Pain shoots up my arm. From where? From my fingers. The doors have closed on my hand! Stand clear of the doors! The unclean sound less cocksure now. Yes! The train cannot leave until all the doors are shut.
I don’t care who or what I’m trampling over as I reel myself in. With strength I never knew I possessed I prise open the doors to a fist-wide crack. I hear a grunt of panic. It’s me. I shove my arm through. The rubber seals squeal against my leather jacket. My knee, my thigh, my whole side. The guard glares at me, mouthing, That is forbidden, but the sound is lost. Will he try to shove me back into the zombie wagon? The fear is lost. I’ve fallen forwards and have headbutted the Empire State Building, circled by an albino bat, scattering words and stars though the night. Spend the Night with Bat Segundo on 97.8 FM.
I am on my knees, safe on the platform, looking up, looking down. The lanky foreigner offers me a hand, but I shake my head, and he rejoins the mass of unclean waiting for the next train. Wait for the comet, wait for the White Nights. The train alongside me starts to pull away.
I haul myself to my feet, spent and quivering. What is real and what is not?
Who is blowing on the nape of my neck?
I swing around — nothing but the back of the train, accelerating into the darkness.
Acknowledgments
The two poems in ‘The Holy Mountain’ are by Taneda Santoko, translated by John Stevens in Mountain Tasting (John Weatherhill, Tokyo, 1980). The folk stories in ‘Mongolia’ are based on tales from How Did the Great Bear Originate? edited by Professor Choi Luvsanjav, and translated by Damdinsurengyn Altangerel (State Publishing House, Ulan Bator, 1987). ‘Mongolia’ is also indebted to The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia by Nick Middleton (Phoenix, 1992). Gambling statistics in Part 4 of London are from Easy Money by David Spanier (Oldcastle Books, 1995). A short extract from W.B. Yeats’ ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, published in W.B. Yeats: Selected Poetry (Penguin), is used in ‘London’ and ‘Clear Island’ with A.P. Watt’s permission on behalf of the estate of W.B. Yeats.
Thank you to Michael Shaw, Jonathan Pegg, Tibor Fischer, Neil Taylor, Sarah Ballard, Alexandra Heminsley, Myrna Blumberg, Elizabeth Poynter, David Koerner, Ian Willey and Jan Montefiore.