Vertigo of London

Of his love for his city, he was sure.
    Maybe he was never quite meant for this world. Maybe
he was like a crofter on a mainland ward -
comfortable, at times, with his own soul, but seldom
with anyone else’s. But on the subject of the city,
his city now, he knew he was quite sure.
    So why did he feel so nauseous? Or did he always feel
this way before and after, which is to say sick, sick
as truth sometimes, sick like some political virus
working its way into the body martial?
    He needed wisdom, advice. Before going back to the
mountains, before the fight again, he needed it fast.
His city, like him, was under threat. This was why he
spent longer than usual pulling himself out of bed, if
indeed it was bed, entering and exiting the other
room, the so-called room for ablutions, kneeling by
the bowl like a half-believer, whom he had almost
forgotten, in his attempt the night before to
body-surf across the up-raised hands of London, was a
London man through and through.    
    He entered the populous streets and walked alone in a
long straight line. Romans. Boudica. Anglo-Saxons.
Danes. (Runestones?) He needed some advice and he
needed it quick. The air by the river was fresh but no
match for the mountains. Even with everyone in both
places armed, at least over there you felt nature’s
triumph. Here these days he found only former
magnitude. And even with the mines over there like
seas of jellyfish once the rains had stripped away the
upper surfaces of the soil, nature did nothing wrong.
Here, within the conurbation, within that which he had
up until this very moment thought he knew well, cars
continued to target the money, with their businessmen
and businesswomen and service-based minds. Credit
crunch? A mountain stream, he thought. Fifty million
tonnes of cargo on the river each year? How about a
place where the angels sing?   
    Anyway, he felt the swelling in his throat again and
began concentrating on the city’s enemies, for this
was one of his other tasks. He thought about their
deliberately unimposing houses in the suburbs, their
dissociative glances, here as well as in the
mountains, and he thought about their stealth. And he
remembered the quiet, increasing gatherings: the
beards, darting eyes, and closing minds. The giant,
epic, other bowls, of granite, made of granite, in
mountains far away.
    And he wondered why they wanted to kill him so much?
   
He crossed the Thames Valley floodplain, by
Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill.
He crossed the busiest and oldest road, at least of
his world, and saw some of the lights on in the
building. This was his building of advice. These
lights, he knew, these bulbs, like bulbs, like beacons
of enlightened but depressed courage, belong to this
city. Even though it is day and the clouds have parted
and the sun is sending wave upon wave of ancient heat
and light to stoke the city’s heart and stroke the
city’s skin, these lights will always remain on.    
    He didn’t bother with the lift and kept on walking.
He could feel the sweat on his collar and still he
kept on walking. One bead ran the length of his back
and did a kind of detour past his scar. Vertigo, he
was thinking. He never used to get vertigo and yet two
weeks before in the mountains - before his sister died
and he rushed back to London writing her eulogy in his
head - he got vertigo, started trembling - right
there, on the mountain. And this was exactly when he
saw them, the city’s enemies.    
    It wasn’t like the old days. Not like with the
Muscovites. Not like when with blazing Hind-D gunships
coming at you and screaming like undertakers, you
popped behind a rock. Not like when with the
night-vision and the titanium and more rocks, you fed
their children. Not like when they hit above your
heads and you had to lean right back and watch what
you thought was the mountains fall.

He had a pet theory about vertigo and it was this. As
you eat your city sandwiches by the river and dream of
falling in love again, please remember. They don’t
give you vertigo when you are young because you are
expendable then. Vertigo is there to save your life
when you have children.
    The carpet was soft, thick, violety. It was also, in
patches, a quiet, almost shy, salmon pink. (Like a
salmon, bouncing its bloody belly upon the tooth-like
jagged rocks, he was also thinking, I shall reach my
goal, I shall make a shoal of my affection ... )
Anyway, a woman in the room to his left took her feet
off the desk. He couldn’t see who she was, not to talk
to, but felt a kind of respect, like they were two
sides of the same river.    
    He proceeded towards the end of the corridor. This
was when everything fanned out like a beautiful idea,
like he had always hoped the city would again, and
this beautiful idea was like a kind of half-nightclub
and half-sitting room in which you might find God.
    He moved cautiously, careful not to crunch the
candles. On the wall to his immediate right - as he
checked the cameras in each corner - was a large glass
cabinet. Inside were these small sculpted heads, urban
voodoo bracelets, handwriting on parchment, and very
small pieces of amethyst.
    Amethyst. The Ancient Greeks and Romans wore amethyst
because they believed it prevented intoxication. Some
of the pieces were also violet and some the colour of
purple grapes.
    ‘Ah, there you go,’ came a voice.
    He looked around, staring at the cameras first, but
could not trace the source of this voice. He looked
behind but didn’t see anyone there, either, only a
chair, a lime-green, or possibly turquoise, chair.
    ‘Is that you?’ he asked the strange voice.
    ‘Is that who?’
    ‘Are you ... you know ... the one?’
    ‘You know the difference between your mountains and
London?’ The Londoner stepped back a few feet and
listened. ‘London, your London, is built on clay, and
the energy, get it, the energy is absorbed, gets
absorbed, right into the ground. Your mountains,
however. The mountains from where you returned. The
place where you say you saw this city’s enemies. They
are all rock, the mountains ... all rock. There,
there, in the mountains, everything pings straight
right back at you, and doesn’t get absorbed at all.’
    ‘Is that it?’
    ‘You tell me.’
    ‘No reason for them to want to kill me, though,’ he
said. Siren sounds passed through the street outside.
‘More prisoners?’ he asked, hearing them. ‘More people
about to be absorbed into the ground.’
    ‘Somebody said to me that you wanted to know why
these people wanted to kill you, is that right?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Well they don’t.’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘They don’t.’
    ‘Don’t what?’
    ‘Want to kill you.’
    ‘Is that it?’   
    ‘No. There’s one more thing.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘They love your city.’