Tiger Work, page 8
‘Why would you do that? I thought people said it was what made us so great?’
‘But then it fed into our greed, and our greed finally devoured the planet.’
‘But what would you put in its place?’
‘Collaboration. It comes from labouring together.’
‘But can we really do that? Are we not programmed to compete, to be greedy, to want to win?’
‘We did that programming to ourselves and then made it essential to our culture. But we can be many things, not just one. When we build together, it is better than when we build alone.’
Those conversations, those fears, were the things I brought with me to the world beyond the tunnel.
The first day in the house, I could not sleep. The night was full of voices. They were the voices of the wild. Everywhere in the city nature had returned and reclaimed its fertile terrain. At night the rewilded world spoke and sang and called and whistled. The wind blew among the trees that had grown everywhere, grown in the middle of cathedrals and churches, sprouted on the roofs of houses, their roots stretching down from the ceiling to touch the earth. Deer and hares and wild boars that were thought to have long vanished from the land roamed free in the cities, which were now their terrain. At night I heard lions coughing far away, and sometimes the chattering of apes reminded me of the ceaseless arguments that got out of hand in the world of the tunnel, after which one of those involved would retreat and not be seen for weeks.
I had never known what it was like to sleep away from people, in a world wild and unknown. I had chosen a room upstairs to sleep in because there was something resembling a bed there. I slept on wooden boards, and had nothing to cover me except the clothes I had brought. It was cold at night, and I shivered long into my dreams. In the depth of the night, I heard rustlings downstairs, but I did not get up to investigate. Those rooms were now the terrain of whatever had made this their home in the place of humans. I had no intention of usurping their world.
In the morning I found animal droppings in the living room, but no animals were around. After looking everywhere to make sure I was safe, I set about making the house habitable. Windows that were broken, I boarded up. I cut a path to the stream. I weeded the garden. I lived off simple foods, off vegetables in the garden and all around the houses. I cleared up the road. Sometimes while I worked, I had the distinct sense that I was being watched. But it wasn’t by human beings. I knew the weight and the heat of human eyes that watch you. Deer had left tracks everywhere, and I was tempted to hunt them for meat. But I refrained. I reasoned that they had reclaimed the city for themselves and were now living in mysterious balance with nature, and it wasn’t for me to come and ruin it. In the kitchen I found an instrument that gave off sparks and with it I made a fire. I found chickens running free and lived off their eggs, which I took judiciously. At night I lit a lamp and bolted all the doors. Upstairs in my room I would read in the absolute solitude of night.
There were moments when I felt I was in a dream. Then I would wake and find myself in what I thought was a nightmare. But it wasn’t so bad after all. I didn’t much miss other people. Maybe it was because their spirit, the society they had made, the end of time they had created, was all around me in the silence of a world without man or woman or child. The wonder is that not everything was erased. We thought that it had all been wiped clean off the face of the earth, and that the earth would get a chance to begin anew, as after a great and final apocalypse, or a universal fire burning away every last trace of humanity. That’s what the tunnels were for: so we would survive the destruction of everything. But then we brought our toxic past with us. I just had to get away from the destructive logic of humans. I didn’t miss other people. Their history, in ruins, was all around me.
And so I began again on my own, surrounded by wolves and wild beasts and large rodents and horses wandering the cities looking for food. I stayed in the house, and after many weeks I brought some order to it and made the garden nice and built a fence to keep out the wolves. Every night I lit a fire and roasted a chicken or a rabbit. Often I stared into the fire and mused about an alternative history of the human race – if we are ever given the chance of a new Eden.
4
I lived like this for weeks and months, and I think I was happy. I had no time to wonder about it. I worked hard all day and fell into sleep as you might dive into a warm sea in the height of summer. I slept better in that momentous solitude than I ever had. And then one day, after I had gone for a walk down the road to see what new vegetables I could bring back to my garden, I heard someone or something crying. I thought I had imagined it and stopped walking to listen. The sound continued, and it took a while to trace it. Then I saw its source, on the steps of a house that had crumbled to dust. Metal rods were sticking out of the foundation, but the steps were still there, keeping their structure.
And there she was, like a figure I had seen in a long-ago magazine. She wore blue trousers, a yellow shirt, and had a cloth wound round her head. She was like a mirage or a hallucination, a dream sent by some deity to tempt me out of the oceanic solitude in which I had been luxuriating. I stared at her awhile, unable to move or think. I didn’t want to frighten her, so I kept still. Then suddenly she stood up.
‘Who is there?’ she asked. ‘I can feel human eyes on me. Who is it? Show yourself!’
Then I stepped out into what was left of the square. Now it was her turn to stare at me, her mouth half open.
‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘And how do you come to be here? Are you a ghost, a devil, a dream? Are you real? You can’t be real, you’re not speaking. I’m imagining you, aren’t I? I’ve gone crazy, haven’t I?’
She began weeping again.
‘You haven’t gone crazy,’ I said gently. ‘And I am real. Question is, are you real?’
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, giving a sudden cry, she got up and ran out of the square faster than I imagined possible. A moment later there was absolutely no sign that she had been there, that she was real and not just a figment of my tremendous solitude. I went in the direction she had gone and saw no one. I spent the rest of the day wandering around, trying to find her, but she was nowhere to be found and left no sign of her existence whatsoever. At last I went back to the house, but there was now a new uneasiness in my spirit.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She had appeared there out of the altered air, like a genie, or a vision. If she was real, this made it harder to fathom. Was she in this world by herself? Had she been by herself all along? Why did she run from me? Is she with others? Can there be more people out there? Why hadn’t I seen them? I had been everywhere in the empty city and seen no sign of new life at all, no sign of the unmistakable presence of humans.
All night I tossed and turned, unable to get the apparition out of my mind. I came to the conclusion that what I had seen was the image my mind wanted me to see, a compensation for the solitude in which I dwelt. I had read how Antarctic explorers in past centuries had seen among their number someone who wasn’t there. I had heard of women having fugitive visions of vanished peoples. It was said that certain places often conjured up the ghosts of those who had lived there long before. Maybe landscapes yield trace memories of people. Maybe squares dream of those who have played and laughed there. Maybe fountains relive the laughter of children who have jumped around in them. But then maybe I had gone so long now without seeing anyone that, for my sanity’s sake, my mind was inventing a girl for me. As I lay in bed, I could see her. I was talking to her when darkness invaded me, and before I knew it dawn was at the window, looking in.
5
I did not see her the next time I went to the square. I wasn’t expecting to see her. But I kept my senses open. It was a lovely day in spring. The utter dereliction of the city, the fallen masonry, the broken columns, the crumbling steps of public buildings, the strange white substance that had discoloured everything, the flowers and plants that grew all along the pavements and on the roads, the trees that had grown through the concrete of houses and squares, the cracked tiles of diplomatic quarters, the empty palaces where royalty had once commanded the adoration of the multitudes, the school buildings taken over by masses of birds, the police stations overrun by wild boars and growling mastiffs, the tall telecommunications tower that was now nothing but a symbol of the failed age of digital hopes – all were now refreshed by the emergence of spring.
The fine light of the sun made the ruination of the city strangely forlorn and charming. No one had ever seen it like this before. No one could have imagined that this would be its fate. There were no human voices in the squares, now teeming with weeds and bright, flaming flowers. Mushrooms of a particularly deadly-looking hue mounted the walls of Parliament. And the House of Lords was buried, like a dark enchantment, beneath a forest of ivy so thick that it seemed almost impenetrable.
I wandered through the lonely city and did not see a soul. I heard no strange sounds, except the sounds of birds and animals wandering freely on the bridge. All the buildings, the roads and pavements, the rooftops and chimneys, and even the spires and the tall towers were covered with this white film. When I scraped it, the film would not come off. I sometimes had to chip at it. I could make no sense of the taste. It tasted like nothing I ever knew.
I walked far into the city with the hope of stumbling upon the girl again. Birds had taken up residence in several houses. Monkeys from the zoo chattered in the upper balcony of a church. Every now and again a horse would bolt through the streets, startling me. Nowhere did I see any sign of a living human being. Disappointed, I went back home. I kept up this search for another week, with the same results. By the end of the week, I became uncertain of what the girl looked like. Two weeks later I could not really be sure if I had seen her at all. By the end of a month, I gave up altogether.
But it made me think about what I would do if I did meet another human soul in this wilderness of a world.
6
In the meantime, I continued working on my garden. I borrowed plants from the whole city. Flowers grew everywhere, indiscriminately. Marigolds grew beside giant rhubarb, poinsettias next to nettles, wild roses beside geraniums. I saw flowers I had never heard of before. I brought the ones I liked back with me. I made a garden out of nothing. It was how I made the time useful. In the evenings, after cooking food for myself, I would read. The city was one vast sprawling library, and I brought back books from my expeditions. I found books in empty houses, in broken libraries, in royal collections. In many places books were mouldering, their paper turning to mush. In one house the books had sprouted red-and-cardamom-coloured mushrooms. One book I opened dissolved upon contact with the atmosphere. It was the strangest thing. It was entirely intact till I opened it, and then its words became dust and air. It made quite a troubling impression on me as I walked back to the house over the bridge and along the roads where houses had dissolved to piles of dust and rubble.
As I neared my house, I had an uncanny sense of something not quite right. It nagged away at me. There was a field near the house with lime and ash trees. They were huge, their branches solid, their leaves lush for that time of year. I always stopped to look at them when I went past. But that day there was something unusual about them, something that bothered me about them that I could not identify. I looked at the trees, at the branches, and saw some wrens’ nests. I had just turned my head away and was about to go through the fence gate when I realised what was different. I looked again, and there she was, sitting with her back against the ash tree, asleep. She must have silently tracked me down.
I stared at her in wonder for a full three minutes until I saw that she was now awake. She looked as though she had been awake all along. She didn’t move when she saw me. She just stared. I didn’t know what to do, so I stayed where I was, with the pile of books under my arms.
‘So, you found me,’ I said at last.
‘I wasn’t looking,’ she said.
‘Then why are you here?’
‘To lay down ground rules.’
‘What for?’
‘Us.’
‘Why?’
‘I know you’ve been trying to find me.’
‘How many of you are there?’
‘None of your business.’ She paused, then said, ‘Only me.’
‘If it’s just us, don’t you think we should work together?’
‘We have to find a new way to do this or it’s not going to work. I will disappear and you will never see me again.’
‘Okay. I don’t want that.’
‘Good.’
‘Do you want to come in?’
‘That’s how it begins. So, no. Let’s talk here on neutral territory.’
I began to walk towards her.
‘Stop. Not another step or you’ll never see me again.’
I stopped. She hadn’t really looked at me all this time. Her back was still calmly against the tree. There was something unsettling about her presence there. It was as if she were a nature spirit made visible, some kind of ghostly form that had emerged from the tree itself. Her colours were green and brown and her mood serene, almost indifferent. Her self-possession was uncanny.
‘We are not going to do it the way it was done before.’
‘Do what?’
‘All of it. I’ve been reading about all of it. That was the only way to make sense of how all this came to be, this ruination of a world. We are not doing what was done before.’
‘Then what are we doing?’
‘I don’t know. But as far as I can see, this is a new beginning. Or an end. Maybe it’s too late to begin. But we can’t give up and do nothing. So we must find a way to begin even if it’s too late to begin. Because history is over. And we are the fag end of it.’
‘I like that you say “we”.’
‘I’m not including you in this “we”.’
‘Oh.’
‘That’s what I came to tell you. Keep to your space. Don’t encroach on mine. I don’t want any romance or any kind of union that becomes a form of power relations. I don’t want to be your wife or anything like that. You manage your world as you see fit, and I will manage mine as I see fit. And don’t fall in love with me. Love in the end did nothing for the human race. They loved and still they brought the whole thing crashing down. They actually managed to bring about the end of everything just by the way they lived and loved. If we are to survive, we have to find something else.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. But while I’m trying to figure it out, I don’t want anything to complicate it. I want the complete freedom to think. I don’t want my time to be affected by you in any way.’
‘My time is already affected by you, whether I see you or not. You are now a part of my breathing and my dreams.’
‘Don’t do that.’
‘What?’
‘Imprison me with love. Your idea of love.’
‘What have you got against love?’
‘It begins as love and ends as power.’
‘Why? It doesn’t have to. Not if it’s real love.’
‘I haven’t come to debate such antiquated notions with you.’
‘What have you come for then?’
‘To tell you to leave me alone.’
‘But we are the only two people left. We may as well work together in some way. We won’t survive if we don’t work together.’
‘What makes you think I want to survive?’
‘You’re still here, aren’t you?’
‘Still here. But not for want of trying.’
She stood up in a single fluid motion. I was not sure how she did it.
‘Keep to your domain and I’ll keep to mine. Run your world the way you want, and I’ll run mine the way I want. Do you get it?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Then she was gone. I didn’t see how she went. She seemed to dissolve into the trees, like mist. I stood there a long time, looking at the spot where I had last seen her. Perhaps I was hoping that she would return, or that she had never left. But she was gone, and I knew I would not see her for a long time.
7
My loneliness was worse afterwards. For days I kept listening for her. I would look at the foot of the tree and imagine that she was there. But it was only a trick of the shadow or the force of my longing creating an image of her out of the movement of light on the leaves. I avoided the parts of town where I suspected she might be. My garden grew luxuriant. Soon I had gathered most of the flowers that could be found in the city. Foxes were everywhere, but they didn’t bother me. Wolves had drifted in from the countryside, and sometimes I heard animals fighting for their territories. I heard the snapping of jaws at night, and the howling and the snarling of beasts defending their broods.
After a lot of time passed and I didn’t see her again, I wondered if she was still alive. It was in those times that I felt the arrangement she insisted on was not practical. Whether she was alive or not mattered to me. To be alone again after having discovered that she was in the world seemed unbearable. So one morning I sought her out, if only to know whether she was dead or not.
It took me most of the day, but I came to a street that looked different from all the others. Flowers lined the edges of the pavement. I followed the flowers till I came to the house. It was a modest Regency-style house, but there were wooden sculptures everywhere. There was a beautiful garden of the happiest-looking flowers. I went up to the door and knocked. I didn’t hear anything. Then I went in. The door, surprisingly, was open. I found her on the sofa, lying down, with a dull look in her eyes.
‘I was hoping you would have the good sense to ignore what I said and come and find me. I am glad you came.’
‘What’s wrong?’
