Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll Page B

Swift, more than two hundred years ago, in 1729, write his bitterest satire, the “Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents or the Country” by suggesting to the government that the estimated number of 120,000 babies born annually be offered to the wealthy English as food? —precise, gruesome description of a project that was to serve a number of purposes, among others a reduction in the number of Papists.
    The battle over the six drops of vinegar is still not over, the woman’s hand is raised threateningly, long whistling sounds come from the boy’s chest. Indifferent people shuffle by, drunks stagger, children carrying prayer books run so as to be in time for the evening service. But the savior was approaching: tall, fat, bloated, his nose must have been bleeding, there were dark patches on his face around mouth and nose; he had also advanced from safety pin to string: there had not been enough for his shoes, they were gaping. He went up to the woman, bowed to her, pretended to kiss her hand, drew a ten-shilling note from his pocket, presented it to her—startled, she accepted it—and said courteously:
    “May I request you, Madam, to regard these ten shillings as sufficient payment for the six drops of vinegar?”
    Silence in the darkness behind King John’s Castle, then the man with the blood-stained face suddenly went on in a low voice:
    “May I moreover remind you that it is time for the evening service? Please convey my respectful regards to the priest.”
    He staggered on, the boy ran off scared, and the woman was alone. Suddenly tears were streaming down her face, and she ran weeping into the house, her sobs still audible when the door had closed behind her.
    The sea had not yet allowed the kindly water to rise, the walls were still naked and dirty, and the gulls not white enough. King John’s Castle reared grimly out of the darkness, a tourist attraction hemmed in by tenements from the twenties, and the tenements of the twentieth century looked more dilapidated than King John’s Castle of the thirteenth; the dim light from weak bulbs could not compete with the massive shadow of the castle, everything was submerged in sour darkness.
    Ten shillings for six drops of vinegar! The man who lives poetry instead of writing it pays ten thousand per cent interest. Where was he, the dark, blood-stained drunk, who had had enough string for his jacket but not for his shoes? Hadhe plunged into the Shannon, into the gurgling gray narrows between the two bridges which the gulls used as a free toboggan? They were still circling in the darkness, they alighted on the gray waters, between one bridge and the other, flew up to repeat the game; endless; insatiable.
    Singing came flooding out of churches, voices of chanting priests, taxis brought travelers from Shannon airport, green buses swayed through the gray darkness, black, bitter beer flowed behind curtained pub windows. Crimson Cloud has to win.
    The great Sacred Heart shone crimson in the church where the evening service was already over; candles were burning, stragglers were praying, incense and candle warmth, silence, in which only the shuffling footsteps of the sacristan were to be heard as he straightened the curtains of the confessionals, emptied the offering boxes. The Sacred Heart shone crimson.
    How much is the fare for these fifty, sixty, seventy years from the dock that is called birth to the spot in the ocean where the shipwreck occurs?
    Clean parks, clean monuments, black, severe, well-behaved streets: somewhere near here Lola Montez was born. Ruins from the time of the Rebellion, boarded-up houses that are not yet ruins, the sound of rats moving around behind the black boards, warehouses cracked open and left to the disintegration of time, green-gray slime on exposed walls, and the black beer flows to the health of Crimson Cloud, who is not going to win. Streets, streets, flooded for a few moments by