Milkman by Anna Burns

Author:Anna Burns [Anna Burns]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9780571338764
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2018-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

Meantime, tension was ever mounting between me and maybe-boyfriend. Apart from my ‘Will you stop driving your car?’, and his ‘Of course I won’t, what you’re asking me there, that’s unreasonable, you’re being unreasonable’, we were both getting into fights about other things. If he was not going to get blown up by a carbomb, then he was going to be taken away by the renouncers as an informer for having the bit with the flag on. If not that, then those who weren’t renouncers in his area but all the same, fanatics of the cause in his area, were going to come in their numbers and do him down over that selfsame imagined-flag thing. As for the rumour of the supercharger, of how it was unpatriotic of maybe-boyfriend to have it whether or not it had the flag on, because of it, according to maybe-boyfriend, he was now being photographed in a minute, expert fashion by the state. I overheard him mention this to chef, saying that he believed, given this photographing, he was attracting attention to himself even from outside his own area. ‘Seems,’ he joked, ‘that owing to flags, emblems, traitorship and superchargers, I’ll make a prospect to be turned informer by the state.’ In contradiction to this, he also said it wouldn’t be untoward if the statelet was not the party doing the photography but that the local paramilitary-renouncers were doing the photography. ‘Could be keeping an eye,’ he joked again, ‘to see if already I’ve turned informer.’ Then there were all those amateur photographers, the lay documentalists, the calendar-moment chroniclers of our troubled times. He said those boys with an eye for the chance, for the possibility of seeking fame and fortune in the future, were popping up everywhere, venturing out with cameras and tape recorders to capture and safeguard, they said, historical, political and social testimony for posterity. ‘You never know,’ they said, ‘what might be considered the most sought-after paraphernalia of these sadnesses in years to come.’ I knew, of course, though maybe-boyfriend didn’t, that not only might he be getting snapped by the state as a potential informer, and snapped by the renouncers as a possible informer, and snapped by those backroom-enterprisers as someone who might be famous one day for being killed as an informer, but also that the state would snap him twice over as an associate of an associate of a man high on their list. As for the effect of the burgeoning rumour of the supercharger having that flag on, maybe-boyfriend’s neighbours and acquaintances continued to edge away bit by bit. Much as they adored the supercharger and had had, for that little stretch of happy time, emotionally invested themselves in their passion for the supercharger, there were other things, such as ‘soldier-lover’, ‘ensign-lover’, ‘country “over the water” lover’, ‘street justice’, all of which had a bigger emotional impact on them than that. Life being short, sometimes incredibly short, why bring upon yourself accusations of collusion, of being

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