Читать книгу Every Single Minute - Hugo Hamilton - Страница 11

I heard her speaking a number of times in public. I saw her on stage once at the literary festival in Ennis, County Clare, in the Old Ground Hotel. I also saw her in Colorado, in Aspen. It was my first time in the Rocky Mountains, but they were very familiar to me already. I had a good memory of those mountains from watching television as a boy. I had also heard a lot of songs that were written about that part of America.

Some of the things she said in Ennis she also said in Aspen. She was there to speak about herself and her family. What life was like for a Dublin woman in her own time. How things have changed and how much better things are now and how much has gone missing. She was well known for speaking straight from the heart, no matter where she was, Ennis or Aspen. She was the world expert on her own childhood and what happened inside her family, nobody could argue with her about those facts. People everywhere in Ennis and Aspen loved hearing what things were like in Ireland and why she could never forgive her mother and father.

The problem was that every time she spoke in public, she would get herself worked up, she got angry, she cried openly. People wanted to hear everything in person nowadays and that left her vulnerable, stepping back into her own childhood and remembering it all over again as if it happened only recently and it was never going to be over. Every time she spoke about these things in public she had to back them up emotionally, in tears, as if nobody would believe her unless she cried.

Sometimes I was afraid the story was getting magnified each time she told it. You know the way you remember things larger than they actually were, whenever you speak about them, just because somebody is good enough to listen. People in the audience were so enthusiastic, she may have been forced to make things look worse. Or maybe it was just a matter of finding the best words to describe the worst things. She had a good memory for bad memory, so she said herself.

Or does everything get smaller when you talk about it?

My concern at the time was her not being able to let go. I hated seeing her crying in public. It was hard to watch her taking out a handkerchief from her sleeve, or not even doing that, allowing herself to cry openly without any attempt to hide her tears. So I made a suggestion to her, as a friend, in good faith. I think it was being away in Aspen that made me say things I would never have thought of in Ennis. The mountains allowed me to put forward the idea that she might try to understand her mother and father a bit more. Not that she would have to forgive them or anything like that, I was not questioning her story or saying it didn’t happen, only that sometimes when she spoke, it took too much out of her. Why not try and put it behind you?

For your own peace of mind.

I was saying this because I had the same problem with my own father following me all the time, even though he’s dead now. The fact is, he never goes away and I’m still afraid of his anger. Sometimes I think it might be better to pretend you never had a father, even for a while now and again, like a short vacation from your memory, instead of sitting up all night like a child waiting for him.

She listened to me. She tilted her head as usual and allowed me to speak my mind. I thought I was doing quite well, making some good points that were worth considering at least. I was only saying that remembering your childhood is not all that it’s made out to be. And you need to give your father the right to reply, especially if he’s not around to speak up for himself. Otherwise it’s like a military tribunal. That’s all I’m saying, you need to step into their shoes and see their point of view.

That’s rubbish, Liam.

She said the altitude was beginning to affect me. I was not thinking properly. The clouds were below the hotel and the air was so thin, oxygen-depleted, my understanding of things had become a bit simplistic.

It’s my life, she said.

I’m only trying to help you get over it, I said.

You want me to abandon my brother?

She was having a yoghurt, I remember. In her room, overlooking the mountains. She was telling me that her memory was all she had to go by. Your memory keeps changing and you have to keep up with it, she said. The yoghurt was finished but she was still finding tiny bits. She picked up the tin-foil lid and licked the remaining yoghurt off until it was shining and then she went back to the carton again.

She said that’s what writers do, they search around for things to write about in their memory, like a human laboratory. It’s not really possible to make things up out of nothing, she said. Nothing is invented, only things that have already happened in some way or another happening all over again in your imagination in more and more fantastic ways.

She continued going around the yoghurt carton with the spoon, so I got the impression she was looking for something in it to write about.

You’re not going to find anything more in there, I said.

She stared at me. You never knew how she was going to take something like that, she might laugh with you or she might go the other way.

You’re living in a fantasy, Liam. That’s what she said to me. You think it’s possible to walk around with no memory. You think it’s humanly possible to put everything behind you and walk away like you’re leaving behind an empty field, or an empty barn?

Ah Jaysus, Úna. I’m only saying, give your parents a break, you can’t blame them for everything.

Well you should have heard her. She accused me of trying to take her childhood away from her, stealing everything she had to write about. I could hear the emotion rising in her voice, as if she couldn’t speak the words fast enough. I can’t even remember half of what she said, all about children being kept quiet by letting them put their hand in a jar of satin sweets so they wouldn’t listen to what the adults were saying. She said I was trying to claim that she was a child invisible, with no interest in the world.

You’re just like the rest of them, she said. You want me to keep my mouth shut, don’t you? You want me to pretend I never heard what happened to women inside their own homes. You think I just went to school peacefully with the nuns and slept with my hands crossed over my chest.

For God’s sake, Úna.

You think I’m just putting on an Irish accent and letting on that I’m from Dublin, is that it?

The conversation started to escalate, out of my hands. She made it look like I had never been a child myself. Like I had said something unforgivable against all children, all women.

I’m not stealing anything from you, I said.

You think I never saw the bloody sawdust on the floor of the butchers?

I’m not disputing your childhood, I said.

You’re being cruel to me, Liam.

Look, Úna. I’m on your side, one hundred percent. I just don’t want you to be a victim.

A victim, she said.

That was it. She gave me a filthy look.

A victim? She repeated the word a number of times, speaking towards the door as if she was addressing somebody else, like there was an audience in the room and she was asking them to agree with her, getting them to say that I had no compassion. What I was implying was so wrong, so hurtful, so insensitive, not even allowing her to be a victim. She turned on me with her eyes and said that was exactly what happened to victims of all crimes, they were made to feel responsible for the injustice that was done to them.

I’m not saying that, Úna.

That’s what being a victim is, Liam, you feel it’s your own fault.

Let go the injustice, that’s all I’m saying.

We don’t have the right to let go, she said. How are we going to change anything if we don’t remember?

I don’t want to be a victim, I said.

You think you have a choice, Liam? Is that it? You think people can just decide whether they want to be a victim or not? It’s just a lifestyle thing, is that what you’re saying? Look at you. You haven’t come out all that well either, have you? Just take a look at yourself, Liam. You’re a mess. That’s what you are.

A mess.

She knew that was out of order. I was waiting for her to put it right, to say that everybody was a mess, not just me, all of us, herself included, but she said nothing and neither did I. She put her finger into the yoghurt carton and began twirling it around. Then she licked her finger and looked straight out the window at the mountains.

I walked out. I didn’t even care if we remained friends after that. I was having nothing more to do with her. I couldn’t be arsed to go and listen to her speaking in public, but then she phoned me to apologize.

Liam, I’m really sorry, she said.

She said I was not a mess. She said I was anything but a mess and I was absolutely right about everything.

I’m full of self-pity sometimes, she said. I don’t know why I’m like this. I keep losing all my friends. That’s why nobody likes me, she said, I’m so obsessed with myself. I can only remember what was done to me. Please, Liam, I’m sorry. You’re the only friend I have left.

Which was not strictly true, she had friends everywhere. But we made up, sort of. You know the way it is, you take a person good and bad. Like she was taking me good and bad. We were good and bad together, you could say.

I went to see her on stage after all, in front of a massive audience. This is Aspen, not Ennis, we’re talking about, so they came from all over America to listen to her. And you know what, nothing changed, she said the same things all over again, word for word. She spoke even more forcefully, like she had only been rehearsing it with me in her room. She spoke like a woman who had never been given a chance to speak before and she was going to leave nothing unsaid this time. It felt as though she was looking straight at me and I was left with no right to reply. You could hear her inhaling. You could hear her mouth clicking. She said the loneliest person in the world was the person who could not tell their own story. And that’s how it was for her before she began to write her memoir. She said you become locked into your own silence and it’s like not being alive at all any more. Until you write the story down and claim your own life back and stop being at the mercy of what happened to you.

I was at the mercy, she said.

She spoke about Don Carlo. She said she had seen it lately at the Met in New York. It was fabulous, she said. It was like the story of her own family. She said her father was just like the King, obsessed with his own power and his own fame around Dublin. Her father had no love for his son. Her mother had no love for herself because she became an alcoholic. As children they went to school with no love. Her little brother was the biggest casualty of all that. He was our Don Carlos, she said. My little brother, Jimmy.

She said love had to be passed on to you as a child. You see your reflection in a child’s eyes. There is nothing in the world better than hearing a child laugh, nothing makes you happier than seeing food going into a child’s mouth, she said. How could they send a boy out into the world with no love in him?

My brother, my reflection, she said.

You could hear the audience listening. You could feel them getting angry on her behalf, crying with her. You could sense them leaning forward and agreeing with her, that a person has to have love inside them to receive it, otherwise love would have no reason to come looking for you. You could feel every mother in the place wondering if they had something to answer for, some moment where they had withheld love from a child. Everything they had done or not done, without knowing what they had done. Fathers too, like myself. That fear of looking back and wondering what could have been done differently, even when it’s already too late.

She thanked the audience for listening to her life and bowed her head. And then, the big surprise came at the end, she sang a song. As she said herself afterwards, she murdered the song. It was all breathy and full of laughing, full of inhaling and coughing and lifting her voice up, as if she had to stand on a chair to get the notes down. It was a song about emigration. Everybody loved it. She forgot the words halfway through. All you could hear was her breathing up and down, like she was keeping the beat going. Then she remembered the words again and carried on all the way to the end, until her lungs were completely empty.