the beggars,’ said my wife.
‘No, not just “oh, the beggars,”’ I said, ‘but oh, the people in the streets, who somehow became beggars.’
‘It looks like a motion picture. All of them waiting down there in the dark for the hero to come out.’
‘The hero,’ I said. ‘That’s me, damn it.’
My wife peered at me. ‘You’re not afraid of them?’
‘Yes, no. Hell. It’s that woman with the bundle who’s worst. She’s a force of nature, she is. Assaults you with her poverty. As for the others – well, it’s a big chess game for me now. We’ve been in Dublin what, eight weeks? Eight weeks I’ve sat up here with my typewriter, studying their off hours and on. When they take a coffee break I take one, run for the sweetshop, the bookstore, the Olympia Theatre. If I time it right, there’s no handout, no my wanting to trot them into the barbershop or the kitchen. I know every secret exit in the hotel.’
‘Lord,’ said my wife, ‘you sound driven.’
‘I am. But most of all by that beggar on O’Connell Bridge!’
‘Which one?’
‘Which one indeed. He’s a wonder, a terror. I hate him, I love him. To see is to disbelieve him. Come on.’
The elevator, which had haunted its untidy shaft for a hundred years, came wafting skyward, dragging its ungodly chains and dread intestines after. The door exhaled open. The lift groaned as if we had trod its stomach. In a great protestation of ennui, the ghost sank back toward earth, us in it.
On the way my wife said, ‘If you held your face right, the beggars wouldn’t bother you.’
‘My face,’ I explained patiently, ‘is my face. It’s from Apple Dumpling, Wisconsin, Sarsaparilla, Maine. “Kind to Dogs” is writ on my brow for all to read. Let the street be empty, then let me step out and there’s a strikers’ march of freeloaders leaping out of manholes for miles around.’
‘If,’ my wife went on, ‘you could just learn to look over, around or through those people, stare them down.’ She mused. ‘Shall I show you how to handle them?’
‘All right, show me! We’re here!’
I flung the elevator door wide and we advanced through the Royal Hibernian Hotel lobby to squint out at the sooty night.
‘Jesus come and get me,’ I murmured. ‘There they are, their heads up, their eyes on fire. They smell apple pie already.’
‘Meet me down by the bookstore in two minutes,’ said my wife.
‘Watch.’
‘Wait!’ I cried.
But she was out the door, down the steps and on the sidewalk.
I watched, nose pressed to the glass pane.
The beggars on one corner, the other, across from, in front of, the hotel, leaned toward my wife. Their eyes glowed.
My wife looked calmly at them all for a long moment.
The beggars hesitated, creaking, I was sure, in their shoes. Then their bones settled. Their mouths collapsed. Their eyes snuffed out. Their heads sank down.
The wind blew.
With a tat-tat like a small drum, my wife’s shoes went briskly away, fading.
From below, in the Buttery, I heard music and laughter. I’ll run down, I thought, and slug in a quick one. Then, bravery resurgent …
Hell, I thought, and swung the door wide.
The effect was much as if someone had struck a great Mongolian bronze gong once.
I thought I heard a tremendous insuck of breath.
Then I heard shoe leather flinting the cobbles in sparks. The men came running, fireflies sprinkling the bricks under their hobnailed shoes. I saw hands waving. Mouths opened on smiles like old pianos.
Far down the street, at the bookshop, my wife waited, her back turned. But that third eye in the back of her head must have caught the scene: Columbus greeted by Indians, Saint Francis amidst his squirrel friends with a bag of nuts. For a terrific moment I felt like a pope on St. Peter’s balcony with a tumult, or at the very least the Timultys, below.
I was not half down the steps when the woman charged up, thrusting the unwrapped bundle at me.
‘Ah, see the poor child!’ she wailed.
I stared at the baby.
The baby stared back.
God in heaven, did or did not the shrewd thing wink at me?
I’ve gone mad, I thought; the babe’s eyes are shut. She’s filled it with beer to keep it warm and on display.
My hands, my coins, blurred among them.
‘Praise be!’
‘The child thanks you, sir!’
‘Ah, sure. There’s only a few of us left!’
I broke through them and beyond, still running. Defeated, I could have scuffed slowly the rest of the way, my resolve so much putty in my mouth, but no, on I rushed, thinking, The baby is real, isn’t it? Not a prop? No. I had heard it cry, often. Blast her, I thought, she pinches it when she sees Okeemogo, Iowa, coming. Cynic, I cried silently, and answered, No – coward.
My wife, without turning, saw my reflection in the bookshop window and nodded.
I stood getting my breath, brooding at my own image: the summer eyes, the ebullient and defenseless mouth.
‘All right, say it.’ I sighed. ‘It’s the way I hold my face.’
‘I love the way you hold your face.’ She took my arm. ‘I wish I could do it, too.’
I looked back as one of the beggars strolled off in the blowing dark with my shillings.
‘“There’s only a few of us left,”’ I said aloud. ‘What did he mean, saying that?’
‘“There’s only a few of us left.”’ My wife stared into the shadows. ‘Is that what he said?’
‘It’s something to think about. A few of what? Left where?’
The street was empty now. It was starting to rain.
‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘let me show you the even bigger mystery, the man who provokes me to strange wild rages, then calms me to delight. Solve him and you solve all the beggars that ever were.’
‘On O’Connell Bridge?’ asked my wife.
‘On O’Connell Bridge,’ I said.
And
