From out of the City

by John Kelly

  – The clearer the spirit, says Chantal, the better it is for you.

  – Cut the crap, Chantal.

  – OK, she says. Here’s the beef. I’ve been following you. For quite some time as it happens.

  – You? Following me? I don’t think so.

  – For quite a while.

  – But I followed you.

  Chantal smiles.

  – Anton Schroeder, I’ve been on that DART so many times, in and out of the city, backwards and forwards. Jesus you really don’t know if you’re coming or going, do you?

  – I don’t believe that.

  – There are different ways of following people, she says, flicking her hair. And my preferred method is to have the person follow me. More fun that way. For me at least. And the mark never suspects anything if he believes that the initiative is all his.

  – So I’m a mark, am I?

  – Yep.

  – And how come I never saw you?

  – Flat shoes. When I didn’t want you to see me I wore flat shoes. When a woman is in flat shoes men like you don’t notice them at all. I know your type. And so then when I wanted you to follow me through Temple Bar all I had to do was become someone you’d be certain to follow. I replaced the flats with heels. I became a little French. Red lipstick. Existentialist Hibernerotic chic. That endless promise of detached and confident sex is something men like you just can’t resist. You’ve been reared on pornography.

  – As simple as that?

  – You followed me, didn’t you? And anyway I have eyes in the back of my ass.

  – The best arse in Dublin blah, blah, blah.

  – Indubitably.

  Then the Man Mountain enters and Roark winces and slumps. He knows he’s surplus now and Schroeder watches with a swelling nausea as Roark’s mouth is taped up once more. The man then picks Roark up like a rolled-up mat and throws him over his shoulder. Then he carries him, fireman’s lift, out through the iron door. Schroeder stands up.

  – Where’s he taking him?

  – Don’t concern yourself.

  – Where does that door lead to?

  – Under the street.

  – Under the street to where?

  Chantal strokes the table as if it were an ancient fur.

  – The Liffey.

  Schroeder imagines Roark, not quite dead, wrapped in black plastic, bound hand and foot and the splash and the cold water and the darkness and the nothingness and the bursting lungs. And Schroeder fears that this Man Mountain will soon be back for him, this time with a medical bag full of gear to be employed on his fingernails and testicles. He sees the beatings on his feet, the waterboarding, his own gun shoved down his throat.

  – So am I next? he asks.

  Chantal shakes her head as a mother would.

  – Relax.

  – You’re telling me to relax?

  – I’ve a question for you.

  – I’m all fucking ears.

  – It’s the same question you asked me. Why am I following you?

  Schroeder recognises this as the sort of question a schoolteacher might ask. Designed to humiliate and trap – the answer, any answer, will be the inevitable proof of his stupidity. And in this case the guarantee of his doom.

  – You’re asking me why you are following me? How the fuck would I know! I thought I was following you!

  Chantal joins her hands and leans her chin on the summit.

  – Mr Schroeder, she says, I’ve had you under surveillance for some time and I have absolutely no idea why. It’s not always my job to know these things but, in this case, I’m totally at a loss. Can you think of any reason, any reason at all, why I might be following you?

  – Just tell me what’s going on.

  – Schroeder, I don’t know what’s going on. And so I’m asking you. Why am I following you? And why was Mr Roark following you?

  – I have no fucking idea.

  – What’s your view on President King?

  – I think he’s an asshole.

  – You do?

  – That’s not really an opinion though, is it? It’s more of a fact.

  – Would you describe yourself as anti-American?

  – Have you seen my record collection?

  – Yes.

  – You have?

  – I told you. I have you under surveillance.

  – Well, as you’ve seen my record collection then how the fuck could I be anti-American? Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Duke fucking Ellington. Americans all. And I’m guessing you’ve been through my books too.

  – I have.

  – I rest my case.

  – How do you feel about President King’s visit?

  – I don’t feel anything about it. I plan to ignore it. Watch some decent movies all day long. American movies by the way.

  – Claude Butler. Tell me about him.

  – Never liked the guy.

  – He’s an old friend of yours.

  – When I was eleven. He lived across the street. I hardly even know him.

  – You were a guest at his ordination.

  – I couldn’t say no, could I?

  – You met him recently.

  – Yes.

  – What did you make of him?

  – He’s not well.

  – In what sense?

  – In every fucking sense.

  – Look Schroeder, I’m on your side.

  – And what side is that exactly?

  – Those women in the hotel. They weren’t hookers.

  – Well they walked like hookers and they talked like hookers and they sure as hell looked like hookers.

  – I want you to go home now, Schroeder. And lie low for a while.

  – Lie low? Am I in a gangster movie?

  – Perhaps you are.

  Chantal screws the top back on the bottle.

  – When you get home, Schroeder, take a look around. And be thorough about it. Maybe go see your pal Walton. I think you should pay him a visit.

  – And why would I want to do that?

  – It would be the neighbourly thing do.

  And then she stands, hands Schroeder back his gun, leads him out of the room, unlocks the front door and looses him once more into the middle of Middle Abbey Street. Pigeons pick at what’s left of a fish supper, a ginger cat is doing yoga on top of a burned-out car and Schroeder, his eyes adjusting to the sunlight, jumps a passing LUAS to Connolly. From there, with his heart banging like a Dutch nightclub, the DART sucks him back out to Dún Laoghaire where the skies are almost blackened now by swarms of ants in their nuptial flight and by the hurricanes of silent gulls in off the waves to eat them up.

  Back in Hibernia Road I’m hammering my heel into the floorboards hoping for a response from Walton. Usually when I do this I hear his wheelchair roll like a marlin dashing for a guacamaya lure but, so far, there hasn’t been a sound. I walk from room to room stomping on the floor and rapping the radiators with a broom handle but still no response. I prostrate myself on the floor with my ear to the boards but again nothing. This is not good. And this is what awaits Schroeder as he descends to Walton’s flat where the door is open and stale air lingers. And it comes almost naturally now to draw the Glock and hold it out before him.

  He nudges the door with his elbow and steps inside the hallway, pricking the darkness with the muzzle of the pistol, entirely ready for the sight of blackening blood pooling on the tiles. The place stinks of unflushed toilets and the very silence warns him not to call out, not to make a sound of his own as he opens the living-room door, anticipating a body unconscious or worse. But there’s no one there. Just bin bags full of congealing clothes and leaning towers of pizza boxes topped with ancient socks.

  Upstairs, inches away, I have my ear to the floorboards, wincing every time Schroeder calls out Walton’s name. He calls over and over but there’s no answer. And, mirrored by me directly above him, he looks in the kitchen. Then he checks the toilet. Then under the stairs and under the be
ds. He searches everywhere. But nothing. Then he tries the back garden. The junk. The barricade. Behind the hedges and in my dacha. But again. Nothing. Walton isn’t here and given what Schroeder has just seen happen to Roark, he fears the worst. I also know that something bad has taken place and, to my growing horror, I know that it has happened, not just under my nose, but under my very floorboards and in my very house. Me who misses nothing has missed something at last.

  Schroeder goes back inside and stares at the customized bed with its systems of handles and pulleys and wonders if there can be any reasonable explanation for any of this. The house has not been damaged, the open door has not been forced and there’s no sign anywhere of either break-in or assault. He sits at Walton’s desk and shuffles a few pieces of paper, looking for any kind of message or note but again nothing – just the slim lifeless unit, a paperweight, nail clippers, a camera, chewing gum, Kleenex and the plastic bags of painkillers. He looks out the window and scans the strange new view of my garden. The rotting heirlooms. The vixen’s labyrinth. Something, we both know, is very badly wrong.

  But then a clue. A ball of glossy paper on the floor. Skin of course. The inevitable Walton smut and Schroeder throws it on the desk and watches it unfurl. It’s a flier for an event in South William Street – a personal appearance by “sex superstar” Jackie (sic) Jack at a place called Paradiso and it’s scheduled for today. So that’s where he is! The sad bastard has gone to worship at the constantly arched feet of Jakki Jack on a State Visit of her very own. He has actually gone out! Progress for him surely, even if it is to Paradiso. Even if it is to bear witness to Jakki Jack – her hair expansive, blonde and hard, her skin thick with tan and chalky make-up coating a faceful of spots, some of them bleeding slightly at the corners of her mouth.

  Right now he will be seated before her glistening torso as it makes a comedy of a pink vest. She is hunched over a pile of product, a huge silver marker moving with wildly inaccurate speed as men leer in silence and Walton is there before her. In Paradiso. He is giving her honour and respect. Hoping for a rub of the relic, desperate to inhale some miraculous perfume which will have him walking again. Wheeled before her now he will bow and tell her everything. And she will look right through him and someone will tell him to move along.

  Schroeder pockets the Glock and he’s just about to leave when he accidentally tips against the screen and the unit powers up. The screensaver, predictably enough, is all herself – the Jackster – in her customary high-gloss environment of leather furniture and yucca plants. An anxious double tap consigns her endless nudity to darkness once again but what appears in its place hits Schroeder like a haymaker. It’s the beautiful smiling face of Francesca and, in panic, Schroeder taps again and whoosh! Twenty or so visible folders scatter across the screen. Most are titled JJ and some plain JAKKI but there’s one in particular which attacks Schroeder with a sudden sickness and dread. The file is named Francesca and it opens to Fran’s beautiful face and then deeper again he finds yet more – shots of Francesca in the garden and Francesca on the street. All are taken in secret and with a zoom and each one – every last one – is a close-up of her laughter and her eyes. No body parts here. No leopard skin or Lycra. No spaghetti-strap dresses of silver lamé. No fishtail bustiers and polished glutes. For these are portraits. Portraits proper. Head and shoulders. And all are taken, from a distance, with love.

  Even Schroeder doesn’t have such images in his head. And of a woman he might have loved. And so I know what he’s thinking. That he will never forgive this trespass. That Walton will be rightly called on this. And that for violations of this nature, this intimate nature, the transgressor must be made to pay. And then he notices that hidden yet deeper, quivering like a queen bee, is a file named simply S. And when he taps on that one, he forgets all about Francesca and her beautiful, captured face. Because everything in this one is about him.

  In several frantic seconds Schroeder discovers something that I, of course, already know – that Walton has the entire contents of Schroeder’s computer buried deep within his own. Every note, pic, email, article and download. He has the lot. In fact, same as me, he has Schroeder’s entire hard drive patched directly into his.

  At first it occurs to Schroeder that perhaps, so long out of sight, Walton has gone entirely mad – his mind now just as broken as his limbs and somehow stupefied beyond all reason by Jakki Jack and her pals. But when he clicks on yet another file he discovers that this is more than just the deranged curiosity of a self-confessed voyeur. For this one is a file which even I haven’t seen. Titled LMCH26501K. It contains full details of Schroeder’s every move over the past six months. His comings and goings, a list of the websites he has visited (mostly legitimate but even so) and even a detailed reference to Francesca leaving. This stuff is actual surveillance, and in many ways it’s even more detailed than mine. Less discriminatory by far and much more mechanical.

  Schroeder reaches for Walton’s whiskey. Why would anybody be interested in this sort of detail, and again, why would Walton have it on his unit? And how could he even know these things in the first place? He’s house-bound after all. Chair-bound and porn-bound too. And when Schroeder clicks on a photograph of himself leaving the house he gets an even worse jolt. The photograph could only have been taken from one position. Not from Walton’s basement but from upstairs – from my place, from the upstairs window of (and I know what he’s thinking) that putrid old bastard with the sleekit eyes. There’s two of them in it! He tells himself, Walton and Monk – his ancient old fuck of a landlord. They’re both watching him. And they’re pooling their intelligence. He’s wrong of course, but that’s what it looks like.

  Something like a stroke begins to develop deep in Schroeder’s torso, the tectonic plates of his heart seeming to shift in a growing panic. He grips his thighs and the entire movie of his mind begins to slip its reels and spill around his feet. His cell thuds. Chantal/ Margaret.

  – You OK?

  – So Walton’s a tout.

  – You work fast.

  – He’s spying on me!

  – He’s not a nice man.

  – And the old guy too.

  – Don’t worry about him.

  – There are photographs on Walton’s computer which could only have been taken by him. From upstairs.

  – Look, Schroeder, they’re hooked into each other’s computers. Neither of them knows that the other is doing it.

  – Is Walton in the Liffey now too?

  – He’s an informer and a voyeur and that’s a dangerous combination. He’s been monitoring you for years but for no particular reason. He knows nothing about what’s going on here.

  – What the fuck is going on here?

  – We don’t have the full picture. We questioned Roark and he didn’t know why he was following you either.

  – You questioned him alright.

  – Look Schroeder, Walton is your business. Do what you like. These people are never missed.

  – What does that mean?

  – Whatever you want it to.

  – Who the fuck are these people? And who the fuck are you?

  Line goes dead. Loud buzz.

  Schroeder takes another slug of the whiskey and tries to blank his wide-eyed nightmare of touts and gunshots. The cut of the liquor helps him focus and it occurs to him that if a man has already read his own file then he might well have something of an advantage. And that if a man knows the source of all treachery simmering all around him, then he’s sure to be ready for it when it finally starts to spit. And that if a man knows there really is a rat in his kitchen then at least he can do something about it.

  And then as the whiskey spreads further within his chest, Schroeder decides that the only sensible way to deal with rats is with smoke, viciousness, and plenty of bullets. But in his own good time. No point in sitting here in the filth and the dust. He’d be better off waiting in his own gaff – alert, prepared, listening out for the rattling sound of wheels. And, in any
case, there’s no way Walton can get down the steps without him.

  Back at no. 28, on vigil, Schroeder resorts to a pill salad and passes the time with an image search for Paula Viola. He finds her at a charity do. A dress of gold. Plunge-line front and back. Heels. Her hair up. Bling. Meanwhile I’m trying to figure out what to do next, weighing up whether or not Schroeder has it in him to point a gun at Walton. I think it unlikely. But then of course Schroeder, just like the rest of us, has enough anger in his guts to do just about anything if the wrong ingredients should happen to mix.

  And of course I’m angry at myself. I have been ignoring Walton for a very long time, underestimating him and ruling him out. A serious error on my part, for once, and now there is much catching up to be done. And so on this night of some torment for the both of us – Messrs. Schroeder and Monk – we both sit up all night. We watch and we wait. And as the night goes on and Walton fails to return, our instincts start telling us the very same thing. Either he has scored with the world renowned fellatrix Jakki Jack or he’s already dead.

  THIRTEEN

  NEXT MORNING Schroeder steps from the DART at Pearse / Stáisiún na bPiarsach and takes the connection to Stephen’s Green / Faiche Stiabhna. A huge sprawling underworld modelled on Gare Montparnasse, it’s strangely silent today without the sonic chaos of snakeoil salesmen, evangelical Africans and assorted buskers in assorted disciplines. In fact whenever the city’s tunnels are cleansed of anybody considered unpredictable, it’s the buskers who are always the first to go – the pan pipers, the didgeridooists and finally the harpers, the tin whistlers, the box-players and the scrapers. As a result, apart from an increased military presence, the station is much less clogged than usual and the effect is unsettling as Schroeder walks briskly through the enormous concourse and steps into an elevator big enough to carry horses. As the doors close four Guards start beating some howling crazy-head with nightsticks and fists. Dull thuds, groans and thwacks.

  Emerging into raging sunlight on the only corner of the Green still open to the public, Schroeder grunts at the psychedelic tableau of geraniums and teenagers arranged with care around O’Donovan Rossa’s rock. He can remember (and so can I) the feel of that same erratic against his own back, not so very long ago, when he too was expelling smoke through his nose like some sleek and muscular stallion, so full of longing and hope. Of course, he had no idea then that life would one day ambush him precisely at the point where it was too late to do anything much about it. Life’s cruellest joke of all, he believes, and he’ll never forget the dull shock of its revelation. That sheer gunk of too-latedness. Of course I’m much older and know that life’s cruellest jokes are saved until the finale but I can’t really blame him. After all, nothing of his present was ever to have been his future, no more than this run-down wreck of a capital was ever to have been Ireland’s.