The soldier inhaled and the water finally came in, burning his lungs. They pulled him out and flung him onto the floor, where he lay, coughing and vomiting water. He was shaking so hard from the cold that he couldn’t speak. No part of his body was still and his teeth were chattering against each other. The intricate wires in his brain began short-circuiting, the sparks taking the form of a thousand neurotic thoughts all at once and causing an unbearable pressure in his head. His stomach flooded with motor oil, making him nauseous. And his heart was beating so fast that all the bolts and springs began to explode out of their proper spots, like tiny mortar shells being flung about his insides. He wanted everything to work properly in his body, he never wanted excitement again, he wanted this to end.
It was just a matter of time before he gave them what they wanted, wasn’t it? Resisting torture is a myth: everyone confesses in the end. There is no way not to. We are humans and we are built to be capable of betraying everyone in the end. Our pain makes us vulnerable. We can all be got to. We can all be turned upside down like a purse and have all our contents shaken right out of us.
The soldier reminded himself again that he was different. He wasn’t quite a real boy. He was callous and insensitive and his heart was hard. Those qualities would come to his aid now. If his heart was mechanical — if his parts were all replaceable — then he should be capable of withstanding torture. Let myself break, he thought, I can be put back together.
He went back under three times. On the third time, he came out, sputtering for air and vacillating as the spark plugs in his spine began to blow one by one. And he spoke the Toymaker’s name aloud. Or it was more like the Toymaker’s name escaped out of him. The secret was afraid of drowning and so it came out of his mouth in order to belong to someone else.
When he heard the Toymaker’s name come from his lips, the soldier knew, to his own surprise, that he was a human being. Nothing remarkable could be expected from him.
This time when they pushed him back under the water, he inhaled and there was suddenly a strange calm that entered his lungs and flooded through his body. He felt the hands of the torturer let go their grip on him. It was as though they were strings that had just been cut. He felt himself sinking down to the bottom of the bathtub, free of all restraint. The bathtub seemed to have depths that he was hitherto completely unaware of. He had kept his eyes squeezed shut until that moment. Now he opened them to discover that there was water all around him. It wasn’t the cold clear water of the bathtub, but the messy, strange green-blue of the ocean. It was filled with all sorts of life.
The fish went by like leaves being blown off trees. There were large sea turtles that looked like pyjamas hanging off a laundry line and waving in the wind. A school of shimmering fish passed by, as if someone had tossed a whole handful of change into the water.
He could not say how long he had been under the water, as time seemed to be irrelevant now somehow. His shirt had been torn open while he was being tortured. For some reason he thought to button it up and as he did, the soldier noticed that all the scars and seams that the Toymaker had made while operating on his chest had completely disappeared. You would never know that he had been operated on, or that he had been built and repaired in any way.
He felt the presence beneath him. It was a cold feeling, although it didn’t involve a drop in temperature. It was more like the sensation of darkness. He felt the dark shadow growing beneath him. It was so silent and he wondered how anything so enormous could also be so quiet. He thought that he should get to the surface again, so that he could escape whatever was beneath him.
As soon as he broke through the surface of the water, the jaws of the whale also exploded open around him. They then closed around the soldier, swallowing him and bringing him back down into the depths. Deeper and deeper and deeper.
There he was in the great belly of the whale. He thought that it would all be darkness, but to his surprise, there was a light that was glowing. He didn’t know what to make of it. He followed it as he climbed over the half-digested creatures. The thin bones of fishes crunched under his feet as the frozen rose brambles had once, as though he was learning to walk again.
There, in the centre of the stomach, was a small table with a candle burning on it. There was a tiny pot that was filled with krill that were jumping up and down in it. The Toymaker was seated at the table, holding a fork and looking into the wide pot. It seemed as though the Toymaker was going to eat the fish while they were still alive.
“Papa,” said the soldier.
The Toymaker looked up and cried out, as if his deepest wish had just been answered.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Grandfather announced that when he was little, before the war, Christmas was his very favourite day of the year. We couldn’t begin to imagine how strange and magical the Christmas he turned seven was, he said as he poured himself another glass of eggnog. My brother and I sat down at the kitchen table, eagerly awaiting the ridiculous things Grandfather would have to say about that particular Christmas. We were undoubtedly about to hear some story about a reindeer with a Russian accent and a drinking problem throwing up on his lawn. That’s because Grandfather’s stories were always so over the top. According to him, you see, the world before the war was a very different place.
Grandfather used to say that when he was little, potatoes actually had tiny little eyes that would open up and look at you. You could hear seashells laughing and talking to one another on the seashore. When you were at the beach, it sounded like you were in the audience at a circus when the lights went off and the show was about to begin.
At the zoo, there was a lion that knew how to say a few words. You had to yell and scream and beg in order to get it to say them. Crowds of kids would shake the bars and curse until finally the lion would roll over and say, “Go away.” Everyone would applaud.
It was harder to tell the difference between when you were asleep and when you were awake. Children would sit and slap each other in the face, trying to wake one another out of a dream when things weren’t going right.
When Grandfather was little, there were always people trapped in air balloons. You would stand on ladders, and when they passed overhead, you would offer them sandwiches.
Girls would fall so madly in love back then, it would almost kill them. They would hold onto three umbrellas and jump out the window after their mother locked them in at night. It was very common for pretty girls to have broken ankles.
He said that sailors had tattoos of beautiful women that would literally dance on their arms and pucker their lips for a kiss. That’s why almost no one got tattoos back when Grandfather was little. They were harder to live with and sometimes they started to nag.
There were so many babies back then that you couldn’t remember where they came from. His mother came home with a parcel wrapped in pink paper. She was sure that it was a little piece of ham that she had bought, but when she unwrapped it, lo and behold, it was a baby.
Grandfather said that when he was little, before the war, he was always hungry. He said that he and his mother would regularly go without eating for five or six days straight and his eyelashes would freeze shut from the cold.