A landing bounce. They want to get out. She’s stiff, and has to tilt her head to fit when she stands. No air, no space. She scowls at the collar of the man who blocks her way, his back turned like a wall. One of her feet shifts and kicks his heel; the impact pleases her. The ache in her neck begins to deepen, to enter the spine. The air is stale, warm with breath. Phones wake and beep around her. Announcements in three languages. She bends to see through the little rounded window. Out there it’s dark, but lit with signals, lines, numbers, floodlights. Land, or its concrete approximation. Where are they? A machine sweeps past below the wing and she watches it, her eyes dry and struggling with the light. Someone sneezes. She covers her mouth with her scarf.
They shift away, impatient. They pitch from body to body and out onto the stairs, rushing forward. They want to bend and touch the concrete, put their head against it like a monk, press down gratefully upon the solid ground until it opens. But the bodies must keep moving on, upright; they’re overground, pushed into a bus, unbalanced. A brief and airless drive. Buildings, doors. A woman collapses behind them, but they barely notice, moving on and through. They shift through travellers quickly. When people are tired, attention’s fragmented, resistance is low. Easy to step in. Harder to move without harm.
Everything flows forward. They glimpse texts in several languages, pass too fast to read. They have a sudden sense of vertigo, of sea legs; sky legs, their hold wavers between worlds. They concentrate their energy, stay with the breath. They are better at this now, hardly raise a heart rate. It should satisfy them, the forward motion, but it doesn’t. Perhaps nothing will.
In front of them a man pants hard at the top of the stairs, struggles with a huge woven plastic bag, red and white checks. They slide into the kid beside him, barked at, unwilling to move – no, not unwilling, just slow to connect. They do what they can with him, gently suggest the correction. The man’s surprised at how easily he answers, and the boy seems happy. He sits on the floor among legs, and the man bends down, catches his collar and sighs into his hair.
They shift through the air, through missed instructions. A body that lengthens like a shadow as it walks to the back of a crowd, looks up to read a sign that flashes languages they know. He mouths one word: Foreigners. Faces, backs of heads. The body shuffles forward, throws them back. Next body behind, looking sideways, back bent. Shuffles forward, throws them. Foreigners. They want to go back and look for Adam. Find another flight, a return. But it’s impossible. Where would they begin? He might be anywhere by now. They are condemned to move among strangers. Blue straps form a labyrinth, the bodies obedient to the flimsy boundaries made by stanchions, rules. Blue signs above the desks, yellow text. Blue uniforms in blue enclosures, caught between.
This chest is tight, compressed: the air fraught in its lungs, the suck of particles that join to particles that mutate and might metastasise. A smoker, or a breather of coal. The pressure of this poison as they approach the border.
But the border is a dream, no more fixed than the blue straps, as porous as this slipway between life and death. He cranes his neck at what’s ahead, sees only doors and glass and passageways. The inside repeats the outside to absurdity. He finds a cigarette and puts it behind his ear, which gives him a taste of the rush that will come with it when he is free. The body moves forward, willing. Its checkpoints are nothing but air and expectation. They are curious, ready.
They take him through.