himself. I hear for a fact that places that have snakes galore have no fleas. Arizona,for instance.You’re forever hearing about the snakes of Arizona but when did you ever hear of fleas in Arizona? Good luck to you. I have to be careful standin’ here for if one of them gets on my clothes I might as well invite his whole family home.They multiply faster than Hindus. Dad said,You wouldn’t by any chance have a cigarette, would you? A  cigarette?  Oh,  sure,  of  course.  Here  you  are.  Aren’t  I  nearly destroyed from the fags myself.The oul’ hacking cough, you know. So powerful it nearly knocks me off the bicycle. I can feel that cough stir- ring in me solar plexus an’ workin’ its way up through me entrails till the next thing it takes off the top o’ me head. He struck a match on a box, lit a cigarette for himself and held out the match for Dad. Of course, he said, you’re bound to have the cough when you live in Limerick because this is the capital city of the weak chest and the weak chest leads to the consumption. If all the people that has consumption in Limerick were to die this would be a ghost town, though I don’t have consumption meself. No, this cough was a present from the Germans. He paused, puffed on his cigarette, and struggled with a cough. Bejesus, excuse the language, but the fags’ll get me in the end.Well, I’ll leave you now to the mattress an’ remember what I told you, confuse the little buggers. He wobbled away on his bicycle, the cigarette dangling from his mouth, the cough racking his body. Dad said, Limerickmen talk too much. Come on, we’ll put this mattress back and see if there’s any sleep in this night. Mam  sat  by  the  fireplace  with  the  twins  asleep  on  her  lap,  and Malachy lay curled up on the floor by her feet. She said,Who was that you were talking to? It sounded very like Pa Keating,  Aggie’s husband. I could tell by the cough. He got that cough in France in the war when he swallowed the gas. We slept the rest of that night, and in the morning we saw where the fleas had feasted, our flesh pink with flea welts and bright with the blood of our scratches. Mam made tea and fried bread, and once more Dad dabbed at our bites with the salty water. He hauled the mattress outside again to the backyard. On a cold day like this the fleas would surely freeze to death and we’d all have a good night’s sleep. 61