Redemption Falls

by Joseph O'Connor

  E:What did he reply?

  W:He said: ‘Clapper’s in the bell, Mick. Let it ring.’

  E:In what spirit was that said?

  W:I guess trying to be chirk.

  E:Chirk.

  W:Cheerful. Trying to buck up the boys, I would say. Or his self.

  E:Some time subsequently, you overheard a quarrel between the Acting Governor and his wife.

  W:I guess.

  E:About?

  W:I don’t remember.

  E:You remember very well. What was the matter between them?

  W:I didn’t hear all of it. It was something about Australia.

  E:It was a violent quarrel about the secret to which John Duggan had made reference. Do not prevaricate, man. You heard every word.

  W:No, Sir.

  E:Mrs O’Keeffe raised her voice, was extremely distressed and weeping bitterly. She employed abusive language towards the Acting Governor, did she not?

  W:I don’t recollect one way or the other.

  E:Mrs O’Keeffe struck the Acting Governor in the face, is that not so?

  W:She might have. I couldn’t say. Then she went into the tent.

  E:I think you remember a great deal more of this incident than you are telling.

  W:No.

  E:After she went into the tent: what happened?

  W:The Boss ast me if there was a Post Office where we was headed.

  E:At Stornaway?

  W:Sir.

  E:He did not know?

  W:Well: there was some question if it was stationed or not at the time. I said I was pretty sure it was. Cause I know Iggy Gilchrist – that’s the marshal of Stornaway – and he was after mentioning to me about a man I knew in the War was working there. So the Boss told me get him some paper and a pen. And see he wasn’t disturbed. And a drink.

  E:A drink?

  W:Believe it was a bottle of whiskey he wanted, yes. But we didn’t have no whiskey left.

  FROM LUCIA’S JOURNAL

  Should have suspected before.

  Should always have seen it.

  He asked my forgiveness. Was too shocked to speak.

  CHAPTER 74

  SURVIVING LETTER FROM THE GOVERNOR TO A BOY IN TASMANIA†

  To Master Robert Emmet Boland,

  in the care of Mr. and Mrs. John P. Boland,

  Blackwatertown Farm, Nr. Hobart, Australia.

  December 31st, 1866

  My dear son, Robert:

  I send you a New Year greeting and my hope that all [missing word] along well with you there. Please forgive my so dilatory [missing word] to your last, which took fully ten months to come from your hand to mine. The mail is often extremely tardy arriving here in the Mountain Territory. The frequent severities of weather and our geographical remoteness see to that. Also this year we have had difficulties aplenty with Indians attacking the steamships.

  If I am not as attentive to our correspondence as I ought to be, Robert, I ask your forgiveness, and promise to better the attempt in the future. I should say, especially since the War of the Rebellion has concluded, with the victory of the United States and her valiant northern armies, that your father is become a tremendously important bore here in America, with many onerous duties, and many eminent drones always desirous of his ear. But such is the yoke of the victorious General. Success, like failure, brings its trials.

  I trust that you are being a good scout for your guardians and attending to your lessons and not being otherwise an out-and-outer. Allow me to applaud the notable improvement in your cursive. Looking at it I cannot credit that you are aged only fourteen: I should have proclaimed it the script of some scholarly graybeard. Possessing the ability of writing neatly is sometimes described as being the accomplishment of a fool, but be assured by your father that only a shite-hawk possessed of no accomplishments whatever would say such a witless and jealous thing.

  Proceeding to some of the weightier subjects your mention letters [sic]: I have considered your sentiments carefully, and I think that I know what you mean. I am sorry that you have been upset by the silly boy you mention. Try not to notice him, for to pay such nuisances any credence serves only to encourage their ignorance.

  You must not think it unmanly to have written to me of your feelings; on the contrary, your frankness does you credit and only confirms, which I already knew, that you are the sort of boy who will grow to a manly and admired adult. A boy’s father is the best friend he shall ever have, even in the strange circumstances in which you and I have found ourselves placed; and, in any case, proper manliness is not stoniness.

  Every mortal man who was ever worthy of his sex, from Cuchullain to Wolfe Tone, to Bonaparte, to Abraham Lincoln, to the very great patriot who bore your own name, knew the limitless universe of human emotions, sorrow and heart’s pain among them. Alexander the Great who conqured [sic] his whole world is accounted as having once wept. Did not the bravest hero that ever stood on the earth weep in the loneliness of His passion? No, it is not girlish to weep at times. I myself, when I think of how you and I are parted at present and have been for so long – yes, I have wept.

  My own mother, like yours, was taken from me early – I can remember feelings of lonesomeness when I was the age you are now – so that you and I can be brothers in that hard experience, as well as being father and son. It is hard for a boy whose mother has gone to Paradise. We should be happy for her because she is receiving a beautiful reward in a place where no more hurt can ever be done her, where the color of our heart, not our flesh, is the measure; but we think of the loss of that kindest friend, and are lonely sometimes and afraid. You are a good natural boy and a feeling one. Never be ashamed of what is in your soul, for what is found there will always light you a way. Cup your hands around that flame and ever protect it, Robert; for when it extinguishes, a man is lost.

  Proceeding to the question which, understandably, has troubled you the most: the filthy words employed by that boy for your late mother, and for those of her skin color, including yourself. Any person that uses the term ‘half-breed’ about his fellow human being requires our prayers and our pity, for he is a failure. Such words reveal the aching emptiness of those who speak them. How dismal, the mind of such a boy.

  At the outset, let me say this, Robert, and know it is the truth. Your mother was a person of peerless character, beautiful and gracious-hearted for all the fact that she was born of lowly degree. I made her acquaintance in no ‘pub’ or ‘den’, as that boy imputed, but through a doctor friend to whose children she attended as nursemaid. Her father was not ‘a criminal’ but a goodly settler born in England. Her mother, an Aboriginal woman, was a lady of extraordinary kindness, one of the finest I have had the honor to know. As for what Father Moran told you about fighting or ‘coming the rough’, you must reach your own verdict, but I can tell you that I do not myself concur with him. No boy should permit a slur to any lady to stand unchallenged, still less to the one whose very being protected him as he formed within her body, and gave him the gift of life. It is not pleasant to fight; but sometimes we must, else the bully thrives, and his brother, the braggart, and good people suffer the trampling of their hopes. And when that violence is done, good people turn wicked, and the hatreds of our inheritance are amplified.

  But since you are troubled, let me reassure you in a clear and clean way. Your mother did not ‘trick with men’ to employ this crude boy’s parlance. And if it is a crime to have had forebears who were not of the same race, then your father, Robert, can stand with you in the dock. The fact is that I myself have Caribbean blood, from an ancestor who was once established at Jamaica. So you see, dearest Robert, I am myself of ‘the Negro race’, whatever those words might signify. And I am the same man, now, that commenced this letter, shall still be the same when I end it.†

  Your sadness has brought to my mind a dear person whom I wish you had known. She was a lady called Beatrice Collins, who was our nursemaid in Wexford. A Negress, she had once been a slave in England. She came
to us after my mother’s passing. ‘Aunt Beatrice’ we called that beautiful friend. She is in Paradise today with Our Lady.

  She was kindly, devoted, gentle Aunt Beatrice, the rock in the tempest of our frightened lives. She was – I do not exaggerate – as a mother to me. My little childish troubles, without exception, were hers. If I cried in the night, she soothed me. I was sent away to school, first to Kildare, then to Shropshire, but whenever I returned, I could see that she was happy to be near me. We got on tightly together. I liked her very much. She was one of those quietly reliable people who gladden us merely to know them. Even my father, who could often be severe with us, mellowed a little in her company. Indeed, as the seasons passed, Father and Aunt formed a friendship. They would sit together in the evenings. They would read to one another. Sometimes they would walk an hour on the quayside. They would have liked, I learned later, to marry. But the shameful prejudices of the world prevented this. Their friendship, if not ended, must be conducted in secrecy – so a priest of the town insisted. Thus the sanctified slum of the pious mind held sway. How woeful, these prisons of bigotry, Robert. The friends unmade, the lives impoverished – the deathly and terrible wastefulness.

  I am sorry that you have heard, and will hear again, the terms with which people of color are insulted. It seems to me, Robert, that there is absolutely nothing I can do for this. You yourself must decide your response. But it is also important to say to you something. The color of your body is beautiful, Robert; it was drawn by the Heavenly Artist to be loved. That same Supreme Intelligence, which designed all creation, decreed its crowning masterpiece to be various of aspect – but ignorant man, that has made so little of what he was given, presumes to question His wisdom. Every giraffe looks the same, every worm and every zebra. Only Man has the variety of godhead. Humanity is of the palette of the Beautiful Mathematician, who, when He came to the earth in corporeal form could have chosen to do so in any. A lion of Judah; an angel; an eagle: or in some dazzlingly lovely shape never seen in this world. He did not choose thus, nor to be any of a white man. He walked the dust of Palestine, an African-Hebrew. As immortal Milton tells us,He took a darksom house . The Holy Bible itself, as you will see when you study it, is principally a book about African people.

  The bravest heroes in this country are of African ancestry, indeed are, in my estimation, the future of this Republic. Often during the War I had the honor to witness their valor: bold, impressive, comradely, disciplined, lion-hearted, indefatigable men. Through the cruelest torments, they had not surrendered dignity, through the vilest oppressions, they had held. It had been attempted to cut the heart of them. They had gainsaid the knife. So hold your head high. Be proud of your patrimony. Tell any pitiable bigot who crosses your path that a black man will be elected President of these United States one day, and when that day dawns, that beautiful day, this Nation will be released into the greatness of its promise and will shine as the lighthouse of civilization.

  All the time I was in captivity, your mother was loyal. We lived in the little shieling I built by my own hands at Lake Comfrey – it might yet be standing. Ask Uncle Boland to take you there. I thought we should have a happy life by its waters. Whole days would pass in almost complete tranquility in that oasis. I learned to fish and to hunt, the names of the creatures. There was sadness, yes: our little daughter did not live, but was taken home to Heaven only weeks after her birth; but your mother was brave – much braver than was I – and in time even that pain was accepted.

  I have been fortunate, Robert. Always fortunate. I know what it is to be loved. All my life – I do not know why – I have had friends who were loyal and good, who protected my confidences, perhaps too long. But there is no soul on this earth, there never was and never shall be, that I loved as I loved your mother. She was my east and my west. My hopes for us were endless. There were numerous occasions when I thanked whatever is in Heaven for my exile, for without it, I could never have known my soul mate.

  It will seem inexplicable to you, I know, that I departed from your mother. It was a terrible, a terrible decision. Love of country, which is second only to the love felt by some for the Maker, calls us, sometimes, to the sacrifice. There is an impulse, a profound one, not to tell you of this, and which hates the very notion that such words could ever be written. I have seen where they lead – these easily repeated words – to the graves of the young and the poor. For like all kinds of love, love of country has its seasons. It burns hottest when we are young; we can be infatuated by it. There is blood in our eyes for desire at such moments, and we cannot see the ghosts by the road. I do not know that I would do it now – but I did do it then; and must always live with my choice.

  Robert, it is not difficult to manipulate words, to bend them to their opposite meanings. I could write you that I had been forced to leave your mother, or allow you to come to such a conclusion. That would be a lie. I chose to leave her. It was my will, and my will only.

  Vanity, I think, was a part of my determination; but it was not the only part. Yes, Robert, I was vain. I thought myself wanted. I saw myself triumphant, vanquisher of invaders. My name would be hurrahed in the streets by the hungry. All the fears of boyhood, the awkwardness I had felt: that I never had a brother, that I spoke with a crippling stammer, that my father did not like me, that my masters thought me stupid, that I was not as brave as others, that I was not brave at all – these would be banished by the heroic act. Was there weakness? Without a doubt. Vainglory? Too much. But in my defense, there was also – and I wish there were another word for it – there was something akin to love.

  This feeling which I have mentioned, for our people, our homeplace – I do not say that it is worthless – it is not. Cruelty must be countered, else our lives here are nothing: we are beasts, then, without the civilizing conscience, and deserve our stagger to the shambles. But it is a dangerous love for it can itself lead to disengagement, to a loyalty to abstractions rather than flesh and blood. It smoked up so strong in me, so ferociously strong, that I felt compelled to relegate private happiness to the subservient position. I could not do my duty to the poor of my nation while remaining a prisoner, in the farthest nowhere of the world, of the crown that had watched them starve. So many had died, Robert. Millions had died. I yearned to do nothing; I could not.

  There was a time, which lasted years, when I would tell myself that your mother understood, even sympathized with this impulse that I must stand for what I felt was right. But how could she have done? How could any spouse, thus bereft? My leaving her was the worst thing I ever did. She begged me not to go and I went.

  I rode away from our cottage, down the lanes by the lake; past the house where you now live with your guardians. I can see that road yet, every yard and swaying tree: many times in dreams have I seen it. There was one last moment. The man who had arranged my escape – a brave man, a patriot, we were once tight as brothers – asked if I was sure that I could proceed. It was not too late. I could never come back. Had I fathomed the full import, the consequence of my decision? I stepped into the boat and we rowed away from Hobart; and I never saw your mother again.

  Robert, on my life, and on any honor I ever had, I did not know that your mother was with child when I left her. Had I known that you were growing inside her, I could never have left. Never on my immortal soul. Nor – again I swear to you – was it ever my plan that our separation, so bitter, would be permanent. My deepest hope, somehow, was to have her brought to me in America. But by the time I arrived here, it was too late.

  On that journey, Robert, terrible things happened. I had to be brave – as I ask you now to be. It was not in any part of my nature to be brave but I must defeat my nature; for I did not want to die, alone. At night, on the island, which I have mentioned to you previously, it was so completely dark, as though the whole world was dying, and no flint had your stupefied father to make any fire or light. Sounds could be heard from the invisible sea. The whale-song could be eerie, and the birds. At such
moments I would close my eyes and think of the astounding vastness of the world, and of my relative smallness in it, my nothingness, really. Strange to say, but this thought afforded a consolation. This, and the thought of your mother. That ever I had been loved by such a person as she; that I was loved, still – that I might somehow be again: these thoughts, I believe, were my only shelter. Without them I would have burned to the cinders.

  You must forgive Uncle Boland for what you perceive to be his evasiveness regarding the final matter you raise. He would wish to be loyal to me; that is all. But yes, Robert; I have to tell you, it is true what you have heard in the town: I am married to a different lady now. She and I have been married for a number of years. I am sincerely apologetic that I did not inform you previously, for my failure to do so has caused you to be anxious. I can only tell you the truth – that the time never seemed quite correct to write of it. One had hoped to have been able to tell you face to face.

  She is a very kindly person, of many talents and accomplishments, admired by all who know her. As well, she is the most intellectually gifted person I have known, and will one day, before too long, be your new mother. When that better time comes, and with God’s help it will come soon, you and I and she shall be a happy little family together. This I vow to you faithfully, with all my heart. So please, never succumb to thoughts that you are alone. You will never be alone while I breathe.

  It is not however the case that I have any child but you. Any such tattle you have heard is quite mischievous. In truth, I may tell you, Robert, and this is a painful matter to several people, that privately I have never felt mentally or spiritually able to be a father again, while our situation, yours and mine, remained so excruciatingly unresolved, and I had not done justice to you and had you by me.