Chalandon My Traitor

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-84351-300-1
Verlag: The Lilliput Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

My Traitor tells the story of Antoine, an idealistic young French violin-maker, who takes a train from Dublin to Belfast in 1977 and is propelled into the heart of the Falls Road and the Republican movement, and Ireland's music, suffering and beauty. He meets Tyrone Meehan, a charismatic. high-ranking member of the IRA, who becomes his friend and mentor, and a symbol of the Irish struggle. As he increasingly identifies with his newfound home, Antoine leaves behind his life in Paris. Over the next three decades, from the streets of Belfast to the fields of Donegal, he witnesses the marches, the hunger strikes, the peace process, learning about bombs, prison, poverty and pride. In 2005 his world implodes when the IRA finally lay down their arms and Tyrone is revealed as an informer. An intense depiction of the nature of friendship and loyalty, and the emptiness occasioned by betrayal, My Traitor is a powerful lyric novel - an ode to Northern Ireland - paying an outsider's tribute to a wounded and extraordinary country. Acclaimed in France, My Traitor won several award on publication in 2007. One reviewer wrote: 'Why did Chalandon choose to write a novel rather than a documentary? Because fiction enabled him to go where he couldn't: to meet 'his traitor' face to face, to look him in the eye and ask: 'what about our friendship? Was that a lie as well?' We understand Antoine. We understand Chalandon. He doesn't falter. His book is a rugged account of a terrible beauty.'

SORJ CHALANDONwas a reporter for Libération from 1974 to 2008, during which time he was awarded the Albert Londres prize for his work on Northern Ireland. He now works for the Canard Enchîné. He is the authos of four novels, all published by Grasset in France. Le Petit Bonzai, Une Promesse, Mon Traître and La Légende de nos Pères.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chalandon, Sorj

Leseproben

TYRONE MEEHAN

The first time I saw my traitor, he taught me how to take a piss. It was in Belfast, in the Thomas Ashe, a club reserved for ex Republican prisoners. I was near the door, beside the large fireplace, sitting at a table covered with empty glasses and dead bottles. It was the favourite spot of Jim and Cathy O’Leary, who offered me a bed whenever I came to Northern Ireland. Jim O’Leary was a friend. He had done time for transporting arms. He was a joiner, but Catholic, and therefore unemployed, like his wife. And he remained unemployed until the end.

The first time I saw my traitor was that evening, 9 April 1977, in the company of Cathy and Jim O’Leary. Jim was coming back from the bar, three pints of beer held tightly in his big hands. A dark, bitter beer, as heavy as a winter meal, with a sweetish ochre head that turned your stomach. He put the drinks down in front of me. He was joking with a man at a nearby table. In the Thomas Ashe, Jim knew everyone. The small crowd, living between freedom and captivity, was at home around these beer-filled tables; they had their own way of life behind the barbed wire. That Easter Saturday, I had been drinking since the middle of the afternoon. One pint here, another there, waiting for Jim to finish his business. He had brought me to the Rock, to the Busy Bee, another place protected by a doorman, a detour round a dead end, a meeting in a park, a handshake with Father Mullan, three words murmured in Irish to a passer-by, a banknote slipped into a hand, an intrigue between two doors. And I followed Jim. I was privy to no secret, no confidences. I barely paid attention. I never asked any questions. I was just proud to be walking with him along the worried streets, where these people greeted him. I was proud because they noticed me at his side. They remembered my face, and Antoine, my name.

It was early evening. The beers kept coming and coming. My eyes were stinging from the cigarettes. I was drunk. From all the pints. Jim’s laugh and the laughter all around. The rough exclamations, the tumultuous waves that shook the tables. The look on Cathy’s face as she searched for her reflection in a raised glass. And then that music.

—A rebel song, Jim whispered to me.

I looked over towards the stage.

O then tell me, Sean O’Farrell, where the gath’rin’ is to be?

I remember closing my eyes. I had my pint in my hand, and two others waiting on the wet table.

The musicians were singing of the war.

When I first came to Ireland, I had little knowledge of the language of this country. When it was the rough, country, stony accent of Kerry, or the earthy Donegal accent, I did not understand a thing. I let the English words probe my school memory. I caught a sentence, a sound, not much. The musicians were singing of the war. A rebel song, Jim had said. But what about? I didn’t know. It was over my head. I simply listened to the pain of the violin and the plaintive notes. For a long time, all I remembered of the Irish words was their harmony, their colour, their effect on the people sitting at the tables around me. Later, a long time after, hearing them over and over again, I was able to make sense of these lamentations. Those that mourned the Great Famine, those that celebrated the 1916 Rising, those that told of the War of Independence, or the hunger-strike martyrs. But when I first started coming to Ireland, I would just let myself get carried away by the seriousness of the people. I watched them covertly. I let myself be guided by a woman’s raised hand, or by a man standing facing the stage, saluting the song like an old soldier. I nodded my head along with them. I held my fist in the air when they did. I laughed when they laughed and stood when they stood. Often, between two songs, a musician would talk into a mike. It was as brief as a salute. A few words, a name I understood because it was uttered with respect. Then the singer would point his finger towards a table at the back of the room and a man would stand up, half-laughing, half-shy, applauded by the standing crowd.

—He did thirteen years. He was released this morning, Jim might whisper.

Or else it was a prisoner’s wife, applauded as a guest because she came from another town. Or the mother of an IRA volunteer, killed in action, who was remembered. Or else it was an American visitor with Irish roots, huddled in a new Aran jumper, wavering in the face of all this attention.

One thing and one thing only was instantly familiar to me: the Irish national anthem. ‘A Soldier’s Song’ was my first landmark. Sometimes it would be played at the beginning of the evening when you gently set your pint on the table, still thinking about the day just past. Other times, the band would play it at the end of the evening, to let you know it was closing time, just before the lights were switched off and then back on again in the most violent way, with glass collectors shouting that it was time to go home. I have always loved that moment when the anthem is played. That communion, that ceremony of belonging, when Ireland calls her daughters and her sons to the foot of the flag. Jim no longer had to tell me when it was time. Even before it was played, in the silence after the songs, the way in which the musicians got themselves into a new position on the stage, in the solemn waiting, the anthem had already begun. And there, in the midst of everyone, standing amongst them all, with the same look of pain, the same chalk-white face, the same rain-drenched hair, the same feeble breathing, I was just like an Irishman.

On that Saturday, 9 April 1977, I arrived in the morning, for a few days, as usual. I had left France, Paris, the neighbourhood around Place de l’Europe, my little workshop, the smell of wood and varnish, all that unsmiling grey, to come here and close my eyes.

—This is your home, Jim said.

It wasn’t true yet, not quite. I had only been coming regularly to Northern Ireland for two years and I still had a guest’s habits. I amused them. I would push a bar door instead of pulling it; I looked left before crossing the road; I would wait for my beer to be finished before ordering another. But even so. Here I was, once again, among them. I was the Frenchman at Cathy and Jim’s table. I was just there, because it was normal, because people greeted me on the streets, because cars from the neighbourhood beeped their horns at me, because I came here without asking for anything, without demanding anything, without explaining anything and without taking anything. On the Falls Road, in Divis Flats, in Whiterock, in Ballymurphy, in the Short Strand, in Springfield, in Ardoyne, in the Markets, in Andytown, in these areas of extreme poverty, of ugly beauty and of violence that newspapers fear, Belfast whispered to me that I was, in some way, at home.

I wasn’t the only foreigner roaming these streets. Journalists wandered everywhere, as well as sympathizers for the Republican cause: Germans, English, Dutch, French who talked too loudly, Americans overwhelmed by their ancestors. They walked around these places of Republican combat, without ever being able to enter them. When they pushed open a pub door, conversations died out. Not maliciously, not aggressively. They just died out, that’s all. Wariness and old habits made the locals stop. But when I pushed open the club door and sat at Jim’s table, the voices had other things on their mind. I was the violin-maker from Paris, the silent one, the one who came here to share some time.

The first time I saw my traitor was that day, in that club, on Easter Saturday. I was standing, fists clenched by my sides because the musicians were playing my anthem. My head was spinning. Eyes closed, enveloped in the smell of turf. ‘A Soldier’s Song’ was in full swing. On the last note, the room clapped. Not in a congratulatory way, but in thanks. I felt good, sitting back down at the table beside the door. Jim was still standing, putting his coat on, but was having difficulty with the sleeves. Cathy was huddled in conversation with a woman with her back to me. I needed to take a piss.

The toilets were in the basement, beyond the bar stocks and the piled-up kegs. A dozen or so men were there, talking about anything and everything. There were hands gripping shoulders, loud voices, drunken promises, tired eyes; zips open, even before reaching the urinal. There was unity, roughness, laughter, hoarse voices, battered faces, hair greasy with cigarette smoke, weary looks. And me, pissing with my forehead pressed against the tiles. Clumsily shielding myself and the quiet splatter of urine.

—Watch your shoes, son, my traitor said, smiling.

I looked at him. Piercing blue eyes, bushy eyebrows, white hairs creating chaos above his ears. He was unshaven. Under the neon lights, a worn face speckled with silver. Beside me. Pissing like me. A cigarette butt in the corner of his mouth, with one eye almost closed. Pissing like me, but he was farther away, with something almost elegant about his stance. In fact, he was elegant. A small man, in a brown tweed jacket with ochre and green thread, a checked shirt and dark woollen tie. He had kept his cap on. A brown herringbone cap from Shandon’s, pure wool, soft from good use. A lot later, years after, he and I went to Donegal together, beyond Lough Foyle, in the Republic, just to buy me the same one.

—Do you want me to show you?

I still had the anthem in my head, beers to drink, Jim and Cathy who were waiting. All those sounds from the back of the room that sang of drunkenness. I too was out of it.

—Do you want me to show you? my...