Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black Read online

  This is them, then? I asked, trying to lift her spirits.

  She nodded.

  Jewish?

  She paused before saying yes.

  A young couple in a sunlit garden, the sun bright on their faces and both squinting a bit. The man soberly dressed in a dark suit and holding a pale bundle in his arms, and the dark-haired woman looking at the baby there and smiling, reaching out with a finger to adjust the flowery shawl. Her dress is light, summer light, swept by a gust of wind against her legs. A fleeting summer breeze, caught by the shutter click and therefore forever.

  That is me, Agatha said solemnly, touching the bundle in her father’s arms with a finger that shook very slightly.

  That really got to me, that little shake of her finger. Again that sense of huge agitation inside, like she’s trying to contain it, like maybe she’s been containing that for weeks or months or even years, and it might burst out of her all at once. The same urgency I’m feeling.

  I’ll help you find them, I said, and bloody hell I had to control the shake in my voice as I said it. I promise. But Ellis. He may not have much time. Understand? He might be trapped but still alive.

  My parents will wait for me, Agatha said, looking up as another long rolling rumble hollowed down our shelter tunnel. Tell me about your brother.

  He’s a bit older than me, I said. Thinks he’s a bit cleverer too.

  But you love him, yes?

  I nodded. I think he’s going to be a great writer one day. If . . .

  I jammed on my brakes and told Agatha to go to sleep, but instead she glanced at this notebook in my hands.

  May I have a look, please?

  It’s just some rough notes, I said, and explained I was trying to make sense of an idea, doing preliminary drawings, but that the book had turned into more of a journal these last few days. She nodded, as if only half listening, and set about reading a page or two.

  So, she said, you are a writer too.

  Good God no, I said. Ellis is the writer. Won a real prize in a poetry competition and everything. And I doubt anything will ever come of all this. It’s just me messing around, really.

  She shook her head and went on reading for a while longer, and then handed the book back.

  I like it, she said. My papa reads me a lot of English books. He used to teach at the university. I’m sure he would like this.

  I told her I doubted it and asked her again if she had any idea where she was registered.

  No, she said. I’m sorry. Will you write more now? I think you should.

  Only to be expected that she can’t remember these funny English place-names I suppose. She looks calm enough now, my little friend Agatha, but the toes of one foot are tapping away frantically underneath that calm. The last few weeks have unnerved everyone, and regulars in the shelter are saying they haven’t seen so many people down here for months. Something so very chilling about this new threat we face. Rockets even now arcing through the heavens towards us. Once a rocket is launched, there’s no way to bring it back again, and these new ones must only take a handful of minutes to cross the gray water of the North Sea and hit us.

  Doodlebugs, buzz bombs, robot bombs, vengeance rockets — call them what you will, names do and don’t matter — but what they are is dehumanized. And that’s what’s blooming well given me the willies, one woman said as we came down.

  Dehumanized. Have to do something with that in the Warriors book. Make the machines weird and awful and deadly, and piloted not by men but by machines, which are ruthlessly efficient and have not even the chance of exercising a conscience. No awareness of what they are doing. Maybe they decide their own targets; maybe they’re huge and powerful; maybe they’re the size of wasps, swarms of them, or even smaller — must force this to the ultimate (il-)logical conclusion.

  Now Agatha’s fallen asleep, slumped against me, breathing evenly, rhythmically, and all that tension has dropped away from her tapping foot, though from time to time, she shudders and half whimpers something in German that I can’t quite make out. Her right shoe is missing a lace; I’ll improvise one for her in a moment.

  The bangs and shudders have eased overhead, and I’m desperate to get going, but I have to let Agatha rest a while. She’s beat.

  Keep thinking about how that eyeball dropped through the rubble and ruin into the dark space lurking beneath. As if it saw for me! Father always said my imagination runs away with me, but I can’t help feeling that’s what happened. That sky-blue eye saw Ellis; he’s still alive.

  I’ll give Agatha another few minutes and then we’ll get going.

  Wolf-slaying wonder,

  queller of thunder,

  cousin of both life and death.

  Nothing can touch you

  as your mind brings you to

  safety, as you slow your breath.

  Sleep.

  The original wonder,

  a mystery deeper than anyone knows.

  A heavenly gift

  casts you adrift,

  soothing the mind

  outside of time.

  In darkness you roam,

  far from home,

  while your body stays here,

  right here,

  resting.

  Resting.

  I could see the pain in Harry’s head,

  feel the ache in his arms and legs,

  and while he allowed for Agatha’s rest,

  told himself that he knew best,

  he wouldn’t admit his precarious health,

  wouldn’t take care of himself.

  And though he will know nothing when he wakes,

  it was I who whispered in his ear,

  and sang him a lullaby soft and sweet,

  and took him down to blissful sleep.

  Sleep.

  So his body will recover.

  Sleep.

  So that he may grow.

  Sleep.

  So his mind can forget.

  Sleep.

  So belief can grow.

  Sleep.

  Sleep.

  Sleep.

  Wolf-slaying wonder,

  queller of thunder.

  Cousin of both life,

  and death.

  Bugger it, fell asleep on my drawing and then must have slept for an age. Lights are all off and there’s just a dim glow at the end of the tunnel. People cocooned around us, dead to the world, to whatever’s happening overhead.

  I dreamed I heard that fiddle music again, the slow tune haunting my sleep. It was coming closer and closer, and then a voice joined in singing — I couldn’t make out the words, but it was getting louder.

  And then I woke up. As if the voice and the song had woken me, but everything is so very quiet now down here, the darkness absorbing sound, stuffing itself into my ears. I can hear my heart beat. Nothing else. The attack must be over.

  Huddled masses on the platform; shapes of things that are people. Above their heads on the tunnel wall government information: a cartoon pig asking for food waste, a scrap metal drive, Loose Lips Sink Ships, and a few posters still up for vacations that will never happen: Bognor Regis, Weston-super-Mare. Skegness Is So Bracing. Showing a world that no longer exists (does it?) — the world of the living.

  There’s a door near us at this far end of the tunnel, a sign I can just make out in the gloom: STRICTLY NO ADMITTANCE AT ANY TIME. Stupid! Someone must go through it at some time!

  There’s a flashlight on the ground. Dropped, broken?

  No, it works.

  Holy God, that was a close one. Clouds of dust and smoke . . .

  Someone must go through that door.

  Someone must go through that door.

  Go through that door, Harry, and there will be no turning back.

  Even if you did, you would never be the same.

  Want to know what’s through that door, Harry?

  Let me ask you a different question:

  What if this war goes on forever?

  What if the
war never ends?

  What if fighting is all that there is?

  What if killing becomes a new god?

  What then?

  Still want to know what’s through that door, Harry?

  Then go and look . . .

  And he does.

  Something switches inside his head.

  I didn’t make him, I swear, not me.

  He chose to go through that door,

  and take Agatha with him too.

  As they crouched in the shelter,

  the deep Camden shelter,

  a rocket bomb struck the pavement directly above,

  shaking the ground, shaking their nerve.

  The German girl said, Harry, I’m scared,

  and Harry took her cold, slender hand,

  that hand of poor circulation,

  as clouds of dust flooded into their cave.

  Billowing black smoke bringing

  Pandemonium.

  Harry took one long look around,

  then opened the door that would take them

  much

  farther

  down.

  Farther

  down.

  Towards

  doomsday.

  Imagine this:

  The war goes on forever. It doesn’t stop. Men keep fighting and dying while others keep making devices to help them do those things.

  Smarter and quicker.

  Stronger, deadlier.

  Scientists creating new forms of death.

  Explosions are one thing

  but they’re so messy and loud;

  what about unseen, invisible clouds

  that can kill with radiation

  or with chemistry?

  Or bacteria.

  That’s a Greek word, and I, Orpheus, hang my head.

  What about weapons made from the atom?

  That’s Greek too: it means indivisible.

  But what if it could be split into two?

  Do you know what would happen?

  Have you any idea of the horrible power

  that would come from within?

  What about robots smaller than dust

  that swarm in a cloud and enter your lungs,

  enter your bloodstream and enter your brain?

  They could be made to eat you, from inside out;

  they could be made to control you

  and turn on your friend.

  That’s what you get when the war doesn’t end.

  All of this waits for Orpheus Black,

  even now.

  Watch.

  Harry and Agatha stumble through the blackness.

  The beam of their flashlight feeble in the gloom.

  And with every step, the noise gets louder;

  that dreadful hum from underground.

  Louder and louder with every step,

  as closer they come to the source of the sound.

  What is it, Harry?

  What is it?

  Are you sure you want to know?

  Feel like I’m blundering around. As usual! Not sure quite where we are. We took a long, long drag down the access tunnel from the deep shelter, the burning black smoke from the rocket strike pushing us farther and farther. My head felt really queer, a stabbing pain, and then it was like that big space was opening up in it again. Very dark beyond the no access door; all kinds of hell was breaking loose around us or overhead. You’d have thought they would have run out of the things by now, not much left to throw at us, but it seems they have a never-ending supply, these unseen attackers of ours . . .

  In the darkness my vision jumped with stars, thousands of tiny points of light swirling, and I had to sit down for a moment; I remember Agatha bending down and taking my hand and being very kind, but very firm.

  Then the bloody flashlight went out.

  Perhaps that’s why it had been left, all but dead.

  I admit I started to panic, but Agatha sat down next to me and said something like: You have no choice. You have to keep going. And then she smiled and said, Come on, Orpheus.

  A joke at a moment like that!

  Harry, I reminded her.

  She waved a hand. Ach, names!

  She’s so calm. When you think about the anti-Semitic bilge you hear day in, day out. When they spread rumors about the stampede at Bethnal Green last year being the fault of panicking Jews. And this young girl is so composed.

  Ignorance = the worst enemy of all.

  Bit of a blank after that. I remember we fumbled into a flight of stairs, really old ones, and we were climbing down and down for what felt like half an hour, but couldn’t have been. Some kind of interlinked basements chock-full of rubbish, and we had a rest, found some tins of sardines, and I wolfed them down. Hadn’t eaten anything as far as I can remember since the brussels sprouts. Is that possible? I’d normally be a basket case without food. Must be the shock, medicine, anxiety about Ellis, all keeping me going.

  After that we squeezed down a tiny brick-lined corridor, filled with rubble from some blast, and came to this place.

  Steps down again, but the whole of this subterranean space is flooded. Fireman in me says it must be an improvised fire tank, or else maybe one of the reservoirs has ruptured nearby and drowned this place. Gray light seeping down is almost worse than no light at all, but at least I can see to write this and take stock. Water’s dark and cold and smelly, and it’s hard to make out what kind of stuff is floating around in it. Keeping my new ritual, I lobbed a blue eye into the deep, and it made one of those plops that tells you a pool’s very, very deep. (And this time, the eye didn’t see anything at all.)

  Dead end really, as I don’t think either of us fancies the swim. But when I suggested to A that we turn round and go back, this look of absolute horror filled her face.

  Me: We’ll just retrace our steps. Smoke will have cleared from the Camden shelter now.

  To which Agatha said loudly, as loudly as she’s spoken yet: We can’t. I can’t go back. NO.

  As if something back there is worse than what’s ahead of us. I felt gooseflesh prick my skin.

  Why? What’s so bad about that? I said, a bit impatient. I need to get to Ellis and this is a cul-de-sac. A dead end.

  I nearly lost you, Agatha said, quietly now, her calm returning. I cannot lose you now.

  Do you mean in the smoke? I said.

  No. You looked awful, she said. I thought you were dying. You can’t die on me, Harry. Not yet.

  That got to me, I can tell you.

  Thought I picked up that humming sound a few minutes ago, but I can’t hear it now. Every now and then there’s a fizzing, like electrical stuff shorting out, and a little burst of light. Dr. Caligari or Nosferatu wouldn’t be out of place down here. It’s like an expressionist film set. Well, Fritz Lang did invent the countdown for rockets after all. Bit of smoke, electrical burning. Water stinks. Not sure even a sewer rat would want to swim through that.

  I can hear something now. Something in the water? And there’s something bigger across the far side, a glimmer of light now, maybe a lantern.

  Oh, but my head is damn well killing me.

  A boat on the water . . .

  I watched him pole across the water.

  What do they say?

  I remember it like it was yesterday.

  And yes,

  I’ve been to the Underworld countless times

  as I’ve lived through other people’s lives,

  but this was the first time,

  and I wasn’t so brave;

  and, listen, it was my wife

  that I was trying to save.

  Bitten by a snake on her wedding day,

  and carried away.

  Carried down, to the Underworld,

  and when she died I lost everything;

  I even lost the will to sing.

  For months I mourned her, hollow and bare;

  my misery mounted and threatened to kill me;

  till finally I knew there was but one thing to
do.

  To descend to the Underworld and bring her back.

  Naked, I smeared gypsum on my skin.

  From head to toe I recast myself

  in white, as one of the dead.

  A ghost.

  A near-forgotten soul,

  I took my cape and my lyre

  and made my way to the mouth of the cave.

  I ventured in.

  No hesitation;

  I’d come to do what I was born to do,

  to be what I was born to be,

  to see my love affair to the very end,

  even should that mean the end of me.

  So,

  I ventured underground.

  As if it were yesterday, I remember

  how I came to the edge of the still black water,

  and, wondering how I should be able to cross,

  the sound of splashing came to my ears.

  Charon. The Boatman, come to collect.

  His long low boat slid into the sand

  and he held me with a steady gaze; and

  as he watched me, I watched him,

  he who, oh so recently, ferried my wife

  across the Styx and thus ended her life.

  He held out his hand, asking for payment.

  I said not a word. I pulled out my lyre

  and began to sing. Of love, and loss,

  of our wedding day,

  of how my wife was taken away;

  and then amongst millions

  I saw he remembered my bride,

  and then, saying nothing,

  stepped aside.

  So, I made the journey.

  Of how it turned out, I don’t wish to speak. Not now. I told you before: a little triumph, a little tragedy.

  That was my time, so long ago.

  Now it’s Harry’s.

  Will he go?

  Will you go, Harry?

  Harry,

  will you cross the water?

  You, and your adopted daughter?

  Remember what I told you in my song,

  and know that lives are not so long.

  But once you head down this tumbling track,

  Harry, believe me, you cannot turn back.

  We’re sitting on wasteland in thin light. It looks all of a piece when you’ve seen as much as I have these last twelve months, and smoke and fog are shrouding everything.