The Book of Evidence (2 page)

By the w a y , that blanket. D i d they b r i n g it specially* or d o they a l w a y s k e e p o n e h a n d y i n the b o o t ? S u c h questions trouble m e n o w , I b r o o d o n t h e m . W h a t a n 3

interesting rigore 1 must have cut, glimpsed there, sitting up in the back like a sort of m u m m y , as the car sped through the wet, sunlit streets, bleating importantly.

Then this place. It was the noise that impressed me first of all. A terrible racket, yells and whistles, hoots of

;er, arguments, sobs. But there are moments of

too, as if a great fear, or a great sadness, has fallen striking us all speechless. The air stands

motionless in the corridors, like stagnant water. It is laced with a faint stink of carbolic, which bespeaks the charnel-house.
In
the beginning I fancied it was me, I mean I thought this smell was mine, my contribution. Perhaps it is? The daylight too is strange, even outside, in the yard, as if something has happened to it, as if something has been done to it, before it is allowed to reach us. It has an acid, lemony cast, and comes in two intensities: either it is not enough to see by or it sears the sight. Of the various kinds of darkness I shall not speak.

My cell. My cell is. Why go on with this.

R e m a n d prisoners are assigned the best cells. This is as it should be. After all, I might be found innocent. Oh, I mustn't laugh, it hurts too much, I get a terrible twinge, as if something were pressing on my heart — the burden of my guilt, I suppose, f have a table and what they call an easy chair. There is even a television set, though I rarely watch it, now that my case is
sub judice
and there is nothing about me on the news. The sanitation facilities leave something to be desired. Slopping out: how apt, these terms. I must see if I can get a catamite, or do I mean a neophyte? Some young fellow, nimble and willing, and not too fastidious. That shouldn't be difficult. I must see if I can get a dictionary, too.

Above all I object to the smell of semen everywhere.

I confess I had hopelessly r o m a n t i c expectations of h o w things w o u l d be in here. S o m e h o w I pictured m y s e l f a sort of celebrity, kept apart f r o m the other prisoners in a special w i n g , w h e r e I w o u l d receive parties of grave, i m p o r t a n t people and hold forth to t h e m a b o u t the great issues of the day, impressing the m e n and c h a r m i n g the ladies. W h a t insight! they w o u l d cry. W h a t breadth! W e w e r e told y o u were a beast, c o l d - b l o o d e d , cruel, but n o w that we have seen y o u , h a v e heard you* w h y — ! A n d there am I, striking an elegant pose, my ascetic profile lifted to the light in the barred w i n d o w , fingering a scented handkerchief and faintly smirking, Jean-Jacques the cultured killer.

N o t like that, not like that at all. B u t not like other cliches either. W'here are the mess-hall riots* the mass break-outs* that kind of thing, so familiar f r o m the silver screen? Wrhat of the scene in the exercise yard in w h i c h the stoolie is d o n e to death with a shiv while a pair of blue-j a w e d h e a v y w e i g h t s stage a diversionary fight? WTien are the g a n g - b a n g s g o i n g to start? T h e fact is* in here is like out there* only m o r e so. We are obsessed with physical c o m f o r t . T h e place is always overheated, we m i g h t be
in
an incubator, yet there are endless complaints of draughts and sudden chills and frozen feet at night. F o o d is i m p o r t a n t t o o , w e pick o v e r o u r plates o f m u s h , sniffing and sighing, as if we w e r e a convention of g o u r m e t s . After a parcel delivery w o r d g o e s r o u n d like wildfire.
Psst! She*s
sent him a hattenberg! Homemade!
It's j u s t like school, really, the m i x t u r e of misery and cosiness, the n u m b e d l o n g i n g , the noise* and e v e r y w h e r e , always, that particular smelly g r e y w a r m m a l e f u g .

It was different, Fm told, when the politicals were here.

T h e y used to goose-step up and d o w n the corridors, barking at each other in bad Irish, causing m u c h merriment a m o n g the ordinary criminals. B u t then they all 5

Why are we so compliant? Is it the stuff they are said to pot in our tea to dull the libido? Or is it the drugs. Your honour, I know that no one, not even the prosecution, likes a squealer, but I think it is my duty to apprise the court of the brisk trade in proscribed substances which is carried on in this institution. There are screws, I mean warders, involved in it, i can supply their numbers if I am guaranteed protection. Anything can be had, uppers and downers, tranqs, horse, crack, you. name it — not that you, of course, your worship, are likely to be familiar with these terms from the lower depths, I have only learned them myself since coming here. As you would imagine, it is mainly the young men who indulge. One recognises them, stumbling along the gangways like somnambulists, with that little, wistful, stunned smile of the truly zonked.

There are some, however, who do not smile, who seem indeed as if they will never smile again. They are the lost ones, the goners. They stand gazing off, with a blank, preoccupied expression, the way that injured animals look away from us9 mutely, as if we are mere phantoms to them, whose pain is taking place in a different world from ours.

But no, it's not just the drugs. Something essential has gone, the stuffing has been knocked out of us. We are not exactly men any more. Old lags, fellows who have committed some really impressive crimes, sashay about the place like dowagers, pale, soft, pigeon-chested, big in the beam. They squabble over library books, some of them even knit. The young too have their hobbies, they sidle up to me in the recreation room, their calf eyes fairly brimming, and shyly display their handiwork. If I have to admire one more ship in a bottle I shall scream. Still, they 6

are so sad, so vulnerable, these muggers, these rapists, these baby-batterers. When I think of them I always picture, Fm not sure why, that strip of stubbly grass and one tree that I can glimpse f r o m my w i n d o w if I press my cheek against the bars and peer d o w n diagonally past the wire and the wall.

Stand up, please, place your hand here, state your n a m e clearly. Frederick Charles St J o h n Vanderveld M o n t -

g o m e r y . Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? D o n ' t make me laugh. 1 want straight away to call my first witness. My wife. Daphne.

Yes, that was, is, her name. For some reason people have always found it faintly comic. I think it matches very well her damp, dark* m y o p i c beauty. 1 see her, my lady of the laurels, reclining in a sun-dazed glade, a little vexed, looking away with a small frown, while some minor g o d in the shape of a faun, with a reed pipe, prances and capers, vainly playing his heart out for her. It was that abstracted, mildly dissatisfied air which first drew my attention to her.

She was not nice, she was not g o o d . She suited me.

Perhaps 1 was already thinking of a time to come when I would need to be pardoned — by someone, anyone — and w h o better to do that than one of my o w n kind.

When I say she was not g o o d I do not mean she was wicked, or corrupt. T h e flaws in her were nothing compared with the j a g g e d cracks that run athwart my soul.

T h e most one could accuse her of was a sort of moral laziness. There were things she could not be bothered to do, no matter what imperatives propelled them to her jaded attention. She neglected our son, not because she was not fond of him, in her way, but simply because his needs did not really interest her. I would catch her, sitting on a 7

ctiair* looking at him with a remote expression in her eyes, as if she were trying to remember w h o or what precisely he was, and h o w he had c o m e to be there, rolling on the floor at her feet in one of his o w n many messes. Daphne! I would m u r m u r , for Chrises sake! and as often as not she would look at me then in the same way, with the same blank, curiously absent gaze.

I notice that I seem unable to stop speaking of her in the past tense. It feels right, s o m e h o w . Yet she often visits me.

T h e first time she came she asked what it was like in here.

O h , my dear! 1 said, the noise! — and the people! She just nodded a little and smiled wanly, and looked about her idly at the other visitors. We understand each other, you see. In southern climes her indolence was transformed into a kind of voluptuous languor. There is a particular r o o m I remember, with green shutters arid a narrow bed arid a Van G o g h chair, and a Mediterranean n o o n pulsing outside in the white streets. Ibiza? Ischia? M y k o n o s perhaps?

Always an island, please note that, clerk, it m a y mean something. Daphne could get out of her clothes with magical swiftness, with just a sort of shrug, as if skirt, blouse, pants, everything, were all of a piece. She is a big w o m a n , not fat, not heavy, even, but yet weighty, and beautifully balanced: always when I saw her naked I wanted to caress her, as I w o u l d want to caress a piece of sculpture, hefting the curves in the hollow of my hand, running a t h u m b d o w n the iong smooth lines, feeling the coolness, the velvet texture of the stone. Clerk, strike that last sentence, it will seem to mean too much.

T h o s e burning noons, in that r o o m and countless others like it — my G o d , I tremble to think of them n o w . I could not resist her careless nudity, the weight and density of that glimmering flesh. She w o u l d lie beside me, an abstracted 8

maya
, g a z i n g past me at the s h a d o w y ceiling, or at that chink of hot w h i t e light b e t w e e n the shutters, until at last I m a n a g e d , I never u n d e r s t o o d exactly h o w , to press a secret n e r v e in her, and then she w o u l d turn to me heavily, quickly, with a g r o a n , and cling to me as if she w e r e falling, her m o u t h at my throat, her blind-man*s fingertips o n m y back. S h e a l w a y s kept her eyes o p e n , their d i m soft g r e y g a z e straying helplessly, flinching under the tender d a m a g e I w a s inflicting on her. I cannot express h o w m u c h it excited me* that pained, defenceless l o o k , so unlike her at any other time. I used to try to h a v e her w e a r her spectacles w h e n we w e r e in b e d like this, so she w o u l d seem even m o r e lost, m o r e defenceless, but I never succeeded, no matter w h a t sly m e a n s I m i g h t e m p l o y . A n d of course I c o u l d n o t ask. A f t e r w a r d s it w o u l d be as t h o u g h n o t h i n g at all had h a p p e n e d , she w o u l d get up and stroll to the b a t h r o o m , a hand in her hair, leaving me prostrate on the s o a k e d sheet, convulsed, g a s p i n g , as if I had suffered a heart attack, which I s u p p o s e I had, in a w a y .

She never k n e w , I believe, h o w deeply she affected m e . I w a s careful that she should not k n o w it. O h , d o n ' t mistake m e , it w a s n o t that I w a s afraid I w o u l d g i v e m y s e l f into her p o w e r , or a n y t h i n g like that. It w a s j u s t that such k n o w l e d g e w o u l d h a v e been, well, inappropriate b e t w e e n us. T h e r e w a s a reticence, a tactfulness, w h i c h f r o m the first w e had silently a g r e e d t o preserve. W e u n d e r s t o o d each other, yes, but that did not m e a n we k n e w each other, o r w a n t e d to. H o w w o u l d w e h a v e maintained that unselfconscious g r a c e that w a s so i m p o r t a n t to us both, if we had n o t also maintained the essential secretness of o u r inner selves?

H o w g o o d i t w a s t o get u p then i n the cool o f a f t e r n o o n and a m b l e d o w n to the h a r b o u r t h r o u g h the stark 9

geometry of sun
and shadow in the narrow streets. I liked to watch Daphne walking ahead of me, her strong shoulders and her hips m o v i n g in a muffled, complex rhythm under the light stuff of her dress. I liked to watch the island men, too, hunched over their pastis and their thimbles of turbid coffee, swivelling their lizard eyes as she went past. That*s right, you bastards, y e a m , yearn.

On the harbour there was always a bar, always the same one whatever the island, with a few tables and plastic chairs outside, and crooked sun-umbrellas advertising Stella or Pernod, and a swarthy, fat proprietor leaning in
the
d o o r w a y picking his teeth. It was always the same people, too: a few lean, tough types
in
bleached denim, hard-eyed w o m e n gone leathery f r o m the sun, a fat old g u y with a yachting cap and grizzled sideburns* and of course a queer or two, with bracelets and fancy sandals. They were our crowd, our set, our friends. We rarely knew their names, or they ours, we called each other pal, chum, captain, darling. We drank our brandies or our ouzos, whatever was the cheapest local poison, and talked loudly of other friends, characters every one, in other bars* on other islands, all the while eyeing each other narrowly*

even as we smiled, watching for we knew not what, an opening, perhaps, a soft flank left momentarily unguarded into which we might sink our fangs. Ladies and gentlemen of the j u r y , you have seen us, we were part of the local colour on your package holiday, you passed us by with wistful glances, and we ignored you.