Colum McCann - This Side of Brightness

* * *

Burma Road. Sheets of steam from the underground pipes. Treefrog moves through the metropolis of cloud. The face of the woman in the subway station follows him. The pipes are thick and gray and hot to the touch. Sodium lights on the wall emit blueness, giving the steam the color of a new bruise. He pushes his hands through the air, and even the air is hot. He has only been down here once before, in this weedlot of steel, four floors beneath Grand Central, the heart of the heart of the city. The ceilings are low, the corridors narrow, the floor dripworn from the steam pipes. It is called Burma Road because of the heat — the words are scrawled in graffiti at the rictus of the steam tunnels. He knows full well that men and women live down here and he must be careful. He is a pinchbeck arrival among them, a man who still lives in some modicum of light. He has seen them, the truly damned. They live crouched under platforms strewn with clothes, or high on steel girders, or in hidden cubbyholes, or buried underneath broken pipes. Wounded men and women living in their lazaret of hopelessness. There are seven floors of tunnels altogether — and he has heard of murders and stabbings down here. But Treefrog is comfortable now in his shame, and he walks with small broken strides.

He opens his overcoats as he goes. Reaching up to touch his beard, he feels the droplets of water that have settled themselves upon it.

The corridor of Burma Road widens where the pipes meet — thin tubes in the air and thicker larger ones low to the ground — all of them hissing and moaning like some aberrant hospital.

A huge wide emptiness seeps into Treefrog’s stomach, and he feels the eyes of that old woman still following him, carving their way through him. His footsteps are loud and echoing. He swipes at sounds in the air. Rapping his knuckles on a pipe, he can hear the vibration, the movement of the noise through water, through steam, through air, maybe all the way up into the city. He comes to the end of the corridor and scales down a metal ladder beyond the CAUTION: OFFICIAL PERSONNEL ONLY sign. The ladder is slippy with wetness but he takes it easily, jumps the final three rungs. He stands in a larger room twelve feet below, where dozens of pipes meet and flow. The steam billows out and forms great clouds that hang and then disperse and drip down toward the ground.

The first time he came here he was with Elijah, who was stealing copper from the tunnel wires. Elijah had stood under the pipes, with steam around his feet, and then he disappeared and left Treefrog alone. It was as if he had vanished into the steam. It took Treefrog half a day to make his way out through the labyrinth, and the domed ceiling of Grand Central had greeted him like a sunrise.

Now Treefrog stands and stares at the room. Water falls down from the filthy pipes like fabulous rain suddenly gracious. Machinery groans. Electric light leaks in and is then arrested so that it paints the outside of the steam.

He takes off his clothes, boots first, then his coats, his jeans, his shirts, his underwear, and moves naked into the sodium-blue clouds. Water drips hot on his skin. He wishes he had soap and shampoo. It is only when he reaches up to his hair that he realizes he has left his blue hat on. He tosses it out of the steam. It is the first time he has been fully naked in ages. The water welts his skin, and he throws his head back and lets the drips wedge themselves down around his closed eyelids, the lovely viciousness of the way the drops thump their heat into him. “Fuck!” he shouts. “Fuck!” He rubs at himself with ferociousness, cleaning his toes, the back of his heel, his shins, bringing his hands upward along his calves and thighs. His penis and testicles are already raw from the heat of the water but he keeps on going, ferreting away in his navel, his ass, his armpits, rubbing the burning water over his chest, the heat pounding down on him, ecstasy, hypnosis, swiping his hands through the steam until he sees her. At first she looks like a shop-window dummy, but then she moves minutely and peers in, still holding her handbag. She allows herself a little embarrassed chuckle as she wipes the vapor away from her wrinkled face. She looks at him and steps forward, fully clothed, into the torrid mist. She sniffs at the air and nods now with approval. Treefrog cups his hands over himself and hangs his head down to his chest, the carnival shape moving around him. There is sudden laughter and Treefrog joins in. His forehead creases and his mouth opens so wide that he can feel the steam burning at his throat and he keeps on laughing. He reaches out to take the hand of the vision and she comes forward until he notices that — right at the edge of the clouds — something real, something human, is staring at him, no movement except for the flickering whites of the eyes.

Treefrog steps out of the steam. He hears a rustling movement, the slap of shoes. He follows the figure, moving quickly now. He hears the sound of heavy breathing. Treefrog reaches the ladder, scales it. The curious shape is already running down along Burma Road, disappearing, laughing out loud. Treefrog remains on the ladder. “Fuck!” he shouts. He knows that his clothes and boots will be gone, so he doesn’t even check, just watches the fading form. But — when the figure is gone — Treefrog descends to the room, and his clothes are still there, even the money in the pockets of his jeans. He looks back at the ladder and wedges his knuckles into his eye sockets and steps back into the steam once more. The subway woman has vanished, and there’s nothing else to do but wash himself clean.

* * *

When Lenora was a baby he would bathe her in the kitchen sink. He would fold a towel and place it beneath her head. Her feet would kick a little and warm water would splash out. He’d dampen a cloth, soften it with soap, and rub it over her. She would cry out until he took a jug of water and poured it from a height. Dancesca sometimes helped him. When they were finished they would swaddle the child in a towel that had been specially warmed over a radiator. Later, they’d gently rock Lenora in their laps while the television flared in the background.

* * *

The wet hat chills his head as he emerges onto 42nd Street in the night. He decides to walk all the way uptown, searching the garbage for cans and bottles as he goes. The snow has stopped but the streets are bright with whiteness. He wears his sunglasses. Not many people drinking sodas in wintertime, but he collects enough bottles to redeem them for two dollars and forty cents. Combining all his money, he buys himself a couple of cans of ravioli and the largest bottle of gin he can afford.

* * *

He passes the empty playground, the ghosts of mothers and children ranged around it. He tips up his sunglasses. Lenora, girl, how are you and what is it like being alive and would I enjoy it?

He climbs over a railing and down the embankment through the drifts of snow.

Ice on the tunnel gate. Treefrog gets down on his hands and knees, goes headfirst through the gap, and twists his body around, brings his legs through, sits on the metal platform, holding his breath. Always a moment of fear. Maybe somebody waiting for him just inside the gate. A man with only one shoe, missing five dollars. Or a kid waiting to fling a bottle of gasoline with a lit rag in the top. Or a cop with a gun. Everything stands in the purest blackness so that he can hardly even see his palm in front of his face. And then there’s a slow coming together of tunnel and light shafts, and he can see through the shadows. He listens for movement, and the fear sits back down in his belly and rests in his liver.

No one in sight. He sweeps his hair under his hat and reaches for his shopping bag, the bottle clinking against the ravioli cans. He takes off his gloves and places each one between the bottle and the cans to deaden the clinking, so he won’t have to share if anybody hears him.