woman sobbed. "My poor sister. Cancer. Her dead next month! Ah, God, can you spare a penny!"
I felt John's arm tighten to mine. I looked at the woman, split, one half of me saying, "A penny is all she asks!" the other half doubting: "Gah, she knows that by underasking you'll overpay]"
I gasped. "You're . . ."
Why, I thought, you're the woman who was just back by the hotel with the babe!
"I'm sick!" She pulled back in shadow. "And asking for the half dead!"
You've stashed the babe somewhere, I thought, and put on a green instead of gray shawl and run the long way 'round to cut us off.
"Cancer ..." One bell in her tower, but she knew how to toll it. "Cancer ..."
John cut in crisply. "Pardon, but aren't you the same woman he just paid at the hotel?''
The woman and I were both shocked at this rank insubordination.
The woman's face crumpled. I peered closer. And God, it was a different face. How admirable! She knew what actors know, sense, learn: that by thrusting, yelling, all fiery-lipped arrogance, one moment you are one character; then by sinking away, crumpling the mouth and eyes, in pitiful collapse, you are another. The same woman, yes, but the same face and role? No, no!
"Cancer," she whispered.
John lost my arm, and the woman found my cash. As if on roller skates, she whisked around the corner, sobbing happily.
"Lord!" In awe, I watched her go. "She's studied Stanislavsky. In one book he says that squinting one eye and twitching one lip to the side will disguise you. And what if it was true? Everything she said? And she's lived with it so long she can't cry anymore, and so has to playact in order to survive? What if?"
"Not true," said John. "But by God, she gets a role in Moby Dick\ Can't you see her down at the docks, in the fog, when the Pequod sails, wailing, mourning? Yes!"
Wailing, weeping, I thought, somewhere in the chimney-smoking dark.
"Now," said John, "on to O'Connell Bridge?"
The street corner was probably empty in the falling rain for a long time after we were gone.
There stood the gray-stone bridge bearing the great O'Connell's name, and there the River Liffey rolling cold gray waters under, and even from a block off I heard faint singing. My mind ran back to ten days before.
"Christmas," I murmured, "is the best time of all in Dublin."
For beggars, I meant, but left it unsaid.
For in the week before Christmas the Dublin streets had teemed with raven flocks of children herded by schoolmasters or nuns. They clustered in doorways, peered from theater lobbies, jostled in alleys, "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" on their lips, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" in their eyes, tambourines in hand, snowflakes shaping a collar of grace about then" tender necks. It was singing everywhere and anywhere in Dublin on such nights, and there was no night I had not walked up Grafton Street to hear "Away in a Manger" being sung to the queue outside the cinema or "Deck the Halls" in front of The Four Provinces pub. In all, I counted in Christ's season one night half a hundred bands of convent girls or public-school boys lacing the cold air and weaving great treadles of song up, down, over, and across from end to end of Dublin. Like walking in snowfalls, you could not walk among them and not be touched. The sweet beggars, I called them, who gave in turn for what you gave as you went your way.
Given such examples, even the most dilapidated beggars of Dublin had washed their hands, mended their torn smiles, borrowed banjos or bought a fiddle and killed a cat. They had even gathered for four-part harmonics. How could they stay silent when half the world was singing and the other half, idled by the tuneful river, was paying dearly, gladly, for just another chorus?
So Christmas was best for all; the beggars worked—off key, it's true, but there they were, one time in the year, busy.
But Christmas was gone, the licorice-suited children back in their aviaries, and most of the beggars of the town, shut and glad for
I felt John's arm tighten to mine. I looked at the woman, split, one half of me saying, "A penny is all she asks!" the other half doubting: "Gah, she knows that by underasking you'll overpay]"
I gasped. "You're . . ."
Why, I thought, you're the woman who was just back by the hotel with the babe!
"I'm sick!" She pulled back in shadow. "And asking for the half dead!"
You've stashed the babe somewhere, I thought, and put on a green instead of gray shawl and run the long way 'round to cut us off.
"Cancer ..." One bell in her tower, but she knew how to toll it. "Cancer ..."
John cut in crisply. "Pardon, but aren't you the same woman he just paid at the hotel?''
The woman and I were both shocked at this rank insubordination.
The woman's face crumpled. I peered closer. And God, it was a different face. How admirable! She knew what actors know, sense, learn: that by thrusting, yelling, all fiery-lipped arrogance, one moment you are one character; then by sinking away, crumpling the mouth and eyes, in pitiful collapse, you are another. The same woman, yes, but the same face and role? No, no!
"Cancer," she whispered.
John lost my arm, and the woman found my cash. As if on roller skates, she whisked around the corner, sobbing happily.
"Lord!" In awe, I watched her go. "She's studied Stanislavsky. In one book he says that squinting one eye and twitching one lip to the side will disguise you. And what if it was true? Everything she said? And she's lived with it so long she can't cry anymore, and so has to playact in order to survive? What if?"
"Not true," said John. "But by God, she gets a role in Moby Dick\ Can't you see her down at the docks, in the fog, when the Pequod sails, wailing, mourning? Yes!"
Wailing, weeping, I thought, somewhere in the chimney-smoking dark.
"Now," said John, "on to O'Connell Bridge?"
The street corner was probably empty in the falling rain for a long time after we were gone.
There stood the gray-stone bridge bearing the great O'Connell's name, and there the River Liffey rolling cold gray waters under, and even from a block off I heard faint singing. My mind ran back to ten days before.
"Christmas," I murmured, "is the best time of all in Dublin."
For beggars, I meant, but left it unsaid.
For in the week before Christmas the Dublin streets had teemed with raven flocks of children herded by schoolmasters or nuns. They clustered in doorways, peered from theater lobbies, jostled in alleys, "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" on their lips, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" in their eyes, tambourines in hand, snowflakes shaping a collar of grace about then" tender necks. It was singing everywhere and anywhere in Dublin on such nights, and there was no night I had not walked up Grafton Street to hear "Away in a Manger" being sung to the queue outside the cinema or "Deck the Halls" in front of The Four Provinces pub. In all, I counted in Christ's season one night half a hundred bands of convent girls or public-school boys lacing the cold air and weaving great treadles of song up, down, over, and across from end to end of Dublin. Like walking in snowfalls, you could not walk among them and not be touched. The sweet beggars, I called them, who gave in turn for what you gave as you went your way.
Given such examples, even the most dilapidated beggars of Dublin had washed their hands, mended their torn smiles, borrowed banjos or bought a fiddle and killed a cat. They had even gathered for four-part harmonics. How could they stay silent when half the world was singing and the other half, idled by the tuneful river, was paying dearly, gladly, for just another chorus?
So Christmas was best for all; the beggars worked—off key, it's true, but there they were, one time in the year, busy.
But Christmas was gone, the licorice-suited children back in their aviaries, and most of the beggars of the town, shut and glad for
Similar Books
