Milkman

by Anna Burns

  *

  And here I was the following day, with third brother-in-law, running in the parks & reservoirs. He was doing his mutterings and I was trying to dwell, not on the milkman as ma thought – as all of them thought – but on maybe-boyfriend, whom I was going to be seeing for a sunset that night. As for the milkman, there appeared no sign, which didn’t mean ‘Hurray! Got rid of! Wonderful!’ because, of course, he could be hovering. With hidden state security, hidden military intelligence, plainclothes people pretending not to be plainclothes people, plus all that general ‘glimpsed one second, gone the next then back again’ local demi-monde activity, the parks & reservoirs was definitely a hovering kind of place. But no. There appeared no sign and this was encouraging, meaning I could relax, could carry on in peace and quiet with my compulsive exercise addiction, aided and abetted by brother-in-law who beside me, was carrying on with his. Normally we didn’t converse or chat or encourage exchange of words on our runs other than the functional ‘Will we pick up pace here, sister-in-law?’ or ‘Will we add a bonus mile at the end, brother-in-law?’ or other suchlike exercise expressions. This time though, familiar, reliable brother-in-law didn’t prove as familiar and reliable as always he had before.

  ‘May I intrude upon you for a few words of private conversation?’ he asked, which struck me with trepidation for brother-in-law had never intruded upon me for such a thing before. Immediately I thought, this must be the milkman. He’s going to launch into the milkman because he too, must have heard gossip even though it was unbelievable that third brother-in-law of all people – the last bastion against doing so – should let himself be swayed and directed by the gossip of this place. It turned out though, that he hadn’t and he didn’t. Instead he embarked on a careful disquisition that I guessed he’d been having for some time in his head. This was on the subject of my reading-while-walking. Books and walking. Me. And walking. And reading. That thing again. ‘Are you talking to me?’ I said. ‘What can you mean? You’ve never spoken to me in your life.’ ‘It’s that I think,’ said third brother-in-law, ‘that you should not do that, that it’s not safe, not natural, not dutiful to self, that by doing so you’re switching yourself off, you’re abandoning yourself, that you might as well betake yourself for a stroll amongst the lions and the tigers, that you’re putting yourself at the mercy of hard and cunning and unruly dark forces, that you might as well be walking with your hands in your pockets—’ ‘Wouldn’t be able to hold the book then—’ ‘Not funny,’ he said. ‘It’s that anybody could sneak up. They could run up,’ he emphasised. ‘Drive up. Good godfathers, sister-in-law! They could dander up, with you – defences down, no longer alert, no longer strenuously reconnoitring and surveying the environment and if you’re reading aloud—’ ‘Ach! Not reading aloud! For goodness sake!’ This was getting ridiculous. ‘But if you’re undertaking the unsafe procedure of reading-while-walking and cutting off consciousness and not paying attention and ignoring your surroundings …’ which was priceless coming from someone who didn’t know the political problems of eleven years were going on. That was something else I was using as a deterrent against the milkman. Another brother-in-law aberration besides that of the female was the rumour in the area that he was so firmly into his schedules of exercise and of fighting that he hadn’t noticed the political problems of a decade’s standing were happening. That was saying something and, in its oddness, I was sure could not help but keep the milkman away too.

  I myself paid little attention to the problems, but I paid at least the minimum, something I could not have avoided because of osmosis. Brother-in-law, however, paid no attention either to osmosis, to the very noticeable social and political upheaval of the time and the place he was living in. Instead he went about blinkered, unaware, which was weird, very weird. I too, found it weird, which meant the milkman – that ideological seer of the dream, the bringer of the vision, someone dedicating his life to a cause that some outrageous person round the corner, deep in a hardly comparable personal fighting and exercise agenda, didn’t know existed – would have considered such negligence as certainly unnerving, not to say indicative of third brother-in-law not being sane. This brings up the mental aberrations because in our area there existed two types of mental aberrations: the slight, communally accepted ones and the not-so-slight, beyond-the-pale ones. Those possessing the former fitted tolerably into society and this was pretty much everybody, including all the various drinkers, fighters and rioters who existed in this place. Drinking, fighting and rioting were run-of-the-mill, customary, necessary even, as hardly to be discerned as mental aberrations. Also hardly to be discerned as an aberration was all that repertoire of gossip, secrecy and communal policing, plus the rules of what was allowed and not allowed that featured heavily in this place. Regarding the slight aberrations, the convention was to rub along with, to turn a blind eye, because life was being attempted where you had to cut corners; impossible therefore, to give one hundred per cent. You could not give fifty per cent, you could not give fifteen per cent, you could give only five per cent, maybe just two per cent. And with those deemed beyond-the-pale, impossible it was to give any percentage at all. The beyonds had funny wee ways which the district had conceded were just that bit too funny. They no longer passed muster, were no longer conformable in the mystery of the human mind as fully to be accommodable and this too, was before the days of consciousness-raising groups, of personal-improvement workshops, of motivational programming, basically before these modern times when you can stand up and receive a round of applause for admitting there might be something wrong with your head. Instead it was best then, in those days, to keep the lowest of low profiles rather than admit your personal distinguishing habits had fallen below the benchmark for social regularity. If you didn’t, you’d find yourself branded a psychological misfit and slotted out there with those other misfits on the rim. At that time there weren’t many on the rim in our district. There was the man who didn’t love anybody. There were the women with the issues. There was nuclear boy and tablets girl and tablets girl’s sister. Then there was myself, and yes, took me a while to realise I too, was on that list. Brother-in-law wasn’t on the list but that didn’t mean he ought not to have been. Considering alone his avowals of devotion towards women, his mission of idolatry, his supreme glorification and deification and view that on earth in women was the life of things, the breadth of things, the cyclicality, essential nature, higher aspect, the best, most archetypal and utmost mystery of everything – keeping in mind too, this was the Nineteen-Seventies – there was no way, under normal circumstances, he would not have been placed in the category of our district’s beyond-the-pales. The reason he wasn’t was because of his popularity, but as for this knowing nothing of our political situation, and especially given his current criticism of me, I latched immediately onto that.

  ‘Excuse me, brother-in-law,’ I said, ‘but about the political problems. Have you heard about the political problems?’ ‘What political problems?’ he said. ‘Are you referring to the sorrows, the losses, the troubles, the sadnesses?’ ‘What sorrows and sadnesses?’ I said. ‘What troubles? What losses? I’m sorry but this is unintelligent.’ Then it was I learned two things. One was that that long-term rumour of third brother-in-law being in la-la-land as regards the political problems was incorrect because he was in touch with what was happening politically. Two was, the community, maybe both communities, maybe even the land ‘over the water’ and the land ‘over the border’, had moved things on to the tune of the political problems here being referred to now as the sorrows, the losses and those other things he had just said they were. ‘Seems I know more about the political situation,’ he then said, ‘than you.’ ‘Not surprising either,’ he went on, ‘for as I’ve been saying, sister, you’re not vigilant as evidenced in particular by this reading-while-walking. I saw you with my own eyes last Wednesday night-time committing social insanity by entering the area completely and dangerously blind to the lower forces and influ
ences – your head down, the tiniest of reading-torches shining on your pages. Nobody does that. That’s tantamount to—’ ‘You know about the political problems?’ I asked. ‘Of course I know,’ he said. ‘Is it that you think I’m nuclear boy, so far gone in my Americo-Russo atomic bomb displacement condition that I can’t tell my own brother’s lying dead with no head beside me?’ This was a reference to one of our district’s beyond-the-pales. Nuclear boy happened to be Somebody McSomebody’s younger brother – Somebody McSomebody being one of ma’s eligibles for me to marry as well as the boy who was to get me with his gun in the toilets of the district’s most popular drinking-club after the ambush and death of the milkman – well, his brother, nuclear boy, was a fifteen-year-old with a serious armament problem. The arms race between America and Russia was a fixation about which nobody could get him to shut up. Constantly he fretted and was distraught, which would have been okay, thought everybody, as in, would have made some sense if he’d been fretting and distraught over stockpiling of weapons owing to the political problems in his own country. But no. He was referring to nuclear weapons being stockpiled in as far away as somewhere else. He meant America. And he meant Russia. And he worried and earbashed everybody, splurging uncontrollably about some imminent, catastrophic event. This disaster, he would say, would be because two immature, selfish nations were endangering all us other nations and he’d only ever talk America and Russia, never aware of anything going on in his face. Never worried, he didn’t, when his favourite brother’s head got blown off in the middle of the week, in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of the street, right there in front of him. One moment this favourite sibling, the second eldest boy, the sixteen-year-old and the most calm and beloved of that family, was making his way over the street towards his nervous, panicked brother, to discourse with him, once again to try to soothe him in his wild nuclear distraction. Next, this teenager was on the ground with his head completely gone. Not ever, not even after the commotion died down, did anybody find it. And people looked for it. The man who didn’t love anybody – another beyond-the-pale – and some other men, many men, even my da, had looked well into days and nights for it. Just after the explosion though, nuclear boy had paused long enough to pick himself up from where the blast had thrown him, then to get his bearings, then to remember where he’d been in his words about America and Russia, then to carry on from where he’d left off. Amidst the screams he went back to worrying, straight back to worrying. Not just for him to worry, he said. Not just him. We should all of us be worrying. Nobody could afford to ignore the risk that mad Russia and mad America were posing, with the rest of us thinking we could afford to ignore the risk. So nuclear boy was one of those outcasts, a beyond-the-pale, having put himself there with his strange Cold War obsession. This meant that if you saw him coming, quick as a flash, you ducked the other way. And here was third brother-in-law declaring that he himself wasn’t nuclear boy, that he was politically and socially aware, that with his own routine of scrutinising and reconnoitring the environment he was the antithesis of nuclear boy. Besides, he said, just because you were aware of something didn’t mean you had to broadcast it on the grapevine. ‘And as for that grapevine,’ he added, ‘I must say, sister-in-law, I wouldn’t have expected you to be perpetuating gossip, never mind telegraphing it through such a wide-ranging but distorting medium as that.’ At this we ran in silence for a bit, with him thinking whatever it was brother-in-law did think and with me thinking, how come I’m the one turned into the gossip here? Also, he does know about the political problems. Also, he’s criticising me when – but for the special dispensation granted him by the indulgent of the district – practically he himself is a notorious community beyond-the-pale. Brother-in-law then intruded upon me again, and again uncharacteristically by bringing up that book thing. ‘Yes. Those books,’ he said. ‘And that walking,’ and he started in from another angle, this time the angle of how, if I wasn’t careful I’d be banished to the furthest reaches of darkness, ostracised and shown no mercy as a district beyond-the-pale. Already he warned that I was being talked about as the ‘reading-while-walking’ person. Rubbish, I thought. But this was him carried away, wild now in exaggeration and imagery. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So if I were to stop walking-while-reading, and hands in pockets, and little night torches, and instead looked right and left and right again for dangerous, unscrupulous forces, does that mean I’ll end up happy?’ ‘It’s not about being happy,’ he said, which was, and still is, the saddest remark I’ve ever heard.

  But no mention of the milkman. Not a syllable. Brother-in-law, bless his soul, hadn’t been listening to rumour which was in accordance with my respectful view of him as someone with no inclination for rumour. And of course I wouldn’t mention the milkman either for – just as with me and maybe-boyfriend and my wariness of presuming, or of trying to explain only to be misunderstood, or of trying to explain only not to be taken seriously – I couldn’t see in those days how I could speak of this dilemma I now found myself in. It was that I didn’t speak to anybody of anything – partly because I wasn’t used to telling anybody anything, partly because I didn’t know how to tell or what to tell, partly too, because still it was unclear there was anything of accuracy to tell. What had he done after all? Certainly it felt to me that this milkman had done something, that he was about to do something, that strategically he was working up to some action. I think too – otherwise why all this gossip? – others in the district must have been thinking the same as me. Thing was, he hadn’t physically touched me. Nor that last time had he even looked at me. So where was my premise for speaking out on how, uninvited, he was pushing in? But that was what it was like here. Everything had to be physical, had to be intellectually reasonable in order to be comprehensible. I couldn’t tell brother-in-law about the milkman, not because he’d rush to defend me, beating up the milkman, then getting himself shot which would then have the community turn against the milkman, leading to the paramilitary-renouncers in the area in their turn getting the community by the throat. Then the community would get the renouncers by the throat, refusing to hide them anymore, to house them, to feed them, to transport arms for them. No more either, would they warn of danger or be makeshift surgeons for them. The whole incident would cause division, would end that much-harkened pulling-together in order to overcome the enemy state. No. None of that. It was simply that brother-in-law would be incapable of believing that anything that wasn’t physical between two people could, in fact, be going on. I also shared this belief, as did everybody else – about someone not doing something so how could they be doing it – which meant how could I open my mouth and threaten widespread disintegration of the current status quo? Especially this would be impossible in the context of the political problems, where huge things, physical, noisy things, were most certainly, on a daily basis, an hourly basis, on a television newsround-by-newsround basis, going on. As for the rumour of me and the milkman, why should it be down to me to dispel it, to refute gossip by people who fostered gossip and clearly wouldn’t welcome either, denial of their gossip? And as for vigilance or non-vigilance? For switching off or not switching off? It was my opinion that with my reading-while-walking I was doing both at the same time. And why should I not? I knew that by reading while I walked I was losing touch in a crucial sense with communal up-to-dateness and that that, indeed, was risky. It was important to be in the know, to keep up with, especially when things here got added on to at such a rapid compound rate. On the other hand, being up on, having awareness, clocking everything – both of rumour and of actuality – didn’t prevent things from happening or allow for intervention on, or reversal of things that had already happened. Knowledge didn’t guarantee power, safety or relief and often for some it meant the opposite of power, safety and relief – leaving no outlet for dispersal either, of all the heightened stimuli that had been built by being up on in the first place. Purposely not wanting to know therefore, was exactly what my reading-while-walking was abou
t. It was a vigilance not to be vigilant, and my return to exercising with brother-in-law, that too, was part of my vigilance. As long as I continued to filter his unprecedented attack on my reading-while-walking, also filtering the more excessive of his exercise-talk which in my opinion, constituted his own mantle of protection, I could run with brother-in-law and not have to be here in the parks & reservoirs on my own. I’d be with a male person too, which would help because I’d sensed that the milkman operated best in cases of isolation. By running with brother-in-law therefore, I could carry on as if this milkman and our two earlier encounters had been insignificant, or even that they hadn’t taken place at all.

  So it had been books, just books, that ‘walking and books’ thing, and I decided to forgive brother-in-law for his out-of-character criticism, which was what I did, then a tree by the top reservoir took a picture of us as we ran by. This hidden camera clicked, just one click, a state-forces click, in the similar way to how that bush, positioned along this same reservoir, had done a week earlier. Oh dear, I thought. I hadn’t considered that. What I meant was I hadn’t considered that the state would now associate anyone I was associating with also with the milkman as they were associating me now with the milkman. Already within a week of that first click, I’d been clicked again four times. Once had been in town, once when walking into town, then twice coming out of town. I’d been photographed from a car, from a seemingly disused building, also from other bits of greenery; perhaps too, there’d been other clicks I hadn’t picked up on at the time. On each occasion when I did hear them, the camera would snap as I passed and so, yes, it seemed I’d fallen into some grid, maybe the central grid, as part of the disease, the rebel-infection. And now, others in my company, such as poor, innocent brother-in-law, were to be implicated also as associates of an associate. Brother-in-law, however, just as had the milkman, completely ignored the click. ‘Why are you ignoring that click?’ I asked. ‘I always ignore clicks,’ he said. ‘What do you expect me to do? Get outraged? Write letters? Keep a diary? Put in a complaint? Get one of my personal secretaries to contact the United Nations Amnesty International Ombudsman Human Rights peaceful demonstration people? Tell me, sister, who do I contact and what do I say, and while we’re about it, what are you going to do about the click yourself?’ Well, I was going to have amnesia of course. In fact, here I was, already having it. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said. ‘I’ve forgotten,’ his forthrightness having sent me immediately into jamais vu. That was my answer – something that should be familiar was not going to be familiar – though there was an uplifting in this camera business too. Brother-in-law hadn’t expressed surprise at the click, or ignorance of the click. Indeed, he’d admitted to it, and not only to that click, but to other clicks upon him presumably not associated with me or the milkman. ‘They’re always doing that,’ he said. ‘People get photographed for the record,’ which meant I could stop worrying, stop feeling guilty about bringing state suspicion down upon brother-in-law’s head. So I did stop worrying. I let it go and we continued our run, with brother-in-law now into his stride, which was not just a running stride, but also his new stride of why again I should stop reading-while-walking. I didn’t listen. There was no way I’d stop reading-while-walking. I remained quiet though, because why, when it came to it, make a fuss when one’s mind was already made up?