Falling animals, p.11
Falling Animals, page 11
Matías doesn’t understand how this one mystery has such a hold on this community. Corpses show up all the time, and most of them stay anonymous. He saw his first on the street when he was seven, an indigenous woman who was curled up in a doorway. Don’t look, his father said, stepping over her. It took three days for the woman to be taken away. He supposes that the dead man on the beach has drifted into myth, a fireside story, alongside Murphy, buried with a loaf of bread and a shovel.
The squiggled name at the bottom of the painting is unfamiliar to him, although he vaguely recognises the artist when he asks about the painting: a dandelion of a woman in a wheelchair. He shakes her hand and they make pleasantries – she is American, and he tells her about his time in LA – and they commiserate over the cold winter nights they have been having. She confides that she has only recently begun painting again and that it feels like she is lifting her skirt and showing the village her dirty knickers. He tells her that she can always turn them inside out to get another day’s wear out of them. The depth and loudness of her laugh startles him.
She shakes her head when he points out the painting he wants – he suspects the extravagant price was an attempt to dissuade buyers – but brightens when he tells her that he owns Murphy’s and wants to put it over the bar. He leaves with the painting, wrapped carefully in brown paper, and an invitation to coffee at the café next week. Even though it is just next door, he has never really spoken to the owner, after her sarcastic welcome, which doesn’t surprise her. A difficult woman, she sighs. But give her a lever and she could move the sun.
When he gets home, he wipes the painting’s frame down with a damp cloth and leaves it outside to dry as he goes inside to assess the few remaining patches of empty space on the walls. Across the street, Matías’s new van is parked beside a vintage sports car with a curved bonnet and cheerful headlights. Donal emerges from their home next door, keys in hand; the car is his latest project, and most days he disappears under the bonnet for hours at a time. He slows as his gaze falls on the canvas, but he is in the middle of the road before he manages to stop completely and come back.
Matías sees this through the large front window of the bar and comes out to see what the matter is. When he gets outside, the look on Donal’s face is strange, jerking, as if he is a record that is skipping on the same lyrics over and over again. His groping hands find a bench, and he sits down in front of the frame to stare at it, reaches out a finger to touch a lick of paint in the foreground of the scene. Behind him, the cat is trying to force the netting on an old lobster pot open, snuffling at the memory of fish.
Matías looks at the painting and back at his partner – this gentle man who wakes up with terrible bed hair, has a habit of falling asleep in the cinema, who could burn a glass of water, who he is planning to ask to marry him – and he is suddenly a stranger, a pulsing cloud of acidic dread. He grabs his shoulder and shakes it. What? What is it?
Donal stares at his silvery-scarred hands, and then his fingers clench, digging dark, uneven trenches in the skin of his face. Then he swallows, forcing shards of himself back into a whole. When he opens his mouth, his words are pulled from some awful, hollow place.
THREE
the widow
She cries like a terrible ocean when they show her the pictures of the dead man. The French police told her that it was probably her husband, but still, the shock of seeing his purple-splotched face, even in a photo, hits her somewhere beneath her ribs.
The police station has a low ceiling and the white wall paint is pocked with bubbles. Ancient fingers have pressed into the paint to burst the protrusions, exposing the grey, powdery plaster beneath. The Irish guard is kind; he brings Monique strong tea and biscuits: two ginger nuts wrapped in plastic. She has never had ginger nuts before and the kick and fire of them is a surprise. He is fat, with yellowy hair and old acne scars. He reminds her of her dead son, although his eyes are blue where her son’s were brown.
The officer brings her husband’s things, all wrapped up in little packages, and an inventory list that he reads off in a dull, formal tone. Monique has to nod at each item they extract from cellophane and lay out in front of her, acknowledge it as belonging to her husband. The items he places on the table are boring, mostly: some clothes and a pair of boots, nothing that hugely interests her. But when he sets out the wedding ring, she tries it on immediately to see how it feels. It is too big for her finger and she puts her tongue through the gap between the gold and her skin. The guard looks at her strangely and Monique takes the ring from her mouth, lets another wave of sorrow spill out over her lips.
The guard rests his hand on her shoulder then, in sympathy. They are all very, very sorry for her loss. He says that her husband was buried by the council almost a year ago in a cemetery outside the village, in a ceremony attended by four guards and a gravedigger. The headstone doesn’t have his name on it, but she can have it engraved now, if that is what she wants. Or she can contact the embassy and try to take the body home, bring her husband back to Poland where he can lie beside her family.
But going back is not part of her plans: she likes it here in Ireland. The distances between things, by bus or by train, are short and sharp, enough to lull her into a doze but not a deep sleep. When she sleeps deeply, the blackness behind her eyes transforms into swirls of colour that dance and cross-hatch against each other. And then they turn jagged and things begin to rise up and shape themselves, not into faces or memories but impressions: of closing doors and musical notes that start out high and pure, then flatten and spread out like the prongs of a rake.
But she does not tell the fat guard any of that. She doesn’t tell him much of anything; for now, it suits her to not speak very much English. They had wanted to bring a translator, but she shook her head; she can understand well enough when she wants to, her mind is just clouded by grief. They are very understanding. But there will be formalities, the guard says, they will need to confirm his identity, ask her some questions about her husband, how he ended up in Ireland, fill out all the official paperwork. But they have a name now, something to go on: Thomas Meyer.
I don’t mind telling you I’m relieved, the guard says, to finally put an end to this mystery. He grins, and then feels ashamed for grinning when she wells up again. He coughs awkwardly and keeps his hand on her shoulder as she cries and clutches the photograph she has brought, a faded image of her and Thomas in the Berlin sunshine all those years ago.
She first saw his face on a programme after the main evening news at a bus stop in Strasbourg. There were three televisions sitting underneath the departure boards. Two on the outside had been set to a weather report and a golf tournament, but the one in the centre was showing a list of people with active police alerts, and it was there that she saw him.
They had done something to undo his deadness: propped open his eyes and brought blood back to his cheeks, using some kind of trick. His face moved from side to side, his eyes opened and closed, but still, she could tell he was dead because the stench of it seeped through the layers of distortion and wafted out from the screen. When they showed a version mocked up with a heavy, silver beard, Monique gasped in recognition, and heads turned towards her. She stood and pointed at the screen – où est-ce? she demanded of no one in particular, and she had to repeat it twice more before somebody answered her.
C’est Irelande, said a young man who was waiting on the same connection as her. Before he spoke, he wrapped his foot securely around the loop of his luggage, as if he expected her to grab it and run away.
Mon mari, my husband, was all she could say.
The young boy yapped to the security guard at the loading bay and he yapped to someone else on the phone, and there was yapping all over like small dogs barking at her feet. They took her to a cold room and showed her the photograph from the television again, and again she said, mine, mine, mine.
The French police did not like the look of her clothes or the bags that she clasped with both hands. Vous connaissez cette personne? said one of them, refusing to meet her eyes, disbelief colouring his words.
Oui. His name is Thomas Meyer and he is my husband. What has been done to him?
There were more phone calls then and more yapping and more questions, from foreigners this time, and she answered them as best she could. Her English isn’t as strong as her French, but it suited her for it to seem weaker than it is. They wanted proof, proof that she did indeed know this man, before they took it any further.
The building where Monique was living was close to the police station; she wanted to walk, but the bastards took her elbows and drove her there anyway. It took some time to find what she was looking for, because her things were laid out in identical brown boxes, and the photographs were in unorganised loaves spanning decades. There were her dead son’s things too – old shirts and a pair of football boots, notebooks and car magazines – and a cat that strode through it all like a queen, hissing every time a pile was dislodged.
Désolé, désolé, she apologised, without meaning it. The police waited in the kitchen while she went from box to box searching for a photograph to show them. She heard one of them taking a glass from the cupboard and washing it quietly before filling it with water, embarrassed by being embarrassed.
Finally she produced the photo she had been looking for: the one where Thomas has his arm around her and she is young and smiling. He has an iron-grey beard and his fingers have dented the cloth on her shoulder a little bit, all four of them curved around into a tight grip, but he is smiling and she is smiling, and when she showed it to the policemen, they looked at their own files and then they smiled too.
She fell asleep in the unmarked car they drove to the airport in. They took her through a special access gate, through a queue made up of just herself. She laughed as she stretched out her arms as wide as they could go to fill up the space where the people had been taken away.
The police didn’t come with her on the plane, but that was all right, because she found a woman to speak to instead. In broken English she explained that she had finally found her husband, that he had been lost for a long time, and she had been waiting years to close the coffin in her heart. The woman took her mask off after a few minutes to hear better, and when she had finished the woman wiped away a tear, crossed her hands over her chest and repeated Monique’s words to herself: the coffin in your heart.
The guard allows her to bring the wedding band back to the hotel they have booked for her. They will interview her again in the morning, when she is feeling up to it. She leaves the station and gets straight on a bus. She sleeps, a light and easy sleep, and the driver wakes her up at the end of the line with gentle hands. She waits for the next bus and takes it somewhere else, and at the end of the day she is in a city on a river. She books into a room under a different name, tells everyone she meets about the coffin in her heart.
When the fat guard finds her again, he is upset with her for some reason. He wants to know who she really is. She tells him, but that makes him worse; he wants a different answer. She tries out a few options, but none of them please him either. He takes her back to the room with the low roof and the bubbling walls in the rear of his car, a long, juddering drive that makes it hard to sleep.
There is no tea this time, just water, and when Monique asks for ginger-nut biscuits the guard ignores her. You look like my poor dead son, she tries to tell him, to make him understand. She switches to French but it is no help. The guard begins to walk in circles around the table. He puts down a file in front of her, and there is a picture of her face, and some words in a language that she decides not to recognise.
He says nonsense words: the photograph she showed them was a lie, that the man with his arm around her is a theatre actor named Thomas Meyer, someone she met in the street after a play, and who – despite a passing resemblance to the dead man – is alive and well. They have checked out her story, and she has never had a husband at all. They have found her son, who isn’t dead but lives in Poland, and he is worried about her because she is a compulsive liar with a history of psychiatric events.
How can you hear anything when you yap so much? she asks him.
He becomes angry then, so angry he slams his fist into the table and spills her glass of water. He makes phone calls, says, we’re right back to square one, square fucking one. He turns to look at her and his eyes are scrunched up like shiny, furious buttons.
They give her a place to sleep for the night, with a rough blanket and a soft pillow. But she knows that there are heavy and broken things waiting for her when she closes her eyes. So she wraps the blanket around her and runs her nails along the wall until it is daylight. The next day there are more people, a woman who tries to take her hand and tell her she has rights. Her eyes are bleary from staying awake, and she wants to get on a bus or into a car so she can sleep. They give her a cup of tea, but still no biscuits.
They are being very lenient, the fat guard says. Her son has pleaded her case at the highest levels, and even though the tabloids and internet mob are out for blood, they have decided not to prosecute her for wasting police resources. The best thing for her is home, family and a secure environment, the woman says kindly. So, it will be more travelling, back to the airport, and on to a plane to Warsaw this time, where, she is told, her son is waiting to take her home. The other guard throws his hands into the air and leaves the room as the kind woman talks and talks and talks.
Yap yap yap. Small dogs bark the loudest. But she knows that if you catch them just right with your boot, between the ribcage and the belly, you can launch them up and away from you. Your foot will break some precious part in their body and they will lie there, panting. Sometimes they get up and sometimes they don’t, but they never bark at you again.
She cries when they take the ring off her. She still tastes it on her tongue.
the guard
In the facial reconstruction, the dead man’s eyes are open. The forensic technicians took the blue-white face from the morgue, tinted it yellow and purple and pink, poured artificial blood back through channels long closed off. Forced its eyes open, added a wet sheen; even animated it, so the face could move around, blink and yawn. It is lifelike in a lifeless way, a puppet that is perfectly, artfully carved, but without that Pinocchio spark.
Gavin saw the body, on the beach that morning. If the corpse was a radiator, it was still plinking and cooling, fluid still trickling through its pipes. But it was definitely a human thing, an animal thing – this digital creation is a thing of machines. The sergeant is not old enough to feel so uncomfortable with this technology: halfway through his fifties, even if he does feel like he is ageing at an exponential rate these days. But these sophisticated tools make him uneasy. Others in the force cheer every time a crime is solved through some strange new tyranny of science. And then Gavin sits in court, watching abusers and thieves and rapists walk away, because the evidence wasn’t there, the jury wasn’t convinced. Motive, means and opportunity aren’t enough any more: if a suspect really did it, they think, there would be some log of it in an overarching filing cabinet. Some great algorithm in the sky should have been watching, recording – a microscopic sliver of DNA left behind, an internet search for getaway cars, a selfie with the prone body. If there is no such evidence shown in court, well, it’s the guards’ fault for not finding it. And so, the criminals walk away, free, not gloating – most are smart enough to wait until they leave the steps of the court behind before bursting into cheers and high fives – but still free, struck out, dismissed. And there is no justice.
Justice is a name we put on a certain set of outcomes, his first lecturer in criminology had said, but it isn’t a finite quantity. You can’t hand it out like parking passes. Say a man beats his wife so hard she loses their unborn baby. A woman left permanently scarred, a child that will never see the light of day. What would be a just punishment for that? A fine? Imprisonment? The death penalty? Ask a hundred people and you’ll get a hundred answers. There is no sentence that will perfectly fit every crime, and even if there was – so what? Could each person live their life as they wished, crashing and burning and maiming and stealing, if only they take their allotted punishment afterwards? Our justice system isn’t the confession box. There is no wiping the slate clean, because how could we possibly quantify a future that will never exist, because this crime has been committed, in this place?
Sometimes we have to settle for half-clean, the professor said. And sometimes that slate just stays dirty.
A man lies dead on the beach on a summer’s day. Start again from there.
The witness who found the body was certain he had drowned. It wasn’t the first time the Gardaí had been called down to a report of a body washed up on the rocks, although that seems to happen more often in winter than summer; such accidents are more frequent when the sky begins to darken after lunchtime and the days are only as long as a yawn. Only they aren’t called accidents any more, now that there is no fear of the Church turning them away from the graveyard – another little cruelty to add to the historic pile. But the way that the man’s body had come out of the ocean looked too neat for the circumstances, and his clothes were bone dry besides.
First, they needed to find out who he was. They did the usual appeals for information, rang hospitals, hotels, homeless charities, everywhere they could think of. It quickly became clear that the man wasn’t a local, or even a visiting tourist. The village was heaving with people all out to chase the rare summer sun, but there was no report of a missing father, brother, grandfather. He had his contacts in the capital go through their missing-person records, then reached out to Scotland Yard and Interpol and beyond. For the first few weeks, every time the phone rang, he was sure it would be a grieving wife, a son, a daughter on the other end, with a story of debts, deaths and depression, and they could file it away as a suicide. But there was nothing. A simple case of a missing person, but they had the physical body – it was the person itself that was missing.
