One blink.

At the end of the last page I laid the pages down. She raised her eyebrows and the pupils in her eyes opened to hold me.

I said to her that I felt the women who witnessed paid a price, one blink, but that still the women lived on, created themselves again, tried to make life.

Mam’s fatigue overwhelmed her and she closed her eyes and dropped into a deep and natural sleep. The twilight was turning the park purple and green, and through the window I saw Biddy hurrying home with her school books, swift and full of intention, and there we all were, suspended in the moment between night and day.

—

Jacques Payac was watching footage of the Labrador Highway in winter. He pointed to his computer screen and said, The damned owners think we should include links in our articles—terrible word, links—to movies, as if words do not do a good enough job.

I laughed and said that they were videos and it was good to see him too and I put a bottle of Scotch on his desk and asked him if he could close up shop for the day. I told him about the end of the trial and the judgment, and he listened like a newsman. He asked what the expert witnesses said about customs of war and how the women withstood the questioning of the defence.

Then he asked, What is next for these women witnesses? Can they accept that one man stands in for all? Can any of us accept this?

I said, Their memories of violence are unlike other kinds of memories. What happened to them cannot be made to seem normal in any way and so it cannot be accepted. Only someone who has lived it can know.

Jacques poured himself a tumbler of Scotch and said, Do you how much a dram is?

No. Is it the same as a shot?

He shook his head and said, No, a dram is 3.6 millilitres and a shot is 44.3 millilitres. A dram is only 1.9 percent of a shot.

He drank down his glass with satisfaction, put it empty on the table and said, I’d rather have nothing than a dram.

He picked up his pen and placed it in a straight line across the top of his desk and said, They wanted to destroy the women and keep them alive. What happens to the women’s rage? To their pain?

I had no answer. I did not want to use the word trauma because we all think we know what trauma means but I do not think we do.

Can a soul be amputated? I said.

Perhaps, said Jacques. Humans go on living in all kinds of conditions.

He told me about his own mother who lost her memory, and on the last day of her life she stared out the window of her home of sixty years, unable to feed herself, dress herself or go to the toilet. She said to him, Life is precious at the end.