Air (or Have Not Have)

by Geoff Ryman

  They took the winter food in silence and Mae's presence was made more normal if unwelcome.

  Some of the younger men, overcome by the cold, by energy, by the end of the year's work, began to dance. The girls squealed arid pretended to be overcome with embarrassment, hiding their cheeks, turning their backs. And turning again to look.

  The married women smiled ruefully and shook their heads. The older men held their hands over their ears as if hating the music and wavered and wobbled in secret rivalry.

  'I always knew men were more interested in each other,' said Mrs Mack. Mrs Mack? Mae laughed and touched her arm. Mrs Mack, less aloof towards Mae than others, responded with a chuckle at herself. 'Did I say that?'

  'I am afraid so. You are wild Western woman,' joked Mae.

  'Oh!' said Mrs Mack, not so pleased with the stale view of her Christianity. 'Yes. I look like the motorcycle girl.'

  'I'm sorry. I am the village fallen woman, remember?'

  'Tuh. These villagers,' said Mrs Mack. 'They forgive murder faster.'

  Mrs Pin said, 'Pay no attention to them, Mae.'

  Mrs Mack leaned forward. 'I understand that you are shorthanded in the Circle. I sew well…'

  Mae still needed allies. 'Yah, sure, you want to join? Please! Why did you not say so before?'

  Mrs Mack was too Christian not to be blunt. 'I didn't know you were making all that money.'

  There was not much to say in reply to that.

  'And they say money can't buy friendship,' said Mae.

  'It can't,' replied Mrs Mack, blunt again.

  Mrs Doh, who could practise tact, ballooned out her eyes at the behaviour of her two friends.

  Mae paused. 'I'll take that to mean we are friends beyond the money.'

  Mrs Mack paused. 'If you like. But you have not previously regarded me much. No one in this village does.' Her eyes were sad.

  'We will be at work tomorrow, in my old house,' said Mae. 'Come and join us. All of you.'

  'You are kind to extend such a valuable invitation,' said Mrs Doh, the fine lines on her eyes and forehead wincing at Mrs Mack's Christian manners.

  There was a sudden involuntary stir amid the people. Oh! said one of the girls.

  Lung had joined the dancers. He hopped in, no embarrassment, looking incredibly pleased to be there. And began to dance as a village dance should be done, broadly, happily, rolling his shoulders, hips, and arms in one great sinewy motion. It was what was needed, to finally make the party warm.

  Some of the women ululated, in high warbling warrior tones. The men joined in. The slower and fatter men finally hopped into the middle. White beards mocked themselves, or showed that once, they could dance with the best. But no one could compete with Lung.

  He began to clap his hands high over his head, he spun around on his heels. The other younger men in the village began to gather round him, to dance just as vigorously. In the cab, Ozer snapped off the Lectro. The flutes, the violins, the tablas of the traditional music flooded the courtyard.

  Lung began to sing along. He could sing too, and his voice when lifted up was not that of a Balshang Otter, or a Karzistani Soldier. It was the voice of a happy peasant who had eaten his fill and was dancing to keep warm in the winter.

  Every village had one, a Tatlises, a Sweet Voice. Lung's voice slipped around notes as if escaping them, escaping order, to follow the flow of blood of the heart.

  'Gel, gel, goomooleh gel,' he sang. Come, come, to a house of welcome. They all danced, they all clapped, even the women began to dance in the snow, amid the sound of who they were.

  And Mae's heart that had been starved of company was suddenly stuffed full. She could feel it strain, like a belly, with the light, the noise, her people, and her son.

  Joe was a village hero, too, Mae suddenly thought. When he was young.

  The air's warmer. It always is after the snow comes.

  Too warm, warned Mrs Tung. That's all she could say, too warm, over and over.

  Finally people left late, bustling children to bed.

  Discipline drilled into them, the soldiers did all the clearing up, gathering up the basins, mugs, spoons. The women were helpless before their speed. Kwan shook their heads. 'We are surplus, ladies,' she joked.

  'Why can't we have the army all the time?' Mrs Nan said.

  In the kitchen the three soldiers scrubbed the cutlery and boiled water in the pans, scalding off the fats and oils and congealing beans.

  'We'll sleep in the truck,' said Lung. Kwan insisted that she had spare rooms. The soldiers nodded in polite gratitude, shaking hands before going to get their bags.

  'I will walk you upstairs,' said Lung to Mae.

  'I am unlikely to come to harm,' said Mae, smiling. But all understood. He needed to talk.

  The joy of the evening fell away behind them as they climbed the stairs. He carried a candle. Mae had to take his arm in the dark. She began to remember their recent unpleasant exchanges by voicemail.

  He helped her fold away her scarf and sheepskin.

  'You got my warning then,' he said.

  In the dark, it was as though Mae could see the steam of her breath glowing. 'It was you?'

  Her mind raced: if it was Lung, not Tunch, then the army knows. Did he send the second encryption as well? If so, was he a friend? If not, she must not tell him anything else.

  Lung whispered, 'Yes, ssh.'

  Mae began to calculate. 'You know about Kwan?'

  'Yes,' he said simply.

  'Is she in danger?' Mae asked. She began to feel sick.

  Lung sighed, 'I don't think so, now. Those screens have gone. She should be all right. After all, you have made Kizuldah famous. What you might ask her to do, which would be even better, is for her to put up some new screens that tell both sides of the story.'

  Like milk, the very air seemed to curdle, go sour.

  Lung elaborated. 'You know. How the government houses the Eloi, gives them homes…'

  'Refrigerators in Balshang,' murmured Mae.

  'Yes.' He sounded pleased; she could almost see the teeth in his smile.

  'That way, the world does not puzzle over where the site has gone,' Mae added.

  'You are very wise,' said Lung. 'But then, you always were wise, Mama.'

  She was thinking: You came here to accomplish this. To get Kwan's site to do the government's work.

  No. You came here to protect your own career in the army.

  Lung relaxed; he felt he had done his job. 'Who would have thought you could do all this? The site, the business? Where did you learn all this?'

  Mae was narrow-eyed in the darkness. What was he trying to find out now? 'Oh,' she said airily. 'Your mother is not so stupid. It is all available on the TV.'

  'And from Hikmet Tunch,' said Lung, lightly.

  'Indeed.'

  'How did you find him?'

  'He found me.'

  It was strange being interrogated by her own son, in a dark and unheated room, as if they had both died and come back as Evil Dead.

  Her dead son gave a short, slightly edged laugh. 'No. I mean, what did you think of him?'

  'What do you think of him?'

  'I think you should stay away from him.'

  Mae decided not to ask him: Is that what the army thinks? She decided to deceive him, to protect Kwan, herself, her Circle. 'Why?' she asked in innocence.

  'Look. The government likes him being here, he brings in money, but he does things in that place that are illegal everywhere else. You know how he started?'

  'As a computer student?'

  'Oh, Mother, he was the country's biggest drug smuggler. They let him off because he runs a computer business.'

  'Our government would do such a thing?' Mae sounded shocked.

  'Our government does many things,' said Lung, quietly.

  And you are its servant, thought Mae. You look at what you do full in the face, and you still serve it so that you can be a lieutenant. And Kwan will never put up a site to do what
you want.

  We could all end up looking at you, my son, from the wrong end of a gun.

  Come, Air, and blow governments away.

  Then her son said, 'What are you going to do about the pregnancy?'

  Mae's whole face pulled back until it was as tight as a mask. 'The usual things.'

  'It is not a usual pregnancy.'

  Mae watched the wreathing of her icy breath. 'Who told you that?'

  Lung blew out. 'That man Tunch. Well…'

  'A nurse called Fatimah.'

  Lung jerked with a chuckle, amused by his mother's quickness. 'Yes. She at least seems very concerned for you.'

  'Yes she is. Perhaps we should both avoid that man Tunch.'

  She couldn't read Lung's reaction. He shrugged and laughed and nodded. 'No disagreement there.' Then concern. 'Are you okay, well?'

  Mae decided not to let him off the hook. 'No. I feel sick and as you can see I am not welcome many places in the village.'

  His eyes could not meet hers. He ducked and ran a hand over his hair.

  Mae asked him, 'How is your father?'

  'Ugh,' said Lung, involuntarily.

  'Seeing a lot of him? He visits you often?' she asked.

  'I can't hide from you, Mama. He is there all weekend, every weekend. Sometimes I have to say to him, look, Dad, I am having all the officers over for dinner.'

  Dark, dark, and cold, in this attic room not her own.

  'And the officers, do they find him interesting?'

  'Don't, Mama. No, they don't find him interesting. He gets drunk, and tries to talk up what he has done, and pretends to be a businessman.'

  And Tsang, thought Mae, I wonder how you like the overripe peach that people must mistake for your mother.

  'But he also visits your sister Ying.'

  'Yes, yes, he bounces between the two of us. But she is married to an officer too.'

  Mae saw it all: poor Joe, desperate, helplessly in love with his son, yearning only to see Lung and how strong and smart he was, and trying, also desperately, to avoid seeing that he was in his son's way, his daughter's way.

  You are not so smart, Lung. You are enough of your father's son, I saw that somehow tonight. This is as far as you will go, and then you too will start, unaccountably, to fade.

  'You want some advice, son?' Mae moved through the winter silk of the night. She took the hard band of muscle beside his neck and worked it. 'The army will not like it that you have a Western wife. They will be disappointed in your father. You know what you should do? Though this pains me, I cannot think only of myself. You should be your wife's husband, and go back with her to Canada.'

  Lung sighed. 'I know.'

  And then, thought Mae, you will not be a spy on all of us.

  CHAPTER 18

  ____________________

  audio file from: Mr Hikmet Tunch

  16 December

  New York Times? How useful. For whom? For me, certainly. Thank you for making such an emotional case against the UN. The government will also be pleased to be shown in such a good light. And your friend Bugsy. How do you serve her? You bring visitors to her superficial and decadent magpie. Do you really think American ladies – for whom a shift from chiffon pastel to black cotton is big news – are capable of being one with your Circle? Remember, Mae, that 2020 is an election year. Your friend is a Democratic journalist. She is using you and your praise of government subsidy to attack the Republican president. You are not a stupid woman, Mae, so it interests me to find that you allow yourself to be acted upon. Finally, you may be wondering who supplied that interesting code that arrived so happily a few nights ago. You should avoid thanking anyone else for it. So who is watching whom?

  Breakfast was late and boisterous and prolonged.

  Lung was still pumped full of love from the night before and didn't want to go. He joked and kicked his big-booted feet, and accepted one cup of tea after another. He and his men had gone out before anyone was up, and repaired the powerline.

  'We found a frame for the wires just hanging in midair. The wires were holding it up and not the other way around. We just stared!' Lung mimed a village dolt scratching his head. 'Then we saw burn marks. Some old farmer had been burning off straw and burned the pole as well!'

  Kwan scraped dishes, her lips drawn. There was a vertical grey line down the middle of her cheeks and her hands suddenly looked thin, frail and veined.

  'I'll do that,' said Mae. Lung was merry, and oblivious. His cheeks still glowed from freezing morning air. He looked like a polished apple. Kwan sat arms folded, her eyes dim and small.

  Finally Mr Wing came in, bundled in sheepskin, his eyes measuring like lasers. 'It's started to snow,' he said.

  The little private looked anxious. 'We could get snowed in.'

  Lung moved slowly, regretfully. Kwan stood up and delicately shook his hand and could not look him in the face. She was scared.

  The sergeant and the private flew up to their rooms and hopped back down, swinging khaki bags. Mae speeded things along by getting Lung's bag for him.

  In the courtyard, Lung recovered his poise. Sergeant Albankuh already had the engine running, and Lung had begun to understand that he was not quite at home. He spent time thanking the Wings handsomely for their hospitality, and also – his hand covering Kwan's – for their kindnesses to his mother.

  Kwan had recovered as well. She replied with exquisite politeness, knowing that he had come to warn her off and, perhaps, to report on her.

  Mae marvelled at them all, the maintenance of form and the retention of humanity.

  It is the village that allows us to do this, she thought. We know each other, and we all hope that that knowledge keeps us each in balance, within limits.

  Then Lung turned to Mae and both of them seemed to relent. They collapsed into a hug. For Mae it was like hugging some huge stranger. He kissed her forehead, called her his Clever Little Mama. Then he stepped back from her. He shoved on his army hat, and that was somehow heartbreaking. It was a boy's gesture, innocent and eternal. All the soldiers throughout history had pushed on some kind of boot or glove just before they left their mothers to die or to come back for ever changed.

  This was the last of her boy. He would swell even bigger, like a great fat boil, and she saw how he would coarsen as he aged until his astounding beauty could not be credited.

  'You remember what I told you,' he said, suddenly serious, pointing a finger at her.

  'You remember what I told you,' she said, equally serious.

  He nodded and hopped into the cab, and nodded to the sergeant to release the brake with – it seemed to Mae – a kind of relief. The truck crept forward, and suddenly Lung's face was flooded with a grin, wide and white between two cheeks like peaches. It was how both of them wanted him to be remembered.

  Snow clung to Mae's hair. It seemed to be wrapping the village in lace. Lace was wrapped tightly around things in drawers, to preserve them.

  Mae stood in the courtyard for many minutes listening to the rumble of the truck as the snow fell. She heard each acceleration, braking, or change of gears. The sound trailed away, away, farther into the valley, step by step, deeper and deeper down, away from her.

  Mae turned to Kwan and said, 'I'm going, too.'

  Kwan blinked. 'What? Why?'

  Mae said, 'I'm renting my own house from Sunni. I'll move my business there. I don't want to be a nuisance.'

  'You're not a nuisance,' said Kwan, and took her hand.

  'Then I want to go before I become one.'

  She went up the long staircase to the freezing attic room, and packed her bags again. She redirected her mail to the new TV of her own. She went back down to the kitchen. Kwan was putting together an evening meal from the remains of last night's feast.

  'You won't have any food in the house,' explained Kwan. 'I thought you might like to have this. We have kindling and shitcakes in the barn. Take some of those, too, to warm the house.'

  'You have been so kind.'


  Kwan looked sombre. 'We have been through a lot together.'

  'Oh! You could say that ten times and it would still not be enough!'

  'But we came through.'

  'We came through.'

  Kwan hugged her. 'You can still stay, you know.'

  Mae touched her arm. 'I really do not know what I would have done if my friend Wing Kwan had not been so kind. There would have been nowhere else for me to go. But the time comes, even with family, when one must leave.'

  Kwan nodded.

  So Mae took her one carpetbag, and another bag of food and fuel, and set out across the courtyard. Her slippers scrunched on the snow, and her breath rose up as vaporous as a fading memory. She knew Kwan would be watching from her diwan. Mae held up a hand and waved goodbye without looking back.

  The Wang household was the first door she passed, on the corner of upper and lower streets.

  It had been her home through most of her childhood. Mae stopped and looked at the doorstep. The single step would always get muddy and she and her older sister did not want anyone to think of them as dirty, so every day for ten years they had scrubbed it. The water in the plastic bucket was always cold.

  Mae now brushed the snow off the step with her slipper. Here, in this house, Mae had slept in one tiny bedroom with two sisters. Their mother had slept on cushions on the diwan. Her brother and an uncle shared a room. The Iron Aunt kept the main bedchamber for herself. It was a fatherless house full of work and worry.

  Mae realized she felt guilty for neglecting her mother. She felt a sullen resentment that her mother had not been to see her. She felt awkwardness and she felt a kind of twist of triumph. She felt many things she did not like herself feeling.

  Come on Mae, she told herself. She knocked on the front door.

  Her sister-in-law opened it, to a sudden swelling sound from within of a baby wailing. Her sister-in-law's face drooped and then froze, mouth open.

  'Li-liang, may I come in?' Mae heard herself ringing a sweet little bell voice, which was designed to put rude people in the wrong.