“The capillaries in the lungs are so thin,” said the composer, smiling his smile, “that when you breath in the oxygen in the air can pass straight through into your blood. It is oxygen that makes blood red. It is purple without it but it is so good at getting oxygen out of the air that when you bleed it turns red immediately on reaching the outside. On the inside it is forever rushing, pushed on by the intricate double rhythm of the heart, bringing life to every part of you, every extremity. It is the circulation of the blood that is life. You might think of the Metro as the veins of a city.”
It was, naturally, a signal honour, but that did not make it any less a strange one. Toshio was aware that some stations on the Metro had their own tunes. All of them had tunes, of course, little jingles that played before announcements and departures, but many of them had the same ones. Some stations, however, had their own, unique musical signatures. You learnt them all eventually, the doors opening and closing, the music playing, the garbled, tinny voices. The changes between stations caught your ear, lifted your eyes from your book to see the station name, realise where you were.
Toshio knew all this, but had never stopped to think about it. To think about where the music might come from. He supposed he had assumed it was bought, some library somewhere of five second tunes, maybe even generated by some Metro computer somewhere. He’d never thought that they might be composed. By a composer.
And certainly not a composer like this. If Toshio had been asked to imagine a composer it would not have been this man. Tall and oddly built, at once thin and boxy around the shoulders and hips, with heavy hands and an incongruously large head, long and sullenly placid like a horse’s. He looked like a workman and Toshio had walked straight past him twice in the station entrance hall before he spotted the fabric bag with a wooden flute in it slung over the man’s shoulder. But then the man had a sudden, sly, lopsided smile, that tilted his face up and made his impassiveness craggy, his tiredness world weary, his eyes gleaming and clever. A composer.
A signal honour then, naturally, but a strange one. Toshio couldn’t really understand what he was doing here. The composer didn’t seem to need his company. All the man was doing was wandering around the station apparently at random and all Toshio was doing was following him. At at such a time too. The police in the station, special secret orders given, all staff told to be alert. And they had sent for a composer.
But why they had asked him and, moreover, why the man had come was entirely beyond Toshio. What was he doing here, in the station, peering into the faces of the commuters, staring down silent, tiled corridors. If it hadn’t been a patently absurd notion Toshio might have believed the man was searching for inspiration. For a jingle. For a Metro station. But surely not. How hard could it be, after all?
Toshio was sure he had said nothing out loud but the composer smiled and said, in a tone that suggested a reply:
“You might think of the Metro as the veins of the city. The corpuscular commuters being rushed to every extremity, bringing life. You have seen, when there are delays, cancellations, a trembling like fever, a uneasy disorder of disease. This tremulous pulse of transport is what keeps the city alive.”
“The Metro is my life, sir,” said Toshio, without considering it.
“It is all our lives,” said the composer, taking his flute from its bag and gesturing with it, “All these people, all their lives. They sleep on it, they wake on it, they eat on it, they fuck on it. They travel to the humiliations of work in the morning and the humiliations of dates in the evening. Friends and enemies, family and strangers, to hospitals, to schools, to offices, to restaurants. To home. This is the steady journey that transports them to the grave. A stop early to pick up coffee, three more stops to her house; never been to that place before - change here and here, six stops then two and where are we now?”
And the composer lifted the flute to his lips and played a sudden flurry of notes, a jaunty little snatch that began to repeat, hit a discordant snag and jangled into a mournful, diminished end.
Toshio felt the ground suddenly shudder and lurch beneath him, as in a small earth tremour. That was all they needed, on top of everything else. But perhaps it might be a good thing, distract the press from the disappearances before they even got wind of them. Then he realised that they were in the south east ticket hall again. That was odd. He could have sworn they were the other end of the station, down at the north end of platform F. How could they have come full circle? How could he have not noticed that?
“How are we here?” he hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
“When we breathe out, we breathe out carbon dioxide,” said the composer, “It is a poison, you can die of it. In small doses it is an intoxicant, it brings sleepiness and confusion. When I breathe out I breathe that poison into my flute and that makes music.”
“The station can be a confusing place,” said Toshio, trying to excuse himself.
“For plants however, it is not a poison, they breathe it in,” said the composer, “What is confusion and death for some, is life to others.”
“You find even regular commuters lost sometimes,” continued Toshio, “They travel here everyday and yet they can still get lost. Even Metro employees. Even employees, sometimes.”
“Everyday, twice a day,” said the composer, suddenly seeming to notice what Toshio had been saying, “Every time the doors open they hear the music, the sad song of the morning trudge, the lullaby lilt of the heavy homeward bound. Everyday of their lives, every station, every morning and every night. Every door opens and every station plays its tune. Imagine one of those tunes so catchy it nestles ear worm in your brain all day, nagging you senseless, imagine a tune so banal it grates on your teeth with every journey. But you need to recognise them, they can’t be background, the tune is the station, you need to know it. Do you know how hard that might be to write?”
“I had never thought of it,” said Toshio, surprised into honesty, “It must be very hard.”
“But what a work!” and the composer smiled at him, a crooked smile, “A soundtrack to a life in all its tiny moments, the true moments of a life, the mundane, the usual, the normal. Do you know how rewarding that might be to write?”
“I had never thought of that either,” said Toshio, “How interesting your work must be.”
The composer said nothing but raised the flute to his lips. The tune was a little sadder now, running up to a catch that took it flipped it around into a sudden descent. Another earth tremor, stronger this time. Toshio put out a hand to steady himself and discovered he was leaning on the map of the wall of platform B, west bound. But they were in the ticket hall. Weren’t they? No, this was platform B. This made no sense.
“How are we here?” he turned to the composer.
“Music is rhythm, at its heart: the heart,” said the composer, looking around him, “The double rhythm of the four chambers, the syncopation of train wheels over the tracks. I breathe out, I shape the rhythm, build it into music. The shape of the music is the shape of the place. The tune is the station. Know it and you can’t get lost.”
“People get lost,” said Toshio, “People are lost.”
“I just need to find the tune,” said the composer and raised his flute again. A run of notes, a catch and another tremor, a violent shaking.
“We need to get out,” shouted Toshio, “We need to get out of the station!” Then he realised he was shouting over the rattle of a train pulling in. He looked up. An eastbound. An eastbound? On platform B? How could it…. Could it have jumped the tracks? Was there a westbound? He had to stop it!
He turned to begin to run for the exit. It was not there. They were on platform A. The composer was smiling his smile.
“What have you done?” Toshio stepped towards him, looked at the smile, and stepped back away from him again, “What have you done? What have you done to the station? The lost people, you know about them, don’t you? You have something to do with it, the people who have gone missing, you know something about it. Is that why they summoned you here? Is that why you’re here? There are policemen, you know, in plain clothes, all over the station, I have only to shout. I can bring them right here, in an instant, I can fetch them right now…”
He stepped again backwards, turned, began to stumble into a run. It was true about the policemen. Commuters had been going missing, in the station they thought, they were keeping it quiet but taking it seriously. He had only to fetch one. Bring him to the composer. He dodged through the crowds and up a flight of stairs.
Behind him the composer put the flute to his lips. The tune ran up, turned on a catch and then up again, lifting into a floating last note that hung on the air. The ground lurched again under Toshio’s feet as he turned into a corridor at the head of the stairs. He stumbled, half fell, caught himself, stood, staggered forward and found himself at the blank end of a passage. He had got confused again. He ran back round the corner. To another featureless wall, another no exit. He turned again. There was no corner now. Just a dead end. A short stretch of passageway with no way out of it. And getting shorter. The tiles made a flat, metal echo out of the screaming.
The composer tried the tune again and satisfied put away the flute. He took a notepad out of his pocket and jotted down the notes. He’d record it when he got home and send it over to them. They shouldn’t have waited to call him. Policemen, what did they know? Music hath charms, after all. It could capture a mood but it could also make it, conjure a place or a feeling out of itself. If the tune was the station, what was the station without the tune?
In the old days they had buried people in the foundations of old buildings to appease the gods. Perhaps the digestive system was a better simile than the lungs for the Metro. Perhaps he was overthinking it. No more missing people, at any rate, not after tonight. That was the last one. The Metro was his life, he had said. A strange honour, but no less a signal one for all that.
And, flute over his shoulder, the composer left the station, whistling to himself a tune like a gentle breath of wind in a bright place.