Underground

by Tobias Hill

  ‘Did you put it back?’

  He blinks and stares, trying to take in everything at once. The room is long as a train carriage. Near the end where Casimir stands are a tall wooden lampshade and a bar heater, wires trailing away. The Underground air is uncomfortably humid. There is someone humped asleep under a pile of blankets, grey rat’s-tails spilling out across the floor. A man sitting against the near wall, broad head shining with sweat, staring back at Casimir.

  ‘I said, did you put it back?’

  ‘What?’

  The man turns his face away, expelling smoky breath through clenched teeth. There is a cigarette in his hand, burning down into a horn of ash.

  ‘He means the barbed wire. In the yard.’

  Casimir turns around. Alice has come in behind him. She is standing so close they almost touch. Her hair is tied back, and Casimir can see the collarbone under her skin. Like wings, he thinks. She reaches out and takes his hand. Turning it, feeling for the pulse with her forefingers.

  ‘Your pressure’s really low. I like your watch. Who’s the head?’

  He looks down. A tiny profile is embossed on the white face. ‘Lenin. The watch is from Russia.’

  ‘I like it. Two faces. I’ve got one too.’ She holds it up fast and close. He doesn’t jerk back. ‘It’s only digital. I set the alarm for 2.12 p.m. Not because I have to be anywhere. It’s just to see what I’m doing each day, at 2.12. It’s never the same, unless I’m sleeping. I’m glad you came back.’

  ‘Why?’

  She smiles. ‘I’m just glad. Why do you think?’

  The hammering starts up beyond the door at the far end of the long room. From here it sounds like an anvil being worked. When Casimir looks back at the Underground girl, she is still half-smiling, waiting for him to talk.

  He reaches out with his free hand, takes her hair, as if he is weighing its smooth mass. Lets it fall. ‘A woman died at my station. Did you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Another died last night.’

  Behind Casimir the man begins to cough; a hacking rhythm, three times.

  ‘I want to know why.’

  She watches him, sharp and feral. Gauging him with her quick eyes. She is so quiet he wonders if she is holding her breath. Then she is reaching out, putting her hands on his shoulders. He can smell food on her breath, warm and salty.

  ‘If we kissed, I’d have to stand on tiptoes.’ She leans on him, pushes herself away. ‘I’ve got to go. OK? I’ll be back soon. Wait for me.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  She doesn’t answer. He goes to the door in time to see her run down the cross-tunnel, out of the staircase’s green luminescence.

  He turns back. The man in still watching him. He is big, shaven-headed like a wrestler. When he speaks again his voice is thick with phlegm.

  ‘You’re a worker, ain’t you?’

  Casimir walks over and sits down. From here he can watch the greenish darkness of the doorway as he waits.

  ‘Yes, I work. On the Underground.’

  ‘A worker. Bloody hell. Congratulations.’

  The man smells of Elastoplast. His thick neck is wound round and round with skin-pink lengths of it.

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘Alice? Got to see a man about a god. No, that’s not right, is it? Spit meth, she’s gone for. Are you comfy? There’s blankets, if you want. Alice got them in a launderette.’

  ‘What is spit meth?’

  He leans towards Casimir, whispering and grinning. His nose is flattened out against broad cheekbones. ‘She’s good at getting things, she was in the papers for it. Blip Girl, the one-woman juvenile crime wave. That’s what they said. Spit meth? Some of the people on methadone want the stronger stuff and some of the people get a taste for methadone, so the people with methadone puke it back up and sell it. That’s spit meth. Everyone gets their poison. What’s yours?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He checks his watch, then looks back up at the doorway. It’s long past dawn. He feels wide awake. ‘Not spit meth.’

  ‘You didn’t take the lift down then?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘It’s out of order. There was a worker like you, got stuck in there for three days. Well out of order.’

  ‘I heard the story.’

  ‘It’s true. Have you got anything to eat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fuck and buggery. There’s nothing here either. Last thing I had was from that bloody Chan’s Kitchen, some Chinese crap, crispy arthritic duck. That’s a joke. Laugh like a drain, why don’t you? I used to live in a park, but that was crap too. It was crap spelled backwards, that’s why it was so shit.’ Something else juts into the man’s brain and he looks back at Casimir. ‘Are you wearing working underwear? Do you understand underground underwear, Mister Worker?’

  ‘My name is Casimir.’

  ‘Nice name. I’m Bill. That’s my wife, Hilary.’ He shakes Casimir’s hand and begins to talk rapidly, still holding on to Casimir’s fingertips. ‘Bill Aeaeae. That’s a nice name too. Like Circe, that was her other name you see. Names are important, aren’t they? Miss Circe Aeaeae – Miz of course, Miz nowadays, Circe was some time ago now. It’s all a matter of time. A stopped clock never boils – no, that’s not right, is it? Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. That’s it. That’s me, you see; a stopped clock. Not like you, poor you, always running, Mister Worker with your shiny watch. Always watch-watching, always running fast. You see? A fast clock never tells the right time at all. Better off stopping than window-shopping. You should come down here more often, sweetheart. Take a break, take a knick-knack. Like this.’

  He pulls out a hip-flask bottle from his parka. It is half-full of a gritty, brownish liquid. ‘Do you want it?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Spit meth. I told you. You can have it.’

  He shakes his head. Sits back from the man’s leering face. ‘Is Alice her real name?’

  ‘Alice? Why not? It’s very nice.’

  Casimir stands up, walks to the open door. Outside there is no sound except the hushed movement of air. Another train is coming, still far off.

  Bill yells after him as he walks aways down the cross-passage, ‘Are you going? Not out there? Ooh, how low can you go?’

  There is yellowed light ahead. Casimir turns a corner and finds himself at the end of the cross-tunnel, a bare light bulb hanging down from the arched, tiled ceiling. Three steps lead down to the southbound platform, and Casimir ducks under the bulb and walks out and stops in the centre of the ruined space. The echoes of his footsteps fade around him.

  The darkness is more substantial here. Casimir’s breathing comes quicker. He forces it slow. Across the tracks, the hall’s curved panels have been removed. An intestinal mass of pipes, cables and iron ridges has been exposed, their shiny lengths and knots running off towards the distant tunnel mouths. From the south come the sounds of trains, the whine-down of deceleration carried along the miles from other lines or stations.

  ‘It’s like that film. When they go into the mother ship and the walls get alien.’

  He turns round. Alice is further up the platform, sitting on an old ironwork bench. Her hands lie on her knees. Like a pianist waiting to play, he thinks. The tunnel wind is picking up, and it tugs against her open coat and hair.

  He walks over, sits down beside her. ‘I don’t see many films.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it.’ She turns to him, pushing back her hair. ‘No films, no clubs. What do you do at nights, Casimir?’

  ‘I work. When I am free, I go walking. I learn English.’

  ‘Do you like England, then?’

  He shrugs. ‘When I came my life was very bad. Now it is not so bad. I made my own life here. Yes, I like it.’

  Alice is smiling, lips pulled back against her gappy teeth. ‘I like sitting here, watching the trains. All the people inside them. No one ever looks out of the windows. You can run around and scream at th
em but they never notice. It’s like being invisible. When I was little I always wanted to be. And now I am.’

  ‘Why did you want to be invisible?’

  She stops smiling. ‘Don’t do that. You sound like a social worker. Everyone wants to be invisible sometimes. You do. Don’t you?’

  The wind is stronger now. He sits thinking, face lowered against it. Shakes his head.

  ‘Liar. Why did you come here tonight? Because of me or because of those women?’

  ‘They looked like you. I thought you might be in trouble –’

  ‘You came because of them.’

  ‘No.’ He meets her eyes and holds them. They are too close for the contact to be anything except aggression or desire. ‘I came because you are here.’ He feels no aggression. He needs to know what she feels.

  ‘Someone is following me.’

  ‘Are they here?’ He forces his words to be heard, eyes narrowed against the wind.

  She has been watching the northern tunnel mouth but now she looks round at him again, unsmiling. ‘No. No one finds me here, unless I want them to.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just someone. I’ve never seen him.’

  ‘How do you know it’s a man?’

  She shrugs and looks away. ‘I’ve heard him breathing. There’s a train coming.’

  The air pressure is rising to a roar, louder and more violent than at an active station. Behind the bench, a storeroom door begins to rattle in its frame.

  The air hammers against them as a train goes through at full speed. Windows flicker past, crowded bodies and profiles lit up and instantly gone.

  He looks back round at Alice. ‘Their names were Marion Asher and Rebecca Saville. Someone killed them.’

  She is still watching him. The roar of the train fades to a thread of sound. He leans towards her. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No.’ She looks past Casimir. Eyes unfocused, giving away nothing. ‘I was sleeping in your station. Then that woman died. I started hearing someone, in the station at night, and then all my stuff got stolen. My blanket and everything. So I came here. I ran along the tunnels and this is where I came out. Do you believe me?’

  ‘Yes.’ She is sitting so close they touch. He can’t feel her body’s warmth or coolness against his own. As if they are too similar, or as if she doesn’t exist. Invisible. ‘You were sleeping in the old cross-tunnel. By the railway sleepers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must have seen him.’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t sure. There are so many people there. Once I heard him in the cross-tunnel, in the dark. I kept still and he went past me. I came here a couple of days after that.’

  Casimir leans his head back. Takes a breath and lets it out, a long sigh. Mostly he feels relief, to be here with Alice, to hear her talk. But there are other feelings too, disturbances. She has always disturbed him.

  ‘You don’t need to stay down here. I have a room. You could stay with me.’

  She grins and tuts, kissing the back of her teeth with her tongue. ‘No one’s going to find me. I like it down here. There’s plugs for music and lights, room for my friends, and it’s warm. It’s safe down here, don’t you feel that? We don’t die if the bomb falls. It’s a good place. And I’ve got you now. You’re on my side.’

  ‘How long has he been following you?’

  She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. A long time. It doesn’t matter now.’

  She leans over him and presses her hand against his chest. Hard, so that Casimir can feel his ribs and sternum against his lungs and heart. He isn’t surprised by her strength. She kneels up, close to his face, staring. Her eyes jitter, as if she is trying to see round his own, to get inside him.

  Then she kneels back, letting him go. ‘You can stay with me, if you like.’

  ‘I can find out who is following you. There are places I can go.’

  ‘Good. Stay anyway. As long as you can.’

  She takes his hand as he stands. Her fingers are bony and cold and too small to reach across his palm. He follows her up the half-lit platform, past rusting escalator steps, their vertebrae of chainwork laid out flat. There is another side-tunnel here, another staircase. The darkness makes him blind and he closes his eyes against it, one hand on the worn wooden balustrade and the other around hers. At the top of the stairs is a door and she unlocks it in the dark and pulls him in and kisses him, reaching up against him. Pulls him down.

  There is bedding under them as he kneels, a thick pile of unzipped sleeping bags and blankets. Alice sits back from him, silhouetted dark against the dark as she pulls her skirt loose over her head. Her hair catches in the collar and he lifts it out. Lies back as she undresses him. He closes his eyes, feeling her hands and kisses against his chest. Her skin is very smooth, colourless in the dark. The cold lines of sleeping bag zips press against his back. Their lining is smooth as her skin.

  She makes almost no sound, nothing except the breath forced out of her by their movement. When he enters her she holds on tight to his arms, gripping the sides of his biceps, eyes open and watching. He lifts her under him, her smaller body moving against his, his hand around the small of her back.

  Even when she comes he can’t tell whether she is about to embrace him or push him away. Then she shoves him off, reaching down to strip off his condom, throwing it away. Curls up into herself, instantly asleep.

  For hours he watches her, naked against the arch of her spine. She mutters and laughs in her sleep. It surprises him that she gives away anything. Once – when he is on the verge of sleep, still raised up on one elbow – she begins to sing in a small, private voice.

  White scars run up from the curve of her hip to the hollow, angled blades of her upper back. Casimir counts their seams. There are seventeen, wrinkled and ugly, a patchwork of old violence. He doesn’t touch them. He thinks of knives. The movement of watch-works over blood.

  He kisses the backs of her thighs. The skin there is hot and still damp and salty, as if she is feverish. Her body has the rank smell of honey. He kisses her lips and temples and the thin back of her skull, at the roots of her wet hair. Her movements move his heart.

  He stands up. If he is to try and help Alice, then it is time to go. For a moment he waits, planning his route upwards through the dark.

  ‘Don’t look back.’

  She speaks without turning over. Casimir curses himself for waking her. Only as he bends and kisses her shoulder does he wonder how long she has been awake.

  ‘I have to go. Sleep well.’

  Her mutter is thick and anxious, running over itself. A voice out of dreams. ‘Don’t look back though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You just mustn’t.’ She is whispering now, subsiding back into sleep. ‘You just mustn’t.’

  He kisses her again. Then he goes. The streets outside are crowded with people and bright under a clear white sky.

  8

  The Feeling of Sight and the Feeling of Sliding

  I’m tall as my father. I am twelve and he is old.

  One time I was with my class in the school bus and I saw my father drunk. He was wearing a check suit. He was leaning on the windowsill of Kapelusze the clothes shop. The window is very big, with stone around it, so Dad looked smaller. Like a kid. His name is Michal.

  No one else saw him; they were shouting about Kozuck, the blind champion runner. I turned my back on the window and shouted too. My dad didn’t see me either because he was looking down, with his legs apart to steady himself. It was only me who saw what happened there.

  This was a while ago. It was easy to tell when Dad was drunk round then, because everything got more. More radio music to dance to. More happy, more angry. Nowadays it’s even easier. The only hard thing nowadays is finding him when he is sober.

  My mother forgot the morning of my birthday. It was only for a few seconds. I went in and she was reading at the glass table. I waited for her to say something and she didn’t know
why, I saw it in her eyes. Then she remembered and she kissed me and we went to open the presents.

  My life is ordinary. Not good, not bad. Sometimes it feels as if it’s getting worse. I dream of it as a feeling of sliding. My life sliding down a steep, dark hill, going under the ground. I can’t stop the slide, it is out of my control. It is my worst dream, but just a dream. I do not think my life is so different from anyone else’s.

  I got zúr soup the way I like it best, with horseradish and two eggs and a whole garlic sausage in, and I got marble cake and blue track-suit bottoms and blue trainers with white stripes. The trainers are imports, Made in the UK.

  I go running down through the Old Town. Smoke goes up from the apartment chimneys straight and brown as dead grass. When I get back I clean the dust off the trainers and put them neat together in my cupboard. There’s the smell of mushroom and cabbage dumplings frying for supper. Starlings outside, arguing for somewhere to sleep. The sound of my parents’ voices through the wall, high and low.

  ‘More than we can afford. Could’ve shown it a bit more.’

  ‘… quiet. He liked them.’

  ‘Never used to be.’

  ‘Growing up quiet. You know him. Still waters run deep.’

  My dad’s voice, louder. The screech of his chair going back. ‘Still waters run deep! “Deep water’s dangerous” – how’s that? What’s so good about deep water, eh? He’d be better for some work. I could use help anyway.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice is small and frightened and strong.

  ‘I could use him. How long’s that going to be?’

  ‘It’s almost ready now. Almost done.’

  I go on through. From the corridor I can smell the horseradish in the soup. The wooden floor tiles are loose under my bare feet.

  On my dad’s last birthday the TV weathermen said the moon would disappear. My father got everyone on the roof of Block C, but Piotrowski the caretaker made him pay dollars. We sat on the roof and drank Lech beer. It was evening and so cloudy, the sky looked like the inside of a bucket. The girls played the Shoe Game: lining their sandals and heels and house slippers up, and whoever’s shoes reached the edge of the roof, that girl would get married next. Then the rain came down so suddenly, it was like the bucket had been turned over on us. Dad shouted that if that was an eclipse, God could stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. After he shouted that, Piotrowski never spoke to us again. His skin is red under one eye, as if someone spilled hot wine on his face.