JJ, I haggled with her.”
He’d be bent over laughing now, laughing or crying I could never tell from the tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Haggled with her,” he’d gasp, nearly choking. “This is the bit that kills me. You actually haggled her down to two thousand dollars.” The mug of tea or soup would be slopping down the side of the chair. “The going rate for a healthy child was two and a half thousand dollars but you haggled her down to two thousand.”
“Yes, JJ, I haggled her.”
“And shook hands on two thousand.”
“Yes.”
Some nights it might end here, the worst of it over, but most nights he’d want to take it through to the bitter end.
“It could have been a lot worse though, couldn’t it? You could have used the old barter system.”
“Yes, JJ, something.”
“No, not just something. Tell the story right, don’t be trying to get away from it. Cigarettes and televisions, those were the things, weren’t they? Explain the cigarettes to me again.”
There was no way out now—I’d have to see it through to the end.
“The place was in turmoil, JJ, the economy was a shambles and the currency was virtually worthless. The gold standard was a packet of cigarettes. A packet of Kent cigarettes traded at two dollars.”
“So you could have had me for a thousand packs of cigarettes.”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“I don’t want to put it that way but that’s the way it was, wasn’t it?”
This was where he’d sink back in his chair with that look on his face. This was where he’d start talking to himself.
“And no one thought it was strange. No one said stall the ball, this isn’t right. You can’t put your hand down in your hip pocket and hand over a wad of notes for a child. That day is gone. No one saw anything wrong with it?”
“You don’t know what it was like. The chaos, the violence, the conditions in those orphanages. You were lucky, JJ.”
I remember the first time I said that to him, the look on his face. Like I’d scalded him or struck him with the back of my hand. I thought he was going to hit me. But he just slumped back in his chair and looked into his mug.
“I’m going to bed, JJ. You have to be up for work.”
“I’ll have a last fag, I’ll go then. Goodnight.”
“Don’t stay up all night.”
But of course he would. I’d find him in the morning slumped back on that chair you’re in now with an ashtray of butts on the floor beside him. He’d have stayed up all night smoking and mulling things over. About him being lucky and the haggling and about what he called his life as a consumer durable.
He looked anything but durable the first time I saw him. Lying in a crib he was with six others, them all up on top of one another like a litter of bonamhs only not half as clean. Like the rest of them he was scalded in his own water and looking out between the bars of the crib with the biggest pair of eyes you’ve ever seen on a child. They were that big I thought they’d jump out of his head and roll across the floor to my feet. And if there was any colour to them I couldn’t tell what it was from the bad light in the room. Black as coal they were and probably just as hard, I remember thinking. But that was just a trick of the light. I now know JJ’s eyes are a kind of deep ruby red, the colour of strong tea without milk. It’s not the type of colour that shows itself. You have to look hard to find it.
Standing there looking at him I thought the room was full of wasps; there was this buzzing noise everywhere. But it couldn’t be wasps. This was the middle of March, there was eight inches of snow outside on the ground—not even that demented city could have wasps and snow at the same time. And then I knew. They were grinding their teeth. The kids, every one of them, grinding their teeth down to the gums and making this buzzing noise that was filling the room. Sitting on their behinds, sprawled across each other, lying on their backs, every one of them working their jaws from side to side, chewing nothing but cold fresh air.2
So there I was pacing the room with my hands clasped behind my back, trying to look like I knew what I was doing, peering into the cribs like a cattle jobber looking at weanlings. But what did I know about finding a child—a forty-three-year-old bachelor from the west of Ireland with neither niece nor nephew? I hadn’t a clue where to start looking . . .
I took a few more turns round the room peering into the other cribs, not wanting to rush things nor give anything away. At the back of the room, just inside the door, there stood a woman with her arms folded across her chest like a bouncer. JJ calls her Dragana but I can never remember hearing her name. Like the hooked nose and the broomstick it was one of those details he made up. But he was right about the arms. She was built like a wrestler, her coat looked like it was going to come apart at the shoulders. This was a woman you didn’t want to mess with. This was her orphanage and these were her kids. If any of them were leaving the room it would only be through her. She was the one who would fix up the paperwork and exit visas. She was the one who would take a percentage of whatever money changed hands.
I didn’t want her forcing my hand so I just kept walking round the room. But those eyes kept turning me round and drawing me back to that little face pressed between the bars. He was wearing these big pyjamas with the leg ends frayed from dragging through the dampness and filth in the bottom of the crib. And if there was any colour or pattern on them under that filth I couldn’t make it out. But there was this look on his face, a look I’ve never seen on any child or adult before or since. It was like he was saying to me, “I’m the child you’ve come for, forget the rest. I’m the one you’ve come for.” He wasn’t saying he was any better or stronger or healthier than any of the others. All he was saying was that he was the one. And he was right; he was the one I had come for. I could have gone round that room a hundred times and looked in a thousand other cribs throughout the city and I knew I would have ended up back at that same spot looking down at that child with those black eyes and those filthy pyjamas. This was my child, big eyes, white knuckles and everything. We just stared at each other and there might as well have been just the two of us in that room. If there was a specific moment when our lives came together this was it. Something clicked between us. I felt like putting my hand out and introducing myself, saying, hello, my name is Anthony O’Malley from Louisburgh in the west of Ireland. You probably haven’t heard of the place but in a few days when everything is sorted I’m taking you out of here and you and me are going to have a long and happy life together. But of course I didn’t. Things were strange enough without me talking to a child who couldn’t understand one word I was saying. And then for one moment I had the feeling there was something wrong with him. He was sitting stock-still, not the tiniest movement out of him. For some reason I thought there might be something wrong with his head, his sight or his hearing or something. But it wasn’t that. I waved my hand in front of his face and his eyes followed it over and back. I shouted softly beside his ear and he started sideways. But there was still this stillness about him . . . The boss woman, Dragana, came up behind me and began telling me something. I didn’t hear her. It had dawned on me why he was so still; he was the only one in the crib not grinding his teeth.
The boss woman was pulling on my sleeve and talking away. She was telling me something, the child’s name, I think. But she didn’t
