Munter 8: The Memory Index

Munter awoke unsettled by the impressions the late days and evenings had left. The clouds of last evening were the same clouds of today, but hued differently, lighter and whiter with day. He felt not the hangover he'd been expecting, but a hunger for more alcohol. His body was still in the throes of intoxication, clinging to the sensation of abandon. He got up and went downstairs to have some toast. While he was waiting for the toast to spring, he studied winter through his kitchen window. Winter got a raw deal. He liked its extremes of clarity and shade. A robin skipped over some hedgerow like a fluttering red shuttlecock. Munter didn’t see robins much. It was nice to see one now. The toast popped up and he spread some butter on the two rounds. The robin landed on the windowsill for a moment and looked in at him before leaping quickly over another hedgerow, and on and on into a day of hedgerows.

*

He decided to go out and buy himself some beers. Hair of the dog, that’s all it would be. Nobuko’s flight still played out on his memory index. It upset him that he hadn’t followed after her to make sure she was okay. He decided to walk down towards North Waterwater Street and call in on her. Hopefully she wouldn’t slam the door in his face or something.

*

There was no answer when he knocked. He glanced very quickly in the front window. A quick glance. He didn’t want to be a lingerer. He knocked again just to be sure. But Nobuko’s house would not move a muscle. It was completely unresponsive and lifeless, unwilling to shake to meet Munter’s request. Maybe she was there, merely dozing heavily, exhausted from the previous day’s happenings. But for some reason his mind would not admit this likelihood. He immediately began to worry. Possible worlds flickered in his mind, each one ominous and terrible. He didn’t want to think of what may have happened to Nobuko. He knocked again, but it was a poor excuse for a knock, limp and unconvinced. He was already expecting and imagining the worst possible end. He stood for a moment and considered the situation, then took a short peep through the letterbox. The inside of the house, like the outside, was sleeping soundly. After about fifteen minutes of lingering at the front window, he decided to leave. He walked unhurriedly down the street away from the house, passing the dog he’d noticed the previous time he’d been there. The dog was, as before, just sitting, and looking. Instead of continuing down the street, Munter turned, electing to go around to the back of the house to see if he could get in a window or something. He wanted to make sure Nobuko was okay. Hopefully she was just unconscious on the floor in a puddle of vomit, he thought to himself.

*

He climbed on top of the fence of next-door’s garden. The kitchen window was slightly open. If he could get closer to it, he could try and force it open a little more. But it was too high and he acknowledged then that it was much too small for him to squeeze through anyway. He started to call her name loudly in the hope that if she were there on the floor in her vomit, she would hear him and wake. As he called her name, a fear and tremulous unease in his voice, he had the sensation of his stomach slowly shrinking inside of him.
Hey you, a voice behind him shrieked.
Munter turned and was confronted by the lady from next-door who was holding a shovel and looking at him with big bulbous black eyes like a sharkwoman.
What the hell do you think you’re up to? she shouted.
Sorry, said Munter. I know the woman that lives here. Nobuko. She’s my friend. I’m worried about her. I think she may be out cold on the floor or something.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised, said the lady. She’s mad in the head, that Chinese one. But no matter about that, I’m not letting you break into her house, you scumbag!
I’m not breaking in. I just want to make sure she’s okay.
Get down from there, you scumbag!
The lady reached up and started tugging at the leg of Munter’s trousers. The tear on the ass of his trousers which he had nearly completely forgotten about suddenly gave up being a tear on the ass of his trousers and forced his trousers into a new era in their fragile existence; the whole trouser-leg tore off in the lady’s hand.
She screamed, and raised the shovel in a threatening fashion.
Get away from me, you bastard!
I’m going, I’m going, said Munter. Will you just let me get down?
I’ve never seen the like of it, cried the lady. You’ll have me up against a wall next thing, won’t you?
Could I have my leg back please? Munter asked, when he’d climbed down from the fence.
There! she rasped, throwing the severed trouser-leg at him. If I ever see you around here again, I’ll wallop you with this here shovel, you get me?

*

Munter didn’t go home. He walked around the city for a while, hoping to see Nobuko, with one trouser leg missing. He walked up and down the streets of O’Connell, Talbot, Parnell, and Gardiner and then up towards Mountjoy Square where he had seen her going with the winos the day before. She wasn’t there, and neither were the winos. He sat for a little in the area near the off-licence that he’d followed them to. Two other winos wandered along and he started to follow them in case they led him to Nobuko’s winos, and maybe even to Nobuko herself.

*

They brought him down towards Sheriff Street. There were lots of gangs of young ones hanging around just as Munter always remembered Sheriff Street. Some of them shouted insults at the winos, and the winos shouted back, Fuck away off! Then one gang of young ones started laughing and shouting at Munter, something about his one trouser-leg being missing. He ignored them. The winos sat down against a wall at the side of a corner shop. Munter looked around to see if anyone in the area met a wino in his memory. But there was nobody. He watched as the winos took their recent acquisitions out of the plastic bags they were carrying. A bottle of cider and three cans of beer. He observed they were sharing the bottle of cider, so he foresaw a fight over the third beer. Or maybe not. They shared the bottle of cider with gently proportionate congeniality. There was something very agreeable about the way they just sat there smiling big stupid smiles and passing the bottle to one another.

*

Munter became embroiled in a shambolic wino turf war. He wasn’t expecting it. You don’t expect such things. He'd imagined a confrontation over the cans of beer, but certainly not a shambolic wino turf war. The two winos with the bottle of cider stood up and went serious as they eyed some other winos who had just strolled down across the street. Munter was just about to leave when the war began. It was like West Side Story only much less musical and much more drunken. The battle was going on all around him. He was imprisoned for a moment. Everywhere he looked there were winos fighting shambolically with one another. The weapons being used were empty plastic bottles of cider (used as swords) and empty cans of beer (being hurled). The war didn’t last as long as a standard war. The winos suddenly started falling down and lying motionless on the ground; some of them did this whether they’d been clobbered or not. Munter quickly slipped through the turf war and got out of there.

*

He stopped at the Simon Community store to see if he could get a cheap pair of trousers. The store was full of interesting things. There was a lamp that looked like it had once been owned by the captain of a space station in the future. There was no price on it. He asked the very old lady behind the counter how much it was and she answered, It’s a lamp. He saw a copy of The Great Masters, the book of Impressionist paintings he owned. It was in better condition than the one he owned. He looked on the inside for a name; there was no name. He liked to be able to trace things back to their previous owners, but this book was stranded in the store, without any past. He considered writing his name on the first page, to give it a second life for the interest of people like himself who liked to trace things back, but then realised he didn’t have a pen. He went to the clothes at the back of the store. There were all kinds of funny clothes hanging on the racks. He imagined Nobuko wearing some of these clothes. They looked like things she would liked to have worn. A long pink overcoat with red buttons caught his attention; he could almost picture her body filling it there on the rack from which it hung; she could also have been wearing the purple scarf he spied on the scarf bracket in the corner. Then he noticed a sky-blue summer dress that he thought would have looked incredible on her. He pictured her walking around the Simon shop wearing it. It was long and fluid and his imagined Nobuko began wearing a pleasant ocean in his eyes. There was a pair of trousers there that acceptably corresponded to the price he was prepared to put to a pair of trousers. They were brown. He checked the ass for a tear. There was no tear, so he bought them. He spotted also a little pair of sandals. He could wear sandals. He always wore thick warm socks, so his feet wouldn’t be too cold. They were in good condition also, adequate replacement for his bitty shoes, and he could afford them, so he bought them also. He put the sandals and the brown trousers on immediately. He put the shoes and the severed trouser-leg in the paper bag he’d been given to hold his brand new purchases. Paper bags don’t mind what they hold. New clothes, old clothes, it doesn’t matter. A paper bag doesn't care for its reputation. A paper bag knows it doesn’t have long in this world, the reincarnation offered by modern recycling practises providing peace of mind.

*

When Munter arrived home, he was drunk. He couldn’t recall how it had happened. He was too drunk to remember that. It appeared as though he'd somehow obtained drunkenness over the course of his amble through town searching for Nobuko. Drunkenness must simply have picked him out amongst the other troubled walkers and hit him hard with all it had.

*

The house was quiet. There was no sign of supernatural activity, no smell of cooking. Munter let himself fall into the dusty couch and more springs went inside as he did so. He was exhausted, but somehow restless. He could not get Nobuko’s disappearance out of his mind. It agitated him greatly, but every time he thought about calling the police to report her going missing, his worry wavered slightly and his confidence in her reappearing grew a little more because when he rationalised, she had only been missing for a few hours, and he didn’t know her very well anyway. It would have been a silly thing to tell the police so soon. There was probably a sufficient explanation for her not being at home this morning. What did he know about her life? Not an awful lot. But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop worrying, concluded it was what he did know about her life that motivated this anxiety.

*

Munter went to the kitchen and opened the fridge door. The contents of the fridge bored him. There was the raspberry jam from Tyrone, a block of white cheese from Kilkenny, a pint of milk from Monaghan, some cabbage from somewhere, some chocolate spread from Liverpool, yoghurt from Offaly, some ham from Spain. All these different regions of the world, yet still the fridge bored him. The fridge itself too appeared to be fed up. Munter decided to go out and get some beers to liven up the fridge. He could sense it was in need of a drink just as he was.

*

He’d never been inside this off-licence. He always passed it when he was walking on the street and he wondered what it was like inside. He frequently spotted an old couple coming out with Tesco bagsful of gin and vodka. He looked around for them now, but they weren’t in the area. It was a very small off-licence. The lady who worked there was extremely friendly. Her mouth was buttered with cranberry-coloured lipstick.
What will you have? the lady asked.
I’ll have those ones there, said Munter, pointing to a six-pack of the slime-green beercans Nobuko had got the night before.
Certainly, love, said the lady, getting the cans.
Where are they from? he asked her.
They’re from Denmark, I think, she said. Tuborg, they’re called.
Ah.
Anything else? asked the lady.
Yes, I’ll have a bottle of the Black Bush and a 20 pack of Marlboro lights.

*

There was a British police show on the television. There was a tempestuous love affair happening between two sergeants and they got into a big row during a drugs raid. Munter didn’t want to watch it, so he turned it off and simply stuck to beer. He wondered what the slime-green beer tasted like. He'd noticed Nobuko make a strange facial expression each time she took a drink last night. He didn’t know if the facial expression was an illustration of dislike or delight. He never asked her. He took a drink. The beer tasted slime-green, exactly as the slime-green shell decreed. He didn’t mind. He would nearly have drunk anything at that point. He would have taken a bottle of cooking fat if that was all that was available to him. The only thing he would not have drunk was one of those unpopular bottles he sometimes saw standing alone on the street filled with a dark orange liquid that may or may not have been the piss of a smashed itinerant. As he thought of this, the boon of the slime-green Tuborg became more evident and the reasonable quality of the beer more noticeable.

*

Munter rolled up in a ball on the dusty couch. He listened for sounds in between taking a drink. He could hear a car parking outside; then a motorbike raging past; then a door closing; then some people chatting as they walked past; then another door closing, slamming this time; then some whistling from a distance; then the low murmur of a plane; then something being wheeled past, maybe a trolley, or a suitcase, or a pram; then a car door being closed, the engine starting, and the car driving off slowly; then loud bootsteps; then a rumble from somewhere, probably a big lorry; then a brief pounding noise from next door in the O’Rourke’s, probably somebody going downstairs; then a name being called: Mark!; then another door closing. He took his can of beer and started to tap a beat onto it with his fingers. He decided to finish a song he’d begun writing on cans of beer some years ago.

*

He rewound the day before to play it back in his mind, but when he got to the start of the day when he’d woken up in Nobuko’s house with a hangover, he chose to keep on rewinding, into the day before that, when he’d first met Nobuko, and then he decided to keep on rewinding, and rewinding, into the days before that, and into the days before those. He didn’t stop rewinding, and he didn’t stop to let any scenes play. It was fun to watch his life whizz backwards in his mind. When he got to the beginning of his memory, and to the end of the whizzing, he preserved the opening memory-picture on pause. The picture was of his mother wearing a white coat and holding him in her arms. He wasn’t sure what age he was at the time. He looked about one and a half. But he recalled being sheltered by that wonderful big coat.

*

Munter lit up a cigarette. He held the cigarette in exactly the same peculiar way Nobuko had held hers last night, standing upright between the tips of his fingers. He closed his eyes to relax them. He’d seen too many things over the past few days. His eyes needed some rest. He made sure to open them whenever he needed to take a drag from his cigarette; he didn’t want to burn his face off.

*

He opened his eyes. Ghost 6 had tapped him. He stood up and looked around the room. There was a dull atmosphere being formed by clouds of cigarette smoke and his feelings of seclusion and nausea. He walked over to the corner of the room, thinking he would second-guess the ghost, but realising then that he didn’t have a clue what he was doing by doing this, so he walked slowly back to the dusty couch. He knew the ghost was here somewhere, but it would not reveal itself, save for tapping him on the chest it would seem. Mieko, he said. Mieko! He hoped she would reveal herself if she knew he now knew who she was. There was not another peep from the spirit. Not a whisper, not a tap, not even a chesty cough. He sat down again, and finished the cigarette. He had no ashtray. He only realised this when he got to the end of the smoke. He put it out in one of the empty cans of beer. Next to him on the dusty couch sat a concentrated mound of grey ash, the leaden residue of the recent cigarette. All of it lay in one place, like a small mountain in a film set in Greenland.

*

Munter rolled up in a ball again and began to sleep. He began to dream a dream in which he found himself at the foot of a tall mountain. The mountain was covered with snow, like it was a mountain in a film set in Greenland. There was a large antenna sticking out of the top of it like a candlestick. He didn’t know what the antenna was. He thought maybe it was for a television station, but he was near sure there was no such thing as television in this region of his mind. Then he thought radio, but he erased this from possibility also, as it became clear to him that he was the only human being in this realm. He was absolutely alone; yet here was this enormous electronic device for communication. Was it there solely for him? Was he supposed to climb to the top of this mountain in order to communicate with somebody through this device? He wasn’t sure. He decided to try and climb it anyway in case there was some significance associated with the antenna. But he came back to reality before he could get to the top of the mountain. Bloody dreams, he remarked to himself. They make fuck-all sense.

*

Munter went to the bitsbobsdrawer to have a look inside, listening as he went for the ghost once more. There was nothing. Not a peep. What were these sounds he was listening for? A cough, a rustle, a whisper, a cupboard door slamming? Munter didn't want to believe in his ghost anymore. There were too many questions being demanded answers in his brain. He checked the bitsbobsdrawer for answers to these questions, but all he got were rolls and rolls of sticky-tape, a pair of scissors, lots of pens, one half of a pair of gloves, and some J-cloths; the usual bits, bobs. One expects too much from a bitsbobsdrawer. The bitsbobsdrawer does not have all the answers.

*

Munter started at the memory-picture of his mother in her wonderful big white coat with him in her arms and whizzed forwards stopping to view memory-pictures of his father, brother, and sister. His father stood in a doorway in their first home with his fist in the air triumphantly. Perhaps his football team had just won or something. His football team was Arsenal. He was a lanky man with a hairy beard and a long thin nose. Then he came to a memory-picture of his older brother, Stuart. Stuart was smiling while sitting on the hood of a car. He was ten years old. Ten years later, Munter’s older brother was a drunkard exhausting cans of lager in alleyways with men much older than he was. A series of beatings led to his development of an almost reptilian-rough skin. He grew to be a very fat man and eventually snapped one day. Stuart forgot who he was, and who he had been. He stopped speaking. He walked slowly around Belfast, eyeing people malevolently. Sometimes he went into shops smelling very badly and the security guards had to put him out. Sometimes he was seen punching walls. Then Munter came to a memory-picture of his sister, Rachel. She was dressed up for her debutante ball, very beautiful with long blonde hair, a corsage on her chest, and holding a bottle of Heineken. Standing next to her was her boyfriend, Aaron, wearing a look of disdain for the photographer and a very clean suit. Munter never liked Aaron. He wasn’t approachable. He only made himself approachable to Munter because Munter was his girlfriend’s brother. They'd been seeing each other for two years by the time of this memory-picture. They looked like a couple that had already lived half of their lives together. They were both eighteen years of age. Four years later, they would still be together. They would be together until the day they died which was a Friday in April. They were coming home from a house party. They’d both had a lot to drink. The car went off the road. Aaron couldn’t control the wheel. He was slammed violently into the top of the car, and Rachel was hurled against the windshield, her head, neck, and torso breaking through it, as the car flopped in the air and landed on its side in a ditch.

***************************************************

Days passed. Munter spent the days drinking cans of beer, and occasionally having a whiskey. At one point, he went to Nobuko’s house again. He ran to the door and rang the bell very quickly; he didn’t want the sharkwoman next door to see he'd returned. There was still no answer. The house remained empty. Maybe she'd come back, and had just gone out again, he thought. He walked around town for a bit hoping to see her as he'd done before, maybe strolling happily with winos, but there was no sign of her anywhere.