Polystom (Gollancz Sf S.)

by Adam Roberts

  ‘Shall we?’ he said, making himself meet her gaze.

  She didn’t reply, but she did unhook her legs and lie back on the mattress. His own urgency pushing him on, Stom clambered on top of her. She exhaled in discomfort as his elbow crushed into her ribs. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered, but he was already fumbling at her crotch with his right hand, inserting himself. There was a delicious sense of slipping inside. He could have cried with the pleasure of it. He started a rapid flexing motion with his whole body, going in, in, in, and arrived at his climax almost at once.

  For the briefest time he was motionless, still inside her, his head clarified and free. Then there followed the sour falling away, the slippage back into flesh, the awkward sensation of post-coital belatedness. He was aware that he had come much too rapidly, which in turn made him feel unmanned, lessened. She would have expected more. She wouldn’t have enjoyed that very much. And, underneath that thought was a darker one: that it was somehow her fault that he had come so soon. If she had been more . . . accommodating. If she had played along, played with him a little; or allowed herself, somehow, to take more pleasure, instead of simply flopping back and opening her legs. If she hadn’t enjoyed it, then she had herself to blame. Sex was a two-way process surely. He pulled out, and rolled back, resentment curdling in his chest. She was doing it all wrong; this was not what he had the right to expect from a wife.

  He pulled off the prophylactic. The gum adhered clammily to his now soggy flesh. A portion near the end had ballooned out into a little sphere, his seed, and he looked briefly at this little sachet of himself. He dropped the whole package over the side of the bed. Servants would clear it from the floor.

  Beeswing was lying, breathing gently, still staring up at the patterns on the ceiling. Her placidity infuriated him. It seemed like a form of dumb mockery. Was she mentally judging him? Comparing him with better lovers? How could he break into the space of her mind, interpose himself between herself and her thoughts? He turned to her.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, his words surprising him in their mildness. ‘I was a little quick. I haven’t had . . . it, since our betrothal.’ He started to ask have you? but the words blocked in his throat. What if she said yes? She was no virgin, had clearly had lovers in her life. There was nothing shocking in that fact, of course, except that it opened the horrible vista of other men possessing her body. Better lovers. Better men. And Stom shrunken and unimportant beside them. Stom useless, ugly, clumsy.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said, in her distant voice.

  At this, its suggestive indifference, anger fired up from Stom’s heart again, and his member stirred with the rage’s aphrodisiac. He reached out to grab her hips, to pull himself onto her again – this time without a prophylactic (because she wanted it with that protection, he would do it without), this time harder and longer – but he stopped, of course. His hand touched her skin, and it was cool and smooth. A piercing revelation went through him. He had made no mark upon her body. He had pushed himself upon her, had possessed her, and now that he had finished there was no indication that he had ever been there. The wind blows upon the green hill, moves through the blades of grass like a comb through hair, the wind knows the hill with absolute intimacy, and then it passes on, and there is nothing to say that it was ever there. A sadness at his own transience dissolved the rage to almost nothing. He flopped backwards onto the mattress.

  They lay together for several minutes, in silence. Through the open window could be heard the faint rhythmic noises of the waves joining the beach.

  Later he called for coffee, and servants brought it on a splendid platinum decorated tray. Dressed in wraps, he and his wife sat on the bed drinking, and she looked away from him the whole time, staring out through the open window across the lawn towards the boatshed, and beyond it to the glistening of the sea, visible as a shining banner between the strips of land and sky.

  ‘This coffee,’ he said, miserably, wishing she would say something, that she would make the conversation – that she would raise any topic, do anything at all – ‘this coffee is from the Southern Continent. It’s usually considered the finest in the whole System.’ He despised his own inanities; but the silence was worse. It isn’t supposed to be like this, he told himself inside. Why doesn’t she act properly?

  ‘This isn’t my usual bedroom,’ he said. ‘It’s called the Mahogany room.’

  ‘Really,’ she said, still not looking at him. She acted almost as if in a trance, as if some vital part of her spirit were missing.

  ‘I’ll sleep in my usual bedroom tonight though. Will you . . . join me there?’ This sounded even more stupid in his own ears. His own wife! They weren’t a contract coupling – they were really married. Of course they should sleep together! So why did he feel so nervous, so awkward asking? ‘At night, I mean. You don’t have to of course. There are plenty of bedrooms in the house.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

  Don’t mind. In a nutshell, he thought, that is the problem.

  ‘You’re not drinking your coffee,’ he said, in a weak voice. ‘I can order tea, if you prefer?’

  Later, he set the coffee tray on the floor and rode one of his spikes of anger to a second sexual consummation. This second time he was not so premature in his climax; he pumped and pumped to the best of his ability, shooing away his own orgasm by deliberately taking his mind away from where he was, by separating out his bucking body from his thoughts. He thought of the Pterodactyl, his one-seater biplane. He mentally toyed with repainting her, imagining different colours. He thought of having all his vehicles, planes, boats, cars, redone in a new livery. Then he thought of taking a cruise, of having his boat brought out of the boatshed and dragged to the sea shore. He could motor over the Middenstead for a week or so. He could take Beeswing, just the two of them on the sea, in the sunshine. Doing it on the deck, her tiny body underneath his, him piercing her over and over with . . . and he was back, on the bed with her now, his orgasm unstoppable. He cried out in mixed pleasure and frustration.

  He had worked up a sweat, and was panting a little. Beeswing was quiet. She did not look flushed. ‘Did you climax?’ he asked, ashamed that he hadn’t noticed her reaction. But he knew the answer as he asked it. She didn’t reply.

  They spent the evening together, reading in the library, and for a while Stom believed that it was going to be alright between them. And that night they went to the same bed. He wasn’t in the mood for more lovemaking, but he embraced her and she let him. He fell asleep more hopeful, but woke in the middle of the night. Sitting bolt upright, out of some agonising dream, and patting the flatness of the bed beside him. Alone.

  He pulled on the dressing gown and wandered the corridors for a while, hoping to locate her, switching on the wall-lights as he went. He found her eventually, curled up under a silk blanket, on a couch in the library. She looked vaguely cross when he shook her awake, and there was even a small pleasure for him in that fact. ‘Would you really want to sleep here?’ he said. ‘Really? There are many more comfortable beds in the house. Or come back with me. Come back to my bed.’ His voice wheedled.

  ‘I was reading,’ she said, sulkily. ‘I drifted off to sleep.’ But there were no books about her, on the floor, on the arm of the couch, on the table, no books at all except the myriad volumes tucked away on their shelves.

  She came back to bed with him, but when he woke up in the morning light he was alone again. It seemed that she had risen early. Stom, guided by Nestor, found her in the kitchen, huddled against the wood-cooker in the early morning chill. The servants looked embarrassed to have their mistress slouching in their space. Did she understand nothing? How could she embarrass herself in front of the servants like this?

  She looked up when he came in and her face seemed almost pleased to see him. For a moment his heart bubbled with possibility; come to me, he thought, love me and I’ll repay it! I swear I’ll repay it sevenfold. ‘What are you doing in here!’ he said in tones of mock-rebuke, as o
ne might with a child. ‘Getting in the way of the servants!’ He helped her to her feet and embraced her, to the further embarrassment of the cook. Then he led her gently away, up the steps, and into the breakfast room. But somewhere, on that short journey, his heart swelling with hope and the possibility of being loved – somewhere on that journey he lost her. Her face came over vacant, her steps absent. She slotted herself into her chair before Nestor had time to pull it away from the table. She was so slender that she could slip between the fat oak edge and the heavy arm-rest.

  Polystom was tired from his interrupted night’s sleep, but nevertheless he made a conscious decision to try to reach her. To find a piece of common interest. She kept staring out of the window, so she presumably liked nature. She could share his love for the forest.

  ‘Do you like trees?’ he blurted out, reaching for a bread-sweet, and breaking it with both hands. The hot sugared dough steamed.

  There was a little silence.

  ‘Trees?’ she echoed in her small voice, as if from far away.

  ‘I love trees. My father loved trees, and I have inherited that love. Most of my estate is woodland,’ Stom said. ‘Beautiful trees,’ he continued, hoping to reach her with his enthusiasm. ‘You’ll love it.’

  She looked up at his face, as if about to speak; paused. Polystom had the sudden rush of hope, that he had touched her. She drew a breath, let it out. ‘I like open spaces,’ she said in her sing-song voice. ‘No walls.’

  ‘There are no walls in my woodland,’ said Stom, a little over-eagerly, still trying to reach her.

  ‘Trees are like walls,’ she said. The sentence was spoken with an enormous quietness that implied grave, sad wisdom. She waited a heartbeat, and said: ‘trees are walls.’ She looked away.

  How wrong! For days Stom could think of nothing else than this little speech by his wife, rehearsing possible replies in his mind, circling round and round the little dialogue over and over until it had condensed into a sort of rage inside him. How could she be so blind? He thought he had been granted an insight into her; saw her spirit fleeing for ever over endless plains, over grasslands, running and running. But this was an illusion, this sense of escape. Because what did it boil down to in the end? Beeswing’s tiny body, her too-rapidly beating heart, her own being-in-the-world, it was that she yearned to escape. And there was no escape from selfhood, it was a responsibility, not a burden. Couldn’t she see? And even though the two of them had not quarrelled as such, even though no voices had been raised or cross words spoken, nonetheless this little exchange had revealed to Stom the sheer unbending stubbornness at the heart of Beeswing’s mind. The stubbornness of the child who has not yet learned (as Cleonicles would have put it) that the gap between wish and world must be accepted or it will shred us to pieces. That wishing is not a crime, but wish – like a metal – only becomes useful if alloyed, tempered, with a sense of how the world is. That was what growing up involved. Didn’t she see that? That was what Stom’s great poetry told him, what his reading revealed, what his late-night discussions with Cleonicles over a mulberry or ashberry whisky confirmed in him. This was his co-father’s insistent refrain; and, more than all this, it was his father’s very essence, every aspect of his silent passage through life. Acceptance, this was the key. The universe of things is all around us, it supports us, it sustains us. Why fight it? I want to go diving today, papa! Not today, Stommi. Why not father, why not why not? And in reply to this eight-year-old insistence his father would not even need words, just the slow turn of his head, his glistening placid eyes meeting his son’s. At some level below speech the little Polystom felt the knowledge, the wisdom, slide into his soul. He was surrounded by the sustenance of things, and also, equally tightly, by his responsibilities. It was a great responsibility to be Steward, and this could not be avoided or shirked. It was better not even to try, but simply to accept. Why couldn’t Beeswing see this? Surely his own wife . . . surely she should understand, if anybody should.

  One of his favourite habits was walking in the forest by himself. On several occasions, early in the relationship, Stom urged Beeswing to come with him, but she declined, obliquely at first, and then more insistently. ‘Why must you be so insistent! I’m no pet dog,’ she said, one time, with a febrile edge to her voice, ‘for you to take on walks.’

  Stom had said nothing to this. He had turned completely about and walked away.

  If she wouldn’t come, then he would go without her. She was the one who lost out. She stayed behind in the house, doing whatever she was doing, and Stom felt himself buoyed up in the purity of his solitude. That was it, he told himself. He felt raised up, lifted by the purity of his solitude. Her loss. Most of my estate is woodland he had told her; so by hating trees she was spurning the bulk of his estate, rejecting him. He was not surprised. She was a child. Her child-like body harboured a child-like mind. He had been foolish to think otherwise.

  The rage coalesced into something hard inside him. He would be doing her a favour by making her see, by making her leave childhood behind, taking on an adult’s perspective. After five days this had settled deep, a subconscious sediment layering the base of his mind. He no longer needed even to think of it. Just as his responsibilities extended to educating the children of his workers and servants, so they extended to his wife. She was wilful, but once she had been broken she would be grateful. It was as universal a law as gravity, as omnipresent a fact of life as the air we all breathe. Afterwards she would thank him. She’d be happier too – healthier, live longer. All this fretful fighting against everything would wear her out otherwise. It was in her own best interests. He had not decided how to impose his will upon her just yet, but the need for it was certain.

  For five days after their seemingly bland conversation the two of them spoke no words to one another. They slept in separate rooms, took their meals apart. They rarely passed one another in the enormous house. On the sixth day Stom’s mind was made up; he mistook the burning inner solidity of his rage for certainty, mistook it for strength of will. It was nothing of the sort, of course.

  [fourth leaf]

  Most of my estate is woodland, Polystom had told his wife on the morning after their wedding. He had hoped to impress her, hoped perhaps to win her over to himself, to bridge the space between them. But there was no such connection; it had been impossible. It was still hard for him to understand how it was that the beauty of the trees had not reached her. The forest is a kind of prison, she had said. Was ever a more absurd thing said?

  Most of my estate is woodland. He still felt the tingle in his abdomen – my estate! It had been three years since his father’s death, and he still could not evade the sense that he was only playing at being Steward in the old man’s absence. Here . . .

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  . . . thoughts [of his] father. These thoughts were somehow – he knew not how – inseparable in his mind from thoughts of the woodlands that his father had loved so completely. The dark, shadow-sated forests, the elegant shafts of trees planted in the rich earth like javelins, and in the air the interlocking thick bushes of fir leaves. Seventy thousand hectares of new planting north-east of Moss Cove between the coast and the mountains, now seven years old, bristling sticky saplings covering the curve of the hills like stubble. Six hundred thousand hectares of ancestral forest, to which the Old Man had devoted all his energies and most of his love.

  Polystom had wandered through those forests as a boy and as an adolescent; solitary, most especially the woodland between the Neon Mountains and the sea, to the west of the house. He still did, now that he was a man and Steward of the whole estate. The solitude there seemed cloistered by the trees themselves, an almost sanctified tranquillity. Their great black stems, around which St
om could just about throw his arms for his fingertips to meet. Their pure reach of height, fifteen or twenty metres before branches appeared. They were like sword-blade epitomes of the shadows they cast, like shadows themselves made material and tangible. Polystom could walk through the cool fragrance of the woods for hours, the brown fir-needles under his feet like springy gravel. He might catch himself, head back, staring up the length of a trunk to the starburst spread of branches and needles above him, with only shreds of blue-mauve sky visible in between, might catch himself staring upwards, and feel foolish. He wasn’t a child! This sort of mooncalfing around isn’t dignified (this was his co-father’s voice in his imagination, this chiding). It doesn’t befit a Steward, a ruler. But the shade of his father, in this shady place, didn’t rebuke him. The spirit of his father would say to him that it was not displeased: drink the peace of the trees, this would be the Old Man’s advice. Not words he had ever spoken to his son in life, of course, for Stom had never had the wisdom to solicit them when Old Polystom was alive. But his father had never considered it beneath his dignity as Steward to wander the trees. His arboriphilia hadn’t diminished his gravitas as local ruler. Polystom tried to take consolation from this thought as he meandered amongst the tree trunks. He walked, and walked, until he emerged from the other side of the forest and strolled down to the shoreline of the Middenstead sea. Intensely thoughtful.