by Tobias Hill
It is something he has been waiting for all his life. And now the darkness is here again, and he is not ready. He is eclipsed. It is as if the life has gone out of him with the light. His legs buckle and he falls although there is nowhere to fall, only a movement through darkness into darkness. Something hits his head and it fills with stars. Their brightness hurts and he is glad of it.
He feels his head with his hands. There is blood, but not so much. The track metal is there, cold and hard, all the power gone out of it. The hammering comes again and the shouting. It could be near and faint, or far and loud. He doesn’t know. You know nothing, he thinks.
‘Casimir.’
His name comes hissing through the dark. Casimir. It sounds like blood. In the dark, someone is saying his name over and over.
‘Casimir Ariel Casimir Ariel –’
A rattle of sound. He closes his eyes again, trying to understand it. It sounds human. He thinks of laughter.
He knows who the voice must belong to, although he has never heard it. For the time being he has no name for it. He reaches down, feet and hands spread, holding on to the track for balance. Sways upwards. Now he is standing in the dark. The balance leaves him and he goes on standing, unable to move. The voice sighs and cries, near or far.
‘Ariel Casimir.’
‘Here. I am here.’
The words come to him like light. With them, he finds the strength to walk forward. Two, three steps. He closes his eyes again. It is easier with his eyes closed.
On the tenth step he walks into the great flat head of the train. He reels back, arms going out as he falls again. He doesn’t cry out. On the tunnel floor he rolls over on to all fours, head down between his shoulders. Teeth together, finding his breath.
‘Ariel Casimir.’
There is light in his hands. On the left hand. He raises it towards his face. It is the wristwatch, the only thing of his father’s he has kept. The glass is broken and the face is bent inwards, like a bottle top. But the luminosity is still there, shedding its faint limelight.
His eyes adjust. In the pitch-black tunnel, the glow of the watch-face is enough to pick out the whole of Casimir’s hand. He presses it against his face, breathing in long sighs, feeling the pulse slow in his wrist, forehead, heart.
‘Help me.’
He holds the watch out ahead of him. There is a figure, slumped face-up across the tracks. Casimir moves over, squatting above it.
The carer’s face is discoloured, the whole surface bruised dark. The crash has thrown him forward, twisting him in the air as the bones began to break. Ribs have been pushed through his shirt from the strength of the train’s impact, Casimir can’t see how many. The man’s arms are flung out, palms upwards.
‘Let me see her.’
‘Lie still.’
‘I’m sorry. I love her. I’m sorry for all of it.’
The man has been made monstrous with damage. His eyes are crusted with blood and tears but open, staring up into the green light. It reminds Casimir of his father, and he tries to picture him. A weak man, twisted by amorality and a brutal, simple nationalism. There was a photograph, he remembers. He had torn it up, letting it fall from the window, not wanting even to look at it.
He remembers Anna’s voice: There is good in you that comes from him. He wonders if it is true, and if the opposite is true: he wonders if he can be the monster his father was. Casimir thinks how easy it would be to kill the carer, here underground, where no one can see. To finish it cleanly, for Alice and himself. To make an ending of things and never have to look over his shoulder, back into the dark. He could do it with the strength of one hand.
‘Please.’
‘Shut up.’
Gently, he touches the man’s body. Feeling for damage, drawing back. The hammering and shouting come again, somewhere behind him. He ignores it. Holds the carer’s eyes with his own, steadying them.
‘I’m sorry. Can I say sorry to you?’
‘No. Not to me.’
‘Take me to her.’
‘Quiet now.’
He reaches under the man’s waist and head. Lifts him in one movement, head and spine held as still as he can manage. He waits for a few seconds, making sure of his footing. Then he starts to walk. Away from the train, southwards towards the station. He measures the steps out, cradling the carer.
‘I’m dying.’ The man sighs. Turns his head forwards. ‘It hurts. You wouldn’t believe how much.’
His feet crunch against the ballast stones. He moves with care. A parent or an undertaker. He remembers how strong his father was, and wonders whether Michal would have used his strength for this. Casimir thinks that perhaps he would.
He thinks of how old his father is. It occurs to him that there is still time to go back to him, in Poland. He wonders if the old man will ask him for forgiveness, and if he is the one to give it.
It takes a long time to round the tunnel’s curve. Now Casimir can see the light of the tunnel mouth. A tiny white oval, it becomes imperceptibly larger with each step. He keeps his eyes on it. He tries to remember where he is coming out. London or Poland. The deep forest or Astrakhan.
‘Can I see her?’
‘Yes.’
The tracks shine beside him, catching the distant light. Against the carer’s body, the palms of his hands ache and burn. The dark is still around him and behind him, but ahead of him there is light.
‘Are you taking me to her?’
‘Yes. Lie still.’
Now he can see Alice in the tunnel mouth. The light is behind her. He walks towards it, not looking back.
Acknowledgements
With thanks
For their help: the Figurski family in Warsaw, the London Wiener Library, the London Polish and Nigerian Embassies, the London Polish and Jewish Museums, the London Jewish Chronicle, the Astrakhan Kremlin staff, Jerry Murray at Goodge Street deep shelter, and London Transport staff at Belsize Park, Green Park, Down Street, British Museum, Camden Town and South Kentish Town. For rhythm: Charles Perry, ‘Portrait of a Young Man Drowning’. For financial assistance: the Harper-Wood Studentship for Literature, administered by St John’s College, Cambridge University.
A Note on the Author
Tobias Hill was born in London in 1970. He has published three award-winning collections of poetry, has worked as a rock-music critic for the Sunday Telegraph, and in 1998 was the inaugural resident poet at London Zoo.
Skin, a collection of stories, won the 1998 PEN/Macmillan Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 1998 Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. The Times compared the ‘surprise and precision’ of Hill’s writing to that of Nabokov, while the Independent dubbed him ‘a canny master of the uneasy and the alien, the slyly violent’.
By the Same Author
fiction
SKIN
THE HIDDEN
THE CRYPTOGRAPHER
THE LOVE OF STONES
poetry
YEAR OF THE DOG
MIDNIGHT IN THE CITY OF THE CLOCKS
ZOO
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Faber and Faber Limited
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com
Copyright © Tobias Hill, 1999
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP record for this book is available from the British L
ibrary
eISBN 978-1-4088-4261-4
Quoted material from: ‘All Along the Watchtower’
(Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix); ‘Electric Ladyland’ (Jimi Hendrix);
‘Flash Gordon’ (Queen, written by Freddie Mercury); ‘Teclo’ (P. J. Harvey,
written by Polly Jean Harvey, copyright Island Records Ltd); ‘Down to the
River’ (Bruce Springsteen); Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking-Glass;
Zbigniew Herbert, ‘Two Drops’, Selected Poems
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