synchronicities

 

Sitting in a cafe.

Lovely September sunshine and a blue sky gilding the onset of a breezy, blustery, rainy, suprisingly balmy, Irish Autumn.

The cafe bustles.

I am reading Khruschev Remembers, which is supposedly a collection of reminiscences by a former communist dictator of Russia, a certain Nikita Khrushchev who ruled from the death of Stalin in 1953 until his own ouster in 1964.

I say 'supposedly a collection of reminiscences' because there are some disputes as to whether Khruschev wrote it at all.

The translation is by a particularly suggestible American academic (They used to call themselves sovietologists, I kid you not.) named Strobe Talbot and the book has lain in various corners of my house since Strobe (or Nikita or the CIA or insert name of mysterious conspirator here) wrote it in 1972.

Strobe was a lifelong leftist in the Demmycrat mould. A quarter century after he put together what I'm reading today, he would go on to serve in the administration of US President Bill Clinton. Before that, somewhere along the way, he was reputed to have been one of those Time magazine staffers enthusiastically predicting the end of the nation State and the emergence of world government in the form of the United Nations organisation.

What could possibly go wrong.

Ho hum.

Needless to say I like the translator a good deal less than I do the Soviet dictator he's supposedly translating.

But today I'm giving the book another go. All a million pages of it. Well it feels that way.

During a lull in Khruschev's maunderings I ring farmer Jones on my mobile phone.

"Any news?" I enquire brightly.

"The queen has taken a turn," he answers in an Irish colloquialism, "and the doctors think she's on the way out. Her family are gathering from all over the world to be at her side."

We talk for a little bit about the queen of England.

We both have only good things to say about her.

"1916 wasn't her fault," adds farmer Jones. "It was nothing to do with the queen. Well before her time. Probably her father was King."

"I think it was her grandfather who was on the throne during the 1916 Rising, " I murmured. "Elizabeth only became queen by chance anyway. Her Uncle was heir to the throne and actually was crowned king for a few months. She was never expected to take the top job at all. But her Uncle reigned for less than a year. He'd fallen in love with an American divorcee, and he resigned the kingship to marry her. So his brother, Elizabeth's father, became king and she became first in line to the throne. The other guy renouncing the throne for the American was considered a big scandal at the time and I suppose a tragedy in a way. But England ended up with Queen Elizabeth the Second because of it. God brings great things out of seeming tragedies. He turns to the good all things for those who love him."

We talked on.

A thought struck me.

"You know Jonesy, I was just talking to Aunty Bridget about her brother Bill who lives in England," I recounted. "He's an old age pensioner now. But he worked over there on the buildings. She was telling me she used to try to stay in touch with him. She would ring his favourite pub. They would pass on the message whatever it was. He'd been barred from the pub mind. But they liked him and would find a way to get in touch with him if there was a message from Ireland. And I asked Aunty Bridget why he would be barred from the pub if they liked him. She told me that it was for fighting. So I said: 'What would he be fighting about?' and she told me: 'He'd fight if someone insulted the queen.'  She told me he always said that the queen had looked after him very well and also all the millions of Irish people who worked and lived in Britain. And I thought this was interesting because Bill and my Aunty Bridget are son and daughter of an old IRA man who was out fighting in the War of Independence in 1920. Her father later sided with deValera against Michael Collins and took part in the civil war too. And now that old IRA man's son is getting into fights in his old age to defend the honour of the queen in British pubs. It's a rum world."

Presently farmer Jones and myself had exhausted our repertoire of historiographical reflections about af queen and he rang off.

I went back to Khrushchev.

By chance I found myself reading about Kkrushchev's visit to Britain in 1956.

The page read as follows:

"I was very impressed by the Queen. She had such a gentle, calm voice. She was completely unpretentious, completely without the haughtiness that you'd expect of royalty. She may be the Queen of England but in our eyes she was first and foremost the wife of her husband and the mother of her children. I remember sometime later during our trip around England, I met an English woman who said, 'So you met the Queen. What did you think of her?' I answered that we'd liked the Queen very much. The woman shook her head sadly and said, 'I feel so sorry for her. She doesn't have an easy life.' 'Why do you say that?' I asked. 'Well she's a young woman. She'd probably like to live the normal life of a woman her age, but she can't because she's the Queen. She lives in a fishbowl. She's always on display and she has to make sure she bears herself in a manner suitable to her royal position at all times. It's a very weighty responsibility and it makes her life hard. That's why I feel great sympathy and even sorrow for her.' I liked this woman. What she said about the Queen was a very human and feminine reaction. Maybe Nekrasov (NA Nekrasov the nineteenth century Russian poet) was right when he said in 'Who In Russia Lives A Carefree Life' that not even the tsar had it easy. The same thing applies to Queen Elizabeth the Second."

I sat quietly in the cafe, lost in thought. I was finding it a most interesting coincidence that I should come on this passage having just had my phone conversation with farmer Jones.

How very curious that I should also have asked Aunty Bridget all about her brother Tony and the reasons for his fighting just last week.

Eventually I finished up wallowing in coincidences at the cafe and headed for home.

Back at the chateau the dogs welcomed me into the kitchen and the parrot yelled a greeting from somewhere.

I switched on the mobile phone and saw an announcement on France 24 TV that the Queen had died.

I sat down in the quiet of the still house.

She was a towering figure really.

A bit like Pope John Paul.

I suppose I'd have loved her unreservedly myself if she'd ever spoken out against abortion.

In my kitchen with the dogs at my feet and shadows lengthening across the garden outside, I said the De Profundis, a Jewish psalm that we Christians of the ancient church have availed of as a prayer for the dead.

The prayer mixed a few translations and the odd flight of phrasing of my own.

I said aloud:

"Out of the depths I call to you oh Lord.

Oh Lord listen to my voice.

Lord give ear to my voice raised in supplication.

If you were to mark sins

Lord who could stand?

Certainly not I.

But with you is forgiveness

That thy name may be held holy.

My soul rejoices in the Lord

And in the fulfillment of his word.

Like the watchmen wait for the morning

My soul is waiting for the Lord.

Like the watchmen wait for the morning,

Let Israel wait for the Lord.

For with him is kindness

And plenteous redemption

And he will ransom Israel

From all their iniquities.

Eternal life grant to Queen Elizabeth the Second,

Oh Lord,

And may your perpetual light shine on her

And may her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed

Through the mercy of God

Rest in peace

Amen."