‘Wake up,’ she said. The gate was open and there was a jug of water on the floor next to me. She had a torch in one hand and the gun in the other. ‘Wake up, Ben Constable. It’s time to go.’
I gulped the water straight from the jug. ‘Come on,’ she said.
‘I’ll get my bag.’
She made me stand back as we went through her two locked doors and she closed them again after me.
‘Do you have cigarettes?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Can I have one of those bitter toffee almonds I gave you?’
‘Yep.’ I went in my bag, got the little tin, opened it and held it out.
‘Two of them,’ she said. ‘One for you, one for me.’
‘I don’t like almonds. I was just keeping them as a souvenir.’
‘OK. Now listen. You walk in front and I will give you directions. But whatever happens, you mustn’t look back. OK?’
‘Who do you think I am, Orpheus?’
‘Do as I say, your life depends on it.’ I don’t think I believed her. I didn’t believe anything anymore.
Butterfly walked close behind, shining the torch around me. I thought of turning quickly and taking the gun out of her hand, but they don’t recommend messing with armed people. So I walked on slowly; it felt as if my body needed to warm up and stretch before it would be able to walk at a normal pace. After a while, I reached out my hand behind my back and stopped. I wanted her to take it. It was my last olive branch. Let’s leave together. Everything’s all right.
She nudged my back with the gun. ‘Keep going,’ she said. I felt it touching my spine through my shirt and I understood something.
We walked left and right in silence and after several minutes, maybe ten or twenty, we came to the chamber with seven entrances.
‘I know this place,’ I said.
Butterfly pointed to the passage I was to follow with the torch. I could hear her dragging her feet a little and her steps became just slightly irregular. We came to the thirty spiral steps and I paced up. She seemed to find them more difficult than I did. I must have been out of her sight the whole time. I could have outrun her easily. I knew the way out from here. All her aggression was fake. Butterfly was crumbling behind me.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said. She was controlling her voice so it wouldn’t shake. I carried on and she walked behind me. But the torchlight wasn’t shining past me anymore. She was falling behind.
‘Butterfly, keep up.’ I took a couple of steps more, but she wasn’t following. I stopped and listened. I could hear her breathing heavily. She sniffed. What are you up to, Butterfly? What is this plan with a gun and dark tunnels? Then I heard her lean against the wall. She sniffed again. She was crying. I heard her slide down to the ground and the light went out.
‘Butterfly!’
She didn’t say anything. I could hear small sobs and her quick, heavy breaths.
‘Butterfly!’
Nothing happened.
‘Butterfly!’
I tried walking backwards, but I stumbled. I took out the remains of The Divine Comedy from my bag, ripped a page out, rolled it up and lit it. I turned and walked towards her.
I had to take a few steps before I could see her properly. She was squatting with her back against the wall and her arms around her knees. She unwrapped the sweet I had given her and put it in her mouth.
‘Butterfly?’
‘You’d better go on without me.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not coming. Here’—she opened her bag and took something out—‘take this but don’t look at it until you get aboveground.’ She handed me a plastic bag with notebooks in it. ‘Put them in your bag.’ I did.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m dying.’
‘What of?’
‘Cyanide.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘The sweet. Bitter toffee almond. It’s poison.’
‘And you wanted me to eat it?’
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I guess you knew too much. Why do you sound so surprised? I’ve been threatening you with a gun for days.’
‘Yes, but it’s plastic.’
‘No it’s not.’ She waved it at me and I took it out of her hand. It was a cheap plastic toy; I’d understood when she pushed it in my back. I pulled the trigger a couple of times and it made a clicking sound a bit like a stapler.
‘There were no murders, were there?’ I said. ‘None of this is real.’
‘The gun’s not real; I had to come up with something quick to stop you from just walking out and taking me with you. It was the only thing I could think of.’
‘Well, it worked.’
‘Until now.’
‘Are you really dying?’
‘I should be, if the poison works properly.’
‘But you only just ate the sweet. What about before? Why were you falling behind and crying?’
‘I was scared. I thought you weren’t going to look back and I would have to go up and outside.’
‘What the hell has looking back got to do with it?’
‘You’ll find out later.’
‘Did you kill all those other people?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course it fucking matters.’
‘I’m not going to answer that question. Ask me something else.’
‘You came and found me in the garden while I was asleep, didn’t you?’
‘I took your keys and turned your phone off to make sure no one would answer it when the Night Guy tried to call. Sorry. I hope you got back into the hotel OK and didn’t have to sleep outside.’
‘Why did you leave me locked up for so long, just for you to die in a tunnel?’
‘The only plan I could think of to get you out was this one. It wasn’t my first choice. I was hoping to have a better idea, but it never came. Hey, Ben Constable?’
‘Yes?’
‘Would you put your arms round me?’
‘OK.’ I’m a fool for that kind of thing. I sat down on the floor next to her and she rested her head against my chest in the dark. She was hyperventilating and trembling. I stroked her hair.
‘Are you really dying?’
‘Yes.’
Half of my heart was breaking and the other half was stone. I wasn’t going to fall for any more tricks. Great, now I’m a cynic.
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, Butterfly.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want saving.’
‘OK, I’m sorry I fucked everything up in your subterranean utopia.’
‘Oh, well. You weren’t to know.’
‘Surely there is a better ending than this.’
‘I’m dying in your arms, what more could you want?’
‘I want you to come and have more adventures. We could go and do chivalrous deeds like you said before.’
‘Windmills.’ Now she was crying again. ‘All those giants were windmills. I think it’s time I gave up chivalry.’
‘No, they were real, I promise you.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘If sanity comes with death, maybe you should stay insane.’
‘Don’t worry, at this late stage there is little chance of me sorting out a lifetime of mental issues.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Will you write a book about me?’ She was digging her fingers into me, holding on tight.
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I use all your emails and letters and the notebooks?’
‘The books I stole are in that bag I gave you.’ Now her voice was cracking.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘I think they’ve turned the lights down,’ she croaked.
‘They must be bringing in a birthday cake.’
‘It’s not my birthday. Is it yours?’
‘Soon.’
‘Did you sleep with thirty women this year?’
‘Well, it’s not quite my birthday yet, but so far, no.’
‘Oh, well. Maybe next year,’ she whispered.
‘How about this for an ending?’ I said. ‘We could make a deal where I leave and go home and in the book I write I say that I was with you when you died, but really you don’t die and carry on living underground. And I would never tell another living soul and I would never try to contact you or come and find you and you would be free and happy. And I would live with the lie a hundred per cent until eventually I would believe it. I swear I can do it. Don’t die, Tomomi Ishikawa. Not again, please.’ I squeezed her a bit, but she didn’t move or make a sound.
‘Butterfly?’
I put my hand on her diaphragm. She was still breathing, quick little breaths, and then they stopped. I held my breath, copying her, and just when I couldn’t hold it anymore her body burst out into violent convulsions. I couldn’t believe the force of it. I held on as tight as I could to stop her from damaging herself. It went on for several minutes and then calmed into occasional spasms. And then I choked and tears came to my eyes. I was scared. I didn’t know what was happening.
‘Shhh. It’s all right,’ I lied. ‘Everything’s all right.’
She went limp again. I put my hand on her diaphragm, but now I couldn’t feel any movement. I put my fingers on her pulse. It was there. Her heart was beating weakly and with a made-up rhythm and pauses that were too long.
‘Shhh.’
She was sitting on a rock by a river and a line of children crossed a low wooden footbridge towards her, stopping at a small island in the middle of the stream to pick wildflowers. As they passed they said ‘Konnichiwa’ and presented her with the flowers, and she bowed her head in thanks to each one. Then she lifted herself to her feet and turned, walking slowly, following the path with the flowers in her hand, upstream along the river as it splashed over rocks, dancing in circles and rushing on. She walked upstream towards the source, back to the beginning.
I closed my eyes and held her for what seemed like a long time. I knew she was dead, but I waited anyway so that she wasn’t on her own. I guess we were there for an hour like that, sitting in the dark. I felt her pulse one last time, but there was nothing.
‘Goodbye, Butterfly. It’s been very strange.’
I moved her to the recovery position and walked off. After a couple of steps I turned and went back. I kissed her head and smoothed her hair. ‘Shhh. Everything’s all right.’ And it was now; I’d already done my mourning. I felt all right, lighter, maybe even good.
* * *
I got to the metro tracks with a few hundred pages of The Divine Comedy to spare. When I arrived on the platform at Buttes Chaumont everything was closed and the lights were dim. I walked up the steps, but shutters blocked my way out, so I went back to the platform, found a seat and sat staring at the wall. Cat came and rubbed his cheek against my shin and then lay down on the ground, slightly covering my toes, and settled down to sleep. It was good to see him. I got out my phone and turned it on. I’d been underground for nine days. Then the phone started beeping and text messages came in. Two from my bank with my account balance, a reminder that I had been invited to dinner the previous Saturday, two from friends wondering whether I’d disappeared, and three messages from Beatrice: ‘Hey, I’m gonna b 10 mins late’ and then ‘Where R U?’ and finally ‘Ben Constable?’. I felt happy.
I got out the plastic bag Butterfly had given me. As promised she’d returned the notebooks and there was a single shit of paper with her scribbled handwriting.
Dear Ben Constable,
Well, it’s been quite a ride. I’m dead now and this time for real. I guess you know that, though, because if everything goes to plan, you will have been with me. I made a deal with myself: I would offer you a poisoned sweet. If you ate it, you would die and I would stay underground. If you didn’t, I would follow you out, so long as you didn’t look back, but if you turned and looked, I would eat the sweet and die. If you’re reading this, then you looked back. I told you not to. You made me eat the sweet. You killed me. It’s a trick, of course, but I just wanted you to know what it feels like to kill someone. Just so you could know something else about me.
If it has any meaning left, then I am sorry. I’m sorry for everything. Go write that book now.
Big kiss, Butterfly. X O X O X O
X I X X L X X O X X V X X E X X Y X X O X X U X X (Did I ever tell you?)
Ps. Oh, nothing . . . . . . . . .