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JOHN BANVILLE

THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of eleven previous novels, including Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, Ghosts, Athena, and Eclipse. The Book of Evidence was short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize and won the 1989 Guinness Peat Aviation Award. He also has received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. He writes for The Irish Times and lives in Dublin.

ALSO BY JOHN BANVILLE

Eclipse The Untouchable Athena Ghosts Mefisto The Newton Letter Kepler Doctor Copernicus Birchwood Nightspawn Long Lankin

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, JUNE 2001

Copyright © 1989 by John Banville

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc. , New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Martin Secker & Warburg Limited, London, in 1989.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Banville, John. The book of evidence / John Banville. p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-307-81712-9 1. Murderers—Fiction. 2. Prisoners—Fiction. I. Title. PR6052. A57B36 2001 823′. 914—dc21    00-052750

Author photograph © Jerry Bauer

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Contents

Cover

About the Author

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Part I

Part II

I

 

MY LORD, when you ask me to tell the court in my own words, this is what I shall say.

I am kept locked up here like some exotic animal, last survivor of a species they had thought extinct. They should let in people to view me, the girl-eater, svelte and dangerous, padding to and fro in my cage, my terrible green glance flickering past the bars, give them something to dream about, tucked up cosy in their beds of a night. After my capture they clawed at each other to get a look at me. They would have paid money for the privilege, I believe. They shouted abuse, and shook their fists at me, showing their teeth. It was unreal, somehow, frightening yet comic, the sight of them there, milling on the pavement like film extras, young men in cheap raincoats, and women with shopping bags, and one or two silent, grizzled characters who just stood, fixed on me hungrily, haggard with envy. Then a guard threw a blanket over my head and bundled me into a squad car. I laughed. There was something irresistibly funny in the way reality, banal as ever, was fulfilling my worst fantasies.

By the way, that blanket. Did they bring it specially, or do they always keep one handy in the boot? Such questions trouble me now, I brood on them. What an interesting figure I must have cut, glimpsed there, sitting up in the back like a sort of mummy, as the car sped through the wet, sunlit streets, bleating importantly.

Then this place. It was the noise that impressed me first of all. A terrible racket, yells and whistles, hoots of laughter, arguments, sobs. But there are moments of stillness, too, as if a great fear, or a great sadness, has fallen suddenly, striking us all speechless. The air stands motionless in the corridors, like stagnant water. It is laced with a faint stink of carbolic, which bespeaks the charnel-house. In the beginning I fancied it was me, I mean I thought this smell was mine, my contribution. Perhaps it is? The daylight too is strange, even outside, in the yard, as if something has happened to it, as if something has been done to it, before it is allowed to reach us. It has an acid, lemony cast, and comes in two intensities: either it is not enough to see by or it sears the sight. Of the various kinds of darkness I shall not speak.