The Redemption Factory Page 21
Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
“The grave hides all things beautiful and good.”
Shelley
AS A CHILD, Paul loved to listen to the wind while he waited for the school bus in the mornings. But this wind, skimming across tumbling sand and angry sea, made the hair on the back of his neck feel funny. It made him feel tired and strangely old.
He watched families gather up their belongings, leaving empty boxes and bottles to litter the beach’s sandy tongue. Parked cars shimmered in the evening heat, all silvery and scaly, like stranded salmon captured upstream upon the rocks.
At last, he took a deep breath, placed his finger on the ‘play’ button, and squeezed the sound from the tape, conscious of its whispery whirl. It crackled, like webs set on fire and his heart began to beat furiously anticipating what he had heard a hundred times already, over the last few days.
For a few seconds, only the sound of a chair being disturbed could be heard as the tape whirled its white noise. Then came sporadic coughing in the background. There was another sound in the background, faint and faraway. Upon his initial hearing, he hadn’t quite captured what that sound had been. Now, after numerous playbacks, he knew it to be the sounds of gulls and crows fighting over food; fighting over dead things …
“Your name?” asked a voice from the tape. Paul tried to picture the voice’s owner. What did his features look like? Angry? Calm?
Silence. Some coughing. Then …
“Thomas … Thomas Goodman. Most people call me Tom …” There was a quiver in the voice, a nervous hesitance.
Paul’s heart never failed to reach his throat each time his father’s voice sounded on the tape.
From his pocket, Paul produced an old black and white photo of his father. His father was smiling in the picture, arms folded, not a care in the world. Paul’s mother stood awkwardly beside his father, smiling shyly, her face partially hidden from the camera’s eye. She looked so young – they both did.
Paul tried to push his memory back, tracing the very first time he had heard his father’s voice. He couldn’t recall. In all truth, he was probably too young to have remembered it. Now, hearing it on this – this nightmarish device – it stunned him into silence and a realization of such a vast expanse of time, only revealing itself in tortured words, his father’s voice a flimsy shadow living in hell, and it sounded so heartbreakingly terrible it infuriated him, eclipsing his sorrow.
Initially, upon reading the letter from Kennedy, Paul had been confused. Was it the rambling of an old man contemplating suicide, his faculties dulled by an unbalanced mind? What if the words were from the sick fingers and mind of Catherine Kennedy, her jealous and bitter world tunnelling through her broken, hateful body?
He believed not a word of the letter, at first, almost tearing it up in defensive anger of Philip Kennedy, the man he regarded as a hero. But then came the tape, piquing his curiosity as it sat on the kitchen table, glaring at him with its hollow, owl’s eyes.
How much money were you given?
There was an immediate lull in the tape’s continuity, then came the voice, again.
I keep telling you. I wasn’t given any money. I don’t even know – arggggggggggg …
Urgently, Paul hit the stop button. He felt dizzy, again. All his blood had been summoned to one spot. Every night for a week now, he found himself shocked awake with a pounding heart. Why was he tormenting himself, over and over again?
Geordie had asked that same question, but he couldn’t answer.
He pulled his mind back to what was going on around him, focusing on gulls hovering in the distance, thinking how he could just sit here for a very long time, especially in late summer, when the wind gets a bit blustery, and the gulls come out of the sea mist swooping up and down in their quest for food.
The sun began to slowly spill into the earth, bringing the beginning of tomorrow’s cool wind bleeding northwards. The breeze off the beach felt cold on his face. White patches of foamy water hissed in his ears. He could smell ozone; could smell the keen smell of starched linen and it made him think of his mother, dressed for church on Sundays, and it made him feel so terribly alone.
No. A million times no. I did not – arghhhhhhhhhhhhh … bastards!
Bastards, thought Paul. Bastards.
Time slipped by, unnoticed, and when the sun finally died, the sky was still light from where it shone somewhere else, leaving fingers of silver and red across the sky.
A new moon began to appear, ghostly, sickly thin.
Closer to shore, roiling swells broke the moon’s reflections into a thousand tumbling pieces, while Paul’s eyes darted from surf to sand, searching for a telltale glint, a clue. Something. Anything …
He thought about Lucky, his terrible death and what if he, Paul, hadn’t told Shank everything he wanted to know, albeit under torture? What if he hadn’t mentioned it to Geordie while Violet listened to every word? What if … what if … what … if …
He became as still as death as he listened to the tape one more time, remembering Shank’s quote from Blake, that is was easier to forgive an enemy than a friend.
From his pocket, he removed Kennedy’s crunched-up letter and flowered it out. He lit it, allowing the flames to lick greedily at the tape, sizzling it into a blackened blob of plastic.
He remembered Shank’s quotes, but thought Kennedy’s more appropriate, wiser: forgiving is not forgetting. It’s letting go of the hurt, and that once forgiving begins, dreams can be rebuilt …
Over the last few days, Paul had felt like something was being torn down and rebuilt inside him. Kennedy had found his redemption in the abattoir and Paul had forgiven him. Now it was time to forgive himself …
About the Author
SAM MILLAR’S WRITING has been praised for its “fluency and courage of language” by Jennifer Johnson, and he has been hailed by best-selling American author Anne-Marie Duquette as “a powerful writer”. He is a winner of the Martin Healy Short Story Award, the Brian Moore Award for Short Stories, the Cork Literary Review Competition, and the Aisling Award for Art and Culture. Born in Belfast, where he still lives, he is married and has three children. He is also the author of one previous novel, Dark Souls.
Copyright
This eBook edition first published 2013 by Brandon,
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First published 2005 by Brandon
eBook ISBN: 978–1–84717–459–8
Text copyright © Sam Millar
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