His interrogator was silent for a few moments. Finally he spoke. “That isn’t my department. My only concern is why your particular level of anxiety.”
“All those empty corridors. I kept looking for signs, for cameras. It made me paranoid.”
“Why would you be paranoid if your intentions were innocent?” The man glanced back at his uniformed partner.
“Why not? People don’t have to be guilty of anything to feel paranoia. Really, why the lack of signage? What if I were from a foreign country and knew no English, here in Britain for the first time?”
“If you did not speak English then the signs would hardly have helped.”
“But you could have used symbols, signs with graphics. There are international symbols for things.”
“Symbols mean different things to different peoples. What you might find innocent and comforting might fill another with terror. There are pitfalls everywhere.”
James’ anxiety reached its peak as he passed through passport control. He felt like a smuggler. All he had to smuggle in were his thoughts. What if they asked about Henry? What if they wondered why he had left Henry behind? He did not mention the museum, not wanting to seem an eccentric, stating simply that he would be sightseeing and his ticket home was for two weeks from his arrival. At that moment, he was not absolutely sure he would be using this return ticket, but he withheld that information because he had no idea why he might even think such a thing. He had no intention of skirting any laws, he simply could not imagine himself returning to America.
Walking the corridor that would lead him officially into England, he was struck by the posters of British children of all ages arranged on the walls, each holding a different small animal. All were smiling, but many of the smiles failed to convince. He recognised most of the animals: various cats, various dogs, a lamb, a large bird, a fawn, but some sparked no recognition at all. Perhaps these were rare animals native to the British Isles, or to some old colony, but wouldn’t he have encountered pictures of these creatures during his extensive reading? Several appeared to be of some unusual species of mole, the neck on one deformed or broken. One might have been a small otter with its teeth bared, its mouth alarmingly close to the slight, nervously grimacing red-headed little girl holding it.
“I take it you do not care for animals?”
“Oh, I like animals well enough. Cats, dogs, that sort of thing. I don’t care to have pets in my own house, but I know they give many people a great deal of pleasure.”
“Perhaps you have an issue with children?”
“Of course not! Why would you think such a thing? I may not spend a great deal of time with children—I have no children in my life right now—but I loved my own son and it would be wonderful to have him in my life again.”
“And yet the posters at the airport disturbed you?”
“Well, I think some of those children were disturbed, frightened, to be holding such creatures. You could see it in their faces.”
“Those posters are up all over England. It is part of the current RSPCA campaign. I have seen them many times, and those children have always looked very happy to me, blissful even, holding their lovely pets.”
“But some of those pets—well, they are a bit unusual, don’t you think?”
“No, no, not at all. They are quite standard British pets in these times. I take it you do not have such pets in America? I’ve never been to your country, but I would have imagined that you had pets like those as well.”
“No.” James sat, thinking back, wondering if he might have missed some trend because he didn’t watch television, or because he read the wrong newspapers, or simply because he had been so preoccupied. But he really didn’t think so. “No, we do not.”
Ahead of him, one of the overdressed passengers with a floppy hat and hanging edge of bandage walked vigorously, carrying a battered leather suitcase heavy enough to distort his or her stride. Around the turn, James was confronted by a mass of back-lit, shadow-swollen British heads atop ill-defined bodies, and he realised he and Clarence had never communicated how they would recognise one another.
He was on the edge of that seething conglomerate when a tall sliver peeled off and whispered, “James?”
He couldn’t see the person’s face for the glare, so he awkwardly tried to sidle around to an angle where the shadows fell helpfully. But he was blocked by someone else’s luggage. “Clarence, is that you?”
The tall figure bent down out of the light. He had a broad pale face with close-cropped blond hair. “At your pleasure.” A large hand trapped his own, trembling as it pumped his arm lightly. Then the glare was gone completely and he was staring up at Clarence in his old-fashioned brown suit and matching vest. James couldn’t help thinking of his own clothes: blue jeans and blue checked shirt, a Western-style belt, beat-up tennis shoes. It felt as if his father had come to pick him up at the airport for summer vacation. They looked at each other until a point of discomfort had been breached, then Clarence picked up James’ bag. “The station is this way,” he said, and strode away. James felt he should object to Clarence’s help with his luggage, but he couldn’t find the right words.
He ran to catch up, self-conscious about his lack of grace. He almost never ran, and imagined everyone must notice. His progress felt impeded by all the faces watching. He felt an irrational need to register every face he saw, especially the children’s, the young men’s. Perhaps Henry had secretly come to the airport to see him. But that made no sense—Henry couldn’t know he was coming. But still, there were many young men with jet-black hair. Henry could have been among them. James tried not to search the crowd for his son, but he could not help himself. It was all starting up again—the anxiety, the constant search. No wonder people viewed him with suspicion. He tried to avert his eyes but could not. His eyes continued to search the crowds. Would he even recognise him, ten years later and all grown up? Would it be like this the entire trip?
From the length and ramped-up enthusiasm of so many of Clarence’s e-mails, James had expected virtually non-stop conversation on a variety of interesting and/or esoteric topics. But his new acquaintance seemed reluctant and quiet in person.
They boarded the Overground, the car moving along with a roller-coaster shimmy. Several of those odd, overdressed, bandaged people were on the train. Just how many are there? James thought, not really desiring to speculate, but wondering if they might have arrived in other planes besides his.
“You’ve never asked me about all those bandaged people I saw on the plane, and after.”
His interrogator conferred with the man in uniform. “What about them?”
“Well, usually you question me when I’ve told you about unusual things I’ve witnessed on my trip.”
“We did not consider this unusual. Patients fly into London all the time for advanced medical treatment. It’s a normal occurrence—much like a child holding a favoured pet, I might add.”
“But so many in body bandages?”
The interrogator shrugged. “Terrible things happen to people, in many countries, especially in this day and age. Your friend, Clarence, did he comment on these bandaged people?”
“Well, no, no. Maybe he just didn’t notice them.”
“A psychologist might suggest that since you feel yourself a wounded individual, you see wounds everywhere. But then, I am not a psychologist, simply a low-paid police officer of little consequence. You, sir, are the one at the centre of attention.”
Clarence made no overtures of friendship and did not even attempt small talk. He seemed obsessed with parsing the details of James’ trip as quickly as possible, and as far as James could tell had not looked at him once since their initial meeting.
“I have booked you into a B&B near the British Museum,” Clarence stated, staring directly ahead. “Inexpensive, but clean. I would offer you lodging at my flat, but it is much too small, not big enough for me alone, really.”
“Oh, no problem. Thank you.”
> “Unfortunately I have things on my schedule this afternoon, a deadline on an indexing assignment. I don’t believe we have ever discussed our respective livelihoods, even after five years of correspondence, but I am a professional indexer. That does not mean I simply assemble a list of words and attach page numbers to it. There is a great deal of analysis involved. I not only read the text, I interpret it. I attempt to determine what the author is really saying, what images and themes obsess him, and I design an index to reflect that. If the author uses language and vocabulary in a manner outside the norm, I use alternate look-up strategies to enable the average reader to better navigate the text. I attempt to separate opinion from fact, explication from obvious obscuration. If you were to examine one of my indices closely, you would find the qualities of a critical essay, albeit in a highly structured, at times cryptographic form. I’m not sure the author would always appreciate what I have to say, but most are a bit too linear to really grasp what I am suggesting about their work. All of which is to say you must find your own entertainment this afternoon. But there are many things to see. I assume you have studied the many brochures I have sent you.”
It wasn’t a question, so James did not attempt to answer. Many of the fellow’s letters and e-mails had been like this—endless lectures on sometimes quite esoteric subjects. Despite his statement to the contrary, he had actually expounded many times in his correspondence concerning his indexing-profession-cum-philosophy. For the most part, James had learned to ignore vast amounts of what Clarence had to say until some nugget floated to the top. Clearly, Clarence was another socially awkward human being. Was there something about weird fiction that brought this quality out in its aficionados?
“Were you disappointed by his lack of social graces?”
“Well, no—they were about as I had expected. We’ve been corresponding for five years now, and his e-mails have been quite informative, but—well—rather awkward. He seems to have led a rather solitary existence, much like myself, but he does seem like a nice person under all that.”
“Still, to come all this way, to come alone into a foreign country, some friendly companionship would have been nice, particularly on your first day.”
“Yes, well, of course. But you do the best with what you have.”
“And you were able to maintain this attitude with no resentment?”
James tried to consider the question seriously. He always tried to be so flexible, so amenable to other people’s eccentricities. Did this blind him to what he actually felt? More importantly, did they think he’d wished Clarence harm?
Their trip had entered its Underground portion, the train dropping into a tunnel as they approached London’s urban sprawl. Soon they were stopping at tube stations and a mesmerising flow and exchange of commuters began. James was pleased to see that this part of London city-life, at least, had not changed since his previous trip a decade ago. Even the overdressed bandaged people with their inflamed skin—still in evidence as they boarded and disembarked the train at various stops—seemed more like eccentric immigrants now, here in London to do the jobs the native Brits didn’t want to do.
Familiar yet exotic names like Hammersmith and Gloucester and Knightsbridge appeared suddenly on fields of black-and-white tile. These names did not sound like foreign places, but still they weren’t the kinds of places you expected to find in America. It was an observation he’d also made on his previous trip. These English-speaking countries with their different governments and measuring systems, their different solutions for electrical connections or how an automobile might be driven, seemed at times like alternate world versions of America. Or like strangely distorted dreams of America. It was a terribly American-centric perception, of course (and relegated non-Americans to illusory status), and that thoroughly embarrassed him, but at least it was an honest admission.
“I hadn’t realised you were married,” Clarence suddenly said beside him.
James looked up, slightly red-faced. Did Clarence know he’d been ignoring him? “Pardon me?”
“You have a ring.”
James looked down at the wire-thick band. His finger had fattened around it. Soon he wouldn’t be able to take it off at all. He considered briefly that the finger itself might actually have to be removed someday, which felt oddly appropriate. “She died, some years ago.”
“Oh, I apologise.”
“No need. It was relatively sudden. An undiagnosed leukaemia.” He glanced up at Clarence’s puzzled face and frowned. “I’m sorry—that sounded abrupt. I suppose you didn’t really want to know any specifics. Chloe once said, ‘If anybody lives long enough, they die of something.’ I think it was her way of saying the body has a time limit, and it’s not designed to exist beyond a certain point. It seemed to help her deal with the anticipation of it—I think even though it was undiagnosed, she somehow knew. But it didn’t help me. Not at all.”
“Very interesting.” Clarence was suddenly animated. “The human body reaches its design limits, which will vary from model to model, if you will excuse the terminology. After that, some mutation at a cellular level is bound to occur, the tissues reorganising themselves into something else entirely.”
James felt an alarming impulse to slap him. He supposed he might have encouraged the man’s insensitivity—perhaps he’d been too glib in sharing that bit of personal information. Since they had first begun their e-mail exchanges, Clarence had periodically veered off into fantastic biological speculations—it was apparently one of his obsessions. But this seemed so oblivious. James wondered if his new friend was even less equipped for decent, normal conversation than he was—a situation James had hitherto considered impossible.
Clarence insisted on carrying James’ bag up the two flights to his room at the B&B, and James, who was thoroughly winded even without the bag, let him. For an indexer, Clarence was impressively fit, his feet pounding up the stairs, arms aggressively clutching James’ large bag to his chest as if it were a rescued child. The urgency in his action puzzled James.
After a series of rambling apologies Clarence walked out the door. James could hear his feet once again thundering on the stairs. He collapsed onto the edge of one of the beds—three were crammed into this long, narrow room—and looked around.
The room smelled like his grandmother’s house, and the furnishings were apparently of that same vintage. Besides the beds, two mismatched dressers were pushed together along one side, and the room seemed to be oversupplied with towel warmers mounted on the walls—he counted four. A coin-operated television was attached to one wall near the ceiling. He dropped the requested coins into the slot and watched a few minutes of news concerning personalities and issues he’d never heard of, before flipping among a variety of gardening and housekeeping shows and several American re-runs.
Over on BBC 0—Had there been such a channel during his previous trip? He didn’t think so—a smiling, red-faced man held up a giant vegetable unlike anything James had ever seen before, but the programme appeared to be about financial issues. Next, two men in period costume gesticulated angrily, set fire to papers in their hands, then danced merrily until their sleeves also caught fire before the men stumbled out of camera range. Next, an old man held up one of the toothy otter creatures, which screamed continually as the man stroked its belly. No eyes were visible in the creature’s head. In a following segment, several figures in heavy clothes and floppy hats laboured in a field. There was a close-up of bandaged, reddened hands holding the tools.
All this had a narrative voice-over in English, but the vocabulary for the most part was unfamiliar to him.
James did not go far for dinner, afraid he might not find his way back along the unfamiliar dark streets. He ordered fish and chips at a small local café. He didn’t recognise the names of any of the fish varieties on the menu, so ordered something in the middle of the price range. The fish had a faint smell of cloves and cinnamon. When he got outside he spat and spat in an attempt to get rid of the taste. The
crowd walking through the intersection eyed him with displeasure. He stared back at them, searching for the face of a familiar young man. It was ridiculous—he wouldn’t simply find Henry by random accident. Eventually he found he could straighten up and walk more or less upright, although with each step nausea came to lap at the back of his eyes.
London was every bit as crowded as he remembered, people walking elbow to elbow, some dazed like himself, many proceeding rapidly on one mission or other. When he reached a row of shops, every other window invariably displayed one of those humane society posters with the strange animals. No one stopped, or appeared to notice in any way, so he assumed these creatures were indeed common household pets.
With one exception. He passed a smaller bandaged person close to a window with a poster featuring the mole-like creatures, one arm raised to the glass and a tiny appendage which might have been a finger except it looked so thin, so red, touching the area in front of the mole’s head.
There appeared to be more beggars and homeless people in evidence than the last time he’d been in this city. Every block or so there would be a gathering huddled around the corner of some old building. Passing a group, he heard musical mumblings in a foreign tongue he did not recognise.
At the edge of a park a rag-swaddled figure had climbed up on a bench and was humming a loud atonal composition into the smoky evening air. Very few passers-by paid attention.
Just as he remembered, the night fell quickly during this part of the year. Shadows grew increasingly complicated until James felt an urgent need to get in off the streets. Low movements whipped across the broken stone pavements. There were garbled complaints followed by running into buildings he could not quite see. People began to leave the streets quickly and he did his best to follow suit.
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