No Country: A Novel by Kalyan Ray Read Free Book Online Page A

O’Connell had backed down.
    No one in that great multitude believed it. “Liars, damned liars!” Cries filled the air, “Oh no, no no.”
    The officer raised a white gloved hand. “Those who do not believe me, listen to the Dubliners.” The crowd fell silent. “Ask the Dubliners,” roared that voice again.
    The line of red-coats was, at most, two men deep, for they were fanned out—not for resistance, but seemingly to spread the word. Behind them ordinary people—Dublin folks in everyday clothes, working men and women, stood in crestfallen groups. The wind seemed knocked out of them.
    From our side, a tall man with a green kerchief tied about his head screamed loud and harsh into the late morning air, “What news of our O’Connell?”
    The air smelt of hay and manure, trampled mud and laundry lye, the smells of a working day. Then a man stooping to pick up a shovel by a dairy cart from the Dublin side spoke, as if to himself. “He’s bowed to Peel’s command.”
    We could have charged at the line of red, horsed as they were, and dashed them to the ground and gone on to the sacred soil of Clontarf, urging the latecomer O’Connell to come to us, rousing him from his nightmare of inaction.
    But the moment, suspended in time, fell with a silent crash and diedamidst us. Weeping broke out, keening, as if the great crowd had just heard that Ireland itself had died.
    “What strange nonsense is this?” barked the tall man from Armagh. “Our Dan has not bowed down to Peel, has he?”
    The murmur which had begun in our midst rose and wavered around us.
    “But,” I stammered to no one in particular, “but earlier he had laughed off the Duke of Wellington to his face, and called him a doting corporal!”
    “Aye, so he did, and called him a screaming liar to boot,” added a man behind me.
    “Our O’Connell called that Lord Alvanley a bloated buffoon—and that man the King’s favourite, isn’t he?” rejoined the Armagh man, twisting his green cap in his hands. Between clenched teeth, I nodded in agreement. Cunning Disraeli had called our leader the hired instrument of the papacy, but our Dan treated them all like barking street strays, did he not?
    “Oh Lord, what strange malaise is undoing him now?” the man from Armagh said in a strangled voice. We stood staring at the ground, feeling our despair spreading like a fog about us. By the time I was able to raise my bent head, the Armagh man had left. The crowd began to thin in all directions. Some turned back the way they had come. Some stopped and began to cook and rest before they started for home, dejected journeys back to Cashel and Wexford, Ballyshannon and Limerick, to Cork and Kerry.
    The world looked hazy and tainted. I was that tired, I could lie down where I stood and fall into a dead sleep. I wanted no food. I wanted no words. I sat where I had stood, now watching the laughing soldiers leave. I had lost all purpose. After an hour I decided to walk into Dublin, find its harbour, ask if any ship sailed toSligo or Mullaghmore, or anywhere to the western counties. I did not want to walk back across my sweet green land, dragging with me the news of our failure. I wanted it washed out of my memory, cleansed with Irish seawater and rough sea-wind.
    I stepped into the city, like a blind man following a smell. I wanted to go home.

Brendan
Mullaghmore
November 1843
    Three weeks past, we learnt with dismay the fate of O’Connell’s meeting and our leader haled to prison.
    I could not wait to see Padraig back and to hear from his mouth tales of his travels, although he would be sorely downcast about O’Connell. But he had had his travel. For that I was elated for him, aye, and a trifle jealous, but my widow ma was so sickly and nervous that she would never hear of my going anywhere, though I already knew in my heart that I loved stories of far places more than the actual places themselves. My centre was my home, my gum to this earth. I understood the