Alastair Bruce - Wall of Days

The footsteps stop, first outside the room next door, then outside my door. The handle turns slowly. Then they move off, further down the corridor.

I look around me. The walls are hidden for the most part. Against them leans a jumble of boxes, furniture and planks. It seems this room is used only for storage. I begin shifting some of the wood. I find a small wooden box. Shaking it produces a rattling sound. I open it and inside I find a child’s toy, a man made of sticks, held together with twine. Or a woman perhaps, it is impossible to tell. I place it in my coat pocket to give to Amhara when next I see her. I pull back a large plank to see what’s behind it. There is something leaning against the wall.

It comes flooding back to me. I feel prickles at the back of my neck.

The colours are faded, bits of paint are starting to flake off but there is no doubt what it is, who it is. It is me. I am in three-quarter profile but looking directly at the artist. The portrait that used to be behind my desk. The same painting. I look fiercer than I remember. I am in military uniform. There is black writing beneath the picture. I do not remember that either and I cannot make out what it says. This is it.

This is the proof that will force them to confront me. I peer closely at the writing but still can’t make it out.

I take the painting and go to the wall dividing the rooms. I knock on it. A shuffling. Indistinct. The sound a mouse might make.

‘I will come for you.’

I don’t know if I can be heard. I speak louder. ‘I will come back for you. I promise.’

There is no one in the corridor. I walk back to the Marshal’s office.

The door is closed and locked. I see no one else in the building.

Outside though, the man from the office stands at one end of the courtyard. Though I have the portrait wrapped up and he cannot see what it is, there can be no doubt I have taken something. But he does not follow me. He watches me leave.

I see Amhara in the street. She wears the red tunic. She is some way ahead of me, darting in and out of sight, down side streets, up alleys.

She stops and turns, looks in my direction. I hold my hand up to her.

She is silhouetted red against a white building.

I go to her. As I get closer her companions emerge from the shadows, from the streets and walk up to me, float up to me. Their eyes are unblinking. They’re close and they reach out to me. One grabs my arm, another pulls at my coat. They’re silent, crowding around me. Amhara hasn’t moved. She is taller than the others. ‘Leave him,’ she says. They look away and run off, disappearing again into the streets. Amhara stays, looks up at me. She takes my hand and squeezes. Her eyes like mine. The world is so much smaller in this moment. Everything stops.

I open my mouth to speak but she turns and is gone. I remember the toy in my pocket too late.

I place the portrait in the shelter, covering it with tarpaulin. Andalus does not seem to notice what I’m carrying.

‘I have proof,’ I say to him.

He leans against the wooden frame of the shelter.

‘Proof that everything is as I say it is. Proof that you and I are the bedrock on which this settlement has been built. Our settlements.’

I watch his eyes.

‘And still you don’t speak. I don’t understand your game.

‘Proof. But I want more. I am going to find more.’

I start at the first house after the town gate. I will work street by street, knocking on every door, waiting for an answer from every one. I will see if I recognise the person who opens the door. I will make sure they cannot close the door on me. If I don’t recognise the person, to each I will ask the same questions: ‘Where are Tora and Abel?’ I will ask this, though I suspect I know the answer already. And: ‘You remember me, don’t you?’ If they look me in the eye and say ‘Yes’ I will smile at them, thank them and leave. But they will not say that. They will not speak the truth.

There are about a thousand dwellings in the town. I do the sums in my head. One thousand houses, five minutes each. Fourteen or fifteen hours a day. It could take a week. And then not all the houses will be occupied when I reach them. I will have to come back again and again.

But perhaps the very first house I come to will have an answer for me.

The occupant of the first will stand to one side, invite me in. They will sit me down, take my hand, tell the truth.

Each house has in theory the same chance of being the true one.

One in a thousand. But surely only the first house has those odds. The last house, the true house, has a one in one chance of being the right house. Does a house that is not the right one have any chance at all of being the right one? Would that I knew which is the last house.

Perhaps when I knock on one door an old crone will point down the road at a house and say, ‘There, that is where you will find your answer.’ A knock on that door elicits the response, ‘No, not here but that house down there,’ pointing to a third. And so on. With each step I move closer to and further away from the truth.

I sit on the steps of the first house for a few minutes. I hold my head in my hands. My forehead feels gritty, coated in sand, as if I am slowly being buried in the dust of the town.

The house behind me is silent. I knock on the door. Peer through the window. Try the handle. I pretend to leave and stand at the bottom of the steps, watching, listening.

Each house gives similar results. Sometimes there is movement inside. Sometimes there isn’t. The doors never open.

When it is the house of someone I know I shout their name. I wait for the echo. I shout again.

I spend hours doing this. The sun goes down. I continue. For a while I do not notice my hunger.

I keep at it until the moon is high in the sky.

At the last house I try I hurl myself at the door. Again and again. I feel my skin grow raw. I open my mouth as if in a scream but I do not know if I make a sound.

Then I stop. I go back to the town hall.

But I cannot get in. I walk up to the Marshal’s door in the moonlight.

It is locked. I get out my knife to pick the lock. I hear a cough to my right. It is the man from the office. I turn to him. I begin to walk up to him, my knife in my fist. He takes a step back. I stop. I lower the knife.

We look at each other for what seems like minutes.

It is not yet the time for that.

On my way out of the courtyard I look up at the window. Before I can see who it is, a figure draws the curtain. It sways for a bit and is then still.

I crawl out of the shelter in the morning and almost bump into the Marshal standing outside waiting for me. He is alone.

‘Yes?’ I say.

‘Tonight. Tonight we will sort things out. You are to come to the town hall at sunset.’

I stare at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, tonight we will know what will become of you.’

‘And Andalus?’

‘Andalus. Yes. I know what he is.’

‘You know what he is.’

‘He too is part of your game. Bring him too, if you can.’

‘I am not the one playing a game.’

‘Are you sure, Bran?’

With that he turns and walks away. As he rounds the corner, the other man appears. He stands in the middle of the road with his arms held behind him.

I go back in to the shelter. I speak to Andalus, ‘I know you can talk.

I need you to talk now.

‘I am beginning to think you are the cause of the hiatus. If I returned on my own they would have no hesitation in sending me on my way again, perhaps with an arrow between the shoulder blades. But as soon as they saw Bran and Andalus cresting the mountain they began to panic. They began to fear the resumption of war, the return of the past.