For the writer whose country was still struggling with the moral ruins of the Third Reich and the new landscape of the post-war economic miracle, the journey to Ireland becomes a kind of self-exploration. His observations are expressions of loss as much as discovery. He seeks shelter from the homelessness and the wreckage of the German language after the war. His journal has been called “a hidden book about Germany” and it is easy to see how the process of regenerating the German soul is assisted by the existence of a place on the western edge of Europe which can still provide illusions, colors, and poetry—shifting things that are not fully prosecuted by explanation.
Standing among the ruins of the deserted village at Dugort,
he cannot escape the glance back at the bombed out ruins of his own home town of Cologne. In a pub conversation, he becomes the unwitting recipient of a peculiar form of Irish hospitality in which he is told that Hitler was not so bad after all. Böll cannot let it go. He must extract this rotten tooth once and for all, even though the lesson here is more for himself and for his own people.
There is also something Utopian in Böll’s view of Ireland. Something childlike smiling back at us from the past which makes us so grown up now, so complicated with knowledge. His comments on contraception are in tune with the time but they also betray the women giving birth to September babies. His silence on social issues seems out of character. But our rear-view assessment is entangled in layers of judgement and revelation. We can see a darkness back there that makes us feel superior, more liberated and better off, yet all the more uncertain.
While the book became a German traveler’s missal, the Irish people never cared very much for it. Perhaps we were offended by the view from outside. We didn’t want to be seen as the people who never moved on. Now that we have moved on and become the visitors dropping in on our own past, this book may still prove to have been written as a hidden book for the Irish. Because it shows us precisely what lies behind, what we have become and what we have lost, what we are glad to get rid of and what we want to keep.
Is it possible also that the traveler becomes corrupted by the places he visits? Was Böll seduced by Ireland and sent back to Germany with a vision that was out of reach? Out of reach for us all. What can you do with souvenirs and shells and bog colors and dusty bits of moonlight on the water? Maybe it is the lightness of the Irish conversation and those effortless skills of self-dramatization which have changed him.
That encounter with Ireland on the eve of globalization must have fired up his literary imagination. Perhaps the Irish
gave him false courage. Perhaps we played a part in turning the later Nobel Laureate into a crusader and politically engaged cult figure, a moralist, fighting on a battlefield of ideas where he triumphed and also paid such a heavy price.
Many of things he warned the Germans about would eventually come to sweep Ireland too in spite of his premonitions. He was too polite to warn us. He must have thought the Irish deserved a break after all that history had done to us and all the rain coming in off the Atlantic drumming down on the houses of Achill before it moved on to Europe. He didn’t love us just because we were poor and funny and unpunctual. He loved the Irish because he saw something in us that the Germans once had too.
What Heinrich Böll has put down in this small travel book remains timeless. It may be nothing more than a stacked up lobster train of precious artifacts and emotional responses to the landscape and stories of unforgettable people he met while he was in Ireland gathering inspiration.
But this Ireland exists. The post office girl is still living on Achill. The doctor’s practice continues to be operated by the doctor’s son. Every year on the first weekend in May, the people of Achill hold a literary festival in honor of Heinrich Böll, curated by one of the September children of Dooagh. The dogs of Dukinella are still barking and the rain still rains and the cliffs still hurt your eyes. The Bervie guesthouse where the young German writer first stayed and wrote down many of these impressions is still there, a single story white building close to the beach at Keel which is run by the sister of the post office girl. It was here that Böll lay awake and heard the surf lapping right up to his feet, where he woke up in the morning and must have thanked the lord it was not the sound of an Autobahn, where he set off on his long field trips with his big Catholic family.
At times the storm comes up with such force that the fine sand is lifted over the house and has to be swept off the path
and out of the gullies and drains and brought back to the beach again. Left to its own devices the sand would just cover over everything.
Dublin, 2011
This Ireland exists: but whoever goes there and
fails to find it has no claim on the author.
I dedicate this little book to the man who
encouraged me to write it: Karl Korn.
H.B
.
The Ireland described in this book is that of the mid-1950s.
My comments on the great changes that have taken place
in that country since then are contained in the Epilogue.
Heinrich Böll
1
ARRIVAL I
As soon as I boarded the steamer I could see, hear, and smell that I had crossed a frontier. I had seen one of England’s gentle, lovely sides: Kent, almost bucolic—I had barely skimmed the topographical marvel that is London—then seen one of England’s gloomier sides, Liverpool—but here on the steamer there was no more England: here there was already a smell of peat, the sound of throaty Celtic from between decks and the bar, here Europe’s social order was already assuming new forms: poverty was no longer “no disgrace,” it was neither honor nor disgrace: it was—as an element of social awareness—as irrelevant as wealth; trouser creases had lost their sharp edge, and the safety pin, that ancient Celtic clasp, had come into its own again. Where the button had looked like a full stop, put there by the tailor, the safety pin had been hung on like a comma; a sign of improvisation, it draped the material in folds, where the button had prevented this. I also saw it used to attach price tickets, lengthen suspenders, replace cuff-links, finally used as a weapon by a small boy to pierce a man’s trouser seat: the boy was surprised, frightened because the man did not react in any way; the boy carefully tapped the
man with his forefinger to see if he was still alive: he was still alive, and patted the boy laughingly on the shoulder.
Longer and longer grew the line-up at the counter where the nectar of Western Europe was available in generous quantities for a small sum: tea, as if the Irish were doing their utmost not to surrender this world record held by them just ahead of England: almost ten pounds of tea are consumed annually per head in Ireland; enough tea to fill a small swimming pool must flow down every Irish throat every year.
As I slowly moved along in the line-up I had time to recall the other Irish world records: this little country holds not only the tea-drinking record, but also the one for the consecration of new priests (the Archdiocese of Cologne would have to consecrate nearly a thousand new priests a year to compete with a small archdiocese in Ireland); the third world record held by Ireland is that of moviegoing (again—how much in common despite the differences!—just ahead of England); finally the fourth, a significant one of which I dare not say it stands in causal relationship to the first three: in Ireland there are fewer suicides than anywhere else on earth. The records for whisky-drinking and cigarette-smoking have not yet been ascertained, but in these disciplines Ireland is also well ahead, this little country the size of Bavaria but with fewer inhabitants than those between Essen and Dortmund.
A cup of tea at midnight, while standing shivering in the west wind as the steamer pushes slowly out to the open sea—then a whisky upstairs in the bar, where the throaty Celtic was still to be heard, but from only one Irish throat now. In the room off the bar, nuns settled like great birds getting ready for the night, warm under their headdresses, their long habits, drawing in their long rosaries as ropes are drawn in when a boat leaves; a young man standing at the bar with a baby in his arms was refused a fifth glass of beer, his wife, who was standing beside him holding a little girl of two, also had her glass taken away by the bartender without a refill. The bar slowly
emptied, the throaty Celtic was silent, the nuns’ heads were gently nodding in sleep; one of them had forgotten to draw in her rosary, the plump beads rolled to and fro with the movement of the ship. Carrying their children, the couple who had been refused a drink swayed past me toward a corner where they had built themselves a little fort out of suitcases and cardboard boxes. Two more children were asleep over there, leaning on either side of their grandmother, whose black shawl seemed to offer warmth for three. The baby and its two-year-old sister were stowed away in a laundry basket and covered up; the parents crept silently in between two suitcases, their bodies pressed close together, and the man’s thin white hand spread a raincoat over them like an awning. Silence; the suitcase locks clinked gently to the rhythm of the moving ship.
I had forgotten to get myself a place for the night. I clambered over legs, boxes, suitcases. Cigarettes glowed in the dark; I caught scraps of whispered conversation: “Connemara … no luck … waitress in London.” I crouched between some lifeboats and lifebelts, but the west wind was keen and damp. I stood up, made my way across the ship, which one would have thought full of emigrants rather than homecomers—legs, glowing cigarettes, scraps of whispered conversation—till a priest grasped the bottom of my coat and with a smile invited me to sit down next to him. I leaned back to sleep, but to the right of the priest, under a green and gray striped blanket, a light clear voice was speaking: “No, Father, no, no … it hurts too much to think of Ireland. Once a year I have to go there to visit my parents, and my grandmother is still alive. Do you know County Galway?”
“No,” murmured the priest.
“Connemara?”
“No.”
“You should go there, and don’t forget on your way back in the port of Dublin to notice what’s exported from Ireland: children and priests, nuns and biscuits, whisky and horses, beer and dogs.…”
“My child,” said the priest gently, “you should not mention these things in the same breath.”
A match flared under the green-gray blanket, a sharp profile was visible for a second or two.
“I don’t believe in God,” said the light clear voice, “no, I don’t believe in God—so why shouldn’t I mention priests and whisky, nuns and biscuits, in the same breath? I don’t believe in
Kathleen ni Houlihan
either, that fairy-tale Ireland.… I was a waitress in London for two years: I’ve seen how many loose women.…”
“My child,” said the priest in a low voice.
“… how many loose women
Kathleen ni Houlihan
has sent to London, the isle of the saints.”
“My child!”
“That’s what the priest back home used to call me too: my child. He used to come on his bike, a long way, to read Mass to us on Sundays, but even he couldn’t stop
Kathleen ni Houlihan
exporting her most precious possession: her children. Go to Connemara, Father—I’m sure you’ve never seen so much lovely scenery, with so few people in it, all at once. Perhaps you can read Mass to us one Sunday, then you’ll see me kneeling devoutly in church.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
“But d’you suppose I could afford—or be so cruel to my parents—not to go to church? ‘Our daughter is still the same devout, good girl, such a good daughter.’ And my grandmother kisses me when I go home, blesses me and says: ‘Stay as devout as you are, dear child!’ … Do you know how many grandchildren my grandmother has?”
“My child, my child,” said the priest gently.
The cigarette glowed sharply, revealing the severe profile for a second.
“My grandmother has thirty-six grandchildren, thirty-six. She used to have thirty-eight, one was shot down in the Battle of Britain, another one went down with a British
submarine—there are thirty-six still alive; twenty in Ireland, the others.…”
“There are countries,” said the priest in a low voice, “that export hygiene and suicide ideas, nuclear weapons, machine guns, automobiles.…”
“Oh I know,” said the light, clear girlish voice, “I know all about that: I’ve a brother myself who is a priest, and two cousins, they’re the only ones in the whole family who have cars.”
“My child.…”
“I’m going to try and get some sleep now—goodnight, Father, goodnight.”
The glowing cigarette flew over the railing, the green-gray blanket was pulled snugly around the slim shoulders, the priest’s head shook rhythmically from side to side; but perhaps it was only the rhythm of the ship that was moving his head.
“My child,” he said once more in a low voice, but there was no answer.
He leaned back with a sigh, turned up his coat collar; there were four safety pins on the underside as a reserve; four, hanging from a fifth that was stuck in at right angles, swinging from side to side in time with the gentle thrusts of the steamer as it headed into the gray darkness toward the isle of saints.
2
ARRIVAL II
A cup of tea, at dawn, while standing shivering in the west wind, the isle of saints still hiding from the sun in the morning mist; here on this island, then, live the only people in Europe that never set out to conquer, although they were conquered several times, by Danes, Normans, Englishmen—all they sent out was priests, monks, missionaries who, by way of this strange detour via Ireland, brought the spirit of Thebaic asceticism to Europe; here, more than a thousand years ago, so far from the center of things, as if it had slipped way out into the Atlantic, lay the glowing heart of Europe.…
So many green-gray blankets drawn snugly around slim shoulders, so many sharp profiles, and on so many turned-up priests’ collars the reserve safety pin stuck in at right angles with two, three, or four more pins dangling from it … thin faces, bleary eyes, in the laundry basket the baby drinking its bottle while at the tea counter the father was vainly struggling to get some beer. Slowly the morning sun picked white houses out of the mist, a lighthouse barked red-and-white toward the ship, slowly the steamer panted into the harbor of Dun Laoghaire. Seagulls greeted it, the gray silhouette of Dublin became
visible, vanished again; churches, monuments, docks, a gasometer: tentative wisps of smoke from a few fireplaces: breakfast time, but only for a few: Ireland was still asleep, porters down on the dock rubbed the sleep from their eyes, taxi drivers shivered in the morning wind. Irish tears greeted home and the homecomers. Names were tossed back and forth like balls.