MargenI didn't scream, because the trade teaches you that screaming in a tunnel is wasting air. I switched on the spare lantern with a steady hand and a voice rather less so.
In front of me, three steps away, stood a man. A company uniform, but the company of a century ago: brass buttons, a peaked cap with maroon braid. Old in a strange way, the way photographs age and people don't. In one hand he held my extinguished lamp; with the other he was tying a cardboard tag to it.
—It wasn't lost —I said—. That lamp is not lost. It's mine and it's right here.
—Here is where lost things are —he replied, without looking up, in a voice that sounded like a platform: wide, with an echo of its own—. And you are half right, which is the most anyone ever is. The lamp has arrived before its loss. That happens, with visitors.
His name was —is, I suppose— the porter. The lost-property porter of Amberes, a station closed the very night of its opening, in 1924, «because of the water business», he said, the way one mentions an awkward relative. The company bricked it up, the plans went quiet, and he was forgotten inside with the ledger and the uniform on.
—You've been here a hundred years?
—I've been working here a hundred years —he corrected, with a minimal pride—. Everything the city loses ends up coming down. The water brings it. I dry it, I tag it, I keep it. Somebody has to keep the register of what gets lost; otherwise people believe things disappear, and things never disappear, Miss Vera. They only change stations.
He showed me the rows: umbrellas, unposted letters, rings, an accordion, dentures, war medals. He let me touch the child's glove; he did not let me touch the handkerchief beneath it. And then I saw it, in the back row, on a shelf at eye level, with its numbered tag and its string.
A wristwatch with a hand-stitched strap, mended with sailmaker's thread. My father's watch. The one we put on his wrist before closing the coffin, nine years ago.
—This can't be here —I said, and the lantern truly trembled in my hand for the first time—. This wasn't lost. This was buried.
The porter consulted the ledger unhurriedly, following the line with a gloved finger, and read me the entry with the neutrality of civil servants and of oracles:
—«No. 9,041 — Gentleman's watch, mended strap — Will be lost where fathers' watches are kept — To be wept for by Vera.» —He closed the book gently—. The date hasn't come, miss. You didn't lose this.
And then, looking me in the eye for the first time from under the cap:
—Not yet.