Hugo Hamilton - Every Single Minute

The city is a contradiction, she said to me.

And she was a contradiction too, she was the first to admit. It’s my life and I have the right to contradict myself. I’m a big, random life, full of messy contradictions, that’s what she said. And at some point all the contradictions in a person fit together into one life. The contradictions are not contradictions any more, they become the story. Like all the contradictions come together in one city.

If there was a clue to describe who she really was, then maybe it was something in herself that was always missing. Some place inside that could not be reached. Something that remained unresolved, put on hold. She said she had the weather inside her, changing all the time. Her life was a mixed-up condition, so she said, swinging between sadness and happiness, between loving everything and regretting everything.

She told me about one of the great moments in her life. The time when they were travelling in Italy together. Herself and Noleen. Along the coast. Going by the side of the cliffs, on a train, through the tunnels. Every now and again the carriage was thrown into darkness. From what she was saying it was probably not unlike the end of the day and when they came out of the tunnel it was a new day beginning, I know that feeling. The view of the sea bursting into the carriage again. She said it was hard to look, it was blinding, your eyes would start watering with all the brightness. They were alone in the carriage together, with the window wide open and the breeze blowing in, flapping at their hair, at their light summer clothes.

They had only one book to read on the train, she told me. Noleen and myself, she said, we had an argument over who was going to read it first. I won the toss because I was the faster reader and it was me who brought the book in the first place, she said. But then Noleen started distracting me, looking out the window and making remarks in her deep voice, making me laugh. In fact Noleen decided to sing a song. Thank God there was nobody listening, she said, whatever it was. I’m glad it was not Bob Dylan. At least I hope she was not singing ‘Girl from the North Country’, she said. We did that as a duet together sometimes, we murdered it. Noleen could do Johnny Cash with her deep voice, and I did Bob Dylan, because I couldn’t sing at all.

Noleen was like a big sister, she said, making me laugh in spite of myself, reminding me that there was more to life than the characters in a book. So you know what we did, Úna said. After I read each page I tore it out and passed it over to her.

That’s how we read the novel, she said. Every time I finished a page I ripped it out and Noleen read it. And when she was finished reading it she put each page neatly down on the seat beside her. At one point, coming out of a tunnel, she said, a gust of wind came into the carriage like an invisible hand, like the hand of the next reader impatiently grabbing the pages off the seat and pulling them out the window in no sequence at all. Some of the pages flew down towards the cliffs, she said. Some of them went up vertically, up over the roof of the train. Some of them flew along the length of the train, attempting to get back on again, trying some of the doors and windows further down. Honestly, she said, they looked like birds. White birds with writing on them. An entire novel full of birds left behind along that journey.

What was the book?

I can’t tell you that, she said.

What was it about?

I’m not sure I can remember too much of what was in it, she said.

She could only remember the pages flying. Then the train stopped. We were held up somewhere along the coast, she said, miles away from anywhere, with the sounds of clicking and snapping in the metal underneath. I’ll never forget it, she said, as long as I live. Only the two of us alone inside the compartment and the heat and the breeze coming in from the sea across both open windows. Nobody came to tell us anything or explain why we were stopped. Over three hours the train was unable to move because of a forest fire ahead. We could smell the smoke in the carriage, she said. We were stuck in time. Everything on hold. Two women, she said, left behind on a train overlooking the Adriatic. Staring at the blue sea. And the terns diving. The terns squeaking and diving, like pages from the book, she said, because they changed direction so fast.

I told her what happened with my daughter. Úna wanted to know all that, about Maeve going to see her real father. I told her how she had been trying to contact him, the biological father, but he refused to get back to her.

Think about this clearly, I said to Maeve. He’s not going to get back to you, that’s guaranteed. And there is nothing to be gained by going to see him in his house, I said, only more trouble. Think about what’s important, Maeve, I said. Think about the good things, like I try to remember good things about my own father. Remember the time you wanted to be a unicorn for Halloween, I said. A golden unicorn. The trouble it took to make that outfit before you changed your mind at the last minute and wanted to be an angel instead, so I had to find wings somewhere quickly. I don’t know if Maeve remembers a lot of those things, only me reminding her.

You can’t plan what a child is going to remember.

Maeve was very cool about all this. I’ve never seen her more confident. She put her hands around my face and called me Dad and said this was only something she had to do for herself, she used the word identity.

She knew what he looked like, her biological father. She had pictures downloaded off the net. Photos of him at conferences in America, Germany, Cairo and places like that. Looking really well, I have to say. The same as ever. Serious, afraid of nobody, but also up for a laugh as always. His hair is a different colour now, darker than I remember. Only his moustache is the same colour as before.

She tried to make an appointment to see him, but he was unavailable. His secretary was protecting him, so I gather, from people not referred to him by other legal practices, people coming to him with private matters, unsolicited, if you like. So then Maeve decided to go in there, into the courts, in person. It’s a public place, she’s perfectly entitled to be there as much as anyone else.

Maeve found out where he was likely to be. She’s that type of person, I said, just like her mother, quite determined. She went there and examined all the lawyers standing around, waiting for the court to be in session. Trying to identify her father.

Her biological father, Úna said.

Yes, that’s right, I said. And then she found him. He was standing in a group, she recognized him straight away, no mistake, dressed in a suit, with a black gown loosely draped around his shoulders. Maeve said he had a look of calmness, a single-minded expression, full of concentration. He was accepting a file from somebody and nodding, or half bowing, slowly, to say thank you. He was shaking hands with one or two of the other lawyers and smiling. She saw him leaning his head down to listen to somebody whispering some last-minute information into his ear.

She walked right up and apologized for interrupting him, but she would like to have a word, she spoke his name.

He didn’t react, so Maeve told me. She repeated herself, giving her own name this time. It’s Maeve, she said to him. She didn’t say the word daughter, she had no intention of embarrassing him. But he was in preparation mode for the trial. He turned away from her. He had no time to be distracted by things that were long in the past now and as much forgotten as they could be.

He didn’t hear, Úna said.

He must have heard, I said. Everyone else heard. You know when your name has been called. There has to be a little tug, when the voice that says something connects with the ear that hears it, don’t you think?