Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll Page B
Authors: Heinrich Böll
Tags: Travel, Essays & Travelogues
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merely switching villages, switching pubs. Many are the curses that ascend to Heaven on Sunday in this pious Catholic country on which no Roman mercenary ever set foot: a bit of Catholic Europe beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.
14
MRS. D.’s NINTH CHILD
Mrs. D.’s ninth child is called James Patrick Pedar. The day he was born was the seventeenth birthday of Siobhan, Mrs. D.’s oldest child. Siobhan’s future is already settled. She is to take over the post office, look after the switchboard, receive and transmit calls from Glasgow, London, Liverpool, sell stamps, issue receipts for registered letters, and pay out ten times as much money as is paid in: pounds from England, converted dollars from America, baby bonuses, prizes for Gaelic, pensions. Every day about one o’clock when the post office truck arrives she will melt the sealing wax over a candle and press the great seal with the Irish lyre onto the large envelope containing the most important items; she will not—as her father does—have a beer every day with the driver of the post office truck and exchange a few terse remarks which resemble the severity of a liturgy more than a friendly chat over the counter. So that’s what Siobhan will be doing: from eight in the morning till two in the afternoon she will sit there in the post office, with her assistant, and again in the evening from six to ten, to look after the switchboard; she will have plenty of time to read the paper, novels, or look out over the sea with herbinoculars, to bring the blue islands from a distance of twelve miles to a mile and a half, the bathers on the beach from five hundred yards to sixty: women from Dublin, fashionable and old-fashioned. But longer, much longer than the short bathing season is the dead, the quiet time: wind, rain, wind, now and again a visitor buying a fivepenny stamp for a letter to the Continent, or one sending registered letters weighing three or four ounces to cities called Munich, Cologne, or Frankfurt; who obliges her to open the fat tariff book and make complicated calculations, or has friends who compel her to decipher telegraph texts from code: “Eile geboten. Stop. Antwortet baldmöglichst.” Will Siobhan ever understand what “baldmöglichst” means, a word she writes so neatly in her girl’s handwriting on the telegraph form, making an oe out of the ö?
In any event, Siobhan’s future seems certain, as far as anything in this world is certain; even more certain appears the fact that she will get married: she has eyes like Vivien Leigh, and in the evening a youth often sits on the post office counter, dangling his legs, and one of those laconic, almost mute flirtations is carried on which are only possible in cases of ardent passion and well-nigh pathological shyness.
“Lovely weather we’re having, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
Silence, fleeting exchange of glances, a smile, long silence. Siobhan is glad when the switchboard buzzes.
“Are you there? Are you there?”
A plug pulled out; a smile, a glance, silence, long silence.
“Wonderful weather, isn’t it?”
“Wonderful.”
Silence, a smile, the switchboard comes to the rescue again.
“This is Dukinella, Dukinella calling—yes.”
Plug in. Silence. Smile with the eyes of Vivien Leigh, and the young man, his voice almost cracking this time:
“Marvelous weather, eh?”
“Yes, marvelous.”
Siobhan will get married but continue to look after the switchboard, to sell stamps, to pay out money, and to press the seal with the Irish lyre into the soft sealing wax.
Perhaps one day she will suddenly rebel, when the wind blows for weeks on end, when people walking along at a slant struggle against the storm, when the rain beats down for weeks on end, the binoculars fail to bring the blue islands within sight, and in the fog the smoke of the peat fires hangs close and bitter. But whatever happens she can stay here, and this is a fabulous stroke of luck: of her eight brothers and
14
MRS. D.’s NINTH CHILD
Mrs. D.’s ninth child is called James Patrick Pedar. The day he was born was the seventeenth birthday of Siobhan, Mrs. D.’s oldest child. Siobhan’s future is already settled. She is to take over the post office, look after the switchboard, receive and transmit calls from Glasgow, London, Liverpool, sell stamps, issue receipts for registered letters, and pay out ten times as much money as is paid in: pounds from England, converted dollars from America, baby bonuses, prizes for Gaelic, pensions. Every day about one o’clock when the post office truck arrives she will melt the sealing wax over a candle and press the great seal with the Irish lyre onto the large envelope containing the most important items; she will not—as her father does—have a beer every day with the driver of the post office truck and exchange a few terse remarks which resemble the severity of a liturgy more than a friendly chat over the counter. So that’s what Siobhan will be doing: from eight in the morning till two in the afternoon she will sit there in the post office, with her assistant, and again in the evening from six to ten, to look after the switchboard; she will have plenty of time to read the paper, novels, or look out over the sea with herbinoculars, to bring the blue islands from a distance of twelve miles to a mile and a half, the bathers on the beach from five hundred yards to sixty: women from Dublin, fashionable and old-fashioned. But longer, much longer than the short bathing season is the dead, the quiet time: wind, rain, wind, now and again a visitor buying a fivepenny stamp for a letter to the Continent, or one sending registered letters weighing three or four ounces to cities called Munich, Cologne, or Frankfurt; who obliges her to open the fat tariff book and make complicated calculations, or has friends who compel her to decipher telegraph texts from code: “Eile geboten. Stop. Antwortet baldmöglichst.” Will Siobhan ever understand what “baldmöglichst” means, a word she writes so neatly in her girl’s handwriting on the telegraph form, making an oe out of the ö?
In any event, Siobhan’s future seems certain, as far as anything in this world is certain; even more certain appears the fact that she will get married: she has eyes like Vivien Leigh, and in the evening a youth often sits on the post office counter, dangling his legs, and one of those laconic, almost mute flirtations is carried on which are only possible in cases of ardent passion and well-nigh pathological shyness.
“Lovely weather we’re having, aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
Silence, fleeting exchange of glances, a smile, long silence. Siobhan is glad when the switchboard buzzes.
“Are you there? Are you there?”
A plug pulled out; a smile, a glance, silence, long silence.
“Wonderful weather, isn’t it?”
“Wonderful.”
Silence, a smile, the switchboard comes to the rescue again.
“This is Dukinella, Dukinella calling—yes.”
Plug in. Silence. Smile with the eyes of Vivien Leigh, and the young man, his voice almost cracking this time:
“Marvelous weather, eh?”
“Yes, marvelous.”
Siobhan will get married but continue to look after the switchboard, to sell stamps, to pay out money, and to press the seal with the Irish lyre into the soft sealing wax.
Perhaps one day she will suddenly rebel, when the wind blows for weeks on end, when people walking along at a slant struggle against the storm, when the rain beats down for weeks on end, the binoculars fail to bring the blue islands within sight, and in the fog the smoke of the peat fires hangs close and bitter. But whatever happens she can stay here, and this is a fabulous stroke of luck: of her eight brothers and
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