Part 2 (1/2)

”Where is your father?”

”Dunno. Mum said he works on an oil rig.”

”You met him?”

”Not yet.”

We sat up talking, then fell asleep where we were. His mother came late the next morning. I was turning sausages in the pan. The doorbell rang. She had cans of lager in a white plastic bag and looked tired.

”Here you go,” she said, handing over the bag. ”Just to say thanks.”

The ground was black with rain. Danny's slippers squeaked on the doorstep. The house was quiet again.

I went upstairs.

Sat in my bedroom.

Drew the curtains.

Lay down with my eyes open.

Quite soon, I saw Danny dragged from his bed.

The officers kept order.

Screams outside, then gunfire. Neighbors peek into the street through lace curtains. Danny is separated from his mother. It's not in black and white like films, but in color like real life.

Different people are pulling his arms. His slipper comes off, then his mother is shot in front of him. Her head opens. Something white. Her hair is clumped. Danny's small fists closing and opening.

It's how we might have met. It's the job I could have been given. Something I could have been ordered to do but wasn't. I did other things. I wore the uniform. I marched. Saluted the Fuhrer. Loaded my weapon. Fired my weapon. And there was always blood, always somebody's blood.

I vomited on the carpet. A thick paste. I fingered my coa.r.s.e gray hair and the bare, misshapen area where nothing grows.

I stood in a cold shower. Lost feeling.

Those days, I often punished myself, but nothing changed.

Downstairs, I stared at the almost empty teacups on the counter. Still warm. I conjured his slippers. His small feet. Racing-car pajamas. His gentle eyes asking, Where is your head? There was something to him, like the boy in Paris who brought cakes to the park for me and the other homeless ones.

Now another child.

No: Another small G.o.d. And Mr. Hugo is the child over there, on the sofa, with tea, and someone to sit with in silence, night pa.s.sing.

I had been woken from my dream by someone else's.

II.

DANNY USUALLY CAME after school. His mother didn't mind because she worked late. I made something for him to eat. Danny's favorite was fish fingers, beans, and American-style french fries. He took the french fries from the freezer, then arranged them on an oven tray. The fish fingers had to be cooked slowly or were cold in the middle. Danny watched television, laughing from time to time. I listened through the serving hatch and felt light, felt unafraid.

Then we ate together. A man and boy eating: I felt echoes from long ago. The knife and fork were too big for Danny. I thought of the knife. Remembered the knife. My father kept it on the mantelpiece. I should have buried it. Then Danny interrupts. Always more ketchup, Mr. Hugo, always more brown sauce. He puts vinegar on his french fries, then on mine. I don't like vinegar, but it's too late and would just hurt his feelings. Danny always saved one fish finger for last. I never knew why.

I cleared up after he left. Sometimes I left the dinner plates until next morning. Beans hardened against the ceramic were almost impossible to remove, but felt light, felt unafraid.

One afternoon, Danny brought new pencils, and so before children's programs, we made drawings.

”Your clouds are good. It's like you stole them from the sky.”

Silence.

Strokes on paper like sighing.

”That's impossible,” he said.

”What is?”

”To steal clouds.”

”I know, I just meant it's a nice drawing.”

”I draw a lot in school. I wish we just drawed all day but we don't.”

”What else do you do?”

”Dunno,” he said.

”You don't know?”

”Stuff that's too hard.”

”Like what?”

”Like reading. I'm just not good.”

I thought for a moment. ”Many things are hard, Danny. Life comes at you in pieces sometimes too big to avoid.”

He seemed hurt.

Dinner was boil-in-the-bag fish. Peas. Bread and b.u.t.ter.

I watched him push peas off the plate. He said he didn't like fish when I knew he did. I think I understood then what was going on.

His mother hadn't come by the time Carry on Laughing had finished. The ten o'clock news started. We listened to Big Ben and the headlines. Danny said everything in the world was going wrong.

Then his mother called. She said the old person she looked after was still bad.

I asked Danny if we might draw a little more. His eyes were fixed on the television.