Hugo Hamilton - Every Single Minute

And then Emily came down the stairs, wearing a similar dressing gown. They looked so alike, Emily and Maeve. They both had the same hair tied up, identical. They looked like they were going for an early-morning swim. Mother and daughter. One swimming ahead of the other. What was going on, Emily wanted to know. Was I making mountains of chips again, in the middle of the night? Yes, we we’re having a few chips, I said. Emily sat down at the table and tasted one of the chips and Maeve started talking. Maeve was telling us everything. How she had met somebody, his name was Shane, he makes me laugh a lot, she said, and his family owns a farm in Leitrim with the ruins of an ancient church on their land, all covered in ivy, it would be lovely to get married there, out in the open with no roof.

It was getting bright outside, I could hear the birds. We still had the lights on because it was in between night and next day. I got up to make a few more chips, another batch, why not? I continued listening to Maeve and started peeling more and more potatoes, not knowing when to stop.

We should be watching the time. By right we should be heading straight back to the hotel at this point. It’s late in the afternoon and I’m not sure she’s up to seeing anything now, she can’t absorb any more sights. She must be exhausted, there is something going on in her thoughts that she’s not letting me know about. I can see it in her eyes, she’s worried. And for a day that was quite warm, it’s gone quite cold. Getting out of the car you feel it. But she’s determined to see the memorial. It’s on the list of things she wanted to see, the list I gave Manfred, no question of leaving it out.

At first you think it’s not finished yet, like a building site. All these grey blocks or square concrete pillars, columns with a smooth concrete finish. It’s not fenced off or anything. You see a few people walking around between the columns and you realize that it’s been designed to look like that, empty, unequal, in long lines at different levels, with columns getting taller and deeper and further away, this is what people have come to see.

The sun has gone and the wind is coming straight through. There’s no shelter. She won’t be able to stand the cold out here for very long, that’s what I’m saying to myself. This is going to be very brief, so we leave everything in the car, she won’t be needing her bag. I make sure she has her cap on. And why does she not have a scarf?

Manfred is waiting by the car.

There’s no official entrance, so you can make your way in from any side you like. Straight into the low columns or straight into the high columns, there’s no difference. I push the wheelchair into a row that leads us towards the centre, if there is a centre. The ground is uneven with cobbles. The front wheels rattle and the wheelchair is tilted, like on a rough road. I continue pushing the wheelchair further along the row going down and we’re almost underground at this stage, that’s the feeling. She wants to stop and look around. There’s nobody there. You don’t hear anything much. You could be lost and nobody would know. We’re talking about a place right in the middle of the city that makes you feel like you could be left behind, deserted. Nothing but lines of grey columns and grey cobbles. And you would expect a bit more shelter down there but the wind is actually stronger, like a wind tunnel, the gap between the columns is pulling the wind from far off and you feel even more exposed.

I thought it was the cold that made her so silent. But she said she didn’t feel anything, she was fine. Later on she told me that it made her feel guilty being there. She wouldn’t tell me what it was that made her feel guilty, only that she felt guilty and she could not say. It seemed to me that everybody visiting this place was bringing their own guilt with them, leaving it behind in the concrete. This is only something I thought to myself afterwards. It felt as though all the guilt in the world was being brought here, adding to the columns, growing new columns. As if this was the collecting point where all the guilt was going to be kept from now on.

Is silence even a good word for it? I’m not sure. There among the grey columns you could hear all the words that were still calling out to be said. The silence underneath the streets, coming up through the pavement. That’s what I was listening to, I think. An entire city full of words not even invented yet coming up to the surface.

It was too cold to speak. So I got her back to the hotel and she wanted to go up to her room alone, I respected that. She wanted to spend some time on her own, without me asking questions. Even when I was not asking questions, my presence was like a conscience walking beside her.

So that’s when I went to speak to Manfred and she went upstairs to her room. I gave Manfred the plans for the evening and let him know that we didn’t need him any more. I must have been there speaking to Manfred for a couple of minutes, no more. He protested a bit, but then he accepted the instructions given to him and left. And in that short space of time, she had gone up in the elevator. She must have got to the right floor because I had pressed the right number for her and even watched the dial outside going all the way up to the fourth floor. She knew the number of her room, there was no fear of her getting lost.

When I was finished talking to Manfred, I went up to my room. I could understand that she wanted to be alone, but I phoned her room to make sure there was nothing she needed. There was no answer. I went around to knock on her door. She was probably having a rest and I didn’t want to disturb her. I walked up and down the corridor and came back to knock again, because it was not like her to ignore me like this without some reason. She should have told me that she was fine, at least, not to worry. And when I was getting no answer, I thought there might have been something wrong, was there some emergency I needed to help her with? I didn’t want to start worrying too much, only that hearing nothing made me think the worst. If only she had her mobile I could have contacted her that way, but it was switched off and I had her see-through bag in my hand in any case. I called her room again. There was still no answer, so I went back down to the lobby to see if she had somehow gone down there to look for me. That’s the only way I could explain it to myself. I was trying not to assume the worst thing right away. I even checked outside the hotel on the street, in case she went out there to see if I was talking to Manfred by the car, which was gone at that point. I ran back inside and went upstairs once more, banging on the door and shouting this time to see if she was all right in there. All I could think of doing was to go back down to the lobby, into the restaurant, around the hallways, anywhere I thought she might have got lost looking for me. I went to the reception to ask if she had left a message. She had to be in her room. I was sure something had happened to her. She might have fallen, maybe worse. I had no option but to go back to the reception desk and tell them it was an emergency. Not that I wanted to alarm them, only would they mind opening the door of her room, it was stupid of me not to have kept a spare key. This took a little while because they had to check my identity before they could even talk to me about another guest at the hotel. I explained that I was meant to be looking after her, so eventually they must have seen by the way I spoke, slightly agitated and almost losing my patience, that I was serious. They agreed to phone her room. But, of course, there was no answer, I could have told them that. And then I was thinking what kind of way was this to look after her? I should never have let her out of my sight.