Read Online TransAtlantic by Colum McCann - Free Book Online

accompany him. He found rhythm in the dips and swerves and repetitions of the Irish accent. He had a penchant for mimicry.
Grand day, y’r honor. For the love of God, wouldya ever gi’us sixpence, sir?
It delighted his hosts to hear his impersonations. There was a deeper intent there, too: he knew that something so simple could hook a crowd.
I am pleased to be in aul’ Ireland
.
    He was five weeks in Dublin. His face appeared on printed billsaround the city. Newspaper reporters met him for high tea in the Gresham Hotel. He was
leonine
, they wrote,
feral, an elegant panther
. One paper dubbed him
the Dark Dandy
. He laughed and tore the paper up—did they expect him to dress in rags of American cotton? He was taken to the Four Courts, brought to the finest dining rooms, asked to sit under chandeliers where he could be properly seen. When he was guided into a room to speak, the applause often extended a full minute. He removed his hat and bowed.
    Afterwards they lined up to buy his book. It amazed him to raise his gaze from his fountain pen and see the row of dresses awaiting him.
    On certain days he grew tired, thought of himself as an elaborate poodle on a leash. He removed himself to his room, took out the barbells, worked himself into a frenzy.
    One evening he found the bill for the waistcoat neatly folded on his bedside table. He had to laugh. They would eventually bill him for every thought he ever had. He wore the camel’s-hair to dinner that evening, casually slipping his thumbs into the pockets as he waited for dessert.
    EVERY DAY HE found another word: he wrote them in a small notebook he carried in his inside pocket.
Rapacity. Enmity. Phoenician
. Words he recognized from The Columbian Orator.
Assiduous. Declarative. Tendentious
.
    When he had first found language, in his boyhood days, it had felt to him like carving open a tree. Now he had to be more careful. He did not want to slip up. He was, after all, being watched by Webb and the others: root, blossom, stem. It was essential to hold his nerve. To summon things into being by the mysterious alchemy of language. Atlantic. Atlas. Aloft. He was holding the image of his own people up: sometimes it was weight enough to stagger under.
    IN RATHFARNHAM HE thundered forth. He talked of woman-whippers, man-stealers, cradle-plunderers. Of fleshmongers and swine-drovers. Of sober drunkards, thievers of men. Of limitless indifference, fanatic hatred, thirsty evil. He was in Ireland, he said, to advance universal emancipation, to exact the standard of public morality, to hasten the day of freedom for his three million enslaved brethren. Three million, he said. He held his hands up, as if he cupped every single one of them there, in his palms. We have been despised and maligned long enough. Treated worse than the lowest of low animals. Shackled, burned, branded. Enough of this murderous traffic in blood and bone. Hear the doleful wail of the slave markets. Listen to the clanking chains. Hear them, he said. Come close. Listen. Three million voices!
    After his speech, the Gentleman Usher from Dublin Castle took a hold of his arm and breathed whiskey and amazement into his ear. He had never heard such a speech, such fine words put together. For any man to speak in such a way! It was profound, he said, insightful, weighty beyond anything he had experienced before.
    —You’re a credit to your race, sir. An absolute credit.
    —Is that so?
    —And you did not go to school, sir?
    —No. I did not.
    —And you took no formal lessons?
    —No.
    —And if you’ll forgive me …
    —Yes?
    —How do you possibly explain such eloquence?
    A hard knot cramped Douglass’s chest.
    —Such eloquence?
    —Yes? How is it …
    —You’ll excuse me?
    —Sir?
    —I have to run away.
    Douglass crossed the room, his shoes clicking loudly on the wooden floor, a smile breaking out as he went.
    IN THE AFTERNOONS he caught sight of Lily when she cleaned the upstairs of the house. Just seventeen