Bed of Nails (13 page)

“Right then, Miss April, better put some clothes on, we got company.”

Bunker didn’t smile at his own joke. His absence of humour was profound. His soul was worn to a thread. When he wanted to laugh, Bunker probably had to hide in a cellar. Perhaps he even hammered his own fingers. Or maybe he was smiling inside. Like John and the fur-trapper in the shop window, his prison identity had taken him over. You couldn’t see what lay underneath, unless you could penetrate the gap in his teeth. Which he took care to show as little as possible.

The first mouthful of wine practically took the skin off John’s throat.

“This is the better stuff. Watch out, after this it’s just plonk.”

No irony, but the serious tones of someone who has experienced the rationing of essentials. Bunker smacked his lips, savouring the acid richness of freedom, then looked John straight in the eyes. Apparently it was for the first time, since John had not noticed before the scar running from his forehead across half his right cheek, taking in the eyelid. A thin white line that slightly distorted the wrinkles on his face.

“Kid, in prison, you can wait five years before a mate tells you anything personal. What’s good about life outside, you can make up time, instead of wasting it. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to tell me your life story, but thing is, I’d like to know how this American shrink ends up at my place, in a state like that. ’Cos maybe you didn’t notice, but you fell down just behind my shack. Even Mesrine heard you.”

Violence, fear, sincerity and solitude were all strangely combined in the pale green of his eyes. That gaze reminded John of Alan’s: more cunning, but perhaps a bit less wild. Using AJJA 17, extra strong tobacco, the old man was rolling a cigarette between his huge fingers. Precious gestures. John lit a Gitane and put the packet on the table.

“I came to Paris, because this friend of mine died. He owed money to some dealers. They want me to pay his bills for him. So they beat me up.”

Bunker tipped the glass up and drained it, then looked at John again with his weary eyes.

“Your turn.”

“What?”

“You get a question now.”

The wine was doing him good, even if it burned. He thought for a few seconds and rubbed his bruised temple.

“Was 1983 when you came out of prison for the last time?”

“No, last time I went
in
. Came out in ’91. Since then I’ve stuck to my promise. Calendar’s the only thing I kept. When I see it, it reminds me what I kept telling myself for eight years. Next time, stay out.”

Mesrine rubbed his haunch against his master’s. Bunker patted his head. The enemy of the system accepted some masculine caresses. John took another swig and the tissues of his trachea seemed to adjust a bit better. The green eyes narrowed, hooded by the wrinkled eyelids.

“That bow, that’s gonna be for some kind of vengeance, is it, for your mate?”

Vengeance? For Alan? The idea made him smile sending a stab of pain through his jaw.

“Vengeance isn’t really the right word. He did it himself. He committed suicide.”

Bunker refilled the glasses, and before drinking rubbed the cross on the back of his hand. He drank the wine off in one long gulp and banged the glass on the table.

“Next question, I know what’s coming. No, I never killed nobody. Maybe I came close once or twice. Armed robbery, that’s what I went down for. Always worked alone, except two or three
times. That was a bad idea too. Two years, five years, eight years – fifteen years inside.”

He rubbed his hand again.

“First time, I nearly died of being lonely. Last time, the joint was heaving, lot of trouble.”

His big fingers touched the scar.

“This place now, courtesy of city hall, charity for an ex-con. Don’t get any more pay than if I was sewing mailbags, but at least I get a bit of peace.”

Bunker dropped his head and looked down into the glass. John guessed the older man was about twice his age, sixty-five or so, but still sturdy with it. The toughest thing about Bunker was the way he spoke: every word like a nail being hammered into a plank. His words were backed up by reality, they had the solidity of objects.

“So, kid, this friend who killed himself, who was he?”

The question was transparent: tell me who your friends are, I’ll tell you who you are. But you couldn’t do better than Alan as far as Bunker was concerned: the kind of friend you get beaten up for is as good as a reference. John sat up and drank some more. He felt he needed to nail down reality with words as well, nails in Alan’s coffin.

“My name’s John.” He held out his hand and Bunker shook it in his square paw. The old man did not give his own name but accepted a formal introduction.

“It’s a long story.”

“Plenty of wine here, son.”

John took another swig of rotgut.

“I met Alan about thirteen years ago, in ’95. I was twenty, he was twenty-three. I lived in Los Angeles, Venice Beach, and I’d left my mother in San Francisco. I’d started college, but I didn’t want to live on campus. I found a room near the shore. In the evenings,
I used to go along the board walk by the sea, drink a beer, eat something, watch the world go by. Venice Beach, you see a side of America on show that’s not always nice, but it’s always interesting. Always something going on. Music, street theatre, girls roller blading in bikinis, families, preachers pushing supermarket trolleys, veterans, old folk, shops, artists, fortune-tellers. One evening, I was on a terrace eating a sandwich and looking out at the ocean. On the other side of the Walk, this guy spread out a blanket and took off his T-shirt. He started with fire-eating, then he put needles in his arms and legs. When too many people had stopped to watch, I got up. This fakir looked sad, but he smiled all the time, so people didn’t notice. I don’t know if it was because I’m tall, or because I was looking fascinated, but he hauled me out of the audience and gave me this empty Jim Beam bottle and told me to break it on his head. Just a gag, he was doing the show, pretending to be in rehab. He was trying to stop drinking, so this was therapy. Everyone was laughing. I just stood still. I couldn’t do it. The people started laughing more than ever. Alan looked at me, and I was the sad one. Then he insulted everyone, and went on doing that till they all left.”

John stopped. Overcome by his memories, he had forgotten Bunker and the cabin. But the keeper was still patiently listening, as if he expected the shrink’s story would last hours. Without changing expression, Bunker said.

“Have to start on the ordinary stuff now.”

Another bottle appeared, the glasses were refilled.

“After that, he took me to a bar, saying I’d really made him laugh, standing there with the bottle in my hand. But in fact he seemed depressed. It was then that I realised the most important thing about Alan. It was only when he was joking that he told the truth. His trick with the bottle was funny. He really was an alcoholic. When I hadn’t been able to hit him, for reasons I later
realised, he was possibly on the point of killing himself right there, in front of all those people.

“He used to come almost every evening after that, to do his street act in Venice. Sometimes we went for a drink. I paid. After listening to all his jokes and nonsense, I understood that with his system of reverse truths, he was on heroin. It took longer before he started making cracks about gays. And I picked up on that too. Well, for another couple of years that’s how it was, we’d see each other now and then. He would sometimes vanish for a bit then come back with a new tattoo and a new act, more violent. I finished my first degree and wanted to specialise in behavioural psychology. I began a master’s. I was doing this research on post-traumatic disorders associated with war, because we’ve got a lot of those back home, and people don’t want to talk about them. We built the country on them, and organised it round them, but they don’t exist. Alan had been gone a few months. One day he came knocking at my door. He was having withdrawal symptoms, but he wanted to stop. He stayed with me, and he was clean for a few weeks. One evening I was reading through my notes, and he said with a laugh that I could do some research on him. He said he’d been in Iraq in the first Gulf War. A homosexual fakir who’s seen combat – there weren’t a lot of those. But if they were anywhere, Venice Beach was the most likely spot. Perhaps I’d already suspected that, and I was already making choices because I’d met him. I don’t know. But his story became a part of my life. Before it became my work.

“You can really only understand Alan’s life if you go back to the beginning. He grew up gay, on a farm in Kansas, with parents who were Methodists. They went to church every day, and all day Sundays! All the rest was a logical consequence of that, and of his personality. Alan was 90 per cent rage. The day after he told me he’d been in Iraq, he vanished again. With my T.V., my stereo and my records. He came back of course, not long after. He’d started to
use my place as a refuge. He never propositioned me, and he never brought any partners home. That was an unwritten rule he seemed to have decided on. And that went on for another two years. He would come, he would steal from me, he’d feel better, he’d go off again and come back in a worse state. There were always problems when he was around: stealing, dealers, fights in bars, tantrums. I was carrying on with my life, and he kept bringing chaos into it. Every time it got a bit worse. He had gangrene under his skin. I was working on plenty of other cases like his, but he was a friend, I wasn’t his shrink. Then in ’99, I began my Ph.D., still on the same subject. I know now it was because of him that I wanted to go on with the research. Anyway, about that time he asked me straight out; did I want to know what he had been doing in Iraq. I finished my thesis in 2006, and in the end the subject wasn’t what I had expected it to be.

“After ‘homosexual’, the second word that explains Alan’s story is ‘torture’. It was a long business, very long, because the subject was him, and it was a kind of therapy. We were both beginners, and he kept disappearing without a word, for weeks or months. We stayed friends, but it was difficult. So two years ago, when I’d finished the research, he was at the end of his tether. He’d been through the worst. When I wanted to submit my thesis, it got hard for both of us. America wouldn’t leave him alone, it was killing him as much as the drugs were. I said, ‘Look, you should go away, go abroad.’ And I thought Paris might be a good idea. He listened to me and he went. A year later, I couldn’t stay at home either, and I came to France too. My mother had bought this bit of land in the Lot in the 1970s before she went to San Francisco. And she still owned it. That’s where I live now. Alan Mustgrave died four days ago, during his last show, in the rue de l’Hirondelle. In front of an audience.”

The bottle of
vin ordinaire
was empty, When he had finished
speaking, John was almost paralytic. The old gangster’s eyelids were heavy and he was looking strained.

“So what you going to do about your mate’s debts, then?”

John leaned forward a little.

“Don’t know … I thought maybe the best thing is to go back home.”

John looked round at the cabin which reminded him of his tepee.

“Where I live, Bunker, it’s …”

“Bunker, who are you calling Bunker?”

“Edward Bunker: he’s this guy back in the States, he was in and out of prison a lot. And one day he came out with a book, he’d written, a novel, and after that he stayed out of jail. He’s dead now, but he died outside.”

Bunker accepted this introduction of his double without flinching, except for a slight twitch of his eyelids.

“So, I was saying, where I live, it’s no bigger than this, only the walls are canvas. I don’t like the city any more. Walls scare me.”

Bunker shook out the bottle to catch the last drop.

“Yeah well, keep clear of them, kid.”

Mesrine was dozing at their feet. John was persuading himself that he should get out of Paris. But the clarity that alcohol can bring before it knocks you out was troubled by the sense of unfinished business. The warning he had received was anything but an answer, and he still had questions.

“Bunk, is there anywhere I can get a shower?”

“Yeah, son, behind this cabin there’s a little shed. And let’s hope a bit of cold water’ll open your eyes for you. ’Cos you look to me like someone that’s going to do something stupid.”

John got up, and flexed his muscles to try and regain his balance.

“All I want is to understand. That’s all.”

Bunker blinked slowly again.

“Stupid bloody shrink.”

The cold water and a shave did him good, but failed to clear his eyes. Bunker had put on his park warden’s cap and had Mesrine on a leash.

“I can’t stop you, son, but I think you’re on a hiding to nothing. Christ Almighty, I don’t know if it’s because it’s your job but I haven’t had anyone talk to me that long for ages. Your story of meeting your pal, that reminds me of another one, just tonight. I don’t believe in luck, I believe you get what you ask for. If you’ve fallen in with an old geezer like me, it was to give you a message. This guy who stabs himself and all, you’ve done as much as anyone could for him, you should save your own skin now. Joke intended, because the truth is going to cost you. So now, it’s up to you.”

“I’ll watch out. But I’ve got debts too, Alan wasn’t the only one.”

John held out his hand again.

“So what’s your name really?”

“Just call me Bunker, that’s fine. In Paris, this is your home. Your stuff’s safe here.”

He gave John a key, explaining which gate to use after eight at night. Mesrine barked as John walked off and Bunker was left standing in front of the pot of geraniums, feeling certain he’d got his arm caught in a very bad machine. As he looked up at the sky, he pronounced with the air of a final judgement:

“Mesrine, something’s going to hit us.”

Around him, a green wire fence half a metre high marked out his little territory in the middle of the Luxembourg Gardens, a little plot among the trees, at the end of a lawn. And a white notice. “
Closed to the public
.”