Communion Town by Sam Thompson Page B

halogen. I didn’t know where I was. A long way off I could hear a major road roaring like the lip of a waterfall. Soon, I thought, I would surely merge into the limits of the city itself. But instead I began to hear sounds ahead, yelps and bellows, the coughs of machines, sirens, infra-bass noise beating away in cellars deep under the pavement. Around me the streets came to a comfortless kind of life, warmed by exhaust fumes, lit by pornography shops and nightclubs that had not redecorated in twenty years.
    I negotiated a grille in the pavement belching steam that stank of fish and starch. A woman in a shredded anorak observed me, while beside her on the doorstep her companion tugged at his dreadlocks and, in time with the faltering ditty of his innards, croaked for help, unless he was saying some other word. In the gutter a slow trickle of fluid found its way around rotting fruit, broken glass and the remains of a dog. Kerbstones and railings took their definition from pink neon signs. Further along, a vagrant, dressed in sacking but with enough sense of propriety still to have smeared streaks of white stuff down her cheeks, wandered from person to person, holding out palsied hands, ignored. A youth spat casually in her direction. Overhead, half the windowpanes had been smashed.
    I turned the corner into a broader street, but, before I could take another step, a man burst from a doorway in front of me, knocking me aside as he went sprawling full length in the road. Catcalls and laughter pursued him from inside the bar. The man cursed, rolled on his side and retrieved his hat. He hauled himself to his feet with the aid of a lamp post, peering redly out of a mess of cuts and bruises, one hand fumbling to straighten his ruined tie. Someone told him to sleep it off.
    I gripped my guitar case. The street swarmed with citizens of the late night, jostling their way from one den to another in search of whatever it was that they needed. As they pushed past they moved me out of the way with cordial roughness, so that I found myself manhandled along the street by the crowd, smeared with its perspiration, smelling its armpits and breathing its alcohol breath. It was easier to accept the embrace than resist it, easier to go where I was guided. I felt that if I chose I could simply let myself be carried forward forever as a particle in the city’s bloodstream, dissolving. I tasted hot fat marbled through the air around a cluster of stalls selling sausages, sweating pies and whelks. I was hungry but my pockets were empty.
    Up ahead, somebody was whistling tunelessly. Surprised at how the cracked melody pierced the din, I craned to see where it was coming from. The whistler was pestering people, jinking back and forth to obstruct them, conducting his own performance with his forefingers. He was an emaciated creature with a long, bony face and a shock of pale hair which in the glow of mercury vapour could have been peroxide blond or prematurely white. He kept on repeating the same jingle, a few shrill notes forced between his front teeth.
    Periodically he paused, grinned and held out an open hand to the crowd. No one responded, but he didn’t seem to mind. He would caper lopsidedly along the street and whistle his phrase again. Drawing closer, he gave me a hostile glare.
    ‘Keep moving,’ he said. ‘These ones are mine.’
    His skin had a damp, unwholesome texture, as if its pores were clogged with powder, and his eyes were the hard and sunken eyes of an insomniac. I thought he might be suffering from some serious illness.
    ‘This is my street. Get your own.’
    Taken aback, I said nothing. Then I noticed that his eyes were darting to the guitar case in my hand, and I understood what he meant: what he thought I was and what he was telling me would happen. If I were to do as he told me, I would keep moving until I found a street of my own; there I’d find a place to sit and play, people would give me pennies and soon I’d be able to