a jam jar and dabbed at our bites.The salt burned but he said wed feel
better soon.
Mam sat by the fireplace with the twins on her lap. Dad pulled on
his trousers and dragged the mattress off the bed and out to the street.
He filled the kettle and the pot with water, stood the mattress against
the wall, pounded it with a shoe, told me to keep pouring water on the
ground to drown the fleas dropping there.The Limerick moon was so
bright I could see bits of it shimmering in the water and I wanted to
scoop up moon bits but how could I with the fleas leaping on my legs.
Dad kept pounding with the shoe and I had to run back through
the house to the backyard tap for more water in the kettle and the pot.
Mam said, Look at you.Your shoes are drenched and youll catch your
death and your father will surely get the pneumonia without a shoe to
his foot.
A man on a bicycle stopped and wanted to know why Dad was
beating that mattress. Mother o God, he said, I never heard such a cure
for fleas. Do you know that if a man could jump like a flea one lep
would take him halfway to the moon? The thing to do is this, when you
go back inside with that mattress stick it on the bed upside down and
that will confuse the little buggers. They wont know where they are
and theyll be biting the mattress or each other, which is the best cure
of all.After they bite the human being they have the frenzy, you know,
for there are other fleas around them that also bit the human being and
the smell of the blood is too much for them and they go out of their
minds.Theyre a right bloody torment an I should know for didnt I
grow up in Limerick, down in the Irishtown, an the fleas there were so
plentiful an forward theyd sit on the toe of your boot an discuss Ire-
lands woeful history with you. It is said there were no fleas in ancient
Ireland, that they were brought in be the English to drive us out of our
wits entirely,anI wouldnt put it past the English.Anisnt it a very curi-
ous thing that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland an the English
brought in the fleas. For centuries Ireland was a lovely peaceful place,
snakes gone, not a flea to be found.You could stroll the four green fields
of Ireland without fear of snakes an have a good nights sleep with no
fleas to bother you. Them snakes were doin no harm, they wouldnt
bother you unless you cornered them an they lived off other creatures
that move under bushes ansuch places,whereas the flea sucks the blood
from you mornin noon an night for thats his nature an he cant help
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