The mountains were nearer. The sun was picking out white specks that were walls and gables of houses. A gull came sailing overhead. He watched it lifting above the masthead. He too felt bereft of weight, as if at any moment he would be blown away like a dandelion seed by the wind of the ship’s passing. He smiled, looking down at the black sagging overcoat that clung to him, ballasting him. Only for the coat, he would float upward; yes, he thought, chuckling, thaw and resolve myself into a dew, a great hazy smoke scrawled Adieu in the sky over Dublin. There would be questions in the Dáil about it, of course; Deputy Jimmy Donovan would rise to his feet, and with the voice and gesture of his old uncle, ask the Minister if his attention had been drawn to the activities of a certain firm of doubtful repute (i.e., which had not contributed to party funds), whose advertising was disturbing the minds of decent citizens and was a slur upon the national image.

All right, then, Jimmy boy. Since I’m one of the family, make it worth my while and I’ll advertise what you like. Drinka Pinta Dieu? Give every Man his Dieu?

“Farewell, my aged parayents,” he sang, dragging the words out in a ballad singer’s nasal drawl,

To you I bid adieu.

I am crossing the wide ocean,

All for the sake of you.

And if ever I return again...

I feel great, by God. Only for this oul’ coat! Damn it, I’ll take it off me.

And so he did, folding the coat over his arm and standing with a waiting expression on his face as Ireland floated toward him. And as the arms of Dun Laoghaire harbor opened to receive him, he felt that he might, at any moment, dissolve upon the sun-warmed deck.

*

Songs, phrases, welled up in a miraculous spring within him as he moved through the Customs. He got onto the train for Dublin, nearly bursting with the effort to keep them suppressed. At Kingsbridge Station, he walked up and down the platform as he waited for the train to the southwest, and felt neither cold, nor pain, nor hunger. When the outer suburbs of Dublin, the streets and streets of council houses, fell behind, he got up, unable to abide any longer the sleepy faces of his fellow passengers. Like fish gasping on a strand, he thought, and began to move along the train.