by Seth Lynch
Five minutes later I'm asleep. Five minutes after that I'm awake. I change into my night clothes, knowing I should stick my head in that water, but I'm too tired to try. A few minutes later I'm asleep once more. Was it Namur where the fortresses were? I wake again and see the room is dark. Outside a dog is calling out to his tethered comrades. They reply and pass his message on across the city. I'm sweating and rolling about, feeling heavy from fatigue. My body is rebelling against its very being.
I have to piss. With eyes half-closed I stagger across to the chamber pot. I stand there, looking at my reflection in the window. Not a glimpse of humour in that face. Afterwards I fumble my way back to the bed. The sheets are tinged with dampness from the cold and my sweat. Already I feel the need to piss again.
Not wishing to witness my misery, the moon has taken cover behind a cloud. The room is condemned to the darkness. Thoughts beat against my skull like the wings of an eagle trapped in a cage.
How long ago was it I heard that man, one of the night's stragglers, singing in the street outside? The song had been faint, growing louder as he made his way along. Occasionally he stopped to belch or perhaps pick himself up. Maybe he stood to admire himself – king of the empty street. There were a few minutes when the noise remained at a certain level; he must have been using the pissoir. He passed by under my window and then his song grew faint. All that time I held a picture of the man in my head. I could see him as he progressed along the road. For those few minutes he was a friend who held at bay my demon mind.
*
Awake, I stare out of the window at the sky. Stars fade as the sky turns a pale grey then blue. Noises enter my room, the clanging of bells, the occasional auto, footsteps and children shouting. The sounds are no longer human, no longer recognisable. All I hear is a distant hum. This must be Sunday. I don't recall anything else before sky blackens and the stars return slowly to their posts.
My stomach starts to cramp and I double up on the bed. There are people in the apartment; I can hear them walking around in the office. Somebody is in the kitchen. They have an accomplice out on the street outside, sitting in a big auto and gunning the engine. Any minute now they will burst through the door and fill me with lead. Have I been poisoned?
Marty must be laughing out loud. Right at this exact minute he is laughing and sipping wine with a beautiful woman tending to his every perversity. Why do you want him, Marie? Let lying dogs sleep. All those people he conned... I ought to get wise. Ha! I'll visit each one and tell them I'll track down Marty, for a small fee. Oh God! Is Marty tracking me down, sending hoodlums from Marseille to get me? I'm not hard to find; my number's in the book, give me a call.
The pain in my gut subsides. I dare not move. My ears strain, trying to pick out every sound the night has to offer. The people in the apartment are silent and the man out in the auto has turned off the engine. If only I could creep to the window and take a quick look outside. I remain perfectly still and drift off to sleep.
I suffer from a propensity to turn in on myself, like a clockwork mechanism where the cogs have worked loose and grate against one another. Spectres metamorphose from the shadows and lure me to the darkness, not with promises of joy, and I go - a beaten dog following its master.
These last few months I have been free of it – I'd hoped free for good. The agency gave me a focus, and Megan has now given me hope. This is as bad as any of those times I'd been lost in Saint-Denis. Back then, a week could pass as I lay on my cot staring at the ceiling. These are the dues I have to pay the cosmos.
That is bad thinking. I fell into that trap before. The downward spiral can be so persuasive. There was a night, alone in a park long after the keeper had locked the gates, where I'd realised that I was in control. Earlier that day I'd seriously considered jumping in the river. I'd gotten so close I could almost taste the water. At the bridge I turned and ran and kept on running until I collapsed with exhaustion behind a hedge in a park. Then I'd fallen asleep. In the early hours of the morning I climbed the park wall and jumped to the pavement below. On the way down a sign across the road caught my eye: Salazar, importers of wine. In that moment, I resolved not to kill myself – instead, I would transform myself.
*
I sleep for a few hours then awaken, dripping in sweat, afraid that a demon is sitting on my chest. With the lights on I search the room for the creature who'd been trying to steal my breath. I start talking, but to whom? Rocks of pain grow in my stomach. I pace the room until a pressure in my head forces me to lie on the bed, holding it, and begging for mercy. I sleep once more.
*
I'm awake again, unsure how long I've slept. I can't motivate myself to move. I am lost. That night in the park I'd pledged against suicide; now I'm falling off the wagon. A voice says, 'why not now, why not bring it to a close?'
I could open the window and step into the void. The thought of those spiked railings stops me. I do have the revolver. No! I will not kill again, not me, not nobody. I take the gun and remove the bullets. I fall asleep clutching them in my hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY
There are voices – indistinguishable – out in the hallway. A knock comes at the door. I turn my head to look in that direction. I make no further attempt to open the door. Have they come for me now that I'm too feeble to defend myself?
A voice permeates the fog... Megan! Why doesn't she come in? I don't want her to see me weakened like this. Before she arrives I'll get up and pretend to be drinking coffee. I cannot move; perhaps I can blink - I think not. My eyes are wide open, staring through the semi-darkness, burning in their sockets. Will she come? The voices fall silent.
They are back. I will myself to sit up, without success. A key clicks in the lock and the voices grow louder. Megan and Filatre - my friends! I try to cry out but my voice is dry and hollow.
'Turn on the light.'
'Christ, it stinks in here.'
'You check in the kitchen.'
The electric light on the bedroom wall flicks to life. I raise a hand in defence against its blinding glare.
Megan calls out: 'He's in here.' I lower my arm and see Filatre entering the bedroom. He loiters in the doorway as Megan comes over to me.
'My darling, are you OK?' she asks.
She crouches down next to the bed and puts her hand on my forehead.
'All been a bit worried, old chum,' says Filatre from the doorway. He lights his pipe and starts making those familiar putting noises. A moment later the smell of the smoke overrides the smell of me. Filatre continues, 'We weren't sure what was happening after you told us to stay away.'
The reassuring smell of Filatre's pipe continues to infuse the room. Megan opens the window and a welcome blanket of cold air wraps itself around me.
Megan addresses Filatre: 'It's OK; I'll take care of him.'
'I know you will, my dear. Let me know if you need anything, I'll be downstairs. See you later, old chum.'
Filatre ambles off, silhouetted by the living room light. I hear the front door open and then close, followed by the sound of creaking stairs. The sounds fade. Megan is stroking my hair and holding me.
'Are you all right? You look deathly pale,' she says.
'I don't know, Megan. These black spells come and I drift away.'
She holds my face in her hands and looks at me so close that our noses brush gently against each other.
'I love you,' she says. 'Hold on to that thought and don't ever let go of it.' She stares into my eyes as if projecting her love there. Then she says: 'You look like you need some coffee. Do you think you can get dressed, or do you want to drink it in here?'
'I'll give it a go, if not I can always drink in the nude. You make it, I'll join you in the kitchen.'
She leaves the room and I climb out of bed. My limbs feel weak. I pull on a pair of trousers that were hanging over a chair, then pick a shirt up off the floor. Halfway dressed I take a look out of the open window. Jumping would have been
horrible, for Megan as well as for me. I amble through the kitchen, mumbling as I go.
In the toilet I look at my unshaven, pallid face in the mirror. There is more than one day's growth on my chin. Sweat has dirtied me up. At least it's not as ingrained as it was in the old days. I wash, then shave, before the smell of coffee mixed with the fumes from one of Megan's cigarettes enters the room. We have achieved a husk of normality.
While drying my face I begin salivating uncontrollably. One whiff of food and my body abandons all decorum. Aromas from the kitchen torment me. For the last few days I've been starving myself, an unintended consequence of the depression. I must eat. I enter the kitchen carrying my shirt. Megan is toasting some country bread. I cut a few slices off the loaf and eat them as they are. With my mouth still bulging from the bread I search in the cupboard and find some pickles.
Megan brings over the coffee as I sate my hunger on gherkins. After a swig of coffee I button up my shirt. I'm presented with jam and toast. I don't have the stomach for it. The belief that my hunger cannot have been so easily satisfied keeps me eating.
'So,' Megan says.
'So,' I echo.
'What has this all been about?'
'I don't think I know.'
'I think I do,' she says. 'I think something in you is broken and we've got to fix it. Deep in your subconscious there is a conflict, a repressed idea, and it's fighting to get out.'
'You sound like you've been reading Freud,' I say.
'Everybody has read Freud. Old ladies on the bus talk about their super-ego as if it were a new dance. They claim it's causing their grandchildren to come down with mal du siècle. Reading Freud is easy; working out what it all means is another story. I'm not sure I buy any of it. So you and I will talk it out, as my own grandmother might have said.'
'I don't have mal du siècle,' I say. 'Whatever I have normally comes and goes.'
I smile wanly and hope it isn't too pathetic. I feel sick from the pickles, although the coffee combats the rising nausea.
'I get the uneasy sensation of falling,' I say. 'After every fall it's impossible to climb all the way back up again. I'm always losing a few inches.'
'And have you always felt like that - as long as you can remember?'
'I think so, although I do have a primal memory of happiness. That could be a trick of the mind to torment me further – my very own paradise lost. I had these feelings a lot at university. I never had them at all during the war. That was the longest period I ever went without them.'
'Not during the war, but as a child? Do you remember them as a child?'
'No, the fears I'm talking about are intangible. As a child I feared being pulled from the bed and beaten. The scars on my back are witness to the tangibility of that fear. For a few weeks each summer we went to stay with Aunt Bess in Norfolk. Alfred and I could waste hours skimming stones across a pond. I even remember saying to Alfie, "Some kids' lives are like this all the time. They don't get the beating, or the prodding, or the name calling".
'During the last week of the holiday I'd start to wet the bed. My Aunt put it down to a nervous disposition. She would say things like: "Don't worry, my love, you'll be home soon and then you can sleep in your own bed." I'd have killed not to have had to return to my own bed.'
Megan's eyes take on a deeper beauty behind her tears. Mine just cloud my vision. She has been gently rubbing my back as I spoke. We aren't going to get through this without some very real pain. I don't find it cathartic. Each moment hurts - which is why I rarely dwell upon it.
'I wish I could have been there to have comforted you,' Megan says.
'There wasn't anything you could have done. Besides, I would have been mean to you. I hid a lot of myself behind a veneer of nastiness. When I think of myself then I was so twisted up that everything I did or said was a contradiction. All I wanted was someone to be close to me, but there was no way I would have let anyone get close.'
'Some would say that stems from of a fear of getting hurt.'
'A psychiatrist might say that if they didn't have any real answers.'
'So what is the real answer, Reggie?'
'I think it was more protective. If I let someone get close to me there was a chance my curse would rub off on them.'
'You were being gallant?'
'Maybe, but I doubt it.'
'So if we are ever going to get close we need to work this out.'
Megan pulls a notepad and a pencil out of her bag and gets ready to start taking notes. I find it disconcerting - one minute I'm talking to my girlfriend, the next I'm talking to a psychiatrist.
'When did it start?'
'Today is Monday, isn't it?'
I'd been aware of days and nights passing but hadn't stopped to count them. Megan nods.
'It began late on Saturday. I'd released Pascal and was waiting in case he decided to return.'
'Who is Pascal?'
How much should I tell her? Does she need to know about the secretary in Montparnasse, or my planning to kill Girondé in Montmartre? I may as well fill her in and see how it goes.
Megan asks for further details as I try to recount everything, beginning with the moment I followed the doorman from Lacmans'. When I get to the part about Pascal she asks exactly what he looks like – sensible as she may encounter him hanging about and can tip me off.
'Let's go back to that house in Montmartre, I want to get something clear,' she says. 'You were planning to put a knife in Girondé because you thought he may harm me as well as you. Then, as you were visualising the act, you had a change of heart. I find that hard to understand. You've killed people before, you had the knife ready, and you were confident you could do it. You didn't do it because you have nightmares about the Germans you killed. Is that right?'
'That's as good a summary as any,' I reply.
'But it doesn't ring true. There must be something else.'
'There was nothing else. I had a sudden flash of past nightmares and I didn't want to add to them.'
'What I'm getting at, Reggie, is this: it wasn't the thought of nightmares that stopped you... it was the reasons for the nightmares.'
'This could go round for a while – the reason for the nightmare is the killing.'
'No, the reason for the nightmares is regret. You may not have regretted killing those Germans at the time – after all they were about to kill your men. But later, after the war, you started to have the nightmares. You've told me that you think about their children – if they had children. You imagined their wives receiving the telegram. They were normal people who got sucked into the war and were killed for it. Then there is Alfred.'
'I didn't kill Alfred, the Germans did.'
'The war did. He was killed because he was at war. And so were all the other dead men you saw. My brother was put in to a wheelchair and will never be able to stand unaided. Men walk about with missing limbs, missing eyes, scarred faces, all because of the war. You see them every day on the street and feel guilty because you took part in it. I think this guilt is contributing towards your depression.'
I let Megan's words sink in. I want to tell her that she's wrong, but it doesn't feel wrong. Not once, in all the times I have seen that officer since his death, have I ever thought: you deserved to die. I have never said it because it is not true. He happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and so did I.
'When you let Pascal go, what were you thinking?'
'I'd already decided not to kill Girondé; it would have been unfair to kill Pascal. At least not in cold blood. If he'd tried to jump me I would probably have shot him and told the flics he was a burglar. No doubt they have him on file.'
'After he left, you sat on the bed and waited in case he returned.'
'Yes, although I was exhausted. I'd had hardly any sleep for nearly twenty-four hours. I started conking out.'
'Lack of sleep wouldn't have helped. What were you planning to do if Pascal came back?'
'There was a distinct lack of a plan. I had my gun nearby. The first time I was waiting for him I had the whole thing set up. Filatre went to the café to act as a spotter. In the apartment I set out trip wires and a few other things in readiness for a sneak attack.'
'After you let him go, you sat on the bed waiting until you fell asleep?'
'Pretty much.'
'Hmm.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means I have an idea which hasn't formulated yet. Can you make us some coffee?'
I put the pot on the stove and clear away the plates. Performing these simple chores makes me feel better. My stomach is over full. Despite having been in bed for over forty-eight hours I could do with a decent sleep. I serve up two espressos and retake my seat.
'This is what I think, Reggie. At the gangster's house your subconscious rebelled against more killing. You took the hint and left. When you released Pascal you knew that he might come back. You couldn't think of a way to deal with that threat without recourse to killing. This led to a deeper crisis which caused your body and mind to shut down.'
'Well put. Shall I pack my bags now?'
'There won't be any need for that. I doubt Pascal will turn up again.'
'I meant so you can take me to the funny farm.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We burn a few cigarettes sitting in silence. Not a strained silence or an interrogation ploy. I'm beginning to relax, allowing my mind to go blank; to forget about Marty, the gangsters, and the city outside. The tiredness has momentarily passed and I've reached one of the lower levels of contentment.
What Megan has said makes sense. I'd never wanted to be a soldier, but the war caught me at a time when words like duty and empire meant something. I signed up like I was buying a new pair of shoes. Those were the days.
