The Dream of the Celt: A Novel (32 page)

“He loved his country, he was a patriot,” Roger said quietly. “You ought to be proud of your son, Sheriff.”

“What good does it do that he was a hero if he’s dead now,” the jailer replied in a lugubrious voice. “He was all I had in the world. Now, it’s as if I stopped living too. Sometimes I think I’ve turned into a ghost.”

In the shadowy cell it seemed to him the sheriff sobbed. But perhaps it was a false impression. Roger thought of the fifty-three volunteers of the Irish Brigade who remained in Germany, in the small military camp of Zossen, where Captain Robert Monteith had trained them in the use of rifles and machine guns, in tactics and military maneuvers, trying to keep their morale high in spite of an uncertain situation. And the questions he had asked himself a thousand times tormented him again. What did they think when he disappeared without saying goodbye, along with Captain Monteith and Sergeant Bailey? That they were traitors? That after entangling them in a rash adventure they had gone to fight in Ireland, leaving them surrounded by barbed wire, in the hands of the Germans, and hated by the Irish prisoners in Limburg, who considered them turncoats and disloyal to their comrades who had died in the trenches of Flanders?

Once again he told himself that his life had been a permanent contradiction, a series of confusions and cruel complications, where by chance or because of his own clumsiness, the truth of his intentions and actions was always obscured, distorted, turned into a lie. Those fifty-three pure, idealistic patriots, who’d had the courage to confront more than two thousand of their comrades in the camp at Limburg and join the Irish Brigade to fight “beside but not inside” the German army for the independence of Ireland, would never know about the titanic struggle Roger had waged with the German military high command to keep them from being dispatched to Ireland in the
Aud
along with the twenty thousand rifles the Germans were sending to the Volunteers for the Easter Rising.

“I am responsible for those fifty-three members of the brigade,” Roger told Captain Rudolf Nadolny, in charge of Irish affairs for the General Staff in Berlin. “I exhorted them to desert the British army. Under English law, they are traitors. They will be hanged immediately if the Royal Navy captures them, which will happen, irremediably, if the uprising takes place without the support of a German military force. I can’t send these compatriots to death and dishonor. They will not go to Ireland with the twenty thousand rifles.”

It hadn’t been easy. Captain Nadolny and the officers of the high command tried to force him to yield with blackmail.

“Very well, we will communicate immediately to the leaders of the Irish Volunteers in Dublin and the United States that in view of Mr. Roger Casement’s opposition to the uprising, the German government is suspending shipment of twenty thousand rifles and five million rounds.”

It was necessary to discuss, negotiate, explain, always remaining calm. Roger was not opposed to the rebellion, only to the Volunteers and the Citizen Army committing suicide, launching an attack against the British Empire without the Kaiser’s submarines, zeppelins, and assault troops to distract the British armed forces and prevent them from brutally crushing the rebels and setting back Irish independence for who knows how many years. The twenty thousand rifles were indispensable, of course. He would go to Ireland with the weapons and explain to Tom Clarke, Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, and the other leaders of the Volunteers the reasons why, in his judgment, the uprising ought to be postponed.

Finally he succeeded. The ship with the weapons, the
Aud
, set sail, and Roger, Monteith, and Bailey set out in a submarine. But the fifty-three brigade members remained in Zossen, not understanding anything, no doubt wondering why those liars went to Ireland to fight and left them behind after training them for an action denied to them now with no explanation at all.

“When the baby was born, his mother left and abandoned us both,” the sheriff’s voice said suddenly and Roger gave a start on the cot. “I never heard from her again. So I had to become mother and father for the boy. Her name was Hortense and she was half crazy.”

The cell was now in total darkness. Roger could no longer see the jailer’s silhouette. His voice sounded very close and seemed more like an animal lament than a human expression.

“In the early years almost all my salary went to a woman who nursed him and took care of him,” the sheriff continued. “I spent all my free time with him. He was always an obedient, sweet child. Never one of those boys who run wild and steal and get drunk and drive their parents crazy. He was apprenticed to a tailor, who thought very highly of him. He might have had a career there if he hadn’t got it into his head to enlist, in spite of his flat feet.”

Roger didn’t know what to say. He felt very sorry for the sheriff’s suffering and would have liked to console him, but what words could alleviate the animal pain of this poor man? He would have liked to ask his name and the name of his dead son; in this way he would have felt closer to both of them, but he didn’t dare interrupt.

“I received two letters from him,” the sheriff went on. “The first, during his training. He told me he liked life in camp and when the war was over, perhaps he would stay in the army. His second letter was very different. The censor had crossed out many paragraphs in black ink. He didn’t complain, but there was a certain bitterness, even some fear, in what he wrote. I never heard from him again. Until a condolence letter came from the army, announcing his death. Saying he had died a hero in the battle of Loos. I never heard of that place. I looked for Loos on a map. It must be a tiny village.”

For the second time Roger heard that sob, similar to the screech of a bird. And he had the impression that the jailer’s shadow trembled.

What would happen now to those fifty-three compatriots of his? Would the German high command respect its agreements and permit the small Irish Brigade to remain together and separate in the camp at Zossen? It wasn’t certain. In his discussion with Captain Rudolf Nadolny in Berlin, Roger detected the contempt the German military had for a ridiculous contingent of some fifty men. How different their attitude had been at first when, letting themselves be persuaded by Roger’s enthusiasm, they supported his initiative to bring together all the Irish prisoners in Limburg Camp, supposing that once he spoke to them, hundreds would enroll in the Irish Brigade. What a failure, and what a disappointment! The most painful of his life. A failure that made him look ridiculous and shattered his patriotic dreams. Where was his mistake? Captain Robert Monteith believed his error was to speak to the twenty-two hundred prisoners together instead of in small groups. With twenty or thirty, a dialogue would have been possible, he could have responded to objections and clarified what they found confusing. But before a mass of men suffering from defeat and the humiliation of being prisoners, what could he expect? They understood only that Roger was asking them to ally themselves with yesterday’s and today’s enemies, which is why they reacted with so much belligerence. No doubt there were many ways to interpret their hostility. But no theory could erase the bitterness of finding himself insulted, called a traitor, yellow, a cockroach, a sellout by compatriots for whom he had sacrificed his time, his honor, and his future. He thought of Herbert Ward’s jokes when, mocking his nationalism, he exhorted him to return to reality and leave “the dream of the Celt” into which he had retreated.

On the eve of his departure from Germany on April 11, 1916, Roger wrote a letter to Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, reminding him of the terms of the agreement signed by him and the German government regarding the Irish Brigade. The accord stated that Brigade members could only be sent to fight for Ireland and in no case used as a mere support force to the German army in other theaters of war. By the same token, it stipulated that if hostilities did not conclude with a victory for Germany, the soldiers of the Irish Brigade were to be sent to the United States or a neutral country that would take them, and under no circumstances to Great Britain, where they would be summarily executed. Would the Germans fulfill these agreements? Uncertainty had returned over and over again since his capture. What if Captain Rudolf Nadolny had dissolved the Irish Brigade as soon as he, Monteith, and Bailey left for Ireland and returned its members to Limburg Camp? They would be insulted, discriminated against by the other Irish prisoners, and run the daily risk of being lynched.

“I would have liked them to return his remains to me.” The grieving voice of the sheriff startled him again. “To give him a religious burial, in Hastings, where he was born, like me, my father, and my grandfather. They told me no. That given the circumstances of war, the return of remains was impossible. Do you understand what they mean by ‘the circumstances of war’?”

Roger didn’t answer, because he realized the jailer wasn’t talking to him but to himself through him.

“I know very well what it means,” he continued. “That there’s nothing left of my poor son. That a grenade or a mortar pulverized him. In that damn place Loos. Or they put him in a common grave with other dead soldiers. I’ll never know where his grave is so I can bring him flowers and say a prayer for him once in a while.”

“The important thing isn’t his grave but his memory, Sheriff,” said Roger. “That’s what counts. All that matters to your son, where he is now, is knowing you remember him with so much love.”

The sheriff’s shadow had made a surprised movement when he heard Roger. Perhaps he had forgotten he was in the cell beside him.

“If I knew where his mother was, I’d have gone to see her, to give her the news, and the two of us could have cried for him together,” he said. “I don’t have any rancor toward Hortense for leaving me. I don’t even know if she’s still alive. She never bothered to ask about the son she abandoned. I told you before: she wasn’t a bad woman, just half crazy.”

Now Roger wondered once again, as he had been doing constantly, day and night, since the dawn of his arrival on the beach of Banna Strand, in Tralee Bay, when he had heard larks singing and had seen near the beach the first wild violets, why the hell there had been no Irish boat or pilot waiting for the freighter
Aud,
which was carrying rifles, machine guns, and ammunition for the Volunteers, or for the submarine carrying him, Monteith, and Bailey. What had happened? He read with his own eyes the peremptory letter from John Devoy to Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, who transmitted it to the German chancellery, advising that the uprising would take place between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and therefore the rifles had to arrive without fail at Fenit Pier, in Tralee Bay, on April 20. A pilot would be waiting there experienced in navigating the area, as well as rowboats and other vessels with Volunteers to unload the weapons. These instructions were reconfirmed in the same urgent terms on April 5 by Joseph Plunkett to the German chargé d’affaires in Berne, who retransmitted the message to the chancellery and the high command in Berlin: the weapons had to reach Tralee Bay at nightfall on the twentieth, not earlier or later. And that was the exact date when both the
Aud
and the
U-19
submarine had reached the appointed place. What the devil had happened? Why was no one waiting for them? Why did the catastrophe occur that had buried him in prison and contributed to the failure of the uprising? Because according to the information his interrogators gave him, the
Aud
was caught by the Royal Navy in Irish waters long after the date agreed on for its landing—risking its safety, it had continued to wait for the Volunteers—which obliged the captain to sink his ship and send to the bottom of the ocean the twenty thousand rifles, ten machine guns, and five million rounds of ammunition that, perhaps, would have given another direction to the rebellion the British crushed with the ferocity that was to be expected.

In fact, Roger could imagine what had happened: nothing great or transcendental, one of those stupid trifles, slips, counter-orders, differences of opinion among the leaders of the High Council of the IRB, Tom Clarke, Sean McDermott, Patrick Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, and a few others. Some or perhaps all of them must have changed their minds about the best date for the
Aud
to reach Tralee Bay and sent the rectification to Berlin, not thinking the counterorder might be lost or arrive when the freighter and submarine were already out to sea and, due to the awful atmospheric conditions at the time, practically cut off from Germany. It must have been something like that. A minor confusion, an error in calculation, a piece of foolishness, and first-rate weapons were now at the bottom of the ocean instead of in the hands of the Volunteers killed during the week of street battles in Dublin.

He hadn’t been wrong to think it was a mistake to stage an armed rebellion without concurrent German military action, but that didn’t make him happy. He would have preferred to be wrong. And to have been there, with those lunatics, the hundred Volunteers who at dawn on April 24 captured the Post Office on Sackville Street, or with those who attempted to capture Dublin Castle, or with those who tried to blow up the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park. A thousand times better to die like them, with a gun in his hand—a heroic, noble, romantic death—and not face the indignity of the gallows, like a murderer or rapist. No matter how impossible and unreal the plan of the Volunteers, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and the Irish Citizen Army might have been, it must have been beautiful and thrilling—no doubt everyone there cried and felt their hearts pounding—to hear Patrick Pearse read the manifesto that proclaimed the republic. Though only for an exceedingly brief parenthesis of seven days, “the dream of the Celt” became a reality: Ireland, emancipated from the British occupier, was an independent nation.

“He didn’t like me doing this work.” The sheriff’s anguished voice took him by surprise. “It embarrassed him that people in the neighborhood, in the tailor shop, knew his father was a prison employee. People suppose that because we rub elbows day and night with criminals, the guards become infected and turn into men outside the law too. Have you ever heard anything more unjust? As if somebody didn’t have to do this job for the good of society. I gave him the example of Mr. John Ellis, the hangman. He’s also a barber in his hometown, Rochdale, and nobody there speaks ill of him. On the contrary, all the residents think very highly of him. They wait in line to be served by him in his barbershop. I’m sure my son wouldn’t have let anyone speak ill of me in front of him. He not only had a good deal of respect for me. I know he loved me.”