Nekropolis

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  “But you said you’ll get sick,” he says.

  “I can’t live this way,” I say, and it is true. If I don’t do something, I’ll die.

  “Your mistress-”

  “DON’T TALK ABOUT HER!” I shout. If he talks about her, I won’t be able to leave.

  He looks around again. We are a spectacle, a man and a woman arguing on the street.

  “Come with me, we’ll go somewhere, talk,” I say, all honey. He can’t deny me, I see it in his face. He has to get off the street. He’d go anywhere. Any place is safer than this.

  He lets me take him into the train, down the stairs to the platform. I clutch my indigo veil tight at my throat. We wait in silence. He has his hands in his pockets. He looks like a boy from the Nekropolis, standing there in just his shirt, no outer robe. He looks away, shifts his weight from one foot to the other, ill at ease. Human. Events are making him more human. Taking away all his certainties.

  “What kind of genes are in you?” I ask.

  “What?” he asks.

  “What kind of genes?”

  “Are you asking for my chart?” he says.

  I shake my head. “Human?”

  He shrugs. “Mostly. Some artificial sequences.”

  “No animal genes,” I say. I sound irrational because I can’t get clear what I mean. The headache makes my thoughts skip, my tongue thick.

  He smiles a little. “No dogs, no monkeys.”

  I smile back, he’s teasing me. I’m learning to understand when he teases. “I have some difficult news for you, Akhmim. I think you are a mere human being.”

  His smile vanishes. He shakes his head. “Hariba,” he says. He’s about to talk like a father.

  I stop him with a gesture. My head still hurts.

  The train whispers in, sounding like wind. Oh, the lights. I sit down, shading my eyes, and he stands in front of me. I can feel him looking down at me. I look up and smile, or maybe grimace. He smiles back, looking worried. There is a family of Gypsies at the other end of the car, wild and homeless and dirty. We are like them, I realize.

  At the Moussin of the White Falcon we get off. Funny that we are going into a cemetery to live. But only for a while, I think. Somehow I will find a way we can leave, if I live. We’ll go north, across the sea, up to the continent, where we’ll be strangers. I take him through the streets and stop in front of a row of death houses, like Ayesha’s family’s, but an inn.

  “There are inns here?” Akhmim asks.

  “Of course,” I say. “People come from the country to visit their families. People live in the Nekropolis, we have stores and everything.”

  I give Akhmim money and tell him to rent us a place for the night. “Tell them your wife is sick,” I whisper. I’m afraid.

  “I don’t have any credit. If they take my identification, they’ll know,” he says.

  “This is the Nekropolis,” I say. “They don’t use credit. Go on. Here you are a man.”

  He frowns at me, but takes the money. I watch him out of the corner of my eye, bargaining, pointing at me. Just pay, I think, even though we have very little money. I just want to lie down, to sleep. And finally he comes out and takes me by the hand and leads me to our place. A tiny room of rough whitewashed walls: a bed, a chair, a pitcher of water, and two glasses.

  “I have something for your head,” he says. “The man gave it to me.” He smiles ruefully. “He thinks you’re pregnant.”

  My hand shakes when I hold it out. He puts the white pills in my hand and pours a glass of water for me. “I’ll leave you here,” he says. “I’ll go back. I won’t tell anyone that I know where you are.”

  “Then I’ll die,” I say. “I don’t want to argue, Akhmim, just stay until tomorrow.” Then it will be too late. “I need you to take care of me, so I can get better and we can live.”

  “What can I do? I can’t live,” he says in anguish. “I can’t get work!”

  “You can sell funeral wreaths. I’ll make them.”

  He looks torn. It is one thing to think how you will act, another to be in the situation and do it. And I know, seeing his face, that he really is human because his problem is a very human problem. Safety or freedom.

  “We will talk about it tomorrow,” I say. “My head is aching.”

  “Because you’re jessed,” he says. “It’s dangerous. What if we don’t make enough money? What if they catch us?”

  “That’s life,” I say. I’ll go to prison. He’ll be sent back to the mistress. Punished. Maybe made to be conscript labor. Maybe they will put him down, like an animal.

  “Is it worth the pain?” he asks in a small voice.

  I don’t know, but I can’t say that. “Not when you have the pain,” I say, “but afterward it is.”

  “Your poor head.” He strokes my forehead. His hand is cool and soothing.

  “Yes,” I say. “Change causes pain.”

  Is it worth dying for?

  2

  Ties

  In the beginning there was paradise, and then I was sent out into the world of men.

  The first and last lesson they teach us is that we aren’t human. But we know it. Humans are rigid and harni bend. Humans have only one shape. I’m bent around Hariba. Hariba is full of sharp angles and unexpected soft places. She thinks that no one gets in, but for a harni, Hariba is…is…in the crèche we would have said that Hariba is half-open. There is space there, empty. That is what makes it easy to love her. When I am with her, there is the constant anxiety that I’m not making her happy, and when I see her look of love, something within me leaps up, relieved and delighted.

  I’ve gone into that dim, secret space and it has brought me here, to the place of the human dead. Hariba is sick. And I’m helpless.

  She sits in the bed in the cool room with the sheet over her knees, and folds paper into flowers. There are lilies on long stalks that she curls into wreaths, then she fills them with tiny flower cups. She names the flowers for me; canna lily, narcissus, rose, impatiens. They are all paper white. She ties them up with long white satin ribbons like the kind she used to wear around her wrists. While she does it, she’s happy and I’m happy to sit with her.

  Then the headaches come back and she lies on her side with her knees to her chin, whimpering. The room feels warmer, the air heavier. Her face shines with sweat and long trails of black hair stick to her forehead. Then she’s closed, no space for me, and the headaches fill her and at the same time there is this need, this terrible need, that I can’t satisfy. I found her in the street that way, outside the master’s house, and that’s how she brought me here, with that terrible need.

  I stay with her and hold the bucket when she’s sick. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Shhhh,” I say. “Shhhhh.” I wipe her face with a cloth. The room smells of sweat and vomit and someone who has been in bed too long.

  Need. We need money to have a safe place and she needs to be safe.

  While she sleeps, I take the wreaths and I go out into the Nekropolis, to the Moussin of the White Falcon. I can bring her back money. It’s a good day, hot and bright. The square in front of the Moussin is crowded with people; some of them are empty, some of them complicated by grief and need. It is in their voices and their faces, in the way their hands shape themselves empty. Women hunch their backs around the emptiness and wail.

  Lots of people are set up to sell wreaths, and most of them have lots of wreaths and banks of flowers. Dry and baking heat. The kind that heats to the bone. I spread out a towel and put my wreaths down. I only have six-two as wide across as my arm and full of the sweep and curve of the canna lilies and four smaller ones with roses. Across from me, a woman sits on a cloth, with wreaths and falcons with their paper wings spread all around her, and makes more things. Humans are only complete like this, when they are doing something that makes their minds and hands busy, when they are doing something that makes them solve puzzles. I like to watch this woman because harni are neve
r complete alone and so there is something peaceful and at the same time disquieting about it. Humans say they are happy when they have things, but hands and mind in concert make them complete.

  A tall boy squats near me with single flowers for sale. He’s looking at my wreaths.

  “My wife makes them,” I say, “but she’s sick, so she can’t make many.”

  He nods. “They’re very nice. Very good work. How much?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. How much should I ask?”

  He considers. “Five for the big ones and three for the small,” he says. “That’s what I’d ask.” He’s pleased that I asked and his pleasure is like warmth. Like heat.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “From the Mashahana,” he says absently. It’s what Hariba says when you thank her. I’ll remember to say it.

  Mourners come and some of them already have flowers, but some of them look at the wreaths. “How much?” they ask and I say, “Five for the large ones and three for the small.” I sell three of the small ones, and then, as the shadows are lengthening over the square, both of the large ones. One of the large ones goes to a man who is pleased with himself. One goes to a woman who is needy.

  “It is a beautiful piece,” I say to the woman. “Canna lilies and roses and lemon leaves. My wife makes them. She’s sick.”

  She nods. Her veil is white with a stripe of blue. She’s a widow, I think.

  “Who is it for?” I ask.

  “My son,” she says hoarsely and there’s the sharpness of her pain, a terrible wave of feeling. She’s hollow.

  “Is he sad, now?” I ask. That’s a center for her pain, that she isn’t needed anymore, and she cries silently as she hands me the money. She’s empty and anything I do will make her crack. Instead of letting her put the money in my palm, I take her hand, and then cover it with my other hand and she stands there with her eyes closed and the tears running down her face. She’s captured by touch, still as an animal. She stands, shocked and holding it in, and then she breaks; first her knees giving way so she sinks, and then her back bending, curving until she’s on her knees and her forehead slowly, achingly slowly, comes down until it touches my hands clasped around hers, and she sobs. “Sweet boy,” she sobs. “Sweet, sweet boy.”

  “Yes,” I whisper, feeling her strange pleasure at her pain.

  “Sweet boy.”

  * * *

  The widow’s name is Myryam and she takes me to a café and buys me a drink of cold orange bitters. She’s hungry to be touched, but doesn’t dare take my hand. It’s hard to be a widow and to go without touch and it’s drying her up inside and out. Her son was twenty-five when he crashed a lorry into a bridge abutment and after weeks and weeks of pain, finally died. She shows me a picture of a plump, smiling boy with well-oiled black hair and a shirt so white it hurts the eyes.

  “He’s handsome,” I say.

  “He is,” she says. “That was taken when he got his certificate to drive a lorry. He was happy. I was happy for him. His father wanted him to do books, but he wasn’t good at math. He wasn’t interested. He was very smart about something when he was interested, but numbers, he said he didn’t care. He got a certificate to be a lorry driver and then he could be out talking to people. He loved people.”

  She rises like bread in a warm kitchen, talking of her son and touching the corners of her eyes with her veil.

  “Maybe you can give me some advice?” I ask.

  “You’re like my own sweet boy,” she says and we bask in the pleasure of each other’s company.

  “My wife makes wreaths, but she’s ill and she can’t make many anymore. I need to find work, but I don’t know where to start.”

  Myryam’s thoughtful. “You could be a waiter. You’d be good at it, I think. Let me ask around.” She’s comfortable now. We fit together like key and lock. “You’re someone’s good son,” she says.

  The sun is going down and the dry air is cooling. The breeze stirs, swirling the dust in the street, curls and hollows, empty and full. “I have to go,” I explain, “my wife’s alone…” I walk home through the empty streets, thinking of Myryam and things I can do for her. Ask her advice and call on her to see how she’s doing. She’d like that.

  The light’s on, but the room feels cool. Hariba’s sitting on the bed, shivering and crying. “Where did you go!”

  “I went to the Moussin,” I say. I sit down next to her. Her skin is hot and dry, her hair lank and oily. “I sold all of the wreaths you made but one.”

  “I didn’t know where you’d gone!” Hariba says. “You were gone!”

  “I’m here now,” I say and hold her and stroke her hair. “Sweet girl, I’m here now.”

  “I was scared,” she says. “I thought you’d gone back.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. Oh, I feel bad. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  “I thought you’d gone back to Mbarek-salah. I thought you’d left me here to die.”

  “Shhh,” I say. “Shhh, you’re not going to die. I’ll take care of you.”

  “You’re just a baby here,” she whispered. “I’ve got to take care of things.”

  “I met a woman, a widow, at the Moussin. She bought your great big wreath, the one with the canna lilies and the roses and the lemon leaves?”

  Hariba looks up at me and nods. I wipe at the tear stains with my thumb.

  “Her son was killed in a lorry accident, oh, a year ago, maybe. She bought your wreath for him. She’s going to help me find a job, maybe as a waiter. Do you think I’d be a good waiter?”

  “I don’t know,” Hariba says. She rests her head against my chest. “Maybe. You didn’t tell her, did you? You didn’t tell her about us?”

  “No, sweetheart. I told her my wife was ill.”

  Shyly, Hariba says, “You told her I was your wife?”

  I kiss her forehead. Ah, I’ve said the right thing. “Of course. Now you go to sleep so you can feel better.”

  “I’m not going to get better,” she says.

  “It always feels that way when we’re sick. When we’re sick, we can’t remember what it’s like to feel good. Now lie down.” She’s prickly and unhappy. My poor Hariba.

  “Do harni get sick?” she asks.

  “Of course we do,” I say. “We get sick, we fall down and hurt ourselves. Just like you.”

  That’s what she wants. Humans always want us to be human, but we aren’t. I sit and watch her go to sleep.

  I share 98 percent of my DNA with Hariba, but so does a chimpanzee, and I know Hariba wouldn’t like to think she had run away with a chimpanzee. I’m not, though, I’m a harni . 98 percent is a number, 2 percent is a number, these are numbers I’ve been taught, but they don’t explain differences.

  I was born in a crèche. I was the only male in a sibling group of five. More humans want female harni than male, so there are eight females to every male. I had four sisters just like myself. We were all one, in the way of harni, almost indistinguishable, until we were five years old and we had to start sleeping in separate beds and going to different classes so we would differentiate. We cried. We were cast out of paradise and after that we were never whole again. I learned that my sisters had names-Isna, Sardalas, Dakhla, and Kenitra-and the more they went each to her separate classroom, the more they changed in different directions. Our teachers had trouble telling us apart, but the other harni in the crèche didn’t. And because I was a boy, I changed most of all. I learned I had a name. I learned I was alone.

  Before we were separate, we didn’t play like humans. After we were separated, we would mimic each other a lot. And sometimes we’d play pretend. We’d play that my sisters had been sold to a human, and because I was the boy, I had to be the rich man who bought them. I’d sit in the chair and order them to do things for me: “Brush my hair,” or “Bring me my shoes.” Then they would go off to their room, which was usually Isna’s bed because it was closest to the wall and farthest from the door, and they would pile on top of each othe
r like mice keeping warm and lie together, happy in the touch and smell of each other. Alone in the chair, I’d feel the air on my skin and the way the edge of the seat cut into my thighs, until I couldn’t stand it. I’d say that I was coming to inspect their quarters and when I pretended to find them, they would take me in and teach me harni ways, until I declared I’d never be human again. and then I’d curl up with them on the narrow bed and smell the milky smell of us all together.

  Of course, humans can’t be harni . They try when they have sex, even if they don’t know what they’re trying for, but they’re always apart and always alone. Once I grew up, I was always alone, too, but the difference is, I remember when it wasn’t that way.

  * * *

  Hariba says it’s silly to go to the Moussin with only one wreath. Her need tears at me, little hooks tugging while her demand that I be human, be the man, and take care of things pushes me away and out.

  “Myryam might be there,” I explain. “She’s going to help me find a job to support us.”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Hariba murmurs.

  “Lie down,” I say, soft. “I’ll sit here until you go to sleep.”

  But Hariba can’t sleep. “Am I going to die?” she asks.

  “No,” I say, “you’re going to get better.”

  Her head aches. She’s miserable.

  “Do you want me to get a doctor?” I ask.

  “No,” she says fiercely, “no doctor. A doctor would know that I’m jessed and that I ran away.”

  “Okay,” I promise. “I won’t call a doctor.”

  She’s soothed and she pushes the pillow away and lays her cheek against the sheet. She doesn’t close her eyes. They are vacant and bruised. I rub her back. She’s wearing a cotton shift and it’s damp and transparent-two white chalky tablets have broken her fever for a bit of time, making her perspire. The vertebrae are like the bones of a snake, a ridge under her sand-colored skin. They curl down into the small of her back and curve up over her shoulders to twist where her head is turned and disappear into her hair.

  “You go on,” she says absently, far away.