They must think they'd scared him off with all their mumbo-jumbo and telling him to go straight home. Let Matta sit and play his game, whatever it was, however he could. Hill was going to find out what they wanted to hide, before they had a chance to do so. Though night had already fallen in the alleys, he ought to be able to see in the dock.
Dark cold stone loomed over him on both sides, blinding him. Perhaps he was going too fast, for sometimes the ache in his knee made him stumble; the rough walls scraped his knuckles. He must have strained a muscle in his leg when the huge man had urged him forward, or when he'd left so hurriedly. At least there seemed to be no obstacles to hinder him.
But there were. He reached a junction only to find that the right-hand alley was blocked by a rusty bedstead. It hardly mattered, since that route led to the docks he had already seen. He groped to the left, mortar crumbling between the bricks and gritting beneath his nails.
Before long he'd had to turn aside several times. Piles of chains and bollards, and in one place a door jammed between the walls, blocked some of the routes; sometimes he had to retrace his steps. In those few places where the glow of the darkening sky managed to reach, he could see nothing but the claustrophobic alleys, the towering windowless walls. He wished he hadn't come so far, for he wasn't sure he could find his way back if he had to do so. If Matta's assistant was responsible for the blocking of the alleys, presumably he would have blocked the route into the dock.
Hill was trying to remember the way back when he heard the wallowing. Something large was moving through water, quite near. It must be a boat—perhaps the one that Matta wanted nobody to see. He limped to the next junction, and saw that the attempts to turn people away hadn't quite succeeded. At the far end of the left-hand alley he could just see the width of a dock.
The end of the alley was blocked by a heap of rubble and twisted metal. It would have kept most people out, especially now when it was so nearly dark, but he hadn't come so far only to leave Matta's assistant the chance to clear away any evidence. He clambered over the rubble and dropped to the uneven pavement, where he almost staggered straight into the water as his aching leg gave way.
More than the danger made him stumble backward. His first glimpse of the water had shown him something larger than he was, inching toward the pavement and rising to meet him. When he looked again he saw it was a length of piping, pale as the moon and stouter than a man. It must have been ripples that had made it seem to move.
He would have to hurry despite his leg, which he must have wrenched while clambering. Already he was having to strain his eyes, though at least the moon was just visible above the warehouse to his left. He limped in that direction, peering at the pavement, the water, the warehouses; the blackness peered back at him hundred-eyed. There seemed to be nothing to find, and he'd ventured beyond the edge of moonlight before he realized that it should not be there at all. How could the moon be only just clearing the roofs when he'd seen its brow half an hour ago, barely visible above a warehouse somewhere over here?
It couldn't have been the moon the first time, that was all. He hadn't time to brood over it, for he had noticed something rather more disturbing; access to the dock from the river was blocked. One end of a bridge had torn loose or been dislodged, wedging tons of rusty iron in the entrance. What could Matta have been waiting for that night if the dock was inaccessible? Just what game was he playing? Surely there was no need to run, whatever the answer was, but Hill was running headlong now, anxious to be out of the darkness. He was so anxious that he almost stepped into space before he realized that the pavement wasn't there.
His bad leg saved him. He'd tottered backward as it threatened to give way. Now he could see the crane, quivering like jelly underwater, through the hole it had torn out of the pavement. There were splintered planks too, which must have bridged the gap until they had been destroyed. The gap was far too wide for him to jump with a bad leg. All at once he felt he was a victim of another of Matta's games, and only his inarticulate rage stood between him and utter panic.
He had no reason to panic. Surely he could find his way back, since he had to do so. There was no point in waiting for the moon to rise higher, when the clouds never left it alone for very long; besides, he preferred not to see the dock more clearly—the walls and the water maggoty with windows, the buildings that seemed so lonely they no longer had anything human about them, the drowned objects that looked as if they were squirming. He was very near to panic as he scrambled over the rubble into the alley, particularly since the whitish pipe appeared to have drifted closer to the pavement. Perhaps it had been a distorted reflection of the moon; certainly it reminded him less of a pipe.
The moonlight didn't reach into the alleys. When he lowered himself from the heap of rubble, the shock of the darkness was almost physical. He made himself hurry— he knew that the floor of the alley was clear of obstructions—though it felt as if the walls had captured him, were leading him blindfolded, too fast for his limp. Somewhere behind him he heard the wallowing again, which sounded now like someone emerging hugely from a bath. He restrained himself from going back to see. He wasn't even sure that he wanted to know.
He'd regained some confidence, and was striding quickly despite his bad leg, when he ran straight into something like an outstretched limb. He'd cried out before he realized what the obstruction was: a pile of bollards. He must have taken a wrong turning in the dark.
He groped his way back to the last junction and limped in the other direction. Yes, this must be right, for now he was able to follow several alleys unhindered, and soon he could see an open space ahead. He was almost there before he saw the fallen bridge, and realized he had come back to the same alley into the dock.
He couldn't think where he had gone wrong. He could only trudge back into the narrow dark. At least the moonlight was beginning to filter down, and showed him an intersection almost at once. He was sure he hadn't turned here on his way to the dock; he would have noticed the row of whitish tires in the left-hand alley, tires stacked together like a pipe. In the intermittent moonlight they seemed to squirm restlessly, and he was glad he didn't have to pass them.
Three junctions further on he thought he'd found where he had gone wrong. That was a relief, because the moonlight was reaching as far into the alleys as it would come; soon the light would be receding. He could just see the walls in those moments when the clouds exposed the moon, and so he was able to run, despite the throbbing of his leg. He'd turned three corners, skinning his knuckles on one, before he almost ran into the stack of whitish tires.
It was impossible. He stumbled back a few yards to the intersection. There was the dock and the fallen bridge, two intersections distant. But hadn't he seen the tires in the first alley he'd crossed on his way from the dock? He must have been confused by the dark—and by Matta, for he felt as if he was trapped in another of Matta's games.
That made him feel childish, and in danger of panic. But he wasn't childish—Matta was, with his malevolent games. His face was what he was. No doubt he was still sitting with the game his assistant had given him, but Hill refused to try to deduce what that game might be. He needed all his wits to figure out the way back, before the fitful moonlight convinced him that the whitish tires were squirming silently, mouth open, down the alley toward him. They looked rather large for tires.
He turned before he was sure where to go, for the moonlight was draining away, up the walls. He plunged into the thickening dark. He was almost sure of his direction, but hadn't he been sure before? He was levering himself along with his hands on both walls, partly to feel that the suffocating dark was nothing but bricks. That wasn't entirely reassuring, for if he collided with anything now, the first part of him it would touch was his face. For some reason that anxiety intensified once he was out of sight of the whitish segments, the tires. But it was his left hand that collided with something in the dark, an object that was clinging to the wall.
It was a ladder. The icy run
gs felt scarred with rust, which flaked away beneath his fingers. The chafing set his teeth on edge, and he was limping away, relieved that it was only a ladder, before he realized the chance he was missing. He went back and bracing his heels against the wall, seized two rungs and tugged. The ladder held. At once, ignoring his bad leg, he began to climb.
It must be windy at the top, for he could hear a large object slithering closer across the roof. The wind didn't matter, for he wouldn't be crossing the roof. He needed only to climb high enough to see where the street was, which general direction he would have to follow. He was climbing eagerly toward the moonlight—too eagerly, for his aching leg gave way, and he almost fell. As he hung there, gripping the rungs in momentary panic, he was close to realizing what game Matta's assistant had brought him.
He tried to grasp the thought, less for its own sake than to distract himself from thinking how high he'd climbed in the dark. He was nearly at the top. Above him the sky swam grayly, suffocating the moon; the edge of the roof sailed free in space. He closed his eyes and clung to the metal, then he recommenced climbing, mechanically but carefully. Matta's game had had something like a worm, a maggot, carved on the box—something fat and sinuous. Of course! One of his hands grabbed a rusty handhold at the roof's edge, then he heaved himself up with the other. There he rested, eyes closed, before looking up. Of course, he should have known at once what the game must be—Matta's version of snakes and ladders.
He was still resting at the top of the ladder when the moon-colored fat-lipped mouth, yawning wide as its body and wider than his head, stooped toward him.
Welcomeland (1988)
Slade had been driving all day when he came to the road home. The sign isolated by the sullenly green landscape of overgrown canals and weedy fields had changed. Instead of the name of the town there was a yellow pointer, startlingly bright beneath the dull June sky, for the theme park. Presumably vandals had damaged it, for only the final syllables remained: -----MELAND. He mightn't have another chance to see what he'd helped to build. He'd found nothing on his drive north that his clients might want to buy or invest in. He lifted his foot from the brake and let the car carry him onward.
Suppressed gleams darted through the clogged canals, across the cranium of the landscape. The sun was a ball of mist that kept failing to form in the sky. The railway blocked Slade's view as he approached the town. He caught himself expecting to see the town laid out below him, but of course he'd only ever seen it like that from the train. The railway was as deserted as the road had been for the last hour of his drive.
The road sloped toward the bridge under the railway, between banks so untended that weeds lashed the car. The mouth of the bridge had been made into a gateway: gates painted gold were folded back against the wall of the embankment. The shrill darkness in the middle of the tunnel was so thick that Slade reached to turn on his headlamps. Then the car left its echoes behind and showed him the town, and he couldn't help sighing. It looked as if the building of the park had got no further than the gates.
He'd bought shares in the project when his father had forwarded the prospectus, with Slade's new address scribbled across it so harshly that the envelope had been torn in several places. He'd hoped the park might revive his father and the town now that employment, like Slade, had moved down south. Now his father was dead, and the entrepreneur had gone bankrupt soon after the shares had been issued, and the main street was shabbier than ever: the pavements were turning green, the net curtains of the gardenless terraces were grey as old cobwebs, the displays in the shop windows that interrupted the ranks of cramped houses had been drained of colour. Slade had to assume this was early closing day, for he could see nobody at all.
The town hadn't looked so unwelcoming when he'd left, but he felt as if it had. Nevertheless he owed the place a visit, the one he should have made when his father was dying, if only Slade had known he was, if only they hadn't become estranged when Slade's mother had died? "If only" just about summed up the town, he thought bitterly as he drove to the hotel.
The squat black building was broad as four houses and four storeys high. He'd often sheltered under the iron and glass awning from the rain, but whatever the place had been called in those days, it wasn't the Old Hotel. The revolving doors stumbled round their track with a chorus of stifled moans and let him into the dark brown lobby, where the only illumination came from a large skylight over the stairs. The thin grey-haired young woman at the desk tapped her chin several times in the rhythm of some tune she must be hearing (dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum), squared a stack of papers, and then she looked toward him with a smile and a raising of eyebrows. "Hello, may I help you?"
"Sorry, yes, of course." Slade stepped forward to let her see him. "I'd like a room for the night."
"What would you like?"
"Pardon? Something at the top," Slade stammered, beginning to blush as he tried not to stare at her vacant eyes.
"I'm sure we can accommodate you."
He didn't doubt it, since the keyboard behind her was full. "I'll fill in one of your forms then, shall I?"
"Thank you, sir, that's fine."
There was a pad of them in front of her, but no pen. Slade uncapped his fountain pen and completed the top form, then pushed the pad between her hands as they groped over the counter. "Room twenty will be at the top, won't it?" he said, too loudly. "Could I have that one?"
"If there's anything else we can do to make you more at home, just let us know."
He assumed that meant yes. "I'll get the key, shall I?"
"Thank you very much," she said, and thumped a bell on the counter. Perhaps she'd misheard him, but the man who opened the door between the stairs and the desk seemed to have heard Slade clearly enough, for he only poked his dim face toward the lobby before closing the door again. Slade leaned across the desk, his cheeks stiff with blushing, and managed to hook the key with one finger, almost swaying against the receptionist as he lunged. Working all day in the indirect light hadn't done her complexion any good, to put it mildly, and now he saw that the papers she was fidgeting with were blank. "That's done it," he babbled, and scrambled toward the stairs.
The upper floors were lit only by windows. Murky sunlight was retreating over ranks of featureless white doors. If the hotel was conserving electricity, that didn't seem to augur well for the health of the town. All the same, when he stepped into the room that smelled of stale carpet and crossed to the window to let in some air, he had his first sight of the park.
A terrace led away from the main road some hundred yards from the hotel, and there the side streets ended. The railway enclosed a mile or more of bulky unfamiliar buildings, of which he could distinguish little more than that they bore names on their roofs. All the names were turned away from him, but this must be the park. It was full of people, grouped among the buildings, and the railway had been made into a ride; cars with grinning mouths were stranded in dips in the track.
Surely there weren't people in the cars. They must be dummies, stored up there out of the way. Their long grey hair flapped, their heads swayed unanimously in the wind. They seemed more lively than the waiting crowd, but just now that didn't concern him. He was willing the house where he'd spent the first half of his life to have survived the rebuilding.
As he turned from the window he saw the card above the bedside phone. DIAL 9 FOR PARK INFORMATION, it said. He dialled and waited as the room settled back into staleness. Eventually he demanded, "Park Information?"
"Hello, may I help you?"
The response was so immediate that the speaker must have been waiting silently for him. As he stiffened to fend off the unexpectedness the voice said, "May we ask how you heard of our attraction?"
"I bought some shares," Slade said, distracted by wondering where he knew the man's voice from. "I'm from here, actually. Wanted to do what I could for the old place."
"We all have to return to our roots. No profit in delaying."
"I wanted to ask about the
park," Slade interrupted, resenting the way the voice had abandoned its official function. "Where does it end? What's still standing?"
"Less has changed than you might think."
"Would you know if Hope Street's still there?"
"Whatever people wanted most has been preserved, wherever they felt truly at home," the voice said, and even more maddeningly, "It's best if you go and look for yourself."
"When will the park be open?" Slade almost shouted.
"When you get there, never fear."
Slade gave up, and flung the receiver into the air, a theatrical gesture which made him blush furiously but which failed to silence the guilt the voice had awakened. He'd moved to London in order to live with the only woman he'd ever shared a bed with, and when they'd parted amicably less than a year later he had been unable to go home: his parents would have insisted that the breakup proved them right about her and the relationship. His father had blamed him for breaking his mother's heart, and the men hadn't spoken since her death. The way Slade's father had stared at him over her grave had withered Slade's feelings for good, but you prospered better without feelings, he'd often told himself. Now that he was home he felt compelled to make his peace with his memories.
He sent himself out of the room before his thoughts could weigh him down. The receptionist was fidgeting with her papers. As Slade stepped into the lobby the bellman's door opened, the shadowy face peered out and withdrew. Slade was at the revolving doors when the receptionist said, "Hello, may I help you?" He struggled out through the doors, his face blazing.
The street was still deserted. The deadened sky appeared to hover just above the slate roofs like a ghost of the smoke of the derelict factories. Even his car looked abandoned, grey with the grime of his drive. It was the only car on the road.
Was the park somehow soundproofed so as not to annoy the residents? Even if the rides hadn't begun, surely he ought to be able to hear the crowd beyond the houses. He felt as if the entire town were holding its breath. As he hurried along the buckled mossy pavement, his footsteps sounded metallic, mechanical. He turned the curve that led the road to the town hall. Among the scrawny houses of the terrace opposite him, there was a lit shop.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 103
