Notes from a Coma Page 15

  “Have you eaten? … You look a bit nervous.”

  “More tired than nervous … I hate that train journey, hate journeys of any sort.”

  “You’ll have a few hours to yourself this afternoon. Try and get some sleep before we move out. Do you have a mobile?”

  “No, I hate those as well.”

  “My God, I thought they were a fifth limb for your generation. Take this. There are two programmed numbers, mine and Dermot’s. Dermot will be down here at reception if you need him. The number is purely back-up, just in case you get separated.”

  “It sounds like a military operation.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what it is. This is where it begins and it has to go by the numbers as they say, no screw-ups. Have you read the handout?”

  “I should know my own biog by now.”

  “Just so you know what they know because that’s where all their questions will come from. We’re holding on to it till the last moment. They will be given it about half an hour before you make your entrance. Try and stick to the facts this evening—remember that you’re in charge here. The trickiest moment will be when they ask about your motives.”

  “Don’t worry I’ll keep it simple: no philosophising or theorising, just the facts.”

  “Exactly. They’ll know from your biog how smart you are and that’s an invitation to debate, they’ll try to trip you up. Don’t give them an opening. Give them as little as possible in your best manners. Forty-five minutes, that’s all it will come to, then we get you back here and you can be on your way home tomorrow.”

  “I have all these clothes with me, I’m not sure what to wear.”

  “Come as you are, keep it simple. Go and get some sleep now. I’ll order some dinner and get it sent up to you. Remember, Dermot will be here if you need him.”

  “What time?”

  Dermot handed him his bag. “Don’t worry, I’ll wake you up.”

  The thing about press conferences is that you try to anticipate two things: who the questions are going to come from and what specifically they are going to address. That way you make sure all the answers are stacked on your side of the table from the off. Of course you’re never going to have all the angles covered but the more eventualities you cover the better the impression you make. We were the ones making the impression that evening and we had our homework done.

  When we arrived at the empty conference hall I got him to sit behind the table on his own. I took a seat in the center of the room and tried placing myself in the mind of those who would be seeing him for the first time. He was wearing his blue jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, looking taller and thinner than he really was; with his height and dark looks I knew he would physically dominate the table. Those journalists were going to meet a young man with the sort of features and cheekbones you see in those glossy scent advertisements, the type of face the new Ireland doesn’t wonder at any more.*

  “How does it feel up there?”

  He spread his hands flat on the table and looked around him. “I’m looking forward to it, it will be a relief to get this out in the open and have the whole thing under way. The sooner the better.”

  “I’ll be there on your left. Have you your wits about you?”

  He nodded. “So long as I’m not sitting on them.”

  He didn’t show any nerves beside me that evening. Halfway through my opening statement he rolled the sleeves of his T-shirt up to his elbows—the country lad breaking out in him. For one moment I thought he might spit in the palms of his hands and say something like, “OK, lads, let’s get down to work.”

  My opening statement covered once more the origins and rationale behind the project. Then a short intro into JJ himself. This was just a ploy to give him time to get his bearings, a soft entry into the whole thing. When I finished I turned to him and asked him if there was anything he wanted to add. As we’d planned he just shook his head and I opened the discussion to the floor. A security correspondent put his hand up and identified himself.

  “Good evening, JJ, I wonder could we have some word from you as to why you wanted to volunteer for this project. I wonder if you could say something about that.”

  JJ nodded and leaned out on his elbows. He spoke quietly, without hesitation. It must have been impressive hearing him for the first time.

  “I’ve given my reasons in my application, I think you have that there in front of you … As it says, I want to go to sleep, to take my mind off my mind. These last couple of years haven’t been a happy time for me. I want to go to sleep so that I can get a rest from myself and my thoughts. It is a fairly simple idea—all I want to do is lie down and get some sleep.”

  “Have you any fears?—the whole project seems risky to put it mildly.”

  “I’m more curious than afraid. Of course there is a degree of fear; I would worry about myself or anyone else if they were not afraid going into something like this. But at this moment I have to say my curiosity outweighs my fears.”

  “Have you any worries for your health?”

  “No, this project has been researched. When it’s got to the point where people are being used as guinea pigs then you have to presume that all the angles have been covered. Of course anything can happen in something like this but in answer to your question, no, I have no worries.”

  Everything was going smoothly up to this, everything running to predictions. The coaching we put him through was standing to him. But then, as we’d predicted, a question about his background. It came from one of the red-top journalists.

  “JJ, your background, an adopted child coming from a single-parent family—do you think that has anything to do with your decision to volunteer for this?”

  It didn’t faze him. He moved into it without hesitation.

  “The reasons for my decision are laid down in my application and they have nothing to do with my background. Yes, I am an adopted child from a single-parent family and in that I consider myself very lucky. All children are born but I was not only born I was chosen also. That makes me feel very special. Nothing in my life has made me feel I have lacked for anything, least of all love. I have no grievance or issues with being an adopted child. That is too easy, too cry-baby.”

  The combative edge in his voice was noted the next day in the newspapers. Before the journalist could come back for a second bite I signalled to another raised hand.

  “What’s been the reaction of your father to your volunteering?”

  “His reaction was that of any loving parent. As you can imagine he is more than a little worried. But we sat down together and talked it through. I can’t say he’s happy about it but it is my wish and he respects that.”

  “When did he first hear about this?”

  “The day I was shortlisted. I told him that morning.”

  We were alone in the hall after the journalists filed out. JJ stood up clutching the plastic bottle of water. I would never meet him again without one of those bottles in his hands, a kind of security blanket, a small shield against the world.

  “That went fine,” I said. “You did well.”

  “I’m going back to the hotel,” he said. “I need to make a few calls.”

  “You’ll watch the nine o’clock news?”

  “No—I can wait for tomorrow’s reviews.”

  “Have you any plans for tonight? Now that you’re in the big smoke is there anything you want to do?”

  “No, I’m going to stick to my room. I’ll probably raid the minibar and watch some TV.”

  “Good, you look like you could do with some sleep.”

  The following morning this tall fella with shades and a red bandanna on his head walked up to me at reception and stood in front of me. Out the corner of my eye I saw Dermot by the lift door looking blankly at me. The tall fella in front of me wasn’t saying anything or moving and for a moment I thought I had wandered into some sort of a stand-off. After a long moment he pulled off the shades and grinned.

  “Will this throw
them for a few hours?”

  “It threw me,” I said. “Yes, for a few hours but no more.”

  “I saw the papers after breakfast so I went out and got sheared. The hairdresser wouldn’t take any money but I signed and dated a ziplock bag before I left.”

  “She’s going to sell you off one snip at a time in a month.† If you don’t fancy the train Dermot can drive you home.”

  He shook his head. “No, let’s keep it simple while we can. Sarah is coming to get me at the station.”

  “Whatever you say. Thoughtful and articulate, wearing his genius IQ up front. An unlikely candidate for such an adventure. You’ve made an impression, JJ, the photos looked well.”

  “So the hairdresser said. The kind of young man any mother would be glad to see her daughter bringing home. I hope Sarah’s parents read that.”

  “That’ll play for a few days. Brace yourself for the claw-back though.”

  “That’s the bit that worries me.”

  “That’s fame for you.” I handed him a red folder. “Have a read of this on the train. It’s the biogs of the other subjects.”

  “Have you met any of them?”

  “No, nor have they met each other. You will meet together in Castelrea Prison two weeks from now. You will be brought together for the first time for the induction sessions. That will take a week—a detox session, the last medical checks and psychological checks. Your job from now till then will be to look after yourself. No injuries or mad drinking sessions. And that girlfriend of yours—Sarah—I’d get my fill of her before I leave if I were you … it could be a long three months.”

  “Yes.”

  Dermot ran him to the train. I let them go alone, my presence would only draw attention to him, defeating the purpose of the haircut. He phoned me later that evening to tell me that journalists were already outside his house but he had refused as politely as he could to say anything.

  * Those vectors which have converged here—epidemiological, political, economic … detonating on impact, cluttering the air with fragments should not occlude the fact that when the smoke clears and the light coalesces we are back in the neuro-ICU looking at five men submerged in the deep end of the Glasgow Coma Scale, sunk beneath the pupillary response and the gag reflex … When the smoke drifts away, and insofar as these things are ever clear to us, we might see how near or far this altarpiece is from being another of those blurred nexus of the good, the true and the beautiful.

  † Listed on ebay.co.uk on the seventeenth of July this item drew a steady stream of bids to its online auction. Ten minutes before the close of its seven-day listing a bid of €1,000 secured the trophy for Krayfeld Records in Oslo, a specialist music store already in possession of an extensive collection of memorabilia from the death-metal wars of the early nineties. An interview with the owner Stein Ommund Svendsen said the hair would be exhibited above the reissues of Luftig’s two-CD back catalogue.

  JJ becoming his own memorabilia is a further example of what one commentator has termed the “metastasisation of the project beyond its scientific parameters into an info-and-memento disposal phenomenon. However, it is now not enough that we see and hear these things, some of us have to possess them as well; only that we feel we can not believe.” The same commentator noted that this transaction echoed somewhat the circumstances of JJ’s adoption from the orphanage.

  A follow-up piece in a national tabloid showed the hairdresser, Emily Rynne, twenty-four, smiling and displaying her cheque outside the hair salon. The money, she said, would go towards her upcoming hen party in Ibiza.

  GERARD FALLON

  You could feel the town bracing itself the night JJ gave that press conference. The pubs were full and of course there was only one topic of conversation on the agenda. To say that people were stunned would be putting it mildly. What the hell was he thinking of? What did he hope to gain from it? The consensus was that no one in his right mind would put himself forward for such a job. Of course someone said this was exactly the point—JJ was not in his right mind, hadn’t he spent a full month in the ceilidh house not so long ago? How had this ever escaped the people who were supposed to be screening those volunteers? Listening to all the talk it struck me that if JJ thought he was going to get any admiration for what he was doing he was going to be sorely mistaken. Even in those first hours after the press conference you could sense the town raising its guard. They knew what was coming. This town would now be held up to scrutiny in a way it had not earned or prepared itself for. It’s not the kind of attention any place wants drawing on itself. No one was going to thank him for it.

  I was glad he wasn’t around that night.

  I got a call from him the following morning, around ten o’clock. He sounded calm, like a man with a good night’s sleep behind him.

  “Well, JJ, that’s some pyjama party you’ve signed up for.”

  “So I believe. I’m calling from Dublin, Ger, I’m coming down on the evening train. The reason I’m calling you … you saw the press conference last night?”

  “The whole country saw it. You came across very well. Confident and resolute, the square-jawed young man with the right stuff.”

  “Good. I’m just putting you on your guard here. Sooner rather than later the press is going to start asking more questions. That stuff at the press conference was just the bare bones, they’re going to come looking for more. I just wanted you to be aware of that. I’ve rung around a few other people.”

  There was a different tone in his voice then, a note I’d never heard before. He was low-key, tentative—moods I didn’t readily associate with him. It took me a moment to figure it out: JJ was on the defensive. For the first time in all my years of knowing him he was on the back foot about one of his ideas, anxious for others and the consequences of what he was doing. Was he looking for reassurance? I wondered.

  “Fair enough, JJ,” I said. “I haven’t seen or heard from anyone yet but as you say it’s probably only a matter of time. I haven’t been up town this morning yet so I don’t know who’s around.” There was a pause on the other end of the line but I could hear his thoughts. “Don’t worry, you’re one of our own. We’ll talk you up.”

  He laughed. “Thanks. I don’t like putting you in this position but there’s no way out of it. You know yourself that if certain things got out how they can be made to look. A bad situation could be made to look a lot worse.”

  “No worries. How are things besides? You looked confident on the box. Are you nervous?”

  “I feel fine. Today’s reviews are pretty much what we expected: curiosity and bewilderment. Things will get critical from now on.”

  “I suppose you’ve answered this more than once already but do you know what you’re doing?”

  He laughed again, the kind of laugh he kept for those moments in our discussions when he was about to deliver some telling point. “No,” he said, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not so sure either whether knowing would be a good thing. What I do know is that I want to go through with it. I’ll probably call you in the next few days. I have two weeks to myself before this thing starts.”

  “Make sure you call round before you go away.”

  “I will. Many thanks, Ger.”

  “Sound.”

  I took a walk out after that phone call just to see if indeed the world’s press had descended on our little town. As far as I could see there was no one around, just the same quiet street you’d expect at that hour of the morning. When I stepped into Kelly’s for the paper JJ’s face was spread over every front page on the shelf. The same colour photo in each one as if JJ had only presented this one glimpse of himself for examination. It showed him seated behind the table looking straight into the camera, no expression on his face. His left hand was outstretched on the table before him, clutching that plastic bottle of water. If I’m not mistaken a cropped version of this photo is the standard portrait of JJ you now see everywhere.

  Eddie took the money from me. “We know he h
as brains but do you think has he any sense?”

  “It’s an adventure, Eddie, that’s what young men go for.”

  “He’s brave though, I’ll give him that.” Walter Crayn came in behind me and picked up the Irish Times. “Three months’ room and board with no worries … there could be worse ways of spending a wet summer.”

  Eddie opened a tabloid on the counter. “He was always a bit odd, the same JJ. He’d come in here some mornings with his head in the clouds; it was like drawing teeth getting talk out of him. You’d wish him luck though. That’s all I can say.”

  “Twenty purple as well, Eddie,” Walter said. “Let’s hope luck has nothing to do with it. I suppose we’ll be going out to the Killary from now on to keep an eye on him.”

  That conversation drew me up. My reading of it was that the disbelief and bewilderment of the previous night had given way to a cautious support. A night’s sleep had allowed us to order our thoughts and put aside whatever reservations we had in our hearts. He’d made his decision and being one of our own we would support him whatever way we could. We weren’t without doubts or indeed cynicism but we would stand behind him. Walking out of the shop that morning I felt good for him, more confident.

  I was sitting down to a pile of exam papers when I got the first call: a feature writer from the Irish Times. He was looking for what he called background colour, anything that might help the public get a clearer view of our new hero, as he put it. How long had I known him and what kind of student had he been? What were his interests, how did I think the town would react to one of their young men volunteering for such a project?

  My speech was ready. JJ’s call had prompted me to put a few thoughts together. I was as bland as I could be without giving offence.

  “I’ve known the lad since he was thirteen years old. He was a pupil here in the local school and teachers and pupils alike were very fond of him. He made friends with everyone during those years, made friends and kept them.”

  “What was he like as a pupil? Seemingly he was very bright.”