opportunity.
But what was the response? None. He had nothing to tell me. He lowered those dark brows as if he were embarrassed on my behalf.
The sad thing is I wasn’t entirely surprised. I hate to say it, but I’ve spent a long time watching over you and Nicolas, doing all I can to help you make the adjustment to your new life – and what have you given back? I ask myself that, Ulya, and to be honest I don’t have an answer.
I’ll tell you something. You’ll find that there comes a point when you can give up on the regret, at long last – on the hurt of not having kept what you had. But then you hesitate, because letting go means giving up the last piece of ground, and if you did that you’d be surrendering, you’d be allowing yourself to turn into a different person. I can’t help you make that choice. Each of us has to decide for ourselves.
Think of Communion Town. Can we say how we would have behaved, if it had been us in the place of the citizens as they were surrounded by those things? Things that, in spite of what they were, gave the uncanny impression of having a coordinated and even a compassionate purpose. They were carrying plastic canisters of clean water and packets of all-but-fresh food pilfered from the refuse bins of supermarkets. They offered these gifts with nods of encouragement and gestures of hospitality.
I don’t think any of us are in a position to moralise on what ensued. All we can do is state the facts as we know them: that after a night and a day trapped underground, every one of those people accepted food and drink from the monsters without hesitation. It’s clear in the security footage. You can watch, if you have a strong stomach, as an overweight man still wearing his jacket and tie crams his mouth with a hunk of bread that has been torn for him by one of the homines, and as a young woman cups her hands, the most natural thing in the world, to catch the water that one of them is pouring for her.
They must have known the consequences of what they did. By the time the would-be rescuers succeeded in bringing the lifts back to life and prising open the fire doors, there were no human beings left in the tunnels for them to save. Nothing was left down there except the pests, the meaningless creatures that slink with the stray cats and cockroaches in the underparts of the city, and those were fit only to be driven off into the dark with oaths and stones. There are twenty-seven more of the wretched things now than there were before.
I’m not going to hide my disappointment with Nicolas. He had the chance to improve matters for himself and he turned it down, in the petulant, deliberate way that he has. For reasons that frankly elude me, he prefers to leave everything up to you. But I’m not too sorry, because, it occurs to me now, you were always the one who fascinated the most. Nicolas had his pleasing qualities, certainly, but you, Ulya, you’ve always been the mystery. You know, I believe that since you came to this city you’ve not shown anyone a glimmer of what goes on inside. Did you give yourself away, perhaps just once? I don’t believe you did.
But you’ve been holding yourself apart for too long now, refusing. I’m here, but I can’t help unless you let me. Think of this as your true arrival in the city. Do you remember how, once, soon after that first glum morning in the Terminus, you spent a long time by the seafront, lost in thought? I was with you then, too, though you didn’t notice me. A storm was setting up offshore, and you must have been cold in that cheap plastic raincoat, but you walked there for an hour. I don’t know what it looked like to you, but to me the sky was a cavernous auditorium, its hangings dark and threadbare and its plasterwork falling apart before our eyes. The sea was full of the anticipatory movements of an audience; rustling programmes, shushing itself, waiting for the spotlight to snap the boards into existence under your feet. I sniffed the chilly, promising air and felt a tingle of excitement, and I was on the point of calling out to you. But I knew it wasn’t yet time, and so I waited, and now at last the chatter has turned to attention and the hush is beginning to stretch, and you have to decide if you’re a singer, a magician or a clown.
We can make a beginning here. Yes. I feel a special moment approaching. I’m hanging on your words. Now take your time. Breathe in.
I saw her on the street today. Another pedestrian pushed in front of me and she was there, already moving past, carrying a takeaway espresso and grasping the strap of her shoulder bag. She’d bought a smart new coat for the autumn, and her hair was cut above the shoulders, but it was the old shade of red again. I ducked towards a news-stand as if I were studying the magazines. She’d prefer that, I thought. She had somewhere to go. For the space of a single footstep, there was nothing in between us but air, and I could have spoken to her without raising my voice, but then the space widened and rush hour commuters filled it, pushing us further and further apart. I followed her for a short distance, just to see if I could stay close, but she outpaced me and I lost her as she boarded a tram. As I watched her disappear a song came into my head, an old song I used to know. I’ve been singing it to myself ever since.
The first time we met, she was climbing into a rickshaw. It was a bitter night and the two of them had just emerged from the yellow mouth of the Communion Town metro, breathing steam and protesting at the cold. She seemed merry and disputatious, and her boyfriend, a big man in leather gloves and a fine wool overcoat, was finding her difficult to manage. She resisted for a moment as he helped her into the seat. Spots of snow were softening on their coats and in her loose hair. I thought I recognised her from somewhere.
‘That’s what he’s here for,’ I heard the boyfriend say. He leant forward, slapped my shoulder and told me an address in Cento Hill. As he settled into the chair, reaching an arm around her, I lifted the bar and took the strain.
If you wanted to pull a rickshaw, you rented it for the night from one of the toughs at the rank off the pedestrian mall. Once he had secured the cash in his money-belt, dropped the chains onto the pavement and told you to have it back by six, you hauled the chair, with its canvas hood and bicycle wheels, around to the galleria to wait for students and tourists to come out of the nightclubs. You could usually cover the hire and more besides, if you were good at spotting the ones who’d leg it without paying, and those who’d show you a knife and take your night’s earnings. Most of the drunks were harmless, but many found the idea of riding a rickshaw hilarious. They would give false destinations or direct you along a labyrinthine route and collapse in mirth when you arrived back where you had started; or they’d simply yell encouragements and fling their rubbish at the back of your head. I had a small melted hole where someone had flicked a cigarette butt into the hood of my jacket. On a good night you could make a decent profit, especially if the weather was foul.
Soaked to the knees, my plimsolls frigid, I splattered through the snowmelt with his voice droning behind me. Damp flakes funnelled down between the granite facades, showing in the streetlights before blotting themselves out on the pavement.
We were halfway to Cento Hill when the rickshaw wrenched itself sideways. I narrowly avoided slamming my chin into the bar as dirty iced water slopped over my ankles and metal grated on stone. One of the wheels had slipped into a pothole. I caught my breath and leant into the bar to test how badly we were jammed.
The rickshaw stuck, then shifted abruptly, and I staggered forward to save myself from falling. Turning, I saw that the boyfriend had climbed out. He beckoned to me, and said:
‘Do you know what these are?’
He sounded very calm, very self-controlled.
‘These
