Wednesday 25 March 2015

Fairground Part 2

For the audio click here
The Rollercoaster

It was difficult to know if my driver was alive or dead. He was seventy if he was a day but a well-kept seventy; grey hair, grey face, grey teeth, his wrinkles were etched with the exhaust fumes of life. He sat bolt upright in his seat, his breathing so shallow, the movements so minuscule that it was easy to miss them. The car seemed to glide along the roads as if on a monorail. The Sunday night streets were deserted, a ghost driver in a ghost town. There were no cars, no people, just the odd shadow lurking in the doorway or a side street. We sat in silence, the radio muted. The screen told me the radio station was playing Jefferson Airplane White Rabbit; despite not being able to hear it, I sang along in my mind.
I felt uneasy, vulnerable. I hadn’t checked where my hotel was, so didn’t know if the driver was taking me there or leading me a merry dance. Years of living in Prague had made me suspicious of all taxi drivers. I suppose I was a taxi driver racist. I judged them on their job not as individuals. The car dipped down into tunnels and then re-emerged at street level like the gentlest of roller coasters. I looked at my watch and then out of the window wondering when the ride would end. We were weaving in and out of the sparse traffic and side streets, zipping through lights on the brink of changing and gliding along these empty streets flanked with grandiose buildings. My driver remained passive, the automatic gearbox doing the work. Could he possibly have passed away since I’d clambered into the back of the car back at the airport? 
We hit another tunnel, I could see the darkness at the end of the tunnel but we didn’t head for it. Instead the driver took a right and headed into an offshoot, It was long and curved, we seemed to be doubling back on ourselves and was it my imagination or did we seem to be heading deeper underground? The curve of the road meant there was no end in sight. The driver seemed to be picking up speed, enjoying the empty roads. Jesus we were heading straight for the wall. He really was dead, and I would soon join him. At the very last minute the wall swung open like ghost train doors, revealing a hidden chamber, an evil megalomaniac’s lair. What the hell was this? Where was this strange ghost man taking me?

He pulled up, ‘Your hotel.’ He said as if answering my internal monologue. He pointed at a door with the livery of a famous chain of hotels written on it. I breathed for the first time in minutes, feeling relieved that we’d reached our destination and slightly silly that I’d thought I was being kidnapped.

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