SQUIRMED to the edge of the larger tunnel, lay sucking in air. There was a light up ahead, out of sight, and one far behind, barely glimmering. A black cable ran along the tunnel. She waited a few minutes longer but no one appeared and she squirmed into the larger tunnel, dirt tumbling down each time a shell hit overhead.
The light was a bulb pinned halfway up on one side. Beyond it was a wide faint corridor that led to an open chamber loud with the fighting above. Voices were coming down, boots thumping wooden stairs, a flashlight darting and stabbing. Four men came into the basement and in their light she could see a series of open-faced rooms stacked with artillery shells, rockets, jerry cans of fuel, crates of rifle cartridges. The men loaded rocket shells on wooden frames on their backs, slid tumplines up their foreheads, and climbed slowly, unsteadily, back up the stairs.
Had the dead man in the tunnel stunk also of cigarettes? It seemed that he had but she couldn't remember. She scrambled back up the lit tunnel and squeezed up to the dead man. In his shirt pocket were cigarettes but no matches. Again she squashed herself along him, wormed a hand into a trouser pocket. A box of matches that rattled when she shook it. She crawled back to the main tunnel, checked the matches in its light. Four, skinny and blue-headed in their little cardboard box.
In the main basement she unscrewed jerry cans and tipped them over, the foul liquid soaking her feet, rising up her socks, sinking into the soil and sliding out into the ammo rooms, and with each new mortar hit above she thought it was people coming down. Trying not to breathe the fumes, she lugged one jerry can back along the main tunnel, pouring it out, then up her side tunnel, squeezing past the man. She dragged the can behind her and all the way to the end, poured the rest of the gasoline down the tunnel, and climbed the steel rungs up to the street.
It was quieter, tracers departing and arriving, the skies darker. She went back down the ladder, lit a match and tossed it into the tunnel. There was quiet whuff then a hiss that slowly died out.
She did not dare to look for fear it would blow in her face. But when she did there was only darkness. She fell against the ladder, felt the sting of tears but they wouldn't come. She couldn't go down there again. It would explode any second. She'd done her best.
She opened the matches. Three. She tossed another in and it huffed and went out. She squirmed back into the tunnel toward the dead man.
It was faster this time, she kept telling herself. The man was easier to crawl past, most of the gas had been pushed out of him. The main tunnel was slippery with gasoline and she was afraid of knocking the light bulb down into it, which might blow it.
There was no one in the basement. She poured out part of another jerry can and carried it back to the main tunnel, cautious not to bump the concrete, cause a spark. She poured more gasoline in the main tunnel and the rest up the small tunnel and over the man.
This is it, she told herself. If it doesn't blow this time I'm leaving.
There was no change in the street. She lit the third match but the stem snapped and the match fell on the ground. She snatched it and tossed it into the tunnel but it had gone out.
Voices far down the tunnel. Someone yelling? She held the last match carefully, by the head, scratched it across the side of the box and tossed it in. A great tongue of flame roared out of the tunnel and leaped across the sewer main and seared the far wall. There was another roar, much deeper, growing, thundering – and again the tongue of flame lashed out, the far wall cracking. The earth shook, everything moving six inches one way – the concrete, the ladder, herself – then six inches back. Shells were going off like rocket launchers, the earth grumbling and banging. She darted back up the ladder and the whole first two floors of the Life Building were afire, trapped men screaming, pieces of the upper stories falling into flames with each new blast.
She ran to the stairwell where she'd left the bedspread, tugged the muck from her hair, changed her clothes for some in the bedspread, too large in the bust and shoulders, rinsed her hair in a puddle and tried to wash the gasoline from her hands and arms. She pulled on the habit again and went quickly back through the Christian side and down past the Hotel Alexandre and the Hotel Dieu Hospital. A Phalange truck was bringing in wounded, men wrapped in sheets. “Oh dear,” she called to a soldier. “What happened?”
He glanced at her habit. “An ammo dump. On the Green Line.”
“Oh, how I hate them!”
“Not the Muslims, sister. Accident, apparently.”
She dropped her head. “How many?”
“Thirty. So far.”
“May the dear Lord be with them.”
“All very well for you to say that, sister. These were all men with families. Wives and kids. You don't love anyone, just God, as you imagine Him to be. You're like those fedayeen over there – they think they're going to Heaven.”
“Don't criticize what you don't understand,” she snapped.
Before she reached the Christian side of the Museum she ditched the habit. Someone came out of the shadows by the big barricade and she saw it was the captain.
She handed him the flashlight. “I didn't even use it.”
“So my batteries?” He glanced up as a shell went over like a great bird, hit out in Dora somewhere. “They shoot at bloody anything,” he said.
“They think Allah's going to guide it.”
He nudged her toward the darkness, where a tank crouched.
“You'll let me through the line again?” she said, reaching her hands up round his neck. It was smooth and young and his hair was short in her fingers all the way up under his beret. Her breasts were itching to be against him and her nails wanted to rip down his back and she could feel him inside already, like he'd be, hot and hard and pumping faster and faster. She dragged him down beside the silent tank, shoving up his shirt as he tore his trousers open and she lay back and let him come in slowly then hard, deeper and deeper till she was sure he was there but he kept coming deeper and she exploded, saw the dragon's tongue of flame, heard the thunder and the screams, felt peace.
“FRÜHSTÜCK!” Knuckles hammered the compartment door; the light flickered, flashed on. The door snapped open, a steward put a breakfast tray on the foot of Neill’s bed.
He sat up rubbing the back of his neck. Dark cold shapes flitted past the window. He found his watch, put it on, forgot the time and looked again: five after six. Shivering, he drew the blankets round his shoulders, started to pour his coffee but it had not all run down through the filter, so he waited watching through the rain-beaded glass the cold, flat landscape, the few distant lights, imagined people getting up, farmers and their burly kerchiefed wives, the smell of coffee and coal fires.
It's the girl, he realized, that's why I feel so bad. He'd been with her in the dream. Ardent and slender and brown-eyed, long dark hair. Naked in the glow of the street lamp. Layla.
Was it losing her that had broken his heart? Made him such a cynical bastard who couldn't even love his wife and kids and had no friends? No, that's not entirely true. He set the filter aside and sipped the coffee.
The train's wheels wailed into a curve. And miles to go, he thought, wondering why. Something shone on the pillow and he brushed at it – a silver hair. Can't be mine, he decided, mine's not that gray. These aren't clean sheets.
But the
