Anna Burns - Milkman

But no mention of the milkman. Not a syllable. Brother-in-law, bless his soul, hadn’t been listening to rumour which was in accordance with my respectful view of him as someone with no inclination for rumour. And of course I wouldn’t mention the milkman either for – just as with me and maybe-boyfriend and my wariness of presuming, or of trying to explain only to be misunderstood, or of trying to explain only not to be taken seriously – I couldn’t see in those days how I could speak of this dilemma I now found myself in. It was that I didn’t speak to anybody of anything – partly because I wasn’t used to telling anybody anything, partly because I didn’t know how to tell or what to tell, partly too, because still it was unclear there was anything of accuracy to tell. What had he done after all? Certainly it felt to me that this milkman had done something, that he was about to do something, that strategically he was working up to some action. I think too – otherwise why all this gossip? – others in the district must have been thinking the same as me. Thing was, he hadn’t physically touched me. Nor that last time had he even looked at me. So where was my premise for speaking out on how, uninvited, he was pushing in? But that was what it was like here. Everything had to be physical, had to be intellectually reasonable in order to be comprehensible. I couldn’t tell brother-in-law about the milkman, not because he’d rush to defend me, beating up the milkman, then getting himself shot which would then have the community turn against the milkman, leading to the paramilitary-renouncers in the area in their turn getting the community by the throat. Then the community would get the renouncers by the throat, refusing to hide them anymore, to house them, to feed them, to transport arms for them. No more either, would they warn of danger or be makeshift surgeons for them. The whole incident would cause division, would end that much-harkened pulling-together in order to overcome the enemy state. No. None of that. It was simply that brother-in-law would be incapable of believing that anything that wasn’t physical between two people could, in fact, be going on. I also shared this belief, as did everybody else – about someone not doing something so how could they be doing it – which meant how could I open my mouth and threaten widespread disintegration of the current status quo? Especially this would be impossible in the context of the political problems, where huge things, physical, noisy things, were most certainly, on a daily basis, an hourly basis, on a television newsround-by-newsround basis, going on. As for the rumour of me and the milkman, why should it be down to me to dispel it, to refute gossip by people who fostered gossip and clearly wouldn’t welcome either, denial of their gossip? And as for vigilance or non-vigilance? For switching off or not switching off? It was my opinion that with my reading-while-walking I was doing both at the same time. And why should I not? I knew that by reading while I walked I was losing touch in a crucial sense with communal up-to-dateness and that that, indeed, was risky. It was important to be in the know, to keep up with, especially when things here got added on to at such a rapid compound rate. On the other hand, being up on, having awareness, clocking everything – both of rumour and of actuality – didn’t prevent things from happening or allow for intervention on, or reversal of things that had already happened. Knowledge didn’t guarantee power, safety or relief and often for some it meant the opposite of power, safety and relief – leaving no outlet for dispersal either, of all the heightened stimuli that had been built by being up on in the first place. Purposely not wanting to know therefore, was exactly what my reading-while-walking was about. It was a vigilance not to be vigilant, and my return to exercising with brother-in-law, that too, was part of my vigilance. As long as I continued to filter his unprecedented attack on my reading-while-walking, also filtering the more excessive of his exercise-talk which in my opinion, constituted his own mantle of protection, I could run with brother-in-law and not have to be here in the parks & reservoirs on my own. I’d be with a male person too, which would help because I’d sensed that the milkman operated best in cases of isolation. By running with brother-in-law therefore, I could carry on as if this milkman and our two earlier encounters had been insignificant, or even that they hadn’t taken place at all.

So it had been books, just books, that ‘walking and books’ thing, and I decided to forgive brother-in-law for his out-of-character criticism, which was what I did, then a tree by the top reservoir took a picture of us as we ran by. This hidden camera clicked, just one click, a state-forces click, in the similar way to how that bush, positioned along this same reservoir, had done a week earlier. Oh dear, I thought. I hadn’t considered that. What I meant was I hadn’t considered that the state would now associate anyone I was associating with also with the milkman as they were associating me now with the milkman. Already within a week of that first click, I’d been clicked again four times. Once had been in town, once when walking into town, then twice coming out of town. I’d been photographed from a car, from a seemingly disused building, also from other bits of greenery; perhaps too, there’d been other clicks I hadn’t picked up on at the time. On each occasion when I did hear them, the camera would snap as I passed and so, yes, it seemed I’d fallen into some grid, maybe the central grid, as part of the disease, the rebel-infection. And now, others in my company, such as poor, innocent brother-in-law, were to be implicated also as associates of an associate. Brother-in-law, however, just as had the milkman, completely ignored the click. ‘Why are you ignoring that click?’ I asked. ‘I always ignore clicks,’ he said. ‘What do you expect me to do? Get outraged? Write letters? Keep a diary? Put in a complaint? Get one of my personal secretaries to contact the United Nations Amnesty International Ombudsman Human Rights peaceful demonstration people? Tell me, sister, who do I contact and what do I say, and while we’re about it, what are you going to do about the click yourself?’ Well, I was going to have amnesia of course. In fact, here I was, already having it. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said. ‘I’ve forgotten,’ his forthrightness having sent me immediately into jamais vu . That was my answer – something that should be familiar was not going to be familiar – though there was an uplifting in this camera business too. Brother-in-law hadn’t expressed surprise at the click, or ignorance of the click. Indeed, he’d admitted to it, and not only to that click, but to other clicks upon him presumably not associated with me or the milkman. ‘They’re always doing that,’ he said. ‘People get photographed for the record,’ which meant I could stop worrying, stop feeling guilty about bringing state suspicion down upon brother-in-law’s head. So I did stop worrying. I let it go and we continued our run, with brother-in-law now into his stride, which was not just a running stride, but also his new stride of why again I should stop reading-while-walking. I didn’t listen. There was no way I’d stop reading-while-walking. I remained quiet though, because why, when it came to it, make a fuss when one’s mind was already made up?

So on we ran, with him eventually dropping the reading-while-walking and slipping back to the usual minutiae of his exercise addiction. This time it was whether one should do a split-body routine or a full-body routine and if it were a split body, should it be a two-way split or a three-way split, all this being fine with me as I had my forcefield up to filter the more draining of his persistence away. It wasn’t that I dismissed brother-in-law though, because as with all women of the district, I too liked him very, very much. I was grateful to him also, not just because I could reinstate my runs after proving my plan successful in out-manoeuvring the milkman. It was also that I felt safe with him – in the knowledge and familiarity of him, in the relative relaxation of him, in that I could be in the company of someone who didn’t, least not usually, harangue and meddle with who I was. He had no hidden agenda; indeed I was the one with the agenda. Also I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed – with our kindred understanding of running and the etiquette of running – being on these sessions with him. Eventually he petered out on that whole aspect of body-training and we returned to our norm of running in silence. Only once did he say, ‘Will we go faster, sister-in-law? We don’t want to end up walking, do we?’ As for the milkman and my aim to oust him by reinstating runs with third brother-in-law, that had paid off exactly as planned.