Anna Burns - Milkman

They intervened on the state of my insides, as well as on my next bout of flinging and whatever high dose of purgative they put in there, it did something which did make me throw up. Over the course of the night I was made to ingest everything, then bring up everything, and in between I went from rigid to rag-doll at least seventeen times. At first I tried counting how many times as a way to distract my mind, to pretend this was an exercise in remoteness. I counted out loud, wee sisters said, then they said that either I lost count or I began to figure my numbers in a muttering fashion. I remembered some tearing sensation at my throat and at my abdomen and at first naively thought all that could happen would be a normal, unpleasant throwing-up. During this vomit session I’d bring up my last meal, then after that all that would be left to come would be bile. No. First there were the stomach contents. Then came many bouts of low-down, intestinal brown contents. Then, when I could no longer cope with the brown contents, only then came the bile. After that, there was more. There was dry heaving. An awful lot of dry heaving. All those stages too, increasingly against gravity, soon had me longing, begging, for the closure of my eyes. As it was, I could hardly keep them open. Got to sleep, I’d think. Got to lie down. Die soon. Why won’t they let me die soon? It seemed really, it was these women with their purging and intermittent praying, and not the poison, that were the cause of my dying in our bathroom that night. There was no let-up. They had split into two groups, one taking on the purging while the other handled the praying. Then they’d swap and only after much prolongation and exhaustion, did the nicer part of the evening bit by bit ensue. This existed in brief lulls, increasingly turning to longer lulls, each occurring after the purgers’ every administration to me followed by my body getting the poison out of me. Only then, when they’d withdraw to convene on next steps, could I remain on the floor, relieved, untampered-with, alone. Here, I’d contemplate the floor – the light dust on it, the odd hair on it, the specks of my recent emesis on it – and I’d consider the only true things in this world were these basic conditions of floor, dust and so on and that they, and only they, could sustain me forever. Sometimes though, I’d change my mind and it would become the panel of the bath, or the toilet bowl or the friendly bathroom wall against which occasionally I’d find myself, that I’d consider just as dependable of sustaining me forever too.

First time I awoke it was daylight and I was in my bed, mentally conjugating the French verb, être . I was running through the persons, tenses and cases of it in my mind. Second time I awoke, I was still in bed, thinking, well, if that’s the latest effect he’s had on me with his sexual prowling, I don’t know how I’m going to escape from him now. Third time I awoke it was from a dream of Proust, or rather, a nightmare of Proust, in which he turned out to be some reprehensible contemporary Nineteen-Seventies writer passing himself off as a turn-of-the-century writer, which apparently was why he was being sued in court in the dream by, I think, me. At that point again I fell asleep then final time I awoke – for I continued this waking and sleeping many times before waking up properly – I knew I’d turned a corner and was now on the mend. The reason I knew this was because of Fray Bentos. I was doing an elaborate Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney Pie fantasy in my head. I had got the tin out of the cupboard, took off the lid and put it in the oven. Then I set out a plate, knife, fork and mug of tea for myself. Even in bed, in my head, the aroma of that pie was making my mouth water. Thank God then, in the next second, it was done. I got it out of the oven, fainting with anticipation, and was about to tuck in when my bedroom door burst open. It was wee sisters. Again as one, they sprang into the room.

‘She’s awake!’ they screamed, and they screamed this in my face as well as to each other. Right away they announced that ma was out and that they had been put in charge. They listed what I wasn’t to do which was to fall out of bed, to try to get out of bed, to eat or drink, also I was not to attempt gallivanting. This was when they spoke of my being sick, also when they enacted for me my groaning. Then they moved on to the state of my skin’s sickly, palely whiteness which was when I interrupted to say I was starving and threw the blankets off to get out of bed. This produced squawking. ‘Not allowed!’ they cried. ‘Mammy says!’ they cried. And I said, ‘Okay. What’s to eat then? Go and see and bring me something.’ But they pushed me back and placed the bedclothes over me. To distract me they said they’d tell the exciting story of the renouncers. That morning while I’d been sleeping, the paramilitary renouncers-of-the-state from our district had called to our house.

Wee sisters had heard the door. Then ma and wee sisters opened it. Men were on the step. They spoke in low tones, saying something had happened in the area and that they wanted to speak to me about it. Ma said, ‘Well, you can’t speak to her. She’s been sick, in bed too, sleeping, or doing her French languages while recuperating. But what happened? Tell me what happened.’ The men said to send the nippers down the back. Ma told wee sisters to go down to the living room and to close the door and be no part of this conversation. She pushed them along the hallway to start them off. Wee sisters sneaked back, this time into the parlour at the front of the house where they pressed their ears to the curtained windows. The renouncers though, still spoke low.

‘So what if she was in the club at the same time?’ they heard ma interrupting. ‘Lots of people go to that club. That drinking-club,’ she said, ‘is the most popular in the area. Doesn’t signify that just because my daughter was in there that she’d know of these things.’ Ma then said that I’d been abed four days, poisoned, and for them to ask the purging-women, with the renouncers replying that they’d leave for now and that certainly they’d speak with the purging-women – also that they’d be back if the testimony of the purgers proved unsatisfactory. Then they went off and ma took herself to the neighbours to find out this new crack. ‘So now we’ve cheered you up,’ said wee sisters – though from my latest anxiety I could not see how they could discern this – ‘it’s your turn, middle sister, to read to us.’ At this they produced storybooks which I hadn’t noticed till that moment they were holding. These were: The Exorcist , taken from ma’s stack of books by her bedside; The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus , taken from I didn’t know where; and the children’s adaptation of the adult Call Yourself a Democracy! which began: ‘Which statelet up until five years ago could search homes without a warrant, could arrest without a warrant, could imprison without a charge, could imprison without a trial, could punish by flogging, could deny all prison visits, could prohibit inquests into deaths in prison after arresting without a warrant and imprisoning without a charge and imprisoning without a trial?’ Weird wee sisters, I thought. Too many Shakespeares. Real milkman’s right. Must have a word with ma about them. Meantime, sisters had placed these books on the eiderdown on top of me. After that, they clambered into my single bed under the blankets beside me. Youngest wee sister, at the headboard, wrapped her arm best she could around me, while oldest wee sister and middle wee sister also squeezed in, holding hands, waiting to be read to down at the footboard end.

Later that day when wee sisters were out on adventures and ma was back, she came upstairs to see me. She looked solemn, which meant more bad news was coming. She said, ‘That poor girl who goes around poisoning people – she’s dead. A sweep-patrol of soldiers found her up an entry with her throat cut so somebody killed her.’ My first reaction was not, as one might expect, ‘What did you say? Unbelievable. How can she be dead when she’s the one trying to kill people?’ Nor was it a plain, ‘Who killed her?’ because although I’d heard ma’s words, my head couldn’t take in the part about somebody having killed her. The mere introduction of her into the conversation had been enough to set me off. Ach, she’s done it again, I thought. Who’s she poisoned this time? I didn’t want to know though, not really, because these things go on so long that you end up getting listless with them. I was sorry, of course, for whoever it had been, but that was in the way I’d been sorry when longest friend told me of the poisoning of tablets girl’s sister. It was another of those removed sorries, the unconcerned sorries, with no true pull of involvement – least not till I realised with a bolt of lightning that the person poisoned had been me. Then it was, how blind I’ve been! What an idiot I am! For now that it was clear, it was absolutely bloody obvious. She was a poisoner. She’d been in the club. She’d come over to me in the club, pestering me about having killed her plus others whilst in cahoots with Milkman or something. Her new method of working too, as everybody knew, was to talk incessantly her hypnotic, inventive stories at you. That way she got you, her next victim, hooked and involved. Disquieted yet fixated, you focused on her words, meaning – and despite knowledge of her modus operandi and of all of her poisoning history – you didn’t take in what her hands were up to. That was what she wanted. Very deft, very furtive, very making herself invisible, blending into everything, dissolving away to nothing. Some people said she was a cunning wee innate, fierce feminist-tract person, except still she wasn’t a feminist according to the real feminists because the women with the issues here said she was mentally ill.