Sam Thompson - Communion Town

He hated knowing that his equanimity could be shaken so easily, but how was he supposed to get anything done when he was always watching for the next glimpse of that unnatural figure? It was a frail thing, polite and even gentle in its manners, but insistent. It wanted to finish its story. At first it had only been on the streets, but before long it was following him indoors, into restaurants, into the office and eventually into his apartment. One morning he’d found it standing in the alcove in his hallway, dragging its white-nailed fingers down the wallpaper as if to say, If you did not want my story then you should not have listened. He felt the pressure of its need at all times. It wanted him to finish what he had started in the derelict house, but he was damned if he was going to do that. Something had been stripped away as he had listened to its voice: since that night he understood less about his own life. The tale it had half-told him had pared him to the quick so that if he let it say another word there would be nothing left of him at all. But it was his steadfast companion now, and it wanted acknowledgement.

He eyed the dark of the living room and then, with an effort, returned his attention to me. There was no getting away from it. He could only repeat how that depraved gang had torn from his eyes the blindfold which most of us wear to the end, and had shown him what waited there, beyond our rooms, after all the streets and houses, behind the world, outside the days. He believed he would have sought them out and murdered them one by one in judicious revenge if not for the apathy that had settled in his bones.

* * *

I haven’t seen Stephen since he told me his story. He left without making arrangements to meet again. Before he went, though, he did say one thing. He rose to go and as I prepared to say my goodbyes an afterthought appeared to strike him. He dipped his head from side to side, and gave me just the sort of smile I remembered from the old days. With the air of an indulgent elder brother, he said: Oh, all right, then. Yes. He knew what I was after and he would satisfy my curiosity. If I promised to listen carefully, he would tell me what he knew I wanted to hear. He would pass on the story that he had been told that night.

The corner of his mouth twitched as he waited for my response. I was touched. Both of us knew how much it meant, that offer. He had made it so casually you would have thought it hardly mattered to him at all, but I knew as well as he did that we had never before spoken so sincerely as we had tonight. For the first time in the years we’d known each other, he had confessed a need, offered to tell me a secret. He was finally willing to let me into the heart of the story.

Strip everything away, and that teaser’s smile would be the last piece of Stephen to go. I didn’t grudge him the attempt, but, as I gently turned down his offer, I didn’t feel too sorry for him either. No; as I guided him to the door, closed it behind him and watched from my window until his pale, unsteady figure had disappeared along the street, I preserved my envy and admiration exactly as they had always been. I preferred it like that, and besides, there was nothing else for me to do. How could I know enough to pity him?

A few of us were in the café that night. On this side of town there aren’t many places to go, so when we feel the need of a drink or some quiet company through the hours of darkness, we come here, where Dilks keeps serving till dawn. For as long as the season lasts, everyone knows that once dark has fallen you don’t go out again before morning.

The café must once have been a comfortable retreat. Dilks runs the place by himself, and he’s always there behind the counter, never misses a night. Behind him, the wall is lined with mirrors which must have been intended, once, to multiply gleaming ranks of bottles and scenes of busy communal life. But the glass is dulled over with black rust, and no reflections are visible: just a shadowy depth loitering.

He sells only rough spirit, served in scuffed water tumblers to the three or four of us you can usually find in here. We’re steady customers. We cluster in faint light which does not reach the farthest corners of the room. Orbs of creamy glass dangle on chains from the ceiling, but they’re cracked and cobweb-clogged, and only a few of them work at the best of times. When the electrics fail, we huddle closer still, and drink by the light of the storm lantern that Dilks hangs from a nail above the bar. We’ve got to know each other over time, and now and then we tell cautious stories about whatever it is has us living this way. The night yawns and we grow sluggish while the empty district waits out there with fog rolling down its walls.

I was in with Briggs and Baggott tonight. Dilks had set the electric fire beside our table, and we held our palms out to the glow. He stood watching us from behind his counter but we knew better than to invite him to join us for a drink. If you suggested anything like that, he’d roll his head to one side, abashed on your behalf, then scratch his beard and lumber off to rub at an old stain on the bartop. So we sat and sipped the neat spirit, making it last.

It was getting dark outside when we were roused by the hinge of the street door, and three men walked in. We didn’t know them. They looked with distaste at the wrecked fittings: at the upholstered seats that had rotted long ago in the side booths, the few warped tables and chairs that were left, and the cold inglenook fireplace which waited like a tunnel-mouth at the far end of the room, with its grate full of damp sticks of furniture and the mummified bodies of birds. Then they sat down and called for Dilks to bring them a bottle of whiskey. He was nonplussed for a minute, and I thought the novelty of the situation might have defeated him, but then he did as he was told, labouring his way around the counter with a bottle in one hand and three tumblers in the other. He even poured out a slug of spirit for each of the men.

Soon they were talking loudly among themselves and drinking fast. They seemed some way drunk already, but not in the way that we got drunk, bewildered and tired and sentimental. They drained their glasses and clicked them down on the table. They laughed often and hit each other in the shoulder for punctuation. Their hands and faces were well-kept and their manners of speech were not from around here. The one doing most of the talking couldn’t have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old. He was well-built, long-limbed, and dressed in good-quality gear: stout leather boots, navy jeans and a black reefer jacket. Once he pulled a leather-covered notebook from his bulky canvas satchel and consulted it, as if to remind himself of some point of fact. Brown curls framed his face, which was handsome in a boyish, rather delicate mode.

None of us regulars had much to say for ourselves this evening. We studied the tabletop. The great pale maps of mildew on the wallpaper glowed towards us through the room’s dusk. Rain came on outside, and water began to trickle from several points on the ceiling into the black ditches in the carpet, but Dilks didn’t seem to notice.

When it had been dark out there for an hour or so, the curly-haired young man emptied his glass and pushed his chair back.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, addressing the room in general, ‘I have heard tales.’

Most of the bottle of whiskey was gone, but his speech was crisp.

‘They tell me that in this season, in your city, no one dares go out after dark.’

He tapped his notebook against the edge of the table.