The Truth Commissioner

by David Park

  ‘Welcome, James, welcome back. We’ve been expecting you,’ Estina says as she offers him both her cheeks and he kisses her self-consciously before repeating the greeting with Natlia. Then as they see him looking at the young woman behind them, they introduce her as Melissa. Later she will tell him all about herself and how she has graduated in child psychology from an American college and is spending a year doing voluntary work before returning to do a master’s degree, but now she too greets him as if she is really pleased to see him. ‘You must be really tired,’ Estina says. ‘Please come inside.’

  ‘Not too bad,’ he says, suddenly embarrassed to be the focus of so much attention. ‘It’s a long drive all right but it’s good to be back again.’

  They lead him into the main building and sit at the long table close to the open kitchen. Estina makes him a cup of coffee that smells and tastes better than anything he’s had in days and they ask him about his journey. At first there’s a certain awkwardness and he’s reluctant to discuss the contents of the van too soon as if it would be rude to flaunt the charity he brings, but he knows everyone is thinking about it and he tries to find a way to itemise it that he hopes is undramatic and sounds unexpectant of displays of gratitude. So first he tells them about the shoe boxes, checks the number he has brought against the current number of children to be certain that no one will go without. He is careful to give responsibility to Estina as to when the children will receive them and after she confers with Natlia she decides that they can be given that evening, after the concert that’s been arranged in his honour.

  While they talk children are watching from the doorway, furtively glancing in at them from the hallway or walking past the windows as if engaged in some unrelated business. Estina gives him an update on the recent improvements that have been made to the main dormitories and tells him about changes in government funding that he doesn’t fully understand but he nods his head and when she’s finished he presents her with a detailed list of what has been brought. He watches the two women pore over it, their heads close together and talking rapidly in their own language. He senses that sometimes they are helping each other with translation and as they do so he notices that Melissa is looking at him and for a second as he returns her gaze they feel connected through their mutual separation from the animated preoccupation of the two women.

  The boy will not talk to Briggs under any circumstances, will hardly lift his head to look at him, so when they meet Briggs has to make himself scarce, sometimes getting out of the car to stand in a doorway or between trees, the red arc of his cigarette in the darkness the only marker of his presence. Sometimes in a wordless protest against the cold, or the injury to his feelings, Briggs obstinately stays in the car and then they get out and walk. The boy’s nervousness has gradually diminished and he talks more freely but little of what he says is of any value. He grows a little cocky, talking up his importance, overestimating his potential worth. Occasionally he will phone when he has nothing to tell them and then Fenton is aware of how hard he has to work to enrich the paucity of what he’s offering. Once or twice he looks at the money with something approaching disdain, as if it’s a poor recompense for what is being given, but he says nothing and always pockets it quickly as if nothing has passed between them except words. But above all things Fenton is patient – the time and money are an investment and he never lets the boy see any sign of frustration or irritation. He understands that sometimes he likes to talk, to have someone to listen to him, and he gives praise and dangles the possibility of a better future in front of him. He tells him that they will take care of him, that they will look after him.

  A few of the younger children have been placed with adoptive families; some have been reclaimed by their natural parents. ‘We have one new child – a boy called Florian,’ Estina says. ‘He’s fourteen years of age, was being cared for by his grandmother after his parents moved to the city to look for work. When she died the authorities were unable to find his parents and so they brought him here.’

  ‘And what’s he like?’ he asks.

  ‘He’s a strange boy,’ she says with a scowl. ‘He doesn’t get on with the other children and wants always to be by himself. He never speaks of his mother or father or shows any interest in where they are. When his grandmother became ill he had to care for her and try to keep their place together.’

  ‘Sounds like he’s had a hard time.’

  ‘Lots of children have hard times,’ she says and drains her coffee.

  After the van is unpacked Fenton notices him standing at the tree line to the side of the main buildings. He has a compact build though is quite tall for his age, has untidy black hair and an alert face that seems to be constantly weighing everything up. The boy watches him approaching, taking in every step, and then he slips back behind a tree.

  ‘Hello, Florian, my name is James,’ he says, knowing the boy speaks good English.

  The boy shuffles slowly from behind the tree, both hands hitched by their thumbs to the corners of his pockets, his eyes seemingly focused on something over Fenton’s shoulder.

  ‘We’ve never met before so we should shake hands.’ Florian looks at his outstretched hand for a few seconds before deciding reluctantly to shake it. ‘Would you like some chewing gum?’ The boy hesitates again and Fenton has to encourage him by actively proffering the packet before he pockets it quickly and says thanks with a nod. ‘I hear you speak good English, is that right?’ The boy shrugs indifferently but it’s obvious that he has understood the question. ‘Where did you learn it? At school?’

  ‘My father taught me.’

  ‘Your father? Where did he learn it?’

  ‘His father,’ the boy says but he does not elaborate. There is defiance in his voice as if he thinks Fenton might not believe him.

  ‘That’s good,’ Fenton says. ‘Wish I could speak more languages. I’m a bit too old to learn now.’

  ‘You’re not too old,’ the boy asserts as he lets one of his hands trace the bark of a birch tree, his sallow skin darker against the tree’s papery whiteness.

  Fenton changes his position and stands beside the boy, looking in the same direction as he does. The wind blows strongly off the Lough and engulfs them with the sour-breathed smell of the sea and the sulphurous odour of the landfill sites. A white woven crown of gulls garlands the bulldozer and then fragments as they swoop to scavenge. Their cries are sharp pinpricks pressed into the stillness of the morning.

  ‘That’s what we produce in this city, Connor – rubbish, mountains of rubbish. Great mountains of it.’

  ‘My brother had a job on the bins once,’ the boy says. ‘Said it was all right. Sometimes he brought stuff home. Not junk or anything but brand new.’

  ‘You ever think of what job you’d like to do?’

  ‘Don’t know. Wouldn’t mind working with cars. I like cars,’ he says, looking round him, unsure as always of where he is, and plumping out his arms and cheeks against the cold like some windblown bird.

  ‘You need qualifications to get jobs. How are you going to get qualifications if half the time you’re on the beak?’

  ‘I don’t like school,’ he says, blinking his eyes and angling his head away from Fenton.

  Fenton is glad they are outside, that the wind is blowing. They watch the slow work of the bulldozer on the other shore. Bits of paper and white plastic bags inflated by the wind billow into the rawness of the air before lurching drunkenly again to earth. The boy is beginning to smell. Fenton isn’t sure if it’s real or the product of his imagination. It’s not the familiar sickly tang of sweat, or the smell of unchanged clothes, or even feet too long encased in the same trainers, but something else, something that seems to seep from his pores and infect the air around him. He’s grown tired now, tired of the boy’s whining self-pity, tired of his counterfeit of cunning, tired of the meagreness of his information. A dredger slugs its slow way up the thick waters of the Lough. Perhaps it’s time to move on, to cut the losses. No poin
t in good money after bad.

  ‘We’re going to have to let you go, Connor,’ he says on impulse as he pulls up the collar of his coat.

  ‘Because I beak off school?’ the boy asks, panic and the jostle of the wind blanching his face and narrowing his eyes with confusion.

  ‘No, not because of school,’ Fenton says, still looking across the water. ‘Because what you’re giving us isn’t any good. There’s no point telling us things we know already that’s just a waste of time. If Briggs had his way, you’d have been on your bike a long time ago.’

  Walshe turns and stares at the car where in the driver’s seat Briggs’s head is hidden behind a newspaper. For a second it looks as if the wind has slipped inside the boy’s tracksuit, pumping and primping him into temporary bulk, but when he speaks his voice is thin and the whispered words so light it feels as if they might blow away.

  ‘I’ll do better for you,’ he says. ‘I’ll do good for you, get you whatever you want, I swear!’

  ‘You know what we want, the names we’re interested in, the houses, the cars,’ he says, feeling the wind shiver his scalp. Suddenly in his imagination he thinks that it is a contaminated wind carrying malignant spores from the coagulated sprawl of human detritus being patiently untangled and spread across the foreshore. ‘I have to go,’ he says, deliberately digging his hands deep into his pockets, knowing this will be the first time he’s left the boy without handing over money.

  ‘I’ll get stuff, I swear to God I will,’ Walshe says, his right hand printing the air in a melodramatic gesture meant to authenticate his words, but as Fenton walks back to the car all he hears is the screech of the gulls.

  A sliver of white bark peels off under the plane of the boy’s hand.

  ‘You like it up here among the trees?’ The boy nods but says nothing. ‘At home I like walking in woods and mountains.’ There’s a moment of silence during which the boy shreds the white filigree of bark. ‘Tonight, Florian, I want you to help me. Will you help me?’ Then without any answer he tells him that he wants him to help with giving out the shoe boxes and with a little act that he’s prepared for the children. He tries to explain it to the boy but the meaning gets lost. ‘I’ll show you later what to do. So you’ll help me then?’

  ‘I will help you but I do not understand,’ Florian says before planing more bark off the tree then turning and walking deeper into the woods.

  Fenton stands watching him go until he finally disappears as if swallowed by the trees.

  That night the children stage their concert and while Fenton recognises the format and some of the content from his previous visits, it doesn’t lessen his enjoyment as he listens to their singing and watches their folk dances. The last one is a complex routine involving long streamers in which the eight girls weave increasingly intricate patterns to a cassette of traditional music and when the tape is paused one of the girls comes to him and leads him by the hand to perform. He pretends to protest but goes with them, doing his best to copy their movements, and as soon as he stumbles into a tangled confusion of streamers the children laugh and clap delightedly. He hams it up a little, kicking up his heels and then clasping a hand to his brow in exaggerated exasperation at the complexity of the routine. At the end he takes an elaborate bow and the children stamp their feet and giggle.

  This part of the evening’s entertainment ends with two songs. The first is performed unaccompanied by a girl of about ten or eleven years of age and when she starts to sing the children fall silent. The girl fastens her eyes on the back of the room and as she sings her voice fills it, dipping and rising in a cadence of sadness that seems to link each child with the song. A large, pale moth trembles above her head and adds to the fragility of the moment and Fenton feels the swell of something inside him, pushing at the edges of his normally sturdy restraint, and he shuffles in his seat and tries to blink his eyes clear. The girl’s voice rings out and though the words are lost to him he feels able to grasp something of their meaning.

  Then Melissa changes the mood by playing a guitar and leading the children in a rendition of some songs in English. The children pronounce the words deliberately so it sounds as if it is being sung in someone’s very best voice. She smiles at them in encouragement and nodding at the start of each verse as if worried that they will suddenly forget the words. When she finishes Estina settles the children then he understands that she’s telling them there is one more item and already he’s feeling nervous, frightened of making a fool of himself, but tells himself that if he concentrates he can get it right, so as the children look on in confusion, he goes to the front and with Florian’s help rigs up the white sheet over a line of string and sets up the table behind it and positions the light. Then going behind it he slips on the white coat and puts the stethoscope round his neck. When everything is ready Florian walks slowly in, holding his stomach in a dramatic display of pain. Fenton goes through an elaborate examination, checking his pulse, taking his temperature, then produces a torch from his pocket, shines it in the boy’s ear, gasps in amazement and slowly appears to pull a long line of knotted handkerchiefs from it. The children laugh and clap and growing in confidence he does the same from the other ear, feigning more amazement at how long the line is. Then he gets Florian to open his mouth wide and conjures a hard-boiled egg from it, holding it up to the audience between his finger and thumb so that they can see it is real. Florian continues to hold his stomach and rub the pain so he listens carefully to it through the stethoscope, shaking his head to reveal the seriousness of the condition.

  ‘I shall have to operate immediately,’ he announces, waiting for Estina to translate, then switches on the light that shines up at the sheet, signals for the room lights to be switched off and goes behind the sheet where Florian is already lying on the table. With slow, exaggerated movements he produces a mallet and pretends to knock out the patient by banging him twice on the head. The audience watching the scene in silhouette laugh and clap loudly, groaning in mock horror when he takes out a saw and appears to saw the boy’s stomach, all the time accompanying his actions with appropriate sound effects. Then from the boy’s supposedly open stomach he slowly removes the causes of the patient’s pain, so first there is a chain of linked plastic sausages that he throws over his shoulder, then a Wellington boot, a teapot, a teddy bear, a small kite with a long tail and finally a small doll. Florian is finally restored to consciousness and helped off the table and coming from opposite ends of the sheet they meet in front of it and bow to the audience. Just as the applause is about to end Florian taps him on the shoulder and exactly as he has shown him appears to produce an egg from his ear. The children renew their clapping and Florian smiles. He puts a congratulatory arm on the boy’s shoulder and then they give their final bow.

  Before supper the children are given their shoe boxes and soon afterwards Fenton slips away into the cool of the evening, wanting the moment to be theirs alone and a little apprehensive in case some are disappointed by the contents. He walks to the line of trees and stands looking down at the lighted windows and wonders what it would be like to have a child of his own, to be a father. He remembers the young woman on the snow-covered slope of the mountain who could have been his daughter, could have been his daughter walking to the top with him instead of a stranger briefly pausing to exchange a few words before heading in the opposite direction. At the start he secretly thought they might adopt one of these children but he knows that they are too old to be considered and that now it’s not permitted so even that dream is undermined.

  The woods feel still, intensely silent: he wonders how far they stretch, how far the children venture into them. The only sounds are the occasional voice of one of the children calling to someone and somewhere beyond the building the light lisp of the river. The stars are a fierce shock of brightness and then he remembers the day he fell and the rush of the water that seemed to flow over him, the river that might have carried him to the sea. But now in the laughter of the children, the voice o
f the girl who sang, the goodness he has in this place, there is perhaps something that might yet clutch him from that inexorable torrent. Perhaps after all he doesn’t need to go on some distant journey, perhaps this place is enough for him to shrug off whatever it is that clings to him, and part of him doesn’t want to go back and step inside the round of his life again. He’s pleased with how the performance went, knows that he will have to learn new tricks if he’s to come back, and he reminds himself how well Florian had done – an intelligent boy who absorbed everything he was shown in the shortest of times.

  The night air grows colder. Out on the road a car’s headlights spear the trees. Briggs is nervous tonight. He shuffles in his seat and glances over his shoulder at regular intervals.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ he says. ‘How do we know he hasn’t set us up?’

  ‘He hasn’t set us up. He wants to talk,’ Fenton says.

  ‘He always wants to talk – that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Talk and nothing but talk. Nothing worth a spit in the wind. I don’t like it here – we’ve been sitting too long.’