“How can you say that, after all we’ve been through together?!”
The woman pursed disapproving lips and hurried off while I doubled over with laughter.
The four of us then laughed our way down the street, debating which pub to visit. It wasn’t a simple choice: there are more than four-dozen pubs in Dingle, even though there are fewer than 1500 residents. We decided to start at An Conair (pronounced “On Conner”).
Because this is Ireland, I ordered a pint. I could only finish half of the dark amber ale, which prompted my companions to start calling me Half-Pint.
“Great,” I said. “I’m going to get laughed out of Ireland.”
“No, no,” Gareth said. “In Ireland the people laugh with you, not at you.”
“It’s no wonder they laugh so much,” I said. “When I got off the ferry in Cork, the pubs were full of people drinking pints—at nine a.m.! Beer for breakfast? What’s up with that?”
“But this is quite normal in Ireland,” Jukka said. “A full Irish breakfast can include eggs, beans, sausage, bacon, toast, and a pint of ale, maybe two.”
No wonder I feel so at home here, I thought, once again surrounded by heavy drinkers.
After everyone finished their pints—except me—we walked to another pub called “The Little Bridge.” (More accurately, it’s called “The Little Bridge” in Gaelic, but I can neither pronounce nor remember how to spell it.) It’s named for the little bridge across the street, which crosses the stream that runs through town. When we arrived Owen was there, playing the bagpipes again, along with a backup guitarist and accordionist.
Gareth suggested we sit so close to the band that I worried the musicians would ask us to back off, but he laid a staying hand on my arm and said, “Just wait, you’ll thank me in an hour.” He was right. As music filled the pub, so did people, until we were so hemmed in I couldn’t shift from one butt cheek to the other without bumping into someone, who bumped into someone else, who knocked over a drink.
Gareth bought us all a round. I ordered a Bailey’s Irish Cream, forced to admit that Irish ale was too rich for my blood. When I thanked him for the drink, he said, “A friend once told me giving is like a river: you dip in when you need something, then put something back later so someone else can dip in downstream.”
“So you’re saying I owe someone else a drink?” I asked.
“Did I hear ye say you’re buyin’, then?” an elfin-faced Irish girl asked me.
“Aw, you’re scarin’ her, Maureen,” shouted the plump young woman next to her. “Don’t mind her, she’s jest TEE-zin ye!”
With that, the pair joined our group. Both of them became quite drunk, but rather than making them annoying and unruly, each drink only enhanced their friendliness. The elfin Maureen apologized several times for being “so pissed.” She and her friend are from Cork, where they’re studying for their teaching certificates. Maureen knows five languages: “English, Gaelic, French, German, and Japanese. I’m very excited to learn Spanish next.”
“I’m surprised you want to be a schoolteacher. You sound like you should be a translator, or a linguistics professor.”
“Nah, I love children. And if I teach, I’ll have summers off for what I love to do best: travelin’. That’s where I want to use m’ languages.”
Between sets, she leaned over to light a cigarette for Owen. When she was out of earshot, Gareth leaned my way and pronounced her “really sweet.” He looked half in love, and I was mildly surprised: she was so chattie and chirpie, while he was so quiet and serious. I suppose opposites attract, but only Jane Austen has ever made me consider that a sensible thing.
Maureen asked Owen if she could sing “Black is the Color.” This is the way of pubs in Dingle, where there’s not a strict division between performer and audience, and anyone game enough to join in is welcome. Maureen sang the traditional Celtic ballad with tear-jerking feeling: “Black is the color of my true love’s hair . . . His lips are like some roses fair . . . He has the sweetest smile and the gentlest hands . . . I love the ground whereon he stands.” It was a song about romantic love, yet she was clearly singing about her love for Ireland. Do I love my own country with such passion? I feel so adrift it’s hard to say anymore.
As the evening went on, the room turned into a roller coaster, a Tilt-a-Whirl, a Bouncy House of human joy, everyone clapping and laughing, stomping and swaying. I leaned toward Gareth’s ear and shouted to be heard, “One thing I love about Irish music: no other music can make me feel so happy and so melancholy at the same time, no matter what the song is.”
He nodded with enthusiasm. “I know just what you mean. I call Irish music ‘my blues.’”
Then the band invited an American musician to join them, a blues singer from New Jersey who’s come to Dingle for the upcoming Irish Music Festival. The crowd parted to create a wide berth for the morbidly obese man, who made his way to the front with the help of a burled wood cane. As the band switched to playing backup for the ballsy, bad-ass singer of American blues, the crowd sang along with new energy. It was your basic blues: someone done him wrong, and all he wanted to know was “woman, why you treat me so bad?”
I told Gareth, “And this is my blues!” The song reminded me that American culture is more than fast food and skyscrapers, suburban malls and pre-fabricated housing. It’s the home of jazz and rock, Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac, hippy counterculture and hip hop rebellion. Americans don’t just dream. We rebel, we confront, we expect. The world thinks us mad, and maybe we are, but it’s a divine madness. Like the blues, sometimes we’re at our best when we’re being bad.
I am an American. No matter how long or how far I wander, there’s no escaping the influence of the places I come from. Nor would I care to. I may think I have no home, but America is the home that lives within me. Much as I might resist belonging to anything, I do belong to that.
That doesn’t mean I’m ready to go back. I still don’t know when, where, or how to end my long escape. Maybe Dingle knows. This town of mist and music feels alive with portents.
***
Jukka had hiked up to Conair Pass before and he was excited to show us the killer view. So today Janet, Gareth, and I followed him into the hills, hoping the mists would clear.
When we began walking uphill from The Little Bridge, the morning was foggy and wet. My feet throbbed with the memory of months of mountains, stairs, cobblestones, and city streets. But the countryside took my mind off the pain: more of my green Irish fantasy trimmed with tiny flowers, rock fences, and a jolly, rocky stream. All of which Jukka pointed out the entire way: “Isn’t this great . . . This is the stream I told you about . . . Isn’t this scenery fantastic?”
“What scenery?” Janet asked. “I can’t see a damn thing.” As we’d climbed higher, the hills had disappeared in a dense cloud bank, which now rained on us in quiet but steady earnest.
The hill we walked on was a series of spongy, boggy hillocks, and our feet were occasionally sucked ankle-deep into the mud. After we crossed a small waterfall—“Isn’t it wonderful?!” Jukka enthused—we quickly lost the trail.
Two confused hours later, we reached the parking lot at the saddle of the pass. The views Jukka had raved about—Dingle Bay below us to the south, Tralee Bay below us to the north—were completely obscured. I peered down through the heavy white mist until I could make out the faint outlines of some nearby lakes, and said, “I can tell there’s a great view. I just can’t see it.” This prompted gales of laughter all around.
Although there was no view at Conair Pass, there was free, if dangerous, entertainment. I had just sat down atop a steep slope to pull my lunch out of my bum bag when a rock pressed against my back and shoved, nearly knocking me downhill. I turned to see what had pushed me.
It wasn’t a rock, but the horns of the Killer Goat of Conair Pass. The goat clearly intended to send me off the cliff and
inherit my lunch. He’s taken up panhandling at the pass after discovering that some tourists have yet to learn you should never feed a strange animal. As I stood up to move away, the goat ran at me and butted me again, harder this time, nearly sending me over the edge. A few feet down the slope stood a small fence, which would have halted my fall but would have mangled me in the process. My companions backed away, laughing.
“Oh my God!” Janet said.
“Oh sure, it’s easy for you to laugh. You haven’t been targeted for”—here I dodged a third butting—“termination!”
We moved away from the slope to eat, each keeping a wary eye on the killer goat. Tourists trickled in by car, and several people approached the goat before we could warn them. One woman walked toward the animal, cooing and reaching out a hand to pet him, when Janet cried, “Look out, he’ll charge you!” This prompted the alarmed woman to turn tail and sprint back to her car. One man stood next to the goat, prepping his camera to take a scenic photo, when the animal swung its head sideways and bashed him in the chest with its impressive horns, nearly goring him. The man retreated to his car, hand pressed to his chest as if it hurt to breathe.
The climax came when a middle-aged German couple showed up in a red, pint-size rental car. The woman rolled down her window and started to feed the goat. Not only did the beast stick his head through the window, horns and all, but he also proceeded to climb halfway into the passenger seat, forelegs in, hind legs out, hooves scrambling in her lap as he tried to launch his entire body into the tiny vehicle. The man and woman both retreated to the driver’s seat, as they tried to shove the animal out of the car. They honked the horn, but this had no effect on the goat. Then the husband tried to be a hero, leaping out of the car and rushing to his wife’s side, where he pushed and prodded the back end of the goat, and finally gave it a swift kick in the rear.
Hint: never kick an animal with horns. The goat did jump back out of the car, all right: it ran at the man, ducked its head, and butted him, hard, horns first, right in the groin. The man yelled and scrambled backward, losing a shoe in the process. Somehow, he escaped emasculation, retrieved his shoe, and jumped back into the car, where he and his wife rolled up the windows and stayed put. They didn’t bother trying to step out to enjoy the view, which, as I’ve explained, couldn’t be seen anyway.
As we started back downhill, the last thing I saw was the goat standing in front of that tiny red compact, pressing its chest against the grill, staring the car down like a bull facing down a matador, as if he dared this pusillanimous red pipsqueak to take him on. Who needs a killer view? Tourists see them every day. But a killer goat? Now we’re talkin’.
Janet said the thing that got to her was the way the goat’s expression never wavered. As she put it, “That blank yellow stare seemed sort of . . . I don’t know . . . evil, somehow.” I wonder if the beast even wanted our food. Maybe he just wanted us to get the hell off his pass.
***
Slender strands of rain and sun string together to make up the days in Dingle. The rainy days are a relief because they expect nothing of me. On those days, I lie in bed late and listen to the rain pattering outside the window. The world’s cares are kept out by Dingle’s green hills and white clouds, making me feel safe, like a child tucked into a magical green and white quilt.
On rainy days, I spend hours wandering from pub to café, café to pub. At some point most days, I settle into the warm embrace of An Café Liteartha, known by locals as the Café Lit. It’s part café, part bookstore. The tiny bookshop out front is filled with Irish literature, while the café in back is filled with wayward tables and locals, expansive conversationalists and intellectual recluses, and always at least two people working on the day’s crossword puzzle.
We’re all waited on by one of the women travelers who’ve come to Dingle for a visit and decided to stay, or by the owner’s son, a good-looking Irish lad who wears his hair in a polite ponytail. The young man is always apologetic when the place is busy and he can’t get to everyone right away, but no one really cares; no one’s in a hurry. Me? I’m just happy to be in this place that smells of books and tea. A pot of hot tea with cream and honey and a fudge biscuit-cake buy me a seat that stops time as I write and read and chat with the locals.
On my first day at the Café Lit, a senior gentleman with a grizzled beard handed me a newspaper article about a local girl who’d scored ridiculously high on her college entrance exam. “She was home-schooled,” he said with an approving nod. “We grow ’em smart in Dingle.” It seems the Irish take deep pride in each other’s achievements. When I browsed through the bookshop out front, the owner informed me that Ireland has turned out more world-renowned writers than many much larger countries. He reminded me of some of their names: James Joyce, C.S. Lewis, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, and several others I’d never heard of, though I nodded and smiled, not wishing to appear illiterate.
The owner is an oldish gent with bushy gray sideburns and long crusts of gray hair emerging from a jaunty tweed hat. Saoirse (Sorshya) is his name—a Gaelic name, so at first I wasn’t sure how to spell it. He speaks Gaelic, too, and, like Irish music, the sound makes my heart ache with a pleasant yearning. He always smiles cheerfully, though his voice is gruff, as if Dingle’s sunny and stormy days have both woven their way into his personality. Each time I tell Saoirse I’m ready to pay my bill, he asks what I ate, then questions me: “Did y’ sit or stand? Did y’ have milk or sugar?” as if he might charge extra for those things.
Like that, with a devilish wink, Dingle’s quiet days end, and its rollicking evenings begin.
***
Whether the days are cloudy or sunny, each night I make my way to the Ballintaggart hostel’s music room. There, a big bay window frames a perfect view of Dingle Bay, a fire often crackles in the grate, and the mood constantly shifts with the people who come and go at all hours.
First, there are the Irish hostel workers: the laughing Irish sisters Eileen and Wendy, and the moody Rory—the Irish Sisters have pinned up a note at the front desk advertising Rory for sale. Next, there’s Joe, the young tour guide from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who looks more like a member of the IRA—he brings a different group through each week. Then, there’s the revolving door of backpackers: Vicki the Scottish siren, the Argentinian man with the didgeridoo, the self-conscious American guy whose name I can’t remember, the pair of smirking Englishmen whose names I don’t care to remember, and an ever-changing cast of characters. By midnight, the music room is usually full with a dozen to two dozen people.
One early evening, I was sitting by the window, half-writing and half-listening to the conversations that wandered in and out. The Irish Sisters were sitting on one of the couches chattering. The American whose name I can’t remember walked in, wearing his usual painstaking smile, and shrugged himself into a corner of the second couch. He kept working his mouth like a beached fish, as if he were about to say something to the Sisters. He seems never able to decide whether to jump into a conversation or press himself into the woodwork, always ending up in the uncomfortable middle.
The two Englishmen whose names I don’t care to remember walked in next and made a noisy, intoxicated production of sitting down in the murmuring room. The noisier of the two, with thick dark brow and storm cloud eyes, dramatically flung himself into a chair, while the quieter, fairer of the two flopped onto the second couch, prompting the Nameless American to shrink further into his corner. The Englishmen were in mid-conversation, and the noisy one was saying something about having “offended again.” Then he announced loudly to the rest of us, “But I don’t believe in all this being polite. I’d rather be honest.”
I looked up from my journal and smiled. “I believe it’s possible to be both.”
“That’s ri—” Wendy began to agree from the couch.
Her voice was drowned out with Mr. Honesty’s reply of, “Oh, ballocks to tha
t!”
This prompted a discussion of the difference between honesty and rudeness. The debate featured Mr. Honesty and his friend versus the Irish Sisters, whose feminine attention the men had surely hoped to rouse in the first place. Having quickly read the danger signs—namely, the nearly empty bottle of wine Mr. Honesty had placed between his knees—I lowered my head and resumed writing. The Nameless American tried to interject with trite one-liners like, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” which drew guffaws from Mr. Honesty. The Nameless American stood up, declared, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be boring,” and left. The Irish Sisters left a moment later, waving to me in sympathy.
“Well, we certainly cleared the room in a hurry,” Mr. Honesty said to his less talkative but equally sneering friend. His tone, and his friend’s snort of laughter, indicated they were quite proud of this achievement.
Then, in walked Joe, the tour guide from Belfast who looks more like an IRA guerilla: thin and proudly slouching, with angry dark stubble poking through his shaved head. A member of his tour group followed, a young American with a boy-next-door face. They sat at a far table, intent on some deep discussion. Mr. Honesty interrupted them several times, trying to muscle into the conversation, but they barely glanced at him. Mr. H managed to squeeze out of Joe a confirmation that he was, indeed, from Northern Ireland, but when Mr. H asked whether Joe was Catholic or Protestant, Joe said he didn’t want to talk about it.
“So you’re Catholic then,” Mr. H concluded. Joe refused to respond. Undeterred, Mr. H blurted, “So, do you know anyone personally who’s been killed?”
My heart skipped a beat. Not metaphorically—I actually felt it. I kept my head down, but my pen stopped moving as I listened.
With an infuriated sigh, Joe addressed Mr. H, “That’s my business and I don’t have to tell anybody! But just think about what you’re asking.” He paused. “There are some things a person should be able to keep to himself.”
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