Speeding

Speeding



I waited, attempting to lounge in a carefree manner, desperately trying to disguise my discomfort at the place and its inhabitants. It was a bizarre place. The giant wooden screens that hemmed us in gave the striking impression of a large confessional box. The impractically small window through which we were allowed plead our particular cases reinforced the image. The interrogations sealed the view. We were sinners all and forgiveness would not come easy.

From a different world far beyond these tainted, ugly wooden screens and their ragged posters came the incessant din of conversation. It was loud and brash, laden with expletives, and to me it sounded unnatural. As if the gardai* were exchanging stories of sporting and drinking bravado completely for our benefit. Perhaps it was simply the confessional’s musical score, designed to both perplex and intimidate, a soundtrack for the sinners.

I looked at those who fate had decreed should share this particular moment in time with me. I had been the first to come seeking forgiveness - for my car crimes - and was met with an icy stare, given a form and told to wait. My baby-faced garda was replaced by an older version, chiselled and hardened by many years spent dealing with many disparate sins.

‘Next’, he shouted, though the young girl stood no more than two feet from him.

Her discomfort was clear. She was young, eighteen as it turned out. Her bobbed blond hair, soft blue eyes and kindly features told the story of a girl who did not belong in a place like this. She was a dainty butterfly forced to alight in a squalid alleyway. Her life itinerary was pre-ordained. The occasions when she found herself in places like this would be minimal, occasional aberrations on a road of prospects and possibilities.

‘An age card….an id card’, she stammered, ‘could I have…an id card…please?’

‘Have you the form filled out?’ he responded, a notable sharpness to his tone.

‘I didn’t get a form…..I thought I had to get it…here.’

He looked at her incredulously, ‘Sure you can get them online now. Have you no internet?’ He stared at her, seemingly daring her to suggest to him that there could be any reason for not having got the form online, apart of course from her own outrageous laziness, coupled with a dogged determination to ruin his day. Continuing to stare at her, he reached beneath the counter and placed the offending form in front of her.

‘Fill it out…quick!’, he said, and he looked at his watch - as if she had angered Father Time himself. With that, he ambled satisfactorily away, his authority and importance clearly reinforced to myself, the chastened girl and the watching foreigner.

All this time, the foreigner had observed this exchange through unflinching, unfaltering eyes that seemed to give a lie to the cloak of alcohol fumes that clung so closely to him. Almost immediately, the conversation behind the screen recommenced, seamlessly resuming a story about a young recruit out training who had ‘nearly shit himself’ when encountering his first pitched battle at a halting site. The Garda’s laughter ricocheted through our cramped booth. We stood there waiting, the young girl, the foreigner and me, obsessively avoiding each others gazes. As the minutes past, it suddenly became clear to me. We were in purgatory.

Unlike the girl who was squirming in this alien environment, the foreigner seemed perfectly at ease here. His apparent serenity piqued my interest and to pass the time, I surreptitiously observed him. It wasn’t necessary. It was clear that all his life, people had either been staring at him in disgust and even anger, or more likely, ignoring him completely as his life began its descent to the place where it was today. Still, his steely eyes and absolute calm stirred something in me. I realised that he was unruffled by this grimy box because he had been here many times before. In fact, it dawned on me that this man, wherever he came from, was infinitely more familiar with the Irish justice system than I – thankfully - would ever be.

A sardonic voice lifted me from my thoughts, ‘So Jack, you decided to come back.’ The absurdness of the rhyme was somehow disturbing to me, maybe because the Garda’s tone carried with it a barely perceptible threat. The girl instinctively took a step away from the window in which the tall Garda’s face was framed.

‘Three weeks Jack, THREE WEEKS we’ve been looking for you. Do you know how many bench warrants I have for you? DO YOU?’

The girl flinched, I flinched. Jack did not move a muscle.

‘I go away. I not here’, he said matter-of-factly.

‘I FIGURED OUT YOU WEREN’T HERE JACK,’ the Garda bellowed, his anger rooted in Jack’s apparent nonchalance. ‘Where the hell were you?’

‘I party…you know….me….I party for long time’

I looked closely at Jack, my admiration steadily growing. His face was round and stern, unmistakeably Eastern European. It always seemed to me that faces like his told the story of generations of hardship, steadfastness in the face of adversity and oppression. A naive and fanciful notion but it somehow suited that steely look. There was something else in his eyes, something that I could not name, a look that was intrinsically connected with his aura of quiet calm. For someone who had been partying for a month (and I had no reason to doubt that he had, based on the pervading stench of alcohol), he looked remarkably fit and strong.

The Garda had had enough. ‘You tell me where you’ve been or I’m gonna take you in right now, RIGHT NOW, DO YOU HEAR ME?’

‘I everywhere, you know…I party.’ Then he said something extraordinary. ‘I alcoholic.’

The words alone could not give true meaning to what he was saying, but to me it was perfectly clear. To him, it was as if those words, now that he had been forced to say them, would explain everything. And of course they did, where he had been, why he had not turned up in court, his life, everything. Suddenly a thousand sordid images flashed before my mind. A man fleeing a country’s problems, refusing to realise that his big problem was coming with him right there on the plane, a hopeful wife, wanting to belief the talk of new beginnings – riches and redemption from the Celtic Tiger. Broken promises, children waiting by mute telephones on solemn birthdays, cheap discount liquor and lost kindred souls. Dingy cramped apartments and evaporating hopes, disappointment and destitution, misery and sin. I saw it all in that unwavering calm and finally I could put a name on that look. Acceptance. Your life distilled into one simple statement and one simple thing, and acceptance of all that it meant for you.

The Garda realised it too. ‘Be here at nine in the morning. Be on time Jack, I’m warning you!’ Jack took his penance, turned and walked toward the door.



*Irish police force