Banks, Iain M - The Bridge

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Synopsis

A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself

in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where

dream and fantasy, past and future fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or

has he never been so alive before?

'Iain Banks of THE WASP FACTORY eclipses that sensational debut...a real dazzler' Daily Mail

'Great artistry, great virtuosity ... great exuberance' New Statesman

'This one's his best yet' New Musical Express

'THE BRIDGE is serious, but playful; it is full of throwaway jokes, minor tangles for the reader to sort

out, political/cultural references to the kind of reality that rarely gets into British literature, and nuggets of

surprising truth juxtaposed with outrageous lies... convincing in a way too little fantasy or mainstream

literature is' City Limits

ISBN 0-349-10215-5

Notes:

The horizontal lines represent sections of the book that were separated with a large amount of whitespace.

12 June 2001 : v1.0 : Scanned/proofed by HugHug

Contents

Coma

Metaphormosis One

Metaphormosis Two

Metaphormosis Three

Metaphormosis Four

Triassic

Metamorpheus One

Metamorpheus Two

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Metamorpheus Three

Metamorpheus Four

Eocene

Metamorphosis Oligocene

Metamorphosis Miocene

Metamorphosis Pliocene

Metamorphosis Quaternary

Coda

Coma

Trapped. Crushed. Weight coming from all directions, entangled in the wreckage (you have to become

one with the machine). Please no fire, no fire. Shit. This hurts. Bloody bridge; own fault (yes, bloody

bridge, right colour; see the bridge, see the man drive the car, see the man not see the other car, see the big

CRASH, see the bone-broken man bleed; blood colour of the bridge. Oh well own fault. Idiot). Please no

fire. Blood red. Red blood. See the man bleed, see the car leak; radiator red, blood red, blood like red oil.

Pump still working - shit, I said shit this hurts - pump still working but the fluid leaking out all over the

fucking place. Probably get hit from behind now and serve me right, but at least no fire, yet anyway; how

long, I wonder how long since? Cars; police cars (jam sandwiches) jam sandwich; me am di jam in di

sandwich car am di sandwich. See the man bleed. Own fault. Pray nobody else hurt (no don't pray, atheist,

remember that, always swore [mother: 'no need to use that sort of language'] always swore you'd be the

atheist in the fox hole well your time has come lad because you're leaking away onto the grey-pink road

and a fire might start and you might be dying anyway, and you might get hit up the backside by another

car if anybody else is staring stupefied at that damn bridge so if you're going to start praying now would

seem like quite a reasonable time but ahshit and whatthehell - CHRISTTHISHURTS! [OK; used only as

swear-word, nothing serious, honest; swear to God.] OK: see you God, yer a basturt, so ye are.) That's

telling them all, kid. What were those letters? MG; VS; and me, 233 FS. But what about - ? Where - ?

Who - ? Oh shit, I've forgotten my name. This happened once at a party; drunk and stoned and stood up

too quick, but this time it's different (and how come I remember forgetting that time and can't remember

my name now? This sounds serious. I don't like this. Get me out of this.)

I see a chasm in the rain forest, bridge of creepers, and a river far below; a big white cat (me?) comes

leaping along the trail, pounding onto the bridge; white it is (is this me?), an albino jaguar, racing across

the swaying bridge (what am I seeing? Where is this? Is this what really happened?) long flinging strides,

white death (should be black but I've got a negative attitude, ha ha) tearing across the bridge -

It's stopped. The scene whitens, holes appear in it; a film burning through (fire!), trapped in the gate

(jaguar in the gate?); stopped, the scene melts, the seen scene disintegrates (see the seen scene

disintegrate); nothing stands too close enquiry. White screen left.

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Pain. Circle of pain on chest. Like a brand, a circular impression (am I a figure on a stamp, postmarked?

A piece of parchment embossed with 'From the library of .........'. (Please complete:

(a) God, Esq

(b) Nature (Mrs)

(d) K. Marx pic

(e) all of the above.))

Pain. White noise, white pain. First weight from all directions, now pain. Ah life's never-ending variety. I

am moved. Mobile man; am I cut free? Or has a fire started? Am I just dying, bleached out, drained

away? (Returned, overdue?) I see nothing now (I see everything now). I lie on a flat plain, surrounded by

tall mountains (or maybe on a bed, surrounded by ... machines? People? Either; both (Like, man, in the

really wide view, they're the same. Far out.) Who cares? Do I care? Shit, maybe I'm already dead, maybe

there's life after life ... hmm. Maybe all the rest was a dream (yeah, sure), and I wake up to

('Thedarkstation') - what was that?

Did you hear that? Did I hear that?

The dark station. There it was again. A noise like a train whistle; something about to depart. Something

about to begin, or end, or both. Something that is THEDARKSTATION me.

Or not (me no know. Me new here. No ask me.)

The dark station.

Oh, all right ...

Metaphormosis:

One

The dark station, shuttered and empty, echoed to the distant, fading whistle of the departing train. In the

grey evening light the whistle sounded damp and cold, as though the cloud of exhausted steam producing

it had imparted some of its own character to the noise. The mountains, covered in their close, dark weave

of trees, absorbed the sound like heavy cloth soaking up drizzle; only the faintest of echoes came back,

reflected from where crags and cliffs and slopes of jumbled scree and fallen boulders broke the

conformity of forest.

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When the noise of the whistle had died away, I stood for a while, facing the deserted station, reluctant to

turn to the silent carriage behind me. I listened, trying to catch some last hint of the engine's own busy

noise as it steamed down the steep valley; I wanted to hear its panting breath, the busy clatter of its

pistoned hearts, the chatter of its valves and slides. But though no other sound disturbed the valley's still

air, I could hear nothing of the train or its engine; they were gone. Above, the steeply pitched roofs and

thick chimneys of the station stood out against the overcast sky, black on grey. Some wisps of steam or

smoke, only slowly dissipating in the valley's moist, chill air, hung above the black slates and soot-

darkened bricks. An odour of burned coal and the damp, used smell of steam seemed to cling to my

clothes.

I turned to look at the carriage. It was sealed, locked from the outside and fastened with thick leather

straps. It was black-painted, funereal. In the traces two nervous mares stamped at the leaf-strewn road

leading from the station. They shook their dark heads and rolled their huge eyes. Their harnesses clinked

and jingled, rocking the carriage behind them slightly, and from their flared nostrils issued clouds of

steam; equine impressions of the departed train.

I inspected the carriage's shuttered windows and locked doors, testing the tight leather strapping and

pulling on the metal handles, then I climbed to the driver's seat and took up the reins. I stared at the

narrow track leading into the forest. I reached for the whip, hesitated, then put it back, unwilling to disturb

the valley's atmosphere of silence. I took hold of the wooden brake lever. In some strange inversion of

physiology, my hands were moist while my mouth was dry. The carriage shook, perhaps due to the

restless movements of the horses.

The sky above was dull and grey and uniform. The higher peaks around me were obscured somewhere

above the tree line by the smooth mat of cloud; their jagged summits and sharp ridges seemingly levelled

by the soft, clinging vapour. The light was at once shadowless and pervasively dim. I took out my watch

and realised that even if all went well I was unlikely to finish my journey in daylight. I patted the pocket

containing my flint and tinder; I could make my own light when that around me failed. The carriage

rocked again, and the horses stamped and stirred, craning their necks round, eye-whites bulging.

I could delay no further. I released the brake and urged the pair into a trot. The carriage lurched and

creaked, rumbling heavily over the rutted road, away from the dark station and into the darker forest.

The road climbed through the trees, past small clearings and over hollow-bellied wooden bridges. In the

darkness and the silence of the forest, the torrents beneath the bridges were rushing oases of pale, white

light and chaotic noise.

The air grew steadily colder as we climbed. The mares' breath wreathed back around me, thick with the

smell of their sweat. The perspiration on my own brow and hands was chill. I reached into my coat for my

gloves, and my hand brushed against the thick grip of the revolver in my jacket. I fastened my gloves,

drew my coat closer about me, and as I tightened the belt of the garment, was impelled to look again at

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the bindings and fastenings securing the carriage behind me. In the gloom, however, it was impossible to

tell whether the straps still held or not.

The way steepened between the thinning trees; the mares laboured up the rutted track, into the lower

reaches of the dark grey overcast, wisps of barely seen cloud mingling with and absorbing thier ghostly

white breath. The valley beneath was a formless black pit; not a single light, no fire or movement, and no

sound that I could detect issued from its depths. A groan seemed to come from the carriage as we rolled

into the enveloping clouds; it lurched as a wheel struck and rolled over a rock in the track. I patted the

pistol concealed within my jacket, determining that the groan I had heard was simply that of the carriage's

wooden couplings flexing against each other. The cloud grew thicker. The small, stunted trees just visible

at the sides of the rough track looked like the dwarfish, deformed sentinels of some phantom fortress.

I stopped in the mist on a level length of the track. The carriage lamps produced, when the flames had

steadied, two cones of light which did little to illuminate thp ground far beyond the sweat-slicked, tossing

heads of the mares, but the lamps' hiss was somehow purposeful and comforting. In their glare, I again

checked the carriage bindings. Some had loosened, doubtless due to the road's many corrugations and

stony obstacles. I turned the lamps in their sockets, pointing them forward again once my inspection was

completed. Their diffused beams encountered the damp vapour like contrary shadows, obscuring more

than they revealed.

The carriage rose through the clouds and out of them, following the increasingly broken surface of the

track as it gradually levelled out and straightened, heading through a narrow defile in the rocks where the

mists slowly thinned. The lamps on either side of me seemed to hiss more quietly, and their beams

became sharper. We approached the saddle of the pass and the small plateau beyond.

The last tendrils of the mist stroked past the gleaming flanks of the horses and the strapped sides of the

carriage like nebulous fingers reluctant to let us go. Above, the stars shone.

Grey peaks rose into blackness on either side, jagged and alien. The confined plateau was steel grey under

the bright stars; dark shadows spread from the rocks on either side of us where the beams of the lamps

struck them. The clouds behind formed a hazy ocean, lapping at the sharp islands of distant peaks rising

from it. I looked back to see those summits on the far side of the valley we had left, and when I turned to

the fore again immediately saw the lights of the oncoming carriage.

My initial start disturbed the mares, causing them to shy and swerve. I checked them immediately and

urged them forward again, calming my foolish heart as best I could and reproving myself for such

nervousness. The distant carriage, twin-lamped like my own, was still some way off, at the far end of the

flattened crucible which formed the summit of the pass.

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I settled the revolver further into my inner pocket and flicked the reins, sending the gasping mares into a

slow trot which even on that level surface they struggled to maintain. The opposing set of lights,

flickering yellow stars come down to earth, wavered, their approach quickening.

Near the centre of the plateau, in the midst of the boulder-field, our carriages slowed. The road through

the pass was broad enough for only a single vehicle, the larger rocks and stones having been cleared to

each side to provide a way through the broken terrain. A small passing place, an oval area where a width

of road greater than a single carriage had been swept from the surrounding rubble, lay equidistant between

my own carriage and that approaching. I was now able to discern the two white horses pulling the vehicle

and, despite the glare of the flickering lamps, make out an indistinct figure seated on the driver's box. I

reined the mares in, letting them amble slowly forward so that our two carriages would meet at the

passing place. My counterpart appeared to anticipate me, and also slowed.

It was at that instant that a strange, unnamable fear gripped me; a sudden and uncontrollable spasm of

shivering ran through me, as if an electric charge had struck my body, some lightning bolt, invisible and

silent, leaping from that clear, still sky. Our carriages reached the opposite ends of the small passing area.

I swerved to the right; the carriage facing me went to its left, so that our teams faced one another, each

blocking the other's way. They stopped, even before I and the other driver reined them in. I pulled back,

clicking with my tongue, persuading the animals to reverse. The other carriage also retreated. I waved at

the shadowy figure on the other vehicle, trying to indicate I would go to the left this time, allowing him to

pass on my right. He waved simultaneously. Our carriages stopped. I was unable to determine whether the

gesture by the other driver was meant to show he agreed to proceed or not. I pulled the two panting mares

to my left. Again the other carriage moved as though to block me, but so immediately that it appeared we

had moved simultaneously once more.

Defeated again, I stopped the two mares; they faced their ghostly opposites across a clear space of air

which was filled by their joined breaths. I decided that rather than retreat on this occasion I would hold

my own carriage steady and wait for the other driver to do so, thus enabling me to pass.

The other carriage remained, quite stationary. An increasing unease caused my whole frame to stiffen. I

felt impelled to stand up, shading my eyes from the glare of the sputtering lamps and attempting to see the

driver facing me across this short but frustratingly impassable distance between us. I saw the other man

rise to his feet as well, for all the world as though he was my own reflection; I would have sworn that he

too raised one hand to his eyes, just as I had done.

I remained still. My heart beat quickly within my chest, and the strange clamminess I had experienced on

my hands before returned, even within my hide gloves. I cleared my throat and hailed the man on the

opposite carriage. 'Sir! If you please, go-'

I halted. The other driver had spoken - and stopped speaking - just at the moment I had started, and then

stopped. His voice was not an echo, he did not speak the words I spoke, and I was not even sure that he

had spoken the same language, but the tone had been similar to my own. A nervous fury gripped me; I

waved violently to the right, he gesticulated at the same moment to his left. 'Right!' I shouted as he too

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called out.

I remained standing for a moment, unable to pretend to myself that the tremor which ran through me then

was any sort of reaction to the physical temperature; I trembled, I did not shiver, and as much to take the

weight from my now unsteady legs as to proceed with my just decided course, I sat down quickly.

Without looking directly at my opponent - for so I now thought of this person apparently determined to

prevent my progress - I took up the whip and cracked it over the mares, guiding them left. I heard no other

whip crack, but the pair of white horses facing me reared like my own pair, then swerved to their right, so

that the four beasts rushed momentarily towards each other, before they reared once more, forelegs rising,

harnesses jangling, heads and flailing legs almost touching. Crying out, standing again, cracking the whip

over them, I pulled them back, attempted to pass the other carriage on its opposite side. Again I was

thwarted, the carriage facing me seeming to mirror my every action.

I drew the nervous, head-tossing mares back at last, facing the equally disturbed pair on the other side of

the rock-cleared oval space. My hands were shaking and a cold sweat had broken on my brow. I squinted

ahead, desperate to see just who my strange adversary was, but above the glare of the carriage lamps there

was only the faintest outline of a figure, and the face was quite invisible.

There was no mirror I was certain (even this absurd possibility at that moment seemed more acceptable

than anything else), and besides, the horses facing me were white, not dark like the pair attached to my

carriage. I wondered what to do next. I could see no alternative route through the pass; the boulders and

rocks which had been cleared to form the track had been piled-up forming a makeshift wall half the height

of a man on either side of the way. Even if I was able to find a gap, the ground beyond would be so rough

and broken as to remain impassable.

I put the whip away, climbed down to the stony ground. The other driver did the same. I hesitated when I

saw this, the sensation of unattributable but intense unease striking me again. Almost involuntarily, I

turned and looked behind me, past the sealed carriage, down the road from the lip of the plateau. To

return, to retrace my steps, was unthinkable. Even had my purpose been mundane, had I been some

ordinary traveller merely intent on reaching a remote inn or distant town on the other side of the pass, I

would have been reluctant in the extreme to turn back; I had seen no other tracks or roads deviating from

the path I had taken from the station far below in the valley, and I had heard of no other pass through

these mountains within a day's ride. Given the nature of my cargo and the urgency of my mission, I had

no choice but to continue on the way I had chosen. Under the pretence of pulling my collar tighter about

me, I pressed the bulk of my concealed revolver against my chest. Stealing myself, trying to reach within

my being to draw on whatever reserves of rationality and courage I could find, it all but escaped my

notice that the figure standing in the glare of the opposing lights seemed to mimic my movements, also

pulling on his lapels or collar, before stepping forward.

The fellow was dressed something like myself; in truth, any other apparel in that frigid atmosphere would

have invited a quick end. His coat might have been a little longer, his body a little more thick set than

mine. He and I came level with the shaking heads of our horses. My heart was beating, now, with a

rapidity and a ferocity I could not recall having experienced before; a sort of horror drew me on, made me

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walk towards this still not-quite-seen figure. It was as if some magnetic repulsion, which before had kept

our two carriages from meeting and passing, had now been reversed, and so sucked me inexorably

forward, drawing me towards something my heart made clear I feared - or should fear - utterly, in the way

some people are fatally attracted towards an abyss while standing on its very edge.

He stopped. I stopped. It was with a surging sense of relief, a brief feeling of total and unalloyed joy that I

saw this man did not have my own face. His face was squarer than my own, his eyes were closer together

and deeper set, and over his mouth there was a dark moustache. He looked at me, standing in the light of

my lamps as I stood in the light of his, and inspecting my face with, I imagined, the same intense and

relieved expression I exhibited myself. I started to speak, but got no further than 'My good -' before I

stopped. The man had started to talk at the same time as I had; some short word or phrase, seemingly

addressing me as I had been about to address him. It was, I was now sure, a foreign tongue he used, but I

could not identify it. I waited for him to speak again, but he stood without speaking, apparently studying

my face.

We shook our heads at the same moment. 'This is a dream,' I said quietly, while he spoke softly in his own

tongue. 'This cannot be happening,' I continued. 'This is not possible. I am dreaming and you are

something from within myself.' We fell silent, together.

I looked at his carriage, as he looked at mine. His conveyance appeared to be the same type as my own.

Whether his was sealed, locked and strapped shut like mine, whether its contents were as important and

awful as those secured in my carriage, I could not tell.

I stepped suddenly to one side; he moved at the same instant, as though to block me. We stepped back. I

could smell the fellow now; a strange odour of some musky perfume mingling with stale hints of a foreign

spice or bulb. His face wrinkled slightly, exactly as if he were smelling something from my person,

something he found vaguely unsettling or distasteful. One of his eyebrows flickered oddly, just as I

remembered my pistol. I had the most absurd and fleeting mental picture of us pulling and firing our

revolvers, and the lead projectiles meeting and striking each other in mid air, flattening into a perfectly

circular coin of squashed metal. My imperfect double smiled, just as I did so myself. We shook our heads;

this motion at least seemed not to require translating, though it occurred to me that a similarly slow and

thoughtful nodding of the head would have suited the situation just as well.. We each stepped back, and

looked around at the quiet, cold, barren landscape of that high place as though in its very desolation we

might find something to inspire one of us, or both.

I could think of nothing.

We each turned, walked back to our carriages and climbed into our seats.

A dim figure in the shadow behind the uneven light of his carriage's lamps (as I no doubt was to him), he

sat, motionless for a while, then took up the reins - just as I did - with a sort of resigned shrug and a

bending of the back and a grasping with one hand which looked like the motions of an old man (and I

mirrored him, and I knew a sort of ancient bitterness, a heaviness, an ice-brittle thickness which invaded

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me, more deadly and intense than any air-borne chill).

He tugged gently at the heads of his horses; I signalled to mine in the same fashion. We started to turn our

carriages round, using our own confined area of the small passing place, edging back and forth and

whistling together at our horses.

When we are level, I decided, square on like battling ships of the line, I shall draw my gun and shoot. I

cannot go back; no matter that he will not give way, regardless of his determination; I must go on, I have

no choice.

We slowly manoeuvred our awkward vehicles until they were abreast. His, like mine, was locked,

shuttered, strapped tight. He looked at me, and reached, with an almost complacent slowness, into his

coat, just as I did the same thing, feeling past my jacket to the inside pocket and carefully withdrawing my

gun. Would he remove his glove? We each hesitated, then he unbuttoned his glove at the wrist, just as I

did. He laid the glove on the seat as his side, then raised the gun to point at me.

He pulled the trigger just as I did. There were two small clicks, nothing more.

We each pulled the chambers open; in the light of one lamp I could see the hammer in my gun had struck

home on the base of the cartridge; a tiny dent showed on the copper-coloured metal. The round, like his

apparently, had been damp, or somehow badly made. This happens, occasionally.

He looked at me again, and our smiles were sad. We each put our revolvers back in our jackets, then we

turned our carriages fully round, and I with my dread load, and he with his, rode back, towards the valleys

and the clouds.

'. . .then we both fire at the same time, or at least we both pull the triggers at the same time, but nothing

happens. Both rounds are duds. So we just. . . smile at each other, in a resigned sort of way, I suppose, and

finish turning the carriages right round, and then head back the way we came.' I stop talking.

Dr Joyce looks at me over his gold-rimmed spectacles. 'Is that it?' he says. I nod.

'Then I wake up.'

'Just like that?' Dr Joyce sounds annoyed. 'No more?'

'End of dream,' I tell him, crisply emphatic.

Dr Joyce looks profoundly unconvinced (I don't blame him really, this is all a pack of lies), and shakes his

head in what may well be a gesture of exasperation.

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We are standing in the centre of a room with six black walls and no furniture; it is a rackets court, and we

are near the end of a game. Dr Joyce - fiftyish, not unfit, but a little puffy - believes in sharing the pursuits

of his patients where he can; we both play rackets, so rather than sit in his office we came here for a game.

I've been telling him my dream in instalments between points.

Dr Joyce is all pink and grey: grey frizzy hair, pink face, and mottled grey-pink arms and legs poking out

from his grey shorts and shirt. His eyes, however, behind the gold-rimmed, chain-secured glasses, are

blue: sharp, hard blue and set in his pink face like fragments of glass stuck in a plate of raw meat. He is

breathing hard (I am not), perspiring profusely (I only broke sweat in the last point), and looking very

suspicious (as I've said, with good reason).

'You wake up?' he says.

I try to sound as annoyed as I can: 'Damn it man, I can't control what I dream. ' (A lie.)

The doctor issues a professional sigh and uses his fielding-racket to scoop up the ball he missed at the end

of the last point. He stares intently at the serving wall. 'You to serve first, Orr,' he says sourly.

I serve, followed by the doctor. Rackets is a game for two players, each with two rackets; a fielding-racket

and a shot-racket. It is played in a hexagonal, black-painted court, with two pink balls. This last fact,

subjected to the unsubtle allotrope of humour which passes for wit on the bridge, has resulted in rackets

being known as 'the man's game'. Dr Joyce knows the game better than I do, but he is shorter, heavier,

older and less well co-ordinated. I have been playing the game for only six months (my physiotherapist

recommended it), but I win the point - and the game - easily enough, fielding one ball while the doctor

fumbles the other. He stands, panting, glaring at me, a very picture of pink pique. 'You're sure there's no

more?' he says.

'Positive,' I tell him.

Dr Joyce is my dream doctor. He specialises in the analysis of dreams and believes that by analysing mine

he will be able to discover more about me than I am able to tell him through any conscious effort (I am an

amnesiac). Using whatever he finds by this method, he then hopes somehow to jog my delinquent

memory back into action: hoopla! With one mighty leap of the imagination I shall be free. I have been

doing my honest best to co-operate with him in this noble venture for over half a year now, but my

dreams have always been either too vague to be accurately recalled, or too banal to be worth analysing. In

the end, not wanting to disappoint the increasingly frustrated doctor, I have resorted to inventing a dream.

I rather hoped my dream of the sealed carriages would give Dr Joyce something to get his yellow-grey

teeth into, but from his peeved look and belligerent stance, I get the impression that this is not the case.

He says, 'Thanks for the game.'

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file:///F|/rah/Iain%20Banks/Banks,%20Iain%20-%20The%20Bridge.htmlSynopsisAmanliesinacomaafteranear-fatalaccident.Hisbodybroken,hismemoryvanished,hefindshimselfinthesurrealworldofthebridge-aworldfreeoftheusualconstrain softimeandspace,aworldwheredreamandfantasy,pastandfuturefuse.Whoisthisman?Wherei...

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Banks, Iain M - The Bridge.pdf

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Banks, Iain M - The Bridge

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