6.

The train stopped somewhere in the night. We’d left the compartment blinds up, and dozens of lamplit faces filed past our window. The station lay in darkness behind them, so it looked as if these people had burst out of the night itself with plans and schemes. Top of the list: getting everything spick-and-span, as quickly as possible. They were like a horde of sprinters carrying brooms, mops, buckets, and all manner of brushes. Laura of the sauna cubicle was standing on the station platform too, frowning as she tapped away at her tablet screen. Just as it seemed she’d be trampled, the throng broke formation, dispersing, nodding, and calling out greetings as they passed her. I waited until I was sure that they’d bypassed our carriage entirely, then drew the blinds, only momentarily considering shaking Xavier awake and reminding him he’d wanted to get out at the very next station.

Did we stop again, just before dawn? I heard the door to Clock Carriage open and close; that was what woke me up. A visit from the library car. I looked out of the window. We were still in motion, shuffling along a hilly avenue of trees. I shouldn’t have been able to see that . . . I clearly recalled drawing the blinds.

Xavier opened one eye and whispered, “Are we there yet? Any lakes? How about mountains?”

I drew the blinds (again?) and nestled up against him, kissing his mouth as it curved into a smile. He went back to sleep, and I would have too if I hadn’t glanced up at the luggage rack and seen the tip of Árpád’s nose quivering between his suitcase and Xavier’s. He’d concealed himself there so that anyone entering the compartment from the corridor wouldn’t notice him until he’d sunk his claws into their head. We watched and waited, Árpád and I, my eyes on him, his eyes on the corridor, and then we heard a low-pitched, mewling growl—part fear, part fury, all mongoose. Árpád sprang to the floor and lay there in a muddle with his feet on his head. The call sounded again, this time much closer, and coming from someone who stood half a metre or so above the ground. It was Chela, huddled against the glass of the compartment door. She’d run to us. Well, to Árpád, really. I got up and let her in. I don’t believe the two of them had met before, but there was no time for introductions . . . she ran in and tucked her lithe form in behind his greater bulk, a linking of forms that seemed to embolden them both. Their eyes flamed. Xavier sat up, looked over at the pair, blinked several times, and started to speak, but I’d already gone to see what Chela was running from, so I didn’t hear what he said.

Someone was standing at the end of the carriageway, holding an extra-large dip net. The bag part was easily Chela- or Árpád-sized. And this someone wasn’t Laura or Ava—initially I thought it might have been Allegra, the part-time passenger and part-time driver I’d been told about but hadn’t seen, but . . . if anything, seeing this person was like seeing that figure waving from the barbed-wire cage as the train went by. I knew I was looking at someone, but I couldn’t make out any features, no matter how I squinted. Nonsense; they’re only a few steps away, of course you can see what they look like.

Outside the landscape stuttered. Either we’d stopped and this was what happened when my attention jerked from the window to the hallway, or we were passing a row of identical willow trees one by one. The person holding the net began walking towards me. I wanted to run back into the compartment and build a barricade. But rationality continued to speak to me. It said: Otto, that string bag is Chela- or Árpád-sized, but you’re not. You’re significantly bigger and heavier than this person. And don’t you see, they’re gripping the handle of their net with both hands—since when was a dip net a deadly weapon? Besides, this person is wearing fuzzy slippers and peacock green pajamas, and if those intimidate you, I don’t know what else to tell you. If you’ve got even a millimetre of backbone in you, you’ll walk forward right this minute.

I went forward, all right, but those rational points only enlarged the sight problem. It wasn’t at all like looking at a person through a hazy filter. There wasn’t any kind of incongruity shock either: they were just there, quite at one with their surroundings, even smiling. In recognition, it seemed. I smiled too, though I didn’t think I knew anybody who’d run around in the middle of the night frightening mongooses by way of amusement.

It was as if this person was both behind my eyes and in front of them. I kept catching myself in the act of assembling the image at the very moment it appeared . . . That makes it all sound more voluntary than it felt. Someone was moving towards me. Someone visible; I couldn’t simply choose not to see them. Yet to see them I had to do more than just look. A lot more. Whatever it was I had to do, the attempt put every cell of my sight apparatus under such strain that I felt blood vessels bursting. I wobbled forward, putting out a hand a couple of times to touch the wall panels, which vibrated as my fingers crossed them. The train was still moving, then. The person stopped smiling once I got close enough to pull the dip net out of his hands and tell him we were trying to get some sleep.

“So was I,” he said. “Well, goodnight for now.”

Moving too quickly for me to stop him, he whipped the carriage door open. Not the one that would’ve led back into the carriage car, but the one that would’ve opened out onto a platform if we’d been stationary. We both staggered as the wind whirled in at around a hundred kilometres per hour to besport itself right merrily, roaring with laughter as it did all it could to rip the hair from our scalps and the skin from our faces—and then he jumped out of the train. He sprang out into thin air; I spun around to find and pull the nearest emergency cord so I didn’t see him fall. And mine was the second cord pull—behind me, Xavier had found one first.

“He jumped,” I said, but the train was screaming. I don’t think Xavier heard me over the bumping of the door hinge and the muddy baritone of the railway brake. “Did you see— He said he couldn’t sleep or something—and then he fucking jumped . . .”

We ground to a halt, and a chorus of shouts grew in volume, along with the rumble of heavy footfall as tens of people scrambled down from the train and ran along the side of it in unison. The maintenance team was still with us.

It was very early on Sunday morning, and I was standing in the middle of the carriageway wearing nothing but a pair of boxers with the Czech word for Saturday on them, shivering spasmodically and staring with bloodshot eyes as I waved an extra-large dip net and shouted about somebody jumping off the train while it was still moving. Laura’s voice came over the tannoy telling us to stay exactly where we were. Xavier did what any kind soul would have done and made me get dressed before the train operator inquisition began. We tried to get our story straight. “Tell me again,” he said. I told him again. Then a third time, and a fourth time. He was shaking too. But he kept asking, “But who, Otto? Who was chasing Chela with a net? Who opened the carriage door?”

He held my head between his hands and looked into my eyes; I watched him reviewing what he knew. I’d been standing over him when I woke up, with Chela already in our compartment. And he’d got out into the hallway in time to see me running at the carriage door, but that was all.

It could have been me, just messing about on my own. I could’ve frightened Chela in an effort to do Árpád a favour by driving a mating prospect right into his arms. As for wrenching the door open and attempting a flying leap—another neural blip, just like running into a burning house for no bloody reason.

“Wondering how long you can put up with somebody who keeps going in for completely unnecessary heroics?” I asked, jocularly but really not joking at all. When Xavier gets tired of me all he has to do is take his pick from the queue of suitors I pretend not to feel threatened by.

“I’ve actually got a lot of time for people like that,” he said. “And anyway, I’m . . . well, you’re the one who could do a lot better.”

I kissed him. “What are you talking about? Listen, I’m gonna go a bit Anne Brontë on you. Are you ready?”

“Will you let me off if I say I’m not ready?”

“No. A Brontean moment can never be averted. I prefer your faults to other people’s perfections, Xavier Shin. There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He was meant to laugh, make a face, parse the sentence, kiss me back, any combination of those four. But he looked at the floor, thinking.

“Xavier?”

We were interrupted by a princess in her late twenties. I’ll amend that slightly: an haute urban princess with a side ponytail, her blue tulle ballgown slashed at the hip and pulled on over silk leggings. A tiny emerald shone from the piercing in her left nostril, but her feet crowned the entire look: she wore an astonishingly white pair of Converse. Trainers only ever stay as clean as the conscience of their wearer.

She climbed up into our carriage from the track and stood in front of us with folded arms.

“Allegra Yu,” she said. “What happened, exactly?” She—or perhaps Ava—had drawn a heart-shaped beauty spot onto the highest point of each of her cheekbones, amplifying the seamless asymmetries of her face so that she wore several expressions at once. She had a Peckham accent, which made me think she might actually hear me out. Peckhamites are deep. You’ll get hurt if you try to waste their time, but otherwise they are available for soul-to-soul communication, giving compassionate audience to all manner of monologues delivered in languages they don’t speak. What am I basing these claims on? I’ll just flash my son-of-a-Peckhamite credentials here.

Allegra listened to what I had to say without asking anything, though at a couple of points she did make some intensely questioning eye contact with me and also with Xavier. After I’d fallen silent, she took the dip net from me. I must have been waving it again as I spoke. I was quite willing to relinquish the net but found that my fingers had other ideas; Allegra had to peel them away from the handle. I was not behaving like a reliable witness.

“Anything to add?” she asked Xavier.

He looked her in the eyes. “No. That’s what happened.”

“You saw it all?”

“Yeah.”

“OK,” she said. “Well, we’re looking. I’ll let you know if we find . . . anything.”

“If?” I said. “What do you mean, ‘if’?”

“Good question,” she said, and considerably disconcerted me by putting a hand into the pocket of her ballgown, pulling out a lollipop, jamming it into the left corner of her mouth, and continuing without answering my “good question”: “Stay inside the train, please. I’ll need to see you both a bit later.”

“Can’t wait,” I said. “But for now . . . can I have a lollipop too?”

She switched her lollipop from the left to the right side, said it was her last one, and rejoined the crew milling around the exterior. She took the dip net with her.

Árpád and Chela believed me. The one skipped up onto my knee and waited until I lowered my head for grooming, brushing my fringe back and forth as he checked for nits. The other came and put her paw in my hand for a second.

“Xavier,” I said, “this is Chela, our future daughter-in-law.”

In Korean, Xavier asked Chela to take care of him in times to come. She listened impassively, and when he went to pat her on the head, she ducked—because of the pressure I’d just put on her with my introduction, Xavier said. Then the two mongooses bounded out of the carriage door and along the track.