Getting it in the Head Page 17

  ‘Speedie, why don’t you sit with us tonight and watch a video? We don’t seem to see a lot of you these days.’

  ‘No can do, Mom. I’m a busy young man. I need to get my sleep, I have to be up for work.’ With that he would leave the room and go to his bed.

  ‘I suppose we should be grateful,’ his mother would sigh.

  And Speedie worked hard in pursuit of Olwyn. He sent her little presents and notes, a short poem even, and he took to stopping her in the street for conversation. But Olwyn would pass by without a word, contempt written all over her face. One time he made a show of her by turning up in a pub with a bunch of flowers and mortified her in front of her friends by telling her that he would love her till there was not a single breath left in his body. And then he overstepped the mark completely. He sent her a note that told her, among other things, it would be his dearest wish to have her coiled body beneath him with her nails raking his back.

  Two nights later Speedie was walking home in the dark and he got a battering. He was walking through Prospect Hill when he was jumped from behind. Someone pulled his coat over his head and dealt him a kick behind the knees which sent him sprawling. More kicks rained in on his head and his belly and when it was done someone knelt over him and told him that if he didn’t fancy wearing his balls for earrings he should leave Olwyn Crayn alone. When Speedie went to work the following day his workmates pretended not to notice that his face was black and blue and that he was holding his ribs.

  Speedie should have taken the hint. Speedie should have been philosophical about the whole thing. Speedie should have consoled himself with the fact that there are many more fish in the sea or with the outright lie that in all probability Olwyn was a lesbian. These were the ruses which would have satisfied the old Speedie and sent him off in some newer, safer direction. But this wasn’t the old Speedie. This was the new improved version, the focused one with a life, and these ploys cut no ice whatsoever with him. Instead, he was just inspired to greater, more desperate measures.

  On the following night Speedie made his final attempt to win Olwyn. He lifted the key to her flat from beneath the stone in the garden, entered, and waited for her to return. When she got back she drank tea in the kitchen with her other flatmates and crashed onto her bed half an hour later. Speedie waited till he heard her sleeping, then climbed out of the wardrobe and up the bed towards her. Olwyn woke instantly and flailed out with both arms, screamed blue murder and woke the whole house. Speedie tumbled down a flight of stairs and was chased from the house by the other tenants. He ran all the way home.

  Speedie was pulled in by the cops the following day and held on remand pending his trial.

  Speedie Ryan’s in prison now, doing two years on charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit bodily harm, both sentences running concurrently. With good behaviour he might get out in a year. Speedie works in the prison mess but he’s a changed man now. He doesn’t say much any more. If you ask him he just shrugs his shoulders and tells you that it’s all in the past, he doesn’t give a fuck any more.

  Speedie’s parents visit him when they can. It’s a difficult journey that takes them to another province but they do the best they can. If you ask them their eyes fill up with tears and they’ll tell you that their hearts are broken seeing their only son behind bars like this.

  Olwyn Crayn is living in a squat in New Road, shacked up with a long-haired slacker who has no work or qualifications and no immediate prospects of acquiring them either. If you talk to him he’ll tell you he’s chilling out, taking it as it comes, there’s no rush. Olwyn sleeps most of the day now and spends the night and early morning watching vids and smoking dope. She hasn’t submitted her graduate thesis so she has yet to get her degree. She might go back and finish it next year, then again she might not, she’ll see how things go. And if you ask her she’ll smile and tell you she’s in love.

  My jeep was one of a dozen vehicles tailed back from the checkpoint. It was the last vehicle in a convoy of three other jeeps, several marked container trucks carrying emergency medical aid and one transit van fitted with radio and signalling equipment. Up ahead, the border security were swarming over the first trucks, searching through the cabs and spilling the contents out onto the dusty road. One of the guards had disappeared into the security hut with a handful of our entry permits. An air of surly menace hung over the guards. They had the aspect of men completing a despicably menial task by way of punishment. Every one of them needed a shave and a new issue of fatigues. The thirty-year occupation showed in every filthy, frayed piece of webbing and in the corroded state of their antiquated weaponry; and this was the occupying army.

  Ours were the first vehicles to gain entry to the occupation in fifteen years. We were a detail of Amnesty observers coming to verify rumours of horrific and systematic human rights abuses. During the last year details of work camps and smuggled photographic evidence of mass rape and torture had been finding its way into the western press. Eventually world conscience had been sufficiently moved to force a UN resolution which achieved a temporary opening of the border. We were the first entrants but, somewhere to our rear, a massive convoy of relief aid under UN guard was wending its way through the desert.

  Evidently this border detail was taking the recent UN resolution as something of a personal insult. Only such lofty censure could account for the sheer sense of affront exuded by the soldier who was making his way towards me. He was a blunt hump of a man whose skin had been weathered to the texture of old leather. His corporal’s stripes were barely visible beneath the mantle of dust that clung about him. He was handing back the visas to the other travellers without a word. When he stood before me I saw that he had also handed out a second document, a few xeroxed pages. I read it through and I quote it here in full. It was titled The Occupation: A Guide for Tourists. It went on:

  1. While travelling in a foreign country you come upon a terrible scene. Atop a hill a young man is being put to death before a crowd of onlookers. He has recently been nailed to a cross. Blood streams from a wound in his side and his thin body is faced into the full glare of the sun. He does not have long to live. Do you:

  A. Feel outrage and disgust and immediately cut the man down from the cross?

  B. Pass quickly without saying a word? You will not presume to meddle in the judicial procedures of your host country. Besides, the man was obviously a notorious criminal who got what was coming to him.

  C. Admire the skill with which the whole tableau has been staged and resolve to seek out the theatre company and make them a lavish contribution.

  If your answer is A, then proceed to 2A, if B to 2B, if C to 2C and so on.

  2A. You take the man to a small hospital on the outskirts of the city and try to sign him in at casualty as your brother. While the man lies bleeding on a trolley you enter into a sordid dispute with the hospital bursar. You finally undertake to pay the medical fees in foreign currency, American dollars and Deutschmarks mainly. You also surrender your passport as security. The patient is wheeled away rapidly for emergency surgery and you spend the next few days in the city while the man is monitored in the intensive care unit.

  2B. You have put the incident quickly out of your mind and spend a few days touring the outlying countryside and city. You discover terrible scenes of waste and devastation. The occupying armies have requisitioned crops and animals and the country’s infrastructure is a shambles. Whole provinces have been isolated by cratered roads and demolished bridges; famine and disease are rife in the worst-hit areas. When you reach the city you find that it is crawling with paupers and wounded veterans, the thoroughfares of the commercial centre are a chevaux-de-frise of broken glass and strewn metal.

  2C. You trace the theatre company to an abandoned warehouse by the railway station. They are a small company specializing in a particularly vivid brutalism. Productions of Hamlet and Oedipus Rex have taken a devastating toll on the players and their confidence is at a low ebb. They have recently h
ad to pull out of an important production because of a shortage of funds. You make an offer to underwrite this new production and it is accepted with gratitude. You are treated as a messiah.

  3A. After four days the young man regains consciousness. He is tended to by a retinue of a dozen men his own age. The surgeon introduces you as his saviour but he is singularly lacking in gratitude when told of your intervention. He accuses you of having thwarted his destiny and of arrogantly meddling in things of which you know nothing.

  3B. An explosion in the commercial area of the city results in many casualties. A rebel attack on an army convoy has been completely mis-timed, the device goes off near a mobile soup kitchen killing mainly women and children, injuring hundreds. You sign up at a mobile blood transfusion unit and donate 500 mls of blood. Pandemonium reigns in the streets and you volunteer to do relief work in one of the field hospitals.

  3C. As part of the underground art movement you learn that the company has a constant fear of infiltration by the authorities: it has been rightly identified as the source of resistance propaganda. Several productions in the past have been shut down by the security forces.

  4A. After ten days your relationship with the patient has not improved. He is incommunicative and evasive. No one will reveal his identity and local police have no record of him having committed any crime. You decide to persevere with your efforts of friendship for a few more days.

  4B. You are contacted at the hotel by the transfusion unit who inform you that you have a developed case of HIV. You spend the rest of the day drinking heavily at the hotel bar. Outside there is a heavy military presence. Patrols move continuously up and down the street, never resting except to disperse small gatherings and send people on their way with a cuff of their gun butts. Overhead, helicopters cross the sky and when night falls searchlights probe the streets. Everyone suspects that there are several more incendiary devices triggered to go off.

  4C. The company has planned a final production of an ancient morality play. It will be a public performance with an overtly political theme; it is hoped that it will incite the city to all-out, unified resistance against the invaders. You are sworn to secrecy and at their request you take on a minor but significant role in the production.

  5A. Psychological tests have shown that the patient suffers from a complex of neuroses ranging from severe paranoia to extreme credulity in occult and New Age religions, healing crystals and tarot cards. The psychologist remarks that this condition is not unusual, the character of the occupation has given rise to several such cases. He has treated several men, all with undocumented pasts, who claim to have healing and regenerative talents. He will not venture a prognosis.

  5B. After four days wandering through the city in a drunken stupor you sober up near a brothel. It is the middle of the night, in heavy darkness, but your mind is now clear. You enter the brothel and promptly engage in several acts of anal intercourse with under-age boys. You then refuse to pay. There follows a tense moment when a search by bouncers reveals that you are carrying no currency whatsoever. You calmly await the arrival of the police.

  5C. Rehearsals are continuing smoothly and you are now enjoying a privileged status within the company. You realize that there is an unspoken effort among the players to court your goodwill. They bring you small gifts of hard-to-get coffee and local craftware. Furthermore you have discovered a talent for acting and your performance has drawn genuine praise from the other players.

  6A. The patient’s attitude has now developed to outright hostility. You narrowly escape serious injury when he attacks you with scissors in the recreation room. You are rescued by four male nurses. The psychologist explains that you have now assumed demonic status in the patient’s imagination. Not only are you responsible for a salvation he did not need but also for the political failure of his death. He suspects that you are an army spy.

  6B. You co-operate fully with your interrogators and admit to having no funds whatsoever. You astonish them further by confessing to six attempted murders via the sexual act. Your captors are in a quandary; they need to prosecute but are unsure of the grounds on which to proceed: the emergency laws have no provisions for dealing with aliens. On a sheet of paper you outline the charges against yourself and draw up details of an emergency bill covering the crime of murder by sexually transmitted disease. You advise that the bill be made law as quickly as possible and waive the right to a preliminary hearing. You are scheduled to stand trial in three days.

  6C. You have begun to covet the lead role in the play. The principal player is a buffoon whose every word and gesture grates on your soul. As a method actor he has immersed himself totally in the role. He has assumed a facile air of wisdom and his speech has become littered with anodyne, pastoral anecdotes. Several of the female players have begun to attest that he has a cure for menstrual cramp. You resolve to turn him over to the authorities. You begin to circulate information about him in various bars and cafeterias.

  7A. You now have misgivings about the wisdom of your intervention. It is revealed to you that the patient is one of the leaders of the resistance and that you have interfered with a mythopoeic event essential to the salvation of the city. Your responsibility for the fate of the people weighs heavily on your conscience and after a night of soul searching you resolve to make amends.

  7B. Your trial begins in the ruins of a religious museum. The witnesses testify from the pulpit and the judge is seated behind the altar. At his back, the door of the tabernacle has been recently shattered. The jury is made up of out-patients from a nearby infirmary. You conduct your own defence but limit your examination to apparently pointless questions on the history of the occupation. In your closing speech you plead guilty and urge that the maximum sentence be handed down. In his summative speech the judge congratulates you on the skill and clarity of your defence. He speaks at length on the ground-breaking nature of the trial and assures you that your name will merit a chapter to itself in the judicial history of his country.

  7C. On his way home from rehearsals the principal actor is picked up by the security forces. After interrogations and beatings he signs a detailed confession outlining various subversive activities and connections. Morale in the company plummets when several more members are implicated. The company is now gutted of a large part of its artistic and administrative talent; its future is in real jeopardy. You move quickly to take charge of the production, promptly casting yourself in the principal role and allocating the lesser ones in such a way as to throw light on your performance. There is a feeling of renewed confidence.

  8A. You outline your plan to the patient and after consultation with his cadre it is decided that it will go ahead. You are issued with a new identity which places you immediately in the pantheon of resistance heroes who have kept the flame of national salvation burning. Within days you are being greeted surreptitiously as the hidden king.

  8B. After only two hours’ deliberation the jury file back into the pews and the foreman returns a guilty verdict. You congratulate yourself on having conducted a successful defence. The judge commends the jury on their verdict and then draws a black cowl over his head before delivering the sentence. You hear that your execution will be expedited immediately and that there are no provisions for an appeal.

  8C. The day of the production is drawing close. Flyers have been distributed and a large crowd is anticipated. The dressmaker works long into the night preparing your costume; there are numerous alterations to be made before it will fit. You spend the rest of the evening at a small restaurant with the rest of the cast.

  9A. The patient briefs you on the details of your mission. Initially overcome by crippling fear, you surmount it with the knowledge that a whole nation is depending on you. Besides, events have now taken on a momentum of their own. You are robed in a regal gown and a makeshift crown is placed upon your head. You are paraded through the slums of the city to a summit on its outskirts, the site of your ascension. On your journey various thugs take the opp
ortunity to indulge in indiscriminate violence, and there are several scuffles with your minders. By the time you reach the summit you have sustained injuries to your abdomen and your cloak has been ripped away.

  9B. You are led from the museum into sunlight wearing a sign which details your crimes. When your eyes have adjusted to the sunshine you are taken through the streets where the crowds are gathering to view some sort of pageant. Upon reading your crimes they grow incensed and start to attack you. They seem to have a ready supply of whips and chains and start to rain blows down upon you. By the time you reach the execution summit your body is running with blood.

  9C. The routes are lined by heavy crowds conspicuously armed with whips, chains and sticks. You move serenely at the head of your supporting cast and the production is going smoothly. Suddenly the onlookers play the part of persecutors. They work your body in passing and by the time you reach the summit your torso is a tracery of lacerations and you have begun to hallucinate. You try to hold your focus on the lines of your parting speech.

  10. Beneath the cross you are given a final moment in which to address the crowd. The soldiers stand aside and an expectant hush descends upon the multitude. You have their full attention. You begin haltingly, it is your first public address and your voice lacks resonance. Gradually, however, you gain in confidence and your speech becomes a ringing affirmation of life, the sacredness of resistance through arms and art and the necessity of justice. The murmur of assent grows until a wave of applause breaks over you; it is sustained while the soldiers take you bodily and hoist you onto the cross. As the nails are driven in you feel no pain, your ecstasy has lifted you beyond sensation. From your perch you can see out over the crowd down onto the ruins of the city. Columns of smoke billow in several parts and food queues are visible in every quarter. This is your kingdom and auditorium, your panopticon, and it remains fixed in your imagination until consciousness, like the daylight, drains away to darkness.