Chapter 21 The Confession #3
He explained the importance of the afternoon rendezvous for Verner and Madame Ateltow, and Anna wondered if she found it attractive or simply bizarre that he seemed more distressed by the idea of having ruined their secret encounter than by his own arrest and murder accusation.
“Or maybe,” she said and laughed, shifting gears with a crunch, “you could just see it as having given them an afternoon they’ll never forget.”
She ran a red light and honked at the driver she cut off, who was forced to slam on his brakes.
“Think of the story they’ll be able to tell,” she added, reaching over to touch Mitch’s cheek.
As she drove, he stared out the window, watching the sidewalks flash by, filled with people and lights.
“You don’t need to worry anymore. I’m your alibi,” Anna went on.
“Except I wasn’t with you the night Salinas died.”
“I know. And I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Stupid thing is… I really missed you. Even if that’s not something you’re supposed to say.”
Mitch turned to look at Anna, just as moved as she was.
“You holding up?” she asked.
He took a moment before answering. No, he wasn’t holding up. He was still in shock, just trying to take it all in, his mind on the future that awaited him.
“I lived through two different periods in prison,” he explained, his voice weary.
“In the first one, I missed my life as a free man every single minute. The smell of coffee in the morning, taking a hot shower in my own bathroom, walking to the station, waiting for my train on the platform and cursing when it was late. The particular smell of that train. The morning sunlight through the smears on its windows. Then the walk to my bookshop, and the sound of the key in the lock. I’d go over every little detail – things I’d never given a second thought before – with this weird, almost painful clarity.
And then, one day… it just changed. And I didn’t even notice when it happened… ”
He trailed off mid-sentence. Anna took her eyes off the road for an instant to glance over at him.
He was dishevelled, pale and haggard, lost in a world she knew nothing about but whose terrible harshness she was beginning to understand.
The van veered toward the shoulder, and she swerved to bring it back into the lane.
“And after that day?” she asked timidly.
“I stopped thinking about life outside. My world narrowed to the rhythm of the prison. Mealtimes. Going for a walk around the yard. The gym. The way the sky faded to grey at dusk. The dread I felt when I heard thunder at night, knowing the rain was carving into the Death Path. The race against madness every morning, as I woke up to another day in my cell.”
Anna eased her foot off the gas pedal, knowing she needed to keep driving as long as possible, to give Mitch time to unload everything that was weighing on his heart – knowing that his confession was part of this road they were travelling together.
“I haven’t told you everything about my trial,” Mitch confided.
“Salinas didn’t just use those two books found in my back room.
He presented others as ‘evidence’: Camus’s The Stranger, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Jack London’s The Confession, Jorge Semprún’s Literature or Life, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
He accused me of distributing those books to innocent kids, to corrupt them, to make them hate and fear authority, to destabilize society by undermining parents and teachers.
I wasn’t listening very closely; I was stuck on the irony of it all.
This man was highly educated, and he was afraid of the power of words.
I couldn’t stop wondering what had happened in his life to make him this way.
Turns out, the books he used against me came from his own bookshelves.
Salinas was a big reader. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was lying to them. And to himself.”
They had left the city and its suburbs behind now; the road stretched out ahead of them like a ribbon through the open country.
Beneath the starry sky, fields of wheat and barley extended on either side of the road as far as they could see.
Anna rolled down the window and took a deep breath of fresh air.
“How did you find out where those books came from?” she asked.
“I broke into his house on the day he died.”
Mitch rested his head against the window and closed his eyes. Anna didn’t ask any more questions.
They arrived in a small seaside town just before dawn. She parked along the seawall and waited for the early light to rouse him. Then she opened the door and jumped out, full of life.
“Come on,” she said, grinning. “Take your shoes off and follow me.”
By the time he’d untied his laces, she was already running toward the waves.
The seagulls’ cries were even louder than the crash of the tide.
The wind blew in strong gusts around them, obstinately whipping Anna’s hair into her eyes.
Just yesterday, Mitch had been handcuffed in an interrogation room, convinced he’d only ever see the light of day through bars from then on.
And this morning he was running barefoot in the sand, intoxicated by the sea air and the sound of a woman’s laughter.
Since meeting Anna, the line between dreams and reality had been rapidly fading.