588
PARTISAN REVIEW
a hardened criminal with a record of similar offenses, and our friend the judge
packed him off with a stiff sentence. Next came a young man who was
charged with attempted murder. With his business suit and neatly brushed
hair he looked like a clerk.
And that was what he proved to be. But his manner of life was un–
usual. He had been living in a flat with other young people. They elected
him
to be their leader and gave him a sword as the symbol of authority. On a
floor above lived one they referred to as "the strong man" ... he had been
the strong man in a circus.
It
happened that the strong man and the young
people on the floor below had arguments about one thing and another. One
day the young man started upstairs with the sword and met the strong man
coming down. They met on a landing and the sword went through the strong
man.
Counsel for the defense said that the prisoner had not made a thrust
with the sword ... he had only been carrying it, and the strong man fell for–
ward on the point and impaled himself.
It
was as absorbing as
Rashomon
and
went on for hours. The strong man was called to the stand and came for–
ward, stooping as he walked. He may have been the only living man, in this
day and age, to have been run through with a sword.
At the end the judge said that the prisoner appeared to be a young
man of good character ... he held a job in the city and there was no record
of previous offenses. He was therefore letting him go with a caution.
We emerged from the Old Bailey wrung out. Talk about traffic tickets!
We were driving with Seamus when we saw a man coming out of a
pub. "It's my father," Seamus said, "I haven't seen him in months." He
stopped the car and got out to speak to his father.
We were driving to Derry. The writing on walls said that Ulster was
prepared to fight. We were stopped at a roadblock by British soldiers. They
were in Northern Ireland to prevent Irish Catholics and Protestants from
killing each other. They made us get out and identify ourselves, and searched
the car for weapons.
Seamus left us at the college in Derry and drove back to Belfast. I was
to give a poetry reading. Halfway through the reading a bomb went off in
the distance, rattling windows.
In
a few minutes there was another. The au–
dience didn't turn a hair ... apparently they were accustomed. This was not
being reported in the English papers. They spoke of violence but not that
there was practically a civil war in Northern Ireland.
We were driven to the next reading by a man who had been sent to
fetch us. The landscape was growing dark, and I had an ominous feeling. It
took me a while to realize why ... this was where I had been stationed
during the war. We were infantry replacements waiting to be assigned to a
regular outfit. We spent our days being instructed in close combat and the use
of explosives, skills that would be required in the forthcoming invasion of the
