Sorj Chalandon - Return to Killybegs

We spent a long time talking. Hours. He gripped my head between his big hands, trying to get through to me. He was going to sign the pact. His surrender. He would go back to be with our mother. He would send those of our family who could be saved far away. He asked me to do the same. I said things I shouldn’t have said, dead men’s words. I shouted that a Meehan didn’t leave his country. He laughed viciously.

— My country? What country? And what is Ireland doing for us? What has it done for us, tell me? Your problem, Tyrone, is that you look at the world from the end of your street. When an old man winks at you crossing the road, or a kid admires you, when a door opens, you think that the entire population is behind you. Bullshit, wee brother! What is Republican Ireland, Tyrone Meehan? Two hundred Belfast streets and a few measly nationalist areas in Derry, Newry, Strabane? Scraps of villages! The Protestants are the majority in their Ulster and that’s the way it’ll stay. Dublin is no longer on our side. The Irish hunt us down with the same hatred as the British. We spend our time behind bars and when we get out, we can only cry in misery. And for what? Who is there to hear our cries? What country would defend us? Germany? Fantastic! What a great political lesson! Support everything our enemy fights? Is that it? The dance with the devil till the end of time?

I was crying, in distress and in rage.

— Open your eyes, Tyrone! Wake up! It’s not a battle that we’ve just lost, it’s the war. Our father’s war. It’s over, wee soldier! Over, do you understand? We are a few thousand trapped men surrounded by billions of people who are deaf to our cause. We have to give in, Tyrone, save what we have left — your life, our lives. I want to see Áine wearing a dress that doesn’t shame her for once. Do you understand that, Tyrone? I want laughter, new faces, streets without soldiers. I want nothing more to do with what we are, wee brother. Ireland has worn me out. She’s asked too much of me. She’s demanded too much. I’m sick of our flag, our heroes, our martyrs. I don’t want to exhaust myself any longer just to be worthy of them. I’m giving up, Tyrone. And I know that you will, too. One day, when you’ve suffered one wound too many. I’m going to breathe. Do you understand? I’m going to live like a passer-by on the street. A nobody. A hero of today. Someone who brings his wages home on a Saturday and goes to Communion on Sunday with his head held high.

My brother left Crumlin in October 1957. With my mother’s blessing, he sent Brian and Niall to the United States to an uncle on the Finnegan side.

In Easter 1960 when I was let out, he was a cop in New York and married to Deirdre McMahon, an emigrant from County Mayo. For St Patrick’s Day that year he marched along Fifth Avenue in uniform with his Irish colleagues, behind the green banner of the Emerald Society, an organization supporting Irish-American cultural understanding. Mother showed me a picture of him, posing before a wooden harp. With the tip of her finger, she stroked his face, his cap, his foreign uniform. She was neither proud nor sad, she was just empty. I put my arm around her shoulder.

I was thirty-six. I had been promoted to IRA lieutenant and married Sheila Costello. Jack, our son and only child, was born a year later, on 14 August 1961. Along with him and wee Kevin I was the only Meehan man left, surrounded by four girls. I knew that only my mother was holding us together. One day, after her death, Róisín would leave. And then Mary. And Áine. Wee Kevin and Sara would follow one of them like a mother. But already, while my mother was praying at the top of her voice, my sisters would avoid me so they could talk about Australia and New Zealand. Without ever admitting it to me, Áine was already dreaming of moving to England.

The Border Campaign was intended to liberate regions of Northern Ireland so as to lay the foundations for a provisional Republic. It was a failure. Once again, everything had to be rebuilt. Our army was in disarray, our movement in tatters, and our courage likewise. When the IRA campaign officially ceased in February 1962, eight of our men had been killed, six policemen had met their ends, and only our rivers ran free.

— Who am I sitting next to, Josh or Father Joseph Byrne?

— Who do you want to meet, Tyrone?

I smiled.

— It’s you who wanted to speak to me.

— So that would be Father Byrne.

— I’m in need of a friend, not a priest.

Josh made no reply. He had changed. I had left a chirping blackbird, a pixie from our forests, a face destroyed with pockmarks. Now I found a sickly and shrunken monk in a black habit before me. And I felt even older.

We were in St Mary’s of the Visitation, in the wooden front pew, facing the altar. Everything had been completely refurbished. I hated the pink fuchsia covering the choir stalls. There were no nooks or crannies, to escape the light. Josh looked straight in front of him, murmuring, playing with the white cord on his habit.

— You’re shaking, Tyrone.

— I’m thirsty.

Silence.

— Jesus wouldn’t have been able to embark on anything without Judas.

— Are you talking to me?

— To us.

I watched him. He had joined his hands.

— What are you looking for?

— I came to help you, Tyrone.

— Who told you I need help?

— You. That’s why you have come.

I looked behind us. A young girl was praying close to the entrance.

— Who sent you?

He smiled.

— The child that you were. It was he who sent me.

— Why don’t you drop it! There’s only you and me here.

Josh closed his eyes. Always that smile, the same he’d had when we were boys, the smile that said he knew more than me.

— Give me your forgiveness, Josh, and let’s be done with it.

He seemed surprised.

— Is that not what you had me come here for, Father Byrne?

— I’m not a dispenser of absolution, Tyrone.

— You’re a priest. Your job is to save my soul, not my skin.

— How you must have suffered, my friend.

He knelt down. I copied him, my knees hurting.

— I’m not going to stay like this. Say what you have to say.

He opened his eyes.

— I always knew that you were the bravest among us, and also the most loyal.

Now he was looking at me.

— It was in order to test that bravery and loyalty that Our Father gave you the gift of treason, Tyrone.

I stared straight ahead.

— Stop that, I told you.

— Your country needed to be betrayed as you needed to betray.

— Josh, you bastard, stop it.

— Jesus asked Judas Iscariot to leave the Last Supper, do you remember? He said to him, ‘That thou doest, do quickly.’

I got up.

— I’m leaving, Josh.

He placed a hand on my arm.

— As Christ had need of Iscariot, your country needed you.

I shook him off.

— The betrayed and the betrayer suffer equally, Tyrone. You can love Ireland by dying, or love her by betraying.

I looked at him.

— What are you saying?

— You betrayed to shorten this war, Tyrone. So that your country’s suffering could end.

I had rage within me.

— What do you know about my betrayal, Josh? What do you know about it, Father Byrne? You’ve read the papers, is that it?

— I know you.

— You know nothing! The last time you saw me, I was gathering turf and was fifteen years old!

— But you are fifteen years old, Tyrone.

I dropped back down on the bench. Josh was spouting monastery drivel. I was right to have been worried. The wee pixie had been given a rough ride by life, by the Church, by all the saints. He no longer looked like anything living. His robe was too big, too black. His feet were bare though it was winter. He had the silent eyes of a madman. His hair had fallen out, and his teeth. I had the impression that death was tugging at his sleeve.