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Death From Above Essay, Research Paper

death from above

North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when

the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two

storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square

ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them,

gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.

The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room.

Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the

waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers. Among

these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and

damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The Memoirs of

Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden

behind the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes,

under one of which I found the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a

very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions

and the furniture of his house to his sister.

When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our

dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of

sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps

of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we

played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The

career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses,

where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back

doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the

dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook

music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street, light from the

kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner,

we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s

sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea, we watched

her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether she

would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and walked up

to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by

the light from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he

obeyed, and I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she

moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The

blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be

seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall,

seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye

and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my

pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken

to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to

all my foolish blood.

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On

Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the

parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and

bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of

shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal

chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or

a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a

single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely

through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange

prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full

of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to

pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know

whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could

tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words

and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It

was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of

the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant

needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted

window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my

senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to

slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled,

murmuring: ‘O love! O love!’ many times.

At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so

confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I going to

Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid bazaar;

she said she would love to go.

‘And why can’t you?’ I asked.

While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She

could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week in her

convent. Her brother and

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