Dan Vyleta - Smoke

They take Nótt away. A man with a billy club, breaking her legs. They tie a rope around her neck and drag her; her jaws snapping, a whine in her throat, not a bark. I watch them do it, and I do nothing. It is of no consequence. Nótt is the past, my boyhood, my becoming. I trained her nose for Smoke. My own nose is better now, better than hers. I can smell your needs across the chill of a city square, can sort their flavours, weigh each urge: taxonomise. What I like, though, is to get close, inhale you like a flower. Dogs with their noses up each other’s arses. I understand it now. The bouquet of vice. Bottle it and you’ll be rich.

But, of course: I am already rich.

London is an ocean of Smoke. People float on it like scum: waterlogged, helpless, half aware of others circling in the depths. I came to it and plunged, handed myself over to its rhythms; its storms and tides; its eddies and swells. Cold, rich, salty. I plunged and I gorged. Not on food, mind. I don’t remember what I ate. Refuse, wild things scuttling in the alley; scoops of old, encrusted Soot. My head is light these days, my stomach a knot. My clothes hang from me like rags.

Here is how I pass the hours. I walk the streets. Stand in the thoroughfares, openmouthed, imbibing every current, belching it back into the air. Smoke flowing through the filter of my body. Irritation turning to anger; drunken joy to mischief; boisterousness to wounded pride: behind me a dark wake, dragging others off their paths. Whirlpools of corruption. I am Smoke’s slave and also its master; drift like flotsam yet command its tides. Dialectics . A Fritz philosopher called Hegel. I am Aufhebung : my own cancellation; a new, a higher version of myself. I am the end of history. I played dice with a gang of child thieves in Hampstead; wrestled a beggar in a ditch by Covent Garden and bit off his nose; danced the polka with a lunatic from Palestine, loused his hair and broke his face. I am a leech, a dog, a sparrow. I am a moraine eel. I am, I am, I am. I’m having trouble with words, with time, with order.

Order!

First. First I came to London. Trailing him: Charlie Cooper. Nótt and I, sharing the road: on my knees, half the time, my nose to her snout, palms in the dirt, sniffing for his trace. We lost it, both of us. He smokes too little, that one, and there were too many others, covering up. Siren songs all over the city, calling to me, moth to the flame. A boardinghouse in Clapham. An opium den in Limehouse. A mother clutching her stillborn, all alone under a bridge. Distractions. I am he: a boy in a sweetshop, blindfolded, sniffing for a single ginger nut.

Then: a trace. No, not of the one I followed. The other one . My cousin, my double. But how different his Smoke smells to me now. Where once I sensed rivalry, I now taste promise; where I saw hatred, I now divine kinship. But how weak it seems, this shred of Smoke, leeched by doubt and temperance; how distant from the moment we stood in the ring and beat paths to one another’s souls. I want to find him, wake him to his nature. Taste him, own him, crawl into his skin. Ingestion, osmosis. Cannibalism. Flesh of my flesh, Smoke of my Smoke. In pain and rage we shall become one.

Order though, order! The world of man has sequence. Cause and effect. The world of Smoke is different. Noumenon: the thing-in-itself. Kant? Cunt! I am Smoke’s avatar. I am its prophet, its priest, its monk. I am—

Order!

First. First I come to London. Then comes the trace. Too faint to follow. Chasing it, losing it. A church, the river, distractions.

Then — Sebastian. I remember where he lives. It is like floating up from the dark of the ocean: relearning the skills of men. Planning. Remembering. Thinking in sentences, in words. All against my newfound nature: my mouth level with the waterline, heart, lungs, and liver in the waves. Leviathan circling at my feet. The Regency. A hotel for gentlemen; porters by the door. Licenced sweets in their mouths. Uniforms speckled with London’s Soot. Room 14. Sebastian, Ashton, Aschenstedt. Smoke, Soot, and Ash.

There is no light in his room, no movement behind the window. No matter; I wait. Darkness falls. Sebastian returns. His Smoke has touched him, has seeped into his clothes. The faintest of traces. I could stop him at the entrance, make him talk. But it is better to wait, let him lead me to him . Sebastian goes upstairs and turns on the light. One can see it from the square. That’s when I learn there are other watchers. First two, then more, chins raised to his window. Men in long overcoats, truncheons clipped to their belts. One at each entrance to the square. They spot us soon after I have spotted them. Perhaps they have a description: Renfrew’s killer, wanted by magistrates. A gentleman and his hound. It’s Nótt they capture: they see me too but hesitate; allow me to slip away. Fear. I catch its smell and scuttle off; watch across the shoulder of the throng.

Nótt makes it easy for them. A sick dog, she is, ever since Renfrew. My smell has changed, she sniffs me with suspicion, no longer sure of her own master. Keeps her distance, always six steps behind. A cast-off shadow, chasing the memory of love. Head down, tail tucked, forlorn. I should have gotten rid of her before. But it is hard to kill old habits.

It takes four of them, converging on her, arms spread out like wrestlers. A crowd gathers at once, eager to see. It separates me from the action. I watch from afar. There is a flavour to the one with the club. He need not have broken her legs but he does so anyway, Smoke rising from his shaven cheeks like a blush that catches fire. He is fair-haired and slight, but in the cast of his mouth he has something of Mr. Price. A man with potential; sergeant to this platoon of thugs. They drag Nótt into a waiting cab. One of the men goes along, the rest resume their watching. Patient, expectant, eyes glued to his window, two floors up. I remain out of sight, cower in the mouth of an alley.

We wait.

Sebastian leaves before dawn. They all fall in line with him, strung out across the length of a street. I make up the rear. Already I know he has spotted them: a thread of Smoke following him, of fear and defiance, too weak to be visible, a beacon to my nose. How simply he gives us all the slip. He walks to work, a satchel in one fist. The sewers. I paid for them, studied the plans. A guard hutch outside a hole in the wall. It swallows him. The watchman turns the pursuers away.

There are other ways in. It takes me a while to find one that is free of guards, my mind tracing the memory of neatly drawn lines. Down below, I find what he’s been building. Iron bars stop me, I give them the slip. Mother lied to me. An investment opportunity, she said, a vineyard of sorts, ripe for the harvest. A mine, an oil well. A pit of dirt. Another lie. Another betrayal.

How many have there been?

Rage takes hold of me, breeds madness. I step beyond words. Daniel and Stephen from Donegal are walking with me, Renfrew in their midst. Mr. Price holds a lamp. Green tiling, Caracalla. A room beyond the laws of physics. Light holds no flame here; past turns to present. I bathe, I feed. My stomach bulges but my limbs are weak.

Order!

He pulls me back. I catch his scent, it carries on a ventilation draught, recalls me to the world of thought. He is here. Not close, not in this chamber, but in some tunnel far away, where the sewer meets the city above. It lures me back; a long ascent. My cousin, my mirror, my bride. Blood wedding; together we’ll be twice myself.

I leave the sewers on all fours. Dark outside, the sun long set, beggars jeering at me, then covering their faces when I pass. The trail is fresh; is sweet with courage, with desire, with doubt. His destination: a house half burnt. Soot mixing with soot. I look up the stairs. He is inside.