Underland: A Deep Time Journey

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

171–172

text excerpt

[Macfarlane has been in the Paris catacombs for two days with a group of urban explorers]

Two days later, we are ready to leave the invisible city.  […]

So we return to our point of entry.  Hours of tiring travel through tunnels from the far north-west of the system.  […]  We reach the access hole and climb, one by one, up and out into the railway tunnel.

After days in confinement, its arched ceiling seems huge as a ballroom.  The air is free of stone dust.  Away to our left is a familiar arch of light.  We crunch back down the track.  The arch grows and brightens.  Green fringes it, hanging down in long lianas, and green is a new colour again.

[…]

We stop at the point where the light meets the shadow, look up, and there is the impossible sun, soon to drop below the buildings that rise above the cutting sides.  We speak quietly to one another.  Our hair is pomaded with sweat and stone dust, our skin is pale.  The air here in the open smells of cucumber and smoke.  A woman is hanging white sheets out on the balcony of one of the apartments high above us.

I hear the first bars of Emil Gilels playing the Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1, one of the few pieces of classical music I know from even a scatter of notes.  The notes drift down along with the leaves to gather in the cutting, and I think I am dreaming the music, but the others can hear it too and it is extraordinary to me that someone should be playing this now, here.

excerpt from 'Underland: A Deep Time Journey' pp. 171–172 (271 words)

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