tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46901199892656768702024-03-14T11:43:12.106+02:00Mine for the TakingFreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-18123971832742647062015-09-17T10:50:00.000+02:002015-09-17T10:50:13.456+02:00Chapter Eight: Empty Spaces (Part V)<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Two days later he was standing on a hill, next to an abandoned radar post, looking out at the lighthouse of Muckle Flugga, and past the small hump of the isle of Out Stack, to the empty sea. He had reached the northernmost point of the British islands. This was the edge of the board.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Instead of permitting himself guiltier pleasures, Richard had spent the night playing chess with the boy.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“Chess isn’t really my game,” the boy had told Richard. “I prefer poker.” And in an attempt to joke, or perhaps to punish Richard for his earlier display of weakness, the boy had flashed him that wicked grin that he had stolen from a friend a mere week earlier, and added: “Strip poker.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Richard refused to be baited. He made certain the boy knew all the rules, and explained to him about openings, and control of the board, about lines of influence, forks and skewers. Then they played.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The first time Richard tried to let the boy win.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The boy scowled.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“You bought my time. And body if you want it. But not…”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He searched for the right word.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“Not your integrity?” Richard suggested. “You’re right. I apologise.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“Sheesh, you do that a lot, don’t you?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“I suppose so.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“Never apologise, never explain. Some bloke said that.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“I don’t think I agree.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“Of course you don’t. Are you gonna set it up again or not? And this time, bloody beat me if that’s how it goes.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So they played again. At first they played while they talked. Richard told the boy that his mother had just died in a nursing home in Scotland. He had driven down to get the last piece of furniture she had owned, the roll desk. He was a veterinarian on the Shetland mainland. He admitted he’d dreamed of young men all his life but never had the courage to go through with it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Really? the boy thought. And you think it was morals keeping you from going through with it with me?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The boy told him more embellishments to his story, but eventually the unbroken sequence of defeats turned him taciturn. Finally, instead of accepting his 6th or 7th checkmate, he simply took the king and moved it past the border of the board.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“No, Arik, that is against the rules.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“Never been one much for keeping rules.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“I know.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“What do you mean?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“I don’t know what the reason was for you to leave your home on the promise of some guy on the internet, and maybe you really have been check mated. But your plan, finding happiness with some Ersatz father here, at the edge of the world, that is trying to cheat, isn’t it? Your version of trying to move your king over the edge of the board.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“What if?” Sullen again, and this time it’s no act. “I’m here, ain’t I? All those rules people make up, they’re just excuses not to accept responsibility for their own lives. Any time I hear someone say, they have no choice I want to curbstomp them.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“Yes, you are here, Arik. And where are you going from here? Where is that place beyond the edge?”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The boy was looking at it now, from the abandoned radar post. He had reached the ultima thule, the furthest North of the British Isles. Beyond the few last rocks was the open North Atlantic. If you went in a straight line from here, there would be nothing but open water until you reached the floating ice shelf at the North Pole.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Lerwick had been bad for him. The only actual town on the entire archipelago, and with its 17,000 inhabitants way too small for a single underage homeless thief to get bye. There had been no crowds to vanish in, no anonymity. The few hostels he could have afforded didn’t buy his stories and after he beat his retreat he didn’t dare even linger in the vicinity out of fear they might have informed the constabulary.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He hiked and hitched his way further north, onto Unst. He spent a night in the colourful bus stop at Baltasound. And now he made his way down from the hill, past the cliffs dotted white with Gannets and Puffins. When he reached the rocky beach, he stared out at the lighthouse. He tried to skip stones across the water, but the waves were choppy and every stone tumbled and sank.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He remembered the lion Groagramman from The Neverending Story, the second book he ever read. Graogramman and Bastian, the main character, had talked about wishes and dreams, and about travelling.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It is not enough to wish to leave a place, the lion had told the boy in the story. You need to know where you wish to go to.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Is this me taking the king over the edge, the boy thought as he made his first step into the cold salty water. Or is this me pretending I have no other choice?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The water flooded his boots. It crawled up his trouser legs. His penis and scrotum shrank away from the cold. When the choppy waves lapped against his belly button he gasped.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And then he saw the boat, tourists on their way back from the lighthouse. He thought he heard them laugh and shout. He was certain they had seen him, were pointing fingers.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Would they rescue him? Drag him from the water? Force life back into him the way the paramedics had done some three years earlier, his first failed attempt? He had never felt more helpless than when they took his death away from him.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For a while he stood in the sea, almost chest deep. In the swell of the cold water his body’s buoyancy made him sway drunkenly. Air bubbles still crawled up his legs from his boots and little folds in his jeans. The sheepskin lining of his jacket got heavy and pulled on his shoulders.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Where do I go from here?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">All he knew was that he couldn’t turn around and go south. He suspected that he knew the reason why as well, if only he could be honest with himself. But he also knew that he couldn’t be.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When he had exchanged messages with Master Daddy Matt, his Online BDSM Daddy, just after he had begun this reckless walkabout, the man had told him “not to do anything stupid.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Was this what he had meant?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Master Daddy Matt had once attempted suicide as well. But according to the way he told it, he had been rescued by an angel.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">“It had been a glowing figure of pure light. When he touched me, I knew I would be okay. I called my friend John and he sent the paramedics.”</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The boy thought back to the day he had tried. There had been no angel for him. He had seen no light. When Master Daddy Matt had talked about the angel, the boy had hoped it was a lie.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The boat had changed course. The tourists had stopped laughing. They were shouting at him now, waving their hands. The guide at the rudder was focused on the rocks just underneath the surface of the sea.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I hate you, the boy thought to his God. I hate you so much.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He turned around, waded back on land. Water spilled from his clothes. He didn’t even stop to pour out his boots. Feeling a bitter sense of shame he just ran from the Samaritans on the boat.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That night he returned to Lerwick. He had no particular plan. Perhaps he would try stealing again. Get caught. He had the romantic idea of reaching under his jacket when a police officer came for him. Of that OK Corral feeling, when he got to stare into a gun. Would Bev’s Swiss Army Knife be enough of a threat?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But instead he found a legal move to take his king off the board.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For a while.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-49161811423071621892014-03-02T21:01:00.000+02:002014-03-02T21:11:33.266+02:00Chapter Eight: Empty Spaces (Part IV)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>DE</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
</style>
<![endif]--><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">They got out of the car. The man eyed the
boy suspiciously, as if checking for loot, or possibly weapons.</span></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Who gave you that shiner?”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Again the boy checked for useful lies.
Would ‘a father’ work in his favour? A boy’s father, or better a girl’s? He
wasn’t sure, decided to play for time.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Someone,” he said, layering on a little
sulk. His instinct told him to look down, as if ashamed or lying.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Someone you stole from?”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"> “No!”
he spat, and glared at the man, suddeny certain how to play it. He forced
himself to think of the man who had hit him, to pump for anger and disgust. “He
stole from me. We had agreed…” He bit off the rest of the sentence, looked away
again.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“He had agreed, to…” he muttered.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man
adjust his belt, then wipe his brow, and he was certain he had him. But to make
sure he let the silence become uncomfortable.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Well,” the man said. “You can carry my
bag.”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">A short while later, they arrived at the
man’s cabin: a small windowless room, the confined space thick with the hum and
thrum of the ferry’s engines. The tiny, attached moulded plastic bathroom
smelled of disinfectant. The boy put the bag down. The man sat down on the bed,
looked up at the boy, then took off his glasses and began to polish them on his
sweater. When he had put them back on, he said:</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“My name is Richard. How should I call you?”
and he put his hand out, as if he had forgotten how to introduce himself
without doing so.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy waited just long enough to make
Richard remember, then shook it – his palms were unpleasantly greasy – and said:
“Ariel. Ariel Storm.”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He let go, stuffed his hands into his back
pockets and looked down at the toes of his scuffed boots. “Um. Friends.” He
looked over to the little neon light glowing over the headboard of the bed. “Friends
call me Arik.”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">For a while, neither said anything. Then
Richard cleared his throat.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Are you hungry, Arik?”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy nodded and they went to the
restaurant. Richard asked him if he wanted a burger and fries, and then ordered
the Viking Burger with cheese and bacon for the boy, while he had the haddock
with chips and peas himself. He insisted on apple tart for both of them for
desert.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Can I smoke on deck, please,” the boy
asked afterwards. Richard lectured him about health risks, but the boy could
see how it made Richard both uncomfortable and happy to have him behave like a
prisoner. He got his cigarette, and they talked about the stars. The boy
pointed out Cassiopeia, and Richard showed him how to find Pegasus from there.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It looks more like a kite with a tail,
than a horse,” the boy said.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“True.” Richard looked at it for a while
and cocked his head. “But it can still fly, can’t it?”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Richard watched the boy finish his smoke.
Then he put a hand on the boy’s back: “Back inside, now.”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy knew he should shake it off
angrily, it would fit the character better, but he felt too tired. They went
back to the cabin. Richard guided the boy inside, and then locked the door from
the inside, pocketing the key after a moment’s hesitation.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">His voice shook slightly when he said: “Make
yourself comfortable. I’ll be with you right away.” Then he went to the
bathroom and closed the door behind him.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy stood uncertainly in the room.
There was no sound from the bathroom. He sat down on the bed, opened his boots
and kicked them off. Suddenly he felt embarrassment for the sour smell of sweat
coming off him. Hastily he peeled off his socks, then his jeans, then his
jacket and sweater. He bundled all of his clothes together and put them
underneath his backpack in the corner by the door, farthest from the bed. Then
he sat down on the bed, with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, blanket
over the knees. And he closed his eyes and waited.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">After a while he heard Richard flush and
run the tap and then open the door.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Richard had undressed, too. He was wearing
his unbuttoned shirt over a ribbed undershirt and grey retro boxers, and dark
socks. He looked most naked without his glasses.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Richard came over to the bed in little
steps, and sat down next to the boy. He put one hand onto the boy’s covered
knee, looked at him. With his other hand he brushed the boy’s bruised cheek.
Twice he wanted to say something, but failed. As if to release him, the boy let
the blanket slide down, went to his knees and pulled his dirty white T-shirt
over his head. Then he took Richard’s hand and placed it on his shoulder, as if
to dance. He took the other one, but instead of placing it on his hip he tried
to guide it between his legs.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Richard stood up.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I am sorry…”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He disappeared again in the bathroom.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy waited for a while. Eventually he
went over to his backpack, and got dressed. He took the dog eared copy of
William Butler’s “The Butterfly Revolution” he had nicked from the Kirkwall
hostel out of his pack, sat down with the back to the cabin door and started to
read.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Eventually the bathroom door opened again.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Richard was dressed, too. The boy put his
finger between the pages and dangled the book between his knees. Richard came
over and sat down next to him.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I am sorry.”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It’s okay,” the boy said. “Do you want to
try again?”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Richard shook his head, took off his
glasses again and wiped them.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I should never have even thought it. It
was…”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It’s really okay, Richard.”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“No,” Richard suddenly said fiercely. “It’s
not.” And when the boy flinched, he added more quietly: “Not because…” He
hesitated but then forced himself to say it. “Not because of the gay sex. But
because you are a kid in trouble, and it was vile of me to even consider taking
advantage of that.”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">To his own astonishment the boy found
himself smiling wanly, instead of bristling at the diminution. He patted
Richard’s knee. I would deserve it, he thought. I would deserve so much worse.
Why couldn’t you be a little bit less decent?</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“So, what now? Want me to get out? I can
make my way from here.”</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Richard stared at the opposite wall for a
while. Then he asked: “Do you play chess?”</span></span></span></div>
FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-56701690419290968672013-10-07T11:05:00.000+02:002013-10-07T11:07:24.122+02:00Chapter Eight: Empty Spaces (Part III)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:RelyOnVML/>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]--></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>DE</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
</style>
<![endif]-->
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He tried the same trick again that had
gotten him to the Orkneys: To wait amongst the cars before they boarded, find
one to hide in when the occupants are taking a leak or stretching their legs,
and sneak out on the ferry past the ticket check. He picked a station wagon
with the rear seats flipped over and an antique rolltop desk wedged in. The
desk was covered by several woollen blankest to protect it and he figured he
could hide under the bunching blankets without being seen.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Again, he opened a door - this time on the
passenger side – and kept it open just a crack when the driver got out and
locked the car. He slipped inside and pulled the door shut from inside, locking
himself in, and crawled under a blanket. The cord around his neck caught on
something and he took off the pick and stuffed it into his pocket. The same
excitement filled him as he had to lie under the blanket, blind, sounds
muffled, and he had to wait whether it would work out or not.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He heard the driver return, the engine
start again, the expected rumble up the ramp into the thrumming hold of the
ship. He waited for the driver to get out, but he couldn’t hear or feel
anything under the blanket and the incessant vibrations of the huge ship’s
engines and the general din of all the other cars and passengers. He realised
his mistake with the station waggon, the insides were too small and too well
lit for him to have a chance of observing the driver without risk of discovery
to himself.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He considered sleeping in the car, under
the blankets, and to simply wait until the car had left the ferry again, but he
was afraid he would struggle free of his cover in his dreams and be found still
on board, with no place to flee to. So when he thought the driver must surely
have left, he peaked out. The lights in the car were off and he tried to get to
his knees quietly, but he bumped into something under the blanket and it made a
hollow thump.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What the…?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The man’s voice was deep and throaty, and
somehow sounded as if he’d been weeping.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy didn’t waste time looking, he
scrambled to the passenger side rear door and tried to open it, but it was
locked.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Who are you?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Shit, he thought. Fucking shit. And he
turned around.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The only illumination in the car came from
the fluorescent lights high up at the ceiling of the hold, and most where
blocked by trucks and travel busses parked around them. The man was wearing
large glasses that blinked in the little light and hid his eyes. He was gaunt
and balding and wore a neat charcoal sweater under a light grey suit jacket and
over a white shirt and a mauve tie. His face was twisted in what the boy
assumed was intense anger.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“A blind passenger, I don’t believe it. A
dirty little stowaway. Thought you get across without paying, did you, you
rat?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Please don’t report me.” It was out before
the boy could take it back.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy took a deep breath. The second time
was harder, he could feel his face begin to burn. “Please. Don’t report me. I…
I can pay you.” And he took out the stolen money, offered a fistful of bills to
the man.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">I shouldn’t get caught, he thought,
desperately. I shouldn’t have to see their faces. And he knew what he meant
was, they shouldn’t get to see his. He hated the pleading in his voice.
“Please… Sir.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The man seemed taken aback for a moment,
then considering.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Come up here. Show yourself.” And he
patted the passenger seat next to him.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy hesitated briefly, but he knew that
the man only had to step out of the car and call for help, and he would be
arrested and sent back. It was the thought of himself in handcuffs when his
mother came to collect him – or his sister Nessa if his mother would refuse to
– that made him comply. He shoved the money back into his jeans’ pocket. Then he
climbed through the gap between the seats and sat down, hands in his lap,
unconsciously already accommodating the cuffs.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The man had leaned back a little to give
him more room, but watched him with an odd expression. When the boy was
sitting, the man reached up and turned on the light. Everything about him was
grey, and a little bit crumpled, in that tasteful British way that made him
entirely inoffensive and almost impossible to remember if passed on the street.
The boy was very conscious of his own dirtiness and smell.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“If you have so much money, why didn’t you
pay for a ticket?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy hesitated. He couldn’t come up with
any useful lie.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I’m not old enough,” he admitted,
hesitatingly. “And no papers.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Something in the man’s eyes changed, in his
posture. He tensed slightly, Seemed to move at the same time closer and away.
Something about him reminded the boy of the men he used to cheat in Edinburgh. Maybe
he can do it here, seduce him and then get away. He remembered the moves.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Also, I thought I might need the money.
If… it doesn’t work out.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“If what doesn’t work out?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“The… the man… I’m meeting… my friend…”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You…?” The man stopped. There was disgust
on his face, the boy thought, but also need. Was he imagining it? But what did
he have to lose? He gave himself a push, searched for tears inside. He thought
of Bev, of how she would feel when she woke up. It didn’t work. He groped for
something else, Nette’s death. No, that was buried too deep, frozen in a
hundred centuries of polar night. He knew where he had to go, the one place he
could tap for tears.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He thought of the night in the deer
stalking cottage, the tentative touch, the kisses, the awakening hunger. The
whispered words. And he felt the burning in his eyes, and the loathing for
himself, for abusing the memory.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Quietly: “He said he would take care of me,
but I don’t know if I can trust him. We only spoke on the web. I might need it
to get away again. But…” He forced himself to look at the man next to him, to
smile. It was easy to make the smile look faked and forced and shaky. “But I’ll
pay you anything if you don’t send me back. You don’t know… I… I can’t go back…
If my father…” – he managed to get a slight hitch into the word ‘father’ that
added a perfect touch, he thought – “if he sees me again in handcuffs, he’ll…”
He let the sentence trail away, let his still burning eyes dipping down in
genuine shame for the charade.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I’ll pay you... in money… or…” The
hesitation was genuine as well. “Please, won’t you help me? I… I need some
help.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The man was silent. The boy didn’t dare to
look at him. The man turned off the light in the car and said in his deep
voice: “Well, I can’t leave you in the car.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy looked up. The man was pale except
for two bright red spots on his hollow cheeks. The glasses were opaque with
reflection again.</span></span></div>
FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-850674372150509992013-10-04T16:28:00.003+02:002013-10-04T16:31:46.336+02:00Chapter Eight: Empty Spaces (Part II)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:RelyOnVML/>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]--></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>DE</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
</style>
<![endif]-->
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">For two days he drifted around Orkney. He
got onto public busses when he saw them and got off at random stops, to walk
along the one track country roads or simply across the windswept plain. On the
seemingly limitless sky clouds and sunshine changed periodically according to an
inscrutable schedule determined by far away currents and convection.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">At the Standing Stones of Stenness, a
Neolithic circle of stones set on a narrow peninsula between two shallow lochs,
he met an old man walking with two hounds. The boy had been standing in the
shadow of one of the stones smoking and watching two crows argue in coarse
voices when the man suddenly spoke.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Memories, huh?” the man asked. His
windbreaker was the dark blue of municipal uniforms, and he had a lazy eye that
made it hard to know what he was looking at.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy smiled noncommittally and tossed
aside the cigarette. The old man slapped the cold stone next to them. “They got
memories, too, you know?” he said, and when the boy didn’t answer he answered
himself.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yes, old memories. Do you know that they
have been set up at the same time the earliest civilisations started out in
Egypt and Sumeria, India and China.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy looked around, across the lochs and
the pastures dotted with gorse and tufts of wild oats, all the way to the end
of the land and the sea many kilometres distant.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What did people do in this place?” he
asked the old man. “There’s nothing here.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The old man looked around as well, with his
mismatched eyes, and then watched his dogs chase each other between the
standing stones.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Maybe that is what they came for.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">In Kirkwall he had two strange encounters
that would haunt him for a long time. One of those happened as he picked
pockets in the cathedral. A clump of tourists was listening to a guide tell
some tale about a woman unjustly accused of witchcraft, and who mysteriously
disappeared from a dungeon cell underneath the church the night before her
execution. The boy had mingled with the group and used their shoving and
pushing and the distraction through the guide to steal wallets. Just when the
guide encouraged them all to peer inside the gloomy hole that lead down to the
dungeon and everyone was craning their heads, a hand closed itself around the
boy’s wrist.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Not this one, Jack. Believe me. It’s not
worth the trouble.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The man was tall and stared at him with
intense eyes. Then he let him go. The boy slowly walked away, so as not to
rouse the attention of his other victims and make sure nobody else would
remember his face.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He strolled through Kirkwall for a while,
and listened to two heavily tattooed girls play Minstrel Boy near the harbour. The
long-haired, dark one sporting raven feathers on her arms was playing the
guitar, and the cropped, blond one with the Celtic knots and heavy leather
choker and bracelets played a fiddle.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">At dusk he walked around the Peedie Sea, a
small body of water at the Western border of the town, cut off from the sea by
a narrow sandbank with a road running across. The sky was overcast and
reflected the town’s lights a sickly sulfurish yellow. In the shadow of a silo,
amidst high stands of pricklyburr he met the tall man from the Cathedral again.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hold this for a moment, Jack.” The man was
holding out a red glow stick. The boy took it and in its light watched the man
set fire to the spiked fruits of the pricklyburr, drop them into a bowl and
inhale the lazy white smoke.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Thanks.” The man took another hit and the
boy thought he could see the man’s pupils widen and swallow all of his pupils
until there was nothing but two limitless black wells. The man’s voice was
cracked and strangely quivering when he spoke again: “I have something for you,
Jack.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The man took something small out of his
coat pocket and handed it to the boy. The boy turned it over in his fingers. It
was a guitar-pick made of ivory, with scrimshaw filigrees and patterns winding
around in it in slanted likes like some sort of unearthly writing, and a silver
framed hole. The boy didn’t play the guitar, but the pick seemed to be almost
too heavy to be useful.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“My name is not Jack.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Isn’t it? Well, it should be. Run a string
through the hole, wear it like a charm. You’ll never be caught again. And now
go away, Jack, and don’t come back. Take the light and go back to where you
came from.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">By then darkness had fallen, and the boy
made his way to one of the hostels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
night he had some problems bluffing himself past the age and ID check of the
Kirkwall hostel. He tried to sell the yarn that he had gotten separated from
his sister (the girl at the check-in counter seemed more receptive to a boy
with a big sister than one with a big brother) who he was travelling with, that
his papers had been in the backpack she carried, and that she would arrive the
next day, but the girl at the check-in counter wasn’t buying it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ah’m sohry, bit Ah cannae do it, luv.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He nodded, resigned to try another hostel.
He pushed his hands into his pockets and encountered the strange, heavy guitar
pick. He took it out and looked at it again.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“At’s a pretty thing. D’ye play the guitar,
luv?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Do you have a string or something?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Maybe feeling sorry for denying him
earlier, she hunted around her desk and handed him a length of some gilded
cord.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“There ye are, luv.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He ran the cord through the hole in the
pick, just as the stranger had recommended, and tied both ends off. He slipped
it over his head and centred the pick on his chest, underneath his T, when the
girl said:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Leuk,
there is yer sis.” And at his startled expression: “’At is yer sister, luv, in’er?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy turned around and saw a young woman
carrying two backpacks, a violin case, and a naked guitar. It was the blond
girl with the Celtic knot tattoos who he had listened to earlier. Something
about her indeed bore an odd resemblance to him. And somewhere nestled in the
corners of her eyes there was weariness he recognised. Trusting his gut, he rushed
towards her to help her with her luggage and said loudly:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hey, I thought you’d arrive tomorrow, sis.
I forgot my ID in the backpack. Stupid of me. Good thing I was wrong.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The young woman sat down the larger of the
bags and handed him the other one without perceptible hesitation. “I don’t
think so. You didn’t forget it in Aberdeen, you numbskull, did you?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The boy knelt down and began to rifle
through the strange bag. The young woman started to chat with the check-in
girl, telling her about the annoying wet end of a little brother, and got three
beds on her ID.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Come on, wet end,” she said, jingling the
room keys. “You carry the bags.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">And in the hallway: “Listen, kid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I only agreed because I really can do without
a scene right now. Don’t let me regret it.” After a pause, “Annie. You are?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Wet End. And thank you.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Annie laughed. “Alright.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">In the room they were joined by her dark
haired friend with the raven feather tattoos.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Did you get it?” Annie asked, voice
discordant with tension.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The raven girl nodded but asked:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“An’ who would tha’ be?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Annie looked around as if she had
completely forgotten her new relation.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“That seems to be my little brother, Wet
End. Wet End, this is Bev.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Mistaek,” Bev said, with a broad Irish
accent. She took a small package from a pocket which Annie grabbed with obvious
greed. “Ye don’t want her fer a sister, ye want me. I’m the fun one. But ye can
be my brother as well, if ye want te.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Annie excused herself to the bathroom. Bev
took up the guitar. She strummed it once, rolled her eyes and began to tune it.
The boy sat on the edge of a bed and relished the pain her comment had caused
him. It took Bev a while, but when she was satisfied, she started in on what
the boy eventually recognised as “Johnny I hardly knew you”.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He and Bev then spent the night talking and
her teaching him the basics of playing the guitar, while Annie lay in blissful
stupor on one of the beds. The boy wondered how his sister might have turned
out if she had still been alive. Early in the morning he got up and searched
through the packs of the sleeping girls. He took almost a hundred pounds and an
old but well-whetted, well-oiled Swiss army knife. He gave Bev a light kiss and
then snuck out of the room.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">That day he travelled the islands again,
and slept on fresh hay in small, lonely barn in the middle of a wide, lonely
field. The next night he took another ferry further north.</span></span></div>
FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-51089557443464906462011-07-27T00:22:00.002+02:002013-10-04T16:26:05.745+02:00Chapter Eight: Empty Spaces (Part I)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpscK9oWSfYbZHBI_2FieeI3P0e-2RQ6J4VEuJkPGf_K0aLrhGD2wLlvukKdtxVKHNGmmYs7ef0ouZuyonPkBJfNeXVHSqN8jMy2pAL3f5Oc8BzU3kDhm-xZOXKR8OikZTM7KTZWvGtuDN/s1600/2277357752_e1f69fa3f5_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpscK9oWSfYbZHBI_2FieeI3P0e-2RQ6J4VEuJkPGf_K0aLrhGD2wLlvukKdtxVKHNGmmYs7ef0ouZuyonPkBJfNeXVHSqN8jMy2pAL3f5Oc8BzU3kDhm-xZOXKR8OikZTM7KTZWvGtuDN/s400/2277357752_e1f69fa3f5_b.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<blockquote>
<div class="Zitat">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I've run away from a little old woman,<br />
A little old man,<br />
And I can run away from you, I can!</span></span></span></div>
<div class="ZitatEnde">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">- The Gingerbread Boy (St. Nicholas Magazine, May 1875)</span></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:RelyOnVML/>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">A fine drizzle hung like mist around the
street lamps along the narrow road between the sea and the steep, washed-out
slope of the land, when the boy strolled out of the darkness and walked up to
the red-and-white barrier marking the entrance to the marshalling area for the
Scrabster-Stromness ferry. He wore threadbare Jeans, a sheepskin-lined denim
jacket, and scuffed and muddy oxblood boots. One of the shoe laces was black,
the other was a bright neon orange. He had taken care to pick the hay from his
clothes and from the dirty blond hair, and to wash the dust from his face, but
there hadn’t been much he could do about the bruised cheek and the black eye,
almost swollen shut, nor about his angry, closed-off expression.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">For a while he loitered at the edge of the
darkness and waited for check-in to begin. He tried to light a cigarette, but his
lighter, a Zippo with the Tarot Death Card motive, was out of fuel.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">When check-in began, he carefully observed
the procedure from a distance. Just as the signs proclaimed, everybody, whether
travelling with a car or on foot had to show a photo ID. The boy felt a slight
annoyance at the terrorists, whose attacks 7 years earlier to the day had changed
the world and made his form of travel so much harder.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">The signs also proclaimed that no tickets
were issued to unaccompanied minors under 16 years of age. Not that it makes
much of a difference, he thought, I don’t own any legitimate ID anyway. And he
doubted any kind of sob story could get him through here. After watching
everything for a while he decided that he would easily get past the controls
onto the marshalling area, with the terminal building, the long access road to
the pier, and the passenger transit building. The problem would be the check
points in the passenger transit building and the walkway up to the ferry.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He almost enjoyed the problem. It
distracted him from other thoughts and memories. He briefly considered trying
to swim to the ferry. The romantic commando style pleased him, but he quickly
dismissed the idea as far beyond his abilities – the ferry would be much too
tall from the surface of the water. He then considered trying to find someone a
year or two older than himself with features similar enough to pass the picture
check, and steal his ID. But there wasn’t anyone like that visible at the
harbour. Also, he thought, such a person might easily notice the theft before
the ferry arrived in Stromness and get the authorities to search for him. He
didn’t fancy police officers searching the boat, cornering, and arresting him.
And he had no intentions of going back South, to Thurso or beyond, to look for
a suitable mark.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">In the end, he thought his best chance
would be to hide in one of the cars. He slunk undiscovered onto the large car
park where the cars waited in neat queues for loading. Most passengers had
gotten out, in spite of the chilly, damp weather. The sky had begun to grey in
the East, and they were stretching their limbs, eating sandwiches and drinking
hot beverages from thermoses, or using the toilets in the terminal building.
The boy walked through the rows of cars as if belonging to one of them, and
carefully considered his options.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He decided on a dark blue van. The driver,
a burly man with a grim, ogerish face and a snake tattoo around his thick upper
arm, locked the van with a remote and left for the terminal building. The boy
peered through the windows. There were no other passengers inside, and several
cardboard boxes had been stacked in the space behind the back seats. Careful to
appear casual and unselfconscious, he took up position behind the rear doors,
where he would be unobserved by the driver upon his return.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">When the van beeped once and flashed its
lights, and the doors unlocked with an audible clunk, he quickly opened the
door, slipped in, closed it and crawled underneath the back seats. There, he
figured, he would be invisible from the windows and from the front seats.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">His stomach cramped with fear and excitement,
as always when he had committed himself to a plan, and was now helplessly
waiting whether it worked out or whether he would be caught. The van’s engine
growled itself awake. The driver turned on the radio. Amy Winehouse’s hoarse,
plaintive voice filled the space between them.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“So we are history, your shadow covers me,
the sky above a blaze that only lovers see.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Then the van jerked into motion, rolled
slowly forward, rumbled over the ribbed metal ramp, and into the belly of the
ship. When the driver killed the engine again, the boy had already braced his
feet against the struts holding the seat, ready to push himself forward. As
soon as he heard the door being opened, he shot out of his hiding place and to
the rear door. Hoping the overall thundering, throbbing noises of the ship and
the other cars would cover his exit, he opened the door, slipped out, ducked
around the corner of the next car, straightened, and walked away casually.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">On deck the peach and salmon glow on the
Eastern horizon had faded back into the Prussian blue of a gloomy day. Two
girls had taken advantage of the lull in the rain, and were standing by the
guardrail, looking out at the emptiness of the open North
Sea. They were chatting in fluent Gaelic, telling each other
giggling gossip, when the bruised boy approached them.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">They interrupted their conversation and
eyed him curiously, but friendly. He struggled to ask his question.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Can you tell me what this means in
English?” He cleared his throat and blushed, trying to pronounce what he had
been told, in halting whispers in the dark of the night five days before: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hah Geul Ah-kum orsht</i>.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">He had to repeat it twice. The girls
giggled again.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Wis
she a bonnie lass?” one girl asked.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Helpless the boy shrugged, their reaction
already confirming what he had been most afraid of. When she told him, he
thanked her, blushing even worse.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">After two hours the ferry docked in Stromness.
He just walked off together with the other foot passengers. Nobody challenged
him, and he disappeared in the narrow, steep alleys.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>DE</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="//img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" />
<style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style>
<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
</style>
<![endif]-->FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-82271570665017561682011-05-08T23:11:00.004+02:002011-05-21T17:47:07.509+02:00PART 2: WHISPERS IN THE DARK<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdarB2NPF_fcdJOtdXxTvDE5yq-43RBQ5sgG9BUAqJV78NMn58GYt8RJM3ob7gCXcAOxPn2S_CgYPq5WxgYY-8CTaLuYe0DcVrIMTvRQieIVyEw1ebmGwCVOvLD1EEEZ18rwa3-3I31ePu/s1600/tumblr_lj2vi3asvu1qao5k3o1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdarB2NPF_fcdJOtdXxTvDE5yq-43RBQ5sgG9BUAqJV78NMn58GYt8RJM3ob7gCXcAOxPn2S_CgYPq5WxgYY-8CTaLuYe0DcVrIMTvRQieIVyEw1ebmGwCVOvLD1EEEZ18rwa3-3I31ePu/s1600/tumblr_lj2vi3asvu1qao5k3o1_500.jpg" /></a></span></div><blockquote style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><blockquote><span style="font-size: small;">It’s not a breeze cause it blows hard.<br />
Yes and it wants me to discard<br />
the humanity I know<br />
Watch the warmth blow away.<br />
- Incubus: The Warmth (1999)</span></blockquote></blockquote>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-86210903818499331482011-05-08T23:07:00.009+02:002011-06-29T21:44:56.615+02:00Chapter Seven: Storm (Part VII)<div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The air in the cottage was cold when the grey morning filtered in through the shutters, but Sim’s naked body, next to me under the thick down covers, radiated heat. For a while I stared a the ceiling, and beyond it I saw all the ceilings under which I had woken in the past, in my mum’s flat, in juvie, in the flats of strangers, in the guest room of aunt’s, in the pit in Leeds, in all those hostels, in Dewey’s tent, and the different skies I had woken to when there had been no ceiling, from the night of being buried to the lost time in the Mullardochs.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I turned my head and looked for Sim’s face, peaceful and asleep, being slowly lifted out of a sea of shadows that clung to him, that caressed his cheeks and temples, the dark locks stuck by dried sweat to his forehead, his lips and neck, that clung to and caressed all of that like a mother saying good-bye to a child forever.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">It took me a while to realise what the feeling was that filled me then. It took me a while because it had been so long since last I had felt it. It had been 484 days, to be exact, I later figured out since the day Hendrik first kissed me. The feeling was bliss, the sort that makes everything else meaningless.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">And then, as if sensing my gaze, he opened his own eyes, sleepily, and smiled – a puzzled, content smile, almost as if in wonder where he was. I know it is impossible, but I swear that in that moment a single beam of sunlight broke through the clouds, found its way through the blinds covering the windows, graced his face, and made his eyes glow like a clear, cool, mountain lake in the spring sun.</span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What’ss t’ time?”</span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Not sure. Around seven. Maybe bit before.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He smiled again and without letting his eyes leave mine tentatively moved closer, as if expecting me to push him away. When I didn’t he carefully laid himself into the crook under my shoulder, his head on my arm. Like that first kiss, in the holiday home, it was as if he entered my embrace like someone testing and then immersing himself in unknown water.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He pushed the covers down and ran his dirty fingers over the tat on my chest: A clock-face framed in two curved words, “pain” above it, and “killer” below.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Is tsat whit ye feel?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Not now, no. But at the time it was very, hm, comforting.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He took my arm, the one below his head, the way one wraps oneself into a coat an looked at the silver scars running along it inside, from the wrist almost to the inside of the elbow.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Whit wuss ut tsat ye gat first?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I got the tat afterwards. After I… got back. To remind myself that the option remained. That even if I didn’t do it, every day would bring the day closer that…” I trailed away without finishing the sentence. Sim nodded.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Wull ye tell us hou ye dead ut?” He looked back into my face. “Tsat’ss <i>why </i>tae ye Sassenach.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I know,” I said, running my hand softly through his curls. “I’m not all stupid, <i>ye ken</i>.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Och aye te noo,” he said, deadpan. And then: “Wull ye?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I let my head drop back into a pillow. “I…” I faltered, took a deep breath, tried it two more times. But I didn’t find any words that didn’t either make it sound ridiculous or pathetic. “Not now, okay?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Something must have stopped him from pursuing that one. Instead he pushed himself up on an elbow and began to inspect my body.</span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Last night we had done everything in darkness. Sim had wanted to turn on the light, but still in the role of the teacher I had advised him to try it by touch, smell, taste, and sound at first. Like with picking a lock, those senses are far more useful in sex than sight, and as long as we can we rely far too much on our eyes. It diminishes our world. And like the good Padawan that he was, Sim had heeded that advice then. But now he took the chance to fill in the blanks that particular experience might have left him with.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He touched the blackened, L-shaped scars on my shoulder almost with reverence. Two nights before, sitting by the lake, I had told him about Julie and about Ponyboy. Sim made as if to kiss the scar, but in the end didn’t.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hou mony tattoos uss’t tsat ye hae?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Three. Painkiller was the first one.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Whan wat uss tsat ye hae’t made?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Three years ago, pretty much.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He whistled, a real boy whistle from between his lower lip and his upper incisors. “Yer paurents alloued tsat?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Are you daft? My mum totally lost her rag, every time actually. But it wasn’t like she make me wash it off, could she?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Daur say no. Shaw us t’ issers?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I rolled onto my belly and showed him the barcode on my bum cheek with the tiny words – in some dot matrix font – “sold under sin” printed underneath.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hendrik had me get that one. He paid for it… in a way.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim nodded. “And t’ last ane?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I showed him my other shoulder, opposite the scarred one. The tat there looked unlike the painkiller and the barcode tattoos a little amateurish, in a pale blue ink. It was a three-layered piece of cake with what might have been a cherry on top.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“That one’s from juvie. My mate Sebi did it with a sewing needle and ballpoint pen ink.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim thought about it for a while, then he smiled. “T’ cake uss a lee?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Och aye.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was still grinning back at him when the bed cover began to slide off the bed and off both of us. Sim caught it quickly, but not quick enough to keep me from noticing the welts on his back, and buttocks, and his upper thighs. He covered them as if nothing had happened, but there was a weariness in his eyes now as he tried to gauge my reaction. I didn’t show any reaction, I’m sure, but I probably kept my face blank for just too long. But, a<i>nasını satayım</i>, too many things suddenly made sense:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Why Conall had been so ready to believe me, and why his father hadn’t. Why Sim had tried to get me away from the house, and why he had been so sore when he came by the next day. Why he was so skilled an emotional reader, and such a master at misdirection. And all the little, bitter comments.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When I didn’t say anything, he echoed me: “Och aye.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">What else was there to say – except that question that burned inside me. Had it been because of me, because he had warned me? A question didn’t dare to ask, afraid of what obligations it might put on our friendship.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Instead I asked: “What’s on the agenda today?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I think Sim was relieved when he laid down on the bed next to me. At least he didn’t move away.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Want tae come wi us tae kirk?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Don’t you think that’d be risking a bit much?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim grinned at me, his beautiful, crazy, wild grin. “Nae at aw. Te day uss kirkin at Saunt Lorcán’s. Tsat means t’ kirk wull be fou o’ fowk, wi t’ pipe band, and awbody clappin haunds wi t’ priest and aw. Smookin ye in and oot wull be a pure skoosh!”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I hemmed and hawed, feeling very uneasy, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and his excitement was catching. The thought was kind of thrilling. And anyway, I never could refuse him anything.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He had told his rents he was spending the night at a friend’s. The friend was in on it, more or less, and used to covering for Sim. Sim rode together with me to the A832, but dropped me off there to loiter behind some rocks and wait for him. I had taken the Zimmer Bradley along and spent the next 45 minutes in the company of Rumal and Orain, until Sim returned together with Conall and Caena in the Defender Pick-Up. The rest of the family had ridden either with neighbours or in their dad’s saloon.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim reintroduced me to his brother and sister, who he declared loudly to be trustworthy, and Conall excused himself for having almost gotten me nabbed.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Masel uss sae sorry, Danny. A really dinnae expect fer ma paw tae actually gae and clipe on ye.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I tried to take it with some grace, which I might have gotten off reasonably well, and they complimented me and Sim that with the new hair cut, dye job, and different clothes none of those who had seen me before would recognise me as long as I staid in the background.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The church itself was a big, grey, squatting block of a building, and brimming with festive worshippers. Once we arrived there, Sim bade me stay behind, and dashed off – turned out he was one of the altar boys and had to change before service. But as soon as he was away, a young man, early to mid twenties, walked up to me. He was wearing dark slacks, brown suede shoes, and a moss green blazer. He had Sim’s dark curls and bright blue eyes.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hey. A’m Aidan. Ye must be Danny.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Carefully I shook his hand. He was tall and look good in that charismatic way that has nothing to do with looks and that people have who see more than they let on and who can form an opinion without sharing it.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I’m Sim’s brother. He asked me te look efter ye, while he’s busy.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Aidan was there in the company of his girlfriend, Lydia, who in turn had a younger brother, John, who was in Sim’s year at the local High School. Aidan left me with Lydia and John while he said hello to his mother and his siblings. He no longer lived at home, and, apparently, wasn’t currently on speaking terms with his father. Lydia started to chat with me, but it was awkward with unspoken chunks of life barring us every way. When John asked me about football we were all very relieved.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That mass was the first time I actually prayed to God again since ‘Nette’s death. I prayed the way I had done before she had gotten sick, the way she had taught me. In prayer you do not ask God for anything. If you have eyes in your head and a brain to understand what you see, you know that God does not change His plans because of the whims and wishes of humans. And if anyone ever comes to you with tales of miraculous cures, ask them why no amputee, however deserving, however hard praying, ever re-grew the littlest finger, let alone an arm or a leg? What, God does cancers and comas but no missing limbs? No, there is no heavenly wishing well. Prayer, done properly, means giving thanks for the world <i>as it is</i>, and listening for God’s voice, to tell you how you can contribute to its beauty and splendour.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Fittingly the sermon’s theme that day was Job 37:14 – “Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I reserved the right to heed or not to heed his words, as I saw fit, but we both – God and I, like God and Job before – knew that to do either was at my own peril. So I knelt down, in all the earnestness of my heart, and swallowed my pride, and for the first time in 3 ½ years I gave thanks. For, though I knew that my life was fucked up beyond belief, on that morning I was grateful for it indeed.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Afterwards Sim dodged his rents, and joined Aidan, Lydia, John and me. It was clear enough that Sim and Aidan shared a special closeness. Amongst his brothers Conall might have been Sim’s every day best friend and companion of many small adventures, but Aidan, the oldest of the siblings, was Sim’s hero and role model.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Aidan had come with Lydia and John in his extremely sexy black Toyota MR2 roadster, a car he had treated with luxurious contempt: The inside smelled of smoke, dope, and spilt beer, and there were parking receipts, betting stubs, and crushed cigarette boxes littered about. Aidan took me along, first dropping off Lydia and John at their rents’s place, and then me at the cottage. On the way there, along the A832 and down the port hole riddled cart rut across the moor, Aidan quizzed me.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sim thinks pretty big of ye.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“He thinks pretty big of you.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Aye,” Aidan laughed and tried to dig a pack of fags from the breast pocket of his blazer. I leaned over, got it out, lit a fag, and gave to him. “Thanks.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You’re welcome.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“So. Oniweys.” He took a puff and hemmed and hawed a bit. “I’ll ask ye straight up. Are ye plannin’ on playin’ some sort o’ con on him and ma family? Or usin’ him fer some other crooked deal?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What makes you think I would do that?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He looked at me through a screen of smoke.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sim told me just enough about ye te hae me worried, but nae enough to know what yer up te.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Did he now.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Look. I dinnae care what the two o’ ye are doin’ up here, as long as ye daena play fause wi ma wee brother.” And when I didn’t say anything: “Ye see, Sim doesnae put trust in fowks. But fer some reason I cannae fathom, he put his trust in ye.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Not enough to warn me about you, I thought. But then, he probably put more trust in you than you deserve yourself. Do you really know your own brother so little?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I took a fag for myself. The cottage appeared at the end of the track. The car shuddered and shook on the uneven ground.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I have no intention of playing false, Mr. MacLeod. I have no intention of hurting Sim. But…”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I searched for words outside amongst the heather, the crags and pools, and didn’t find any. Aidan stopped the car. He opened the door, dropped the fag end onto the ground and extinguished it with a well practiced twist of his right brown suede shoe. He looked at me and nodded. “Aye. Life sometimes deals us a shite hand.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">We both got out. There was a hint of the sea on the air.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Well, Danny.” Aidan offered me his hand across the roof of his roadster. “If ye’re ever in need of a place te stay, feel free te come te me.” And he handed me his card, naming him a solicitor, and giving his address in Port Maree.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">***</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When I saw Sim again later that day, he was in a foul mood. Tourists had rented the cottage and would be arriving on Wednesday. Our time together had gotten an official time limit. But – he had to grin at the cleverness of himself – he had strategically annoyed his dad into giving him the chore of making the cottage presentable for the tourists. That meant he also had an official reason to come by after school on Monday and Tuesday, which he did.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The weather was rather dreary and cool, but we still had a blast. On Monday I met him at the gates of his school and together we played two cons I had dreamed up. The marks were day tourists passing through, minimising the threat to Sim of being caught, and the nature of the game made maximum use of the fact that he was well known to the locals, while I was a stranger as well.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Tuesday we rode the horses to the tip of the peninsula and swum in the sea. Later we fished in the lake. And later still I helped Sim clean up the cottage while he introduced me to his favourite Scottish punk band, The Real McKenzies. And then he put on Nick Cave and we practiced dancing some more. From dancing one thing lead to another, and ended with him kneeling in front of the bed while I buggered him energetically.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Had we been caught doing this before 1861, it would have meant death by hanging for me. Until 1980 it would have meant penal servitude for life or no less than 10 years. (Though only if I had been of legal age myself, I suppose. I never understood the British rules regarding the age of criminal responsibility.)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">This is what it meant in 2008:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Suddenly Sim grew pale as death and stared over my shoulder. Someone had come in under the cover of Nick Cave singing about the Mercy Seat.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I turned around as fast as I could, given the circumstances, and could hear Sim wince as I did. Then my ears were ringing and I stumbled backwards and fell over the edge of the bed, the entire left half of my face in sickening flames.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Over me stood, face contorted by rage, fists balled and in the air, Sim’s father. I have no idea what he screamed or even if it was English, Scots, or Gaelic, but the meaning was clear enough: “I will kill you.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I doubt though that he really had that resolve. Few do. He just thought it was the correct and manly sentiment to show at such a moment, and that in the end some judicious violence would suffice. Of course neither of us knew that he had actually succeeded, but that it took one year and two months for the impact to run down the skein of fate and finally break my body.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was still stumbling to my feet, hampered by jeans and boxers bunched around my ankles when Sim – his legs were untangled and naked but for a single, vividly orange sock – jumped up and went between his dad and me, begging – begging! – him to stop.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">His dad caught him with a backhand slap to the temple that sent Sim flying across the room like a rag doll, until the corner of a table connected with his head and broke his flight curve.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He crumpled to the floor like a heap of wet clothes.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I told you I sometimes see red?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I assume I must somehow have gotten out of the jeans, and I must have grabbed whatever I got my hands on, Sim’s heavy-duty bicycle lock as it turned out, and I must have attacked Mr. MacLeod.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I only remember that I heard two sound: Furious and insane sounding bellowing – that must have been me – and then a soft whimpering. The red haze receded enough for me to realise that the whimpering had come from Sim’s limp body. That was enough to bring me back into the real world.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Mr. MacLeod was lying on his back, his right wrist and leg apparently broken, his face almost as pale as Sim’s had been when he had seen him. And I was standing above him, the bicycle lock held high and about to be brought down with all my strength onto his head.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I still wanted to murder him. That is not a figure of speech. I wanted to see his skull crack, his face split, and his brains run across the floor in a pink, frothing mush. I wanted to stomp into that mush and make it squish. I wanted him to be eradicated from this earth.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">But the rage was fading almost as quickly as it had come. Having heard Sim’s one whimper had been enough to cut away the bottom of my heart and to let everything boiling in it fall out, leaving nothing but a terrible and cold emptiness.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Keeping the lock firm in hand I retreated to Sim and knelt down net to him, to feel his pulse. I didn’t feel it, but I was probably too shaken to do so anyway. He was breathing though, so he was still alive. There was blood pooling under his head and I couldn’t see where it was coming from. I didn’t dare move his body for fear of doing more damage.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Instead I fished his mobile from the pocket of his jacket – a jacket he had hung over the back of the chair – now knocked over – just an hour ago, when we had still been laughing. And hugging. Dancing. And kissing.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Pushing aside premature grief was very hard.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I concentrated on dialling emergency services.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“There has been an accident. Someone has been hurt at the head. He is losing a lot of blood. Unconscious. Fourteen years.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">She wanted to know where I was. I asked Mr. MacLeod. When he didn’t answer right away, I roared at him and hit his broken leg with the lock. He roared, too, in pain, and then told me what I needed to know. I passed it on to the shocked emergency operator and hung up.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I got dressed, gathered up my few belongings, stuffed everything in the nylon backpack Mr. Roth had given me, and waited by the window. I had expected an ambulance, but when I heard the helicopter, I knelt down next to Sim and gave him a small kiss on the forehead and, ignoring his father, hurried out of the house and hid amidst the birches.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I watched the medics carry Sim and his dad away. I saw that they had put a serious looking inflatable brace on his neck and that his face was uncovered. I couldn’t give tuppence about his dad.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When the helicopter had left, I picked up the bike Sim had left again carelessly lying on the gravel of the cottage, and rode off.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">***</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I went to Aidan’s place, the one noted on the card he had given me. There was no police car at his front door. When he opened the door for me, he was holding the telephone in his hand.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I heard. What happened?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I stumbled over my words, anger and grief and self-reproach tying my tongue. With a few quick, precise questions he sussed the situation.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Stop apologising,” he said absentmindedly. “I know ma dad.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I took a deep breath. I looked at him hard. Then I said:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“If you know your dad, you know he will put all of this on me.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Aidan looked up, his face a question mark.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I want Sim to live,” I continued. “I don’t see what I can do to help beyond this, but if there is anything, I will, even if it means going to the rozzers. But if your dad thinks he can finger me for Sim’s attacker and get away with it he’s wrong. If none of you will speak up, I will. I’ve seen the marks he left on Sim. Everything will come to light and he will go down with me.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Aidan still didn’t react.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I don’t know how badly you want to see him in jail, but they got my voice making that 999 call. They have me shouting at him and hurting him. My fingerprints are all over that cottage, and probably all sorts of other traces. And my prints will eventually lead them to everything about me. You’re a fucking solicitor, you do the math.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He looked back at me for a while, thinking. I believe he was really pondering whether he should let both me and his dad go to jail. But then he took his phone again:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ma? It’s Aidan. I know, I’m on ma wey there. But ye must listen now, ma. Send Iona te the wee cottage. She must scrub it doon. No, everything. Change linen, and do every light switch and door knob, water tab. Anything somebody might put his hands on. No, ma, if ye daenna want yer husband in jail fer a very lang time, ye will dae it. Richt noo! Aye, A’ll see ye there. And ma? If ye get ther first, make him shut oop until A’m there, too, aye?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He turned to me, looking grim and a bit sick. “I have te go now. Ye can stay or leave. There’s food in the kitchen. Help yerself.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was one of the longest nights of my life. I spent most of it sitting on the windowsill, staring out at the street, expecting police cars. I finished all my fags, remembering with each one the two boxes of Marlboro Sim had brought me. Remembering every damn thing we’d done together.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I got up once to pee, and another time to drink some water from the tab.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The sky was greying when Aidan returned.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“He’ll live. It’s a fracture and they say his brain is swollen, but they say he’ll make it.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I slumped down in a corner against the wall.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ye gotta leave. They dinna believe our yarn aboot the accident and ye havin’ been chust a hiker passin’ through, but I daena think they’ll be able to pruive anything, once ye’re gone.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I nodded. I gave him my e-mail address, in case he or Sim ever wanted to contact me later, and we went down to his car. We rode in silence. The land was still just as beautiful as it had been when Conall had taken me. He let me out at Braemore Junction. We shook hands, and he said farewell cordially enough, but there was little doubt he wished I had never set foot in his family’s house.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Then he took off, in his sexy black roadster. I stood where he had let me off, at the car park for Corrieshalloch Gorge and the Falls of Measach. I was 1,971 kilometres from Lake Iešjávri, as the crow flies. 1,971 kilometres and 86 days. And 1,533 kilometres and 191 days from a little, run down farm house in Lower Silesia.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And 3,026 kilometres and 393 days from that dinghy Greek guesthouse near the Aegean Sea.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Not that any of these places would have meant shit to me then. All I knew, as I stood there, was that I couldn’t go south. That I couldn’t go back.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">So I struck out my thumb and waited for a northbound car to take me along.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-5398239692401560742011-05-05T18:30:00.006+02:002011-06-29T15:38:34.747+02:00Chapter Seven: Storm (Part VI)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The sun was slowly dying in a bloody swamp of stringy clouds above the Hebrides when Sim returned. He came on horseback.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ower t’ muir uss t’ shortest wey,” he explained as he dismounted. He was keeping two coins palmed, one in each hand. One of them fell to the ground as he tethered the horse to a tree. He picked it up with an apologetic shrug.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hae tae haud at practeesin, richt?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Right,” I said, and I couldn’t have felt prouder.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sae, whaur uss we gaun?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I had the other cottage in mind, the one a bit down the shore. It seems to be empty at the moment.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“T’ McDonagh boothy?” His face fell. “Tsat’s dreich. Naessin tarein bit stour’s sel and moose-wabs.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Nothing there but what?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He rolled his eyes: “Dist and speeder wabs.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Oh. Yes, which is why it’s a good place to practice. We’re not going to knock over Fort Knox on our first try, are we?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The disappointment on his face remained.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Okay,” I relented. “How about we try your rents’s house, later, when they’re asleep?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim shuddered. “Certes, and tan ma paw kin catch ye lairnin masel hou tae be a berglir? Tsat’s a mischancy thochtie, mate.” Then his face brightened: “Och! Masel ken chust t’ perfit goose. Ut’ss in Port Maree, bit ut’ss geylies oot-t’-way. Ut’ss belangin tae somebody frae Edinburrae, bit ut shoud be emptie te noo.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You are crazy, you know that, Sim MacLeod?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Aye. Masel uss, ussna A?” He grinned. “C’mon, aff we gae.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He climbed back onto the horse and scooted to he very front of the broad saddle. “Ceana telt msel ye ken hou tae ride. Ye tak t’ reins.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I stepped into the stirrup he had just taken his own feet out of, grabbed the saddle horn, and swung myself into the saddle behind him. He leaned back into me as I reached around him on both sides to take the reins, and I had to think of Hendrik and the rides on his motorbike.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Without waiting for his directions I nudged the horse into canter and went to the narrow path across the moor to Port Maree.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Och, ye awready ken yer wey aboot,” Sim commented.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It pays to know your exits. If you want to be a thief, you better keep that in mind.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Bitterly he muttered: “A leart tsat lesson lang syne, mate.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Silence settled over us as we rode through the chilly September night. He snuggled his back against me and I kinda hoped he didn’t notice my wood, but I had told him enough for him to be forewarned, and anyway, he neither joked about it nor shied away. A low waning moon winked heartlessly through ragged clouds and the lonesome beauty of the land burned itself into my soul forever.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The house Sim lead me to was a nice, modern, flat-roofed holiday home at the north end of the village, set back a bit in the hills above the beach. We left the hose tethered to a clump of wild gooseberry bushes in a hollow hidden from the village behind the last crest of the shore-side hills. Sim wanted us to camouflage ourselves Ranger style, with mud across the faces and grass and leafy twigs and heather stuck across our clothing, but I stopped him.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Bit ut’s really wirkin. A wis amang t’ best at ACF fieldcraft.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“ACF?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Airmy Cadet Force. At schuil. At’s tis paramilitary sivival trainin, ken, Bear Grylls like. And masel uss guid, guid at’ut. Pent and ryss and t’ like, tay brak t’ contours, mak ut real fickle fer t’ issers tae ken us fer human.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ryss?” – “<i>Twigs</i>, man. <i>Twigs</i>, and <i>grass</i>, and <i>leafs</i>. And pent fer t’ face. <i>Make-up</i>.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yes, Sim. I believe you are really good at paramilitary survival, and if it was a matter of getting shot at or not, I’d agree. But you’re going to break into an empty, unprotected house. It’s our job nobody sees us at all, with twigs or without. And if we are caught, you can always say, we were just bored and had a look around for a laugh. At best you get a slap on the wrist for trespassing. But if you show up in bloody camouflage, that’s not going to stick. When they see you meant business, they get you for B&E. That’s no joke. We are breaking into a house.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He sobered a bit and followed me over the wall, across the sloping lawn, and to the front door. By then the moon had set, and the only light came from the street lamps beyond the wall and the bushes. Sim wanted to take an electric torch from a pocket. I held the wrist.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“No light,” I whispered. “The beam of a torch at night is really suspicious. Someone who has a right to be here would turn on the porch light, and if they were coming or leaving they’d have a car down by the street and everything.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Bit hou wull we appen t’ door?” he whispered back.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I’m going to teach you how to pick a lock now. And that is done by sound and touch anyway. Here, gimme your coins and take these.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">In the darkness I pressed two small tools into his hands, a safety pin and a small flathead screwdriver I had taken from a tool box back in the cottage.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“To pick a normal security lock you need a pick – that’s the safety pin in this case – and a tension wrench – the screwdriver. The pick has to be both thin, so you can get it inside the lock and move around inside, and strong, so it doesn’t bend away once you start to poke at things. The wrench has to be able to administer torque, that is pressure on the cylinder, turn it, you know, like a key would. So it needs to fit into the slit and apply pressure on the sides, but leave as much room as possible so you can still move the pin freely. It’s always a sort of compromise.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I showed him how to apply torque with the screwdriver and the guided his other hand with the pin into the lock. While I had waited for Sim that evening I had bent the last three millimetres of the pointy end of the pin upwards with some pliers.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“The thing about the pick is this: Most stuff, like paper clips, especially those made of brass or copper, are too soft. Once you try to press against the pins inside the lock, they bend somewhere along the long part between your grip and the little bent pointy end. And those covered in plastic are usually too thick to get inside properly. So you need something made from steel, but stull just pliable enough so you can bend the end 90 degrees without it snapping off.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Like a sauftie-preen?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“For example. A good, long, not too thick steel paperclip can work, too. Really fine hacksaw blades can also be good. Wire is mostly too soft, but that depends. Okay, now feel around inside the tumbler. Scrape the pin along the bottom. Can you feel how the point keeps catching?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Aye.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“That’s the pins. There is 5 to 8 pins in a lock like this. Each pin is actually two steel pins and a spring pressing against them. When a key is inserted the teeth of the key push each set of pins exactly so that the break separating them – remember, it’s always two pins and a spring – is aligned perfectly with the side of the cylinder, so that one pin is exactly outside, and one is exactly inside. But when you remove the key, the springs move the pins so that they go across the line and pin the cylinder in place, so it can’t turn. Got that?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Aye.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What you want to do is push each set of pins so that the crack between them is aligned perfectly with the cylinder wall and you can turn the lock with the wrench… the screwdriver.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Bit winna t’ springs push t’ pins back, ance A muive tae t’ neist ane?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Spot on, mate. That’s why you need to keep torque on the cylinder with the wrench all the time: Not so much you can’t push the pins anymore with your pick, but enough so the pins don’t slide back in. Once you get a feel for it, you can actually hear and sense the tiny click when a pin separates at the crack.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Och, ut’s fickle, eh?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It’s a lot harder than it mostly looks on the telly, but it’s not magic either. Just try to feel and hear and imagine what’s going on inside the lock.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Uss’t up or doon tsat A thrimmle t’ pins?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Can be either way. Depends on how the key is put in. You always push the way the teeth of the key are pointing. In Germany it’s usually downward. I think it’s the same here. I read that in America it’s usually upwards, but I’ve never been there myself.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Doon, richt.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then I settled down and let him work on it. I knew that the first time takes forever. And it did. It took Sim almost three hours, and he was bathed in sweat at the end. It’s not easy to stay crouched in front of a door, keep constant but delicate pressure with a tool not really good for the job with one hand and try to make tiny adjustments in a space you can’t see with the other.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Once, after about half an hour, Sim wanted to give up.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“A cannae dae it, Dana. A wull be here awe nicht.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I got time. So do you. Or do you have somewhere else to be?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Naw, atweel no. Bit tis maun be gey dreich fer ye. A tsocht we would hae fun te nicht.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I got time, Sim. You want to learn this or not?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">After that he concentrated on the lock.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I learned a lot about Gaelic cussing that night. It’s not only very strenuous, but it also incredibly frustrating. Every time your tension torque slips all the pins you already got into the correct position will slip back, and you have to start from scratch.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">But he kept at it, and around two in the morning he turned the cylinder with the screwdriver once around we heard the latch slide back one setting.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Then the cylinder caught again and the door was still locked.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Whit’s wrang?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It’s a double lock. Most are. You need to turn the key twice before you can open the door. But of course as you turn, the pins slip back, so you need to pick it all over again.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Och nae. Nae!” And he followed that with a long stream of Gaelic obscenities. “Ye kenned at woud happen?!”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yep. Well, I was pretty sure it would.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“And noo?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Here, let me try this.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I took another safety pin from my pocket and took the screwdriver from Sim. I applied the screwdriver and pushed the second safety pin into the lock and ratcheted it quickly in and out in a somewhat jiggly sawing motion. After a few seconds the cylinder turned a second time and this time the bolt inside slid all the way back and I could push the door open.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim stared at me with open mouth.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hou’d ye dae tsat?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I grinned and pressed my second make-shift lockpick into his hand. He felt it and realized that I had not given it a single 90° twist at the end, but had rather bent it into a zig-zagging shape, not unlike a normal key, only that all “teeth” were roughly the same size and shape.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sometimes this works, too. You must apply the right amount of torque but then you can try to simply jiggle the pins quick enough and hope they will all catch at the right spot. Works a lot faster than picking each pin individually.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“<i>An Taigh na Gall ort!</i>” Sim spat a couple of nasty insults my way. “Hou wisna ye at telling masel tsat rich oot?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sorry, I’m just a simple Englishman,” I said, grinning. “When you get excited I can’t understand you. What did you just say?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Feech! A askit: Why dinnae tell me hou tae dae tsat richt awa?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Seriously, Sim? Because now you actually learned how a lock works. Now you also know why this trick works. Now you understand a lock. And anyway, ratcheting doesn’t always work.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hou lang uss it whan ye pick a lock?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Depends on the lock, of course. But normally I got it down to about 20 minutes. But that took a lot of practice I mostly practiced on the door to the roof. It was pretty difficult, and nobody ever bothered me when I sitting at the top of the staircase.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I opened the door wide.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Please, come in.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The house was exactly what you would expect from a holiday home when it wasn’t it use. Lots of pine wood, and carpets and cushions in subdued colours and patterns that inured them against stains and dirt. The fridge door was propped open with a neatly folded kitchen towel, and in the cabinets remained a bag of sugar, a carton of salt, and an open pack of rice.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim went to the fuse box and turned the power on. Then he turned on the lights in the living room. I thought about telling him not to, but the windows were shuttered, the curtains were drawn, and the room itself, on the lower level, was hidden from the street behind the wall and the hedge.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hey, leuk here!” Sim had found a bottle of Scotch in one cabinet. We opened it and took turns drinking directly from the bottle.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Then Sim turned on the stereo and began to dance in the middle of the room. I sat down on the couch, lit a fag, had some more Scotch, and watched him. When he noticed me watching, he said: “C’mon. Dance wi us.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Dance wi us.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“But we’re both blokes.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Aye. And tsat baszers ye, <i>pìobair</i>?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I can’t dance.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Nowey!” Sim laughed. “Ye canna dance? Masel wull lairn ye! C’mon.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">For a second I thought about telling him to fuck himself, but then sighed, put the fag between my lips, and went over to him.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ut’s gey easy, Dana. Leuk. Ye pit yer caurie haund here and gie’s isser. Sae. And noo ye coont tae fower, wi t’ muisic. Ane, twa, tsree, fower, ane, twa, tsree, fower…”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I concentrated on matching his steps and after a while I actually got into the rhythm. Then Sim stopped and knelt down by the rack with CDs. He went through it and then pulled one out.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Tis uss a Walz. Haud on.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He put the CD into the player and then Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman began singing: “I know I stand in line you think you have the time…” Sim came back over to me, took up position again and showed me the gentle swayin one-two-three steps of the Walz.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then we danced. For real. Slow, and close, to this insipid, silly, clichéd, soppy song. His nails on his fingers on his hand on my shoulder were dirty and badly cut. He smelled of sweat and horse. His belt buckle pressed against my crotch. From his nose his breath came through the neck of my T and was hot and chilling at once on my chest.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">In this plain, almost anonymous living room of the empty holiday home I had taught him to break into, drunk on Scotch and excitement, success, and our own daring, we danced.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And when Nicole Kidmen left the stage and Robbie Williams started into the brassy “Do Nothing Til’ You Hear From Me”, Sim looked up into my eyes and with a burning face asked hoarsely: “Will ye lairn us t’isser stuff an aw?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And when I didn’t answer right away: “Ye ken, whit ye dae wi…”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Not wanting to make him spell it out, I kissed him as gentle as I could. At first he tensed, and I had to think of Tim, and wondered if I had made a mistake again. But it wasn’t the same tension, there was no real shock in Sim’s body language, more a shivering, excited fear, and when his tongue met mine, it was as careful as a testing of the water. Careful, but curious.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">After a while we cleaned up, turned off the lights, and rode back to the cottage. This time I used the bed. And Sim stayed.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-38042423326867223442011-05-04T22:35:00.002+02:002011-06-28T09:37:58.557+02:00Chapter Seven: Storm (Part V)<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> <div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I walked Sim to the curve in the path, where it left the birch wood and started out onto the open moor, past the bony white scrags, and I kept staring after him when he had ridden his bike down that path far longer than it took the darkness to snuff him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I knew that even by my own fucked up standard I could leave whenever I wanted. All I had promised was to teach him as long as I staid, after all. I hadn’t said how long that would be. Also, while I had promised to teach him what I knew, I hadn’t specified what part of my knowledge. So why was I so uneasy? Why didn’t I simply up and leave? Why didn’t I stay and just teach him some harmless coin tricks, and some confidence tricks so elaborate or so dated that he wouldn’t ever be able to actually use them?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I clearned and locked up the house and withdrew into the woods again. I didn’t really believe he would rat me out, but I didn’t fancy being caught asleep by some farmerishly early visit of his dad or anyone else of his family.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">But that night sleep refused me, even on my soft pillow of moss and wormy wood. So after a while I decided to pay a visit to Port mare. It was a decent hike and I arrived just before dawn. Port Maree is a bit larger than Inverewe, and something of an administrative centre for the peninsula, with houses threaded on a main road that follows the long curved beach.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The combined supermarket and news agent wasn’t officially open yet, but they were getting deliveries and the bloke there sold me a packaged sandwich and a can of ginger beer, and told me to try the hotel for internet access. I made my way along the beach, and watched the Atlantic turn the sand a silvery mirror again and again, only to be blotted up each time. And each time the waters disappeared they took my footprints with them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Crows and sea gulls raucously greeted the returning fishing boats. At the far end the sand darkened with algae and sea weed and gave way for blackened, fishy smelling boulders. The hotel was one of the Victorian country houses that looked all pretty and perfect from far away, but from close up revealed all the little damages time had wrought, the many patches and spots that had been painted over, added to, and modified to keep up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Inside the night clerk was setting the tea room for breakfast. She allowed me access to one of the two computers they have for guest use, as long as I left before the shift ended. I checked mail, blogged the last couple of days, and then opened the Yahoo browser messenger to see if there were some night owls from the US or some early birds from Europe online. Indeed, both my BDSM Daddy Matt from Texas and Peter, an elderly queer bloke from the Midlands were on.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I tried to talk to both of them about Sim and the promise I had given him. The paedophile African-American Baptist Sadist and the closeted Anglican Poofter agreed that it was bad enough I was doing this stuff, and that I should get my arse back to Berlin onto a school bench, and that it would be better to break my word than to go through with it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I told them both they could go screw themselves. Master Daddy Matt told me to beat myself with a birch rod or ruler or so the next time I wank. The night clerk asked me to finish up. I erased the browser history and logged out.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I checked out what I assumed must be Sim’s school, Maelrubha High. It was a Saturday, though, and the school remained dead and empty. I stood at the fence for a while and pressed my face against the iron rails. The sky was low and dark, and in a glowing a cold light the colour of polished tin just above the hills.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">When I left Port Maree for the emptiness of the moors, I didn’t take the A832, and didn’t try to hitch a ride. Instead I walked off the end of Lohim Road, a patchy cart rut that soon disintegrated into a mere deer pass through the hills and past the small lakes of the peninsula. It took me close enough to the cabin that I could cut across the heather, grab something to eat and a new book, and went for an uneasy nap in the woods. Later I settled down in my look out post again, practice coin tricks, reading a Darkover novel, and waited for the boy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">When he arrived, we got right at it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Whit wull ye lairn us first?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Nothing. You’ll show me first, what you already know.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“A ken naeting aboot stealing an t’ like.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I tossed him a coin. He was still moving a bit stiffly, but apparently his soreness was better, and he caught it out of the air, without effort of fumble.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“There, very good.” I grinned. “Now put it in your palm and hold it very lightly between the ball of your thumb and the edge of your hand. No, that’s already too hard. You hand doesn’t look natural that way anymore.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">He relaxed his hand.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Let it drop down to your side. Keep it relaxed.” I watched him. “Great. You’ll keep that coin there all evening, and when you leave, you will continue to do so every moment you can. I mean every, okay, this is hard work. Under the shower. While brushing your teeth. Sitting in school. Doing your homework. Doing your chores. Train yourself to be able to do anything with a coin palmed. Switch palms every now and then. Keep your hand relaxed and try to not clink the coin against anything.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Then I questioned him about hobbies and chores. As a crofter’s son he obviously knew his way around animals.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“See, that’s useful: Animals can both warn a mark and attack you. On the other hand, make friends with a man’s pet and he will more likely trust you. Every little bit you know about animals, especially dogs, can help you.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">He also knew how to sharpen blades, how to tie various knots, how to climb sheet poles, how to use the saw and the claw-hammer efficiently, and how to repair fences. He had acted in school plays – amongst other roles that of the Artful Dodger in a school performance of “Oliver, The Musical” – and had been playing the fiddle since he was 5.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Aw tsat uss uissfu?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sure. Take the fiddle. Your fingers and hands and arms are strong and nimble from the practice. It’s given you a good sense of timing and a good ear. Nearly everything can be used by a thief and liar. What you are good at determines how you go about the art. The other thing that determines any grift are the weaknesses of the mark. After all, you don’t want to make it hard on yourself. You want it to go off smoothly.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">His greatest asset, of course, was that he really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wanted </i>it. Whatever I told him, or showed him, he sucked it up like it was cream and he a starving kitten.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Like, after a while he began t complain that his hand was cramping up around the coin he was still holding in his palm.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I told him: “That’s why you have to practice.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And he grinned at that. He grinned and then concentrated on relaxing his hand without letting go of the coin. And when it fell out of his hand, he picked it up and put it right back. And he asked me for techniques to strengthen and relax his hands.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I taught him the basics of change raising, pocket pocking, and cheating at card. He immediately understood the three main challenges: To be aware of where the mark’s attention was; to find ways – or better yet: to use already present opportunities – to distract the mark and steer his attention away from his misdeeds; and finally the quickness and smoothness to pull it off in a minimum of time with a minimum of movement. The last bit, he’d simply have to practice, and practice, and practice, but that was nothing new to a life-long fiddle player, was it?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">And he was already brilliant at distraction and misdirection.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Finally he said: “Masel hae tae gae hame and dae ma chores or ma paw will tak a sparey.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“How do you explain your absence anyway?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Naessin tae it. Yesterday A makkit on masel hae tae practeese wi t’band.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“You play in a band?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">At that he actually blushed a bit. “Aye. T’ Port o’ Daw. Masel sing and fiddle. And t’day A chust said maself wuss meetin in wi ma mates.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Can you come back later?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">His smile deepend. “Shuir. Want fer me tae bring sometsing? Mae fags?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">“Actually, I had a field trip in min. Want to learn how to break in somewhere?”</span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-57360156278973526462011-05-04T22:26:00.001+02:002011-05-05T07:49:16.596+02:00Never Apologize, Never Explain<i>On the whole that is a motto I take rather serious. But I take this novel rather serious as well, and I value you, my readers and commentators, very, very much. So I wanted to promise you that I have no intention of leaving this tale hanging. Sometimes real life interferes, usually because I am making a mess of things, usually because my heart outshouts my brain, as it did these past three weeks. And sometimes I falter because I fail at being as honest and truthful as I want this telling to be - as I NEED it to be - or because the tale has arrived at a particularely painful point, as it is the case in this Chapter.</i><br />
<i>I may falter. But if there is any virtue that I call mine, it is that I go on, to the end. I have done so in the past, and by God, I mean to do so now.</i>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-18842284283107794392011-03-30T16:02:00.014+02:002011-06-30T03:38:30.172+02:00Chapter Seven: Storm (Part IV)<div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim’s directions had been surprisingly accurate and helpful. Normally peeps don’t really see the world around them, the less so the more common it is to them. For the most part they are unable to describe it in useful terms to a stranger. But Sim had it down so dead on that I found the place on a lonely moor, in a moonless night, without once getting lost.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I had gotten off the narrow, winding footpath here and there, though, especially where the wooden posts of the overland power line didn’t exactly follow it. Several times I had sunken into muddy pools of moor water, mostly only to the ankle or the knee, but more than once all the way to the hip. When I finally got to the cottage, water was squelching in my boots and crumbs of peat were itching my arse crack.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The cottage was a blocky, square stone building, thatch-roofed, and directly at the shore of a lake, hidden well by a dense birch wood. A short wooden pier lead directly from the house onto the lake.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Everything was dark and quiet when I approached. I got out the keys Sim had given me. At first they didn’t seem to fit, and for a second I thought it had been a cruel joke, but then I was past the catch in the lock and the door opened. Since all the windows were covered by shutters – and there was little enough light outside – the inside was pitch black. I felt for a light switch and found it, but flipping it did nothing. With the help of Mark’s Death Arcana Zippo I eventually found the fuse box and turned on the power.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The cottage had one room, one kitchen, and a small bathroom that obviously had been built in later. At first the faucets wouldn’t run, but some more look revealed an electric pump. Witching it on yielded fresh water, and an electric geyser even made it hot. I quickly stripped and warmed up under a steaming hot shower. The electric kettle, some old Tetley’s bads, and a thermos allowed me to warm up from the inside as well. The only thing I really missed was fags, but I had smoked my last on the walk here.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I never considered not going to the cottage, or not waiting for Sim the next day. I know that most peeps don’t get that, but to me there is a big difference between lying and breaking my word. Call it pride, but lying is a way of gaining control and power. Breaking my word cheapens myself. It’s not that I don’t do it, it’s just that I am loathe to, and usually need a pretty good reason.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">But all that didn’t mean that I trusted Sim, of course. His dad had already proven to be a hypocrite and a snitch, and his older brother an idiot for not knowing that. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked the family. But I wasn’t going to put my fate into their hands, was I?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Next to the door I found several pairs of Wellingtons, some raincoats, and an old woollen seaman’s jumper. Of my own wet clothes I only put back on the woollen knee socks Mr. Roth had given me. (Unlike cotton, wool, I had discovered on my journey, keeps you warm even when it is wet.) Then I stepped into the smallest pair of rubber boots, and put on the jumper – it hung down to my knees – and one of the rubberized rain coats. I cleaned up my mess as good as I could, took one of the woollen blankets from one of the bunk beds, and an Orson Scott Card from a stack of Science Fiction and Fantasy books on a shelf, turned off all the lights, faucets, switches, and fuses, and cleared out.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">In the birch wood I found a well hidden spot, a bit up a hillside, from where I would see both the cabin and the path leading across the moor without being seen myself. I hung my clothes to dry, snuggled up in the blanket, took a crumbling, moss-covered log for my pillow, and tried to get some rest. Given the circumstances I slept reasonably well.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">At first light I put my own cold and still damp clothes back on, and climbed the nearest hill top. I would guess the elevation at maybe 300 meters and I had a pretty good view of the surrounding area. He land was very beautiful, in its bleak and monotonous way: Undulating, mostly shallow hills in shades of dark auburn, burnt umber, and sepia, broken here and there by pale grey and chalky white ridges of bare rock. There were patches of heath and rushes. Most hollows contained small lakes or pools. To the Northwest the country got rougher and rockier, to the West, beyond the lake, there were mountains. The foot of the hill I was on and the shore of the lake were bearded with birches and pines. There might have been a road on the far side of the lake, and maybe a house a good way down the shore, but that might have been a ruin. Other than that there was no sign of human life in sight. I though that this was actually a pretty good spot to lay low for a while.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Walking had warmed me up, and my body heat soon dried my clothes, except for the boots. For the rest of the morning I walked around the area, checked out escape routes, vantage points, and other useful features. I found out that the house I had seen wasn’t a ruin, but boarded up and not in use, like the MacLeod cottage. It had a small pier. On the pier lay, turned over against rain, a small fibreglass rowboat, which I heaved into the water and used to scout out the small island closest to the MacLeod cottage. On the South side of the island I found an old, overgrown orchard, many of the dark, crooked branches weighed down with ripe apples. I collected some, sat down on a comfortable rock, and while I ate my fill, I read the Orson Scott Card. Later I took a dozen more apples along, enough to last me the rest of the day.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I returned the boat and walked back to the cottage for some more hot tea. There was no food in the kitchenette, but sugar, and I poured enough in the thermos to make the tea viscous with it.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Finally I returned to my look out post and in the company of Mr. Card I waited for Sim.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">In the late afternoon someone came riding down the path on a bicycle. It was him, dressed in a school uniform, black-and-yellow tie flying behind him like a streaming pennon. Over the waters the tall, helmet-shaped mountain had just been set aflame by the setting sun, and the reflection of those burning rocks gave everything a grim, war-like hue, and his wite button-down shirt, damp with sweat, seemed soaked in blood.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I watched him skid on the gravelled path as he turned into the final curve to the cottage. When I was satisfied that nobody had followed him, I came down the hill behind him. By the time I reached the bike, dumped carelessly on the ground, wheels still coming to a stop, he had disappeared inside. He looked crestfallen, when he came back out, but as soon as he saw me standing in the m idle of the track, his face lit up again.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Awricht, Dana. Masel tsocht ye didna come efter aw.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I crossed my arms, didn’t return the smile.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I gave you my word, didn’t I?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Aye, sae ye did, Mr. <i>Blanchard</i>.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“He could have asked, before calling the bloody police.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">For a moment Sim’s face darkened. It took me a second to realize that it was with shame, not anger.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yer richt. Masel hae tae apologise fer ma Paw. Hisel’s a menseless, unwycelike oof what tsinks tey rules o’ courtesy dinna apple tae <i>Sassenachs</i>.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sassenach – or Saxon, Gaelic for Englishmen and sometimes all foreigners – was a word I knew already. But more than than I knew the sound that crept into Sim’s voice as he said it, that helpless rage and anguish about someone you couldn’t stop loving, no matter how much you wished to. I had heard it often enough on my own voice.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Well, thank you for warning me. And for offering shelter.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Och, least A coud dae. Finnd ye t’wey awricht?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yeah. Only got wet feet.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Bit ye dinna bide inower.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He gestured towards the house that indeed looked as if I hadn’t set foot inside. It wasn’t a question, the way he posed it. I hesitated just long enough to see the expression of shame and rage deepen on his face. He understood too well.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I shouldn’t have doubted you. I’m sorry.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He shrugged.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Och aye. Let’s gae ben and git ye wairmt oop and fed.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">On the way inside, I noticed he was limping slightly.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You okay?” I asked, nodding towards his leg. “You hurt?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It’s naessin. Chust a wee bit sair.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim opened the shutters of the two windows that were not visible from the lake or the path, turned on the heating, and put on the electric kettle. He told me to take off my wet boots and socks and put them on the radiator.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">While he did that I asked: “So, what happened after I was gone?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Naessin much. Masel telt Conall. When oor paw finnd ye gaen, he suddent hae minds ye wis oan yer wey tae Ullapul, Conall haed. Bit oniwey, t’ polis un <i>An Gjerstan </i>wisna seekin fer ye. Aisser yer fowks ne’er cawd ‘em, or tay dinna ken ye’r in t’ <i>Gailtacht</i>.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Gailtacht?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“T’ Hieland. Here awa.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He smiled and spread his arms to embrace the land in its entirety.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Well, that figured. There was no reason for anyone to be looking for me up here, after all. The last I had been spotted was leaving a bus not even quite out of Wotton, Gloucestershire. I couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or disappointed.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Suddenly Sim grinned and got something from his backpack.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Bit chust tae be shuir, masel brocht ye tus!” He handed me a pair of scissors and a pack of dye. “And tus.” And he produced a plastic bag stuffed with old clothes.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I weighed the pack in may hand and gave him a grim smile. Half an hour later I had somewhat scrubby, short, dirty blond hair, and was dressed in threadbare jeans, a white T, and a zippered, olive jumper with elbow patches. Looking in the mirror I had to admit that no verbal description would connect me with the boy who had sat down for supper at the MacLeod dinner table. Sim even made me exchange the motorcycle jacket I had stolen from Ruth for a sheepskin-lined denim jacket that had once belonged to Aidan, another of Sim’s brothers, who no longer lived at their rents’s place. I only refused to give up my Oxblood Doc Martens.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sae guid as new,” Sim confirmed. “Hark, masel hae tae gae hame fer tea, bit if ye want, A kin come back efter.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“That would be great. You sure you won’t get into trouble?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Me? Nae!” He grinned again, his marvellous chipped grin. “Ye kin caw msel Sim <i>Blanchard</i>, <i>mo caritsh</i>. Onie usse tsin ye want fer me tae bring on ye?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">So I asked him for fags, and off he went, still limping. Again I went outside and spent the time in between up on the hill. This time when I saw him return, alone and un-followed, I went back inside in time, turned on the radio, and waited for him there.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He had brought me two packs of Marlboro.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Bit no inower or ma paw will ken.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">We went outside onto the short pier. I tore open the pack, got one out, broke off the filter, sparked up and sucked in a lung full of smoke. I offered the pack to Sim and after a moments hesitation he took one. He did his best to hide that he was unused to it, and I pretended not to notice. We sat down next to each other.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Everything alright at your rents’s?” I asked</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Shuir. Nae problems at’a.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then he asked, timidly: “What’s yer tale, tenn, <i>mo caritsh</i>?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ran away, travelled around, got no real goal.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He peered at me in the deepening gloom, blinking when smoke got into his eyes. He waited for me to continue, but I brazened it out.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“C’mon,” he finally said softly. “Tsat’s no fair.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I sighed, and then to my own surprise I found myself nodding, and beginning to talk. And to my much bigger surprise I found myself not even making up stuff.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I didn’t tell him much of the hard facts, like my name or where I was from. I moved my aunt from Gloucestershire to Wales, and altered all other names and dates and locations somewhat. But as the night progressed and he kept asking questions, I told him more and more of the truth, the whys and hows, of the joys and the pains and fears, as good as I understood them myself. I told him a lot about Edinburgh – which I made out to have been Glasgow, although he knew too much of both cities to be fooled, it turned out – and he sucked up everything about the cons, about “James” (i.e. Charley), and about “Kit” (Ponyboy), and about my trip through the Highlands. I even mentioned Cannich.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Finally we fell silent.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Gie’s anusser,” he said. I did and lit it for him.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He rolled onto his tummy and blew the smoke over the quiet water.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“A ken what happened tae ye in <i>Corie an t’ Shee</i>, in t’ Mullardochs.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What happened to me there?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ye wis taken by t’ <i>Deena Shee </i>tae Elfin.” He turned his head and looked over his shoulder at me in the darkness. “Tae Fairyland. Tay bide unner t’ hills, t’ Shee. Bit when yer lacer bruik, tey bud let ye gae.” And at my amused expression: “A’m bluidy serious, Dana. Tay ar real, sae tay ar.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He looked back down onto the water and into his own dark reflection. Then he extinguished the fag in the lake and but the butt to the others to dispose of in the bin later. He rolled onto his side, propped up his head on his hand, elbow on the planks of the pier. He paused, began to say something, hesitated, and began again.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Will ye lairn us?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Learn…?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Lairn. <i>Teach</i>.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Teach… what?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What ye ken. Lairn us tsievin. Connin. An aw tsat.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You want me to give you a course in Larceny 101?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim laughed, a quiet, mirthful laugh, if a bit shakey.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Aye.” And pleadingly: “<i>Ma shay duh hull ay</i>.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“<i>Cehenneme git!</i>” My words were out before I could think about them. “I will not. Are you nuts?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim sat up, awkwardly. He got to his feet stiffly and walked back into the cottage. I put out my own fag and followed him. Sim turned on the light.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Why the fuck would you want to learn any of that, Sim?” I asked. He blinked at me in the bright light of the lamp over the table.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hou no? Ye’re daeing it, aren’ ye?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Weren’t you listening? I went to jail.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“An tsat dinna stap ye, A notice.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Look, I appreciate your help, I really do. And if there is anything I can do for you, I will. But that is crazy. You live in a village with, what, maybe one hundred inhabitants? That’s about as many as in the single <i>kahrolası </i>tower block I was raised in. How long do you think I would have lasted had I only plied my trade in my own <i>kahrolası </i>house? Or your school – how many pupils are in that school?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“A hunnert and aichty-nine.” Face and voice sullen.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“My school has 2000 <i>kahrolası </i>pupils. My <i>kahrolası </i>primary school had 600. And I never would have been so stupid to try to steal in either. I know it sucks to hear that, but your world is too <i>kahrolası </i>small to be a crook in, man.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“A daena ken tsat wird. <i>Kuh-ro-lasse</i>?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It’s Turkish. Means damned.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Wha sais masel wull bide here foriver?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“<i>Siktir git</i>! That’s not a party game, Sim. That’s not a <i>kahrolası </i>adventure novel. If you don’t practice that, and practice every day, it’s no good to you at all.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sae?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“So, you can’t practice here. And you’re bloody fourteen. By the time you’re eighteen you’ll have forgotten all of it. Look, Sim. Some stuff you can learn by doing. Playing football or riding your bike. Some stuff, that’s a really bad idea, like flying a plane, or free climbing, or picking <i>kahrolası</i> pockets. You’ll only get in <i>kahrolası</i> deep trouble. I don’t need to waste my time for that.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“<i>A phit!</i> Ye’re nae twa years aulder tan masel if yer a day, and if ye gat yersel t’ jyle hinder year, ye haed tae hae stairted yer tsievin t’ same age as masel uss noo.” He glared at me. His face was pale, and his thick dark curls hung down his forehead. He shook them out of his eyes with an angry flick of his head. “Mebbe masel wull practeese on a <i>kuhrolasse </i>suit wi bells, like tsay daed auld lang syne. Oniwey, whit’s it tae ye? Aren’ye chust efter telling me aw aboot hou ut’s yer ain richt tae fuck oop yer ain life houaniver ye chuise? Ar ye really gaen tae tell us noo masel nae hae tsat richt? Feech, if tsat’s sae ye kin fuck yersel, <i>Sassenach</i>!”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">We stared at each other across the table. Sim had his fists balled tightly, and his shoulders were shaking.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Why did ye tell Ceana to get me out of the house yesterday?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Whitwey?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ceana told me you put her up to it. To ask if I would accompany her to feed the horses. Why?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He swallowed and stared at the floor. Then he sighed.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Masel haed tae talk tae Conall aboot ye. And mak siccar ma paw and ma maw wadna pit quaistans on ye. And… and masel etteled at getting ye pit oop in ma chaumer.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You… what… ettled? Chaumer?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He sighed again. “A <i>tried </i>tae get ye pit oop in ma <i>bed-room</i>.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I thought about that.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“How? Never mind why. How did you do that?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Bi makkin on tae ma maw masel didna want ye tar. Tsat’s aw it teuk.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You took extra long to clean up your homework before supper, too, didn’t you? To keep the chair next to you free, so that I would have to sit there.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The anger still nested in Sim’s eyes, but he couldn’t quite suppress a grin. He shrugged.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You are one devious bastard, you know that?” I asked.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Telt ye, ye kin caw masel <i>Blanchard </i>an aw.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Aye, so you did.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Across the table I offered my hand to him, even though in my heart of hearts I knew it was a mistake. But then, I never could say no to him.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Okay, Sim MacLeod. For as long as I stay, I will teach you what I know.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ye hecht?” His eyes were hard. “Ye’ll haud tryst?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I didn’t know those words, but the meaning was clear enough.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I promise. And I keep my word.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And so I did, damn me. And so I did.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-29592923216403624222011-03-24T19:31:00.007+02:002011-06-28T09:43:27.202+02:00Chapter Seven: Storm (Part III)<div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Conall’s family lived in one of those long, whitewashed stone-built cottages, with small awning windows along the front and back and none in the narrow side walls that peak in a chimney. It was set a little back from the road, on a rise yellow with high, flowering gorse. The Defender roared as Conall raced it up that last bit before killing the engine in a choked stutter. When I stepped out, the coconut smell of the gorse washed over me. The sea, on the other side of the road, was dark, and quiet.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Conall took me inside. Everything was crowded with boots and coats and people. The air was steamy with the smell of boiling cabbage, and wet dog, and many conversations being carried on at once. In the living room a table was being set while a boy and a girl were hastily finishing homework. Three older men in work clothes were discussing something in Gaelic in the hall next to the front door. In the kitchen a matronly woman, her long hair streaked with silver, was directing more young people to cut bread and fill jugs. Lamps were spaced haphazardly, so that some areas were gloomy and others brightly lit, increasing the sense of buzzing chaos.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Conall shouted over the din to several people that I was “Danny” and that I would stay for tea. Several people nodded to me. The boy at the table, who was maybe a year or two younger than me, and who had dark, curly hair, bright eyes, and a chipped tooth, looked up from his homework and asked something in Gaelic. Conall laughed and answered back. I understood that he made it clear that my name was “Daniel”, not “Dana.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Then he said to me “Masel buist fault tae yowes” and left again. I had no idea what that had meant. A young woman, maybe three or four years older than me, greeted me. Her English had the same beautiful Scottish sing-song, and the dry, harsh “r”s, but was a lot more intelligible than most of her family.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hi Danny. A’m Iona. Pleased tae meet ye. Tae’s awmost ready. D’ye want tae wash oop?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And she showed me a tiny bathroom next to the kitchen. It had just about space for one deep, chipped enamel sink, and a loo with a rickety, wooden seat, and two feet, and it smelled very strongly of soap.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I closed the door, and breathed deeply. I washed my face and my hands rather thoroughly, and combed wet fingers through my shaggy and by now shoulder long hair. I looked down on myself: I was wearing my patched fatigue trousers, and – under an old black leather motorcycle jacket – a black T with bold, mustard yellow letters inviting everyone to “Guess where I’m pierced”. I had appropriated the T from an Australian backpacker on Skye. At the time I had thought it was pretty funny, but now I felt decidedly uncomfortable in it. But I couldn’t very well keep the jacket, that I had taken along when I’d left the sleeping Ruth, buttoned up to hide it, could I?</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">So, when I came out again and Iona took my jacket to hang it on a hook in the hall that had already two or three other pieces of garment hanging from it, the boy at the table nudged the girl and pointed out the words on my chest. Both giggled.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Iona</span><span lang="EN-GB"> said something to them in Gaelic, rather sharply, and they began gathering up their pens and papers. People filed into the room and sat down on chairs.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hey! Ta’ss ma sait!” the boy shouted when someone else wanted to sit on the chair he had been on before.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Awricht, awricht, Sim. Dinna tak a sparey. Whit’s wi aw yir gibbles on ma ane cheer?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Chust sit on Conall’s fer noo!”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim – that’s pronounced <i>shim </i>– cleaned up his mess, and by the time he was done, everybody had taken their seat and<span> </span>the only one that remained for me was the one next to him, from which he just then removed his book and papers.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was officially introduced to Mr. and Mrs. MacLeod – he was one of the three men from the hall, a broad-shouldered, big-handed man with closely cropped, steel grey hair, and a dashing scar on the right side of his face; she was the woman the kitchen with the silver in her hair, and eyes surrounded by a nest of crow’s feet.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When Mr. MacLeod shook my hand across the table, he greeted me, but left my name hanging, expecting me to complete it: “Daniel…?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Balnchard, Sir. Daniel Blanchard.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Gerald Daniel Blanchard is a Canadian master thief, who burgled amongst other places an Austrian castle in 1998, and who had finally been caught in 2007. I had followed his process with fascination and awe.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Thank you for sharing your supper with me,” I added. “It was very kind of Conall to invite me.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Mr. MacLeod seemed pleased, and for the rest of the meal, I was mostly left alone. Soon enough the necessary information transfer that always occurs when a large family sits down together took up everybody’s attention. And when Conall came back, he had to explain about the cut on his face – he had gotten plastered and fallen in to a barbed wire fence – and then about the sheep, or <i>yowes</i>, he had bought.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Only Sim kept quietly bugging me.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Whaur ye frae, <i>mo caritsh</i>?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Canada.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Uss’at sae? Whaurawa frae tare?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Winnipeg.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Och, aye? Nae frae Quebec?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“No.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Bit Blanchard uss a French naem, nae?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yes, but people have French names outside of Quebec as well.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yer accent ussna Canadian, uss’t?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“My mum is from Austria.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hou auld ar ye?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sixteen.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Awricht? Ye leuk yunger. Masel uss fourteen!”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That last bit he said with all the pride of someone who only earned that distinction very recently.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sae, whit ar ye daeing in bonnie auld Alba?” He grimaced and thre a quick look at his dad, before he added: “In Scotland A meant.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Just travelling.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Aw by yersel?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“My rents are back on Skye. Your brother Conall picked me up hitchhiking.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And so on.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">While Sim kept up this constant Q&A, I tried to figure out the peeps at the table and their relationships. Mr. MacLeod was a right patriarch, he kept the pose of the unmoved mover at the head of the table – and even though the table was round, it was very obvious that the head was wherever he sat. The others seemed to regard him with a mix of fear and respect. Most of the other were his children, and their general management was apparently left to Mrs. MacLeod. There were two daughters and three sons present, though I gathered that a few more had already left the house. One girl was a friend of Iona, and one boy a mate of seventeen year old Boyd. One of the older men from the hall had left when supper had started, but the other was a friend and neighbour, and I got the impression that he and Mr. MacLeod were working on some project or deal together, but could not pick up any details.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Eventually tea was over. I offered to help with the dishes, but Ceana, the youngest, and the one who had been doing homework together with Sim when I’d arrived, wanted me to help her with her chores, namely feeding the horses and rabbits. Sim, who would have had to go also, asked if I could fill in for him, so he could help Conall with something (a lot of technical farming terms were used, in Scots or even Gaelic, too boot, and it all went right by me.)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Ceana showed me their four horses and the rabbits they kept in boxes behind the house. From her I learned that her family were crofters, people who kept a small farm next to a main job. Her father captained a whale-watching boat from Port Maree and her mother did some administrative work for the Highland Council. But they also raised quail, held sheep, offered hiking tours in summer, and hunting tours in autumn. And they had two hunting cottages to rent to tourists.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It my be girlish, but I really like horses. When I had been younger and begun getting into trouble, this one counsellor got me a place in a stable in the Southwest<span> </span>of Berlin. I was told that it was a job, taking care of the animals. I only learned later that in fact my mum had to pay for it, and that it was therapy. I still bristled at the memory of the deception, but I really enjoyed spending some time with the horses. And when Ceana noticed that I got along with them, and knew what to do, she warmed to me. That was how I found out that Sim had put her up to getting me out of the house.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When I got back, Conall told me that I would stay in his and Sim’s room for the night. He would sleep in the room of another sibling who wasn’t there that night. It seemed a bit complicated but I went along. From the pitying looks I received from Mrs. MacLeod and Iona I understood that Conall had relayed my tale of woe.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Sim showed me to the room and gave me some washed out PJs from one of his older brothers. I had expected him to take up his interrogation again, but he hurried away and left me to my own devices. I was fine with that, and sank into the thick covers. I had had more to eat than in a long wile, and since I had begun the day early and with some serious walking on Skye before getting that ill-fated lift, I was quickly asleep.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Not much later, Sim shook me awake.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Wheesht” he hissed, signalled me to be quiet, and handed me my jacket.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Pit on yet claes!”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yer claes.” He also tossed my trousers and T onto the bed. “Coorie oop!”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Why?” I asked, but instinct had me obeying already.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Akis ye coud fuil ma glaikit brusser wi yer yairn, bit nae ma paw, ye bawheid. An me naisser. Tsat T-shert o’ yers, nae lad what’s feart o’ his paw wat pe caucht deid in it. And oniewey, A ken what Gerlad Blanchard uss. So A ken yer nae what ye said ye ar. Bit ma paw onlie suspects, sae he’s callin’ t’ polis in <i>An Gjerestan </i>reit noo! Tsat’s hou ye want uptail tis bluidy seicont!”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He opened the dormer window and looked out.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Kin ye sclim o’er tae t’ ruif and…”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">But I was already at his side, then up on the window sill, and pulling myself onto the eave line and the dormer roof.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I looked down from there and said: “Thank you, Sim!”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That was the first time, I used his name.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He smiled up at me: “<i>Isheh do veha, </i>Dana.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That was, what he would call me from then on forth.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">There was a noise on the landing outside his room. I froze. He ducked inside but after a second he had his head back outside.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Fause alairm. Hey, haud on fer a sec. Masel uss richt back.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He disappeared and I heard him hurry out of the room. I considered scarpering anyway, but while I was still checking out the best – and that meant quietest – way down from the roof, he was already back.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Here, tak tsir.” He held up a ring with two keys. “Tay’re fer ane o’ oor deer stalkin’ boossies.” And he explained to me how to get there.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It’s toom richt noo,” and at my confused look: “<i>Empty</i>. Nae <i>occupied</i>. Ye kin scug tare. A’ll come by t’ morn and bring ye sum scran… sum <i>food</i>.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Okay.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I wanted to turn away, but he whispered: “A kin onlie come efter schuil us soot. Ye promise ye’ll be tare, Dana?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He looked zp at me, his face pale in the darkness.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I promised. He nodded and ducked back inside. I crawled across the roof to the windowless side wall and down the downspout, and disappeared in the night.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-55193596217784523752011-03-22T19:02:00.008+02:002011-06-28T09:44:10.638+02:00Chapter Seven: Storm (Part II)<div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I spent a couple of days on the Isle of Skye, walking around mostly along the shore, swimming in the sea, and reading my way through a bunch of cheap crime and romance novels I picked up at the hostels. In the hostel in Uig in the north of the island I met Ruth, a thief from London who had specialised on backpackers. We spent a night of getting drunk on whiskey and swapping tales and tips about grafting and life on the street. I tried to get her to join me in some confidence game, but she wouldn’t. She had been screwed royally by another con artist a while back and had been caught. It had cost her 10 months and 2 prison rapes. She would never again trust anyone to play anything more complex than straight theft. She tried to get me to team up with her for that. I’d had enough of that in Leeds.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Thursday afternoon I got a ride out of Broadford Bay. Sparring was opened right away with the confession of the Honda Civic Si diver who had picked me up that he normally didn’t take on hitchhikers because of “how today’s youth is”. I probably succeeded in confirming most of his prejudices – more than he knew when he finally kicked me out at that unmotivated roundabout outside Achnasheen, since I had lifted his wallet and a high end mp3 player from the coat he had flung on the back seat.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was still giving him a two fingered salute and shouting some choice expletives in Polish and Turkish after his diminishing hatchback when a muddy, dented, bottle-green Defender One-Ten Pickup stopped next to me. Two sheep were bleating under the aluminium hard-top covering the bed. The window was cranked down and a large, slender brown dog looked out. Past him, from the driver’s seat, a young man with a freshly stitched up face peered at me.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“<i>Faesger ma. </i>Masel ween ye want fer anusser ride.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He wore dirty curderoys, tall, olive Wellingtons, and a colourless, coarse woollen jumper. His hair was cropped to a fuzz. The stitches on his left temple and cheek gave him a rakish appearance, but underneath he seemed friendly, and open, and ready to laugh.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He reached past the dog and opened the passenger door. I climbed in.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Thank you.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“<i>Isheh do veha,</i>” he answered and put the car in gear. “Masel uss on t’wey tae Inverewe, by Port Maree. Bit if yer gaun aist A coud tak ye tae Garve or Ullapul.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">None of these place names meant much to me, though I had heard of Ullapool. So I said: “Ullapool would be perfect, if it’s not too much trouble.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He let the clutch come too fast, and stuttering and coughing the Defender crawled out of the roundabout, and only picked up speed as we passed through Achnasheen, past the train station and a burned down hotel. The dog sniffed at me and gave a short bark. His tail thumped against the vinyl upholstery.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Awricht. Masel uss Conall. T’ dug uss Jovantucarus.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Daniel,” I answered.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Nice tae meet ye, Danny. Whaur ye frae?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That one was always tricky. If you are too far from home, it raises all sorts of questions. But passing yourself off as local obviously doesn’t work either. Back in England I had sometimes gone with relatives living somewhere beyond where my ride would take me, sometimes embellished with a sick single mum and the need to stay with said relatives for a while, but in the Highlands I had made the experience that peeps were apt to go out of their way and hand me over to my imaginary family. So I went with this tale instead:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I’m from Canada, but my dad’s grandmother came from Scotland. My parents are visiting some distant relative today, but I didn’t want to, so they let me explore a bit on my own.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Conall was astonished at how far I had gotten, on my own (I kept underestimating travel distance in the Highlands, it may not be much as the Crow flies, but given the state of the often single track roads, it was a lot in travel-time), but I think I would have pulled it off, had not a police car come our way shortly after, lights flashing. Normally, the best way to react to the rozzers is by keeping your face under control and just going about your business as if nothing’s amiss. But the A832 between Achnasheen and Garve had been bloody deserted and I still had the wallet and the mp3 player of that Civic driver burning a hole into my pocket. So I slunk down and pressed myself into the corner between seat and passenger door. Conall watched me and raised an eyebrow, but kept on driving.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sumtsun masel shoud ken?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I tried to turn my slinking manoeuvre into a yawn and stretch, fully aware that it wouldn’t be convincing, not after my worried glance into the wing mirror. But the police car had disappeared behind us, and it set up my next yarn nicely.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“C’mon, Danny. Masel uss no blind. Why’re ye hidin frae t’ polis?”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I summoned up the memories of Cannich and all the shame and resentment I could and put on a sullen face. And I told him about an abusive dad, and a stupid cow of a mother who never fought back – and how last night he had gone off on one of his rages again, back in the holiday cottage on Skye they had rented. How normally I would weather these storms at a friend’s place, but how there wasn’t anyone here. So I’d taken some money and planned to make the best of it, stay in some hostel, and wait out the three days it usually took him to calm down again.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I mostly stared out the window or at the scuffed tips of my boots as I talked, my head ducked to match the role of the battered child, but I threw Conall a furtive glance, and to my astonishment saw he had swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. There was no doubt on his face, just compassion and concern.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You will not hand me over to the cops, will you? If they drag me back now, only one day into his fit, he’ll smile and be polite and my mom will back him up in everything. They’ll make it all out to be my imagination and stuff. But he’ll kill me once they’re gone. Seriously, you must promise not to tell!”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Conall promised, solemnly. And then he invited me to stay at his family’s place for the night. I tried to wriggle out of that, but I’d dug myself in too deep, and short of jumping out of the car and running away, there wasn’t a no he’d accept for an answer.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">So at Braemore Junction, he took the turn for Wester Ross, and in silence and a golden sunset we drove through some of the most breath-taking land I have ever seen. On the right the sea, quiet and slate grey, and reaching for the horizon. And on the left the earth dark with moor and heath, and the rushes pale golden and shivering in the wind. And behind that, dusted in snow, the mountains, rising, and rising, like time made substance.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-57762013481055354462011-03-13T15:51:00.008+02:002011-06-28T09:44:56.844+02:00Chapter Seven: Storm<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibYnwp_3KKDF7gW8TT_uwzuGahb3cAXGTvQoBmpbYn7L4hFlkEHmsDFDKVzx5AhVTuEmSI-I2kK6Kf2By2OlBsZWpDR7NJyjapJp5x7BIAb3x_AFLXjbojlnZwt-naooI2ojB78dZZAT_P/s1600/Wester+Ross.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibYnwp_3KKDF7gW8TT_uwzuGahb3cAXGTvQoBmpbYn7L4hFlkEHmsDFDKVzx5AhVTuEmSI-I2kK6Kf2By2OlBsZWpDR7NJyjapJp5x7BIAb3x_AFLXjbojlnZwt-naooI2ojB78dZZAT_P/s400/Wester+Ross.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<blockquote><div class="Zitat" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">But you, of all people, know how fast the weather can change. </div><div class="ZitatEnde" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US">- Patrick Stewart as Prof. Charles Xavier, X-men III: The Last Stand (2006)</span></span></div></blockquote><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-US"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">[This post has been subsumed in the following one in a rewrite. Please continue there.]</span>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-55624201678887690812011-03-09T14:42:00.007+02:002011-06-28T09:53:17.257+02:00Countdown: 4 - Flesh of Lost Summers (Part VI)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He didn’t release my arms. He just sat on me, leaned forward, holding the weight of his upper body on his outstretched arms, and allowed for the world to collapse inward and dissolve in that lasting, coppery kiss.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Once, he bit my lip, and our blood began to mingle. I trembled with my whole body.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">What did I feel? Relief. Waves, and waves of relief. They welled up inside me like a flash flood, filling the lightless caves, and flushed all the dust, lose shale, and guano of past disappointment, rejection, and doubts away. They kept rising, those waves of relief, until I was certain they would spill out as tears, finally free again, but it was giggles instead, bubbly, pealing, as if my insides had been carbonated.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And there was lust. So much more, and so much more raw, than there had been with anyone else. The way his knees dug painfully into my wrists, the way my lip throbbed and burned, the taste of the blood, and of the tobacco on his spit. The way he just wouldn’t break the kiss, even when I started giggling. The way his tongue patiently, savouring, explored the inside of my mouth. The way his breath flowed from his nose past my cheeks alternately cool in and hot out, evenly, unhurried.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">After a while, still without breaking the kiss, and without lifting his knees from my arms, he put his socked feet together, put the toes between my thighs and pushed them apart. He brought his feet further up until he was sitting on his heels and his spans were pushing hard into my crotch. He wriggled his toes ever so slightly against my bum, and I could feel his lips form a smile against mine when I groaned.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">His tongue was still in my mouth and our combined saliva and blood was running down my cheeks and chin and into my nose. He kept kissing me while I helplessly humped my crotch upward against his feet. He kissed me allthorugh that most uncomfortable and strenuous form of masturbation, until I filled my shorts.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Only then did he sit up and look down at me. He wiped his mouth once, with the back of his hand, smearing the blood and giving him a terrible, wolfish expression. He just looked at me questioningly. I looked up, dizzy and uncertain what he was expecting.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Well, Tavi?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Thank you…?” I hazarded, my voice hoarse.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Thank you what?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Thank you, Sir?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Is that a question, Tavi?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And there was the last uprising of relief. There still weren’t any tears, but If elt it pour out of me, out of every pore and orifice, wash over me, until I was shivering, the way one does at the end of a long piss. I relaxed, and I smiled, without any reservation, and said with utter conviction and sincerity:</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Thank you, Sir.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And I was rewarded with that strange smile of his that only sat in the corners of his eyes.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">In the following weeks, Hendrik expected me to continue studying hard and reaching all the goals he had set for me. And if we spent less time on my studies while together, he expected me to make up for that in my own time. But to be honest, he never expected more of me than I could deliver, if I really put my back into it.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was probably the strangest relationship I ever had with someone, way stranger than with Ponyboy or even with that cold bitch that would end up shooting me 2 ½ years later. There was sex, of course, but even that was, I dunno…</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was required to cum onc, but only once, each time we met, and it was always the last thing we did, before going our separate ways. And it was always and only by me humping his feet and creaming my undies. Usually he would sit on a chair or the edge of his bed, and I would kneel before him, my hands on his thighs, and do my business. Afterwards he sort of lost interest in me until next time.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And he… well, take the time he took my cherry. This was how it went: He asked me if I’d ever been fucked before. I said, honestly, that I’d played around, you know, with some things, like carrots, and stuff. I’d even done it a few times on cam for dirty old men getting off on it. But no other person had entered me there. For a afew days he didn’t mention it again and I was sort of disappointed, and then he told me to get permission from my mum to go camping with him for a night the next weekend.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">For his 18th birthday, just one or two weeks or so before, he’d gotten his driver’s licence and a used fire-engine red BMW Funduro. That Friday he was waiting for me in the yard behind the tenement building his rents were living, next to his bike. He took my backpack with my sleeping bag and change of clothes and everything and just stuffed it into the narrow gap behind the concrete shed that housed the bins. There was a load of other trash there.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Nobody will take it. You can get it out when we get back. Now take of your pants und briefs.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Here?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He just looked at me impatiently. He hated when I questioned his commands. I looked around in the yard. We were alone. Half hidden behind the bin shed I opened my belt and dropped my shorts. I stepped out of them without removing my trainers, and then slid down my briefs. (He had forbidden me to wear boxers any more. Only tight slips were allowed.)</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He took the briefs and had me put on my shorts again. When I had rebuckled the belt, he stuffed the briefs in my mouth. Then he put the sextra helmet he had sitting on the seat of the bike onto my head. Turned out he had spray-painted the visor opaque from within. When he had shoved it onto me, I was gagged and blind.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He sat down on the bike and started the engine. Then he had me climb onto the seat behind him and off we went.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I have no idea where exactly he took me, but according to my watch it was about a three hour ride, first through the city, then on the highway, then country roads that got increasingly bumpy, and finally completely off-road. For me this ride, mouth dry, jaws aching, in darkness, the noise of the wind and the engine blasting everything from the world except the feel of his cool, slick, leather-clad torso against my chest and the naked arms I had slung around him, lasted forever. In some ways it hasn’t even ended yet. Maybe it never will.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Once we arrived, he had me climb off and took my by the hand. Still blind and dumb he guided me through some underbrush, down a slope, and into a thicket of reeds. The ground got marshy, and then I stepped into cold water. Hendrik just lead me on. I could hear him splash through the water next to me. With nothing to hold onto but his hand, I walked on. The water reached my knees, my hip, my chest, and then we were swimming, me still with the helmet, his hand still my lifeline. A few minutes later, there was again muddy ground under my feet, it got shallower, and he was leading me up another slope.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Wordlessly he had made me sit down, back to a tree, and tied my wrists behind it. Then he busied himself with a fire. Only when he was done, he removed the helmet and the gag. We were on a small wooded island, in a small, swampy lake, surrounded by a coniferous forest. There was a tent he must have had waiting for us. Over the fire he was boiling water in a tin pot. When it was done, he made tea and fed it to me from a tine cup. It was too hot and burned my tongue. He didn’t stop forcing it into me. The clothes, mine and his own bike leathers, he just let dry on our bodies.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">So, when he eventually untied me, and we snogged, and rolled down back into the shallow, muddy waters of the lake, and he took me with my head half submerged, it was really only that one other thing, that happened that weekend. The ride, the tea, the blind swim, and the island, and later, spending the night – tied up again – in his arms, those were what it had all been about.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Or there was thing with the clothing. First it was the boxers, but then he gave me a bunch of old underwear and socks from his little sister, Solveig, to wear instead of my own. And finally he made me give him my hi-top Chucks and gave me a pair of Solveig’s worn, low, pale yellow Keds instead. When I balked, he just gave me this strange look. Not dominating, you understand, he never brow-beat me. It was just this mild contempt, like a dare. Like, aren’t you even man enough to be able to wear a girl’s clothes without getting frightened. And so I did. And you know what. I felt good about it. I felt proud.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The worst, and the best, he demanded of me, was without a doubt the night in the woods.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">In late July he had told me to stop wanking. My only relief would be those sessions with him. Of course there wasn’t really any way for him to know if I complied, though I think he knew he could trust me to keep my word. Being faithful made me much too happy and proud to do anything else.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“But,” he said, “when I have to trust you, I need you to prove that you also trust me. Really trust me. Do you think you can do that, Tavi?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">What do you think I answered to that?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">So one evening he again put me into that helmet and drove me deep into some woods. When he removed the helmet and showed me what he had prepared, I grew very faint, and very afraid. At the bottom of a small hollow he had dug a grave, a neat, oblong rectangular hole into the forest ground. The spade and the axe he had used still leaned to a large oak tree nearby.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He knelt down next to me, lit a fag, and handed it to me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You can say no, Tavi. I won’t tell you what will happen. I’m not telling you it will be okay. I’ll just ask you to trust me. If you don’t, we go back bow. But you and me, it will be over. It’s your choice.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I looked at him. It was one of the few times he was flushed, too. He, too, was breathing hard. In his eyes burned a fire, a strange, wild desire. He really, really wanted this. But he left the choice to me. Only, of course, it wasn’t a choice. I wasn’t going to be a coward. I couldn’t. So I nodded.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Say it, Tavi.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I had to think about that for a second, but then I got it.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I trust you… Sir.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He gave me one of his smiles, strained by his dark desire. He tied my wrists behind my back. Then he had me climb in the hole and lie down. One side of the hole wasn’t vertical, but sloped, like a bathtub. I had to lie with back on the slope, facing up. He tied my legs, too. And then he began to fill the gave with the dark, damp earth, all the way until my face, staring straight up, was more or less flush with the ground, a pale oval in the middle of the forest floor.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Last he scattered leaves and twigs and lose earth over the whole area. I blinked some dust away and blew some leaves from my mouth and nose, but I must have been practically invisible even from only a couple of meters away.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Can you breathe, Tavi?” he asked.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I tried. It was harder than normal, but I thought it wouldn’t be a problem. I tried to smile, in spite of the terror, and whispered: “Yes… Sir.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He nodded, gathered up the spade and axe, got onto his bike, and drove away. I heard the engine recede and fade into the wind in the treetops.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I don’t think there are words to describe that night. The unbearable fear, the loneliness, the sounds of the nature around me. I watched the last light fade from the little sky above me. The dark crowns of the oaks and pines and maple trees standing high above me like giants merged with the night until only a few pinpricks of starlight remained here and there. Insects crawled over my face. Mosquitoes discovered me early. I must have fed thousands that night.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I honestly didn’t know if he would come back. And a part of me totally got off on that idea, that he had left me there to die. Even when I started to call for help. Even when I started to beg.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">At some point I pissed myself, turning the earth around my crotch to mud. At some point a group of wild pigs moved past pretty close. Ever since reading Clive Barker’s <i>Pig Blood Blues</i>, and later Thomas Harris’s <i>Hannibal</i>, I had been fascinated by the idea of getting eaten by a pig. I was certain, they would discover me and eat the face of my skull. I couldn’t even see them, just heard them moving and grunting and snuffling in the darkness. Eventually the went away.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Time stretched, like taffy, and fragmented. I realised that breathing was getting harder. I was running out of energy to push away the earth pressing against my chest, and lying on tied arms didn’t make things easier. I don’t know if I really could have suffocated that way, but at the time, it felt that it was happening, right then. The feeling grew more and more intense, until sheer physical panic took over. I screamed and yelled and begged. I struggled, but all I managed was to wear myself out even more. I had loosened the earth around my head enough so I could turn it a few centimetres to either side, or lift it a little bit, but doing that was so strenuous I had to let it sink back after a few seconds.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">At some time it rained for a while, big drops hitting me in my face. I could feel the wetness seep down through the earth, making it even heavier and breathing even harder. The dripping of the drops from the leaves continued for a long time after the rain itself had stopped, distorting all sounds even further.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I sometimes thought I heard people, or steps, or a suppressed cough. Sometimes I was afraid and ashamed, sometimes I screamed for help. The sounds always drowned in the sounds of the nightly forest, leaving me uncertain if I had just imagined them.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When morning finally came, and I lifted my head and tried to look around, I could see a figure from the corner of my eyes, sitting hunched against a tree on top of the slight rise encircling the hollow I was in the centre of. I was near delirious at the time, and exhausted beyond anything I had ever experienced. I was convinced that the hunched figure was Death, incarnate, waiting for me to give up my last breath. And I was certain I would do so soon. Each breath was a gasp, flat, and I felt very dizzy and faint. The world had ceased to be more than a vague scribble on a paper-thin sheet of experience. Underneath was only that void I had already encountered once, on my 12th birthday.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The figure got up. It was Hendrik, holding his father’s hunting rifle. He stretched, brushed some leaves from his legs, and walked away. Half an hour later, I heard his motorcycle approach. He dug me up, untied me, gently took off my clothes, helped me into a fresh tracksuit, and lifted me onto his bike. I was shivering all over and could hardly hold onto him. He was very careful as he drove back.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">At his place – his rents were away, like almost always – he ran me a hot bath. He washed me gently, with a soft washcloth, and some scented bubble bath.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Were you there the whole night?” I asked, still barely able to use my voice. I kept trying to touch him, to hold onto him. Even when he left the room only for a few seconds, I felt like crying out to him like a baby.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">His face remained serious when he didn’t answer. He only kissed me, the softest kiss of all the ones he ever gave me. There was no smile in his face, no praise. I don’t have a word for what was there, but it was worth to me even more than the night he carried me off the football pitch.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">***</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Why didn’t it last?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I don’t know, really. There wasn’t any one thing. He tried a lot of things. He played with pain, made me bleed. He also tried to find the point where my revulsion would best my need to rise to any challenge. He never found my limits. And that began to bring him to his.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He made me get my second tat, and even paid for it: Out of the money I had paid him. When my mum discovered it, she blew her top, as she had with the first one. Of course I neither told her who had done it, nor that it had been Hendrik’s idea. But even so, he was very careful not to mark me too much, cutting, or beating, and not to get me sick. Not for my sake, I am certain, but to avoid attention.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He began to abuse his girlfriend. He made me watch them, tied up in his wardrobe, or even in the large drawer under his bed where he kept his duvet and pillow during the day, as they made out. I was there when he defloured her, telling her he loved her all through. He made me go on picnics and stuff with them, selling me as this social case he had taken on to keep me off the street. He upped that eventually by telling her I was queer and getting her to talk to me girl to girl about blokes. The talks were double torturous for me, having to keep everything that mattered about my sex life – namely him - out of it, while suffering through her own humiliation that remained invisible to her.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">None of that really stopped what I felt for him, but it began to fade. On our last meeting he made me dress in her clothes and pretend to be her, or some mock transvestite version of her, while he screwed me. I don’t know what he was after that day. I tried hard, but he never finished.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">We lay next to each other, not touching, when I said:</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Can’t we come out?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hm?” He turned his face towards me, brushed my long hair from mine. (He had forbidden me to cut my hair.)</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I don’t care if you stay together with her, and really, I am sure she wouldn’t mind about me. I mean, she must half know anyway, and she’ll suffer far worse for you. So will I. I just don’t wanna stay hidden anymore.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">After all the many challenges he had given me, all of which I had passed with at best a brief hesitation, this was the first serious one I had given him.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He blew softly on my sweaty face. Then he shrugged.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You can go anytime.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He didn’t call me Tavi. I felt hollow and tired and disgusted with myself. I got up, took off her clothes. Naked I was marked by him all over in a thousand small ways, masked by my usual bruises and scrapes, but I could have counted and identified every single nick and prick and scar he had left on me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He watched me get dressed and walk out. He never said a word.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I didn’t call him again, after that. And he didn’t call me. We met at football training, but there we had always pretended that there wasn’t anything between us, so we just continued that act. It was hard at first, but it quickly got easier. And when I shaved my head and began wanking again, I knew it was over.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I think I could have forgiven him everything, except cowardice. It wasn’t that he didn’t admit to me, it was that he let himself be held back by fear, the fear of what others would think of him.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The real kicker, of course, wasn’t his failure. The kicker came, when at night, in the loneliness of that tiny room I had once shared with ‘Nette, I talked to her ghost, the way I often did. And I told her about Hendrik, and how pissed off I was at him. And her ghost, dry and far away, asked me, why not being a coward was so important to me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Because of what you taught me,” I said.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I felt her wistful smile, the one only ghosts can wear, because to them everything is past, is lost, is both precious and no longer important. And in her smile I read the bitter truth: I was afraid of failing her. I was afraid of being weak. I was afraid of being afraid.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Nothing had changed.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was still a coward.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-71075214491098192102011-03-09T01:35:00.003+02:002011-06-28T09:56:02.483+02:00Countdown: 4 - Flesh of Lost Summers (Part V)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">I am scared to go on. I am scared to revisit the places he took me. I am scared to look into the mirror of those memories. But more than that I am scared to show you those places, those memories, and that when I do your eyes will not see the beauty, and that your gaze will not be accompanied by understanding. I am scared your sense of morality and propriety will force me to re-evaluate something that for the longest time had been a place of refuge for me, somewhere to withdraw into and feel special, and safe, and good about myself.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">But I do want to take you by the hand and take you there, you see, show it all to you, with all the passionate impatience of a child burning to show off his favourity toy, his favourite climbing tree, his secret treasure.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">When my father up and left, his collection of CDs remained, for a while, until my mum did something with them and I never saw them again. It was all stuff like Marillion, Pink Floyd, Queen, U2, and Billy Joel. One day, I must have been 11, I took some of them out and listened to them. I hadn’t yet entirely given up on him, but mostly, and every song was a barb that tore up the inside of my heart.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">But it was Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” that really sucker punched me. I was at an age where that particular explicitness sometimes still was needed, and I had no rents providing it. When I listened to “The Stranger” I finally understood what the Flesh Fair in “A.I.” had meant to me, and what the weird feeling had been that I’d had when I watched one and a half years before.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">My mates and I had rented the Spielberg flick and watched it one afternoon. I had been 9. I’d got my first queer crush, on Jude Law’s Gigolo Joe, and that had been bad enough – to sit there with the others and realize that that feeling they had just begun to talk about, the one they got when they saw Christina Aguilera or Avril Lavigne, that I got that when I saw Jude Law. When I saw Jude Law with Haley Osment. But that hadn’t been the worst.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">We’d been in the living room of Hector’s rents, and my mates had hoted and jeered at the glacial pace and the sickly-sweet sentimentalism, and for a while I had pretended to do the same. But then we had gotten to the Flesh Fair, where masterloess robots were executed on torture machines done up garishly like carnival rides and circus acts. They were dissolved with acid, drawn and quartered, and turned into sentient torches, still babbling and begging that they could still be useful. That they could still be loved.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">I watched the scene in horrified fascination, lying on my belly to hide my aching hard on. I knew we were supposed to wait in breathless suspense whether the little girl would manage in time to save the boy-robot David, Gigolo Joe and the walking, talking Teddy Bear. My mates were cheering the robot-destroyers on, calling for the death of David so that the film would be over. And I, I too wished for the girl to be too slow, hoped for him to end up on one of the machines… but I yearned for it, because I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wanted to be him</i>.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">I wanted to be that parentless robot child, wanted for Gigolo Joe to hold my trembling hand and tell me the sweet lies we tell children to deceive them into believing the world is not as monstrous as it really is. I wanted him, wanted myself to be torn from those arms, crying, begging and struggling, and then be tortured to death in front of an applauding crowd.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Never before had I been so turned on. And for over a year it terrified me. Being queer was one thing. I mean for a 10 year old that is bad enough. But to be… this?</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">So, when Billy Joel asked me, did I ever let my lover see the stranger in myself, I finally understood who I had met that day. And when he told me not to be afraid, that everyone has a face they hide away forever, relief washed over me. It was probably the last kindness, the last fatherly act my dad did for me.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Still, for a long time afterwards, I only took that face out and wore it in the cold solitude of my fantasies, by night under the covers of my bed. I didn’t show it to Colin, or Jonas, and not even to ‘Nette, and I never would have dreamed of showing it to Hendrik, though I might have suspected that the part in me that craved him so, his ruthlessness and cruelty, was very close to that strange in myself.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">But I want you to keep in mind that long before I lost my angel wings and stepped over that invisible threshold that seperates innocent children from perverted men, that demon was already living in my heart. Whatever you may think of Hendrik, after I am done telling you about him, it wasn’t him who fucked me up.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Had it been illegal what he did? Probably. Had it been morally wrong? Maybe. Did it hurt me? Oh yes. It still does. But I had wanted it, for years, before it finally happened.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB">***</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Nothing would have happened, I suppose, had it not been for my failing grades in 3rd form. I had spent most of the winter 06/07 in emergency rooms, police cars, arrest cells, and doing increasing lengths of community service, and the bill for my lack of school attention and even attendance was due. At the end of the first term it clear that only a miracle could keep me from having to repeat the year. Given that professional tutoring services were too expensive I asked my form teacher Mrs. Nastarowitz, and she promised she’d ask around amongst the older pupils.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">My football performance had suffered considerably as well. At 14 football was no longer the centre of my universe. I had put my dreams of beomding a professional away together with my LEGO building blocks.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">Hendrik was still our assistant coach, but he, too, had been less active since he’d gotten himself a girlfriend, a surprisingly ugly girl, one year younger than him, with a crooked nose and kinky, caramel hair. He had also grown lean with his last growth-spurt, had shaved his once shaggy hair down to a skullcap of brass coloured fuzz, and looked so lean and mean it hurt.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">One Friday in April he came up to me after training. He wore a black tracksuit with red and gold piping, and black football boots. The cleats clacked loud on the tiles of the corridor to the changing rooms.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yo. Nasty Rowitz tells me you need some help.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was tired and spattered with mid, and I had to get up very early the next morning for weekend community service. The nights were still crispy cold, and steam was rising from my body.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yeah. Math, and chemistry, and physics, and…”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“And French,” he said, looking me up and down like a buyer checking out the merchandise. “I know.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">And after a pause: “I take 10 an hour. And I expect you to give it a lot more than you did here today. You will take this serious, understood?”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You will tutor me?” I couldn’t believe it.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">There was that rare flash of a smile, the twinkle in the eye of a distant god.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“If you don’t fuck it up. Monday, after school, my place.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">And Hendrik, the boy I had dreamed of for the past 4 years, gave me his address and his mobile phone number.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">As a tutor he was as strict as he was as football coach. He took the time to figure out exactly where my problems lay and he was good at explaining things, but he expected me to study hard and to mindlessly practice all the formulae and vocab.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">It started pretty early on. We met two times for two hours every week, that was 40 Euros I’d have to play my mum back somehow. We sat at the dinner table in his rent’s flat, catercorner, so that he could read over my shoulder.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">When he saw me making a mistake, he only would snort quietly, not “God you are stupid”, somehow, but always “Jeeze, you know you can do better than that.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">And, like, from the second time on, his leg would touch mine under the table. And his elbow would touch mine on the table. Or his hand, lying innocently there, his fingertips would brush against my hand when I reached the end of the page.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then, maybe the second week, the third at the latest, I had not done my homework. I did it probably half on purpose, to test him, the way I tested teachers, and rozzers, and social workers, to see how much I really had to conform, and what was merely expected bit without the stomach to enforce it.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">I told him I’d forgotten to do it, my expression 4/5th contrition and 1/5th challenge. He hit me with the open hand right in the face. He didn’t pull it. My hand whipped around and I tasted blood.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">I jumped up and wanted to punch him, but he just leaned back, looking at me from half-lidded eyes.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“That was your only screw-up, got that? Next time, you’re out, Tavi.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was the first time he’d used that name since the night on the bus. I couldn’t believe he remembered at all. All the fight went out of me and I sat back down.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Are we clear?” he asked.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">I nodded. “Yes.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yes what, Tavi?”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yes, Sir.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">A smile crept into the corners of his eyes. It wasn’t a friendly smile, and it never reached his mouth, but it made me shiver. It wasn’t telling me he was fucking proud, but still, I wanted to make him smile like that again. And again.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">But I didn’t know how to, and so for another week I studied hard and did my stuff and had a hard-on through all those hours that he kept touching me.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was his girlfriend that picked the moment for me. She called him during one of the tutoring sessions, and he stepped out into the hall with the phone. He left the door ajar, and I listened.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">They talked about something I can’t remember, because it paled to insignificance next to the thing he said at the end. She probably asked him when they could meet, or something, and he said, with a sigh: “Got to stay here with that little creep I told you about. Once I’m rid of him, I’ll head out.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">The disappointment was more than I could handle. All those days, all those moments, touching me, it had all just been in my head. I could feel the tears burning in my eyes, the shame in my cheeks. I could hear him say good-bye on the phone and walk back towards me. I knew that in a few seconds he would see the shame on my face.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">When he returned to the living room I attacked without warning. Like Lukas Hendrik knew how to fight, and like Lukas he was a lot bigger and stronger than me. It didn’t take him long until he had me on the ground on my back, arms pinned under his knees. But his lips were bloody.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You listened, Tavi.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Don’t call me that!”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Fuck you, Tavi! I’ll her whatever I like. It’s none of your fucking business!”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Don’t call me that!”</span></i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then he kissed me, long, longer, saturated with the taste of his blood.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was the last fight I had until the one with Samuel, except for the one with that lady rozzer, and as I told you, that doesn’t count.</span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-2605775351470335902011-02-17T12:49:00.008+02:002011-06-28T09:57:05.926+02:00Countdown: 4 - Flesh of Lost Summers (Part IV)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then there was Hendrik. Oh, how do I describe Hendrik to you?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I have known Hendrik for the best part of my life. He is four years older than me, and he played for the same football club as Orcun, Hector, Leo, and I. The first time he made an impression on me was when he acted as ref during my F-Youth days – that is football aged 7 and 8. He was only 12, but there was already something about him I adored, right from the start. He was without mercy. Once he made a call, you knew there was nothing you could do to change his heart, and any attempt to argue just resulted in a foul being given against you. He applied the rules very strictly, but he was fair, and as far as I know always correct. He knew his stuff.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I began paying attention to him, watched him when he played himself, or when he hung out at the club house with his mates, or when he just helped Coach or older players stow away stuff, take care of equipment, and so. Hendrik was always a bit stocky, at times almost chubby, but in that firm, supple way that makes you think of a powerful, aggressive dog, or a tiger, or a wolverine. His hair, usually worn longish and shaggy, was a rich, dark blond that depending on the light could be the tawny colour of honey or the shimmering green gold of tarnished brass.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He was a quiet bloke, and rarely smiled. He didn’t scowl either, but just seemed to watch things in a detached, almost serene way. He was almost always at the club, either playing or helping or watching. He was never particularly close with anyone, but he was never an outsider either. And when you looked into his eyes – though I suppose few ever did except me and Coach – you knew that he didn’t miss much, and that he always knew what he wanted.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">As a player he never lost his cool, but there was a grit in him, a deep, smouldering fire that wouldn’t ever let him give up. Oh, he could be tactical, even devious in his attempts to get his will, on the pitch or off, but he never waivered.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I always tried to be like Hendrik, as a football player, to be equal to his focus, his courage, his ruthlessness, and his absolute will to win.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then came 2003. I was in E-Youth. Hendrik, who turned 14 that July, was in C-Youth. Coach had asked him to be his permanent assistant on our team, and we’d seen a lot more of him. Coach had always trained us to be efficient and goal-oriented – no “it’s not if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” hogwash – but Hendrik made us bend the rules to the breaking point. ‘Thinking outside the box’ was what he called it, to win, and to win by wider margins.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It’s only a foul if the ref gives it,” he told us. “And even the, sometimes it’s worth it. Sometimes a booking, and at the end of the game even a send-off can be worth it, if it gives us a tactical advantage. Just be smart about it.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">We practiced awareness of when we were invisible to the ref, and how to create diversions that drew attention away from a player about to commit such a tactical foul. I know it is bad form, it’s considered unsportsmanlike, but I still say that there was something very sporting about it: it wasn’t just that we played only against our opponents, but also against the system itself. The challenge, the fun and joy of it, is being so good, so quick, so deft and perceptive that you can get away with it. For after all a rule or law is only as good as it is enforceable. Following it is not a necessity, but a choice. You just have to be aware of the consequences. Later I applied all of that to my career as a crook, but I learned it from Hendrik on the football pitch. Don’t they say that sports teach you for life?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">You can imagine how as our team moved up in our league we got a rep as grade A bastards.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">***</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I knew that Hendrik was paying me some attention also. I certainly did everything I could to impress him, and slowly I became one of his favourite players. I started out as a winger, because of my size, but eventually I was made centre forward. But still, he never seemed fully content with my performance, and always wanted me to exhaust myself more, play more aggressive, and more daring.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“It’s not your job to be careful, Ricky. Leave the defence to Bariş, Leo, Cem, and the others. It’s your job to score and to help Hector to score. Nothing else matters.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And when I complained that he was less harsh judging Hector, he ginned without humour: “Hector is content to be merely good. If I push him harder, he’ll walk. And I don’t have anyone better to replace him with. You, you want to be the best. You I can kick as much as I like, and you’ll come back for more. So, yeah, I expect more from you. A lot more. And you know you can give it.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">There was that one game that summer, an away game against a team from Halle, in Saxony. We’d screwed them the last time we’d played them with two unlawful scores. So the tone of the game was hostile from the kick-off. They were fairly secure at the lower mid-table of our league, and they needed a win less than they needed to avoid another lost game, so they’d decided to stonewall us all through, with only occasional passes and quick strikes when we neglected our own defences too much.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It had rained hard not just through the game but for the last couple of days, and the pitch had turned into a mud bath. The game was almost over, we might even have been in stoppage time, and no goal had been scored by either side. We were all exhausted, and very frustrated after 90 minutes of railing futilely against this wall of disdain.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I had just made a solitary run down the right wing, to open up their left flank. Hector had been supporting me, while our two other forwards got into position. But when I tried to pass to them directly over the centre backs of the Hallensers, one of them had leaped up gracefully and blocked it with his head. The ball had fallen down, and they drew four of their defenders together around it, apparently intending to slowly pass it back to their goalie. Everyone was waiting for the ref to end the game, and they only meant to kill the remaining time.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was still running lightly in the direction I had kicked the ball, and threw a quick glance over my shoulder towards Hendrik, who was standing at the sidelines. Through the rain I could make out his set jaw, and the cold fire in his eyes, his angry, withheld disappointment, nay, loathing with us.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was still only moments after they had blocked the ball, and they were still ambling around each other, tired and lacklustre in spirit themselves. Their goalie was slowly approaching them, leaving the goal wide open. And then I understood the mistake they had made, in their wishful thinking that the game was already over, and picked up speed again. I ran as hard as I could, my thighs protesting with sharp pains, my ankles groaning and trembling with the stain of having to stay steady on slippery ground, until I was an arrow aimed at the heart of their defence. Only one of their defenders saw me coming, and he shouted to alert his slowpoking mates, but it was too late. I knew I couldn’t shoulder through the three bloke wall between me and the ball. The ball was still just outside the penalty box, so even if I hurt one of them, or tripped them, it probably wouldn’t result in a penalty kick against us, and anything else wouldn’t make any difference at this point. So I dropped down to one knee, the other leg outstretched, and on a wave of mu and water I slid through between their legs, kicked the ball, and scored.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When blokes understood what I had just done – reasonably certain that everyone was just then staring at the goal, and given the poor visibility, and that I was hidden behind the thicket of their legs – all of them kicked me as hard as they could. All the anger we had so justly incurred all through the season, and all the mute, cold frustration of this long, wet game went into those kicks.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then the ref’s whistle signalled the end.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Hendrik carried me back to the bench himself. Before the designated game medic (the father of one of the blokes who’d just vented on me, actually, and who as an EMT by profession) began patching up my bleeding face, Hendrik hugged me quickly, and hard enough to make me groan in pain, and whispered: “That was fantastic, Ricky. Fucking fantastic. I am so fucking proud of you!”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was the first time he said it, and I knew I would willingly put my right arm into a meat grinder to have him say it again.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">My back was one big bruise, and I had serious trouble breathing. The medic gave me a shot that made me woozy and faintly high but reduced that sense of suffocating. They debated if I should get checked out at the hospital in Halle, but in the end decided against it. On the bus ride back, Hendrik had me lie on the backseat of the bus, where I could stretch out, and put my head in his lap, partly to make sure I was okay and didn’t pass out or anything, and partly to ease my breathing by taking pressure from my chest.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was late as we drove back, and almost dark outside. Everybody was excited and relieved that we’d won after all, and talking loudly over the thundering diesel engine, and the hard rain, and the evening rush hour traffic on the A9 northbound towards Berlin.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Hendrik put his hand on my head.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Try to sleep, brave Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What’d you call me?” I whispered back.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. You know, the mongoose from the story, the one that follows the cobra into its lair and kills it.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I know the story. My sister calls me the same. She calls me Tavi.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“She’s a bright girl, then. Now try to sleep.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The bus was shaking us gently. My cheek rubbed against the smooth nylon fabric of his trackie bottoms, damp from the rain. Mostly he kept both his arms stretched out along the top of the seat’s back, like a relaxed Jesus on the cross, but every now and then (when nobody was looking?) he put one warm, strong, heavy, and slightly sweaty hand on my shoulder or my head, and would as if absentminded tousle my hair. For a while Coach sat with us, offering to spell him, but he said I’d just fallen asleep (which I dutifully pretended to be, after that), and he’d rather not wake me. They’d talk quietly for a while, and then Coach went back up the aisle to keep the rest of the team in check. The red and white lights of the passing cars got caught in the rivulets and raindrops on the deep indigo windows.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And in my memory I held firmly the image of his face, as he’d hugged me, carrying me across the pitch, both of us rain-drenched and muddy, and as the blood from my nose had soaked the arm of his track suit. I held the fire in his eyes, no longer cold, but fiercely hot, like a furnace, as he said: “I am so fucking proud of you.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">So what do you expect? Of course I fell for him. I fell like a ton of bricks. But this was football. Football players aren’t queer. Even in 2003 that still just didn’t happen. Period. I kept being one of his star players, at least as long as I didn’t slacken and kept the performance of the team in higher regard than my personal well-being or my good name as a sportsman, but he never called me Tavi again, and he never held me again. He never even let me sit next to him on the bus, or join in a conversation he was having with mates his own age, or anything. He was strictly business, and I didn’t dare to push that boundary.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">So for the best part of the following year, all through winter, I pined for him from afar, and did what I could to stay in his good books, and dreamed of him doing nameless, ill-imagined things to me at night. I came out to ‘Nette, and Lukas found out about me and told ‘Nessa. And in spring Tariq caught my eye, and for a while I put my desire for Hendrik aside as unattainable. But I never forgot him.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-58757810495741405692011-02-14T04:43:00.003+02:002011-06-28T09:57:56.821+02:00Countdown: 4 - Flesh of Lost Summers (Part III)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When we changed from primary to secondary school, again my mates and I were split up into different classes. In my new class I met Jonas. Jonas had wavy brown hair that I always wanted to run my hands through, and a snub nose, and a beautiful, expressive mouth that made me think of lions, and of that scene in “God’s Army” where the Archangel Gabriel says: “Do you know how you got that dent, in your top lip? Way back, before you were born, I told you a secret. Then I put my finger there and said ‘Shush!’”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">During the braks I still hung out with Hector, Orcun, and Leo, and Jonas sometimes joined us for football. Like us he was also part of the run-about table tennis crowd at the concrete table tennis tables in the school yard. When I had to be with my own class, I spent most of my time in his company.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Jonas could tell great jokes, and had a keen eye for the weaknesses of our teachs. No one could imitate them like he, cruel and true. And he was always ready to join in any mischief. But at the same time there was something very fragile about him, some sort of puppy dog quality, the way he would follow orders, and his quick, darting looks, checking out the eyes and faces of those around him, if we were still laughing, if we were all still with him.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That winter I had graduated, via Grant Morrison, from superheroes to the wonderful worlds of Garth Ennis, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Warren Ellis. I had tried to convert Jonas, and had first given him Morrison’s <i>Invisibles</i> and then <i>The Filth</i>. One afternoon in late May we were at my place. Jonas was deeply immersed in the sexual misadventures of Greg Feely, and somehow we got talking about pron. It was all red faces, and machismo, and giggles. I kept taxing his face for signs of rejection and was always ready to jump back into joking, but Jonas proved reluctantly interested.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Want to?” I asked finally.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“What?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Wank.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Now?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I nodded. “Yeah.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Jonas hesitated, but he didn’t say no. So I sat up against the wall, and began to unbuckle my belt. After a second he followed suit. We were both very hard but also tense and uncertain. When we both had cum, grunting and panting, we fell back and got a major case of the giggles.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">After a while we recuperated, but neither of us made a move to clean up or even pull up his trousers again. Jonas liked at me, a bit concerned, and asked: “Isn’t that gay?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">For a second I was tempted to say: ‘Nah, we’re just messing around,’ or something like that, but I steeled myself, and said. “I am gay.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He gave me a long look and I couldn’t read his face. Then we heard ‘Nessa come home, and got cleaned up. A short while later Jonas said he had to get going, and left. And the next two days he was oddly reserved in school. He didn’t cut me or anything, but there never seemed to be a moment when we were alone together, and no mention of that afternoon was made.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The following weekend our class made a three-day excursion to an old monastery in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, a couple of kilometres north of Berlin. The weather was very hot, but still with the humid green heat of late spring. On the bus ride Jonas had sat with someone else, and I was fully decided to ignore him and forget about him. But that evening, after supper, when we had some time to do as we pleased, he came up to me in the hall and told me to follow him. He lead me to the herb garden, where we were alone but for the last of the evening sun. And behind a dogberry bush in full bloom he pulled me to him, awkwardly, not knowing were to put his elbows and knees, and kissed me with those wonderful, leonine lips, long, and wet, and without any skill.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I am, too,” he said, when he finally let go of me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Together with the sun our shadows faded from the gothic, red brick wall of the ancient building, but I will forever remember the smell of those dogberry roses, and the wind in those gnarled, old oak trees, and the taste of the hostel cantina supper on his tongue, and the sense that maybe, just maybe, there could be an ordinary life to be had on this here planet, for me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">For one month we were an item. A secret, covert, closeted item, to be sure, but a real couple. We went to the cinema, we held hands, we snogged behind the school, and we made out on my mum’s couch. Then came the summer holidays. He went to Italy with his rents. I waited, eager for his return. When he came back, he had fallen in love with a girl and wasn’t gay any more.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-74608124188437202222011-02-07T13:33:00.010+02:002011-06-28T09:58:34.562+02:00Countdown: 4 - Flesh of Lost Summers (Part II)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I tried to apologize to Tariq, but he didn’t even hear me out. In the months that followed, ‘Nette got sicker, and sicker. There was that bad incident at the funeral. I turned twelve and failed my exit stage left. When they had me up and going again, I couldn’t stop hating, hating everything, hating myself. That May Day, on Heinrichplatz, was the first time I got into an open, physical fight with the rozzers, and the first time my mum had to collect me from the station. Around then my mates I also had our brief career as shoplifters.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">My mum, so far overextended that she was crying herself to sleep every night, when she thought we wouldn’t hear her, sent me to my aunt for the summer. And to everyone’s surprise I sort of caught myself again, for a while.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was in England that I met my boy #2. Colin F. was sixteen at the time, like my cousin Jane, and her best friend and confidant. He was blond, quiet, and had a shy smile that could flicker up and disappear at any moment, like a deer in a forest clearing. He was often at my aunt’s house that summer, and most importantly, he wanted me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Not that he said anything, or made any move. How did I know? Well, it was partly how often he turned up in the door to a room I was in, or on the veranda when Alice and I were in the garden, and how he never seemed actually comfortable around me when we got within speaking distance. But more than that it was something in his eyes, some quality of eager openness and furtive closedness<span> </span>at the same time. Or maybe it was just that I could smell his fear. After all, I knew all about that fear, didn’t I?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I tried not to tease him – at all. And I made the strange discovery that teasing was my main way of communicating with peeps. Any peeps. I hadn’t known that until then. But for Colin I made the exception. Even when Alice wanted to play some tricks on him and Jane, I made excuses, or distracted her with other ideas, and left him alone. I remembered ‘Nette, and Tariq, and tried to be less of a coward.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I didn’t throw myself at him either, of course. He probably would have run if I had. Outwardly I kept up the appearance of friendly indifference, but I relaxed around him. My body and my eyes, enough to let my desire become apparent.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The seduction of Colin was probably my first confidence job. Not that I would have been able to call it that back then. But I did seduce him. Not with lies, mind you, for all my practice that has never been my strong suit, but with the truth.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Lying is hard work. I know you do it, too, all the time. We all do. But have you ever made a study of how it is done? Have you ever stood in front of a mirror and tried to make your face and your body say something you didn’t believe?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">As someone once observed, somewhere inside of us is this perfect mathematician. If someone gave you all that data describing an object moving in a curve through the vectors of impulse, gravity, inertia, resistance, and so on, how long would it take you to calculate it’s flight path? And yet, if someone tosses you an apple, you can catch it out of the air in a heartbeat.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Likewise body language is so hard to describe, and yet we all use and read it all the time without consciously thinking about it. It is only when we begin to lie on a regular basis that we have to learn that language by mind instead of by heart.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I now know what it was I did, back then. I opened my chest to him by keeping my arms at my sides or otherwise occupied just so they wouldn’t form a barrier between me an him. I kept my pelvis turn towards him, not sideways, the way we do to shield ourselves from possible blows. When he was in my back, I wouldn’t stiffen my neck, but bare it, inviting an attack. When he was close I would melt a little bit, so that my back and my bum and my legs would become this curve, this wave that asked for a hand to run along it.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was a good liar, even then, but none of that was a lie. I seduced him with the simple truth, just showed him what I wanted. Why did I just call it a confidence job, then? Well, the essence of the confidence job isn’t that you lie to the mark. The essence is that you allow the mark to lie to himself. That you allow him to trick himself into believing that he could have something he desired for a price he could afford. That was the lie: That I would give something to him, and not just take.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Eventually Colin noticed. Oh, he never caught on to the fact that I was quite active in this. He believed it was all his own doing. But he lost some of his shyness around me, became more eager for my company. And when my aunt suggested my cousins should take me on a bike trip to Three Cliffs Bay in Wales – a three day tour each way – and spend a few nights camping there by the sea with me, Colin somehow ended up coming along. Unfortunately without any grown-ups along, Alice decided we would disregard the promise we had given my aunt, and she would sleep in a tent with Colin, while I would stay in the other with Jane. But I still got my wish.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The first day at Three Cliffs Bay Colin and I went for groceries at the the little camping site shop. It was rather crowded and while we queued Colin finally made his move, and stepped up close enough behind me that his crotch touched my bum. He did his best to make it seem accidental, for maximum deniability, and I carefully but unmistakably pushed my bum backwards and pressed lightly against his erection. Oh, the feeling of this undeniable proof of his desire. It send chills down my spine. To get the message across I once, very slightly, rotated my bum against him. He didn’t dare for more then, but when we went back to the girls, there was a new spring in his step.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Finally, finally, a whole day later, Alice declared she was going swimming and Jane went along. I said I would rather have a look at the little castle ruins up on the high shore, and Colin said he would come along with me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The ruins, a single, crumbling wall and the remains of a gatehouse, were deserted. I went for the narrow chimney-like nook next to the gate, and pretended interest in climbing up inside there. Colin squeezed in with me, and pretended to help. I still think he was unaware how much I knew that this was only foreplay, the way he stood below me and put his hands on my hips, both of us wearing nothing but swimming shorts and trainers.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was a bit chilly in the shade of that nook. We both had goose bumps when we embraces. The grass tickled my shins when I knelt down. His hands were wonderful in my hair, alternately gentle with restraint and then again helplessly demanding. And when I made myself swallow I thought: “I’m not a coward. I am a real faggot now. And I am not a coward.” But I was wrong.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I shivered, weak with relief, and a squeaking little laugh escaped my lips, a sound the Colin mistook for dismay. He hugged me and whispered he was sorry. Unable and unwilling to explain any of these complicated thoughts and feelings, I turned away from him to the walls of the ruined gatehouse, and said: “Well, are you going to help me up there? Maybe we can see Alice and Jane from the top.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">We stole a few such moment, Colin and I, but since we both tried to keep it secret from my cousins, opportunities were scant. We went back to Wotton-under-Edge, and it got even harder to find innocent pretexts for spending time alone together.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I didn’t want to return to Berlin. I didn’t want this summer to end, not just because of Colin, but also. As always, my time in Gloucestershire seemed to be time away from the real world, from my real life, from the real me. In England I could be someone I wouldn’t ever dare to be in Berlin. But I’d already forced one extension by crying my eyes out in my aunt’s lap, and with school about to start again I knew that my deportation couldn’t be stayed any longer.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I hope it was mostly the fear of my return to Berlin, to my mum, and my remaining siblings, and to our tiny flat that was still with too much echoing emptiness, that rode me that evening when Colin dragged me away behind the garage, and kissed me, hard and painful in his yearning.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Rikki,” he whispered, and with a sudden dread I knew what was coming. “I…”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Panic welled up inside me, and hatred. In the half light filtering from my aunt’s kitchen through the oleander bushes I could see Colin’s tongue, pink and perfect, touch his upper front teeth, beginning to shape the one word I could not permit him to utter, the one that held promises I knew he wouldn’t be able to fulfil, the one that implied a betrayal too monstrous to allow.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Helpless, not knowing how to react, I headbutted him, hard, hard enough to crack his left upper incisor, cutting my own scalp on it. He stumbled back, and there was more astonishment than pain in his gaze, a stunned question, and I believe he still thought it must have been some accident, me stumbling forward, a silly mistake, ugly, but a shared experience we might soon laugh about.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Instead I punched him in his gut. Going down he knocked over a stack of empty terracotta flower pots, and they shattered on the tiled ground like a cluster bomb. Colin began to cry and pressed his hands in front of his bleeding mouth.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“If you need your cock sucked, you know where to find me,” I hissed, as my aunt and Alice came running around the corner to investigate the noise. Blood was trickling down my own face, from the cut of his tooth. I bent down lower, so that only Colin could hear me. “But don’t ever… kiss me again, you queer bastard.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">A week later, back in Berlin, I got a letter from Alice, informing me about Colin’s incisor. Neither I nor – as far as I know – he ever told anyone what happened back then.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I didn’t return to Wotton-under-Edge until those two weeks three years later that ended with me ditching the bus and following the fox into Westridge Woods. While I was at my aunts I met Colin once again. He’s now a student of law at the University in Cardiff, and like Tariq he, too, didn’t hear me out when I tried to apologize. He was too eager to apologize to me. It turned out that all these years he had been consumed with guilt. After me he foreswore homosexuality, became religious, and let his mum set him up with his wife and the mother of her future grandchildren.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That was the price I made him pay, for that first blowjob, that first confidence job. For my cowardice. Ah, who is keeping track any longer, huh?</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-10386230204734823902011-02-06T23:07:00.006+02:002011-06-28T10:01:43.089+02:00Countdown: 4 - Flesh of Lost Summers<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOX2V1qo8wGkugiMfYp9Bn84AgGBGMt_cRQI3DXF2b1evn6NLgg6bQMiQAwxfKYqGWvNICwOGeBCHx4dncskKEwlFPsJhLHQYAPEYHVae5WUzkOdNX0ntPzoIv2n3L5vtKdKnivPgj6UnN/s1600/punk-in-love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOX2V1qo8wGkugiMfYp9Bn84AgGBGMt_cRQI3DXF2b1evn6NLgg6bQMiQAwxfKYqGWvNICwOGeBCHx4dncskKEwlFPsJhLHQYAPEYHVae5WUzkOdNX0ntPzoIv2n3L5vtKdKnivPgj6UnN/s400/punk-in-love.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="Zitat" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB"></span></span></div></blockquote><br />
<blockquote><div class="Zitat" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I can't get enough of you, no never put you down<br />
I don't wanna be wrong don't wanna be right<br />
Just wanna be playing along</span></span></div><div class="ZitatEnde" style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">- Children's Masterpiece Theatre: Flesh of Lost Summers(2007)</span></span></div></blockquote><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB"> </span></span><br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Let’s talk about fear for a moment. Let’s talk about cowardice.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When I was seven years old, we went on our very last trip with the entire family, mum, dad, and us four kids. Mosquitoes, campfires, canned ravioli, fishing, and swimming in the lakes and waterways of Polish Masuria.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">One afternoon our rents had gone for groceries. The sun was low and our campground almost entirely consumed by the shadows of the tress. Golden sparkles were still dancing on the gently lapping waves of the lonesome lake. ‘Nette was lying on her stomach on a large towel and reading a teen magazine. ‘Nette had waded out pretty far into the shallow waters and stood, arms outstretched like some Christ figure in the fading blaze of the evening sun. Lukas had disappeared in the woods. And I was playing by myself with these little plastic soldiers that come in a bucket.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Suddenly a big, far forest spider dropped first on my head and then down, knocking over one of my soldiers. I shrieked and jumped. And next to me, Lukas – who knew that I was afraid of spiders – began to laugh. He had returned from the woods brought the critter as a special present to me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“For chrissake, Lukas, leave him alone, will you?” ‘Nessa groaned from her towel, but she didn’t even bother to stop leafing through her magazine.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Lukas ignored her. Instead he picked up the spider and let it dangle on its thread from his finger, swinging it back and forth like a pendulum.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Look here, little pussy, she wants to play with you.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I tried to get away, but stumbled over a root and landed with a heavy, painful thump on my back. Lukas followed me to stand over me and slowly lowered the spider towards my face. Terrified I lay still and stared up at the wriggling, eight-legged beasty.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then a small hand closed around the spider. ‘Nette, nine years old and dripping wet, crouched down next to me. I knew that she hated spiders just as much as I did, and when we were alone with each other in the privacy of our room, she would shriek and hide behind me, and egg me on to put a glass or something over it, if one came to visit us there. Now she was trembling all over. I don’t know if it was with fear and revulsion, or with rage, or if it was because she was wet and there was a cool breeze blowing between the trees. Perhaps it was a mix of all of the above.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">She stared directly in to the eyes of her 14 year old brother and held her lightly balled fist towards him, as if about to offer a gift in supplication. She even relaxed he fingers enough so that the scrabbling legs of the spider began to appear between them. And then I could see her steel herself. She gritted her teeth. Her breath hitched once. There were tears in he eyes but also a deep resolve.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Slowly she got up, put herself between me and him, and then she crushed the spider in her fist. All though she stared directly into his eyes, hers just as stormy grey as his. And I knew that I loved her, loved her with a blind, fiery passion I had never felt before and thought I never could again.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Lucas snorted and turned to leave.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Pussies,” was what he muttered when I – now that the spider was gone – launched myself at him. I jumped on his back, and clung to him like a monkey, and tore at his hair and bit into his ear.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That night, when ‘Nette and I were down at the lake washing the dishes after supper, and I was still aching all over from the beating Lukas had ended up giving me, she took my by the arm, and she looked at me very seriously, and this is what I remember her saying to me:</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Everyone is afraid, Tavi.” Tavi was her special, secret name for me, from the Kipling tale. “But only a coward lets that stop him.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That night I lay awake for a long time, and I swore to myself that I would never be a coward again. But things aren’t ever that simple, are they, and often enough life doesn’t permit us the luxury of keeping our word. Least of all to ourselves.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">***</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I’ve always liked boys, and men, and never really looked at girls, or women, in a sexual way. And as far back as I remember I knew that this was something I ought to be ashamed of. Like most of my kind, when my mates began talking about girls and pussy and boobs in that way, I first tried to avoid it, and then, for a while, I joined in and was probably especially obnoxious. But I hated it. Not because I was lying – I lie all the time, it doesn’t bother me at all – but because I really didn’t like that particular role.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">‘Nette was the first person I talked to about this. I was 10 at the time, and it was my assistant football coach I had been thinking about. She listened very seriously and said matter-of-factly: “So, you’re a faggot.” And she hugged me and kissed me and added: “Then that’s just the way it is.” And for the short time afterwards that we had we could talk about boys, and compare what we liked about them, or didn’t, and what we wanted them to do to us.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And later, when she was dying, she egged me on to go through with it, to finally get fucked. But I didn’t have the first idea how to go about it. I mean, I had my fantasies, but they were never too clear about how to initiate it all.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">As I’ve mentioned before, when I was eleven, during ‘Nette’s last summer, there was Tariq. He had thick, black hair, and dark eyes, like a horse, and skin the colour of coffee with lots of milk. His nose was aquiline, and his face heart-shaped, and he had a birthmark low on the left side of his jaw line, close to the ear.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The only way I found to express my desire for him was to annoy him thorouly with constant needling, jibes and taunts, until he lost his patience, and we fought in the school corridor. We both got quite a lot of heat for that from our teachs and rents, and he never forgave me, but I remember how much I loved wrestling with him, how much I loved feeling his fingers dig into my arm as he tried to hold me down, how hard my prick was against his hip as he lay on me, pounding my face to get me to finally cry uncle so he would be able to walk away with his head held high. How he began to sob with frustration when I wouldn’t, and how he spit into my face as they dragged us apart.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That afternoon I spent at ‘Nette’s side. She’d one of her migraines and had returned from school early. She was already scheduled to go to the hospital, but we still assumed it would only be temporary. I cried about the way Tariq had looked at me when he’d come from the principal’s office and I had been on my way in, and I had known that even if I ever had had a chance before, it was gone forever now. ‘Nette had rested one hand on my head, and without opening her eyes she had said: “Coward.”</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-74999280769443538212011-01-27T21:44:00.022+02:002011-06-28T10:03:39.076+02:00Chapter Six: Tales from the Trails (Part VI)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">From here the path gets rougher, and some of it I only remember through a haze. Some of it I don’t remember at all. And some I wish I didn’t.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">There isn’t much to tell you about Inverness. I staid in a hostel where I was woken at 5 in the morning by some Spanish backpackers sharing their checking out process with the world. My shoulder felt swollen and was hurting something fierce. Unable to find my way back into sleep I walked down to the harbour. It was a charmingly ugly and practical affair without any touristy frills. At a kiosk frequented by oil-stained labourers stinking intensely of fish and burnt diesel I got a cheap breakfast of kippers and bitter tea. The labourers made fun of me, of my too large army surplus clothes, and the fact that I belonged in school and not with them, but I could laugh with them and it made me feel rather good.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I answered some mails and wrote a blog entry at an Internet Café and set out for the outskirts of Inverness to hitch a ride along the A862 around Beauly Firth and then north, into Ross-Shire or maybe along the East Cost. That was how I got that lift with the plumber in his old white Ford Transit. He seemed fine at first, but it didn’t take me long to realize that he was pissed out of skull. I tried to get him to let me out along the way, but he wouldn’t ear of it.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Whitfor?” he asked, sniffing suspiciously. “A thocht ye wis gaun tae Beauly?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I, er, changed my mind. I want to go West instead, to, et…” I racked my brain for some tourist attraction that might be West of where we were. “Loch Ness?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ye think A’m fou, dinye?” he shouted accusingly. I didn’t know if by ‘fou’ he meant ‘full’ or ‘fool’, but I thought, either was pretty accurate.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Ye think A’m tae fou tae drive, dinye? Bit A’ll pruve ye, A’m nae fou ataa!”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And he took both hands from the steering wheel and shook then in the air. Maybe he was thinking of bicycles and how driving without hands might prove your sense of balance, I don’t know. He laughed at me triumphantly. The van drifted into the opposite lane. There were cars coming our way.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I shouted and tried to grab the wheel. The van swerved and wobbled.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Whoah!” he shouted, wrested the wheel from my hands, and got us more of less back on course. The honking of the other cars dopplered and faded behind us.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Git yer hands oaf! Are ye tine tae kill us?!”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You were…” I began shouting back.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He interrupted me with a slap to my shoulder that made me gasp with pain.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“A wis barrie! A haed aathing unner control. Twas ye what naur kilt us.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">While we were shouting e was only facing me and not paying any attention to the road ahead. I was afraid anything I might say would just make things worse, so I shut up.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">For a while he muttered darkly to himself. Then, when we arrived at the turnoff, he said: “Wast he wants tae gae, wast we’ll gae. A’ll tak ye tae Struy, aye, bit nae faurer.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The roofs of Beauly were already visible to our right, while the sign pointing straight ahead said “Struy, 9 miles”.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“No, no, I’ll go to Beauly. Let’s go to Beauly!” I tried to stop him, but too late.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">For the next fifeen minutes I was quiet, securely buckled in, clinging to the handgrip, feet braced against the floor of the footwell, as he drove down the narrow, tree-lined country road, running the engine alternately at too low or too high revs, cutting curves, and swerving around oncoming traffic. He kept up a false cheer and talked to me all through, but I didn’t listen.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Finally he stopped at a telephone box in Struy, grinning, deeply satisfied with himself.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“See? See? I telt ye. A’m nae fou ataa.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yeah, well, thanks, you crazy fuck,” I said, jumped from the van, and slammed the door hard behind me. I could see his face twist in anger behind the windscreen. He shouted something and shook his fist. Then he gunned hi engine, made a tight turn, and roared away back the way we’d come.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was around noon. The sky was overcast and grey, but it wasn’t raining. Cured from any wish to hitchhike for a while, I decided that since I was here now anyway, instead of going back those 9 miles to Beauly I’d follow the road along the valley of the river Glass and see where that would lead. After half an hour the sun came out for a while and showed me that the trees were beginning to change into their autumn finery. Summer was beginning to end.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Eventually I came across a bridge to a crossroads and a couple of grey stone houses. I was still pondering my choices – shops, police station, and Glen Afric, or Glen Cannich and Mullardoch, or Drumnadrochit, public loos, and a camping ground – when a group of backpackers only a couple of years older left a shop ahead and came towards me. So I bummed them for smokes.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">***</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The next day I left when it was still dark. Everything was hazy with booze and shame. I couldn’t find my jacket, the M65 I’d bought back in Manchester, and the T I had been wearing was soiled. I took it off and left it on the middy ground of the camping site, put on my spare and the hoody I’d carried in my satchel.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The road towards Loch Mullardoch rose quickly out of the valley, and soon Strathglass and the Cannich camping ground were hidden behind a thicket of birches. I was shivering and didn’t know with what. I froze and sweated at the same tie, my shoulder hurt something beastly, the pain radiating out, joining forces with a headache and a sore throat and the pain from my kidneys where Trevor, or maybe Fred, had hit me when I wouldn’t hold still.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">After a while I got out of the birch wood, and when the sun rose in my back my shadow leaped out in front of me, hurrying ahead and showing me the way. I followed, glad of anything that took my mind off the night I was leaving behind. And even though I felt sick to my stomach I began to run.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The valley opened up, wider and wider, and the mountains on both sides grew higher. The river flowed through several small lakes, and after a couple of hours I cam to a huge concrete dam, cutting across the valley. I climbed the last rise at the side of the dam and looked out over Loch Mullardoch and the lonely, treeless mountains that sheltered it.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I was seriously ill, and I knew it. It was more than just the effect of booze and the pot from last night. I was running a fever, and I needed a doctor to look at my shoulder and the ugly blue-red veins that were snaking away from the inflamed wound like little tentacles under my skin. But the road ended at the dam. I twas either turn around and creep back to Cannich or go on into the wild.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The fragments of last night that were stuck in my chest burned worse than the fever. So I stepped off the road onto the unmarked trail along the Northern shore of Loch Mullardoch.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Even today, a couple of years later, I can’t tell you exactly what happened. Oh, I remember the events, mostly, and frankly, the details are none of your beeswax. Yes, in the end it had gotten rough, enough that I might have the law on my side – though nancy boys should beware of such assumptions – but in my heart I knew that for the most part I could have stopped things. I could have fought harder, or run away, or called for help. In the end, I, some part of me, had let them do it.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It had begun friendly enough. I’d bummed them for that fag, we’d gotten talking, and they’d invited me to their camp fire. They’d shared their hotdogs with me, and their beer and the joint. We’d talked some more. They’d been from down under, on a pre-college trip to the old country, jobbing in London and travelling around when time and money allowed them to. I’d told them pretty much the truth, just sufficiently altered and vagued up to keep my legal identity and origins hidden. I had called myself Alan, and eventually sexual orientation had come into things.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">On the shore of Loch Mullardoch I missed the bridge across a brook and instead followed the narrow path upward. Now and then I had to ford a tributary. Water ran into my boots and made my feet heavy and cold. Every step was hell. I sweated like a pig when I moved, but when I rested I trembled with chills. Halfway up the mountain I had to throw up, but I had this mad idea I mustn’t leave the trail but that I couldn’t, like, soil it either. I tried to hold it in, to get on where it touched the river again, but ended up puking the remains of those sausages all over my chest and arms and hands.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The path dragged on and on, past a couple of small waterfalls, and eventually lost itself in the heather and bracken of a wide, deep corrie. All around me the rounded humpbacks of the mountains rose and dove under the low, shifting sky. In the middle of the corrie a single dead tree stood at the convergence of the many little streams, bone white, and supplicating. I dreamed a gathering of people into the wilderness, and I heard drums and whistles, and then lost track of things.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">You see, they had been curious, the boys from down under. I think that had been genuine. In the beginning they had just asked how it was, you know, to be with another bloke. And they got to musing how it is different to get a blowjob from a bloke or from a girl. After all, a mouth’s a mouth, innit? They made low cracks, jokes in high voices, flapping a limp wrists. Where exactly was the line across which those jokes crossed from crude to cruel, from sleazy to savage? When had I stopped being a guest and became a victim? And how much did I participate in this transformation?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">***</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I came to by the side of a small lake in a deep valley, with high, rocky slope behind me. My satchel was missing, as was any memory of how I had gotten there. All I could remember was a fucked up dream about some weird party, or maybe a procession? We had been walking somewhere, along some dark road. Or maybe it had been a boat crossing a vast underground body of water?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">My palms were marked with fresh, uneven scratches, the kind you get from climbing rough rocks, as were my knees, the trousers torn above them. And, most annoyingly, the lace of my left boot was torn. Other than that I felt good. The fever had mostly passed. I was still weak, and very thirsty, but that was all.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I drank from the lake, repaired my shoe lace as good as I could, and got going. I crossed a couple of kilometres of wild, hilly country, and earthen, rusty heath, until I came to a large lake. The sky was a sickly shade of saffron, and the sun, hidden behind clouds, shimmered on the waves like hammered brass. And as far as I could see only untamed wilderness, except for one small rowboat far out on the lake.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I hollered and waved my arms. For a while nothing happened. But then I saw that the boat was coming towards me. Against the glare I could not make out who as at the oars until it was almost upon me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hullo there, m’boy. Everything alright?” It was an old chap, tall and whip thin. He was wearing an old, long sou’wester, a thick, woollen jersey, dungarees, and tangerine Wellingtons.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hullo, Sir. Um. Can you tell me were I am. I seem to have gotten lost.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I’ll say. Good grief. You look a fright.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I looked down on myself. My black hoody was stiff with mud and dried vomit, so were my fatigue trousers, and torn. My hands and knees were scraped and dirty with peat. I had no backpack and no coat.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Everything is alright, Sir,” I said hastily. “I just lost my way.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Want to come into the boat, m’boy? I can ferry you to the other side. Got a small lodge there. Catch your death out here like that.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I hesitated but then gave myself a push and stepped into the rocking dinghy, careful not to step on the fishing rods and tackle box that cluttered the bottom.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Better sit yourself down, m’boy,” he said, and when I had settled down on the seat in the stern, he offered me his hand. It was old, and bony, and very firm.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Benedict Isaac Roth.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Colin Campbell,” I answered. He looked at me for a second, astonished. Then he laughed. “Alright, Colin. Come along then.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He took me across the waters of what turned out to be Loch Monar, one valley over from Loch Mullardoch. Mr. Roth was there on a fishing holiday. In the lodge he had rented he had maps of the area and on them I figured out that I must have walked about 7 kilometers from the Coire an t-Sith to the northern slopes of the An Riabhachan, a path fraught with steep ridges and sheer cliffs.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“By rights you should be lying dashed on the rocks of the Sgurr na Lapaich, m’boy. I know what I am talking about. What were you thinking?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I didn’t tell him. He told me some more of my monumental stupidity, made hot tea and baked fresh scones, which he served thick with melting butter and strawberry jam. Then he heated enough water to fill a small wooden tub and had me wash and warm up. I had a look at my shoulder but it seemed a lot better. There were thick dark scars now. The surrounding tissue was still ruddy and tender, but that angry throbbing was gone, that tight feeling of a tomato about to burst, as were the bluish-red veins.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Where to now, m’boy?” he asked me when I had towelled myself off. “My trust chariot isn’t far.” At my raised eyebrow, he chuckled and added: “An old Daimler, very comfortable ride. If you want I could take you someplace.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Like where?” I asked.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Like Inverness, or Glasgow.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I put on my trousers and saw that he had patched the tears at the knees while I had bathed.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Thank you, Sir.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“My pleasure. Well? Look, let’s not mince words, shall we? You have got nowhere to go, have you? I used to be a lawyer in my old life, and quite a fine one if I say so myself. So, if there is some institution, some halfway house perhaps…”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He looked at my face and saw refusal written all over it. He sighed.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Where will you go then?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">My T smelled pretty bad. I put it on anyway and grinned. “The world is my oyster.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He smiled wanly and handed me a long, neon orange shoelace.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“So I noticed.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Wow, what did you get that one for?” I took the shoe lace and ran it through my fingers. “Really dense fog?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I can keep it if you prefer limping around with one unlaced boot, m’boy.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I threaded it into the oxblood Doc Marten. The colours clashed horribly. I looked around for my socks, but they had been replaced by a fresh, dry woollen pair.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I took the liberty of disposing of your old rags. Try these.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I couldn’t, Sir.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Well, you’ll have to go without any then. I burned yours.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“You haven’t. You haven’t even got a fireplace in here. They’re probably just in the trash.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">But thinking of Huey and his lesson, I took them and finished dressing.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Seriously, m’boy. Where do you think you’ll go now?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Seriously?” I showed him on the map. “I thought this trail here, and then to Skye.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He gave me a couple of tips about the route, and a small nylon backpack, and some provisions.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Take the map, also,” he added. “Don’t want you to get lost again, do we?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Mr. Roth took me with his boat back across the lake. I tried to say my good-byes, but he just shook his head, waved, and rowed away. And I turned west.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Two nights later I arrived at the road circling Loch Carron, and I made an astonishing discovery: It was already Saturday, August 30th, 2008. It had been Tuesday morning when I had left Inverness. Which meant that I must have lost not one, but two nights and a whole day, delirious in the Mullardochs…</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The next night, showered and dressed in a stolen pair of boxers and a fresh, black T, I was lying in a bed in a hostel near Kyle of Lochalsh. It was a shared dorm and there were a bunch of travellers in the room with me. Some were getting ready for bed, coming from or going to the bathroom, while others were lying on theor beds, reading guidebooks, or talking quietly. I had a top bunk, and I was on my back, staring at the ceiling above me, and suddenly I began to tremble. It wasn’t the fever or anything. And it wasn’t no relief either. I was just shaking with my whole body, enough to make the bed begin to rattle against the wall. I curled up into a tight ball and hugged my knees to my chest and tried to breathe evenly, until it passed.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I knew that Mr. Roth had been right. By rights I really should have been dead. My bones should have been lying in some gorge, being picked apart by scavengers and bleached by the rain and the sun.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The next day would be the first day of school after the summer holidays in Berlin. Tim, and Samuel, and Florian, and also in another part of the city Leo, and Orcun, and Hector, they would all be sitting in their chairs in their various class rooms, tomorrow, staring out of the window. Only my seat would remain empty.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I had to think of the “The haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson. Best damn ghost story ever, IMHO. Except maybe for “The Ghost of Canterville”. At the end of “Hill House” Eleanor, the main character, is driving the car and wondering: “Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That had been me. All the time I had secretly been waiting for some heavy hand to fall on my shoulder and stop me. To catch me and send me back. I hadn’t truly believed that I could actually escape, simply by walking away.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I knew, as I lay there, in that bed in that hostel, near the shores of Skye, surrounded by strangers, that I should turn around. That it would be the sensible thing to do, to go back to my mother, to get things back on track before they would spiral completely out of control.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I knew that I should do that.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">But I also knew that I wouldn’t.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">This wasn’t just something I was doing anymore. It was who I had become.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-5571055367247815532011-01-17T22:15:00.020+02:002011-06-28T10:04:23.926+02:00Chapter Six: Tales from the Trails (Part V)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was raining again when I entered Glen Dee. The sky was as rugged as the ground, clouds, torn, chasing each other, sunlight coming through the ragged opening in scattered bursts, the way a gunman might occasionally strafe a besieged house with bursts of automatic fire. The hills on both sides of the glen grew into mountains and the path itself plodded ever upwards.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">In the evening I reached a mountain whose lopsided peak jutted out impressively over the glen, like a cock straining against tight trousers. As I found out later it’s called “Devil’s Point” in English, which was the polite translation of its Gaelic name as it was told to Queen Victory when she travelled through these parts. A more literal translation would be “demon dick”.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">There was a small stone hut at the foot of the Devil’s Point. I thought about spending the night there, but when I got close, I saw that a group of happy hikers were just getting cozy inside, hanging freshly washed socks from the window sill and busying themselves with the fireplace. I greeted them half-heartedly, without breaking my stride. I hurried past the hut and up a small path that lead to the ridge joining the Devil’s Point and several other peaks to a plateau.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I had not intended to climb any of these peaks. I had wanted to stay on the trail along the valley. But the path to the stone hut had taken me away from the main trail, and once I was there and saw that it was occupied, I only had the choices of either staying, or turning around, or walking on, uphill.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I didn’t want to stay. Helen and John had been all the company I craved that day. And I didn’t want to turn around, because doing so would have made it only to apparent to those hikers that I was avoiding them. And somehow that moment I couldn’t have born the shame of my cowardice becoming visible to them. Even if it meant having to drag myself up that devilish mountain.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I cursed myself every exhausting and agonizing step. Each made my shoulder throb with a deep, dull fire. And when the night had quietly done away with the last of the dusk I found myself in a large corrie, illuminated only by the wan light of a distant, gibbous moon – an immense natural amphitheatre made up of moss-covered rocks and steep slopes. And I felt very lost, and small, and terribly exposed to the heavens.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The corrie was lines with little brooks. I found a dry, sandy spot between two of them, had the last of Helen Campbell’s sandwiches, emptied the bottle, tended to my feet, and finally smoked my last fag and gazed down into the Glen, and the tiny flickering light of the hearth fire in the stone hut far below me at the foot of the mountain.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">As I sat there I was still mulling over the things Helen had said. And her question whether I believe in God and in Jesus Christ.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Just to be clear on this, I do believe in God. I do. I do. But… how do I say this?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">My Dad had been raised a Roman Catholic, and my aunt had converted to the Church of England when she married. My cousins had been raised Anglicans. My mum is from a family of strict Prussian Lutheran protestants. My oldest friend and neighbour, Orcun, was from a family of moderately devout Muslims. And Hector’s parents were lapsed Communists and strict and vocal atheists. From the beginning I had known that whatever anyone wanted to claim about religion, there was always a way to look at things differently.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">My mum had me and my siblings baptized in the local Lutheran parish, and all but me went to Confirmation class from 12 onward. I was the only one to flat out refuse to go. But that was the extend of my mum’s involvement with the Church. The only times I ever saw her even talk to the vicar was during ‘Nette’s funeral, and at Nicky’s baptism 2 ½ years later.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Primary school offered religious instruction for Protestants and Catholics, but none for Muslims, so it mainly served as a segregator for the main ethnicities – the German kids mostly went to the Lutheran class, Polish kids to the Catholic, and the Turkish and Arabic kids had a free period (but usually visited a Qur’an school some afternoons of the week.) Again it seemed to me that somehow religion was less about truth and more about belonging, about identity and taking sides.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I remember how astonished I was when I finally received religious instructions how boring and meaningless everything was that I was being told about God and Jesus. How God – supposedly almighty and all-knowing – was this soppy stern chap who in some never fully explained way was supposed to love everybody (like, what does that even mean?) and watch over the entire world and every littlest critter in it, and who for some reason was to be credited with every good turn but never to be blamed for everything that went wrong. And Jesus, the son (or incarnation, they never could tell me which) of this almighty God, had brought even more love and forgiveness into the world – I kept wondering what a perfect God needed a version 2.0 for – but then got killed rather badly for it.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then I looked around in my world, and inside myself, and saw all the violence, and the callousness, the pettiness, and how messed up and dirty and run down everything was, and I thought, <i>kurwa</i>, He sure is doing a terrible job.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I also began to seriously resent my teacher, and God, because if there was any truth in what she told me about God’s intentions and power, then God must either hold one hell of a grudge against me, or – and that was even worse – I must be so unimportant that in all his omniscience He never noticed me.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And then ‘Nette started her confirmation classes, and in the nights we would talk about what she had learned, and what she was thinking about all of it. And we’d try to make sense of it ourselves. And once again I was astonished, this time because the stuff we read was nothing like that boring, pedantic, and utterly ineffective God the grown-ups had been telling me about.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The God of the bible is a truly wicked bloke. He is rash to anger and totally overreacts to everything. He blunders along and often acts before he thinks and then comes to regret it later, or changes his mind in mid-stride. He blusters and boasts, sulks, and refuses to admit when he’s made a mistake. He’s bloodthirsty, and untrustworthy, and incredibly vain. But He is full of love – and not that boring, serene love my dried-up teach was going on about, but a love that years, and hurts, is proud, and tender, and that knows how to forgive, not for morals butt for passion. Who could read the story of God and David and not be moved by the flawed, fiery passion for one another?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The bible is full of great folks, and I was pissed off that the teach had made them all sound so dull. There was David, and his suggestive, well, not even love-triangle but love-quadrangle, with King Saul and Saul’s son Jonathan and saul’s daughter Michal. I mean, talk about kinky. David’s career as an outlaw and rebel, his ascent to kingship, his trouble with his own sons, and his less than glorious old age.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Or take Jacob, the thief, liar, and runaway, who got into actual fisticuffs with God, and who God loved so much that he re-named him Israel. Or Job, who took God to court and forced Him to show His true colours. Or Moses, who I think it can be argued is the only person other than Mary who has a reasonable claim to the boast that God made love to him, but who was still turned back at the border of the promised land and had to die, alone, in the desert.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">At the age of 10 the New Testament was a bit boring for me and often very hard to understand. But even there were hidden gems that the grown-ups had withheld from me: Why do they gloss over Herod’s mass child murder in the Christmas Story? And who came up with these three boring old kings, when the actual text tells of an numberless group of wise men – possibly wizards! – from the East? And then there are moments like the one when Jesus begs God to spare him, when he is filled with fear and doubt, but God refuses him and Jesus is nailed to the cross anyway. Later when ‘Nette’s tumour had metastasised into her bones and she had to be given morphine, an still it hurt her so badly, I had to think of the crucifiction and what it would feel like to have nails driven through my wrists and the spans of my feet.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">This God of the bible was a God who made sense, a God who fit the world I was living in. It wasn’t a God I could approach about a new bicycle or a Playstation, sure, but it was one I could somehow respect.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Until he murdered my sister.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That long Saturday afternoon, as I walked up Glen Dee and climbed the Devil’s Point, He was a lot on my mind again, and for the first time in years I asked myself if I still had faith. If I was, as Helen had said, putting my fate in the hands of God.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The idea bothered me, it bothered me a lot. I mean, if I allowed for God as the charioteer of destiny, I could hardly avoid it, could I? But it rankled with me: Since her death I had never begged. I preferred to take what I wanted and be damned the consequences. I didn’t want handouts from Him.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When I was sitting up on the mountainside, shivering in my damp clothes in the night’s chilling breeze, I tried to see the world through the Atheist’s eyes. It was surprisingly easy, under those racing clouds, with the cold and distant stars blinking through them from afar. It was easy to imagine the vastness to be empty not only of matter or warmth, but of meaning. But it remained a thought experiment. It didn’t truly relieve me of my conviction.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It did make me remember those nights, though, when I’d lain in my sister’s bed, had felt the warmth of her body against mine, smelled her skin and the shampoo in her hair, and when we had gazed out through the narrow window, so high on the wall – the same window that I would try to flee through from that lady rozzer only a few years later, condemning myself to jail and all that followed – and through which we had looked at the very same stars that I was seeing now, from the slopes of the Devil’s Point. And the memory hurt. It hurt with a raw, sudden intensity I had not expected, and I wanted to cry out in pain.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Instead I bit down on that pain, and spit it onto the gravel, and snarled: “Yeah, well, fuck you, too!” And I curled up as tight as I could, under those cold stars, and surrendered myself to the nightmares once more.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: center; text-indent: 0cm;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">***</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It would be easy to leave it at that and to move on to the scary White Van Man from Beauly, and that beastly night in Cannich, and my near death experience in the Mullardochs, but that would be dishonest.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When I woke up I was very cold and did a double Aikido session before walking back down from the Devil’s Point. The day was misty and gloomy and I was hungry and very thirsty. By the time I reached the hut the hikers had moved n. I looked around inside, vaguely hoping to find some left over food, or to warm myself on the ambers of their fire, but only warm ash remained, not enough to do me any good.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">My shoulder hurt if anything even worse than the day before. It made me think of Ponyboy, and I knelt down in the middle of the room and wanked. That made the pain flare up, but I gritted my teeth and brought myself to a sad, whimpering ejaculation onto the floor. Still kneeling I pissed on it as well. Then I buttoned up and left.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I drank of the cold waters of the Dee, filled up the bottle, and walked on. The sun came out for a while, and to my right be Ben Macdui reached for the sky. Clouds came and went, but the mountain remained, its peak dipping in and out of the wisps of mist.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the mountains in Scotland, but they are nothing like the Alps, or the mountains of the Balkans. The Cairngorms may have rocky cliffs here and there, and sometimes there are clumps of trees at their feet – pine, and birch, and aspen, and bushes of juniper and rowan – but other than that they are these rounded humps, steep, but startlingly smooth, overgrown with heather and lichen in the valley, but the tops<span> </span>bald and covered in immense fields of lose, round, fist-sized stones. Walking amongst them is like paddling a small sealskin canoe through an immense herd of gigantic whales.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And so, their steep, smooth walls flowing out ahead of me along the valley’s sides, the valley floor itself rising like a wave to the distant pass, in spite of my anger and resentment, it made my spirits lift.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And when I passed a gushing creek coming down the mountain I veered off the path and began to hike up a pathless mountainside. It was hard going, and soon I was out of breath, but I didn’t slow down. My eyes were constantly on the lookout for the next good foothold, my brain kept calculating distance and balance, and once again it was his magic of movement, the trance of the trop, that pulled my heart along.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">From time to time it rained, and the cold water ran down my body underneath my clothes. Then the sun came out again and dried me. And then, finally, in densest fog, I reached the heap of stones that marked the highest peak of the Ben Macdui, the highest peak of the Cairngorms.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Look, I don’t want to take back anything I just told you about my relationship to God, or life, or anything. It didn’t change anything, it didn’t convince me of anything. But still… while I stood there, catching my breath, the sky tore open, the mists around me blew apart, the world unrolled all its horizons, and the sun set everything ablaze. All the wetness caught and magnified her fierce fire, like a universe of jewels. No religion or philosophy dreamed up by humans can say as mayn good tings about the world, or say them as convincingly, as the sun, the air, the water, and the rocks did just then.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">After that it was all downhill. By afternoon I surrounded by trees again, where I promptly got lost. By nightfall, tired beyond endurance, I ended up in Inverdruie, where I spent the night. Monday I first had a look at the Aviemore Centre, a piece of daring architecture from the 1960s so incredibly uncool that it is actually kind of cool again, and hitchhiked to Inverness, where I arrived in the evening.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-47702578352703366922011-01-16T16:11:00.019+02:002011-06-28T10:04:58.855+02:00Chapter Six: Tales from the Trails (Part IV)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">When I opened my eyes it was well after sunrise. Two people were coming up Glen Tilt. They were still away enough for me to take a leisurely leak against the rocks, straighten my clothes, shake the ants from my hair, have a drink down at the stream, and light a fag.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">My first impulse had been to scramble uphill and go into hiding somewhere, but I figured, they’d see me running away, and I didn’t like that idea. So I sat down on a rock by the side of the water and waited.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was a bloke in neat blue jeans, and a neat, zippered sweater in dark marine, and a baseball cap in the same colour, and a lady in a grey tracksuit trousers, a sweater in a startling cool magenta, and a white baseball cap with a black bill. Both seemed to be in their 30s or so.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hi there, young man,” the bloke said, when he reached me, and wiped the sweat off his face. He had that athletic chubbiness that seem to be specific American. His eyes were brown and friendly, in a rather patronizing way. Hers were a water blue and shifty, as she sat down her backpack and sat down heavily next to it.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">There was a funny thing going on between the two of them. One thing Uncle Valya had taught me is to never trust people’s words but – if anything – their bodies and their eyes. And looking at the two of them, beyond their surface behaviour, this was what I saw: His attempt at friendliness towards me, his smiles and words, was an act – meant to put <i>her </i>at ease. That she, while outwardly calm, was in the grip of panic, like a deer staring at you frozen in fear and ready to bolt. But she wasn’t afraid of me, nor of him. I think it was the mountains. I think it was their age, their silence and loneliness.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hull,” I answered, put the fag between my lips, and offered him my hand. A little bit astonished he shook.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Hey,” he asked. “You wouldn’t be on your way to Inverey?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Inverness?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“No, no,” he laughed, strained, and put more of himself between me and his lady as if to shield her from whatever I might have to say. “Inverey. A little, er, a little village, that’s… look…”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">He pulled out an ordinance map from his pocket.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Here,” he pointed to a small hamlet at the end of a tiny road in the middle of the mountains. “And, we’re rught about, er, here… right?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">His stubby finger poked vaguely at an area covering several streams and trais somewhere Southwest of Inverey. I took the map and looked for Blair Atholl an Glen Tilt.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I’m not certain, Mister, but we should be somewhere in this valley, here. Probably near the end.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Together we determined our most likely position. It was almost funny how they both began to visibly relax, like little kids that had just made it out of a haunted house, or peeps who just barely avoided a dangerous accident. I doubt it had much to do with the meagre and uncertain information I could provide. I think it was mostly the fact that the mountains had yielded another soul, a human face to speak to without feeling crazy. I wondered if they would have felt the same in some stretch of wilderness in whatever US State they came from, or it was in part due to their sense of being so far from home.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">While he and I were brooding over the map, she put down her backpack and began to produce a surprising amount of food: Sandwiches, cut into little squares and neatly wrapped in cling film and stowed in little Tupperware containers, apples and carrots, peeled and sliced to finger size, and small PET bottles of Isotonic drinks.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Can I offer you something too?” she asked. I studied her face, the one behind her mask. She really wanted me to share their food, to stay with them.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“We also got some Mars bars, somewhere,” she added, almost pleadingly, and began to dig for them.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“That’s my wife, Helen,” the man said. “I’m John. John Campbell.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">We’d already shaken hands, but he’d been too tense then for introductions, so there was a brief, awkward moment now.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“David,” I offered in return, clearly pronouncing it dah-vid, not day-vid. “David Silberknopf.” Sil-bur-kuh’nobf. And to Helen I said: “Wouldn’t say no to a sandwich and a drink, ma’am. Ta.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">She handed me both with a thankful smile.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I asked John: “Could I have a look at your map again?”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It was the first time I’d looked at a detailed map of the area, and I decided that I wanted to head north, through Glen Dee, towards Aviemore.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Helen looked around. “Are you alone, David?” (Of course she had to pronounce it day-vid.)</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yup,” I said.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Where is your family?” she asked.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Defiantly I looked her straight in the face. Then I pointed roughly East-Southeast. “Thataway, ma’am.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">She didn’t get it and actually craned he neck to look at the steep, bare hillside. I sighed.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“About one thousand kilometres thataway.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Kilometers?” she asked and frowned. Then she said: “Oh,” and after a moment, again: “Oh.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I busied myself with the map, but I could feel her eyes ravelling all over me, over my oversized M65 jacket with the sleeves rolled up, and my face still bruised and scabbed with the traces of Ponyboy’s caresses.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“How old are you, David, if I may ask?” Day-vid again. This time from John.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Sixteen,” I lied without looking up.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">More silence while we ate and I studied the map.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Are you a runaway?” Helen sounded timid, but she couldn’t let it go.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I looked up again and debated making up some story. But somehow the strange balance of power between them and me made me feel unnecessarily mean if I did so. So I answered as straight as I could: “I suppose that you could say that.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">John had watched me as well. I handed him back his map.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Where are you headed?” he asked, as he took the map and looked down on it. I showed him, none too precisely.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“We’ll have the same route up until here,” he observed.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Yup,” I said again.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Do you mind if we walk with you?” I smiled, though I didn’t much care for the looks passing between him and his wife.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">As we walked Helen wanted to know if I’d been abused. If I had been beaten. And she gestured towards my face. When I refused to answer that, she dragged her husband into this. They both began to offer me “solutions”, from finding some church organisation that would put me in a new home with good, Christian folks, to going to the American Embassy and asking for asylum (like, huh?). It was only when she tried to drag God into things, too, that I got seriously annoyed.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“I’ll square with God myself, and I’d appreciate it you stayed out of that, thank you very much, ma’am,” I said through gritted teeth.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“So you believe in the Lord God, and in our saviour Jesus Christ?” she asked, half apprehensive, half relieved.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I thought about quoting Riddick at here – I absolutely believe in God, and I absolutely hate the fucker – but then thought, that would only lead to more hassle. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her the fully story, was I? So I just nodded curtly and walked on.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">After t hat we walked in silence for a while. Not much later, John, still trying to ease things for Helen, proposed a rest. They offered me more of their food, but I declined, probably somewhat haughtily, in favour of an apple of my own. We’d left the river Tilt and had not yet reached the Dee, so I had to do without drink.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Helen drew John away from me under the pretence of wanting to show him some part of the scenery, and when they returned, he said: “David, we have decided that we will accept your decision to run way” – as if it was theirs to accept – “and we’ll not speak of it any more. I apologize if we came on strong.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">And Helen chimed in: “If you are willing to put your fate in God’s hands, we shall have faith too.”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I smiled wearily, but<span> </span>wasn’t especially sorry that I had made use of the time they’d been away to go through their backpacks and take 60 quid from thm. Since they’d been taking pictures during the break, I also decided to relieve them of their camera before our ways separated, to make certain they didn’t keep any record of our meeting.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">True to their word they didn’t mention the topic for the rest of our time together. I the early afternoon we reached the White Bridge across the River Dee. They would go East from there towards Inverey, and I’d turn Northwest, along Glen Dee, deeper into the Cairngorms.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Helen insisted I take several of their sandwiches, and a bottle of isotonic drink.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“We will pray for you,” she assured me, as I reached with my right hand past John to shake hers, and lifted the camera from the pouch on his belt with my left.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“That you for the food and the company, ma’am,” I said, slipping the camera into my back pocket. “Have a good journey. God bless.”</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-51033305572743844622011-01-15T15:36:00.008+02:002011-06-28T10:05:58.538+02:00Chapter Six: Tales from the Trails (Part III)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The day began misty and grey and eventually it started to rain, quietly at first, then harder. Walking I enjoyed the way the Doc Martens felt different from the Chucks I’d worn all those weeks before. The Docs were much heavier, of course, but also with the Chucks you can feel every last pebble and ridge of earth through the soles, and through the canvas top even thick and tall grass can be felt. With the Docs, new as they were, the leather not yet quite broken in and the sole still stiff, it was as if a red carpet had been rolled out underneath me, as I made my way through grass and bushes, through puddles and mud.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I followed first the Perth-Inverness railroad tracks to Pitlochry, where I got some grub and more fags, and then the B8079 that in turn follows General Wade’s old military road from around 1730 through the Pass of Killicrankie into Blair Atholl.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Hey, have you ever noticed how things that are normally considered beautiful, like winter snow and summer rain, turn ugly when you encounter them alongside a road with heavy traffic? How things otherwise pure and innocent get corrupted by the noise and the dirt and the haste of modern life? And have you ever noticed how in all that corruption and ugliness, in headlights reflected in wet tarmac, in the blackish sludge and gravel of a road shoulder meeting the lifeless, oil-soaked soil, in the nagry hum of traffic buzzing past in the rain, and in the way all passers-by lose their faces helmeted with hoods and shielded with umbrellas, how in all of that there still is so much beauty?</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Well, when I reached Blair Atholl that Friday noon I was thoroughly sick of that stark, industrial beauty. Aside from a few mornings in Edinburgh’s Holyrood and park this morning’s swim in the river had been the first time in almost 3 weeks – since coming into Marsden out of the Pennies – I had been away from the company of Peeps, and I was sick of them. Sick of their noise, of the smell, sick of their gazes, of showing up at all in any other person’s mind, or them leaving dirty tracks in mine. I wanted to get where I would be all alone. So I forwent a visit to the sterile looking Blair Castle and headed straight for Glen Tilt, the river valley that leads into the Grampian mountains, whose peaks had beckoned me since I had seen them the day before.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Just for the record – What I did was dead stupid, okay? I went into the mountains with nothing but a single change of clothes, a water-proof poncho, a couple of apples, 2 cans of tuna, and some cheese and sliced bread. I didn’t even have a water bottle, let alone a map, or a compass, or a tent. Even if I stuck to the valleys and voided risky climbs, and even if there was still some tourists around, in spite of all the rain, this is how peeps get killed. It was plain stupid, and even a city boy like me should have known better.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Also, it turned out that Doc Martens are not exactly ideal for wilderness walks. Not enough profile and the soles get slick when wet. The first two days I had some trouble with sores and blisters, again, though that was mostly die to the newness of the boots. But Huey had taught me well enough, and I was equipped to deal with that, so I stopped every hour or so to lance, wash, dry, and dress the blisters, and to tape irritated skin, and that went okay.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">For the rest of the day I walked uphill along the stream, between the steepening, mostly treeless hills. Eventually the little road made way for a narrow stony path, still following the water. I rested when I had to, but I always kept walking on. Only when it got so dark that I could no longer be sure of my footing I found a soft, grassy knoll partly sheltered by a rocky outcropping, and simply curled up in my poncho.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I stand by what I said about the danger, you understand? But if you’ve never done that, just walked into somewhere with no clear idea where you are, and just laid down to sleep on the bare ground under the naked sky, far from any other human being, well, you don’t know what you’ve missed. It’s uncomfortable, it’s cold, and the hunger can be a bitch, but the sense of freedom. Man, there is nothing in the world that can beat that. Nothing!</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">It took me some time to find sleep, and I was woken by bad dreams twice that night, but each time it was still too dark to walk on. The second time, however, the rain had stopped and the clouds had opened up to reveal a magnificent, starry sky. For a while I sat, Indian style, on the slope, smoked, and looked into the incredible vastness above, before settling back down for a few more hours of sleep. That time it was deep, and lasted until I was woken by voices echoing from the rocks.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4690119989265676870.post-4388598116417597682011-01-13T16:38:00.009+02:002011-06-28T10:06:42.207+02:00Chapter Six: Tales from the Trails (Part II)<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><img src="http://img2.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" style="background-color: #b2b2b2; " class="BLOGGER-object-element tr_noresize tr_placeholder" id="ieooui" data-original-id="ieooui" /> <style>
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }
</style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Normale Tabelle";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
</style> <![endif]--> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The lorry park offered free showers and a Transport Café. When the <i>suczka </i><span> </span>in the BP shop wouldn’t sell me fags, I went into he café for a coke and swiped two packs from tables I walked past. The driver had gone for a shower and a meal and I idled away the time at the Outdoor Activity Centre net to the petrol station, studying advertisements for white-water rafting and bungee jumping and other exciting adventures for rich pussies. Later the driver cam back carrying a pack of four large cans of Stella, which he shared freely. I got the narrow top bunk, and together we listened to a Best of Italian Opera mix and talked for a while about the Highlands, and the freedom of the road, and how it was disappearing a little bit every year. Then we settled down for the night.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">I felt very comfortable in the cosy shelter of the lorry cab, in spite of the pain in my shoulder. I enjoyed the smell of patrol, beer, male sweat, and aftershave, the hypnotic lights from passing cars that came through the cracks in the drapes and moved white bars across the walls and ceiling, and the sound of the petrol station and the rain on the metal roof directly above my head. Eventually I drifted into sleep, and for a few hours I found rest in the deep sea silence and darkness of dreamless sleep, before the nightmares started again.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">My dreams of that time came in two shades. Either it was that of the madding crowd. I would be in some place thick with peeps. Sometimes it was my old school, or the Prinzenbad public pool, where I used to go with my mates in the summers in Berlin, or it could be something from my recent life, like, say, a theatre or gallery I’d hit with Charley in Edinburgh, or the Headrow in Leeds, where I’d worked with Julie, or the camping site at the Big Chill. Wherever it was, it always began with me going about my business, alone. But then something would happen with the crowd. Sometimes they would start to mutter and talk amongst themselves, too low for me to understand. Sometimes I realized they were talking in some language I didn’t know. And then they’d begin to stare. Someone might ask me something in gibberish and get angry when I couldn’t respond. Or they’d start pushing me around, and shouting all together at me in an unintelligible cacophony of exclusion. In the end though the real horror wouldn’t come from those crowding me from head on but from someone being suddenly in directly in my back, touching me from behind, hot breath on my neck, too close to bear.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">In the other kind of nightmare, I’d be stalked. Those would begin with me alone in some place that had been populated on moments ago, you know, Mary Celeste like. There would be food on the tables, and steaming mugs of tea. Tellies were on, flickering, but set to a quite murmur. There might be open books about, or fluttering newspapers, or unfinished letters, the pen still lying on the paper, the ink not yet dry. At first it wouldn’t be eerie, but seemed perfectly natural. As if I knew where they all were, and why. Sometimes I could hear peeps nearby, around a corner or behind some wall. Never loud, but, you know, present in their absence somehow. I knew they weren’t far.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">But then something would enter. I’d notice motion behind a row of trees perhaps, or hear a floorboard creek beyond a door that’s been left ajar. Whatever It was, It would slowly come closer, prowling, lurking, circling me, moving behind furniture, or behind me. And I would realize that all those peeps that moments ago still had been just around some corner, that they were all gone now. I was all alone. Even if I’ start to shout for help, nobody would be there to hear me. Nobody would come. And I would become afraid. Terrified. I never had a clear idea what It would do to me when It caught, but I knew that anything would be better. Anything. Anything but that.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">That was the dream I had that night. When I woke up with a start I painfully hit my head on the ceiling of the cab. For a moment I was convinced that It had followed me from the dream and was now going to grab me. Then a large lorry passed outside. It’s headlights illuminated the entire cab and I saw that nobody was there except for me and my still snoring host.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">Too shaken to lie down again I got dressed in the darkness, grabbed my bag, and crept out. I lit a fag, crossed the A9 and the fields beyond, and climbed down the bank to the shore of the river Tummel. There I stripped and stepped directly into the cold, rain-swollen waters, and washed the stink of fear from my skin. The current was pretty strong. The water surged and swelled around me. In the distance I saw otters glide through the waves, look up, and disappear.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">The overcast sky was beginning to grow grey when I walked back onto the shingle beach. I was shivering, partly with the cold, and partly still with the tension from the nightmare. I stepped into my boots, tied the lose laces once tightly around each ankle, and began training Aikido, hard enough to break out into a light sweat again. I kicked shadowy enemies, blocked their invisible blows, and rolled across the ground to evade their attacks, the pebbles scratching my back bloody. When I was done the shivers had passed.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">There was hardly any traffic sounds from the A9, down there in the river valley, and when I finally got dressed, the birds around me began greeting the new day. My aunt is mad about songbirds, you see, she got her garden planted especially to attract them, and she is always pointing out one or the other of her little feathered friends, which is how I knew most of those that started singing all around me then: Thrushes and Robins, Tits, Siskins, and Blackbirds. And with their dawn chorus my soul, too, suddenly took wing, and soared, rose above the gloom of the night, rose, and rose, and revelled in the glory of the new day.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“All your life,” I sang quietly. “You were only waiting…”</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="EN-GB">“Blackbird” echoed with Aimee Mann’s gentle, hesitant voice in my mind, and I hummed along as I walked back up the riverbank and then northward, between the river and the road.</span></span></div>FreeFoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00096319447345952569noreply@blogger.com1