“Your name wouldn’t happen to be Puffky, would it?” Schlumm suddenly said, from down low, from his mouth exhaling words at the height of my left knee.
“No,” I said. “Puffky is dead. He was found on a mezzanine. With his blood, he had had time to write: Schlumm did me in.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Schlumm. “Everyone does that now. It’s in style.”
“I’ve seen the photos,” I said. “It was a bad death.”
“Bunkum,” Schlumm protested. “There aren’t any illustrations like that in the Organization’s journals.”
“An independent journal,” I explained.
“Oh,” said Schlumm.
The evening thickened, then Schlumm asked me if I knew who he was.
“No,” I said, “who are you?”
“Schlumm,” he said. “Ingo Schlumm. You might’ve already come across that name in the Organization. I have namesakes. Some Schlumms are dedicated to theoretical research, others are attached to the Action branch. Others still are just schmucks. But let’s cut to the chase. The Organization warned me that I was going to meet a certain Puffky.”
“Puffky?” I repeated thoughtfully. “No clue.”
“Yes,” said Schlumm. “Someone like me, not yet dead, but indisputably cracked. I say cracked so as not to dramatize the diagnosis. A guy who’s not yet dead, with identity problems. That could be you, right?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. My name is of no importance.”
“Fine,” said Schlumm. “All in all, if any name works, nothing’s stopping me from calling you Puffky.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” I said, then I frowned.
Switching off the air conditioning had caused a rise in temperature. With the exception of a pinkish, dying nightlight at the neighboring compartment’s entrance, there was no functioning lamp in the train car. We were surrounded by the smells of siesta and mold. Inhabitable space, by which I mean the space we were inhabiting, was filled with mist, with damp condensation, with miasmas. My brownish rags, my indigo scarves, and my feet began exhaling pungent locker-room smells. My clothes needed wringing out. I remained stoically inert for an hour, then I started thinking that an action on my part would be justifiable and even desirable. Taking advantage of a moment of inattention on Schlumm’s part, I hit, using one of my good toes, the air conditioning switch. The vent went off, the scarves began undulating and flapping around me and around Schlumm’s head, as they had done at the start of the journey.
Outside, night prevailed, but, as we were passing through a new commercial zone, the darkness was pinpricked with garlands of white bulbs. There were numerous vendors sitting behind their merchandise, heads bent over bowls of instant soup. If it weren’t raining so heavily, we would’ve been able to make out what the noodles were flavored with, fish or crab or spicy cuttlefish or sesame shrimp. A short while ago the rain had increased. It was crashing down in vertical sheets. There were hardly any drops on the window.
“Tungchoi,” said Schlumm.
Strips of grimy cotton were fluttering in front of his lips, so his diction wasn’t very good.
“Pardon?” I said.
“We must be on Tungchoi Street,” said Schlumm. “We’ve been zigzagging instead of heading straight toward the sea.”
“Possibly,” I said.
“You know the Tungchoi Market?” Schlumm asked.
“Tungchoi Market?” I said.
“Yes. That’s what it’s called. Have you ever gone?”
“No,” I said.
A minute passed, cadenced by the skin or fabric flapping around Schlumm’s face.
“So this Puffky,” I inquired, “did you have any accounts to settle with him?”
Schlumm didn’t respond. I turned toward him, though until that point I had kept looking out the window. I lowered my head in his direction. Lifted by the ventilator, the pieces of tissue fluttered in front of his nose and occasionally slapped one of his eyelids, his forehead, his mouth. I know that some claim we look very similar, almost identical, but, in the shadow of the compartment, I felt no sympathy with Schlumm’s mask, a scrawny boxer’s, unkind and psychologically unstable.
“I’m telling you, I’m not Puffky,” I said. “Let’s stop joking around about this. My name’s Schlumm too. Djonny Schlumm.”
Schlumm didn’t react, so I turned toward the outside world once more. The train had slowed down, its movements softened, then stopped, like we were at a red light. The silence had grown considerably. Schlumm and I were unmoving, nearly petrified in the darkness, existing only through words and shopkeepers’ lights, through exterior wet flashes. The pinkish nightlight was far away from us, in another universe, inaccessible.
“A namesake even,” I continued. “In the schmuck category, I suppose, in your classification.”
Schlumm coughed. Who knows if he had fallen ill, traveling like this, in the opposite direction and next to the window. I’d heard talk about him, read reports on him, on his allergies and neuroses. I also knew he was doing research into the loss of individuality during the forty-nine days of death, the feeling of splitting in two that contaminates one’s journey through the first few hells. The Organization had tolerated these blasphemous studies until a recent date, as long as he reported his results, but it no longer tolerated them now because he no longer shared his notebooks with anyone. Hence my job, my mission. His emaciated and brutal face was awash with rents. Schlumm’s cheeks and even his skull, whenever smacked by the blackish tatters, did not make happy flesh sounds, but were instead reminiscent of an organism kept alive despite its profound desire for extinction, despite its violent attraction to a definitive and irreversible peace.
“I don’t believe you, Puffky,” Schlumm suddenly tensed, moving away from my right leg. “You’ve come here to eliminate me, the Organization ordered you to extract the results of my research from me and eliminate me.”
“You’re the one who crept in here, Schlumm,” I retorted. “Don’t go making wild accusations about me now. Don’t try to reverse our roles. You’re the one who just suddenly appeared in a car I’d been traveling in for hours already, since Mongkok.”
“Oh, you got on at Mongkok?” Schlumm asked.
“Yes.”
“Me too,” said Schlumm. “There was a woman. My presence bothered her. She changed compartments.”
“A Chinese woman?” I asked interestedly.
Schlumm shrugged his bony and solid shoulders, agreed with a weak breath, and added nothing else.
The train set off again, the light must have turned green. I went back to squatting forward. Getting agitated hadn’t done me any good, talking with Schlumm had rattled me all over. This was causing me physical problems. I now had spurts of fever accompanied by shivers and cold sweats. My neck was sore. In my head I started going through atypical illnesses I might have been exposed to unknowingly. It’s not unusual to find infected gobs of spit in public transportation. I had avoided them until now, but I couldn’t be totally sure.
“Has anyone spit on you?” I asked.
“No,” Schlumm said. “Not that I know of.”
We went without making any significant sounds for several hours. We were right next to each other, sitting in our own way, at the foot of the bench, in the thick shadows, and, every now and then, I felt the ventilator’s wind hit me, soon followed by noisy rumpled fabrics, and, on my neck, on my forehead, the rips in our two robes became entangled, twisted together, folded back, snaked and flapped around. The train’s route zigzagged for a while between Pakpo Street and Hakpo Street, then made a beeline toward Yaumatei.
I was seized by a terrible feeling of weakness. I nodded off several times. In all likelihood, entire days and nights went by during my unconscious periods. People probably got on the train and then got off again, coming into the compartment and then leaving, all without my knowing. During one of these indistinct mornings, or at the start of one afternoon, Schlumm once again turned the air conditioning to zero, and the swishing fabrics around us died down.