‘Excuse me, could you hurry up? I do have somewhere I need to be.’ The voice that came from behind the dark sunglasses was dripping with sarcasm.
Wellington blinked and turned to look at the driver’s window. The man was balancing his elbow on the edge of the door, waving a small plastic rectangle in his hand. Wellington clicked the trigger and pulled out the nozzle that was inserted in the side of the car. He placed it on the side of the bowser and then walked to the window.
‘Thank you sir.’ He took the card. He had been instructed to say as little as possible to his customers. Thank you sir; Can I help you?; Goodbye: these were considered appropriate. Very little else.
He returned a few moments later with a little slip of paper and the card.
‘Bout bloody time.’
The man behind the sunglasses peered at him. This was normally when they wound up the window and left. Wellington looked back innocently. The man’s face was made up of sharp lines. The two beside his mouth flared out and down so harshly they seemed to have been cut into his face. His forehead protruded menacingly. Looking at him Wellington felt a pounding in his ears, like the throbbing sound of silence. He hoped he would leave soon.
A moment or two later he did. Wellington felt rather than saw him shrug his shoulders and shake his head. He muttered something (‘I’m going to be late’) and then pushed the levers that slid his car out and away.
Wellington turned to pick up the broom against the door. He swept slowly so as to make as little noise as possible. The petrol station was on the side of a very long road, with very little beside it except fields and fences. Once the hum of the car’s engine had died away, the loudest noise was the wind breathing in the trees above the station.
But Wellington needed to be very quiet. Now that he was out here and alone, he knew his music would not bother anyone. But only in the moment that he tried to find it, did he realise he did not know how to turn up the volume. He had done his best in Class. He had not broken any Rules but he had not learnt to fear them either. This had brought him within the boundaries of acceptability, but so far out on the fringes that it had been necessary to exclude him. He didn’t mind. He liked it here. He touched the bristles as lightly to the floor as he could, sweeping up the dried old leaves into a pile near the back, where he would later sit and admire the patterns they made.
Chapter 11
The tires rolling along the highway made a sound like water running from a tap. The road was long and straight beneath them, offering no resistance or obstruction. Inside the car low music laid over the tire sound. The song was familiar, and would be so in any country in the world. It gave no clues to where the road led or who followed its relentless unfurl. It was not music itself that the Anonym was against, only certain kinds. The kind that said something different. The kind that reached inside and coaxed out memories. Dangerous music. That was why the Anonym had gone to the trouble of putting together their own tracks, and banning all else. They seduced their public with words of meaninglessness, numbed their thoughts with the same melody and rhythm, altered ever so slightly for each variation. And if the Anonym happened to become rich off the tracks they produced for all’s protection, it seemed nothing more than a happy coincidence for themselves.
The driver of the car leant forward and adjusted the volume slightly. It was the Anonym’s ideal disciple, Mr Nietzburger himself. Here was a man who had chosen to be the face of the faceless, their representative to the world. And what was this face?
Pale eyebrows lay almost transparent upon a brow that bulged largely over a sharp nose. His lips were thin and pulled tight together, their colour only slightly challenging the eyebrows above. His eyes were dark and opaque, the only two defined points in his physique. If Mariella had seen him, she would have noticed the thin black outline that cloaked Mr Nietzburger’s body. It simmered angrily, like the ocean on a grey day. But for all its fury it stayed trapped, unable to break further than a few millimetres from the body that made it.
After some hours he had realised he was not where he was supposed to be. Instead of buildings, and roads, and powerlines, he saw only a horizon of hills. Russet and gold, they curled against each other as far as the eye could see. A child curved to the bosom of a mother, a lover pressed into the back of another. The faded grass across their expanses rippled softly in the wind, just as the burnished ochre of the lion’s fur lifts in the breeze. Their planes were spiked here and there with the angled branches of dead trees. No, not dead. Asleep. Waiting for the rain as all the others. All the animals, birds and insects Mr Nietzburger could not see or feel. A world of mystery and power of which he had never been aware.
In fact, Mr Nietzburger found his lip curling in distaste as he watched the world move past the window of his expensive car. He did not like things that were not marshalled into a proper order. It made him feel uncomfortable. The feeling tingled along his skin like a rash. What right did this land have to so blatantly deny the Rules by which he lived? By which all people of society lived?
Mr Nietzburger was of that peculiar breed which conveniently forgets the origin of their species, which denies any state before the present, or powers higher than themselves. Truly their first and most severe masters were the Anonym, but who knew of that authority? Mr Nietzburger barely knew himself what he did, why and for who.
The feeling of being lost and alone permeated the slick atmosphere of the car. Without realising it, Mr Nietzburger took one hand off the steering wheel and placed it on the gun in its holster beneath his shirt. Boundaries had been rubbed out and drawn again only in people’s minds. This net knit tighter and more complex than anything authority could have created. But without it there was only violence. Crude as it was, it had its effect.
Unease, unacknowledged, filtered through the small margin of Mr Nietzburger’s colours. Without knowing where or why he drove, he continued down this unknown road, a road of an abrupt end.
At the tip of this abrupt end Mariella and her new friends were in amiable company. She was sitting on the broken, unfinished tar, sharing a meal with the Road Workers. They passed tea in flasks and small tin boxes filled with a thick soup of beans, ground maize cooked into a porridge and a mound of limp green leaves. It was simple food as she was used to. The men talked softly, speaking only occasionally to her. Some only stared at her with wonder in their eyes, and crimson in their cheeks when she looked their way.
Mariella did not mind the quiet. She felt a gentle happiness being with the others, listening to the soft hum of their voices and thoughts, sharing some of the joy from her own pink cloud, the one that carried her always. These men had their soft clouds of colour too, but also the faint imprints of animals standing in their shadows. Most of the Road Workers trailed horses – animals of a stout and sturdy breed. The foreman, who had taken on the role of speaking with her, stood in front of an ox. These animals amused Mariella. They moved and spoke when their owners did, mirroring their density in their shadow-world.
If my mother had an animal, or only, if I could see it, I wonder what it would be? Mariella mused. Thinking of her mother, Mariella stood up and began brushing off her skirt.
‘Are you going home?’ the foreman asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, little one, go sa-’ the foreman’s farewell died on his lips. How could he tell a being who was of this world to go safely within itself?
‘Goodbye.’
Mariella smiled.
The men packed away their food and took up their tools. But tools in hand, they stood motionless and mute while Mariella walked away, until the beautiful spirit had vanished entirely into the trees.
Mr Nietzburger felt annoyed. He rubbed his hand across his forehead and swore under his breath. He had no idea where his wrong turn had led him. And now, the road in front of him was ending. The way was littered with signs.
WORK IN PROGRESS
TEMPORARILY CLOSED
SLOW DOWN
By now a blush of shadows ha
d crept upon the line of hills, the last embers of the sun cooling from the horizon to the sky. The palette of browns was waning to sameness in the change. In the air thickened with a film of dusk, the orange lights of a road works vehicle flashed all the brighter. Round and round they went, silently mocking Mr Nietzburger.
The Road Workers were busy loading their tools into the back of the small truck. Mr Nietzburger pulled up behind it and stepped stiffly out of his car. The man who Mariella had ministered to sat on the open tailgate of the vehicle, while the others crowded round to deposit their belongings in the right boxes. The foreman stood closest to where Mr Nietzburger had parked. He was bending over, putting down a ROAD CLOSED sign, and he straightened slowly, his eyebrows raised in curiosity. In the normal routine of their solitary work, two newcomers in the same day was more than remarkable. The foreman looked over Mr Nietzburger. The authority of the man was obvious. It tinged the darkness of his eyes, and tugged at the corners of his downturned mouth. If Mariella had been there she would have seen the workmen’s horses whinny and stamp the ground, uncomfortable in the presence of Mr Nietzburger.
‘I’m not supposed to be here.’ Nr Nietzburger was powerful in front of these men, yet his first words had not capitalised on that power, but rather undermined it. The world clouding with darkness, the bare trees stabbing the staining sky, all around him had upset the severe dignity of his preferred demeanour, and he had no idea why. He tried again.
‘This road, this place…where am I exactly? Where is the nearest town?’
‘There’s nothing around here for miles, sir,’ said the foreman. ‘This highway’s only just been built, it’s only half-finished like now.’
Mr Nietzburger looked around at the darkening hills. Irritation rippled across his shoulders and tightened in his jaw.
‘There’s nothing round here sir,’ the foreman reiterated.
‘Only Mariella.’
The man nearest the truck, the one with the injured leg, had breathed the name so quietly, it was as if a thought had slipped from his mind out through his lips. By all rights, Mr Nietzburger never should have heard it.
Was there something in the man’s manner? Was it the joy that burned in his eyes at the name? Or was it Mr Nietzburger’s long-honed habit of detecting the unusual, the deviant, the extraordinary, that drew his awareness to that name?
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘No-one, a child, a girl – I never,’ the man stumbled over his words, the limp of his body moving to his brain.
‘I am in charge of Placements,’ said Mr Nietzburger. ‘I know of no child of Placement age in the district unaccounted for.’ He narrowed his eyes. The horses behind the men stamped and threw their heads back, but remained where they stood. Faced with authority, they had no more power than their masters.
Chapter 12
When Mariella returned from her journey to the Road Workers, she told her mother nothing of what she had seen, or who she had met. This lie (for everyone knows that silence can also be a lie) was the first she had ever told. Deceit lay heavy upon the shoulders of so pure a soul. But Mariella regarded even this weight with curiosity. It was new and strange and therefore also a thing of wonder.
What was she but a channel for experiences? Knowing the world as she did, not seeing the boundaries others saw, what else could she be?
She had taken a step towards an ending, and the story could not be undone now.
‘How long has she been in there now?’
The two teenagers, a girl and a boy, stood close together at the end of the corridor. They each moved books slowly from one shelf to another in their open lockers, feigning a purpose other than their intended one.
‘A few weeks. Four. Maybe five.’
The girl paused a moment, and rested her head against the open door. ‘God, they’ll kill her.’
‘She’s not breaking.’ Another boy had walked up behind them. Although they could not have seen him approaching, the other two made no show of surprise when he spoke.
‘How do they know?’ insisted the girl. ‘She hasn’t been out of Solitary for them to even test her.’
‘Do you think she’ll break?’ said the boy who had just arrived.
‘We all did, didn’t we?’
In a synchronised moment, all three teenagers turned towards their lockers and absorbed themselves in their contents. Just then, a woman in a white coat appeared around the corner and clipped past them in high heels. She tossed a comment to the turned backs as she passed, its edges sharp as a stone. ‘Lunch in five minutes. Hurry up.’
When the last echoes of the spiked heels had disappeared from the white walls, the older of the two boys shook his head slowly. He had a long black fringe that lay across an unusually wide forehead.
‘She’s different from us,’ he said softly. A mouse poked its nose out of his collar and sniffed the air. The others’ eyes glanced at the creature for a moment. Unlike the woman who had just clipped past, they could See this boy’s animal. They watched its small intelligent eyes as they listened to him talk.
‘Remember how quiet she was during activities? She was never scared, never humiliated. It seemed as if it all just amused her. Do you remember a time when none of this mattered? When none of what they did mattered?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well…she does.’
Sophie was on her knees in the little garden behind the house. The skin of her legs buried in the soil, she watched life scurry around her as she thinned the carrot seedlings. Ladybirds landed lightly on bowed leaves, ants clambered up and down the terrain that shifted with every pull of her fingers. She caught glimpses of earthworms suddenly exposed, burrowing themselves into darkness. The sound of cicadas swelled in the air.
She thought about Mariella, who was down at the river. Guilt nagged at Sophie for refusing to take Mariella to the Black Market the day before. She was growing older. Sophie knew that soon she would press harder to leave this place. At the Black Market at least, a place of secrecy, there could be no danger posed to her. Still Sophie hesitated. She wanted to believe that what was no longer hers was still in her grasp. She wanted so much to believe that she was the master of her daughter’s heart and soul.
And then, although the cicadas’ aerobics was a shrill scream that filled up her ears, Sophie heard the growing noise of a sound she had not heard for many, many years. An approaching vehicle. She stumbled to her feet, slipping in the clayey soil, and ran round the side of the house.
A little way down the hill, Mariella stood up from her place beside the river. As fear shot through her mother with every quickening pulse, Mariella began to run.
Despite the quiet emptiness of noon, a time when those that could crept towards shade and laid their heads to rest, the trees around the house, the same trees that had hid Sophie and her child for so many years in their embrace, had muffled the sound of the approaching vehicle until it was too late. When Sophie ran into view, the sleek silver car was already parked. The dry ground was bruised beneath its tires, the brown grass crushed in its path.
The man who stood beside the vehicle was dressed in a plain neat suit. He had a clipboard in his hand. He could have been anyone, anywhere. Precisely because of this, Sophie knew at once that he was a Regulator.
‘Hello ma’am,’ the Regulator said. ‘This house here is outside the Permitted Zoning District. Are you aware of that?’ The studied politeness in his voice only lightly covered his distaste for the woman in front of him – hair dishevelled, knees of mud. A typical Hermit.
Sophie could feel her heart jumping inside her and struggled to control it. ‘Is that actually against the law?’ she asked.
Mr Nietzburger narrowed his eyes. He had not expected trouble.
‘Although you have indeed contravened several explicit Regulations, Prohibitions and Guidelines,’ by now even the semblance of politeness had fallen from his words, ‘I would be willing to overlook your…indiscretions…if you could give me information
on a young girl, a…’ his eyes flicked down to his clipboard, ‘a Mariella.’
All the Hermits living outside the system invariably knew each other. They collaborated together in various illegal activities, trafficking and such, but they were nothing more than a thorn in the side of the Anonym. Their influence was negligible. They were content to scrape together mean little lives for themselves on the fringes of society. Usually the Regulators overlooked them. But when Mr Nietzburger spoke that name, the reaction of the Hermit in front of him shattered the unspoken compromise between Hermits and Regulators to live and let live into tiny shreds of memory.
‘Get out!’ she screamed. Obscenities poured from her mouth as she tore at her hair. She pushed Mr Nietzburger in the direction of his car and began hammering at his chest.
‘Get out, go away! Leave us, leave us!’
At that moment, Mariella appeared from between the trees.
Chapter 13
Wellington had been given a bicycle to get to work. The idea was to contain him. On a bicycle he would not be able to stray further than he should. But a mistake had been made. Gliding through the air on the bicycle Wellington was closer to all that was around him than he had ever been in a vehicle. And being closer to that which was around brought him closer to himself. With all the space of the fields and sky pressed up against him there was no room left for his mind. Thoughts trailed behind, left in his wake. Here he was free and here he strained his ears to hear the music of his heart.
He loved clanging his bicycle down the steps of his current home. He rode quickly past the patchwork walls of apartment blocks, towards the ramshackle houses that staggered towards the city centre, very soon spotting branches and spaces that drank up the morning light more thirstily than the two-dimensional angled place the Anonym had built. The sun lay on the world like dewdrops. It shattered each surface, each blade of grass, each leaf, each smooth expanse of concrete into the facets of a diamond, too many to count.
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