The Dream of the Celt: A Novel

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  When he learned that the young man had no place to sleep, he invited him to his hotel. He took a small room for him on the same floor as his. In spite of the accumulated fatigue of his long journey, that night Roger didn’t close his eyes. He savored and suffered imagining the athletic body of his new friend immobilized by sleep, his blond hair tousled and that delicate face, with its very light blue eyes, resting on his arm, sleeping perhaps with lips open, showing his white, even teeth.

  Having met Eivind Adler Christensen was so powerful an experience that the next day, at his first appointment with John Devoy, with whom he had important matters to discuss, that face and figure returned to his memory, distancing him for moments at a time from the small office where they talked, overwhelmed by the heat.

  The old, experienced revolutionary, whose life resembled an adventure novel, made a strong impression on Roger. He carried his seventy-two years with vigor and transmitted an infectious energy in his gestures, movements, and way of speaking. Taking notes in a small notebook with a pencil whose point he periodically wet in his mouth, he listened to Roger’s report on the Volunteers without interrupting, but when he stopped he asked innumerable questions, requesting details. Roger marveled that John Devoy was so extensively informed about what went on in Ireland, including matters supposedly kept absolutely secret.

  He was not a cordial man. He had been hardened by his years in prison, by clandestinity and struggle, but he inspired confidence, the sense that he was frank, honest, and held granite-like convictions. In that talk and those they would have for the rest of the time he remained in the United States, Roger saw that he and Devoy coincided point by point in their opinions on Ireland. Devoy, too, believed it was too late for Home Rule, that now the only objective of Irish patriots was emancipation, and that armed actions would be an indispensable complement to negotiations. The British government would agree to negotiate only when military operations created a situation so difficult that granting independence would be a lesser evil for London. In this imminent war, approaching Germany was vital for the nationalists: her logistical and political support would give the independence movement greater efficacy. Devoy told him that in the Irish community in the United States, there was no unanimity in this matter. John Redmond’s theses also had partisans here, even though the leadership of Clan na Gael agreed with Devoy and Roger.

  In the days that followed, Devoy introduced him to most of the organization’s leaders in New York, as well as John Quinn and William Bourke Cockran, two influential North American lawyers who lent assistance to the Irish cause. Both had relationships with high circles in the executive branch and the U.S. Congress.

  Roger noted the good impression he had made on the Irish communities when, at John Devoy’s request, he began to speak at meetings and gatherings to collect funds. He was known for his campaigns in defense of the indigenous peoples of Africa and Amazonia, and his rational, emotive oratory reached every member of the public. At the end of the meetings where he spoke, in New York, Philadelphia, and other East Coast cities, contributions increased. The leaders of Clan na Gael joked with him that at this rate they’d become capitalists. The Ancient Order of Hibernians invited him to be the main speaker at the largest meeting in the United States that Roger took part in.

  In Philadelphia he met another of the great nationalist leaders in exile, Joseph McGarrity, a close collaborator of John Devoy’s in Clan na Gael. In fact, Roger was in his house when they heard the news of the successful covert unloading of fifteen hundred rifles and ten thousand rounds of ammunition for the Volunteers at Howth. The news provoked immense joy among the leaders and was celebrated with a toast. A short while later he learned that after the unloading, there was a serious incident at Bachelor’s Walk between Irishmen and British soldiers of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers Regiment, with three dead and more than forty wounded. Was the war beginning, then?

  In almost all his travels around the United States, at meetings of Clan na Gael, and public events, Roger appeared accompanied by Eivind Adler Christensen. He introduced him as his assistant and confidant. He had bought him more presentable clothing and had brought him up to date on the Irish problem, about which the young Norwegian said he was totally ignorant. He was uncultured but not a fool, he learned quickly and proved very discreet at Roger’s meetings with John Devoy and other members of the organization. If the presence of Christensen aroused their misgivings, they kept it to themselves, for they never asked Roger intrusive questions about his companion.

  When, on August 4, 1914, Great Britain declared war on her enemy, Roger and the leaders of Clan na Gael had already decided he would leave for Germany. He would go as a representative of the supporters of independence to establish a strategic alliance in which the Kaiser’s government would lend political and military assistance to the Volunteers. In return, they would campaign against the enlistment of Irishmen in the British Army, which the Ulster unionists as well as the followers of John Redmond defended. This project was discussed with a small number of leaders of the Volunteers, including Patrick Pearse and Eoin MacNeill, who approved it without reservation. The German embassy in Washington, to which Clan na Gael had links, collaborated in the plans. The German military attaché, Captain Franz von Papen, came to New York and met twice with Roger. He expressed enthusiasm at the rapprochement among Clan na Gael, the Irish IRB, and the German government. After consulting Berlin, he informed them that Roger Casement would be welcomed in Germany.

  Roger expected the war, like almost everyone else, and as soon as the threat became a reality, he threw himself into action with the enormous energy he was capable of. His position in favor of the Reich was charged with an anti-British virulence that surprised his colleagues in Clan na Gael, even though many of them were also wagering on a German victory. He had a violent argument with John Quinn, who had invited him to spend a few days at his luxurious residence, for affirming that this war was a plot caused by England’s resentment and envy as a country in decadence faced with a vigorous power at the height of its industrial and economic development and with a growing population. Germany represented the future because it carried no colonial ballast, while Britain, the very incarnation of an imperial past, was condemned to extinction.

  In August, September, and October of 1914, Roger, as during his best times, worked day and night, writing articles and letters, giving talks and speeches in which, with maniacal insistence, he accused Britain of being the cause of this European catastrophe and urged the Irish not to give in to the siren songs of John Redmond, campaigning for them to enlist. Meanwhile, the Liberal government approved Home Rule in parliament but postponed putting it into effect until the war was over. The division within the Volunteers was inevitable. The organization had grown at an extraordinary rate, and Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party were in the large majority. More than 150,000 Volunteers followed him, while barely 11,000 remained with Eoin MacNeill and Patrick Pearse. None of this lessened the pro-German fervor of Roger Casement, who, at every meeting in the United States, presented the Kaiser’s Germany as the victim in this war and the best defender of Western civilization. “It isn’t love of Germany that speaks through your mouth but hatred of England,” John Quinn said during their argument.

  In September 1914, Roger published a small book in Philadelphia: Ireland, Germany, and Freedom of the Seas: A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914, a collection of his essays and articles favorable to Germany. The book would later be published in Berlin with the title The Crime Against Europe.

  His pronouncements in favor of Germany impressed the accredited diplomats of the Reich in the United States. The German ambassador in Washington, Count Johann von Bernstorff, traveled to New York to meet privately with him and the trio of leaders of Clan na Gael—John Devoy, Joseph McGarrity, and John Keating. Captain Franz von Papen was also present. It was Roger, as agreed upon by his companions, who expounded the nationalists’ request to the German diplomat: fifty thousand rifles and ammu
nition. They could be unloaded in secret at various Irish ports by the Volunteers. They would be used in an anticolonialist military uprising that would immobilize significant British military forces, which ought to be taken advantage of by the Kaiser’s naval and military forces to unleash an offensive against the military garrisons on the English coast. To broaden pro-German feeling in Irish public opinion, it was indispensable for the German government to issue a statement guaranteeing that, in the event of victory, it would support the Irish desire for liberation from the colonial yoke. By the same token, the German government had to commit to giving special treatment to Irish soldiers who might be taken prisoner, separating them from the British and giving them the opportunity to join an Irish Brigade that would fight “alongside, but not inside” the German army against the common enemy. Roger would organize the brigade.

  Count von Bernstorff, with his robust appearance, monocle, and chest covered with medals, listened attentively. Captain von Papen took notes. The ambassador had to consult Berlin, of course, but he added that the proposal seemed reasonable to him. And, in effect, a few days later, at a second meeting, he informed them that the German government was prepared to hold talks on the matter in Berlin, with Roger as the representative of the Irish nationalists. He gave them a letter asking the authorities to offer every assistance to Sir Roger during his stay in Germany.

  He immediately began to prepare for his trip. He saw that Devoy, McGarrity, and Keating were surprised when he told them he would travel to Germany with his assistant, Eivind Adler Christensen. Since it had been planned, for reasons of security, that he would travel by ship from New York to Christiania, the Norwegian’s help as a translator in his own country would be useful, and in Berlin as well, for Eivind also spoke German. He did not request additional funds for his assistant. The amount Clan na Gael gave him for travel and housing—$3,000—would be enough for both of them.

  If his New York comrades saw something strange in his determination to have the young Viking who remained mute at their meetings accompany them to Berlin, they said nothing about it. They agreed without comment. Roger wouldn’t have been able to take the trip without Eivind. With him a tide of youth, of hope, and—the word made him blush—of love had entered his life. It hadn’t happened to him before. He’d had sporadic street adventures with people whose names, if they were their names and not mere nicknames, he forgot almost immediately, or with the phantoms his imagination, desires, and solitude invented on the pages of his diaries. But with the “beautiful Viking,” as he called him when they were alone, he had the sensation during these weeks and months that, beyond pleasure, he had at last established a loving relationship that could endure and take him out of the solitude his sexual preference had condemned him to. He didn’t talk about these things with Eivind. He wasn’t ingenuous and often told himself the most probable thing, even the certain thing, was that the Norwegian was with him out of self-interest, because with Roger he ate twice a day, had a roof over his head, slept in a decent bed, had clothes and the security that, as he had confessed, he hadn’t enjoyed for a long time. But in the end Roger discarded all precautions in his daily exchanges with the boy, who was attentive and affectionate with him, seemed to live to attend to him, handed him articles of clothing, was willing to take care of every errand. He always behaved respectfully toward him, even at the most intimate moments, maintaining distance, not allowing himself any abuse of confidence, any vulgarity.

  They bought second-class passage on the Oskar II, from New York to Christiania, which sailed in mid-October. Roger, who carried papers with the name James Landy, changed his appearance, cutting his hair close to the scalp and whitening his tanned complexion with creams. The ship was intercepted by the Royal Navy on the high seas and escorted to Stornoway, in the Hebrides, where it was subjected to a rigorous search. But Roger’s true identity was not detected. The couple reached Christiania safe and sound at nightfall on October 28. Roger had never felt better. If anyone had asked, he would have responded that in spite of all the problems, he was a happy man.

  And yet, at the very hour and minute when he believed he had caught the will-o’-the-wisp—happiness—the most bitter period in his life was beginning, a failure, he would think afterward, that would cloud everything good and noble in his past. The day they arrived in the capital of Norway, Eivind told him he had been kidnapped for a few hours by strangers and taken to the British consulate, where he was interrogated about his mysterious companion. Roger naïvely believed him, and thought this episode offered a providential opportunity to demonstrate the artful deceptions and murderous intentions of the British authorities. In reality, as he would learn later, Eivind had gone to the consulate offering to sell him out. This matter only served to obsess Roger and make him waste weeks and months in useless measures and preparations that, in the end, brought no benefit to the Irish cause and undoubtedly were the butt of jokes in the Foreign Office and British Intelligence, where they must have viewed him as a pathetic novice conspirator.

  When did his disillusionment begin with the Germany that, perhaps simply because of his rejection of Britain, he had begun to admire and call a model of efficiency, discipline, culture, and modernity? Not during his first weeks in Berlin. On the fairly bizarre trip from Christiania to the German capital, accompanied by Richard Meyer, who would be his intermediary to the Kaiser’s Ministry of Foreign Relations, he was still filled with illusions, convinced Germany would win the war and her victory would be decisive for the emancipation of Ireland. His first impressions of the cold, rainy, fogbound city that Berlin was that autumn were good. Both the undersecretary of state for foreign relations, Arthur Zimmermann, and Count Georg von Wedel, chief of the British section at the chancellery, received him with amiability and were enthusiastic about his plans for a brigade composed of Irish prisoners. Both were advocates of the German government making a statement in favor of Irish independence. And on November 20, 1914, the Reich did just that, perhaps not in terms as explicit as Roger had hoped for, but clear enough to justify the position of those like him who defended an alliance of Irish nationalists with Germany. Still, by that date, in spite of his enthusiasm for the statement—undoubtedly one of his successes—and the fact that the secretary of state for foreign relations finally told him the military high command had ordered Irish prisoners of war to be placed in a single camp where he could visit them, Roger began to sense that reality would not yield to his plans but instead would do everything to make them fail.

  The first hint that matters were taking unexpected paths was learning, in the only letter from Alice Stopford Green he received in eighteen months—a letter that took a transatlantic parabolic detour to reach him, making a stop in New York, where the envelope, name, and address were changed—that the British press had reported his presence in Berlin. This had instigated an intense polemic between the nationalists who favored and those who opposed his decision to side with Germany in the war. Alice objected to it: she told him so in categorical terms. She added that many firm advocates of independence agreed with her. At most, said Alice, she could accept Irish neutrality in the European war but not making common cause with Germany. Tens of thousands of Irishmen were fighting for Great Britain: how would these compatriots feel knowing that noted Irish nationalists identified with the enemy firing cannon at them and gassing them in the trenches of Belgium?

  Alice’s letter had the effect of a lightning bolt. That the person he most admired, the one he thought agreed with him politically more than any other, should condemn what he was doing, and tell him so in those terms, left him stunned. Things probably were seen differently from London, without the perspective of distance. But even though he told himself every justification, something remained in his consciousness, disturbing him: his political mentor, friend, and teacher disagreed with him for the first time and thought that instead of helping he was harming the Irish cause. From then on, a question echoed in his mind with the sound of an evil omen: What if Alice is r
ight and I’ve made a mistake?

  During that same month of November, the German authorities had him travel to the front, in Charleville, to talk with military leaders about the Irish Brigade. Roger told himself that if he was successful and a military unit was formed that would fight beside German forces for the independence of Ireland, perhaps the scruples of many of his comrades, like Alice, would disappear. They would accept that sentimentality was a hindrance in politics, that Ireland’s enemy was Britain and the enemies of her enemies were Ireland’s friends. The trip, though brief, left him with a good impression. The high-ranking German officers fighting in Belgium were certain of victory. They all applauded the idea of the Irish Brigade. He didn’t see very much of the war itself: troops on the roads, hospitals in the villages, lines of prisoners guarded by armed soldiers, distant cannon fire. When he returned to Berlin, good news was waiting for him. Acceding to his request, the Vatican had agreed to send two priests to the camp where the Irish prisoners were being assembled: an Augustinian, Father O’Gorman, and a Dominican, Father Thomas Crotty. O’Gorman would stay for two months and Crotty for as long as necessary.