Underground

by Tobias Hill

  ‘We’re perfect for him, you see? He needs foreigners who can walk around here, and not look foreign. Foreigners who look like Russians. Poles, not Iranians. It works like clockwork, you’ll see. Years of money. You look wet as a dog. What were you looking for, out there? There are whores in the lobby downstairs, if you want them. I’ll go for a walk, eh? Kazio? What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  On the TV the postman is waiting for a rope-ferry. The ferryman is a beautiful woman in shirtsleeves. They watch each other as the traffic drives off the platform, picking up dust.

  ‘Nothing nothing nothing.’ He turns back to the window. Outside the rain has eased. ‘You used to play a game when you were little, do you remember that? All you ever said was “Why?” Used to drive me mad. Do you remember that radio? When you filled it with – no. I suppose you were too young. Here. I’ve got something for you.’

  I don’t look up at him until he comes over and I have to. I see he’s wearing a new wristwatch. The face has slipped round but the band is heavy metal, steel and gold.

  ‘The Iranian gave me a new watch, see? Rolex Oyster. So I remember where his new office is, he said. It’s a joke. Oyster. Anyway, I want you to have this. Here, put it on, take it.’

  He is holding out his old watch, the one with the Lenin face and the radium dial. The strap is worn pale from years against his skin.

  ‘Please, Casimir.’

  There is need in his voice. I’ve never heard that before. I look up and it’s there in his face too. He’s still holding out the watch and I reach out fast and take it from him, strap it on. There’s only one notch-hole. Tomorrow I’ll make another, measured for myself.

  ‘There you go. How does it feel?’

  It feels good. More than the watch, it feels good to talk again. I look up at him and smile. Everything Jan said must be asked, and I will ask it. But there’s time. We still have days together.

  ‘It fits well. Thanks, Dad.’

  ‘Great. Really, I’m glad you like it.’ He claps me on the shoulder. My shirt’s still wet, warm with my sweat. He wipes his hand dry on his trousers. ‘Right, I’m off to bed. We start early tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good night. I’m glad you like it, eh?’

  “Night.’

  ‘Sleep well, Casimir. Good night.’

  We walk to the boat, towards the sea. First are the high brick buildings of Lenin Street, then the asphalt roads and shop fronts, then mud back streets and slumped-down wooden houses.

  In the end there’s nothing but shanty town. Chicken runs and dog kennels and hacked-down stumps poke out around the shacks. The back streets get thinner, become tracks. We walk single file, my father ahead like always. Little children play in the lanes. Whenever we come close to them they run ahead and stop again, like hedgerow birds. On our right are the high concrete walls of shipyards and naval docks. The wind hums in their razor wire.

  The shanty town opens out on to building sites and a stand of aspens crusted grey with bird shit and lichen. A caterpillar truck moves, way off across cleared land. The river is beside us, wide and green, and overhead the gulls reel out their fishing-line cries. The sandy mud sticks to my boots. Heavy clods of it, until my feet drag and my thighs ache. We stop often, scraping off furls of mud on driftwood and slag concrete.

  ‘How far is it now?’

  ‘Not far. Keep up, will you? We can’t be late.’

  Dad’s voice is hard again, as if last night never happened. I look down at the watch. We’ve been walking for three hours. The strap’s tight, now my blood is running hard. My wrist is bigger than my father’s.

  In the end we come to a stretch of empty warehouses and depot yards. The ground is black with oil and rust. In the shadow of a broken trailer my father steps too near a nest of mewling grey kittens. The skinny mother spits and runs away from us between wrecked machinery. Nothing else moves here except clouds. Around us are the shapes of derelict cranes and waterfront winches, the sky grey above their giant arms and feet.

  My father stops dead ahead of me. I can hear his breath coming fast. I see the whites of his eyes as he looks behind us. ‘Right here. This is the place. Christ. It feels like home.’

  ‘There’s no boat here. Do we wait –’

  When I look back at my father he’s already moving, clambering down to the water over the iron counterweight of a toppled crane. Beyond the crane is a lorry cargo hold, its rusted trunk leant twenty metres into the river, doors swung outwards towards the sea.

  My father wades in, arms and legs working, pushing out towards the container’s doors. The water soaks his blue jeans and green anorak and the cloth clings to his arms in ridges and bubbles.

  ‘Dad! Wait for me –’

  He doesn’t look back. I go down to the water’s edge quickly, pushing between rushes and lotus stalks. The Volga is cold as sea water, muddy where my father has already disturbed the bottom. From up ahead comes a groan of metal as he yanks at the rusty container doors, treading water outside them. I move hard, the water surging against my thighs, waist, up to the heart.

  ‘Dad?’

  My feet can’t reach the river bed any more. I imagine it in my mind. It feels deep. I swim out and round to the container’s high doors and through them, reaching up for the sharp metal, hauling myself into the half-light.

  The container is long as a church; long as St Barbary’s, by the Strug Estate. At the far end water slaps at the line of floor and wall. Above me the roof is high as two rooms, sheets and pocks of metal eaten away. There’s not much light, but the container is full of sound. The small whispers of water in darkness. The slap of shallows in the distance. The echoing clop of waves against the hull of a boat; the bump and creak of its tyre-stays against the walls. I rear back as it strains towards me, the wooden curve of the hull against my outstretched hands.

  ‘Casimir? Where the fuck are you?’

  ‘Here. I’m here.’

  My father leans over the boat’s side, looking down at me, and he chuckles. The noise travels on in the wrecked chamber, a shaking hiss of sound. ‘Mary and Jesus. You look like a dog now, boy. A dog in a sack in a river. Here, step on the tyres, got it? Out you come. Quickly. All right?’

  He turns away before I can answer. I stand on the boat’s deck, the shirt heavy on my chest. It’s hard to find my balance. The boat has benches around its walls, a flat planked floor, a motor with a crooked chimney pipe. The floor is crammed with rope and nets, buckets and life jackets, cans of fuel and long white boxes. I count six while my father checks the motor. They look big in the dark, looming white. I reach out to touch one. The plastic is hard and cool against my fingers.

  ‘Simple as a rowing boat, you see? Just a big rowboat with a motor in. No one’ll stop us, but if they do, you sit down and shut up. All right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. Off we go.’ He pulls the engine cord and the container fills with its smoke and bellowing noise.

  We edge outside, picking up speed. I take a big breath of the wind. It streams against my wet jeans and jacket and I can feel my skin cooling, cold. I look back at my father. Behind him is Astrakhan, the towers of mosques and movement of cranes already small with distance. He sits with one hand on the rudder, legs crossed at the ankles, wet blue shirt sticking to the folds of his belly.

  ‘How long to get there?’ I raise my voice over the chatter of the motor.

  My father screws up his face into the wind. ‘Three hours at least. Two to the coast. Sit back, get some rest. I’ll tell you if I want a nap. And stay away from the boxes.’

  The corners are round, clamped down with metal. They don’t shift as the boat thuds against the hard green backs of waves.

  I look round again. My teeth are beginning to chatter and it’s hard to talk. ‘What’s in the boxes?’

  The wind and sun have already dried his hair. It flies back from his face, twisted black.

  ‘Dad? What’s in them?’
r />   He doesn’t hear me. The river widens around us, slow and empty. There are no buildings on the banks now, just broken green where the trees are. A straggling line of sheep, down by the water. Pylons, marching away across the flatlands.

  ‘Dad? What’s in the boxes?’

  He looks back down at me, face still snarled up into the wind. He could be smiling but it’s hard to tell. ‘Stay away from them.’

  I sit still, not looking at my father. The boxes are close, I could lean forward and open the nearest. It would take almost no movement.

  The motor’s rhythm goes through the whole boat, settling in my bones. The smell of diesel is like home, sweet and warm. It would be easy to sleep. Easier. The sun is out now, clouds breaking up around it. I lean back against the thrum of the engine and close my eyes.

  I wake dizzy with the sun full on my face, my skin tingling with it, already burnt. I can hear my father, his hard voice. Another man, calmer, answering him. What language are they speaking? I hear words of Russian, Polish, Arabic. Other voices and languages I can’t understand. A shift and clank of movement, the sound of orders. I recognize orders in any language. Behind it all, the wash and hush of the open sea.

  I never knew my father spoke so much Arabic. I open my eyes. The sky is blue with high rib marks of white cloud. In one side of the sun is a chip mark. Small and black, as if the sun were made of glass. It hurts my eyes and I look away.

  There’s a plane next to us, floating on the sea. I’ve never seen a plane like this. Only in films. It has us in its shadow. On the wing are two men with dark skin, like the Iranian but with scarves on their hair. Their faces are wrinkled and a deep redbrown, as if the sun has managed to burn even them. Two more stand on the fishing boat. They lift up a white box between them. Eight hands on it, talking in their quiet, urgent tongue.

  I look round at my father. He stands above me, talking up to a fifth man. The man wears a Western suit of blue linen. He looks at an open box as he talks, not at my father. Listening to them move through languages is like being a child again, hearing my parents through doors and walls.

  ‘Forty. We agreed … less for less.’

  ‘… nothing. I just deliver them to you. Talk to the …’

  ‘Still, there is this problem. I can find better quality binary systems than this sprayed from the plane, this will leave a smaller footprint. Less deaths, is it not so?’

  I pull myself up. The man looks down at me and away without moving his face. His eyes are the colour of dried blood, set into crumpled skin. He goes on talking. As if I’m invisible.

  ‘… take them?’

  ‘… the VR 55. Only the binary form. The money I will discuss with the Iranian.’

  I look into the box. Inside is a plastic tub, transparent as old ice. Inside the tub is white powder. There are labels on the tub, written in Russian: VR-55, binary chemical 2. CAUTION: HAZARDOUS MATERIAL. A skull and crossbones. A storage number with many digits.

  I think of the flour mill, and my mother’s father. I think of the little bottles in the story of Alice: Drink Me. Flour and water, and the clack of glass, green and white. Little bottles. If you put them together, you make bread.

  The fifth man has a gun in his belt. Oiled black metal, like the chapel grilles in churches. Now he shouts to the other men and they close the last box and take it away. The plane rocks against us and I stumble forward against my father.

  ‘Casimir? Welcome back.’

  ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘Making our delivery. It’s just business.’

  ‘You said you would tell me.’

  My voice is thick with sleep, as if I’ve been drinking. My father looks round and high above us, the other man turns away. I can’t get my balance. My father turns away. ‘Nadir!’

  The fifth man raises his hand. The sun is above him, chipped and broken and bright. The wind flaps at the man’s thin blue suit. ‘Until next time, Mister Kazimierski. And to your son. God go with you. And travel fast. The eclipse has already begun.’

  The plane moves away, water boiling up behind it. The wind is colder now. The plane whines faster, lurching up into the air. I start to look up again but my father grabs my face, pulls my head down. ‘Kurva! Do you want to go blind? Don’t look up, understand?’

  I nod. My jaw hurts where he grabbed it.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Yes. I said yes.’

  I don’t look at him and he swears again, walking back to the engine. The boat rocks and slops under him. He pulls the engine cord and it comes to life, hacking and coughing.

  ‘Come here. Casimir? Get back here. If you’re minding the boat, you won’t look up. Hold it here. Right.’

  He stands beside me as I steer. The sea changes colour around us. First it’s shining, you can see down into its clear green-blue. Then the light no longer goes into it. The surface becomes dull, flat as slate, the way water looks in the early evening. I can feel my father standing next to me. Too close. The warmth of his arm in the cold air.

  ‘What was it? The powder.’

  ‘Why? What does it matter? It’s done now. We go back and get our pay. Business is business.’

  There’s no noise around us, only the clatter of the engine. The seagulls have stopped crying. I didn’t hear until they were gone. I start to look up but stop. After a time I see the seabirds in the distance, in the low sky, flying towards land.

  I laugh. ‘Flour and water.’

  ‘What?’ My father looks at me as if I am mad. Keen, careful eyes.

  ‘What does the powder do?’

  ‘It kills people.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘How should I know? Many. Many many many. How many mice dine on a loaf of bread?’

  ‘Why do the Russians sell it?’

  ‘They don’t need it any more. They no longer require it. So someone makes money out of it, it’s only natural.’

  My father bends forward, lighting a cigarette. It’s cold enough that I feel the smoke, warmth blown back into my face.

  ‘Two chemicals. You mix them together, like flour and water. And it makes a poison.’

  He looks up at me. ‘Clever boy.’

  ‘A chemical weapon.’

  ‘Only the best for the best.’

  There are shadows growing on the deck now, although light still catches through the gaps of planks above the waterline. I narrow my eyes to see. Through the cracks, light falls on the deck in hundreds of little crescents. The sun is being eaten away.

  ‘How will they die? Does their skin go numb?’

  He goes quiet then. We chop across the water. He looks across at me. Fearing me. ‘You touched it. When you were little. You remember that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory. It goes to your nerves, this stuff. One pinch on your skin, one drop, and everything goes numb. When your lungs go numb, you can’t breathe any more. Then you die.’

  ‘You should have told me. I will never come here again.’

  I don’t say it. Only in my head. A shudder of feeling goes through me. It’s because of the way the light is going. So fast, as if the world is grinding to a stop. It makes my skin crawl.

  ‘Money for nothing. I told you. We buy things now, to take back to Poland – but it’s just cover. Less questions asked. You don’t need to tell your mother. Christ, it’s getting cold. I could do with a coat now. Still, we’ve not far to go.’

  The light is going faster. Shadows pool out around the ropes, buckets and buoys. I look down. My shadow is growing straight out eastwards from my feet. My teeth are chattering again. I shake when I breathe, the fear gathering in my arms and chest.

  ‘Not too far. Keep on course, that’s it. Watch the coast and you’ll be fine. Watch the coast and don’t look up. Watch it. Casimir?’

  There is something happening behind us. I can feel it in the hair on my back and hear it too, a great silence. My father’s voice is small beside me. I look round.

  A shadow is coming
across the sea towards us, racing across the flat water. It is the shadow of the moon. It is as big as Poland. It makes no sound as it swallows us, a cold mouth without language. I look up, head right back on my shoulders. Straight up into the sun’s black death mask.

  ‘Casimir? Casimir?’

  I look back down for my father, but my father has gone. Beside me stands nothing but an evil man.

  11

  Care

  ‘I’m a dentist, I know. The range of colours in people’s teeth – fabulous. Like eyes.’

  ‘No, they’re not.’

  ‘I’m telling you –’

  ‘People don’t have green teeth, do they?’

  ‘Not usually, no.’

  ‘Well then. Nothing like eyes.’

  He opens his eyes. The northbound train is crowded with evening passengers. In front of Casimir is a wickerwork of limbs and torsos and, framed through that human mass, a couple talking. There is no other sound except the roar of the train. They are dressed for a night out, bright and dark and colourful, the woman sitting forward with her knees together. Casimir watches her nervous energy. He feels it in himself, all his muscles sprung tight. Waiting for action.

  At Kentish Town he rises against the train’s momentum and pushes through the crowd to the curved Tube doors. Their glass is still crystallized with rain from the city surface, miles south. The drops shiver out into roads as the train decelerates and grinds to a stop. Casimir steps out as the doors begin to open, hauling them apart, the grime staining his hands black.

  The station is full of people sheltering from the rain and ticket touts for the Forum concert halls, the sweet public smell of their wet clothes carried down shafts and wells. Casimir takes the escalator in long strides, not breathing fast yet, beginning to run harder as he reaches the street. The pavement is jammed with concert-goers around the all-night take-aways, eaters leaning on the unlit fronts of fish and flower shops, and he runs round the crowds and through them, stumbling once in the gutter as a car blares past. Drinkers yell after him outside the Vulture’s Perch and Castle Tavern.