Free Time's Arrow by Martin Amis Page B

our ticket, dispensed with a contemptuous flick by the station trash can, bears the name of our starting point, not our destination. I feel that something similar applies to me and Tod, to our identity. "Tod Friendly," Tod Friendly keeps grunting without opening his mouth, as if he's trying to remember it, or learn it. Our pitiful impedimenta: one uncarriably heavy suitcase full of clothes and money and our human remains; and one body clotted with rotten adrenaline. Tod's heart cowers like an oyster at any quick movement from the other bodies in our car. Transports of heart and train . . . Shit, here comes the serge shoulderspan of the guard, his neck bent in judgment. He dots my ticket and moves away with an interrogatory stare. Oh, we really don't feel so good. Maybe it would be better if we sat facing the other way? The train says Tod Friendly Tod Friendly Tod Friendly . . .
    Stop it. Stop the train! I somehow thought I was in a state of full ordeal readiness. Ready for continued descent—
    but on a modest gradient. Jesus, my poor bourgeois dreads: another undesirable residence, perhaps, more low company (if any), or possibly (I had faced this, with martyred mien) the life of the open road. But come on. Tod's glands are in their dream mode, whinnying in nightmare. So maybe these are the things we're heading toward: the white coat and the black boots, the combustible baby, the soiled bib on its hook, the sleet of souls. The wooden room where something lethal will be lugubriously decided. Everybody dreams about being harmed. It's easy. Much tougher to recover from the dream of harming . . . America swipes by the window, cattle, timber, wheat, offerings from a younger world. With rushing eagerness I look for calm—to the ocean, not its nervous surface and its frayed edges, but the hidden depth to which everything is eventually returned.
    It must be New York. That's where we're going: to New York and its stormy weather.
    He is traveling toward his secret. Parasite or passenger, I am traveling there with him. It will be bad. It will be bad, and not intelligible. But I will know one thing about it (and at least the certainty brings comfort): I will know how bad the secret is. I will know the nature of the offense. Already I know this. I know that it is to do with trash and shit, and that it is wrong in time.
     
     

3
     
    Because I am a healer, everything I do heals
     
    This business with the yellow cabs,
    it surely looks like an unimprovable deal.
    They're always there when you need one,
    even in the rain or when the theaters are closing.
     
    They pay you up front, no questions asked. They always know where you're going. They're great. No wonder we stand there, for hours on end, waving goodbye, or saluting— saluting this fine service. The streets are full of people with their arms raised, drenched and weary, thanking the yellow cabs. Just the one hitch: they're always taking me places where I don't want to go.
    Our first thirty-six hours in New York were hectic but not frightening. They seemed to have to do with our identity. Getting a new one. Or getting rid of the old one. We also had to settle in at the new apartment, which I'm very impressed by (and only hope it's a long let, but I'm scatterbrained about such things and leave all that to Tod). Or better say "Tod." Tod won't be Tod for much longer. He'll trade in that name and get a better one. See you, Tod. . . . Then, too, we made the acquaintance of Nicholas Kreditor. I wouldn't claim to know how it all added up. Anyway, I set it down, I lay it out. I sometimes feared for myself, at first, but not for others. This is what happened to us when we came to New York.
    We eased in under the city: Grand Central, where the train sighed, and the passengers sighed, one by one. The first people to leave went off hastily, while others lingered, girding themselves for the streets. Tod held his head down for a couple of minutes, then sloped off. Among the shadows of the platform