Doll. Nicky Singer

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      You see, he has already died once. When he was a baby. His was a difficult birth in a difficult country. Chile. They looked at the scrap of him and put him on a life-support machine. An hour later someone decided to blow up one of Pinochet’s power stations. The cot died then, but the scrap of life didn’t. It breathed for itself until the spare generator kicked in. You might not be lucky twice, Jan thinks. Which is why he doesn’t run the bridge.

      There’s a low rumble further down the track. Jan listens, quick and intent. It is, he thinks, the sound of the train that forks off before it gets to this bridge, about half a mile away. He recognises the drone. But the girl can’t know that. She’ll wait for it to pass, thinking, as he did once, that if you wait for a train, there can’t be another one immediately. So you’ll be safe. You’ll have the two or three minutes you need. That’s a fine calculation in itself – how many minutes will it take you to run the seventy-metre bridge? If a world-class athlete can do a hundred metres in under ten seconds then…

      She’s running. He cannot believe his eyes; the girl is running. What if he’s wrong about the train and the fork? What if the train is coming right here, right now? A sound explodes out of his mouth. He thinks it’s “Stop!” But it would be madness to stop now, she must keep going, she must run faster than she’s ever run in her life, just in case. He can still hear the rumble, it’s gone on too long, the train must be past the fork and the girl is still running, running like in a dream where no matter how fast you run, you never move forward at all.

      And then – she’s arrived. She’s at the other side. And there is no train. No rumble even. The train has gone the other way.

      She’s a good distance from him now, a dark silhouette against the sky, and yet he feels her flash of triumph, sees it in the defiant stamp of her body. Yes, I did it. I ran the bridge. Then her head drops, she’s holding something. It’s a doll. A small doll, no bigger than her hand. How can he know that when he’s so far away? And yet he does know.

      Jan leans from his bed, in the bedroom of his very English house, and opens a drawer. He extracts a tiny painted box, lifts the lid. There are seven Worry People in this box: three men, three women, one child. They are made of matchwood, their bodies bound with brightly coloured cotton and vibrant scraps of cloth: blue, purple, pink, red. All except one, and it is this doll – Violeta – that Jan lifts out and puts in the palm of his hand. This doll is made of wire, the cotton bindings a dull yellow, the skirt the colour of baked mud. Its face is orange paper and, though it has black eyes and a black nose, it has no mouth. Its hair is black and sparkling, as though it were made of sand and tarmac. Its wire arms are uneven, one outstretched towards him, the other a rusted stub. The doll is only half a thumb high. He closes his hand around it. Oh yes, he knows. He holds the doll for a moment, then puts it back in the box with the others and returns the box to his bedside drawer.

      In the eye of his mind, he watches the way the girl touches her doll, observes again how she closes the doll against her chest. That’s when she realises, he thinks. She has to run again. There is no way back, unless she wants to swim the river.

      She begins at once. Her hand still on her heart. Starts to cross for a second time. But she isn’t running now, she’s jogging. Barely that, she’s ambling. It’s the confidence; she doesn’t have to hurry. The doll has absorbed her fear. Is that why she doesn’t react to the noise down the track? It’s loud enough. Not a drone this time but the circular-saw noise. Surely she can hear it? The whine of the Intercity. The whoosh of pushed air and, coming closer, the scream of speeding metal? There is no alarm at all on her face. And she’s looking right at him now, gliding across the bridge towards the oncoming train. Her face a moon of content. He wants to go on to the bridge and shake her. Hurry her up.

      Time is passing so slowly and still the train comes. She must be able to see it now, though he has his back to it. Hurry up. Run. Run! The train is not air now but thundering steel, bawling and sparking down the track. And then it’s past him and she’s still on the bridge. Against the wall on the inside track, where the train is coming. There’s a moment, a long, eight-coach moment, when he can see nothing but moving metal. And then, like an arrow, the train’s gone.

      But the girl remains. She’s at the edge of the bridge. Bending down, picking a flower. And now he really does want to shake her. Now he wants to pick her up and punch her in the face, even though she’s small and he doesn’t know her. How dare she! How could she put him through that! He moves out from the shadow of the elderflower tree (although he’s not given to interventions) and walks towards her. She stands up. But not, he thinks, because she hears him, but because she’s finished looking at the flower. Her skin is creamy pale though there’s a flush in her cheeks, he notices as he comes closer, and her eyes, which are so dark they look almost black, have a wild brightness in them.

      For a moment she doesn’t seem to register him. And then, quick and defensive, she moves her body square to his, glares up at him. And something in him wants to laugh, she looks so ridiculous, a fierce little sprite who’s nevertheless run the bridge. But he doesn’t laugh, partly because of the intensity of her gaze, which makes him feel the intruder, and partly because of the doll. Around its neck are large ungainly stitches, black, like you use to sew up a wound.

      She feels his eyes, snatches the doll from his sight.

      “What’s it to you?” she yells, the spots in her cheeks burning.

      And then she’s off, tumbling down the mound, flailing through the brambled undergrowth, and on, into the field beyond. As though he’s after her. Which, of course, he is not.

      He watches her for as long as she stays in view. Her body fighting, jagged and twisting, even when the terrain gets easier. He is ashamed to have sent her on this desperate flight.

      But he knows what he saw.

      “Jan, Jan.” His mother is coming. Her footfalls are on the stairs.

      But he certainly cannot answer his mother now. He must reach the end of his thought. He needs to say aloud the thing that he has not been saying aloud. The thing that is worrying him although, as the girl said, it’s nothing to do with him. But it is to do with him. Why else would the blood beat so hard in his breast?

      “Jan!” His mother comes into the room. “Didn’t you hear me?”

      He heard her.

      “Jan, oh Jan.” She sits down beside him on the bed. “Jan, they rang me at work. They said you didn’t go in today. Why is that, Jan?”

      He doesn’t know. He knows only he had to be at the bridge.

      “You understand how important your education is, don’t you, Jan? You can do nothing, be nothing, without it. Tell me you understand?”

      He understands.

      “Jan, why don’t you speak to me?”

      Jan has nothing to say on the subject of education.

      “Jan, please speak to me.”

      “The doll,” Jan says aloud, “I think it’s evil.”

       3

      Gerda.

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