Читать книгу The Paper Man - Gallagher Lawson - Страница 8

1

AT MIDNIGHT THE LAST MOTORBUS PULLED INTO THE STATION. While the driver busied himself in the rearview mirror with an inspection of his teeth, a single passenger boarded. He was a young man wearing a gray suit with a butterscotch tie and felt hat; his jacket sleeves hid his hands that carried a cardboard valise and an accounting ledger. Had the driver paid more attention, he would have noticed something peculiar about the passenger. But it was dark, and the driver, who suffered from unevenly spaced teeth and had just finished a packet of sunflower seeds, was preoccupied with checking his smile. In the mirror’s reflection he only saw the back of the young man, who chose a window seat halfway down the aisle and immediately pulled the curtains shut.

As the bus’s engine roared and they departed along the single-lane highway, the young man’s apprehensions grew. The dry inland wind blew through a cracked window near the front and flung his hat to the floor. He closed his eyes. It should have been a relief to be on his way, but his mouth was parched and the shredded-paper soup he had eaten earlier churned inside him.

The young man, named Michael, had lived his entire life inland, the dry center of a large peninsula. He had never been on the bus and had never passed the mountain range that cut off the inland from the rest of the peninsula. If it had been daytime, he would have watched the change in geography, yet it was crucial he left at night—he needed the darkness to keep himself from standing out.

For two hours, the motorbus continued along the highway. At the next station, two women boarded, reeking of lemons and laurel. They sat behind Michael, and as they settled, their citrus odor made him feel worse. He pressed his jacket sleeve to his painted lips until a wave of nausea passed. The other passengers whispered while the wind whistled through the cracked window. From his valise, he removed a knitted scarf and left his accounting ledger in its place. The scarf he bunched up and tried to use as a cushion, leaning his head against the window. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but he was extremely tired and the rhythm of the road eventually rocked him to sleep.

The bus stopped five times throughout the night, where other passengers boarded. In a half-dream state, Michael observed liquid shadows that quickly spread in empty seats like sprouting fungi. At one stop, the shadow of a man chose the seat next to him, but within a few minutes he was snoring and his shaggy head was propped on Michael’s shoulder. Michael didn’t want to bring any attention to himself, and so he stuffed the knitted scarf between his shoulder and the man’s head and accepted his new role as a pillow.

At dawn, the motorbus stopped at an inspection point sitting at the base of the mountain range. During the night, they had crossed over it, and now they were about to join a highway that cut through a region of rolling hills. From the small impromptu shack that was the inspection point emerged three men wearing uniforms. They had short, thick necks with shaved heads like stumps that they lowered as they boarded the bus. In the dim morning light, their oiled boots gleamed, and with each heavy step they took down the center aisle, the bus tilted to the left and then to the right. Flashlights held aloft, they illuminated the faces of the sleepy passengers, their own shadows sliding across the roof.

“What do they want?” Michael whispered to the stranger beside him. After the night’s sleeping arrangements, it felt odd, almost improper, to finally speak.

“Never been searched like this before,” the man said. He had large hands that gripped the armrests between the seats. “Maybe they’re looking for someone.”

“Who?” Michael asked. He tried to get a better view of what was happening at the front.

The man shrugged. He yawned and clouded their small space with his sour breath. The inspectors continued walking in synchronized steps down the main aisle, to the left and to the right, painting each row of passengers with beams of light. One of the inspectors halted at their row and inhaled deeply. If it had been possible, Michael would have started sweating.

“Open your suitcase,” the man said.

There must be a mistake, Michael wanted to say. But there was no time to explain. The uniformed man had already reached between his legs and plucked his case from under the seat.

The two other inspectors looked on as the first man undid the latches and shuffled through the contents. Michael stood to block the morning sunlight seeping through the curtains. He didn’t need them to notice his unusual appearance. The inspector’s fingers ravished the clothes and papers inside while Michael’s own fingers trembled—he desperately wanted to snatch his belongings and stow them away—but he was the stranger here. He had to comply.

“What’s this?” The uniformed man held up several bloated socks.

This couldn’t be happening. His brothers, Michael realized, had called the checkpoint. Somehow, Michael imagined wildly, they’d already discovered he was gone—somehow, they had awoken early and announced to their father his escape. He opened his mouth to speak, but there was no story, no excuse that would get him out of this.

The uniformed man shook out the contents of one of the socks. Into his palm, strapped by a blue rubber band, plopped a bundle of cash.

“Why hello.” Michael’s neighbor welcomed the money with sour morning breath. He leaned closer to get a better look. Michael pressed his jacket sleeve to his lips again.

This was all the inspectors needed. One of them sniffed the case and then reached in and withdrew Michael’s ledger. He flipped through a few pages before glancing at Michael, who was now bracing himself for the worst. The inspector passed the sketches of a shimmering city skyline and splayed the ledger to pages with crude drawings of his brother choking on a scorpion tail.

Before he could help it, Michael’s hands went into action and snapped the ledger book shut and pressed it tight against his stomach. The inspectors ignored him, but he still tried his best to stop shaking and stand his ground, to make himself an imposing silhouette against the window.

“Any coffee beans in this case?” the inspector asked.

Two stowaway silverfish crept out of his suitcase, dropped to the floor, and scurried away. No one seemed to notice this except for Michael, who accepted his belongings back. The inspectors began sniffing again, deeply inhaling, and continued along the main aisle of the bus.

“Wrong guy,” the neighbor said to Michael. “This time.” He laughed and slapped his legs with his large hands. “Apparently, that chump change of yours wasn’t even worth taking.”

One row back, a woman jumped when the inspectors lunged at her and searched her bags. Michael held the curtain in place to block the light leaking in, but it was pointless. The sun had risen and daylight spilled into the bus. He glanced back. The woman held her face in her hands while the men revealed several pillowcases inside her luggage. They were full of lemons and laurel leaves, all of which were immediately confiscated.

Once the bus departed again, Michael was kept awake by imagining the scene he feared most: the surrounding passengers turn, see him, their eyes widen, unable to stop staring, and they ask—Where did you come from? Why are you alone? How old are you? And then, the key question: What happened to you? The few strangers who had happened to catch a glimpse of Michael at home always believed at first that he was encased in a kind of decorated body cast. More than anything else, it was terrible to watch their expressions change as his father admitted the truth. Michael pressed himself against the curtain until it undulated around his head, allowing him to sink into its fading darkness.

The man next to him, now fully awake, began to ask the basic questions politeness required. Michael mumbled responses, hoping to end the conversation, but soon realized that the man really didn’t want to converse; he wanted to tell a story, and so Michael had to take on another role he was comfortable with but nevertheless somehow resented—the role of listener.

“I’m on my way back from a funeral,” the man said. “My father passed.”

Michael said nothing.

“But that’s not the worst of it. I went all the way south, and when I got to the funeral home, they told me there was a terrible mistake. They sat me down in front of this large wooden desk, with a vase of beautiful flowers and a stack of papers on top. They hemmed and they hawed about telling me. Apparently, they had their paperwork wrong, and so they followed the southern custom to bury him at sea. I had purchased a plot of land in the north, where my mother is buried. They tried to apologize, but sorry isn’t exactly good enough, is it? Not for that kind of thing! So I demanded they bring his body back, and they said that wasn’t possible. Before I knew it, I had that vase filled with flowers in my hands and then it was gone. Smashed it on their floor.”

He turned and said, “When my mother died thirteen years ago, I bought the two gravesites up north. They were supposed to end up together. Now he’s in the sea—fish food, can you believe it? Don’t you think I had a right to smash things up? Tell me, kid, what would you have done in my position?”

“You’re from the north?”

“Originally, but I live in the city now.” The man glared at Michael and leaned in closer. “Come on now, don’t change the subject! What would you have done?”

This was when it became apparent the man only had one eye. How had Michael not noticed this before? Covering the man’s right eye was a white patch that curved like the shell of an egg, held in place by an elastic band disappearing into his shaggy mass of hair. Michael had the advantage of a face that showed little emotion, and hiding in the shadow of the curtain, his surprise was muted. The one-eyed man stared at Michael, his face full of sincere patience, waiting for validation.

“I wouldn’t know what to do,” Michael said. He clenched his feet around his valise.

“I’ll tell you what to do. You destroy everything within your reach.” The man grunted, as if approving his own statement.

Michael imagined those large hands before him—snapping the stems of calla lilies, stomping on the ceramic vase, tearing the pages from the guestbook.

“The final blow,” the man said, smiling, “was tossing some plaque with an engraved prayer through the front window of the funeral parlor. The shattering glass was the most liberating sound I have ever heard.”

While the man spoke, Michael continued fidgeting with the curtain. The bus was filling with light; soon the people would single him out. And yet here was someone who also looked different, who was completely comfortable talking with a stranger. He even seemed to disregard his difference, or possibly even flaunt it, by highlighting it with a bright, white patch. Michael took this as a sign of inspiration.

“I’ll be glad to have that behind me,” the man said. He lived in the city by the sea, which he said was tolerable since it was close enough to his hometown in the northern continent. Perched at the top of the large peninsula they were crossing, the city, though still technically southern, had a lot of northern influence, the man noted. The patched eye faced Michael again. “And where are you from?”

His last word was accompanied by a fleck of spittle that landed on Michael’s face. Michael hastily wiped it off with his coat sleeve. Moisture that sat on his skin for too long, even the smallest of drops, was always a problem.

“I’m from the inland,” Michael said. He cleared his throat. It felt as if he had not spoken in days. “But I’m on my way to the city, too.”

Every time he said the words “the city” it felt like he was uttering a secret password to another world—to a place meant exclusively for him. Over time, the words themselves had taken on a magical significance, and even in this moment, while talking to this stranger, he was swept up in the idea of entry into the city. But the man sat up. He became very stiff, clenching his armrests and puffing his chest.

“The last thing the city needs is more visitors. It’s best you turn around at the next stop.”

Michael was stunned. “That doesn’t seem very fair.”

“Fair? You think that last checkpoint was bad? The north has started doing everything to bring order to the city. Not just anyone can stroll in and pretend he’s always lived there.”

“Since when?”

“You inlanders follow the news? Listen to the radio?” As the man spoke, he tapped out each word on his knee. “The city’s a mess. Full of immigrants, anarchists, and libertines. No real government, everyone doing whatever one wants. They call it autonomy. I call it chaos. It’s about time the northern continent won some representation down here.”

“But isn’t the peninsula autonomous?”

The man shrugged mysteriously, and Michael realized that he hadn’t really paid much attention to the papers. He only glanced at what was happening in the city—art galleries, movie houses, all-night bookshops, concerts.

“Is it dangerous?”

The man laughed. It was so loud people nearby glanced at them. Michael tried to lower his head.

“The city’s anarchists are the problem. Criminals have been in the pockets of the politicians for too long.”

It was Michael’s turn to shrug.

“That’s right,” the man said, grinning. “Just like all the others, ignore all the problems and pretend everything is okay. You got your entry form squared away, right?”

Michael didn’t say anything. The man scoffed.

“Good luck in the city!”

The possibility had never occurred to him that he would not be permitted entry. What would he do then? He couldn’t go back. He had often heard his brothers complaining about the city’s problems and how it prevented them from expanding their coffee business, but he had always reasoned that they were intimidated or scared. Perhaps their truck’s axles could not handle the drive over the mountains? What little he had read in the newspaper never mentioned the situation had turned. The city, as he understood it, was a place where he could finally fit in, and this news prompted him to sit up anxiously, as the curtain in the window shifted and splashed sunlight onto his expressionless face.

The man’s single eye widened. His lip curled as he finally recognized something was different. “Do all inlanders look like you?”

If Michael had real skin, he would have blushed. He would have given away that he didn’t like talking about his appearance or being singled out as representative of inlanders—a term he hated and hoped to leave behind. If he had real skin, he wouldn’t need to say a single word to explain all of this—it would all have been said through his body. But he didn’t.

“I don’t look like them, and they don’t look like me,” Michael said.

The man continued to stare, but a cruel little smile rose on his lips. This confused Michael—after all, the man himself sported an eye patch, so why would he stare as though he didn’t understand? Michael pulled the curtain to hide again in the shade.

“There was an accident,” he finally said. “I didn’t always look this way.”

“So what happened?” The man raised his hand to touch Michael’s face, an echo of the uniformed man reaching toward him. Michael leaned against the wall, realizing how trapped he was in this small space. When the hand, large with filthy fingernails, attempted to reach forward again, Michael panicked and heard himself lash out.

“And your eye? You did all that damage at the funeral office, but what did they do to you?”

The man’s skin rippled with rage, something Michael wished his own could do. Inside was a distant building of some feeling; since his mind was so separated from his body it took time to register what was happening within.

“Or maybe you’re wearing a patch for the fun of it? That’s certainly why I’m this way. Just to be different.” His own voice was trembling. He hated himself when that happened. He identified the feeling inside—he was terrified and completely vulnerable. Overwhelmed, he surrendered his nostrils to the surrounding smells: coffee from his case. Lemon and laurel. Diesel and dirt. Camphor.

“Excuse me!” The woman across from them was now awake, grimacing. A few others in the surrounding rows turned, including the woman who had her lemons taken away. Michael shriveled from all the attention.

The woman, whose blanket smelled of camphor, continued: “Will someone shut this boy up!”

He grabbed his valise and dashed for the back of the bus.

The last row was a single broken chair missing the seat cushion. By propping his case over the armrests, he was able to make his own seat. There he pulled out his ledger and began to draw the face of the one-eyed man. Michael’s hands were clumsy, and most of his drawings, made to calm himself or release any unwanted feelings—a habit that had turned instinctual—would have appeared to most people to be made by a child. He exaggerated whatever he saw. Sketching the man, Michael added—instead of an eye patch—a large egg lodged in the man’s face. This was Michael’s style. Style, he thought, was what made you unique. And to create things, whether on paper or with paint or metal, required style. He drew to develop his style but also to take out his frustrations and anger on his subjects. Acts he could not commit in real life, therefore, were staged and practiced on the page.

He tried to ignore what the man had said. There had to be a way for him to enter the city. Leading up to his departure, he had already begun to imagine himself living there. Perhaps as an artist, perhaps as someone with friends who looked different too. Any situation was better than rotting away inland.

For several hours, he watched the road and changing landscape. The inland was far gone. No inspectors were looking for him. Inside he continued to daydream, while outside the sparse shrubs and hills of sediment began dwindling. Finally, as the sun was setting, the bus descended the highway down the last hill, revealing the first glimpse of the city. Michael’s fear faded, and he tucked his head under the curtain for a better view.

The city rose from the top of the large peninsula, which was shaped like a ragged ellipse, with a bay on the east and the vast ocean to the west. A thin isthmus attached this autonomous southern region to the northern continent, a vast sprawling land filled with a network of cooperatives and city-states. But they were all uniform and had no real presence, Michael had heard, nothing to compare with the dazzling city that overlooked the great eastern bay. Towering buildings with impenetrable glass shimmered with the setting sun, matching the ocean beyond them. What was inside them? The north coast was a sharply rising hill with a cliff that faced the bay, covered by a canopy of trees. In the middle of the trees stood a white lighthouse, overlooking the ships entering and leaving the harbor. Michael took a deep breath, imagining the scent of salt water and secrets buried deep in the ocean. He was no longer an inlander. He would be an urbanite.

Yet as the highway off-ramp curved and his anticipation grew, something appeared in the road ahead: a slumped body with a sickly iridescence.

“Look out!” he shouted. The heads in front of him looked in every direction.

He was thrown forward. The bus skidded and swerved to the right. The wheels moaned louder than any dying animal he had heard inland. They slammed against a cement wall. A moment later something broke, a heavy sound of metal separating from metal, and the bus fell forward. Suitcases pinwheeled down the aisle, and bags from the storage shelves above dropped like falling fruit. Passengers on the left were flung to the right, screaming, salmon-pink mouths gaping.

As Michael plunged through the air toward the front of the bus, along with the suitcases and bags and newspapers from other passengers, he was surprised to find he could see everything very distinctly at once: he saw a stray lemon tumbling down the aisle; he saw a series of hats and scarves climb over seats; he saw, through the windows, the iridescent body in the road that lay motionless, and at the same time he saw the other side of the canal they had fallen into and that the bus was teetering on the cement wall that divided the street from the sewer; and he saw himself, in mid-air, somersaulting, snagging his blazer on one of the armrests, sensing a sharp tear in his body; and then he saw himself falling slowly, past the two stowaway silverfish, and it seemed to him that he could die, if not by smashing into the glass at the front of the bus then at the moment when the bus would finally fall into the canal and be swept away by the waters. At that moment, a sadness, a heavy feeling of regret, sank with him to the ground, as he understood that just when he thought his new life was beginning it was already over.

A blast of humid air entered the bus.

An overzealous young man with a barking voice had opened a side window as an emergency exit and commanded that everyone waste no time and climb out. Michael, though, lay on the ground, watching this exodus, numb, trying to make sense, inhaling the new smell of the open sea that seeped in. Then he detected another scent. Someone, out of fright, must have urinated—soaking into his scalp was a trail of liquid that started several rows back and, because of the angle of the bus, crept into his hair. He quickly dried himself on one of the seat covers. Liquids were constant enemies he had to avoid.

Where was his valise? He raised his hands to explore his head and ensure there were no soft dents caused by the urine but instead he felt something else.

His left arm was missing. It should have registered as a bigger problem that he was missing part of his paper body, but physical pain was something he no longer experienced. His paper skin had always seemed distant, so distant that he never received messages in his mind of any sensations of pain. The only hint was in his vision, when things lost their shape and blended their colors and textures. Land and sky would mix into each other, blurring borders; edges bled into their surroundings, and he would swim in a concave pool of colors until the sensation passed. This usually only lasted a moment. It was how he recognized something was happening to his body.

However, with the commotion and the increasing urgency to escape, it gave him less time to pause. The seats and windows were blurred into one puddle of colors, of lights and darks, and then the moment passed and details returned. Nearby, the remaining passengers scrambled to the emergency exit and out into the salty air. The bus lurched forward again, and those inside cried for help.

With one arm, Michael searched under the seats. He found his valise toward the front. Because he was so light, his own body weight didn’t tip the bus forward as he wandered up and down the aisle. Beneath the old woman’s wool blanket, still smelling of camphor, he located his missing arm. Some stout person must have stepped on his fingers, for they were smashed flat.

He clumsily dragged the arm and case to the emergency exit, only to discover he could not lift himself. He was the last one inside. Through the front glass of the bus, he could see the swift muddy waters in the canal.

A shadow from above fell over his face.

“It’s true, then. Inlanders like to stay on the inside.” There grinned the man with one eye.

Michael humbly smiled back. Why shouldn’t they be friends, after such a horrific accident? The man put out his large hand, the same one that had tried to touch Michael’s face.

“Give me your suitcase first.”

Michael hesitated.

“Give me the suitcase first, and then we’ll pull you out. Hurry.”

Michael raised the valise with his good hand, and the one-eyed man grabbed the handle.

“Thank you,” Michael said. He was learning a valuable lesson now that he was on his own. He told himself not to be quick to judge others and was thankful that the man was forgetting what had happened. “Can you take this as well?” He held up the broken-off limb, embarrassed to look the man in his one eye.

The metal of the bus creaked again as it started to lean further.

“Hello?”

The man was gone.