The Wall(42)

I had heard the word ‘despair’ and thought I knew what it meant; thought also that it was one of those states of mind that resembles a weather system, something which sets in and then you live with it or under it. Now I found that despair can also be something that happens to you, that it can hit you in a single moment. And then it settles down with you for the duration. This is the thought I had in those days: that at some time in our lives we should, all of us, take some time to think about the worst possible thing that we can imagine happening to us. Your worst fear: track it down inside yourself. Take a good look at it. And face the fact that it will happen. The thing you dread most will happen. When it does, the name of the thing you’re feeling is despair.

Our guards offered us the opportunity to write letters to our ‘loved ones’. This wasn’t a special dispensation: it was clear that there was a protocol, agreed procedures, for occasions such as this. Agreed procedures for the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. In my case ‘loved ones’ meant my parents, and I decided I didn’t want to write to them, because I had nothing to say. Hifa talked me out of that. I put down some platitudes about being sorry, even though I wasn’t. I said I loved them, even though I didn’t, at least not in that moment. But I felt better for having written the letter.

We stayed in that new barracks for several days and one by one were brought to the medical centre and put under general anaesthetic while we had our chips removed. No biometric ID, no life. Not in this country. No turning back … After the operation we were held in recovery for a day, then returned to barracks. I could feel an itch deep in my arm where the chip had been and when I asked the others said they had the same feeling. A phantom chip. On the sixth afternoon, Hughes and Hifa and I were called and taken to another lorry; we’d have said goodbye to Yos and the other Defenders, if we’d known that was the last time we’d see them. From the angle of the light through the side of the vehicle I got the impression that we were heading south. We were driven until it was dark. Another barracks, but this time we were there hardly any time at all, an hour at most, before some Guards came into the room. From the look on their faces I could see this was what the Help had called kuishia: the ending. They seemed sad rather than angry; also implacable. We were taken down a series of concrete tunnels and then suddenly were out in the open air, and a Guard ship was waiting, with a lifeboat tied to the side. As soon as I saw it I realised it was going to be ours. We were led across a gangway to the ship. The Guard captain was waiting for us and he, weirdly or generously, I’m still not sure which, maybe both, saluted us and shook our hands. The ship cast off and we headed out to sea and we were led downstairs to a small unfurnished cabin and the door was locked behind us.

Up to that point my despair had left me numb to other feelings. Despair, grief, numbness, blankness. But not much else. I felt there was nothing I could do, and as a corollary (maybe) that there was therefore nothing else that it was necessary to feel. Everything that happened had been inevitable. Now and for the first time, I felt afraid, very very afraid. The boat would be lowered into the water and we would be lost, with the same complete lack of agency we had had ever since the night of the attack. The feeling that I had been relying on to keep me numb – that there was nothing I could do – suddenly became a source of overmastering fear. There’s nothing you can do. That thought can be a comfort, or it can be a terror. Panic, the need to flee, the impossibility of fleeing, the desperate need to escape combined with the certainty that you can’t escape, the sense that you are going to die of dread right there in that moment. My heart was beating fast and erratically. There was no air in the cabin. The lights had been turned up and were flickering. I was frying in my clothes, where I’d felt cold only seconds before. Hifa saw me freaking out and put a hand on my arm. I flinched, as if I’d had an electric shock, then thought, why am I flinching, and that new idea was just enough, turned my attention just enough, to allow me to start slowing down.

‘It’s OK,’ said Hifa, which was so not true it was a help. She wasn’t looking at her best, pale and shaky, which turned out to be the start of her seasickness.

‘Yeah, it’s all great,’ said Hughes.

‘So great,’ said Hifa. Her face was drawn. I could see that the attempt at banter between them was reflexive, a flashback to when we had been Defenders, when we had been on the Wall, and this was how we had talked to each other.

‘I wonder how far they tow us?’ said Hughes, who got his answer straight away, because the engines slowed to an idle. When people are put to sea, they are taken out of sight of land, so that they won’t immediately try to turn and go back where they came from and also so that they won’t run straight into Guard ships who would immediately sink them. We had been on the ship for about half an hour, so we couldn’t be far from land. Say, fifteen K at most.

The door opened from the outside. Three Guards were standing there, with two behind them: the latter two were carrying guns. Again, they didn’t look grim so much as sad. We came out and followed the unarmed ones down the corridor with the armed guards behind. They led us clanking up the ship’s metal stairs out onto the main deck. It was relatively calm and still and the night was clear. They walked us over to the lifeboat, which was a couple of feet below the level of the deck, and we stepped across and down to get in. The whole crew came to the side of the ship and, on their captain’s command, saluted as the lifeboat began to be lowered into the water. I swear that was almost the worst moment, the solemnity and finality of that salute.