School of Velocity
Page 16
But Dirk doesn’t stop. His words are like barbed wire, wrapping tighter and tighter around my head.
“All these memories are from a lifetime ago,” he says. “You’re no closer to me than any of my colleagues. I’m sorry to say this but I’m a stranger to you. And you’re a stranger to me.”
“But,” I manage to blurt out, “what about what we did in this room?”
Dirk shrugs. “We were kids,” he says. “That was kid stuff that we did.”
I wipe my eyes. I see Dirk shake his head and stand up. I rise with him. Hammers pound at the sides of my skull.
“Dirk …”
For a second he stays still. Then he turns to the door.
“No, Dirk. Please don’t …”
He reaches for the doorknob. I stand in the centre of the room, my whole body shaking. My face bubbles with heat and moisture, my eyes begin to sting, my knees start to go weak. He’s left the door half-open behind him, but it isn’t a sign or clue. It’s nothing. He is gone.
CODA
It’s black outside. The wind cuts into my bones, slicing through everything right up to the opening bars of Chopin’s “Tristesse” that come from the very back of my head. The equilibrium of the mezzo-piano beginning, the climbing and descending octaves. The rumble of chords in the left hand, soothed by solitary raindrops falling in the right. But as soon as I anticipate the next line, the music begins to break apart. The rumbling left returns, this time monstrously. Crashing, pounding, pulverizing, mistake-ridden. Wrong, wrong, wrong. More mistakes. More noise. The reverberations multiply outside my control, turning into hammers striking at the weak parts of my skull, trying to make it crack and crumble.
My car is just on the other side of the road, but the surface is slick with early-morning frost and I need to take small steps. I’m halfway across when I remember I left the overnight bag in the entranceway. I try to turn, but slip. I reach out to stop the fall but it doesn’t help. My forehead bounces off the asphalt. A cold damp seeps through my clothes and across my skin. I stay crouched on the road. It hurts too much to move. I finally stand up and hobble to the hood of the car. Leave the bag behind, I say to myself. Scream to myself. Leave it for him.
I turn out of the dead end. The streets of Den Bosch are empty and soon I’m back on the A2, in the country. In these parts there is no lighting, and when the sky is dark, as it is now, the road disappears into the land around it. Inside my head, inside my ears, the sounds have combined into one long, wild clash. I roll down the driver’s side window and press on the accelerator.
For a while, longer than I expected, there is nothing out there. But eventually I see, far in the distance, a pinprick of light.
A gust of wind rattles the hood of my car. I turn off my own headlights. It makes everything feel closer.
After a minute, the single pinprick separates into two. As they approach I can tell, by the size and distance between them, that they belong to a small truck.
I press harder on the gas. The clashes are heading towards a sublime pitch. The wind that rushes through the open window, which should be deafening, is just another line in the symphony. The truck’s headlights, closer now, show me just enough of the road ahead. No turns. No rises or dips or bridges.
I push my shoulders back into the seat, lock my hands on the wheel, close my eyes.
“One, two, three …”
The noise is all force now. Pounding, smashing against one ear then the other. I can pick out the cymbals, the broken strings, the four-note chords deep in the left hand. Passages I played ages ago and bits I heard late last night, all mixed up in one another.
“Four, five, six …”
I strengthen my grip on the wheel, tense my forearms and shoulders. Chainsaws. Razor edges. Bawling kettles.
A faint glow lights the inside of my eyelids.
“Seven. Eight.”
A new noise comes to clean out the others. Louder. More insistent. A ground-shaking thrum that turns into a roar.
“Nine. Ten. Eleven.”
The glow becomes a light. I clench my fists to keep the car in line. I squeeze my eyelids tighter. The roar is everywhere. The lights are beginning to burn.
“Twelve.”
A blast from a horn. A deafening ringing. The inside of my eyelids are burning white.
I know what comes next. A sudden jerk forward, then back. A hailstorm of glass, raining down on the roof. A scraping along the driver’s side, followed by a violent hiss, and a longer, louder blast from the horn, which lasts, and lasts. But I don’t hear any of it. I don’t hear anything. I’m about to reach the mythical thirteen, establish the record, beat Dirk, and win.
Dirk sits up in bed and rubs his eyes. He had forgotten to lower the blinds the night before and the morning sun is sharp.
He pushes the blanket off the side of the bed and puts his feet on the floor. It’s cold. He pads around for his old slippers and finds one then the other; the second was hiding beneath his bed.
Standing too quickly, he has to check himself. He has the edge of a headache. The usual excuse, too much drink. He blinks a few times, regains his balance, and walks around the bed to check the window. One of the panes is foggy. A cracked seal. Must replace, he thinks. His housecoat is at the foot of the bed. He swings his arms into the sleeves.
The second-floor hallway is dark but the light from the living room glows up the stairs. The curtains are open. The park grass is an early-morning green. It’s not yet in full splendour. Still waking up, like Dirk.
The front door, the vestibule door. Morning air. The paper, of course, is on the lowest step. One of these days the delivery man, or woman, or whoever, could get the paper to the middle steps, or even the higher steps. Or, even, the top step. Save Dirk’s back just a little. Or he could cancel the paper. He only scans the headlines and reads the odd letter to the editor.
He throws the paper on the island and shakes the kettle. Enough water for two. Onto the stove, then. Knob to max.
Housecoat half-open, he surveys the mess. Plates on the counter. Trays in the sink. Chairs pulled from the table. He could go on, but he’d just be avoiding it. The thing he saw when opening the front door. The black leather bag on the tile. An overnighter.
From where he’s standing, beside the stove, he sees something familiar sticking out the top of the bag. In fact, he thinks he knows what it is. Thinks? Is sure. The Great Janini. Got it off a shop in Den Bosch and gave it to Jan, in grade ten. Could it be the same, the original? Wouldn’t that be something. There are other things in the bag besides the rolled-up poster. Dirk can make out the edges of envelopes, the corners of colour photos. Bengal tigers, he thinks. Louis Napoleon the Third.
He tests the kettle by touch. Heating, but with the momentum of a boulder rolling uphill. He shakes the useless knob.
A part of him wants to open the bag. Wanted to the moment he recognized the poster. Turn it upside down and give it a shake. The other part, unsure of Jan’s intentions, waits by the stove for the water to boil. What’s another five minutes after so long? Give it time. Give him time. Patience, he says to himself. Even if patience is not his forte. Forte, a kind of pun.
Dirk touches the side of the kettle again. He doubleknots the cord of his housecoat. He looks over the dead end of the street, and makes himself into the kind of person who patiently waits.
And I acknowledge with gratitude those who sped this story from manuscript to publication:
ANDY KIFER, the all-enduring, all-weather chain that turned blind energy into kinetic force,
AMY BLACK and KIARA KENT, the two true wheels that put this tale in touch with the world,
and my brother GREGORY, imaginary ideal reader, the wind at my back.
Thanks to all. Till next time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Beck Rubin is a cultural historian who writes on architecture, literature and psychology, and this novel is his first foray into fiction. He is currently at work on a second: a family saga spanning s
everal generations, from pre-World War II Germany to present-day Los Angeles and Western Canada. He lives in Toronto.
ONE, an imprint of Pushkin Press, publishes a select number of exceptional debuts. Its list is curated by writer and editor Elena Lappin.
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THE MINOR OUTSIDER
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DAREDEVILS
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DON’T LET MY BABY DO RODEO
Boris Fishman
SCHOOL OF VELOCITY
Eric Beck Rubin
Forthcoming
SYMPATHY
Olivia Sudjic
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COPYRIGHT
ONE
an imprint of Pushkin Press
71–75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ
Copyright © Eric Beck Rubin 2016
Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House
Canada Limited in 2016
First published in Great Britain by ONE in 2016
ISBN 978 0 993506 28 4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
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