‘Bet yer can’t guess wot I do?’
I looked him over.
He looked pitiable; like an emasculated door mouse. He was in his dotage. Small of stature. Fidgety. Skin wrapped in centuries of folds that held god knows what secrets. He had a hooked nose, large furry ears, and bushy eyebrows. His face had a sulphury complexion under the light bulb that hung above us; its feeble glow our only source of light. His eyes were like diamond cutters – two magnetic bright blue beams that shone out from amongst the folds of flesh and pierced the smudgy blackness.
‘No you’re right, I can’t’
He looked up at me. His eyebrows reproaching me with their bushiness.
‘Garn!’ he cried with a playful shove. ‘Wot’s yer bleedin’ game, eh? Can yer not take a guess matey!’
‘Alright, alright’ I said.
‘Let me see. You’re the esteemed curator of the museum, right?’
I waited for another exasperated look of indignation.
Instead he smiled and nodded approvingly.
‘That my friend is coweckt-a-mundo’
‘You, you are?!’ I stuttered, surprised.
‘You? Me? Yes me, who else can yer see with us laddy?’
The poor man had been summoned up to the surface to fetch me - to be my guide. And he seemed rather pleased about it too. I suspected he was nocturnal and didn’t get out much. The two of us were crammed in an elevator heading downwards; the ancient winch and pulley mechanism variety; its cogwheels moaning and complaining to each other. I got the impression that the elevator wasn’t used often.
‘Sorry I didn’t quite catch your name, what was it again?’ I asked
‘Again?’ he replied ‘I’ve not given yer my name laddy so there’s no again about it! but as you ask so kindly you can go callin’ me Kenny’
‘Ok, so tell me Mr Kenny, do you get many visitors down here?’ It was pretty obvious they didn’t. The elevator itself would scare them away.
‘V’zeetors? V’zeetors! Wot wud we wont v’zeetors down ere’ for? Wen der’s plenty of em’ ponces crawling up der!’ he shrilled.
‘Ahh the bo-em’ Kenny sighed. He’d reached home. The bottom.
What surprised me was that we hadn’t so much stopped at the bottom but landed on it. Before I could add anything further we we’re off. It was dark below. The air was dank and draughty. We walked through a warren of corridors and tunnels lined with vaults. The floor was stony and it echoed with our footsteps. All sounds were amplified down here; like mortars tearing through the air. You could hear your laboured breathing, the steady drip-drip of distant leaking pipes, and the furtive scurrying of a large portion of London’s rodent population and all this to the backdrop of looming shadows that lunged at you with vengeance. You could hear the constant drone of the overhead light bulbs; amberesque balls of grimy-yellow that ran along the ceiling in single file like soldiers and disappeared into the depths as far as the eye could see. How long the tunnels were!
Kenny went into his (little used) tour-guide routine:
‘Four miles of corridors serving 153 individual coffered domed vaults. We have 3,567 light bulbs, each of which I have personally changed at-least 5 times…’
Suddenly there was a deep rumbling under our feet followed by the sound of grinding gears. It sounded suspiciously like a train.
‘and that is the Piccadilly Line westbound train to’ he paused, ‘to Russell Square’ – Kenny was on a roll.
‘When were these tunnels and vaults built?’ I asked.
‘Ooh, ages ago mate. Yonks before the fire n’way’
‘The great fire of London in 1666?’
‘Yus, dats wight. If yer look up T’ ceilin’ he said pointing ‘In them corners yer can still see the blackened stumps of the wood beams that wer burnt. The inferno must ‘ave raged ‘ell above, but the roof is made of stone so the vaults wer saved. Them vaults r’ old laddy. They wer around well before the Great Sewage Works Building Program of the 1500s. I know this cos me mate who works in the sewers and he say’s to me one day the sewers go around these vaults. There wer som arch‘ologists that came round er last year; pokin n’ peepin’ and wot av yer with der fancy E’kwipment n’ all. Dunno wot they found tho’ – if anyfink dat is’
‘Oh no, the current building above was built in the 1600s. It first belonged to some o’ganization or suffink and then they turned it to a museum. Before all that there was a church ere on this sight. The museum building was built on the foundations of the old church building yer see. The underground vaults however ave always been ere’. Even before the church. I’m not sure if anybody knows wen tho. Maybe those archi ‘ologists know. Who knows?
‘But you’ve been here for years right? Do you not have any ideas?’
‘Wot I fink don't matter. But I fink these vaults go back years, as far back as the Crusades’
Then he paused
‘Look there’s suffink ere’ I wanna show yer. I think those arch’ologists missed this. Yer game?’
‘Er, Yeah. Sure’ I said.
Secret Vault
We headed into a vault in the corner. There was nothing especial about it. It had a coffered-domed ceiling just like the others. On the far side there was a rectangular niche built into the wall. This too was not unfamiliar but on closer inspection, when you poked your head into it, you noticed that one of the sides of the niche had a narrow passage that a single person could pass through sideways. When you went through to the other-side, you was in another vault. A vault onto another!
But this second vault was different. It had a ribbed-ceiling not coffered like the others and patterned cornice running around its knees. It was much older -12th century Romanesque style I'd guess. But what was really startling was what adorned the wall on the far side. I walked towards it. It was a large arch structure, containing a ‘Jali’ or latticework screen with geometrical patterns. There were two panels on either side of the bottom with fret patternage. The outer rim of the arch itself had further layers of herring bone patterns, floral undulations, carved stone and finally a series of inscriptions. The design had arabesque motifs. It looked like a ‘Mihrab’ found in mosques indicating the direction to Mecca but the inscriptions at the top and those surrounding the arch were not Arabic at all. On closer inspection they looked liked 'Sanskrit'. It was wholly inexplicable - an Arabic design but Sanskrit calligraphy? I had never seen anything like it before! I would have liked to have studied it further but Kenny was growing impatient. So we headed back out.
The Diary
We entered the vault that housed the Dr Alexander Von Nutterboffin collection. The air was gristled with the unmistakable smell of old paper. The vault was lined with sheaves and sheaves of it. Floor to ceiling; buff and yellowed and dog eared by age and covered in a thin patina of dust. The paper lined the walls and it seemed to buttress the ceilings; our only protection from the roof caving in.
'jus press the buzzer if yer need me - yeah?’ and then he was off
Soon I was rummaging through the paperwork. I found a diary belonging to the doctor and began reading...
Extracts from Dr Nutterboffin's Diary:
May 17th, 1963 – Soil mainly sandstone with occasional Syenite crystals indicating igneous rock history. Nothing extraordinary there. It’s lovely to sit here at sunset under the shade of the cool elongated shadows, especially after the furnace of the day. The scene is landscaped by the Karakoram Range in the far distance under whose feet the gentle undulating curves of the Pamir foothills ripple like satin sheets. Beautiful!
Carbon – normal
Sodium – normal
Sulphur – normal
Helium – less than normal (due to reduced biomass – living organisms)
Cadmium – abnormally high concentrations
Potassium – abnormally high concentrations
Unknown – traces of unidentified element (further analysis required)
May 29th, 1963 - Have dug through the main soil substrata level. Nothing so far. Hard chalky layer next. Took the afternoon off to pay a visit to the nearby village of ‘Nanga Ghandu’. As I entered, the village shamen jumped out from under a tree where he had been masticating some betel leaves. His eyes were vacuous as if he were stoned. He performed a little ritual on me; reciting some incantations all the while jigging his arms from side to side. He made me drink some philtre, and then put a talisman round my neck – presumably to ward of evil spirits.
Thought: Who are they protecting? Me or themselves!
Anthropological note: animalistic nature of ritual at odds with Islamic teaching, yet somehow the locals have fused it into their beliefs – ritual practiced in many other villages bordering the dam. Found no evidence of its existence in farther afield/outlying villages.
Village elders were very kind and hospitable. We had chai. Told them I wanted to know more about the history of the area. So was taken to a hovel that belonged to the oldest person in the village. A women whose birth certificate claimed she was 147 years old (unable to vouch accuracy but record keeping 147 years ago would have been lacking!) – but she did look very old. Her name was Masi Jaan Jalebi. There she stood in front of me. All 4ft 8 inches of her and rather sprightly for her age too! A wizened creature; shrivelled by the heat, her teeth having long departed her, and her husband an even more ancient memory. Looking at her eyes was like looking through layers of tree rings. She lived alone with her chickens, which could be heard clucking and cooing under her bed. The inside of her hut was cool, the walls covered in baked mud and blackened by the soot from the indoor brazier.
