We didn’t expect – though we should have guessed – that this one, too, would have stopped dead. This makes a hundred and thirteen, by my count. A hundred and fifteen, according to Laura, who heard someone say: The one at the white tower still works.
Now we have to go back. Or rather to go forward, but in the opposite direction. The words ‘go back’ and ‘go forward’ have long since lost all meaning. Or ceased to matter. When it comes to it, most words have lost their meaning. And yet still we cling to them.
The last few blocks – now the first few – will also be the least difficult. The drains are one of the few privileges left to us. Who would have thought? A job half-done is now our only protection.
But, like everything else, the trenches can suddenly stop. Or start. And Laura and I have to clamber from the depths. Sidestep a group of burn-outs, scrabble up and down mounds of earth as our shadows fade with the tracks we leave behind.
‘Between the pipes!’ I call to Laura as we reach the corner, hop over a plinth shorn of its statue, circle the rusted skeleton of a car and reach the pavement on the far side of the street: ‘Keep down, stay between the pipes!’
I don’t know how long it’s been since a man and woman walked upright. Those of us who still move around do so the way we do. It not only keeps us hidden, it teaches us to use our hands again. These days, being able to grip is less important now than being able to move fast.
‘Along the road or through the building?’ Laura calls, suddenly stopping. A few metres ahead, the pipes shielding us come to a dead end. I don’t know why she’s asking, and tell her as much: ‘Why are you bothering to ask?’ Smiling, Laura says nothing but runs towards the entrance of the skyscraper from whose apex it seems night is being born.
In the few metres before we reach the hulking concrete behemoth, Laura and I jump several craters and dodge past another family of burn-outs: avoiding each other’s eyes, as though unaware that they are huddled together, they are soaking up the last rays of afternoon.
This is how it began. Or at least it was the beginning of the end: a man left his office, stopped in the middle of the street, allowed every muscle in his body to go slack and whispered: ‘I’m exhausted.’
Midway through the building, I catch up with Laura. ‘Rooms’, we called them many years ago, and I don’t know which is more distant, the ‘many’ or the ‘years’. ‘Just the way you like them,’ she says, smiling at me again. She’s right. We’re running through a vast, cold, empty gallery. A space that might have been anything.
‘It wasn’t designed to be a ruin,’ I say to Laura for the umpteenth time and now it is my turn to smile. ‘But we need to get a move on,’ I say, racing across the raw concrete: ‘We can’t hang around, it’s getting late. And we left our things unguarded.’
‘Our thing,’ Laura corrects, clenching her jaw as she, too, breaks into a run.
By the time we see the main door of the colossus, we can scarcely see a thing. The street is shrouded by a plastic tarp fluttering fitfully with the wind. The sun is dipping below the mountains that ring this last metropolis, shearing all things of their shadows.
On the steps leading down to the street, we once more come to a sudden halt. We hesitate, turning towards each of the compass points except the one from which we came. ‘It’s obvious,’ I say to Laura a second later, as our eyes make out the contour of the bridges.
As we approach the point where the street arches its back, we dodge past a thicket of shrubs, another group of burn-outs and the remains of one of the defeated. I see mistrust engraved on Laura’s face. It has been months since we came across one, months since we stumbled on one of the vanquished.
‘Don’t think about him,’ I say, ‘just keep running.’
But I am the one who cannot shut out the feelings of revulsion as we race uphill. Was he simply prey, or had he, too, been a malefactor?
Malefactors: this is the name we give to those who go beyond exhaustion, the burn-outs who, rather than seeking shelter, dried out like piles of salt: the dead-beats who rather than practising self-mummification, allowed themselves to rust like a mesh of cogs; those who, without realizing, stopped the clocks.
‘Perhaps he was the first,’ I let slip in a low whisper, and my words stop Laura in her tracks: ‘Why are you still harping on about that?’ She’s right, why am I still brooding? Why is it always the same? Why am I so determined to believe that it was self-exploitation that made them suddenly grind to a halt. Why can’t I simply accept what we’ve been told?
‘You know perfectly well it was the sphere,’ Laura whispers, coming closer and trying to hug me. She knows me, knows the thoughts that wound me most. ‘The huge sphere that fell stopped all the clocks,’ she says, trying to reassure me. She tries to put her arms around me, but they are not adapted to such gestures.
A moment later, Laura lets me go, steps back and smiles. ‘You’ll see, we’ll find one that works,’ she says encouragingly, as though it is her job to support me. As though I am not the one responsible for keeping the fire in her belly burning.
‘I’m sure we will,’ I say to my daughter, regaining my composure. Then, wiping my eyes, I point into the distance. We have reached the highest point of the bridges: despite the gathering dusk, it is still possible to see the vegetation devouring and destroying the ancient constructions built by men; seeing the plants reclaim what was always theirs brings a smile to both our faces.
In an attempt to strengthen the bond that the landscape has created between us, Laura and I turn and survey the other horizon visible from the bridge before we set off again. ‘Security is your responsibility,’ I say, decoding for my daughter these ciphers that once were letters over there on the factory tower ringed by the twilight, at the far end of a patch of waste ground that could be crossed in two steps or two hundred.
‘Don’t read it!’ Laura screams. ‘You always do that!’ she says, suddenly angry, and turning on her heel, races down the road, ‘I’ve told you, I don’t want you reading them!’
Twenty metres before we leave the bridge, I hear my little girl’s voice, quavering in the wind: ‘A hundred and sixteen,’ Laura says, snatching an old wristwatch off the ground without breaking her stride.
‘A hundred and fourteen,’ I protest, feebly clinging to my own calculation. Smiling again, Laura lightly tosses aside the useless lump of plastic. ‘We’re not safe, Papa.’ Above our heads, lowering clouds have descended on the darkness: I cannot see them, but I can sense them – can I smell them?
‘We’re not safe, either of us,’ my daughter says, running faster, her words becoming a premonition, warping the only two faces either of us have ever touched, ever admired. ‘We’re not safe,’ she says again in a hushed whisper, and her premonition becomes reality: gradually we hear the sound, the sound made by those who live behind the huge white bars.
Every night they slip out in search of us. They want the one thing we have, they know that it is all that remains, that we possess it, they want to take it back to their translucent caves. But they do not know where we hide it. ‘We have to make it back to the hideout,’ I call to Laura. ‘We have to hurry,’ I goad her, turning our pace into a headlong flight.
‘Head for the mouth,’ I order a moment later, as we finally leave behind the ridge that begins where the bridges end and ends here, where the strange, inextinguishable arc of light soars like a temple to nothingness.
Despite my insistence – ‘Head for the mouth’ – Laura turns into the little alley that plunges into the earth: this is another route into the old city. The shortest route from where we are, but not the one that we usually take, the one we know best. Behind us, the noise of those who live imprisoned in translucent membranes grows louder.
‘Turn right,’ I yell angrily, ‘that will take us there,’ and watch as Laura obeys. We need to get back to our cave as quickly as possible, I think, and, as always when I do so, I am grateful to have happened on it one day; it is a place where my daughter can be safe; where the one thing we possess is beyond their reach; in that refuge, I can safeguard both.
‘Thank you for leading us to the cave,’ I mutter, switching on my flashlight and seeing the halo of light, or rather the thick ocean of darkness that encircles it, conjuring the image that comes to me on sleepless nights of what we once called gods. ‘Thank you for leading me to this place,’ I whisper as my daughter races towards the tunnel at which I am shining the torch.
‘For showing us that this was what we had been searching for,’ I mumble gratefully and, taking my hand from the walls, I pat the pocket in which I keep the talisman I was given: Welcome to Paradise, read the words on the billboard we stumbled upon one day; words that, as we drew nearer, were transformed into something else: _ _ _come to _ _ra _ise, read the letters over the cave that has become our refuge: some of the letters have faded. It is still some way off.
‘Give it a rest with the gratitude,’ Laura calls back, reading my mind yet again. ‘Quit with the bullshit and run faster,’ she says, swerving towards another tunnel.
‘They’re getting closer,’ my daughter yells at the top of her lungs as we dash into one of the central shafts: only then do I hear them again – she is right, the noise has never been so close. I can feel the sound waves shudder down my back, my neck; the skin on my lower back is hissing, they’re less a hundred metres away.
‘They’re going to find our hideout,’ my daughter warns and, despite her fear, she stops in her tracks, switches off her flashlight and presses herself against the tunnel wall. ‘They’re going to take our things,’ she says, grabbing my torch and flicking it off too. ‘Our thing,’ I correct as I, too, try to force the wall to open up and swallow me.
‘Don’t make a sound,’ I say to Laura, silently, simply moving my lips. All we can hope is that they will lose their way, the noise they make is closer now, too close; it is upon us.
Petrified, attempting to become one with the stone, Laura and I stand motionless for a long time. But we cannot stay like this forever. To stay silent is almost to surrender, to allow exhaustion to seep in, to give up or give in, to lose track of time. We not only fear these creatures, we fear becoming those things they scarcely notice. My daughter would not know how to mummify herself, she would be filled with the awareness of self-exploitation. Perhaps this is what gives me the strength to draw myself upright. I notice that the noise is further off: ‘Now!’ I say and set off at a run.
When the noise finally fades, I look over my shoulder, I want to smile at my little girl, but though I scan the darkness I cannot see her, Laura is not following. Terrified, I stop, turn and begin to retrace my steps, my fear mounting.
‘Laura!’ I call out, ‘Laura … Laura!’
I find my daughter, sobbing, rooted to the same spot where we tried to become one with the rocks. ‘Get up,’ I say, crouching down and pressing my lips to her ear. ‘We can’t do this, you know that.’
Despite my words, Laura does not react, does not move but for her trembling. I shake her, gently at first, then forcefully. She moves her head – no, just her lips: ‘I don’t want to any more.’ Silently, I try to think of what to say to her: mentally reviewing what we have lived through together, recalling every word we’ve spoken, invoking every day we’ve lived.
In the end, I say nothing.
Having waited with my daughter for a moment, I try again: ‘You can do it now,’ I say as I wipe her eyes with the one hand still capable of making the gesture. ‘We need to get back to the cave.’
Lifting Laura is not easy; I feel rust in my bones, the powerlessness of fingers that have not touched other fingers in an age; I cannot straighten my back to haul her to her feet.
In the end, I have to tuck my head under her arm to haul her to her feet.
Making it through the first tunnel is an ordeal. But gradually, Laura comes to herself again. And then, when I feel the moment is right, I bring my lips close to her ear: ‘What would happen if they found our thing?’
I see something blaze again in my daughter’s eyes. And though she continues to lean against me as we navigate the tunnels, by the time we reach the vast gallery where the wider tunnels converge, Laura is finally walking on her own.
A moment later, we are sprinting again. Glancing at each other from time to time. Sometimes even speaking in low voices: suddenly I tell her to turn, all that is pushing her forward now is the terror within her – they can’t have found it.
Frantically we cover the final stretch, Laura is increasingly panicked, I am increasingly radiant. And so we come to the cave: come to raise.
No sooner are we inside than I rush to the corner and throw myself on the ground. I slide away the rock shielding it and cup the thing in both hands; I need to bring my little girl back to herself, to give her the strength that exhaustion threatens to sap from us.
We sit on the floor facing each other and I arrange the flashlight and slowly, carefully, unwrap our thing: it glitters in the palm of my hand.
‘You turn it over,’ I say to Laura. And my daughter excitedly raises her hand, brings it to my palm and turns time. The trickle of sand is barely audible.