Mark Ford

. . . I drank and was surprised to see what looked like tea leaves at the bottom of the cup . . . minutes later a great warm green wave or cloud began advancing towards me. “Look at the boats on his shirt,” I felt myself trying to say, in Spanish, or Moroccan, yet knowing I knew none of the words . . . it was bright morning, and the train had arrived and emptied at Chamartín before I finally pried open my eyes, and saw on the carriage floor nothing but an unfamiliar pair of trainers: cracked white leather, with three green stripes. “Mister — or rather Herr — Adolf Dassler made these,” I thought. But which of the two friendly men with whom I’d shared the carriage, and some wine, had been wearing them? I pondered this awhile, then fell asleep again . . . and did Herr Dassler visit, personally, all the cities inscribed on his trainers? Koln, Dublin, Paris, Montreal, Kopenhagen, Bern, Amsterdam . . . and fit the trainer to the city? Rom, like these, Vienna, London . . . Señor Dassler, I am dreaming of you on a bench on a platform in a train station in Madrid, unable to wake up, a pair of your trainers, that weren’t mine, but now are, on my feet . . . I am swimming, Herr Dassler, in your wake, though I fear you are dead, a corpse washed clean by the numbing tides with three slanting stripes emblazoned on your chest, your passport and your wallet drifting to the ocean floor . . . I discovered in a pocket — oh! the kindness of strangers! — about forty pesetas; but casting around for a joke or silver lining, I found nada— or niente, as I put it to my shoes . . . closing my eyes, I imagined fingers untying and easing off my Reeboks, as the train hurtled through the darkness, the men trying them on in turn, the ex-owner of these flexing his toes, padding up and down, nodding approval. They must have whispered like parents, as they lifted my shirt and unfastened my money belt, or perhaps, more like surgeons, they used scissors, or a knife . . . snicker-snack! I watched the vorpal blade trace arabesques across my breastbone, hover, then slide between two ribs.Chug-chug went the trains. The heat was building, the potion at last wearing off. How light I’d be, I now began to reason, as quick and canny as a lizard, a perfectly camouflaged lizard, who’d shed a skin and acquired a new way of walking.

were some quite creepy men — one used to lie down on the dayroom floor, then get us all to pile on top of him — and a basilisk- eyed matron in a blue uniform with a watch dangling beneath her right collarbone.Thump thump thump went her footsteps, making the asbestos ceiling tiles quiver, and me want to hide, or run like a rabbit in a fire . . . What we lost, we lost forever. A minor devil played at chess with us, forcing the pieces to levitate and hover, flourishing swords, in midair. I’d grasp them now, the orotund bishop, the stealthy knight, the all- knowing queen, but they dissolve in my fingers, refuse to return to the board, to their squares.