Air (or Have Not Have)

by Geoff Ryman

  She puts the sock down on the table, and ponders. It will not do for her husband to see any telegram about any man. She ponders a moment, and wonders why she is not crying when there is no doubt.

  Mrs Tung goes up Lower Street to the Teahouse, and she slips sideways into the room with all the men and cigarette smoke. The men in cloth caps look up and glower. She is a woman, even if her head is covered. Only whores sit in cafes with men. Mrs Tung sits at a table and starts to darn socks. She focuses on the yarn and the thread. The morning passes. She nods yes to a glass of tea, but does not drink it.

  Her cousin Mr Tui comes up and suggests she should leave. Mrs Tung just shakes her head, for she finds she does not trust herself to speak. She keeps her eyes on the socks.

  Then the machine in the corner of the room chatters. Mrs Tung sees the shadow of Mr Tui turn away. Mrs Tung puts her hands in her lap and waits.

  The shadow comes back. 'This is for you,' he says, leaning down, so that she has to see his walrus face looking sad.

  'You should have said you were waiting,' says Mr Tui. Mrs Tung knows that if she speaks, she will start to weep. Cousin Tui stands up. 'She was waiting for this!' He shakes the telegram at the men at the bar.

  He folds it flat and puts it in her limp and waiting hands.

  Dear friend, beloved cousin Kalaf is dead.

  'He was kind to me when I was young,' says Mrs Tung, and scrunches up the telegram as if it were her face. Her face becomes a rag to be wrung; she can feel water seeping. She stands up, and holds up, and swiftly strides out of the Teahouse. She keeps her head high, walks back home through the narrow corridor of houses, and cannot tell anyone that the father of her child is dead. She finally closes the door of the kitchen, and hides her face in her husband's wet socks.

  Mrs Tung knew before she could have known.

  Mrs Tung had been a traveller in Air. Before there was Air.

  So Mae went to find her.

  Mae went back to the day of the test.

  Mae burgeoned back into her old life.

  The cauldron is boiling; Joe has eaten his rice. Old Mrs Tung is led in, chuckling at herself. Kuei helps her, blind to his own future, as blind as this time-bound, work-bound Mae.

  ____________________

  to Chung Mae Wang

  CERTIFICATE OF APPRECIATION FROM THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 2019

  for FASHION STUDIES

  ____________________

  And all around them are the magnetic fields, the arcs emanating from the fire in the heart of the earth – unnoticed and of no importance to Kizuldah for two thousand years.

  Until now.

  There is the flash and the buzz and the inflation of the mind. Every neural pathway is jolted at once.

  A kind of Question Map of the self. Every question answered, complete.

  Buzzed and jolted and in that moment stamped for ever on eternity, in Air. A complete, unchanging, unloving, unnatural Map.

  And, oh, murmuring, here comes the Format.

  Mae has to chuckle. It was such a cheap and tinny thing, the Format, like a child's plastic space-helmet clamped on the head. A few lines of code, a bit of information added to the mix.

  'Chocolate. I smell chocolate,' coos Old Mrs Tung.

  Here it comes, thinks Mae-in-Air, here it comes.

  The cauldron is knocked, and topples. It will fall forever. That white steaming sheet will like a shroud cling and scald the old thin flesh for an eternity.

  Mae is moved by pity and jumps forward, her mind addled and stirred by the unfamiliar immanence of all-time one-time. She plucks away the scalding shroud.

  Mrs Tung? another Mae demands, riding on the shoulders of her old life. Where are you, Mrs Tung?

  Mae-in-Air seeks the eternal soul.

  In time, Mrs Tung takes another Mae's hand. There are sticky trails across Mrs Tung's face, as if from snails. Her hands are lumpy and blue.

  'I can see!' Mrs Tung whispers. Her eyes waver back and forth, skipping, leaping, but they move in unison.

  Mrs Tung, it's me, Mae!

  Air was saying, 'To send messages, go to the area called Airmail…'

  Mae watches her early self swoop clumsily across a virtual courtyard and overshoot the graphics. She embeds herself in the blue stone. Seen from enough distance, anything is funny.

  Air says, 'For an emergency configuration, simply repeat your own name several times.'

  And Mae-in-Air hears her other self say over, and over, 'Mae, Mae, Mae…'

  Mrs Tung cries out in unison, Mae! Mae!

  Click.

  That was it. That was it right there.

  Such a simple thing, a mailbox address. You don't need to talk about souls, or wonder how your imprints got entangled. It's nothing to do with the Gates or the UN Format.

  All you have to do is chant the same name together when they configure your mailboxes.

  Mae starts to laugh. Their mailboxes had the same name! That was the problem. They would have the same name for eternity – all eternity, both past and future.

  The imprint had the mailbox, but the imprint was connected always to the real self, the real person who controlled.

  All I have to do, Mae realizes, is talk to the real Mrs Tung.

  Water, says Granny Tung, as if in prophecy. The 1959 flood comes gurgling back, but Mae is gone.

  Mae pierced and repierced air like a sewing needle, looking for the real soul of Mrs Tung.

  Mae sat on her own shoulder, morning visit after morning visit to Mrs Tung's attic.

  There Mrs Tung was in her chair at ninety, the wind blowing in her face as if fresh from a Cossack campfire, looking back at memories of the hills.

  'Is that you, my dear Mae?' Mrs Tung would banter and then laugh again from heartbreak. 'Well, well, come and sit near me child, and tell me all your news. Hoo-hoo-hoo!'

  Mae would collapse. 'Woh! Nothing Granny, just laundry.'

  'Oh-ho-ho, I used to so love doing laundry. Watching it hang out in the sun all those colours. I used to love the smell of it you know.'

  That's because you loved the people who wore the clothes, Granny.

  And Mae-in-Air, on her own shoulder, would whisper: Granny, Granny Tung, can you hear me?

  And it seemed sometimes, that the old catlike face would go still and listening, as if just catching a whisper.

  Granny, Granny, I'm here.

  'Hoo-hoo-hoo, strange how the mind plays tricks. I suddenly remembered – oh, I don't know why – something long before your time.'

  And Mae-in-time, fresh from laundry and Joe's noodles, and the smell of Siao in the loft, would lean forward, hopeful for novelty, wanting beauty. 'Remembered what, Granny?'

  'Oh!' Mrs Tung waved it away. 'I remembered… I don't know why – hoo-hoo-hoo – I remember one year, the rice fields were full of poppies. Just for no reason. And we all left them there, because so many of our young men had died. Poor souls.' Her old blind eyes still glittered with joy. As if they could see the eternity beyond.

  And Mae would stand up to go, and Mae-in-Air would collapse herself back down.

  Then she would huff and puff and blow herself back up to another day, another visit.

  Mae followed herself, haunted herself, trying to find whenever Mae had been near Old Mrs Tung. She reasoned that there might be some closer link, the closer she got to their final relationship, their final state.

  Then, finally, Mae went back to the day just before the Test.

  Mae-in-time thumped her way up the stairs to Mrs Tung's room. It was a duty visit. Her head full of dresses and how she could deliver them all in time by leaving off lace collars. She was feeling impatient, a tickle of nerves making her jump as she collapsed onto the chair Mrs Tung kept for guests. They talked about wishboats and pumpkin seeds. Mae, outside time, could see now that Old Mrs Tung was in a mysterious mood.

  'I remember the day you first came to me,' Mrs Tung said as if the time had come to talk of final things. As indeed it had. 'I thought: Is that the
girl whose father has been killed? She is so pretty. I remember you looking at all my dresses hanging on the line.'

  Yah, yah, yah, a sweet old lady's memories, thought Mae. She replied, half thinking, 'And you asked me which one I liked best.'

  Another Mae thought: Pay attention, Mae, this is precious. This is the last time this will happen.

  Mrs Tung giggled. 'Oh yes, and you said the butterflies.' She sat straight up in her chair as if surveying all of her life from a high cliff. The air from the open window blew her hair. 'We had tennis courts, you know. Here in Kizuldah.'

  'Did we?' Mae pretended she had not heard that before.

  'Oh yes, oh yes. When the Chinese were here, just before the Communists came. Part of the Chinese army was here, and they built them. We all played tennis, in our school uniforms. Oh! They were all so handsome; all the village girls were so in love.' Mrs Tung chuckled. 'I remember, I couldn't have been more than ten years old, and one of them adopted me, because he said I looked like his daughter. He sent me a teddy bear after the war.' She chuckled and shook her head. 'I was too old for teddy bears by then. But I told everyone it meant we were getting married. Oh! I wish I had married him.'

  There were so many people Old Mrs Tung wished she had married – from her Cossacks to boys in other villages and of course her Kalaf. She even managed to love the ones she had married.

  It's all so precious, thought Mae-in-Air, it's all so beautiful, we have to ignore it, to get on with the laundry.

  And Mae felt a wind blow, a movement in Air.

  Old Mrs Tung did a slight jerk, and turned her head and tried to chuckle. 'Ooh. Hoo-hoo-hoo. Someone just walked on my grave,' she said, in time.

  And outside time, dim and confused something rippled, like a voice: Mae?

  Dying people say their fathers return. The dead sit down beside them, to comfort them. They give them kisses in dreams. Missy lay dying in summer, in an attic room that was always hot and smelled of old sweat in clothes. Mama would not let Mae visit, for fear of making her ill as well. But Mae still crept in and marvelled in horror at the dark circles under her sister's eyes and the dew of sweat. Missy looked at her, said sweetly, 'Isn't it lovely that Papa lies so quiet next to me?'

  Again: Mae?

  It was just a whisper, unclear, unformatted, a swirl, an eddy in time from a place where nothing can move.

  Mae-in-Air reached across for it, across the breakfast table of time.

  And very suddenly, like the incomplete thing it was, the room, the space it contained and the bodies in it, collapsed like cards, fell back and down.

  And there in infinite layers reflecting back, reflecting forward, babe, child, woman, Granny, was Mrs Tung.

  Mrs Tung was a weaving blur around the landscapes of three villages lost in forgotten hills. Mrs Tung was a serpent-weaving pattern of someone's entire life, a sinuous wild shape through time, folded in on itself.

  Folded in on Mae.

  Mae didn't use one name to call it. She used all names: Young Miss Hu, Ai-ling, Mrs Yuksel, Mrs Tung, Granny. The names were a weaving serpent blur as well.

  And the entirety seemed to rouse itself, in something like recognition. It rose up like a ghost.

  There was no speaking to it. There was nothing clamped to its head to translate and set other people's messages in order. It rose up and then settled down, into the most probable shape. But it could be teased down the hill, edged towards the imprints.

  'Help me,' whispered Mae.

  And the entirety lifted up its aged, young, beautiful self and corralled its separate parts like hundreds of waving chiffon scarves, collected itself, trying to recognize and learn in a realm where time and learning were complete. Finished, meaning, accomplished.

  Mae nipped in and out of that life like a mouse through floorboards. Mae called, and the entirety tried to lift its head as Mrs Tung slept.

  Mae whispered to Mrs Tung in dreams.

  A young wife tossed fitfully in her bed in a village called Mirrors. Mae tried to lead her back to the moment when the cauldron spilled, when the fire shot through the Air.

  Little Miss Hu shivered on the grass as she slept by a campfire, trading horses. Mae called.

  Granny shook her head, aching in a wooden chair, asleep in dreams, in Air.

  Dreams are a way for the finished self in Air to live again, to have a before and an after in which to think. We learn through all eternity in our dreams.

  And so did Mrs Tung. The dream had recurred all through her life.

  It was a terrible dream, always the same. A friend, a daughter, even Lily perhaps, needed her. She, Mrs Tung, had done something. She didn't mean to do it, she had not known she had done it, but it was something she had done. Sometimes, at its most nightmarish, she had somehow stolen her friend's body.

  And the answer was always the same.

  Old Mrs Tung lifted all of herself up like a thousand ragged ghosts. And she was blown by love towards one particular time.

  'Mae Mae Mae Mae Mae Mae…'

  And she met a friend, and that friend seemed to pour her like slithery silk scarves to one particular thing.

  That thing was a part of Mrs Tung's life. A moment of her life that had been taken and frozen and held. It was like a burn victim, so scarred that it could not move, embittered and incomplete. Incomplete and angry, after the beautiful pattern should have been finished. Mrs Tung settled on it with her whole self, and enveloped it and welcomed it and hugged it and stilled it. She was reunited with a tiny, hardened, mean little part of her life. She wove it back into the beautiful carpet.

  And then said, very clearly, quoting the poet through all her life:

  'Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale, complaining of separations.'

  Somewhere in time, Mae's eyes fluttered and opened again.

  She was in her kitchen, back in herself.

  'I'm back,' she managed to whisper. There was a sound of scraping chairs as two men jumped up from the table.

  But somewhere else, two spirits sat together as if in an attic exchanging memories, joined forever, remembering the poets.

  'Body is not veiled from soul, nor soul from body, yet none is permitted to see the soul.'

  In the future, everyone will be able to talk with their dead.

  CHAPTER 26

  Mae, Siao, Mr Ken and his children all strolled together towards the celebration.

  They were a new kind of family. Mr Ken walked on ahead, cajoling and calming his two daughters who were beside themselves with impatience to get to the square to join their friends.

  Mr Ken's arms were full of little paper boats. Each one had a birthday-cake candle balanced in it. The girls kept jumping up and trying to snatch them, as if they were full of bonbons.

  'Careful, careful!' said Mr Ken. 'The candles are only held by a little wax, and these are for Auntie Mae and Siao as well.'

  'Let me have mine,' said the eldest, trying to look more mature. She delicately peeled a boat from her father's grasp. She looked at it with experienced eyes. 'What happens if the candle falls over and the boat catches fire?'

  'Oh, that is very good luck: That means your wish gets to Heaven even faster.'

  Mae thought, I think Kuei has just made that up.

  But, oh, he was handsome, his hair combed, his broad shoulders in a nice new shirt, his round legs in beautiful new slacks.

  Mae and Siao strolled slightly behind them, holding hands.

  Siao had caught her glance and grinned. 'I have found you out,' he said, teasing. 'I know you have a lover. But I am not sure who it could be.'

  'Ah, now I am undone,' said Mae. She played along, but she could still be taken aback by Siao's unexpected habit of turning the most painful things into jokes.

  'People even say that once you had a crush on my brother Joe,' said Siao.

  'Joe? Don't be silly. Maybe when he was younger and more fashionable. I only like fashionable men.'

  'Ah,' said Siao, who even on this big night wore his stonem
ason's grey sweatsuit. ' That is what you see in me.'

  He grinned at her with his beautiful catlike face. That was the village face when it was beautiful, like Mrs Tung's, I love both of my men, thought Mae.

  She walked, ponderous with contentment and pregnancy. I feel like a ewe on the pastures at lambing time.

  'Mrs Chung-ma'am!' someone called. Mrs Hoiyoo, Kwan's sister, was waving from a high window. 'Your special dress is so beautiful!'

  It was airy and embroidered. 'Shen Suloi made it for me!' Mae called back.

  'The girls look excited.'

  'They are beside themselves. See you there!'

  The village square was already full of people. Mr Ken's daughters saw friends, squealed and ran off, clutching their boats of wishes.

  The village square was newly paved with honey-coloured stone. Their once wayward little river was now firmly disciplined in a decorative zigzag channel. The bridge which had conveniently dropped down from Upper to Lower Street was now firmly mortared in place, and hung with lights.

  Once, the lights would have hung from the One Tree, and the children would have been in the swings soaring higher and higher over the heads of the festival. The children did not even miss the tree now.

  'Dad! We'll need more duct tape!'

  Genghiz Atakoloo shouted down from scaffolding at the edge of the drop. It would hold all the village TVs, for everyone to see. His father, Enver Atakoloo, bristled his white moustache. Mae remembered that her first real crush had been for Mr Atakoloo, who in those days had been strong and bull-like with his black eyes and black stubble. On the terrible day that he killed Mr Pin and was carried off to prison, Mae had wept. Joe came up behind her and said that she must get used to that, because one day, he, Joe, was going to kill someone and go to prison, too.

  'I miss Joe,' Mae said to Siao.

  'I know,' said Siao, and gave her hand a shake.

  Mae coughed up bile, and moved her handkerchief over her mouth.

  Dawn came bouncing up, pulling her mother, Mrs Ling.

  'My mother says you are no longer pretty,' giggled Dawn.