Free Observatory Mansions by Edward Carey Page A

whose passport photographs I had stolen. I told him: I thought they would be mine, I feltI had been waiting for such a long time. I returned the photographs and he accepted my apology.
    In this fashion my passport photograph collection progressed to such an extent that I had at one stage one hundred and twenty-six different passport photographs of people I had never met. For one hundred and twenty-six different faces, one hundred and twenty-six different histories were conceived.
    On the afternoon in the park when the new resident had tamed Twenty, Dog Woman, I spied a forsaken passport photograph by the park bin nearest to me. It was of a young man. Thirties. Black hair, in need of a brushing. Square face, in need of a shave. Denim shirt, in need of an ironing. I struggled to imagine his life from his face. Another human being, yet another I had never seen before. What did this one know? Was he happy? Was he cruel? Did he worry? The more I stared at his face, the less I understood him. This is not unusual, the same procedure happens whenever I examine a person either on photograph or in reality: in my first glimpses I always think I can read someone fairly quickly, that the snap judgements I make are surely accurate, but the more I observe the less I understand, the more I realize how difficult the art of judging a person is.
    When I looked up again from the passport photograph I saw that Twenty was lying on her patchy piece of grass alone. The new resident had gone.

Outside the church .
    I could not see her anywhere in the park. I considered immediately returning to Observatory Mansions to warn Peter Bugg that I had lost her. But if the new resident had returned to Observatory Mansions then it was already too late. If, however, she had not, then she must still be somewhere in the city and Peter Bugg could continue his work inflat eighteen uninterrupted. I had not looked far when I was halted by an idea. The new resident smoked a great deal, she had not yet been seen without a cigarette in her mouth or in her hand. When cigarettes are finished the cigarette stub is generally discarded, thrown casually on to whatever piece of ground the smoker happens to be crossing. I could therefore follow the new resident by means of collecting her cigarette stubs. I approached Twenty, not getting too close, to pick up a cigarette stub which had certainly belonged to her (careful not to let any ash fall on my gloves, using a pair of tweezers which I always carried with me). Printed on the cigarette’s paper in black ink, just by the filter, was a circle in which was written the words LUCKY STRIKE. Now I could follow her discarded stubs through the city until I found that place where they ceased being discarded, the place where the new resident would be. I noticed that her cigarette stubs bore her teeth marks. This was useful: it meant that I was unlikely to waste time following some other person who was not the new resident, but who also smoked Lucky Strikes.
    I followed the stubs, they came every two hundred metres or thereabouts. When I found a stub I had to pursue all directions until I came across the next one. In this way I eventually found myself outside a church. On the steps of the church was the final cigarette stub, though this was more than a stub: half a cigarette, abandoned. I presumed, therefore, that the new resident was inside the church. There were two exits from the church, the first was past the porch through a large oak door, the other was to be found by shifting the stone lid off a false tomb within a private chapel. Having moved the lid aside you would find yourself descending roughly cut stairs, heading off into the darkness. You would find yourself in a tunnel, a tunnel which widened as it progressed. Along that tunnel you would discover numerous objects, nine hundred and eighty-seven to be accurate. I considered it unlikely that the new resident would take that exit, so few peopleknew of it. She would surely leave