China Miéville: Looking for Jake and Other Stories

I’ve heard it all before, I’ve read it before. I’m taking my own sweet fucking time over this letter. Then I’ll see what’s being asked of me.

I took the tube to Willesden.

I wince to think of it now, I jerk my mind away. I wasn’t to know. It was safer then, anyway, in those early days.

I’ve crept into the underground stations in the months since, to check the whispered rumours for myself.

I’ve seen the trains go by with the howling faces in all the windows, too fast to see clearly, something like dogs, I’ve seen trains burning with cold light, long slow trains empty except for one dead-looking woman staring directly into my eyes, en route Jesus Christ knows where.

It was nothing like that back then, not nearly so dramatic. It was too cold and too quiet, I remember.

And I am not sure the train had a driver. But it let me go. I came to Willesden and as I stepped out onto that uncovered station I could feel something different about the world. There was a very slow epiphany building up under the skin of the night, oozing out of the city’s pores, breaking over me ponderously.

I climbed the stairs out of that underworld.

When Orpheus looked back, Jake, it wasn’t stupid. The myths are slanderous. It wasn’t the sudden fear that she wasn’t there that turned his head. It was the threatening light from above. What if it was not the same, out there? It’s so human, to turn and catch the eye of your companion on a return journey, to share a moment’s terror that everything you know will have changed.

There was no one I could look back to, and everything I knew had changed. Pushing open the doors onto the street was the bravest thing I have ever done.

I stood on the high railway bridge. I was hit by wind. Across the street before me, emerging from below the bridge, below my feet, the elegant curved gorge containing the tracks stretched away. Steep banks of scrub contained it, squat bushes and weeds that tugged petulantly at the scree.

There was very little sound. I could see only a few stars. I felt as if the whole sky scudded above me.

The shop was dark but the door opened. It was a relief to walk into still air.

We’re fucking shut, somebody said. He sounded despairing.

I wound between the piles of strong-smelling books towards the till. I could see shapes and shades in this halfhearted darkness. An old bald man was slumped on a stool behind the desk.

I don’t want to buy anything, I said. I’m looking for someone. I described you.

Look around, mate, he said. Fucking empty. What do you want from me? I ain’t seen your friend or no one.

Very fast, I felt hysteria. I swallowed back a desire to run to all the corners of the shop and throw piles of books around, shouting your name, to see where you were hiding. As I fought to speak the old man took some kind of contemptuous pity on me and sighed.

One like the one you said, he’s been drifting in and out of here all day. Last here about two hours ago. If he comes in again he can fuck off, I’m closed.

How do you tell the incredible? It seems odd, what strikes us as unbelievable.

I had learnt, very fast, that the rules of the city had imploded, that sense had broken down, that London was a broken and bloodied thing. I accepted that with numbness, only a very little astonished. But I was nearly sick with disbelief and relief to walk out of that shop and see you waiting.

You stood under the eaves of a newsagent’s, half in shadow, an unmistakable silhouette.

If I stop for a moment it is all so prosaic, so obvious, that you would wait for me there. When I saw you, though, it was like a miracle.

Did you shudder with relief to see me?

Could you believe your eyes?

It’s difficult to remember that, right now, when I am up here on the roof surrounded by the hungry flapping things that I cannot see, without you.

We met in the darkness that dripped off the front of the building’s facade. I hugged you tight.

Man . . . I said.

Hey, you said.

We stood like fools, silent for a while.

Do you understand what’s happened? I said.

You shook your head, shrugged and waved your arms vaguely to encompass everything around us.

I don’t want to go home, you said. I felt it go. I was in the shop and I was looking at this weird little book and I felt something huge just . . . slip away.

I was asleep in a train. I woke up and found it like this.

What happens now?

I thought you could tell me that. Didn’t you all get issued . . . rule books or something? I thought I was punished for being asleep, that’s why I didn’t understand anything.

No, man. You know, loads of people have just . . . disappeared, I swear. When I was in the shop I looked up just before, and there were four other people in there. And then I looked up just after and there was only me and this other guy, and the shopkeeper.

Smiles, I said. The cheerful one.

Yeah.

We stood silent again.

This is the way the world ends, you said.

Not with a bang, I continued, but with a . . .

We thought.

. . . with a long-drawn-out breath? you suggested.

I told you that I was walking home, to Kilburn, just over the way. Come with me, I said. Stay at mine.

You were hesitant.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, I’m sure it was my fault. It was just the old argument, about you not coming to see me enough, not staying longer, translated into the world’s new language. Before the fall you would have made despairing noises about having to be somewhere, hint darkly at commitments you could not explain, and disappear. But in this new time those excuses became absurd. And the energy you put into your evasions was channelled elsewhere, into the city, which was hungry like a newborn thing, which sucked up your anxiety, assimilated your inchoate desires and fulfilled them.

At least walk with me over to Kilburn, I said. We can work out what we’re going to do when we’re there.

Yeah, sure man, I just want to . . .

I couldn’t make out what it was you wanted to do.

You were distracted, you kept looking over my shoulder at something, and I was looking around quickly, to see what was intriguing you. There was a sense of interruptions, though the night was as silent as ever, and I kept glancing back at you, and I tugged at you to make you come with me and you said Sure sure man, just one second, I want to see something and you began to cross the road with your eyes fixed on something out of my sight and I was getting angry and then I lost my grip on you because I could hear a sound from over the brow of the railway bridge, from the east. I could hear the sound of hooves.

My arm was still outstretched but I was no longer touching you, and I turned my head towards the sound, I stared at the hill’s apex. Time stretched out. The darkness just above the pavement was split by a wicked splinter that grew and grew as something long and thin and sharp appeared over the hill. It sliced the night at an acute angle. A clenched, gloved fist rose below it, clutching it tight. It was a sword, a splendid ceremonial sabre. The sword pulled a man after it, a man in a strange helmet, a long silver spike adorning his head and a white plume streaming out in his wake.

He rode in an insane gallop but I felt no urgency as he burst into view, and I had all the time I needed to see him, to study his clothes, his weapon, his face, to recognise him.

He was one of the horsemen who stands outside the palace . . . Are they called the household cavalry?

With the hair draped from their helmet spike in an immaculate cone, their mirrored boots, their bored horses. They are legendary for their immobility. It is a tourist game to stare at them and mock them and stroke their mounts’ noses, while no flicker of human emotion defiles their duty.