Mortal Friends (eBook)

James Carroll (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
100 Seiten
Blackstone Publishing (Verlag)
979-8-200-95376-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Colman Brady, an Irish farmer, involves himself in the Irish rebellion of the early 1920s and later escapes to Boston where he rises to and falls from political power and seeks a second chance through the life of his son.

James Carroll is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Cloister, which the New York Times called 'incandescent,' and eight works of nonfiction. Other books include the National Book Award-winning An American Requiem; the New York Times bestselling Constantine's Sword, now an acclaimed documentary; House of War, which won the first PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award; and Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which was named a 2011 Best Book by Publishers Weekly. Carroll is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and an Associate of the Mahindras Humanities Center at Harvard University. For twenty-three years he wrote a weekly column for the Boston Globe and he contributes occasional essays to NewYorker.com. He lives in Boston with his wife, the writer Alexandra Marshall.

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From the author of the National Book Award-winning An American Requiem and the classic bestseller Constantine's Sword comes the story of Colman Brady, an Irish farmer who involves himself in the Irish rebellion of the early 1920s and later escapes to Boston where he rises to and falls from political power and seeks a second chance through the life of his son.Richly imagined scenes, a complex plot, and masterful writing combine fact and fiction; characters like Mayor Curley of Boston and the Kennedys come to life in this classic saga of Irish-America as seen through the eyes of one revolutionary as he makes the daring choices that will shape not only his fate, but his beloved son's.

Textauszug

1

When his right arm went to sleep Colman Brady woke up. He was lying on it. He rolled over, held it over his head and shook. The tingling in his hand intensified momentarily, then subsided. What now? he thought. It had taken half the night for him to fall asleep, and here he was awake again. He put his culprit arm under his head and stared at the gray seams of the ceiling.

Colman Brady was a twenty-two-year-old farmer in a small village half a day’s horse ride from Clonmel, Tipperary. He never had trouble sleeping, but on this night he had his reason. He was getting married the next day to Nellie Deasy, and he was filled with an unsettling emotion he had never had before and which he could not identify. It was, he thought, the first phase either of panic or ecstasy.

“The hell with this,” he muttered, flinging back the blanket. He got up, dressed and went into the snug room where his sister Bea, aged twelve, and his brother Conor, aged fifteen, were asleep.

“Conor,” he whispered. “Conor!”

The lad rolled away from Colman.

“Conor! Come with me! Hey, old man! Wake up!”

“What, Colman?”

“I’m going up to the Dolmen. Come with!”

“Now?”

“We’ll watch the sun come up like a pair of Druids!” Colman was shaking Conor, trying to infuse him with his eccentric energy. “Come on, chap!”

“Never! Never!” Conor pulled his blanket over his head. It was November. The night air would be cold and wet. They would wreck their feet against loose stones climbing in the dark. “Go away, Colman!” Conor whispered.

“Come, you fearful little Druid Jesuit!”

Colman picked up his brother, a lump of blanket, and slung him on his shoulder like a sack. Conor yelped, “Put me down!”

“You’ll wake Bea! Shush!”

At that Bea woke, rubbed her eyes, asking, “What’s wrong?”

“We’re off, dearie, for a stroll,” Colman said, stooping through the low door, holding onto his brother easily. Colman was a large and strong man. Conor was a stately lad, but small for his age.

“Now?” Bea was mystified. “Shall I be left then, alone?”

There was no one else in the house. Their mother had been dead twelve years, since Bea’s birth. Their Pa was dead a year. Jim, the oldest of them, was two years dead in the war in France. Their oldest sister, Maeve, was living in the States.

Colman heard the worry in Bea’s voice. It hadn’t occurred to him that she should come. But why not? The three of them, the night before his wedding, an outing, a lark, their last without Nell.

Colman waved at her to follow. “Come along, love!” he cried. “Come along!”

Colman’s excitement caught his brother and sister then, like wind catching leaves. Soon all three were dressed and outside. Typically, Colman had forced his brother and sister into his mood and had forced them to love it. They could barely keep up with him as he crashed across Moore’s field and up the steep hill that rose, a tumulus, behind it.

The Dolmen was a great standing stone, an ancient and eerie marker that prehistoric pagans had noted time by and perhaps worshipped on and probably buried their dead under. It looked like an altar for giants, and it was a miracle of lifting and balance. A giant unhewn granite block rested upon two smaller ones, forming an opening beneath the table-stone through which a large man could pass only slightly crouching. Colman and Conor often went there in the summer, sometimes sleeping under it so they could see the sunrise from the highest point in the county.

When Bea hurt her foot on a stone halfway up the hill, Colman swept her up to his shoulder and carried her the rest of the way. She clung to him, her face in his bush of hair. She was delighted and happy.

“You’re such a burden to me,” he claimed gaily. “You make me old before my time.” But it was far from true and Bea knew it. Colman could terrify her, and when he swatted her with his razor strop, Bea hated him and wished him dead. But when, as then, he was affectionate and playful, he was better than her Pa had been and she loved him more than anyone in the whole world.

As they approached the summit of the hill, the black outline of the megalith could be seen against the sky. It was an awesome and mysterious sight. It filled Bea with dread, but she didn’t let on.

“We should have a procession,” Colman announced. He lifted Bea, readjusting her on his shoulder so that her legs straddled his neck. “Conor, you be my acolyte and go in front.” Conor dashed in front of him. “And, love, you be my tiara! Now chant with me!” And with that Colman began to make a weird throaty noise of the sort monks make at their funerals.

Conor joined in, but Bea remained silent. They proceeded in a circle around the huge stone altar that was bigger than the poultry shed. Then Colman approached it. Bea, on his shoulders, could just see the top of it at the level of her eyes. Colman lifted her and set her on the stone.

“Introibo ad altare Dei,” he said. “I will go up to the altar of God.”

And Conor replied, “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum.”

“The God,” Colman translated, “who gives joy to your youth.”

“You shouldn’t!” Bea said urgently. “You shouldn’t play the Mass.”

“Ohh,” groaned Conor contemptuously.

“It’s not mocking, darling,” Colman said while hoisting himself up onto the stone. He hauled Conor up in a swift jerk. Then the three adjusted themselves. They were like birds perching. They sat close together, their legs dangling. Colman put an arm around each of them and hugged them. Conor was alright, but Bea, Colman feared, was an intimidated girl. She was afraid of everything. Including the religion. Including the priest.

“It’s not mockery to come watch the sunrise—God’s masterpiece,” he reassured her.

“I hate the dark,” she said, snuggling into his shoulder.

“The dark is God’s creature too.”

She didn’t reply.

“Eh?” He pressed for a response.

“Yes.”

“Of course it is. Next summer, love, you’ll sleep out here the whole night through with me and Conor. Right, Conor?”

“And Nellie too?” Bea asked.

Colman had forgotten Nell, had not imagined that she would be with them then. But of course she would.

“Aye, all of us! Praise God for that!” Colman laughed with his head back, a great roaring laugh that frightened Bea and made her think of the Druid giants who’d built the altar on which they sat.

When he stopped laughing Colman realized that his sister and brother could not understand the surge of feeling that made him brazen and eccentric. He hugged them closer to himself, wanting them to feel the promise his love was making: Nell would make things better for them, not worse. He himself would always be theirs; that is what he would have said if he’d known the words.

Conor thought Colman was going to break his collarbone. He freed himself from his brother’s arm.

“Pax tecum,” Colman said to Conor. “Peace be with thee, Kipper.”

But Conor did not reply. He was feeling suddenly put upon by his brother and overwhelmed. He wished he’d let him sleep.

“Well?” Colman said. He wanted the Latin response.

“Et cum spiritu tuo.” Conor said it a bit broodingly. The joke had paled, but Colman just would not let it go.

Bea was squirming again.

Colman instantly sensed their uneasiness, and it irritated him. His prude of a sister, his mope of a brother.

“You’re a moody pair,” he said.

Bea felt a rush of misery. His rebuke was unfair. Her eyes filled tentatively.

“This place is beastly and I’m cold,” Conor said sharply.

“But we always come here.” Colman was shocked at his brother’s mood.

“That was before.”

“Before what?” Colman demanded.

“Before her.”

“Who, Nell?”

Conor did not reply. Colman looked at Bea. “Is that why you’re grousing?”

Still they said nothing.

Colman was determined to force it out of them. “What are you, bumps on a log? You can tell me. I want you to tell me.”

Nothing.

“You’re afraid Nellie will change things, aren’t you? Well, she won’t. I promise you. She won’t.”

“She already has,” Bea said, and then burst into tears.

The scutter, Brady thought. Serves me right. The ingrates. Here I’ve been mother and father and feeder and friend!

“Damn right she has! Damn well right!” he exploded. “And about time!”

Bea wailed.

“And you, you calf-nun! Whimper! Whimper!”

Brady slammed his palms down on the stone perch, angry and hurt. His brother and sister, his vestige of family hobbling him with their pouting and brooding and on the night before his wedding! To hell with them!

“Off! Off! Both of you!”

Colman clipped them both with bright vicious blows to the backs of their heads, nearly knocking Bea from the megalith and stunning Conor. Colman took Conor by the scruff of his shirt and dropped him rudely to the ground. “Here. Take your pale-face sister!”

Only a little more gently, Colman handed Bea down to Conor.

“Get home! Go to sleep! Sorry to have disturbed you!”

They set off, stumbling...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 25.10.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• ISBN-13: 979-8-200-95376-9 / 9798200953769