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At the end of your search, you learn Ireland is in you, always, always • Conclusion --- Part Seven of a series By
Bryce Petersen Jr.
The small gray apartment building blended in with the cloudy gray sky. I was looking for a big birdhouse, a landmark, a road sign on my path. Three teen-agers -- two skinny snickering ones and one, my height and broad shouldered -- were looking at me from the curb. I stepped in a puddle. The big one stepped toward me, over a broken bottle, as I passed. "You want some hash." I guessed it was a question. "Not particularly." "I have some. You want it or not?" "How much?" "Twenty quid." "Don't have 20 quid." "Now, listen," he said. "I'm gonna walk with you a few steps while you decide. And if you decide you don't want any, I'm going to punch you." The skinny ones snickered from behind. "I don't want any." "Yer sure?" "Yeh." I glanced back at his friends. They hadn't moved, except to turn around for a better view. They were pretty excited. I turned back, met his fist with my chin, saw a few stars and stumbled a few steps to the next intersection. A big, bright birdhouse hung there in the intersection. I was close. The
rich English bar their gates Assu is tired from working her 13th day in a row without a compliment. "I don't want a proper job," she says. "Can you see me in a dress? And makeup? I would have to fix my hair." Assu's hair is shoulder-length, frizzy like a wire brush and nearly dreadlocked. I can't see her fixing her hair. Fergus, a boy from County Cavan in north-central Ireland -- a place full of cows, lakes, fields, fish and big empty families -- is lighting a fag and thinking about getting a job tomorrow. Erik -- he's not French, he's Basque -- doesn't want a job. He's a musician, musicians don't work. "He's after being thrown out of Damiana's," Fergus tells me. "She thinks he robbed her." Erik is sitting on the couch watching telly. Fergus, Assu and I sit on the floor around the table. The program is about the Great Potato Famine. An egg hits the window and oozes slowly down. "English go home" is the boyish cry from above. There's also a flatmate from Mexico upstairs and I'm an American visitor, back with no money after a two-month tour around Ireland and a moderately successful attempt at "finding my roots." No one is English, though surely there have been Brits inside these walls. It's like the United Nations here. Assu gets up off the floor, sighs, puts out her fag, gets a rag from the kitchen, walks outside without a word and wipes away the egg while glancing sadly at the roof from whence it came. This gives us something to talk about. The bored kid on the roof has thrown rocks and eggs, hurled insults and threats, and generally abused the flatmates all summer. They've never talked to him, but they suspect he's responsible for the Fuck You sprayed on the wall outside the door. "Next time, I go up on the roof and I shake him," Erik says from the couch, still staring intently at the screen. Fergus rolls another cigarette, and one for Assu, and wishes for a joint or a flagon of cider. Assu dreams of the day she can take a bus ride to the country. She dreams of the day she will see a cow. Fergus says he'll show her a cow, though he hopes she won't be disappointed. She almost made it once, she tells us, but she had to work. "Shh." Erik turns up the sound. The telly screams the cries of the hungry, working and begging for food. The potatoes are black. The rich English bar their gates from the starving farmers. Erik narrows his eyes at the injustice. Fergus, the lone Irishman, rolls his. I wondered if Erik -- who had once said, "I am an anarchist and to be an anarchist, you must respect other people" -- had stolen Damiana's money. The three of us -- Erik, Damiana and I -- had walked to a memorial, a depiction of the Great Potato Famine on the banks of the River Liffey, one day during a break in the near-constant rain. The memorial is in the shadow of the immense Custom House, symbol of pre-1921 English rule. Several tall, starving, bone-thin statues depict the tragedy. Fathers carry slumping daughters over jutting shoulders, mangy dying dogs hunch in the shadows and a woman looks back, through sunken hollow hopeless eyes at the large, lavish house, overflowing with food for the rich. Erik looked at the solemn stone figures gravely. The Basque, too, are a people without a homeland. Their land is split between two rulers, France and Spain. They too have a rich history which will not die under the rule of another culture. Another of Erik's favorite sites is a flame, constantly burning, inside a web of chains. Damiana was just happy to find such a beautiful photo to remember Ireland by. "I take your picture. Smile." Erik, his back turned, scowled at the request. Finally, he turned around. "Oh, smile." She snapped the photo anyway, then spent the next few minutes standing over the plaque which explains the atrocity. A little bewildered, she tried to understand the words as Erik pointed, gestured and shouted beside her. "It is sacred, these people were starving and the English did nothing. The rulers were sitting at their banquet tables, turning people away. It didn't have to happen," Erik told her. She'd thought it was just a pretty picture of her friends next to some wonderful statues. I fed the fat pigeons and watched the thick water of the Liffey, slimy from oil and waste, slide by. But tonight, my last night in Ireland, the telly is telling us about the people starving to death, telling us how the English did nothing, how they would sit at their banquet tables, turning people away; telling us how it didn't have to happen. I am watching with interest. Fergus is rolling his eyes and yet another fag. He likes to say, You're a saint and a scholar, to friends who buy him a drink. But he knows people are fickle. His brother lives less than 10 miles away. They haven't spoken in years. Fergus usually spends his dole check on hash and pints of Guinness for everyone. He talks a lot. Even in his sleep. "Ken y'blem me? No I don't t'ink so," he said once, his size-15 shoes still on his feet, between snores from the floor. He sings, too, but only when conscious, so far as I know. I spent all me money on whiskey and beer, He'll get a job tomorrow, he says, at a building site. Assu has a job. She pays for the flat, buys the food, loves her friends. But she's getting a little tired of Erik sitting on her couch all day and eating her food. She works 10-hour days and averages one day off every two weeks. She's paid 20 pounds a day -- about $3 an hour. We have urged her to quit, to find a new job. She knows three languages fluently, why doesn't she work at a bank or as a translator? "I don't want a proper job. I don't want to wear a dress and makeup. I cannot fix my hair." So Assu stayed in her job and dreamed of the day she could go to the country and see a cow. Erik stayed in her flat and watched television from her couch while he dreamed of rock stardom and his drums got dusty. Weeks later, I am back at home reading Assu's letter. It tells me that she still hasn't told the little boy she was not English, but the landlord fixed her new broken window. It tells me Erik had admitted to stealing Damiana's money and found somewhere else to stay for free. It tells me Fergus is working at a building site and that the two of them are looking for their own flat. She was looking for another job, she wrote. A proper job. I was, too. After two years off from school and three months without a home, I was ready to settle in, buckle down and look inside myself for once, instead of at the other side of the world. Wherever you go, there you are.
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