But not being all that bright - being two balls short of a pig-fuck, or whatever they say inMinnesota - Ricky had neglected to notice the important advantages that these celluloid gods had over him. In fact, there really is only one advantage, but it is a very important one. The advantage is that films aren’t real. Honestly. They’re not.
In real life, and I’m sorry if I’m shattering some deeply cherished illusions here, men in Ricky’s situation don’t tell anyone to go and screw themselves. They don’t sneer insolently, they don’t spit in anyone’s eye, and they certainly, definitely, categorically don’t free themselves in a single bound. What they actually do is stand stock still, and shiver, and cry, and beg, literally beg, for their mother. Their nose runs, their legs shake, and they whimper. That is what men, all men, are like, and that is what real life is like.
Sorry, but there it is.
My father used to grow strawberries under a net. Every now and then, a bird, seeing some fat, red, sweet things on the ground, decided to try and get under the net, steal the fruit there from, and clear off. And every now and then, that bird would get the first two things right - no sweat, they’d go like clockwork - and then he or she would make a complete dog’s breakfast of the third. They would get stuck in the fine mesh, and there’d be a lot of squawking and flapping, and my father would look up from the potato trench, whistle me over, and tell me to get the bird out. Carefully. Get hold of it, untangle it, set it free.
This was the job I hated more than any other in the whole universe of childhood.
Fear is frightening. It is the most frightening of all the emotions to behold. An animal in a state of rage is one thing, often a pretty alarming one thing, but an animal in a state of terror - that juddering, staring, skittering bundle of feathered panic - is something I never wanted to see again.
And yet, here I was, seeing it.
‘Piece a fuckin ’ shit,’ said one of the Americans, coming into the kitchen and immediately busying himself with a kettle. Solomon and I looked at each other. We’d sat at the table for twenty minutes after they’d taken Ricky away, without exchanging a word. I knew that he’d been as shaken as I was, and he knew I knew, so we’d just sat there, me staring at the wall, him scratching lines on the side of his chair with his thumbnail.
‘What happens to him now?’ I asked, still staring at the wall. ‘Not your problem,’ said the American, as he spooned coffee grounds into a jug. ‘Not anybody’s problem, after today.’ I think he laughed as he said that, but I couldn’t be sure.
Ricky was a terrorist. That was how the Americans thought of him, and that was why they hated him. They hated all terrorists anyway, but what made Ricky special, what made them hate him more than most, was the fact that he was an American terrorist. And that just didn’t seem right. UntilOklahoma City, the average American had looked upon the letting-off of bombs in public places as a quaint, European tradition, like bull-fighting or Morris dancing. And if it ever spread out ofEurope, it surely went east, to the camel jockeys, the goddamn towel-heads, the sons and daughters of Islam. Blowing-up shopping malls and embassies, sniping at elected officers of the government, hijacking 747s in the name of anything other than money, was downright un-American and un-Minnesotan. ButOklahoma City changed a lot of things, all of them for the worse, and, as a result, Ricky was being made to pay top dollar for his ideology.
Ricky was an American terrorist, and he’d let the side down.
I was back inPrague by dawn, but I didn’t go to bed. Or at least, I went to bed, but I didn’t get in. I sat on the edge, with a filling ashtray and an emptying packet of Marlboro, and stared at the wall. If there’d been a television in the room, I might have watched that. Or I might not. A ten-year-old episode ofMagnum,dubbed into German, isn’t much more interesting than a wall.
They’d told me that the police would come at eight, but in the event it was only a few minutes after seven when I heard the first boot on the first step. That little ruse was presumably meant to guarantee bleary-eyed surprise on my part, in case I was unable to affect it convincingly. No faith, these people.
They numbered about a dozen, all of them in uniform, and they made an over-cooked meal of the whole business, kicking in the door, shouting and knocking things over. The head-boy spoke some English, but not enough, apparently, to understand ‘that hurts’. They dragged me down the stairs past the white-faced landlady - who probably hoped that the days of tenants being hauled off at dawn by police vans were gone for good - while other tousled heads peeked nervously at me through the cracks of doors.
At the station, I was held in a room for a while - no coffee, no cigarettes, no friendly faces - and then, after some more shouting, a few slaps and pokes in the chest, I was chucked in a cell;sansbelt,sansbootlaces.
On the whole, they were pretty efficient.
There were two other occupants of the cell, both male, and they didn’t get up when I came in. One of them probably couldn’t have got up if he’d wanted to, seeing as how he was drunker than I think I’ve ever been in my entire life. He was sixty, and unconscious, with alcohol seeping from every part of his body, and his head hung so low on his chest you almost couldn’t believe that there was a spine in there, holding him together.
The other man was younger, darker, wearing a tee-shirt and khaki trousers. He looked at me once, head to toe and back again, and then carried on cracking the bones in his wrists and fingers while I lifted the drunk out of his chair and laid him, not too gently, in the corner. I sat down opposite the tee-shirt and closed my eyes.
‘Deutsch?’
I couldn’t tell how long I’d been asleep because they’d taken my watch as well - in case I managed to work out a way of hanging myself with it, presumably - but the numbness of my buttocks suggested at least a couple of hours.
The drunk had gone, and the tee-shirt was now squatting at my side.
‘Deutsch?’ he said.
I shook my head and closed my eyes again, taking one last draught of myself before stepping into another person.
I heard the tee-shirt scratching at himself. Long, slow, thoughtful scratches.
‘American?’ he said.
I nodded, still with my eyes closed, and felt a strange moment of peace. So much easier to be someone else.
They kept the tee-shirt for four days, and me for ten. I wasn’t allowed to shave or smoke, and eating was actively discouraged by whoever cooked the food. They questioned me once or twice about the bomb scare on the flight from London, and asked me to look at photographs - two or three in particular to begin with, and then, when they started to lose interest, whole directories of wrong-doers - but I made a big point of not focusing on them, and tried to yawn whenever they slapped me.
On the tenth night, they took me to a white room and photographed me from a hundred different angles, then gave me back my belt, laces and watch. They even offered me a razor. But as the handle looked rather sharper than the blade, and my beard seemed to be helping me towards metamorphosis, I turned it down.