Eventually there was no more reason to linger. I walked down the steps into the station and took the lift to the platform.
I pulled my camera from my bag and held it up to my face, taking a couple of pictures to see whether there was enough light. The metro station in summer was unnervingly still, kept breathing only by visitors to the park too lazy to walk up from Jaurès. There were plenty of places on the train when it came, but I stood by the doors. From the window I watched the passing lights, looking for a hint of green. I tried not to blink for fear of missing it. Maybe it wouldn’t be there; it might just be the product of Tomomi Ishikawa’s wild imagination. The tunnel here is quite broad but seemed darker than I imagined the other lines to be. I liked the changing shape of the walls. I’d like to walk along here and explore every tiny opening and all the shadowy places. The train creaked as the track pulled it round to the right and through the glass; I could see the carriages snaking away behind me. From the corner of my eye, just feet away, I saw a flash of green, and it was gone.
There is a plant in the metro on the line 7bis between Buttes Chaumont and Bolivar; I saw it, sitting under a horizontal light, shining green in the blackness. We pulled into Bolivar and I ran back to the opposite platform to retake the same journey.
The picture that I took was blurred. Really blurred. I examined the image on the screen, hoping for a hint of green, but there was nothing but a bright horizontal streak along a dark brownish background.
Back at Buttes Chaumont for a third time, I stayed at the front of the platform so the train wouldn’t yet be running at full speed by the time I passed the plant and I’d have a better chance of getting it on camera.
Now I knew where to look, I could see the plant every time I passed it. But after four times back and forth on the line I still hadn’t managed to get a clear picture. The next train I took pulled out of the station and was barely round the corner of the track when it ground to a halt. The driver apologised for the delay and said we would be moving in a few seconds. The window I was looking through was directly in front of the plant. I took three pictures and felt fairly sure that I had a clear shot, judging by the image on the camera’s LCD. A woman in the carriage smiled at me and eyed me up and down, then looked away. People look at each other in Paris.
At home I loaded the pictures onto Tomomi Ishikawa’s computer. I deleted everything that was remotely blurred and ended up with just one photograph. I liked it. It was a good treasure. Butterfly was right. I found the idea of a plant growing in the metro amazing. It had tiny round green leaves streaming down from pale branches. It’s not a beautiful plant, it’s just a weed, but it’s growing underground with nothing but a narrow strip light illuminating it. Can a plant survive, feeding from just a small light like that? Obviously, yes. So why aren’t there more plants in the metro? It was the only one I’d ever seen and I was impressed. I loved the plant. I selected it as the background for the computer desktop.
* * *
It was two days later that I noticed what should have been obvious. Staring at me from the screen of Butterfly’s computer was the plant in the metro, and behind the plant, on the brown wall, there were forms and patterns coming out of the dark: the rows of brick; painted horizontal stripes, red and white, that line every metro tunnel; and writing. It could have been graffiti, but the hand was too regular and the pale letters too small.
I opened the image in Photoshop, increased the exposure and zoomed in. I could see scruffy, hastily chalked letters, written by a girl, written by Butterfly. ‘This way, Ben Constable,’ the words said, and underneath was an arrow pointing to the right.
My heart leapt. There was no doubt about it. Tomomi Ishikawa had written a message for me on the wall of the tunnel. How the hell had she got into a metro tunnel? She had many fantastic ideas for activities that were less than legal, and/or dangerous, but she was all mouth. Butterfly didn’t actually do these things. They were just ideas. But I know the shape of her letters. She wrote this. Besides, who else would have done it?
So if I’d correctly understood, I was supposed to walk into the tunnel and follow the arrow in order to find some hidden treasure. I couldn’t actually go into the tunnel, of course. I was too scared and happy to admit it. It was a great idea, but I wouldn’t do it in real life. I wondered what the treasure was. Another murder?
A solution came to me a couple of hours later while watching the sky shunt the clouds to the east. Well, more accurately, it was a half solution. I would go back and forwards on the metro and photograph every inch between Buttes Chaumont and Bolivar. I would take a thousand pictures and stick them all together until I could see all of the tunnel wall. Then I would scrutinise every brick and mark until I found what I was supposed to be looking for. And if it was just a picture or something interesting to look at, there would be no need for me to go into the tunnel on foot and risk my liberty and safety. Of course, it might be an envelope or something, but I would deal with that as and if the situation arose.
I spent the rest of the day going back and forth on line 7bis, taking photographs, to the feigned indifference and occasional overt curiosity of my fellow passengers. I counted the clicks of the camera and measured the spaces between the lights and any landmarks, scribbling a diagram in my notebook. It was essential that I got the whole tunnel. I worked like a zombie until eleven thirty at night, took 517 pictures, then went home. I deleted everything that was blurred or doubled up until I had two hundred or so images documenting pretty much the whole length of the wall. Then I started to build a collage on Tomomi Ishikawa’s computer. A great long string of overlapping photographs.
I fell asleep in my clothes at five in the morning and woke again at eleven to carry on. And by three in the afternoon I had a single image that I could scroll along from right to left, covering the route from Buttes Chaumont to Bolivar.
Suddenly I was starving, thirsty and in desperate need of the toilet. It was as though I’d turned off my body for two days just to focus on one thing. Normally I can barely concentrate for long enough to write my own name. In the last six months I hadn’t written more than six pages. I was interested to note my dedication to this laborious task. I made some quick food and had a shower.
I tidied up the kitchen, then went back and started to examine the picture. The new photo of the plant was actually better than the one I had already and I could see the writing on the wall as clear as day. I followed the arrow and I didn’t have far to go. About thirty yards after the plant there was an opening, like a doorway, with steps going down and something drawn on the wall. I zoomed in and there was an arrow on the side pointing down at forty-five degrees. Underneath it was written ‘DOWN HERE, BC’ in clumsy block capitals.
Fuck. She wanted me to go into the tunnel and down into some unknown subterranean world. I couldn’t go into the tunnel. I would get into trouble. It seemed like a poor reason not to do something slightly adventurous, but it was true. I just couldn’t imagine actually doing it. It was undoable. It was pointless to take so much risk to find something left for me by a dead person.
* * *
I stood looking southwards into the tunnel at metro Buttes Chaumont. In front of me there was a yellow sign telling me not to go past this point and blocking the route down the narrow steps. There were people on the platform waiting, too many people for me to get down the steps without anybody noticing. How do graffiti artists do it? There must be hundreds of people who go into the tunnels all the time. Why can’t I? I thought that maybe I should wait until late at night when the last metro had gone. There wouldn’t be any people about and it would eliminate the risk of getting run over by a train or electrocuted (presuming they turn the current off at night). There was room next to the tracks for a person to walk. It’s not like London, I thought. If you were walking along the tracks in the Tube and a train came, you’d get totally squashed. Here, though, so long as you kept close to the wall, you’d have a good few inches’ clearance, maybe even a foot. A train came t
owards me and into the station. I watched a handful of people get off and on, but even as they were filing into the lift going upwards, a new batch arrived. There was no way I could get onto the tracks. Or was I just being cowardly? And as if to prove that cowardice was the problem, Cat turned up. Hello, Cat, I thought. He looked into the tunnel. Then without so much as a glance in my direction, he walked under the yellow sign warning of the risk of death and headed downwards into the dark. ‘Where the fuck are you going, Cat?’ I asked, but he probably didn’t even understand the question.
He walked a couple of metres and then smelt the ground as if he were a skilled tracker or something. Cat, don’t pretend you know what you’re doing, because you don’t. He took another couple of steps and waited again, then set off walking calmly along towards the plant, a long way out of sight. Cat, come back! Don’t leave me here. After a minute another train came. I looked up at the ceiling in as casual a manner as I could muster, then, as the train pulled away, I went back to my position staring into the tunnel and watched the back of the train disappear. I hope Cat’s all right (fucking stupid cat). People came out of the lift and I tried to look innocent again.
As the next train pulled in, I moved back from the edge of the platform and slid down the wall so I was squatting and scowling at the ground. People passed me and another couple of trains came and went. What if Cat doesn’t come back? Do you have to wait for imaginary cats, or can you just leave them to find their own way home? I think I know the answer to that question. And then he poked his head round the corner and looked at me. ‘What?’ He just looked at me and waited, then looked back into the tunnel and back at me again. ‘I’m not going, Cat. I’ll get caught or there’ll be a horrible accident and I don’t know what will happen.’ He stared at me and then sat down and licked one of his paws. ‘I’m not going, Cat. I can’t.’ A woman in a dark green uniform came down out of the lift towards me.
‘Monsieur?’ She asked me if I was all right and I thought about telling her that I just felt a bit faint but was fine now. I didn’t want to worry her, though, or cause a fuss, so I came up with a better idea and told her I was waiting for someone. She gave me a bored look and told me to go and sit on one of the seats provided. As I stood she turned back towards the lift. I guess I’d shown up as being suspicious on some camera and she’d come to look. She looked back over her shoulder to make sure I’d actually moved, at the same time that I looked back to make sure she wasn’t still watching me, which was embarrassing. I went quickly to one of the white moulded plastic seats and Cat followed at a leisurely pace. ‘I can’t do it, Cat. I got in trouble just for squatting on the floor, and Christ, normal people sit on the floor in the metro all the time. There are beggars who spend their whole day sitting on the floor in stations, but the moment I do, someone in uniform comes and moves me on. Imagine what would happen if I walked onto the tracks. I’m not good with authority, Cat, and I get into trouble easily. And I’m a coward. I can’t do it.’
Cat got up and walked off and I waited for a minute to make sure I wouldn’t catch up with him, then took the lift up out into the night.
9
Resistance
From Buttes Chaumont I trudged mindlessly up to Belleville, along rue des Pyrénées and then cut through tiny streets and stairways down to Ménilmontant. A few fat drops of rain fell on my head. I changed my route a little and ducked into a bar where I used to drink with Tomomi Ishikawa. I half expected to see her sitting alone, scribbling words for which she would offer no explanation into a notebook. She wasn’t there, of course. I sat at a table in the open window with a beer and the rain picked up. I watched the pavement and let my lungs fill with the intoxicating smell of warm summer night and water that somehow crumbles the sound of voices and glasses into a comfortable drone. But despite these favourite things, I felt sorry for myself. I got out my notebook and did my own scribbling.
The last time I sat in this chair there was a bottle of wine in front of me, two glasses and an ashtray. Tomomi Ishikawa was sitting opposite, leaning forwards with her elbows on the table, looking serious. A long time has passed since then. Maybe a year.
‘Can I tell you something cool?’ she asked.
‘Yep,’ I said.
‘At the Pantheon—’
‘The Pantheon in Paris?’
‘Yeah. There’s a clock. It’s an old clock and for a long time it didn’t work.’
‘You like clocks that don’t work.’
Tomomi Ishikawa looked at her watch—it said twenty past three. ‘I do,’ she said; ‘so if anything, this should be a sad tale for me, but it’s not, it’s cool, as you will find out, my dear Ben Constable.’
‘OK.’
‘OK. There was this group of intellectuals who hung out together like a secret society.’
‘Is this a joke?’
‘No. Listen. Their headquarters were underground in the catacombs where they would meet and watch films d’auteur, drink exceptionally fine wines and talk about art, cultural heritage, science and philosophy and how France was going to the dogs. They probably had concerts down there featuring prominent French musicians playing great French composers and that kind of thing.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Shhh, I’m making some of it up, but not all. It’s a true story. They’re some elite group of know-it-alls with roots going back to the Age of Reason and they get access to the catacombs through a secret stairway in one of the schools on the Left Bank, let’s say the Sorbonne, but it’s secret so I don’t know exactly.’
‘What’s this got to do with the Pantheon?’
‘I’m getting to that.’
‘OK.’
‘So, one day they’re moaning about modern architectural wonders such as Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and they drift onto the subject of the sad disrepair of national treasures, and somebody mentions the clock at the Pantheon that doesn’t work and they sip a 1976 Château Lafite Rothschild and tut in disapproval. Then they have this bright idea that they should restore the clock themselves—illegally. They don’t care about the law because they’re a secret elite group and already meet clandestinely in their secret chamber deep under the city, so this kind of thing seems perfectly normal to them.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So they get lots of tools and go to the Pantheon at the end of the day and hide in a secret corner that only they know about, and wait until it’s all locked up, then they go up to the clock and set up a base where, for months on end, maybe a year, they go at night and work painstakingly to restore the clock to its original splendour.’
‘What, really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cool.’
‘Anyway, when it’s done they decide to write a letter to the director of the Pantheon, telling him that the clock is now working and giving him instructions on how to maintain it, wind it up et cetera, but instead of being pleased, the people in charge of the Pantheon are really upset that a band of militant clock restorers could break into the place, set up a base there for a year and commit an act of such wanton vandalism without anyone noticing, and so they decide that in order to avoid a scandal they should break the clock so that nobody will ever find out. But the guerrilla clock restorers go and wind it up themselves and the next day it chimes for the first time in years and everybody looks up and notices. And the director is fired.’
‘Oh,’ I said, and felt sorry for the director. ‘Did this happen in the sixties or something?’
‘No it happened now, like last week or something. I read it in the paper.’
‘What, even the bit about the 1976 Rothschild?’
‘No, I added that bit for effect. But that ought to be proof enough that it happened after the sixties.’
‘So what’s the point?’
‘The point is that they are cool and we should be members of a secret society like that. We should go underground and find out where they meet.’
‘They wouldn’t want us. We’re not intellectua
ls.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘OK, I’m not an intellectual.’
‘Maybe we could bring something to the group that they haven’t got already?’
‘Like what?’
‘Fun?’
‘I don’t think they’d be interested in fun, and besides I’m not feeling fun today.’
‘Oh, Ben Constable, but that’s perfect. They don’t want fun and you are no fun. I just know they’ll let us join.’
The man known affectionately to Tomomi Ishikawa as Our Waiter came over to my table. His hair had grown since I’d last been here so I couldn’t completely recognise him until he spoke to me in English (which he seemed to want to practice).
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ I replied, and smiled.
‘A lady before the bar ask me to give you this.’ He placed a glass of red wine and a folded piece of notepaper on the table.
I looked up at the bar. There were various people standing in front of it, none of whom I recognised (but that meant nothing).
‘What woman?’
‘The Américaine. You come here sometimes with her.’
‘Where is she?’
‘It was long time ago. I couldn’t find the shit, but she offered a drink of wine for you and she ask me to give the shit to you when you arrive here.’
‘The shit?’
‘This shit. This. I found it now.’ He pointed to the folded notepaper on the table.
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘the sheet of paper. Eeeee. Sheet.’
‘Shi-it of paper.’
‘You can just say piece of paper.’
‘OK.’
‘How long ago?’
Three Lives of Tomomi Ishikawa Page 8