as part of standard equine post-bolting procedures. The damage done could not be undone, and I felt a numbing calm. The storm had broken, the tipping point had been passed, and that was that. Things were as they were; lessons had been learned. We were all a little older and a little wiser. It was a scratch and a minor stain. It was not a matter of life and death. Outside, in the rain, trams still throbbed their dreary, reassuring bassline, an overhead spark and visceral rumble to match the spark and rumble of the storm.
The sky lightened for a short time after the worst of the storm had passed and the steady rain thinned out the clouds, but the heavens never cleared and the rain never ceased, although it did diminish from a torrent to an insistent and steady stream. When seven came near, the recovering daylight began to retreat again as the sun sank somewhere behind the thick duvet of cloud that smothered the continent.
It was a short walk to the concert hall, as I had known for a while. I could not imagine Oskar elbowing his way onto a tram every morning with an
International Herald Tribune
and a briefcase full of fresh batons, perhaps individually wrapped in hygienic paper like the chopsticks and toothpicks in Chinese restaurants. The pavements were slick with water, their surface animated by the raindrops beating upon them. I carried an umbrella from thestand under the coat-hooks by the front door, a cheap collapsible obviously intended as a spare – next to it was a bayonet-straight, mahogany-handled patrician number that was clearly Oskar’s first choice. I considered umbrellas essentially disposable items, an opinion forced on me by the fact that I have unintentionally disposed of so many through the years, and so I always buy cheap ones and strive not to become too emotionally attached to them, as soon they will be making their way in the world without me. Oskar’s umbrella looked simultaneously brand-new expensive and antique expensive. There was no way it was leaving the flat in my company. There would be no more screw-ups, not tonight. Tonight, I was not even in the flat to screw anything up.
Brooks ran in the gutters, seeking lower elevations. The canal would be refreshed tonight, I thought. Most of the route to the concert hall was along one avenue, a tree-lined axis of uncompromising straightness drawn to connect two cardinal points – a triumphal arch that led nowhere and which commemorated an entirely imaginary triumph, and a plain roundabout of no apparent significance. Either the palace or monument that had formed the other anchor had been removed – a distinct possibility in a country that could only function if it periodically forgot the colossal contradictions inherent in its history – or it had never existed in the first place.
The age that had had the confidence and power to smash these lines through its own capital had apparently balked at tweaking God into compliance. Like the Islamic carpets that contain a deliberate flaw, the avenue wasdisrupted by the Divine. An Eastern church erupted from a square bisected by the boulevard, a heavy castellated cube covered in antiseptically white plaster that seemed pulled in tight to every angle and leading edge, a starched bed sheet tucked impossibly tight by some psychotic matron, surmounted by a fungal mass of time-green copper domes. Generous, almost Catholic, gilt glinted through the rain miasma, and even in the grim light the whitewash shone in a way that suggested it was producing its own energy, throwing off a kind of Cherenkov radiation into the cooling tank of the city. It was possibly ancient, but so perfectly maintained that it might as well have been built yesterday, a fresh cube of tofu swimming in the city’s murky tetsu broth.
On the other side of the avenue, the square had been greatly extended to accommodate the twentieth century’s contribution to the scene. This was a looming stack of stained concrete boxes, badly streaked by the
The sky lightened for a short time after the worst of the storm had passed and the steady rain thinned out the clouds, but the heavens never cleared and the rain never ceased, although it did diminish from a torrent to an insistent and steady stream. When seven came near, the recovering daylight began to retreat again as the sun sank somewhere behind the thick duvet of cloud that smothered the continent.
It was a short walk to the concert hall, as I had known for a while. I could not imagine Oskar elbowing his way onto a tram every morning with an
International Herald Tribune
and a briefcase full of fresh batons, perhaps individually wrapped in hygienic paper like the chopsticks and toothpicks in Chinese restaurants. The pavements were slick with water, their surface animated by the raindrops beating upon them. I carried an umbrella from thestand under the coat-hooks by the front door, a cheap collapsible obviously intended as a spare – next to it was a bayonet-straight, mahogany-handled patrician number that was clearly Oskar’s first choice. I considered umbrellas essentially disposable items, an opinion forced on me by the fact that I have unintentionally disposed of so many through the years, and so I always buy cheap ones and strive not to become too emotionally attached to them, as soon they will be making their way in the world without me. Oskar’s umbrella looked simultaneously brand-new expensive and antique expensive. There was no way it was leaving the flat in my company. There would be no more screw-ups, not tonight. Tonight, I was not even in the flat to screw anything up.
Brooks ran in the gutters, seeking lower elevations. The canal would be refreshed tonight, I thought. Most of the route to the concert hall was along one avenue, a tree-lined axis of uncompromising straightness drawn to connect two cardinal points – a triumphal arch that led nowhere and which commemorated an entirely imaginary triumph, and a plain roundabout of no apparent significance. Either the palace or monument that had formed the other anchor had been removed – a distinct possibility in a country that could only function if it periodically forgot the colossal contradictions inherent in its history – or it had never existed in the first place.
The age that had had the confidence and power to smash these lines through its own capital had apparently balked at tweaking God into compliance. Like the Islamic carpets that contain a deliberate flaw, the avenue wasdisrupted by the Divine. An Eastern church erupted from a square bisected by the boulevard, a heavy castellated cube covered in antiseptically white plaster that seemed pulled in tight to every angle and leading edge, a starched bed sheet tucked impossibly tight by some psychotic matron, surmounted by a fungal mass of time-green copper domes. Generous, almost Catholic, gilt glinted through the rain miasma, and even in the grim light the whitewash shone in a way that suggested it was producing its own energy, throwing off a kind of Cherenkov radiation into the cooling tank of the city. It was possibly ancient, but so perfectly maintained that it might as well have been built yesterday, a fresh cube of tofu swimming in the city’s murky tetsu broth.
On the other side of the avenue, the square had been greatly extended to accommodate the twentieth century’s contribution to the scene. This was a looming stack of stained concrete boxes, badly streaked by the
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