by Paul Theroux
And strange, this was his season. He had always liked – in the same degree that others hated – the days darkening into winter. Norah feared them. To her, winter was a cold tunnel she might never clear, and lately she had begun to remark on how progressively dark it was getting, how they had their tea at night. She had spent her life waiting for the sun to reach her windows; there was nothing more for her: life was a matter of temperature. She had said a thousand times, ‘I’d like to live in a country where the sun was always shining.’ Mr Wangoosa’s country? Mr Aroma’s? Churchill’s Tobago? Palmerston’s Jamaica? But he bore her yearning with politeness, adding only that hot countries were governed by torturers. He saw her as similar in some ways to the African savage who allowed the riddle of the weather to foreshorten his existence and alter his mood until – and like those pathetic blacks in the television programme – poor Norah would simply sit in the dark and wait to die. But he could not mock Norah. He too had his fantasies, and he imagined death to be something like sitting on the top deck of a Number One bus on a December afternoon, the shop lights flaring and blazing at the windows, the black conductor grinning; a red catafalque racing him into darkness. It was death: you did not get off.
He felt it now; he was on that bus. A month ago he had travelled this way and had seen it all. But today he was reprieved. He alighted at Deptford without incident, deposited his flimsy ticket in the litter bin and started up the street. It was as he remembered it, only drearier. And gusty: the people hurried, simulating panic, as they always seemed to do on windy days. His gloom was deepened when at the brick wall with the torn circus poster – wagging tongues of paper – he saw the words that never failed to still his heart with ice: ARSENAL RULE. A necessary landmark, and yet he wished he had not seen it.
He was rising on the road. The sounds of the river reached him with greater clarity, a boat’s steady poop and a distant hammering at Millwall borne across the water. He gained Ship Street and turned into Albacore Crescent, walked halfway up and stopped. Without the slightest warning, and just as he had once witnessed the demolition of Mortimer Lodge – that embarrassing misapprehension – he imagined number twenty-two bursting into flames. The roof caved in, the windows splintered, and a lighted cloud of bursting sparks and brick fragments was released. A cylinder of horrible fire heated his face. And then, as he watched, the flames died, the splinters met, and every brick fell back into place until the house regained its former solidity and was whole. But there were scorch marks above the windows; had they been there before?
The vision jarred him, and his heart was ticking rapidly as he mounted the steps and rang the bell. The echo droned on; he listened for footsteps, but he was sure on the second ring that the house was empty. No bell sounded louder or more mournful than one in an empty house.
As he turned to go he put his hand on the knob and pushed the door open. From this doorway to the back of the house there was emptiness – none of the clutter he’d seen before, and only the faintest smell of tobacco mingled with dust. Cold air, a wave of it, rolled past him from the creepy interior. He stepped inside and shut the door. A hum, like an electric purr, made him stop; but the hum was in his head, not in the house. He peeked into the living-room: two chairs, no cushions, bare walls. The dining room held a scarred table, and scabs of soot had fallen down the chimney and littered the linoleum in front of the fireplace. The kitchen was empty. He stepped into the back room, a floorboard gave under his foot and for a split-second he was on his way, careering through the first inch of a black hole.
He went upstairs, disturbed by the oafishness of his own banging steps, paused on the landing, and tip-toed down the hall. Then to the top of the house, three rooms: empty.
But as he paused again his mind strayed. The front door had been unlocked: the house could not be empty. He recalled the closed room he had hurried past on the floor below. Not the bathroom, which was shut as if engaged: he could smell the soap. One looked in a bathroom at one’s peril; but that other room?
He retraced his steps: down to the landing, down one flight to the closed door; and he stood in the stale cold air of the hall, taking shallow breaths.
My son is there, he thought. He had touched the doorknob. He was saddened by the chipped paint and the scars, the chill of the porcelain knob. His sadness turned to shame, and it was physical, an infirmity: his arm went dead, his fingers wouldn’t work. His soul rebelled, restraining him with a tug of timid dignity. It was wrong; the place was private. The front door was unlocked: the house had to be empty. It was anyone’s, but not his. For the first time in years he thought of his father and mother in a chastening way, as if when he went home they would stop him and ask him where he had been, what he had done. He had his reply. He withdrew his hand and straightened himself, and as he descended the stairs – softly, to make no noise – he thought: But my son is dead.
She heard his slow descent on the stairs. The front door banged shut, and she shuddered, the nervousness overtaking her now when she was out of danger. It had not been Hood; it was a cautious tread, someone checking the house, a curious neighbour, the gas-man, a meter-reader, a stranger. The keyhole on the bathroom door was sealed, and she had not had the courage to risk a peek. She had shot the bolt and stayed there, where she’d hidden when he entered the house. She cursed herself for not locking the front door, and starting down the stairs she reproached herself for wanting to go and lock it now. The absurdity of it. It was too late; whoever it was had come and gone, and she was safe again.
She climbed back to the landing, where she had been stopped when the front door opened, and she went up the second flight to the top floor. The front bedroom looked no emptier than it ever had. She scanned it for differences, for any change. This was the way it had always been. But the family was ended, he would never return: so emptiness was this knowledge that no particle remained, and only she could know how hollow it really was.
She looked for more, because the day before she remembered how firmly he had said, Don’t come back here. She had half-expected to find him propped on one of those Indian cushions, studying the painting he had begun to covet. She was dispirited; she had nerved herself for a scene and was glad when the bell rang and the door opened; but that gentle step going up and down the stairs was not his.
Dust flew as she rifled the closets. She found the newspapers she had put on the shelves. She wrenched the dented mattress aside. Fur-balls, a button, hairpins, a foreign coin: they aggravated her distress. And as she went through the room, searching for her painting, she could not recall anything of the lovely thing but its thick coat of yellow varnish, its coarsely woven backing, the configuration of cracks that lay over a face she could no longer see. That had always been the way: each time she saw it, it was new to her and she marvelled as if it was just made before her eyes, existing only when she looked at it. Out of sight it was a blank in her mind, and as she searched she prepared herself for the fresh shock of being amazed by the face again. She was certain it was in the house. Don’t come back here: that was proof.
But she had stopped searching. She had opened a low drawer and, on her knees, was reading the old newspaper that lined it. She was calmed, and she remained in this position for a long time, reading effortlessly a large plain story on a browning front page. Old news. It held her, fixed her, as no book ever had.
Downstairs a door opened. She registered the sound, but it vanished without meaning into her depthless mood, and she was so absorbed in the newspaper she did not start until she heard voices: ‘Nothing’ and ‘Better make sure.’ She stood and staggered as if she had been hit, dizzy from her kneeling. She went to the door and listened. They were on the ground floor. She crept along the wall to the landing and made for the place where she had been safe before, the bathroom halfway down the stairs. But she heard them climbing.
‘There’s no one home.’
‘I’ll look up here.’
‘Check all the rooms.’
‘I’ll kill that bas
tard.’
The voices were loud, careless, shouting back and forth. Not Hood. Obscure rowdy men. Their accents alarmed her; she was afraid, just hearing their brutish mispronunciations. They moved quickly through the house. She padded down the hall, her eyes aching, looking for a place to hide: not a room, a closet – or out the window?
‘Smells like’ – the voice ran ahead of the feet tramping the uncarpeted steps – ‘like someone died here.’
And noises, kickings, downstairs.
‘I don’t see nothing.’
Nuffink: she quailed. She was at a back window. It was painted shut; she struggled to free it from the casement, and as she did – not knowing what lay below here, not caring that it was thirty feet down to a paved alleyway behind the house – she was linking the visit of the first man to this one and seeing how it fit. He had been making sure the house was empty, preparing for the others, and when he left, when she had felt safest, she was in the most danger. Her thoughts moved as clumsily as carpentry. She could not open the window. She had told Murf to paint it, and he had done it like he did everything, with stupid sloppy care. She fought with it, and even as she heard the man in the hall she was blaming Murf and hating the thought of his pinched face, his ugly ears.
‘Well, well, well. I don’t believe it.’
The man, tall, with a killer’s face and strings of hair to his shoulders, stood in the doorway.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said, and still tried to work the window open.
‘Don’t move.’ He was pale, his skin like a sausage casing. He leaned backwards and yelled, ‘Rutter!’
‘You find something?’ It was the man on the ground floor calling into the stairwell.
‘A bird!’
‘What?’
She said, ‘I don’t know what you’re looking for. The house is empty.’
‘Really.’
He was mocking her. She said, ‘I used to live here. There’s no one here now.’
‘Except you.’
‘I thought I left something behind. I –’
‘Who are you?’ It was the second man, shorter, darker, in an overcoat and a small neat hat. He shook out a pair of glasses and used them to look at her. They softened his appearance: she almost trusted him for those glasses.
‘She thinks she left something behind.’
Finks, somefink. The chewed words scared her.
‘Says she used to live here.’
She appealed to the smaller man, whom she could see was in charge: ‘This is my own house. You won’t find anything.’
‘Up against the wall, chicky.’
‘I have a right to know who you are. If you’re policemen you have to tell me.’
‘That’s right, chicky. Flying-squad.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You heard what he said.’ The taller man stepped towards her. ‘Get over. Palms against the wall, legs apart.’
‘I don’t care what you’re doing here,’ she said, and tried to sound friendly. ‘Just let me go. No one will know.’
‘What’s your name?’
She hesitated. She said, ‘Sandra.’ And it was as if, admitting it she became that person, one she hated. She said, ‘Don’t touch me, please.’
‘We’re not going to hurt you.’
She turned and saw that the smaller one had taken out a pistol.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Please –’
‘Don’t worry,’ said the man. ‘This ain’t for you. This is for him.’ He jerked the pistol at the other man. ‘I don’t trust him with birds, see. I’ll make a hole in him if he starts anything.’
‘I wouldn’t mind and all,’ said the taller man. ‘Let’s do her and get out of here. The place is empty.’
‘Just rooms – empty rooms. Nothing.’ She began to cry. ‘Please let me go. I’ll do anything you say.’
‘You’re giving me ideas,’ said the taller one.
They frightened her, and her awareness of this fear gave her the greatest sense of outrage she had ever known. She wanted them cowering, dead, chopped into pieces. Rape: she would let them; afterwards, she would find them and kill them.
‘Tell me what you want,’ she said.
‘Keep her away from the window.’
‘Off we go,’ said the taller man. ‘Make a funny move and I’ll brick you so fast you won’t know what happened.’
They pushed her into the hall. She thought of running downstairs. They had guns; but something else kept her from making a dash – there was nothing in the house, nothing at all, and remembering that gave her hope. Somehow, they knew about the painting. She hoped they’d find it; they could have it. But no, the house was empty.
She stayed ahead of them, walking along the landing. She said, ‘These are bedrooms. They’re all empty.’
‘How many upstairs?’
‘Two. No, three.’
‘What about this one?’
The voice was over her head. It was rough, unpleasant, deliberately threatening. She trembled; her fear was like penance, purifying her. She felt innocent, a young girl, without any blame, punished for no reason. And again she wanted the men dead, at her mercy.
‘Which one?’
‘Here. The door’s closed.’
‘Empty, like the rest of them.’
‘The rest of them are open.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
They gathered at the door. She remembered the televisions, junk, and Hood saying, We’ll leave them for the next tenant. A hand moved across her shoulder. Don’t touch me. Pure. Most of all she hated Hood: Don’t come back here. You only said that if you had something to hide. She thought: I will do whatever they say, and be safe; the ones who fight, die.
They stepped into the room.
The Number One bus that had taken him to Deptford would take him the rest of the way to Catford, but he had waited twenty minutes and none had come. The queue had lengthened behind him: shoppers, labourers, schoolboys in uniforms. It was dark. He clasped his hands on his paper and relaxed, finding it restful to be so anonymous, in a bus queue in Deptford, among strangers. There were whispers of complaint about the late bus. He eavesdropped, invisible in the shadow of the bus shelter, glad that nothing was required of him but to listen.
‘What’s that?’
The explosion reached him as a muffled roar, too brief for recollection.
‘Smash-up.’
‘That was no smash-up.’
‘Gas-main.’
‘Look!’
The sky was lit, segments of low cloud touched by fire and given majestic detail, and sparks travelling up in gusts, curling above the rooftops. Now the bus queue broke, and all the people ran across the street in the direction of the flames.
Mr Gawber stayed. He boarded the bus and went to the top deck, paid his fare and folded his paper square to complete the crossword. He clicked his pen, but he did not write. He thought: home, Norah, and tonight Peter Pan. It is the end of my world. He put his fingers to his eyes and tried to stop his tears with his fingers.
26
‘Beautyful. Beautyful.’ Murf was at the window, the firelight from the next road flickering on his face, catching his ear-ring and making his ears seem to twitch. Little Jason joined him, standing on tip-toes, his chin on the sill, shrieking at the flames. ‘Went like anything,’ Murf said to the child. ‘It’s still going beautyful. I wish Brodie was here. That cracked it and all. Look at it go!’
The explosion, a tremendous thud, a shower of bricks and glass, had come as they were having tea. It shook their plates and brought a groan from their own house. And Murf, who had just pushed a fragment of kipper into his mouth, stood up, his cheeks bulging, his eyes popping. He threw down the slice of bread he was holding; he choked, trying to swallow, trying to shout. Hood saw black fingermarks on the breadslice. Murf, still chewing, had started out the door, but Hood restrained him, and so Murf had run upstairs to watch the blaze. Then Jason and Lorna; then Hood.
Eruption
: the neighbourhood which had seemed to him a district of empty houses, locked and abandoned, was alive; the streets full of reddened people painted by flames, gathered in little watching groups, driven from their houses like ants roused by heat. An ambulance brayed in Ship Street. It came skidding around the Crescent, its blue lights flashing in all the windows of nearby houses. Deptford itself was alight, but this fire, simulating life, reduced it to theatre, and Hood could not bear to watch.
Lorna said, ‘That’s your house!’
‘Not anymore it ain’t,’ said Murf. He laughed; he was dancing. He lifted Jason to see. ‘Look at the little basket – he likes it and all!’
‘What’s up,’ she said. ‘What the hell is this?’
Murf said, ‘That there’s the booby-prize. Hey, where you going?’
‘Downstairs,’ said Hood.
‘You won’t see nothing from there.’
‘Who says I want to?’
Hood left them and went down to the dining room. The eaters had been put to flight. Panic showed in their leavings. The table was covered by the half-eaten meal, bones, bitten pieces still on forks, greasy glasses, the fingerprinted bread, teethmarks everywhere; and outside, the alarm, the excited shouts.
‘What do you know about this?’ said Lorna entering from the hall.
‘You don’t want me to tell you.’