“Three days ago, a Tibetan woman got on at Lee Yip Street,” Schlumm said.
“Oh, a Tibetan,” I said.
“A Tibetan woman from the Organization,” Schlumm clarified.
“So?” I said.
“She left,” said Schlumm, “a little before we got to Shek Lung Street. She was looking for a certain Puffky as well. The Organization’s put her on your trail. Her task is to extract information from you.”
“What kind,” I asked.
“Something you didn’t want to give, it would seem.”
Sweat began streaming all over my body, springing up in dozens of places at the same time and quickly spreading to all my folds and smooth surfaces, bathing me from head to toe, chilling me. I shivered.
“Information,” I sputtered. “Information about what.”
“About the seven weeks following death,” said Schlumm.
“Oh, there are many more than that,” I said.
“She was just interested in the first seven,” said Schlumm.
“And she’s gone now?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Schlumm. “As soon as. .”
“As soon as what.”
“As soon as you were done with your revelations,” said Schlumm. “You were talking in your sleep, you know.”
“I have no idea what I could have gone on about,” I lied. “The first seven weeks. Why not the last seven, too, while she was at it?”
“She looked happy when she got off at Shek Lung Street,” announced Schlumm.
“What could I possibly have said? You were there. You heard everything, since you were there. So what was I talking about?”
“I don’t know,” said Schlumm. “I was sleeping too. My health’s been on the decline these days, if you must know. I can’t fight against sleep and come out on top anymore, like in the past.”
He looked disappointed, concerned, but I felt like he was mocking me and I got up to fight him, or at least hit him. He knew too much, and it was time to eliminate him. We grabbed hold of each other. Both of us were soaked in sweat and smelled horrible. Our state of extreme exhaustion slowed our movements.
I started trying to bash his face in.
“What did I say during this so-called nap, huh?” I croaked. “Will you tell me, yes or no?”
He swiftly got the upper hand. I had been informed that he knew close combat techniques, kempo and jiu-jitsu moves, but he made do with kneeing me in the chest and then, at a point when I was sure my rib cage had been smashed to bits, tipped me backward and rolled me under the opposite-facing bench, with the same ease as if I had been a bag of bones and sawdust.
We stared each other down for hours, wordlessly, while our adrenaline dissipated. The network of ribs fencing in my lungs had reconstructed, bruises had ceased swelling on what should be called my flesh, for lack of a better term. I was suffering more from fever than the consequences of battle. Sometimes I had difficulty breathing, sometimes I didn’t. The train went by or through temples. The aroma of incense and smoke came in through the air ducts. So as not to founder in morosity by thinking exclusively about my conflicts with the Organization and its henchmen, I tried my hardest to imagine the pious chaos at the altars, and the devout waving fistfuls of thin, incandescent stems, praying to Guan Yin or bowing hangdoggedly before idols, calling out to ancestors, demons. I’ve always felt a keen sympathy toward these rites, even when they look absurd to observe, supposing that I might one day find myself in a situation where I’d be expected to display such demonstrations of piety.
By the end of the afternoon, my bouts of fever were spacing out. Outside, night was falling. We had reached, I think, the eastern end of Wingsing Lane. I still refused to investigate the exterior landscape to learn where we were in the world. Beside the disorder of my damaged and dirty clothes, I could see the ugly angle of my right elbow and, in the distance, a ball of black hair, some hamburger crumbs, a semi-circle traced by a shoe’s sole in an oily stain. I compared all this to what was already in my memory. Dedicating myself to this mental activity made me feel less affected by the shame of defeat and less tormented by the train’s jolts. The compartment indeed swayed relentlessly, which at present was upsetting both me and my stomach. Essential viscera might have also been damaged in the brawl, maybe. I watched Schlumm for a moment. The switched-off blower was no longer mangling his scarves or the top of his robe, which was now hanging in tatters, since I had yanked on it during our altercation. Schlumm didn’t seem to want to fight again, or dress himself in a non-miserable fashion.
Once we were past Wingsing Lane, I put myself back into a sitting position, a meter away from him, my spine pressed against the same bench as his. We stayed like that until morning, in the darkness modestly pinkened by the neighboring car’s nightlight, then dawn came. You could start to make out a new urban scene on the other side of the window. A corrugated metal shutter suddenly appeared, then vanished. It was lowered in front of an indistinct store. I had time to identify the very simple character meaning “ten thousand,” but that got me nowhere.
“Woosung Street,” Schlumm murmured.
Having sufficiently sulked, I decided to act as if nothing hostile had come between us. A hot humidity clung to the space we were cloistered in.
“Maybe we could turn the air conditioning back on,” I suggested.
“I was going to,” said Schlumm.
He stretched his hand out toward the control panel, but the system didn’t start up. He moved the notched button several times, pushing it back and forth on the aluminum rectangle, between an improbable flame symbol and the drawing of an azure snowflake. Useless movements.
“It’s borked,” he summed up.
“I can hit the top of it,” I proposed.
“If you wish,” said Schlumm.
I started to crawl toward the electric panel. When I passed by him, Schlumm grimaced.
“Your robe?” I asked. “Your skin?”
“Say, Puffky, I’m starting to wonder if you didn’t. .” he whined.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.
“Thank goodness,” he said.
I reached the controls and banged on them with what was left of my cartilage, my bones. I was very close to Schlumm. I took multiple precautions so as not to walk on him again. I was in precarious equilibrium. We were suffocating, both of us were dripping with sweat, enshrouded in fetid exhalations, and at the limit of exhaustion, as if an insidious infection had destroyed our invisible internal organs, and prolonged its ravages whenever we moved or spoke. I kept attacking the no-longer-communicative switch all day, along with the system itself, which remained inert. The joints of my fists had split open, a liquid was seeping between my fingers, unusual beads, not really amber colored, but comparable enough to what grasshoppers leak when they’re captured and afraid. I stopped exerting myself, I clung to the window’s ledge, the crossbar, I straight my back until I was nearly vertical. I felt like I was accomplishing heretofore unknown acrobatic feats. Outside, the atmosphere was gray. The glass was covered in a dense mist. With my dirty, wounded hands, I scribbled a few words onto the damp surface.
“What are you writing?” asked Schlumm.
“Schlumm attacked me,” I said.
“What,” said Schlumm. “Why?”
“It’s also in case the Organization sends investigators,” I said.
“So, you should put Schlumm did me in instead,” said Schlumm.
We stayed there contemplating this for some time.
“As long as the murder hasn’t taken place, it’d be better not to write anything at all,” Schlumm finally said. “You never know in advance who’s going to kill you. You can anticipate it, but you can never be one-hundred percent sure.”
“That’s true, there is a margin of error,” I said.
I cast a sidelong glance at Schlumm. Evening was falling, and in the already-triumphant darkness, his features pleased me less and less. It looked to me like the corner of his mouth was wrinkled in a way that could only be explained as malicious irony. This man talked about murder indifferently, he talked about it like only a murderer can. Something bored into my marrow cavities and shot fear into my blood and, five minutes later, I moved away from the window and Schlumm’s withdrawn form, motionless and calm-looking, but now very disturbing as well. He looked like he was asleep. I couldn’t rule out that he might be actually sleeping, or that he was feigning drowsiness, or, and this is the worst hypothesis, that he was doing both at the same time.
I moved while taking a thousand precautions so I wouldn’t get entangled in the trails of fabric extending from Schlumm’s body. I wanted to avoid bothering Schlumm or waking him. I got back to my original place, where I had sat at the start of the journey, then, since the distance between us still looked ridiculous to me, since Schlumm had just to lean over and hold out his arm to grab me and send me back into nothingness, I continued moving toward the car’s entrance, and crossed through it.
I crawled down the corridor. The single nightlight still working was emitting slender rays to guide me. I had decided to go into the neighboring compartment, where just this light was burning, so as to assure myself of more decent survival conditions. It wasn’t a question of escaping the agents the Organization had ordered against me, I didn’t have that hope, but only to gain some time and space. In the unsupple night, its temperature the only warmth, I fixed my eyes on that faded lilac, wilted fuchsia lamp, which had become my pathetic star of continuation. I use continuation here to mean everything that allowed me to avoid immediate aggression, and thus still keep myself, for the moment, away from the terminal void. From time to time, I made myself go completely rigid, so as to hear whether or not the killer was on my heels.
In reality, I didn’t perceive anything truly nerve-racking.
In reality, I didn’t perceive anything truly nerve-racking. The train continued on its route toward the sea, the wheels swallowed the ruptures between the rails without complaint, the shock absorbers grated regularly. The whistlings of air and iron striated the shadows in a clearly not-infrequent way. My body escaped me a little, I felt like it was prowling and crawling around beyond me, already unable to fight against stiffness and fear, but the notion of not having fully perished yet had drilled into and stimulated me. Rather than gruesomely collapsing, I lifted my head. I braced my limbs toward the lamp and continued my progression.
Hours passed. I didn’t stop for one second, even when I felt faint. I had finally reached the haven I had dreamed of, and which had been designed to seat about eight living people. The benches were softly brushed by the nightlight’s rays. Tonight seemed denser here than elsewhere, most likely because my eyesight had diminished. Staying on my guard, I settled in as well as I could, at the base of one of the seats, facing frontward.
I spread pieces of my robe in tentacles around me, so the pain would warn me if someone were creeping up on me in the dark. It’s a technique the Organization teaches to monks in the Action branch. It reassured me to know that no one could covertly slip into my life and remove me from it, however deep the shadows surrounding me. The Action branch’s instructions also specified, for better security, that one had to abstain from making any kind of noise, such as breathing or other things. I kept myself from breathing, concentrating on thinking about the journey rather than oxygen.
The train was no longer moving. In the distance a loudspeaker was making an announcement. I tried to listen. The acoustics outside were bad. I thought I caught, however, that the next stop would be the Haufook Street station. So we were still far from the sea. Doors slammed in another car. Everything around me was now silent. There was no one behind the partition.
An hour flaked away, then the train started up again. The darkness, the soothing movements, the state of profound extenuation I found myself in were all right for me. Though I can’t affirm it with certainty, I think I lost consciousness for a night or two, since, soon after, the compartment was filled with morning’s glow. It sneaked in gently through the droplets covering the opaque window. I attentively examined the surrounding visible world. My memory was scrambled, my mind impotent. I saw things without coming to conclusions about them. For example, there were, beneath the bench facing me, a piece of hardened gum and several hairs, but I couldn’t say if they were familiar to me or not. In the mist, someone had written in a clumsy and soiled hand: Puffky did me in. I remained there, before these humble pieces of information, trying to connect them to build a coherent intellectual edifice, but my thoughts didn’t click. I wasn’t building anything. I had a single constructive obsession, I continuously made sure I was still sitting facing forward.
From the other side of the partition, I thought I heard snoring, then everything that could have had a connection to life or sleep went quiet.
“Are you there Puffky?” I shouted.
There was no response. I waited a moment, then repeated my question.
“Come on, I know you’re there,” I said.
I started tapping on the partition to make contact between us.
“There was a murder,” I said. “Are you alive?” I asked.
I continued knocking on the bench’s supports, on the air conditioner’s grill, with my right fist, my feet.
“Listen, Puffky, don’t stay over there in your corner, I’m not going to hurt you,” I said.
Puffky didn’t respond, and, for several days, while we made our way to the sea, I had no idea if a murder had taken place or not.