Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll Page A

sketch I would like to write, for this is where Seamus meets his cousin Dermot from the next village. Dermot has also had salt ham, peppery cabbage. Dermot is also not a heavy drinker, all he wants is a glass of beer to quench his thirst; he too—in the next village—has stood in front of the poster with the realistically painted glass of stout, the epicurean seal, he too stood making up his mind, finally got his bike out of the shed, pushed it up the hill, cursing, sweating—now he meets Seamus: their conversation is brief but blasphemous—then Seamus races down the hill toward Dermot’s favorite pub, Dermot toward Seamus’ favorite pub, and they will both do what they never intended to do: they will drink themselves into a stupor, for it wouldn’t be worth coming all this way for one glass of beer, for one whisky. At some time or other on this Sunday they will push their bikes up the hill again, staggering and singing, will race down the hill at breakneck speed. Seamus and Dermot, who are not drunkards at all—or are they after all?—will be drunkards before evening.
    But perhaps, while he stands thirsty in the village square after two o’clock and looks at the foam-licking seal, Seamus will decide to wait, not to get his bike out of the shed; perhaps he will decide to quench his thirst—Oh the shame of it!—with water or buttermilk, to fall onto the bed with the Sunday paper. In the oppressive afternoon heat and quiet he will drop off to sleep, suddenly wake up, look at the clock and frantically—asif pursued by the devil—rush over to the pub opposite, for it is a quarter to eight, and his thirst has only a quarter of an hour left. The landlord has already begun to call out mechanically: “Ready now, please! Ready now, please!” In haste and anger, always with one eye on the clock, Seamus will down three, four, five glasses of beer, knock back several whiskies, for the clock hand is slipping closer and closer toward the eight, and the lookout posted in front of the door has already reported that the village policeman is slowly strolling across: there are some people who on Sunday afternoons suffer from attacks of ill humor and adherence to the law.
    If you find yourself in a pub shortly before eight suddenly listening to the landlord’s “Time, gentlemen, please!” you can watch the influx of all those who are not drunkards but who have suddenly realized the pub is closing soon and they haven’t yet done what they possibly wouldn’t feel in the least like doing if it were not for this insane law: they haven’t got drunk yet. At five minutes to eight the crush at the bar is tremendous; everyone is drinking to ward off the thirst that may come at ten, at eleven, or even not at all. Besides, everyone feels obliged to stand the other fellow a drink: so the landlord desperately calls upon his wife, his nieces, grandchildren, grandmother, great-grandmother and aunt, because at three minutes to eight he has to draw seven rounds: sixty pints of beer, the same number of whiskies, have still to be poured, still to be drunk. This urge to drink, to be generous, has something childish about it, it is like the furtive cigarette-smoking of those who vomit as furtively as they smoke—and the final scene, when the policeman appears at the door on the dot of eight, the final scene is pure barbarism: pale, grim seventeen-year-olds hide somewhere in the barn and fill themselves up with beer and whisky, playing the senseless rules of the game of manhood, and the landlord—the landlord fills his pockets, heaps of pound notes, jingling silver, money, money—but the law has been kept.
    Sunday is by no means over, however, it is exactly eight o’clock—early yet, and the scene acted out at two in the afternoon with Seamus and Dermot can now be repeated with a cast of any number: about quarter-past eight in the evening, up on the hill, two groups of drunks meet; in order to abide by the three-mile regulation they are