TransAtlantic by Colum McCann Read Free Book Online

leanshouldered. There was a reek of porter about the streets. A young beggar sang a melody in a tired voice: a police boot sank savagely into her rib cage and moved her along. She fell at the next railing, lay against it, laughing.
    The Irish had little or no order about themselves, he thought. The carriage went corner unto corner, turning, always turning, gray unto gray. It began to drizzle. The streets were muddy and even more deeply potholed. The sound of a fiddle was rent through with a scream.
    Douglass was unnerved by what was unfolding around him, but he stared out eagerly, absorbed it all. Webb cracked the whip down onthe horse’s back. They clopped back up Sackville Street, past Nelson’s Pillar, towards the bridge, across the river once more.
    The Liffey was dimpled with rain. A low barge made its way down from the brewery. The wind ran raw and unstoppable along the quays. Vendors of fish moved over the cobbles, pushing barrows of stinking shells.
    A tribe of boys in rags jumped onto the side of the carriage. Seven or eight of them. They used the moving wheels to propel themselves on, then hung perilously by the tips of their fingers. Some of them tried to open the carriage door. Laughter and puddle-fall. One monkeyed across and landed softly on the wooden board, nestled his head against Douglass’s shoulder. A series of raw red welts ran along the boy’s neck and face. Webb had implored him not to give away coins, but Douglass slid the boy a ha’penny. The child’s eyes grew slick with tears. He kept his head on Douglass’s shoulder as if welded there. The other boys leaned in from the side of the carriage, shouting, pushing, cajoling.
    —Mind your pockets! said Webb. No more coins. Don’t give them any more.
    —What are they saying? said Douglass.
    The din was extraordinary: it sounded as if they were chanting in rhyme.
    —No idea, said Webb.
    Webb pulled the carriage up near a laneway, one wheel on the footpath, shouted at a policeman to scatter the boys. The whistle was lost in the air. It took three of the constabulary to dislodge them from the carriage. The gang ran through the laneway. Their shouts ricocheted.
    —Thanks, mister! Thanks!
    Douglass took a handkerchief to his shoulder. The child had left a long stream of snot along the arm of his coat.
    HE HAD NOT imagined Dublin this way at all. He had envisioned rotundas, colonnades, quiet chapels on the street corners. Porticoes, pilasters, domes.
    They passed through a narrow arch into a chaos of men and women. They were gathered for a meeting in the shadows of a theater house. A redheaded man stood on top of a silver keg, barking about Repeal. The crowd swelled. Laughter and applause. Someone responded with a shout about Rome. The words volleyed back and forth. Douglass couldn’t understand the accents, or was it the language? Were they speaking in Irish? He wanted to descend the carriage and walk amongst them, but Webb whispered that there was trouble brewing.
    They continued down a havoc of backstreets. A woman carried a tray of kale on a string over her neck, trying in vain to hawk the exhausted green leaves.
    —Mr. Webb, sir, Mr. Webb, y’r honor!
    Webb broke his own rule, handed her a small copper coin. She ducked away into her headscarf. She looked as if she were praying over the coin. A few coils of hair escaped, damp and coarse.
    Within seconds they were surrounded. Webb had to force the carriage through the crowd of stretched hands. The poor were so thin and white, they were almost lunar.
    A LADY ALONG George’s Street gripped her umbrella as the carriage passed by. A newspaperman who happened to glimpse him wrote afterwards that the visiting Negro looked rather dandy. An audacious whore on the corner of Thomas Street shouted that she would laugh at his best and whistle for more. He caught sight of himself in a shopwindow and froze the picture in his mind, stunned at the opportunity for public vanity.
    THE STORM MADE the carriage