The Toll Bridge by Aidan Chambers
This was something Adam could never understand. Five or six days after he came to stay, clearing our stuff out of the bedroom, Tess helping, he said:
‘What d’you want all these books for?’
‘There aren’t that many,’ I said.
‘A hundred and eight,’ Tess said. ‘I counted.’
‘I’ve over a thousand at home.’
‘Glad we’re not painting your place,’ Adam said.
‘Bookworm . . .’ Tess said.
‘Chewing his way through paper.’
‘. . . Bibliophile.’
‘What d’you do with them all, once you’ve read them?’
I said, ‘For a start, you can do more with books than you can with people, judging by the way you two carry on – or don’t carry on as it happens. Here, grab these.’
‘Go on then,’ Adam said as I piled books into his cradled arms, ‘tell us. What can you do with books you can’t do with people?’
‘Not another of your games, for God’s sake, not while we’re doing this.’
Tess said, ‘Go on, tell him. I’ll start you off. You can read them, which,’ she added pointedly to Adam, ‘is certainly more than you can do with some people.’
‘You can write in them,’ Adam said. ‘I’ve seen him do it. Bloody vandal.’
‘Buy them.’
‘You can buy people,’ Adam said.
‘Sell them, then.’
‘You can sell people as well. Seen it done. But why not sell these, Jan? We could have a party on the proceeds.’
‘Hasn’t he told you? He doesn’t like parties.’
‘Must be defective, poor sod.’
‘It’s what comes of biblioboring.’
‘We should do something about that.’
‘Educate him in everyday life.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ I said.
‘Use them to hold things up,’ Tess went on, ‘like wonky table legs.’
‘And hold things down. But you can use people for that as well.’
‘If you’re lucky,’ I said.
‘Give them away as presents,’ Tess said.
‘Burn them to keep the place warm.’
‘Fascist,’ I said.
‘Cover up nasty cracks in the wall,’ Tess said pertinently.
‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ I said. ‘They don’t play up the way people do.’
‘Or get ill,’ Tess said.
‘Or puke,’ Adam said.
‘Or cry,’ Tess said.
I said quickly, ‘Or eat or drink or nick your clothes or take holidays or sleep or poop or doublecross or answer back or desert you when you need them or want to be paid or take the huff or need decorating or get The Glums or have a menopause or murder or torture or fight wars –’
‘Sometimes cause them,’ Tess butted in.
‘– or do anything except look attractive while they wait for you to do whatever you like with them, like read them. OK – is that enough for now, can we get on?’
‘I’m knackered after all that,’ Adam said. ‘I thought books were supposed to be relaxing.’
‘And while we’re on the subject,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to do something about you and the telly and me and reading, unless you want to go into exile in the basement every night.’
‘Why?’ Tess said. ‘What’s the matter?’
That explained, she said, ‘Easy. I’ve a set of headphones I used when I wanted to watch the telly at home and nobody else did. Now I’ve one in my room I never use them. Adam can borrow them, so he can watch while you read.’
‘Brilliant,’ Adam said.
‘Only takes feminine lateral thinking.’
‘You can go lateral for me any time.’
‘I said thinking.’
3
One evening towards the end of the decorating there was nothing on TV that Adam wanted to watch and Tess dropped in bringing some beer she’d filched from the fridge and we were talking about sleep because when Tess arrived Adam was slumped in one of his sleep-snacks and I was reading a story about a dream, which comes into this story soon.
Adam perked up, of course, the second Tess came through the door and they joshed around, which they always did, flirting, that evening cracking suspect puns on being laid out and having a lie down and being wide to the world and heavy breathing and how thrilling a good zizz was, and when they’d got through with that Tess said they’d done something on sleep in biology the year before. They’d had to record their dreams as soon as they woke up in the morning (most of the time, of course, they hadn’t dared tell the truth so they made them up) and they’d done experiments with REM (rapid eye movement – the wobbling of the eyes under the lids which happens when people are dreaming), and we nattered on about all that and the meaning of dreams and why they are so weird, till Adam suddenly said,
‘What I want to know is why I wake up just about every morning with a whacking great hard on.’
‘You do?’ Tess said, leaning forward, agog.
‘Like a broom handle.’
‘Because of sexy dreams?’
‘Not always. Happens quite a lot when I haven’t been dreaming about anything.’
‘Or not that you remember when you wake up.’
‘Me too,’ I said, no less than the truth, but rather so as not to be left out. ‘Didn’t they tell you anything about that in biol?’
‘Grief, no! They only talk about sex in Human Relations and they didn’t say anything about early morning erections then, only about Aids and not having babies.’
‘What about your brothers,’ I said, ‘don’t you know about it from them?’
‘We’re not the kind of family where the men lie around with their dingers on show, if that’s what you mean. And you know my mum, she’s pretty open but she wouldn’t go much on talking about erections.’
‘Well, all I know is I wake up stiff as a bat,’ Adam said.
‘Ready for a good innings,’ I said.
‘A big score, you’re telling me.’
‘Boys!’ Tess said with mock scorn. ‘Sex mad.’
‘Unlike girls,’ Adam said, ‘who aren’t, eh? They don’t have nothing like that, I suppose.’
‘What, like early morning blooming of the nips or clutching of the clit, that kind of thing?’
‘Very elegantly put,’ I said.
‘To be honest, yes.’
‘You do?’ Adam said, himself agog now. ‘There you are, then, it isn’t just us.’
‘Another of the uncontrollable pleasures of growing up, you mean. Like acne.’
‘I enjoy it more than acne,’ Adam said. ‘All you can do with acne is pick it.’
‘Easier to get rid of as well,’ I said.
‘Oo – you don’t, do you!’ Tess said, this time demonstrating shocked innocence. ‘Not that I know what you’re talking about, of course.’ And we all laughed.
‘But here, listen,’ Adam said. ‘I’ve been having a funny dream lately.’
‘Funny ha-ha or funny disgusting?’ Tess asked.
‘Funny how it makes me sweat. I’m coming along this road, not walking or running or in a car or anything, just sort of floating along, and there’s a bridge up ahead, not this bridge, just a bridge, a flat straight bridge, and as I come nearer I get more and more scared, I’m not sure why, because there’s something dangerous on the other side I think, that’s how it feels anyway, and I go slower and slower and all I can see is the bridge, nothing neither side, which is just a blur, and there’s nobody with me, I’m all alone, I feel lonely, and when I reach the bridge where the road becomes the bridge, there’s a yellow line painted across the road and I stop just before it and I can’t make myself go no further, just can’t move at all, can’t make myself cross the bridge, I’m stuck because of whatever it is I’m scared of, and I can’t turn round and go back because there’s something behind that I’m trying to get away from, I’m right stuck, and near freaking out, I’m breathing hard, and sweating, an
He’d even broken out in a sweat as he spoke. Tess and I said nothing, seeing how disturbed he was and not knowing what to say. The Ancient Mariner. It was as if the whole evening had been working up to this point, when Adam would tell his dream.
He fell silent, his eyes grasping us, expecting, wanting us to say something that would release him from his nightmare.
‘That’s it,’ he said after a while. ‘That’s all.’
Taking a deep breath, Tess said, ‘I wonder what it is on the other side that scares you?’
I said, ‘Maybe it’s nothing to do with what’s on the other side.’
‘What then?’
‘Dunno. Doesn’t have to be something on the other side, though, does it? Could be the bridge itself he’s afraid of. Or what he’s running away from. Or the yellow line. What does that mean?’
Tess said, ‘Does it have to mean anything? You’re always trying to find a meaning in everything. Sometimes things don’t mean anything, you know, they don’t have to, do they? They might just be there.’
Adam watching us like a spectator at a tennis match, closely assessing every stroke.
I said, ‘I don’t believe that. Everything means something. Everything is there for a reason. Nothing just happens.’
‘You’re an appalling intellectual, you know that, don’t you.’
‘Why do people use “intellectual” as an insult? What’s so bad about thinking? I enjoy thinking.’
‘All right, don’t let’s go into that now. What we’re talking about is Adam’s dream,’ Tess said. ‘Dreams have their own kind of logic, don’t they. They’re not like . . . I don’t know . . . like this happens, then that happens as a result, and then the next thing happens, and so on. They’re weird. Everything is jumbled. Things don’t seem to connect.’
‘Exactly. They have their own logic. And all logic has a meaning. So things do connect. What you have to do is puzzle out the logic by finding some sort of pattern to it, don’t you. Then the meaning becomes dear. Like poetry. Some poetry doesn’t seem to make any sense when you first read it, so you just keep on reading it and rereading it while you puzzle out what the logic is, the ideas, the images, the words, all the rest of it, till you find the pattern – how everything connects in a way you hadn’t noticed at first. I mean, that’s one of the things that’s so interesting about poetry, isn’t it, you know that.’
‘Sacré dieu!’
‘I’m only trying to explain how I think about dreams, that’s all. Look, I’ll give you an example.’
‘He’s off, Adam, here he goes.’
‘No, listen,’ Adam said, ‘I want to know.’
I went on, ‘As it happens, I was just reading a story about a bridge. I’m interested in bridges at the moment, not surprisingly.’ I fetched the book. ‘It’s a story called “The Bridge”. It’s by Franz Kafka.’
‘The guy who wrote the one about the boy who wakes up and he’s turned into a beetle?’ Tess said.
‘The very same,’ I said, finding the place.
‘Well then it’s bound to be weird.’
‘Want to hear it or not? It’s very short, won’t strain your powers of concentration.’
‘Cheek!’
‘Sure,’ Adam said.
‘OK, here goes:’
I was stiff and cold, I was a bridge, I lay over an abyss; my toes buried deep on one side, my hands on the other, I had fastened my teeth in crumbling day. The tails of my coat fluttered at my sides. Far below brawled the icy trout stream. No tourist strayed to this impassable height, the bridge was not yet marked on the maps. Thus I lay and waited; I had to wait; without falling no bridge, once erected, can cease to be a bridge. One day towards evening, whether it was the first, whether it was the thousandth, I cannot tell – my thoughts were always in confusion, and always, always moving in a circle – towards evening in summer, the roar of the stream grown deeper, I heard the footsteps of a man! Towards me, towards me. Stretch yourself, bridge, make yourself ready, beam without rail, hold up the one who is entrusted to you. If his steps are uncertain steady them unobtrusively, but if he staggers then make yourself known and like a mountain god hurl him to the bank. He came, he tapped me with the iron spike of his stick, then with it he lifted my coat-tails and folded them upon me; he plunged his spike into my bushy hair, and for a good while he let it rest there, no doubt as he gazed far round him into the distance. But then – I was just following him in thought over mountain and valley – he leapt with both feet on to the middle of my body. I shuddered with wild pain, quite uncomprehending. Who was it? A child? A gymnast? A daredevil? A suicide? A tempter? A destroyer? And I turned over to look at him. A bridge turns over! And before I fully turned I was already falling, I fell, and in a moment I was ripped apart and impaled on the sharp stones that had always gazed up at me so peacefully out of the rushing waters.
Silence. The fire burned our faces.
Adam stirred, flexing himself as he did sometimes after a film he’d specially liked.
‘Great!’
‘You liked it?’ Tess said, surprised.
‘Is that all of it?’
I nodded.
‘Let’s have a look.’
Tess and I watched as, like a boy with a new toy, Adam pawed the open page and pored over the words, too.
‘I’ll have a read of this later on.’ He looked up, smiling. ‘I’m too slow for it now with you two watching.’
‘But what does it mean?’ Tess said.
He shrugged.
‘But you like it?’
‘Sure. You can kind of feel what it means.’
‘There you are,’ I said to Tess, ‘he’s a natural. He really knows how to read. Don’t struggle with it. Just let it happen. Right? And don’t snort at me. What do you think it means?’
‘Oh no, you’re not getting out of it that easy!’ she said, laughing. ‘I know you. You’ll get me to say something stupid off the top of my head, having just heard the thing for the first time, and then you’ll come up with something clever, because you’ve read it half a dozen times and been thinking about it for days! You’re like Bishop at school, he does that, and it’s not fair. It’s easy to be clever about something when you’ve had plenty of time to work it out and the other person hasn’t.’
‘I’ve only read it once, just before you arrived, and I haven’t a clue what it means.’
‘Then why did you read it to us? Not just because we were talking about dreams and Adam told us his. That’s too simple for you.’
‘I really do want to know what you think. I’m not playing games, honest.’
‘All right, I’ll believe you though there’s many who wouldn’t. All I can say is that it seems to me to be a typical male fantasy about sex and failure.’
Adam said, ‘How d’you work that out?’
‘Let’s have a look.’
Now it was Tess who pored over the pages. Adam watched as you watch someone who knows how to do something and hope by watching to learn the trick.
‘I mean,’ Tess said after a while, ‘all this about being stiff and lying over an abyss! He even uses the word “erected”. You don’t erect bridges, do you? You build them, surely? Then there’s the river. That’s always got to do with sex, hasn’t it. Water, flowing, channels. The image of the female. And it’s a trout stream! We all know what fishes swimming in a river are supposed to mean.’
‘What?’ Adam asked, not batting an eye.
Tess shot a glance at me. Did he really not know?
‘Well . . .’ she said, ‘penises, sperm, the male in the female . . . And then there’s this dark stranger with the stick – I suppose you’ll say that’s another penis – which he plunges into the man’s hair and then jumps onto the middle of his body. And after that the storyteller falls and smashes onto stones in the river and is ripped a
‘So all you think it means is he can’t get it up?’ I said.
‘But the figure who comes along is a man,’ Adam said.
‘Yes, well, I’d rather not go into that, thank you,’ Tess said, making her mock-shock face. ‘The whole thing seems pretty dubious to me. Unless the figure is his father, which would be bad enough. Which reminds me – it’s time I left you two to it.’
‘Now there’s an Oedipal connection,’ I said, laughing.
‘Left us to what?’ Adam said, beginning the banter of departure that matched the banter of arrival.
‘Whatever you do when I’m not here.’
‘Nothing near as exciting as we could do if you stayed.’
‘This place is becoming a den of vice,’ Tess said, making for the door. ‘In your minds, anyway. Night all. May flights of angels sing you to your rest.’
When she had gone, the sound of her bike echoing down the road, Adam picked up the book again and sat reading for long minutes. After a while he started humming (was he conscious of doing so or not?) a tune I couldn’t at first remember; then it came back: ‘. . . like a bridge over troubled waters I will lay me down . . .’
When at last he looked up, his expression serious, his eyes the other Adam’s eyes, he said, as if making the meaning plain, ‘It’s the stones, the stones in the rushing water.’
I nodded, pretending I understood. But I didn’t.
[– You and me, being so so clever, did we sense that talking about bridges and what bridges might mean wasn’t a good idea that night? It’s funny, but I can’t remember. I can remember the evening and saying the things you say we said – or most of them; I don’t remember any of those twittish puns! I do remember what we did and what we said and I even remember how I felt, but I don’t remember what I thought.
But I’m off the point, which is that it didn’t seem to occur to us that Adam’s dream was about a bridge and Kafka’s story was about a bridge and that there we all were sitting by a bridge, and that bridges are always about connecting two separated things, about joining things together that can’t meet otherwise, and about crossing from one side to the other. In either direction. That bridges are borders and boundaries. And are walls with holes in them. That things (rivers, roads, cars, boats) and people go through and under them as well as on and over. That they are places where people meet, where they hide, where they go to look down on what goes under. From where they fish, play Pooh-sticks, and sometimes have to pay to cross. And even throw themselves off.