The Dead Republic (2 page)

I’d come to see the wall, maybe put my hand against it, break off a piece of whitewash, put it in my mouth and taste it. But just to see it - that would have been enough. To find its foundation in the grass, to feel it in the sole of my good foot.

Proof.

I had sat in front of the wall. I had held my new wife’s hand. I could have started from there and worked my way forward, to the old man standing in front of the fallen wall, or squatting in the grass, picking up pieces of clay. That was me, what I’d come to this place to be. I was the old man. I was only forty-nine, but not many would have believed it. I wasn’t sure, myself, what I believed - if I believed. The wall would have helped.

I sat down beside the gate.

I’d cycled every inch of every lane of this county. I’d lobbed bombs from most of the ditches. Bullets had slowed me down, but nothing had ever stopped me. Thirty years ago.
Only
thirty years. It wasn’t a lifetime. I looked at my hand, at yellow, knuckled bone. The hand had once held guns and women. I closed my fingers and felt nothing.

I used to be heard. My eyes used to kill.

There was no white wall.

I was once a man called Henry Smart. I was born in Dublin, in 1901, and I fought for the freedom of Ireland. I married a beautiful woman and we tried to save Ireland together. There was a baby, a girl called Saoirse, born when I was hiding. I went into exile when my comrades decided that they needed me dead. My wife was in jail. I went alone to England, then to the United States, with a false passport and a wedding photograph. I hid again, for years. I changed my name and cities. I found my wife again - she found me - in Chicago, when I broke into a house with Louis Armstrong. But I had to run again. My old comrades - a man who might have been called Kellet - had caught up with me. They put me against a wall. But my wife shot the men who were going to shoot me. I ran and, this time, we ran together. I had a family, and it grew. We had a boy we called Séamus Louis, and I called Rifle.We rode the boxcars through the years that became the Great Depression. We never stayed still for long. We were rebels again and we were happy. But I lost them. We were boarding a moving train. Rifle slipped. I caught him, saved him and fell. The train moved on, taking my family and my leg. I recovered. I learned to walk with a wooden leg. But I never found them. I searched for years. I heard stories about them and I followed the stories. The stories stopped, and I stopped searching. I crawled into the desert to die. I lay down and let the sun burn me to nothing. I died. I came back from the dead when Henry Fonda pissed on me. He was acting in a film called
My Darling Clementine
, emptying his bladder between takes. I was brought back to life, and I met John Ford, the man who was directing the film.

This had happened five years before, in 1946.

Ford knew me - I didn’t know how. He knew all about me. He knew my scars and how I’d got them. He looked across the darkness, straight at me.

—You’re the story, he’d said.

He was going to make the film of my life. That was why I was there now, in Ireland, sitting against the stone wall. I remembered it like quick pain, like the anger that was my real blood. I remembered the decision: I’d go home. I’d go home and tell my story. I was an old man - the bullets and grief had caught up with me - but I felt bright and new. We shook hands. Ford was an old man too; he understood. I looked up at the black-blue sky, at all the dead and wandering stars, and I shouted.

—My name’s Henry Smart!

I stood up now. I got up, away from the wall. I knew where I was going, and I knew what I was going to do.

I was going to kill John Ford.

The sound was a surprise.

—I didn’t know you could do that, I said.

—Do what? said Ford.

—The voices, I said.—The music and that.

It was three months after I’d met him. We were out of the desert, and in Los Angeles, somewhere, in a dark room. There was a movie projector clacking behind our heads, and we were watching one of his old ones, a thing called
The Informer
.

—Well Christ, he said.—What was the last picture you saw?

—
The Gaucho
, I told him.

I’d seen it with my daughter in Oak Park, just after her mother had found me.

He was staring at me. He had to shout; the projector was right behind him.

—That was, when? he said.—1927, ’28. You like it?

—Yeah.

—See any of my pictures back then?

—I don’t know, I said.—Was your man, Douglas Fairbanks, in any of them?

—Nope.

—Then probably not.

—
The Iron Horse
, he said.—I made that picture.

—No.

—You didn’t see that one?

—No, I said.—Or if I did I don’t remember.

—Fairbanks is dead, he said.—They’re called talkies.

—What are?

—Pictures with sound. The worst thing ever happened to the picture business - fucking sound. Watch.

It was supposed to be Dublin, in 1920. A thick-looking lad called Gypo had been turfed out of the Organisation, which I guessed was the I.R.A. I didn’t catch the reason why he’d been expelled. Then he informed on his pal, Frankie, for twenty quid. He went on the batter and spent it. And that was it, till they caught him. It was Dublin, but there wasn’t much that brought me back. None of the corners or accents were real. And some of it was just ridiculous. There was a bit at the start, a flashback, where Gypo and Frankie, old comrades and pals, stood at a bar, singing and drinking, with rifles on their backs. All through the film the lads in the trenchcoats were afraid that the informer would point them out. But they still brought their rifles when they went out for a few pints. It was full of things that made no sense at all.

But it sucked me in. I watched and I cared. Gypo’s girl reminded me of Piano Annie, the woman who’d taken me in after I’d escaped from Richmond Barracks, in 1916. She didn’t look like Annie, but there was something that was right. Her voice wasn’t Annie’s, but she looked at a poster in a window,
£10 to America
, and the eyes, just then, were Annie’s. I wanted to go back there and hold her, to send my hand through the projector light. I wouldn’t have wasted the money like Gypo, I wanted to tell her. I’d have got her the ticket to America.

The lads in the trenchcoats weren’t the real thing, the ones who spoke, but the faces around them in the shadows were good, all the certainty and fear. I liked the fog and the blind man who came tap-tapping out of it. I kept telling Gypo to keep the money in his pocket, to go easy on the juice, to rescue himself and Annie. But I loved the way he threw it around, bought drinks and chips for everyone, and left a trail that, back in Dublin in 1920, would have had him dead in five minutes. I loved his face, and the question he asked that stunned me -
Isn’t there a man here who can tell me why I did it?
- the question so real I thought I’d asked it myself. I liked how he smiled and grimaced, and tried desperately not to be stupid. And I liked how he died, how he carried the bullets across the street and into the church, to Frankie’s ma -
Frankie, Frankie, your mother forgives me!
For fuck sake. He held out his arms, like your man on the cross, and dropped dead. I knew it was over, but I was hoping he’d get up.

I knew what it was that had shaken me. The music. The songs.
The Rising of the Moon
and
The Minstrel Boy
- they were rippling right through the film. I’d always hated them; I thought I had - but I was all set to die for Ireland. The film was over, the music gone with it, but I needed a minute to become an old man again.

It was still dark, and darker now that the projector was off. Ford sat, waiting. He’d lit a cigar; I could hear him sucking away. He sat low, well back in his chair. I heard him creak.

—Well? he said.—It’s a good one.

—Yeah.

—Hell of a story.

—Yeah.

—You liked it.

—Yeah.

There was silence then. (I’d learn; there’d be a lot of silence.)

—You didn’t like it, he said.

—I did, I said.

—No.

I knew the tactics. I’d just seen them done badly in the film. I’d been interrogated before, many times, so I knew what was happening now.

—I don’t think so, he said.

I didn’t answer.

—What did you like? he said.

—Ah, fuck it, I said.—Most of it. The story and Gypo, and—

He slapped his leg with his hat, like Gypo would have done in the film.

—I got it right, he said.

—Got what right? I asked.

—Well, the time and the place, you fucking rebel.

—No, you didn’t.

There was more silence. I could see something white - a handkerchief. He was chewing a corner of it.

He stopped.

—But you liked it? he said.

—Loved it.

—Jesus. Why?

—Well, I said.—I haven’t seen a film in years.

He laughed, and the light went on - both exploded at the same time. I could suddenly see him slouched there, his chin inside his collar, and he was laughing. The woman who’d turned on the light sat down on a folding chair behind him. The projector was between me and her, but I saw paper on her lap and she held a fat pen over it. Her name was Meta Sterne.

—Great, he said.—Great. So, where did I get it wrong? With me, Meta?

He didn’t turn as he spoke to her. The hankie was gone, back in his pocket.

—With you, Pappy, she said.

—Great. Take it down as he says it.

I was still being interrogated.

—Great, he said, again.

I couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark lenses. I wondered how he’d even managed to see the film.

—I got it wrong, he said.

—It’s good.

—Fuck good, he said.—Fuck great. I know it’s good. I got a goddamn Academy Award for that picture. It’s a good picture. But I didn’t get it right. You were there, in 1920. Right?

I nodded.

—You were one of those guys.

I nodded.

—You were the leading man.

—I was never a fuckin’ informer.

—But you were there. In the fucking thick of it. I’m right?

—Yeah.

—So, what’s wrong - what’s not accurate about my picture?

—Most of it, I said.

—Get that, Meta? he said.

He lifted his head slightly and spoke to a high corner of the room.

—I got that, she said.

—Most of it, he said.—That’s a son of a bitch. Too late now. I made that picture in - when did I make that picture, Meta?

—1935.

—1935. Thank you. So, Henry. Let’s approach this differently. What’s right about it?

—The trenchcoats.

—Got that, Meta?

—Got it.

—We’ll bring in the trenchcoats, he said.—Hundreds of ’em. This is great. What else?

—The doorways.

—They took you back.

—Yeah, I said.

—Trenchcoats and doorways. Guys in the doorways, collars up. Great.

He sat up, a bit.

—I’m being serious, Henry, he said.—We got to get this right. What else?

—Well, I said.—That time near the end, when they’re all picking matches to see who’ll have to shoot Gypo, and your man picks the short match.

—That was good.

—Not at all, I said.—It was shite.

—Get that, Meta? Shite. Do not omit the
e
.

—Don’t worry.

—I mean, it was good, I said.—The story. The look on his face. The fear there. It was spot on. Because most of them were amateurs. They were terrified.

—Not you, though.

—Collins had a name for it. When you were going out to put a bullet in someone.

—I knew him, he said.

—He called it a no-come-back job. And that was good, in the film. Your man’s face.

—The face, Meta.

—Got that.

—Yeah, he said.—I knew Mick Collins. I was there, you know, in ’21. On the boat, when he came back to Dublin with that Treaty. I was on that goddamn boat.

I said nothing to that.

—Picking the matches, he said.—What was wrong with that?

—The choice, I said.—There was never a choice.

—How did it happen?

—It was a fuckin’ army. You were given the order, not a box of matches.

—Right.

—I’d be given a name, I said.—On a piece of paper. And that was it, you just did it.

—Shot the guy.

—Yeah.

—Paper, he said.—Slid across a desk, right?

—Sometimes.

I was doing more talking than I’d done in years.

—See there? he said.—What do we need the fucking talkies for? That says everything there. Piece of paper sliding across a dark-wood desk. Upside-down?

—Sometimes.

—A death sentence, he said.—A no-come-back job.

He creaked again. He was sitting up.

—I love it.

He was assembling the story, starting the job. I understood that then.

—What about the paper? he said.—After you read the name. Burn it?

—No.

—What did you do with it?

I knew he’d like this.

—I slid it back across the desk.

—Beautiful, he said.—The eyes. The fingers.

He lifted his glasses. He leaned out of his chair. He looked at me properly. He let me look at him. The eyes were gentle blue, a kind man’s eyes, much younger than the surrounding skin and creases. But he couldn’t see me. Without the glasses, he was blind.

—I knew it, he said.—Two fucking rebels.

His grin was huge and brown; it threatened to demolish his face.

—We’ve got a picture here, Henry, he said.—There’s one more in the old man. It’s a hell of a good story.