Echoes Read online

  A man with a canvas rucksack and his phone in his hand sits down across from you. He’s wearing a woollen jumper but with shorts despite the cold, has tanned legs and light hair. He is blithe and self-assured against the fringes of the storm that bluster outside. He greets you and your sullen companion in English. You lose count, nod back, rub the click wheel of your iPod as if you are scrolling through songs. You check the time. Start counting again.

  The last to arrive is the woman with dreadlocks who had been up at the end of the platform with you. She shakes a printout of her reservation at Shorts, speaks with some kind of European accent. She tells him he’s sitting in her seat. Shorts puts his hands up, no problem, and switches to the window seat beside you.

  You shut your eyes as the train shudders into motion. You try to tell yourself that it’s over, that you can relax now and enjoy the ride. Nothing happened, just as you really knew it would not. But you are wound tight, about the train and the talk. You are terrible speaking in public. Still, you had skimmed through the program when it was released online and marvelled at your name, a junior academic’s, listed beside speakers you had read for your degree. The others in your department had swapped looks with raised eyebrows: three days to see an old friend in Paris, a short flight to Venice, the conference, your talk, and then five days free, watching the crowds over coffee and walking the cobbles and canals. So what will it be there, spring? End of winter? Their smiles were smiles of both relief and desperation. They all knew that if this managed to pull you together, they might be free of worrying whether you’ll show up to work or be late to your lectures because you had to walk back across campus to check again if you had locked the door to your office.

  It is this that has you sitting in the carriage of a train for the first time in eight months, breathing rancid cigarette smoke, now that storms have grounded your flight. Now, unless you take the overnight train, you won’t make your time slot, won’t give the talk you spent months preparing, and won’t even earn the thing that made you spend the money and time to get to this side of the world in the first place: prestige. The train car sways, jolting you against the wall. You keep your eyes closed and try to focus on the count.

  You are down to one-five-two when the door opens and an attendant steps in for your tickets. Dreads hands her the crumpled printout. Shorts digs in his rucksack, his knees apart. You take out your earphones and feel in your pockets.

  When you look up at the attendant, you look into a pair of hard eyes, bright with green eye shadow. In one sickening rush you are back on the platform, eight months ago: the tug on your hand is just her, now, taking your ticket, but you jerk back your arm. You’ve lost count. Her eyes. The tug on your hand. In your head you hear—you remember—a stage whisper: Let’s go, Alice. A woman’s name? Why did she call you that? Let’s go? Then there is you back then, pulled to your feet before you even felt it happen. No one around you moved; some looked on, idle, at this minor commotion while the rest gazed, mindless, along the tracks as the express train approached. The woman who gripped your hand had blonde hair with a taint of red like a faded bloodstain, and her eyes as she looked, urgent, over her shoulder were lined in moss-green makeup. Her face is locked in your memory. She was dragging you forward, and a shock shuddered through you as the train blared its horn over the level crossing. There were three steps left. You pulled back hard. Her fingers were locked between yours. She jerked you forward another two, then she jumped.

  You were pulled to your knees, still gripping her hand. The train hit with another blast of the horn. The slam flung your arm across. Your eyes were shut and you felt the rush of air buffet your face and a thick spatter of warm rain over your skin. She was gone and in your head was nothing but her eyes with their brilliant green haloes. You were sprawled on the platform and, around you, you heard screaming as people realised that your fingers were still laced into hers. You were holding something like a sheathed umbrella, pale and capped in red, and the rain on your face tasted like copper.

  Afterward, the police questioned you for more than an hour. Everyone at the train station had assumed that you knew her. You were terrified that they might think that you pushed her. You sat in a windowless room at the police station going over the details again and again. You thought of your own face in the rearview mirror of the police car, eyes wide and skin spattered with red rain. The officer who interviewed you was so calm you were furious, slammed your fist on the table, saying you’d been going to work, to the university, that that woman had nothing to do with you. They’re waiting for you, you shouted. You’re supposed to be interviewing for a research assistant and now you’ve missed the first candidate. This woman called you Alice, for fuck’s sake. She had no idea what she was talking about. Eventually the cop asked you to wait and she left you, leaving the door ajar. You heard her describing you to someone else: “He’s worked up, but he’s fine; the blonde grabbed him and jumped, she ended up between the train and the platform. He was left holding part of her arm. Looks like some random nut-case suicide.” Then a man opened the door of the interview room. He introduced himself as a counsellor and when you left you had his card in your wallet.

  The train attendant smiles behind those awful green-brightened eyes. She hands back your reservation and thanks you in French. Her pale hair is tucked under an indigo cap and she wears a dark buttoned waistcoat. She has a shirt with sleeves that reach to the elbow and as she stretches forward to take papers from the woman by the window you imagine you see a trail of blood seeping from under one white cuff and running down the back of her forearm. You look away, run your hands through your hair. Stop thinking about it, you tell yourself. What’s the time? But you look back regardless. The ruby streak is still there, really there, and the cuff of her shirt blooms with red.

  You forget every word of the neat French politenesses you’ve been offering in shops and cafés on your trip. You call out, in English—“Watch out!”—and your voice is much louder and more urgent than you expect. Everyone looks at you. Madame, by the window, scowls in annoyance, says something in curt French that you don’t understand. The attendant looks askance.

  “Is there something the matter?” Her accent is thick.

  You say: “Your arm, are you okay?”

  She looks down, tilts her arm out with a frown. A drop of blood falls from the point of her elbow and lands in a black spot on the carpet. With her other hand, she wipes along her forearm, as if she thought she had brushed against something. Her fingers smear the blood along her skin in rich swathes.

  She takes the ticket from Shorts. “Oh, man,” he says. “Lady.”

  The attendant tugs her sleeve, turns her elbow out further. When she lets go she leaves livid red bands on the fabric. “What is the matter?”

  You reach forward. “You’re bleeding.” You can hear your voice rising.

  “I do not think so, monsieur.”

  You start to argue back. Dreads ducks her head, trying to see from the other side. Shorts takes back his ticket by one corner, inspects the paper with a grimace before stuffing it back in his rucksack. The attendant’s cuff is now saturated with blood but she keeps shaking her head.

  “Forget it,” you say. Your head is tight. You are standing and edging around the attendant with your hands up away from her arm.

  “There is no problem, monsieur,” she smiles. She stretches out a bloody hand.

  “Don’t touch me!” You reach the door and stumble down the corridor, unsteady with the rocking of the train. Through the windows, flat fields flow past. The trees are low rounds flashing by in the late evening gloom. Some of the couchette doors are open to the corridor. Inside, people lounge, reading or listening to music. You pass low conversations as you stagger to the end of the car. Fluorescent lights flicker in the ceiling. You fold open the door to the toilet, push it closed behind, and fumble with the flimsy lock.

  Leaning against the veneer, you feel the vibration of the train through your back. The space is so narrow t
hat the walls press in. The air is dense with the smell of stale urine. Nausea seizes your gut and you crouch, sliding your back down the door. You flip up the lid of the toilet. The bowl has a hatch at its base that is open onto the tracks. In the twilight you can just make out the grey of the ballast streaming under you like foam on the crests of waves. Bile rises in your throat. You slam down the lid and grip the edge of the sink.

  The mirror is a dull steel, the silvering flaking. Your face hovers behind the weathered surface, shifting with the sway of the train. The flecks on the mirror look like spattered blood on your face, and you put your hand to your mouth and nose, wipe your fingers down your chin to show yourself that your skin is clear. You splash water on your face, pumping the soap dispenser, and rubbing the slime onto your skin, just in case there really is something there to wash.

  What did she want with you? Why did she jump? The questions are normal, you tell yourself, repeating the words of the doctor recommended by the counsellor on the business card, who you called when, three weeks after it happened, you still had not gone back to work. The questions are normal but they don’t normally have answers. Let’s go, you hear again in your head. You glance at your watch. Seven-five-three. Seven-four-two. You force yourself to stare at the mirror, turn your head back and forth and watch the marks on the glass float separate to your face. Seven-three-one. You lift your chin. Seven-two-oh. Seven-oh-nine. You bring your face closer to the mirror, flatten your palms against the glass. You are speaking out loud, urging yourself to hear the numbers: “Six-nine-eight, six-eight-seven, six-seven-six, six-six-five. Fuck.” You wash your face again, rubbing the soap into a thick lather that smells like air freshener.

  You dry your face on the sleeve of your jacket, walk back down the corridor. The flicker of the fluorescents casts the reflection of the couchette doors onto the windows. When you reach your couchette, Shorts has stepped out. You pull your suitcase down from the rack and take your tablet from the front pocket. Maybe reading will help.

  You feel the others watching. Turning, you offer an appeasing smile. Dreads is twisting her thick, black hair into a knot, tying it back with a scarf. Someone has drawn a set of heavy beige curtains across the window. She asks, “Are you okay?” You wave a hand. Yes, you’re fine. You shrug.

  “That was ugly. Her arm,” she says with disgust. “Are you afraid of blood?”

  You shake your head, embarrassed. “Sorry. She just . . . reminded me of someone.”

  “That’s okay.” She smiles quizzically. “Are you sure you are okay?” You try to place her accent. Eastern European, you guess. You’ve never been very good at picking those out. You nod.

  Madame has a French magazine open on her lap. The text is a scatter of cedillas and trémas. She is looking you over. You notice for the first time a bruise along one of her cheekbones. The hard line of her lipstick feels like a sneer. You look back at Dreads and tell her you might go down to find food. She smiles again and says sure. She never eats train food.

  You take your tablet and cross through two other cars. Each is the same rumbling, swaying stretch of garish light. The solid grey of the couchette doors on one side, on the other a reflection over the inky black of what is now night through the windows. As you walk you feel the cold coming off the glass. An attendant in waistcoat and bow tie nears in the other direction, an older man with thinning hair. He narrows his eyes as you sidle past and, once you’ve crossed, you glance over your shoulder and see him standing in the doorway of a couchette, looking back along the corridor. You walk faster, tug open the dividing doors into the next car.

  Shorts is standing in the foyer of the dining car, talking on his phone. As you near, you make eye contact. You nod in acknowledgement but he keeps on talking, staring straight through you.

  The wait staff in the dining room wear black shirts and trousers. Three of them are milling between the tables, clearing crockery or delivering plates. You take the nearest empty table and put down your tablet. The woman who brings your menu is the attendant from your couchette, changed into black, her eyes rimmed in the same green makeup. You avoid making eye contact and, as you look over the menu, you hear your bunkmate talking behind.

  “I’m at work; you can’t just call me like this,” says Shorts to his phone. “No. We’ve moved in together and you’re in my place, so you do things my way— What? You’re still at home? When is your interview? So? Get the train in—No, don’t ‘Alex’ me. Just listen. It doesn’t matter to me if you just sit around doing nothing. It’s up to me to earn our money. But I thought you wanted to do this research thing. You should work at something for yourself. It’s good for you.”

  You finger the edge of the menu. Alex? What if that’s what she said? Not Alice, but Alex. Maybe she knew someone called Alex. You want to call your doctor. You have her number, for emergencies; before you left for this trip you talked thoroughly through how you would deal with your travel. You won’t need to use the trains, you told her. Now you’re just glad that you can’t see the world rushing past through the black in the dining car windows.

  The two of you had decided you would start slowly. Go to the station, watch the platform from across the road. Leave when you wanted, before any trains came through. Graded self-exposure, she called it. In her clinic you had tried to prepare for the process, closing your eyes and imagining walking, looking along the platform and down to the tracks. She would ask you to rate your anxiety. One, very little. Five, just coping. Eight, nine, ten. That’s enough. Stop. Walk away from the platform. You would open your eyes and look at your doctor, who sat across from you, hands folded around her pen. Eleven, you always wanted to say. Eleven.

  You pull your phone from your pocket and turn on the screen. No reception. Although what does it matter; it’s just after four in the morning back home. You shouldn’t call now. You had a flashback, that’s all. The worst is over. In fact, you did well. This does not fit the definition of an emergency.

  The server returns for your order. You manage to look at her as you speak. She does have the same makeup, the same copper blonde hair, but she is not the same woman. She’s younger, has a dimple under one eyebrow from an old piercing. She walks back through the car. About half of the tables are full. Mostly older couples. You hear Italian, German. On the other side of the aisle, near the end of the car where a grimy bain-marie case stands empty, a middle-aged woman slaps her hand on the table and tells her little girl to sit still, for God’s sake. The child is twisting around in her chair, holding a blue lollipop in one hand.

  In the foyer, Shorts is still holding his phone to his ear. “I don’t have time to deal with your dramas. You’ll have to work this out on your own,” he says. He hangs up and heads away down the corridor, elbowing his way past Madame, who walks into the dining room with her French magazine under her arm. She passes you and sits a few seats back.

  You switch on your tablet and open a folder of journal articles that you had saved with the intention of skimming them again one last time before your talk. You are slated at the end of the morning session. With a start you realise that this is only a few hours away. Tomorrow. You flick to your presentation, open the file and begin to click through the slides. But you struggle to bring your well-rehearsed patter to mind. You mouth your opening words, and then lose the next line, distracted by the conversations around you. Concentration is still a problem for you.

  Witness survivor. That’s what they call you. Someone who has witnessed a violence. You went through all the typical experiences expected of the label they gave you. The anger. The compulsions. The checking behaviour. The desperate longing for answers. All you ever found out about the blonde woman at the station was that she had been a part-time student with another faculty at your university. Her name had been on the long list for the assistant interviews, although her minimal resume did not make the final cut. She was survived by a nameless sister and mother. Survived. As if somehow her existence had been a violence in itself. No Facebook, no Twitter, n
o more answers to your questions.

  Your dinner is a grey steak cooling under a congealed sauce. You check the time on your tablet, then your watch. Check it again on your phone. You have a message, although the bars are still showing no reception. It’s a voicemail alert. You call the service, wondering if you might get lucky. The mailbox does connect and you dial through the menus. The message starts with silence. Then a woman’s voice:

  “Alice? Are you ignoring me? Alex?”

  You hang up, put the phone face down on the table. Take a breath. Look at the colourless meat on your plate. You slice a forkful of steak and hold it up, not quite able to put it into your mouth. You glance to the foyer of the dining car. Still empty. The low voices of the other travellers are a complex murmur around you. You look for Madame, see a bored looking business woman with her head over her plate, a grey-haired couple both staring across the aisle at the night-inked windows. There is no sign of her and you are no longer sure where you thought she had sat.

  Alice, you think. Alex? You turn your phone over and call the mailbox again. There is still no reception but again you connect. You dial to the message, try to make out which name is being used. You play the recording over and over but every time you just hear what you want. You think “Alex,” you hear it. You play it again, thinking “Alice,” and you hear it. Are you ignoring me? Your finger hovers over the button to delete but then you play it through one more time. Just a wrong number, you think. That’s all it is.