He caught a much-prized glimpse of the platform. Camden Town and Chalk Farm were dispatched easily; less than five minutes after Mornington Crescent, the train slowed down for Belsize Park. The old Gujarati in the jacket had nodded off; the woman—Ananda saw them both through the window when he got off, hurtling forth—was in a wakeful slumber, eyes deep and fixed. Gone. He went up the stairs, then past the semi-circular hatch (through which the platform from which he’d just risen was visible), with its onrush of air each time a train approached or after it departed—invisible gust, by which you knew a journey’s aftermath or closeness. His uncle and he had strolled past the hatch a hundred times in their lackadaisical way: they never hurried for the trains, not even upon being warned by that warm breeze. Through the collapsible doors on to the spherical cage, the lift. More than anything—escalator or staircase—this antique piece of ironwork was his connection to what was subterranean here.
