365

by James Robertson

  I’ve asked her that myself a hundred times, but to no avail. However, as soon as Michel said it, she stopped, thought about it for a few seconds, and said, ‘You’re absolutely right. I will.’ And she did.

  He is charming, of course, and French. That must be what made the difference.

  11 June

  My Father, Swimming

  Once, I was lost at the seaside. My parents searched for me in a state of panic. It was high tide and I was three. They searched along the promenade and behind the row of beach huts, and with churning stomachs they scanned the grey sea that was level with the top of the steps leading down to the beach, looking I suppose for some small floating thing that might be me. But I was dry and safe: I’d just gone for a wander, and was happily being entertained by some other family to whom I had attached myself. It was my parents who were lost and distraught, and were not found again until the moment they saw me.

  I don’t remember this incident, but I do remember other things about those seaside holidays. My father used to go for long swims, when the tide was lower and I was playing on the sand along with the other children. I could see his head as he did the sidestroke or the backstroke. He was a slow, steady, powerful swimmer. How much he must have enjoyed the solitude and peace out there, away from the demands of family. There was a pier about a mile along the coast, and sometimes he would strike out for it, and I would lose sight of his head as he swam further away. I don’t think I was worried. I knew he’d come back. I can still see him in the water. I imagine him reaching the pier, swimming round its barnacled and weed-wrapped legs and heading back to us, always at the same, calm, methodical stroke and pace.

  I wonder if he imagines that swim, or even remembers it. Today he needs someone to help him into the shower, to wash his back while he grips the safety handles, to dry him off with a towel and get him dressed. It’s a long distance from now to then, much more than a mile there and a mile back. I wonder if, when he’s in the shower, he ever closes his eyes and for a moment is back in that sea, strong, alone and free, and swimming away from everything.

  12 June

  Visionary

  ‘Is that better … ? Or worse?’

  ‘Not sure. Can you do it again?’

  ‘Better … ? Or worse?’

  ‘A bit better.’

  ‘And again. Better … ? Or worse?’

  ‘About the same. No difference, I’d say. What do you think?’

  ‘They’re not my eyes, Mr Cruikshank. Not my eyes and not for me to say.’

  ‘No, you’re quite right. Sorry.’

  ‘Now, look straight ahead, and in a moment you’ll see some flashing lights in your peripheral vision. I want you to click the clicker every time you see one of those flashing lights. Okay? Here we go.’

  ‘Wow! That’s amazing. Oh, sorry, forgot to click. That’s like the aurora borealis or something.’

  ‘It should only be little flashes.’

  ‘Not from where I’m sitting. Spectacular display! And what a range of colours!’

  ‘That’s very unusual. Are you quite sure?’

  ‘Actually, I’m kidding you. But they’re not your eyes, like you said. So how can you be so sure what I’m seeing?’

  ‘Because that’s the way the test is designed. Please, Mr Cruikshank. If you don’t tell me what you’re really seeing then there’s no point in proceeding.’

  ‘I thought maybe you were trying to catch me out.’

  ‘This isn’t a game, Mr Cruikshank. Are you seeing the flashing lights normally now?’

  ‘Absolutely. Whatever “normally” means. Am I clicking fast enough?’

  ‘Let’s try something else. Going back to the chart on the wall, how far down it can you read?’

  ‘A-B. Top line’s fine. A-N-D. So far so good. O-N-A-L-L. Carry on?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘H-O-P-E-Y. Isn’t that a Red Indian tribe? Sorry, Native American. E-W-H-O-E-N. Getting trickier now. And the bottom line – ooh, tough. T-E-R-H-E-R-E. Am I right?’

  ‘Very good. I’m going to adjust the lenses slightly. Here are some more letters on the chart. How far can you read now?’

  ‘Oh, that’s much clearer. A-S. H-I-N. What a difference! I-N-G-C-I. What did you do?’

  ‘Just a slight adjustment, as I said. Carry on?’

  ‘T-Y-U-P-O. That’s marvellous. Inspirational, in fact. N-A-H-I-L-L. Great! I’ll take those ones.’

  ‘But I haven’t finished the tests yet.’

  ‘Don’t care. I want those lenses. The other ones are depressing. And I’ll have an extra pair, in case of accidents. And sunglasses too, for night-time. Where do I pay?’

  13 June

  The Last of the Pechts

  after Robert Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, and Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Heather Ale’

  The Pechts were a red-haired folk, short but very strong. They had long arms and such wide feet that, when it rained, they could turn them up over their heads as umbrellas.

  You can still see the ruins of great castles that the Pechts put up. They would form a long line between the quarry and wherever they wanted to build, and pass the stones along the line until the castle was finished.

  The Pechts made an extremely potent ale from heather. Others wanted the recipe for this brew, but it was handed down from father to son as a closely kept secret.

  Time passed, and the power of the Pechts declined, until they were finally defeated in a mighty battle by the Scots. Only two Pechts, a father and son, survived. They were brought before the King of Scots, who threatened them with torture if they refused to relinquish the secret of the heather ale. The father, in a quiet word, told the King that he feared torture more than anything, but could not bear to be dishonoured in his son’s eyes. If his son were first put to death, he would hand over the recipe.

  The King immediately ordered the son to be killed. As soon as it was done, the father cried out defiantly, ‘Now do your worst to me. It was my son who I feared might relent under torture, but I will never give you the secret.’

  The King saw that he had been outwitted, but decided that the greatest punishment he could impose on the father would be to let him live. And so he was held a prisoner, till he was blind and bedridden, and most people had forgotten his existence; but one night, hearing his guards boasting about their feats of strength, he asked from his bed if he could feel one of their wrists, so as to compare it with the wrists of men of his young days. The guards, for a joke, held out an iron bar for him to grasp, and he snapped it in two as if it were the stem of a clay pipe. And that was the last of the Pechts.

  14 June

  The Scot Monodont, 4545

  What we know for certain about this pinnacle – or indeed about the many other contemporaneous constructions which adorn the 4th Archipelago – is very limited, whereas there are abundant speculative theories about their origins and purpose. The name given to the pinnacle is not supported by any documentary or archaeological evidence, but is assumed to have survived orally for centuries among the last of the Oil Age tribes that once inhabited this region. The name refers to that pre-Lapsarian, almost mythical people who may or may not have been responsible for these edifices, but whether to any specific ‘Scot’ or to the entire race is mere guesswork. The word ‘monodont’, meaning ‘single-toothed’, may simply refer to the visual appearance of the pinnacle, although Professor Ap Von Jürgin has proposed that the Scots worshipped strong, healthy teeth and that the pinnacle has totemic significance.

  We do know that it is made from a relatively local sandstone and was erected between 2,500 and 3,000 years ago. How the immense quantity of material was transported has not been established. The suggestion that a complex network of avenues, metallic paths and waterways once existed in the area is of course complete fantasy – as is the even more bizarre notion that these were designed by visitors from another planet.

  If the builders of the Monodont were, as is likely, influenced by the Symmetrian mo
vement which dominated pre-Lapsarian cultures across Eurindis, then it was probably surrounded by four lower points: a portion of only one of these survives. Dr Jochin Yapert convincingly argues that what we now see was originally the central pinnacle, the peak of which was reached by an internal staircase. (A recent artist’s impression of what the whole may have looked like, bearing as it does an uncanny resemblance to the Mars Shuttle, has unfortunately encouraged the notion that interplanetary travellers once visited the 4th Archipelago.)

  The shattered lump of marble at the base, says Dr Yapert, may be the remnant of a representation of some tribal dignitary or possibly a deity. This is visible only at low tide.

  No attempt should be made to land on the Monodont, which is home to a colony of rare water pigeons.

  15 June

  Buffalo Storms

  Nobody knows where they come from, or where they go after they’ve happened. It’s as if the animals, individually and in small groups, are wandering in vast, empty spaces that nobody knows about even though we’re supposed to have mapped every inch of the continent, and once in a while something triggers a coming-together, which provokes one of these storms. And, as with other forceful demonstrations of nature, there isn’t much we humans can do about it but get out of the way, or hold tight and let it come through.

  Buffalo storms must in some respects resemble those mighty gatherings recorded by early white travellers on the plains. At first a storm moves slowly, but as the number of animals swells so it picks up pace. The recent Springfield-to-Syracuse event in Colorado and Kansas, which caused an estimated four hundred million dollars’ worth of damage, was monitored by experts who measured the storm track as 0.4 kilometres wide and 3.7 kilometres long, with an estimated animal density of 0.6 per square metre, reaching a top speed of 42 miles per hour. The dust cloud caused by the pounding hooves of some nine hundred thousand animals rose more than three miles.

  ‘You simply can’t control such a powerful phenomenon,’ says Dr Derick Cody of the Oklahoma State University. ‘Razor wire, wooden fences, concrete walls – a buffalo storm just crashes right through such barriers, doesn’t even feel them. The only possible way of diverting a storm route is by lining up a lot of trucks that are big, tall and heavy enough to turn it slightly. But you have to get the angle right or not even a forty-ton truck is going to withstand it when the storm hits. And how many truck drivers are prepared to risk sacrificing their rigs? You can’t get insurance against a buffalo storm.’

  An as-yet-unsolved puzzle for scientists is how the storms dissipate so rapidly after they have wreaked their havoc. Where do a million bison go? ‘If we had the answer to that,’ says Dr Cody, ‘we could go out after them and break the cycle. But it’s a mystery.’

  Many Native Americans are enthusiastic fans of buffalo storms.

  16 June

  Jack and the Tree

  Jack was walking by the lochside. It was a still, sunny day. He came to a tree, reflected perfectly in the loch. He thought, If I climb tae the tap o this tree I’ll be able tae wave tae masel at the tap o the ither tree in the water.

  So he starts climbing. The branches are thick and well spaced so it’s not a difficult climb, but it’s a long one, because it’s a very tall tree. The tree gets narrower and narrower, till at last he’s just a foot or two from the top. But when he looks down, he’s disappointed to find that he’s too high to see the foot of the tree or its reflection in the loch. When he looks up, however, there at the tip of the tree is the tip of another tree, identical to the one he’s on, but upside down in the sky. He stretches up into the cloudless sky and his fingers feel wetness. He slaps the sky with the back of his hand and a ripple starts. He takes a penny from his pocket and throws it above his head. It plops into the water and he can see it going past the other tree – as if sinking or falling, although it’s going up the way.

  ‘This is weird,’ says Jack. ‘Either I’m upside doon or this tree is or the sky’s turned tae water but whitever’s gaun on it’s makkin me feel seeck. I think I’ll climb doon.’

  So back he goes, and it’s slow, hot work, harder than it was going up, and all the time he’s wondering about that upside-down tree in the sky. He’s relieved when his feet are back on solid ground. And there’s the loch, as still as ever, and the tree reflected in it just as it was before.

  Jack thinks, I’ll hae a wee dook in the loch tae cool doon. He strips off and is standing at the edge about to jump in when a penny comes shooting out of the water, straight into his hand.

  The clear, calm loch suddenly doesn’t seem so inviting. And Jack changes his mind about going for that swim.

  17 June

  Jigsaw Puzzle

  I was not short of sources of entertainment during my recuperation after the surgery: I had the radio to listen to, books to read, the television to watch. Nevertheless, my wife kept finding me staring out of the window, and decided that I needed some additional stimulation. She could have engaged me in erudite conversation, I suppose, but what she opted for was a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.

  The picture on the box showed a grey sky and an almost imperceptible horizon, below which was a grey sea. The sky and the sea were the same shade of grey, the clouds in the sky looked like waves, and the waves in the sea looked like clouds. I am not sure why my wife chose that particular picture, but I thought I should show gratitude by having a go at it. I anticipated being more frustrated than stimulated.

  However, to my great surprise, I became intrigued by the challenge, and determined to complete the puzzle. Having established the four edges I set about the task of filling in the middle. This was a slow, laborious process that took many hours, but eventually only one piece was left, which I triumphantly fitted into place. I sat back from the table to admire my handiwork.

  Just then I noticed something quite remarkable. Near the bottom-left-hand corner of the picture, I could see a man’s head among the waves. I snatched up the box and studied the picture on it: no head – no sign of human or any other animal life – disrupted that bleak seascape. I looked again at my completed puzzle: there, unmistakably, was the man, with what looked like an expression of utter exhaustion on his face. He seemed to have been in the water for quite some time.

  I called to my wife. Her first reaction was to congratulate me on my achievement. I brushed her praise aside. ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Look! There! Don’t you see the man in the sea?’

  I pointed at the spot. My wife stared, first at the puzzle, then at me. She shook her head. I looked again, but it was too late. The drowning man had disappeared beneath the waves.

  18 June

  Normal

  The one I’ll remember, the one I couldn’t take my eyes off all through the performance, was a beautiful boy, this perfect model of a beautiful boy, leaning against his carer, forehead pressed to her side. They sat together in the middle of the stage, and all around them the other children – all with disabilities of varying severity – banged drums and rang bells and sang if they could sing, and in front of the stage the audience sang and clapped and cheered along with them. That boy and woman were like an island. They were surrounded by noise and colour, and they were in it but also beyond it. The boy was one of the performers, a participant, and yet he seemed not to be there at all. And the woman was with him, wherever he was. That was her role, to be with him.

  The hall was full of families come to celebrate their children’s achievements. Tiny, fractional movements were immense achievements for some. There were children in wheelchairs twisted into shapes you would think almost impossible for the human frame to bear. There were raucous, happy, out-of-tune children. There were shy, slow, determined children. I felt I had entered some other world from which the word ‘normal’ had been banished because it was useless. This was in fact what I had done. And I saw that when I went back to my own world that word would still be useless.

  The way his head and her body touched was something to see. Had I been a painter, I would have wanted
to paint that connection, capture its tranquillity and trust in the midst of everything. I thought of his family. Were they in the hall? If they were seeing him there, did they see him as I did, the centre of everything and nothing, both present and absent? Did their hearts break, or did it make them happy to see him so still and safe up there on the stage? How I saw him is of no consequence either to them or to him, or to his carer, but I wished I could have been Picasso. Picasso would have known what to do.

  19 June

  A Personal Statement from Our Director of Operations

  We talked about rendition, sure, I’m not going to deny it. What am I going to say, that isn’t my head on the video, that isn’t my voice? Listen, it’s me. We talked about a lot of things. Rendition was one of them. That’s what we do, we talk. That’s what we get paid for by government, to come up with suggestions, opinions. That is our expertise. And this isn’t leaked, by the way, this is me telling you, straight up.

  There’s a real world out there, full of bad people. We monitor movements and developments, we analyse what’s happening, and we tell government what we find. We’re good at our job, okay? When you have a meltdown situation, like when that regime was collapsing, you identify opportunities. The chaos offered opportunities. And let me tell you, it was personal with that bastard. He should never have been allowed home to die. Did his victims get home to die? No, he blew them out of the sky. Don’t talk to me about if he did or he didn’t. Read the verdict of the court. He should have been rotting in a prison cell, not home with his family. And don’t talk to me about compassionate release. So it was a natural thing, to see if he could be rendered.

  And play that video again. Did we do it? No, it was a suggestion, a possibility. And isn’t there someone saying, ‘We can’t do that, because he’s already been tried and sentenced and served time’? Yes, there is. We knew what was legal, we knew what was done by a foreign jurisdiction. We just didn’t agree with it. So do you want me to condemn the employee, the loyal employee and loyal citizen of this country, who said, well if we can’t render him why not do the other thing, the more efficient thing? Do you want me to condemn that? ‘One more reason to just bugzap him with a hellfire,’ is that the opinion you want me to condemn? Well, I won’t do it.