Underground

by Tobias Hill

  Casimir turns slowly, eyes wide, taking in everything. Under the last spiral of steps is a cavity, narrowed down at its curved end like the volute of a shell. He sinks down to his knees, peering inside.

  There is a tiny scuttling in the cavity, insects or tunnel mice, nothing larger. Casimir straightens and begins to walk again. The dust is thicker, matting the concrete under his feet as he moves between shelves.

  It is hard to keep track of time. He gropes around for the watch at his wrist, brings it up to his face. But the luminosity is fading. He has been close to the dark for too long. Casimir takes another shuddering breath and goes forward again, eyes wide open.

  Without warning he comes to the south end of the shelves. Beyond there is nothing but darkness, the line-lights dead or never installed. Casimir’s arm catches a filing box and it falls to the chamber floor. The impact booms dully in the long hall. He kneels down, gathering up spilled papers, marring the hall’s thick dust with his movement.

  The papers are printed with faded blue shop-till ink. Casimir holds one strip up to the light, then another: ‘Asha’s World of Booze, 291 Parkway. 17/05/74. Cheque #248285. AC#90887121. Holder: T. T. Cheam. Sun (The) Tuesday, 20 x Skol Lager, 1 Liquorice Allsorts. £6.30.’ ‘Ashbery Health Clinic, 2b Pleasant Row. 17/05/74. Cheque #188803. AC#01076458. Holder: D. Falconer. Spinal Massage Treatment. £85.00.’ ‘Ashen Entrail Patent Leather Goods –’

  Casimir looks away. Light spills forward from the last linelights above him, into the dark. There are more storage units ahead of him. Between them, the accumulations of dust are scuffed by movement. Hundreds of feet into the dark is a right angle of light.

  He straightens. He can feel the last line-light above him, the slightest warmth of its illumination. Casimir looks up at it, closes his eyes and breathes in. As if he could inhale the light, hold it inside himself. Then he opens his eyes and steps out into the dark.

  The shivering begins almost immediately, starting in his legs and creeping up to his arms and chest. After fifty steps Casimir realizes he is still holding his breath. He begins to exhale and then stops himself. He goes on walking. If he looks down he sees nothing, but from the edges of his eyes Casimir can see the dust around him, disturbed ahead of him, a darker path curving towards the right angle of light.

  It is clearer now. Casimir can make out the line of a door. He is walking towards the last of the storage units, up against the southern end-wall, as far into the deep shelter as he could go.

  It is a dozen steps to the door. Quite distinctly Casimir can feel his heart, its spasmodic movement against his ribs, and the pulse of blood up near his brain. He comes to the door with his hands stretched out, touching the light. Feeling along it as the breath goes out of him.

  He stands outside the door while his breathing steadies, one hand by the hinges and one by the handle. There is no sound from inside. Between Casimir’s hands is a stencilled sign:

  Portastor #62. Licence #62. Renew 01.01.01

  CARE

  He reaches out and opens the door. Steps forward, out of the dark.

  There is no one inside. The cabin’s walls are bright sheet metal. Light strikes off them from two long-life bulbs. Against the far wall is a red-striped mattress, a metal tool box and two stacks of posters which reach up to the ceiling, white paper pillars. A narrow path is cleared to the bed. The rest of the floor is covered with objects, laid out in neat rows. Reflections glare off tall glass jars, tiny droppers, assemblies of green bottles.

  There is a whisper of sound outside. A scutter of feet, moving away. Casimir doesn’t turn round. For the moment what is here matters, not the man outside. His foot catches against a stoppered jar and he kneels fast, stilling it before it falls.

  The jar is full of a dense, oily dust. It is impacted down into layers of lead-grey and brown, like exotic sands in souvenir glass. The folded texture and colours look almost fungal, Casimir thinks.

  There is a label on the far side of the jar. Casimir turns it to see. BEDDING SKIN is printed in old typewriter letters, the Ds bluish and faint.

  He puts the jar down, looks up. The room is full of a sweet odour, comforting and intensely familiar. A stack of translucent Tupperware boxes is stacked next to Casimir and he picks up the top one, shakes it. The box is almost weightless, full of a soft flopping sound.

  He opens the box. It is packed with Kleenex tissues, pink and white and green, compressed in tightly so that they topple out towards him.

  Casimir picks the tissues up. They are all used, the stains clear and dry. In the second box he can see more tissues. Darker stains. A label and date. ACCIDENT BLOOD.

  It is hot in the small chamber. The light seems to beat back off the metallic walls in waves. Casimir’s breath is becoming harsh and quick.

  He looks round him, dazed by the light. Along the left wall is a row of bottles, their necks wound shut with masking tape. It is hard to tell what they hold through the green glass. Beyond them is the mattress, the tool box. A wooden container, polished as a music box.

  Casimir steps through to the bed. Reaches down for the box. It is heavy, full of the dense chuff of written papers. Casimir clamps the lid in one hand and the base in the other. Pulls against the tiny lock. There is another label on the base of the box, HEAD, in faded blue.

  The lid creaks. Casimir’s face is snarled up with effort, eyes fastening on nothing. The objects, the mattress.

  He stops. Laid across the mattress are pieces of cloth and clothing. A grey sweatshirt, arms folded. A plain white towel.

  The chamber is baked in long-life light. Casimir can feel the sweat on him, trickling down his sides. The towel is folded in four, carefully kept. Casimir puts the box back down, takes the towel. Turns it in both hands. Presses it against his face.

  It smells of himself. The odour is acrid, not unpleasant. He remembers Alice’s voice: Like fish blood. To himself his own sweat smells more mineral; if metal could be smoked it would smell like him. It is familiar as the sounds of the Underground. He thinks of Lower Marsh. The narrow corridors and cheap rented rooms.

  He breathes again, closing his eyes. Beyond his own smell is another. Bitter and sweet and lovely, like honey. Alice.

  There is an electric buzz of sound, violent in the harsh, bright room. Casimir drops the towel, twisting round, hands finally going to the cellular phone at his belt. He raises it to his face and clicks the line open.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  I am in storage, he thinks. In storage with Alice. Laughter rises up in his throat like vomit. He forces it back, throat clicking tight.

  ‘I don’t know, I – is that you, Ian Weaver?’

  ‘Sievwright. Where are you? He’s here, the guy you – he’s right here now!’

  He closes his eyes. Holds them shut. ‘Sievwright, where is he going? Which screen do you see him on?’

  The line crackles with interference, the worker’s voice fading in: ‘… the one with the tunnel lights on. Going back where he came from –’

  Casimir clicks the cell off. Looks up. In the Underground he knows everything, his mind racing ahead up the shafts and passages. It is two flights to the deep-shelter entrance. Five hundred feet to the tunnel mouth. He knows the way. It isn’t far now.

  He runs across the room. Bottles and jars scatter around him, crashing together. Outside is the dark but the light is ahead of him now and he runs hard, back towards the deep-shelter stairs. Making it easy for himself, struggling back up towards the light.

  At the outer door the telephone catches the wall. Casimir lets it clatter down the emergency stairs as he jumps down to the cross-passage, pushing hard with the muscles of his chest and arms and legs. Leaning into the run as he comes out on to the empty platform.

  For an instant the station fades back around him. He can smell the forest, which is also the smell of home. The sap of pines like mint and blood. Voices behind and the squirrel ahead of him, not running. Waiting for him, under the trees. Then h
e is at the tunnel mouth and he can see the carer ahead of him, or if not the carer then someone, the figure disappearing round the tunnel’s curve, the bright beads of line-lights strung out into the warm darkness.

  He stops at the platform’s edge. Sits down on the white line, reaching out with his feet towards the shining metal tracks. Glances back along the platform. The timetable light-board is a hundred feet away. The arrival time of the next train glitters as the minutes change. Casimir narrows his eyes but they are tired, strained by bad light. He can see only one digit by the train’s destination. An eight, or a six, or a three.

  ‘Oy! You can’t all be just going in there. That’s breaking the law.’

  He looks up. Sitting on the last platform bench is an old black man, curls of white hair sticking out under a brown pork-pie hat. Leaning forward, a wooden walking stick across his knees.

  ‘I’m sorry. I have to go.’

  ‘Breaking the law. Tch.’ The man goes on frowning, shaking his head. Angry or uncomprehending. Casimir turns away, pushes himself off the platform, and starts forward into the tunnel.

  The air here is colder now, the city above cooling towards midnight. From up ahead Casimir can hear the carer. He is no longer moving quietly or even with speed. The chuff of his steps against the gravel is slow and measured, like a spade cutting into stony ground.

  Around the first bend the tunnel straightens out. Now Casimir can see the other man. A hundred yards distant, the dark round of his shoulders is sketched into the gloom. He leans a hand on the tunnel wall as he walks and his breathing echoes back down the tunnel. It is monstrous, the breath rattling. Casimir calls out, still moving.

  ‘I see you. I know who you are.’

  The other man slows to a halt. He is at the periphery of a line-light’s illumination, stark and clear. The face is broad and moon-like. Without expression. He looks through Casimir, as if he sees no one there. After a moment he turns and begins to run again. Not fast but regular, finding his rhythm.

  He is limping, Casimir thinks. The carer is hurt. If he is hurt, I can catch him.

  He picks up pace, boots crunching against the ballast. Once he thinks he hears another train, a sighing of air, but when he tries to listen it is only the other man. Breathing hard, not so far ahead.

  The carer looks back as he runs now, craning round every few steps. The skin of his face and hands is unnaturally white. Whiter than skin, as if he has been washed in formalin.

  ‘I know what you are. What you want, I mean. Wait, I –’

  Talking is no good, he thinks. It takes his breath away. A stitch is forming in his gut, a slow twisting pain. He thinks of Poland again; the birch trees, whiter than the snow. The carer’s skin is white as the birch. There is still fifty yards between them when he feels the movement of air against his face. Casimir keeps moving, remembering the postal train.

  But there was no wind when the mail Tube passed them. Now he can feel the air pressure; its current, dangerous as electricity. A slight coolness against the line of his nose, as there was eight days ago. Adams beside him on the platform, telling him about the woman who fell.

  ‘Wait – there’s a train coming. A train –’

  It is closer now, the air building up, acquiring sound. Casimir stoops down. Already there is sound in the tracks. Faint, the whicker of ice warping or water boiling.

  ‘Can you hear me? Listen!’

  He is shouting now. Ahead of him, the carer stops. Turns round.

  This time he is standing between lights, in a bar of darkness. Casimir cannot see his expression, only the white of his skin. His face, his hands.

  There is metal in the carer’s right hand. And now there is sound coming from him too, not speech but a chatter of metal, like ticker tape. It takes a moment for Casimir to connect it with the movement of metal. In the carer’s hand, the knife opens and closes. Irregular but purposeful, like the spasm of a butterfly in sunlight.

  ‘Come back! We have to go back –’

  The sound of the butterfly knife is already being drowned out by the roar of the train. It is faster than the postal train, thinks Casimir. Already it is much too late to turn back.

  The sound of the knife stops abruptly. Now there is only the rumble of air. It buffets against Casimir’s face and he narrows his eyes. Very still now, watching the other man. Seeing him. In the dark, the carer is smiling. An open-mouthed smile, the jaw thrust out, the bottom teeth a hard crescent.

  Like the pike, Casimir thinks. Beside the carer, cables run on along the tunnel walls. In the glare of the next line-light the cables curve up in an arch of grime-black, green and orange plastics. Under the archway is the junction’s black hole.

  The alcove is less than ten feet behind the carer. The noise in the tracks is more violent now, the train’s weight carried down the electrified metal. Casimir shouts into the wind as it builds and thunders.

  ‘You let me follow you.’

  The carer smiles again; teeth out, grimacing. He walks backwards two steps, hand brushing along the wall. Now he is standing in the light, the junction alcove beside him. In his fist the knife points towards Casimir. Edge and point on, it is almost invisible.

  The wind roars past them both, tugging at their soiled clothes. Casimir can see the other man’s face now. He doesn’t remember seeing him this still before. He is surprised by the lines of old expression in the man’s face. The carer looks like he is flinching away from something, some pain or violence. The feeling is set hard into his features. It is the face of someone used to losing and loss; the expression of a victim.

  From their sockets the eyes stare out at Casimir. Hard and narrow as the face is soft and wide. As if it is his own eyes the man flinches away from. They are Alice’s eyes. Blue as blood seen through muscle.

  Two hundred feet northwards, the Underground train comes round the tunnel’s curve. To Casimir its flat head seems to move with great slowness. There is time to see the driver in the bright cabin, leaning down over the gears. A face in the first carriage, leant back against the dirty window. Blue sparks and fuse-light spat between rails and wheels. Light thrown out across the tunnel’s roof, racing across its iron ribs with the quickness of sunlight across fields.

  Then the Tube is into the straight, picking up speed. Ahead of it, the carer stands unmoving, a giant black silhouette with the headlights behind it. The Tube’s horn blares out, deafening loud, the sound rifled against Casimir’s eardrums. He bends away from it, eyes squeezed shut. Reaching out for the tunnel wall with one hand, then with both hands.

  The wall cables are under his palms, caked with grime. Above them are the old line-telephone wires. In his mind’s eye he sees their parallel lines. The bright, live copper.

  He scrabbles upwards. For a second he is hanging off the negative wire, feeling it bend as he hauls upwards. Then he has both wires, their electricity buzzing against his palms. He cries out against the train’s roar and brings his hands together above his head. Like a prayer, or a fist.

  For a moment there is light everywhere, the entire section of line short-circuiting around Casimir. The train screams down on him. Even in his hands there is light, and a rhythm of pain. Then all the lights go out.

  12

  Out of Depth

  He drives fast, but the sunlight is faster. It goes ahead of us, over the fields and woods. When the birch trees are in darkness the trunks are pale as lightning marks, struck upwards through the black hemispheres of their branches. But when the sun moves on to them the forest is green on top and yellowish underneath, the colour of hair or dry grasses.

  The signposts are blue and white, like paintings of July sky. It is ten kilometres to Gliwice. I will be home soon. I will not be home again. How can my mother love my father? How is it that I came to be born?

  My father drives without speaking. Around us is the wind, it comes in through the front windows, out through the back. Two front, two back, like blood through a heart. Soon I will see my mother.

 
The sun moves on to us again and I sit back. When it passes us my muscles harden. It makes me think of Astrakhan, every time. The shadow of the moon, big as a country, coming across the water towards us. The surface of the moon, the surface of Russia. I was calculating them together, but I never finished. I remember my father’s expression when he turned to face the moon’s shadow. He looked terrified. It was like looking into a mirror. This is the last time I will feel for my father.

  He changes down gears at the corner of Aleksandra Fredy Street. Changes to fourth again, picking up speed. I look across at him: his face is curious, as if he is waiting to be hit. I don’t understand it. I look away. Out of the side-window I can see the Strug Estate. The blocks stick up, arranged in pairs, like the points of electric plugs.

  ‘Fire.’

  His voice surprises me. I look round at him and then follow his eyes, back to the estate. From one of the blocks smoke is rising. A or B Block; not ours, which is further away. It is not like coal smoke, which is brown; this is black and thin. It is a small fire, but the smoke still goes up and up. I am surprised at how far the smoke goes. Miles up it drifts away, east towards Oswiecim.

  ‘Maybe it’s your mother. She’s been burning duck eggs again.’

  I say nothing. Now we turn off Energy Street. The smoke is coming from A Block, and I roll down the window and look out. The afternoon sun catches off the flat windows. Only high up there is one burnt-out window. The glass is all gutted out, the windows dulled two flats above it.

  ‘At least it’s not us. At least we’re all right, eh?’

  We are all right. Not good, not bad. I try to picture my mother’s face and it has gone. I put my head right back to see the fire. I count up the floors. Five, six, seven. The sunlight races over and past us.

  13

  Still

  He opens his eyes.

  Nothing happens. It is as if his face is paralysed without his mind knowing. As if he is blind. The tunnel dark lies against his face. Somewhere there is the sound of shaking metal and shouting. But he no longer understands this. In the dark he understands nothing at all.