The Wall

by John Lanchester

  ‘This had better be good,’ he said. I handed him a water bottle and pointed into the middle distance as we swayed up and down. He saw the lights as we got to the top of the second set of swells. He said nothing and looked at them for a while as they came in and out of view. I noticed he too was taking some time before he felt sure he could trust his senses.

  ‘What I’m wondering is, if you think about who that might be, how many of the options are good for us?’ I said.

  He nodded. We stood at the prow and looked into the distance while the boat bucked up and down on the swell and the lights winked on, winked off. Once I had had a few chances to study the lights I thought I could see they were arranged in a triangular pattern of five, one at the top and two lower down on each side.

  ‘Same. Guards probably aren’t out here at this time, but if they are and they see us, they’ll sink us straight away, no question. So we can’t go anywhere near them if they’re Guards. If they’re Others, how come they’re making such a spectacle?’

  A boat full of Others who felt confident enough to be fully illuminated on the sea in the middle of the night – to be that unfrightened, they would have to be very frightening.

  ‘So we leave them be?’

  He thought for a moment. It felt impossible that we would encounter the first sign of life out here, the first sign of company and possible salvation, and turn away from it. But when we thought about it, saw the risks, there was nothing else we could do.

  ‘Plus, I think they’re further away than they look. The horizon at sea level is about five K. The swell is coming from that direction. That’s a lot of rowing into a lot of waves.’

  ‘And only three of us to do the rowing.’

  We looked at each other. We had been physically inactive for six weeks while we were waiting for sentence, and the rowing was hard. My hands were blistered and split and I was getting out of breath within minutes. Even if we wanted to row to the boat we might not be able to do it.

  ‘OK. Thanks. Go back to sleep,’ I said.

  Hughes started to go back towards the covered part of the lifeboat. He stopped.

  ‘In a few days we may be so desperate we have no choice,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  ——

  So this was life at sea. After the sentences were passed, we were taken in another lorry to another barracks. This time we travelled in handcuffs. I imagine the authorities’ thinking was that we now had nothing to lose so were more likely to make a run for it. That lorry journey was the worst moment of my life so far, worse than the moment of sentencing, worse even than when I knew the breach had happened and the Others had got away. I knew what the rules of the Wall were – like everyone else, I had known them my whole life. I don’t remember having them explained to me because there was no time before the rules, before the facts of life: the sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night; if you throw something in the air, gravity makes it come back down; if the Others get over, you get put to sea. And yet, for all that, I felt sick with the injustice of it. Physically sick. I knew for certain that I, that we, had done nothing wrong. More: I had done everything I could to guard the Wall to the best of my capabilities. I had fought hard and watched my friends die. We all had. And this was our reward.

  I had heard the word ‘despair’ and thought I knew what it meant; thought also that it was one of those states of mind that resembles a weather system, something which sets in and then you live with it or under it. Now I found that despair can also be something that happens to you, that it can hit you in a single moment. And then it settles down with you for the duration. This is the thought I had in those days: that at some time in our lives we should, all of us, take some time to think about the worst possible thing that we can imagine happening to us. Your worst fear: track it down inside yourself. Take a good look at it. And face the fact that it will happen. The thing you dread most will happen. When it does, the name of the thing you’re feeling is despair.

  Our guards offered us the opportunity to write letters to our ‘loved ones’. This wasn’t a special dispensation: it was clear that there was a protocol, agreed procedures, for occasions such as this. Agreed procedures for the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. In my case ‘loved ones’ meant my parents, and I decided I didn’t want to write to them, because I had nothing to say. Hifa talked me out of that. I put down some platitudes about being sorry, even though I wasn’t. I said I loved them, even though I didn’t, at least not in that moment. But I felt better for having written the letter.

  We stayed in that new barracks for several days and one by one were brought to the medical centre and put under general anaesthetic while we had our chips removed. No biometric ID, no life. Not in this country. No turning back … After the operation we were held in recovery for a day, then returned to barracks. I could feel an itch deep in my arm where the chip had been and when I asked the others said they had the same feeling. A phantom chip. On the sixth afternoon, Hughes and Hifa and I were called and taken to another lorry; we’d have said goodbye to Yos and the other Defenders, if we’d known that was the last time we’d see them. From the angle of the light through the side of the vehicle I got the impression that we were heading south. We were driven until it was dark. Another barracks, but this time we were there hardly any time at all, an hour at most, before some Guards came into the room. From the look on their faces I could see this was what the Help had called kuishia: the ending. They seemed sad rather than angry; also implacable. We were taken down a series of concrete tunnels and then suddenly were out in the open air, and a Guard ship was waiting, with a lifeboat tied to the side. As soon as I saw it I realised it was going to be ours. We were led across a gangway to the ship. The Guard captain was waiting for us and he, weirdly or generously, I’m still not sure which, maybe both, saluted us and shook our hands. The ship cast off and we headed out to sea and we were led downstairs to a small unfurnished cabin and the door was locked behind us.

  Up to that point my despair had left me numb to other feelings. Despair, grief, numbness, blankness. But not much else. I felt there was nothing I could do, and as a corollary (maybe) that there was therefore nothing else that it was necessary to feel. Everything that happened had been inevitable. Now and for the first time, I felt afraid, very very afraid. The boat would be lowered into the water and we would be lost, with the same complete lack of agency we had had ever since the night of the attack. The feeling that I had been relying on to keep me numb – that there was nothing I could do – suddenly became a source of overmastering fear. There’s nothing you can do. That thought can be a comfort, or it can be a terror. Panic, the need to flee, the impossibility of fleeing, the desperate need to escape combined with the certainty that you can’t escape, the sense that you are going to die of dread right there in that moment. My heart was beating fast and erratically. There was no air in the cabin. The lights had been turned up and were flickering. I was frying in my clothes, where I’d felt cold only seconds before. Hifa saw me freaking out and put a hand on my arm. I flinched, as if I’d had an electric shock, then thought, why am I flinching, and that new idea was just enough, turned my attention just enough, to allow me to start slowing down.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Hifa, which was so not true it was a help. She wasn’t looking at her best, pale and shaky, which turned out to be the start of her seasickness.

  ‘Yeah, it’s all great,’ said Hughes.

  ‘So great,’ said Hifa. Her face was drawn. I could see that the attempt at banter between them was reflexive, a flashback to when we had been Defenders, when we had been on the Wall, and this was how we had talked to each other.

  ‘I wonder how far they tow us?’ said Hughes, who got his answer straight away, because the engines slowed to an idle. When people are put to sea, they are taken out of sight of land, so that they won’t immediately try to turn and go back where they came from and also so that they won’t run straight into Guard ships who would imm
ediately sink them. We had been on the ship for about half an hour, so we couldn’t be far from land. Say, fifteen K at most.

  The door opened from the outside. Three Guards were standing there, with two behind them: the latter two were carrying guns. Again, they didn’t look grim so much as sad. We came out and followed the unarmed ones down the corridor with the armed guards behind. They led us clanking up the ship’s metal stairs out onto the main deck. It was relatively calm and still and the night was clear. They walked us over to the lifeboat, which was a couple of feet below the level of the deck, and we stepped across and down to get in. The whole crew came to the side of the ship and, on their captain’s command, saluted as the lifeboat began to be lowered into the water. I swear that was almost the worst moment, the solemnity and finality of that salute.

  The lifeboat swung a few feet further out as it was lowered and then, when we were just above sea level, was abruptly dropped into the water. We went crashing to the floor of the boat. When we’d got up and straightened ourselves out, the ship was moving away from us on a curving trajectory back towards land, alight like a floating cathedral in the pitch black of the ocean. It was immediately clear how different the sea felt when you were centimetres above its surface on a pitching small plastic boat, as opposed to a metal ship’s deck ten metres high.

  Having stood up, Hifa sat back down again. ‘I’m not sure about this,’ she said. It was my turn to be reassuring so I told her to sit where she was while Hughes and I sorted ourselves out. There were many boxes and crates in the front of the boat, and we started to open them and look into them. The Guard had been generous, very generous, with supplies and assistance. We looked to have enough food for weeks. They had put in waterproof and warm clothing, torches and batteries and metal tools. There were several casks of water too. I couldn’t do the maths on that straight away, and I knew that people always needed more water than they thought they did; but it looked as if we would be able to survive for a while. As long as we weren’t drowned or shot.

  That, though, wasn’t all the Guards had left us. We didn’t go into the back part of the boat, under the awning, because the front was so full of food and equipment it needed to be reorganised before we could fight our way through. That made it confusing and weird when noises started coming from the back of the boat. Looking at each other wildly, Hifa and Hughes and I all simultaneously realised that we were not alone. Then a figure wrapped in a blanket came out of the back and straightened up. He was swathed in multiple layers of cold-weather clothing and had a hood over his head and I thought I was hallucinating, or having an aneurysm, or something, because although I could recognise who it was I also couldn’t get my brain to admit that I recognised him. The hair under the hood was blond. I know you but I don’t know you, my brain was telling itself. Then he spoke and I saw that although I couldn’t believe it, I had no choice.

  ‘Hello,’ said James the baby politician. ‘I imagine you weren’t expecting to see me.’

  Hifa and Hughes and I just stared at him. Their mouths were open and no doubt mine was too. James nodded and looked as pleased with himself as it is possible to look if you are huddled in a blanket on a lifeboat on the open sea. It wasn’t comforting to see him, not at all, but I did feel momentarily less alone – as if it was a relief to find it wasn’t just us Defenders who were put to sea.

  ‘Yes, and there are other surprises in store. Come and look.’

  Hifa got up and we moved towards the back of the boat, staggering and balancing on the boxes and gear as we went. The awning was folded down over both sides of the opening so we couldn’t see in. James pulled it back and bent down and pointed. We crouched down to look. A person was lying on a foam mattress on the floor of the boat, wrapped in several layers of clothing and blankets. He was either unconscious or asleep. Despite the wrapping, we all recognised him at first glance. It was the Captain. James gave us a moment to take that in.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Shall we kill him?’

  19

  I learnt that I had nearly killed him once already. The night of the attack, the Captain came close to bleeding out from the bayonet wound I’d given him. I’d hit an artery. If it had been up to us, his company, we would probably have let him die. But the medics got to him in time and he was stabilised and now, six weeks later, he was recovering, too weak to row but otherwise getting stronger. He did indeed look like a man who had nearly died; the skin on his face was stretched and the scars on his cheeks were now in parallel with newly drawn lines of illness and strain. His eyes were open and he stared at us and we stared back, but nobody spoke. It wasn’t until the next morning that we talked to him.

  That was a strange night, all crammed together in the back of the lifeboat. Three banished Defenders and their two companions. Companion number one was the member of the elite who had failed in his chance to stop what had happened. Companion number two was the man who had betrayed us. Sixteen Others had got over the Wall and escaped, and so sixteen people were put to sea. That was the seven members of the company who had survived and nine others in the chain of command, including several people in the next watchtowers along, who were judged to have reacted too slowly when the action kicked off that night. James said that the judgement had been passed on him because, according to the court, he should have realised that the Captain was part of the network of Others and their supporters. He thought that was outrageous. He was bitter and did not pretend otherwise.

  ‘My question is, how? How was I supposed to know?’

  My answer to that was that I didn’t know and didn’t care. I was glad that he felt the injustice of what had been done to him as much as we felt the injustice of what had been done to us.

  ‘A network of hidden support and I was meant to find one end of it and unravel the network with what, the power of telepathy? I’m supposed to look into his soul and work out this plan they’d been hatching for years?’

  ‘How about you shut up?’ Hughes said. James took the hint.

  Hifa spent that first night retching, at first over the side, then into a bucket, then dry-retching where she lay. We lay there and I didn’t feel as if I’d slept but I must have because I opened my eyes and the sun was some way above the horizon. Hughes and Hifa were standing at the front of the boat. The Captain was awake but silent under the awning. I woke James and went to the others and that’s when we decided to have it all out and get the story. Hughes went under the awning and said something to the Captain and he got up and came to the bow.

  The Captain sat with his back against the front of the lifeboat. We stood in front of him.

  ‘It was ten years. Seven of us set out to get over the Wall. Then there were further expeditions with messages backwards and forwards. We had a set of signals with lights. I was the only one who made it. We all knew we would have to wait and in the end it was five years before I was able to get a message back. Then we moved to the next phase. I waited for three more years. Then I was a Captain and we could start to execute a specific plan. By now we had got in touch with a wider network. Some of your countrymen don’t agree with the Wall. They think you need the Wall to keep out the water but not to keep out human beings. Some of them don’t agree with turning people into Help. They think it’s slavery. It’s a big network, much bigger than you realise. I don’t know much about who is in it and I don’t know who they’re helping but I do know that my people are not the only ones who are coming.’

  He stopped. We wanted something more and I could tell that he knew it. The silence went on – the human silence, because the wind and waves and creaking of the boat never stopped. It is never silent in a small boat in northern waters. Eventually it was Hifa who spoke. Her voice was hoarse from her hours of retching.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry?’

  The Captain was stiff and still, leaning back rigidly, and I felt there was a strong reaction he wanted to give but wouldn’t. He thought for a long time.

  ‘The thing we most despise about
you, you people, is your hypocrisy. You push children off a life raft and wish to feel good about yourselves for doing it. OK, fine, if that’s what you want to do, but you can’t expect the people you push off the side of the raft to think the same. To admire your virtue and principle while we drown. So, no, I’m not going to be like you. I’m not going to lie, I’m not going to be a hypocrite, and I’m not going to say I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not even for Sarge?’ said Hifa.

  He blinked but said nothing. In that moment I did want to kill him. I looked over at Hifa, who mainly seemed as if she was going to be sick again, and at James, who was standing with his lips pursed shaking his head, looking like someone on a television debate panel trying to make it clear to the audience that he disagreed with an argument being made by a fellow panellist. Then I looked over at Hughes, and what I saw on his face was the look of a man who was in the middle of suffering a huge, all-encompassing disappointment. My anger subsided and began to turn into a sense of loss. I felt sad. Loss, loss, there was just so much loss, in what had happened to us, in what the Captain had done, in what we had done to the world, in what we had done to each other and in what was happening to us.