Air (or Have Not Have)

by Geoff Ryman

  It was so slow, the fall of stone. Above them on the hill, a terrace wall turned sideways, grumpily, forced to move by the weight of stone settling on top of it. All of it slumped forward towards the school, to Sezen's.

  They would not be able to get back to Upper Street.

  'We've got to go this way,' said Mae.

  They all ran. Mae shone the light. Doors left open, doors closed, Mae found she no longer cared who had managed to escape. As if something were jamming needles into her ears, there was a terrible sensation, a shivering in the air, in the earth itself, that was not quite a noise. It was something inside her head.

  There was another sigh, in front of them this time. The hills groaned with relief, as if finally able to let loose their bladders and bowels. Three houses only, and they would come to the square.

  The beam of light teased them, showing them glimpses of the flood. The square had indeed gone. Most of the Kosals' house had collapsed. The western corner of it still stood, but the rest was spread as rubble across the new lake. A chair stood on the stone. Beyond the rubble, the river roared.

  'We can't get across,' said Mr Ken.

  'We could try climbing the rubble,' Joe said.

  'Just beyond it would be the gully. We would just disappear into it.'

  'Let's go back,' Old Mrs Ken pleaded.

  'The house will be buried,' said Mae.

  There was grinding, as if the sky itself were being milled, as if the hill were peppercorns – and in the light of the moon and stars they saw the bridge above them come away from its foundations.

  The bridge heaved up and shrugged forward and skidded down the slope with a fall of earth and stone, down from Upper Street. There was an explosion of water, great white shooting jets of it. Wooden beams spun upwards into the air. A tangle of roots rose up, snagged itself, whiplashed down. The One Tree had fallen. The bridge moved down the hill. The bridge settled, still upright, leading nowhere.

  Another crash spread out just above them. The Dohs' house would have finally gone.

  One of her men jerked her. Which one? All of them moved into a veil of water. It pummelled their heads. It tried to drive them down onto the ruins of the Kosal house. They had to climb up a broken wall of stone. Someone reached down for her. She looked up into his face. It was Joe's face, looking worn, handsome, and sad. But not slow -fast, lean, and as awake as he had been when he was the leader of the young men. He hoisted her up.

  First they climbed up the Tree. They walked along its ancient oaken trunk, all rough creases.

  And then walked as if nothing were awry, across the old bridge. A waterfall thundered next to them, scented with earth and the mineral smell of freshly melted snow. A beautiful river huge and green washed under them and down onto a valley that was a sea. The Tuis' house stood above the water, its upper storeys only. Otherwise, the southern wing of the village was simply submerged. Kizuldah looked like a seaside town, as if it had always been that way, with a breakwater of stone.

  Lower Street fell away below them to the west, and the hillside was flowing across it. Everything was moving: rocks, shrubs, earth, as if in migration. The earth looked like a herd of buffalo going to a lake to drink.

  'Oh! Oh,' sobbed Mrs Ken. 'Everything's gone!'

  They had to jump down from the bridge, twice the height of a man, into swiftly flowing water. The current slammed into Mae, taking her breath and her strength. One of her men caught her; she caught him; they both caught Mrs Ken and whoever was holding her. Together they pulled each other up onto the street that was gushing water, white rapids over the cobbles. Cobbles were solid underfoot.

  They were going to live. They ran up the hill towards Kwan's.

  CHAPTER 24

  Wing had his generator running.

  The courtyard was full of light and people. The Haj, their pilgrim to Mecca, stood at the courtyard gate. He had crammed onto his head a funny hat with a teddy bear's face. Perhaps he wanted to cheer people up. He had a list.

  'Chung Mae,' the Haj called out. People surged forward. 'Ho-ho! With all the Chungs – Old Mrs Ken and…' He paused, ballooning out his eyes. '… Mr Ken.' He coughed and then murmured, 'Quite a family group.'

  Mrs Shenyalar threw a blanket around Mae's shoulders. 'Mrs Chung was first!' the Muerain's wife shouted to the villagers. 'She roused my husband!'

  Sunni's mother, Old Mrs al Gama, took up Mae's hand. Sunni hugged Mae. 'Are you all right, darling?' Sunni asked.

  Mae turned back around to the Haj. 'Mr Haj-sir. Where is Sezen? Miss Ozdemir – has she come in yet?'

  The Haj kept smiling, but his eyes narrowed. He said nothing.

  'Kwan has hot food for everyone.' Sunni was tugging at her shoulder.

  'Haj? You have been keeping count? Who has come? Who has not?'

  The Haj looked sweet, like a calf, and shrugged. He was blinking. 'So many have been saved,' he said, looking down at the list.

  'Where is Sezen?'

  The Haj sighed, and reached forward with his plump hands. 'She has not come here.'

  'Who else?'

  'The Shens, the Chus…'

  Mae knew. 'The people in the south wash.'

  The Haj shook his head. 'The Macks and Pins are all right.' He sighed. 'They believed you.'

  Mae found she was weeping. 'Who else?'

  Sunni stopped pulling, surrendered, and hugged her.

  Mae asked, 'What about Han Kai-hui? Her daughter?'

  The Haj simply shook his head and said, 'Inshallah.'

  'Almost everyone else is all right,' said Sunni. 'You did everything.'

  Mae let herself be led through the throng. All the Soongs had survived and were huddled in one corner of the court. The cluster of grandchildren played with toys. Mr and Mrs Okan shuffled up to Mae and showered her with thanks.

  Sezen was gone. She had died saving An, the traitor. Han An, the last person in the world you could have seen Sezen giving her life for. Mae thought of An and their clipboards. Mae remembered Kai-hui's face when they were little girls, both poor, catching turtles in the reeds.

  From somewhere there came a sound like thunder or fireworks, a crackling and a boom. Someone's house had fallen. Involuntarily, the villagers groaned.

  Some of the Dohs surged around Mae now, and took hold of her hand. They were thanking her. Was their house still standing?

  'Have you seen Mr and Mrs Ozdemir?' Mae managed to ask. Mrs Doh stared back at her, as if she was far too important to know or care about sharecroppers.

  'Wild girl,' said Mae, and suddenly her legs left her.

  Mae slumped down onto the ground. Siao, Joe, and Ken Kuei were ranged all around her and that was too much as well. Her brain buzzed.

  Someone else was using her mouth.

  We all go, we are all washed away, down into the dark, and no one will find us ever again.

  Sunni was making Mae sit up. 'Sezen is probably cut off somewhere, Mae. You know Sezen: She'll come roaring up here tomorrow on her boyfriend's motorcycle.'

  Indeed, it would be just like Sezen. Mae tried to smile. Joe and Ken between them helped her to her feet. Her shins were numb.

  Somehow she was on the stone staircase, being led down into Kwan's kitchen. All around them, the noise of the flood was gently falling asleep. Sssh, the waters seemed to say, sssh, the worst is over. The wound is lanced, the pus is draining. Sssh little ones, sleep.

  In the kitchen, everything was feverish: the single orange light, the heat of the stoves, the bustling women.

  Something bony and hard flung itself around Mae's neck. Mae burped vile juices into her mouth and felt only elbows. Kwan, desperate, clung to her. Kwan leaned back, looked at Mae, and her lower face crumpled.

  Mae felt nothing. Who was this person?

  Kwan took her hand and led her to a table. Mrs Pin leapt up, and with a kind of whirligig speed, spun bowls and village bread onto the table in front of Mae.

  Wing and Mr Atakoloo looked up from their food. Both bowed deeply and in silence.
Mrs Pin ladled soup into Mae's bowl. Mae picked up the spoon, and found it was too heavy to lift.

  She collapsed into tears and lowered the spoon and sat helplessly. Kwan crowded in next to her and Mae gave her an angry shove.

  'I tried to tell you!' Mae shouted at Kwan. 'No one believed me. No one did anything!'

  The kitchen fell into an embarrassed silence. From outside came the rushing sound of water.

  Kwan, Wing, Sunni, Young Mrs Doh – all stared at her with those same round, helpless eyes. What were they waiting for? For her to say: I forgive you?

  'That's all I have to say,' she told them abruptly. She tore at a newly moistened piece of village bread.

  Mae found that the only person she cared about right now was Sezen. Not Joe, not Ken, not Ju-mei, not Kwan, none of them. It was a strange thing to discover. If she told the story of any of them, it would not move her. Only Sezen's life had a meaning. Sezen, who loved Air.

  'Where is Mrs Ozdemir?' said Mae, very carefully, very angrily. 'That is what I have asked people. Sezen's mother. Or is she not important enough to be allowed into the kitchen?'

  Kwan looked up, questioningly. 'In the courtyard somewhere?'

  Without saying anything else, Mae stood up and walked.

  'Mae?' someone called after her.

  She broke into a run, fleeing from them. Leave me alone! She heard her feet on wet stone again, as if the Flood was still behind her.

  The flood never goes away, it pushes – pushes, and washes all away.

  Bunched up like a fist, Mae pushed her way unseen through people too concerned with their own loss. The sky was going silver. The rooster crowed on Kwan's barn roof.

  Mae found Hatijah huddled in a corner of a barn in the dark. Her head was covered and she sat rocking slightly. She was singing in a wan, private voice.

  'Mrs Ozdemir-ma'am? Hatijah?' Mae rubbed the woman's shoulder. The family goat was loose, rooting in hay. Edrem sat with his back towards everyone.

  'Hatijah? Don't give up hope. Suppose she rescued all those people and got them up to high hills. What a heroine she will be, ah? Think how joyous we will all be when she comes back to us? Hatijah?'

  The woman kept singing – a thin, wheedling, wordless lament. Hatijah stared unblinking and dry-eyed, ignoring the baby on her lap. Mae hugged the red shawl and thought of fleas and the stricken household and how Sezen had fought – fought everything. And she won. Sezen had won.

  'Hatijah? Do you want to talk?'

  Hatijah kept singing tunelessly, and rocking back and forth. The older daughter sat plucking her own shawl, scowling, ignored. The useless back of her useless husband was turned towards them.

  'Can you talk?'

  Nothing.

  Edrem answered instead. 'We saved the goat.' He snarled the last word. His hands were over his eyes and he creaked like an old leather chair.

  Born in poverty, die in poverty. Born in shit, die in shit, die without hope. Oh, but live in hope, oh yes, only to have those hopes broken, ground down. And for what? To want to slit the throat of a poor animal because it is alive and your daughter is not?

  To break your back, weep into the earth, be beaten by the sun, and for what? For the sometime song of the nightingale? The once-a-year feast? The sometimes-full belly that is mostly empty? Love? When love is what makes it hurt when someone is destroyed?

  Edrem began to sob – great, heaving, heartbroken, helpless, useless sobs. His skinny, bent body, his wide, flat shoulders swelled and shuddered. Mae hugged him too and smelled sweat, old hides, smoke, bread and yogurt. Like his wife, he was beyond being hugged.

  Mae was useless too.

  So Mae stood up and stepped back out into the last of the starlight, looking up at the stars, so perfect, so white, so cold. The Dragon's Breath was still blasting and hot. People still stood in silent circles, kicking the ground. The Haj was still at his post, trying to tell Dawn and her friends a story, but looking – looking as the sun rose, for anyone coming up the road.

  The rooster cried, saying, Work. Work should begin.

  Mae climbed up her friend's stone steps. The steps belonged to others as well, to a thousand years' worth of families. Mae's legs were made of bags of wet earth. Fire burned in her belly. Kwan sat exhausted on a chair in the diwan, hand buried in her hair. Kwan did not see her.

  Mae climbed up farther.

  Footsteps followed.

  Mae turned and on the landing of the staircase, three men looked up at her. She pieced together who they were. Joe and Mr Ken were lined up side by side, as if for a firing squad. Behind was Siao. Siao's eyes were full, and full on Mae.

  Beautiful men, so much alike really. Useless. Useless, their beautiful brown eyes, their fat male hands, their lean legs.

  'Mae,' said one of them, 'Joe and I have been talking.'

  'About the weather?' Mae asked with a crooked smile. 'Everyone talks about the weather.'

  'We have decided not to fight,' said Joe. 'Mae. You are expecting a child?'

  'It is expecting me,' she replied. She had to sit on the stairs.

  Joe walked forward. Joe, she thought, you are beautiful again. Maybe you become beautiful when you are really needed. Maybe somewhere, you are always beautiful. Maybe if you had been born rich…

  'I was the one who left,' said Joe. 'I will leave again.'

  He leaned forward and kissed her. He took her face in his hands. 'My little Mae.'

  His shoulders said: You don't need an idiot like me. I have ruined everything. I lost my father's farm. I want to wander the earth in shame.

  'Don't feel useless, Joe,' Mae pleaded. 'We're all useless. We just do things and hope.'

  'Lung thinks I'm a fool,' he murmured. 'I am a ghost here.'

  The teenage boy had suddenly found cracks in his face. Who needs a teenage village hero in his fifties? What could he do? Nothing. Except to be someone's sharecropper.

  'I could buy you some land,' Mae said.

  Joe paused. 'I hate farming,' he said, smiling. 'I think I want to drive a truck.'

  'So did I,' said Mr Ken, in recognition.

  But you grew up, thought Mae.

  So, I still love my husband. And I am going to let him go. She stood up.

  Everything was very suddenly clear, as if washed clean by flood-water. She looked at her old husband, who was going away; and at faithful simple Mr Ken who had fathered her last-chance child; and at Siao, who was wise.

  'I am going to live with Siao,' Mae announced. 'I'm sorry.'

  Without a glance at Mr Ken, Mae climbed again. She remembered her first day at school, and seeing the older boys playing football. The captain of one of the teams stopped the game and began to fight. 'That is not fair,' he bellowed.

  A little boy Mae's own age came up and stood beside her. He was the first child in the school to talk to her. 'That's my brother,' little Siao said proudly, quietly. 'Are you going to live here?' he asked.

  'Until I'm grown up,' little Mae had answered.

  Mae went into her old, high room, and there was the machine in front of the high window and she looked out over the courtyard. The sky over the broken roof and the bowl of the mountains was already blue-grey against silver. Somewhere farther down the valley, in the future, the sun was bright, but Kizuldah was still in shadow. The rooster was crowing over and over, having sensed at last that something was wrong.

  And there was her old friend, Kwan's TV.

  'Chung Mae. Wake. Full audio and video, no queuing, sent in real time and saved to Bugs at Nouvelles. Also to Bedri at Metoff.'

  A flick and buzz. The little seeing, detachable eye. Mae held it up in the palm of her hand.

  'Hello, Bedri, hello, Bugsy, this is Chung Mae. There has been a flash flood. This is our village now at seven-fifteen a.m.'

  The bowl of the shadowed mountain was no longer in orderly lines. White rocks were spread in wedge-shaped lines down the hillside. They rested at crazy angles like eggs in the mud. The treasured and nurtured earth had escaped, wa
sted itself in bursting down the hillside.

  'It may not look too different to you,' said Mae. 'But yesterday it was covered in snow. There was snow on the high hills, and today, looking at the hills across the valley, there is no snow. That is the first time I have seen that.'

  She swallowed. She traced the two parallel streets of Kizuldah with her eyes.

  'It will not look different to you, but our stone bridge was washed away from Upper Street into Lower Street. I can remember…'

  Mae had to break off, and swallow – she felt her eyes swell and heat up. But this was real time; she could not afford mistakes.

  'I can remember when the Chinese engineers visited, to volunteer to make the bridge. They came with trowels and concrete because Kizuldah had none. We were too poor.'

  Her voice, like a carpet, was worn thin. It straggled away like torn thread. Mae swallowed and continued.

  'We loved the Chinese because they were told not to be snobbish, to mix in, and they did, and they worked hard, and they left that bridge behind. And those of us here who are Chinese, thought of them every time we walked across it. The big handsome men, the happy women, who lived in our homes and praised the food. How we all admired them and their bridge. And see the house next to it? Oh!'

  Mae had to stop again. She hauled back in moisture and sadness, for she had to keep talking.

  'That was Mr and Mrs Kosal's house, but it was the house on the square, and on its benches we spent our lives sitting. Old men played dominoes, our Haj would talk about his travels, and Old Mrs Kosal, now gone, would come out and give the children bonbons. In the square we had the harvest. We would pile up the hessian sacks full of rice, and build bonfires for barbecues. Year on year we would lay out rugs and hire a band, and all of us – the old women, the boys, the little girls – danced and ate our fill of roast and yams and new rice. We sat under the tree. We called it the One Tree. It had been planted there so long ago and was big and huge; it was like a friend, it was like all our fathers taken root. And it's been washed away. It had a swing on it, and all the children – the children of the 1950s, and the 1960s and '70's, '80s, '90s – all of us swung on that swing. So high, so hard, I think some of us must have tossed our spirits into the air. And they are still in the air. The spirits of the children, playing.'