A Thousand Cuts

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He showed me the gun.

Well, he didn’t show me as such but I saw it. The week before the shooting, this was. We were in the staffroom and I was sitting next to him and I spotted it when he opened his briefcase.

I say the gun but I suppose it was just a gun. I’m only assuming it was the one he used. To be honest, it didn’t even look like it would fire but that sort of tallies with what people have been saying. That it was an antique. A museum piece. From the war or something. That’s what people are saying, isn’t it?

So it was the gun, I suppose. It was wedged between a file and a stack of papers, like it was a Thermos flask or his lunch box or something. Like it was anything but what it was.

I say, Samuel, sort of laughing. That’s not what I think it is, is it? He says, pardon me, and I nod. That, I say. In the case. It’s not what I think it is.

Oh, says Samuel. Oh. You mean this?

And he lifts the lid of his case wide and picks up the gun by the handle. His finger finds the trigger and for a moment the barrel is pointing right at my head.

I sort of laugh again. I mean, I wouldn’t make much of a policeman, would I? Someone points a gun at my head and all I can do is give a nervous giggle. But anyway, that’s what I did. And I say, Samuel, I’d rather you… I mean if you could not please… So I giggle and I can’t even finish a sentence.

Samuel says oh again. He says, no, no, no, don’t worry. And he turns the barrel so it’s pointing at the back of his case, at the upturned lid of his case, and beyond the lid, sitting opposite, is Terence, Terence Jones, TJ to those who know him, and Samuel’s got the gun pointed right at him. And TJ can’t see this because he’s reading the newspaper and anyway the gun’s still hidden by the briefcase. And Samuel, his finger’s there on the trigger and I can tell he’s about to squeeze. As in, fire. The gun. At TJ.

So what do I do?

I do nothing. I watch. It’s all I can do. Like I say, you’d be happy to have me on the force.

But as it turns out the gun doesn’t fire. Samuel pulls on the trigger but it sticks. It doesn’t move. And Samuel looks up at me and he’s not exactly smiling but he looks pretty pleased with himself nonetheless. Do you like cats, Inspector? I like cats. I have three. And Samuel looks like my tabby, Ingrid, when she’s eaten her share of the giblets and Humphrey’s and Bogart’s too.

Samuel, I say. Really. And still I’m struggling to think what to say to him. Because it’s not the type of situation you ever contemplate dealing with, is it? Not if you’re someone like me. I’m interested, Inspector: how would you have reacted, do you think? If you had been me? Because you would have done what was right, I’m sure, and not just because of your training. Although I suppose it’s perfectly obvious to me now. I should have wrestled the gun from him. I should have pinned him to the floor. I should have called for the headmaster, told the headmaster to call the police. That’s what I should have done. That’s what I wish I had done. Naturally that’s what I wish.

But at the time I was waiting for an explanation. That’s what rational human beings do, isn’t it, when they’re confronted with something beyond the scope of their everyday experience? They withhold judgement. They offer the benefit of the doubt. They fear the worst perhaps but they know deep down that there will be a perfectly reasonable explanation. That’s the very phrase people use, in fact, isn’t it? You’ll see, they say. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.

And Samuel gave me one.

He drops the gun into the briefcase, rather carelessly. He clicks the briefcase shut. He says, it’s real but it doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked since 1945. It was my grandfather’s, he says. Or rather, it became my grandfather’s. He stole it. Won it. However you want to look at it. He got it from a German, a Nazi. In Italy. My grandfather fought in Italy.

Which is fascinating, rather, isn’t it? I teach religious studies but my subject and Samuel’s are so intertwined that really the syllabuses should be merged. That’s what I think anyway. Because what’s the study of religion but social history? What’s faith but an empathy with the past? But that’s not why we teach religious studies, I’m told. My views, depending on who you talk to, are old-fashioned or avant-garde. Which is fine, I suppose. I’m not complaining. And I’m in danger of straying from the point. Which is, Inspector, that what Samuel said intrigued me. His explanation was logical and fascinating both. The gun was a relic from the war and he was, he told me, teaching his sixth-formers about Monte Cassino. He wanted to engage them, he said. Show them something that would bring them forwards on to their elbows rather than send them back on to their heels. Which is just the sort of thing Samuel would say because there was nothing he wanted more than to get his kids interested. I mean, all teachers, regardless of their subject, can empathise with the sentiment but for Samuel it had turned into a mission. He was committed. He was determined. He must have been, mustn’t he? To put up with what he did. To keep coming into work after everything that happened.

So I’m convinced but still I manage to keep some sense about me.

Do you think that’s wise? I ask him. It’s a gun after all. And this is a school.

He shrugs.

I say, I mean it, Samuel. I really think you should be careful. The parents, the headmaster, the pupils for heaven’s sake… Just imagine how they might react.

Now Samuel does smile and I don’t like that smile at all. But it’s a flicker, a spark that catches and then goes out, and after it fades it’s hard to tell if it was even a spark at all. Maybe you’re right, Samuel says. Maybe you’re right.

I’m glad you think so, I say, because I really think… But then the bell goes and everyone gets up because it’s the last double period before lunch. And neither one of us says anything more.

This would have been the Wednesday so it was exactly a week before. After that, I watched him fairly closely. As closely as I could, at any rate. It was hard, though, because we taught in different wings and neither one of us spent a great deal of time in the staffroom. We each had our reasons. He was a fairly solitary figure and I suppose I’ve always been one too. But I like to think that I am happy in my own company. There are moments, naturally, when I crave companionship and usually they coincide with times when there is none on offer. What’s that – Murphy’s law? Anyway, at school when I go to the staffroom it’s usually to hear adult voices. Even TJ, for all his shortcomings, can seem a calming presence after you have been floundering all day amid the shrillness of youth. But Samuel: he was never happy in his own company. If this doesn’t sound too self-important, Inspector, I’ve always seen myself as something of a spiritual barometer in this school. It’s not a role anyone else would recognise, naturally, more an extension of my particular specialisation. Not even that, really. I’m just interested in people. That’s all. I’m nosy, you might say. I like to know how people cope. Within themselves. What drives them. What undermines them. There’s no great skill involved. You just have to listen more than you talk. You seem to listen well, Inspector, so I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. And with Samuel, it was obvious from the very start. Not that he would do what he did. Heavens. How could a balanced individual expect that of anyone? It was obvious, rather, that he was troubled. Sad. Sad is the word. Sad and lonely and unable to break from the mould into which his life had settled.

So he was vulnerable. Extraordinarily so. And he was having a difficult time, as you probably know. But though the gun worried me, I’m not sure that even then, at the time I saw it, he had decided he was going to use it. You’re going to ask me why he was carrying it then, aren’t you? Before the shooting I would have repeated to you his story. I believed him, mainly because I wanted to. Obviously, though, he was lying about it not working. Maybe the safety catch was on when he squeezed the trigger or something and that’s why it didn’t depress. I mean, is that how guns work? I’m not an expert on these things. He didn’t show the gun to his sixth-formers either. I know he didn’t because I asked – subtly of course – Alex Mills, one of the pupils that Samuel and I shared, when he was helping me clear away after class. At the time I was relieved. I assumed Samuel had seen sense and that the matter was at an end. It didn’t occur to me that he’d never had any intention of showing the gun in class.

So why did he have it? I’ll tell you what I think. You heard about TJ’s behaviour, am I right? You heard about the children and how they treated him. Most important, I think, you heard about the football match. They broke his leg, Inspector. Deliberately. Oh I know, I know, they claimed it was an accident and the headmaster believed them but he must have been the only one in the school who did. If indeed he really did. But can you imagine? These thugs had been hounding him for months and for a while Samuel might have been able to convince himself that it was all harmless – traumatic but physically harmless – but then they snap his fibula.

Have you ever broken your leg, Inspector?

A bone then? An arm perhaps?

Well, I have and let me tell you that it hurts. It’s agony. I don’t handle pain very well – I’d not make a very good woman, I’m afraid! – and Samuel didn’t strike me as the stoical type either. So he was scared, Inspector. That’s what I’m trying to say. Maybe the gun… I mean, he said it was his grandfather’s. So just having it, carrying it with him, maybe it made him feel better. Safer. Less vulnerable. For all I know, he’d been carrying it since the football match. But like I say, that doesn’t mean he intended to use it.

Something changed though. I was watching him, like I said, and at the beginning of the next week, the week of the shooting, something most definitely changed. I told you that I thought he was scared but I also think he kept it fairly well hidden. Like it was simmering. You know, like a pan on a gentle heat. But then, come Monday. Well. All of a sudden it was bubbling over. There was no hiding it any more. You only had to talk to him. You only had to watch him for a moment. Although, saying that, no one did. No one spoke to him. No one paid him any attention. He was Samuel, after all. The only person the teachers of this school go further out of their way to avoid is Mr Travis, and in the headmaster’s case it is for entirely different reasons.

I spoke to him though. I was watching him. I noticed that the clothes he was wearing on the Monday were the ones he’d gone home in on the Friday. He had two suits, from what I could tell, one beige, one brown, and he never wore the same suit two days in a row. He changed his shirt every day too. And his tie. You wouldn’t notice unless, well, unless you’d noticed but he had a strict rotation. Mondays it was one combination, Tuesdays it was another. There was no great diversity of style. I suspect the shirts had come five in a pack. The ties likewise. Not that I’m snobbish about such things. The clothes maketh the man, that’s what they say, isn’t it? Well Al Capone wore spats and Jesus Christ dressed in rags, which pretty much settles that argument in my mind. But I know how important such things are to other people, to the younger generation in particular. Just look at TJ, for instance. If he’s not in a track-suit, he’s wearing an Italian-made sports jacket and a tie with a knot the size of my fist. Like the footballers do when they’re giving interviews after a game. So that’s why I noticed it with Samuel. He was particular about such things, it seemed to me, but not for aesthetic reasons. It was as though he had established a system in order that he would no longer have to think about that system. On Mondays he wore suit A with shirt B and tie C. He just did.

So I realised immediately on the Monday. He was wearing Friday’s outfit and Friday’s wrinkles. Saturday’s and Sunday’s too, by the look of things. There were rings around his eyes, like a cartoonist would draw on a character who’s just been beaten in a fight, and a web of red lines stretching across the white. What with the state of his clothes, I’d say he’d slept – if he’d slept at all – slouched in a chair or on the sofa or in the seat of his car.

It’s the end of first break and he’s drifting out of the staffroom when I put my hand on his shoulder. As he turns, he spins and steps backwards. He stumbles on a chair leg and almost falls. TJ sees it happen and gives a snort. He makes some comment, some crack about having a good trip, and then he’s gone and Samuel and I are the only ones left in the room.

Is everything okay? I ask him. Samuel, I say. He’s watching the doorway, you see. Samuel, I say again. Is everything okay? You seem… well… I don’t finish the sentence.

What? he says. Oh. Yes fine. Excuse me. And he tries to slip by but I take his arm. Again he flinches. Again he pulls away. What? he says. What is it?

Nothing, I say. I’m startled by his tone. It’s aggressive. Defensive. Not like Samuel at all. I mean, usually when he spoke he was never anything but polite. To a fault really. He was courteous but courteous like a waiter in a fancy restaurant, one who doesn’t necessarily own the place but certainly wouldn’t offer you a table if he did.

Nothing, I say again. I just wondered, that’s all. Whether everything was all right.

He laughs. A snort, really, like TJ’s. Oh yes, he says. Everything’s fine. Everything’s wonderful. And he tries to get past me again.

I don’t let him. I don’t know why but it seems incredibly important all of a sudden that I talk to him, that I find out what’s bothering him. So I reach and place an arm across the doorway.

Samuel looks at me. He glares at me. He says excuse me again but in a way that means you better had.

Samuel, please, I say. If there’s something the matter you should talk about it.

And he laughs again, that same derisive grunt. He says, that’s reasonable. I mean, you’d think that talking would help, wouldn’t you?

I say, sorry?

But he doesn’t elaborate. He just says excuse me again and this time I let him go. There doesn’t seem to be any other choice.

It was only afterwards that I remembered about the gun. I’m walking to my classroom and my innards give a sudden lurch, like it’s just occurred to me I’ve left something burning in the oven back home. I stop and I think and I tell myself there’s nothing to worry about. He was upset about something, that was all. Something personal that wasn’t any of my business. I had no right to pry and he had every right to be angry with me. And he’d explained about the gun. He’d demonstrated to me that it didn’t even work. But when I thought about that, I thought about the expression I’d caught on his face after he had pointed the gun at TJ, that little flash of jubilation, and I grew anxious in spite of myself.

I asked around. Other teachers, even one or two of the pupils I trusted not to make a fuss. But no one had noticed anything strange. Like I said before, most of them barely noticed Samuel at all as a rule. No, nothing odd, they told me if they had seen him. No odder than usual. And they would laugh and I would smile and that would be the end of that.

In the afternoon, Samuel and I shared a free period. I knew we did but I checked the timetable just to be sure. So I went looking for him again. I would talk to him properly this time, I told myself. I would find out what was troubling him. I would ask him again about the gun. I would insist, if it came to it, that he hand it over to me, museum piece or not. But I couldn’t find him. I looked in every classroom, in the staffroom, in the playground, in the girls’ changing rooms for heaven’s sake. I ended up in the secretary’s office – you know, the room next to the headmaster’s office, where Janet has her desk and where we keep all the registers and the staff rotas and that sort of thing – even though I knew he wouldn’t be there. It was the last place I looked and when I didn’t find him there I lingered. For no particular reason other than I didn’t know where else to go. I leant against one of the filing cabinets and started to click my tongue against the roof of my mouth. It’s a habit I have. Most annoying to those around me, I would imagine.

Everything okay, George? You look as stressed as I feel. This from Janet. She’s seated at her desk.

I don’t reply. I give a grunt maybe.

George? she says again. I look at her and she’s smiling. She’s waiting.

Yes, Janet. Thanks. Everything’s fine. I push myself away from the filing cabinet and I’m about to leave. Then I say, you haven’t seen Samuel have you, Janet?

Samuel? she says.

Samuel. Samuel Szajkowski.

No, she says. Then, yes. That is, he’s gone home, she says. The headmaster sent him home. I… um… don’t think he was feeling very well.

Oh, I say. Oh. And I’m pondering this as I make to leave.

With one word, though, Janet stops me. She asks me why. And I don’t really notice at the time but it’s a suspicious why. A defensive why. Like you’d say to a friend who’s just asked you how much money you have in your wallet.

No reason, I say. It’s not important. And this time I do leave. And do you know what, Inspector? I wish now that I hadn’t. Given what has happened. The benefit of hindsight and all that. Because there was something more to it. I know there was and I realise now that Janet knew there was. And it doesn’t take much to get Janet talking. That’s why I left, in fact. She can trap you, just with her eyes and her tongue, from the opposite corner of a room. She would have told me what she knew if only I had asked. I wouldn’t even have had to ask, come to that. All I would have needed to do was provide her with an opening.

Instead I spent the rest of my free period trying to concentrate on marking papers. After that I had classes. The next day, the Tuesday, Samuel didn’t come to school at all. He was still ill, that was all I could find out. Then, on Wednesday morning, I saw him. I was in the staffroom and I must admit I had almost forgotten why I was so desperate to find him. Not forgotten exactly. My unease, rather, had become more like idle curiosity. Only when he walked through the door, just as everyone else was filing out, did that sense of urgency reassert itself.

He’s still wearing the same suit, the same shirt, the same tie. This time there’s no doubting that his clothes are unwashed, stained, crumpled. Also, he smells. I can tell he smells even from the distance I am away from him because the teachers he passes wince, they wrinkle their noses, they pull back so as not to brush against him. It’s time for assembly – it’s time for the assembly – but I hang back anyway to try and talk to him. Vicky Long, though – she grabs my arm. She starts walking and talking and dragging me towards the door. I try to extricate myself but before I know it I’m in the corridor and Samuel’s left alone in the staffroom. Vicky’s talking to me about the musical she’s directing. An end-of-term performance of Oklahoma! She’s short a cowboy and she’s hoping I’ll agree to step in. There are only a few lines, she tells me, and practically no singing. There’s a dance or two but nothing complicated. A jig. A two-step. I’d have them down in fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes maybe – fifteen minutes a dance. So what do I say? Will I do it? It will be such fun, she promises me. Will I do it then? What do I say?

I don’t say anything. I’m in the assembly hall now, climbing the steps to the stage. I’m taking my seat and something or someone catches Vicky’s attention and she drifts towards the seats on the other side of the lectern. I look down at the rows in front of me. The children are already seated. Some are whispering, one or two are laughing, giggling really, but most are sombre. They’ve caught on to the mood that the headmaster’s summons sought to convey. They know that there has been trouble. They know that the headmaster is about to put on a show.

I’m still looking for Samuel when Mr Travis walks in. He closes the rear set of doors behind him, with a click that is more ominous somehow than if he had slammed them shut. Silence. The children stare ahead, at their hands in their laps, at their feet. A few affect nonchalance, bravado. There are two empty seats on the stage: one behind the lectern, the other at the lectern end of Vicky’s row. None of the other teachers seem to notice, however. They are watching the headmaster as he strides the length of the hall. He’s wearing a grey suit and a black tie. His shoes are polished to a military sheen. His footsteps are not loud but they resonate. They are as relentless and as purposeful as a countdown.

The rest, Inspector, I believe you know. I did not get a chance to talk to Samuel. I did not make that chance. Whether I would have been able to change anything anyway, I’ll never know. Possibly I would have. Probably what happened next would still have found a way to happen.

It’s not much of a consolation, is it? It’s not much of a consolation at all.