Helping (Dying) Strangers

Andrew watched the sun gild the swart, twitching man, and then watched him in the shade as it enlivened the woman on the table along. The man was drinking tepid water. ‘Cup of hot water. Please. Please,’ he said, holding out five pounds to the café’s lone waitress while the crown of his bald head pointed at the window opposite. He rejected his change with an aggressive shake, then left the hot water to cool for ten minutes before he drank it in sporadic sucks, as his left hand, his dominant one, trembled subtly rattine over a small black notebook. The man snapped it shut whenever he stopped jotting, then pocketed an old silver pen with a surreptitious twitch into his ersatz tweed blazer.

Andrew believed he had followed him from Russell Square for no other reason than money. Andrew had none. He had lost all his money pretending to be rich when he bordered poor, now he had crossed that border and felt the new territory’s lack — when you have none of it, that’s when you feel it, Andrew thought. Then:

To impress that crowd of rich… the last vestige of your loan to fit in? All my reserves for half a bottle!

A question rolled around his mind, applying weight over its different faculties. Andrew, the philosophy student, engaged with it philosophically. At first. Realising with uncomfortable clarity just how honest a person he truly was. The question — would I rob? — he validated with fantasies of the man as a Chicagoan criminal with wedges of green lucre — ‘an honourable theft.’

He was not set on any course. ‘I only followed him on whim. I can’t go back to the flat anyway — too cold.’ The death throes of winter really scratch out in February, in London — and when you’re poor in cities, winds feel like they whisper about your cold tender ears to embarrassedly usher you away from society, into subways, basements — fridges & freezers.

Andrew sat nursing a tap-water in a corner behind a colony of slurping faces. Right behind his quarry, who soon turned his dark, glabrous dome — stained at the peak with glum scars — to look around. His eyes had been open for a while, sleep rarely visited them: the iris was black, held in cerise whites tinged with yellow. His face held what Andrew decided was ‘pathetic resolve.’ It was an intelligent, fatalistic face, childish, innocent, scornful. His lower lip jutted out at Andrew babyishly as they looked one another over, then his exhausted orbs underwent a sudden widening, unwilled — an extenuated tear struggled through to shyly introduce itself — before he marched out, knocking his chair over with a veering hip.

Customers flinched from his shadow, held their breath, and the woman on the table over accounted with paranoia for something he left behind. That little black notebook. Abandoned. Andrew strode over and pinched it on the pretext — looking fey, longhaired, scholarly — that he was going to return it. But after a desultory search round one corner he just nestled it into his coat and made his way to a friend’s house. To drink — to borrow money.

The bus hissed to a standstill. He slid on through the back door and swarmed to the top deck where he sat next to a suited, catatonic boy. Andrew pulled out the notebook and paused with his gritty fingers pressed on its leather front. ‘That would just be stupid,’ he thought, ‘and scummy’ —

then he opened it:

I’m unwell god. damit. That’s what I’ll say I’ll say I’m damn low, unwell, and black and blue, and yellow and green, green-eyed and green-souled, red-eyed, sore-fingered, sore-eye-lidded, and my palms are oily and salamanders. Arhrhrh [ineligible scrawl tapered off with a black circle]. And I can run up walls when I feel like it — that’s what I’ll say. I’ll say: none of this is real. 

Ah I don’t know 

I’ll

Hope to and fro

I’ll I’ll

Know and know — all this knowing is as stupefying as

a dead dog’s tail wagging when no one is watching.

What do you know of it?

What I tell you, that’s what, so listen, boy, and listen with a sorrowful face withering open space. Let my voice invade your head. Sounds? Yes, sounds. I’ll tell you how it sounds:

This here — my voice — sounds  Londonborn and not quite poor. Barely rich until recently, recently really rich until now, now richer for the sake of it, like everything else. It sounds like a bird flapping by the mouth of a tunnel and people walking into a baleful. A baleful. Bale — full — cold — room. It sounds like rain building down a window when you’re in the car, your seat is warm, and something rumbles. but it doesn't. That’s what I’m here to tell you

and it’s this

nothing 

is r

e

a

l

So

There. Punctuation. Punk-

chew-

ayshen can exist here as long as my voice is

As long as it’s heard to its full purpose. meaning. It’s full truth. So I’m unwell, yes. No, I’m, not, actually. I am not actually. really. I’m not.

Am I crazy I wish I was crazy maybe I hopefully am

Aw man can you help me? Probably no. No one can help anyone. Can anyone help no one. Anyone can help one, no? Youtube. These phones, they can everyone talking talking talking. There’s loads on there Man, I’ll tell you — I’m real untidy man.

Listen! I’m Londonborn but I’m NewYorkraised. Understood?

Andrew lifted his poised eyes. He had missed his stop but stayed on and stalked to a free double seat at the back. He returned, to the question:

Do you understand what that means? Do you have any idea how I made my substantial summy-sum-sums. Would you care to venture a guess? You might as well —

MR hungry —

Andrew scanned the bus and surveyed the passing streets. ‘Excuse me.’ An old woman insisted he move up. He did.

Before we roll over your short reality let’s blast out some guesses — until - the —— air — is filled —— by whiffs of cordite. How about it? Close this notebook. I’m not kidding, idiot, close it and take ten minutes of analysis.

Andrew followed the orders. Sweat invaded from the cover of his hairline. There was no way the man actually knew who Andrew was. Still, he felt inclined to take the ten minutes. This inanimate little moleskin had a certain power over him. He imagined that leathery scarred head floating by the window and turned to check it was —

‘Calm down, you idiot,’ the old lady looked at Andrew. He said it out loud, resonantly — the passengers in front turned to eyeball him as well. More than anything he felt sympathy… “Aw man can you help me…”

Andrew felt almost certain he could not. So how did he make his summy-sum-sums then? Murder? Drugs? What sends someone that mad? Being hounded constantly and always… nothing is real? — for this lunatic, Andrew thought, nothing is…

You did not take your ten minutes but that’s ok. I expect as much from you but that isn’t your fault. Nothing is your fault or anyone’s — hate to say it, but nothing is your credit either. Or. Anyones. You did not take ten, and the six you took — were fruitless. Idiot boy. But that isn’t your doing. I am no murderer, I’ve never taken a drug in my life. Now they try and stuff them down me, these holograms… never mind them, dear boy…

I made my summy-sum-sums by being bribed. A long time ago, when my poor mama was facing the — the what? The End…

The End! You wouldn’t know about that because you’re young taut rosey. But Andrew let me tell you Andrew people start ending and it’s really tough —

The blood in Andrew’s face dropped away, out of his body, he grew light, frail, the elbow of the woman sitting next to him testified to the bar of a cage…

Andrew I know youre scared that I know who you are Andrew but you musnt be. This is a very lucky day for you Andrew. Your hard up with the money. Now pull yourself — ahh — no no do not cry Andrew! Pull yourself together, and get off the bus at the next stop Andrew, or the consequences will be really

get off the bus Andrew… get off

Now! Now! Get off

Here!

Here!

Andrew clapped the book shut and obeyed. Under the burring light of the bus stop, the wind hissing on him, he turned the page and read:

It’s good you did that Andrew. Soon your troubles will be over. Your current troubles. But the new trouble, Andrew, it’s a serious trouble — but I’ll offer it… You may deal with it better than me, Andrew. better than the others. You’ll find out when you get there Andrew. There’s a highrise behind you, it is rough Andrew, scary, infamous, but go in it. Flat 33 third floor I’ll be here. Come in please come in, Andrew.

Fear, a harsh acquaintance, stretched out in Andrew more acutely than any emotion he had ever felt. The world was melting away, flooded over by waves of uncertainty, of artifice, the oppression of surveillance.

He walked up the stairs stiff as a marionette, passing floored addicts, psychological unfortunates, the cast down, rough kids, all silent — all watching.

He slinked onto the third floor from the stairwell, an attractive couple smoked by some flowers dying on the terrace. They lived in number 30. He got to 33.

And knocked with two nervous raps —

Now he was crying. The tears scorched his poor, mad cheeks — he was a baby again — ‘this must be resolved, this man must resolve this,’ he murmured. ‘Or I’ll die. I’ll jump off this terrace or something’ —

‘Pull yourself together, Andrew, for my sake,’

The man opened the door with a forced laugh and walked back into his flat. Andrew moved inside with a shuffle of unnatural steps. ‘Who are you?’ his voice trembled weakly.

‘Gene. I was Gene, that’s who I was.’ His voice travelled echoically down the corridor. Andrew left the door open.

‘How did you know who I…?’

‘I invented you, Andrew.’

‘Shut up.’

‘You and everyone in that cafe. And indeed everyone you’ve ever met or known. Not invented, more fair I replicated…’ His eyes were insane and focussed.

‘Be serious you sick. — Be serious!’

‘I don’t think I’ve been any other way since I’ve known —’

‘Known what?’

‘That we aren’t real. And I found out Andrew. Some others made me very rich to keep it quiet, Andrew. If everyone knew, Andrew, it would be bad. Death, Andrew. I knew, from when I was… And I made my own one to live in, where I could — I became very rich Andrew… Mama became pain free.’

‘This is insane. You are insane,’ said Andrew, in a weak laugh.

‘Ok Andrew — here I want you to have this, Andrew,’ he held a black duffel back to the penurious student. ‘Take this one, Andrew. I don’t want it, I’m leaving here, there are twenty thousand American dollars in there, Andrew, like you wanted to have, remember.’ He took the bag and looked inside it. ‘I had to tell someone, Andrew. Just someone. Are you happy you know?’

Andrew walked out with the bag, back into his life, and left the madman to himself. Andrew did deal with the trouble better than Gene. He approached the question philosophically, repeating on the bus: ‘What I touch, what resists me — that is what I understand.’ The money resisted him. He tried to visit Gene again but was relieved to find that there was no floor three. But there were: floored addicts, psychological unfortunates, the cast down, rough kids, all silent — all watching. Then he realised, jubilantly, that it was the wrong building.