Paul and Luke took the last tube home and didn’t mention the play. Usually they deconstructed everything they saw exhaustively, but not this. Paul talked about rehearsals and Luke listened, and tried to get himself back, and pretend. At Barons Court they bought some stale chips for half price by the tube station just as the chip shop was closing. At three o’clock in the morning Paul and Leigh were woken from deep sleep by Luke shouting. It was an incoherent cry from some far-off place. They lay rigidly, waiting, but there wasn’t another sound. In his room, Luke had sat up in bed to be sure he wouldn’t risk returning to the terror of his dream. He was sweating. Cold. Imprisoned. He thought of Nina Jacobs kneeling blind and bound. The play had cut him open and there she’d been, offering herself up to be saved. He had been stripped to nothingness and then the pretty sight of her, like an answer. She had seemed so right to him. She seemed to call out. Kafka’s The Penal Colony was about to open and it felt inconceivable it would be ready.
