Ripped

by Frederic Lindsay

  'I'm not a Jew,' Merchant said. He rubbed his fingers between his brows in the same unconscious effort of recollection. 'When the Nazis came to Poland, they had two plans for extermination, but only one was for the Jews – the other was for the intellectuals. After the massacre at Bromberg on Bloody Sunday, all the politicals were gathered in the camp at Soldavo - that was in the winter of 1939. I was only nineteen – a boy at University – but I had made the mistake of being the President of a left-wing student society. Heydrich had personally ordered that the activists should be killed. We didn't know all that naturally. We were the victims. I saw a guard kill a boy. I saw worse things later but because that was the first I would not forget him. It wasn't what he did to the boy, it was the noise. There's a noise a baby makes crying.'

  A muscle in Murray's thigh had cramped. It was as if he had been sitting very still for a long time. Cautiously, he eased it, while Merchant talked on as if compelled about that lost time. He wondered if the older man was ill, and even, fantastically, if it was possible that he had been told he was going to die.

  'All that stuff,' Murray said, 'it's the past,' and fell silent.

  'No,' Merchant said. 'The guard who killed the boy is here in the city. I saw him on Saturday night. I knew him at once.'

  His voice trailed away and he sat looking at his hands like a discarded prayer folded over the file of official papers. 'All that stuff,' Murray said almost gently, the way you talk to someone who is sick, 'about being a Jew in the camps. Nobody wants to hear about that Jewish stuff. All the Socialists are flying the PLO flag now. Don't you understand nobody cares about that stuff anymore?'

  'You don't listen,' Merchant said. 'It didn't happen to me because I was a Jew.'

  3 Irene and I

  WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29TH 1988

  Inside, Malcolm Wilson found the air heavy and still with the dry taste of electric heaters in hot weather. In the bright sunshine the site was a scooped saucer raked brown with claw marks and alive with ant men and lego toys. Inside, blue smoke from Blair Heathers' cigars trailed from the lamps like festive streamers.

  'Thank God it's Friday.' Heathers laughed, showing teeth so splendid and so clean that they could only be false, the right kind of expensive dentistry having arrived too late in a self-made life. 'That's what you lot with your bums behind desks say - and the grafters out there aren't any different. You have that in common. T.G.I.F.'

  He was in high spirits, it seemed. Despite the gloss on his skin, the jewellery on his plump white fingers, the exclusive barbering, he looked at home here close to the raked earth and the machines. 'They won't find much difference down there,' the heavy man standing next to Malcolm objected. Malcolm tried to recall his name. 'They're on shifts round the clock. Sunday or Friday makes no bloody difference.'

  And then he smiled at Heathers to show how that was to be taken; 'We keep them at it'; and Malcolm remembered – Chalmers, the site manager, which made him like the rest, a Heathers' employee.

  'Into the golden hours,' Heathers said. 'They'll be earning more than I do.' Malcolm glanced round the beefy competent men indicating their appreciation of the joke. They were all of a type except himself and the odd-looking man with the foreign name.

  'And this is Mr Kujavia. He's a business consultant,' Heathers had said.

  Kujavia? It was foreign, of course, but of what country – Russia? Perhaps Poland. He was in the same kind of business suit as the others, a thickset man under the average height with a lumpy potato face and spikes of black hair standing up on his head. Mr Kujavia the business consultant. Where had he seen him before?

  'Malcolm, here is the man who's paying for it all,' Heathers was saying.

  'Oh, no,' Malcolm said, and felt his foolishness when there was a general response of laughter. 'I help with little pieces of the local red tape.'

  'And that,' Heathers smiled, 'helps to pay the bit the government and the E.E.C. leave over.'

  It was afternoon and it seemed to Malcolm, looking out through the long glass panels, that despite what had been said about working round the clock there was a change to be observed and that the patterns outside were altering into something not slower but somehow looser, like metal coils yielding up their tension.

  'Everybody finished?' Heathers asked. 'Don't let me rush anybody. Only I'm going right now.' There was a general setting down of glasses. 'Right. We'll have the Cook's Tour then.' Someone hurried to open the door and they filed out into the dry dusty air. It felt arid and overheated like the temporary structure they had left, as if the entire site had been baked on a whim of Heathers.

  In the open vehicle, they were crowded together. Startling but unmistakable, he caught the smell of an unwashed body. Involuntarily, he turned his head in surprise and realised he was beside Kujavia. The man's linen was clean where it showed; even the face and hands seemed clean, but again the air between them was oiled with the choking offence of human dirt. The muscles of his throat rose and perhaps he made some noise for the man looked round. The impression was of a pure and terrible malevolence and Malcolm's shoulders contracted as if ducking from a blow. Even when Kujavia glanced away, it took an effort to straighten from that spontaneous and uncontrollable reaction. Humiliated, he wondered if any of these bulky stolid men surrounding him had noticed. He took deep breaths of the clean air that blew warm against them and willed his heart to beat more slowly. He tried to imagine in what kind of business Mr Kujavia might act as a consultant to Heathers, whose voice dominated over the engine and the racket of the site as they bumped down towards the bottom of the saucer.

  '– like God. It helps those who help themselves. If you try to farm the top of Ben Nevis, what do you expect to harvest except bloody snow? Look round when you get down – bloody amazing – technology – that's the future –’

  It was a royal progress. Seated up at the front, Heathers nodded to left and right without at all interrupting the flow of his talk. Men lifted a hand in salute as he passed. There did not seem to be anyone who failed to recognise him. Malcolm remembered how on Saturday night he had said, 'I have a minute for everybody, even the brickies. They respect me for that.'

  'You don't mind going down into the tunnel?' Chalmers' voice broke into his thoughts.

  'Why should I?' Malcolm asked.

  'Some people do. You'd be surprised.'

  'I'm looking forward to it. I gather it's a new technology.'

  'New enough,' the site manager said. 'We don't handle that part of it. It's contracted to an outside firm, specialists.'

  As he spoke, they rolled inside the tunnel entrance to the Underpass. After the controlled confusion of men getting out of a crowded vehicle, they gathered in a group. Malcolm patted the chinstrap on his safety helmet, and noticed how many of the others went through the same reassuring ritual. 'We're going to walk down,' Heathers said. 'It gives you the feel of it better. And the exercise won't do anybody any harm.' Even just inside, voices echoed. As they went forward, the tunnel was lit from the roof with a white brilliancy that stretched black edged shadows beside them for company. The sense of descending was kinetic, a tightness at the front of the thigh with every step. Malcolm, looking over his shoulder, expected to see daylight, but it was gone, through the tunnel seemed so straight. Some people can't come underground, Chalmers had said.

  'Feel anything?' Heathers grinned back at them from under the helmet stamped with his initials in gold. 'Feel anything yet?' It was cold, and the group milled to a halt and Heathers was saying, ' – shamed the Government into the go ahead. Community cash. The most sophisticated transport link in any inner city in Europe,' the curtain of broad backs parted and the man behind Malcolm muttered, 'Jesus wept!' and sounded reverent.

  Heathers guffawed. 'That's the kind of thing you see in the real world when you come out from behind your desk, George.'

  'That's real?' George asked. It was a cavern of ice.

  'So cold,' Chalmers the site manager said, 'they've to stop every

  ten
minutes to thaw out.' Ahead of them a trench ran the length of the tunnel floor. The earth beside it glistened. Pipes curved down into the trench and over a wheel on the nearest a workman bent, winding it down by slow turns.

  'After five or ten minutes, they go numb from the waist down,'

  Chalmers went on quietly as Malcolm, hardly conscious of what he was doing, moved forward until he was at the front of the group. He was in the grip of a powerful and unexpected emotion. The ice vault, the cold, the stillness, above all the movements of the men which were so slow and seemingly noiseless, produced this effect. Nothing in his experience, apart from sex, had taught him to imagine he might be lost and carried out of himself. 'Liquified nitrogen freezes at ninety-six degrees below zero. You can see why it's cold out there. They're pumping it into the ground – later the soil will be excavated and the concrete will go in wrapped in a fibreglass shield – hundreds of tons of it. When the ground thaws out again, they'll have given us a foundation. But that's later. Right now they're working in sixty degrees below freezing. You're watching the coldest men in the world.'

  It could not have lasted. Anyway, the voice reciting facts and figures brought it to an end. The significance of his mood was gone like the meaning of a dream that is sensed but lost in the margin between night and day. He was surprised to find himself at the front of the group with Chalmers and Kujavia on either side. Chalmers shook his head. He was smiling as if he understood. 'I shouldn't go any further,' he said.

  When Kujavia took him by the arm just above the elbow, the grip was enormously strong, but it was the remnant of the mood which made him walk forward unresistingly. After only a few steps, the outcry of voices behind sounded very far away. He heard it as a distant confusion shot through with glittering points of noise like ice crystals. The group working around the trench had stopped to watch. Gloved, helmeted, turning the white blankness of faces, in its stillness it seemed to be composed of sculptures rather than men.

  They came to a place where the air around them changed. At that invisible boundary, the cold stopped being something outside them. It moved inside, encasing every organ of the body. Malcolm felt his heart like a bird struggling to escape. Clothed as they were, it was impossible to go any further.

  The man who had been crouched over the wheel came towards them. He spread his arms as he approached in the natural gesture of a boy herding geese out of a garden. Under the yellow helmet, the face was made of angles and tight pulled skin. He drew off his right glove using the pit of the other arm to drag it clear. As they watched, he tilted back his helmet and broke off a piece of his hair. The brittle strands snapped between his fingers.

  'It's cold here.' White breath puffed from his lips. 'You shouldn't be here.'

  'I am sixty years,' Kujavia said. 'More old than sixty, but I am a lion.'

  The air came into the lungs like knives. But when they returned, Kujavia stood apart seemingly ignored as the men eddied in a slow unease.

  'I don't know,' Chalmers muttered. 'I don't know. I never saw him before.'

  On the other side, Heathers did not interfere but watched with no expression Malcolm could read. He felt the weight of the older man's gaze.

  Going back, there was no hint of daylight until, as if a corner were turned although the tunnel appeared undeviatingly straight, they were at the entrance. Moments later they were seated and being run into the dazzling light of the sun.

  'You'd have missed an experience if you hadn't come,' Heathers said. On the bench seat his fat thigh pressed hard against Malcolm. 'I was surprised that you hadn't wanted to come.'

  'I don't understand why my brother phoned you. He had no right to do that.'

  He waited for Heathers to respond but met the same blank gaze as if what he had been saying did not make sense. The hot pressure of the thigh next to his made him uncomfortable. His ribs ached where the policeman had punched him on Saturday night. He wanted to be rich and safe, so safe nothing like that could ever happen to him again.

  'I haven't even seen my brother in a week,' he said. 'Maybe he tried to get in touch last night. My wife and I were out late. But even so...It doesn't make sense.'

  'I was told you phoned to say you wouldn't come,' Heathers said.

  When the vehicle stopped outside the site office, there was an odd hesitation before people moved to get out. Since the incident in the tunnel, most of the men had been watchfully silent. Now they got out in the same subdued fashion. Malcolm saw that Kujavia alone remained seated, lolling back, eyes closed like a cat in the sun.

  'Merchant phoned to say he couldn't come,' Heathers said in his hard nasal drawl. 'This business of not coming – I got frightened it was catching.'

  He took Malcolm's arm in a way that reminded him unpleasantly of what had happened in the tunnel. 'If you came in a taxi, I'll give you a lift.' They were walking to where Heathers' car was parked. Malcolm caught an acrid whiff of his own sweat and from Heathers the cloying sweetness of a deodorant. The chauffeur, who was sitting with his back to the site and head bowed as if reading, must have been keeping one eye on his mirror for as they approached he jumped out and opened the door.

  There was no reasonable way to refuse. Malcolm got in and slid over to leave room. Heathers followed him and the opposite door opened and Kujavia came in on the other side.

  'What –' Malcolm began, but in his fright it came out, Wait! The car moved off, picking up speed as it came on to the paved road and became part of the flow of traffic moving towards the city.

  'How can I do business if I can't rely on people?' Heathers asked. He did not seem to want any answer to that, and Malcolm watched the buildings go by and tried to pretend Kujavia was not there.

  'How do you like being the boss of the Department, Malcolm? Does it suit you?'

  'I'm only in charge of things temporarily,' Malcolm said. 'Until Mr Bradley gets back to work.'

  'You know better than that. I made it my business to see the hospital reports. He's dying. He's gone rotten here.' With the same pale plump hand that had grasped Malcolm's arm, Heathers rubbed his belly. 'As of now, you're Johnny on the Spot. The man that matters.'

  'If anything did happen to Mr Bradley,' Malcolm said carefully, 'I'd certainly hope to be on the short list. After all, I know what the job involves...'

  Heathers stared at him, little blue eyes very bright above the red cheeks.

  'You're too young,' he said. 'They'll bring in somebody from outside. It's the way the Region's mind works. If you've got somebody good, you've got them, so look outside and see if you can bring another good one in. You can't expect politicians to know anything about management.'

  The casual verdict physically sickened Malcolm who wanted his share, his opportunity at the pork barrel Bradley had delved into up to the elbows. If Bradley had sold himself, he had taken care the price should be right. Malcolm remembered him saying, 'Some plumber or carpenter grafts away, studies, gets a leg up and becomes that wonderful beast, a Master of Works. First thing he's being invited out for a game of golf. No clubs? Don't worry – my son's bag's going spare in the boot. And you'll have a drink? Come to think of it – what about a meal? You can't pay here – it's club members' treat here. That kind of thing's nice – especially when you're not used to it. Oh, you're a popular chap. Then comes the day you're overseeing a job, a school or a hospital like as not, and the concrete's not what it should be or they've scamped the wiring and you should have a word with the contractor. It's a good job you're seeing him at the weekend for a round of golf and dinner at the club. He's right glad you mentioned it. He'll see to it – no problem. And if things don't improve, you don't like to keep narking on, do you? Not a popular chap like you, a chap who fits in so well. Not with him being a personal friend, like.' Bradley shook his head in disgust and his accent broadened. 'That's what the public would never credit – how cheap most of those buggers come.' It was six weeks and a day before the routine medical check-up gave the first hint that something was wrong. The big Yorkshi
reman's eyes were clear and his skin had a very healthy look from the open air and all the good holidays he had taken where you could be sure of the sun. There was no way of telling that he had gone rotten inside.

  'I always got on well with Willie Bradley,' Heathers was saying.

  'I could work with him. It wouldn't be reasonable of me to say you could count on his job – not at your age. But you've got a great chance to make a good impression. You're a lucky young man.' With the venomous clarity of hope deferred, it occurred to Malcolm that, despite the car and the chauffeur and the rings on those plump fingers, Heathers' accent was exactly still like the one his mother would have described as that of a keelie, a boy from the slums of Moirhill. The hostility of the thought frightened him; it wasn't something he had planned for; it didn't fit in with what he wanted for himself. Sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades.

  'Mr Heathers –'

  'Blair. That's all the respect I need. Just Blair. My father now, he was different. When I was a kid, I saw him getting into an argument with a rent collector who'd been calling him “Heathers” – without any "mister" in front of it. He knocked him down. I'll be honest with you; he kicked him in the head.' Heathers smiled. 'I don't offend easily. But then I'm a more successful man than my father.'

  Glancing away, Malcolm saw Kujavia leaning back in the corner with his eyes shut. There was no way of telling if he was awake and listening. 'Denny!' Heathers leaned forward to the driver. 'I'll need you again in about half an hour – after you take Mr Wilson back to his work.'

  'There's no need,' Malcolm said. As he spoke, the car came to a halt. Without waiting for the driver, Heathers opened the door himself and swung round to get out.