Frank McCourt - 'Tis

They love jazz and they’re like two mad professors in the living room, putting records on the phonograph, clicking their fingers to the beat, telling me all about the great musicians on this Benny Goodman record, Gene Krupa, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Benny himself. They tell me this was the greatest jazz concert of all time and the first time a black man was allowed on the Carnegie Hall stage. And listen to him, listen to Lionel Hampton, all velvet and glide, listen to him and Benny coming in, listen, and here comes Harry sending in a few notes to tell you watch out, I’m flying, I’m flying, and Krupa going bap-bap-bap-do-bap-de-bap, hands, feet going, sing sing sing, and the whole damn band wild, man, wild, and the audience, listen to that audience, outa their mind, man, outa their everlovin’ mind.

They play Count Basie, point their fingers and laugh when the Count hits those single notes, and when they play Duke Ellington they’re all over the living room clicking fingers and stopping to tell me, listen, listen to this and I listen because I never listened like this before and now I hear what I never heard before and I have to laugh with the Lennons when the musicians take passages from tunes and turn them upside down and inside out and put them back again as if to say, look, we borrowed your little tune awhile to play our own way but don’t worry, here it’s back again and you go hum it, honey, you sing that mother, man.

The Irish boarders complain this is just a lot of noise. Paddy Arthur McGovern says, Shure, yeer not Irish at all with that stuff. What about some Irish songs on that machine? What about a few Irish dance tunes?

The Lennons laugh and tell us their father left the bogs a long time ago. Danny says, This is America, men. This is the music. But Paddy Arthur pulls Duke Ellington off the phonograph and puts on Frank Lee’s Tara Ceilidhe Band and we sit around the living room, listening, tapping slightly, and not moving our faces. The Lennons laugh, and leave.

29

Sister Mary Thomas somehow found my new address and sent me a note to say it would be very nice if I came over and said good-bye to Mrs. Klein and Michael what’s left of him and to pick up two books I’d left under my bed. There’s an ambulance waiting outside the apartment house and upstairs Sister Mary Thomas is telling Mrs. Klein she has to put on her wig and, no, she can’t have a rabbi, they don’t have rabbis where she’s going and she’d be better off on her knees saying a decade of the rosary and praying for forgiveness, and down the hall Sister Beatrice is crooning to Michael what’s left of him and telling him a brighter day is dawning, that where he’s going there will be birds and flowers and trees and a risen Lord. Sister Mary Thomas calls down the hall, Sister, you’re wasting your time. He doesn’t understand a word you’re saying. But Sister Beatrice answers back, It doesn’t matter, Sister. He’s a child of the Lord, a Jewish child of the Lord, Sister.

He’s not Jewish, Sister.

Does it matter, Sister? Does it matter?

It matters, Sister, and I’d advise you to consult your confessor.

Yes, Sister, I will. And Sister Beatrice goes on with her cheerful words and hymns to Michael what’s left of him who may or may not be Jewish.

Sister Mary Thomas says, Oh, I nearly forgot your books. They’re under the bed.

She hands me the books and rubs her hands together as if to clean them. Don’t you know, she says, that Anatole France is on the Index of the Catholic Church and D. H. Lawrence was a completely depraved Englishman who is now howling in the depths of hell, the Lord save us all? If that’s what you’re reading at New York University I fear for your soul and I’ll light a candle for you.

No, Sister, I’m reading Penguin Island for myself and Women in Love for one of my classes.

She rolls her eyes to heaven. Oh, the arrogance of youth. I feel sorry for your poor mother.

There are two men in white coats at the door with a stretcher and they go down the hall for Michael what’s left of him. Mrs. Klein sees them and calls, Rabbi, Rabbi, help me in my hour, and Sister Mary Thomas pushes her back into her chair. They shuffle back down the hall, the men in white with Michael what’s left of him on the stretcher and Sister Bea-trice stroking the top of his head that looks like a skull. Alannah, alannah, she says in her Irish accent, sure there’s nothing left of you. But you’ll see the sky now and the clouds in it. She goes down with him in the elevator and I’d like to go myself to get away from Sister Mary Thomas and her remarks on the state of my soul and the terrible things I’m reading but I have to say good-bye to Mrs. Klein all dressed up in her wig and hat. She takes my hand, Take care of Michael what’s left of him, won’t you, Eddie?

Eddie. I feel a fierce pain in my heart because of this and a terrible memory of Rappaport and the laundry at Dachau and I wonder if I’ll ever know anything in the world but darkness. Will I ever know what Sister Beatrice promised Michael what’s left of him, birds, flowers, trees and a risen Lord?

What I learned in the army comes in useful at NYU. Never raise your hand, never let them know your name, never volunteer. Students just graduated from high school, eighteen years of age, raise their hands regularly to tell the class and the professor what they think. If professors look directly at me and ask questions I can never finish the answers with the way they always say, Oh, do I detect a brogue? After that I have no peace. Whenever an Irish writer is mentioned, or anything Irish, everyone turns to me as if I’m the authority. Even the professors seem to think I know all about Irish literature and history. If they say anything about Joyce or Yeats they look at me as if I am the expert, as if I should nod and confirm what they say. I nod all the time because I don’t know what else to do. If ever I shook my head in doubt or disagreement the professors would dig deeper with their questions and expose my ignorance for all to see, especially the girls.

It’s the same with Catholicism. If I answer a question they hear my accent and that means I’m a Catholic and ready to defend Mother Church to the last drop of my blood. Some professors like to taunt me by sneering at the Virgin Birth, the Holy Trinity, the celibacy of St. Joseph, the Inquisition, the priest-ridden people of Ireland. When they talk like that I don’t know what to say because they have the power to lower my grade and damage my average so that I won’t be able to follow the American dream and that might drive me to Albert Camus and the daily decision not to commit suicide. I fear professors with their high degrees and the way they might make me look foolish before the other students, especially the girls.

I’d like to stand up in those classes and announce to the world that I’m too busy to be Irish or Catholic or anything else, that I’m working day and night to make a living, trying to read books for my courses and falling asleep in the library, trying to write term papers with footnotes and bibliographies on a typewriter that betrays me with the letters “a” and “j” so that I have to go back and retype whole pages since it’s impossible to avoid “a” and “j,” falling asleep on subway trains all the way to the last stop so that I’m embarrassed I have to ask people where I am when I don’t even know what borough I’m in.

If I didn’t have red eyes and an Irish accent I could be purely American and I wouldn’t have to put up with professors tormenting me with Yeats and Joyce and the Irish Literary Renaissance and how clever and witty the Irish are and what a beautiful green country it is though priest-ridden and poor with a population ready to vanish from the face of the earth due to puritanical sexual repression and what do you have to say to that, Mr. McCourt?