Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll Page A

milk bottles stood gray, empty, and dirty in doorways and on window sills, waiting sadly for the morning when they would be replaced by their fresh, radiant sisters, and the gulls were not white enough to replace the angelic radiance of the innocent milk bottles; the gulls bobbed along on the Shannon, which, pressed between walls, increases its speed for two hundred yards. Sour, gray-green seaweed covered the walls; it was low tide, and it almost looked as if Old Limerick were exposing itself indecently, lifting its dress, showing parts that are otherwise covered bywater; rubbish was waiting to be washed away by the tide; dim lights burned in the bookies’ offices, drunks staggered through the gutters, and the children who that morning had swung from sides of beef in butcher shops now showed that there is a level of poverty for which even the safety pin is too expensive: string is cheaper, and it works just as well. What eight years ago had been a cheap jacket, but new, now served as jacket, overcoat, trousers, and shirt in one; the grown-up sleeves rolled up, string around the middle; and held in the hand—innocently shining like milk, that manna that is to be found, always fresh and cheap, in the last hamlet in Ireland—ice cream. Marbles roll across the sidewalk; now and again a glance at the bookies’ office where Father is just putting part of his unemployment pay on Crimson Cloud. Deeper and deeper sinks the comforting darkness, while the marbles click against the worn steps leading up to the bookie’s office. Is Father going on to the next bookie, to put something on Gray Moth, to the third, to put something on Innisfree? There is no dearth of bookies here in Old Limerick. The marbles roll against the step, snow-white drops of ice cream fall into the gutter where they remain for a second like stars on the mud, only a second, before their innocence melts away into the mud.
    No, Father is not going to another bookie, he is just going to the pub; the marbles can also be clicked against the worn steps of the pub: will Father give them some more money for ice cream? He does. One for Johnny too, and for Paddy, for Sheila and Moira, for Mother and Auntie, perhaps for Granny too? Of course, as long as there’s any money left. Isn’t Crimson Cloud going to win? Of course she is. She has to win, damn it; if she doesn’t win, then—“Look out, John, don’t bang down your glass so hard on the counter. How about another?” Yes. Crimson Cloud has to win.
    And when there’s no more string, the fingers will do, thin, dirty, numb children’s fingers of the left hand, while the right hand shoves marbles, throws them or rolls them. “Come onNed, give us a lick,” and suddenly in the evening darkness the clear sound of a girl’s voice.
    “There’s a service this evening, aren’t you going?”
    Grins, hesitation, head-shaking.
    “Yes, we’re coming.”
    “Not me.”
    “Oh come on.”
    “No.”
    “Oh well—”
    “No.”
    Marbles click against the worn steps of the pub.
    My companion was trembling; he was a victim of the most bitter and stupid prejudice of all: that people who are badly dressed are dangerous—more dangerous anyway than the well-dressed ones. He ought to tremble in the bar of the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin at least as much as here, behind King John’s Castle in Limerick. If only they were more dangerous, these ragged ones, if only they were as dangerous as those in the bar of the Shelbourne Hotel who don’t look dangerous at all. At this moment a woman, the owner of an eating place, comes rushing out after a boy who has bought six-penn’orth of potato chips and in her opinion has poured too much vinegar on them from the bottle he took from the table.
    “You wretch, d’you want to ruin me?”
    Will he throw the chips in her face? No—he can’t think of anything to say, only his panting child’s breast answers: long-drawn-out whistling sounds come from the weak organ of his lungs. Did not