Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll Read Free Book Online

probably go to England, two to the United States), and the oldest son has stayed home: from far off, when he comes in from the meadow with the cattle, he looks like a youth of sixteen; when he turns the corner and enters the village street you feel he must be in his mid-thirties; and when he finally passes the house and grins shyly in at the window, you see that he is fifty.
    “He doesn’t want to get married,” said his mother, “isn’t it a shame?”
    Yes, it is a shame. He is so hard-working and clean; he has painted the gate red, the stone knobs on the wall red too, and the window frames under the green mossy roof bright blue; humor dwells in his eyes, and he pats his donkey affectionately.
    In the evening, when we go to get the milk, we ask him about the abandoned village. But he can tell us nothing about it, nothing; he has never been there: they have no meadows over there, and their peat cuttings lie in a different direction, to the south, not far from the monument to the Irish patriot who was executed in 1799. “Have you seen it yet?” Yes, we’ve seen it—and Tony goes off again, a man of fifty, is transformed at the corner into a man of thirty, up there on the slope where he strokes the donkey in passing he turns into a youth of sixteen, and as he stops for a moment by the fuchsia hedge, for that moment before he disappears behind the hedge, he looks like the boy he once was.

6
ITINERANT POLITICAL DENTIST
    “Tell me quite frankly now,” said Padraic to me after the fifth glass of beer, “whether you don’t think all Irishmen are half crazy?”
    “No,” I said, “I only think half all Irishmen are half crazy.”
    “You ought to have been a diplomat,” said Padraic and ordered his sixth glass of beer, “but now tell me quite honestly whether you think we’re a happy people.”
    “I think,” I said, “that you are happier than you know. And if you knew how happy you are you would find a reason for being unhappy. You have many reasons for being unhappy, but you also love the poetry of unhappiness—here’s to you.”
    We drank, and it was only after the sixth glass of beer that Padraic found the courage to ask me what he had been wanting to ask me all along.
    “Tell me,” he said in a low voice, “Hitler—war—I believe—not such a bad man really, only—in my opinion—he went a bit too far.”
    My wife looked at me encouragingly.
    “Go on,” she said softly in German, “don’t give up, pull out the whole tooth.”
    “I’m no dentist,” I said quietly to my wife, “and I’m tired of going to pubs in the evening. I always have to pull teeth, always the same ones. I’m sick of it.”
    “It’s worth it,” said my wife.
    “Now listen, Padraic,” I said amiably, “we know exactly how far Hitler went, he went over the corpses of millions of Jews, children.…”
    A spasm of pain crossed Padraic’s face. He had ordered his seventh glass of beer and said sadly: “What a pity you’ve let yourself be taken in by British propaganda, what a pity.”
    I left the beer untouched. “Come on,” I said, “let me pull that tooth; it may hurt a bit, but it must be done. You won’t be a really nice chap until it’s done; have your teeth put right, anyway I feel like an itinerant dentist.
    “Hitler was,” I said, and I said everything; I had had a lot of practice, I was a good dentist already, and if the patient is a nice chap one goes about it more carefully than when one does a routine job, merely from a sense of duty. Hitler was, Hitler did, Hitler said—Pad’s face twitched more and more painfully, but I had ordered whisky, I raised my glass, he swallowed, choked a little.
    “Did it hurt much?” I asked cautiously.
    “Yes,” he said, “it hurts, and it’ll go on hurting for a few days till all the pus is out.”
    “Don’t forget to rinse your mouth, and if you’re in pain come and see me, you know where I live.”
    “I know where you live,” said Pad, “and I’ll be