Mario Llosa - The Dream of the Celt

When he heard the door close behind him, he lay facedown on the narrow cot and closed his eyes. It would have been good to feel the cold water from that spout invigorating his skin and turning it blue with cold. In Pentonville the convicts, except for those condemned to death, could bathe with soap once a week in that stream of cold water. And the conditions in the cells were passable. On the other hand, he recalled with a shudder the filth in Brixton, where he had been covered with lice and fleas that swarmed in the mattress on his cot and covered his back, legs, and arms with bites. He attempted to think about that, but over and over he kept remembering the disgusted face and hateful voice of the blond clerk decked out like a dandy whom Maître Gavan Duffy had sent instead of coming in person to give him the bad news.

Regarding his birth—on September 1, 1864, in Doyle’s Cottage, Lawson Terrace, in Sandycove, a Dublin suburb—he remembered nothing, of course. Even though he always knew he had seen the light of day in the capital of Ireland, for much of his life he took for granted what his father, Captain Roger Casement, who had served with distinction for eight years in the Third Regiment of Light Dragoons in India, had inculcated in him: his true birthplace was County Antrim, the heart of Ulster, the Protestant and pro-British Ireland where the Casement line had been established since the eighteenth century.

Roger was brought up and educated as an Anglican in the Church of Ireland, like his sister and brothers, Agnes—whom the family called Nina—Charles, and Tom, all three older than he, but since earliest childhood he had intuited that in matters of religion not everything in his family was as harmonious as in other areas. Even for a very young child it was impossible not to notice that his mother, when she was with her sisters and Scots cousins, behaved in a way that seemed to hide something. He would discover what it was when he was an adolescent: even though Anne Jephson had apparently converted to Protestantism in order to marry his father, behind her husband’s back she continued to be a Catholic (“a Papist,” Captain Casement would have said), going to confession, hearing Mass, and taking communion, and in the most jealously guarded of secrets, he himself had been baptized a Catholic at the age of four, during a vacation trip he and his siblings took with their mother to Rhyl, in the north of Wales, to visit their maternal aunts and uncles.

During those years in Dublin, or the times they spent in London and Jersey, Roger had absolutely no interest in religion, though during the Sunday ceremony he would pray, sing, and follow the service with respect in order not to displease his father. His mother had given him piano lessons, and he had a clear, tuneful voice for which he was applauded at family gatherings when he sang old Irish ballads. What really interested him at that time were the stories Captain Casement, when he was in a good humor, recounted to him and his brothers and sister. Stories about India and Afghanistan, especially his battles with Afghans and Sikhs. Those exotic names and landscapes, those travels crossing forests and mountains that concealed treasures, wild beasts, predatory animals, ancient peoples with strange customs and savage gods, fired his imagination. At times the other children were bored by the stories, but young Roger could have spent hours, even days, listening to his father’s adventures along the remote frontiers of the Empire.

When he learned to read, he liked to become involved in the stories of great navigators, the Vikings, Portuguese, Englishmen, and Spaniards who had plowed the world’s seas, vaporizing myths claiming that once you reached a certain point, the ocean water began to boil, chasms opened, and monsters appeared whose gullets could swallow entire ships. Yet if he had to choose between adventures listened to or read, Roger always preferred to hear them from his father’s mouth. Captain Casement had a warm voice and animatedly described in a rich vocabulary the jungles of India or the crags and boulders of the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan, where his company of light dragoons was once ambushed by a mass of turbaned fanatics whom the brave British soldiers confronted first with bullets, then with bayonets, and finally with fists and bare hands until they had forced their attackers to withdraw in defeat. But it wasn’t feats of arms that most dazzled young Roger’s imagination, it was the journeys, the opening of paths through landscapes where white men had never walked, the physical prowess of enduring and conquering the obstacles of nature. His father was entertaining but very severe and did not hesitate to whip his children when they misbehaved, even Nina, the little girl, for this was how mistakes were punished in the army, and he had confirmed that only this form of punishment was effective.

Though he admired his father, the parent Roger really loved was his mother, a slender woman who seemed to float instead of walk, who had light eyes and hair, whose extremely soft hands when they tousled his curls or caressed his body at bath time filled him with happiness. One of the first things he would learn—at the age of five or six—was that he could run into his mother’s arms only when the captain was not nearby. His father, true to the Puritan tradition of his family, did not believe in coddling children, since this made them soft in the struggle to survive. In his father’s presence, Roger kept his distance from the pale, delicate Anne Jephson. But when the captain went out to meet friends at his club or take a walk, the boy would run to her and she would cover him with kisses and caresses. At times Charles, Nina, and Tom protested: “You love Roger more than us.” Their mother assured them she did not, she loved them all the same, except Roger was very little and needed more attention and affection than the older ones.

When his mother died, in 1873, Roger was nine years old. He had learned to swim and won all the races with children his age and even older ones. Unlike Nina, Charles, and Tom, who shed many tears during the wake and burial of Anne Jephson, Roger did not cry even once. During those gloomy days, the Casement household was transformed into a funeral chapel filled with people dressed in mourning who spoke in low voices and embraced Captain Casement and the four children with contrite faces, pronouncing words of condolence. For many days he couldn’t say a word, as if he had fallen mute. He responded to questions with movements of his head, or gestures, and remained serious, his head lowered and his gaze lost, even at night in the darkened room, unable to sleep. From then on and for the rest of his life, from time to time in dreams the figure of Anne Jephson would come to visit him with that inviting smile, opening her arms where he would huddle, feeling protected and happy with those slim fingers on his head, his back, his cheeks, a sensation that seemed to defend him against the evils of the world.

His brothers and sister were soon comforted. And Roger too, apparently. Because even though he had recovered his speech, this was a subject he never mentioned. When a relative spoke to him about his mother, he fell silent and remained enclosed in his muteness until the other person changed the subject. In his sleeplessness, he would sense the face of the unfortunate Anne Jephson in the dark, looking at him sadly.

The one who was not comforted and never became himself again was Captain Roger Casement. Since he wasn’t effusive and Roger and the other children had never seen him showering his mother with gallantries, the four of them were surprised at the cataclysm his wife’s disappearance meant for their father. Always so meticulous, he dressed carelessly now, let his beard grow, scowled, his eyes filled with resentment as if his children were to blame for his being a widower. Shortly after Anne’s death, he decided to leave Dublin and sent the four children to Ulster, to Magherintemple House, the family estate, where from then on their paternal great-uncle, John Casement, and his wife, Charlotte, would take charge of their upbringing. Their father, as if wanting to have nothing to do with them, went to live twenty-five miles away, at the Adair Arms Hotel in Ballymena where, as Great-Uncle John let slip occasionally, Captain Casement, “half mad with grief and loneliness,” dedicated his days and his nights to spiritualism, attempting to communicate with the dead woman through mediums, cards, and crystal balls.