The Airways

by Jennifer Mills

  The toilet reeks of unwell kidneys. Shadows slip past underneath like fish. If there is life in the water below this bridge it is invisible. This pissing makes him sigh, the train lurches, they feel how glad he is to have missed the slippers. He pushes the flush button, but the water refuses. Empty. He breathes, and the lungs grasp at oxygen.

  They’ll drown with him.

  He hovers a moment by the guard’s door, then returns trundling down the corridor. They glance into each room, looking out for someone wakeful. At the other end of the long car, he pushes the exit button and it opens. He stands between carriages, enclosed by the room but also in the air, which smells like burnt things: oil, the thick coal-fired atmosphere. No light but the cigarette. They feel the drug swim out through his extremities, tracing the circulatory system, as if it’s ink. The breath. They wonder how long he has left.

  They want more.

  SYDNEY

  It was not until he was in his seat, buckling the belt according to the instructions, grateful to have escaped the embraces of his mother and sister, and thinking superficially about the films he’d watch to fill the hours ahead, that he remembered what it was that he’d forgotten. When the overweight backpack had been deposited in its tray and conveyed away, when there was no longer any point in going over the list again, he had thought the forgotten feeling would fade, that it was just the residue of anxious packing. Now that the plane was beginning to taxi slowly towards the runway, and it was too late to change his mind, he remembered Yun had mentioned Beijing.

  How had he let himself forget this?

  He felt the constriction of the belt across him as he retrieved his earbuds from between his knees. The unread security card lay across his lap, its illustrations of falling gas masks invoking a calm apocalypse. He bent it in half.

  The thought that the destination had already been decided for him, not an exit but a return, was overwhelming. What if Beijing was a trick?

  I thought it was the edge of the world.

  He shook the thought away. A coincidence, that was all. Obviously they would not be there now. They were nowhere on this earth. The dead could not play tricks on the living. He pushed in his earbuds, felt the pressure but did not switch on the sound.

  For a time, he had kept returning to images of the event of their death, as though he had made a recording of it. He had found himself taking pleasure in the slow-motion replay, the way it seemed to fill a hollow in him. The hunger for that central scene. The need to be certain of their absence.

  But it was only a set of images, the work of his mind’s eye. He had not meant to disturb them, not at all. He would not be capable of causing harm. There was a difference, wasn’t there, between looking at someone and actually hurting them? He was no predator.

  The ache in his chest threatened for a moment, budding pain at the unfairness of the misunderstanding. There was nothing now to be afraid of. He was safe from them, from what they had nearly made him become.

  He stuffed the folded card into the pocket, and closed his eyes.

  Soon their voice, their face, vanished from his mind. As the plane lifted, he felt with happiness that he was really leaving all that behind, that some of those possible selves were sealed away as others opened. He felt his body adjust to the change in pressure as it passed through the membrane that separated one life from another, though he knew that there was no such thing.

  SLEEPER

  They wake a passenger. The elbow stiff, the arm above it numbed and buzzing. They wake with the body, in an awareness of the body’s weight against the thin mattress, feel it roll gently from side to side with the movement.

  They test their presence. The body stretches its tired legs, obedient. Sleeper berth the width of a steel trolley. Grief follows them like a shadow, ready to enclose. They remember how their body used to know them. How strong it was, how trustworthy, in spite of everything. They had a history together; they had a common language. It obeyed them, sometimes. Other times, commanded or demanded. They long now for its inconvenience and its recalcitrance, its individuality. It wasn’t perfect, but it was home.

  They can make another, somewhere.

  They look at her reflection. Her soft flesh rests against the bench. A young face looks back, unfocused. She doesn’t see them. She’s taken with the world outside: the landscape shutters past in frames, a sliced mountain, a flooded field, the posed bodies of woman and buffalo holding still in the undisturbed surface, joined by a slack rope’s curve.

  They let the rope fall.

  Restless, they move through the passengers quickly, flicking along their spines like a shelf in a library. Trains file people in neat rows. It makes a rhythm of searching: never enough, never enough. Another young woman, her little heart throbbing along with the beat. The other earbud in the boyfriend’s ear, their bodies joined along the thigh and through the cord. They stay with her, excited in the physics of her attraction, the light weight of her young body, rich with sensations, the pleasure of itself, just past adolescence, somehow almost without fear of harm – the pinch of a bra beneath a tender breast, the high-pitched shiver below, the secretiveness of her body at rest in the train’s embrace. She shifts in her seat and her back arches. A body alive in its moment. She looks at the boyfriend, a glow like embers in her chest. Lets her head fall against his shoulder, feels it soften beneath her.

  They could take her.

  Her contentment, everything. Her possibilities, her pleasure.

  Her future.

  They slip instead into a young man eating salted peanuts, watching a movie on his tablet. The bag rustling. The cholesterol swimming in his blood. Period costumes, battle scenes. His eyes aren’t really focusing. They can unfurl themselves in this distraction. Occupy the space that it leaves open. But they already know that it won’t be enough, and why should he deserve them? He lifts his gaze, and fields scroll past like photographs. In the distance, little fires or lights. Official and unofficial lives.

  The train slows between apartment buildings. Stubborn gardens hang from balconies, surviving on so little light. An old man leans out a window to position a cage.

  They let his eyes drop to his screen.

  The sleeper car full of the smells of sour noodles, cigarette smoke. The sweet scent of the child in her lap, asleep in unspent potential. They drag her eyes to her reflection, feel her hands go still as her attention changes. She has to see them.

  They remember Adam’s eyes through the gap in the door.

  Her body jolts. A leg knocks against the steel frame under the table. Shaved skin prickles into the weave of jeans. She sees old houses given to the animals. Watches a town appear from the fields: raw cement walls, no windows, then houses, their front doors plastered with red paper characters, fortune and faded happiness. They feel her desire, lodged below the ribs, as loss. Stone tombs bedded in the hills behind houses, the dead kept close. Her finger touches the glass and comes back with a grey circle of dust on the tip, which she places, for some reason, in her mouth. The chug, the muscle swallowing of engine, and all those possible lives crumble away. She glances up at the door of the cabin. The guard is asking a question. The language travels through her body like electricity, draws her attention back inside.

  ‘Yànpiào,’ the guard says, and holds her hand out.

  The woman searches the tiny table for her ticket, which she hands over.

  ‘Beijing,’ she says. The word warms her throat.

  The guard exchanges the ticket for a plastic card, slipped from a folder.

  ‘Beijing,’ she repeats.

  All the tension in the woman’s muscle concentrates and stills around the name. It’s a taste in her mouth that pulls out memory, as her body fills with longing. She looks at the child, who does not stir. In texture, the word feels like the connection between them. She reaches to touch the child’s hair, inhales the scent of shampoo, like apples. Some
thing is drawing her north. Awash in her homesickness, they remember flashes of grey sky, a hand in theirs, the feeling of water lifting their weight. Cold at the feet, a thrill of surrender.

  Are they drawn too?

  The guard looms over, savouring the scene, then backs into the light. The corridor too bright behind her. The woman’s body starts to shake. They lost concentration, and they’re hurting her. As she floods with pain, they go with the guard, shifting into her just as she closes the door.

  The guard walks stiffly, muscle accustomed to outbalancing the train, the echo of long work in the neck. Cold steel in the hand, nails sharp against a heel of palm. Tight underwear beneath the uniform, a wire digging into the rib below the right arm, the binding of elastic round the waist. Stockings grazing shoes. Then her hand on the cold door, twist lock, bolt tool. Formal responsibility satisfies her. The body calm in its authority. She reaches for a paper, marks a chart, tongue pressed against the back of one tooth to write.

  Beijing. Two characters. A pragmatic, anonymous, brightly unromantic name. But her body leans into the strokes, absorbed, with some of the other woman’s pleasure, and her mouth makes the shape of it. She bites her lip. Reads over her list. Other names don’t move her in the same way. It’s as if the city’s singing to them. They let a finger linger on the paper. They had forgotten how the body might be taught to carry memory, and keep it safe.

  She stands up, faces a mirror. They bring her eyes close. There’s no reaction. The side of one finger abrades the lashes, and she blinks, whole and full.

  They let her reassert her image, her home. The breath.

  Beijing. She carries the name in her mouth like a ripe grape. They could burst its sweetness.

  BEIJING

  Adam lifted his head, the window leaving a print of warmth on his skin. He examined the face of the woman who had spoken his name. Chinese, about his own age, and beautiful in a stiff Northern way. The face exuded harmony from beneath an anxious expression. He recognised her, knew he should be able to recall her name, but it would not form inside his mouth, which held instead a memory of sweetness.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. Her skin was bright and smooth in the light from the café. The impression of anxiety was fading.

  ‘We’re just having a coffee,’ she said. He felt his face become puzzled, then forced it into a smile. Her voice was warm, familiar. She glanced inside for a moment, then looked back quickly. ‘Are you okay? I know you’ve been . . . unwell.’ One of her hands still clutched the door.

  Adam felt his heart hopping inside his chest, his breath thinning. The woman’s distance irritated him. He wasn’t sick. He peered through the glass. Well-groomed people perched on stools. Dates sat opposed, looking at phones. A row of young men in the window, their faces gaunt in shadow. Paper Halloween bunting grinned down from above them, and Adam flushed, embarrassed. He was awake now, that was the important thing. He was strong enough to walk through glass.

  ‘I feel amazing,’ he said.

  ‘Actually we’ve been trying to reach you,’ she said, her face angled towards someone inside. ‘Come in out of the cold.’

  Was it cold? He hadn’t noticed. There was someone else with her. She glanced at his shoulder, looking at his jacket. He touched the collar, felt the texture with pleasure, then followed her inside to where a handsome man perched at a high table released his lovely smile. Adam allowed himself to be enveloped in a hug, inhaled deeply. The scent of the man was clean and strong and wholesome. He let it calm him. There was no-one he would rather be near. He reached for a stool and tried to pull it towards him, but it refused to move, and his fingers slipped numbly from its surface.

  ‘Hey, man. We’ve been meaning to contact you,’ he said. He frowned. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Adam. ‘I’m great. Just – you know, the air – it’s getting worse,’ he said hopefully. He patted the stool, remained standing. Manu, it was Manu and Eliza, of course. He wanted to say their names now, but it was too late. His skin tickled in the air conditioning. He considered the idea that maybe he had taken something, that the man on the train had slipped him something. The light in here was much too bright.

  ‘So we have some exciting news,’ Manu said, grinning. ‘I did try calling.’

  ‘My phone died,’ said Adam. He touched his pocket to check it was still there, looked at the floor, and decided to sit down. The stool was bolted to the ground. That’s why he hadn’t been able to move it.

  ‘We’re having a baby,’ Manu said. Adam lifted his gaze, set it carefully on the small target of Manu’s teeth. He put a hand against his own stomach. Yes, that was what it was. He could feel the warmth of life inside him, tender and protected.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ he said. He was very hungry and looked for a waiter.

  Eliza was grinning too, irresistibly. It made her bones show. ‘So we’ve decided to go back to Vancouver.’

  Adam stared. The teeth were clean and orderly. Good genes, effectively corrected.

  ‘Just for a year, anyway. It means making a few changes over here.’ Manu was speaking slowly and clearly, his dark eyes kind, making sure that he heard each word. Adam nodded, looked at the table as though lost in thought. Something good would come of this, a promotion, an opportunity. He imagined himself sitting between them on the plane, all three with laptops open, glasses on, each wearing something fine and pale. Of course, he did not wear glasses. On the table in front of him there was a cloth napkin, the rim a pale mustard yellow. He wanted to feel the texture of it. He picked it up and folded it in half, then in half again. He could not remember how to make the folds his sister taught him. He straightened. Eliza was blinking.

  ‘Have you eaten? Do you want something to drink? I’m only allowed tea,’ she laughed. ‘I feel so Chinese ordering it. I’m sure Charlie is disappointed in me.’

  ‘That or decaf,’ Manu said. ‘Heaven forbid.’

  Adam unfolded the napkin, started again. They could grow up together, in a new country.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Manu was looking at him oddly.

  He nodded, pushed the napkin away. ‘Charlie,’ he said, vacantly.

  ‘The barista here is a friend of ours,’ said Eliza. She waved towards the counter. A sign pointed behind a screen to a door marked by two little figures, a boy and a girl divided by one clear line.

  ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ Adam said.

  The warmth of the café floated around him, its studiedly perfect interior. Not a blade of hair out of place. Every seat full. Voices gentle, accents plentiful. Now that he was used to the light, it was beautiful. He longed for this happy atmosphere, even though he was already inside it. He pushed the door, found the light switch. Washed his face over the round bowl, looked into the mirror. He seemed shabby – not just his clothing and unshaven face but his skin, his outline. All his edges were blurred. Something wrong with his eyes, he thought. He stared into them and saw fine flecks of white in his brown irises. He’d never noticed them before.

  He looked at his hands, which were more coherent. Pressed his fingertips, cool from the water, into his palms, which were warm. These two parts of his hand seemed to belong to two different bodies. He pressed two fingers against his wrist until he was certain there was a pulse there. A little fast, but he was just excited. He had never been to Canada.

  No-one had died, least of all him. The people in the café were alive, real people, not images, or dreams. He wanted a fresh start. He tried to picture Canada, how he would find it living there. He imagined there was often snow. He might need glasses after all. He imagined he would learn to adjust.

  ‘You’re good?’

  ‘Awesome,’ he said. ‘And hey, congratulations again, you guys.’ He was proud of his steady, casual voice. The stool moved for him this time, and he sank onto it gratefully. ‘It’s great news.’ He pulled himself closer with the edge of the
table, and helped himself to water. He was light-headed, but wouldn’t eat until after this conversation was over. It would be a way to celebrate, preferably alone. Everything was about to change.

  Manu frowned, put one hand on his wife’s back. ‘Yes, we’re very happy,’ he said. ‘It’s come at a great time for us. It does mean that we’ll have to scale things back over here. I know this is not the best time to talk about work, but actually, I’ve been trying to reach you for a few days.’

  ‘My phone died,’ said Adam.

  Manu frowned again. ‘Yeah, so you said. Well, I am sorry to spring this on you, but we’ll have to put the brakes on our Beijing outfit for a while. We’ve decided to shut it all down.’

  Adam had stopped drinking, but the glass was still at his lip. He held it there a moment longer, and looked at the lower half of the world, distorted inside it. Their bodies blurred, the table mere geometry. Finally he put it down, wiped his mouth with one coherent hand.

  ‘I think you understand the situation is becoming . . . less encouraging,’ Eliza said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Adam. He did not lift his head. There was no trace of hurt in his voice.