The Truth Commissioner (29 page)

He takes some hours off work one afternoon to go with her to the hospital for a check-up where they are told everything is
fine and given a copy of the scan and he stares at the swirl of what looks like a satellite weather map and listens to her
excitement as he points out the hazy continent of their child slowly emerging from the clouds. She has been given the rest
of the day off and he leaves her home and sees her settled before taking the lakeside path back to work. Past the condominium
and the empty tennis courts. Only the occasional jogger and a couple of women in shorts, fast-walking, their arms swinging
in synchronisation like metronomes, their heads pecking at the air as they talk. Two men on a bench with their heads angled
towards him. Looking for someone? Waiting for someone? He is struck by the whiteness of one of the men's arms, the slightly
awkward sit of his casual clothes as if his body hasn't become fully accustomed to them, as if they are slightly shocked by
the sun. A newly arrived perhaps. Maybe on holiday. He nods as he passes.

‘Hello, Michael,' the white-armed man says.

He doesn't reply but keeps walking, his heart pressing and pulsing against his chest. A Northern Irish voice. For a second he thinks of running but forces himself to stay calm.

‘It's all right, Michael.'

He stops and turns. The white-armed man is standing, looking at him. In his late fifties, thin-faced, gaunt, his eyes narrowing to take him in.

‘My name is Danny.'

‘That's right, Danny, and mine is Gerry Lynch. I'm from Belfast. I'm a friend, Danny, so you don't need to worry. I can call
you Danny if you like or I can call you Michael Madden. It doesn't matter. Why don't you take a seat?'

He watches him stretch out his hand towards the seat but he doesn't take up the invitation.

‘Sit down, Danny. This is Sean Manley – he's a friend as well. We need to talk.'

‘Not here,' he says, looking back to where he can see the house. Then without saying any more he turns and lets the two men
follow him. When they pass someone on the path he lowers his eyes and tris to distance himself from the men behind him. He
leads them to a picnic table that sits in a little grove of trees close to the water's edge.

‘Don't know how you stick the heat, Danny,' Lynch says, wiping his brow as if the short walk has drained him. There's a sheen
of perspiration in the grey hollows of his cheeks like dregs in the bottom of a cup.

‘You get used to it, don't you, Danny?' Manley says. His accent is Irish American. ‘It bakes up a lot hotter than this.'

‘Who are you and what do you want?' he asks, trying hard to keep his voice strong and steady.

‘I'm going to have to get a cap or I'll be going home with my head the colour of a match,' Lynch says, rubbing his hand through
the thin wisps of receding fair hair. He takes out a cigarette and offers him one but he shakes his head. Out on the lake
a speedboat is scissoring the water and spuming a wake from the shredded surface. Lynch lights the cigarette and slowly inhales.
‘I'm from the Army Council – I've letters of authorisation if you want to see them – and Sean works for the movement here in America. I'm here because I've been instructed to bring you something.' He sets a brown envelope on the table and turns his face to the lake.

He doesn't want to touch it. It feels like the moment he touches it everything will explode in his face. It's addressed to
Michael Madden and has his last known Belfast address. To put his hand to it is to retake his name, open the portal to another
life, another time, so he stares at it.

‘It's all right, Danny,' Lynch says. ‘Just open it.'

‘Is it about my mother?' he asks.

‘No, your mother's fine.'

‘Why have you come here? What do you want with me?'

‘Everything's cool, Danny. No one wants anything bad for you but you need to read the letter,' Manley says as he slides the
envelope across the table.

Still he doesn't touch it. Someone has carved their initials into the wood. The grain on the table has been dried and polished
by the sun. There is a black smudge scarring one edge where something has burnt it. Lynch's fingers are heavily stained with
nicotine, the same colour as the envelope. The speedboat screams as it passes close to shore and as the two men sitting opposite
him turn their heads to look at it, he lifts the letter, takes one last look at the name and address, in the hope that he
will see there's been a mistake and that it's for someone else, then opens it. His eyes scan it, reading almost more quickly
than he can take it in. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission requires your attendance … case number one hundred and
seven, the case of Connor Walshe … He feels as if he's tumbling downhill and attempts to arrest his free-fall by clutching
at the words and trying to hold their meaning in his head. The Commission has the power to compel attendance … Where required,
legal representation can be provided … All political parties, churches and community groups have agreed … a necessary
part of communal healing and the peace process… Closure... All participants are indemnified and absolved from any legal
or civil repercussions as a result of their testimony … Dates and times, more details than he can absorb.

He doesn't speak at first because he's unsure of how his voice will sound, or if words will form at all or merely splinter
like glass. The speedboat's wake is a frothing seam of white. There is a tumbling sickness in his stomach. He tries to breathe
it away and under the table he grabs hold tightly of the seat's edge.

‘I don't know any Connor Walshe,' he says softly.

‘It's all right, Danny,' Lynch says, offering him a cigarette for the second time. This time he accepts and tries not to let
his hand shake as he reaches for it and the lighter. ‘We're friends and the movement always looks after its own. We know exactly
what you know and don't know. For better or worse we've signed up to this Truth and Reconciliation thing – if you ask me I'd
probably say for the worse but that's just a personal opinion and smarter people than me say we need to do it. So it has to
be done.'

‘I'm not going back,' he says.

‘You don't have a choice, Danny,' Manley says. ‘Like Gerry says, we've signed up to it.'

‘I do have a choice and I'm not going back. My life is here now and I'm never going back.'

‘No, Danny, Sean is right – you don't have a choice. Wrap it up any way you like but the bottom line is it's an order and
only a fool disobeys an order.'

‘I don't take orders any more – it's over for me,' he says.

‘It's never over until you're told it is,' Lynch says. ‘You know that as well as I do. And listen it's a ritual, a quick appearance,
and you're not on your own, we have people who will prepare you, tell you what to say, how to handle it. It's all over before
you know it – it's easy, painless. In and out.'

‘Painless? To say what I did.'

‘Listen to me, Michael,' Lynch says, angrily stubbing out his cigarette on the wood. ‘Don't start talking shit and beating
yourself up. We were fighting a war. We all were and we all did the type of things that had to be done in a war. The type
of things they did to us and worse. So don't start thinking like that even for a moment. You were a soldier fighting in a
war and you're still a soldier but when you do this it's all over. All over for good. The army lets you go, then the army
lets itself go, disappears into the pages of history.'

‘You don't understand,' he says. ‘I'm here illegally. They'll throw me out, never let me back.' He thinks of telling them
of Ramona but he will not soil her name by using it in front of them.

‘Listen to me, Danny,' Manley says, leaning his arms across the table. ‘We'll look after you. We have friends everywhere,
important friends, right up to the very door of the Oval Office. The administration played their part in setting this up so
we're not going to let you get thrown out. You have to trust us to do right by you. Gerry's already told you – we look after
our own. You need to believe that.'

He does not know what to believe so he says again, ‘I'm not going back.'

‘You don't get this, Michael, so I'm going to have to spell it out,' Lynch says, beads of sweat forming on his upper lip and
brow. There are brown freckles on his scalp as if he has run his hand through his hair and tiny flakes of nicotine have rubbed
off. ‘We want you to come back voluntarily. Do that and we help you all the way, take care of everything, absolutely everything.
Don't co-operate with this thing and you're on your own and hung out to dry. You don't turn up and they'll ask the authorities
to deport you. You could do time here as well.'

‘They don't know I'm here,' he says and Lynch smiles.

‘That only takes a phone call, doesn't it?'

‘You'd do that?' he asks, already knowing the answer.

‘You want to try and live your life knowing that one phone call pulls the plug on it?' Manley asks.

Their voices are hammers in his brain and every word sparks some new fear for the future. He does not know where to turn for
respite.

‘You'd be away for about two weeks, no more, maybe much less,' Lynch says. ‘You'll be back long before it's time for Ramona
to have that baby. We have people who will look out for her. We can look after your job as well. There's no other way out
of this, believe me, Michael.'

They know about Ramona, they know about everything. Only one thing they do not know because there's no way to know it and
that is how he is to tell her. He no longer hears what they say because in his head he's frantically searching for that way,
rejecting every conceivable, broken-backed idea that presents itself. There's no artifice, no story that can conceal the fact
that he's another man who has deceived her, and deceived her in a way that even she has never experienced before. Then he
tries to tell himself that in himself he has been true to her. That a name in itself does not change who he is or what they
mean to each other. He thinks of the children on the beach with their father, pouring water into the moat of the castle they
have just built. He thinks of sand, of houses, and in his ears he hears the throaty rasp of the sea as it rushes in, taking
everything in its path. They're still talking to him and he's nodding his head but all he hears now is the break and tumble
of walls. Of things being swept aside. He watches them walk away, Manley's hand raised in a farewell wave, and their walk
is purposeful, the walk of men who have done their work. He sits until they have disappeared and then he goes down to the
water's edge and is sick amongst the reeds.

The lake is still, with only the gentlest of swells pushing halfheartedly through the reeds. Far out, sky and water like lifelong
friends seem inseparable. A little breeze plays with the smoke of his dying cigarette. He wonders if Arnie is somewhere out
there on his boat, casting his lines. Sitting waiting patiently for a catch. The sky feels so low he could almost stretch
out a hand and touch it. He lights another cigarette – there seems no point any more. Arnie says the water is always cold,
cold even in the heat of the day. Soon it will be time. In his broken, shallow sleep, words had slipped like eels through
his mind but when he tried to trap the truth of what he must say this morning, and how he must tell her, they slipped into
the shadows. A bird skims the surface of the water, a black arrowhead in the slowly strengthening light. He thinks of ever
more elaborate lies then blows them away through the purse of his lips with the smoke of the cigarette. He tries to tell himself
that there'll be a release in truth, that after all this time the weight of deception will be lifted from his shoulders. He
walks to the end of the jetty and throws the cigarette away. It's almost time. He narrows his eyes and stares out into the
sleeping heart of the lake. For the next hour or so it is able to wear its own face and does not have the luminous insistence
of the sky pressed relentlessly against it. Then he bends down and scoops a handful of water and splashes his face with its
coldness.

The walk back to the house is weighted with the words in his head arranged all wrong like the flowers he bought for her birthday
and cack-handedly tried to shape in a vase. How many layers of their life will be pulled away by what he has to tell her?
And what will be left when he has finished? He thinks of the stillness at the heart of the lake and tries to tell himself
that love can endure. Even this. But he's no longer sure of anything he tells himself, of what he can believe and what is
just another deception, designed to smooth his way, so it feels as if he knows nothing any more and that everything he wants
to hold tightly slips through his fingers like water.

He hesitates at the door then goes in. Maybe she will stretch out her arms to him. Maybe she will tell him that he's cold
and enfold him in the embrace of her sleep-stirred warmth. Then after a while she will say, ‘What does a girl have to do around
here to get a cup of coffee?' and he will slip reluctantly from her side.

She looks at him as he stands in the doorway of the bedroom watching her.

‘Well, Danny, is the lake still there?'

He doesn't answer and she sits up in the bed, shaking the black shock of her hair away from her face.

‘What's wrong, Danny?'

He looks into her eyes and takes a single step into the room.

‘My name isn't Danny.'

She's looking at him and then she starts to smile but stops. No other way. It's the price that must be paid. The water is
cold against his skin. He steps further into the room and each slow step is weighted with fear. More fear than he's ever felt
and he knows there are no words.