The Journey Home

by Dermot Bolger

  ‘Amsterdam seemed the place to go, but it was the end of winter, few tourists there, shag all casual work. I’d trudged through the streets for days, sleeping down behind Central Station, waiting for my luck to change. I’d met a Turk there when I was passing through in the summer. His family were in prison in Kabul; he’d been given political refugee status on condition he said or wrote nothing in Holland. I remember his talk fascinating me. He was a bizarre mixture…twentieth-century Marxist and nineteenth-century peasant, completely unlike the fey Dutch around us. One summer evening we went drinking and the most beautiful Dutch girl I’d ever seen asked him for a light. She was no more than seventeen, white skinned, in a loose T-shirt and skin-tight jeans. Back at her table she kept glancing at him, letting him know she wanted him to fuck her. I could see how tempted he was but he stayed talking with me even though I was egging him on. And suddenly I realized that what he was most lonely for, amid those glossy streets, was somebody to talk to from his own world, somebody who could grasp what the fuck he was on about. And from what he’d heard of Ireland, he presumed I was a refugee too.

  ‘That winter I spent eight days searching for a familiar face and in the end it was he who found me. I was huddled outside the Aithain Bookshop watching an organ grinder across the road, the metal figures jerking in and out of the freezing air, when this voice said, Hello Irish.

  ‘Spent three weeks, kipping on his floor, Hano, looking for work each day, putting off my return until it was too wet or cold to stay out any longer. His flat overlooked the back entrance of one of Holland’s most select brothels. Each evening I watched the red sign across the road switching on and off, silhouetting him where he sat in the window with his memories and thwarted plans, motionless except for the glow of his cigarette burning down. I think I could have spent years there and he wouldn’t have complained, but I could feel myself sinking into it—waiting endlessly, like him, like a real refugee, for something to happen.

  ‘All that I had left was that Irish pound you’d given me the night before I left. I’d kept it as some sort of good-luck charm, and the two times I tried to change it the men in the booths looked at me as though I was insulting their intelligence. And one address in Amsterdam that Justin Plunkett had given me. Don’t even know why I’d kept it, I never meant to go there.’

  Shay’s cigarette had gone out. He lit it again, pulled on it, blew the smoke out. He smiled to himself.

  ‘When you’re that broke you just can’t lift yourself. I hitched to the Irish embassy in The Hague…don’t know why, to feel I belonged somewhere, I suppose, that I was still part of something. That ninth secretary was some spring chicken, hair dyed blond, those rimless glasses, and a voice like the speaking clock. I didn’t want repatriation, I didn’t want to go home thinking I’d failed in my own mind. I was looking for the fare down to France where I figured I’d get work or a loan of a hundred guilders, just something to get myself back on my feet. I never even saw her hand touch the bell, before I found myself in the street outside. The two porters were Dutch. They grinned at me and one tossed out a cigarette as if to a beggar.

  ‘I walked for hours till after it was dark. I tried dustbins, watched to see if people left food on the counters of the open-air cafés, drove myself crazy staring in the windows of restaurants. You should see it some day, Hano; a city of embassies and government. The streets smell of it—money and privilege, centuries of uninterrupted wealth. Even the red-light district is discreet.

  ‘Near it there was a street of gay bars. Young men stood on the pavement outside them, hair groomed, tight jeans, sweatshirts. You know how they say you’re getting old when the policemen look young? Well, the youngest cop I ever saw was riding on horseback down the centre – fair skin, blue eyes, hair so blonde you’d swear it was dyed – the perfect Aryan specimen. An old queen stumbled into his path and the cop shouted impatiently for him to stand aside. The queen looked back and blew a kiss in the air as he reached out to rub the leather boot in the stirrup. It was gas. The gays drifted out of the bars till they surrounded the cop, smiling seductively up at him, rolling their eyes and winking as he started to blush. I could see his face swamped in red before he lashed the horse and broke through the jeering men, and as they drifted away I saw a face I knew cruising down the far side on the street.’

  Before Shay said his name some instinct told me. I didn’t want him to continue. It brought back too many memories of things I would never have the courage to tell him.

  ‘Must have been some meeting of Junior Ministers on. Patrick Plunkett may be famous over here but most people in Europe were amazed we even had our own passports. I was used to seeing him on the box, or watching the chauffeur open the door for him outside his advice clinics on Saturday mornings when I was small. Always surrounded by people and shaking hands. He looked so odd there, just another face in the crowd. I felt like crying, Hano. Weeks searching for a familiar face and who did I get? I’d only met him once, years ago in Justin’s apartment. I remember Justin stubbing out his cigarette like a guilty schoolboy when he saw the Merc outside, even though that night in Murtagh’s he’d laid two white lines down for us on the counter inches from the barman’s pumps. The da couldn’t resist the political handshake when I went. Well shake the hand that shook the hand of three American presidents, he’d said. Shake the hand that’s after scratching me arse, I’d replied. Okay, I was pissed, but I never forgot the look he gave me. It was like, I own you, son. It doesn’t matter what you say, you’ll need me one day and I’ll make you bleed.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear this, Shay,’ I said. Just hearing that family’s name mentioned in the room made me feel dirty again. Shay’s voice was low, insistent.

  ‘Listen to me Hano, sit down and fucking listen. I want this out, I want to tell you. I’m sick of carrying it around inside of me. So I followed him, right. I don’t know why—maybe I couldn’t think of anything else to do. There was nothing for me to do. I knew I wasn’t going back to the Turk, knew I couldn’t stay there, and I just couldn’t face another hike up to Denmark again or down to France. Not without food or money, some dignity. I was starving and filthy and the old bastard had been right. I was just like those housewives I’d seen standing outside his clinic in the rain. Finally I did need his help.

  ‘He must have known someone was behind him. Most of the streets we passed through were deserted, our two sets of footsteps conspicuous. He turned a corner and, when I reached it, the avenue before me was deserted. I’d walked a few steps when a hand grabbed my shoulder from a doorway. He swung me round to face him.

  ‘“What are you at, boy? Why are you following me?” His eyes were suspicious, without any recognition in them. Seeing him face to face, I realized I’d been crazy even to bother. There was no kudos to be got from the party for helping emigrants, except by encouraging them to leave. He’d probably get a dressing down if he’d helped me to return. I had been going to mention knowing Justin but suddenly I didn’t want to be beholden to that family in any way. I mumbled something about mistaking him for somebody else. His hands still gripped my jacket, his face inches from mine. When he asked how long I’d been following him I said since the street with the policeman on the horse. Saw him frowning, Hano.

  ‘“I saw no policeman on a horse! Didn’t say that I did. Do you hear? You’re thinking of somebody else. Now get away. Off with you before I do call the police.”

  ‘I backed away but had gone only a few yards when he called me. He had recovered himself, his voice as polished again as the government handlers had shaped it.

  ‘“Wait,” he said. “You just took me by surprise. Where are you from?”

  ‘I thought for a moment. I’ve not much of a Dublin accent and didn’t want him to know I recognized him.

  ‘“Essen,” I said, thickening my voice, “in the Ruhr. And you?”

  ‘“Manchester,” he said, pronouncing each word distinctly. “Denis Law? Georgie Best? Remember them? No, you’d be too young. I’m in
engineering. We have important clients over here. Your English is good.”

  ‘“Ya,” I said. “Sehr gut.”

  ‘I could see him trying to size me up, Hano, but I was bored. I wanted to get away, yet didn’t know of anywhere to go. He asked if I often went down the street with the horse and, when I shook my head, he said I was wise, that it was a dangerous place. “You get all kinds of people down there, all kinds,” he said. He shut up and eyed me speculatively. I knew I was getting ensnared in something I wanted no part of. I turned to go.

  ‘“Hey Essen, when did you last eat? Don’t try and kid me. I can see the hunger in your face.”

  ‘I told him I had to meet some friends. He laughed, fully in control now. I knew he’d had this conversation a dozen times before.

  ‘“You don’t fool me Essen,” he said. “You’ve nowhere to go. Look in a mirror – you haven’t seen food or a bed for days. Oh, I know what you’re thinking but you’re wrong. I’m no queer, I’m just alone. I’ll not lay a finger on you. Sure, I’ve a lad your age back in Manchester. If he was stranded I hope someone would do him a turn. Come with me for a meal, keep me company. European to European eh, we’re all one big community now. Look, I’m not even paying for it. Company expense card.”’

  Shay stopped speaking. A sound came from his bedroom. He listened. You, Katie, were moaning something in your sleep. The untouched cigarette beside him had burnt down into a worm of ash. He touched it with his finger and it broke apart. I rested my elbows on the chair and cradled my forehead between my palms. Shay went on.

  ‘I refused, of course, but he knew all the tricks to work on my hunger. Finally I told myself that I was younger and stronger and could handle him. He had good taste in restaurants. The manager took one look at me and ushered us into a dark corner. When the waiter brought the menu, Plunkett ordered two large beers for me and a glass of wine for himself. I began to ask him wide-eyed questions about engineering and England. Jesus, his knowledge of Manchester didn’t extend beyond United’s first team twenty years ago. Kept contradicting himself with that mixture of arrogance and stupidity. He reminded me of this book I read once about South America. There was a quote in it from the mother of a Bolivian general: If I had known my son was going to become president of the Republic I would have taught him to read. When he asked me to name things in German I cursed him to his face in Connemara Irish without him recognizing one word of it. He was trying to get me drunk but I knew my limits, or at least I thought I did. I was weak from hunger and unused to alcohol after that past month. It was taking its effect sooner than I expected. I rose, a bit unsteadily, to use the toilet.

  ‘“Sit down!” he snapped and, when I looked at him, he repeated it more quietly. “This is my evening, Essen. I’m asking nothing, so just do what you’re told. If you leave this table I’ll be gone before you return and you can explain half the bill to these oriental gentlemen.” I sat down and we stared at each other in hostile silence.

  ‘“Drink up,” he said. “The food is coming.”

  ‘I realized how drunk I was becoming on my empty stomach and left my glass untouched, but he ordered two more beers for me when the food came. It was an Indonesian rice table with eighteen dishes. When I saw it I forgot everything, Patrick Plunkett could be handled later, I thought, for now my body just wanted food. He smiled at my appetite and asked were we friends again. Even his pretence of an English accent was gone. I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, thinking how I’d slag Justin whenever I got home.

  ‘Neither of us spoke after that. I ate and ate and when he ordered more beer I was grateful for it. Beneath the table I fingered the buckle of my belt. The moment he laid one finger on me I’d let him have that. My bladder and bowels were aching, but somehow I controlled them until I’d finished everything on the table and had downed seven large beers. I was in severe pain now. He’d paid the bill and we were outside. I knew I had to get away from him but I could hardly move. My eyes kept closing Hano, my head spinning.

  ‘“The toilet,” I said to him. “I’ve got to use the fucking toilet.”

  ‘He took my hand. I was too weak to shake him off. At any moment my bladder would burst all over the pavement. His voice came from close to my ear.

  ‘“My hotel is just on the corner. You can use the toilet there and go on. You’ll need to sober up. I’ll help you.”

  ‘I remember nothing about entering the hotel or reaching his room. Perhaps I blacked out. When he helped me on to the bed I struggled up, determined not to black out again. I was shouting out for the toilet. There were two doors at the end of the room. Through a blur, I watched him lock one and enter the other.

  ‘“It’s in here,” he cried. “The toilet’s here.”

  ‘I staggered in the direction of his voice. When I went in there was just a bath in the room. I knew instinctively that the toilet was behind the door he’d just locked. He lay naked in the gleaming white bath, Hano, a bloated carcass with a thin coating of hair on his chest standing out against his child-like white skin. I felt sick looking at him. The same face I’d seen on a thousand posters stared up, pleading, old looking and wrinkled without the coating of make-up.

  ‘“Do it on me,” he begged. “Please, I don’t want anything else. On my face, on my chest, please, that’s all I ask.”

  ‘I swayed in the doorway. Just being in his presence made me feel I’d never be clean again. I felt guilty, felt I’d sold myself for food and drink, felt the sick power of his voice I’d been hearing since childhood. If I delayed any longer I’d soil my clothes. I went through the motions, Hano, in a state of shock, like I was in somebody else’s body—seeing his cock harden as I turned to sit over the rim of the tub and listening to him squirm to get his face directly below me.

  ‘I cried out in relief as my bowels and bladder opened in a rush. And I never looked down, just covered my face with my hands as I heard the slap of shit hitting his face and the hiss of piss splashing over his body, knowing how his hand was pumping away. He never made a sound through it all and though my eyes were closed I could see his face in my mind, the mouth open, eager to swallow the torrent of piss, the brown streaks of shit smearing his forehead and hair, the white necklace of his sperm sprinkling over his chest. If he had even reached one finger out to touch me, Hano, it would have broken the spell, but he made no contact at all with my body. And even after I had finished I was unable to move, I perched there with my buttocks exposed to his eyes, numbness replacing the feeling of degradation. Then he spoke with the pleading gone, in the voice I remembered from those television programmes, in the assured tones of a man of state addressing an underling:

  ‘“I shall lie here a while longer, Essen. You will find a one hundred guilder note on the bedside table. Should you try to take anything else I shall have you arrested before you reach the lobby. Now get out.”

  ‘There was no paper to clean myself, and when I thought about it it seemed a futile thing to do. I fixed my clothes and left the bathroom without looking back. A small lamp was switched on beside the bed, the crisp Dutch banknote shining in its circle of light. I thought about it before bending down to pick the money up. I had sold myself. I took his money, folded it neatly in my wallet and left your crumpled Irish pound in its place. Across it I wrote, Fuck you too, Mr Plunkett, TD, Junior Minister. I walked till I found a train station and blew the money on a ticket anywhere.’

  Shay went silent. Though he was gazing straight at me I wasn’t sure if he was still aware I was there.

  ‘And then?’ I asked.

  ‘It gets complex then, can’t understand it myself. Anyway I left the train, eventually made it back to Amsterdam and phoned the number his son had given me. That phone call was a once-off Hano—or that’s what I thought. Twenty-four hours later I was sleeping on the stairs here, waiting for you to come back from that simple world I once belonged to. I’ve never felt clean again, Hano, never fully after that. It’s funny, I used to enjoy having you around because you were so
innocent you amused me. Now I’d envy you.’

  Shay stopped speaking. It was my turn to come clean, to tell someone, to share the burden inside me. I wanted to but I couldn’t. I didn’t know the words. Some of it he guessed because he smiled.

  ‘But you’re not innocent no more Hano, are you? They get you, always get you some way or other. I gave in Hano, never confessed, could never tell you even. In the end I just became a part of it. Surrendered myself in slow stages. Screw the world because the world is screwing me. Keep your head down as you build your nest egg and say you’ll stop some day. Make yourself forget things. Do you believe in sin, Hano?’

  ‘Do you mean like in school, that shite?’

  ‘No…never had time for the organized stuff. Used to watch the converts coming out of the Mormon church by the cemetery, middle-aged men in suits having orgies of ice cream. Perpetual bleeding adolescence, perpetual abdication of responsibility. Don’t think, just follow the rules and get an Apex ticket to heaven. I don’t mean other people’s versions of sin. I mean your own, your own judgement, your own penance.

  ‘I left that hotel Hano and it was like I would never feel again. There was a shop for leather goods on the corner. As I passed the window I looked in. My face Hano, it scared the fuck out of me. I never saw such desperation before, it was a face that would gladly welcome death. I came home to forget that face, but I couldn’t. I only found it here again.

  ‘You were at work one day when I saw her first. It was nothing major, just the challenge of another girl on a wall. Remember them here, the little schoolgirls thinking they’d entered the big dangerous world? She was watching the trucks. She turned when I spoke to her, and I was back Hano, back in that street in The Hague. It was the eyes, the same fucking despair beneath the mock toughness, the same desperation that would risk anything. She thought I was bent when I brought her back, thought there was something wrong with her. But I couldn’t touch her. I was powerless; I was dazzled. I wanted a second chance, I wanted…I don’t know, it doesn’t make fucking sense…wanted somehow to save her, to save myself, to atone in my own mind. I didn’t know how Hano. For once in my life I didn’t know what to do.’