Exchange Place

The Foldable Trilby

I woke up. It was still dark. I groped for the bedside lamp. It was an old-style Bakelite lamp with a click switch on the column just under the shade at the base of the socket. My hand found the switch. The light came on. I was hungry. Aftermath of the Black Rose. I went to the washstand and splashed some water on my face. I replaced the towel on the rail and saw that the wall to the left of the rail was splashed with water that must have dripped from my hands as I moved from the washstand and groped for the towel. The water had dribbled on the wall in fractal rivulets like a root system or a river delta or a route map. I looked into the mirror and wondered how many other faces had looked into the mirror of Room 7 of the Adelphi Hotel, how many thousand other faces lay behind my face.

I was hungry. I dressed and went out on to the corridor in my stockinged soles. The corridor was lit by a single, dim, yellow, bare bulb. I walked to the landing. The stairwell was dark. There was a dimmer switch on the wall and when I pressed the button a light came on. As I came to the next landing the light went off and I had a brief, flickering after-image of myself descending the stairs. I pressed the next dimmer switch, and so on down until I reached Reception. The night porter was asleep. I tiptoed past him and stooped under the hatch. There was a rack of keys on the wall and I lifted the one labelled Kitchen. I went in to the bar and over to the door which had a blue and white enamelled sign reading Kitchen. I opened the door. It was dark inside. I found the light-switch and the strip lighting flickered on. The floor was littered with swathes of paper, crumpled photographs, photocopies, manuscripts, fragments of plaster, everything covered in paint droppings, Cobalt Blue, Green Lake, Madder Carmine, Burnt Umber, and I had to pick my way carefully in my stockinged soles to the big yellow fridge in the corner. Naples Yellow. I opened it and the light came on. There was a platter with a turkey on it. One leg was missing. I tore off the other leg. I had put the leg to my mouth when I heard a footfall behind me. I turned and saw a man in a white overall coming towards me. He had a boning knife in his hand.

I woke up. The dream had been very real and I could still see myself in its other world. I got up and went over to the washstand and splashed water on my face. I replaced the towel on the rail. The wall to the left of the rail was splashed with water that must have dripped from my hands as I moved from the washstand and groped for the towel. The dribbles made a pattern I had seen elsewhere. Axons and dendrites. I went back to bed.

I woke up. When I went down to reception I was told the security alert was now over and that it was safe for residents to return to their homes. After breakfast I packed my belongings and took the 1F bus, Antrim Road via Carlisle Circus. I presented my 60+ bus pass to the conductor and took the stairs to the upper deck. The bus began its normal circuitous route through the city centre, Donegall Square, Chichester Street, Victoria Street, High Street, Castle Place, Royal Avenue, proceeding onwards up Donegall Street and Clifton Street to Carlisle Circus. Three white police Land-Rovers had blocked the Antrim Road and a white security ribbon fluttered behind them. The bus took a detour up the Crumlin Road. I felt a tremor of unease. The bus took another turn, past the jail. There was a bar on the corner, draped in Union Jacks and paramilitary regalia. I had not been in this district for a long time and buildings began to loom out of the fog of memory, shops, factories, warehouses, office blocks, some of them six and eight storeys high, some with ornate cupolas or Gothic clock towers, mansard roofs, dormers, parapets, domes, steeples, tall brick gables with faded, painted signs — Belfast Rope Factors Ltd., Cohen & Co. Auctioneers, Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, Rollins Glass Designers and Factors Ltd., Standard Hemstitching Co., Imperial Picture House, Belfast Model Dockyard Co., Hebron Gospel Hall, Holland Wholesale Radio Factors, Melville & Co., Ltd. Funeral Furnishers and Motor Hirers …

I had known these buildings from my childhood, but had forgotten them, and I felt both lost and at home, as if I were revisiting my past. I took out my notebook and was writing down the names when the bus turned again. From my vantage point on the upper deck I caught sight of a street sign. Berlin Street. I was definitely on the wrong side of the divide. Someone from my side could have walked these streets then, but not now. So much had changed, but the buildings, it seemed, had remained. The bus began to labour up a steep incline and the landscape seemed to tilt as if the bus was on a level. I didn’t like where it was taking me. I decided to get off. I would make my way back on foot. I would keep my head down, making no eye contact. I had thought to take off my hat, fearing it would make me conspicuous. It was a foldable, navy felt fur trilby, Lock & Co. of London. I could have folded it and hidden it in my briefcase. But when I looked down at the crowd on the thoroughfare below, I could see that all the men were wearing hats or caps, hats and caps bobbing along, borne by the human current. I would have been a navy hat among many navy hats. Then I remembered that it did not matter, that I was to all intents and purposes invisible, in the way I have been on the streets of this same city, threading my way through the crowds on main thoroughfares, or walking through a portal into a narrow entry, where you encounter but few people, solitary men and women, the odd couple, or a street musician, the sound of his instrument amplified by the high walls. I am my invisible twin, the one I see in the mirror sometimes late at night, the other who is high on weed. A little Black Rose. Was it Bill or was it Ben? I feel the mirror neuron firing in my brain, electrical bursts of activity connecting from axon to dendrite to make me see in the other what I see in myself as I mime the other. I got off the bus and joined the human tide of the others, the people of the other side.

It was October and a fog was descending, the street lamps dimly coming on. The black cars parked by the pavement glistened in the yellow light. I put my collar up and pulled down the brim of my Lock & Co. hat; hands in coat pockets, I joined the throng, threading my way downhill against the flow. The road to be taken was becoming clearer to me. I saw the map in my mind’s eye and the invisible fractal that would take me to my destination. I had not gone twenty or thirty paces when I found the crowds vanished from my orbit. I walked the pavement alone, past parked car after parked car, and something in me told me one of them was a bomb about to go off, but had not told me which one. They all seemed to be ticking over, when …

I come to lying fully clothed on the bed in Room 7 of the Adelphi Hotel, my face under my hat. I take off the hat. I am awake at last. I am John Kilfeather.