Anna Burns - Milkman

They didn’t appear exactly, for it turned out they’d been waiting in this area already. This surprised me because the reputation of this place – for dark arts, for witchcraft stories, sorcery stories, bogeymen rumours, human-sacrifice rumours, scary tales about upside-down crucifixes; regardless too, of whether or not the state security forces with their black ops and their dupery of a general public were thought, least in these present troubles, to be at the bottom of it – meant most people might hurry through the ten-minute area because they had to get from A to B but other than that, would tend to stay away. The fact I myself was in it, talking to a sinister man while holding the head of a cat that had been bombed to death by Nazis was proof, if anything, that the ten-minute area was not for normal things. But there they were and there were four of them. It seemed too, they were coming out of concealment or at least from half-concealment. The first stepped out from a shop recess, the shop being closed now because it was evening and not because it was eerie and should never have been opened. He came from within the shadows and for a brief moment glanced towards us, then he looked away. After that he stood there ignoring us, though again why should he stand there? Two others then emerged from the decayed grounds of each of the derelict churches a little bit up from us and they too, briefly looked our way. Then they stood about – all three standing, expectant, waiting. They were also equi-distant from each other, with the milkman and I down at the other end. At first I had the fearful notion that these were plainclothes men about to ambush and shoot the milkman, which meant most likely they’d shoot me as an associate of this milkman. However, I sensed then that, as well as some current of mental triangulation going on between those three, there was a further connection reaching from them to us. It was that they were together, those three and the milkman. At that point a fourth and final man walked right by me and I jumped for I hadn’t seen or heard him come up. He passed inches from me, without glancing or acknowledging either me or the milkman. This was when I gave another jump, for on turning away from him and back to the milkman, I realised that he had gone as well.

He had left me, and I didn’t know why that should have shocked me, given that not one thing about this man’s presence had so far reassured me. It was that the instants and the suddens of him had each time caught me unawares. Automatically I looked again behind, townwards, in the direction that the fourth man was taking, to see if I could glance the milkman accompanying him. He couldn’t have gone the other way, for I’d have caught sight of him heading towards those others. At that moment those men then chose also to walk by me and, although they did this individually, I continued to feel the coordination and sense of a shared plan. They were together. All four together. And all five – of this I was sure – were going to converge before long at the same point.

You’re a mad person.

Once more this was me talking to myself after the milkman had left me. He and the others, doing that pretence of not being together, had gone off separately in the direction of downtown. I was now alone and had started to walk the opposite way out of this ten-minute area, my thoughts on tacit no-running threats, tacit no-walking threats and especially that tacit carbomb murder threat. Plus there was that cat’s head I was holding in my hands. With the time just off ten o’clock, and with only the tiniest of daylight remaining, there was no way, now, I was going to take it to the usual place. Things were different in the dark, but even if the last of the light should suffice to see me in there, get me down the back and in amongst those ancient stones and grasses; if it should suffice further to enable me to locate a place of repose for the head as initially I had intended, I felt that now, in spite of his having already met me and delivered unto me his latest commands and wishes, still that milkman could make another appearance from behind some Tombstone of Dracula to carry on the next part of his plan. I knew by now, regarding me, that he had a plan, some workable agenda. Therefore I couldn’t be going to the graveyard. Still though, I did want to take the head some place. Deep foliage was what was wanted. Some patch of green, and, of course, such existed in the parks & reservoirs. As with this ten-minute area though, the parks & reservoirs, especially at night, were particularly not to be entered. Why transport a head anyway, from one dark place only to leave it in another dark place? And even if I managed to steel myself to go into the parks & reservoirs, to bury it in some bush or hide it in some undergrowth, those state spies in the bush or in the undergrowth – especially given their sense of conviction of my association now with the milkman – would dig it up immediately to see what it was. So not that green. But there were other greens. The weedy surrounds of the two remaining churches were green, but yet again, they were depressing. Besides, they were still in this ten-minute area. There were gardens, other people’s, because we didn’t have a garden, so how about I choose an overgrown one on my way home and sneak in and leave it there? By now, this development of plan had become overly involved and fretful, meaning I wanted to give up which was not at all the attitude. The attitude, however, had been dissipating bit by bit even before the appearance of the milkman. From the moment I’d left teacher and my classmates in town and had started to walk out of the centre and up towards my own area, I’d felt that constriction, that insidious ‘There’s no point, what’s the use, what’s the point?’ coming over me or building up from within me and it was while in that state of dithering and of discouragement, also of berating myself with, ‘You’re a mad girl, drawing enfeeblement to yourself by your madness by the minute,’ even as I was thinking too, to set the head down, just set it down, anywhere, on the next bit of concrete and leave it, I realised I was already out of the ten-minute area and had walked up as far as the usual place. So I was at the ancient, rusted cemetery gates, and this was when I heard a car behind me. Instantly I had another attack of shudders. Oh no. Him! Walk on. Keep walking. Don’t look round or engage.

I passed the graveyard entrance just as the vehicle drew alongside me. A voice called out. ‘Hello! Hello there! Are you all right?’ I stopped for it wasn’t the milkman. It was someone else. It was real milkman, for there was a real milkman, one who lived in our area, who did take milk orders, who did have a proper milk lorry and who really did deliver the district’s milk. He was also the man who didn’t love anybody, one of our district’s official beyond-the-pales. He lived around the corner from us and had been judged beyond-the-pale because one day he came back from that country ‘over the water’ where his brother had been dying and realised something was wrong in his house. He lived alone and had gone out his back to get a shovelful of coal and saw someone had been digging. So he dug too, to find out why. After a bit, and very dirty, he came out his door, carrying two armfuls of rifles. These rifles were wrapped in plastic and he carried them into the middle of the street and dumped them on the road. As he did so, he shouted, ‘Bury them in your own backyards, why don’t you!’, then he returned to his house and came out with more. This continued because after the rifles came handguns, dismantled guns, heaps of ammunition and further stockpiles wrapped in cloths and more plastic. Everything got thrown, with him beside himself in temper, continuing to shout until he saw a pile of children who had been playing – up to the point he’d altered their landscape – on the spot where the guns now were. At first the children had jumped to the side and from there had been watching proceedings. When he caught sight of them, the man who didn’t love anybody stopped shouting. Then he resumed shouting, this time at them. ‘Get out of it!’ he yelled. ‘I said out of it!’ and he was so explosive that the children, now targets, did get out of it. A handful though, remained frozen to the spot and began to cry. The man who didn’t love anybody then shouted to his neighbours who had come out their doors to see what the commotion was. He told them to come and get these children, demanding to know too, if any of these good neighbours had been aware of what, during his absence, the renouncers-of-the-state had been up to in his house. So he fought with everybody, this man who didn’t love anybody, this real milkman. He even fought with children. But to draw the distinction: he became known as a beyond-the-pale because he’d dumped arms when everybody knew if you found arms in your house after they’d got in and buried them, you were supposed to lump it and put up with it; and he became known as the man who didn’t love anybody because once, without compunction, without even saying sorry, he had made children cry.