The Wall(64)

I went back up to Hifa. She was still sitting on the mattress. I showed her my bounty, my booty, my plunder, my gift. She scooched over on the mattress and I sat next to her. My hand shaking – I was nervous, now that it had dawned on me how precious the matches were – I opened the window of the lantern, turned the tiny tap for the oil supply, and struck a match. Its flare of light was the most extraordinary thing I had seen in a long time. I touched it to the wick and the lantern came into life. The light was yellow-blue, gold, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I bent forwards and put the lantern down on a chair at the end of the bed. The light was flickering but reliable, the most cinematic and biggest sight. I sat down next to Hifa and we watched the light for many minutes.

‘We can bring the supplies up tomorrow,’ I eventually said.

‘I’ll set out lines.’

‘He’ll withdraw the ladder. Maybe he already has.’

‘But we’ll leave the lifeboat there. You never know.’

‘You never know.’

We were silent again for a long while.

‘I didn’t actually want to Breed,’ said Hifa. ‘It was more about wanting sex. And wanting to get off the Wall. I got tired of waiting, I thought you’d never ask.’

Did I believe her? I’m not sure. Jokes ran through my mind: I thought about saying, I know, or You did the right thing, or Now she tells me. Instead I just squeezed her arm. I thought, I could watch this light forever, I will never tire of watching this light, this light is the best thing I have ever seen. My arms and back hurt, I was tired and hungry, I was, when I thought about it, dehydrated, with a dry mouth and a nasty headache, but I didn’t care about any of that, all I wanted to do was sit on the bed and watch the lantern.

‘Tell me a story,’ said Hifa.

I tried to think of one. ‘Everything is going to be all right,’ I said, that’s what a story is, something where everything turns out all right, but I said that and I could see it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. That is another thing a story is, something somebody wants to hear, but my mind was blank and all I could think was, she wants me to tell her a story, a story where something turns out all right. I said this to myself over and over again, that’s what a story is, something that turns out all right, and then it came to me, and what I said out loud began like this: ‘It’s cold on the Wall.’





About the Author




John Lanchester has written four novels, The Debt to Pleasure, Mr Phillips, Fragrant Harbour and Capital, and three works of non-fiction: Family Romance, a memoir; Whoops!: Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay, about the global financial crisis; and How to Speak Money, a primer in popular economics. His books have won the Hawthornden Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the E. M. Forster Award, and the Premi Llibreter, been longlisted for the Booker Prize, and been translated into twenty-five languages. He is a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and a regular contributor to the New Yorker.