Garcia's Heart
Page 34
An older man, a patient in a pale blue bathrobe and pushing an IV pole on its little wheels, came into the solarium and shuffled right up to the glass wall. He looked down at the streets below and then up and around at the city, as if to verify that the scale of things in the outside world had not changed. Then he turned, his hand on the pole, escorting it back to his room. It was only on his way out of the room that the man glanced over and noticed the three of them sitting there. The expression on his face, visibly gaunt even in the low light of the room, did not change as he left.
In the silence of the solarium Patrick felt at ease for the first time in Den Haag. Celia was sitting beside him, and yet he felt no regret that he’d lost her nor anger that he’d spent his life trying to discount that loss. Instead, he wanted to tell her that he’d loved her, from what he understood of the word and of himself, not to change anything between them, but just so that she knew. It was important to him that she knew. But then he watched Celia hold her son in her arms and it all seemed unnecessary. Paul was falling asleep and she wiped the hair out of his eyes and kissed him on the forehead. The boy’s eyelids fluttered and closed. Accompanied by the sound of her son softly breathing, they sat in the room looking out past the lights of the city to that point in the distance and the darkness where the sky and the sea must have met.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It was a privilege to work with Jennifer Lambert at McClelland & Stewart. The enthusiasm and intelligence she brought to this book were much appreciated.
I would like to thank my agent, Denise Bukowski, for all her efforts on my behalf.
Thank you to Jim and Maureen Durcan, Bruni and Peter Erdmann, Anne Durcan, Alec Macauley, Maria and Rick Higgins, Andrew Steinmetz, Alain Dagher, and Jim Dixon. Finally, thank you to Florence, Niall, and Julia, for everything.
The following works were particularly important for me during the writing of this book: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton; The Ethical Brain by Michael Gazaniga; Neuroethics: Defining the Issues in Theory, Practice and Policy, Ed. Judy Illes. Details of the activities of Battalion 316 were first published in a series of articles in the Baltimore Sun that ran from June 11 to December 15, 1995, and are available through their on-line archives at www.baltimoresun.com.
COPYRIGHT © 2007 BY LIAM DURCAN
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Durcan, Liam
García's heart / Liam Durcan.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-174-0
I. Title.
PS8607.U73G37 2007 C813'.6 C2006-905097-X
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
While the activities of Battalion 316 described herein are based on documented fact, the characters are fictitious and the book is a work of fiction.
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