The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry Page A

and open among the townspeople. As he is in a crowd, he wonders how many of them are against him or against his kind, how many would be indifferent to or ignorant of the whole matter and how many would be for him. For the latter he despairs.
    But keeps his eyes roaming over the multitude, and when he spots at last Jonno Lynch, he knows his quarry cannot be far away, and sure enough, there’s Mr O’Dowd in the dapperest coat in Sligo, a treasure of a coat, sleek and brushed and tailored to perfection. It wasn’t his father cut that coat, certainly.
    The great crowd spills out into the fresh and speckled sunshine. The sycamores once so sacred to Jonno Lynch blow about a little in the sea-breeze. No doubt the minds of the people are full of the canon’s sermon, about the evils of gold in the modern world, or merely the sense of their own cleanliness, both spiritual and in the matter of their shirts and blouses. Pounds of starch unite the crowd, and for a moment in his distress Eneas can think only of the clothes hung on the people, as if hearts and souls were in the materials and not in the bodies they hide from view. It is a rackety thought and no help to him as he tries to move through the mass of talking and laughing citizens. He sees O’Dowd now talking to the canon on the steps of the cathedral and he is abashed in his task by the sight but what can he do? He must pursue what feels now more and more like a stupid notion, feeble and even dangerous. But he’ll be a Greek in this now if it kills him, and when O’Dowd finally detaches himself from the little red mouth and chinless round face of the canon and descends the concrete steps with a smile of some grandeur on him, Eneas stands in his way. And Eneas has never seen O’Dowd up close, indeed has only glimpsed him passing in his Ford motorcar, and he is surprised by how young the man is, maybe not more than ten years older than himself. But he has a fierce balding head, which he is just covering now with an excellent hat, angling it expertly against the flow of sun and fashion. Eneas stands in his way as best he can, because O’Dowd is not inclined to look anywhere except further out over the heads, perhaps to his waiting car. And it occurs to Eneas, being trained in those matters, that there might be some D men about in their plainclothes so obvious to the world. Certainly there must be RIC men posted about quietly, because it would be part of their duties to guard a mass crowd. In Enniscrone only the last week two men were arrested by the Tans coming out of mass, which caused the most tremendous furore in the district. Not so much because the two men were undoubtedly murderers of a patriotic bent, but because shopkeepers’ wives were present and one at least fainted in terror of those large rusty-looking guns the Tans carried. At any rate, Tans, RIC, rebels, it was all the one to Eneas now, and he raises his right hand gently to impede O’Dowd.
    ‘What’s the whatsa?’ says O’Dowd, pleasantly, maybe not knowing Eneas’s face, as if Eneas were just another of the young men of Sligo with their heads sleeked like filmstars.
    ‘Mr O’Dowd, I’d like a word with you, if you had a minute.’
    ‘Sure, son,’ he says, ‘step over under the trees a little.’
    And Eneas, following O’Dowd’s bright shoes across to the grubby trees, is astonished by his success. Also, yes, he is even sicker at heart now because he realizes that O’Dowd has totally mistaken him for a decent man, a man with some decent request, a true man of Sligo. When they reach the dappled desert under the sycamores, and O’Dowd turns to him grandly, Eneas’s mind is turning over like a terrible engine. There are trapped animals in there, birds, lions, elephants, a zoo of panic and fear. This is so much harder than he imagined, him cool and measured, and O’Dowd at best silent and nodding. But the vast friendliness of the man is destroying him.
    ‘I don’t think you know me,’ says