Glass

by Alex Christofi

  People packed up their stuff. The break was ending. Blades took me with him into a lift, and we took the remaining stairs to the very top. I had become aware of every twitch he made beside me. He had rolled his uniform down to his waist, tying the arms, with only a vest underneath. I could see pools of shadow grow and disappear as he flexed and unflexed his arms. He wasn’t a big man, but his hands looked as strong as clamps, and he had that nervous tension I sometimes saw in drug addicts on the street, as if at any moment he might just lunge forward and sink those canines into my nose.

  We got out onto the maintenance deck, set the gondola and he climbed into the cradle. I noted with a certain satisfaction that he hadn’t clipped himself on. But then really, what was I going to do – hoist him over the side?

  We were just preparing to drop, and I hadn’t yet heard any sirens. The cradle ran on an automated reel that would take forty-odd minutes to come back up once it was fully extended. If Blades didn’t know we’d taken the cameras, he’d continue washing the windows in blissful ignorance. If he did find out, he wouldn’t suspect me, because I’d be up here with him. I climbed into the cradle after him, feeling very clever.

  We got our equipment ready. I clipped myself securely on, twice. I had my standard spray, squeegee, suction cup, scraper, titanium scraper, GOMORRAH. Check. Glasses pushed up to bridge of nose. Check. T-shirt still too small, possibly still too heavy, but the cradle felt pretty solid. I doubted any human could break the steel mesh cables. You could hang a wrecking ball off one of these.

  We pressed the green button to start the programmed descent. Our pace was pre-determined, our rhythm absolute. Here was our crow’s nest, there the horizon. All around us, the curved earth. If only we had been able to look out from this vantage point hundreds of years ago. You could see things more clearly up here. People were put in their proper proportion. Red ants, black ants.

  ‘Günter, have you moved the camera?’ I froze. Blades pointed over near the stairs. ‘The camera. Did you move it?’

  ‘What makes you think I moved it? I only just got here.’

  ‘Did you or didn’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘…’

  ‘Why did you move it? Are you stupid? We spent hours finding the right positions.’

  ‘I don’t care how long you spent. I wasn’t going to let you get away with it.’

  He took a step towards my end of the platform. ‘I’m not in the mood for practical jokes, Günter. Where is the camera?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘They’re hidden. All of them. You’ll never find them.’

  Blades took another step towards me. The platform shuddered.

  ‘This is the last straw.’ His voice rose. ‘This is the last. Fucking. Straw. I brought you up here, I gave you a job. You were nothing when I found you, just some local yokel. People in Salisbury didn’t respect you, you were a circus act to them. Don’t you understand? You were a joke, a fat man flying like a wind sock. I mean, look at yourself. Really look. I constantly have to send Frank to pick you up because you refuse to own a car. The other cleaners don’t respect you either, I have to step in for you every time your back’s turned. They say you’re too fat, you talk nonsense, your methods are eccentric. I’ve been defending you, because I thought you might be grateful. I thought you might go far.’ He took another step forward, now only inches from my face. ‘And this is how you repay me.’ He put his hands on my shoulders and looked me deep in the eye, like a drill sergeant. ‘So what is this? Some kind of fucking hidden camera show? What?’ I said nothing. ‘Why have you hidden my fucking cameras’

  He started to shake me hard and the cradle wobbled.

  ‘Take your hands off me,’ I said, my voice cracking. I grabbed his arms and tried to pull them off me but he was shaking me more violently now. The cradle began to bounce gently.

  ‘Give me the cameras you bloody hun! I’ve had enough of your fun and games, tell me where they are!’

  He was gripping me so hard that I couldn’t pry even a single finger off my shoulders – he was just too strong – and now the cradle bounced and swung in towards the windows, smashing against the glass, which fractured at the point of impact.73 I stamped on his foot and his hands moved from my shoulders to my neck and he started to push me backwards, bending me over the side.

  I panicked. I had a safety rope, but instinct took over. Before I knew what I was doing I had taken the GOMORRAH out of my sidekick holster and sprayed it into his face. He let out a shriek like a man possessed and clutched at his eyes, stumbled backwards, tripped on a metal strut and fell back over the side, one hand trying to snatch at a cable. I reached out to grab his arm but pulled back. It was too late.

  It wasn’t quite a freefall. As one foot caught a window frame it threw him into a spin, so that he seemed to be cartwheeling erratically down the building. He must have lost consciousness at around the thirtieth floor, when his head hit and cracked a window, slowing the cartwheels. From that point on he was a rag doll, lifeless arms like streamers on a kite. He barely bounced when he hit the concrete, though his body broke up a bit, stuck bull’s-eye in a cloud of dust.

  My ears rang. I felt as if I was underwater. I looked at my watch and saw that it was just gone half past two; I unclipped myself, wiped my sweaty palms on my trousers, climbed a couple of feet of cable and hoisted myself back onto the deck; I took the lift to the ground floor; I walked out quickly past the crowd that had gathered around the body; I entered London Bridge underground station; I texted Frank to meet me at Liberty’s. Somewhere crowded. We could get anywhere from there. I heard sirens dipping in pitch as I walked down the escalator; I changed at Bank and ended up at Oxford Circus, where I began the short walk to our meeting point; I looked at my watch: 2.58.

  I had saved the day. I had definitely saved the day. Blades was evil. Everyone knew it. It had been me or him. It was self-defence. He had attacked me first, he was trying to strangle me or throw me over the side. I had done what anyone would do. Burned his face and sent him on a thousand-foot flight. It was the right thing to do.

  I had to think of other things. That was something to think about later.

  I turned onto Great Marlborough Street and saw the sun cleaving the road into light and dark. It was so obvious, so clear-cut. I saw the LIBERTY sign, the beautiful exotic flowers by the entrance. Along the shop front, from floor to ceiling, was plate after plate of cool, pristine glass. I stepped out into the road to get into the sunlight and saw the golden weathervane, in the shape of a ship, sailing on air towards some land of hope, the sunlight caught in its intricacies as if charging it with energy. I walked out further into the middle of the crossroads, and stopped. This was the moment that everything had been building up to. This moment. Now, here. The sun blazing like a furnace, the clear light, liberty, purity. This is it. I feel a blistering rush as if I am being lifted from the ground, hear a screech as of shuddering tyres, the split of metal and the fracturing of glass.

  In this moment, I see God’s teardrop start to form: the universe is flung outwards, matter grabs on with its fingertips and waltzes with its nearest partner; stars form, stars waltz, combine; and then whole groups of stars, waltzing and combining. Some of these huge bodies start to collapse under their own weight; I am born and die; life is born and dies; and still the teardrop wells, gathering weight, becoming rounder, pregnant. More stars collapse to become so dense that the light itself is waltzing around them, gathering itself into a compressed black mass, finding other darknesses, feeding. The teardrop has formed. It ripples ever so slightly. The darknesses begin their last waltz around the unseen centre of everything, God, antimatter, all worlds. They waltz closer, faster, like water down a plughole. The teardrop falls, and when it lands, all worlds collide, and there is a monstrous splash. The universe is flung outwards.

  ‘You have to get him to hospital,’ someone cried in distress.

  ‘No!’ I croaked. I couldn’t feel my body.
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br />   ‘You’re pretty mashed up,’ said another voice, speaking softly from the throat. ‘You’re losing a lot of blood.’

  ‘No,’ I heard myself reply. ‘I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.’ I repeated it like a mantra, like a spell. I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew I was lying in a bed.

  ‘You’re awake,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you might be dead.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Frank.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Good. But try not to be alarmed when you see your chest. And don’t try and pull it out. That might make you die.’

  I looked down at my body. There was nothing obviously untoward, except that I could see something out of reach in the very bottom of my vision. I craned my neck, trying to pull my head upwards, and saw a thin but discernible sliver of glass, lodged in my chest like an award.

  ‘How far in is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Far enough that taking it out is worse than leaving it in. They want you to speak to your family before they operate.’

  In the face of this injury, which was so obviously mortal, I became calmer than, perhaps, I have ever been. I was to die. It was decided. There was not a thing I could do about it; to struggle against it would only bring death closer. I imagined the edges, just atoms thick, cleaving my cells like a knife through hot butter on a scale so minute that it almost didn’t matter which side they were on.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked. It hurt to talk, or breathe.

  ‘I tipped off the muck from a phone box and then got your text and realised I was late to meet you, so I was driving a little over the agreed speed limits and I caught you as I came out of a side road. You really took out my bumper. Half a shop front too.’

  ‘Is Blades okay?’ I asked, somehow unable to believe any of it.

  ‘He’s not going to get any worse.’

  ‘Have they diffused the bombs?’

  ‘Don’t know. Spoke to one of the lads who’d come down to see the body and he seemed to think the cameras were all filming the sky to do a time lapse video.’

  ‘That’s probably just what Blades told him.’

  Frank didn’t say anything.

  ‘But he really was planning to blow up the Shard, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Wouldn’t rule it out. Either way, you’ve relieved the world of a prick.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Course not. He fell.’ Frank cracked a good-natured grin. ‘You get some rest. Your family will be here soon.’

  He looked anxiously at the door. I closed my eyes. I tried to shift in the bed but it hurt too much. I should do more exercise, I thought. Here I am, alive, a miracle of muscle and joint, unused.

  My mind lapped gently at the shores of consciousness. I thought of the seaside. It was so vivid, the ocean so impenetrably deep. I could almost smell fish.

  A hand took my hand. A strong hand. An expressive hand.

  I couldn’t muster the breath to speak, but my hands still worked.

  I’m sorry, I signed.

  You’re just saying that because you think you’re dying, Max signed back miserably.

  I really am sorry. I’m sorry that you’ll only have one person left to care about.

  You’re sorry for your behaviour? he signed.

  No. You are my brother. It is your job to put up with me. And tell Lieve—

  Lieve was real No way! So you finally got laid? he replied.

  Yes. Tell her she will be a good mother. Important.

  He nodded. We could not say anything else. I could not say love without disturbing my wound, and wouldn’t have known how to say it to Max. I hoped he knew.

  Sometimes it is hard to tell whether you are crying without touching your face. My temples felt hot. There could have been tears running down them, I supposed, but my hands were heavy now. As the late afternoon sun fell, it shot in through the window and filled my eyes with light. I didn’t close them. I wanted the image of that light burned onto my retinas. The sheets around me were soft and hot.

  For a long time I have been looking for something simple to reach for, something that stays the same always, that is not subject to conditions. Something pure and clear as light through glass.

  When it comes down to it, though, I suppose I don’t know what that is. You can’t rise up out of the world. Nothing that exists can be pure. Purity can’t feel, or interact; it might as well not have been. I have tried to live by ideals, to find something after my mother that might carry me over the rocks. I wonder what she would say. ‘You tried your best, and that’s what counts.’ I did. I did try my very best. But I suppose I wasn’t up to the job. I suppose, if anyone’s up there counting the scores, they might concede that they have made it too hard to be good.

  Still, I suppose a lot of things.

  Dad was trying to show me a text message.

  ‘Your friend the Dean is on her way.’

  Too late, I signed. I imagined her sitting on a train, her hands curled up into each other like a Grecian key, and tried to smile. Any messages for Mum? I signed.

  ‘Tell her I broke one of the plates from our nice set but I’ve found a wholesaler who can replace it.’ Dad chuckled through his bleary eyes. He never knew what to say when it mattered. But that was for the best too. ‘Tell her I love her, and I hope it’s bikini weather up there. She always had a cracking pair of legs.’ He shook his head, choked up, and covered his face with his hand.

  It’s okay, I signed. Get some rest. I think we could all do with a rest. I don’t know if he saw me. I don’t know if anyone did.

  Footnotes

  1 John 2:4. dw: I know one is not really supposed to use the King James Version in this day and age, but it’s a damn sight more poetic than that awful New International Version.

  2 DW: Some deaf people can’t hear music at all. They are called ‘profoundly deaf’, their ears being about as much good as if they were submerged under a hundred tonnes of water. Max can, in fact, hear music, but it’s the difference between a live orchestra and a touch-screen phone.

  3 DW: I can’t find any record that Günter spoke German, even later, in London. His mother seems never to have taught him, perhaps because she had spent so long convincing herself she was English.

  4 DW: It’s called The Broadfield House Glass Museum. It’s still there, if you’re ever stuck for childcare.

  5 DW: Günter only ever called them Dutch waffles.

  6 DW: I never quite knew where he got this notion. As Günter’s beloved Wikipedians might have put it, ‘[citation needed]’.

  7 DW: As you may know, sadism is when it gives you pleasure to cause other people pain. What I don’t understand is that sadists often team up with masochists, who get pleasure from receiving pain. I hardly think sadists would enjoy knowing they are in fact causing masochists pleasure.

  8 DW: You would think Günter had to get a category B licence (car) so that he could obtain the category L licence (electrically propelled) in with the bargain. In fact all the floats were diesel, because only about one in eight people have their milk delivered in Salisbury. Günter passed his test third time, with thirteen minors (stalling x 2, signalling too early, signalling too late, approaching a junction too fast, passing too close to a parked car, stopping too close in traffic, failure to overtake a slow-moving vehicle x 2, lane discipline, ancillary control, undue hesitation x 2).

  9 DW: Alcohol is one of God’s stranger gifts. On the rare occasion that I am out walking late at night, I am reminded of Isaiah 19:14: ‘The Lord hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit.’

  10 DW: In Russia they obviously don’t call them Russian dolls. They call them Matryoshka dolls, coming from the word for mother. So really the dolls are a metaphor for offspring, rather than the other way around.

  11 DW: ‘He will never amount
to anything.’ At twenty-six, became the most important physicist of all time, but hindsight, as we shall learn, needs no spectacles.

  12 DW: It seems clear that during this time he was, if not depressed in the modern sense, at least melancholic. The Reverend Robert Burton defined melancholy as ‘a kind of dotage without a fever, having for his ordinary companions fear and sadness, without any apparent occasion.’ Rev. Burton wrote a 1,400 page book on the subject, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), during which he complained rather unselfconsciously that there was too much to read these days, and that ‘our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.’ His remedy for melancholy can be summed up in the last six words of the book: ‘Be not solitary, be not idle.’

  13 DW: Or, to be accurate, The Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in Salisbury.

  14 DW: For a long time, glass vessels or windows were the preserve of the rich. It is comparatively recently that they have swapped place with lobsters.

  15 This is Bishop Richard Poore, who is commemorated holding a scale model, in case visitors are somehow oblivious to the building on which the statue stands.

  16 2 Kings 4:40. dw: There’s nothing like a cry of ‘there is death in the pot’ to put one off one’s food.

  17 DW: Günter related his experience of the funeral to me later. As far as I am aware, I did no such thing.

  18 Proverbs 14:12. dw: People too often think of laughter and crying as opposites, when really they are at the same end of the spectrum. Their opposite is being underwhelmed.

  19 Jeremiah 9:21. dw: If I’d known what was going to happen, I might have saved this one for the next funeral.

  20 Hebrews 9:16-17. dw: I am absolutely sure that life is one’s only true message to the world, and to God. One’s message can even be quite coherent if one dies young enough not to dribble a comeback album down one’s cheek. For those who die young, their oeuvre is complete, their contribution known, evincing none of the compromise that comes with age. Can there be any word more antithetical to greatness than ‘reunion’?