Part 9 (1/2)

8.

THE DAY OF THE FIRST RE-ENACTMENT finally arrived. July the eleventh.

We'd decided to begin at 2 p.m. I spent the morning in Naz's office, then ate a final light lunch with him. The air there was solemn, its heavy silence punctured only by the occasional ringing phone or crackling radio which one of Naz's staff would answer in hushed tones.

”What is it?” I'd ask Naz each time.

”Nothing,” he'd answer quietly. ”Everything's under control.”

At half-past one I left. Naz's people stood by the door as I made my way out-three or four of them on each side, forming a kind of tunnel-and wished me luck, their faces grave and sober. Naz took the lift down to the street with me, then, when the car pulled up, turned to face me and shook my hand. He was staying behind to direct all activities from his office. His dark eyes locked on mine while our hands held each other, the thing behind the eyes whirring deep back inside his skull.

Our driver drove me from the office to the building. It was just two minutes' walk away, but he took me there in the car we'd gone around in while setting all this up. I sat in the back seat and watched the streets slide by: the railway bridge, the sports track with its knitted green wire fence, its battered football goals, its yellow, red and white lane markings, boxes, arcs and circles. I turned my head to look out of the rear window just in time to see the top of Naz's office disappear from view. Then I turned back-and, as I did, my building slid up to the car and loomed above me like a sculpted monolith, the words Madlyn Mansions Madlyn Mansions still carved in the stone above its front door. still carved in the stone above its front door.

The driver brought the car to a halt in front of it. Annie was waiting on the pavement. She opened the car door and I stepped out.

”All ready?” she asked.

I didn't know what to answer. Was it ready? Everything had seemed to be in place the evening before. Annie had been there all morning: she'd know better than me if it was ready. Or had she meant was I ready? I didn't know. How could you gauge these things? What standard would we have gauged them by? A slight ripple of dizziness ran through me, so I let these thoughts go. I smiled back at Annie weakly and we walked up the stone steps into the building.

The same quiet, uneasy atmosphere was reigning here as had reigned in Naz's office. The bustle and hum of scores of people going about tasks that I'd grown so accustomed to over the last weeks and months had disappeared and been replaced by earnest, hushed, last-minute concentration. The concierge re-enactor was standing in the lobby, while one of the costume people fiddled with the strappings of her face mask. Her face had never come to me-or, to be precise, it had come to me, but only as a blank-so I'd decided she should wear a mask to blank it out. We'd got one of those masks that ice-hockey goaltenders wear: white and pocked with little breathing holes. I stopped in front of her.

”You understand exactly what it is you have to do?” I asked her.

There was a pause behind the mask, then she said: ”Yes. Just stand here.”

Her voice, behind the plastic, was unnatural: it rattled and distorted like those tinny children's toys that emit cow sounds or little phrases when you shake them. I liked that.

”Exactly. Stand here in the lobby,” I repeated. I nodded at her and the costume person, then moved on towards the stairs.

The glum pianist was already practising up in his third floor flat. We'd chosen something by Rachmaninov for him to play-at first, at least. He'd played me sample pieces by several composers, and I'd liked this one by Rachmaninov best. It was called Second Second or or Third Concerto Third Concerto or or Sonata in A Major Sonata in A Major or or B Flat, Minor, Major- B Flat, Minor, Major-something along those lines. What I liked about it was the way it undulated: how it bent and looped. Plus it was very difficult to play, apparently, which was good: he'd really make mistakes. I heard him hit his first snag as I moved onto the staircase. I stood still and grabbed Annie by the arm: ”Listen!” I whispered.

We listened. The pianist paused, then went at it again, slowing right down as he entered the pa.s.sage that had tripped him up. He repeated it several times, then picked his pace up and returned to the beginning of the sequence, clocking it-then again, a little faster, then again and again and again, speeding it up each time until he was back almost at full speed. Eventually he accelerated out of the pa.s.sage and on into the rest of the sonata.

”That's just right,” I said to Annie. ”Just right.”

We moved on, up past the motorbike enthusiast's flat. He wasn't there, of course: he was out in the courtyard tinkering with his motorbike. I hoped he was, at least: that's where he was supposed to be. Then past the boring couple's flat. On the floor above this, the fourth floor, we found Frank. He was standing on the landing with a diagram in his hands, checking the walls and floor-the distribution of filled-in and blank s.p.a.ce-against this. Seeing me, he nodded his head in a way that implied he was satisfied with his check, let the hand holding the clipboard drop to his side and told me: ”Everything in order. Good luck.”

We continued upwards. Members of Frank and Annie's crews were moving off the stairs, retreating behind doors with radios in their hands. We pa.s.sed the liver lady's door: I could hear several people shuffling around behind it, and the sound of soft, uncooked liver being laid out on cutting boards. Then we were on my floor. Annie entered my flat with me to check everything was right here, too. It was: the plants were scraggly but alive; the floorboards were scuffed but warm, neither s.h.i.+ny nor dull but somewhere in between; the rug was lying in the right place, slightly ruffled. Annie and I stood facing one another.

”All yours,” she said, smiling warmly. ”Call Naz when you're ready to go.”

I nodded. She left, closing the door behind her.

Before phoning Naz I stood alone in my living room for a while. The layout of the sofas and the coffee table, of the kitchen area-the plants, the counter and the fridge: all this was correct. Below me I could hear radios and TV sets being switched on throughout the building. At least one Hoover was in use. I stepped into the bathroom and looked at the crack on the wall. Just right too: not just the crack but the whole room-taps, wall, colours, crack, everything: perfect. I stepped back into my living room, picked up the phone and called Naz.

”Ready?” he asked.

”Yes,” I said.

”Good,” he replied. ”I'll start the liver and the cats. We'll take it from there.”

”Fine,” I said, and hung up.

I walked over to the kitchen window and looked out. Above the staggered, red-tiled rooftops of the facing building, the doors of two of the little cabins opened and two cats were shunted out of each. Three of them started meandering slowly around the roofs, each in his own direction; the fourth just sat down and stayed still-although if I slightly moved my head a centimetre or so to the left the kinked gla.s.s made him elongate and slither. A crackle came from downstairs: the snap of wet liver landing on hot oil; then came another one, a third, a fourth. For a few seconds it sounded as though fireworks were being let off a few streets away; then the crackles quietened down into a constant sizzle punctuated by the occasional pop. I wandered back into the bathroom and looked at the cats from there while I waited for the liver's smell to reach me.

When it did, I stepped back into the living room and called Naz.

”It's not right,” I said.

”What's not?” he asked.

”That smell,” I said. ”I thought Annie had made sure they'd broken the pans in. So they weren't new, I mean.”

”I'll check that with her now,” he said. ”Hold on.”

I heard him radio Annie and repeat to her what I'd told him. I heard her radio crackle to his radio and back down the phone line to me. I heard her tell him: ”They are broken in. We went through all this.”

”She says they are broken in,” Naz told me. Then there was a crackle and I heard Annie's voice ask Naz: ”What's not right about the smell?”

”What's wrong with it?” repeated Naz.

”It's got that sharp edge,” I told him. ”Kind of like cordite.”

”A bit like cordite,” I heard him tell her.

”That's what he said before,” I heard her voice say. ”Tell him to give it a few minutes. It should settle down once it gets cooking.”

”Give it a few minutes,” Naz said. ”It should...”

”Yes, I heard,” I told him.

I hung up again and walked over to my kitchen area. The plants rustled in their baskets as I pa.s.sed them, just like I'd first remembered them rustling. I went over to the window. The cats were widely dispersed now, black against the red. I could see three of them: the fourth must have slunk off behind a chimney pot. I brushed past the kitchen unit's waist-high edge, the same way I'd remembered brus.h.i.+ng past it when I'd first remembered the whole building-turning half sideways and then back again. My movement wasn't deft enough, though, and my s.h.i.+rt caught slightly on the corner as I pa.s.sed-not violently, snagging, but still staying against the wood for half a second too long, hugging it too thickly. This wasn't right-wasn't how I remembered it: my memory was of pa.s.sing it deftly, letting the s.h.i.+rt brush the woodwork lightly, almost imperceptibly, like a matador's cape tickling a bull's horns. I tried it again: this time my s.h.i.+rt didn't touch the woodwork at all. I tried it a third time: walking past the unit, turning sideways and then back again, trying to make my s.h.i.+rt brush fleetingly against the woodwork as I turned. This time I got the s.h.i.+rt bit right, but not the turning. It was difficult, this whole manoeuvre: I would need to practise.

I moved over to the fridge and pulled the door towards me. The door gave without resistance, opening in a smooth and seamless flow. I closed it, then pulled it towards me again. Again it opened smoothly. I did it a third time: again, faultless. Downstairs the pianist was coming out of a corrective loop, speeding up as he took off for new territory. I opened the fridge faultlessly once more, then closed it for the last time: I was ready to go.

I called Naz again.

”I'd like to leave my flat now,” I told him. ”I'll walk down past the liver lady's.”

”Okay,” Naz said. ”Count thirty seconds from now and then leave your door. Exactly thirty seconds.”

He hung up. I hung up too. I stood in the middle of my living-room floor, counting thirty seconds with my hands slightly raised, palms turned slightly outwards. Then I left my flat.

Moving across the landing and down the staircase, I felt like an astronaut taking his first steps-humanity's first steps-across the surface of a previously untouched planet. I'd walked over this stretch a hundred times before, of course-but it had been different then, just a floor: now it was fired up, silently zinging with significance. Held beneath a light coat of sandy dust within a solid gel of tar, the flecks of gold and silver in the granite seemed to emit a kind of charge, as invisible as natural radiation-and just as potent. The non-ferrous-metal banisters and the silk-black wooden rail above them glowed with a dark, unearthly energy that took up the floor's diminished sheen and multiplied its dark intensity. I turned the first corner, glancing through its window as I moved: light from the courtyard bent as it approached me; a long, thin kink travelled across the surface of the facing building, then shot off away to wrinkle more remote, outlying s.p.a.ces. The red rooftiles were disappearing as I came down, eclipsed by their own underhang as the angle between us widened. Then I turned again and the whole facade revolved away from me.

I continued down the stairs. Sounds travelled to me-but these, too, were subject to anomalies of physics, to interference and distortion. The pianist's music ran, snagged and looped back on itself, first slowing down then speeding up. The static crackle of the liver broke across the orphaned signals cast adrift from radios and television sets. The Hoover moaned on, sucking matter up into its vacuum. I could hear the motorbike enthusiast clanging down in the courtyard, banging at a nut to loosen it. The clanging echoed off the facing building, the clangs reaching me as echoes almost coinciding with the clangs coming straight up from his banging-almost but not quite. I remembered seeing a boy once kicking a football against a wall, the distance between him and the wall setting up the same delay, the same near-overlap. I couldn't remember where, though.

I moved on down the staircase. As I came within four steps of the fifth-floor landing I heard the liver lady's locks jiggle and click. Then her door opened and she moved out slowly, holding a small rubbish bag. She was wearing a light-blue cardigan; her hair was wrapped up in a headscarf; a few white, wiry strands were sprouting from its edges, standing out above her forehead like thin, sculpted snakes. She shuffled forward in her doorway; then she stooped to set her bag down, holding her left hand to her back as she did this. She set the bag down carefully-then paused and, still stooped, turned her head to look up at me.