Night of the Animals(47)
Finally, a spiral of whispers unwrapped itself behind him as he moved along, keeping his eyes closed.
“Why’d you do that?” he heard. “You stupid cunt! You stupid cunt! Why’d you do it? You want the f*cking Watch here?”
He heard the sound of scampering feet, and finally silence. He opened his eyes, steadied himself, and opened the battered front door of the IB, entering the murky atrium. Voices, supple and slippy, suddenly came into his head again: Remeowbrooow, Cuthber-yeow. It was otterspaeke—weird, dunked language. Remember St. Cuthbert. That’s what it really meant. He took a deep breath. His heart was pounding. He whispered, “I hear, I do.” There was a malfunction in the lift to his flat—it did not stop at the eleventh floor. It had not for the past year, as far as he knew. A note from the parish, in a special Plexiglas wall-slot, assured residents that the conveyance was “perfectly safe.” He did not doubt this. But still, he did not like having to go to the tenth or the twelfth floor, then taking the stairs. He was, after all, a nonagenarian—and even his EverConnectors didn’t change that. He could not escape a feeling that he and the other dwellers of the eleventh had been singled out for isolation.
He hit “12.” There was a delay before the poorly lit compartment lurched up. There were 144 IBs in Building 3. Most of the other floors’ main hallways appeared worse than his, yet all were sunless shafts that stank of mammalian urine and cigarettes. The floors were littered with an excreta of Wimpy Burger papers and KFChwa boxes, flattened milk cartons, shattered bottles. He frequently thought about how the dirt of the place would have been unbearable to his mother, who had considered filth and religion low-class, despite her own soiled and fey peasant pedigree. Cuthbert had once dragged his fingernail along a wall for a few feet, just to see what would happen; it came back furred with a brown gluey grime, and he did not mind it. It was a new kind of English soil. On walks through the building he discovered other Indigent wanderers. There was an old man from the north who liked to tell nasty jokes and who suffered fainting spells. There was another, round-cheeked man who always wanted Cuthbert to come into his flat for a curry. He encountered people who did not appear to see him.
On Friday nights, many young Muslim Indigent men laughed and talked in their long, moon-white prayer shirts in the hallways after service at the venerable nearby North London Central Mosque, now managed by a group of Aga Khanian Fatimids called The Life, or Al-Haya. The mosque, its radicalism long softened yet under close scrutiny for decades, remained open under King Henry’s reign only as a cynical exhibit of Windsor tolerance. The Privy Council felt it had its royal plate full with English republicans and suicide cultists, and it couldn’t be bothered to persecute a harmless religious minority.
Cuthbert often saw children, of course, chasing each other, kicking hurtballs and flying on speedfins down the sticky floor tiles. Some were the offspring of refugees; some came from poor, ignorant locals who distrusted foreigners, who were vulnerable to hatred. They all lived together and, somehow, muddled on.
A gaggle of older women and young children were walking down the hall, about to go past him, carrying baskets of flowers.
One of the girls carried a tiny black and brown Chihuahua closely in her arms. The dog looked used to cuddling.
It gazed at Cuthbert and said, in a docile voice: We are waiting for you, St. Cuthbert.
“We?” he said aloud.
The animals, the dog said, sounding slightly weary. Listen for us.
Another Indigent girl, who was missing an eye, thrust a spray of pink and purple campanula flowers into his hand. He felt dizzy with shock. He took the campanulas, and held them to his nose, but there was no smell.
“Take,” said the girl, tugging his sleeve.
The old women stopped in the hallway and grinned at him. Between Buildings 3 and 4, several older Indigent women—English, Chinese, Pakistani—had cultivated a small flower and herb garden in a disused sandbox. Hyacinth and gold whisper blooms grew in tall, proud stalks.
“I’ve hardly any money,” he said. He pointed at the Chihuahua. “Your little dog. She speaks.”
“Yes,” one of the youngest of the old women said. “You are so funny.” With her black hair and Middle Eastern features—and her poverty—he guessed she was Kurdish. “It’s a he. His name is Osman.”
“Osman,” he said. “’E’s a good dog, I can tell. What can I give you for the flowers?”
“We don’t take money!” the woman said, still smiling. “Keep money.”
“Isn’t there something?” he asked.
“Just be careful,” the woman said. “The Watch is around.”
She’s right, said Osman. Be careful, St. Cuthbert.
Why do you call me that? he asked the dog. Why?
Because you have almost reached the bottom, and it has almost reached you. Do you not acknowledge your own sins against the animal world? You must, or the Otter Prince will not come.
the evils of rotten park
IN THE DISORDERED, UNHOLY TIMES IMMEDIATELY before and forever after Granny died of a stroke, in 1974, the Handley household’s last ties to the Wyre and its folkways—and the Wonderments—dissolved. His father’s beatings and punch-ups had long moved from the vaguely disciplinary, but they lacked the pure, chaotic malice of Cuthbert’s last year at home. At grammar school, three or four boys saw the bruises, but no one said a thing to anyone.