"Ah, Jaisus," said everyone, nodding.
"That"s number one." Timulty ticked it off on his finger. "Place is lacking. Then, second, time and circ.u.mstances. For say you should sweet-talk a fair girl into a field, eh? in her rain boots and slicker and her shawl over her head and her umbrella over that and you making noises like a stuck pig half over the sty gate, which means you"ve got one hand in her bosom and the other wrestling with her boots, which is as far as you"ll d.a.m.n well get, for who"s standing there behind you, and you feel his sweet spearmint breath on your neck?"
"The father from the local parish?" offered Garrity.
"The father from the local parish," said everyone, in despair.
"There"s nails number two and three in the cross on which all Ireland"s males hang crucified," said Timulty.
"Go on, Timulty, go on."
"Those fellows visiting here from Sicily run in teams. We run in teams. Here we are, the gang from Finn"s pub, are we not?"
"Be d.a.m.ned and we are!"
"They look sad and are melancholy half the time and then spitting like happy demons the rest, either up or down, never in between-and who does that remind you of?"
Everyone looked in the mirror and nodded.
"If we had the choice," said Timulty, "to go home to the dire wife and the dread mother-in-law and the old-maid sister, all sour sweats and terrors, or stay here for one more song or one more drink or one more story, which would all of us men choose?""
Silence.
"Think on that," said Timulty. "Answer the truth. Resemblances. Similarities. The long list of them runs off one hand and up the other arm. And well worth the mulling over before we leap about crying Jaisus and Mary and summoning the guard."
Silence.
"I," said someone, after a long while, strangely, curiously, "would like ... to see them closer."
"I think you"ll get your wish. Hist!" I said, not too dramatically, considering the situation.
All froze in a tableau.
And far off we heard a faint and fragile sound. It was like the wondrous morning you wake and lie in bed and know by a special feel that the first fall of snow is in the air, on its way down, tickling the sky, making the silence to stir aside and fall back in on nothing.
"Ah, G.o.d," said Finn, at last, "it"s the first day of spring. . . ."
And it was that too. First the dainty snowfall of feet drifting on the cobbles, and then a choir of bird song.
And along the sidewalk and down the street and outside the pub came the sounds that were winter and spring. The doors sprang wide. The men reeled back from the impact of the meeting to come. They steeled their nerves. They balled their fists. They geared their teeth in their anxious mouths, and into the pub like children corne into a Christmas place and everything a bauble or a toy, a special gift or color, there stood the tall thin older man who looked young and the small thin younger men who had old things in their eyes. The sound of snowfall stopped. The sound of spring birds ceased.
The strange children herded by the strange shepherd found themselves suddenly stranded as if they sensed a pulling away of a tide of people, even though the men at the bar had flinched but the merest hair.
The children of a warm isle regarded the short child-sized and runty full-grown men of this cold land, and the full-grown men looked back in mutual a.s.size.
Timulty and the men at the bar breathed long and slow. You could smell the terrible clean smell of the children way over here. There was too much spring in it. Even I backed off a bit.
Snell-Orkney and his young-old boy-men breathed swiftly as the heartbeats of birds trapped in a cruel pair of fists. You could smell the dusty, impacted, prolonged, and dark-clothed smell of the little men way over there. There was too much winter in it.
Each might have commented upon the other"s choice of scent, but- At this moment the double doors at the side banged wide and Garrity charged in full-blown, crying the alarm: "Jesus, I"ve seen everything! Do you know where they are now, and what doing!"
Every hand at the bar flew up to shush him.
By the startled look in their eyes, the intruders knew they were being shouted about.
"They"re still at St. Stephen"s Green!" Garrity, on the move, saw naught that was before him. "I stopped by the hotel to spread the news. Now it"s your turn. Those fellows-"
"Those fellows," said David Snell-Orkney, "are here in . . ." He hesitated.
"The Four Provinces," said Heeber Finn, looking at his shoes.
"The Four Provinces," said the tall man, nodding his thanks.
"Where," said Garrity, gone miserable, "we will all be having a drink instantly."
He flung himself at the bar.
But the six intruders were moving also. They made a small parade to either side of Garrity and just by being amiably there made him hunch three inches smaller.
"Good afternoon," said Snell-Orkney.
"It is and it isn"t," I said, carefully, waiting.
"It seems," said the tall man surrounded by the little boy-men, "there is much talk about what we are doing in Ireland."
"That would be putting the mildest interpretation on it," said Finn.
"Allow me to explain," said Mr. David Snell-Orkney.
"Have you ever," he continued, "heard of the Snow Queen and the Summer King?"
Several jaws trapped wide down.
Someone gasped as if booted in the stomach.
I have, I thought, but go on.
Finn, after a moment in which he considered just where a blow might have landed upon him, took a long, slow sip of his ale with scowling precision and, with the fire in his mouth, replied, carefully, letting the warm breath out over his tongue: "Ah . . . what Queen is that again, and what d.a.m.ned King?"
The men at the bar leaned forward, in favor of storytelling anytime; then caught themselves and leaned back.
"Well," said the tall pale man, "there was this Queen who lived in Iceland, who had never seen summer, and this King who lived in the Isles of Sun, who had never seen winter."
"Ya don"t say?" said Nolan.
Finn scowled at Nolan. "He will, if he has a chancel"
The men muttered at Nolan, who tucked in his head.
Snell-Orkney said: "The people under the King almost died of heat in the summers. . . . And the people under the Snow Queen almost died of ice in the long cold winters. But both monarchs had deep compa.s.sion for their people and decided they could not allow their suffering any longer. So in the autumn of one year the Snow Queen followed the cry of geese going south-to fair weather. And the Sun King followed the hot winds blowing north until they were cooled. In the quiet of a forest, they saw one another. She was a woman all white as the snows of forever, a drift of eternity, the blizzards of Time, the moonlight on glaciers and wind blowing the frail curtains of a window in winter. White. All white!"
The men at the bar murmured at this description.
"As for the Sun King?" Snell-Orkney smiled. "He was all fire, all warm and all blazing and as bright as the fires of whole forests aflame. Self-consumed in his burning conflagrations of yearning! The Sun King indeed. The King of the Sun!
"They grew nearer. And looking into each other"s eyes, they fell in love. And were married. And every winter, when the cold killed people in the north, all of the Snow Queen"s people moved south, and lived in the mild island sun. And in the summer, when the sun killed the people in the south, all of the Sun King"s people moved north, to be refreshed and cooled. So there were no longer two nations, two peoples, but one race, which commuted from land to land with the changing of the weathers and the shifting of the seasons, forever and forever." Snell-Orkney paused.
The men were spelled. They looked around at each other. They muttered. The mutter grew. They stirred. Then Nolan began to applaud. Garrity picked up. So did Finn and Timulty, and all the rest, until it really seized them and they gave glad cries. I joined them.
It was a true standing ovation, in which Snell-Orkney stood drenched in their approval. He shut his eyes shyly and gave a small bow of his head.
Then, quite suddenly, each man discovered his own hands beating the air. The men became self-conscious of their applause. The applauding died down as each slowed the beat of his palms. They glanced around in wonder, to find themselves approving of those that they had, not long ago, doubted. The men studied each other"s hands, but at last Finn blurted: "Ah, what the h.e.l.l!"
And he gave more applause, as did the men. It rang the rafters. It exploded. It concussed as all cried: Sure, what the h.e.l.l! . . . Yeah! . . . Who gives a d.a.m.n! . . . Well done!
The thunder died. Snell-Orkney stood there, blushing, as Timulty said: "G.o.d, if you only had a brogue, what a teller of tales you would make!"
Aye! . . . Sure! . . . Right! said all.
"Would you teach me the brogue, sir?" asked Snell-Orkney.
Timulty hesitated. "I ... well ... ah, G.o.d! Why not! Yes! If you"re goin" ta shoot off your mouth, best do it right!"
"Many thanks," said Snell-Orkney.
Finn interrupted, hesitantly. "Somewhere along the line we have missed the point of your dear story. I mean, the reason you told us about the Queen and the King and all that."
"How silly of me," said Snell-Orkney. "We are the Sun King"s children. Which means that we have not seen autumn in five years, or seen a snowflake melt, or felt a winter wind, or heard a window-pane crack with frost. We hardly know a cloud when we see it. We are parched for weather. We must have rain, or possibly, snow, or perish-right, chums?"
"Oh, right, yes, right," said all five in a sweet chirruping.
Outside, there was a pulse of light, thunder, sounds of possible rain, promises of snow.
Finn nodded, pleased. "G.o.d listens real close."
To which the men added vociferously: Oh, you"ll get plenty of rain . . . Lots . . . You"ll drown . . . Prepare to swim.
Snell-Orkney went on: "We have followed summer "round the world. We have lived in the warm and the superwarm and the hot months in Jamaica and Na.s.sau."
"Port-au-Prince," said one of the chums.
"Calcutta," said a second.
"Madagascar, Bali," said a third.
"Florence, Rome, Taormina!" added the fourth.
"But finally, just yesterday, we heard, on the news, this is one of those years in Dublin with exceptional snow. Where in all the world, we said, would we most like to see snow? So we said, Let"s go north, we must have cold again. We didn"t quite know what we were looking for, but we found it in St. Stephen"s Green."
"The mysterious thing?"" Nolan burst out, then clapped his hand to his mouth. "I mean-"
"Your friend here will tell you," said the tall man.
"Our friend? You mean-Garrity?"
Everyone looked at Garrity.
"As I was going to say," said Garrity, "when I banged in the door. They was in the park, standing there . . . watching the autumn leaves fall off because the trees were loaded with ice!"
"Is that all?" cried Nolan, dismayed.
"It seemed sufficient unto the moment," said Snell-Orkney.
"Are there any leaves left up at St. Stephen"s?" asked Timulty. "And are the d.a.m.n trees covered with snow!?"
n.o.body seemed to know. We all stood still.
"h.e.l.l," said Timulty numbly, "it"s been twenty years since I looked."
"Me? Twenty-five years," said Garrity.
"Thirty!" admitted Nolan.
"The most incredible treasure in all the world," said Snell-Orkney. "A few touches of scarlet and amber and rust and wine, the relics of time, the husks of old summer, somehow left on the branches. But the trees themselves! The branches, the boughs cloaked in sheaths of ice, costumed in frost, burdened with snow that blows away in plumes, whispering! Ah, dear!"
All were enchanted, "Aw, now . . . sure . . . well . . . ," they muttered.
"He speaks deep," whispered Nolan.
"Drinks all around!" cried Snell-Orkney, suddenly.
"He"s touched bottom," said Timulty.
The drinks were poured and drunk.
"Now, where are them d.a.m.ned trees?" cried Nolan.
Yeah ... By G.o.d . . . Right! said all.
And not ten minutes later we were all up at the park, together.
And well now, as Timulty said, did you ever see as many d.a.m.ned leaves left on a tree as there was on the first tree just inside the gate at St. Stephen"s Green? No! cried all. And what, though, about the second tree? Well, it was not so many leaves as it was frost and sheaths of ice and snow, that as you watched just lifted and blew in spirals and whirls down into the men"s faces. And the more they looked, the more they saw it was a wonder. And Nolan went around craning his neck so hard he fell over on his back and had to be helped up by two or three others, and there were general exhalations of awe and proclamations of devout inspiration as to the fact that as far as they could remember, there had never been any G.o.dd.a.m.n leaves or snow on the trees to begin with, but now they were there! Or if they had been there, they had never had any color, or if they had had color, well, it was so long ago . . . Ah, what the h.e.l.l, shut up, said everyone, and look!
Which is exactly what Nolan and Timulty and Kelly and Garrity and Snell-Orkney and his friends and I did for the rest of the declining afternoon. For a fact, autumn had taken its colors out, but winter had truly arrived to cover the park white on white. Which is exactly where Father Leary found us.
But before he could say anything, three out of the six summer invaders asked him if he would hear their confessions.
And the next thing you know, with a look of great pain and alarm the father was taking Snell-Orkney & Co. back to see the stained gla.s.s at the church and the way the apse was put together by a master architect, and they liked his church so much and said so out loud again and again that he cut way down on their Hail Marys and the rigmaroles that went with.