The departure of a small man
by Gordon Gibson
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: A glimpse into the mind of a self-styled community guardian.
_____________________________________________________________________
Now, when anybody asks about him, what he was like and so forth, I find that the first phrase to enter my mind is, 'a small man'. Not that he was abnormally small, but, in the way that people make binary distinctions without giving a great deal of thought to them, you might say that he was small rather than large. He could be described as the kind of ordinary man that people tend not to notice in the street because of the absence of any eye-catching attribute; neither ugly nor good-looking; a face verging upon being plump, with regular features and a habitual expression that might be called 'cheery', quicker to adopt a smile than a frown.
Squarely built, he carried a little too much weight around the hips, but not enough to qualify as 'portly'. His black hair showed no sign of greying, although he was probably in his late forties, which might suggest that he used some kind of application to disguise the effects of ageing; and it always appeared just a little too long, as if a week or two beyond the time when it should have been trimmed, but not quite unkempt; tidy enough. His clothing was inexpensive but appropriate for a man employed, as we believed, in non-manual work: a tweed sports jacket and dark flannel trousers, a clean polo-shirt open at the neck, brown leather shoes well worn but polished. On winter mornings, leaving his flat to walk to the bus stop, he wore a waxed cotton jacket, olive green with a brown corduroy collar.
He never passed a neighbour on the stairs or in the street without exchanging a greeting in his almost-perfect English: one of those utterances with little meaning that served simply to acknowledge the presence of an acquaintance: 'How are you?', or 'Good morning', or even 'Uh-huh'; but there was rarely any further conversation, although he had been known, on occasion, to pass the time of day with one of the wives from the building, commenting on the weather, or the mess that kids had left on the stairs. As a single man, living alone in a small, top-floor flat, he inevitably became a topic of speculation amongst those who lived around him. From the younger women, there were benevolent conjectures: 'The poor soul, he must be lonely. I wonder if he's always been on his own, or has he split with a partner?' From husbands came suspicions – sometimes jocular, often irritable – voiced over a pint in the local pub: 'Funny one that, hardly goes out except to his work. Not a normal way for a man to live. Seems odd to me.'
In the way that information spreads invisibly through a community, unproven assertions about him gained acceptance as facts. He was said to work with computers in the offices of a local company, maintaining the systems used by the administration. Someone reported that he was regarded by his work-mates as being 'quiet but civil', but that his department manager had criticised him as 'stand-offish'. His unobtrusive independence was taken as support for a belief that he had once been a soldier; his accent, faint but discernible, confirmed that his origins lay overseas, although no one was able to identify where exactly that was. Some referred to him as 'the refugee', others as 'the foreigner'.
Of course, he is no longer a member of this community. Details of how he looked, how he dressed, how he behaved are no longer accurate, for all of that information applied only to the time he spent amongst us. I have no way of knowing whether he still maintains that same identity, that appearance, that demeanour in his current life, wherever that is now being lived.
Perhaps he believed that all that we required of him was that he be a man who kept himself to himself, who caused no trouble, who did not fight, nor disrupt the stillness of the night with drunken challenges or offensive songs. But in holding himself apart from those who lived around him, he left them unhindered in the task of forming their own explanations for his refusal to engage with them more closely, for his denial of any need in him that they might satisfy. Perhaps he should have foreseen that, after the invention of innocuous facts about him, they would progress to darker imaginings; and eventually come to wish him gone.
*
Four police officers arrived at 6 o'clock in the grey light of an October morning. They allowed the street door to slam behind them, the sound echoing up the stairwell, and they conversed loudly with one another as they ascended. By the time they reached the fourth floor, and stood outside the small man's flat, the whole building was awake, and husbands, standing at open doors, were calling to one another across the landings: 'What the hell's going on? Who's making all the racket?'
The sergeant thumped with a leather-gloved hand on the door and shouted, in a voice that reverberated through the building, 'Franz. This is the police. Open the door, please.'
Many of the listeners had, until then, been unaware of the small man's name, and this addition to their stock of knowledge added a frisson of excitement to the strangeness of the dawn. The sergeant resumed the pounding upon the door, and a second officer joined in the action, setting up a rhythm such as occurs when two men, wielding heavy hammers, together drive home a wooden stake. Neighbours in night-wear left their homes and progressed hesitantly, to gather on the fourth landing and the stairway. A third police officer, commanded loudly that they should stay well back, and not interfere with the conduct of police business. The banging continued.
Minutes elapsed before we heard the rattle of the lock being turned. The door opened a few centimetres. The two hammering police officers immediately barged forward, forcing the gap fully open, knocking the small man to the floor. They stood over him as he tried to scramble to his feet. He held his hands in front of his pyjama trousers in a pathetic attempt to maintain a vestige of decency. The police officers pushed him back into the flat and entered, the last of them slamming the door behind him. The watching crowd, hushed until now, began to converse excitedly, neighbour to neighbour.
'God knows what he's been up to,' they said.
'When they come for them at this time in the morning, it's because they expect trouble.'
'Drugs,' one wife pronounced, authoritatively.
'More likely porn. He's into all that computer stuff,' said a husband.
'Or child-abuse,' said another, grimly.
And so they lingered, reluctant to return to their homes until some act of finality took place, until some delivery of just desserts. Of course, I knew why the police were taking an interest in him. I felt a distinct satisfaction that they should have responded so promptly to my unsigned, accusatory letters, and wondered which of my claims about his criminality had been most effective in bringing them to his door.
*
The waiting congregation was fewer in number by the time the door of the small man's flat opened again. Almost an hour had passed, and the chill of the early morning had driven the less inquisitive back to the warmth of their own dwellings. Those who remained seemed to derive satisfaction as the small man appeared. Fully dressed, his wrists secured by handcuffs, he was roughly driven forward by the police sergeant who held a firm grip on the collar of his jacket. The talk died to silence.
Behind the prisoner and his escort followed the other police officers, their arms full of electronic equipment, magazines, sheaves of papers and a random collection of household containers.
‘Watch your feet,' the sergeant said, as the small man reached the top of the staircase. Neighbours pressed themselves against the wall, as if some terrible contagion might be transferred to them were they to brush against the captive. For his part, he leaned his weight against the cast iron banister, lowering his eyes as he negotiated the worn stone steps.
*
He never returned, although, of course, nothing was proven against him. A few days later, three young men carried the contents of his flat – a few sticks of cheap furniture and some bulging, black plastic bags – down the four flights of stairs and packed them into the rear of a white van. It was the sight of this removal which caused me, briefly, to question whether I had been justified in suggesting to the authorities that an illegal immigrant, probably a criminal, was living covertly in our community. But he was, after all, not one of us. A foreigner. I cannot abide foreigners.
Swearwords: None.
Description: A glimpse into the mind of a self-styled community guardian.
_____________________________________________________________________
Now, when anybody asks about him, what he was like and so forth, I find that the first phrase to enter my mind is, 'a small man'. Not that he was abnormally small, but, in the way that people make binary distinctions without giving a great deal of thought to them, you might say that he was small rather than large. He could be described as the kind of ordinary man that people tend not to notice in the street because of the absence of any eye-catching attribute; neither ugly nor good-looking; a face verging upon being plump, with regular features and a habitual expression that might be called 'cheery', quicker to adopt a smile than a frown.
Squarely built, he carried a little too much weight around the hips, but not enough to qualify as 'portly'. His black hair showed no sign of greying, although he was probably in his late forties, which might suggest that he used some kind of application to disguise the effects of ageing; and it always appeared just a little too long, as if a week or two beyond the time when it should have been trimmed, but not quite unkempt; tidy enough. His clothing was inexpensive but appropriate for a man employed, as we believed, in non-manual work: a tweed sports jacket and dark flannel trousers, a clean polo-shirt open at the neck, brown leather shoes well worn but polished. On winter mornings, leaving his flat to walk to the bus stop, he wore a waxed cotton jacket, olive green with a brown corduroy collar.
He never passed a neighbour on the stairs or in the street without exchanging a greeting in his almost-perfect English: one of those utterances with little meaning that served simply to acknowledge the presence of an acquaintance: 'How are you?', or 'Good morning', or even 'Uh-huh'; but there was rarely any further conversation, although he had been known, on occasion, to pass the time of day with one of the wives from the building, commenting on the weather, or the mess that kids had left on the stairs. As a single man, living alone in a small, top-floor flat, he inevitably became a topic of speculation amongst those who lived around him. From the younger women, there were benevolent conjectures: 'The poor soul, he must be lonely. I wonder if he's always been on his own, or has he split with a partner?' From husbands came suspicions – sometimes jocular, often irritable – voiced over a pint in the local pub: 'Funny one that, hardly goes out except to his work. Not a normal way for a man to live. Seems odd to me.'
In the way that information spreads invisibly through a community, unproven assertions about him gained acceptance as facts. He was said to work with computers in the offices of a local company, maintaining the systems used by the administration. Someone reported that he was regarded by his work-mates as being 'quiet but civil', but that his department manager had criticised him as 'stand-offish'. His unobtrusive independence was taken as support for a belief that he had once been a soldier; his accent, faint but discernible, confirmed that his origins lay overseas, although no one was able to identify where exactly that was. Some referred to him as 'the refugee', others as 'the foreigner'.
Of course, he is no longer a member of this community. Details of how he looked, how he dressed, how he behaved are no longer accurate, for all of that information applied only to the time he spent amongst us. I have no way of knowing whether he still maintains that same identity, that appearance, that demeanour in his current life, wherever that is now being lived.
Perhaps he believed that all that we required of him was that he be a man who kept himself to himself, who caused no trouble, who did not fight, nor disrupt the stillness of the night with drunken challenges or offensive songs. But in holding himself apart from those who lived around him, he left them unhindered in the task of forming their own explanations for his refusal to engage with them more closely, for his denial of any need in him that they might satisfy. Perhaps he should have foreseen that, after the invention of innocuous facts about him, they would progress to darker imaginings; and eventually come to wish him gone.
*
Four police officers arrived at 6 o'clock in the grey light of an October morning. They allowed the street door to slam behind them, the sound echoing up the stairwell, and they conversed loudly with one another as they ascended. By the time they reached the fourth floor, and stood outside the small man's flat, the whole building was awake, and husbands, standing at open doors, were calling to one another across the landings: 'What the hell's going on? Who's making all the racket?'
The sergeant thumped with a leather-gloved hand on the door and shouted, in a voice that reverberated through the building, 'Franz. This is the police. Open the door, please.'
Many of the listeners had, until then, been unaware of the small man's name, and this addition to their stock of knowledge added a frisson of excitement to the strangeness of the dawn. The sergeant resumed the pounding upon the door, and a second officer joined in the action, setting up a rhythm such as occurs when two men, wielding heavy hammers, together drive home a wooden stake. Neighbours in night-wear left their homes and progressed hesitantly, to gather on the fourth landing and the stairway. A third police officer, commanded loudly that they should stay well back, and not interfere with the conduct of police business. The banging continued.
Minutes elapsed before we heard the rattle of the lock being turned. The door opened a few centimetres. The two hammering police officers immediately barged forward, forcing the gap fully open, knocking the small man to the floor. They stood over him as he tried to scramble to his feet. He held his hands in front of his pyjama trousers in a pathetic attempt to maintain a vestige of decency. The police officers pushed him back into the flat and entered, the last of them slamming the door behind him. The watching crowd, hushed until now, began to converse excitedly, neighbour to neighbour.
'God knows what he's been up to,' they said.
'When they come for them at this time in the morning, it's because they expect trouble.'
'Drugs,' one wife pronounced, authoritatively.
'More likely porn. He's into all that computer stuff,' said a husband.
'Or child-abuse,' said another, grimly.
And so they lingered, reluctant to return to their homes until some act of finality took place, until some delivery of just desserts. Of course, I knew why the police were taking an interest in him. I felt a distinct satisfaction that they should have responded so promptly to my unsigned, accusatory letters, and wondered which of my claims about his criminality had been most effective in bringing them to his door.
*
The waiting congregation was fewer in number by the time the door of the small man's flat opened again. Almost an hour had passed, and the chill of the early morning had driven the less inquisitive back to the warmth of their own dwellings. Those who remained seemed to derive satisfaction as the small man appeared. Fully dressed, his wrists secured by handcuffs, he was roughly driven forward by the police sergeant who held a firm grip on the collar of his jacket. The talk died to silence.
Behind the prisoner and his escort followed the other police officers, their arms full of electronic equipment, magazines, sheaves of papers and a random collection of household containers.
‘Watch your feet,' the sergeant said, as the small man reached the top of the staircase. Neighbours pressed themselves against the wall, as if some terrible contagion might be transferred to them were they to brush against the captive. For his part, he leaned his weight against the cast iron banister, lowering his eyes as he negotiated the worn stone steps.
*
He never returned, although, of course, nothing was proven against him. A few days later, three young men carried the contents of his flat – a few sticks of cheap furniture and some bulging, black plastic bags – down the four flights of stairs and packed them into the rear of a white van. It was the sight of this removal which caused me, briefly, to question whether I had been justified in suggesting to the authorities that an illegal immigrant, probably a criminal, was living covertly in our community. But he was, after all, not one of us. A foreigner. I cannot abide foreigners.
About the Author
Gordon Gibson was born in Motherwell and now lives in Troon. After working in the steel industry, he trained as a primary school teacher and spent his working life in a variety of posts in education, from playgroup adviser to university lecturer.
Gordon always wanted to write, but never had the time to commit to it. When he retired, he decided to see how he would get on if he focused his efforts. Over the past three years, his writing has appeared in a number of online and print publications.
Gordon always wanted to write, but never had the time to commit to it. When he retired, he decided to see how he would get on if he focused his efforts. Over the past three years, his writing has appeared in a number of online and print publications.