The Truth Commissioner

by David Park

  ‘I think you had a right to know,’ she says.

  He turns and looks at her. Now her face no longer seems open but tight and riven with shades of secrecy that he can no longer gauge or calculate.

  ‘Where is this room?’ he asks.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ she says, standing up, almost excited.

  ‘No, just tell me where it is.’

  ‘It’s the last room in the corridor that runs past the kitchen.’

  In that second she appears to Fenton like a child, eager to persuade him, eager to impress him. He stares into her eyes but all he sees is that grey swirl of mist separating himself from a world where he has to make decisions, where he has to pick a course. And now there are no landmarks or maps, no way to pick a route except through instinct. She starts to apologise for having to tell him these things but he knows she’s glad she has and that part of her motivation is to see him do and say things that she felt unable to do herself.

  ‘What will you do?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he answers even though part of him believes that he will do nothing, that he will get in his van in the morning and drive, and the thought of the anonymity of the journey, the endless unravelling of the landscape, brings some relief. So he excuses himself, telling her that he has to check the van before it gets dark, and leaves her sitting playing with the rope of her hair.

  Getting into the van he locks the door and grips the wheel with both hands but fights off the impulse to start the engine and drive. He tries to force himself into the world where actions have consequences and where everything has to be balanced in ledger columns but at first these thoughts fly asunder like startled birds and nothing can stop their scattering wing-clacking confusion. Turning, he stares at the cardboard boxes and packaging that will go back with him, the empty pallets and the blankets that protected fragile items, and suddenly he feels weary, knows he has to build up his strength before attempting the long homeward drive. He is tempted to sleep but knows he must put it off a little while longer and knows, too, that without some sense of stillness it would be impossible, so he begins with what he knows is certain. The conditions and facilities in the orphanage have improved significantly since it was first revealed to the world. Estina and Natlia, the two full-time workers, were appointed after the worst features of the past had been largely addressed and, under their care and that of the other team of helpers, the children seem well and, as far as he can judge, reasonably happy. He sees nothing that speaks of the former abject physical neglect or the catatonic paralysis of the emotionally abandoned that originally formed the most disturbing images. Even if some of what Melissa claimed was true and even if occasionally a small proportion was creamed off for personal use perhaps it was a small price to pay for these improvements. And if he were to say anything to Estina how could she respond but to deny it and he thinks of the damage it would do to those who have contributed faithfully and sincerely to what they believed had made a difference to the lives of these children.

  That night the sleep he felt so much in need of refuses to come. He constantly changes position in his narrow bed in an effort to find one that will allow him to drift into sleep but it eludes him the harder he tries. Moonlight silts like silver through the thin gauze of curtain and the night is speckled with sound. Insects ping against the glass and at intervals the bang of a dormitory door or the cry of a child are sharp pinpricks in the unsettled silence. Sometimes as he listens he thinks he hears the rush of the river but then tells himself that it’s too far away and what he hears must be the hum of electricity. He thinks of Florian’s house in the trees and for a second is almost tempted to try and find his way there and sleep amidst the sheltering canopy of leaf. Rising he goes to the window and peers at the blanched moonscape which is layered with shadows and where the transit van sits like a beached boat washed round by incoming tides of an opaque wavering light.

  He gets dressed but then sits on the edge of the bed unsure for a moment about what he’s going to do. Then opening the door he stands listening and as an uneasy silence settles he walks along the corridor towards the stairs. He switches on the torch he has brought from the van and it smears thin slips of white across the green skin of paint coating the stairwell. His steps are light, muffled by the coldness of the bare floor. Sometimes a moth rushes to dance in the fleeting spotlight he offers and as he slowly descends the stairs he pauses at intervals to listen carefully but the whole building seems to have slipped into some fitful slumber that is broken only by the bark of a cough or a whimper perhaps prompted by some dream.

  He makes his way through the central rooms, each step still a debate about whether he should return to his room or go on. Somehow not finding out gets linked in his head with Florian’s future and simply to walk away feels like it will condemn him to something less than he deserves. Suddenly there’s a scurry of feet and two young children, hand in hand, hurry across the corridor in their nightdresses and disappear again into another room. He switches on the torch again as he passes the kitchen area and momentarily it brightens against the shiny surfaces of pots and pans, then he steps into the corridor that ends with the room he seeks. It feels smaller than the other corridors and the floor is bare concrete, cold to the eyes. When he reaches the last room he rests his hand on the handle and hesitates for a final second but when he tries to turn it, he finds it locked and the discovery brings no sense of failure but rather a rush of relief. But before he can take comfort in it a light that hurts his eyes suddenly illuminates the corridor.

  ‘What are you doing, James?’ Estina asks, her face hardened into anger, her stare unrelenting even in the face of his blinking.

  ‘I was going to look in your store. See what you have, what you don’t.’

  ‘In the middle of the night?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he says, feeling foolish, unused to and embarrassed at being in the position of the accused.

  ‘So you’ve been talking to Melissa?’ she says as she walks towards him.

  Now there seems no point trying to sidestep and he feels the unflinching fix of her eyes that are grey like flint under the harshness of the light.

  ‘She told me some stuff,’ he says, still hiding in vagueness, ‘and I wanted to see for myself.’

  ‘Let me guess. She told you that we are all thieves who steal everything, who starve the children while we get fat. That what she told you?’

  ‘No, she didn’t say that, Estina.’

  ‘And you want to see in here?’ she asks, pulling a bunch of keys out of her trouser pocket. ‘Here, James, here is the key.’

  There is no escape from his humiliation as he stares at her outstretched hand.

  ‘I don’t think I should,’ he says, desperate to find some way out of the situation.

  ‘Take it!’

  And this time he obeys her order and turns the key in the lock. She pushes the door open with a gesture of contempt and switches on the light. She has to lean across him to reach it and he feels her breath on his cheek. He doesn’t want to go further but has little choice as she presses her hand in the small of his back.

  ‘Please look as much as you want,’ she says, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. But now he knows that there will be no respite in half-hearted apologies and that it would be better to grasp the nettle so he merely thanks her and shrugs off any sign of hesitation or further embarrassment.

  The room has boxes piled high along three walls. Most are shut, some are already opened, and a quick examination shows that most contain tinned foods. In others are kitchen and bathroom consumables. The only time he turns to look at her is when he finds several boxes of children’s toys but she returns his gaze defiantly. He sees nothing to confirm or deny what Melissa has told him but knows that his efforts have succeeded in damaging things. He nods curtly to tell her that he’s finished and after he leaves the room she locks the door once more. He doesn’t know what to say and they walk back down the corridor in silence.

/>   ‘I think we should talk,’ she says, ushering him into the kitchen with an outstretched hand. She gestures him to sit at the table and rummages in one of the high cupboards for an already opened bottle of wine, then sets two small wine glasses on the table and pours each of them a drink. She leaves hers untouched as he sips his cautiously, trying not to grimace at the splurge of sourness that hits his throat.

  ‘What we store is what we don’t use, what will be needed in the future.’

  ‘The children’s toys?’

  ‘We keep them for when we need them – birthdays, holidays. We need to have these things at different times. You understand?’

  ‘I understand.’ He sips the wine again and then asks, ‘And you’ve never sold things you’ve been given?’

  ‘Never,’ she insists. ‘But sometimes if we have too much of one thing and not enough of something else then we …’ She searches for the right word, screwing up her face in momentary frustration.

  ‘Trade?’ he offers.

  ‘Yes, trade. We give something, we get something. You understand?’

  He nods and splays his hands on the table like a pianist about to play then asks, ‘Why do you think Melissa said those things?’ The words hang in the air unanswered for a few moments then she shrugs her shoulders and holds her arms outstretched wide.

  ‘The girl sees what she wants to see. Sometimes I think she is a little sick in the head,’ she says, tapping the side of her own. ‘Did she tell you that she spends half her time telling the children that they must love Jesus? Or that she takes them into the woods and makes them pray?’

  Fenton shakes his head and narrows his eyes as he forces himself to sip more of the wine.

  ‘I go back in the morning,’ he says, telling her what she already knows.

  ‘Will you tell your people about what she said?’

  ‘No, I won’t, Estina.’

  ‘And you will come back?’

  ‘Yes, I will. Thanks for the wine,’ he says, standing up. ‘I should get some sleep now.’

  ‘But you haven’t finished it yet,’ she says, smiling for the first time.

  ‘I’m not really a wine drinker. But thanks anyway.’

  As he walks away she holds up her glass in salute but as he slowly climbs the stairs to his room he tastes the lingering bitterness of the wine on his lips and the bed he gets into feels cold and solitary.

  In the morning everyone has assembled to see him leave and when he says farewell to Estina and Natlia they both offer him a quick handshake but not their cheeks. Melissa stands a little way off and waves while the children bounce around the van excitedly like buoys in a choppy sea. He looks around for Florian but there’s no sign of him and he assumes he’s still somewhere up in the trees. One of the children hands him a small posy of wild flowers wrapped in silver paper, and he slots it into the dashboard before starting the engine, then as he slowly and carefully sets off, they stream on either side of him waving and shouting. But gradually he pulls away and finds the road that will curve his route back up the valley. The corkscrew of a road feels like the slow unravelling of the last few days and there’s a stillness in the van that he welcomes at first but which gradually becomes edged with an unexpected sense of loneliness.

  Everything presses in on him through the windscreen – the frayed and ragged encroachment of trees to the road’s edge; the grey snakeskin of the river that is spotted by black stones; the remote foreignness of the sky that seems to arch a heavy indifference over his journey. But he tells himself that some day he will return and when he does he’ll bring books and materials for Florian that will help him achieve his ambition.

  He passes through the same small villages and the town where nothing seems to happen and everything seems smothered under a layer of dust and lethargy and the thought of what he might be able to do for the boy restricts the slow seep of emptiness that threatens now to engulf him. He tells himself that Alec will pull through for him, that it’s the younger man’s opportunity to pay back what is owed to him, and there are others who owe him, too, and they will not let him be hung out to dry. There’s too much respect for that to be allowed to happen. He tells himself that when he returns he’ll plan his big journey. It’s not the time to go on it now – he knows he’ll need a long rest after this trip is over – but at least he should start to make plans and decisions for the future. In the intervening time he will build up his stamina and experience, getting into the mountains as much as he can, and there is a cancer charity walk up Ben Nevis that he could do in October.

  The return journey feels like the rewinding of a tape as sometimes he passes places and even people that seem frozen in situ from the outward journey. Occasionally his mind plays tricks on him and he projects the homeward sequence incorrectly but there’s really only one road to the border and so he rarely feels the need to refer to the map and is able to slip into automatic pilot. Perhaps that is what takes him so long to realise, or is it just so long to admit to himself what he knew right from the outset? His knowledge springs less from the evidence of the slightest movement, or the sound of breathing, but rather from an instinctive sense that someone else now shares this space that has been exclusively his for so many miles. But he continues to drive, playing it over in his head, desperately trying to think it through and only occasionally glancing fleetingly in the mirror that he has quietly adjusted. Without ever seeing him he knows it’s Florian and he feels a welter of confusion as if he has arranged for the boy to be hidden here, but only now is reluctantly admitting the truth to himself. Several times he goes to call out to him but stifles the words because he’s unsure of what words he wants to use. He knows the boy must be taken back, knows it, knows it, but there’s something else he hears in his head and it’s telling him that this is the son he never had, the child that will make sense of his and Miriam’s life, pull together all the frayed edges of their existence. His mind races, flooding with the kind of images that only the childless secretly store, and with each one his heart beats a little faster. He thinks of the boy’s rightful future life stifled and taken from him if he’s imprisoned in a world of narrowed horizons and drudgery. He itemises what they could give that life and all the ways they could open it up to something infinitely better so the appeal to altruism is only partly undermined by the selfish motives he is forced to acknowledge.

  He goes to speak again but knows that a single word will signify complicity with the boy’s presence. Different options shower up inside his head, each one passionately and momentarily bright like some meteor before burning out and falling to earth. Border guards are only likely to take the most cursory interest in a van returning empty of its delivery – there’s just a chance it could be done. But with every optimism comes a subsequent slew of questions to which he has no answer. As he drives he barely registers the world outside – the world itself feels as if it has contracted inside the van, this journey, and if will alone could effect his desire then it would happen regardless of what might stand against it.

  More traffic is on the road and every vehicle that passes him seems blind to his secret, intent only on their drivers’ own concerns. What would the world really care even if it knew? Who would say it was a bad thing? Up ahead the traffic is beginning to slow. In a short while he will reach the straggle of single-storey buildings that mark the border and soon he will stare into the unsmiling faces of young men in seal-grey uniforms whose eyes will register only a surly indifference even as they mechanically pursue the rituals that justify their own existence. The line of traffic stops. Fumes from the cracked lips of the exhaust of the truck in front spume into a blue gauze of smoke. He closes his window tightly but even then there’s the sound of music from a nearby cab – a high-pitched wail of violin and voice. It sounds like music to which there should be frantic dancing, perhaps at the latter stages of a wedding when passions are uncurtailed, dancing where flailing arms propel partners in frenetic, staccato rhythms and the strutting heels of shoes clack like casta
nets against wooden floors. Never in his life has he danced. Never in his life has he been invited to the wedding feast. He tries to shut his ears against the music, looks at the posy fastened to the dashboard, wants to touch the petals, but his hand shakes when he reaches out and he pulls it back and grips the wheel.

  And one night as he sits alone in an office lit only by the screens of computers and the outside ochre sodium lights that try to rebuff the darkness beyond the perimeter, a phone rings. Walshe’s phone. But when he speaks to the boy his words fall into a silence opening like an abyss and then there is nothing. He looks at himself in the mirror and thinks of a boy with a white owl face swooping towards him out of the darkness, then turns the van slowly round and follows the road that brought him.

  Danny

  The swell off the lake pushes through the fringe of reeds and fur-headed rushes forming the shore’s inner penumbra and washes against the little wooden jetty. He lights his first cigarette of the day. It’s one of only five he’s reduced himself to and so every second has to be savoured – even the striking of the match and its sweet flare of sulphur. The best part of the day. Just turned six and the first light already slowly stretching itself a little tighter and sharper. It’s the cool he loves best, this time before the sun begins to bake everything dry and crisp and starts to choke the juice out of the day. Ramona tells him he will catch a cold but all he feels is a relief that he’s made it through another night and so there is pleasure in everything as he stands at the end of the jetty and stares out at the lake.