Hugo Hamilton - Every Single Minute

You did what you could.

It was me who killed him, she said.

No you didn’t, don’t say that.

I could have saved him, Liam. It was up to me, nobody else. Once I knew he was abandoned by his own father and mother, he was in my care, nobody’s responsibility but mine. What use is happiness if you leave your brother behind? What does it matter, my artistic life, my rage, my books and all the public attention I got? Was he the price of my success? His happiness the price of mine? Because I knew he was not able to live on his own, without help. He was nobody without me. He was in trouble from the beginning and I did nothing, she said. I was not ready to give up on myself and give away that glimmer of talent, the little tricks I pulled with words, those things that impressed people, the little collection of stories I kept in my head to describe my life. I was afraid to sacrifice that right to be myself in order to keep my brother from going down. I loved him but I was not able to do that, Liam, I could not give up my life for his.

She continued listening to the music.

I should have brought him with me, she said. I should have gone travelling with him.

The music was lifting her words as she began talking about all the places in the world she never got to see because she had not thought of bringing her brother with her. If only I had not abandoned him. He would have given me the courage to go places I had only dreamed of before.

I should have dropped everything, she said. I should not have been so worried about my independence and wanting to create something for myself. Sure what have I got in the end, he’s my story, my reflection, my weakness. I should have been his big sister, his friend, his travelling companion. I should have said to him, listen, Jimmy, we are going to go travelling together. You and me. Come on, Jimmy, I should have said, let’s go away.

Anywhere away.

If only I could go back, she said, I would bring him with me this time. That’s what I would do in my next life. If there was such a thing as the next life, I would take him with me and never let him out of my sight. Jimmy, are you ready, I would say to him. The tickets are booked. We would live like it was the only life. We would start in Berlin and then we would go on trains all across Europe. And when we were finished with Europe, we would move on to Asia and Latin America, all down through South America we would travel together. I would give up writing books and speaking in public. I would stop talking about my life and my family, my memory. We would remember nothing about where we came from and what happened back home, we would keep on travelling, just the two of us, me and my brother Jimmy.

It said in the death notice that she was with her brother now.

Sure what does it matter that he was drinking, she said.

On the gravestone, they have the name of her brother and her own name underneath.

Sure what does it matter that he was taking drugs.

Only the two names together, along with the dates of birth and the dates they died.

We could have had the time of our lives, she said, travelling up and down the world, across the equator how many times, round as often as we liked, all down to the Galápagos and the Indian Ocean and Sri Lanka and Tibet, all those parts of the world in whatever order they come, places that I don’t know yet, all the people we would meet and all the packed trains and suitcases and people sleeping where suitcases are supposed to be kept, back over to Africa where life started in the first place and God knows where do you go on to from there, she said, to the ends of the earth. I should have gone to the ends of the earth for him.

Sure what does it matter as long as we were travelling, she said. What does it matter only that we kept on travelling.

The shoes. The red canvas shoes. I keep thinking that if I had them, I would have brought them back to Berlin with me. That’s the place for them, I feel. I’m only imagining this now. If I had her shoes, I would take them with me in my bag, I would be looking for some place that would keep them long-term. Of course, I don’t know where the shoes are, sneakers, Converse, whatever they’re called now, with the white rubber soles and the rough white stitching and the little steel eyelets for the laces and one lace broken. If it was up to me, if I was in charge of her shoes, I would be storing them somewhere around the city, but where? I’m thinking of the U-Bahn , I would love to put them on top of one of the yellow trains. I would tie the shoelaces together to stop them from getting separated. They would travel back and forth forever underneath the city, indefinitely. But these trains get cleaned regularly, don’t forget, so the shoes might disappear and never be seen again. Better still. If I had them, her shoes, I might even take them with me to the Pergamon Museum, into the room with all those bits of marble that don’t fit together any more, unfinished. There’s a pillar I’ve been looking at, medium height, where I could easily throw them up on top. They would be there forever, part of this permanent exhibition of Greek artefacts. But it’s only a thought, of course, never to be carried out. Maybe the rightful thing to do with her shoes would be to bring them back to Clare, that’s where they belong. Where her shoes covered most ground. Maybe they should be brought back to the Burren, somewhere out along the cliffs. On a ledge somewhere, out of reach. But I don’t have them. The shoes. The red canvas shoes. I have no idea where they are.

I’m going through the photographs of Berlin and there is one I have of her at the memorial. She is surrounded by all those grey columns. It shows her from the side, sitting in her wheelchair, shoulders hunched against the wind. Her hand is holding the collar of her black coat around her neck. She looks cold. Her head is bowed, uncovered, no hair. She’s staring at the ground. And it’s not one of those photographs like so many of the others where she’s doing her best to smile at the camera.

She has taken off her cap. Why? I don’t know.

It’s a hard photograph to look at, with her head bare and nothing but grey columns around her, some that are not straight either, leaning to one side, uneven, sinking columns.

I think it was a hard place for her to go to. Because she was dying and still she wanted to remember millions of other people dead. It was hard for her, I think, to say to herself that she was less important than all those other people. She felt small and insignificant, so she told me afterwards. As though her death was not really much to speak about now. Not even the death of her own brother could matter here. There was something about sitting among the grey columns that haunted her. As though she was in a church with no roof and no windows and you were not really meant to speak.

I suppose it’s such an instinctive thing, taking a photograph. I get the camera out of my pocket, I don’t know why. I suppose I’m trying to keep something, trying to hold on to her. In fact, it’s only when I step back to take the photograph that she takes off the cap. She holds the collar of her coat around her neck with one hand and takes her cap off with the other. I don’t really know why she has made the decision to take off the cap at this moment, in the cold. This is the time to put on your cap, not the time to take it off. But maybe it’s something she does out of respect. It looks like her head has been shaved. Her skull is exposed to the wind. She looks like she’s closer to death than ever before. She cannot get any closer to death. But she is still alive in that photograph. And there is still time in that photograph to push the wheelchair away, there is still time to get back to the car and back to the hotel, there’s still time for her to see her family, there’s still time to get her back to Dublin before she is dead.