An Accurate Record

If not for the timing of the telephone call interrupting his afternoon dream, Barclay would never have consented to the interview. The faces of the Oster family hung before him as he answered the call, and he blinked them away, found himself in his blind-darkened living room, a talk show playing on the television. The voice coming through the telephone was young and apologetic. Wanted to interview Barclay about his experiences during the Coup. “It’s for my history class,” the voice said.

“Who is this?” Barclay snapped.

“It’s Eric Roe. I mow your lawn.”

Barclay didn’t say anything for a moment, the dream still rampant, as if playing out in this very room. It had been a room like this one. He fixed his eyes to the television screen. The talk show was the kind on which guests sat with the pretty host, shed tears, and confessed their dark pasts and deep secrets.

Through the telephone, Eric Roe, who mowed Barclay’s lawn, said nervously, “It’ll just be an interview of you as a normal citizen during the Coup. I have to do it for a grade. I won’t get too personal or—”

“Yes,” Barclay said. “I will cooperate.” His heart was pounding. “When will you come?”

They made arrangements. As Barclay replaced the telephone, a strange calm came over him. He listened to a studio audience clap in sympathy as a man on television wept, and he realized there was a reason he did not typically remember his dreams: Forgetting was an act of will. But it exhausted him. He couldn’t do it anymore.

Barclay spent the week before the interview preparing exactly what he would say. He searched his memory for the specific details so that the record taken by this nervous student might be accurate. He tried to remember what was said and done. He decided to write a prepared statement to be read for the young interviewer: I, Barclay Schuyler, do solemnly swear this statement to be my own, uninfluenced and uncoerced, made in good faith and true to the best of my recollection. He crumpled it up, threw it away, started again: I cannot keep my silence any longer. No, no good. New sheet of paper: When one has committed inexplicable, inhumane—No, no again. It would not do. Barclay decided he would simply have to let the interview run its course, and when the appropriate question arose, he would answer it.

He did not sleep that week, except for naps in his chair. At night, he lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling. He paced the room. He opened the drawer that held the small plastic case that held the thing he had carried with him all these years, but he did not touch the case, gently closing the drawer instead. He sat on the edge of his bed. I will tell it, he repeated to himself. I must tell it, there is no longer any way not to tell it. I will not sleep. He did not sleep.

On Friday, Barclay sat at one end of his dining room table and stared across at the young man who would normally be here only to cut his grass. Eric Roe was tall, thin, and earnest-looking. On the table was a small recording device and a notebook. The sun cut through slats in the blinds behind Barclay, who folded his veined hands on the table, leaned forward eagerly, his heart once again playing the drummer in this unfolding drama.

“So,” Eric began to explain, “for my modern history class, our assignment—”

“Yes, yes,” Barclay said. “Let’s proceed. Please, turn on your machine, let’s begin.”

Taken aback, Eric fumbled with his recorder, thought better of it, looked at his notes first, read something—painfully slow—nodded to himself, then turned on the recorder. “First of all, Mr. Schuyler, I’d like to thank you for your time. Could you state your—”

“No questions,” Barclay said. “Please. You will hear my statement.” He paused. Eric sat across from him, his mouth hanging open. “I am Barclay Schuyler. I make this statement of my own free will.”

“Actually,” Eric said, raising an index finger, “I’m supposed to ask you questions. That’s the assignment. That’s what we’re gonna get graded on. The questions we ask. I’ve got my questions prepared already.”

“I see,” Barclay said, although he truthfully did not. How could this young man know what questions to ask? What did he know of the Coup? What did he know of Barclay Schuyler?

Eric referred again to his notes. He cleared his throat. “Could you state your name and the year of your birth, please?”

“I have already stated my name.”

“Oops. Sorry. Here, I’ll skip to the next question. How old are you now?”

“Too old to waste my time with trivial matters. Do you have for me questions about my experiences during the Coup?”

Eric scrunched his face in concentration, apparently put-off by Barclay’s manner, but determined to proceed. He flipped through the pages of his notes until he found what he was looking for. “Before the Coup, what was your occupation?”

Barclay took a deep, slow breath. “I was an accountant.”

And so the interview proceeded. The questions presented by the young interviewer were oftentimes inane, trivial, lacking an understanding of the scope of the situation about which he was asking. Eric wanted to know if Barclay remembered where he was on the morning of the Coup, or what he had been doing when he first heard the news, and what his reaction was. (Barclay was in the office; he heard the news by way of a panicked man flinging open the office door and shouting it for all to hear; although most of the others left in a great flurry, Barclay remained in the office, preparing his audits as scheduled, and he did not stop even when crowds of men fled past with soldiers close behind, though he did look up momentarily.) Eric wanted to know if Barclay had ever seen tanks rumbling down his street, or if he had ever been accosted by soldiers. (Tanks rumbled down all the streets; soldiers accosted everyone. A student of history, even at introductory levels, should have already known these things.) Eric wanted to know if Barclay ever felt pressure or stress. Was there anything special he did for good luck? How did he entertain himself during the Coup? Was there any particularly humorous moment he recalled? Barclay—truthfully, he does not remember how he answered such questions. He studied his interviewer, waiting for the question that would open the door. The young man had sharp blue-green eyes that suggested more intelligence than was on display during the interview. He had a faint harelip, easy to miss without close scrutiny. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat. His arms were long and thin, the hands at the ends disproportionately large. His hair was light brown and bushy. He had black eyebrows. His jawline was slightly disproportionate. He cleared his throat often and scratched his forehead with his index finger when nervous or uncertain—frequently, to be sure. He knocked his knees together underneath the table—Barclay could hear the rhythmic knock-knock-knocking. Did you go to any of the Colonel’s speeches? Eric asked. Did you ever march in any of the parades? Did you ever read any of the propaganda? Did you keep any of it? What do you remember about it? Were you aware that soldiers were rounding up intellectuals and sending them to re-education camps?

Barclay realized he was sitting up so straight that his back had begun to ache. His hands were clasped together so tightly that a mist of sweat had formed on the table beneath them. “Please repeat the last question,” he said.

Eric repeated the last question.

Barclay ran a hand over his silver crew-cut, his breath shuddering. “Yes,” he answered, “I was aware that such people were being rounded up.”

“And were you aware that the re-education camps, in many cases, were actually death camps?” Eric cocked his head slightly. Barclay interpreted within this movement a note of self-satisfied triumph.

“I was aware that most of these camps were actually death camps,” Barclay answered.

“Did you know any of these people who were rounded up?”

Barclay did not answer immediately. He clenched his hands again, gazed across the table with intensity. The sun cut stripes across his back. Eric, distracted by the silence, retreated to his notes, seemed to read ahead, trying to zero in on a better question. His lips moved as he read quietly to himself.

“I knew a family,” Barclay said. “The Oster family. He was a philosopher. She was a teacher. They had a young daughter. I gave them shelter when their home had been ransacked. I hid them in my home. One day, I betrayed them. When I returned home that day, they were gone. I never learned what happened to them.”

At his end of the table, Eric nodded, still fixated on his notes. After Barclay had finished speaking, the young man glanced up. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, that’s all right. I’m sure everyone knew at least someone who was affected.” He gave a smile of sympathy. He turned back to his notes. “Were there any hobbies you depended on as a distraction from the hard times?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. Were there any hobbies—”

“I must conclude the interview now. It was kind of you to come.” Barclay had not unclenched his hands, had not altered his posture, stared at the young interviewer, who now looked up, startled and disappointed, again confused.

“There’s only a few more questions,” he said. “I mean, really, we’re almost done.”

“I have answered enough questions today.” Barclay nodded toward the door. “You will understand if I am not able to see you out. I am suddenly very tired.”

Eric blushed. He clicked off his recorder and straightened his notes. Then, remembering suddenly, he turned the recorder back on, made a show of thanking Mr. Schuyler for his cooperation, made a statement about the importance of the younger generation coming to an understanding of the older generation’s history, and shut the machine off again. As Eric stood up from the table, nodded, made his way to the door, went out, Barclay did not budge from his position, and his stare burned into the wall where the interviewer’s head had been. How long he sat there afterward, he doesn’t know. Hours. It was dark by the time he became aware of his surroundings. Light from the streetlamp outside grooved the wall around his rail-thin shadow. Tears burned his eyes, and he slumped in his chair and sighed, his arms falling to his sides.

He did not sleep. His confession had been made, but not heard. Was it the intensity of his stare, is that what had done it? Is that what had kept the young interviewer at bay, so that he retreated to his notes, asked the assigned questions, did not receive the substance of the answers? Was it willful ignorance? It didn’t matter. The confession had not been heard. Perhaps Barclay had not emphasized enough the ghastliness of the tale of the Oster family. He had expected that his statement would be provocative in the literal sense, that it would provoke Eric to ask more specific questions, draw the tale out bit by bit until the bloody guts of it were spread on the table between them, ready for the magnifying glass. Instead, the tale had been shoved back into the oblivion of Barclay’s psyche by the obliviousness of the young interviewer. Barclay stood up, went to his room, but did not sleep. He paced. He opened the drawer that held the small plastic case that held the thing he had carried with him all these years, and he picked the case up, but he did not open it. He carefully slipped it into the pocket of his vest. He sat on the edge of his bed. I must tell the tale, he said to himself, over and over. I will not sleep. He did not sleep.

The next day he sat in his armchair before the television, the blinds all pulled tight. He had not showered nor changed his clothes from the day before. Or had it been days now since the interview? He couldn’t remember. He hadn’t slept. The talk show host chatted with a romance novelist whose leg had been run over by an ambulance. The interview evoked sympathy and good-natured laughs. The host promised her audience a swift return after these messages, and the cameras pulled back and the commercials jangled in: Are you lost in a labyrinth of doubt? Does your world seem like it’s falling apart? Or do you simply have a story to tell and need a sympathetic ear to listen? If this is you, the Comfort Hotline can help. Just call 1-800-COMFORT right now. Operators are standing by.

Barclay was dialing the number before the commercial had ended.

When the call went through, a perky yet sympathetic voice on the other end of the line said, “Welcome to the Comfort Hotline! We’re ready to lend a sympathetic ear to you.”

“I turned them in,” Barclay said. “I went out that day and turned them in, yes, I did it and can never take it back, and I’m so very sorry. I’ve done my penance, but it can’t be undone.”

The voice on the other end of the line had gone on talking without pausing to hear: “After that, we’ll take just a few moments to gather your credit card and billing information and a brief mental health history. Once we have that information, we’ll have you talking to one of our qualified sympathetic listeners. Call loads may be heavy at times, but we appreciate your patience in waiting for the first available sympathetic ear. Now if you’ll just—”

A recording, of course. Predictable in hindsight, but Barclay had not stopped to think at the time. If he had, then he would have guessed that a recording would be the best he could hope for, and he would not have made the call.

As it was, he waited. He gave his credit card and billing information. He shared his mental health history. (Nothing to report, aside from his consuming urge to tell this story.) After that, he waited again. The first talk show ended, and another came on. A rotund host walked onto the stage with his microphone and greeted the crowd: “Hey, who hates people out there today, huh? What an awful bunch humanity is, am I right?” In response to these trademark lines the studio audience clapped and whistled.

“Hi, thanks for calling the Comfort Hotline,” said a woman’s voice, velvety and low. “My name is Erica, and I’m here to listen. What’s your name?”

Barclay swallowed. “My name is Barclay Schuyler, and I betrayed the Oster family in the Coup.”

“Hi, Barclay,” Erica said. “Hey”—her voice was like honey—“do you wanna go ahead and tell me all about it? I’m right here listening.”

“They came to me in good faith,” Barclay said. “He was a professor. She was a teacher. They had a young daughter with bad eyesight. Her name was Anne. She wore glasses.”

“Sounds like one of those really smart families.”

“Intellectuals, yes, which is why they were among the first to be targeted. One day their home was ransacked while they were out. They saw the damage from down the street as they were returning. The windows were broken, their belongings thrown into the street. Soldiers were waiting. The Osters turned around and never did they look back. They came to me for help. I took them into my home. I hid them in my home.”

“Well, that was a really nice thing for you to do, Barclay,” Erica said. “Wow, you sound like a great guy. I bet you’ve got a wife who thinks the world of you.”

“I—No, I was never married.”

“Aww, that’s too bad. You must be a swell guy. Are you kind of the loner type?”

“I prefer, yes, I prefer solitude. Because I have this tale, and that for me is all there ever is. I have to tell it.”

“Well, I’m here to listen. I love a good tale. You go right ahead, Barclay.”

Barclay grasped the receiver, pressed it to the side of his head. “I hid them in my home. But one day, I betrayed them. I am not sure why I did it. I have asked myself over the years, and I do not have an answer. I betrayed them one day. When I returned home, they were gone. I never saw them again. I have done a terrible, terrible thing.”

“Ohhh, Barclay, please don’t be so hard on yourself,” Erica purred. “We all do terrible things now and then, but we have to find a way to get on with our lives. I’m sure you’ve done lots of good things, too.”

“Can any good, on any scale, render my betrayal meaningless?”

“Well, we’re all human, Barclay. I mean, I know I’ve made my share of mistakes. But the thing is to not be so hard on yourself. Now, come on, tell me about some of the good things you did. I mean, you helped that poor family out, for instance.”

Barclay reached up to his vest, removed the small plastic case, held it in his trembling hand. “I have in my hand,” he said, “I have the proof of my wrongdoing. I have carried it with me all this time. I’ve never told anyone. I have it here in my hand.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself, Barclay.” Erica’s tone turned scolding, as if she were talking to a disobedient yet beloved child. “Now I want you to think about all the good you’ve done. Maybe there was a car stalled on the side of the road once, and you pulled over to help. Maybe a little boy was lost in the store, and you helped him find his mother. We’ve all done good things. We just forget sometimes. Once, I helped a little girl out of a tree.”

The plastic case trembled in Barclay’s hand. He tried to pry it open, but it had been snapped shut for so very long. In his attempts, he dropped the case, and then, trying to catch it, he dropped the telephone receiver. As he bent over to retrieve the case, he could hear Erica’s voice whispering on, soft and banal, through the telephone speaker. Barclay picked up the case and held it to his chest, to his beating heart, beneath both hands. He sat back in his armchair and closed his eyes, holding the case to his chest while Erica’s voice droned on, gently adding digits to the total balance owed on his credit card.

He did not sleep.

In the morning, unshowered, in the same clothes, with the plastic case in his vest pocket again, he stepped out of his home and onto the sidewalk. He lived near the downtown area of a small city. There was an attorney’s office just down the street. Again, without thinking, without following a particular line of logic, driven only by this new urgency, Barclay visited this office. “I need to speak to an attorney,” he told the young man who greeted him inside.

The young man smiled and said, “All right. What would you like to talk to him about?”

“Are you an attorney?”

“No, actually,” the young man said. “I’m a legal assistant. But I’m happy to talk to you for a few minutes so we can see if there’s anything we might be able to help you with.”

Barclay breathed through his nose, his eyes skittering about the reception room. The young man’s blue-green eyes were sincere and sharp. The two men locked into a momentary stare, where Barclay attempted to burn his way past this young man’s gatekeeping skills, and the young man reflected a pleasant but firm dauntlessness.

“Is there then a room where we can talk?” Barclay asked.

The young man took him into a conference room. He shook his hand, introduced himself as Chris Ericson. They sat at a large table. Barclay folded his hands on the table and fixed Ericson in his stare. His back was too sore to hold erect. He hunched his shoulders. This Ericson sat back in his chair, crossed his legs casually, folded his hands over his tie. “So,” he said, and cleared his throat, “what’s on your mind?”

“Let me come to the point,” Barclay said. “You know of the Coup.”

“Of course.”

“There was a family. The Oster family. I hid them in my home when the soldiers were looking for them.”

“Wait, here?”

“No, no, no, no, no. No. I only moved here afterward.”

“I’m sorry. Go ahead.” Ericson scratched his forehead with an index finger.

“I hid the Osters in my home. The man was a philosopher. We would talk sometimes. He would marvel at the many realities that co-existed with our own. Each different action spawns a different reality, he would say, and they all co-exist as parallel dimensions. At this moment, for instance, I am talking to you in another reality, and you are listening in that different reality. And even though I may say the same thing through every single reality, you are not thinking the same thing. In one reality, you are listening to me with all your heart, and you will be moved by what I tell you. You will want to do something. In another reality, you are already calculating how to tactfully remove me from this building. In yet another, you are not listening to me at all; you are thinking of your wife, who is young and beautiful and who never was betrayed and—But I get ahead of myself. I don’t know which reality this is, but I will soon. Do you understand?”

“Sure,” Ericson said. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down severely.

“We would have these discussions. In one reality, he would say, you forbade us to enter your home, and we were captured and executed. In another reality, you died to save us. Perhaps it was that. His own words putting the idea of death into my head. For I knew that if they were found, I would most certainly face the guns along with them. You understand.”

Ericson cleared his throat and sat up earnestly. “What I’m not sure about, sir, is what the legal question here is.”

“Legal question,” Barclay grunted. His hands were still clasped on the table, eyes still staring. “I will give you a legal question. Listen. I started to worry. There was that. Maybe that’s all there was. A man and woman and their child. Her name was Anne. She wore glasses. Listen: I betrayed them. I knew a man who was with the Secret Police. No one was supposed to know this was his role, but everyone did. I broached the subject in casual conversation. I have this predicament, I told him. Of course, I don’t want to be inhuman, but at the same time, I must consider the risk to myself. I’m sure they are exaggerating the consequences if they are found. And the man with the Secret Police agreed with me and consoled me. I couldn’t be blamed for wanting to help, he said. It’s only human. But there are limits to what one can do, and there are limits to what is permissible. Yes, I told him. There are limits.”

“But it sounds,” Ericson interrupted, “like this is an outside issue. I mean, not to interrupt, I’m sorry about that. But even if there is a legal question here, it wouldn’t be one we could handle. We’re only licensed to practice law in this state. We’re a small law firm. There’s only so much we can do. You understand.”

“I betrayed them,” Barclay said.

“You know, why don’t I—I mean, if you don’t mind waiting just a second, I can go and get the number for—who would it be?—somebody who practices federal law, or maybe someone who practices international law. I mean, you’re right, this sounds big. But we’re just not equipped to handle it. If you’ll just wait a second, I’ll be right back.”

Barclay did not wait. He left before Ericson returned, and he wandered down the street. Aimless, from block to block. Eventually he came upon the local police station. Of course.

The woman at the desk had pretty, blue-green eyes and light brown, bushy hair. Her jawline was uneven and, upon close scrutiny, she had a faint harelip, but the feathers of her hair and the pleasant, calming demeanor eclipsed such shortcomings. She wore a blue officer’s uniform, and her name badge said E. Rowe. “How can I help you, sir?” she asked. Barclay said nothing. He reached into his vest pocket and produced the oblong plastic case. With trembling hands, he placed it on the counter. The woman watched as his fingers fumbled, and finally the case snapped open. On a bed of purple velvet lay a pair of child’s eyeglasses, one lens and one arm broken. The broken lens contained jagged shards of glass around a hole. The jagged shards were coated in a dry, rust-brown powder.

“I am responsible for this,” Barclay said. “It should be all you need to know. I will go quietly.”

“I don’t understand,” Officer Rowe said gently.

“These belonged to a child. At the time of the Coup. I am responsible. This is all that was left. When I returned home, there was no trace but this. You see? It was my doing. This ghastly relic is the evidence.”

“Are you saying something happened to the child?” Officer Rowe asked.

“This is blood, here, here. You can take it to your laboratory, test it, it’s blood. I have carried it with me all this time.”

Officer Rowe looked closely at the glasses but did not touch. She looked up, sympathetic but vexed and helpless. “Are you telling me that this happened during the Coup?”

“Yes.”

“During the Coup,” she said. “That was more than twenty years ago. And it was a war.”

“And there are war crimes.”

“Are you telling me that you killed this girl, sir?”

“I betrayed her and her family. Their deaths are on my hands.”

The woman nodded her head. She scratched her forehead with an index finger. “I’m sorry to hear this, sir. I don’t know that we are the appropriate venue for your complaint. In fact, I don’t think we are. I know there are organizations—”

“You will hold me until these organizations can be contacted.”

“We can’t do that. It’s not within the provisions of the law for us to do that.” She looked again at the broken eyeglasses, and then very gently she closed the cover until it snapped into place. She pushed the case toward Barclay. “It was twenty years ago, sir,” she whispered. “It was a war. Perhaps you are responsible. It’s not within our power to do anything about it.”

And so he walked again, aimless, from block to block. The agony of his unreceived tale scorched his heart. His eyes searched, for he felt now that he would know the face when he saw it—he would know the one who would hear his confession. The one who would hear him out, fully, and finally walk away stunned, forlorn, sadder, and wiser. The one who could help him set down an accurate record of his confession so that he would never be able to recant, and so that, in the telling, the agony of it might diminish and allow him to serve out the remainder of his penance in peace. He searched for the face until, at length, he came upon a church. The church itself was of no significance to him; it wasn’t a priest he needed. A priest would hear his confession, tell him to pray, and send him on his way, and no one would ever know. But at this church, a limousine was parked outside, and near the church doors, a member of the wedding party stood, had stepped out for a moment for a breath of fresh air, the ceremony near ready to begin. As Barclay approached, the young man watched politely, ready to guide him inside to sit on, which side, bride or groom, sir? No, Barclay said, and he gripped the thin arm with his veined hand. No, you must listen. There was a family—His eyes held the young man’s blue-green eyes in thrall. There was a family, Barclay said. You must hear me. There was a family. The young man scratched his forehead and tried gently to pull away, saying, but the wedding is about to start, there’s the piano for the bridal march now—No, Barclay said. You must hear me and do justice to my tale. There was a family. You will help me, I see it in your eyes. Help me create an accurate record of my confession. You must.

ERIC ROE

Eric Roe’s stories won Chautauqua’s Editors Prize and The Bellingham Review’s Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. His work has appeared in Redivider, december, Barrelhouse, Best American Fantasy, and Stories That Need to Be Told. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he is the editorial assistant at University of North Carolina’s Marsico Lung Institute.