It was him. He glanced up at her, smiled briefly, uncertainly, confused to see her; a fear grin; and looked back at the floor. He gestured at one of the tables, walked to it. She followed him, sat down in the chair across the table from him. The table was clearly called for. When they were seated, the guard who had escorted her in left them and walked over to chat with the other guards.
She looked at him in silence for a while. After a single startled glance, as if to reaffirm that it was her, he looked at the table. He looked withdrawn. He had lost weight since that night in her apartment, and he had been skinny then.
“Why are you here?” he asked at last.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I wanted to see you in jail.”
“Ah.”
Long silence. Now I’ve got some of my own back, she didn’t say— barely even thought. Now I’m safer than I was before. I won’t get shot in the street. Now the tables are turned, you’re the one being held against your will, I’m free to go. And so on. It wasn’t feeling like good reasons had brought her here.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I’m here.”
“What happened?”
“I got arrested.”
“You were at a refugee dinner, I heard?”
He nodded. “What else did you hear?”
“I heard that they got attacked by some hooligans, and you went to their defense, and you were still there when the police came, and they were looking for you for something that happened at Lake Maggiore.”
“So they said.”
“What happened at Lake Maggiore?”
“I got mad at a guy and hit him.”
“You hit him and he died?”
He nodded. “So they say.”
“Are you some kind of a … ?”
He shrugged. “Must have got lucky.”
“Lucky?” she repeated sharply.
He squirmed. “It was an accident.”
“Okay, but don’t joke about it. From now on, what you say may have an impact on your legal status.”
“I was just talking to you.”
“Practice it with everybody.”
“No jokes? Really?”
“Will that be a hardship for you? I don’t recall you making many jokes when you visited my flat.”
“I was trying to be serious then.”
“Do that now too. It could make a difference.”
“In what?”
“In how long a sentence they give you.”
The corners of his mouth tightened, he swallowed hard. No joke there.
“This person who died, did you hit him with something?”
“Yes. I was holding a piece of driftwood I found on the lakeshore.”
“And that was enough to kill him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe his head hit something when he went down.”
“Why did you hit him?”
“I didn’t like him.”
“Why didn’t you like him?”
“He was being an asshole.”
“To you or to others?”
“Both.”
“Were these others Swiss or Ausländer?”
“Both, really.”
She regarded him for a long time. Apparently theirs were the kind of conversations that included many long silences.
Finally she said, “Well, it’s too bad. It means they’ve got you for multiple things now. So … Well, I’ll put in a word for you, if you want.”
“That I was a good kidnapper?”
“Yes. That’s already been put on the record. I mean, I reported it as a kidnapping, so now I can’t exactly say I was having you over for a nightcap. They don’t have any three strikes type laws in Switzerland, as I understand it, but you do have this latest fight you were in, to add to the death and what you did to me. That will have an effect on the judgment. If I weren’t already on the record saying otherwise, I would consider telling them we were just having a night.”
He was startled. “Why?”
“To help shorten your sentence, maybe.”
He continued to look surprised. She too was surprised. Who was this man, why should she care? Well, because of that night. He was obviously damaged. Something wrong in him.
He shrugged again. “Okay.” Then suddenly his look turned dark. “Do you know how long it might be? My sentence?”
“I don’t.” She paused to think about it. “In Ireland I think what you did would get you a sentence of a few to several years, depending on circumstances. Then there’s time off for good behavior and so on. But Switzerland is different. I can look into it.”
He stared through the table, down this unknown abyss of years. “I don’t know how long I can do it,” he said quietly. “I already can’t stand it.”
Mary pondered what she could say. There wasn’t much. “They’ll give you work,” she ventured. “You’ll be let go out to work. They’ll put you in therapy. It might end up being not that much different from how you were living before.”
This earned her a quick fierce black look. Then he was staring at the table again, as if unhappy she was there.
She sighed. In truth there was little encouragement to be had in a situation like his. Well, he had made his choices and here he was. If they had been choices. Again the question of sanity came to her. All the horrid violent crimes in the world, worse by far than anything this man had done— weren’t they all prima facie evidence of insanity? Such that any subsequent punishment became in effect punishing someone for being ill?
Or in order to keep the community safe.
She didn’t want to be thinking about these things. She had bigger fish to fry, she had a busy day. But there he was. Stuck, jailed, miserable. Possibly insane. Not just post-traumatic, but damaged by the trauma itself in some way even more crippling than PTSD. Some
