The Dream of the Celt: A Novel

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Once he had a fever and the doctor at the infirmary said he was going to die.” The sheriff took up his monologue again. “But between Mrs. Cubert, the woman who nursed him, and me, we took care of him, kept him warm, and with love and patience saved his life. I spent many sleepless nights rubbing his whole body with camphorated alcohol. It did him good. It broke my heart to see him so small, shivering with cold. I hope he didn’t suffer. I mean over there, in the trenches, in that place, Loos. I hope his death was quick and he didn’t realize it. I hope God wasn’t cruel enough to inflict a long agony on him, letting him bleed to death slowly or choke on mustard gas. He always attended Sunday services and fulfilled his Christian obligations.”

  “What was your son’s name, Sheriff?” Roger asked.

  He thought the man gave another start in the darkness, as if he had just discovered again that he was there.

  “His name was Alex Stacey,” he said at last. “Like my father. And like me.”

  “I’m glad to know it,” said Roger. “When you know their names, you can imagine people better. Feel them, though you don’t know them. Alex Stacey is a nice-sounding name. It gives the idea of a good person.”

  “Well-mannered and helpful,” the sheriff said softly. “Perhaps a little timid. Especially with women. I had observed him since he was a boy. With men he felt comfortable, he got along with no difficulty. But with women he became intimidated. He didn’t dare look them in the eye. And if they spoke to him, he began to stammer. That’s why I’m sure Alex died a virgin.”

  He fell silent again and sank into his thoughts and total immobility. Poor boy! If what his father said was true, Alex Stacey died without having known the warmth of a woman. The warmth of a mother, a wife, a lover. Roger at least had known, though for a short time, the happiness of a beautiful, tender, delicate mother. He sighed. He hadn’t thought about her for some time, which never had happened before. If an afterlife existed, if the souls of the dead observed from eternity the fleeting life of the living, he was sure that Anne Jephson had been watching over him all this time, following his footsteps, suffering over and distressed by his misfortunes in Germany, sharing his disappointments, setbacks, and the awful feeling of having been wrong—in his ingenuous idealism, in the romantic propensity Herbert Ward so often mocked—of having idealized the Kaiser and the Germans too much, of having believed they would make the Irish cause their own and become loyal and enthusiastic allies of the dream of independence.

  Yes, it was certain his mother had shared, during those five unspeakable days, his pain, vomiting, nausea, and cramps in the U-19 submarine that transported him, Monteith, and Bailey from the German port of Heligoland to the coast of Kerry. Never in his life had he felt so bad, physically and spiritually. His stomach could tolerate no food except for sips of hot coffee and small mouthfuls of bread. The captain of the U-19, Raimund Weisbach, had him take a swallow of brandy, but instead of stopping his nausea, it made him vomit bile. When the submarine navigated on the surface, at about twelve miles an hour, it moved the most and his seasickness was most devastating. When it submerged, it moved less but its speed diminished. Blankets and overcoats could not alleviate the cold that gnawed at his bones, nor the permanent feeling of claustrophobia that had been like an anticipation of what he would feel later, in Brixton Prison, in the Tower of London, in Pentonville Prison.

  Undoubtedly because of his nausea and horrible malaise during the trip in the U-19, he left in one of his pockets the train ticket from Berlin to the German port of Wilhelmshaven. The police who arrested him in McKenna’s Fort discovered it when they searched him in the Tralee police station. The train ticket would be shown by the prosecutor at his trial as one of the proofs that he had come to Ireland from Germany, an enemy country. But even worse was that in another of his pockets, the police of the Royal Irish Constabulary found the paper with the secret code the German admiralty had given him so that in an emergency he could communicate with the Kaiser’s military commanders. How was it possible he hadn’t destroyed so compromising a document before leaving the U-19 and jumping into the boat that would take them to the beach? It was a question that festered in his mind like an infected wound. And yet, Roger remembered clearly that before taking their leave of the captain and crew of the U-19 submarine, on the insistence of Captain Robert Monteith, he and Sergeant Daniel Bailey had searched their pockets one last time to destroy any compromising object or document regarding their identity and origin. How could he have been careless to the extreme of overlooking the train ticket and secret code? He recalled the smile of satisfaction with which the prosecutor displayed the code during the trial. What damage did that information in the hands of British intelligence do to Germany?

  What explained that very grave distraction was undoubtedly his calamitous physical and psychological state, devastated by seasickness, the deterioration of his health during his last months in Germany, and above all, the concerns and anguish that political events caused in him—from the failure of the Irish Brigade to his learning that the Volunteers and the IRB had decided the military uprising would take place during Easter Week even though there would be no military action by the Germans—which affected his lucidity and mental equilibrium, making him lose his reflexes, his ability to concentrate, his serenity. Were these the first symptoms of madness? It had happened to him before, in the Congo and the Amazonian jungle, faced with the spectacle of the mutilations and countless other tortures and atrocities to which the indigenous people were subjected by the rubber barons. On three or four occasions he had felt that his strength was leaving him, that he was dominated by a feeling of impotence in the face of the excess of evil he saw around him, the circle of cruelty and ignominy, so extensive, so overwhelming it seemed chimerical to confront and try to destroy it. Someone who feels so profound a demoralization can commit oversights as serious as the ones he had committed. These excuses relieved him for an instant or two; then, he rejected them, and the feelings of guilt and remorse became worse.

  “I’ve thought about taking my own life.” Once again, the jailer’s voice caught him unawares. “Alex was my only reason for living. I have no other relatives. Or friends. Barely acquaintances. My life was my son. Why go on in this world without him?”

  “I know that feeling, Sheriff,” murmured Roger. “And yet, in spite of everything, life also has beautiful things. You’ll find other reasons. You’re still a young man.”

  “I’m forty-seven, though I look much older,” the jailer answered. “If I haven’t killed myself, it’s because my religion forbids suicide. But my doing it isn’t impossible. If I can’t overcome this sadness, this feeling of emptiness, that nothing matters now, I will. A man should live as long as he feels life is worth it. If not, not.”

  He spoke without drama, with calm certainty. Again he fell silent and became still. Roger tried to listen. It seemed that from somewhere outside came reminiscences of a song, perhaps a choir. But the sound was so soft and distant he couldn’t decipher the words or the melody.

  Why did the leaders of the Rising want to keep him from coming to Ireland? Why did they ask the German authorities that he remain in Berlin with the ridiculous title of “ambassador” from the Irish nationalist organizations? He had seen the letters, read and reread the sentences that concerned him. According to Captain Monteith, it was because the leaders of the Volunteers and the IRB knew Roger was opposed to a rebellion without a major German offensive to paralyze the British army and the Royal Navy. Why hadn’t they told him directly? Why had they sent him their decision through the German authorities? They were suspicious, perhaps. Did they believe he was no longer trustworthy? Perhaps they had credited the stupid, irrational rumors circulated by the British government accusing him of being a British spy. He hadn’t been at all concerned about the slander, had always supposed his friends and comrades would realize these were toxic operations by the British secret services to sow suspicion and division among the nationalists. Perhaps one, some of his co
mrades had let themselves be deceived by the colonizer’s tricks. Well, now they must be convinced that Roger Casement was still a fighter loyal to the cause of Irish independence. Could those who doubted his loyalty have been some of the men shot in Kilmainham Gaol? What did the understanding of the dead matter to him now?

  He sensed the jailer standing and moving toward the cell door. He heard his slow, listless steps, as if he were dragging his feet. When he reached the door, he heard him say:

  “What I’ve done is wrong. A violation of the rules. No one should say a word to you, least of all me. I came because I couldn’t stand it anymore. If I didn’t talk to someone my head or my heart would have exploded.”

  “I’m glad you came, Sheriff,” Roger whispered. “In my situation, speaking to someone is a great relief. The only thing I regret is not being able to console you for the death of your son.”

  The jailer grunted something that might have been a goodbye. He opened the cell door and left. From the outside he locked it again with the key. Once again the darkness was total. Roger lay down, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep, but he knew sleep wouldn’t come tonight either, and the hours until dawn would be very slow, an interminable wait.

  He thought of the jailer’s words: “I’m sure Alex died a virgin.” Poor boy. To reach nineteen or twenty without having known the pleasure, the feverish swoon, the suspension of what was around you, the sensation of instantaneous eternity that barely lasted as long as the ejaculation and yet, so intense, so profound that it excited all the fibers of your body and made even the last vestige of your soul participate and come to life. He might have died a virgin too if instead of leaving for Africa when he turned twenty, he had remained in Liverpool working for the Elder Dempster Line. His timidity with women had been the same as—perhaps worse than—the shyness of the young man with flat feet, Alex Stacey. He remembered the jokes of his girl cousins, and especially of Gertrude, the beloved Gee, when they wanted to make him blush. They just had to talk about girls, to tell him, for example: “Have you seen how Dorothy looks at you?” “Do you realize that Malina always arranges to sit next to you at picnics?” “She likes you, cousin.” “Do you like her, too?” The discomfort these jests produced in him! He lost his confidence and began to stammer, to stutter, to talk nonsense, until Gee and her friends, overcome with laughter, calmed him down: “It was a joke, don’t be like that.”

  Still, from the time he was very young he’d had a keen esthetic sense, known how to appreciate the beauty of bodies and faces, contemplating with delight and joy a harmonious silhouette, eyes that were lively and mischievous, a delicate waist, muscles that denoted the unconscious strength predatory animals exhibit in the wild. When did he become aware that the beauty that exalted him most, adding a flavor of uneasiness and alarm, the impression of committing a transgression, did not belong to girls but to boys? In Africa. Before he set foot on the African continent, his Puritan upbringing, the rigidly traditional and conservative customs of his paternal and maternal families, had repressed in embryo any hint of that kind of excitation, faithful to an environment in which the mere suspicion of sexual attraction between persons of the same sex was considered an abominable aberration, rightly condemned by law and religion as a crime and a sin without justification or extenuating circumstances. In Magherintemple, in Antrim, in the house of his great-uncle John, in Liverpool, in the house of his aunt and uncle and cousins, photography had been the pretext that allowed him to enjoy—only with his eyes and mind—those sleek, beautiful male bodies he felt attracted to, deceiving himself with the excuse that the attraction was purely esthetic.

  Africa, that horrible but beautiful continent with its enormous suffering, was also the land of freedom, where human beings could be mistreated in the most iniquitous way but, at the same time, show their passions, fantasies, desires, instincts, and dreams without the restraints and prejudices that stifled pleasure in Great Britain. He remembered an afternoon of smothering heat and high sun in Boma, when it wasn’t even a village but a tiny settlement. Suffocating and feeling that his body was on fire, he had gone to swim in the stream on the outskirts that, shortly before rushing into the waters of the Congo River, formed small lagoons and murmuring falls among the rocks in a spot with very tall mango trees, coconut palms, baobabs, and giant ferns. Two young Bakongos were swimming there, naked as he was. Though they didn’t speak English, they answered his greeting with smiles. They seemed to be swimming, but Roger soon realized they were fishing with their bare hands. Their excitement and laughter were due to the difficulty they had holding on to the slippery little fish that escaped between their fingers. One of the two boys was very beautiful. He had a long, blue-black, well-proportioned body, deep eyes with a lively light in them, and he moved in the water like a fish. With his movements, the muscles in his arms, back and thighs became prominent, gleaming with the drops of water clinging to his skin. On his dark face, with its geometric tattoos and flashing glances, his very white teeth stood out. When they finally caught a fish, with a great clamor, the other boy left the stream and went to the bank, where, it seemed to Roger, he began to cut and clean the fish and prepare a fire. The one who had stayed in the water looked into his eyes and smiled. Roger, feeling a kind of fever, swam toward him, smiling as well. When he reached his side, he didn’t know what to do. He felt shame, discomfort, and at the same time, unlimited joy.

  “Too bad you don’t understand me,” he heard himself say softly. “I would have liked to take photographs of you. Talk with you. Become your friend.”

  And then he felt the boy impelling himself forward with his feet and arms, shortening the distance that separated them. Now he was so close they were almost touching. And then Roger felt someone else’s hands searching out his belly, touching and caressing his sex, which had been erect for a while. In the darkness of his cell, he sighed with desire and anguish. Closing his eyes, he tried to revive that scene from so many years ago: the surprise, the indescribable excitement that nonetheless did not attenuate his misgivings and fear, and his body embracing the boy’s, whose stiff penis he could also feel rubbing against his legs and belly.

  It was the first time Roger made love, if you can call it making love when he became excited and ejaculated in the water against the body of the boy who masturbated him and undoubtedly also ejaculated, though Roger didn’t notice that. When he came out of the water and dressed, the two Bakongos invited him to a few mouthfuls of the fish they had smoked over a small fire on the edge of the pool the stream had formed.

  What shame he felt afterward. All the rest of the day he was in a daze, sunk in remorse that mixed with sparks of joy, the awareness of having gone past the limits of a prison and achieving a freedom he had always desired in secret and never dared look for. Was he remorseful, did he intend to make amends? Yes, yes. He did. He promised himself, for the sake of his honor, the memory of his mother, his religion, that it would not be repeated, knowing very well he was lying to himself, and now that he had tasted the forbidden fruit, felt how his entire being was transformed into a dizzying blazing torch, he could not avoid its being repeated. That was the only, or, in any case, one of the few times in which pleasure had not cost him money. Had the fact of paying his lovers of a few minutes or hours freed him very quickly from the pangs of conscience that at first hounded him after those adventures? Perhaps. As if, being converted into a commercial transaction—you give me your mouth and penis and I give you my tongue, my asshole, and several pounds—those rapid encounters in parks, dark corners, public bathrooms, stations, foul hotels, or in the middle of the street—like dogs, he thought—with men with whom he often could communicate only by gestures and looks because they did not speak his language, stripped those acts of all moral significance and turned them into a pure exchange, as neutral as buying ice cream or a pack of cigarettes. It was pleasure, not love. He had learned to enjoy but not to love or be loved. Occasionally in Africa, Brazil, Iquitos, London, Belfast, or Dublin, after a particularl
y intense encounter, some feeling had been added to the adventure and he had told himself: I’m in love. False: he never was. That didn’t last. Not even with Eivind Adler Christensen, for whom he had developed affection, but not that of a lover, perhaps an older brother or father. Miserable wretch. In this area, too, his life had been a complete failure. Many lovers for a price—dozens, perhaps hundreds—and not a single loving relationship. Pure sex, hurried and animal.

  For that reason, when he made a reckoning of his sexual and emotional life, Roger told himself it had been belated and austere, made up of sporadic, always hasty adventures, as transient, as lacking in consequences, as the one in the stream with waterfalls and pools in the outskirts of what was still an encampment half lost in a place on the Lower Congo called Boma.

  He was seized by the profound sadness that had almost always followed his furtive amorous encounters, generally outdoors, like the first one, with men and boys who were often foreigners whose names he did not know or forgot as soon as he learned them. They were ephemeral moments of pleasure, nothing that could compare with the stable relationship, lasting over months and years, in which added to passion were understanding, complicity, friendship, dialogue, solidarity, the relationship between Herbert and Sarita Ward that he had always envied. It was another of the great voids, the great nostalgias, of his life.