And yet. An incident of this nature only serves to remind one that there are clear sides, that there are still enemies. She is not on the same side as he: does it not stand to reason that she is on the other?
He draws himself up. ‘He attempted to burn down a hospital,’ he says. ‘With twenty-six men in it, most too weak to escape on their own. With a child in it. They could all have died.’
‘I know. I cannot believe it. But I do not believe he could have meant it,’ she goes on, in a rush, not allowing him time to refute her words. ‘I know him. He loves … symbols. I think he wanted to do something symbolic. I do not believe he would actually have wanted all of them to die.’
She cannot see it, he thinks. She is blinded by the all-powerful subjectivity of her love. Perhaps she should be allowed to protect this illusion, if nothing else. But he cannot stop himself from saying, ‘If it were to be a symbol, why a hospital? Why not a military barracks? Because he was certain of those inside not being able to save themselves? To fight back?’
‘Because it was our house. I imagine he thought it was … not his right, but something almost like a duty.’
He remembers the figure glimpsed in the furious light cast by the flames, blank-eyed, still as a fox. He meant it.
He summons his resolve. ‘I do not think I understand. What exactly is it that you are trying to suggest I do?’
‘No one was killed.’ Does she really believe that it is this that makes the difference?
‘They were not spared on his account. He left it to burn. If he had had his way, every person in that building would have been burned too.’
‘I am sure, now – seeing what he could have done – that he feels remorse.’
‘How can you be so certain?’
‘Because this is not the man he is. He is a good person, a kind man, a schoolteacher’ – he scoffs at this – ‘and because I know him.’
‘Because you know him, or because you cannot see past your love for him?’
‘I am asking you to give him a second chance.’
‘Even if I wanted to, there is nothing I can do for him now. His fate is not my decision. They have him.’ His own use of ‘They’ gives him pause. It creates a distance – one that seems to him vaguely unpatriotic, and which he is not sure whether or not he intended.
‘There will be a trial?’
‘Yes.’
‘You will be there as a witness.’
He sees now, clearly, what it is that she is asking of him. He had suspected it, but to hear it aloud is another matter. That she has the nerve to suggest it, to him, standing here maimed by her brother’s crime, astounds him. And, knowing the little of her that he does, it shows him how desperate she must be.
‘You cannot think …’ he lowers his voice, ‘you cannot ask me to lie about what I saw.’
‘I am not asking you to lie,’ she says, quickly. ‘I am asking – I suppose I wanted to know – how certain you can be of what you saw.’
He thinks back to the night. Already it has about it the surreal atmosphere of something dreamed. Or, rather, a story told to him rather than something he experienced firsthand. He finds the figure, within this memory, and he is perhaps the only clear point in it, the one element without blurred edges. And yet there is something uncanny about it, the closer he looks. The pale face, the blank eyes, the animal poise of him. The figure now appears not quite human – too poised, too clear: more like the idea of a perpetrator than anything real. He had seemed almost like part of the fire itself, an agent of chaos. He cannot imagine how an ordinary man, in the light of day, in the banality of a courtroom, will match up to him.
He shakes his head, to clear it. ‘I have to be honest about what I saw,’ he says. ‘Surely you understand that?’
She remains silent, expressionless. Somehow, despite everything, he feels that she has retained the high ground in the exchange.
‘You should not have come. You should not have asked this of me.’
He sees movement beneath the mask she has made of her features, some spasm of pain. He sees, briefly, the control she must be exerting upon herself. He closes his mind against the thought.
The Prisoner
He is afraid.
How?
He is afraid of himself.
When he had lit that match it had ceased to become his, like a giant beast escaping the leash. But all of the death, that was his.
He has tried to close his mind to it. But the images come, still, as he lies in his temporary cell. He wakes half-suffocated by the smoke that seeps from his dreams.
He tries to weep. For those who must have been killed. For himself. And for the others, the ones before, the faces that visit him in dreams.
But his eyes are dry. All tears have been scorched from him.
George
The temporary court is convened in an empty school building. The room in which proceedings will take place, presumably, was once where assemblies of the children took place. He thinks, inevitably, of her.
She took the boy that morning. Whatever
