“There are no spare rooms
left.”
It was a familiar
reply and Boz turned on his heels but the landlord reached out and clasped his
shoulder with an enormous hand.
“You can have the
cupboard under the stairs.”
Boz hesitated a moment
and then followed the landlord over the threshold of the door into the lobby of
the building. It was the best offer of the past month, a month of walking the
streets and ringing doorbells. Space was at a premium in this city right now
and available rooms were scarcer than unicorns. The landlord turned on the
lights in the stairwell and pointed upwards.
“It’s near the top. I
shouldn’t really rent it out, but I feel sorry for young men in your position.
There are three hundred and thirty three apartments in this block, so I guess
we can just call yours number 333⅓.”
“I’m not expecting
visitors or mail,” said Boz.
The landlord shrugged
and they ascended the flights of steps together, puffing hard by the time they
reached their destination. Boz peered at the door of the cupboard. It was low
and small and he would be required to crouch to pass through it, but he was
grateful for any form of accommodation, however cramped. Everything in his life
had worked out fine apart from not having a home. He had money in his wallet
and a full belly but no place to stay. This one problem soured all the good
things.
“I’ll draw up a
contract and you can sign it tomorrow. Here’s the key.”
Boz accepted the tiny
metal object and inserted it into the lock. The landlord had already wheezed
off down the stairs and was gone before he opened the door. The cupboard
contained a few blankets and a pillow. At the rear were an old vacuum cleaner,
a dozen plastic bags and two large cardboard boxes. With a heavy sigh he
squeezed into this space and fell asleep. The deep exhaustion of more than four
weeks living rough, cold and damp and an easy target for violent drunkards, had
caught up with him.
He woke slowly. It was
pitch dark and his muscles were aching. He thought about the city and the new
building regulations which made it impossible to construct new housing. The
authorities were determined to stop the metropolis sprawling outwards any
further, nor did they want the skyline encroached upon more than it already
was, so building higher was no solution. Boz understood this desire to preserve
the city the way it was. It was a beautiful city, as cities go, with courtyards
and patios and balconies and roof gardens.
Not having enough
space in the cupboard to stretch out at full length, he had curled up in a
foetal position, legs hugged to his chest. Now he had terrible cramps. He
decided to move the vacuum cleaner, bags and boxes out into the corridor for
the remainder of the night. He could always replace them in the morning before
his landlord returned. As he moved these objects, he was astonished to discover
that they concealed an opening to a tunnel. A faint glow came from its depths
and he felt a light breeze on his face.
“How far back does it
go?” he wondered.
There was only one way
to find out. Crawling on his hands and knees he proceeded down the tunnel. The
glow broke apart into a number of individual specks of light like stars and the
tunnel itself grew wider and taller. Soon he was able to stand and walk.
Wherever he was headed, it was not into the building. This was not a service
duct that wove between clusters of water and gas pipes, bundles of insulating
fibre and electrical fuse boxes. He savoured the distant scents of honeysuckle,
cooking and wine.
The sides of the
tunnel were no longer bricks but mossy stones and worn railings. The ceiling
had vanished. Somehow he was in a street, the street of a city not his own, a
city equally as beautiful, with a castle on a crag and tall houses clustered
below it. The stars were lamps on poles. He passed under an archway and
impulsively resolved to remain here, not to go back, not that he could ever
retrace his steps because he had already forgotten the way he had come. This
city was no worse than the one he had left and his wallet was bulging. First he
would find a proper place to live.
“There are no spare rooms
left.”
Although he expected
this reply, Boz did not turn away immediately. He asked the same question he
had asked all the other landlords.
“Don’t you have a
cupboard under the stairs?”
The landlord licked
his lips and hesitated before nodding and leading the way up the flights of
steps to the designated space. Boz heaved a sigh of relief. He had found his escape
route after another month of rough living. This city was as pleasurable as the
one before it, but its charms and opportunities could not be fully appreciated
by one who had no place to rest his head at night. Once again homelessness was
the fly in the ointment, or something larger than a fly, a crow or vulture.
“I shouldn’t really
rent this out, it’s against regulations, but I know how hard it is for young
people these days. I sympathise, really I do.”
Boz accepted the key
and opened the door. Now his search was over, he was able to relax and enjoy
his memories of his brief stay in this unknown metropolis. The first thing to
delight him was the discovery that the inhabitants spoke the same language as
he did, though with an alluring accent. In return he appeared exotic to them.
This city was identical in size to the one he had known but the layout was
changed, as if the buildings and streets had been shuffled and replaced on the
landscape in a different order.
Boz had a special
fondness for the districts nearest the river, the stone bridges and restaurants
festooned with coloured bulbs, the steep cobbled lanes and little squares full
of musicians and dancers. And that girl on the scooter. But always the fact he
lived nowhere spoiled everything. He had even tried to get a job where he might
be allowed to sleep safely on the premises, in a kitchen or warehouse, but that
was not acceptable behaviour here. Without a place to return to, he was
nowhere. His life was on hold, romances had to be abandoned, all his future was
suspended until he found a room.
No rooms were to be
had. Now he had been given a cupboard instead, but he could hardly be expected
to bring a girl back to a cupboard. It was not a home at all, but it
represented another chance elsewhere. His wallet was still mostly full, he had
spent only a fraction of his savings, and he still had hope. As soon as the
landlord was out of sight, he moved the vacuum cleaner, bags and boxes into the
corridor.
The opening was there,
complete with the faint glow, the glow of the merged streetlights of a third
city. He crawled into the tunnel, stood when the ceiling was high enough and
began running. Soon he was running down a street, biting scented air. A song
emerged from an open window above him, a girl brushing her hair in the
moonlight. He slowed his pace, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets,
whistling her melody.
A man clutching a
newspaper came the other way. Boz stopped him and asked, “Where might I find a
place to live in this city?”
“You’ll be lucky,”
replied the man. “There’s nothing much here.”
To confirm this
assertion he showed the newspaper to Boz, opening it to the section where
landlords advertised properties. The page was blank. Boz sighed and the man
tried to cheer him up by saying, “You have an interesting accent. The girls
will love that.”
“Not if I have no
place to go.”
The man shrugged and
moved on and Boz went the other way, appreciating the sights and magic of the
city, even while another part of him was downcast. Could he meet a girl and
move in with her? That option seemed dishonourable and was probably
impractical. Better for him simply to start searching now, ringing the
doorbells of apartment blocks. If he did not find a room he might still find a
cupboard under the stairs, an escape route to the next city. And this process
could continue until he ran out of money and cast his empty wallet into the
gutter.
The night passed
uneasily. The days that followed it passed in the same manner. He grew to know
and love this new city but he was never established here. There was wine and
food, music also, and a girl. But nothing stable. During daylight hours he
enjoyed living, being in the city, but in the evenings he searched for a room. He
was always on the move, tense, without a base, aimless, unable to relax.
“No spare rooms? What
about a cupboard under the stairs?”
At last he found one
and he said goodbye to this city, another month of his life, as he tramped up
the steps. The vacuum cleaner was there and the other items too and he moved
them out of the way and plunged into the tunnel. The tunnel became a street,
the street of a city with yet another reshuffling of buildings and squares.
Already he knew it was as full as the previous two. He could hear the city
breathe, a breathing composed of the flexing of the floorboards in every room,
all occupied. He knew that another month of searching lay in wait, the growing
of more stubble in shadows while he waited for morning and the warming rays of
the rising sun.
He called to a girl on
a street corner, “Excuse me, Miss, but do you know...”
Of course she did not.
Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a vision of his destiny. He saw himself passing
through city after city without settling in any of them, searching for and
finding cupboard after cupboard under a sequence of nearly identical stairways.
A future of crawling into tunnels, hurrying down them until they became
streets, and then a snatched form of life, taking pleasure between slabs of
anxiety, closed doors and rejection. He checked his wallet.
“I have enough money
to last another forty or fifty cities. I won’t stop yet, I’ll keep going as
long as I can. If I don’t find a place to live, I’ll just keep looking for the
tunnel to the next city. When I have only enough money left to pay for my
funeral, I’ll climb the highest tower of the city I’m in, wherever that tower
might be located, and I’ll throw myself off. That way I’ll have rest and
respectability in death if not in life!”
He struggled to open his
eyes. Where was he? A gloomy chamber with a pungent odour, some sort of
cleaning fluid. Had he found a room at last, a real room, a home? He was naked
and stretched out on something hard, not a bed. As his eyes opened fully, the
memories settled back slowly in his juddered brain. Many cities, many streets
and restaurants and girls. He had been searching for somewhere to live for
years. He had explored dozens of cities that were variations of just one city,
so many that he had lost count.
There were other
people in the chamber with him. An ache throbbed through his bones, fading and
then suddenly flaring up, the pain concentrated at a point on his chest. He
remembered what he had done, the final moment of despair, the sensation of
falling. And yet clearly he had survived. Was he in a hospital? All those
wonderful things, his experiences, degraded by the fact he had no roots, and
now this? Was he going to be stuck in a hospital for weeks or months? He
blinked and waited for his eyes to adjust properly.
The men standing over
him did not look like doctors. They wore heavy cloaks and very tall black hats
that almost scraped the ceiling. One held his wallet, another was clutching two
electrodes in gloved hands, electrodes connected to a machine that hummed and
spat in the corner. Boz felt there was an association between this machine and
the burning sensation in his chest. The man holding the wallet nodded down at
him and said:
“Pleased to meet you,
we are your undertakers. You have just enough money to pay for a funeral, we’ve
counted it, a single note and a few coins, it comes to 333⅓ crowns
altogether, which is exactly our fee. But there’s a slight problem, a minor
hitch, and we couldn’t just get on with the burial. So we brought you back to
life to discuss something with you, to make a proposal. We all think it’s a
neat solution to our difficulty.”
“Tell me,” gasped Boz.
His words emerged thin and dry and his efforts to sit up came to nothing. He knew
he would never feel more alert than this ever again, but it did not seem to
matter. The reply to his question was a murmur but he heard it and managed to
roll his eyes in exasperation.
“There are no spare
coffins left. But there’s an old tea chest in the attic...”
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