Notes from a Coma (7 page)

“Maybe those kids want to go back to the sea. That’s where we come from in the first place, isn’t it? Maybe they want to start all over again. Washed out to sea and broken down by the sand and water, then rising up into the clouds and falling as rain all over this green and pleasant land. Rising up again as grass and trees and nettles and briars, maybe that’s what they want.”

“That’s a JJ idea. I don’t see it myself. If you’re dead you’re dead and that’s all there is to it. No longing or feelings.”

“They don’t belong there, Sarah, it’s not sacred ground, it’s not even consecrated. And I’ll bet they know it. I’ll bet they’re happy when they’re washed up out of those graves. Imagine how they must feel when they get out of that cliff, when they feel the starlight and fresh air on their little skulls. I’d say they get a whole new lease of life. I’ll bet if you came down here some moonlight night you’d see them, all these little skeletons, jumping around and dancing and singing their little heads off. And then, just before sunrise, they run down to the waves and swim out to sea until their arms tire and they sink gladly down to the seabed. I’ll bet if you came down here some moonlit night that’s what you’d see.”

I shuddered. “I wouldn’t want to see it. It wouldn’t make me one bit happy. Besides, those little kids won’t have much more time for singing and dancing. The whole thing is going to be exhumed and relocated to the new graveyard.”

“That’s a mistake, I’ll bet that no one has considered what those little kids want.”

I threw up my arms in exasperation. “That’s rubbish, JJ.”

“Is it? Suppose one night one of those little skeletons paid you a visit. Suppose you woke up and found one of them
sitting on the end of your bed. He has a job for you he says, he wants you to speak on their behalf. He’s heard about relocating the Killeen but himself and his buddies want no part of it. They’re happy where they are, or happy in so far as dead kids can be. They’re prepared to take their chances with the sea, they see it as a second chance and they are willing to take it. He wants you to be a spokesman for the dead, to make a moving plea on their behalf. After listening to him for a while you agree to make representation on their behalf, you make no promises but you tell him you’ll give it a try. Of course the little fella is delighted. He shakes your hand and turns to go but you have other ideas. You don’t want him to leave. It’s not often you’re on speaking terms with the dead; you have a lot of questions. You don’t want to pass up this chance.

“ ‘So what’s limbo like?’ you blurt out before you can stop yourself.

“The little fellow turns round and shakes his head. He hadn’t expected any questions but now that his work is done he’s in no hurry.

“ ‘A terrible place,’ he says. ‘Badly thought out, a real rush job. There’s no facilities or toys or anything. It’s like an open-cast copper mine. We just sit around talking all day and night but since all of us are kids we have nothing to talk about.’

“ ‘So who looks after you, who feeds you, do you ever see the angels?’

“The little skeleton fellow is standing inside the door. He has loads of time.

“ ‘You’d see angels once in a while; you’d see them passing
through. Some of them are OK, the lesser ones, the thrones and dominions and virtues, they’re OK, they don’t have too many airs about them. They might stand and pass a few words with you but mostly they just pass through. But then there are the others, Gabriel for instance, deafening everyone with his bugle. And then there’s Cupid—’

“ ‘You’ve met Cupid!’

“ ‘Yes, but you wouldn’t know him now, he’s put on a lot of weight.’

“ ‘Has he? I could well imagine. I mean, any picture I’ve ever seen of him, the thick arms and legs of him, you could tell he was going to have a problem with it later on.’

“ ‘He has a problem now all right. And he’s angry and bitter with it. You couldn’t listen to him. Moaning and griping and bitching about the glory days when he was a marksman and could hit a target at a thousand paces. He couldn’t hit the ground now if he fell. And of course it’s everyone’s fault but his own.’

“ ‘Jesus!’

“A funny look crosses his bony face.

“ ‘No.’ The little fella shakes his head. ‘I’ve never met him, or met anyone who has either. You hear a lot of talk, stories and so on, but I have yet to meet anyone who has met him.’

“ ‘And what about the other fella, the red gent with the horns and the pitchfork—’ ”

“JJ!”

“What?”

“Shut up.”

“I was just coming to the good bit.”

“No! I don’t want to hear any more.”

And that’s what a mindrot meditation was.

There was never a percentage in it, not in terms of public profile or column inches or first preferences or anything else either. That was obvious to me the minute my senior colleague landed that project on my desk—a blue folder with the word SOMNOS stencilled on it. I didn’t know what the word meant then but I do now and when I read through it I thought of what that journalist said to me that day on the steps of the Dáil: a poisoned chalice right enough.

No, I didn’t wonder at it or think twice about it and I’ll tell you why. On the evening I got my portfolio I was sitting in the Dáil bar talking to Emmett Cosgrave—he was junior environment minister at the time and he told me a story which has stood to me since. Emmett was back from an
environmental conference in Düsseldorf, of all places. He’d put in a hard morning’s work in front of some watchdog committee explaining why this country wasn’t meeting EU legislation in agricultural pollution and groundwater contamination. Emmett had pointed to pending legislation and greater enforcement of existing laws and so on. All morning on the defensive and that wasn’t the half of it. In the afternoon, as part of a subcommittee, he’d met a delegation of Green Party activists from France and Germany concerned about the levels of mercury emissions from crematoriums throughout the EU. Seemingly, crematoriums are the single biggest violators of mercury emission codes across the whole EU, bigger even than heavy industry which, by and large, has cleaned up its act. But because of what they do crematoriums have managed to escape censure and this is what was worrying these people. Now I didn’t know there was mercury in the human body. There isn’t, Emmett said, or at least there shouldn’t be. But there is mercury in prosthetics: breast implants, pacemakers, false limbs, false teeth,
teeth fillings, glass eyes, glasses, hearing aids and God knows what else we’ve been fitting ourselves out with. And with an ageing and more beauty-conscious population across the EU there are no shortage of these. The problem arises when crematoriums cannot burn off the latent mercury in these things. If a crematorium burns above a certain temperature, there’s no problem—the mercury vaporises and condenses within the incineration process, it can be gathered and disposed of safely in toxic dumps or, you’ll be pleased to know, because of its refinement, there is a ready market for it in the pharmaceutical industry. But if crematoriums do not reach this temperature, the mercury flies off in a raw state into the atmosphere and does all sorts of damage to the ozone layer and so on. Now since 80 percent of crematoriums across the EU were built in the sixties and seventies they are operating systems which cannot reach these temperatures and therein lies the problem. And make no mistake about it, there is a problem. Listening to these people, Emmett said, you’d think the planet was choking on the fumes of burning breast implants and glass eyes.
Three and a half hours he sat listening to this. Facts and figures and demographic charts, medical submissions and forward projections … By his own account Emmett lost interest after the second hour and began worrying about catching his flight home. But, when it came to winding up the discussion, he thought he saw an opportunity to win back some of the ground he’d lost earlier in the day. He conceded that while he saw there was a problem and indeed a serious one, it was not an Irish problem. Ireland does not have a cremation culture; to the best of his knowledge there is only one crematorium and this one operates within existing codes. Obviously therefore the problem did not concern us. This was where they had Emmett snookered. As an addendum to their presentation they produced a proposal which outlined the need for biodegradable cardboard coffins and unbleached cotton shrouds for those countries with a burial culture. Would Emmett be tabling a motion in the future to bring these proposals to effect? This was too much for Emmett. He gathered up his papers and left the room.

The following week when I read through the outline of the
Somnos
project I thought of that story. I didn’t blink or wonder at it because I knew then it doesn’t matter whether it’s biodegradable cardboard coffins or prison ships in Killary harbour. It’s all politics, a job of work to be done and the sooner you get over your astonishment the sooner you can do something about it.

I knew straight away that the sticking point of the whole project was never going to be the expense or the environment or other factors—it was the idea itself that would prove difficult to sell. A penal experiment in a county with the lowest crime figures in the country and the country itself with the lowest crime figures in the entire EU—this was the paradox which had to be sold to the electorate, the Irish people. It had to be put to them as starkly as possible; they had to be made see the necessity for it.

The fact that the Irish taxpayer was underwriting the whole thing gave me a degree of leverage. I thought I saw a loophole. Reading through it I couldn’t see why the
volunteers had to be exclusively prisoners—there was nothing in the original proposal stipulating that this had to be exclusively the case. Enquiring into it I found there was nothing in the constitution to prohibit someone who was not a prisoner from volunteering. That made me think. When I mentioned it at committee stage there was, what can only be termed, a sharp intake of breath among the other members. Don’t even think of it was the unspoken plea. But I did keep thinking. The other participating countries were already well ahead of us in terms of finalising their nominees. All the logistics were in place, everything was ready to go. Already in some quarters we were seen to be dragging our heels despite the fact that we were underwriting the whole thing. All the time though I was thinking about that loophole in the protocol.