Dark Cities
Page 27
The November night had fallen by the time Mildred locked Pre-Treasured Prizes and hurried away to the car park. The colourless glare of the streetlamps turned the painted man even paler. His white breaths lingered in front of his face, and Donald saw how few and how measured they were, presumably in aid of the performance. Donald was about to move on, having grown shivery from dallying, when he realised what he’d failed to notice. Street performers always left coins in a receptacle to encourage people to donate, but this fellow had nothing of the kind, despite having used the ploy when he’d played the headlong businessman. “Don’t you want to earn anything?” Donald murmured, but the whitened face didn’t twitch.
The evening crowds thinned out and vanished before he reached his apartment, on the ground floor of a converted warehouse in a side street that was becoming overrun with nightclubs. He changed his clothes and jogged to the gym, where he cycled and ran for a couple of hours. He didn’t mean to slow down while he had the energy to outdistance it, and he returned home with more of an appetite. His chicken casserole and half a bottle of wine kept him company for the duration of a Sinatra album, and then he was ready for bed, where he dealt with several chapters of this month’s choice for the reading group. At least the nightclubs were relatively dormant during the week, and he slept without much trouble until dawn.
He was on his way to the Pre-Treasured shop well before opening time. He preferred to be with people whenever he had the chance, but he wasn’t expecting to see the human statue so early in the day, or to find the man facing the shop. There was still no sign of money, not even the man’s own. Donald hitched up his quilted overcoat to extract a lukewarm pound, which he dropped at the man’s feet. He could only assume the performer didn’t think much of the amount, because he didn’t even twitch.
In the overcast winter light the pale eyes looked dull, unpleasantly close to lifeless. Donald felt as if they’d fixed him in the act of willing them to blink. He stared at them until he began to feel not much less cold than stone, and revived himself with an uneasy laugh. He was heading for the shop when he heard a rustle of activity behind him, but when he looked the statue seemed not to have stirred. “What did you just do?” he said. “You have to let people see what they paid for.”
He saw the man ignore him, which was too much. He came close to sprawling on his face as he crouched to recover the coin. “Last chance to show me,” he said without result, and pocketed the pound as he made for the shop.
As Mildred locked the door she said “You didn’t need to encourage him.”
“Why, what’s he been up to?”
“Nothing I’m aware of. I’m simply saying money paid to him may be income lost to us.”
“You should be glad I took mine back, then.”
“I hope nobody saw. That won’t do our image any good.” As if she was extending Donald an opportunity to redeem himself she said “We’ve had a box of books for you to price. Ninety-five for the paperbacks except one ninety-five for the big ones, and three ninety-five for the hardbacks unless they’re big enough for seven.”
“Ninety-five,” Donald added so wryly that he kept it under his breath. He was already aware of the prices and how she used them to embarrass customers, saying “Will you want your change? It’ll help to fight cancer.” His task took up the morning, not least because the books reminded him of the one the human statue held. Had Donald drawn the man’s attention by retrieving the coin? He had to keep glancing towards the window, but couldn’t tell whether the man was watching him across the book; indeed, the fellow never even seemed to blink. The spectacle had begun to unnerve Donald by the time he set about making space for the new books, and then he had a thought. “Hang on,” he said to nobody in particular as he found the book of local photographs.
While the lower floors of all the buildings on both sides of the street had been altered beyond recognition, the roofs and the architectural details beneath them hadn’t changed. Stone faces peered out below the eaves behind the statue in the photograph, but there was no sign of them across the road. The November chill fastened on Donald as he stepped outside to look for them. On his way past the human statue he glanced at the book—a ledger with its pages painted even whiter and then covered with names and dates, which had been dug into the surface so as to look carved. There was no sign of the architectural features anywhere in the street. “Excuse me,” he said, “you’re in the wrong place.”
Several bystanders stared at him as if he might be mad for talking to a statue. They weren’t behaving too impressively themselves, having already hung around so long that Donald could have thought the performer was infecting them with stillness. This close to the statue Donald saw that the eyes must be shut, the lids painted an unrelieved white, though he had to fend off the notion that the eyes had no pupils or colour, any more than they had lashes—that they were set like pebbles in the sockets. “You shouldn’t be here if you want to be real,” he said and retreated into the shop.
Mildred was transferring the book of old photographs to the window display. “What were you saying to him?”
“I was trying to move him. I thought you wanted him to go away.”
“I hope you didn’t say you were acting on my behalf. Did anyone else hear you?”
“I don’t think anyone was very interested. Maybe not even him.”
While that had to be part of the man’s act, he looked set to maintain his pose all day if not longer. As Donald made room for the latest lot of books by adding to the window display he tried to see the white eyes blink, but they never did. They must be the lids, because otherwise they would have pupils. All the same, he was glad to leave the sight behind when he went for his break.
The cramped back room smelled of stewed tea and Mildred’s fierce perfume, both of which might have infiltrated the drab brown wallpaper. Donald dangled a teabag in his Can That Cancer mug and lingered over sipping until he began to wonder if the statue might have shifted in his absence. He poured the remains of his tea into the thunderous metal sink and used the venerable toilet before hurrying out to rejoin Mildred, only to demand “Where’s he gone?”
Mildred glanced none too instantly towards the window. “He must have listened to you after all.”
“Yes, but did you see where he went?”
She gave Donald just as delayed a glance. “I was dealing with a customer.”
Why should Donald wish he’d seen the performer move? Surely all that mattered was his having moved, and now he was nowhere to be seen. On his way home Donald caught himself looking out for the statue, but everyone in sight was moving— at least, apart from a distant group of people halted by whatever they could see. Donald had to peer hard along the side street to be sure that they were queuing for a bus, though why should their inactivity have bothered him? He put on speed, not just to prove he could. Tonight was the meeting of the dining club.
This month they met at Crabracadabra, the new seafood restaurant across town. Some were couples, and all of them were at least Donald’s age. Quite a few of the topics of conversation— political failings, familial ailments—felt close to growing too familiar. As he tried to bring more vigour to the dialogue Donald was distracted by a waiter who loomed over him to serve wine. Even once he grasped that he’d been reminded how the human statue had towered over him while Donald recaptured the coin, he had to wait for his heart to steady and slow down.
Strolling home, he realised he was surrounded by statues— dummies in the store windows. He thought he’d left the lifeless shapes behind until he saw a figure down a side street. The man had no cause to move while he was waiting for a bus, of course, and perhaps he was a slow reader. A nearby streetlamp seemed to turn him as pale as the cover of the book in his hand.
Donald slept well enough. In the morning he had to flex his arms and legs to help wake up his heavy eyes. As he trotted to work he noticed that the bus stop wasn’t visible along the street where he’d seen the man reading, though why should it matter
? He was more disconcerted to see someone in the doorway of the shop, standing absolutely still with an object in his hands. Then the man turned to face him, revealing that the item was a jigsaw in a box. When Mildred let Donald in, the customer tried to follow him. “We’re open in ten minutes,” Mildred said.
“I’m just returning this. Since you’re a charity I won’t ask for my money back.”
Mildred sounded not far from affronted. “Why would you?”
“Half of it is missing. I’m surprised you offered it for sale.”
“Then I hope you’ll accept our apologies.” Once the door was locked she said more accusingly to Donald than he thought was called for “You’ll need to check this.”
As he sat behind the counter to count jigsaw pieces out of the box into the lid he felt like a schoolboy in detention. The stone eyes of a Roman statue gazed up from the midst of the cardboard chaos, and Donald could have imagined they were willing him to reassemble their body. “I’m afraid the customer was right,” he said. “A lot of it isn’t here.”
“Well, I don’t know how that could have happened.” This sounded like an indictment in search of a culprit. “You’d better see all the others are complete,” Mildred said.
Donald only just succeeded in staying amused by her attitude. People chose how they behaved, and he could. He felt he was back in detention, and perhaps defiance made him count the pieces of the jigsaws as slowly as he was able to bear, until he seemed to be in danger of dawdling to a standstill. People at the window didn’t help, though he needn’t think that the motionless folk were watching him, and in any case they couldn’t know that he was being penalised. In time he grasped why they were troubling him. While people generally halted when they were looking in shop windows, he’d begun to feel as if their stillness was both an imitation and a symptom of an unseen presence. Each time he established that a jigsaw was complete he stepped out of the shop on the pretext of taking a breather, but he could never be sure that the crowds weren’t concealing someone too pale and still.
That night the reading group met in the town’s solitary bookshop. Nearly all the members had chosen the month’s book, but very few had finished the novel, which was narrated in this year’s slang if not in a future lingo. Donald had made himself understand it so as not to feel left behind, but everyone else was more interested in regretting the present and yearning for the past it had dislodged. So tardily that he felt slowed down Donald realised this was his cue to ask “Does anyone remember where Samuel Huntley’s statue used to be?”
“Who?” more than one listener said, and the most historically inclined of them answered for Donald. “He was meant to be something of an educational pioneer.”
“In what way?” Donald felt inexplicably anxious to learn.
“He was supposed to have developed a method of calming his pupils, for one thing, but I don’t know how.”
“He mightn’t be too calm about having his statue knocked down,” another woman said.
Donald didn’t need the comment, surely only because it was a distraction. “But do you know where he,” he asked his informant, “that’s to say where it was?”
“Somewhere near here.” She shut her eyes, reminding him unnecessarily of the human statue, and opened them without having found more of a memory. “I should be able to tell you next month,” she said.
Donald had to suppress a ridiculous inkling that in some way this would be too late. As he returned to his apartment he was dogged by a notion that the plastic sculptures in the shops weren’t the only static figures he ought to notice. He was almost home when he saw one along a side street—somebody not quite as distant as last night’s loiterer had been. Perhaps he should feel heartened to observe that people still read books, although the man might just be consulting a street map by the light of the streetlamp that turned him unnaturally pale. He was certainly taking his time over the book, and Donald felt equally immobilised by trying to identify it without venturing closer. He didn’t stir until his efforts or the glare of the streetlamp began to make his eyes smart, and he had to jerk his body out of its torpor before he was able to hasten home.
That night he didn’t sleep a great deal. Drifting off felt too much like a threat of growing excessively still. Whenever he floundered awake he had to reconfirm that he could move his limbs and to ward off the idea that his plight was being watched or wished upon him. Of course he was alone in the ground-floor bedroom, where the curtains were too thoroughly shut for anyone to be able to peer in. A trace of streetlight surmounted the curtains, and having convinced himself yet again that he was alone in the dim room he made himself risk sleep.
As he trudged to work he found his panic hadn’t altogether left him. Might it catch up with him if he didn’t put on speed? He was panting by the time he reached the shop, and the sight of his winter breaths brought to mind a child’s portrayal of a steam train. He hadn’t seen a train like that since he was very young, and he didn’t want to dwell on the past in case it slowed him down.
Mildred was waiting to greet him. “What are we going to do today?” she said as though to a child.
“Stand around looking important.” Accusing her of that would hardly improve the situation. “What’s there to keep us busy?” Donald asked instead.
“The discs could do with checking. See all the cases match.”
Donald tried to lend the task more animation by tramping back and forth between the counter, where the discs were stored, and the shelves. He felt driven to behave yet more strenuously once Mildred started watching him, until she said “Haven’t you ever heard of time and motion, Donald?”
“I hope I’ve got plenty of both left.” When this went nowhere near amusing her he said “I just need to keep moving. You may find you do when you get to my age.”
“You’re making me feel idle, like your friend who was outside.” As various rejoinders clamoured in Donald’s head— the man was anything but his friend, she deserved to feel inert compared with Donald, he wasn’t causing it, surely nobody else could be—Mildred said “Take a few at a time to the counter. You’ll be tiring yourself out if you aren’t careful.”
The prospect of slowing to a standstill daunted him enough that he followed her suggestion. Instead of sitting at the counter he marched on the spot while he found the discs their cases, even after Mildred gave him a lengthy frown. Several cases for bands he’d never heard of—Chorus of Snails, the Devastating Artichokes, the Nostrils, the Complicit Eggs—had been stolen, presumably to house pirate copies. “We need less wandering about,” Mildred declared, “and more vigilance.”
Donald already felt unwillingly vigilant, watching out even when they had no customers, though he never caught anyone watching him. The compulsion accompanied him home and out again for his weekly meeting with friends in a downtown pub. He mightn’t have ventured into the streets overlooked by posturing plastic figures if he hadn’t wanted to question somebody who worked near the town hall. “Do you know if they’ve moved Samuel Huntley up your end of town?”
“I’ve really no idea, I’m glad to say.” Whatever the solicitor found objectionable, he said no more except “We can do without him.”
Another drinker was a doctor, and Donald turned to her. “Isn’t it quite common to wake in the night thinking someone’s there and you can’t move?”
“I wouldn’t say common.” As if taking pity on him she said “That’s what nightmares meant originally, waking up paralysed with the idea someone was causing it. Has that been happening to you?”
“It nearly may have. I won’t let it,” Donald vowed.
When he left the pub he found he’d had quite a lot to drink. The figures in the windows might almost have been mocking his bids to walk straight or stand still. He managed to laugh at his erratic progress until he was nearly home, when he caught sight of a man loitering in the middle of a side street. “Stay out of the road,” Donald managed mostly to pronounce, “before you get yourself run over.”
At least the blurred sight of the man let Donald stand still; in fact, he might almost have been forgetting how to behave otherwise. The thought overwhelmed him with a panic worse than any he’d experienced last night in bed. It seemed to rob him of speech, even of breath. With an effort that made his chest ache he sucked in a lungful of air, which released him. He staggered forward without meaning to and then without desiring it at all. “Go where you’re wanted,” he shouted, “and that isn’t here.” He’d already turned his back on the fellow, and was able to stumble home.
His conversation with the doctor didn’t help him sleep. It simply left him conscious that his experience wasn’t quite like the one she’d described, because he felt as if lying there in the dark could attract a watcher, unless his confrontation in the street had done so. Eventually he struggled out of bed and reeled across the room to fumble the curtains apart. The street was deserted except for an ill-defined face—his own dim reflection. After that he made himself lie still in bed, though this felt like a threat of paralysis. Sleep caught up with him at last, although never for very long, and he rose none too steadily before dawn.
By the time he left the apartment the streetlamps had shut down. Mist turned the ends of streets into charcoal sketches, imperfectly erased. Donald found he welcomed the vicious chill, which was bound to have driven the loiterer away. He felt like celebrating the absence as he reached the junction, but the man was still in the side street. He might not have stirred since Donald had last seen him, except that he was hundreds of yards closer. “Have you been like that all night?” Donald cried. “Are you completely mad?”