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“It’s a war situation, Padraig” said Finn again decisively. “A bloody civil war situation. Those mutineers are a tough and determined lot.” It seemed to Padraig as if all of this had been preying on Finn’s mind for some time and he was glad to be able to talk about it. “There’s de Valera himself. Michael Collins, of course. He’s a ruthless killer if ever there was one. Richard Mulcahy. The Flying Columns of the Irish Volunteers. The assassination of those two policemen in Tipperary in January, on the same date as the first meeting of the so-called Dail Eireann in Dublin—Ireland’s independent parliament—that was the work of the Volunteers, now calling themselves the Irish Republican Army. And that’s just the start, Padraig. The first shots in what could prove to be a long-drawn-out war of independence.”
“So we might have a Republic of Ireland after all,” Padraig said.
“Ay, but maybe not the one the brave but reckless poets died for in Dublin three years ago. I see a world of difference between the vision of those young romantics and the narrow, blinkered outlook of those bitter fanatics who’ve survived to set themselves up as a Dail Eireann. Ach, it’s a pitiful little country.”
“A civil war in Ireland.” Padraig spoke as if such an outcome was too ghastly to contemplate. “Gunman against gunman. Irish Republican against Ulster Unionist.”
“Savage against savage,” Finn muttered. “They’re all savages. Ireland is the home of jackals and hyenas. Always was and always will be.”
Finn MacLir looked despondent. His eyes were listless, and the loose flesh hung below them in discoloured, wrinkled pouches.
Padraig had never seen the old man with so little vivacity. “Come now, Finn, isn’t that rather harsh? We were once the only civilized country in Europe.”
A cynical smile crossed Finn MacLir’s face. “Land of saints and scholars, eh? Your old, clerical recourse to a Golden Age no longer fools anyone, Padraig. A thousand years of savagery dims four hundred years of so-called glory almost to extinction. When a bog buries a palace, it’s a turf bog we have. The palace no longer exists. Just the bog. Ireland is a turf bog in which every shred of civilization lies buried. Digging it up doesn’t restore it; it is stained forever by the muck that buried it.”
Finn MacLir sighed. “I’m worried, Padraig. I’m worried for Nora. She’s married to one of de Valera’s bitter fanatics.”
“Flynn Casey.”
Libros Libertad 