The Bunker Diary (25 page)

I left Russell’s room until last. I
didn’t really want to go in there at all. He was dead, but his memory was alive,
and I wanted to leave it at that. But something made me go in there. I don’t know
what it was, some kind of ghoulish curiosity, I suppose. Something stronger than
sentiment.

The air smelled thick and coppery, almost
salty, and there was a silence to the room that reminded me of the silence of a church.
You know, like you’re not supposed to be there, like something’s watching
you. I stood there for a while, just looking around, trying to breathe calmly. It
wasn’t easy. There were tiny splinters of coloured glass scattered on the floor by
the bed, shining dully in the light. They looked like blue-and-white needles. The bed
was still bloody and there were ugly smears on the floor where we’d dragged the
body out. There was other stuff in there, too … stuff I don’t want to
talk about. It was all too much. I got his notebook from the cabinet and took it back to
my room.

I’ve just finished reading it. Page
after page of words and pictures and diagrams … there’s all kinds of
stuff in there. Thoughts, letters, theories, equations, drawings, even poems. It’s
incredible. Beautiful, dark, harrowing, complex, and indescribably sad.

I’m not going to show you any of
it.

The last entry is addressed to me.

Dear Linus
, it begins.

The rest is illegible, just a dying
scrawl.

I’m going to sleep.

It doesn’t take long to sink back
into a routine. Whatever it takes, I suppose. You just take it, live it, hour after hour
after hour.

07.00: You wake up shivering. It’s
impossibly cold. You can’t get up. There’s a nasty taste in your mouth and
your tongue feels furry. You’ve got a throbbing headache and a stuffy nose.
You’re tired. You’re not hungry, but you can’t stop thinking about
food. Cheese, honey, hot meat, green vegetables swimming in gravy. You don’t even
like
vegetables. And fresh air too. You can’t stop thinking of fresh
air. Wind, sky, open spaces. Gardens, fir trees, hedges …

What do you do?

I lie in bed thinking of other times.

When I was a little kid. When Dad was home,
telling me rhymes. I remember the one about budgies and crabs and grizzly bears, and the
one with the buffaloes, and last night I finally remembered another one, a longer one.
It was about a tortoise. I started thinking about it about three days ago, and last
night I finally got it:

I’m not sure though …

It doesn’t quite work, does it?

I’ve probably misremembered it.

Anyway, there was another one. A shorter
one, about a zebra, which I just can’t remember at all. I’ve been racking my
brains for days, but I can’t get it. And that’s really bothering me.

08.00: The light comes on and my memories
fade. I get out of bed, already dressed, and wrap myself in blankets. Everything’s
cold, but my feet are the coldest. They’re cold all the time. Drinking gallons of
icy water probably doesn’t help. I go to the bathroom, wash, slip the sheet over
my head and try to use the lavatory. Not much there. I walk back down the corridor, nod
a silent greeting to Fred as he passes the other way, and go into the kitchen. Sit down,
wait for the lift to arrive.

08.45: Jenny comes in. We talk. She has
sores on her mouth and her nose is runny. Her breath smells horrendous. Mine too, I
expect.

08.55: Fred wanders in, shirtless,
scratching his belly. He
doesn’t say much. He ruffles
Jenny’s hair. I tell him I want to see him later. He says OK, drinks from the tap,
and wanders back to his room.

09.00: The lift comes down. Empty.

09.30: The day drags on. I talk to Fred. We
discuss how long we can go without food. Neither of us knows for sure, but we both think
it’s probably quite a long time. Ten days, a couple of weeks, a month …

‘As long as we’ve got
water,’ Fred says. ‘Water’s what counts.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You got any ideas?’

‘About what?’

‘Getting out of here.’

I look at him. I start giggling.

‘Shit,’ he says.

My laughter turns to tears.

Later on, back in my room, I lie down and
think some more about the zebra. It’s becoming an obsession.
There once was a
zebra …
? No.
Zebras are …
? No. I try to imagine
Dad’s mouth speaking the words, hoping it’ll nudge my memory. I see his
teeth, his lips, his bristly moustache … but I can’t hear the words. And
now I can’t even remember what he looks like.

I can’t remember what Mum looked like
either.

No, hold on … there she is. I can
see her now. We’re walking down the road together, a long time ago. It’s
dusty. There are builders across the road, building a new house or something. I can hear
the dumper trucks. Drills. The whump of a jackhammer. Shouts for tea. The road is
tracked with dried clay and the clay is zigzagged with the tyre marks of the dumper
trucks. Dried clay is good for kicking. Cracks off nice and hard.

Mum tugs at my hand. ‘On the pavement,
please.’

I pull away from her and aim another kick,
and a slab of dried clay skids across the street.

‘Linus!’

At the bottom of the road we pass a workman
coming up. One of the builders. Knapsack, hat, cigarette, boots, a waistcoat over
sun-browned skin. He’s got a bracelet on his wrist, a silver snake. He steps aside
to let us pass. Dark eyes, a passive nod. Then he carries on up the street. I look back
at him, wondering what he is. He looks like an outlaw Indian from one of Dad’s
picture books. Blue Duck the Cherokee, or the Apache Kid. Yeah, the Apache Kid, took to
the hills as a renegade, swooped down to pillage and rob from time to time, eluding all
pursuers.

‘Don’t stare,’ Mum says.
‘It’s rude.’

‘
You
were.’

‘I was
not
.’

‘You were. I saw you.’

‘Don’t be stupid. Come
on.’

We turn the corner and go down the hill.

‘Is he a bad man?’ I ask.

‘Who?’

‘That man, the hat man.’

‘He’s just a builder. He builds
houses.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘
I
don’t know. Give me
your hand, we’re crossing here.’

‘Can I wear a hat?’

‘Give me your hand.’

We cross the road.

‘What’s it called, Mum. On his
arm?’

‘What’s what? Mind the dog
dirt.’

‘The –’

‘
Mind!
Watch where
you’re going.’

I’m skipping now, making circling
gestures on my wrist. ‘Here, on his arm. That man had a snake.’

‘A tattoo?’

‘
No
.’

‘What then?’

‘Like a ring. Like a … you
know … on his wrist.’

‘A ring? Oh, a
bracelet
.’

We stop again, hand in hand, opposite the
newsagent’s. Traffic is light, but Mum does it right: look right, look left, look
right again, then walk – don’t run – across the road.

‘Can
I
get a snake
bracelet?’

‘No.’

Last night I thought I had the flu or
something. I woke up early in the morning feeling really bad. Kind of sick and hollow.
My head was splitting and everything was aching like hell. Legs, arms, chest, even my
eyes were throbbing. My nose was all bunged up with snot and I could hardly breathe.
Then within an hour or so, I started feeling all right again.

Very odd.

I suppose it’s just a lack of energy.
No fuel, no energy. No energy, no good. No good, bad.

I’ve been looking for insects.
Cockroaches, flies, spiders … whatever. Yeah, I know spiders aren’t
insects. I ain’t dumb. You know what I mean. Bugs, creepy-crawlies, invertebrates,
small crunchy things on legs. I’ve looked everywhere. Down the back of the cooker,
along the walls, nooks and crannies. I couldn’t find anything. Nothing. Not even a
dried-up fly.

Where’s all the bugs when you need
them?

Escape seems to have drifted away. I
don’t think about it any more. What’s the point? I don’t want to get
gassed. I don’t want to get wet. I don’t want my head bombarded with noise.
All I want, most of the time, is to sleep.

I wonder what He did with the bodies. Anja,
Bird, Russell, the dog … what’s He done with them all? Buried them?
Burned them? Chopped them up? Put them in bin liners and chucked them in a river? Maybe
He’s eaten them. That’d be something, wouldn’t it?

Another thing I wonder about is His
appearance. What does He look like? I can’t remember. My memory of Him is useless.
All I can remember is a blind man in a raincoat, and I know He’s not that. A while
ago I flipped back through the pages of this notebook and found Russell’s
description of Him.
Middle-aged, dark hair, about five feet ten inches tall. Well
built, but not overly muscular. Strong hands. Clean-shaven. Lightly tinted
spectacles. Charcoal suit, white shirt, burgundy tie. Black slip-on shoes, burgundy
socks.

It’s a pretty good description, but it
doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s not how I see Him.

That bothered me for a while. I didn’t
understand why I should have a different picture in my mind. Why should I reject the
probable truth? But then I thought, why not? I can do what I like.

So this is how I see Him.

He’s quite short, kind of dumpy, about
forty years old. He wears plastic-framed glasses with greasy fingermarks on the lenses.
The glasses keep slipping down His nose, and when He pushes them back up He wrinkles His
upper lip. His skin is pale, sallow. He has a childish mouth, an unremarkable nose, and
small round ears. His hair is shit-brown. He combs it to one side and thinks it looks
smart, but it doesn’t. Clothes? He wears pale-coloured nylon shirts with the
sleeves always
buttoned. No tie, suit trousers, slip-on shoes, a
zip-up leather jacket from somewhere cheap like Peacocks or Primark.

How’s that, Monster Man?

Am I close?

No?

Well, I’ll tell You what. That’s
my
picture of You, and that’s all that counts. It doesn’t
matter what You think about it. All that matters is me. Because I’m all there is.
Nothing else comes into it. It’s me and me alone. What I imagine, what I see, what
I think … it’s beyond question.

That’s all there is to it.

OK?

What I see is what You are.