Notes from a Coma

by Mike McCormack

  “Yes, that’s well known, very gifted. JJ has an IQ which allows him to turn his mind to anything. It was obvious to everyone who taught him that he was an exceptional young man.”

  “Did you think he ever suffered for his intelligence?”

  “No, certainly not to a degree that will allow for any cheap theorising.”

  “What I’m getting at is do you think his intelligence and the fact that he was adopted left him with some want in his heart which he might hope this project would fulfil?”

  “Nothing I know about JJ leads me to believe that there is a want in his heart or his head or any other place. He is a questing soul, there’s no doubt about that, but I’m firmly of the belief that this is because of an unusually sharp mind, not the result of some existential malaise as you might put it. You have to remember JJ is read beyond his years. He could put any of his teachers to shame in any discussion. Always questioning, always looking for answers.” I drew myself up and tried to change tack. “This is beginning to sound like an obituary; I hope it’s not going to come across like that tomorrow.”

  “No, but as I say there is a real shortage of background detail on him. Always looking for answers you say. How do you think JJ imagines a three-month coma will provide any answers?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to know what’s on JJ’s mind nor should anyone else either. All you need to know is that he is a young man any teacher would be proud of. JJ has a lot of goodwill coming to him. Let’s hope he comes through this unharmed and that he can get on with his life.”

  “Are you worried about him?”

  “As JJ himself has said, anyone in their right mind would have worries.”

  That interview was quoted verbatim the following day, padding out a ream of pop psychology and low-grade sociology. The most accurate part of it was the headline, a four-word phrase which sounded like the first line of a lonely heart’s ad: Restless Mind Seeks Rest.

  It wouldn’t be the first time this village had someone who flirted with his own death like this.

  If you go out this road about two miles and turn left after the sign for Conlon’s timber yard you’ll see this big hall in off the road on your left. The roof is stripped away now, the whole thing falling in on itself.* You wouldn’t think to look at it but back in the seventies this was one of the most hopping dance halls in the county. In 1972 a Cork man by the name of Considine—Mick Considine I think, a P&T worker—made an attempt on the world record for being buried alive in that dance hall. Raising money he was for some sort of sheltered housing project below in Cork … A section of the floor was lifted up and Considine was lowered down in a coffin. They timbered up the hole and a slab of concrete was poured over him. A small headstone and a limestone border finished off the whole thing. That evening while the band played we literally danced on his grave into the early hours of the morning. Five days was all he lasted. An attack of claustrophobia nearly choked him and it was only by the skin of his teeth that he was broken out by two local lads with a pair of twelve-pound hammers.

  I’d forgotten that story until someone drew it down the night of JJ’s press conference. More than one person has mentioned it to me since.

  * There’s this downturn across the land, all indicators flatlining across charts and screens, a blank refusal to respond to the old stimuli. Somehow the coma has leaked out through the security perimeter, found its way into the ambience of the nation and once more become the national idiom. Of course the causal sequence may be the other way round but one way or another we have thrown in our lot and gone native in it, remembering once more a way of being that is second nature to us. And while no one can finger the exact time or place where the rot set in, the place where bad went to worse, there is general agreement that there has been this general shift, not of mass but of minds and energy. Every analysis points to exhaustion and fatigue, some essential component in the engine itself worn out, pleading for time out, an extended rest period where it can draw its breath and gather its strength …

  KEVIN BARRET TD

  They were flown in separately, the helicopters touching down in the exercise yard at half-hour intervals. After they were billeted in their separate chalets I went to the mess hall to greet them. My hope was that they’d be sitting around in a comradely huddle talking together, taking their first steps towards bonding as a team. Some hope. When I entered the hall Didac and Emile and JJ were gathered at one end of the longest table with their backs to me; Haakan and Jimmy Callanan were sitting beneath them locked in a ferocious arm wrestle. You didn’t need to do much looking to see who had the upper hand … Jimmy was breathing hard, leaning into his right shoulder, a vein throbbing along his jawbone. As I approached his left hand shot out and grabbed the end of the table. Luftig looked up at me and then turned away with blank disinterest. Then, baring his teeth, he suddenly drove Jimmy’s arm down on to the table with a brutal heave, toppling the Scotsman from his chair on to the floor. A guffaw broke over the table. Emile Perec reached out and held up the Swede’s hand. Le champion, he yelled, le champion du monde. That done, the five of them split up and moved off to separate seats, as far away from each other as the confines of the hall would allow. Luftig immediately wired himself into his Discman and Perec opened up a comic on the table and buried his head in it.

  It wasn’t the start I’d anticipated. Straight off I saw we had a de facto leader and his fool in our midst; a hierarchy of sorts had already asserted itself. Any hope of them coming together in an atmosphere of respect and camaraderie was going be disappointed. It was obvious they were going to keep their distance from each other for as long as they deemed it necessary. If not outright contempt for each other the impression they gave was one of studied indifference. And a captive audience they might well be but they were determined to prove difficult.

  It was not a time for speechifying. I said a few words of welcome, called out their names, commended them on their bravery and assured them that whatever the scientific aims of the project nothing would compromise their health and safety. I wished them well and told them that all the educational and recreational facilities of the prison were available to them. If they were grateful they did a good job of keeping it to themselves. JJ was the only one who showed any interest in what I had to say but I knew better than to believe it was anything other than politeness.

  Looking at them then I mentally scrapped one of the PR ploys we had scheduled for later that week. We had hoped to bring them before the public in a final televised press conference from inside the prison. It would be the final part of our hearts-and-minds operation—five articulate speakers coming before the nation with a suitable sense of historic opportunity about them. All objections would wilt in the face of such humility and square-jawed resoluteness. At least that had been the idea. But one look at those sullen expressions and the likelihood of them blanking an assembly of political correspondents made me think better of it.

  If any part of the project was badly managed it was this induction week. The decision to house them in separate chalets within the prison was a mistake. It failed to draw them together—in fact, it did nothing but make them all the more resolute in their separateness. From the outset they made it known that they wanted nothing to do with each other. They ate separately, exercised separately and sat in opposite corners of the reading room. Not once during the entire week did anyone witness a pair of them in conversation with each other. In fact, it became clear that they would do everything in their power and within the confines of the prison to keep out of each other’s way. Marking out their separate space and identities became each man’s individual project for that week. It was something I hadn’t foreseen, a variable I hadn’t reckoned on and it made me anxious.

  Jane Evers, the prison psychologist, spelled it out for me. Her read on the situation was that they should not be forced to bond if they did not want to. Within the aims and protocols of the experiment there was no need or reason why they should. This was not a team-building exercise
they were limbering up for nor was it some type of Special Forces mission; these models did not obtain. In their separate comas they would have no need of each other, they would not be reliant on each other for anything like skills, logistical or moral support. They would endure alone and isolated and it was obvious they had resolved to start as they were going to finish. Furthermore, she warned, they were likely to react negatively to any ploy which might seek to draw them together. A reasoned understanding of what they were undertaking should be assumed and must not be offended by dressing up the project as anything other than what it really was. This final individuation should be respected; it was their time to themselves. If they wanted this to change then it was for them to say so; if they didn’t then nothing was lost bar an atmosphere of camaraderie.

  It made sense but it still left a worry. As something we hadn’t foreseen it hinted at God knows how many other things lay down the road to jump out at us. Confined within the prison and mercifully out of the public gaze it was of no real consequence but I didn’t want the project proceeding on this ad hoc basis. Smoothness and certainty and openness—these were our watchwords.

  At the end of the second day I called a meeting of all the advisers on secondment to the project to run through the whole thing from bow to stern.

  This was the most fretful week of the entire project—everything afterwards was calmness itself compared to the anxiety of those few days. Our biggest problem was still trying to get public opinion onside, assuaging the fears of those letter writers and commentators who were still harping on the ethical difficulties of the project. By then, however, there was an unmistakable air of futility about the whole debate. The project was now under way and all these objections and scruples were only so much hot air. Nevertheless, my time was taken up with media appearances, debates, radio phone-ins … repeating assurances, rebutting objections, putting backspin on all the hostile articles and editorials which were still appearing. The Taoiseach himself spoke once on the subject. On the steps of the government jet, his stance was statesmanlike. A master of the public utterance he confined himself to a few bland assurances, emollient words, nothing which might give hostages to fortune. Then with a wave of his hand to the assembled press he turned his back and was gone. As I knew from the beginning of this whole thing I was on my own. It would make or break whatever political career lay ahead of me.

  We were lucky with our timing though. As the Dáil had risen for summer recess we didn’t have to cope with an organised attack from the opposition. Those few opposition spokesmen who did come out to speak on the subject gave such hapless performances it was obvious their protests were only a matter of form; their voices carried no conviction and they were easily countered. Appealing to the nation’s scruples was a smokescreen, covering the fact that they themselves were largely in agreement with the project; a full year scoring easy points week in week out in debates on the prison crisis but offering no credible alternative had left them without leverage. Finally, when it was revealed that my opposite number’s name was on one of the very first memorandums discussing the project at EU level, the ground was decisively cut from under them.

  In one sense all those media appearances took my mind off the fact that actually there was very little I could do from now on. A rationale was in place and all negotiations were over; the machines were waiting to be plugged in, contracts had been filed and the principal roles had been assigned. We were now in clock-watching mode, waiting for the curtain to rise.

  For security reasons I wanted to keep the exact commencement date a secret; justice department officials wouldn’t hear of it. Openness and transparency they said, everything had to be above board and, more importantly, had to be seen to be above board. The public had to feel from the beginning that they were having as near as dammit complete access to the project; this was a public event. Secrecy and duplicity were to be avoided at all costs. Moreover, it was made known to me early on that press coverage of the start-up would be extensive. Sky News had negotiated exclusive rights for a live relay from inside the prison, specifically the moment when the volunteers assembled in the yard and moved out in convoy. Again I objected. It presented not just a security risk but a risk of real embarrassment. The convoy would be televised—who knew what protests or obstacles might materialise along the way. I urged a decoy—an empty convoy wending its way along the N60 towards the Killary drawing a press convoy in its wake while the volunteers were transported overhead in a Sea King helicopter. The ruse could be sold afterwards as a security measure and, I advised, such forward thinking would reflect well our anxiety to safeguard the volunteers. It took time and much back-room haggling but in the end department officials sat down and rejigged the terms of the transmission with Sky News.

  We were conscious now that the whole thing was more theatre than politics. Even at this preliminary stage the project itself seemed the still point at the heart of a massive media event.* And because of that I wanted the whole thing shorn of as much colour and detail as possible. The volunteers for instance would wear their own clothes. Someone had suggested they might wear a one-piece uniform in the manner of NASA astronauts. This, it was thought, would be in keeping with the pioneering nature of the project. The volunteers put their foot down and I supported them. The less visual signatures this whole thing had the better. Of course we had no way at the time of foreseeing Luftig’s stunt with the T-shirt; when that furore broke over us we had more than a little explaining to do. When he walked out into the exercise yard wearing jeans and leather jacket none of us suspected a thing.

  Seeing the press posse haring down the N60 after the empty convoy gave us our only laugh of the day. When they were out of sight we led the volunteers from the mess hall and got them into the helicopter. Counting the pilot and co-pilot there were nine people on board. John Tierney, governor of Castlerea Prison, and myself were the only two civvies. This was a calculated risk. There was no way of knowing how the volunteers would react in these final minutes. Who knew what kind of panic might set in? Lifting off I saw John clasping his hand to his breast pocket—a final check to see that the syringes of sedatives were safely stowed.

  It was a quiet first few minutes; you could feel the tension in the volunteers. They were leaning back with their eyes closed. As usual Haakan was wired up to his Discman, this grating thump coming from it. Emile was stuck in his comic and JJ was halfway down his bottle of water. Not for the first time I wished I had some words or speech ready and not for the first time I found myself without two words in my head. Thankfully Emile took his role as clown seriously. Without warning he lifted his head out of his comic and burst into song …

  Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,

  Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

  Sonnez les matines,

  sonnez les matines,

  Ding dang dong,

  ding dang dong.

  The other lads looked at each other and took up the chorus, bawling it out with smiles and laughter till myself and John were forced to join in. That song might be a lullaby but the version I heard that day sounded more like a battle hymn than anything you’d sing over a child. But it was obvious what was happening; this was the moment of bonding delayed to the moment of absolute necessity. They were looking round at each other, brothers in arms now, cautious smiles on their faces. JJ followed this up with “Hush Little Baby Don’t You Cry” and those of us who knew it took it up. That too was longer and louder than I’ve ever remembered. A few more songs then and when I looked out we were flying low, coming up through the fjord. The decoy was pulling on to the cordoned pier side between the thronged press and onlookers. We circled overhead a minute or so to give the crowd time to settle and then put down on the opposite side of the pier within a second cordon. We had the volunteers on the edge of the slipway and inside the barriers before the crowd twigged what was happening. They moved towards us and of course, seeing his opportunity, this was the moment when Luftig took off his jacket and scandalised a nation. John Tierney
made a move towards him but I pulled him back. Too late, I said. Let it go. They were at the end of the slipway before the press caught up with us, cameramen and reporters elbowing their way through the crowd, too late now to get any parting words from the volunteers. From the moment of touchdown to the moment they stepped into the dinghies, I’d say less than a minute. That above anything gave the whole thing its air of sudden anticlimax. Another minute and they were out in the middle of the fjord churning up a white wake behind them. Afterwards, of course, there was that criticism that we’d sent them on their way without any sort of ecumenical blessing, no words of spiritual fortitude, no sprinkling of holy water on their heads. We’d decided against it; a survey among them had established that all five of them, to a man, were faithless.

  * Whether or not the Somnos project had its precedent in those reality-TV incarcerations which bulked so large in the programming schedules of a couple of years ago is still a matter of debate. Theorists point out that the comatose condition of the subjects is the ultimate refinement of the witless compliance of all those contestants who never once sought to subvert the terms of their confinement from within. TV critics noted that those baseline dramas—tantrums, sulks, hissy fits and petty mind games—which intrigued so many viewers in the original versions had now been flatlined to a series of minimal cues and responses, decipherable only to a specialist audience. However, the fact that we do not know what we are watching nor how to interpret what it is we are watching is now apparently no obstacle to our watching.

  In parallel with this analysis ran an especially paranoid theory—that the whole project was a trial run towards a partnership between media corporations and state penal systems. The privatisation of state prisons along American lines had been ongoing in Austria, France and Britain since the mid-nineties and was now increasingly viewed as an opportunity to offload an exchequer expense on to the private sector … However fanciful this theory may be, it would gain renewed currency in the months after the Somnos project when the Italian media corporation Fininvest successfully tabled a bid for a prison franchise in its home city of Milan.