The Clawfoot Bathtub
The writing of a memory
It was 5:00 a.m. on a Sunday when I stepped ashore at the Dublin docks. The early morning fog was gliding across the city’s slate rooftops, licking at windows, and sliding down drainpipes until it caught in my throat, chilling my breath.
Dublin, dear God, did anyone ever know such a town?
When I opened my nostrils, I could smell the religion, and reaching out, felt as if I could touch her filthy heart. One writer wrote: ‘Places have souls,’ but that writer had not been to Dublin at 5 a.m. on a Sunday in November.
By 6:00 a.m., crossing over the River Liffey, I was still looking for somewhere to relieve my bladder and a room to put my head down. The sun was beginning to rise, a yellow blob mingling with the fog. People passed by, stepping politely aside, going somewhere; but where I wondered, where does anyone go in this forlorn, damp, and sorrowful city?
Most walked with backs bent forward, looking half asleep, flat caps askew on their heads. Such men I knew were born and raised in Dublin, their forefathers most likely unloaded coal from the ships coming into Dublin port, but such industries have disappeared. Their fathers had served their dreams and spent their childhood days hiding in the dockland’s great sheds, kissing away their November shivers.
I wondered if these men dreamed like their fathers dreamed. Coal back then was all they were taught and all they ever knew. They believed those ships would keep their children warm and the security of a constant wage coming in, even though not a single word was true. The men I watched were not going to the docks anymore, seeing as the great sheds had been torn down, the area gentrified. Home to the Millennial man.
Walking into the city, I saw women and children sitting in endless doorways, wanting any spare change. Hands and hearts stretched out my way —
“Giv’ somethin’ mister — I’m pleadin’ wid yer, just a little, the gods’ll be kind ta ya, mister.”
The gods would not have chased me to this forlorn city had they been kind.
Dublin City. Sorrowful City.
I wanted to weep. Ireland can do that to outsiders. It can cut your heart out with delinquent ideas about modern culture and peace and other romantic ambiguities. True, it’s not Belfast, it’s not that sorrowful, not yet. Dublin, at least, does not smell of dead flesh in its streets, nor harken to the hopeless prayers of angels in graveyards.
I’m in pain with needing to piss. A bent and buckled woman emerges from the fog, dressed shabbily, smelling of lavender, and holds up a twig of heather — “Ye’ll be lucky, sir…ta’day ye’ll be lucky.”
I wanted to push by, but she stood firm, obstructing my path.
“De ye not want to be lucky, sir?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out some change.
“Ah, ’tis the day ye’ll be lucky fur sure, my darlin’ man — ’tis the day.”
Right then a shaft of light shone through the slippery fog. Had I been drinking; I would have sunk to my knees. I’d seen many a strange happening at sea but none to rival this instant shriek of light. It shone down, flashing off the skull of a balding man riding by on a bicycle. The whole meaning of which was lost on me.
Dublin, sorrowful beast. Same age as Rome. But without the romance.
I walked the streets knocking on doors. Those with signs in the window declaring vacancies. But it was Dublin, and no one wakes for a stray animal so early in the morning.
My bowels needed emptying. Was there nowhere in this sorrowful town for a man to piss, to leave his stench in comfort? My body was galvanized for sufferings yet to come.
It was the barber who saved me from the alley toilet. I sat in his chair, scissors clipping, sending strands of hair flying to the floor, and watched the weightless fog slip surreptitiously by the open door. The barber asked about my business in the city. I explained how the weather had moored my yacht within the shelter of the harbor walls.
He listened intently. In the mirror, I watched him working, red hair trembling on his head, a strand of which fell onto his forehead like a bolt of lightning. He had enormous ears, but small in comparison to his smile. Then he put his hands on my shoulders, brought a towel around my neck, and his eyes met mine in the mirror. He could have razored all my hair off for the relief of a piss, but it was a perfect haircut. I gladly paid his fee, begging him to keep the change.
Before I left, he handed me an address for a room near the castle walls.
“Here, look this up. The ol’ girl will take to lookin’ after yer,” he said. “Head up yonder here, through Merchants Arch. Cross over the river at Ha’penny Bridge. You’ll see it, The Winding Stair, it’s a bookstore. Knock hard on the door, she’s a little deaf.” I thanked him and left.
True to the barber’s word, an elderly lady opened the door. My nose immediately picked up on a smell of decay matched with the scent of violets, those sprayed from a can.
She bid me to enter. I did so, uncertain. Almost afraid not to. Her knobby fingers grasped mine as she led me through a narrow hallway. Damp stains, like dead leaves, were embossed on the wallpaper, some of which fell in drifts from the ceiling. The old woman, seventy years of age I might wonder, led on up the stairs.
“This’ll be yer room, sir,” she said.
My heart was heartened by the simplicity of the room and its light but adequate furnishings. Through a door farther down the hallway, she pointed out the bathroom. I looked in. There was a claw foot bathtub and a toilet with a darkly stained wooden seat.
In the room itself, on every wall, were pictures of the Virgin Mary. On the cabinet, at the side of the bed, was a lit candle. No need to worry about smoke detectors going off in this accommodation.
I turned back to her, “How much?” I asked. She smiled.
“Oh no, it’ll be nothin’ dear lad, after all, ye got ye’s hair done at my boy’s shop…that’ll be payment enough fur sure.”
I explained that I could not stay for the price of a haircut.
“Then ye’ll not be a stayin, sir. I couldn’t face my boy if I were to be takin’ ye’s money.”
She pulled the bed covers down and folded them neatly. The sheets were brilliantly white.
“Ye see, ye’re a client of my son and we looks after our customers if we can. Now ye’ll be bringin’ yer things through, won’t yer, and I’ll be makin’ yer a cup of hot tea.”
The barber never said anything about the room being free, he said only: the old woman’ll look after ye and pressed a piece of scrap paper with a scribbled address into my hand.
Half an hour later, my hair and beard full of sea salt, I entered the bathroom and ran the tap. Water gurgled, then knocked and rushed its way through the hundred-year-old plumbing. I undress and lay chest-deep inside the huge enamel tub.
What bliss, what eternal bliss to feel my body soaking after taking such a beating from the waves.
My rib cage was bruised and blackened by the tiller; my hands were sore from rope burns.
Bliss, I tell you. Heaven, I assure you, is a claw-foot bathtub in an old lady’s home above a bookstore in Dublin.
I sank my shoulders into the hot water.
I slept.
Through the small skylight above the bathtub, the sun shone down on me.
Dublin — beautiful Dublin.
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