Mariella

by Claire Frances Raciborska

  And then, there it was. A house. Square all round, no more than three rooms inside. A stretch of veranda wrapped around the front. Three little columns holding up its rusted roof. Beyond the peeling paint and broken windows, beyond the missing doors and orange moss of rust, Sophie had seen the gleam of a promise, one which had been kept. She had left behind her silent screams and her trapped joy. She had scraped those away. She sometimes thought of herself as a white china plate, like those in her favourite shop of her world before. A smooth clean plate with a tiny centre of food. A small gourmet core of passion and beauty. Her daughter too had a life away from the Regulators and their Rules. Sometimes she thought it was Mariella herself that had forced her escape. It was difficult to see how a child such as she would have survived their world. But this kind of freedom was not without cost. It seemed that with all that she had left behind was also a part of herself. She was still running. From fear, from the Regulators, from those she thought could take her gourmet core. Sophie envied Mariella. Although she had never known anything to run away from, Sophie had made sure of that, she knew Mariella was more than she was. A braver, stronger version of herself. Mariella was so unashamedly herself. It was a shamelessness Sophie knew the world would find hard to forgive.

  Chapter 7

  The young people sat in rows, each an accurate measured distance apart resulting in pleasing parallels that cut the room into segments. Each student sat in the required position – feet both on the floor, thighs parallel to the ground, back parallel to the chair. A man walked inside the grid, distributing sheets of paper (accurate measured shapes that fit together without blemish). He was silent as were the young people poised around him.

  He reached the back of the room, at a point where if he swivelled at a perfect right angle he would be able to continue the clean lines of his progress. But he was held up by a marring of angles. One of the young people had a foot up on the chair, knee pressed to the desk as he leant over its surface, his fingers swirling round to trace patterns no one else could see.

  ‘Wellington.’ The man spoke in the tone of a command. ‘You failed. Again.’ He tossed some papers onto the desk.

  Wellington looked up, his face full of love and kindness. The man frowned. He expected humiliation and apologies, not joy. Wellington was not behaving as he ought. He turned so sharply that his heels clicked together and marched off to the other side of the room.

  Those alongside Wellington leaned in close. He himself did not look at the papers with their red circles and crosses. He seemed unconcerned with them. The others wanted him to frown or feign indifference if he must, but at least offer some reaction to the boundaries that mapped out their world. These symbols drawn out to categorise their efforts or even themselves as good or bad were placed as the goal, the reason or purpose behind their being. The better your symbol, the better your place in the world, the better your life in it. This was the world as it was presented to them and they believed it. They grasped for these symbols as their lungs grasped for air and their throats for water. Now the symbols were numbers on a paper, later they would be numbers in a bank account, or subtler cadences of power in words and clothes and gestures.

  Wellington pushed the papers aside to make room for his invisible musings. The sheaf fell to the floor, fluttering in the faint draft like curled autumn leaves. The men and women around him turned their faces away, dark thoughts gathering in their minds. Wellington caused them discomfort. His blatant disregard for what should have been vital made their own beliefs shift inside them, and it felt like the world breaking apart. Wellington would be punished.

  Chapter 8

  Mariella stood at the door, watching her mother drive away. She stayed there until she could no longer hear the growling of the engine, or the tyres crunching through the dry grass. Soon the throb of the cicada-songs closed in once again, wrapping the small home in their heavy hum.

  Mariella walked away from the house, away from the direction her mother had taken. Where was she going? Nowhere and everywhere. She walked to be closer to that which was a part of her. The world around her was brown and dry. It was waiting for the rain. There was nothing Mariella had known to equal the patience of the dry bush. The rains always left. And they always returned.

  She walked upwards, making her way through crunching leaves and trees that snapped at a passing breeze. The air was light upon her skin, no invisible drops of water to weigh it down. Even in this time of waiting, of quiet, the world was teeming with life. The sounds and smells around her, the colours only she saw, the shimmering that made up the world she knew, all reminded her that she was not alone. Since she was a little girl, Mariella had carried with her a sense of awe. The abundance around her had strengthened and nourished her with a single notion. The life that stirred in the trees, that breathed through the grass and reeds, swirled in the rivers and turned upwards to watch the sky, made her heart thrill because she was a part of it. When it was all made, when it all brought itself into being, she came with it. She was a part of this vivacity. And so she knew wonder as an intimate friend. Because she had never been apart, but always one and the same.

  She walked for hours, until the sun that had warmed her back shone on her face. At some point during the day she had realised she was walking towards something. A cluster of density, something heavy and solid, awaited her. Although she moved with her usual grace, her usual calm, there was nevertheless a sense of excitement growing inside her. After all, what had she known, other than this place? A part of her was urging her to find out what her mother had been trying to hide from her her whole life.

  She heard them before she saw them. There was a hammering, like a blue jay smashing a snail against a rock, only infinitely louder and more terrible. In brief moments of reprieve, when the sounds of the bush flooded in once again, Mariella heard a babble of voices, men’s voices. She rounded the crest of the hill, parted her way through the trees and saw the scene laid out before her.

  The men working on the road looked back and saw a beautiful and wild creature. A face lit inside by its own smile, dark hair flying round. The shape of an angel or a ghost. Mariella floated towards the five grease-stained men in orange vests. The men stopped and stared as one entity. She was still several paces from them when the hammer that hung in its owner’s slack grip dropped to the tar of the road, knocking another man’s shin on the way down. His yell and double-over of agony broke the spell of silence.

  The men crowded around their injured friend, and when they glanced back at Mariella, as they all did, they found her amongst them. In silence they stepped back and parted the way for her. Her influence of peace, and affection, had fallen over them all. It would not be too much to say that some had already fallen in love with this nubile creature of only fourteen.

  Mariella knelt by the man on the ground. In her hand she had a plant, which had gone unnoticed by the men until now. It was an arm of cactus, one of the many fierce inhabitants of this land. She placed her crude leather sandal against its spiny top, and braced its root against the heel of her hand. As it broke it oozed clear juice from its wound. It dribbled through its white quills.

  Without pausing, Mariella lifted the trousers of the man before her and rubbed the juice on his skin. She touched a fully grown man she had never met with a calm unsullied by self-consciousness or shame. Using her fingernail, Mariella lifted a small disc of flesh from the plant and gave it to the man to eat.

  ‘There, that should help,’ she said. The men before her stared in mute wonder.

  ‘Look here, little ma’am.’ The foreman shook himself slightly and stepped forward, remembering who and what he was. ‘Look here, where have you come from? There’s nowhere about for miles. You shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘I live just over that hill, not too far away.’

  The claim was impossible, for who could live in such a place? Who was there that lived outside the domain of the Regulators? But then, the men thought, who was there like the girl before them? In
the end they all nodded sagely. Incredulity aside, it seemed against nature herself that this girl should lie. And working as they did, under the sky and sun and clouds, these men knew more of nature than most.

  ‘What are you building here?’ Mariella walked around the patch of tar on which they stood, staring intently down at it. She crouched down and touched her finger to its surface.

  ‘It’s the new highway.’ Again it was the foreman who spoke. ‘It’ll really change this area, you know, make something of it.’

  Mariella looked up at the foreman’s words, in which he had injected some measure of pride, hoping to impress this young apparition. She was frowning, looking confused.

  ‘Make what?’ she asked. ‘How can you change something from what it is?’

  As soon as she had spoken, Mariella thought again. She remembered that she could talk to birds and move the trees, that she could stop the river and bring the rain. Why had she thought others too would not have this talent?

  ‘Well…well now, there’s just nothing here,’ continued the foreman, slightly flustered now. ‘When the highway’s done it’ll bring development.’

  Mariella nodded, happier now, although she had listened very little to his reply. She thought she saw the answer more clearly herself. Her mother had always seemed strangely inept at changing the world around her, the way Mariella could. In fact, it was something they had never talked about. When Mariella had begun to talk of it, as a little girl, the colour around her mother had always paled slightly with discomfort. Mariella was a kind child, and rather than distress her mother, she had learnt silence. Now she had found others who were the same as her. Others who could change the world from what it was.

  Chapter 9

  Hendrik Nietzburger was not an attractive child. He was small, and pale. He had the face of an adult which many found disconcerting on one so young. His limbs were awkward and always sticking out at odd angles. He did not seem to understand the games the other children played, or be able to be a part of them. His parents were poor and so they could not clothe him in the popular way. He was clever too, which only put more space between him and his peers. With such unfortunate attributes as his birth rights, he quickly saw that his place in the general hierarchy of things was rather low. He watched the world around him, with dark and probing eyes, and saw that in order for him move up the rungs, it must be on a ladder of his own making. He resolved to find a way.

  He had not spent very long at Class when he came upon the little boys that were to change his fate. He was walking in the lower reaches of the playground, where bushes lined the boundary. Rather than attempt and fail to play with the others, he chose to keep his distance. He rounded one of the fuller bushes, it branches dotted with tiny white flowers. There he saw two boys, around his age, sitting in the grass. Their pants were around their ankles and had their little penises gripped in the fingers of one hand. Curiously they watched each other as their mirror. They seemed to be enjoying themselves very much.

  Little Hendrik was both excited and confused by what he had seen. Had he had any friends he might have called them to come and look, but he did not. So without thinking about it very much, he ran to tell his Educator, who was usually kind to him and at least paid him more attention than the other children.

  He could not have anticipated what was to follow. The Educator was shocked and very angry. The two boys were punished and when Hendrik arrived the next day, he was told they had been moved to another Class. Hendrik was thrilled. It was him and his actions that had changed the ways things were. He had found a new kind of power. It had everything to do with being the outsider, and nothing to do with being liked, yet it was integral to the hierarchy. He had found his way to climb.

  Chapter 10

  The Superintendent of Educators drummed his fingers against the table. The tip of his pinky came down to hit the surface at the same moment his forefinger left it, creating an unbroken circle of beats. It crescendoed to a peak, hammering in the ears of all those present like rain on a tin roof, then quietened down to a patter. The Superintendent looked out at the table that stretched down the room in front of him. His Educators looked back, most of them blinking behind glasses. Educators normally wore glasses, he thought, and were often weedy. He himself never wore glasses, and had framed his big square shoulders with an expensive suit. This was a special meeting and called together for only one purpose: to discuss the problem that was Wellington.

  ‘It’s just not natural, to smile so much. Especially when he’s got nothing to smile about. His marks are terrible, and he’s practically an orphan.’ The lady who had spoken sniffed in distaste. She had grey hair in a bun and very stern spectacles.

  ‘Yes, the poor dear,’ spoke up another woman. Her hair was blond and curly and fell down over her bosom. ‘Only he doesn’t do anything to encourage sympathy. If only he would look in the least dispirited, slope his shoulders or something. One does want to love him, one does.’ She frowned, slightly embarrassed. ‘But it’s just too difficult.’

  ‘Every week he does something to disrupt my Class.’ It was a man who spoke this time. ‘He just sits there, so disrespectful. Any student within a three-desk radius is staring out the window, totally lost.’

  The conversation continued. New words, like ‘late developer’ and ‘disadvantaged learner’, were introduced, helping the discussion along without inserting any real meaning. This was common procedure at meetings. The Superintendent let it all unfold. He was meeting a very pretty young woman for dinner later. His hand still lay on the table so he managed to check his watch without any of the Educators noticing. He congratulated himself on that, then drifted into a musing on the young woman’s charms. It was the best part of his job really; its title and the way it managed to impress all manner of young and attractive females. Lazily he let his poised attention become real. No, they did not seem to have gotten anywhere. He supposed they wouldn’t without him intervening. That was what the meeting was called for, after all, so that decisive action could be taken, and he was the only one capable of that.

  ‘Right, so anyone have any concrete grounds for punishment?’

  The room fell silent. The exact problem with Wellington was that there was no exact problem. He made others feel uncomfortable. None of the Educators wanted to look too closely into why because to do so would be to investigate the power that controlled their own lives. The Rules were always strictly avoided in polite and civilised society. They were never a topic of conversation or direct thought.

  The Superintendent sighed. He was tired of Wellington. He had met him once or twice. Odd little chap for sure. Hardly a month went by without someone or another complaining about him. Educators sidled up to him in the staff room or pounced on him in the corridors. All to talk about this damned child. They took it in turns he thought. It was a strategy they had devised to irritate him, he was sure of it.

  ‘He must be due for Placement now surely?’

  ‘Well, that’s just the thing, how can a child like that be Placed?’ said the woman with grey hair. She had pouted out her lips in frustration. The movement made her glasses slip a little down the bridge of her nose and actually had a beneficial effect on her looks. ‘There’ll be all sorts of complaints. We were supposed to Educate him out of such strangeness, that’s our job.’

  ‘From parents too,’ piped up the man at his shoulder. ‘From parents too there’ll be complaints. There are already. No one wants him around.’

  The Superintendent started drumming his fingers again. He looked at his watch, this time not so surreptitiously. He wanted to go home, have some time to put on some cologne before his dinner. He was a man who had been perfectly Placed. He wielded his power well and to his advantage. He never thought to question the bigger structure that governed his role. To do so would have been to jeopardise some very nice perks thank you. He was also mostly competent at what he did, but not brilliant at it either.

  ‘So put him away somewhere!’ He threw his hand up
, the fingers outstretched.

  All the Educators looked back at him, his palm up towards them like a stop at a cross-street.

  ‘But you see,’ the woman with blond curls spoke sweetly and patiently, ‘he’s almost impossible to Place-’

  ‘No you stupid woman.’ As Superintendent he was allowed to say these things. The woman looked nevertheless surprised. Women like her were not usually called such. Many other things, but not that. ‘Not in a Training College. Don’t even send him for Placement. Just put him somewhere, doing something. No one will notice his age, strange boy like that. They’ll just think he went for a short Training and scored too low to do anything else. Rid of him, that’s all we want, isn’t it?’

  A few beats passed and no one spoke. The Superintendent took this as his chance to leave. ‘Good meeting everyone.’ He stood up and walked to the end of the room, cementing his conclusion. As he reached the door his step slowed. He turned round thoughtfully. Such a gormless little chap couldn’t too do much harm surely, but it never hurt to be too careful.

  ‘Put him quite away will you? Away from others. So there won’t be any influences. Don’t want him giving anyone any ideas, do we now?’ And with that he strode off, his chest puffed out with the thought of his evening ahead.

  Wellington stood watching the numbers on the tiny screen click up.

  286, 287, 288, 289, 290…

  His lips were parted and his head tilted slightly to the side. He was amazed that a collection of only nine digits could move in a sequence that then changed the meaning of the second place digit, also held in place by the same nine digits. He could count alright, and multiply and divide too. In fact his general arithmetic was better than most of the students he had been in Class with. But when it came to a test on paper, he had often got lost in the ponderings of structure and intention behind the symbols. In the world of numbers he had never been afraid to ask why.