Ghostwritten

by David Mitchell

  “I understand what to do, Bat. Thank you.”

  “Something tells me you’re not there any more, Zookeeper.… Am I right? … I’m right.”

  “That was Led Zeppelin’s ‘Going to California,’ dedicated to the memory of Luisa Rey, followed by ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ which, if the world were ending—again—would be the Beatles number I would preserve aboard the Space Ark. Well, New York, I think the fireworks have finally finished. The stars are going out over Staten Island, and Night Train FM is pulling into the new morning. Time to crawl home, knock back a glass of seltzer, retrieve your underwear from the lamp-shade, lower the blinds and hit the hay. December 1st promises brilliant skies. Comet Aloysius is getting more dazzling by the day, and the State Medical Officer is recommending UV sunshades if you venture outside. Anglo-Saxons, cover up your skin. Us Hispanics, SPF 24 sunblock or higher. Strange, huh? Two sources of light, everything has two shadows. Thank you for spending the night with Bat Segundo, double-check you haven’t left anything under the seat or on the luggage rack, and watch your head as you leave the Night Train. Stand clear of the doors!”

  UNDERGROUND

  MY FACE STARES back as my breath obscures it. Stowed away in the sports bag at my feet the device has begun expelling dead seconds. A timer, solenoids, springs within springs. The hand of God is drumming its fingers, before beginning His Serendipity’s holy work.

  The train slows as we pull into the metro station. I see nothing but a night without stars. Where are the rows of commuters, the platform, the escalator, my exit to the world above? I waste precious moments working out what is amiss.

  I am waiting on the wrong side of the compartment! Here I am, wedged tight against doors that are not going to open! The unclean have walled me in with their baggage and bodies, cemented with grime and underclothing.

  There is no need to panic, Quasar. The doors hiss open at the far ends of the train. In a moment the unclean will drain out onto the platform, and I will be carried along by the current. Wait.

  Wait.

  Wait. Horror slides in like a cleanly struck chisel. Nobody is getting off—already the guards in white gloves are shunting yet more unclean on! Belatedly, I try to make headway against the tide, but it has a will of its own, and it is all I can do to hold my ground. Should I try to fake a heart attack? Start screaming like a maniac? I dare not—who knows where that might lead? I may jeopardize His Serendipity’s crusade. Better that I die down here. What? I glimpse a couple walking their dog down a beach in Okinawa. Paradise is only ninety minutes away by All Nippon Airlines. The ripped sunset colors the world’s end. Or its beginning.

  I don’t want this train to be my tomb. Fight.

  The waves of unclean break against me, squeezing out my breath. Business drones, office women, schoolgirls, sex swelling the curves of their lips. I push back, an arm gives way, a body yields a fraction. Fight, Quasar! You are at war! If only my alpha quotient would allow me to teleport to the streets above! My ear squashes against an unclean ear. Music leaks out of the Walkman, and a saxophone from long ago circles in the air, so sad it could barely leave the ground.

  I’m levered backwards, past the sports bag. I see the moments come swarming out through the zipper. Dominoes, sparrows, flies on a summer day. The baby watches me with eyes that are no longer hers. Minnie Mouse watches me too, grinning. Mirthfully? Revengefully? What is she trying to say?

  My muscles are cramping, but I swim forward once more. I squeeze against a young woman clutching a viola case, a bouquet of doomed flowers, and a book. The viola case digs into my groin. She shields her face with the book, an inch between our noses. The Zen Eye. Buddha sits, lipped and lidded, silver on a blue hill, an island far from this tromboning din. Always on the verge of words.

  Get us out get us out get us out! My lungs are gripping the bars of my rib cage. When the solenoids shatter the vials of cleansing fluid, will my heart hammer a way out, too? What of my soul? Will my soul find a path out of these tunnels? I squirm around the viola case, a backpack, and slide between a pair of trench coats. I try to straighten up, but I am blocked by a sleeping giant whose hair is the color of tea. Here is the tea, here is the bowl, here is the Tea Shack, here is the mountain, faces of rock in the purest sky. See? See? It’s not far, not far. I crouch under the giant, and twist upwards. Along the ceiling of the compartment I see grasslands rise and fall like years, years upon years of them. The Great Khan’s horsemen thunder to the west, the furs, the gold, the White Ladies of Muscovy. Leading the way is the new Toyota Land-cruiser, zero percent interest, repayable over forty-eight months, applicants subject to credit checking.

  Move! The unclean are dazzling you! Empty yourself of self, and you may slip though where even a scream could not. A sailor blocks me. A sailor, down here? Surely, this heaving coffin is the opposite of the sea? A glossy booklet is splayed against his uniform. The spine is warped and cracking. Petersburg, City of Master-works. An icing-sugar palace, a promenade, a river spanned by graceful bridges. What stops this train collapsing under its own mass? What stops the world?

  This is my stop, I explain to the unclean I am stepping on. I get off here.

  The unclean reply as one. Move down the compartment.

  I try to block them as they block me, and seek out their weakness. Adrenalin swirls through my bloodstream like cream in coffee. One more meter closer to life. A vinyl shopping bag falls down from a rack. It bulges with a crayon-colored web that a computer might have doodled: The London Underground. I elbow it out of my face. I get off here. The fire in the hearth is the color of fellowship. Their smiles are warm and gluey as Auld Lang Syne. On the label of Kilmagoon whisky is an island as old as the world.

  And I can go no further. A mere meter away, but with more unclean being crammed on, I am stuck fast as a bee in amber. I watch the light on the waves, and sink, my arm flailing out towards the exit even though the rest of me has given up fighting.

  Stand clear of the doors, say the unclean. Tubes locked within other tubes, and Quasar, the distant messenger, locked in the innermost. With a hydraulic hiss the doors close on the unclean and the cleanser.

  Pain shoots up my arm. From where? From my fingers. The doors have closed on my hand! Stand clear of the doors! The unclean sound less cocksure now. Yes! The train cannot leave until all the doors are shut.

  I don’t care who or what I’m trampling over as I reel myself in. With strength I never knew I possessed I prise open the doors to a fist-wide crack. I hear a grunt of panic. It’s me. I shove my arm through. The rubber seals squeal against my leather jacket. My knee, my thigh, my whole side. The guard glares at me, mouthing, That is forbidden, but the sound is lost. Will he try to shove me back into the zombie wagon? The fear is lost. I’ve fallen forwards and have headbutted the Empire State Building, circled by an albino bat, scattering words and stars through the night. Spend the night with Bat Segundo on 97.8 FM.

  I am on my knees, safe on the platform, looking up, looking down. The lanky foreigner offers me a hand, but I shake my head, and he rejoins the mass of unclean waiting for the next train. Wait for the comet, wait for the White Nights. The train alongside me starts to pull away.

  I haul myself to my feet, spent and quivering. What is real and what is not?

  Who is blowing on the nape of my neck?

  I swing around—nothing but the back of the train, accelerating into the darkness.

  Acknowledgments

  The two poems in “Holy Mountain” are by Taneda Santoka, translated by John Stevens in Mountain Tasting (John Weatherhill, Tokyo, 1980). The folk stories in “Mongolia” are based on tales from How Did the Great Bear Originate? edited by Professor Choi Luvsanjav, and translated by Damdinsurengyn Altangerel (State Publishing House, Ulan Bator, 1987). “Mongolia” is also indebted to The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia by Nick Middleton (Phoenix, 1992). Gambling statistics in “London” are from Easy Money by David Spanier (Oldcastle Books, 1995). A short extract from W. B. Yeats’s “The Lake Is
le of Innisfree,” published in W. B. Yeats: Selected Poetry (Penguin), is used in “London” and “Clear Island” with A. P. Watt’s permission on behalf of the estate of W. B. Yeats.

  Thank you to Michael Shaw, Jonathan Pegg, Tibor Fischer, Neil Taylor, Sarah Ballard, Alexandra Heminsley, Myrna Blumberg, Elizabeth Poynter, David Koerner, Ian Willey, Jan Montefiore, Scott Moyers, Sunshine Lucas, Kate Niedzwiecki, Don McConnell, Ruthie Epstein, Kate Norris, and Andy Carpenter.