For her kindness to my son … the son not mentioned by name. Whenever it felt like I was about to make an outburst, I silenced myself with my lollipop.
Laura leaned forward, hands on her knees, gaze like a drill, going from Xavier to me, then back to Xavier. “Guys, help us out here. Just under five years ago, after the reading of this will, Ms. Yu over there managed to convince Ava Kapoor that living together on this train would be the best way of making sure she could meet the sanity requirement.”
“Such a sinister condition to make,” Allegra said slowly. “Almost like a threat. Ava doesn’t have any kind of psychiatric record. There’s just some sort of even keel she’s on. When she’s moody, it’s moderately moody. She did take it really hard when her dad died—they were so close. But the grief didn’t drag her downstream. I think she was ready to go, but whatever it is that grounds her wouldn’t budge. So after a while she went, Ugh, I’ll just have to stay here with you lot, then. Karel was around for all of that, but maybe he was thinking the worst of the grief would hit later, or that it would all just build up? I can’t work out why else he’d do this. Cut Přem out altogether and arrange the rest the way he did. But that’s how it happened, so the next steps were up to us. We put our heads together and drew up a list of factors that heighten vulnerability. So we’d know what to avoid until Ava’s thirtieth. I promised her four years and eight months in which she wouldn’t be hungry or lonely or paralysed by finances, wouldn’t have too much or too little to see, learn, and do. I promised she’d get to work on her train and get to share it, let strangers enjoy it without having to have anxiety-ridden conversations with them … because somewhere along the line we realised that communication was the thing we really had to address. We had to limit it. Talking to strangers can be riskier than it is rewarding; even people who know each other well talk at cross purposes and derange each other’s perceptions.”
“Sanity and consistency of perception are the same thing?” Xavier asked.
He’d struck a point on which they were unanimous: Laura said, “Of course it is,” and Allegra said, “Yes!”
“… And with all those precautions in place, at the end of those four years and eight months … payday,” I said.
Allegra gave me a very slight wink. “It should’ve been simple. And it might still be. Wednesday’s the big day. We’ll all have to have some champagne together before we drop you off in Boughton.”
Laura began to speak but trailed off as a sound that had been in the distance for a while now made itself distinct from the hubbub of maintenance team conversation outside. A pitch perfect rendition of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby.” It wasn’t louder than the other voices calling out to each other, but it was the kind of sub-sound you wanted to shake out of your head. The whistler moved along the side of the train, and the song isolated itself within the ear, quivering just above the white noise you hear when you try to listen to your own pulse.
Then, without a break in the whistling, Bang, bang, bang, the carriage wall jumped.
Bang—Přem’s self-portrait skipped up the wall and clattered back down. Don’t worry, baby …
The four of us scattered, swearing our heads off. Xavier followed Laura back into the postal-sorting carriage while I followed Allegra into a dormitory carriage that was mostly navy blue linen and bunk beds. Allegra pressed walkie-talkie controls in what seemed like an arbitrary sequence, and we all but squashed our noses against the carriage windows as we sought out the best view of the ground directly in front of the gallery carriage. There was a fire extinguisher rolling around beside the track, and two members of the maintenance team sprinted our way and retrieved it. Allegra’s walkie-talkie connected her to several crackly voices; she reeled off names and questions, but the replies were more or less the same: it had been so quick nobody had seen anything. One of the walkie-talkie voices, belonging to someone named Eric, was able to confirm that the fire extinguisher was empty, but that was all the information he had. Everybody was of the opinion that we should get moving again as soon as possible. Allegra assured them we’d be off in half an hour, tops.
When we returned to the gallery car, the wall was still again. Xavier and Laura were already seated and wearing matching expressions. They’d settled on belligerent relaxation.
“What was that …?! Any ideas?”
Xavier spread his hands, and Laura shook her head. Allegra sat down too, punching in one more walkie-talkie code that linked her to Ava.
“Everything OK, beb? Over.”
Ava answered with her mouth too close to the microphone; the syllables hissed themselves into gravel, and we didn’t catch what she said. But we did hear a snatch of theremin music a moment later; we might’ve found her song choice witty and reassuring if we hadn’t just heard it whistled a few seconds ago.
Allegra said: “Ava, I’m coming over. Over!”
There was more hissing, then a laugh came through. “Allegra, I’m just practising … Did it sound that bad? Let me have some time to tinker with it. Over.”
Laura grabbed the walkie-talkie. “It … wasn’t bad, Ms. Kapoor. You don’t worry either; practice to your heart’s content. Over and out.”
Allegra stood up, sat down, then stood up again and circled our chairs, chewing her nails. Laura closed the channel, stuck the device in the pocket of her jeans, and said to Xavier and me: “Wednesday is indeed the big day. And the doctor’s boarding the train tomorrow to make the assessment that has to be submitted to the executor. We need a calm and quiet atmosphere. No more pulling the emergency cord for no discoverable reason.”
To the carriage wall she said: “And no more whistling and fire extinguishers!”
She put a hand over her own heart for a second before continuing. “Ms. Kapoor has spoken with Dr. Zachariah weekly ever since she took up residence here, and the doctor jokes—at least I hope it is a joke—that Ms. Kapoor maintains sanity to an abnormal degree. But we can’t rest on our laurels yet. The problem is that four years, seven months, and twenty days of the best laid plans can come to absolutely nothing over the course of twenty-four hours.”
“Ah. Er … it’s true that complacency’s no good,” Xavier said, “but it really doesn’t seem like you have to do any more than you already have. We’ll just stay out of everybody’s way until we’re home. Believe us, we have no disruptive intentions.”
Laura asked: “Are you sure?” at almost exactly the same moment Allegra did. Laughing nervously, each gestured for the other to elaborate first.
“It’s just that ever since you two joined us, Ms. Kapoor has been … skittish,” Laura said.
Allegra smiled. “Maybe in your opinion, Ms. De Souza. Let’s see what the qualified and experienced psychiatrist says.”
“Ms. Yu … are you forgetting that we’re back to the songs for Přem again, from midnight ’til five? That one song in particular … the one that sounds like part of a soundtrack for a TV special on abusive relationships. If Dr. Zachariah observes all that and still decides Ms. Kapoor’s doing well, then we’ll need to find a more credible assessor pronto.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Allegra said, “I know we aren’t friends and you’re just here for work, but have you left the neutral observer zone, Ms. De Souza? Are you actively hoping that Dr. Zachariah won’t confirm Ava to be of sound mind?”
Laura twirled her lollipop around inside her mouth while she thought about this.
“No,” she said. “Over the years I’ve become biased in the other direction. I hope Ms. Kapoor does inherit. I think she would make the money behave correctly. And I like you, Ms. Yu. I know that left to your own devices you would have used these years to write music instead of chauffeuring your girlfriend around by train.”
“I’ve been doing both without too many issues, thanks,” Allegra said stiffly.
“But you are not happy with the music you write nowadays. You compare it to what you were doing before, and it is the same, almost exactly the same … you are
unable to add anything or to blend anything in. Well, you made that choice of your own free will, so I won’t embarrass you anymore. I’m telling you I like the way you have been keeping the terrifying promises you made to Ava Kapoor. I’m telling you this even though it’s unprofessional to do so, since it’s true that I’m not here to like anybody.”
To Xavier and me, Laura said: “I shouldn’t get attached. The money situation is quite serious. Ms. Kapoor has borrowed quite a lot of money on her inheritance expectations. Money to live off, and money for the work she’s doing on the train …”
“There are companies that would lend that much based on this?” Xavier asked, raising and dropping the photocopied will.
“Ruthless ones,” Laura said, and Allegra added: “With cutthroat interest rates.”
Laura shrugged. “Et voilà, I travel with them, I send reports to my boss in Hong Kong. In theory I assist with keeping Ms. Kapoor on an even keel because that is the best way to guarantee my boss gets his money back, but it makes me feel like we’re on some sort of sanitarium train, humouring the patient. So whatever, I don’t hasten to dampen Ms. Kapoor’s spirits when she laughs loudly, unlike some …”
“I think I see,” I said, before Allegra could return the volley.
“So do I,” Xavier said. “Sorry if we’ve somehow made Ava skittish.”
Allegra repeated that we hadn’t done that, but Laura listed the various passengers they’d picked up and dropped off over the years. Xavier and I were the thirteenth pair of honeymooners …
I waited for Xavier’s interjection that we hadn’t actually got married. He delivered as expected. We’re both curious about his unerring pursuit of transparency there. (He says he doesn’t quite understand it himself.) Maybe some part of Xavier Shin savours the uncomfortable pause as the other person tries to decide what to ask or say, not ask or not say. For my part, I’d argue that a pinch of unexpected information might well make otherwise formulaic exchanges more real, but in this case the outcome tends towards more awkwardness than there needs to be …
Anyway, I’m not saying I dislike it. Xavier’s brief and obstinate amendments remind me of all the trouble we two took to discover our intentions towards each other. In the absence of progeny, or a belief that subjecting each other to a legal and economic contract guarantees us anything we really need from each other, what was the simplest and strongest sign of our bond? After all the hinting and the ranting and the silences both gentle and fearsome, what a relief it was to discover that, in the case of X and O, all it comes down to is being known by the same name. Even if that is an overestimation of our ability to keep up with whatever shenanigans life has in store for us …
Laura raised an eyebrow. “So this isn’t a honeymoon to you?”
The question was directed at me, along with an unimpressed stare. Allegra duplicated the stare. It looked as if they’d made up their minds which Shin was the commitment-phobe who’d thrown his spanner into the honeymoon works.
“We’re calling it a non-honeymoon honeymoon,” I said, in my firmest, most upbeat, and hopefully image-rehabilitating voice.
Laura shrugged and continued her discourse on passengers. Couples usually weren’t a bother, though more than once she’d questioned the wisdom of allowing certain other parties onboard. Most recently she’d looked askance at the thirteen exorcists of assorted denominations and belief systems who had all been summoned to a single address in Morpeth, Northumberland. “… And I said to Allegra, is this a train or a Tower of Babel?” But even that hadn’t been a problem; Ava hadn’t seemed at all unsettled and had particularly relished the notes and drawings they’d left in The Lucky Day’s guestbook. No spooky serenades, until us.
“Ms. De Souza’s the skittish one,” Allegra said. “I am too, these days.”
“Because of him … Karel’s son?” I asked. “He didn’t contest the will?”
“No, he didn’t. By the time the will was read, we hadn’t seen or heard from him for months. Karel’s mate Zeinab, the executor, says Přem knew about the will and that he really, really, really wasn’t happy about it. Half of me reckons that if Přem was alive, he’d have contested the will, or at least attended Karel’s funeral. The other half of me reckons Přem would wait until Ava was within spitting distance of the inheritance and then spit all over us.”
Allegra crouched down between our two chairs, Xavier’s and mine. She took my left hand, and she took Xavier’s right hand. “Otto and Xavier Shin, I have no way of telling whether either of you are lying. You could be a pair of brilliant actors with those all-this-is-completely-new-to-me looks on your faces. And I’ve put such a strange bubble around the three of us, Ava, Laura, and me, that I don’t know if we’re going to be able to live in the real world again after this. But please. Before we get going again, I need you to either swear to me that you have nothing to do with Přemysl Stojaspal, or just take your stuff and get off the train right now.”
Laura beamed at us. “If you stay, and you do anything else that might bother Ms. Kapoor, you boys will be locked up in our holding cell.”
Xavier and I crunched our lollipops as we took this in. It was too Good Cop, Bad Cop for words.
“I swear we don’t have anything to do with—er—him,” I said. “We’ll go along with you quietly from now on. Let’s not keep that doctor waiting …”
I punctuated all this with reassuring nods, and Allegra nodded each time I did. Still holding Allegra’s hand, Xavier told her the bubble she’d been building wasn’t that much stranger than life in the real world.
“For instance,” he said, “I know a guy who only claims to know how to say ‘hello,’ ‘goodbye,’ ‘thank you,’ and the days of the week in Czech. But in his sleep, he’s fluent.”
“What kind of things does he say?” Laura asked.
“It’s sort of a cascade, really. But there is one recurring chant. ‘Pojd’ blíž … pojd’ blíž …’”
“What’s that in English? Do you know?” I asked, somehow. Not sure how, what with my mouth having dried up all of a sudden.
Xavier leaned his shoulder against mine for a moment. “I checked. It means ‘Come closer.’ ”
“And do you—I mean, did you? Go closer?”
“Yeah,” Xavier said, “but he’d elbow me out of the bed. It wasn’t me he was talking to. Anyway, we’ll be out of your way now.”
The whistling began again as we were leaving. I looked back at Laura, who was saying, “No … no, no no no,” as she glanced at the wall, then at the floor. The whistler couldn’t really have stretched out full length between the train and the track, couldn’t be pushing the notes up out of their lungs and through the floor beneath us, but that’s exactly what it sounded like. Don’t worry, baby …
Xavier was already back in the postal-sorting carriage. He looked at me over his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to do something about this?”
Don’t worry, baby …
Behind us Laura and Allegra stomped on the linoleum, Allegra’s trainers sparkling as she raised thunder.
“You try if you want,” I said, shaking my head and brushing past him. He grabbed my arm and pushed me back into the gallery car, so hard I almost lost my footing. “Sort this out, Otto,” he said.
The connecting door closed, and I pressed the button to open it again. The lightbulb rocked back and forth, splashing shadows across the walls of the gallery car. Xavier stood in full sunlight, resting his elbow on the corner of a wooden letterbox, and he won our staring match easily.
He didn’t repeat himself—not aloud, anyway, but I still muttered, “As you command …”
Don’t worry, baby …
Just the chorus, and the whistler was giving it everything they had.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I said. He said he wouldn’t, the door closed again, and I turned back to Laura and Allegra. They were beside themselves with baffled fury, but their stomping had become rhythmic. I suppose that’s what happens when you keep it up long enough �
�� rage turns into a soft-shoe shuffle. I walked around them, calling their names until they looked at me, then, locking eyes with Allegra first, I held my right hand up, my index finger touching my thumb, and I began to whistle in time with our unseen entertainer, in a lower note so that a harmony sounded through the carriage. As below, so above. Allegra was much better at whistling than I was, so it was a relief when, after about three seconds, during which she looked more likely to burst into tears than give in and be mesmerized, she took up the notes and ran with them.
Don’t worry, baby …
When I broke eye contact, she lifted her gaze to the blank canvas that we said we’d seen Ava in. Laura took longer to enlist. About fifteen seconds. She was badly off-key, but dedicated.
I’d guessed that the whistler was more of a soloist than an ensemble player, and he proved me right by abruptly dropping out once we’d whistled our way through one more chorus.
Don’t worry, baby …
I never have anything up my sleeve except for the utterly fraudulent authority with which I assure you—yes, you—that you’ll get through this, whatever it is, and everything will be better. We both know nothing’s all right, but when I tell you it will be, you take it. If you don’t, it’s because you’re holding out for another outcome altogether.
9.
The train was in motion again by the time we reached our living quarters (going by the tannoy announcement it sounded as if Laura was in the driver’s seat for now), but we weren’t 100 percent sure of Árpád and Chela’s whereabouts. There was, however, a skittering of claws on metal overhead that suggested our friends were running around on the roof of the train, heading back in our direction each time they heard their names called.
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