Kleinzeit

Corridor in the Underground

Ah! said the walls, listening to the footfalls, it’s the silence that we like, the lovely shapes of silence between the shapes of the footfalls.

There was a clean sheet of yellow paper, A4 size, lying on the floor of the corridor. None of the footsteps had made it dirty yet.

A ragged man came along, lumpily dressed, with a full red beard and bright blue eyes. He had a bedroll slung on his shoulder with a rope and carried two carrier-bags. Probably half a bottle of wine in one of them. He looked at the sheet of paper lying on the floor of the corridor, walked all round it, then picked it up, looked at both sides of it. No writing on either side. He felt it. He took a black Japanese nylon-tip pen out of his pocket. He sat down, leaned against the wall, took a clipboard out of one carrier-bag, put the paper in the clipboard, and wrote on it in a bold black hand:

MAN WITH HARROW FULL OF CROCKS

He took the paper out of the clipboard, laid it on the floor of the corridor and walked away echoing.

Here is the world, said the man on the paper. Here is greatness in me. Why a harrow full of crocks? Will there be music?

Yes, said the music. It was a little way ahead down the corridor. It was mouth-organ music, edgy, wonky, sometimes trotting like a three-legged dog and sometimes striking like a rattlesnake. It was a medley of Salty Dog, Cripple Creek, and The Rose of Ballydoo. It was put together as if the first tune had run smack into a lamp-post with the other two following close behind it.

When the red-bearded man got to where the music was he played it. He played it on a mouth organ he took out of his pocket. Out of a carrier-bag he took a filthy little peaked cap of corduroy, dropped it on the ground with the greasy lining looking up.

What a sound track, said the man on the paper with the harrow full of crocks.

Plink, said 2p dropping into the cap.

When? said a glockenspiel in a music shop.

Later, said the walls of the corridor.