Hugo Hamilton - Every Single Minute

What were they thinking?

She asks Manfred that question like a girl. Because she likes to go back in time to the very beginning to try and work it out logically, step by step. She lets on that she’s like a blank envelope and she knows nothing about the Cold War or anything to do with the twentieth century. She wants Manfred to go over the whole story again, as if that part of history was happening in front of us.

How can they put up a wall, she says, in the middle of a city? Manfred. Could you explain that to me?

So Manfred gives her a summary of the time before he was born, which is more complicated than you might think. He blows air out through his lips and gives her a list of facts while the traffic is talking over him, arguing with him. And she’s ticking off things inside her head, waiting for him to come up with something new. She likes the story of the woman escaping by clinging on underneath a car, but she wants Manfred to tell her something about himself, what side of the wall he grew up on. So he tells her that he was only a child in the west and he would never have met his Polish wife, Olga, if the wall was still there.

The past is so childish, she says.

She asks Manfred would he mind getting her a bottle of water, she’s thirsty. He goes away but she calls him back to give him the money. It takes a moment for her to search around in her bag, even though she can clearly see her purse from the outside. When Manfred is gone she sits forward in the wheelchair with her arms folded, trying to imagine his life.

Imagine Manfred on one side of the wall, she says, and Olga on the other, unable to get to each other. Imagine the wall coming down and Olga rushing across into Manfred’s arms and they have three children in quick succession. Imagine being born at the right time, she says. Imagine being born too early or too late. Imagine not knowing that things can change. Imagine all the news not reported yet. Things we don’t know yet. All the people coming after me, she says.

Imagine not knowing what happened in the past, she says. Imagine things happening and you thought they were just happening.

Imagine not knowing about 9/11.

Maybe she’s lost the thread of what she was about to say. She begins worrying about Buddy again, because she once lost him on one of her walks and thought he would never come back again. It was the worst moment of her life, she says.

Don’t worry about Buddy, I tell her. He’s fine.

He misses me, she says.

So I try to put her mind at rest again and tell her that Buddy is the best-cared-for dog in Ireland. He’s living like a prince, like a celebrity.

Manfred comes back with the water. He takes the cap off the bottle for her and she has a drink. Then she hands the bottle to me along with the cap to screw back on again and she gets out a bar of chocolate, she’s hungry. I ask her would she like to go and eat something, a sandwich maybe, but she says she’ll be fine with the chocolate.

I feel like a feather, she says.

She has trouble opening the chocolate. Her hands are gone weak, so I offer to help her but she snatches it away saying she can still manage.

She’s dying, don’t forget.

She rips the cover off the chocolate like a letter she’s been waiting for. I can hear the sound of the silver paper over the traffic. She horses into it, as she would say herself, biting straight into the chocolate as if it’s the last chocolate bar on earth. I can hear the black squares snapping off inside her mouth, grinding between her teeth, like she’s eating bits of black tiling. She holds the bar out where she can keep an eye on it, not letting it out of her sight, waiting to break off the next bit as if she’s trying to finish the whole thing before something happens, before somebody comes and takes it off her, somebody who needs it more. And she’s stamping her right foot up and down. That’s my memory of it, her right foot stamping on the footrest to help with the chewing. She’s rocking a bit also, in a rhythm, and there is a melody, some sort of high droning note full of unspoken things coming from the back of her throat. A black paste on her lips and the noise of the traffic over the chewing. Manfred and me watching her without looking.

Sorry, she says.

Then she offers the chocolate around, speaking with a black mouth, something that doesn’t sound like the full spelling.

Here, she says. I have more in my bag.

I notice that she has a big smear of chocolate across the side of her face, so I get out a tissue to clean it off. I put the tissue up to the top of the bottle of water and turn it upside down so I can wipe her face clean. She doesn’t notice me doing this. Instead, she holds on to my hand and asks me again about Buddy.

Will you call Mary for me, Liam?

Now?

I need to know that he’s OK, she says, has he enough water?

You want me to call her from here?

Please, Liam. He’s an outdoors dog. He gets down if he doesn’t get a good run.

So I make the call to Dublin, because she’s getting restless, one of those anxiety spikes. She might start crying. She’s putting even larger pieces of chocolate into her mouth, two squares at a time if not more, silver paper and all, and I’m on the phone to Mary, telling her that we’re making good progress, we’ve got as far as the Berlin Wall. We’re not doing this chronologically, I explain to Mary, not the way it happened in history, more like a random tour, pick and mix. I’m on the phone saying sorry to bother you with this Mary, but there is one small problem, if that’s all right, it’s Buddy. I think she misses him.

I just want to say hello to him, Úna says.

So I relay that request to Mary, could she put the phone up to Buddy’s ear, would that be possible? Could she put it on speaker phone maybe? And, of course, there is no question, Mary will do anything in the world. I pass the phone on to Úna so she can have a word with Buddy. She gives me what’s left of the chocolate to put back into her bag while she speaks to Buddy with black teeth smiling.

Come here, Buddy, she says. Come on, good boy. You’re such a good boy. There’s a good boy, Buddy. Come here.

You’re in Berlin.

It doesn’t make sense. But you know what she’s getting at, she wants him to feel that she’s near. She continues slapping her hand on her thigh, saying, good boy, come here, Buddy.

He can hear me, Liam.

Manfred is standing by in case we need him.

He’s barking, Liam. He knows it’s me.

She hands me the phone as if I don’t believe her.

Here, Liam, you speak to him.

So there I am at the Berlin Wall saying come here Buddy. Shoe, Buddy. Get the shoe. It’s his favourite game. Shoe.

Stop winding him up, Úna says.

He’s barking like mad now. I go through the motions, pretending to throw a shoe and hide it behind my back.

He’s a Border Collie, Liam. Don’t get him so worked up, he’s only going to be searching all over the house, tearing the place apart, and poor Mary will have to give him a shoe of her own to calm him down again.

Shoe, Buddy. Shoe.

Will you stop tormenting him, Liam. Give me the phone.

He was there at the funeral, Buddy. Right up at the front, with Mary. I remember him barking once or twice in the church, everybody heard it. He must have been confused over his whereabouts. Probably thought the interior of the church was outdoors, would he? While she was dying he was very unsettled because the house was full of people coming to visit her. The house was over-subscribed, overwhelmed, one of those words. People trying to get in the door to see her, people she wanted to see and people she didn’t want to see. They were all the same to Buddy, I think. What am I saying? He knows people individually, by their clothes, their smell, he knows the difference between a man and a woman. He’s very intelligent, so he probably never forgets a face. And it’s only a small house, a terraced cottage. Artisan, they call it. The front door opens straight onto the living room, in off the street.