The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

by Claire North

  “Hello, Harry.”

  Vincent stood right there, calm as anything, leaning against a box of grenades. For a moment I was frozen in his stare, a thief caught red-handed: no denial, no chance to beg or run. I said, “In the time it takes me to load and fire one of these guns…”

  “No,” he agreed. “You won’t make it.”

  He didn’t move, didn’t try to stop me. I sighed. At the end of the day, having nothing better to do, I had to try. I grabbed the nearest pistol, had the safety off and the empty magazine out in a click, reached down for the live ammunition on the shelf below, grabbed a fresh magazine, pushed it into the butt, felt it lock, raised it to fire–not at Vincent, but at me–when several thousand volts administered from behind sent my body first into paralysis, then convulsions, then nothing at all.

  Chapter 55

  A padded suit in a padded chair in a padded cell.

  How had I worked in this place for so long and not found this room?

  Bright light and an IV drip. The drip fed into a vein in my hand. My hand was strapped to the chair at the wrist. I wondered if anything would be achieved by trying to wrench the drip out of my skin. In the long run, probably not. There were straps along the length of my arm, stopping at the bend in my elbow. More straps across my legs, around my ankles, across my chest and even, to my annoyance, my forehead. It was designed to make death by anything other than an act of God impossible. I reflected that it was probably also the best my posture had been for a very long time and was thus innately uncomfortable.

  Vincent sat in front of me and said nothing.

  A phrase written on his face.

  Not angry–just sad.

  I wondered if, in another life, Vincent had been a primary school teacher. He would have excelled at the task.

  Finally I said, “Assuming I refuse to eat or drink, how long do you think you can keep me alive with nutrients and force alone?”

  He almost flinched, pained by the vulgarity of the task in hand. “In a few years’ time the IRA hunger strikers will live for over sixty days before death. I’m hoping, however, that we can find some better way of sustaining you than by putting a tube down your throat.”

  My turn to flinch. Sixty days is a long time to be a prisoner with no thought of escape but a prolonged, painful death. Did I have the will to refuse food when dying of starvation? I didn’t know. I had never put it to the test. Could my mind reject life even when my body screamed for it. It depended, I concluded, on what that life was for, and worth.

  Silence.

  I couldn’t remember there ever being silence between us before this day, or at least a silence which was not one of shared excitement and contemplation. There seemed no need for communication, no need to spell out all the obvious things which polite society required were said. Indeed, it seemed to me that in that silence we said it all anyway, and almost at the exact instant I had run out of things I wished to say to Vincent in the imaginary conversation in my mind and begun back again on a loop of it, he raised his head and declared,

  “I need to know your point of origin.”

  The question stunned me, though it shouldn’t have.

  “Why?” I asked, mouth suddenly dry.

  “Not to kill you,” he blurted hastily, “Dear God, I would never do that, Harry, never, I swear. But I need you to know that I know it. I need you to realise that you could be aborted in the womb, not-born. I need you to know that, so that you will keep my secrets. I know you will never again be my friend, but the rest… is more important.”

  I considered the implications, not for my own life–the threat against that was suddenly very clear–but for Vincent. He was younger than me, born later in the century, and therefore the idea that he could somehow be a threat to me, prevent me even being born, was impossible, unless he had assistance. Someone of an older generation, someone who would be alive in 1919, ready to poison my mother before I could be created. An ally in the Cronus Club? A collaborator in his dream, as I could no longer be?

  He watched me, no doubt following the direction of my thoughts, then added, “I would rather not take the information by force, Harry. But if I must, I must.”

  A snap back to the present, focus on reality. “You’ll torture me?” I asked. No point dancing around the words, and I was mildly pleased to see him flinch at the idea. Less pleased to see how readily he accepted it.

  “Yes, if I must. Please don’t make me.”

  “I’m not making you, Vincent; the decision is entirely yours. I’d like just to clear myself of any moral responsibility for that particular act before you do it.”

  “You know everyone breaks, Harry. Everyone.”

  A memory. Franklin Phearson, sobbing at his feet. Everyone breaks, and that was the truth of it. I would break as well. I would give up my point of origin.

  Or I would lie and die.

  “What will it be?” I asked airily and was surprised by the giddy lightness of my words. Recollections of Phearson tumbled beneath my thoughts like a quiet sea pulling back for the tsunami, and I rolled along with the waters, no longer in charge. “Are you thinking chemical? I should warn you, they tried antipsychotics on me before and it produces some unlikely effects. Psychological? No, probably not psychological. If I have only sixty or so days before my body is too weak to survive, and while I hate to overestimate my own mental fortitude, time is your enemy. Electrical would be best, but runs a risk to the heart–you do know about my heart, don’t you? Extreme cold, perhaps. Or extreme heat? Or a mixture of both. Sleep deprivation as standard but then again—”

  “Stop it, Harry.”

  “I’m just going through the process for you.”

  He managed to meet my eyes, and I found it easy to meet his. I’d never seen him beg before.

  (I’m a fucking good guy, Harry! I’m a fucking defender of democracy!)

  “Just tell me, Harry. Tell me when you’re born and this won’t have to get any worse.”

  (Christ, I’m not that guy, I’m just not, but you gotta understand, this is bigger than you or me.)

  “I hope you don’t mind if I again query your use of the phrase ‘have to’.” I didn’t know who spoke but it sounded like me, albeit a little drunk. “You are under no compulsion to do any of this to me. It’s an entirely voluntary action on your part.”

  “Everybody breaks, Harry.”

  “I know. But you can’t afford to see how long it takes me, can you? So come on, Vincent,” I relished his English name, rolled it round my tongue. “You’d better get started.”

  He hesitated, just a moment, then the begging was gone.

  His eyes tightened.

  (Make a difference, damn it! Make a difference!)

  Franklin Phearson’s voice in my ear. Once upon a time he’d made the pain go away and stroked my hair, and I’d loved him for it like a child loves a long-lost mother, and I’d been broken and he’d been right. In his own inestimable, pointless way, he’d been right, and I’d died and that world, to me, might never have been if memory didn’t make it so.

  With a half-shake of his head, Vincent stood to go.

  “Not going to do it yourself?” I called after him. “Whatever happened to moral responsibility?”

  “Think about it for a day,” he replied. “Just a day.”

  And he left.

  Chapter 56

  One day.

  One day to avoid a fate far, far worse than death.

  One day in a padded suit strapped to a padded chair in a padded room.

  Look for the flaws in the system, any flaw, no matter what.

  Chair bolted to the floor, IV drip feeding me the nutrients I would naturally refuse to take. Padded door, guards outside. They were the weakest link. Vincent, in refusing to participate in what would happen next, had left the process open and exposed to manipulation. I had no doubt that he’d ordered the guards not to speak to me, but sometimes even an under-rewarded soldier of the USSR has to take the initiative.

&nbs
p; I tugged and writhed against the needle in my hand until at last I managed to pull it free, lacerating the skin across the top of my hand in a great jagged red stripe. I didn’t call out, didn’t say anything, but let the blood run in great crimson stains over the white padded floor, infusing the cloth with glorious technicolour. The strap across my skull made it impossible for my head to hang, but I closed my eyes and waited with what I hoped was my greatest faraway look. It took the guards shamefully long to check on me and see the blood still dribbling down the chair. They burst in at once, and then an embarrassing conversation took place as to what they should do, and whether to get help.

  “Is he unconscious?” asked one. “How much blood has he lost?”

  The elder and, I hoped, the senior, inspected my hand. “It’s a surface wound,” he exclaimed. “He’s pulled out the needle.”

  I opened my eyes and was satisfied to see the man jump back in alarm. “Gentlemen,” I said, “I imagine you’re under orders not to communicate with me, so let me be blunt and to the purpose. I know you all, I know your names, your ranks, your histories and your homes. I know that you, Private, still live with your mother and you, Sergeant, have a wife in Moscow who you haven’t seen for three and a half years, and a daughter whose photo you proudly carry in your pocket and show to all in the canteen every dinner break without fail. ‘She is my diamond,’ you explain. ‘She is my wealth.’ I have a question for you–just one question, and it’s this–do they know nothing? Absolutely nothing about what you do? It’s very important you think about this, very important you consider every aspect of every conversation you’ve ever had with them, for if they know anything, anything at all which could compromise this facility, then of course, gentlemen, they will be next. Your wife, your mother, your daughter–they cannot know a thing. Not even a whisper. That’s all I wished to say, and now if you wouldn’t mind applying a plaster to my hand, I’ll get on with the business of awaiting my torture and inevitable execution, thank you.”

  They left in a hurry and didn’t bring me a plaster.

  It may have been twenty hours later, it may have been two, and Vincent was back. The sergeant from before stood in the doorway as he talked, watching me nervously over his employer’s shoulder.

  “Have you considered?” Vincent asked urgently. “Have you decided?”

  “Of course I have,” I replied lightly. “You’re going to torture me, and I’m going to tell you an endless series of whatever it is I think you want to hear, to make you stop.”

  “Harry,” urgency, desperate and low in his voice, “it doesn’t have to be this way. Tell me your point of origin and no harm will come to you, I swear.”

  “Have you considered the point of no return? That moment when the damage you’ve done to my body is so great that I no longer care, nor consider it worth my while, to say anything at all? You must be hoping that you won’t reach that moment before you break my mind.”

  He leaned back, face hardening at my words. “This is your doing, Harry. This is something you’re doing to yourself.”

  So saying, he left me. The sergeant stayed in the door, and for a moment our eyes locked.

  “Nothing at all?” I asked as the door swung shut.

  They began only a few minutes later. To my surprise, they opened with chemicals and a twist on the usual theme of the same, a partial paralytic, locking my diaphragm in place so I choked and suffocated, the air turning to lead in my lungs, blood and head. Some movement was still possible, the dose cleverly judged, so for an hour, maybe more, maybe less, I sat gasping and gaping for air, the sweat running down my face and spine, vision on the edge of darkness but not quite going over. Vincent had hired a professional. A small man with a neat moustache, he had his tools laid out–always for my scrutiny–on a tray before him, and like an athlete in training gave some time for rest between each new application of pain. At the end of every rest he asked the question “What is your point of origin?” and waited patiently for me to reply, shaking his head sadly when I refused to do so. Next up was physical nausea, causing cries not so much of pain but of an animal trapped in its own carcass, of heat upon heat upon heat, of a twisting, a shrinking, a narrowing of the senses until all I could perceive was my own hideously sane delirium.

  And there was the sergeant in the door, watching, always watching, and when the torturer took a break to get himself a glass of water, the sergeant came in and took my pulse, looked into the pupils of my eyes and whispered,

  “She knows I took the train to Ploskye Prydy, the end of the line. Is that too much?”

  I just smiled at him and let him answer the question for himself.

  Somewhere between the sickness and the suffocation Vincent came in and held my hand. “I’m sorry, Harry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  I tried to spit at him, but my mouth was dry, and he left again.

  They brought in the car battery long before, I think, they intended to use it. It was merely another object of interest, a thing to be placed on display. Sleep deprivation and extreme heat, a variation on the method I had expected, were the first order of the day. Someone with a highly creative appreciation of the use of surround sound and an ear for the unholy had created a soundtrack which oscillated between techno beats, tortured screams and graphic descriptions of violent and violating acts, carried on with Foley effects and in several different languages. If there was any danger that the noise and horror of all this was making me numb, a little too close to sleep, the guards came in and shook me awake, throwing ice water in my face, horror against the heat.

  “You’re a good man,” I told the sergeant when he woke me again. “You know what’s right.”

  “Drink, Harry, drink.” Vincent’s voice, a whisper in the sudden quiet. I knew he put a damp cloth to my lips and I drank greedily, until my mind crawled back to awareness and I spat the liquid out, spilling it down my chin and front, a thin concoction two parts saliva to one part water. The torturer’s moustache was especially fine the day he pulled my toenails out. I imagined him sleeping at night with a net across his face to give it such excellent buoyancy.

  “You’re a good man,” I told the sergeant as he folded up the plastic sheet from beneath my feet, containing its cocktail of torn nail and black blood. “How long until it’s you?”

  He looked over his shoulder to make sure the torturer was outside, taking one of his many rest breaks to stretch his fingers out after his work, then leaned in close. “I can get you poison,” he whispered. He looked. “That’s all I can do.”

  “That’s enough,” I replied. “That’s all anyone can do.”

  The poison was rat poison, but rats and humans share more than a few passing genetic traits. It was enough. The torturer, ironically, didn’t realise what my symptoms entailed until my kidneys were well into failure; even I could perceive the spreading yellowness in my skin was no reaction to having the little bones in my feet crushed one at a time in a vice. I howled with laughter when the torturer realised, shaking in my chair, stained tears rolling down my cheeks at the revelation.

  “You idiot!” I shrieked. “You incompetent! You total arse!”

  They unstrapped me from the chair and the torturer stuck two fingers down my throat to induce vomiting far, far too late. That was how Vincent found me, on the floor, shaking with laughter in my own blood-flecked puke. The old sergeant stood stiff and steady in the door. Vincent turned from me to the torturer, to the sergeant, and in that instant knew precisely what had happened and how. Anger flickered across his face, and he turned back to me. I laughed the harder to see the look in his eye, but to my surprise Vincent didn’t lash out at the sergeant, didn’t condemn the torturer, but gestured to two orderlies and barked, “Get him to the infirmary.”

  They got me to the infirmary.

  They even gave me painkillers.

  The doctor stared at the floor as she delivered her diagnosis, and my laughter, rather diminished by the loss of hormonal stimulation from my system, was only a sm
ile for Vincent when he came to my bedside. “That was very quick,” he said at last. “I didn’t expect you to contrive a means of death for at least five days.”

  “It’s been less than five days?”

  “Two and a half.”

  “Good God.” Then, “The sergeant’s a good man. He didn’t like what you’re doing. If you shoot him, can you apologise to him first? On my behalf, that is.”

  Vincent scowled, flicking through my medical chart in the vain hope of finding some indication that I wasn’t, in fact, already a long way past saving. I had finished puking, finished shaking and burning. The doctors had got to me in time to prevent cardiac failure, but my kidneys were lost, and my liver would follow soon, and that was enough. I didn’t even need to look at a chart to know it was so.