The Sailor in the Wardrobe

by Hugo Hamilton

  It was not long afterwards that they were sent further to the east and my mother says he must have lost any sense of self-protection. He was shot in the leg almost immediately and taken to the field hospital. His knee was completely shattered and he never walked without a stick again. I remember when we were small and went to Germany, we saw him always sitting sideways at the table. My mother says he was glad that he had been injured. He didn’t care about his leg as long as the nightmare would go away and let him sleep. But the nightmare never left him. It kept coming back again and again, as if he was seeing it for the first time and he wanted to run away again each time but couldn’t.

  After he got back to Germany, he thought of reporting what he had seen, going to the newspapers, but everything was controlled by the Nazis. He told his own family, but they were afraid of what they were hearing and begged him never to say anything out loud in the open or they would all be sent to the concentration camps. So he kept it to himself.

  It was only after the war, when he got married to Tante Käthe, that he could speak about it. It was all out in the open and he found out that things were even worse than he had imagined as he learnt about the concentration camps. Everybody was trying to rebuild their lives and all they talked about was repairing houses and finding food. He tried to work really hard to undo this nightmare that kept returning. He didn’t think of writing it down in a diary or turning it into a letter to somebody who would take the images away. And it was not something he could talk to his wife about every night either.

  It was only when Stefan was growing up that he finally found the right moment to speak out. He could have kept it like a secret to himself, my mother says, but he did the best thing of all, more courageous than anything he could have done during the war that might have been futile. Onkel Ulrich told his own son. He took the biggest step of all long after the war, in peacetime. He took the risk of losing the affection of his son, the risk that he would be killed by his own son, the risk that his only son would never speak to him again.

  So that’s how Stefan inherited the history of his father and the nightmare of the forest massacre in the Ukraine. That’s why Stefan cannot get rid of it either. And now I bear the image in my head as well. I know that Stefan can do nothing to un-remember it either, because it’s stuck in his mind as if he had seen it himself. My mother says, there is nothing you can do to put this nightmare out of your mind. ‘We have to invent ways of un-killing people,’ she says.

  At first I don’t understand what she means. But then she explains that we have to bring all those dead people back to life again. It’s the Germans who killed them, but it’s also the Germans who will bring them back by remembering them. As long as only one person in the world remembers, then they are still alive and not quite dead yet. As long as there is still a trace of those people, however small, left in your memory, that’s all that matters. My mother says it’s a new German invention, keeping those murdered people alive. We can’t be afraid of the past. The past is not a weakness and we have to think of ways of keeping those murdered people from disappearing. It’s the hardest thing to do, she says, but they are our people and it’s going to be a great talent, something the Germans are going to be the best at, the un-killing of millions of people.

  Nineteen

  My father believes that too much freedom is bad for you, so he’s imposed a new curfew and tells me to be back home by eleven. I argue with him and say that freedom is something absolute, like human rights, something you can never have enough of. He disagrees and says it’s something precious, something you have to be a bit careful with. He has a duty to protect me from the perils of freedom, even though I don’t want to be protected and only feel like escaping. He says I’m living in a fantasy if I think the world will ever be free of rules. I tell him that people are fed up being obedient and he says it’s the opposite, people are more obedient now than they ever were before, and it’s harder to break the rules of freedom than it ever was to break all the rules of totalitarianism and imperialism put together.

  ‘The tyranny of freedom,’ he calls it.

  He’s become the family prophet now, warning us about the good times coming. He tells me about his first taste of freedom after Irish independence when he became a schoolteacher and cycled through West Cork, how that freedom was linked with the idea of working and rebuilding your country. My mother says she still remembers the first day of freedom from the Nazis at the end of the war when she cycled home through the mountains. It’s like a special smell in the air, she says, like when you lean your head down into a pram and inhale the scent of a newborn baby’s head.

  My mother tries to talk to my father, but he says he stands by the rules. If I’m not back in the house by eleven, I can stay out on the street and become homeless, because he will not allow me back in. As long as I live under his roof, I have to be subject to his law. So she comes and begs me to play the rules a little longer, just to keep the peace.

  ‘I’m not going to live under a curfew,’ I tell her.

  ‘Please,’ she says, when I’m going out the door. ‘Do it for me.’

  So that makes it worse, because it means that if I come in late, I won’t be breaking his law as much as breaking her heart.

  Most of the time at the harbour, there is nothing happening and we’re only waiting for the day to end. Even in the summer, after the sun goes down, it stays bright for a long time and people hang around smoking and talking. The motorbikes come and go, bringing the harbour back to life one last time. You wait for the last boats to come in and when they are all tied up, we still wait until the harbour is deserted. In the nursing home, you can see the patients being put to bed and the lights going out. Lights going on and off again when one of the old people calls for something or can’t get to sleep. Sometimes you can watch the same nurses making their way from room to room, until only the lights in the corridors are left on, nurses moving along each floor with the late-night medical trolley. Cars keep coming around the bend and shining their headlights across the boats, lighting up the whole harbour just for a moment before racing away up the road. The ferry from the main harbour goes out and you can see it getting smaller and smaller on its way over to England, like a lantern fading away on the water. Sometimes you feel you can even see the curvature of the Earth, because the ferry is high on the horizon and then slips down behind it. The last of the motorbikes is gone and you can still hear it going through the gears, all the way through the streets, until I can only imagine the hum of it.

  Everybody is gone now. I am the last person left along with Dan Turley, and I still don’t want to go home until he locks up and walks away up the pier to his house. All the signs have been taken down and stored inside. The fish boxes have been cleaned and put away. There is nothing left to do and Dan is about to close the door when we hear the sound of another boat coming in. It’s hard to see who it is, but then against the light of the sky it’s clear by the silhouette that this must be Tyrone, a man standing up at the back of the boat, gliding into the harbour and flicking the butt of his cigarette into the water.

  I should leave now but I stay for a few minutes longer, as if I have some kind of premonition that something is about to happen. As Dan switches off the light inside the shed and gets ready to lock the door, Tyrone comes walking up from the quay carrying a fish box in front of him. I get on my bike, ready to cycle away, but then Dan begins to mutter and curse again. If I wasn’t there, if there was no audience, he would say nothing and just close the door, forget that Tyrone even existed and just walk away home. But I’m the witness, the supporter who brings out the worst in him, and I can hear him goading Tyrone under his breath until he finally drops the fish box in his hands and steps right up towards the shed.

  ‘What did you say?’ Tyrone shouts.

  The mackerel come back to life in the box and slap around furiously for a moment. Before I know it, the two men move up to each other, cursing and growling, face to face. Then they begin to go at each
other with fists. Suddenly there are no more words and it’s just straight violence now. It’s a real fight. Two old men trying to kill each other on the pier and nobody around to stop it.

  ‘Go on you fuckin’ buffalo,’ Tyrone shouts.

  There’s blood on his mouth. He must have got a punch, because his face has lit up with a red colour that almost looks black under the harbour lights. Now I know why blood is red, because it’s the most alarming colour you can imagine, the colour that makes your heart race. Tyrone is trying to get back at Dan, trying to connect a decent punch, but they have locked on to each other in a wrestling match, huffing with the exertion. It’s a breathing war as they shift around the pier, each trying to drag the other down.

  I want to leave, but I’m paralysed by what I see. I can see Dan’s white cap lying on the ground, so I pick it up. I place it on the trellis outside the shed, afraid of going any closer. It seems like a nightmare that has been coming for a long time, but I can’t wake up or walk away. Dan Turley and Tyrone gripping at each other, pushing back and forth, just breathing and groaning as if they will never let go. I can see spittle on Dan’s mouth, foam around his lips. I can see the whiteness of his head and the mark left behind by the rim of his cap.

  Against the remaining light in the sky, I see them embracing each other in a vicious dance, as if they are suddenly doing a waltz, moving from one side of the pier to the other, all the way towards the edge until they nearly go over the side into the harbour, then all the way back towards the shed, swinging back so fast that it looks like Tyrone is forcing Dan to sit down on the trellis. They seem to be completely unaware of where they are. Nobody sees any of this happening and the nursing home seems a million miles away, with everyone fast asleep. Every now and again a car lights up the fight for an instant, as they sway back to the edge of the pier and stop at the crane, then all the way back until they crash right into the side of the shed. Twice more, Dan’s broad back slams into the shed before they fall to the ground just inside the door.

  I don’t know what to do to stop this. I’m afraid to intervene. And then I wonder if they’re only fighting because I’m watching, if I go away they might stop and come back to their senses. They pick themselves up like small boys off the ground and instantly lock on to each other again, waltzing around towards me so that I have to jump away and pull the bike out of their path at the last minute. My mouth is so dry that I can’t even say a word. Then I get on my bike and start cycling away to get help.

  And then the fight comes to an end. I stop to look back and maybe I was right, that I’m only keeping the fight alive by being present. They let go of each other and I watch them standing there, leaning forward a little, with their hands on their hips, just breathing heavily.

  ‘Just you fucking wait,’ I hear Tyrone say, before he picks up the fish box and disappears away up the pier.

  Dan finds his cap and brushes it off before putting it back on his head. He stands for a moment, staring after Tyrone with black marble eyes, unable to say a word because he’s breathing so heavily. His mouth is open and there is spittle hanging from his chin as if he’s got no energy left to wipe it off. I wait to see what he’s going to do, if he’s going to get the hatchet, but he doesn’t. He locks the door of the shed, fumbling with the keys for a long while, unable to do it any more, and I want to run back and help him. He doesn’t see me and I know he doesn’t want me to talk about this to anyone. Then I finally see him wiping the spittle off his chin with the sleeve of his jacket and I cycle away.

  By the time I get home, it’s already too late and I find the door of the house locked and bolted from inside. It could only be little more than five minutes past eleven, but the curfew has fallen and my father has closed the fortress against me. I rest my bike against the side of the wall and look up at the windows, but all the curtains are drawn. The lights are out, as if they’re all in a rush to prove that they are asleep. I can’t ring the bell, so I wait outside for a while until my mother realizes that I’m back and sneaks down the stairs to open the door very quietly. My father doesn’t hear her locking the door again, though there is a loud click as the lock jumps back into place.

  We stand in the hallway for a moment. My mother likes this secrecy, as if I’m doing all the things she wishes she had done herself. She holds my hand and looks into my eyes for a moment.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ she asks.

  Maybe she can sense what I’ve witnessed. But I tell her nothing and we creep up the stairs like two thieves. I know the creaks on the landing and how to avoid them. We wave at each other in silence and go to bed.

  I lie awake for a while thinking of what I have seen. I imagine what’s going to happen next at the harbour and how it will end. I watch the light from the street throwing the shadows onto the wall of my bedroom. I see the fight starting again and again, like an endless film, Dan picking up his cap and wiping the spittle from his chin, until I’m exhausted and fall asleep, But even in my sleep I hear more shouting, right in close to me. This time I am no longer just a bystander. I can see the rage in Dan Turley’s eyes. I can see his bottom lip pushed forward and hear him breathing. I can see blood on his neck, on his hands. I can see drops of blood on the pier, leading away to where Tyrone has gone to find an oar or something better to fight with. A trail of blood that you sometimes see along the pier after somebody has carried up a box of freshly caught mackerel. A trail of blood that you sometimes see on the street and wonder if it was a fight or an injured dog. I see Tyrone moving quickly around the pier with a broken oar in his hands.

  ‘Come on yah fuckin’ buffaloes,’ he’s shouting.

  And this time he’s coming for me. Tyrone swinging his oar around, aiming straight at me, pinning me back against the shed. I want to wake up, but I can’t get out of this nightmare any more and I feel the oar hitting the side of my face. I can hear the sound of the wood echoing inside my head and when I wake up at last, I find that my back is right up against the wall of the bedroom. The light is on in the room and I can hardly see anything, except my father, standing over me, punching his fist down.

  ‘You let him in,’ I hear him shouting. ‘That’s treachery.’

  I am blinded by the light overhead. I can see him in his pyjamas, without his glasses on, my mother trying to pull him back by the elbow, trying to stop him hitting me again. I can hear him gasping with the effort. I have no defence and I feel the punches coming one after the other and my head knocking back against the wall behind me. I feel myself sinking down under the blows, as if the oar is striking me again and again and my back is sliding down the side of the shed. Tyrone standing over me with a look of insanity in his eyes and Dan Turley holding him back to stop him from finishing me off.

  It is all the punishment in history being passed on blow by blow, all the revenge and all the resentment going back for centuries, here in my bedroom. Nobody can stop it. My father is breathing so hard he can’t speak. It’s the breathing war. He rolls up his sleeves to do it better. I can see he has already taken his watch off. I can smell his sweat. As my eyes finally get accustomed to the light, I can also see that the whole house is up and the room is full of people, the entire family around me, with their hands together as if they are all praying for this to end.

  ‘Peace,’ my brother Franz suddenly calls out.

  Then everything stops. There is silence in the house, as if somebody from outside has spoken and our family has begun to see itself for the first time. I see them crowding around my father, trying to help him out of the room, as if something terrible has happened to him. They ignore me and keep looking after him. They are afraid for him and worried because he’s so angry and upset by what he has done. They know he will feel terrible about it and want him to sit on the stairs, to calm down and take in a deep breath.

  ‘I want him out,’ he keeps saying. He sits on the stairs for a moment, with everyone around him, as if he was the person who was attacked. I’m left sitting up in bed feeling my face and the
n I realize that my eyes are wet and I can’t stop myself crying. I feel so guilty. I feel so hurt, so angry that I want to kill him. I feel like running away and never coming back.

  My father gets up suddenly and goes down the stairs to the front room. He says he’s going to call the Gardai because there is an intruder in the house. If only my father could see how ridiculous this has become, calling the police to evict his own son. He is determined to make the call, right in the middle of the night, while my mother begs him to leave it till the morning. She puts her finger on the button to cut off the dialling tone a number of times, but then he fights her off.

  ‘Yes, an intruder,’ I can hear him saying out loud.

  I’m afraid I will soon be homeless. I get worried about having to live for the rest of my life as an outsider. But then I hear the phone hanging up again.

  ‘Think about it,’ I can hear my mother pleading with him. ‘You don’t want him to be like Stefan, disappearing and never coming back.’

  So then I leave the house. Before anyone can stop me, I call my father’s bluff. While they are all still in the front room trying to stop him from calling the Gardai to our house, they hear the front door slamming. My mother runs out and I hear her calling me back, but I keep running down the road with tears in my eyes, saying to myself that I will never come back again because the whole house is like a wardrobe and if I don’t escape now, I never will.

  I walk the streets on my own. I spend some time back at the harbour, but then I have to keep moving, like the mackerel, because now I’m homeless. I walk all the way up the hill where I can look down over the whole city, like an orange bowl in the distance. I sit on one of the benches thinking how I want to go back and kill my father. I think of him with spittle on his chin, staring at me, out of breath. But then I can’t live with the hate in my head any more. I can’t hold on to my anger and I can’t help wanting to forgive him again. I want to be friends with him and feel sorry for him. It’s my fault that he lost his temper, and I’m glad I didn’t retaliate. I’m glad I didn’t do something like Stefan that I could not repair.