fifty-eight

Outside Kings Cross was purgatory: beggars, drug dealers and pimps. Lost souls waiting for their bodies to return to them. The bright lights of London lit up around them, like the fires of Hell. Inside the station, the light that shone through the vaulting arches belonged to God. Stations always beguiled me. They seemed to me full of containment and the largesse of the soul. They were the gateway to the other side.

As the train moved out through the suburbs, I realized that this was the first time I had travelled out of London since I had met Justine. Justine had become terminally connected with the city, it was where I thought she had been imprisoned, where I had looked for her traces.

The train was almost empty. The windows were not tinted, but muddied with dirt. The gentle murmurs of the passengers served as a fluid melody to the rhythm of the train, like a stream of blood to the beating of the heart. The train rumbled on through the dark countryside. It was misty and foggy outside. But the sky above was as white as Justine’s flesh. The light was so bright that it hurt my eyes.

I was certain that light also lay in wait for me at the end of my journey. A light that would engulf any pain in the moment it took to blind me with its brightness. This light would be jealous of any pain, burn it out of existence. Only the angel of terror and pleasure would be left to hover above my head.

In the opposite compartment, twin girls were playing chess. Their profiles were identical, their movements synchronized. They could have been one person reflected in a mirror.

The train stopped at a small provincial town and an old woman got on. Much to my annoyance she sat down opposite me. Her damp grey hair fell in strands around her ears.

‘Would you mind not staring? It’s very rude,’ she suddenly said to me. Her breath smelt of linctus.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that I was,’ I said.

‘Well, you should have. You strike me as someone who is not very observant of someone else’s feelings. Or of your own, for that matter. You shouldn’t go through life with so little self-awareness. It could end in trouble.’

She was quite clearly insane, and I was relieved when she got off at the next station. I watched her stride along the platform. She was smiling. In spite of her age, she looked very far from death. Further away from it than I was.