Back Up

by Paul Colize

  She nodded.

  The second nurse glanced at the patient, then lowered her voice.

  ‘There’s something I should tell you, sir.’

  The doctor followed her gaze. He looked surprised.

  ‘Friend of yours?’

  The night before, two police officers had fingerprinted the unknown man, and taken photographs, in hopes of identifying him. So far, no family members had come forward to report the disappearance of a man answering his description.

  The nurse gave a thin smile.

  ‘No, it’s not that.’

  He took her to one side.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Before coming here, I worked at César de Paepe for three years. They held a drop-in clinic for the homeless each winter. Street sleepers could get free treatment in the evenings. I did shifts there a few times.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘The men I treated all showed similar characteristics. Whatever their age and general state of health, they had bad teeth, and their toenails would be in a very bad state. They developed a kind of second skin, all over their body. We would wash them four or five times before they started to look okay. And they all showed signs of vitamin deficiency. There was one other indicator that identified the ones who had been sleeping on the streets for a long time.’

  She paused, searching for the right words.

  The doctor supplied the phrase.

  ‘Their personal hygiene?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes. People sleeping rough long-term lose the most basic habits of personal hygiene.’

  ‘And what’s your conclusion?’

  ‘Despite appearances, I’m certain this man is not a street sleeper.’

  6: MY MOTHER’S SMILE

  Hiroshima.

  My mother said my birth put an end to the war. She said it with a smile. I was sitting in the kitchen, gazing at her. I didn’t know what she meant. I must have been happy.

  She was preparing a meal. She dried her hands on her apron and her smile broadened.

  I was born on August the sixth, 1945.

  Later, I learned that Little Boy killed almost a hundred thousand people that day. A hundred thousand innocent people murdered, massacred, burned alive in the space of a few minutes while I was emerging from my mother’s belly. I never understood how anyone could rejoice at such horror. I never glimpsed the bright future people associated with that event, only the heavy price to be paid.

  I retain only vague impressions of my childhood, a handful of memories, blurred at the edges. From time to time, images, smells or sensations emerge from the black hole that has filled my life.

  They surface for a moment, signalling to me. I see them with astonishing clarity. I could describe every tiny detail.

  Then they sink out of sight. Some come back to taunt me, enchant me, touch me. Others come in a dazzling flash, then disappear forever. Whole segments of my life obliterated in the mists of time.

  It was hot. Perhaps my mother’s radiant warmth made it seem that way? The radio was playing classical music. Life felt easy, I was in touch with reality.

  We lived in a small apartment over a garage, on Avenue de la Couronne, not far from the police barracks.

  I was sitting in the kitchen, drawing new worlds with my coloured crayons. The crayons, my Dinky trucks, my Meccano and a pack of cards I won in a raffle: these were all my toys, my whole world.

  The highlight of the day was the ride-past of the mounted police. At the sound of horses’ hooves on the cobbles, I would rush to the window. Everyone did the same. The neighbours would appear on balconies, or at their windows.

  We watched the horses walk sedately, in rows of two, three or five. The cars would pull over to let them pass.

  People had time to spare.

  On rainy days, the riders wore long cloaks that fanned out over the horses’ hindquarters. Sometimes they paraded in dress uniforms. They looked very fine with their battle-standard and their black fur hats.

  No one seemed to bother about the piles of dung the horses left behind.

  When they rode out to patrol a march in the city centre, the police wore helmets and carried long truncheons.

  Later each morning, I would look out for the green cart from the Union Économique. My mother and I would go down to buy our daily loaf of bread. I would walk up to the horse, but never dared stroke him. He wore blinkers. I would lean forward, trying hard to catch his eye. He made me feel afraid.

  Around noon, we heard the soup-seller’s bell. I would run to the window and watch people busying themselves at the back of the van, saucepans in hand. When they had gone, I went back to the kitchen.

  I sat and watched my mother to-ing and fro-ing. It seems I spent my entire childhood in the kitchen, watching my mother.

  In the afternoons, I took a nap. I stretched out on my bed and my mother would pull the curtains. I fell asleep straightaway.

  I woke to the grinding of the mill, and the aroma of coffee. I would get out of bed and go to my mother. A slice of buttered bread would be waiting, coated in black fruit syrup. I devoured it greedily.

  Once a week, on a Friday, my mother waxed the parquet floor. She would spread the wax, leave it a while, then polish the wood with a hand-operated polisher that weighed a ton. The smell of beeswax always takes me back to those happy Fridays. I was content. Time took its time.

  My mother loved me. I think she was the only woman who ever did, besides Mary, I suppose. My brother loved to terrorise me. He told me wild beasts and creatures from outer space were hiding under my bed, waiting until night-time, when they would come out and attack me.

  When my father came, he smelled of beer and tobacco. I had to keep out of sight, in my room. He was bad-tempered, and he had bad days at work. He would go down to the cellar to fetch a sack of coal, and stoke the boiler. Then he would tell my mother he wanted a beer, and the brats could leave him in peace.

  My mother would do as he said.

  My father was hardly ever in a good mood. When he was, he would pinch my mother’s bottom, or pass behind her, pressing against her and grasping her breasts. My mother would laugh and pretend to look shocked. But I could see she didn’t like it really.

  I was disturbed by it, though I couldn’t say why. I would disappear into my room, fuming. I wanted to stand up to him, but I said nothing.

  One day, the earth shook beneath my feet.

  It was late summer. My mother told me I would be going to school next day. This was good news. I would learn all sorts of things.

  I didn’t want to go. I cried, I yelled. My brother swaggered like he’d seen it all before, and poked fun at me. I kicked the furniture. My father slapped me and I calmed down.

  Next day, I put up a heroic fight. I cried again at the school gate. I didn’t want my mother to leave. I shook with rage. I wanted to go home with her, and sit in the kitchen with my coloured crayons and see her smile.

  I tried to make a deal. I would stay if my mother could stay too, and sit beside me, on the next bench. They said no.

  My schoolmaster was Father Martin, but I was to call him Father. If I wanted to speak, I had to raise a finger. I refused to cooperate, and never said anything.

  When we took dictation, he would loom up behind me and lean over me. I felt his breath on the back of my neck. The muscles in my hand would melt. I was incapable of writing, unable to grip my pen or dip the nib in my inkwell.

  I wanted to go home, and see my mother’s smile.

  That’s about it.

  All that remains of my childhood. My mother’s smile.

  7: AND THAT’S ALL

  I was about ten years old when I first heard the words ‘rock and roll’.

  The lady with the French pleat, at the record shop, where we went from time to time, spoke them disdainfully as she handed me a record by Chuck Berry. She said it was new, it was called ‘rock and roll’. And she pursed her lips.

  Who was the first official rock’n’
roller? Or the first rock’n’roll song? I never knew. I never got into arguments about that.

  For me, it was Chuck Berry and ‘Maybellene’.

  And that’s all.

  8: 105 KILOS

  Ten days after the accident, the police were forced to admit they were getting nowhere.

  The district officers had uncovered nothing in the neighbourhood. None of the locals had seen X Midi before. The street sleepers around the station were questioned, to no avail.

  On the off-chance, an ID request had been issued to the national offices of Interpol in Brussels. X Midi’s fingerprints were sent for analysis by the Judicial Identification Service, but there was no match on their database.

  A police cryptanalyst had studied the letters and numbers found on the unknown man’s hand. Several leads had been followed up, but all were discounted.

  A police team visited the hospital and asked for the man to be shaved. More photographs were taken, with unsatisfactory results. The man’s unnatural expression – his slack features and closed eyes – made him hard to recognise.

  They took his measurements. X Midi was a force of nature. He was 1.92 metres tall, and weighed one hundred and five kilos.

  9: LAUGHING OUT LOUD

  I was one of the smallest and skinniest in my class. Father Martin retired and was replaced by Mr Christian, an irascible lay teacher with an excitable, nervous disposition.

  Teachers smoked in class back then, breathing smoke into their pupils’ nostrils and slapping anyone who fell out of line.

  Such practices were tried and tested. We knew nothing else. No one dreamed of getting angry or challenging them. The more so because the exact same discipline was meted out to us all at home.

  Short trousers were compulsory. Even in the worst of the winter, the teachers seemed quite unmoved by the sight of their pupils’ thighs trembling blue in the cold.

  One of my classmates stood a full head taller than the rest of us. We called him Taurus, the bull. Winter or summer, his great, meaty thighs were ruddy and robust, over catch-wrestler’s calves and carthorse ankles that disappeared into his military boots. He was the uncontested king of the schoolyard. He commanded our profound respect.

  Taurus claimed to know how babies were made, but would only tell the secret to members of his gang. He alluded to his theory with an air of great mystery, suggesting blasphemous revelations wreathed in hell-fire.

  I was still on the birds and the bees, and that suited me fine.

  The pupils’ latrines were tucked away at the back of the schoolyard: a row of boxed-in stalls built against the perimeter wall. They were fitted with doors that left the user’s feet and head in full view when standing. The metal hooks that served as locks had for the most part been ripped off by bad boys in acts of retaliation.

  Privacy of a kind was secured by holding the door in place with one foot while using the toilet. This required intense concentration and excellent coordination.

  On the morning in question, Taurus had a brush with one of the teacher’s pets. An acid exchange ensued, and the pet had the last word.

  A harmless incident – but not when Taurus was involved.

  During break, Taurus spied the swaggering pet and waited for him to shut himself into one of the stalls. For reasons unknown, he came over to me, gripped me by my jacket collar and ordered me to tear open the door so that everyone could see the little pisser’s arse.

  He rallied his little gang. They reported for duty and stationed themselves in front of the toilet door. I was trapped between fear of being caught by one of the supervisors, and visceral terror of Taurus’s reprisals if I disobeyed.

  I was rooted to the spot, stammering, unable to think. Taurus came back at me. He stood with his feet planted firmly apart, face close to mine, fists on hips. What was I waiting for?

  I couldn’t do it, I stammered. We’d get into trouble.

  He felled me with a sharp kick in the shin, and did the job himself.

  Cowering on the toilet, exposed for all to see, the poor kid began squealing like a stuck pig. Taurus and his gang doubled up laughing.

  A supervisor came running over. He saw what was happening and rounded on the assembled company. Before he could ask who was responsible, Taurus singled me out with an accusing finger. The attendant clipped me hard around the ears and sent me to the headmaster, who asked why I had done such a thing. I replied that it wasn’t me, and refused to reveal the true culprit, earning myself another couple of sharp slaps.

  I was sent back to class and told to stay behind after school the following Saturday. I was told to write a thousand times that I mustn’t open the latrine doors when they were being used.

  When my mother came to collect me, the headmaster called her into his office. He told her what had happened and lamented the change in a pupil whose behaviour had been exemplary until now.

  My mother listened wordlessly, thanked the headmaster and told him that she knew what she must do. She told my brother to go home by himself, took me by the hand and led me off in a different direction.

  As soon as we turned the corner, she took me in her arms. She knew I was incapable of bullying.

  I was furious. I shook with rage. I wanted to burst out crying, to kill Taurus, the yard attendant and the headmaster. I wanted to explain what had happened, lose myself in her arms, forget everything. But not a word nor a teardrop came.

  She suggested we go to the record shop, promised me I could choose a record just for me and no one else, told me it was just a bad experience that would soon pass. I should forget all about it.

  The lady in the record shop said it was called ‘rock and roll’.

  We took Chuck Berry’s record home. My mother said she wouldn’t tell our father. She would tell him I’d been invited to a friend’s house on Saturday afternoon, and we would listen to the record the Thursday after that.

  I had no idea of the risk she took, by choosing not to tell my father what had happened.

  My father talked of nothing but war. Not the war I had put an end to by being born, but the conflict that loomed between Russia and America, the one that would destroy the planet with atomic bombs.

  My brother was uninterested in either the impending war, or music. Pop-eyed, his cheeks aflame, he spent his time poring over a magazine that he stuffed under his pillow whenever I entered our room.

  A few days later, I went to confession, as we were all required to do every week. We went in groups of five, during school time. The church was next to the school.

  Having delivered myself of my venal sins, I spoke to the curate in the semi-darkness. I told him what had happened at school. I wanted to know why God had not come to my aid, because God is all-seeing, and God is just, and God punishes wicked people.

  He took my question as an affront to the name of the Lord, and expressed grave reservations as to the salvation of my soul if I persisted in such blasphemy. He sent me away, adding a few Our Fathers to my penance.

  That evening, I took my Bible and hurled it under my bed, throwing my Catholic upbringing, and the remnants of my faith, to the wild beasts and the creatures from outer space. That week, I turned the page on a chapter in my life. My blind confidence in humanity and the Church disappeared into thin air.

  The following Thursday was a half-day at school. We took the record out from its hiding place, and went into the living room together, my mother and I. We opened the lid on the record-player.

  It was a monumental item of furniture: a radio and turntable combined. It smelled of new wood and beeswax. The turntable was equipped with a system allowing you to drop several 45 rpm discs one after the other, so that you didn’t have to keep going back to change the record. The lid had a brass inlay, showing a dog sitting next to an old-fashioned phonograph.

  We positioned the disc and set the turntable in motion.

  My whole body tingled at the sound of the opening chords. I felt an irresistible urge to get up and move, to throw my arms around, and shake m
y backside and every bit of me that could be twisted and shaken about. I had no idea why just these few notes had such an effect.

  That was it. Rock and roll.

  I turned up the volume. Chuck’s guitar blew me away.

  My mother was shaking her bottom, too. My brother came to see what on Earth was going on. He joined in as well.

  There we were, dancing like savages, all three of us together, in the middle of the living room. We turned the volume up as far as it would go. We laughed and shouted until our stomachs hurt.

  Rock came into my life that day and it never left.

  That afternoon is one of the happiest memories of my life, Ma in her pretty yellow dress, dancing to rock’n’roll and laughing out loud.

  10: CRASH INTO THE CROWD

  No one imagined Steve Parker would ever do the deed, though his suicidal threats were well known to his entourage, and to the members of Pearl Harbor, who spent every day in his company. They reflected the darker side of his nature, the side that had earned him a reputation as a troubled, nervy character.

  The slightest disagreement – a difference of opinion on a choice of chord was all it took – and he would fly into a rage, cursing the whole world and threatening to bust his amp if his demands weren’t met.

  Excessive behaviour like this was just the way Steve functioned. People around him were used to his eccentricities and treated his threats like the tantrums of a spoiled child. With time, no one paid them much attention or took him even half-seriously.

  More shocking even than his death was the fact that nothing suggested he knew about the death of his friend Larry, just the day before.

  Larry Finch was the founder and uncontested leader of Pearl Harbor, but Steve Parker was its éminence grise. It was he who took the decisions affecting the future of the group. After mulling them over, he would inform Larry, taking him to one side, after which Larry would relay them to all concerned, with strict orders to comply with the directives, the first of which was the band’s insidious choice of name, imposed by Steve on the other members.