The Big Pink

by Erwan Atcheson

COUNTING LAYERS OF ONION

  John McIlroy leapt out of his bed to tell me that the Iraq War had started.

  I’d been eating little bread-pizza things Sheila knocked up. Bit of toasted bread, with chopped tomato, onion, garlic, mozzarella, olives and ham on top. We’d watched two films together: first, Boogie Nights and then The Deer Hunter. Neither of which I’d seen before, but both were good. I went home at 2am, and when I walked down the hall, John McIlroy ran from his room to tell me that they’d started an aerial bombardment of Iraq. They were using what would tomorrow be described as ‘Shock and Awe’ tactics. In other words they were bombing the Muhammad out of Baghdad. It was a war of preemption.

  I didn’t know how to take this news. For a week beforehand the US and Britain had been agitating for a land invasion if Saddam didn’t disarm the country. Apparently Saddam was poised with ballistic missiles pointed straight at Belfast and London. He would release them with 45 minutes notice to wipe out our fair population. I wasn’t the only one having my doubts about this information. Nor was I the only one thinking: Why would Saddam Hussein initiate a war that would result in retaliation?

  I went into the livingroom. It was dark, and I didn’t switch on the light. My eyes were adapted to the darkness from my walk home. The street lights showed the settee and the armchairs bathed in a dead orange light. I always find it eerie to sit in a room that is usually full of life. No-one in the house was stirring and there was a swish of cars down the road and distant shouts. I wondered how I was supposed to mark the war’s beginning. I’d been on the protests. I’d signed my name in opposition to it. But I’d always expected the invasion to happen. Now that it was happening, I felt odd. When something happens that we had considered bound to happen, it makes our story feel complete. I felt satisfied. At the same time it was my will that it should not happen. I was in contradiction.

  Knowing it was pointless to stay up, I left the livingroom, pausing only to glance at the array of articles stuck to the wall.

  I spent the next day writing up my essay on Kant, rising at the unusually early time of 9am. I wasn’t pleased with my understanding of Kant. As a result, I took the essay very seriously, and wrote it in a staid, worried style. Often in those days I wrote my essays glibly. I wrote as if I was pretending to be someone else, a third-party author or a machine, taking ideas from me and writing them down elsewhere, for some other party, for no stated reason. I don’t think that’s a good way to write a paper. This time I wrote it as if I was really writing it. It gave the thing a more authentic feel. But the improvement in style was sadly not matched by an increase in quality. Rather, a certain unhappiness was present in its tone. It was as if the author truly wished he could have contributed something better. I received a decent mark for this essay: 65. That meant it was of ‘2.1’ quality. I didn’t and still don’t really understand much about degree classification.

  My day after that was much more pleasant. I saw Sheila after a lecture, at 2pm. We ate lunch at her house, spaghetti, bacon and bread. We shared a few stories, told each other about this and that. We hardly mentioned the war. John Cleese would have been proud. I don’t know why we didn’t talk about it. Maybe because it had nothing to do with us; it was thousands of miles away. We talked about the philosophy class Sheila was going to tonight. She wanted to do some preparation.

  I went home after that. I sat in the livingroom again, alone like the last invader. I had no idea where anyone was. There was at least someone else in the house, I could hear them in their room. I thought it might be Levin MacHill. I felt that I should go upstairs. There was probably some work I could be doing. I stared out the window, smiling as I remembered how Hamish had done the same, month after month, waiting for a job to walk by. Then I scowled as I recalled his arrest. Then I hit my head as I recalled his ‘defence’ during his lengthy police interview. I wondered if he and Levin would be interested in playing some snooker soon. They would only go at my instigation.

  There was a coin on the floor. I picked it up and put it on the mantelpiece.

  Sheila sent me a text inviting me to the Union some time later. It was about 4, I think. I joined her, of course. I met her as often as I could. She introduced me to a friend, I can’t remember her name. Sheila told me when she left that the girl was dyslexic. Sheila was interested in all dyslexics; her father and brother had the same condition.

  ‘She only found out in her final year. She’d been wondering why study had been making her feel so tired, and why it took her so long to read text books. The Uni offered to give her more time in her exams, but she didn’t take it. She got a very good mark in the end. We went to the same graduation.’

  We went to the Botanic Gardens.

  There were no seats on the main green. The tropical ravine was closed; it shut at four. We went to the herbaceous borders behind the rose gardens. Sheila told me how fed up with her masters she was; she didn’t think she would get anything out of it at all. She complained about the doctors without inhibition.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ I asked.

  Sheila became excited. She had learnt of a new PhD opportunity in neuroendrocrinology. I asked her what she meant. She told me she wanted to study how the brain worked. She told me how many types of messengers there were and what kind of messages they carried. I thought I’d had a good idea of how the brain worked. I did not. It was mostly false, apparently; and what wasn’t false was inadequate. Since this was true of all mental models, I thought, how was it possible to know anything at all? Especially when most of our knowledge was like the shadows seen out of the corners of our eyes. We knew only, I thought, what lay directly in front of us. Everything else was vague, perhaps even invisible.

  We listened to the birdsong. The late March sun shone brightly over the hedgerows. I thought of beauty.

  When Sheila and I parted, my mood changed. I felt anger, or irritation. I don’t know what caused it. I was heading down Eglantine Avenue from Islamist Centre side. Maybe it was a lack of caffeine. I didn’t want a cup though. I wanted to make dinner. The dinner I made was crap: a pork chop sandwich. I wondered about my intentions and inner thoughts, hidden from me like bastards. I ate the pork chop. The sun went down. I spoke to Levin briefly on my way up stairs; he was about to go to work.

  I went to work myself: delicious, blissful predicate logic, practice on a computer, a blissful, wonderful computer program. The program, named after Dr Lemmon the logician, was called LemonAid. It consisted of puzzles: abstract propositions to be proven from abstract propositions by simple logical steps. Why did I enjoy this program so much? Well, I guess it was just because of the step-wise increase in difficulty. I’d get a sense of achievement from each problem I solved. The program would simply say ‘correct’ when the right answer was obtained. That was all I needed. I worked my way through them. Here, unlike the rest of philosophy, was a system where there was a right answer.

  I worked upon these problems like a monkey. Sheila called over at about ten, on her way back from her Philosophy evening class. She and the others had been discussing animal rights; but the conversation had taken a vigorous turn towards feminism, and so Sheila was very worked up and elated. She described how she’d taken on most of the class; made her views clearly and forcefully. Well, she didn’t claim clarity for herself. She said she had tried to express herself well, and the instructor, Keith, had come to her aid. He had repeated her ideas and added to them. It was a discussion she was proud of.

  I was pleased … I had a desire that everyone should study philosophy … I proselytized it … I had as many discussions on it as I could. I encouraged Neil to do it too … he was also going to this discussion group with Sheila. Levin would also eventually attend, but that was at least eight months from the time I am writing about.

  What am I doing now? Sitting at a desk in Galway picking sunburnt skin out of my hair. I am writing.