Teacher Man. Frank McCourt

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      My mother said she wouldn’t care if it was worn by the earl himself for all the good he and his ilk ever did for Ireland with their castles and servants and never a thought for the sufferings of the people. She’d offer three pounds and not a penny more.

      The Nose snapped that a pawnshop was no place for patriotism and she snapped back that if patriotism was something you could show on the shelf there he’d be polishing it and overcharging the poor. He said, Mother o’ God, missus. You were never like this before. What came over you?

      What came over her was that this was like Custer’s last stand, her last chance. This was her son, Frank, going to America and she couldn’t send him off looking like this, wearing the relics of oul’ decency, this one’s shirt, that one’s trousers. Then she showed how clever she could be. She had very little money left, but if Mr. Parker could see his way to throwing in a pair of shoes, two shirts, two pairs of socks and that lovely green tie with the golden harps she wouldn’t forget the favor. It wouldn’t be long before Frank would be sending home dollars from America and when she needed pots, pans and an alarm clock she’d think immediately of The Nose. Indeed, she could see half a dozen items there on the shelves she couldn’t live without once the dollars came pouring in.

      The Nose was no daw. From years behind the counter he knew the tricks of his customers. He knew, also, my mother was so honest she hated owing anybody anything. He said he valued her future custom, and he himself wouldn’t want to see that lad there landing shabby in America. What would the Yanks say? So for another pound, oh, take off another shilling, she could have the extra items.

      My mother said he was a decent man, that he’d get a bed in heaven and she wouldn’t forget him, and it was strange seeing the respect passing between them. The lane people of Limerick had no use for pawnbrokers, but where would they be without them?

      The Nose had no suitcases. His customers were not known for traveling the world, and he had a good laugh over that with my mother. He said, World travelers, how are you. She looked at me as if to say, Take a good look at The Nose for it isn’t every day you’ll see him laugh.

      Feathery Burke, in Irishtown, had suitcases for sale. He sold anything old, secondhand, stuffed, useless or ready for the fire. Ah, yes, he had the very thing for the young fella going to America, God bless him, that would be sending money home to his poor old mother.

      I’m hardly old, said my mother, so none of your plamas. How much for the suitcase?

      Yerra, missus, I’ll give it away to you for two pounds because I don’t want to be standing between the boy and his fortune in America.

      My mother said that before she’d pay two pounds for that wornout piece of cardboard held together by a spit and a prayer she’d wrap my things in brown paper and twine and send me off to New York like that.

      Feathery looked shocked. Women from the back lanes of Limerick were not supposed to carry on like that. They were supposed to be respectful of their betters and not rise above their station, and I was surprised myself to see my mother in that pick-quarrel mood.

      She won, told Feathery what he was charging was pure robbery, we were better off under the English, and if he didn’t come down in his price she’d go to that decent man Nosey Parker. Feathery gave in.

      God above, missus. A good thing I didn’t have children for if I did and I had to deal with the likes of you every day they’d be standing in the corner whimpering with the hunger.

      She said, Pity about you and the children you never had.

      She folded the clothes into the suitcase and said she’d take the whole lot home so that I could go and buy the book. She walked away from me, up Parnell Street, puffing on a cigarette. She walked with energy that day, as if the clothes and the suitcase and my going away would open doors.

      I went to O’Mahony’s Bookshop to buy the first book in my life, the one I brought to America in the suitcase.

      It was The Works of William Shakespeare: Gathered into One Volume, published by the Shakespeare Head Press, Oldhams Press Ltd. and Basil Blackwood, MCMXLVII. Here it is, cover crumbling, separating from the book, hanging on through the kindness of tape. A well-thumbed book, well marked. There are passages underlined that once meant something to me though I look at them now and hardly know why. Along the margins notes, remarks, appreciative comments, congratulations to Shakespeare on his genius, exclamation marks indicating my appreciation and befuddlement. Inside the cover I wrote, “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh, etc.” It proves I was a gloomy youth.

      When I was thirteen/fourteen I listened to Shakespeare plays on the radio of Mrs. Purcell, the blind woman next door. She told me Shakespeare was an Irishman ashamed of what he came from. A fuse blew the night we listened to Julius Caesar and I was so eager to find out what happened to Brutus and Mark Antony I went to O’Mahony’s Bookshop to get the rest of the story. A sales clerk in the shop asked me in a superior way if it was my intention to buy that book and I told him I was thinking about it but first I’d have to find out what happened to everyone in the end, especially the one I liked, Brutus. The man said never mind Brutus, pulled the book away from me and said this was not a library and would I kindly leave. I backed into the street embarrassed and blushing and wondering at the same time why people won’t stop bothering people. Even when I was small, eight or nine, I wondered why people won’t stop bothering people and I’ve been wondering ever since.

      The book was nineteen shillings, half a week’s wages. I wish I could say I bought it because of my profound interest in Shakespeare. It wasn’t that way at all. I had to have it because of a film I saw where an American soldier in England went around spouting Shakespeare and all the girls fell madly in love with him. Also, if you even hint that you read Shakespeare, people give you that look of respect. I thought if I learned long passages I’d impress the girls of New York. I already knew “Friends, Romans, countrymen,” but when I said it to a girl in Limerick she gave me a curious look as if I were coming down with something.

      Going up O’Connell Street I wanted to unwrap my package and let the world see me with Shakespeare in my oxter but I didn’t have the nerve. I passed the small theater where I once saw a traveling company perform Hamlet and remembered how I felt sorry for myself for the way I’d suffered like him. At the end of the play that night Hamlet himself returned to the stage to tell the audience how grateful he and the cast were for our attendance and how weary he was, he and the cast, and how much they’d appreciate our help in the form of small change, which we could deposit in the lard tin by the door. I was so moved by the play because so much of it was about me and my gloomy life that I dropped sixpence into the lard tin and wished I could have attached a note to let Hamlet know who I was and how my suffering was real and not just in a play.

      Next day I delivered a telegram to Hanratty’s Hotel and there was the cast from Hamlet, drinking and singing in the bar while a porter ran back and forth loading a van with their luggage. Hamlet himself sat alone at the end of the bar, sipping his glass of whiskey, and I don’t know where the courage came from but I said hello to him. After all, we both had been betrayed by our mothers and our suffering was great. The world would never know about mine and I envied him for the way he was able to express his anguish every night. Hello, I said, and he stared at me with two black eyes under black eyebrows in a white face. He had all those words from Shakespeare in his head but now he kept them there and I blushed like a fool and tripped over my feet.

      I rode my bicycle up O’Connell Street in a state of shame. Then I remembered the sixpence dropped into the lard tin, sixpence that paid for their whiskey and singing at Hanratty’s Bar, and I wanted to go СКАЧАТЬ