Black Water

Waterloo Bridge. The mighty Thames.

Bridges are always offensive to the gods, we've read. They're the symbol of hubris, of over-striving. Who would think themselves stronger than the currents and tides?

The gods of the river need to be appeased. The Greeks used to cut the throats of animal suspended above the river. They used to throw live horses into the waters, or sacrifice them on the banks. Later, they used to build shrines and chapels on bridges, and priests would spend their whole lives there, accepting offerings from passers-by.

And weren't there more ancient traditions of sacrificing a child to appease the river? W. shudders. The Thames is full of all kinds of offerings: jewellery and figurines, spear-heads and battle axes, mutilated effigies of the saints, crucifixes with the head of Christ removed perfectly preserved in the mud and silt …

Should we throw ourselves in?, we wonder, looking down at the restless, heaving river. But if we threw ourselves in? Ah, but the river wouldn't want us. We would propriate no god, who were neither innocent, like children, or full of life, like horses. Our blood would not mingle the water. And we're worth nothing, or no more than those countless obscure sufferers drawn to the river to throw themselves in. What would it matter if we died, and to who? We'll write nothing worthwhile. We'll think no worthwhile thoughts. Just the reverse! The very opposite!

The river is calling us, W. says, he can hear it. The waters are calling us home, obscurity to obscurity. Will I jump first? Will he? Will we hold hands and jump together?

Ah, where would the river bear us, if we threw ourselves in? To the Dead Man's Stairs at Wapping, where suicides wash up? To Dead Man's Dock near the Isle of Dogs where tide and current wash up the dead? Or perhaps we'd be borne out past Lower Hope Reach, our bodies decomposing in the English channel.

But the river wouldn't want us, W.'s sure of that. We'd be pulled up from the waters, our stomachs pumped of the polluted water. They'd slap us round the face. Wake up! Wake up! And his eyes would open and see me. And he'd retch up the black river water from the bottom of his lungs.