The Invisibles by Hugh Sheehy

Author:Hugh Sheehy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780820343303
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2012-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

TRANSLATION

High above, propped-open windows let ghostly winter light into the station. Pigeons fluttered in and out, a constant disturbance of wings. He had seen five trains arrive and empty, fill with new passengers, and depart. He was trying to remember where he had seen the mosaic tiled into the wall across the tracks. It showed Lazarus emerging from his tomb, unwrapping the bluish shroud from his head as he walked out before the crowd. His arms were pale green by contrast to the peach-colored faces and arms of onlookers, his posture upright and solemn, as if the experience of death and resurrection had turned the former beggar into something other than human.

He had seen this in a church somewhere. A long time back. He could remember neither the name of the church nor the city, though he knew, studying the scene, he was not religious. His memory was blank, a dark sea of implications throwing him back into the present moment. He had come down here after waking up in a dingy hotel room with only a train pass, forty-nine crumpled dollars and change, and a ring of keys in his possession. There were no cards, no phone. In the emergency room at the hospital he had waited more than an hour between two patients with more visible woes — a boy with a broken nose and a bloody shirt-front and a shivering woman with blue lips — before the nagging certainty that there was nothing wrong with him, at least not physically, won out, and he got up and walked out, feeling chills of liberation as he hurried away from the automated doors.

He reached into his pocket and took out the keys and ran a finger over their teeth. They were colored silver and dull gold. These details told him nothing.

A light appeared down the dark tunnel, and a rapid transit train screamed and clattered into the station, car after car of yellow-lit faces looking dully out. An internal clock, not a watch or other conventional timepiece, but a mechanism in him measuring time in its own way, prodded him to get up — perhaps motion would jog something loose, a street name, a trusted face. He looked into the dark window of the door and was momentarily stunned by the sight of himself: shock of black hair, face molded tightly to the skull beneath.

The car was full, the seats and the standing room at the front taken. He moved through making as little contact as he could, aware of faces pinching with annoyance as he eased by. In the back corner he came face-to-face with a small woman in a white and black plaid wool coat. Her blue eyes looked surprised to see him. She did not look away as he took hold of the pole beside her and the train resumed moving.

Passengers swayed as the car rocked back and forth along the rail. He felt her watching and wondered, if he knew her, how to explain himself. She sighed lightly, with what sounded like real disappointment.

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