Dan Vyleta - Smoke

It takes Collingwood a moment to collect his voice. He answers with the ritual phrase.

“Please, sir. Examine me.”

“You submit willingly?”

“I do. May my sins be revealed.”

“That they will and that they must. We thank the Smoke.”

“We thank the Smoke.”

And then, in chorus: “We thank the Smoke.”

Even Thomas mouths it, that hateful little phrase. He only learned it upon coming to the school, not six weeks ago, but already it has found time to grow into him, taken a leasehold on his tongue. It may be it can only be excised with a knife.

The interrogation begins. Julius’s voice rings clear in the large room. His is a pleasant voice, precise, rhythmic, sonorous. When he wants to, he can sound like your favourite uncle. Like your brother. Like a friend.

“You’re a prefect, Collingwood,” he begins. It is like Julius to begin there. Somewhere harmless. It makes you lower your guard. “How long has it been now since you earned the badge?”

“A year and a term, sir.”

“A year and a term. And you are pleased with the position?”

“I am pleased to serve.”

“You are pleased to serve. An excellent answer. You discharge your duties faithfully, I take it?”

“I endeavour to, sir.”

“And how do you think of those boys of whom you have been put in charge?”

“Think of them. Sir? With. . with fondness. With affection.”

“Yes, very good. Though they are perfect little brutes sometimes, are they not?”

“I trust, sir, they are as good as they can be, sir.”

“One ‘sir’ will do, Collingwood.”

Julius waits out the momentary titter that races through the room. His face, standing to the side of the lamp, is in darkness. All the world is reduced to one boy, one chair. When Collingwood fidgets, his nightshirt rides up higher on his legs and he has to pull it down with his hands. He does so clumsily. His hands have formed fists he has difficulty unclenching.

“But you like to punish them, don’t you, your little charges who are as good as they can be. Sometimes, you punish them quite severely, I believe. Just yesterday, many a boy here saw you administer a caning. Twenty-one strokes. Good ones, too. The school nurse had to treat the welts.”

Collingwood is sweating, but he is equal to this line of questioning.

“What I do,” he says, “I do only to improve them.” And adds, with a touch of boldness: “The punishment hurts me more than them.”

“You love them then, these boys.”

Collingwood hesitates. It is a strong word, love. Then settles on: “I love them like a father.”

“Very good.”

There has, thus far, been not so much as a wisp of Smoke. Collingwood’s shirt remains clean, his collar pristine, his armpits sweat-soaked but unsoiled. And yet there is not one amongst the boys simple enough to conclude that Collingwood has spoken the exact truth. The laws of Smoke are complex. Not every lie will trigger it. A fleeting thought of evil may pass unseen; a fib, an excuse, a piece of flattery. Sometimes you can lie quite outrageously and find yourself spared. Everyone knows the feeling, knows it from childhood: of being questioned by your mother, or your governess, by the house tutor; of articulating a lie, pushing it carefully past the threshold of your lips, your palms sweaty, your guts coiled into knots, your chin raised in false confidence; and then, the sweet balm of relief when the Smoke does not come. At other times, the Smoke is conjured by transgressions so trifling you are hardly aware of them at all: you reach for the biscuits before they’ve been offered; you smirk as a footman slips on the freshly polished stairs. Next thing you know its smell is in your nose. There is no more hateful smell in the world than the smell of Smoke.

But for now Collingwood remains free of it. He has passed his examination with flying colours. Only, he isn’t finished yet: Julius. Still he stands, angling the lamp. It is as though his voice pours out along with the light.

“Your brother died not long ago, did he not?”

The question takes Collingwood by surprise. For the first time he appears hurt rather than afraid. He answers quietly.

“Yes.”

“What was he called, your brother?”

“Luke.”

“Luke. Yes. I remember your telling me about him. How you played as little boys.” Julius watches Collingwood squirm. “Remind me. How did Luke die?”

There is no mistaking the resentment in the answer. Still it comes.

“He drowned. He fell out of a boat.”

“I see. A tragedy. How old was he?”

“Ten.”

“Ten? So young. How long to his eleventh birthday?”

“Three and a half weeks.”

“That is unfortunate.”

Collingwood nods and begins to cry.

Thomas understands the tears. Children are born in sin. Most babies turn black with Smoke and Soot within minutes of being born, and every birthing bed and every infant crib is surrounded by the dark plume of shame. The gentlefolk and all commoners who can afford it employ nurses and attendants to look after the child until Good begins to ripen in it, at age three or four. Sometimes they make a point of barring the child from all family intercourse until it is six or seven: from love, and so they will not grow to despise it. Smoke is tolerated to the eleventh year: the Holy Book itself suggests the threshold before which grace is only achieved by saints. If you die before eleven, you die in sin and go to hell. But (thank the Virgin) it is a lesser hell than those reserved for adults: a children’s hell. In picture books it is often depicted as a kind of hospital or school, with long, long corridors and endless rows of prim, white beds. Thomas owned such a book when he was growing up and drew in it: drew colour, people, strange walking birds that trailed long feathers like bridal trains. It is the tradition in many of the older families to hire a bond servant when a child turns ten whose only task is to guard the young one’s life. If the bond servant fails, he is put to death. One calls them rooks, these bond servants, for they dress all in black and often trail their own Smoke like a curse.

Julius has given the boys time to digest all this, the weight of little Luke’s death. That lamp whose beam he is steadying must be heavy in his hand, and hot. But he is patient.

“Was Luke alone? In the boat, I mean.”

Collingwood speaks but his answer is inaudible. His tears have ceased now. Even though he still wears his nightshirt, he has been stripped of something these last few minutes, some protective layer that we carry on our skins.

“Come, come, man. Out with it. Who was it? Who was in the boat with your ten-year-old brother when he drowned?”

But Collingwood has clamped up and no word will pass his trembling lips.

“It appears you have forgotten. I shall help you then. Is it not true that it was your father who was in the boat? And is it not also true that he was drunk and slept through the drowning, and only woke when the servants found the boat stuck amongst reeds in a riverbank three miles down the stream?”

“Yes,” says Collingwood, having refound his tongue. He almost shouts it, in fact, his voice an octave higher than it was but a minute ago.

“And,” asks Julius, matching the shout with a whisper, “do you love your father as the Holy Book instructs us to?”

Collingwood need not answer. The Smoke does it for him. One notices it at the shoulders first, and where the sweat has plastered the nightshirt to his skin: a black, viscous blot, no bigger than a penny. It’s like he’s bleeding ink. Then the first wisps of Smoke appear, stream from these dark little spots, leaving gritty Soot behind.

Collingwood hangs his head, and trembles.