From out of the City

by John Kelly

  The San Fernando Valley in the State of Southern California was Walton’s spiritual home – or it was until the Morality Act banned the production of pornography on the “homeland territory” of the United States and the entire American adult industry relocated to Europe (including Ireland where the business end of things ensured that the profits, if not the performers, could still go back to California). It was, Walton said, an American solution to an American problem and, he was delighted to report, the new system had impacted in no way whatsoever the quality (his word) or quantity of new releases. The standard of light was different, but that was all.

  Francesca was rather upset when Schroeder revealed Walton’s addictions. After the accident she had developed a deep and tender sorrow for him and, to some extent, he was all hers to worry about. He was like the sad, special boy in the cellar, living on cream crackers and milk. But once she discovered that he had such a multitude of female friends (after a fashion) and a very special friend in Jakki Jack, for whom he wouldn’t leave the house even if he could, she began to feel a little redundant and she stopped contacting him. Her instinct had been to take care of him but Walton’s instinct was to take care of himself, no doubt with the aid of all manner of cutting-edge equipment, something which the 21st century had indeed delivered as promised.

  And when Walton was asked to state where he was when it happened, the incident at the Castle, he didn’t lie. He was where he always was. In front of his unit, high on painkillers and prolonged arousal, communing with Ms Jack and her many fun-loving friends. He might well have added, but thought better of it, that he was also clicking hungrily on ads for drugs, watches, vintage revolvers and Samurai swords and examining, in very dark detail, the endless popups of faces and numbers. Willing partners in the greater Dublin area. Online now. Eager to meet. Every fantasy fulfilled.

  Refreshed and back in the attic I find Schroeder’s reply to Walton now flashing in the slot. He’s asserting that I’m forever pissing in the garden – which is a damned lie – and he refers to me as “a mouldy old bastard” and says he has seen me do far worse. I am understandably hurt and my reprisal is immediate. I download a Chinese short-life virus and prepare its dispatch. A message for Schroeder will appear to have come from Walton and vice versa and once opened, both computers will be knocked out for a full 24 hours. Serve the little fuckers right and I stage-cackle at the thought of Walton apoplectic at being cut off from the screamer. Do him the world of good I reckon. Maybe encourage him to develop an erotic aesthetic of his own? And as for Schroeder, he might even take the opportunity to actually write something longer than a sentence. A short story about a fedora for example. Or the first two paragraphs of yet another novel.

  Three screens over I see that Ms Jack is already up and about – a live feed from somewhere in the Alliance, the kitchen-cam trained on her granite worktops as she makes herself a breakfast of yoghurt, muesli and forest fruits. Walton will watch her eat, wash her teeth, shower and then throw a few unconvincing shapes on the bed. I will pick my moment carefully, fire off the virus and then wait with arms folded for Walton to open it and the moans of Ms Jack to cut dead. And then I’ll just sit back and listen. Enjoy the outraged wailing of Walton from below.

  – What the fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck!

  I do my shift. I catch up on everyone’s correspondence, I tidy up the files and I go through Schroeder’s most recent notes. By and large, it’s an idle enough few hours and there’s little to report until, that is, I make another random sweep through the atmosphere over Dún Laoghaire and I pick up American chatter from what I assume is the Barry. I can tell from the tone that they’re in preparation for something significant. Nothing specific or obvious is said but when I hear the term “full preparedness” several times over I make the reasonable deduction. Either Ireland is about to be invaded or President King is coming over again. It’s starting to look like he’s never away. Either he really does love his daughter or, just like his priapic predecessor, he’s banging some cocktail waitress from Chucho’s of Grafton Street. And I’m right too. The State Visit is announced three days later.

  FOUR

  A CLASSICAL STATION from Berlin is playing Bach’s Inventionen and like a maestro myself, I start conducting the throbbing bank of units with my fingertips. Today is a newsflash day. It’s a day with ingredients in it. I can tell. Protestors are gathered outside Dáil Éireann, all whistles and roar, cheering like goats whenever a trumpet blurts out “Boots and Saddles” and tattered rags of Rossini. Djembe drums like dark, rolling thunder scatter chaos into a grim mantilla of fumes and Schroeder is standing on an overgrown stoop on Molesworth Street, named for Richard, 3rd Viscount Molesworth of Swords. I’m hooked into every feed I can get – simple enough on a big newsday – and I settle back in my high-backed swivel chair, sipping like some flinty old prophet at a cold ginseng tea.

  Of course it’s not just me who knows what will happen today. Everybody knows. It’s merely a prelude to much more significant events to come but even so. Because Schroeder is present, thinking he’s on some kind of date, I’m committed to sticking with it. I hate to leave any of my charges unattended at the best of times, but on a day like today I need to pay special attention. Not since October 1860, when they first scribbled data at Valentia Observatory, has there been a day quite as sweaty as this one. A newsflash day if ever there was one.

  Schroeder, of course, loves newsflashes. After my own heart in that way. The interruption. The pumping graphic. The headless ritual of something extremely serious gatecrashing all things domestic and dull. But for Schroeder, however, the crucial element in any such newsflash is a very particular reporter called Paula Viola who goes live at all these events – all sex-eyed and fresh from the crisp bordello of fact – as he put it in one of his better lines. For her to speak his name in a newsflash would be, for him, an ecstasy beyond measure. And that’s why he needs watching, a particular watching that is, on days like this – a roasting hot day of disruption, disorder and, without fail, bloodshed and grief.

  Observe them closely. This dying breed of chanting death-wishers assembled in the sun. A grim bouncing multitude of fists and flags, placards and banners with words like oil and blood prominent in dripping shades of red as the hardcore rages like an orgy of frogs beneath an enormous tricolour of green, white and orange – Celtic Poodle blocked across it in black. And all around, and decades too late, the further flags of Venezuela, Palestine and Mexico. They have come here in such numbers to protest the very notion of the Presidential presence and to jeer, in particular, the sleek as cat-shit slug who keeps inviting him – An Taoiseach, said to be en route in an armour-plated Cadillac donated, along with a new munitions factory (for Limerick of all fucking places!) by that very same President. Richard Rutledge Barnes King. Of the Memphis Kings.

  They are, of course, wasting their finite breath. In three weeks’ time there’ll be marksmen on these rooftops and frogmen in these drains and nothing will be left to lunacy, principle or chance. The most ruthless minds in the country (intelligence, military and show business) will see to it that there will be no incident or blip, and that the ancient sod of Erin will serve with equal parts charm and humility as demanded and already guaranteed. Some tasteless tenor, a fraudulent purveyor of Celtic grotesquerie on demand, is already practicing in the bubble bath, rehearsing the first of a hundred thousand welcomes. Oh, the gruesome thought of it! Some fat, pink man with a twinkle in both eyes, winking at the front rows, soaping the cascading folds of his belly and belting out If you’re Irish come into the parlour, there’s a welcome there for you.

  Of course actual Dubliners will simply stay at home that day, content with the booze and the barbecue, ignoring the whole affair with the intense pleasure of total apathy. This new Mojave weather means aprons and sausages and the necking down of Euro-surplus Estonian beer. No excuse needed for anything historically denied the Irish nation, and even this murderous heat remains a novelty. Ancient Ireland is flame
-grilling now in some noxious Athenian smog and the old leathery Gael loves it. No more than we deserve after all. Haven’t we shivered enough down the frigid centuries of damp and gloom? And aren’t we really, at the heel of the hunt, some class of misplaced Moroccans after all? Still making our drums out of dead goats. Still singing unaccompanied in the old swallowed tongue and still wondering why we never have the right clothes for the day that’s in it.

  I can see Schroeder standing high on a stoop. He’s checking the news on his handset – Minister Gibbon confirming that the President will visit Dublin after a stopover at Shannon where he will address US troops. The response arises immediately. A chant. Explicatory. Without lustre or hope. King not welcome! King not welcome! But Gibbon is insisting that King will be as welcome as the flowers in May. Then the ad break. Ambulance chasers, dietary supplements, home security firms, erectile dysfunction and cheap flights to Yemen. And then the lunatic trumpet signals again and a line of government vehicles, one of them containing the clovenheaded Taoiseach – Domhnach Cascade TD – passes at speed along the street.

  As the Caddy approaches the gates, a protestor breaks through the cordon and hurls himself at the tyres. There are squeals. Then silence. Then more squeals as the Caddy bounces forward and the man dies – his torso crushed like a clove of garlic into the tarmacadam. As the blood spreads with determination on the road, even the Guards turn their faces away. The protestors flare and a megaphone squeals and crunches as Cascade, still talking on his cell, is smothered inside a testudo of waving weapons and led straight through the gates of Leinster House.

  Schroeder seems safe enough where he is but I straighten up even so. And, sure enough, the visored Riot Squad soon starts to spill like black mercury onto the street, prodding with stunted weapons at waist height, forcing everyone to retreat to the corner of the National Library where they regroup beneath a flapping image of the young Willie Yeats. As canisters begin to explode, some of the protestors squeeze their faces into gas masks (every household has one) and the huddle seems to mutate into one giant, fantastical creature – a multi-eyed crustacean gesturing in the depths of a spotlit sea. In the rising clouds the studious face of the poet fades in and fades out. He has no words to offer here. No wisdom now in the teeth of brutes.

  The stand-off lasts five seconds at most. Then a roar and something soars in a lobbing arc and both Schroeder and I watch it land with a clatter at the security barrier. It’s a grenade and Schroeder watches it spin on the road like a foolish avocado. Seconds pass. Then more seconds. Then more. Too many seconds, it seems, and everyone breathes again. A dud. No doubt purchased in some stinking Tallaght lock-up, its provenance a dusty quartermaster in Chad or the Sudan. Dublin is now so full of dodgy ordnance that hardly a night passes without unscheduled pops and bangs coming from the darker districts of the west and north. My eyes flick from screen to screen. And what happens next is a foregone.

  A sudden yelp of laughter from within the crowd, perhaps even the one who threw the grenade now cursing his bad luck and trying to laugh it off as if it hadn’t really been all that important, as if it was some cheap cigarette lighter typically out of gas. But that laugh is even more significant than the avocado because it’s in the script. It’s the bit in the script where the script is dropped, which is itself always in the script. Behind their visors, pumped by their own dark capacity for drawing blood, the men of the Riot Squad chew their lips and breathe like heavy horses. They check their straps and scrape their boots on the ground.

  Inside the gates of Leinster House, in the middle of the wide car park, An Taoiseach is surrounded by his staff. He finishes his call, fixes his hair, smoothes his silvery jacket and winks. As if in some deep and sorrowful wisdom, he just winks. A sad, solemn and deadly wink and that’s the cue. Specials are never loosed for nothing and, seconds later, rapid gunfire stutters across Kildare Street. Pigeons scatter from the rooftops and screams become screeches. People fall and blood gurgles once more in the metropolitan drains.

  And as always after these things, a silence and a smell – chemical, acid and fearful, a smell which gets in the skin and can sicken for hours later, a smell which has travelled already to the Green and has set the dogs a-snarling. But otherwise not much. Just that smell and that silence broken only by the odd chuckle from a Special or the sudden gush of returning pigeons, their pigeon heart-rates already back to normal, their squatters’ rights restored.

  Schroeder lets out a whispered fuck. She really should be here by now, drilling through the throng, all stilettos and fingernails, the crew following like a caravan of busboys with hoisted cameras and booms. His heart begins to thud as he wills the van to corner the Green at speed, Paula in the back, fixing herself in a mirror – unscrewing the lipstick, tugging her hair and arranging her menacing breasts for maximum impact. All set for a one-take PTC.

  He looks a little frantic now, checking both the crowd and the coverage, whisper-swearing like a mad cleric on the roads. She must be here somewhere! She must be! For he has come to realize that it’s usually her arrival that actually triggers things, and so she must be here already. But where? He knows that she tends to appear quite suddenly and with such efficient ceremony that it gets everybody rather overexcited and that’s usually the moment when the body count tends to rocket. And so he keeps repeating to himself his private, profane office. Where the fuck is she? Where the fuck is she? Where the fuck is she?

  – Cool it Schroeder. Cool it. You’re in the belly of the beast.

  But Schroeder, almost as if provoked by my distant advice, suddenly kicks out like a wild horse at the door behind him – something which attracts the attention of a Branchman opposite. Branchman by the name of Pilkington. Kildare. Boozer. Hatchetman. Anglo-Saxon corpuscles. Now thus! Now thus! From Lancashire they say. Originally. Rivington. Then Tore House that was torched in Westmeath. And he’s the cut of them too. Derek Pilkington. Detective Inspector now rousing himself to detect and inspect Schroeder “behaving erratically” on the steps.

  – Move it Schroeder, I whisper to the screen.

  But Schroeder doesn’t need to be told this time. Kicking a heritage door is a foolish mistake – a false move in a city where false moves are not encouraged. And so he slips off the stoop and away, heading quickly towards Dawson Street, named for Joshua Dawson, Collector of Dublin, Secretary for Ireland and Member of Parliament for County Wicklow.

  – Stay where you are, Pilkington.

  Pilkington stays where he is.

  – Good man, Pilkington. Good man.

  Molesworth Street has been sealed off so Schroeder cuts down Frederick Street, named for Frederick, Prince of Wales, and passes the block-long Evangelical House of God and emerges near Trinity only to find himself completely stuck. Reeking of sweat and cooking oil, the street is Beijing chokka, both ends blocked as far as Grafton Street in one direction and the shell of the National Gallery in the other. Schroeder as usual takes it personally. The leaf on the line, the clog in the pipe, the corpse in the swimming pool, the disruptive act of state or freelance violence to bugger up his day. And so now, here he is, trapped in the once grand gutter of Nassau Street, named for William III of Orange and the Count of Nassau – these days just a fungal thoroughfare of knock-off emporia and only the one pub. He feels stood up. He feels like a bomb.

  A helicopter rises up from the rugby grounds and Schroeder watches it head southwards at an angle, like a grim laden bee. Princess King being evacuated as usual. The slightest bit of trouble in the city and she’s whipped off to the base at the Park. Thanks to her, Trinity is a fortress now too. Sandbags and razor wire, men on the rooftops with binoculars and rifles. One way in and one way out. Students are strictly vetted and various levels of passes are issued to those deemed appropriate. The rest, those considered a threat for an assortment of bizarre reasons, are required to continue their academic lives at other universities. Worse again, the bar has been closed until further notice and the annual Ball is off.

 
Schroeder has nothing against her personally. He met her once and liked her, finding her civil, smart and very sexy in that calm and deliberate way that comes with comfort. She was relaxed, confident and funny, and at one point he somehow touched the tanned American skin of her forearm – a breach in security protocol which she didn’t seem to mind at all. A jazz fan too – always a good sign in a Yank – and if she hadn’t been a student (and the daughter of the man himself ) he might have offered to buy her a coffee. But the problem with Princess is this. While undoubtedly charming, delightful, funny and extremely attractive, it’s a fact that every place she goes is utterly transformed, in a bad way, by her presence. And of course by the humourless eunuchs of her quite preposterous security detail. No wonder her classmates hate her and, as the helicopter disappears over Westland Row, Schroeder notices a longhair at the railings raising a middle digit skywards, not once looking up from his book. He’s lucky he doesn’t get it shot off.

  Of course I need my wits about me in situations like this. Schroeder is vulnerable now and we all need to concentrate. I lay out a mix of pills on the desk before me and, fingering them like a decade of the rosary, I pop them one by one. Whenever bodies are scattered in the road outside Dáil Éireann a man like me must always try, if at all possible, not to think too much about any of it. Ireland is a very altered place. Everything is broken now and yet most of the Sons and Daughters of Róisín have adapted to these alterations, however inelegant, with remarkable ease. A handy race of people still, we still live on nothing but our wits. And on whatever else it takes. Seven dead that day. Nine wounded. Plus the bloody heap beneath the Caddy. But even so. My sole concern is Schroeder and I attack the keyboard with an astonishing flourish.