Green Hell (13 page)

She didn't reply.

At least not by e-mail.

You might say her reply was more biblical, and definitely more colorful.

At the tennis championships in Melbourne, one of the players had a tattoo in Celtic print. From Beckett, it read:

I can't go on, I won't go on . . . I'll go on.

A month later, almost to the day, the head of a young man was found, wrapped in a blanket, outside Galway City's dog shelter.

Newspapers variously described the blanket as dark blue and dull green, but one tabloid, in a fanciful piece, described it as “emerald green.”

Identifying the young man was proving difficult as his teeth had been removed
.

Returning to the flat on a fine Sunday evening, I found a small Labrador pup in a box at my door. I cried,

“I can't . . . Jesus, I just can't!”

Can I?

I bent down to touch the warm little head. He was sleeping soundly on my Garda coat. Then I noticed he was wearing a shiny new leather collar.

Green.

A medallion attached had his name. I had to squint to read it.

BORU
.