by Michel Faber
I cradle my soup mug in both my hands, hiding my mouth behind it while I survey the dining hall some more. There is a susurrus of talk but remarkably little for such a large gathering of people. Most just sit, staring blindly ahead of them, mute and listless inside their black-and-white texts. I try to eavesdrop on the ones who are talking, but I barely catch a word: I’m too far away, they have no teeth or are from Newcastle, Cathy Stockton has started snoring.
After about twenty minutes, a grizzled bald man walks over to me and parks himself on the chair nearest mine. He extends a hand across the faux-marble patio table for me to shake. There is no need for introductions. He is Eric James Sween, a former builder whose business had been in financial difficulties before he disappeared from his home in Broxburn, West Lothian, in January 1994.
I wonder, as I shake his surprisingly weak hand, how long ago his wife said she would give anything just to know he was safe. Would she give as much today? The baby daughter she desperately wanted to show him may be experimenting with cigarettes by now.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘It’s a doddle.’
‘What is?’ I ask him.
‘What you have to do here.’
‘What do you have to do?’
‘A bit of manual labour. Not today: it’s raining too hard. But most days. A cinch.’
The old women seem to have melted away from the canteen, leaving me alone in the dining hall with all these strangers.
‘Who runs this place?’ I ask Eric James Sween.
‘Some sort of society,’ he replies, as if sharing information unearthed after years of painstaking research.
‘Religious?’
‘Could be, could be.’ He grins. One of his long teeth is brown as a pecan nut. I suspect that if I could read the lower lines of his T-shirt, obscured by the table, there would be a hint of bigger problems than the failure of a business.
Which reminds me:
‘No one must know what’s become of me.’
Eric James Sween squints, still smiling, vaguely puzzled. I struggle to make myself absolutely clear.
‘The people who run this place … If they’re going to try to … make contact, you know … with …’ I leave it there, hoping he’ll understand without me having to name names –although of course one of the names is printed on my breast in big black letters.
Eric James Sween chuckles emphysemally.
‘Nobody’s ever gonna see you again,’ he assures me. ‘That’s why you’re here. That’s why they let you in. They can tell you’re ready.’
He is staring at me, his eyes twinkling, his face immobile. I realise that our conversation is over and I wonder if there is something I can do to bring it to a formal conclusion.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
I sit in my dining room chair for the rest of the afternoon, getting up occasionally to stretch my legs, then returning again to the same chair. No one bothers me. It is bliss not to be moved on, bliss to be left unchallenged. This is all I have wanted every day of my life for as long as I care to remember.
Everyone else in the hall stays more or less where they are, too. They relax, as far as the hard furniture allows, digesting their lunch, biding their time until dinner. Some sleep, their arms hanging down, their fingers trailing the floor. Some use their arms to make little pillows for themselves against the headrest of their chairs, nestling their cheek in the crook of an elbow. Others have their knees drawn up tight against their chin, perched like outsized owls on a padded square of vinyl. A few carry on talking, but by now I have reason to wonder if they are really talking to the people they sit amongst. Their eyes stare into the middle distance, they chew their fingernails, they speak in low desultory voices. Rather than answering their neighbours or being answered, they speak simultaneously, or lapse simultaneously into silence.
Eric James Sween, perhaps the most restless soul of them all, ends up seated in the most crowded part of the room, drumming on his thighs and knees with his fingertips, humming the music that plays inside his head. He hums softly, as if fearful of disturbing anyone, and his fingers patter against his trouser legs without audible effect. A little earlier, he found a handkerchief on the floor and wandered around the room with it, asking various people if it was theirs. Everyone shook their heads or ignored him. For a while I was vaguely curious what he would do with the handkerchief if no one accepted it, but then I lost focus and forgot to watch him. My concentration isn’t so good these days. The next time I noticed him, he was hunched on a chair, empty-handed, drumming away.
Occasionally someone gets up to go to the toilet. I know that’s where they’re going because at one point a hulking arthritic woman announces to herself that she had better have a pee, and I follow her. She walks laboriously, obliging me to take childish mincing steps so as not to overtake her. I notice that on the back of her T-shirt she has a lot of text too, much more than on the front. In fact, there is so much text, in such tiny writing, that her back is almost black with it. I try to read some as I walk behind her, but I can’t manage it. The letters are too small, and the woman is contorting her muscles constantly in an effort to keep her ruined body from pitching over.
She leads me to two adjacent toilet doors on the opposite end of the dining hall from the canteen. Fastened to one door is a picture of a gentleman in a frock coat and top hat; the other has a lady in a long crinoline dress, with a bonnet and parasol. I enter the gentleman toilet. It is bigger than I thought it would be and luridly white, more like a room in an art gallery. Above the washbasins is a faded illustration painted directly onto the wall; it depicts a pair of hands washing each other against a green medicinal cross. REINLICHKEIT, it says underneath.
I select one of a long row of teardrop urinals to stand at. They look ancient and organic, as if they have been fashioned from a huge quantity of melted-down teeth. There are caramel stains on the enamel like streaks of tobacco. Yet the drain-holes are bubbly with disinfectant, showing that they are clean.
I stand for a while at the urinal, giving myself permission to let go of my little reservoir of waste, but nothing happens, so I leave. At least I know how to find it now.
Finally it is time for the evening meal. The two old nurses arrive and start cooking, in the kitchen behind the canteen. A watery miasma emanates from their labours, floating out into the hall, ascending to the ceiling. There is a general murmur of anticipation. I go to the toilet, successfully clear my bowels, and find myself disturbed almost to tears by the softness of the toilet paper. I wash my hands under the sign of the green cross. A dark coffee of grime swirls in the sink, dilutes and gurgles away.
When I return to the dining hall, a queue is forming at the canteen counter. I wonder whether the Safehouse is the sort of set-up where all the really decent food is snatched by the early birds and there’s only scraps and clammy leftovers for the latecomers. I take my place in the queue, even though I’m not particularly hungry. It’s an opportunity to stand close behind someone, trying to read what’s written on their back.
I’m standing behind a young man with bad acne on his neck and head. He has very short hair, like felt, lovingly clipped to avoid any trauma to all the bulbous little eruptions dotting the flesh of his skull. I wonder if a hairdresser charges a great deal more for that: to exercise such care, such restraint, such understanding. What has brought this young man here, if he so recently had a hairdresser who was prepared to handle his head so gently?
On the back of the young man’s T-shirt is an unbelievable amount of text, a dense mass of small print which I can’t imagine to be anything more than a random weave of symbols, a stylish alphabet texture. Starting near the top of his left shoulder, I read as much as I can before my attention wanes:
and so on and on, thousands of letters and numbers right down to his waist. I peek over the young man’s shoulder, at the back of the woman standing in front of him, and then, leaning sharply out from the queue, I glimpse the backs of half a dozen people further on. They’
re all the same in principle, but some of them have text that only goes as far down as the middle of their backs, while others have so much that their T-shirts have to be longer, more like smocks or dresses.
My own T-shirt is pretty roomy, come to think of it. Definitely XL. I wonder what’s on it.
There is a man standing behind me, a tall man with thick glasses and hair like grey gorse. I smile at him, in case he’s been reading the back of my T-shirt and knows more than me.
‘Lamb tonight,’ he says, his magnified bloodshot eyes begging me to leave him be.
I turn and face front again. When my turn comes to be served, I am given a plate of piping-hot lamb stew. The fat nurse has dished it up in such a way that there is a big donut-shaped ring of mashed potato all around the edge of the plate, with a puddle of stew enclosed inside it. As she hands it over she smiles wanly, as if admitting she just can’t help being a bit creative with the presentation, but maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe she’s learned that this is the best way to prevent people spilling stew off their plates on their way back to the tables.
I sit down somewhere and eat the stew and the potato. There’s quite a lot of lamb in the gravy and there’s a few carrots and beans floating about as well. I haven’t had anything this wholesome since my … well, for a long time anyway.
When it’s all over, I stare into space. I’d meant to keep an eye on the others, to ascertain how much food the last ones in the queue got. But I forgot. My memory is not what it was; thoughts and resolutions crumble away like biscuits in a back pocket. The important thing is that no one is moving me on. I could weep with gratitude. Except of course I don’t weep anymore.
After another little while, I become aware that the windows of the Safehouse have turned black. Night has fallen on the outside world. I feel a cold thrill of anxiety, the instinctive dread that comes over you when you realise you’ve foolishly put off the essential business of finding a soft enclave of rubbish or an obscure stairwell until it’s too late. I imagine the bony old nurse coming up to me and saying it’s time for me to go home now, and that the Safehouse opens again at ten o’clock tomorrow. But deep down I know this isn’t going to happen. I’m here to stay.
I sit for another couple of hours, staring at the people but not really seeing them. I also stare at my shoes, mesmerised by the metal eyelets of the laces, the scuffs and grazes on the uppers. I stare at the black windows, the reflection of the fluorescent light on the table nearest me, the damp canteen counter, empty now. I wonder if I should be shamed or even alarmed by my lack of boredom. I hadn’t realised before today how completely I have made my peace with useless-ness. Out in the world, I was hunted from sitting-place to sitting-place, never still for more than an hour, often rooted out after a few minutes. In warm shopping malls detectives would lose patience if I loitered too long without buying; on stone steps outside shops people would swing the door against my back and say ‘Excuse me’. Even at nights, watchmen would shine torches into my face, and unexpected vehicles would cruise close to my huddled body.
With so much outside provocation to keep me moving, I never noticed that inside myself I have, in fact, lost any need for action or purpose. I am content.
I wish my wife could know this.
Eventually a bell rings and people start filing out of the dining hall. I look around for Eric James Sween in case he might be making his way over to me to explain what happens now, but he’s already gone. So, I fall into step with the others and allow myself to be herded into a new corridor.
It’s a shabby passage, not very long. On one wall hang naïve paintings of meadows and farm animals, slightly skew-whiff and with incongruous gilt frames. The opposite wall is blank except for a very large laminated board, screwed securely into the plaster well above eye level. It looks like those lists you see in war memorials of soldiers who died between certain dates, or the lists of old boys in ancient universities. At the top, it says:
KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS
There are columns and columns underneath, five square feet of them, starting with:
n:= born
M = mother
F = father
PGM = paternal grandmother
MGM = maternal grandmother
and so on. I dawdle to a standstill under the board, allowing the other people to pass me. I read further down the columns, straining to understand and to remember. The further I read, the more complicated it gets. p means punished, for example, but it only really makes sense when learned in combination with other symbols, like!, meaning an act of physical violence.
I glance ahead. The last few columns are full of fearsome strings of algebra which, if I could decode them, would apparently explain highly complicated things involving social workers and police. Even the most compact-looking formula, , unfurls to mean ‘birthday present sent by father, withheld by mother and never mentioned’.
I pull my T-shirt over my head, exposing my naked torso to the draughty corridor. The soft white fabric flows like milk over my fists as I try to get it sorted out. It’s not the front I want to see: I know my name and I don’t want to be reminded who might be worried about me. I hold the back of the T-shirt aloft and check its left shoulder. n:13/4/6o, it says. That’s my date of birth, right enough.
After that, it’s hard going. My text makes no sense because I don’t know what I’m looking at, and the key is no help because I can’t see what I’m looking for. I try to tackle it one symbol at a time, hoping that a moment will come when it suddenly all starts falling into place. At least I have the advantage of having had quite a simple childhood.
Unfortunately, just as I’m a couple of lines into my text and am searching for an explanation for pM9, the ninth time my mother punished me, I feel a tap on my naked shoulder and almost jump out of my skin.
I spin around, my T-shirt clutched to my breast like a bath towel. Confronting me in the hollow corridor is the old nurse who admitted me to the Safehouse. My heart beats against my ribs as she glowers straight into me, face into face. Her withered hand remains raised, as if she is about to administer a Catholic blessing, but she merely scratches the air between us with a hovering fingernail.
‘You mustn’t take your garment off here,’ she warns me, sotto voce.
‘I was just trying to see what it says on my back,’ I explain.
‘Yes, but you mustn’t.’ Her eyes, fringed all round with dull silver lashes, glow like sad heirloom brooches. I cannot disobey her.
As I pull my T-shirt over my head, she retreats one small step to avoid my flailing arms. Then, when I’m decent again, she touches me lightly on the elbow, and escorts me along the corridor, away from the KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS board.
‘It’s bedtime now,’ she says.
I am led into the Safehouse’s sleeping barracks. It’s an even larger space than the dining hall – more like some massive, echoing warehouse whose ceilings must accommodate the comings and goings of forklifts and cranes. It is harshly lit and draughty and smells like a vast kennel, with a faint whiff of chlorinated urine. The ceiling is so high that rafts of fluorescent lights are dangled on long chains, down to where the highest ladder might be able to service them. Each raft contains four strips nestled side by side. Suspended so far above my head, luminous, airborne and still, they remind me of childhood visits to the Natural History Museum – fibreglass dolphins and sharks, dusty with time and grimy at the seams.
I tilt my head back, trying to see beyond these glowing mobiles to the ceiling above. I glimpse the silhouettes of wooden beams and steel pipes, a shadowy Cartesian plane supporting a transparent, or at least translucent, roof.
I feel a prod at my elbow.
‘Time for that later,’ the old nurse chides me gently, and I walk on.
The floor we tread is an old pool of concrete worn smooth as bone, silent under my feet. The rubber crêpe soles of the old nurse go vrunnik, vrunnik, vrunnik as she walks beside me, leading me deeper in.
I keep my eyes downc
ast, reluctant to see what this great warehouse is, after all, for. I feel a glimmering constellation of eyes on me, I fancy I can hear the massed sighing of breath.
‘This is your bed, up here,’ I hear the nurse say, and I have to look where she is pointing.
All along the walls, stacked like pallets of produce, are metal bunk-beds, a surreal Meccano bolted straight into the brickwork. The beds go twelve-high, each compartment a little nest of white sheets and oatmeal-coloured blankets. A few of these beds are empty, but very few. Almost every rectangular nook contains a horizontal human being — man, woman or child, installed like poste restante. Some lie with their backs already turned, their rumpled heads half-buried under bedclothes. But most stare straight at me, blinking and passionless, from all heights and corners of the room.
The old nurse is pointing at a vacant bed, eleven beds off the ground, which I can only get to by climbing an iron ladder up the side of the bunk tower. I look round at her awkwardly, wondering if I can bring myself to tell her that I have a fear of high places.
She purses her thin dry lips in what could almost be a smile as she waves her fingers brusquely upwards.
‘No one falls here,’ she lets me know. ‘This is the Safehouse.’
And she turns and walks away, vrunnik vrunnik, vrunnik.
I climb the ladder to my bed. On the way up, I am conscious of my progress being watched by a great many people, and not just from a distance, but at close and intimate range by the inhabitants of each of the ten beds I climb past. Half in shadow, half illuminated by shafts of harsh light, they haul themselves onto their elbows, or merely turn their heads around on the pillow, staring hollow-eyed into my face as I ascend. They stare without self-consciousness, without mercy, reading what they can of the text on my T-shirt, or appraising my body as I haul it upwards only inches from their noses. Yet they stare, too, without any spark of real interest. I am an event, a physical phenomenon, occurring on the rungs of the ladder that is bolted to their own bunk. To ignore me would require a greater fascination with something else, and there is nothing. So, they stare, mute and apathetic, their gaze eyeball-deep.