AG LÉAMH: Transatlantic, Colum McCann

“No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is.
—EDUARDO GALEANO”

“I said something ridiculous about Mayakovsky and the amortization of the soul, but even I knew it was hopeless. I had to admire the skill and unfailing politeness with which I had been very quickly outmaneuvered. He sat there, a young hound pleased with himself, and I felt denser than usual. The ancient iconography of the Irish imagination: eviction.”

“I had little idea what he meant at the time, though it strikes me now as intricately beautiful, the twigs taken from everywhere, bits and pieces, leaves and branches, crossing and crisscrossing, years of time lapse, Catholic, British, Protestant, Irish, atheist, American, Quaker, all the time the clouds dispersing in the shaped-out sky behind him.”

“THEY SHOT TOMAS as he pulled up his boat to shore in October of 1978. Nineteen years old. Still in university, his second year, advanced probability. I am still not certain whether it was UVF or IRA or UFF or INLA or whatever other species of idiot was around at the time. In truth, I have a fair idea, but it hardly matters anymore. Our ancient hatreds don’t deserve capital letters.”

“A handsome young man filled her with diesel and then returned my credit card with a slightly embarrassed shrug. He checked the tires and put in a liter of oil, put his finger to the front of a backwards baseball hat.
“No charge, Mrs. Carson,” he said. “That’s on us.”
He stuffed a rag into the pocket of his overalls, turned away. I called him back, closed his fingers around a single pound coin, and he blushed.
“Mind the road now.”

“In the distance, the mountains lay purple against the sky. Perhaps they were called the Mournes for another reason: in the face of such beauty it always shocks me that we blew ourselves asunder for so many years.”

“The things we put away most carefully in a drawer might very well be the things we will never, again, find.”

“His wife was a pale Irish beauty with a sophisticated accent. “Aoibheann,” she said. She took Georgie from my arms immediately and backed into the shadows.”