mitad mitad

(a short sequence for Overworlds and Underworlds, part of Leeds Canvas for the Cultural Olympiad 2012)

My last bed made, cover pulled tight, fresh slip on the pillow. Across the street, the church spire. Neoclassical. 300 years of soot darkened stone. Harmony. Gravity frozen. Gateway to infinity. Only the toilet to bleach. Today I'll drink coffee the way I like it, make this city my own.

Holy Trinity spire piercing grey sky. The man sweeping leaves says the stone will be cleaned. 'This new shopping mall, the one they're building here. They're paying for it.' Plastic sheets flapping, scaffolding, generators, drills. 'Go inside,' he says. 'There's a cafe and the church is open.' 'I'll come back,' I tell him. It's raining too hard to stand still.

In the cafe on the corner of Boar Lane and Albion Street I order a double espresso and half a cup of warm milk. 'You want a half and half?' the barista says. 'Yes, please,' I say. He smiles and turns to his work, cropped hair shaved to a line along his golden neck. He charges me for the espresso only. 'We don't sell mitad mitad,' he says. 'Ah, nobody sells mitad mitad in England.' I sit by the window, watch the rain and the people and think of a barrio a long way away. When I look back, the barrista is watching me.

'I'm an architect by training,' I say, as we walk under the white wall of the Queens Hotel. 'I apply for jobs, and have to be patient.' He says, 'I've been patient for three years, I want to work in a lab, study the way particles emerge from emptiness. I'm very qualified. But I've learned to make coffee in the international style and be nice to customers.' 'You were nice to me,' I say. He looks down at his feet. 'Come on,' he says. 'I want to show you something an architect should see.'

In the station, he buys cigarettes at Journeys Friend and asks if I want chocolate. 'I'm fine,' I say. The coffee filled me. Then he leads me through the station and out the other side, down some steps, under a bridge and into the archway. 'It's a part of the city you don't see,' he says. We walk through, water running fast beneath us, rippling flow echoing off stone walls. When we come through into the daylight we're by a canal. Cafes, bars and tall office tower above. He says, 'My friend works here. In the kitchen. He brings food home. Come and eat at our house.'

'This way,' he says. We walk to a footbridge, cross the water and along a path beside a narrow river, tall modern flats above the landscaped bank. An Italianate campanile built in red brick to the left as we head out of the centre. 'It's a chimney,' he says. 'For a factory. They made pins. I've learned so much about this city.' 'Incredible,' I tell him. 'I can't believe the things I see here.' The path turns up onto a dual carriageway. We walk beside the traffic out toward Burley, the streets we live in, the houses we share.

*

Past midnight. Under the station. In the big archway. What am I doing here? Fast flowing river. Perfect curve of the bricks. 'Any deviation from the math and it collapses,' I say, pointing up. 'You are so serious,' he says. 'Come on, I’ll show you architecture that you can't imagine.' We stop at a side tunnel, blocked off by a wooden facade. He knocks on a door and when it opens steps through and hugs a guy in the dark interior. I follow inside, thinking, This is crazy, I'm new in this city. I don't know these people.

We walk to the far end of the archway in torchlight. Smell of old brick. Fungi. Stagnant water. 'Maybe I'll go home,' I say. 'Don't be scared,' he says. 'Just follow me.' He steps up between the sidewall and a steel mesh fence, takes my hand and pulls. We squeeze through a gap, onto a raised platform beside a rusty air duct. 'Where are we?' I say. 'The old city,' he says. 'Where they stored grain. Coal. Brought in on the canal. Before railways.' We step alongside the duct to the far wall. 'But what are we doing here?' 'I want to take you dancing,' he says. 'You have to let me take you dancing.'

I can't see the floor. My trainers scuff on the metal frame. We go to where the wall is opened for the duct to pass through. Step into another tunnel. The torch lighting the ceiling. Again, all brick, perfect curve, like a cathedral. A catacomb. Organic mosaic of decay. Green and vermillion. Empty. Unused. Lost to view. Then another hole in the wall. Through and into a wide room and the sound of voices and more torchlight. About a dozen people. They turn as we approach. Like the souls of lost workers. Someone asks if we brought the sounds.

He lifts his shoulder bag and takes out a laptop. Kneels down. Goes to work with jacks and leads that trail in from speakers around the walls. They switch off torches as the music starts. Low beats. Sound effects. I hear water, echoing footsteps, voices just out of range in the mix. Meshing. Notes blending into chords. A melody emerging. Like a lullaby. Then my hand is taken and I feel us pull in together. Arms around shoulders, heads leaning in and touching as we roll with the rhythm. And always the beat, like a heart. All our hearts synchronising. In the dark. Together. Under the city.

*

Taste of cold beer. Wooden chairs. Table in an empty bar at 3am. Window onto a square by the canal. Like a piazza. Glass and steel towers above, old stone paving below. 'My music is physical,' he says. 'I make it from the maths of our universe. The physics of what we are.' 'Who are those people?' I ask. 'They are friends, fans, I meet them online mostly. We share music and places. We have to find space where we can dance together. Fully immersed.' 'I was scared at first,' I say. 'It can be the best emotion to bring,' he says. 'Elemental. Are you still scared?' 'No, I feel safe. I feel the best I've felt since I came to this country.'

*

The city is quiet when I take a bus to work on the early shift, still tired from the night before. Kirkstall Road. Low roofed shopfronts giving way to depots, depositories. Then the centre and its glass towers. But always the old roads threading through. Boar Lane. Milk Hill. Albion Street. And buildings that survive, change with time. Cafes, bars, sandwich shops. I climb down opposite the station. Walk past Holy Trinity, cross and go into the hotel. To the staff room. Where workmates say, 'Hi' and smile. Upstairs in the corridors, the low hum of central heating. Another music. In another architecture. 

© danny broderick

pic from here