off you?” Ronald said.

  Dermot didn’t answer him. The one scribbling at the table waved a hand. “I’m Oliver Toolan, and if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to the root of a wee problem here.”

  “He’s our fearless solicitor,” Deirdre said.

  “With quite a bit of work to do,” Ronald said. He put his hand on Deirdre’s head.

  “I didn’t know Ronald was an Irish name,” Dermot said.

  “Must it?” Ronald said.

  Dermot didn’t answer him.

  “Want some?” Pauline said. She held up a bottle of red wine.

  “It’s too early or too late, I don’t know which,” Dermot said.

  “For our sakes, I hope it’s too late for Gerry to be traveling,” Ronald said.

  “Who?” Dermot asked.

  “Gerry Kelly, this is his house,” Deirdre said. “He teaches at University. He’s away to visit his father for the weekend.”

  “If he returns tonight hell be throwing half of us out of his bed, you know,” Ronald said.

  “Is this the headquarters?” Dermot asked.

  “Aye, this is our headquarters,” Ronald said.

  Dermot sat on the couch and put his head back. It went up against the poster of Che. He snapped forward.

  “Do you not like Che Guevara?” Ronald said.

  “What do I care.”

  “You leaped like you were petrified of even his picture,” Pauline said. They all laughed.

  “How could I like a fuck who was going to blow us up with missiles?”

  “America does not have any missiles?” Deirdre said.

  “Of course we do. And we should’ve hit this fuck right on the head with one of them, him and his fag friend Castro.”

  “Wait a minute, this is new, you know,” Ronald said. “Castro now is a homosexual in American lore?”

  “Castro’s got to be a fag,” Dermot said. “Doesn’t have a wife, doesn’t have any girl friends. Great big fuckin’ beard. Fuck, I could read. I never read a story about him and a girl. He was always with this fuck Che. Another fuckin’ beard. And the Russians handed them missiles. How do you like that? Communists give missiles to fags.”

  Ronald was laughing. “I think you’re more afraid of the beards than the missiles.” Pauline was slapping her hands on her thighs. Deirdre was looking past Ronald at Dermot. She was ready to bite.

  “Doesn’t the Church tell you to stay away from Communism?” Dermot said.

  “There’s no such thing as a Church any more,” Deirdre said. “There’s just a lot of men in black clothes livin’ in big stone houses. It was all very good when Christ started it, but like everything else, the thought was dispersed over the years.”

  “That’s your opinion,” Dermot said.

  “What kind of a church is it that stands by and allows wee children to get killed?” Deirdre said.

  “What do you mean by that?” Dermot said.

  “We’ve violence and degradation here for several reasons,” she said. “You have here in Northern Ireland a political union between a landed aristocracy and rich industrialists. In order to keep this political union intact, they must have ferment among the workers. Therefore, every thirty years or so, the people in the political union let sectarianism run through the streets of the working class. Each time somebody with minimal intelligence suggests that perhaps one way to remove sectarianism as an issue is to force the Catholic Church to give up its separate schools so the workers can join together, Catholic and Prod, and fight the true enemy, the rich unionists, each time this comes up, the bloody bishops rebel. They have their own political power in their churches and school halls. They’d much rather see the people kill each other than to give up their political power.”

  “Now that’s a lie,” Dermot said.

  “Is it now?” Deirdre said. “Read the history of your own nation. The Catholic bishops in the North took no stand on slavery because they deferred to the Catholic bishops in Louisiana and Virginia.”

  “Where do you get that from?”

  “From books in libraries,” Deirdre said.

  “Who wrote a book like that?” Dermot said. “A Communist had to write a book like that.”

>   “Now you sound like a policeman,” she said.

  “A policeman?” Ronald said.

  “A policeman protecting people like you from criminals,” Dermot said to him.

  “Policemen by themselves, one man at a time, are nice enough fellas, I guess, but as a group they’re, well, they’re policemen, you know,” Liam said.

  “Actually, the best instruments of oppression on earth,” Ronald said.

  “Shit. Get mugged and find out,” Dermot said.

  “Find out what?” Deirdre said. “Find out who they really are for? In Czechoslovakia the students’ rioted against the Russian troops. Who stopped them? Not the Russians. While the students who fought the Russians threw petrol bombs at their bloody tanks, the policemen, their very own Prague policemen, beat them unmercifully.”

  “That’s in Czechoslovakia. Who knows what they have there,” Dermot said.

  “Well, then what of Dublin?” Deirdre said. “In Dublin when people in need of housing squatted in some empty buildings who came after them with batons flying? Not the landlords. The Garda. Our own fine Garda. Batoning women holding wee children.”

  “Fascists,” Pauline said.

  “Brendan said it so lovely,” Deirdre said. “‘I’ve never seen a situation so dismal that the presence of a policeman couldn’t make it worse.’ ”

  “Go ask that kid and his father out in the street this morning,” Dermot said to Deirdre.

  “You weren’t acting as a policeman.”

  “What the hell do you think I was doing?”

  “You were a sensitive human being. There’s a vast difference.”

  “Bullshit,” Dermot said. He was irritated. She just couldn’t understand what had made him move at the soldier with the gun. “Get mugged and find out what you think about policemen,” he said.

  The lawyer was leaning back in his chair, stretching his arms. “Let’s get on with it now, Deirdre.”

  “I’m going,” Dermot said.