Free The Canal by Lee Rourke Page A

also extremely common. Hidden internal injuries are manifold: torn spleens and severe damage to organs, such as the heart, kidneys, liver, bowels, lungs, and the aorta often lead to internal bleeding. The whole spectacle is a bloody, rotten mess. I have never stopped to look at car accidents for this very reason.
    The canal was silent. Not a sound could be heard. It was as if the wind had taken it all away. I looked to my feet. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I imagined it happening all over London, the entire country: gleaming cars hitting tired, worn-out random people, in random streets, in random towns, and random cities. I imagined it occurringall over the world: the cool exterior of each car smashing into warm living flesh.
    “Do you fancy coming to get something to eat with me …?”
    “I’m not hungry. Telling you all this has left me feeling cold. I’m going to leave now.”
    “Oh. Okay.”
    “Will you be here tomorrow?”
    “Yes … I will.”
    “Good. So will I …”

- conversation two -
    “Where were you on Thursday, the seventh of July, 2005?”
    “The bombings?”
    “Yes.”
    “I was walking to work. The same job I have just left … recently … I was on Moorgate wondering why the streets were swamped, people walking in the road, police on every corner, and why the majority of people were walking towards me, away from Bank, away from the square mile, the City. I had no idea what had happened. This must have been around the time after the bus exploded, all the way in Tavistock Square … when people weren’t still too sure what was happening, or when they had realised the severity of it. Everyone seemed to have their mobile phones to their ears. I remember their faces, those people streaming towards me. It’s funny, I never give other people on the street a second glance, I don’t generally care about strangers. But that morning their faces penetrated deep inside me. Each and every one of them.”
    As I began to speak about what I did that morning she inched closer to me on the bench. She did this obviously and without trying to disguise the fact. It was a warmish day, and she was wearing a thin white dress that was almost transparent. When her left leg brushed up against my right it felt like it was her naked flesh touching me. She was wearing flip-flops. They were silver and black. She had immaculately painted toenails—jet black. I looked at them, each of her perfectly filed toenails. The toe immediately next to her big toe was longer, this was concurrent on both feet. Her feet were beautiful. I wanted to touch them, to plant soft, gentle kisses upon them, to caress them. To put each between my teeth, to bite down tenderly. I was aware of each of their movements: subconscious movements executed at the tips of the nerve endings.
    I continued to talk about that day.
    “I often think about what turns ordinary human beings into mass murderers and terrorists. There must be more to it than mere religion, fanaticism, fundamentalism. There must have been other key factors? … It’s all so futile. So pointless …”
    “You’re wrong, of course …”
    “Why? What makes you think that?”
    “There is a point to it. Of course there’s a point to it. There’s got to be a point to it, otherwise …”
    “Otherwise what?”
    “Otherwise it’s not worth doing …”
    “So, you’re saying there is a point to the London bombings?”
    “Yes.”
    “A
point
to the mass murder of those innocent, everyday, working-class Londoners?”
    “Yes, there has to be. Why else would they have done it?”
    “But it’s all so futile …”
    “It’s the banality of evil, that’s what it is. Ordinary human beings doing extraordinary things. It happens. It happens in all wars … Human beings haven’t changed, just killing machines have …”
    “But it’s wrong …”
    “I know it’s
wrong
. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a point to it …”
    “What were you