The Dream of the Celt: A Novel (15 page)

“You had everything,” the sheriff grumbled behind him. “Diplomatic posts. Decorations. The king knighted you. And you went and sold yourself to the Germans. How vile. How ungrateful.”

He fell silent and Roger thought the sheriff was sighing.

“Whenever I think about my poor son killed over there in the trenches, I tell myself you’re one of his killers, Mr. Casement.”

“I’m very sorry you lost a son,” Roger replied, not turning around. “I know you won’t believe me, but I haven’t killed anyone yet.”

“You won’t have time left to do that now,” was the sheriff’s judgment. “Thank God.”

They had reached the door of the visitors’ room. The sheriff stayed outside, next to the jailer on guard. Only visits from chaplains were private. In all the others the sheriff or a guard always remained, and sometimes both. Roger was happy to see the stylized silhouette of the cleric. Father Carey came forward to meet him and took his hand.

“I made inquiries and have the reply,” he announced, smiling. “Your memory was exact. In effect, you were baptized as a child in the parish of Rhyl, in Wales. Your name is in the register. Your mother and two of your maternal aunts were present. You don’t need to be received again into the Catholic Church. You’ve always been in it.”

Roger agreed. The very distant impression that had accompanied him his whole life was, in fact, correct. His mother had baptized him, hiding it from his father, on one of their trips to Wales. He was glad because of the complicity the secret established between him and Anne Jephson. And because in this way he felt more in tune with himself, his mother, and Ireland. As if his approach to Catholicism were a natural consequence of everything he had done and attempted in these last few years, including his mistakes and failures.

“I’ve been reading Thomas à Kempis, Father Carey,” he said. “Earlier, I could barely manage to concentrate on reading. But recently I’ve been able to. Several hours a day.
The Imitation of Christ
is a very beautiful book.”

“When I was in the seminary we read a good deal of Thomas à Kempis,” the priest agreed. “Especially
The Imitation of Christ.
”

“I feel calmer when I can manage to become involved in those pages,” said Roger. “As if I had cut free from this world and entered another one with no preoccupations, a purely spiritual reality. Father Crotty was right to recommend it to me so often in Germany. He never imagined under what circumstances I’d read the book he admired so much.”

Not long before, a small bench had been installed in the visitors’ room. They sat on it, their knees touching. Father Carey had been a chaplain in London prisons for more than twenty years and accompanied many men condemned to death on their final journey. His constant dealings with prison populations had not hardened his character. He was considerate and attentive, and Roger liked him from their first encounter. He did not recall ever having heard him say anything that might wound him; on the contrary, when it was time to ask questions or talk to him he showed extreme delicacy. He always felt good with him. Father Carey was tall, bony, almost skeletal, with very white skin and a graying, pointed beard that covered only part of his chin. His eyes were always damp, as if he had just cried, even though he was laughing.

“What was Father Crotty like?” he asked. “I can see you two got along very well in Germany.”

“If it hadn’t been for Father Crotty I would have gone mad during those months in the Limburg camp,” Roger agreed. “He was very different from you, physically. Shorter, more robust, and instead of your pallor he had a red face that grew even redder with the first glass of beer. But from another point of view, he did resemble you. In his generosity, I mean.”

Father Crotty was an Irish Dominican sent from Rome by the Vatican to the prisoner-of-war camp the Germans had set up in Limburg. His friendship had been a life raft for Roger during those months in 1915 and 1916 when he was trying to recruit volunteers for the Irish Brigade from among the prisoners.

“He was a man immune to discouragement,” said Roger. “I went with him to visit the sick, administer the sacraments, pray the rosary with the prisoners at Limburg. A nationalist as well. Though less impassioned than me, Father Carey.”

The priest smiled.

“Don’t think that Father Crotty tried to bring me closer to Catholicism,” Roger added. “He was very careful in our conversations so I wouldn’t feel he wanted to convert me. That was happening to me on my own, here inside,” he said, touching his breast. “I was never very religious, as I’ve told you. Ever since my mother died, religion for me had been something mechanical and secondary. Only after 1903, after that trip of three months and ten days into the interior of the Congo that I told you about, did I pray again. When I thought I would lose my mind in the face of so much suffering. That was how I discovered that a human being can’t live without believing.”

He felt his voice would break and stopped speaking.

“Did he discuss Thomas à Kempis with you?”

“He was very devoted to him,” Roger agreed. “He gave me his copy of
The Imitation of Christ
. But I couldn’t read it then. I didn’t have the head for it with all the concerns I had at the time. I left that copy in Germany, in a suitcase with my clothes. They didn’t allow us to carry luggage on the submarine. Just as well you found me another one. I’m afraid I won’t have time to finish it.”

“The British government hasn’t decided anything yet,” the priest admonished him. “You mustn’t lose hope. There are many people outside who love you and are making enormous efforts to have the petition for clemency heard.”

“I know that, Father Carey. In any event, I’d like you to prepare me. I want to be accepted formally by the Church. Receive the sacraments. Make my confession. Take communion.”

“That’s why I’m here, Roger. I assure you you’re already prepared for all of that.”

“One doubt distresses me a great deal,” said Roger, lowering his voice as if someone else might hear him. “Won’t my conversion to Christ seem inspired by fear? The truth is, Father Carey, I’m afraid. Very afraid.”

“He is wiser than you and me,” the priest declared. “I don’t believe Christ sees anything wrong in a man being afraid. He was, I’m sure, on the road to Calvary. It’s the most human thing there is, isn’t it? We all feel fear, it’s part of our condition. Just a little sensitivity is enough for us to sometimes feel powerless and frightened. Your approach to the Church is pure, Roger. I know that.”

“I was never afraid of death until now. I saw it at close range many times. In the Congo, on expeditions through inhospitable places filled with wild animals. In Amazonia, in rivers filled with whirlpools and surrounded by outlaws. Just a short while ago, when I left the submarine at Tralee, on Banna Strand, when the rowboat capsized and it seemed we would all drown. I’ve often felt death very close. And I wasn’t afraid. But I am now.”

His voice broke and he closed his eyes. For some days now these rushes of terror seemed to freeze his blood, stop his heart. His entire body had begun to tremble. He made an effort to be calm but failed. He felt the chattering of his teeth and to his panic was added embarrassment. When he opened his eyes he saw that Father Carey had his hands together and his eyes closed. He was praying in silence, barely moving his lips.

“It’s passed,” he mumbled in confusion. “I beg you to forgive me.”

“You don’t have to feel uncomfortable with me. Being afraid, weeping, is human.”

Now he was calm again. There was a great silence in Pentonville Prison, as if the prisoners and the jailers in its three enormous pavilions, those blocks with gable roofs, had died or fallen asleep.

“I thank you for not asking me anything about those loathsome things they apparently are saying about me, Father Carey.”

“I haven’t read them, Roger. When someone has attempted to talk to me about them, I’ve made him be quiet. I don’t know and don’t want to know what that’s about.”

“I don’t know either,” Roger said with a smile. “You can’t read newspapers here. One of my lawyer’s clerks told me they were so scandalous they put the petition for clemency at risk. Degeneracies, terrible vileness, it seems.”

Father Carey listened to him with his usual tranquil expression. The first time they had spoken in Pentonville, he told Roger that his paternal grandparents spoke Gaelic to each other but changed to English when they saw their children nearby. The priest hadn’t succeeded in learning ancient Irish either.

“I believe it’s better not to know what they’re accusing me of. Alice Stopford Green thinks it’s an operation mounted by the government to counteract the sympathy in many sectors for the petition for clemency.”

“Nothing can be excluded in the world of politics,” said the priest. “It’s not the cleanest of human activities.”

There were some discreet knocks at the door, which opened, and the sheriff’s plump face appeared:

“Five more minutes, Father Carey.”

“The director of the prison gave me half an hour. Weren’t you told?”

The sheriff’s face showed surprise.

“If you say so, I believe you.” He apologized. “Excuse the interruption, then. You still have twenty minutes.”

He disappeared and the door closed again.

“Is there more news from Ireland?” Roger asked, somewhat abruptly, as if he suddenly wanted to change the subject.

“It seems the shootings have stopped. Public opinion, not only there but in England, too, has been very critical of the summary executions. Now the government has announced that all those arrested in the Easter Rising will pass through the courts.”

Roger became distracted. He looked at the window in the wall, also barred. He saw only a tiny square of gray sky and thought about the great paradox: he had been tried and sentenced for carrying arms for an attempt at violent secession by Ireland, and in fact he had undertaken that dangerous, perhaps absurd trip from Germany to the coast near Tralee to try to stop the uprising he was sure would fail from the moment he learned it was being prepared. Was all of history like that? The history learned at school? The one written by historians? A more or less idyllic fabrication, rational and coherent, about what had been in raw, harsh reality a chaotic and arbitrary jumble of plans, accidents, intrigues, fortuitous events, coincidences, multiple interests that had provoked changes, upheavals, advances, and retreats, always unexpected and surprising with respect to what was anticipated or experienced by the protagonists.

“It’s likely I’ll go down in history as one of those responsible for the Easter Rising,” he said with irony. “You and I know I came here risking my life to try to stop that rebellion.”

“Well, you and I and someone else,” Father Carey said with a laugh, pointing up with a finger.

“Now I feel better, finally.” Roger laughed as well. “The panic has passed. In Africa I often saw blacks as well as whites fall suddenly into a crisis of despair. In the middle of the undergrowth, when we lost our way. When we entered a territory the African porters considered hostile. In the middle of the river, when a canoe overturned. Or in the villages sometimes, during ceremonies with singing and dancing directed by witch doctors. Now I know what those hallucinatory states brought on by fear are like. Are the trances of the mystics the same, the suspension of oneself and all carnal reflexes produced by the encounter with God?”

“It’s not impossible,” said Father Carey. “Perhaps the path traveled by the mystics and by all those who experience trance states is the same. Poets, musicians, sorcerers.”

They were silent for a long while. At times, out of the corner of his eye, Roger observed the priest and saw him motionless, his eyes closed.
He’s praying for me
, he thought.
He’s a compassionate man. It must be terrible to spend your life helping people who are going to die on the gallows.
Without ever having been in the Congo or Amazonia, Father Carey must be as well informed as he about the dizzying extremes reached by human cruelty and despair.

“For many years I was indifferent to religion,” he said, very slowly, as if talking to himself, “but I never stopped believing in God. In a general principle of life. Though it’s true, Father Carey, I often asked myself in horror how God could permit things like this to happen. What kind of God tolerates so many thousands of men, women, and children suffering such horrors? It’s difficult to understand, isn’t it? You must have seen so many things in the prisons; don’t you sometimes ask the same questions?”

Father Carey had opened his eyes and listened to him with his usual courteous expression, not affirming or denying.

“Those poor people whipped, mutilated, those children with their hands and feet chopped off, dying of hunger and disease,” Roger recited. “Those creatures squeezed to extinction and then murdered. Thousands, dozens, hundreds of thousands. By men who received a Christian education. I have seen them go to Mass, pray, take communion, before and after committing those crimes. Many days I thought I’d go mad, Father Carey. Perhaps, during those years in Africa, in Putumayo, I did. And everything that has happened to me since has been the work of someone who, though he didn’t realize it, was crazy.”

The chaplain didn’t say anything this time either. He listened with the same affable expression and patience for which Roger had always been grateful.

“Curiously, I believe it was in the Congo, when I had those periods of great demoralization and asked myself how God could permit so many crimes, that I began to be interested in religion again,” he continued. “Because the only beings who seemed to have maintained their sanity were some Baptist ministers and Catholic missionaries. Not all of them, of course. Many did not want to see what was happening past their own noses. But a few did what they could to stop the injustices. Real heroes.”

He fell silent. Recalling the Congo or Putumayo did him harm: it stirred up the mud in his spirit, brought back images that plunged him into anguish.

“Injustices, tortures, crimes,” murmured Father Carey. “Didn’t Christ suffer these in his own flesh? He can understand your state better than anyone, Roger. Of course the same thing happens to me at times. To all believers, I’m sure. It’s difficult to understand certain things, naturally. Our capacity for understanding is limited. We are fallible, imperfect. But I can tell you one thing. You’ve made many mistakes, like all human beings. But with regard to the Congo, to Amazonia, you cannot reproach yourself for anything. Your labor was generous and brave. You made many people open their eyes, you helped to correct great injustices.”