Underground

by Tobias Hill

  It’s true what Piotr said. She has no cock, just the skin and a hole. It’s terrible. I shout and let go because I’m surprised to see it.

  When I start shouting, she stops crying; now she is just looking at me. Something has happened and I cannot understand. I go away from her three steps. She’s putting her dress down straight, not even looking at me; she isn’t scared of me now. I turn back from her and run.

  I look for her again. She is sitting on the ground. She has little stones from the asphalt. She is making patterns of black stones on the white sand.

  Will I talk to her? Yes, I will.

  ‘Do you forgive me?’ She says nothing. I sit down. ‘Do you have a Polski Fiat? Because your hair is red. Red is for people with cars.’

  Hanna looks up at me very quick, with her eyes and nose screwed up.

  ‘You’re stupid, Casimir. Red is for Communists.’

  I don’t hit her when she calls me stupid. Everybody hates her so I don’t bother. I ask her, ‘What is Communists?’

  She shrugs. ‘Communists have cars. Like my father.’

  Now she goes back to her stones. She is making words, black on white. I can read it pretty well now. She showed me how to do it. The stones make HANNA.

  It is Mother’s birthday and so we go to the Restaurant Diamont. There are red curtains, red carpets, red walls, red cloths on the tables. There is a piano but it isn’t red. A restaurant man comes with a list of food. He has a red tie clipped on his white collar.

  It can only mean two things. Either the Restaurant Diamont is all Communists or the restaurant man has brilliant cars. I ask him when he brings the food but everyone is talking and he doesn’t hear me. I get cherry soup with stones in it and then pork. Father asks for steak tartare, but they don’t have it, and caviare, but they don’t have it either; the man’s list is quite wrong.

  Mother drinks vodka with bison grass. They have that. Her dress is made in London and the buttons shine. It’s so beautiful, it makes her look tired. Father never looks tired.

  He puts his food away fast and I do too. When it’s all gone, he wipes his mouth three times on a red napkin. ‘Heh. Why not play the piano?’

  ‘Michal. No.’

  ‘Go on. Play. Play!’ He’s smiling. She is too.

  Mother goes to the piano. Everyone looks at her but she looks at no one. The waiter opens it for her but she doesn’t notice. What is she doing? She just sits there with her hands on her knees and her head down. Then all at the same time she breathes out and looks up and starts to play.

  She makes beautiful music. I didn’t know she could do that. When she has finished, everyone claps for her. When Mother smiles her lips stop against her teeth. Not like Father. When he smiles you can see his gums and the insides of his mouth and the gold dog teeth.

  Once I had lots of lists but now there is only one. It’s the list of trees. Some is from the radio programme Poland: Forest, Lake & Mountain and some is mine. I keep it all in my head. I say it to myself before sleep.

  Larch. Interestingly, in the coldest climes it is the deciduous trees that flourish. Take the larch. Tall and handsome, it conserves water by shedding its leaves, and so it thrives where evergreens cannot.

  Larches look dead. They go near death and trick it. It takes patience.

  Poplar. They are twisted and black like balcony metal. When you break branches they’re the colour of rust.

  Firs go up in green heaps. The biggest heap at the bottom. At Christmas we put lights on one while we wait for the first evening star, when we can eat. Last Christmas the Gypsies came with a thing blown up and we jumped on it.

  Pines. From the Krakow train they are all one green height, like soldiers. Inside they are like a cage. The cage has no inside or outside. It moves with you.

  Birch. Snow goes blue in shadow but birches don’t, so birches are whiter than snow. You can peel the skin off like white sunburn. On Piotr’s farm there are fat old birches and we peeled one and wrapped up Monika and she looked like an Extra Mocne cigarette.

  They are white against the sky. All other trees are dark. Inside birch forests the darkness is broken up with white lines. Ice weighs down the saplings and they make doorways in and out.

  At night they are so white and clear, straight and arched and leaning, it must mean something. It looks like writing. If it was English I would never know. I look hard to read the language of trees.

  I walk to the forest. The land goes away in lines: a picket fence, a long dirt path, then railway rusted up orange. A woman is on the path, walking balanced with buckets of potatoes.

  Now the forest. The soft ground smells sweet as coal. The orange railway goes on, east towards Oswiecim. Sometimes there are pylons like tall grey climbing frames. There is nothing else, nothing made. Only me. The forest is dark and safe and in it I know everything.

  ‘Casimir’s got a Yid girl!’

  Wladislaw says it. We are in class and waiting for Mrs Nalkowska. He is smiling and his eyes shine, as if he has found out a wonderful joke.

  No one laughs, not yet. As for me, I say nothing. I don’t look at Hanna for the whole lesson, not at anything, I just sit here with my eyes on the desk. Grey metal, like Russian guns. Hanna keeps looking at me; I see her doing it. I hate her for it. I wish she would look away.

  I wait until the lesson is over and we are in the playground. Out here it is just children and for the moment it is better like this. Wladislaw is with all his friends by the back wall and I am alone.

  I go up to him. They’re eating Nuscaat bars from the Strug Estate shop. I knew that one day I would have to fight Wladislaw anyway. My pockets are heavy because they are full of sand from the pit. His friends all lean around against the wall.

  ‘Why did you say that lie about me?’ I meant my voice to be loud, but it comes out soft. It’s still clear, though. Wladislaw takes his hands out of his pockets.

  ‘Piss off, Casimir. You’ve got no friends round here.’ His eyes are narrow and blue. It makes him look worried, even though he is bigger than me. It is not so good always having friends, because now he can’t run away.

  He comes up to me, close. I can smell candy in his mouth. Brandos, warm and sweet like animals breathing. ‘Go fuck your Jewish girl.’ He smiles around the candy and starts to say something else.

  I push the sand up into his face, into his eyes and mouth with the heel of my hand. He groans and bends over. Green drool and sand come out between his teeth but I keep pushing. I am good with my hands, like my father. I hold on to his hair with one hand and his face with the other. Then I throw his head back into the wall. It makes a noise like a hoofbeat on cobbles.

  After the fight no one talks to me much. I stay away from Hanna. She plays by herself at the edge of the yard, making words with stones.

  Me and Mother and Father, we are listening to the radio. It is the Thirtieth Anniversary of the People’s Republic. Even the music is better than this. I look at Mother’s hands on the kitchen table. Her fingers are big, red, hard on the sides of them. The nails are dotty with old bits of red paint. I turn the hands in my hands. Back, front, back.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Nothing. There is nothing wrong with them. They are just my mother’s hands.

  ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Casimir Ariel.’

  ‘Ariel? Ariel what?’ This is the Militia man who is talking. He has a big moustache. I am by the Ikarus Street cheese shop, waiting for my mum to come out. Why did I tell him my other name? It just came out. But he is Militia, he must know all my names.

  ‘Kazimierski.’ He is looking at me hard and straight.

  ‘Kazimierski. What does your father do, Ariel?’

  I shrug. ‘Lots of things.’ I wish he wouldn’t look at me so hard. He smiles.

  ‘What is his job?’

  I can’t remember. My dad goes to Russia for money. I shrug again; I try and hide down between my shoulders. ‘He’s my dad. That’s all.’

  ‘Wher
e is he from, your father?’

  ‘Casimir?’

  The Militia man and me look round. It is my mum.

  ‘Mum!’

  It’s great to see her. She gives the Militia man a hell of a look. He stands up straight and tries to say something but it comes out soft and jumbled; it is half one thing and half the other. He clicks his heels and bows and goes. I sit close to Mum on the tram home. I would hold her hand if I could, but people are there.

  He is my dad. That’s all.

  It’s the night of St Andrew’s Day. In my grandad’s room there are:

  Eight big cans of Russian fish with pictures on.

  Two boxes of Russian vodka. There were three until tonight.

  The gun of a cosmonaut in a wooden box.

  Fish eggs in little jars. Lots of them.

  Furs. Smooth black and grey curly. The smell of them is so strong I can’t smell Grandfather any more. I don’t know how he stands it. The gun is small and ordinary with Russian on it. Dad says it was in case the cosmonaut came down in a jungle. It was a present to Dad from colleagues. It has a red star on it too.

  St Andrew’s Day. The guest room is full of people. I go round counting cigarettes. Elzbieta and Eva smoke Carmen. Mr Wittlin and Mr Chorzelski smoke Caro. Grandfather smokes Extra Mocne and coughs black spit. My father smokes the fastest and it is Marlboro. Once he offers them round. Everybody takes one except Mother.

  ‘Casimir! Oh, sweet little big child. Come here. Hup.’ It is Eva. She is Father’s friend, like everyone. She is old and her hair is purple. ‘Look what your Auntie Elzbieta is doing, see?’

  Elzbieta isn’t my aunt. I look anyway. On the table she has my green candle, our door key and the washing-up bowl. The bowl is purple plastic with black bits and full of water. Wax drips from the candle, through the key’s hole, into the bowl.

  ‘You see? She’s telling her fortune.’

  ‘I know what she’s doing.’ Eva’s breath feels wet against my ear. I don’t like her breath or the fortune-telling either. It is better not to know. I try to get down but Eva holds me tight. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Poor little big boy. Look, look! It’s a palace!’

  Everyone looks. There is wax on the water and Eva says it looks like a palace, so Elzbieta will get rich. I lean over the bowl to see, but there is no palace; the wax is just wax. Dad comes round with more vodka. His face is red with drinking, burnt with it around the eyes. His eyes are shiny and clear, like the vodka. He shouts and waves to Mother.

  ‘You see what Elzbieta has got? Palaces. Palaces, Anna, wife. Come here and we’ll find our future, eh? Maybe we’ll find my big deal.’

  My mother shakes her head. She is standing in the guest room doorway. The air comes in cold behind her.

  ‘Dear wife, come.’

  My mother turns back, out of the doorway. She didn’t smile.

  Eva shouts after her, ‘Anna! What are you afraid of, eh? An unhappy marriage?’

  Everyone goes quiet. I get away from Eva and go. Mother is in the kitchen, making beetroot soup and cabbage pasties. The stove flame makes her face blue and calm. She is singing to herself, words I can’t understand. Sometimes she does that. When she sees me she smiles but not until.

  ‘Hello, love. Are you having a good time?’

  ‘Yes. Are you?’

  She laughs in the stove light. ‘Me?’ She picks me up. She is thin but strong, my mother. ‘Thank you for asking, Casimir. Sometimes I worry about your father, that’s all. About what he plans to do for work. Bedtime, yes? I’ll ask them to be quieter.’

  ‘And get my candle back.’

  ‘And the candle.’

  I try to sleep. The light comes in, long flowers of it through the net curtains. Gold from the streets and grey from the moon.

  I know why my mother is afraid. It is not because of my dad. I go to the window and stand. There is a coal train going east. I count the trucks up to thirty-one. Past the train are the railway’s blue lights. Then birch forest, the line of its edge like writing. I screw up my eyes to read what it says. My mother will die at sea, but if there is a way to save her I’ll find it. Like a good rat, finding the way.

  5

  Alice on the Underground

  He is woken by the flash of sunlight between houses. The Underground carriage has come out of the dark, on to the surface tracks north of Tottenham. Casimir looks out at the rows of pebbledash houses, disoriented for a moment. Terraces stop dead where the railway runs through them.

  At Blackhorse Road he gets off, takes Adams’s address from his pocket, then walks towards Coppermill Lane. After a few blocks the buildings begin to separate out. High metal fences run on towards the Walthamstow marshes. The wind comes in over open country, whining in the razor wire. The air smells of water and Casimir feels something shift inside him, a sense of loneliness as he looks at the last houses, their peeling clapboard and isolation.

  Number 215 is the last before the road ends. There is a sign on the fence behind Adams’s house: DANGER DEEP WATER. RESERVOIR NO. 5. Through the fencing Casimir can see electricity pylons marching off eastwards between colossal stretches of water, railway sidings and dump-hills of sand and gravel. Miles away is the pyramid summit of Canary Wharf tower, already illuminated in the early evening light.

  The windows of the house are dark and uncurtained. Casimir walks up towards them between soft white beds of pansy and cyclamen. From the door he can see Adams, hunched forward in a front-room armchair.

  He rings the bell and the supervisor turns his head. His face is round and moon-like in the dark room. He raises a hand to Casimir and stands, supporting himself on the arms of the chair. Casimir turns and looks out across the reservoirs while he waits. A flock of birds is settling over the water, silhouetted against the sky.

  ‘I told you not to come.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I need to –’ he searches for the English phrase – ‘to sort things out. About what is happening, underground. It’s important to me.’

  ‘I’m not even talking to the police. Why d’you think I’ll see you?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why? You haven’t done anything yet. Come in.’ The supervisor goes back into the front room and Casimir follows him through.

  ‘I can do you tea or coffee, if you like.’

  He sees that he was wrong; the room is not dark but full of mobile light. It is reflected from the water outside, then again off the polished wooden surfaces of furniture, so that the room is filled with an oddly beautiful lucidity. There is the tick of a carriage clock from the mantelpiece. Photographs of smiling faces. The sweet musty smell of old cigarettes and English food.

  He goes to an armchair, sits down. ‘I would prefer alcohol.’

  ‘I don’t drink.’

  Adams is still standing, so that Casimir can’t make out his face. Only his voice, the tightening of it. The edge of what might be anger or a lie. But he has seen Adams angry before and his anger is not quiet like this. He waits, head slightly to one side, not looking at the other man or away.

  After a moment the supervisor walks towards the mantelpiece. In the half-dark there is the sound of a screw-top on the lip of a bottle, the clink of tumblers and liquid. He turns back without speaking, hands a glass to Casimir. Then he sits down in the second armchair with his back to the window, takes a drink, bares his teeth as he swallows. Casimir can smell the whisky in his own glass, cheap and harsh.

  ‘You have a nice home. Close to the water.’

  ‘Tell me what you want, Casimir.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘To the girl?’ Adams barks laughter. A nervous, unhappy sound, without humour. ‘She fell, that’s all. It might be she was pushed or it might not. If it’s an accident it’s bad, if it wasn’t it’s worse than bad. I don’t think it was an accident. I think there’s someone down there who gives me the frights. I can’t tell you anything you haven’t thought for yourself.’

  Casimir sits forward in the a
rmchair, the glass held in both hands. He waits patiently for the supervisor to go on. A car goes past outside, high beams wheeling light across the far wall. Adams looks up at the window, eyes narrow. When he talks again his voice is soft, an amazed whisper.

  ‘Thirty-seven years I worked down there. Quite a time.’

  ‘You think she was pushed.’ He watches Adams’s slight nod. ‘Sievwright was talking about another killing. Someone else who was pushed, years ago.’

  ‘Was he now? Sievwright doesn’t half talk, eh? It wasn’t just one person pushed. Three died. The last one was at my station. Ours, Camden. That was the first time I thought, maybe I don’t like it down here any more. Underground. Maybe it’s changing down here, I thought. And I was right.’ Adams screws up his eyes, presses his fingers gently against the eyelids. ‘It was a few years before you came. One day after the general election, so I remember it – 12 June 1987. That’s when they caught him. His name was Thomas Gray. They kicked him out of hospital, so he was living down in side-passages. Got away with it for months, staying down there all night, out of the way of the cameras. Not that we watch, half the time, or know half the tunnels there are any more.’

  ‘Where did he hide?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? Maybe he was in the old cross-tunnels, like you thought someone was the other day. There’s all kinds of places down there. Snickets and pope-holes, you know that. He probably knew it better than we did. You’ll not guess how we caught him. All the men he pushed looked just like him. Only men, spitting images. He just waited in the crowds for someone to come along. Six million people a day. All he had to do was wait.’

  Adams’s voice has gone soft and rapid. Private, no longer meant for Casimir. ‘I caught him, as it happens. I was the one who recognized him. I thought I was stopping something then, I really did, but he wasn’t the only one. You see? He was just the first one I noticed. And this one’s going to be the last, because I’ve fucking well had it up to here.’

  Casimir hears the chink of ice. As if the older man is swirling his glass, or as if his hands are shaking.