Kleinzeit told him.
Right, said God. Leave it with me. I’ll get back to you later.
You know where to reach me? said Kleinzeit.
I have your number, said God, and rang off.
Sister would be gone until morning. Kleinzeit looked at the trouser-suit hanging over a chair, picked up the trousers, kissed them, went out.
He went into the Underground, took a train to a bridge, walked across it, saw a little old ferret-faced man playing a mouth organ, gave him 10p. ‘God bless you, guv,’ said the little old man.
Kleinzeit turned around, walked back. The little old man thrust his cap towards him again.
‘I gave,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I’m the same man who just passed you going the other way.’
The little old man shook his head, scowled.
‘All right,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Maybe it never happened.’ He gave him another 10p.
‘God bless you again, guv,’ said the little old man.
Kleinzeit went into the Underground again, rode to the station where he had last seen Redbeard. He walked back and forth through the corridors for a long time without seeing him, looked for new messages on the tiled walls, read ALL THINGS NO GOOD, thought about it, read elsewhere: EUROPE NO GOOD ONLY TOP ¼ OF FINLAND AND TOP HALF SEA COAST NORWAY, thought about it. On a film poster a famous prime minister, shown as a youthful army officer, pistol in hand, glared about him, said in handwriting, I must kill someone, even British workers will do. KILL WOG SHIT, answered the wall. Kleinzeit finally found Redbeard sitting on a bench on the northbound platform with his bedroll and carrier-bags, sat down beside him.
‘What do you think about the top quarter of Finland?’ said Kleinzeit.
Redbeard shook his head. ‘I don’t care about current events, I don’t read the papers or anything.’ He held up a key. ‘They changed the lock.’
‘Who?’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What lock?’
‘STAFF ONLY,’ said Redbeard. ‘I’ve been dossing there all year. Now it’s locked. I can’t open the door.’
Kleinzeit shook his head.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ said Redbeard. ‘As long as I kept doing what the yellow paper wanted I could unlock that door. I had a place to lay my head, make a cup of tea. No more yellow paper, no more door.’
‘Where’d you get the key?’ said Kleinzeit.
‘From the last yellow-paper man.’
‘What do you mean, “the last yellow-paper man”?’
‘Thin bloke, looked as if he might go up in flames at any moment. Don’t know what his name was. Used to go busking with a zither. Yellow paper got to be too much for him, same as it did for me. Don’t know what’s happened to him since.’
‘What was he doing with the yellow paper? What were you doing with it?’
‘Curiosity’ll kill you.’
‘If not that, something else,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What were you doing?’
Redbeard looked cold, shaky, scared, hugged himself. ‘Well, it wants something, doesn’t it. I mean yellow paper isn’t like trees or stones, minding its own business, is it. It’s active, eh? It wants something.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Kleinzeit, feeling cold and shaky, feeling the deep chill and the silence, the cold paws against his feet.
Redbeard looked at him, eyes blue and blank like the eyes of a lost doll’s head rotting on a beach. The rails cried out wincing, stinging, a train roared up, opened its doors, shut its doors, pulled out. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Rubbish. Wasn’t it you that told me it made you write a barrow full of rocks and you got sacked?’
‘All right then, what does it want?’ said Kleinzeit with fear in his bowels. What was there, for heaven’s sake, to be afraid of.
Nothing at all, said a black hairy voice from somewhere. Hoo hoo. The pain opened in Kleinzeit like wondrous carven doors. Lovely, he thought, looked beyond the doors. Nothing.
‘It wants something,’ said Redbeard. ‘You write a word on it, two words, a line, two, three lines. Where are you. The words aren’t …’ He trailed off.
‘Aren’t what?’
‘What’s wanted. Aren’t bloody what’s wanted.’
Like lightning Kleinzeit thought, Maybe not your words. Maybe somebody else’s.
‘What is there to do with paper?’ said Redbeard. ‘Write, draw, wipe your ass, wrap a parcel, tear it up. I tried drawing, that wasn’t it. Right, I said to the paper, I’ll let you find the words, let you get out in the world a bit, see what you come back with. So I started dropping it around. Surprising how few people step on a sheet of paper that’s lying on the ground. Mostly they’ll walk around it, sometimes they’ll pick it up. The paper began to talk to me a little, rubbish as far as I could make out, nasty little short sentences I wrote down. Then it tried to kill me but it was low tide and I bloody wasn’t going to walk half a mile through mud to drown myself.’ He laughed feebly, not much more than a wheeze.
‘Where’d the other yellow-paper man get the key he gave you?’ said Kleinzeit.
‘Don’t know,’ said Redbeard, hugging himself, making himself small. ‘I’m scared.’
‘What of?’
‘Everything.’
‘Come on,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘I’ll buy you coffee and fruity buns.’
Redbeard followed him up to the street still looking small. ‘No fruity buns, thanks,’ he said at the coffee shop. ‘No appetite.’ He looked nervously about while he drank his coffee. ‘The lights in here don’t seem bright enough,’ he said. ‘And the street’s so dark. Nights usually look brighter than this with the street lights on and all.’
‘Some nights are darker than others,’ said Kleinzeit.
Redbeard nodded, hunched his shoulders, huddling away from the night outside the window.
‘You live on straight busking?’ said Kleinzeit.
Redbeard nodded. ‘Mostly,’ he said. ‘Plus I nick a few groceries and the odd thing here and there. Keep going, you know.’ He nodded several times more, shook his head, shrugged.
‘The yellow paper,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘is it a special kind? Where do you get it?’
‘Ryman. 64 mill hard-sized thick din A4. Duplicator paper, it says on the wrapper. Best leave it alone, you know. It’s nothing to muck about with.’
‘Lots of people must do, though,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘People in offices. If it’s duplicator paper it’s being used all the time to duplicate things, I should think.’
‘Duplicating!’ said Redbeard. ‘No danger in that. Listen, I want to tell you about it …’
‘No,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘you mustn’t.’ He hadn’t expected to say that. For a moment the lights didn’t seem bright enough to him either. ‘I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter, doesn’t make any difference.’
‘Please yourself,’ said Redbeard. He turned to look out of the window again. ‘Where am I going to sleep tonight?’ he said. ‘I’m not used to sleeping rough any more.’
Kleinzeit almost broke down and cried, he was suddenly so full of pity for Redbeard. He could see that he was afraid even to go out into the street, let alone sleep out of doors. ‘My place,’ he heard himself say. Strange that he hadn’t thought of it lately, hadn’t gone there in his excursions from the hospital. His flat. Clothes on hangers, things in drawers. Shoe polish, soap, towels. Silent radio. Things growing quietly bearded in the fridge and no one to open the door and make the light go on. Good job there were no fish in the aquarium, only a china mermaid. He heard the click of a key on the table top, saw his hand putting the key there, heard himself tell the address. ‘Drop the key through the letter box when you go,’ he said. ‘I’ve a spare one in my pocket.’
‘Thank you,’ said Redbeard.