Putting his conversation with Moylita Kaine into this light, not only were her intentions irrelevant to his enjoyment, but it was arrogant of her to impose them on him by explaining.
The instant Dik thought this he regretted it, because he knew her motives had been kindly. Even to think it was to place himself as her equal, when it was abundantly clear that she was superior to him in every way. Chastened by his own arrogance, Dik resolved to make amends in some way, without revealing why.
But as he worked on in the kitchens, waiting for his duties to finish with the serving of the midday meal, the thought would not go away. In explaining her novel to him, had Moylita Kaine been trying to tell him something?
Walking up the warmway to the saw-mill, Dik passed one of the burghers. Automatically, he stepped into the snow at the side and stood with eyes humbly lowered as the man swept past.
Then: “Where are you going, boy?”
“To see the writer, sir.”
“By whose authority?”
“I have a pass, sir.” He fumbled in his pocket, thanking the stars that he had remembered to take it with him. The burgher examined it closely, as if trying to find the least irregularity. Then he passed it back.
“You know who I am, Constable?”
‘Wes, sir.”
“Why did you not salute?”
“I . . . didn’t see you approaching, sir. I was watching where I placed my feet.”
There was a long silence, while Dik continued to stare at the ground. The burgher was breathing stiffly, as if seeking some excuse to bar him from the mill. Then at last, without a word, he walked on down towards the village.
After what to Dik seemed a respectful few seconds, he regained the warmway and hurried up to the saw-mill. He let himself in and went up the stairs. Moylita Kaine was standing by the window, and as he opened the door she turned towards him with an expression of such anger that he almost fled.
But she said at once: “Oh, it’s you. Come in, close the door.” She turned back to the window, and Dik saw her hand was clenched tightly, the knuckles white. He assumed that her anger was directed at him—had she somehow sensed his uncharitable thought?—but after a moment she looked back at him. “Don’t take any notice, Dik. I’ve just had a visit from one of your burghers.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“No . . . not at all.” She went to her desk and sat down, but almost at once she stood up again and paced about the room. At last she went back to the desk.
“Was he ordering you about?” Dik said, with a feeling of kinship.
“No, not that sort of thing.” She sat forward. “Yesterday, you said the burghers were married. All of them?”
“I . . . think so. When my troop arrived there was a function at the civic hall for the officers. I saw a lot of women then.”
“Clerk Tradayn . . . is he married?”
“I don’t know.” Suddenly suspecting what might have happened, for it had been Tradayn Dik had met on the warmway, he wanted to hear no more about it. He reached under his weatherproof cape, and brought out the object he had been carrying.
“Moylita,” he said with some hesitation, for it was the first time he had used her first name, “I’ve brought you a present.”
She looked up, then took it from him. “Dik, it’s beautiful! Did you carve it?”
“Yes.” As she turned it in her hand, he went and sat on the edge of the desk, as he had done before. “It’s a special wood. I found it in the forest. It’s easy to carve.”
“A hand holding a pen,” she said. “How did you know . . .?”
“It was the way the wood had grown. It looked a bit like that before I started. I’m sorry it’s crude. All I’ve done is smooth it down.”
“But it’s exactly right! May I really keep it?” When he nodded she stood up, and, leaning across the desk, kissed him on the cheek. “Dik, thank you!”
He started to mumble about the inadequacy of the gift, thinking of his repentant motives, but Moylita moved some of her papers aside and set the wood-carving firmly on the desk in front of her.
“I asked how you knew,” she said, “because it’s a coincidence. You see, I have a present for you too.”
“For me?” Dik said, stupidly.
“I wrote something for you last night. Just for you.”
“What is it?” Dik said, but at the same moment Moylita produced a few sheets of white paper, clipped together in one corner.
“It’s a story . . . I wrote it for you after you left yesterday. I don’t think it’s very good, because I wrote it so quickly, but it happened because of what we talked about.”
“May I see?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I want you to promise me something first: that you won’t read it until I’ve left here.”
“Why not?” Dik said, then added with a flash of insight: “Is it about me?”
“Well, there’s someone in it who’s a bit like you . . . you might recognize one or two things he says.”
“I don’t mind that!” Dik said eagerly. “I’ll read it now.” He held out his hand.
“No. I want to tell you about it first. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to impress you . . . it really isn’t a good story. It’s not very original, and I think the writing isn’t polished enough. I did it quickly.”
“That’s how I made my carving.”
“Maybe . . . but there’s something else. If anyone found this, you could get into trouble. You see, the character in the story is someone who’s on the other side . . . beyond the wall. If the burghers found this, they would wonder what you were doing with it, and where you got it from. Do you still want it?”
“Of course. I can hide it . . . our kit is never searched.”
“All right, then. But another thing. The story isn’t set here, in the mountains. I’ve set it in the south. Do you know where I mean?”
“Jethra,” Dik said.
“No . . . not even in the south of the country. The southern continent, on the other side of the Midway Sea.”
“Near the Dream Archipelago!” Dik said, thinking of the novel.
“That sort of area. I’ve got to warn you, because although it probably sounds innocuous to you, and even rather unlikely, if the burghers saw this they would assume you were a spy.”
Dik said, not understanding: “Moylita, how can—?”
“Listen, Dik. Just before I came to the village, there were a lot of rumours in Jethra about the progress of the war. Some of my friends suspect there have been secret negotiations with the enemy, because the air-raids have been doing a lot of damage. It’s been said that the theatre of war will be moved to the south, to fight it out where there are no cities.” Dik opened his mouth, but Moylita went on: “I know it sounds nonsensical; it does to me too. Why they can’t just declare a ceasefire, I don’t know. But the war is getting worse, not better, and to save our precious way of life they’re going to make war elsewhere. For the story, I’ve assumed this will happen, and in the very near future . . . so the story takes place on the southern continent.”
“A lot of books have been set there,” Dik said.
“Yes, but not books dealing with the war, with this war.”
Moylita fell silent, and seemed to be studying Dik’s face, trying to divine his reaction.
“Do you still want to have the story?” she said.
“Oh yes,” he said at once, because his reaction was one of even greater interest in seeing it.
“Very well, then. Look after it, and don’t read it now. Do you promise?”
He nodded emphatically, so Moylita Kaine pressed the thin typescript out across the desk and scrawled her signature on the top sheet. Then she folded it in two, and passed it over. Dik took it, and as if the paper were the skin of a living animal it seemed that every fibre was alive and throbbing with organic electricity. He could feel the typewritten words indented in the paper, and he ran his fingers along the reverse side, like a blind man fe
eling for meaning.
“You interrupted the play to write this,” he said.
She looked at him with unconcealed surprise. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But surely that’s more important?”
“I’m writing the play because I’m paid to, Dik, and I’m writing it for the burghers. They’ll get their play, but I don’t feel I’m really writing it. I’m following a formula I worked out years ago. I just change names and places . . . it’s easy. I thought you’d realized that.”
“I suppose I had guessed,” Dik said, nevertheless a little disappointed. Holding the new typescript, feeling the pressure of its words against his hand, and all the mystery and promise they held, he remembered his thoughts of the morning. Yesterday, Moylita had disappointed him about the play, and soon afterwards had told him about her ideas about The Affirmation. He didn’t want her to do that to this story.
Even so, a great curiosity was growing in him; he so wanted to understand it properly.
“Moylita, is this story . . . symbolic?”
She didn’t answer straight away, but looked at him with a strange and shrewd expression. Then: “Why do you ask?”
“Because . . . please don’t tell me what it means!” It stumbled out, not at all what he had meant to say. He wanted her to tell him about it; he might never see her again. She had made him understand the novel, when before he had only loved it.
But she was smiling, and said: “Don’t worry, Dik. It’s very simple. It’s about a soldier who reads a book, and later he becomes a poet. Nothing symbolic at all.”
“What I meant—”
“I know . . . because yesterday I was carried away by my own brilliance, and talked about the walls? There’s only one wall in this, and it’s built of bricks and it’s just a wall.”
“And this soldier, this . . . poet, he climbs it?”
“Dik, I think you should wait until you’ve read the story. I don’t want you to give it meanings it hasn’t got.”
“But he does climb the wall, doesn’t he?”
“How did you know?”
“Because—”
Then the door opened without warning, and the burgher Dik had seen earlier came quickly into the room. He slammed the door behind him.
Because of what you said; Dik’s intuition, tailing away.
The burgher said: “Mrs Kaine, would you—?” He saw Dik, who had moved back against the wall, and turned at once towards him. “What are you doing here, Constable?”
“I told you, sir . . . I have a pass.” He reached into his pocket, groping for it.
“I’ve seen the pass. What are you doing here, in this room?” Moylita said: “He has every right to be here, Tradayn. While I’m writing, the troops—”
“The Border Police are under the orders of the Council, Mrs Kaine. Passes issued by non-commissioned officers have to be approved by me.”
“Then you can approve it now. Have you got it there, Dik?” While they spoke, Dik had found the slip of paper and held it out towards the burgher. He had never heard anyone ever speak back to a burgher, and it was awe-inspiring to see the confidence with which Moylita did it.
Clerk Tradayn took no notice of him or his pass, but went to the desk and leaned across it, resting his broad, plump hands on the edge.
“I want to see what you’ve been writing,” he said. “All of it.”
“You’ve seen the play . . . I haven’t done any more since yesterday.”
“You were using the typewriter late into the night.”
“Have you been spying on me, Tradayn?”
“Mrs Kaine, while at the frontier you’re under military law. Let me see what you’ve been writing.”
She scooped up the sheaf of papers from the desk and thrust them at him. Meanwhile, Dik, still standing with his back against the wooden wall, could feel her secret typescript hanging conspicuously in his hand. He wished he could slip it under his cape, but any movement would draw the burgher’s attention.
“Not this, Mrs Kaine . . . the rest of it. What are you holding, Constable?”
“Just the pass, sir,”
“Give it to me.”
Dik glanced helplessly at Moylita, but she was staring at the burgher with frank hostility. Reluctantly, Dik held out the pass, but Clerk Tradayn reached behind him and snatched the typescript from his other hand. He moved to the window, and unfolded it in the light.
“ ‘The Negation’,” he said. “Is that your title, Mrs Kaine?” Moylita’s steady gaze did not flicker, and the burgher read on, adopting a scornful, mocking voice: “ ‘It no longer mattered which side had first breached the pact that prohibited the use of sense-gases. They had been in illegal use for so long that they were no longer questioned. What the ordinary soldier perceived as real could not be trusted, because his sense of vision, touch and sound had been . . .’ ” The burgher stopped reading aloud, looked sharply at Moylita, then turned back to the typescript. He read quickly down the first page, silently mouthing the words, then flicked it over and read the second. “Have you been reading this, Constable?”
“No, sir—”
“The boy has no knowledge of it. I’ve lent it to him . . . it’s something I wrote several years ago.”
“Or several hours ago.” Tradayn squinted again at the first page, his small, deep-set eyes moving quickly across the lines. He held out the typescript for Moylita to see. “Is this your signature?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He stuffed the typescript into an inner pocket. “Constable, return to your quarters at once.”
“Sir, I—”
“Quarters, Constable!”
“Yes, sir.” Dik shuffled hesitantly towards the door, looking back at Moylita. She was watching him now, her eyes steady and calm. He wondered if she was trying to signal some message to him, but if she was it was something so subtle it was lost on him. When he reached the frosty air outside he started to walk down the warmway, but halted after a short distance. He listened, but he could hear nothing. He hesitated a few seconds longer, then left the warmway and ran across the snowfield towards the nearest trees. Here the snow had drifted deeply, and he jumped down and hid behind the trunk of a broad fir.
He had only a few minutes to wait. Moylita and the burgher soon appeared, walking down the warmway towards the village. Moylita went first, walking with her head bowed, but she was carrying under her arm the carving Dik had given her.
Dik hid in his hostel room for the rest of the day, waiting for the inevitable summons to Clerk Tradayn’s office in the civic hall, but it seemed nothing in life was inevitable, for the summons never arrived. By nightfall, Dik was more in terror of the uncertainty than he would have been of punishment.
The story he had never read seemed, for reasons he did not fully understand, as potentially explosive as one of the enemy’s flatcake mines. She had said it herself, and the burgher’s reading of it had confirmed it. She would be charged with spying and treachery, and she would be imprisoned or exiled or shot.
The fact that this sort of retribution might also be taken on him was of less importance.
The constant nagging fears and worries sent him into the streets of the village as soon as the evening meal was done with. He had eaten virtually nothing, sitting in silence as the other lads shouted and laughed.
The night was clear, but a strong wind was up, lifting the powdery snow from the roofs and sills and sending it stingingly into his face. Dik walked the length of the main street, hoping for a sight of Moylita or some clue as to where she might be, but the street was empty and dark and the only light showing was from windows high under the gables. He returned slowly, halting when he came to the civic hall. Here the tall windows showed light, gleaming in horizontal slits through the wooden shutters.
Hardly thinking what the consequences might be, Dik went to the main doors and walked inside. There was a narrow hallway, cold and brightly lit, and opposite him were two more doors, made of wood and heavy glass, groun
d-cut with ornate curlicues. A caporal was standing before them.
“What’s your business, Constable?”
“I’m looking for Moylita Kaine, sir,” Dik said, with simple truth.
“There’s no one here. Just the burghers.”
“Then I’ll see them, sir. Clerk Tradayn summoned me.”
“The burghers are in session. They summoned no one. What’s your name and number, Constable?”
Dik stared back silently, fearing the caporal’s authority but still compelled by his anxiety about Moylita, and he backed away. He returned to the street, closing his ears and mind to the caporal’s voice, shouting behind him. Dik expected to be followed, but once he had let the main doors swing closed behind him the shouts ceased. Dik ran away, sliding on the icy ground as he reached the corner of the building. He came into the tiny square which lay beyond. This was where local farmers could petition the burghers during the day-time, and where, before the war, there had been weekly markets. The square was divided up into a number of pens where the tithe-livestock would be kept while the petitions were heard. Dik vaulted over two of these pens, then paused to listen. There was no sound of pursuit.
He looked up at the shuttered windows of the civic hall, behind which was the Council Chamber. Dik climbed on to one of the pens, and shuffled forward until his hands were resting on the cold brick of the building. He raised himself as high as he could go, and tried to peer through the shutters into the Chamber. The shutters behind the glass were slatted, and all he could see was the ceiling, richly ornamented in plaster mouldings and delicate, pastel-coloured renderings of religious tableaux.
Dik could hear the indistinct sound of voices from within, and after several unsuccessful attempts to see he pressed his ear against the glass. At once, he heard the sound of Moylita’s voice, high-pitched and angry. A man said something Dik couldn’t hear, then Moylita shouted: “You know the sense-gases are being used. Why won’t you admit it?” Several voices were raised against her, and she was shouting. Dik heard: “. . . they have a right to know!” And: “. . . drive them mad, it’s illegal!” The Chamber was in uproar, and Dik heard a series of loud thuds and the sound of wood falling hollowly against wood. Moylita started to scream.
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