Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

Castrolami came into the annexe.

Lukas raised his head, queried with his eyes.

Castrolami said, ‘She’s strong, she’s fine. I have other surprises for her, but she’s good. What do we have here?’

The collator used his hands for the gesture. The psychologist murmured, ‘ Niente di nuovo,’ and shrugged, seeming to squirm a little at ‘Nothing new’, and the ROS men kept their heads down, as if they declined to be part of the failure.

Lukas said, to himself, to Castrolami, to anyone with nothing better to do than strain and listen to the gentle lilt of his voice, the soft accent when he spoke in Italian, ‘It’s what we do, isn’t it? We sit around and we wait. We live off sandwiches and fries and high-dosage coffee, and we tell ourselves that the break will come. Don’t know from where and don’t know how but we have to believe it will. Smoke too much, eat too much, drink too much caffeine, but be ready to go, because we’re not the people out with the kids at a parents’ staff meeting, and we’re not at the goddam cinema, and we’re not doing a fishing weekend up-country, so we wait, and we believe it’ll come… And if we get the break, and if we get up front and we have audio contacts, maybe even an eyeball contact, it may get played out for a week or be settled in a half-minute – a few words that foul up or do the business. We hit the break running, and we can’t say we’re tired or that we’re coming off shift, or that we’re going into a meal stoppage, and because of all that we’re the privileged few. What’s best – my small, insignificant opinion – is that we’re not in armies and we don’t have a big picture to fulfil, or generals breathing on our shoulders. We’re anonymous and unsung, and we don’t get to stand in a line for a regulation quota of medals. We live in the dirt, we operate in dark corners, we’re accountable only to success or failure. We smell and don’t get back home or to a hotel room for changes of underwear and socks, but there’s no place I’d rather be, and there are no people here that I wouldn’t want to be with. I hope we get the boy back. That about wraps up the bullshit stakes – apologies and all that.’

One of the ROS guys muttered, ‘Bravo,’ and repeated himself. Another slapped the stock of a weapon he was cleaning. Lukas had not, in his adult and working life, made a remotely similar declaration. It was as if the boy, the victim, had released something trapped deep in his soul, reached where no others had. Someone else folded his magazine tight and hit Bravo’s head with it in simulated applause. And he recognised that a sense of growing apprehension, new and unlearned, had driven him to make the speech. And there was a short rippled clap from the collator and the psychologist. Apprehension? He cut it. Before it blazed, he doused it.

Castrolami, dry, asked, ‘You do that talk most days?’

‘Every morning in front of the shaving mirror.’

The quip, bogus, was ignored. ‘Are you quitting, win or lose?’

‘Doubt I’ve anything else to do. Suppose not.’

‘Why did you say that stuff?’

‘Seemed a good idea.’ Lukas grinned. ‘You wait for the break – what’s the puzzle? You don’t know where it’s coming from, but the chance is that it comes.’

Gerald Seymour

The Collaborator

He was asked by a voice, now detached, the face in shadow, did he want food? It hurt Eddie to speak. It meant he had to suck air into his lungs, which expanded his ribcage and the bones that might be cracked. His throat was dry, his lips grotesquely misshapen. His voice was a croak. ‘I don’t… Thank you. No.’

There was no reaction: no indication of softening and a degree of kindness, or offence that the offer was refused. Eddie couldn’t read the face high above him. He was unable to judge whether the chance of food meant that his hope of survival was greater or less. Did they bloody bond? Was it a last meal being ordered? He couldn’t control the rambling of his thoughts, which bounced, pinballs in a machine: home, Immacolata, work, the guys in the house, her again, pains in his chest and head, curry in the Afghan, the knife or the pistol, Immacolata. Some of the thoughts, jumbled and without process, were comforting; others wounded.

He didn’t understand why the man, Salvatore, stood over him, watched him.

Should he have accepted the food?

Did refusing it diminish his lifespan by a day, an hour, five minutes, or did it make no difference?

He had said he didn’t want food because he wasn’t hungry – seemed a good enough reason to turn it down. His throat itched, seemed rubbed raw.

Eddie wheezed, ‘Please, I’d like water.’

‘You would like water?’

‘Please… yes… please.’ Did it play well if he grovelled? Should he not stand upright for himself? Eddie didn’t know whether he should be cowed or whether he should goddam show some fight – there was no one to tell him. He thought he needed to earn respect and wouldn’t if he bowed, scraped, slithered. ‘I want some water.’

‘You want water?’

‘Bring me water.’

Would he be kicked? Was there any more shit left in him to be kicked out? He saw the shadow turn and it was gone from the doorway. The darkness was falling. A light came on down a corridor and he heard running water. Well, Eddie had a target, a new aim. Might not live, might not hang on and cling to the pulsebeat, but he was looking to achieve respect. What a man wanted. The tap was turned off. A light was switched off. The feet came back down the corridor and across the room, then the shadow shape filled the doorway.

Eddie looked up at the shadow. ‘Thank you…’ He coughed. ‘… for bringing me water. Thank you.’

The shadow moved. A bucket swung. The water came in a wall, slapped hard into Eddie’s face and drenched him. It was in his eyes, his ears, up his nostrils and down his throat. His lips smarted and he feel sharp stubs of pain from the grazes on his face. The water puddled on the floor round him. He expected, then, to be kicked and tried to curl himself up so that the soft parts of his body were better protected – but no kick came. He thought he would hear the maniacal laughter of a man demented. There was none.

More movement in the doorway.

Eddie dared to look.

The man, Salvatore, bent his knees, slid his back down the door jamb, then pushed his legs out. His trainers buffeted Eddie’s knees, but it wasn’t a kicking.

Salvatore sat with him.

A second cigarette was offered, held up in front of his eyes, and Eddie nodded. It was put between his lips. There was a brief flash from the lighter and Eddie sucked. He could hear distant, occasional traffic and a cacophony of barking dogs. The smoke climbed. His thoughts were sharp now, as if they’d been tempered on stone, and the moments when he had bounced them, juggled them, were gone. He had learned a truth: a man had total physical control over him, could snuff out his life as easily as he would let go of the little lever that kept the cigarette lighter alive, yet the man was vulnerable. Eddie reckoned that the water thrown over him, and the cigarette between his swelled lips were signs of earned respect.

‘If you want to talk,’ Eddie said, ‘I’ll listen.’

There was only silence and he could hear the rhythm of Salvatore’s breathing.

And Eddie heard, also, the dogs bark again, raucous, as if a pack hunted.

They had frightened away the rats, which scurried to holes. The dogs circled the body.

The rats and dogs fed well round the rubbish bins at the base of the Sail. The rats had made a meal of the blood, and the dogs, soon, would use the body as a toy.

A mastiff-cross was the pack leader. Had that dog been a pedigree, a pure Neapolitan mastiff – the symbol of the most fanatical tifosi following the city’s Serie A football team in the glory days when Diego Maradona had lit it – it would have been pampered, not running free among the rubbish bags of Naples’s most deprived rione. It would not have gone close to the corpse, sniffed it, then worried at its clothing and taken a leg in its jaws. This animal, though born to a mongrel bitch, retained many of the mastiff characteristics. It weighed in excess of seventy kilos, and lifted the man with ease. The beasts in its pack attempted to join in, tugging at the other leg, the arms, the head and strips of clothing.