Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 by Bartholomew Gill

nor the rash of broken windows, nor the trashing of the jakes will continue,’ if I ‘bring them on board,’ says he.
    “ ‘In what capacity?’ says I.
    “ ‘Protectors,’ says he. ‘People do stuff, you tell us, we fi?x ’em.’
    “Says I, ‘More easily said than done.’ No geniuses, they were at a loss. ‘For you to fi?x yourselves.’ I threw them out and rang up your cohorts over at the subst a
    tion.”
    “Immigrants?”
    “Nothing of the kind. Irish as you and me, apart from the bangles and rings in their ears and noses. The one had a bloody big stud—like a tie tack—through his tongue. Made him lisp.”
    “Tall fella? Blond with broad shoulders?”
    “Nah. More like a midget, he was. Dark. The one with him was blond with broad shoulders, though he didn’t open his mouth.”
    “Anything in his nose?”
    “Snot, I should imagine. But I didn’t check.”
    McGarr explained what he wanted, and that it was offi?cial. “Won’t take but a sec.”
    “I’ll go up, then, and see who’s stealing from me aboveground.”
    McGarr thumbed on the machine and took Flood’s chair, wishing he’d thought to carry a drink down with him.
    The video began with a blank screen and pipe-an d fi? ddle music, some traditional tune McGarr had heard before but couldn’t name.
    As the screen brightened, Newgrange—the ancient passage grave on the banks of the Boyne near Slane— appeared, and the voice-over declared:
    “This is what the Irish were capable of building without metal tools or the wheel fi?ve hundred years before the oldest pyramids were constructed in Egypt. The structure is so perfectly aligned with the sun that only on one day per year does sunlight strike the central altar—on winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. In more than fi?fty-three hundred years, never has the massive corbeled stone roof allowed a drop of water to penetrate the sanctum.”
    In travelogue fashion, the video went on to describe the high points of Celtic civilization: brehon law, Beaker people pottery, La Tène design, the “proto-Arthurian values of chivalry and gentilesse, as deve l oped within the Fianna, which was the group of legendary heroes who were said to have ruled the Ir e land of Celtic myth.
    “Also democracy—rule by the consensus of the clan. The Celts had a way of dealing with each other on a daily basis that was based on warmth, clan solidarity, and trust. The most extreme punishment that could be meted out to an offender was not death. It was expulsion from the community—to be declared pariah.”
    The voice was what McGarr thought of as “mid-Atlantic,” one that could not be identifi?ed as demo n strably Irish, British, or North American. It was, however, surely urbane, and McGarr wondered if the entire piece had been lifted from some television show run on the BBC.
    “But Christianity, which arrived in the latter part of the fi?fth century, proved disastrous to Ireland,” the voice continued, noting that early Christian converts were encouraged to renounce the world and retreat to abbeys, monasteries, and other sanctuaries. “This alien movement not only usurped and supplanted the a n cient religion of Ireland’s native Celts, it also led to the central religious division of the country that obtains to this day.
    “The most immediate deleterious effect was the e s capist teachings of early missionaries, their advocacy of converts becoming ‘exiles for Christ.’ ”
    Family, clan, and nonreligious community ties su f fered—the video continued—such that 350 years later, when Vikings began raiding the Irish coast, there was no effective militia in place to defend the country.
    “Abbeys, monasteries, and churches had waxed fat, amassing great wealth, while secular institutions, which might have countered the Viking threat, were all but absent.
    “Even after seventy years of sustained Viking pilla g ing, Christianity with its otherworldly ethos could not bring forth a common defense.