In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje [78]
Harris, half-asleep on the makeshift bed in his office, has heard the thump, one thump that didn’t fit into the pattern of noises made by the row of water pumps. He walks onto the mezzanine of the pumping station. It is brilliantly lit and stark. In his dressing-gown he descends the stairs to the low-level pumping station, walks twenty-five yards into the Venturi tunnels, and then returns slowly, listening again for that false thump. He has seen nothing but the grey-painted machines. On the upper level he looks out of the windows and sees the military patrols. He relaxes and goes back to his room.
Patrick rests without closing his eyes, his gaze on the high window that brings light into this dark screen room. Soon he will go along the corridor where he had searched for her and found her, bathing beside a candle among all those puppets … years ago. He cannot touch his own face because of the pain. He has no idea what he has broken.
After twenty minutes he gets up, puts on his clothes, and begins to attach the blasting caps onto the dynamite. He walks into the humidity of the pumping station. As he settles and beds the explosives he can see what will occur. A column of water will shoot up seventy feet into the air and break through the glass windows of the roof. The floor buckles, other pumps overload and burn out in seconds. When the settling basins explode, the military tents on the lawn above them will collapse downwards into twenty-four feet of pure water. He picks up the wheel of wire and lines the electrical fuses through the Venturi tunnels.
“On the golf course I’m under par
Metro-Goldwyn has asked me to star …”
The machine roar drowns him out as he half mutters half sings, unaware that the song from the boat has attached itself to him like a burr. He wades across the raw water of the filter pools with the wire wheel in his outstretched hand, selecting the key columns on which to lay the dynamite. The water from here will burst through the wired glass into the corridors of rosy marble.
“I’ve got a house – a showplace
Still I can’t get no place – with you …”
He lays a charge with its electric detonator over the plaque that says Dominion Centrifugal Pump. The last ones he nestles under the ferric chloride tanks, and beside the rose marble tower clock with its code lights. He runs the wires into the blasting-box.
Barefoot, he walks up the staircase trailing the live wires behind him, around the mezzanine gallery and into Harris’ office.
Harris sitting at his desk, the gooseneck lamp on, happens to be watching the door when it opens. Even if he had known the man before he would not recognize him now. Black thin cotton trousers and shirt, grease-black face – blood in the scrapes and scratches. The man’s knuckles bleeding, one arm hanging loose at his side. He notices the shirt ripped open at the back when the intruder turns to close the door.
He walks towards Harris, the blasting-box carried like a chicken under his right arm.
– Do you know me?
– I worked for you, Mr. Harris. I helped build the tunnel I just swam through.
– Who are you? How dare you try to come in here!
– I’m not trying this, I’ve done it. Everything is wired. I just press the plunger on this blasting-box.
– What do you want? Who are you?
– I’m Patrick Lewis.
There was silence. Patrick leaned forward and rubbed his cut fingers over the smoothness of Harris’ desk.
– Feldspar, he murmured.
Harris watched the eyes darting in the man’s dark face. He walked over to the sideboard and returned with a decanter of brandy and glasses. He was thinking. Then he began to speak. He talked about how he hated the officials of the city but how he loved City Hall.
– I was practically born in City Hall. My mother was a caretaker. I worked up.
– You forgot us.
– I hired you.
– Your goddamn herringbone tiles in the toilets cost more than