The cold fell through him, entered with the breath. His knees, thighs, lungs were weakened, opened. A tightness in the throat came loose. Adam swallowed, leaned against a weight at his shoulder. He tried to remember how to get air. But the air was in him already; it was too late, too swift. The earth trembled beneath his feet, it rose into his limbs. Not earth, something other. Focus. From the dark, his vision returned.
He could see his feet. The train. His cheeks were hot, his mouth dry. The air was warm and his dumb synthetic jacket was stifling. The mind had snagged on something, some old memory or fear. A turn, a dizzy spell. Something airborne. He inhaled, and the illusion dissolved: a dissociative moment, a trick of perception.
A woman beside him tugged the sleeve of her yellow cardigan over one thin wrist.
If anyone had noticed, they did not show it. When he found his reflection, it looked ordinary; maybe his skin was a little flushed. His face shuddered in the glass then resolved, but it was only motion. He lifted a foot, shifted an arm. All functioning, all fine. His face stared blankly back at him, then turned away.
He fumbled for his phone, drew it from a pocket. It had switched itself off. He tried to turn it back on, pushing the button with his thumb, but it did not respond. A brand new machine, the best in the world; he’d had to line up for it in Sanlitun, and now it wouldn’t wake up. It was a dead black rectangle, an expensive nothing. He pushed it back into his pocket.
It was a mistake, a false positive. The mind was always inexact, it filled in blanks, and at such a distance it was impossible to recognise anyone. Now that he considered it, it was obvious. He remembered how it had been with his father. Seeing the back of his head in the supermarket, on the street. The mind invited patterns, ready to make the leap of recognition. It was the reason he sometimes thought he could hear his name in the Chinese voices around him. He reached over his shoulder to press the place where it was hurt, and felt only tingling. The heat was fading from it. The train slowed, straightened, and he breathed. Lifted his head.
He found the face again, but the person who looked back was unfamiliar: tall, Chinese, early twenties, the gaze neutral and undirected over the distant heads. The eyes like unshelled almonds, not unfriendly, but unknown to him. Dark hair, swept over. He could not see their mouth.
His throat constricted. Like a thread he meant to swallow, a string that caught at the back of the tongue, it drew him forward. He began to move. He breathed the common air in quick gulps. Grasped at poles that slipped clean beneath his hand, swung at plastic handholds, missed. He pushed through bodies, shuffling, separating, but could not get far. Rude in the crush of people, he was suddenly visible. Looks were shot at him, shoulders turned. He heard ‘lǎowài’,‘Měiguórén’. A suck through teeth. An ‘ài’ as he stepped on a toe, though boots protected it. He gave up, reached through coats for a pole. And now he couldn’t see them at all.
The train slid into the station.
There was a rolling crush as it unloaded and reloaded passengers. Adam had to turn and grasp the pole to avoid being swept out with the crowd. After the carriage refilled, he looked out over heads and between raised arms again, searching the place, finding nothing.
He waited for the doors to close, for the train to move on, for what seemed like a long time.
He turned at a murmur. Businessmen and students were leaning out of the doors. Their eyes were fixed on something outside. A girl whispered words to herself. He turned, saw a small crowd gathered on the platform ahead. Two security guards pushing through. As the guards approached the place, the crowd began to loosen and disperse. He guessed that someone had collapsed, or was being arrested, at the centre. It was too far away for him to see. Abruptly, the doors began to slide closed, forcing those leaning in or out to choose a side. And then they were moving.
By the time his carriage passed, nothing remained of the incident. People stood gazing blankly at the departing train. Order had reassembled itself, closed efficiently over the wound.