MargenIt took me a week to go back. I asked for that stretch in the assignments —nobody argues over a boring stretch— and I brought the big lamp, the small sledgehammer, and the leak as an excuse, just in case.
The new mortar gave way where it wanted to give way. That unsettled me even then: walls don't want. I pulled out brick until I'd opened a crawl-hole, and went through with the lamp held out in front.
A service stairway, granite steps eaten by old water, curving down. And below, what the plan promised and the mind refused: Amberes. A whole station. The two platforms, the vaults with their century-old white tiles, the porcelain signs with gilded lettering. And filling everything, still and black, water that had swallowed the tracks and lapped at the edge of the platforms.
It smelled of pond and cold stone. The lamp couldn't reach the bottom of the water, and believe me: better that way.
I walked along the dry platform stepping the way you step in churches. There were things. In order. Along the wall, in tidy rows: an umbrella with a duck's-head handle. A cardboard suitcase with stickers from hotels that no longer exist. A rusted scooter. A child's glove, alone, laid on a folded handkerchief as if in a shop window. Dozens, hundreds of objects, each with a cardboard tag tied on with string, numbered in pen.
At the far end of the platform, a booth with a sign: LOST PROPERTY. And inside the booth, on a lectern, an enormous ledger, cloth-bound, lying open at the middle.
I shone the light on it. Columns: number, object, where it was lost, who wept for it. The ink of the first pages was from 1924. I turned the pages towards the end, my stomach tightening, because the handwriting —the same neat hand of a dead draughtsman— never once broke off.
The last entry's ink was fresh. It glistened.
«No. 14,312 — Crew lantern — Tunnel 3, tonight — To be wept for by Vera, who is already here.»
My lamp went out.