by Tobias Hill
The rotting brick is cracked with subsidence, step-fissures opened in the mortarwork. There are creepers hidden in the cracks. Anja puts her hand out, trying to recognise the fine, sharp leaves. Pale yellow buds hang from the stems, dead with frost. In the sunken front garden Anja can see their roots, branching out like buttress trees. The front door is boarded up but there is a gaping hole in the basement wall, a window smashed or booted in. Anja lowers herself down, feeling soft mulch under her feet.
She looks into the cellar. It is full of greenery and warmth, succulents crowding up to the windows. She takes a breath of the hot, wet air. Holds it inside her. She climbs in without falling.
The room smells of mushrooms and orchids, dark and sweet. Anja can hear a whirr of electric fans. She shivers when the warm air touches her face, a spasm of muscles. Her hands begin to ache dully, the cold blood hurting in its veins. She gnaws at her knuckles, trying to control the pain.
The ceiling creaks. She snaps her head back, arms out to support a roof beam or plaster. Nothing falls. Her lips are still pulled back against her teeth. She feels sweat on her face as she moves through the plants. The air cools it across her forehead and cheekbones.
There is a stairway, half-hidden behind growths. The bannister has fallen away and she climbs with her hands against the wall, feeling for support. The window at the top of the stairs has been painted black. She turns round. There is a computer on the floor, filling space with the rippling light of a screen saver. The room is full of feathers.
It is a mosaic of green, metallic blue and gold. Condor wing-flights hang down, massive as oars, the colour of dried blood. She starts to laugh, softly at first. The feathers laugh with her, dancing away from her breath.
They are all over her, a hot insulation. She tries to push them away but the floor is covered. Soft grey-green down eddies up towards her like fog. She can’t breathe, feathers catch on her sweaty skin. The ceiling and walls are disturbed by her motion. They move like sequins on a glitterboard. In front of her is an arc of brilliant red. King Bird of Paradise, Anja thinks, and cries out, on the edge of panic. She backs away, falling against the stairs. Holding on, not going down.
‘How long have you been here?’ She is talking to herself. As if the feather man is inside her, a parasite. Her voice is the wheeze of an asthmatic, dried-out with avian dust. Her head sags with exhaustion. She leans back against the wall, closes her eyes. Shouts, ‘How long have you been here?’
Her voice has no echo. The feathers baffle it, moving and settling. A bus groans outside, changing gears. Distant as sound heard through water.
She walks back into the room. Carefully, keeping her motion to a minimum. Feathers rise and fall around her. Hummingbird down glitters against her torn clothes. She turns her head like a sleepwalker. Behind the computer, the wall is barred with ostrich plumes. Anja draws in breath through her nose. Blows gently towards them. The plumes swing back into space.
She pushes through. There is a second staircase, unlit, loose feathers adhering to a worn-out carpet. A sour, pungent odour of alcohol. A zoo smell, Anja thinks. She frowns in the dark, trying to match it with a cage or an enclosure. She thinks of the liger, its head yawning back on a laboratory table.
There is a landing at the top of the staircase. Empty fishtanks are stacked beside an empty doorway. In the gloom Anja can make out a kitchen, dust collecting on cracked white tiles. On top of a broken cooker is a portable gas stove, water boiling in a pan. One plate, one cup. A freezer hums in the corner, enamel bright white. There is a black rubbish sack in the chipped sink.
The knotted plastic is too tight for her fingers. Anja pulls the polythene apart. A black mass spills out across her forearms and she pulls away, not crying out. The kitchen fills with the stench of fish. She leans forward. The sink is full of caviar, a sturgeon’s roe-sac breaking apart as it oozes free of the plastic.
She begins to shiver again. The spasms won’t stop. It is a question of control. What she has lost, what she can keep. Her teeth begin to chatter. There is a door in the far wall. Anja makes herself stop, listening. There is nothing to hear. The door isn’t locked. She goes through.
Before she sees anything there is the sour odour of formaldehyde and she doubles over, retching. Anja remembers the liger, school laboratories, the slit eye of an ox. The smell clogs her lungs. She backs away coughing, looks up.
The room is jammed with Formica café tables, shopping trolleys, plastic beer crates. Fishtanks are packed close together on every surface. There are shapes frozen in the tanks, suspended in liquid. Anja goes closer. The room is quiet as a museum. She can see an armadillo, curved like an ammonite in a box. A gilthead fish, round and flat as a pot lid, eyes mildewed white with preservative.
A dead zoo, she thinks. All the beautiful things. The animals peer back at her, eyes whitened or sunken away. It dies with them. There is nothing here that isn’t monstrous. There is window light in the next room, falling across bare, dry boards. She can see it through the open doorway. She wanders in.
The tank is head-on to the doorway. At first Anja can see nothing but the liger’s head, huge and savage against the glass. Its beard and mane are tangled in the formalin, and the eyes are already misting with vague cataracts of preservation. Anja walks round towards the window. The liger’s torso is wasting, the belly visibly shrunken. Violently grotesque. She thinks of the Sea Hall, leatherback turtles colliding in their confinement. The tunnel-vision of sharks.
She presses her hands against the glass. It is cool and solid on her skin. There is slight movement in the tank, beyond the great cat’s bulk. The feather man is standing on the far side, distorted by the liquid. Watching her. The carcass floats between them, talons extended. Blue and yellow ivory.
‘This is not right.’ Her voice is calm. ‘I thought it would be – not like this, something wonderful. But –’
He smiles with his mouth, not with his eyes. Shakes his head, raises one hand to his ear and turns it away. Anja can see the wizened texture of his skin, the washed-out blue of his old eyes. She mouths at his deafness through the glass. This is not right. Not right.
He doesn’t move, his mouth still smiling a little, muscles not yet returned to laxity. Anja steps back, the light of the window behind her. She punches the glass hard, knuckles clacking against the surface.
He watches her, hands at his sides. She can feel blood running down her knuckles to the fingertips. She clenches her fist. ‘Look what you’ve done.’ She whispers it. Shouts, ‘What have you done?’
She runs back into the adjacent room. The café tables are round, iron under the Formica. From the nearest table a lemur gazes back at Anja with white owl-eyes. She kicks its tank away, gagging as it hits the ground in a wash of glass and formaldehyde solution. Picks up the table by its legs. The alcohol is already on her skin, she can feel its itch and liniment burn.
He is still waiting. She watches him as she swings the table back. ‘What were you making? Is this a zoo? A dead zoo, is that what it is?’ He is shaking his head, puzzled or dazed. She grunts with effort and hauls the table forward by its legs.
It clangs off the glass. The tank booms like a drum. The liger moves slowly in its liquid, head keeling to one side. Its paws move lightly, the way dogs dream of running.
The feather man lowers his head away. Anja wants to bring him to her. Make him hear. She rolls the table back with both hands, feeling the strain on her shoulders. Groans as it swings forward against the glass.
It cracks easily as eggshell. Anja closes her eyes against the expulsion of formalin. It washes over her, a cold oil against her skin. She gags and kneels forward, pulling her arms across her hair and face, trying to clean herself. There is nothing she can do. She can smell the rot and alcohol on her skin. Sickly sweet, like blood and pines.
She doesn’t see the liger fall. It collapses bonelessly, forepaws folding across her. She feels her ribs snap, hears them inside. She opens her mouth to scream but there is no air, only wet
fur. She breathes in on it instinctually, wanting to force air through the meat. Her diaphragm shudders with the effort.
The dead weight is killing her. She slaps at it, pushes frantically. It reminds her of childhood anger, hitting against her mother or father. Their immovability. She giggles. Livid spots bloom on the insides of her eyelids.
The air comes back to her. Wonderful, stinking of formaldehyde, stinging her throat and sinuses. The liger has gone. Back to the zoo, she thinks, and laughs again. Her ribs grind together and she opens her eyes wide to shout.
Her head is level with the floor. The liger is sprawled against one wall, jowled face staring back at Anja. She can see formalin soaking down between the floorboards. Glass is scattered like broken pond ice.
She turns her head. The feather man is sitting on his haunches beside her, rocking slightly. He is picking glass out of her clothing. She can feel his hand, close but never touching. His arms are wet with preservative from the liger’s skin.
‘We have to take the liger back. To the zoo.’ Her voice is a whisper, oddly distorted by broken bones. She is trying to see his face but he is half-turned away. The corner of his mouth grins like an animal’s: a gibbon, salmon, dog. She’s not sure if he’s smiling. She reaches out, thinking he hasn’t seen her lips move. Wanting him to read them.
He moves towards her. His hands are fast and wider than her face. She remembers the feel of suffocation and flinches back. He lifts her easily, like feathers, and starts to walk. The ribs move grudgingly inside her and she bends into herself, struggling for a place where the pain is lessened.
He is walking between tables. She can hear the slide and crash of tanks, the hiss of formaldehyde on electric sockets. In the kitchen she can smell caviar and burnt metal, the water boiled dry in its pan.
The pain is a caul across her face. She is foetal, curled up around her hurt, protecting it. Part of her is trying to remember how formalin burns. She thinks it burns well. She can feel the poison vaporising on her skin.
They are moving through a mire of feathers. Liquid drips through the ceiling and trails down the walls, dragging down the ostrich plumes and condor flights into a drab sludge.
There is a voice talking quietly in the background, like a radio. Anja knows it must be hers. She can’t make out the words. She reaches down towards the ruined feathers. The room is full of bitter plastic smoke, the computer humming ragged and dangerous in its corner.
They are going down into the plants. Now she can hear her voice, louder than the whicker of fans. She is saying sorry, to everyone, over and over again. The house crashes around her like a car. The wings of firs catch at her face as she falls.
She is not falling. The feather man has lifted her up, out of the basement. Anja is lying on open ground. She cranes her head round to see him. She waits for him to come out.
He doesn’t come. Anja calls out for him, but her voice is weak. She waits a little more, lying on her back. The sky is grey and bright. It looks like rain, she thinks. Condensed fog hangs in droplets from the airplants and telephone wires.
Anja tries to remember what is happening next. The house, the feather man. The way formalin burns, the gas stove’s tight blue flame.
She gets to her knees, stands slowly. The pain is bearable if she bends forward, like an old woman. She shuffles to the edge of the sunken yard. She wants to call down but she doesn’t know his name and she knows he won’t hear. She calls anyway, just words, trying to bring him out. There is no one at the dark hole of the window.
There is no way back down except to jump. Anja tries to guess if it would kill her, or how long she would pass out for. She doesn’t think she has much time. She shuffles round, looking off into the deserted market ground. The gates are open, early morning traffic moving slowly beyond them.
She walks towards the gates. Formaldehyde burns in her nostrils and against her lips. It takes a long time to reach the road. There is a telephone shelter on the opposite pavement. Anja goes across, not waiting for the cars to stop. They hoot and shout at her.
She has money. The line clicks and whirrs as junctions connect. The number rings for a long time before someone picks it up.
‘The Zoo.’
‘This is Anja Kivinen. I need to speak to Shamash the wolf keeper.’
‘The Finn. You should be here. Where are you?’
It is the head keeper. Anja crouches forward against the hood of the telephone shelter, supporting her body. ‘Please. I need the wolf keeper.’
‘Wait.’ The phone clicks onto hold. There is music on the dead line, a full choir singing Stille Nacht. She starts to cry. The tears hurt her raw skin.
‘Anja? Where are you?’
She presses her cheek against the receiver and the calm of his voice. ‘Shamash. I’ve found him.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Camden Lock Market.’ She smiles back the tears. ‘He’s in a derelict house, it’s not safe but I can’t get him out. I need your help. Can you come?’
‘Where is the liger?’
‘In the house. He had all these animals in formalin. Like a secret zoo, and I’ – her voice is fading to a wheeze – ‘I broke it all. Was that right?’
His voice is a steady monotone. It doesn’t pause. ‘Yes. You were right.’
She doesn’t believe him. She starts to cry again. Gritting her teeth so he won’t hear.
‘Anja, we don’t need it.’ His voice is still calm. Clumsy, giving away nothing. Not truly clumsy. ‘The liger. Johannesburg say she was old. The zoos agree it was a natural death. So. We don’t need it any more.’
She feels a wave of dizziness. ‘The feather man. He’s still important. It has saved me, Shamash, his zoo, it was wrong but good came out of it – and he saved my life! He – But I can’t get him out now. Please, there’s very little time. Will you come?’
The line sighs like a shell. She can hear whispering. Crossed lines, the head keeper and the wolf keeper. When the voice comes back it takes a moment for her to recognise the head keeper. ‘Anja. When can I expect to see you back here?’ She doesn’t understand. ‘Where’s Shamash? I need –’
‘He’s doing his job, which is caring for animals. Not people. Not people who steal dead animals. Do you understand?’
There is dead air again. She thinks of late-night radio stations. ‘Anja. We are zookeepers. This is where you belong now. You know that. Hang up. Call the police. Then come back. Come back soon.’
She steps away from the telephone. It swings on its steel wire. When she looks back at the market there is already a thin plume of smoke where the derelicts stand. It fans out high above in the grey air. No one has noticed yet.
She goes back towards the road, the gate. Each step takes time and an acceptance of pain. There are people there before her, two teenagers in puffa-jackets, watching the thickening trunk of smoke. There is a sound of glass pinking and falling. Someone comes out of the security guards’ office. They are shouting at her to get back. She ignores them. She can feel the heat of the burning house on her face. When it starts to hurt, she stops.
The fire is breathing, she can hear it, gusts of movement inside the house. A big animal in a small cage. It is trying to get free, moving out along the lines of creepers and telephone wires. It roars in the chimneys and staircases. It throws itself against walls and Anja steps back, knowing she won’t be able to run. It warms her and she feels good. Alive with it.
There is a sound of sirens, lost in traffic and distant one-way streets. Anja looks back at the crowd. They huddle against the gate to see. The roof is burning away, blue flame running crisscross between roof beams.
The smoke glitters. Feathers rise in the intense heat. They ignite, burning cupric green and alcohol-blue. In the high air they spread, erupting and vanishing over the tenements and car parks. Someone in the crowd starts to clap. The fire-engines wail closer.
Anja puts out her hands. Shafts and vanes float against her, charring into nothing. They are beautiful; t
hey disgust her. She wipes them away. They cover the ground in a black snow. She leans her head back and looks up. The sky moves with the small, quick lives of feathers.
A Note on the Author
Tobias Hill was described by Adam Mars-Jones as ‘a master of the historical thriller’ and in the Observer as someone who ‘writes the kind of fiction that can change the way you look at the world’. Along with his two subsequent novels, Underground and The Love of Stones, he is the author of three award winning collections of poetry.
By the Same Author
fiction
THE CRYPTOGRAPHER
THE HIDDEN
THE LOVE OF STONES
UNDERGROUND
poetry
YEAR OF THE DOG
MIDNIGHT IN THE CITY OF THE CLOCKS
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Faber and Faber Limited
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com
Copyright © Tobias Hill, 1997
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
Tobias Hill is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Extracts from Noddy Goes to Sea (in the story ‘No One Comes Back from the Sea’) are reprinted by permission of Gillian Baverstock, Enid Blyton Limited