Communion Town. Sam Thompson
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 are brand new Jas Copeland loafers. Have you any idea how much they cost?’
His breath fogged my glasses.
‘Is it unreasonable to expect that you should be capable of doing your job without destroying my property? Do you think that’s unfair? More to the point, are you intending to compensate me for the damage?’
I didn’t reply, but I had a notion I wouldn’t be getting paid for this run.
‘I thought not,’ he said. I could tell that this conversation wearied him very much. ‘Hold out your hand. The right one. Palm upwards. Come on, get on with it.’
Without knowing why, I found myself obeying. I watched my right hand reach out to offer him my palm. He took off his belt, wrapped half its length around his fist, and tugged, testing its strength. Then he stopped. She had climbed out as well, and was finding her footing on the treacherous pavement.
‘Wait a mo,’ he said, his tone changing. ‘Where are you going, we’re nowhere –’
She ignored him and picked her way around the mired rickshaw. As she went past, she leaned close to me and said: ‘You shouldn’t let him speak to you like that.’
The crystals fell in behind her as she walked away.
Ten days later at the Institute of Humane Sciences, a lecture had just ended and the central hall was blocked with students, their voices flooding the barrel-vault roof which had previously echoed only the squeaks of my rubber soles. My daytime job was for an agency which supplied me with dark green overalls and sent me to the university, where I worked my way around the corridors, lecture theatres and seminar rooms, wielding long-handled pincers and pushing a cart stocked with cleaning products and refuse bags.
The students drank coffee from tall paper cups and had a lot to say. The girls’ hands flashed and the boys squared up to each other jokily with their chins raised. I trundled along the edge of the hall. This, I had realised, was where I had seen her before, and since that snowy night I had glimpsed her almost every day, arguing eagerly with other students, carrying books out of the library or, often, quarrelling in public with one tall youth or another – it pleased her to embarrass her admirers. As I caught sight of her now, though, she was glancing around, fiddling with an unlit cigarette, not quite listening to her friends.
Without warning she turned her back on them and strode towards