The Tunnels of Saint Lorenzo - First Three Chapters

CHAPTER ONE

            Bib lay under the floorboards of the Greenwich house, his stethoscope pressed against his chest as he listened to the restless beating of his heart. Bib had lain under the Greenwich house for close to an hour, listening to the Greenwich family eat their dinner and discuss the trivialities of their day from directly underneath their dining room table. It was terribly boring. At times like these, when there was no expectation to uncover plans of the Propaganda Machine, Bib took to listening to his heart, and sometimes, if he was assured he was alone, Bib would allow himself to dream.

            “The poor fool, I do not believe he has the capacity to learn,” the Greenwich father said as he tore into a side of roast beef. He was speaking of his clerk at the law office, Bib knew. Mr. Greenwich always complained about his clerk over dinner—it had become a habit for Bib to put away his stethoscope and count his pulse whenever Mr. Greenwich began his nightly tirade. Bib kept the stethoscope pressed against his heart and watched as his chest rose and fell with his breath. He breathed softly so he would not be heard. The pulsing of his heart and the steady rise and fall of his chest were the only reassurances Bib had that he was alive.

            “Then fire him,” Mrs. Greenwich said. She was sipping on a glass of red wine, a commodity becoming increasingly unusual in Saint Lorenzo. She had long quit eating. The rationing touched everyone in Saint Lorenzo, even Mr. Greenwich, who had connections that kept his stock slightly fuller than most.

            “And do what? Manage the office alone with no one to keep my files? I’d sooner be damned than stock my own files.”

            “Edward is old enough to be your clerk.”

            Bib sighed and put the stethoscope against the floorboards. It was protocol and entirely unnecessary, but Edward Greenwich had become an interest of the state. It was believed by Bib’s superiors that Edward was a sympathizer to the rebellion, and that he was disseminating propaganda of the Red Hand to his fellow students at the college.

            “Edward? That little rascal? I ought to have his paternity tested.”

            “He is your son and you love him,” Mrs. Greenwich said.

            “He stopped being my son when he left this house. I only have our daughter now, my Cherrie, and she will give me a new son when she is fit to marry.”

            “You speak of her as if she were a piece of livestock to be sold.”

            Mr. Greenwich laughed, “If only it were that easy.”

            Bib put away his stethoscope. There would be nothing of importance to say now. Bib heard Mrs. Greenwich climb the stairs to her bedroom where the stethoscope would be of little use, and Mr. Greenwich sat eating his roast beef. Bib crawled from beneath the floorboards of the Greenwich house, down the ladder, and into the tunnels below.

            There were one hundred or so tunnels and sub-tunnels under Saint Lorenzo. For each tunnel there was a crew of one hundred tunnellers or more, each tunneller responsible for his stretch of houses and shops. Some of the more experienced tunnellers were responsible for a dozen or more different houses, while young tunnellers, some of whom started at the age of five, were tasked with monitoring a single house. Bib had been tunnelling for several years—how many exactly he could not be sure—and his responsibilities had grown to five houses and two shops. Wallers were used for those living in upper-story apartments, but this was laborious and uncomfortable work, and Bib had no interest in crawling inside people’s walls, despite being offered the position numerous times. Bib preferred working the street-level houses where the air was cool and quiet. Bib’s stretch of tunnel included the Cottonwood house, the Phillips house, the Craft house, and the Greenwich house. He also monitored Dr. Vanderwielen’s Dental Office and Sunny’s General Store. The fifth house, to which he hesitated to go now, was the house of Elizabeth Ninderstock.

            Bib climbed down the steel tunnel ladder in the open space beneath the Greenwich house. Bib stretched as his feet hit the wet concrete floor of the tunnel. It was remarkable how sore one could get from doing nothing but lying down. There was no one else in the tunnel as far as Bib could tell, he could see no orange headlamp on either side. Bib kept his headlamp switched off, a direct violation of standard tunneller protocol, and fished a cigarette out of his pocket. Bib lit the cigarette and smoked in the pitch-black darkness of the tunnel, feeling the warmth of the smoke in his throat. He was tempted to listen to his heart, or perhaps his stomach—it had been several hours since he had last eaten, the sounds would be delicious! —but thought better of it.

            Bib felt something brush against his leg as he stood and smoked. The touch startled Bib, who was not accustomed to unexpected touches of any kind, and it took him several moments to realize that it was a cat. Cats littered the tunnels under Saint Lorenzo. Bib reached down into the darkness for the cat, but by then it had already gone. Bib finished his cigarette to a nub, stomped it into the concrete floor of the tunnel, and went on to the house of the widow Elizabeth Ninderstock.

CHAPTER TWO

Bib lay under the floorboards of Elizabeth Ninderstock’s living room, his stethoscope pressed hard against the underbelly of her hardwood floors. He might have hidden under her dining room, or even her bedroom if he had liked, but Bib felt that the living room was the most chivalrous position to assume when surveilling a woman as respectable as Elizabeth Ninderstock. It appeared that Elizabeth was not home this particular evening, but Bib kept his stethoscope ready, waiting for her to return.

Bib did not know much about Ms. Ninderstock’s life; he knew nothing of her childhood or her familial relations, and the circumstances of her husband’s death were still shrouded in mystery. Though he knew nearly nothing about Ms. Ninderstock, Bib felt that in a separate sense, he knew everything there was to know about her. He spent almost every night with her, except for the few rare occasions when she was invited to a neighbor’s for supper or tea. Bib knew her by the sound her chair made when she settled into it, by the sound of her flipping the pages of a book. He knew her by the squeakiness of her sneezing, and by how she always sneezed four times. Bib had heard somewhere, possibly while he had been tunnelling, that the most intimate form of love is to know a person’s sneeze. Bib believed that to be true. Whenever Elizabeth Ninderstock sneezed, he paid extra close attention, his grip on his stethoscope squeezing tighter. In many ways, Bib thought he knew Elizabeth Ninderstock better than he knew himself.

Bib was recreating the sound of Ms. Ninderstock’s sneeze, the first, the second, the third, and finally, the last little a-tishoo to complete the quartet, when Ms. Ninderstock suddenly came through her front door. She seemed in a terrible hurry, Bib thought. She closed the door behind her almost as soon as she had opened it, and with a force that Bib did not recognize. She kicked off her shoes and laughed, which Bib thought strange, that she should be laughing to herself. Bib crawled on his back closer to the sound of her voice, searching with his stethoscope for a spot of the floorboards that resonated more clearly.

There was something else there. Heavier footsteps, footsteps that stirred up the dust caught between the floorboards, footsteps almost entangled with hers. Guttural sighs that did not belong to a woman.

Ms. Ninderstock and the heavier footsteps fell upon the sofa with a great crash that knocked over the end table. Ms. Ninderstock continued laughing, her laugh soft and easy. There was the sound of the unbuttoning of overcoats and blouses—yes, it was unmistakable now. Their breathing became louder as they took to playing—that is the only way it could be described to Bib’s poor, forgiving mind. Yes, they were playing, Bib assured himself. Elizabeth began to cry, frantic, wild cries. Bib put away his stethoscope and turned onto his stomach. He covered his eyes with his hands. Bib imagined the sound of his beating heart.

            The happy news was that it was over soon after it had begun. Her playmate left as quickly as he had come, and Elizabeth Ninderstock lay on the sofa, her breathing shallow. Bib wiped his eyes—it was dusty in these tunnelways, and it aggravated his sinuses—and rolled onto his back. His hands trembling, he plugged the stethoscope headset to his ears and placed the receiver against the floorboards. He thought he heard a whimper from the sofa where Elizabeth Ninderstock lay.

            “Oh Henry,” Elizabeth said. She could barely speak. “Forgive me, Henry. Forgive me.”

            Bib had already forgiven her. How could he not! The name mentioned was unimportant. She might as well have said Bib. She was talking to him, as if he were standing directly in front of her. He kissed the underside of her floorboards, beneath where she lay crying. Elizabeth Ninderstock was still crying as Bib fell asleep, his stethoscope still pressed against the bottom of the floorboards.

CHAPTER THREE

            Bib woke from his sleep several hours later. His sleep had been occupied by fitful dreams. He dreamt of Elizabeth Ninderstock and old black goats, Edward Greenwich and the Red Hand sympathizers, and above all else, the Propaganda Machine. Bib woke with a whimper, covered in cold sweat, his eyes cruddy with dust. His stomach rumbled from having missed his dinner.

            It appeared that Ms. Ninderstock had retired to her bedroom for the evening—Bib could no longer hear her crying with his stethoscope—so Bib climbed down the ladder to the tunnel. He hoped Rex had saved him his dinner. The tunnel was crowded with tunnellers and filled with orange headlamp light. It appeared that Bib had slept through the roll call and the handout of the nightly dinner. All of the tunnellers were sitting in their line of cots in the center of the tunnel, eating their cans of tuna and their sleeve of crackers. Tuna and crackers were the dinner every night for tunnellers young and old, with a little tin of water. Tuna and crackers were also served for breakfast and lunch without fail. If they were lucky, sometimes the tunnellers would be given oranges or bananas, but these were traded for cigarettes.

            Bib’s cot was close in proximity to the houses of Elizabeth Ninderstock and the Greenwich family. Bib walked with his head down and his shoulder brushing against the edge of the tunnel walls as he made his way through the orange-lit tunnel. It was a trick Bib had learned early in his career. All tunnellers at their core were ruffians, beggars, and drunks turned Federation informants. It was not uncommon for fights to break out in the tunnels for a sideways glance or the accidental bumping of elbows. Bib was small in stature and timid by nature—in a fight he would have stood little chance against the common tunneller brute.

            There were many tunnellers that did not learn this rule. Small boys in particular, boys who would have been in primary school if they had not been the sons of thieves, who thought that life in the tunnels was a game of some magnificent proportion, were the most common to fall at the hands of old tunnellers.

            Bib remembered years ago, when he had been new to the life of tunnelling, there was a red-headed boy whose mother had given him to the Federation. The red-haired boy had been working for little more than a week before he began a nightly thievery of the old tunnellers’ tuna. He was young and small, no taller than Bib’s waist now, as he recalled, but the boy was exceedingly clever. After roll call, if a particular cot was left vacant—just as Bib’s was this night—the red-haired boy would steal the can of tuna left on the empty cot, so when the tunneller came back to their bed that night, there would be no dinner waiting for them. Bib felt a certain sympathy for the boy, not for the crime he was committing, but for the game that was being played. When the boy’s pockets were full of tuna cans, he would go deep into the tunnel with his headlamp in search of cats. With the tuna, the boy would feed the cats, who all learned to wait for him for hours and hours into the night.

            The old tunnellers did not much like going to bed with their stomachs rumbling, and it was not long before they realized what had happened and by who. One night, the old tunnellers turned off their orange headlamps and went deep into the tunnel where the little boy stayed to feed the cats. Bib lay in his cot that night listening, and heard the boy’s laughs as they closed in on him. The red-haired boy thought it was a game, nothing more than hide-and-seek or tag or something of the like. The boy’s laughter filled the tunnels as he reveled in his mischievousness. But then the boy grew quiet, and Bib imagined the poor boy’s face as he learned the rules of the tunnel, that naughty children do not play grownup games, and that games sometimes abruptly end. The boy did not cry, and the tunnels stayed quiet that night, and for many nights after. From that night forward, there was no red-haired boy to steal tuna cans, and the cats went unfed.

            Bib kept his head down as he passed through the lines of cots, doing his best not to wake up a snoring tunneller. Some tunnellers sat in their cots and played cards, and some lay smoking cigarettes, talking to the tunneller in the cot beside them. Bib thought that the line of cots looked like a long grey worm stretching down the middle of the tunnel, a worm of which he was a small particle. When Bib finally got to his cot he found another tunneller sleeping on it, snoring loudly, his boots resting on Bib’s pillow.

            The tunneller in Bib’s cot was named Copper. He was a mean fellow with a long scar from his chin up to above his right eye. He was a smuggler of liquor, cigarettes, and anything else of value he could barter from the surface, and he was quite famous amongst the tunnellers for his dealings. Copper roamed the far ends of the tunnels where he conducted his business, only venturing into the tunnel’s center to steal a cot for a night when the concrete floor became too uncomfortable on his back. Bib imagined that the tunneller had gotten drunk off his own wares, and had collapsed on Bib’s cot while he had been away.

            “I saved your dinner for you,” the man in the next cot said. It was Tunneller Rex. Rex, a dark, well-built man of Bib’s age, was sitting in his cot, and Bib noticed that at his feet was a can of tuna and a sleeve of crackers.

            “Couldn’t save the cot too?” Bib said as he sat next to Rex on his cot. Rex was Bib’s only friend in the tunnel. Bib and Rex had become tunnellers at the same time, when they were both boys, and they had known each other when they had lived on the streets of Saint Lorenzo. Rex had always been a kind and happy boy, and he had grown to be a kind and happy man, even when there was no reason to be either kind or happy.

            “I just couldn’t bear to wake the drunk bastard,” Rex said with a laugh. Rex handed Bib his tuna and crackers. Bib sat at his feet and ate. “You missed roll call,” Rex said. “You lose track of time again?”

            “Something like that,” Bib said.

            “Well, you look horrible.” Rex lit a cigarette. He tore off the filter and started smoking.

            “Ms. Ninderstock was sleeping with someone,” Bib said. He did not know why he said it exactly, and even saying the words ruined his appetite so he could not finish the tuna. Bib set the tuna on the floor and started smoking. He wished that he had a bed to sleep in, and for a moment he thought of screaming in Copper’s face, of grabbing him by his elephant ears and thrashing him. Bib thought better of it.

            “And you’re upset about that?” Rex looked at Bib with a piercing gaze, his eyes almost black as he smoked.

            “It isn’t right,” Bib said. “She’s a lady, and a widow. It isn’t right for her to be doing that with someone so unfamiliar.” He suddenly felt very angry at Ms. Ninderstock, and he cursed himself for giving her forgiveness she did not deserve. He wished he had never listened to her through her floorboards.

            “And why should it not be right?” Rex said. “She is an adult. But even if it were wrong, she does not know of your existence. Your tears for her are of little use.”

            Bib sighed, “You are a terrible friend.”

            Rex laughed. He had the most beautiful laugh, Bib thought, a laugh that was unapologetic and happy. Bib smiled. “Then sleep on the floor if you like, if I am such a terrible friend,” Rex said as he laughed again and smoked. “Let me make you happy, since you are so pitiful now. I will tell you a story that I heard today as I was listening to the Funkhousers, do you know the Funkhousers? No? Anyway, this story may cheer you from your present sorry state.”

            “Not likely,” Bib said.

            “Then listen to it anyway, you know how I like to hear myself talk. I was listening to the Funkhouser wife today and her brother-in-law, the brother of the old Mr. Funkhouser, as they were having breakfast. They were talking about whether old Mr. Funkhouser should be buried or cremated, as his will was unclear in this regard. I was not aware that Mr. Funkhouser had died, but I was not surprised by the news, as Mr. Funkhouser had long been ill with a consumption in his lungs.

            “Anyways, the wife thought that her husband should be buried and the brother that he should be cremated, when at last the brother cried, ‘I cannot see a reason why it should matter, the old man is dead! Let the birds pick at him in the street.’ The wife did not like this very much, and began to cry. ‘Do not cry for him now, now that you have inherited his fortune through his will,’ the brother said. ‘You call yourself an honest wife, but you have been sleeping in my bed! Have you forgotten these sins, these sins which have matured into teethy flowers that bite at your honor and your womanhood?’

            “The wife had no reply to this and sat crying over her breakfast while the brother sat eating. Old Mr. Funkhouser was to be cremated, his brother decided, and his ashes were to be kept in an old flower vase, and his wealth would be in part tithed to the Federation and in part given to his wife, and when his wife was to die, her ashes would be placed in the flower vase with his.”

Rex continued to smoke once he was finished with his story, a faint smile on his face.

            “How is that supposed to make me feel better?” Bib said.

Rex sat up in his cot so that he was eye-level with Bib. “Old Mr. Funkhouser died believing his wife to be an honest woman. Then why should it not be? That was his truth, and it made him happy, even though it was a mere deception.” Rex leaned over his cot and crushed his cigarette into the concrete floor. “You must think yourself happy, even if your thoughts must be lies. That is my advice to you, my friend, or else you will be forever miserable.”

“That does not make me feel any better,” Bib said.

“Think on it a little while, maybe that will change,” Rex said as he patted his pillow. “Now I must go to sleep, good Bib, it will be a long day tomorrow, as it was a long day today. You may sleep next to me if you like. Goodnight, and good dreams.”

            Rex fell asleep quickly, and soon his snores echoed Copper’s. Bib, seeing that he was now alone, and feeling neither tired nor cheered, left Rex in his cot to walk the tunnel and sort his confounding and troubled thoughts.