Hand in the Fire. Hugo Hamilton
your own past. You don’t even recall much of what happened in your own country and who was brought before the European Court or anything of that sort.’
‘More or less,’ I agreed.
‘Some days are a complete blank,’ he said. ‘How does that sound?’
He went over the details of the night again, shaping it into a brief and unambiguous synopsis. I could remember being in the pub and meeting the victim. I could recall having a friendly chat with his daughter outside the back door while she was smoking, but I had no recollection of anything after that.
‘Will I tell them that he hit me?’ I asked.
‘I wouldn’t mention it. That would only give you a motive.’
He was so convincing. I admired the way he could see things with such clarity. He had the ability to think on his feet and look ahead while he was speaking. He knew where each sentence would end before he even began. In contrast, I spoke almost entirely in beginnings, or endings, with nothing sounding in the least bit finished or credible.
‘Just a bit of advice, Vid. Don’t let them put words in your mouth. And don’t be the big storyteller. Doesn’t suit you. Best to remember as little as possible.’
That was it. He spoke to the officers again and told them it was clearly a case of mistaken identity. First of all, I was not Polish, so they appeared to have the wrong man. They discussed this for a moment and then insisted on taking a statement. A woman Garda typed it up on a computer, then printed it out and produced a pen from the back of her hair for me to sign. Kevin later said to me that she was quite pretty, despite the fact that she was in uniform and that she was so small, not even the size of a milk carton.
‘That’s very convenient,’ one of the officers remarked at one point, referring to my memory loss, but Kevin objected quite vigorously to that suggestion, saying it was completely out of order. Calling somebody’s disability convenient, that was not on. They had the wrong man, he reiterated, and I liked that idea. It was so good to have him by my side. There was no progress made with the enquiries. At the end of the interview, they told me that I would need to come back in order to be formally identified by the victim, but in the meantime I was free to go.
Two weeks later I had to show up again for the line-up, which was made up of immigrants like myself mostly, with a man from Nigeria at one end and a man who turned out to be a plain clothes policeman in the middle, just to mix things up a little. The electrician was still on crutches, but he had no hesitation in pointing to me right away, without even wishing to look into my eyes.
To me it felt like I had been picked out as the only person who didn’t belong here.
On the same day, I was brought before the court and charged with the assault. I don’t even remember the words that were used because I was hardly listening to what they were saying. I think my mind shut down completely and refused to hear anything. I suppose I was clutching at the familiar things in my life, images of home which I was running away from but which might still give me some comfort. I was thinking of the streets of Belgrade, the trees in summer, the sound of the language, the Cyrillic writing we learned in school. The people in the cafés, the wasps around the cakes. None of those things had prepared me for what was happening in court. I was concentrating on the shape of the houses on Washington Street, my route to and from school on the bus. I could see myself passing by the cinema and I could even remember some of the movies I had watched there, the posters outside on the wall, the excitement of paying the money at the box office, getting the ticket stub and walking into the cool, darkened auditorium on a hot day, like the only refuge from the heat. I could see my life condensed into a number of key memories, like the sound of the bus doors clattering as they closed and the bus pulling away and leaving diesel fumes behind, mixed with the smell of coffee and leather goods and a million other things. I could remember the stalls with vendors selling bootleg merchandise. I could feel the heat of the summer lying across the lazy streets when I emerged from the cinema, hitting me in the face like a cushion, even though it always took a long time to step out of the story of the movie back into reality. I could remember the face of an old woman who begged on the corner, next to the bakery, still sitting on a small wooden box at that very moment, in her own city, while I was in court a thousand miles away, completely out of place.
I wondered if it was a mistake to leave your own country. My first impression here was of everything being so wealthy and inviting. The shop fronts were new and the goods on display were neat and ordered, with lots of choice. Belgrade seemed so dull by comparison. I could recall passing by a ladies’ fashion shop with the mannequin of a woman with one amputated arm. She had rosy cheeks, but her nose looked like it had been bitten off and the plaster inside her nostrils was showing as though everything had been affected in some way by the war.
I heard my name being called out a number of times, badly pronounced. Next thing I was standing in the street again, free to go, awaiting trial. The whole thing was over so fast that I had no time to pick up what had been said. It would have been so much more depressing if it hadn’t been for Kevin encouraging me, clapping me on the back as though I had won a prize. He was doing everything in his power to sort this out.
‘We’re in this together, Vid. I will not let you down, I swear.’
He reminded me that I was doing him an enormous turn and that he would see me right. He would engage the best legal minds in the city to work on this case. He got me a cup of coffee and told me to put it out of my head for the moment, but I could think of nothing else and even thought of leaving and going back home to my own country to escape from this, as if that would solve my problems.
‘We’ll get you out of this,’ he assured me. Once again, I felt the rush of confidence coming from his words. I felt safe and welcomed, as always, until I was on my own again, walking home.
It was lashing all afternoon after the court appearance. Nothing could be done about the weather. Even when the rain stopped, the trees were dripping and the gable ends of houses were stained with watermarks. I could feel the moisture at the back of my neck, inside my sleeves. I could see it hanging across the streets. The whole earth sagging under the weight of unhappiness, with more clouds, like heavy curtains being closed. Cars hissing along the streets as if we were all living in a fish tank. Passengers floating away on buses with steamed-up windows. The swings in the People’s Park were wet. The benches were wet. The lawns saturated like a green sponge. Nobody wanted to be out and nobody wanted to be in either. The faces of children at the windows, waiting for something better. I wondered if I could ever get used to it. The dampness seemed to affect everything here. Children got curls in their hair. Hall doors swelled up, causing trouble closing. Rusted railings. Rusted bicycle chains. You could hear people coughing. You could hear them complaining that it was impossible even to get the clothes dry.
At one point, while I sheltered in a doorway, a woman came along the street saying ‘rotten’ to everyone she passed by. I was in a trance, staring through the rain in front of my eyes, just hearing the word ‘rotten’ echoing again and again along the street. I listened to the water, like the sound of wheels spinning inside my head. Water running down the drainpipes and gurgling away into the sewers. Herringbone patterns rushing into the drains. Broken gutters where the water came spurting out in a fountain across the pavement until the whole city was turned into one great water feature.
I was angry. I even had time to feel betrayed. There were so many unanswered questions in my own head. Who made the anonymous phone call on the night? I refused to even think that Kevin would have done such a thing, calling the Garda station and putting on a Polish accent. A friend would not do that.
The following day, I quit working for the building company I was employed with. It was important to avoid running into the electrician or any of his mates. I got a job sanding floors instead, which was not ideal, and it made more sense to get out of the building trade altogether. It was best to lie low for a while, until this was all over.
I went back to security work. But it was not my style, standing around outside bars and night clubs in a black suit, looking people up and down and refusing entry. Not much better hanging around the door of a pharmacy all day. I decided to stop that and took up a job