Atlantic. Dad told me this castle was built hundreds of years ago and if you wait for the larks to stop their singing over there you can hear the Normans below hammering and talking and getting ready for battle. Once he brought me here in the dark so that we could hear Norman and Irish voices down through the centuries and I heard them. I did. Sometimes I’m up there alone on the heights of Carrigogunnell and there are voices of Norman girls from olden times laughing and singing in French and when I see them in my mind I’m tempted and I climb to the very top of the castle where once there was a tower and there in full view of Ireland I interfere with myself and spurt all over Carrigogunnell and fields beyond. That’s a sin I could never tell a priest. Climbing to great heights and going at yourself before all of Ireland is surely worse than doing it in a private place with yourself or with another or with some class of a beast. Somewhere down there in the fields or along the banks of the Shannon a boy or a milkmaid might have looked up and seen me in my sin and if they did I’m doomed because the priests are always saying that any- one who exposes a child to sin will have a millstone tied around his neck and be cast into the sea. Still, the thought of someone watching me brings on the excite- ment again. I wouldn’t want a small boy to be watching me. No, no, that would surely lead to the millstone, but if there was a milkmaid gawking up she’d surely get excited and go at herself though I don’t know if girls can go at themselves when they don’t have anything to go at.No equip- ment, as Mikey Molloy used to say. I wish that old deaf Dominican priest would come back so that I could tell him my troubles with the excitement but he’s dead now and I’ll have to face a priest who’ll go on about the millstone and the doom. Doom.That’s the favorite word of every priest in Limerick. I walk back along O’Connell Avenue and Ballinacurra where peo- ple  have  their  bread  and  milk  delivered  early  to  their  doorsteps  and surely there’s no harm if I borrow a loaf or a bottle with every inten- tion of giving it back when I get my job at the post office. I’m not steal- ing, I’m borrowing, and that’s not a mortal sin. Besides, I stood on top of a castle this morning and committed a sin far worse than stealing bread and milk and if you commit one sin you might as well commit a few more because you get the same sentence in hell. One sin, eternity. A dozen sins, eternity. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, as my mother would 299