Mariella

by Claire Frances Raciborska

  Chapter 20

  The slamming of the car door was cushioned by its various sophisticated mechanisms. The whoosh and click was a petering ellipsis rather than the exclamation mark Mr Nietzburger would have preferred to signal his arrival. He gripped his briefcase tightly under his arm and walked in clipped steps towards the back entrance of The Institute.

  This movement that was growing, ‘The Others’, had been started by the Thought-Makers, those hand-picked by his own Placement Department. The Thought-Makers, regulated more than any of the others, had managed to dismantle the safety protocol put in place for their own good.

  Mr Nietzburger listened to the staccato-fire of his heels against the paving stones as he thought of the memo within his briefcase.

  ‘…to contain the rebellion, Segregation will come into full force, keeping apart those rendered temporarily insane…’

  ‘…despite previous history of loyalty, the addressed Regulator will be cordoned according to the Associative Contamination Act 379…’

  Skilled as he was at reading between meanings, Mr Nietzburger’s mind bristled against the import of these words. He was a Regulator of the Anonym. It was he who demarcated the boundaries of society. It was he who chose those inside and those outside the line.

  With The Others on their doorstep, the Doctors and Trainers were too afraid to leave. They had barricaded themselves inside the stern marble walls of the Institute. Peering from the windows they had watched the movement form. Thornton had quickly seen the need to get organized, and he had done so with an orderliness which would have made his Trainers proud – had they not been huddled behind sheets of glass, wishing for a way out.

  As Mr Nietzburger walked towards the building, he hardly recognised the Institute of neat lawns and careful bricks that he had known. When the Regulators branded them with a name, The Others had gained a cohesiveness they could not have mustered on their own. Their beliefs now had a banner under which to gather. This name was spelled out on a thin strip of grass that had worked its way between the fence of the Institute and the pavement outside. The Others had made it with clusters of rocks and bits of twigs. They declared themselves to the world, and more people came, drawn no doubt not only by the label but by the colours of the Thought-Makers, which were bristling with purpose.

  The camp that grew on the trimmed grass, spreading between the walls and fence draped with piping, and eventually spilling into the roads and embankments outside, was not slick and shiny like the things of the Anonym’s world. It was dull and faded – bits of nature stuck together with found objects of sheeting, iron and boards. All the dwellings centred on the temple, which had been painted green. This was The Others’ gathering place.

  Mr Nietzburger looked up at the imposing lines of the Institute, drawing the eye neither up nor down, and he could not help the understanding that crept upon him like a predator honing in on its kill. The Doctors and Trainers were locked away behind the white walls. No one had come to rescue them. They had been tarred by the same brush, not because they had been part of the rebellion, but because they had seen it. Their loyalty to the Rules could no longer be trusted. Was he not the same?

  As the Regulator in charge of Placements, as a veritable creator of the Institute and its functions, Mr Nietzburger too would be condemned. In the war between fits and misfits, he was to be tossed over into the fray. He had given his whole life to be one of them, and then, in the end, he was to be cast to the lot of The Others. He had been betrayed by the Anonym – by the nameless, faceless ideals he had served all his life.

  In the space he had kept cleared with control, false power, indifference and cruelty – in that same space he had guarded with layers and layers of walls, barbs and fences – anger flooded in. Its liquid heat made his being thrill with power. Toxic as it was it was a kind of elixir, one to rival the intoxication of calculated control that had sustained him until now.

  He knew what he had to do.

  Sophie left this world and all she knew. She was black and empty. As she experienced the nothingness that was all she had left, she was aware only of a warm pulsing core. It had a sort of oval shape. She could not place it on her body, because she did not know if she had a body. The darkness had destroyed everything that she had thought herself to be.

  But in the wreath of that destruction, the warm slip that seemed a little like life, Sophie sensed another awareness growing. The darkness – devastating, terrifying – could also be exquisite. It was so itself, and in being so, achieved a kind of beauty. Was this what she had run from for so long?

  Sitting there, in the dark, she realized she could See.

  Chapter 21

  Back in his office, Mr Nietzburger stared at the document lying dormant in its neatly-typed text. This flat page of ant-words had ripped a hole in his world.

  Everything that I am is for them, he thought. What else do I have? What else am I?

  The shock of this question rippled throughout his body. He sat entirely still in his ergonomically designed chair as he felt it reverberate through his arms, fingers, legs and toes. In this chair he had whiled away hours, days, weeks of his life, draining his precious life energy into a complexity of untruths. He had worked, not for himself, but for an association of magicians, weaving and spinning a blanket of lies and legends. The eye of his mind reached back, and saw through all of the regulations he had enforced over the years. He had managed fear in others, and so had not seen how in its thrall he was himself.

  He reached behind for a file, wondering at that moment, how many minutes becoming days he had spent caressing the sharp corners of these files. His heart calculated quicker than his mind, and his hand dropped in terror at the sum. The slick surface of the file fell from his fingers to the ground. He swivelled the soft grey plaid cushion of his chair to face it, staring. The anger that had flowed through his veins as he stood in the grounds of the Institute, in the camp of The Others, had filled his body soft and silent like mercury. It waited in the full strength of its destructive power.

  Slowly he reached up, and pulled down another file.

  The methodical control of his hands as he moved through one shelf and then the next belied the fury holding him together. Fear had mixed with anger and years of suppression into a precise, lethal focus. The sound of the plastic sleeves sliding against each other as they hit the floor was that of a netted catch of fish, gasping and writhing for their last taste of life.

  Soon the cabinet, once colour-coded according to crimes and suspicion, had purged its contents on the grey squares of Mr Nietzburger’s office carpet. Pushing his chair aside, Mr Nietzburger placed first one squeaky leather shoe on his desk, and then hauled up the other. He was standing at full height on the polished oak dotted with clean white pages. All anyone entering the facility would have seen, through the small window at reception, would have been the pants of an expensive suit from the knees up, and the bottom of its jacket. It was instantly recognizable as something expensive; it was like a million others; it said nothing about itself or its owner.

  In the front pocket of his shirt, Mr Nietzburger had a book of matches he had taken from the last hotel he had inspected for compliance with the Conformity Regulation. He slipped the book out and took one stick from its array of identical brothers. He savoured for a moment the fragile edges of the matchstick between his fingers. Then he lit it, in a small flare of sound so quiet for what it would herald, and threw the flame towards the floor.

  The day after the dream, Wellington woke up to a world of silence. It seemed his music had finally deserted him altogether. He rode slowly to work. His limbs felt heavy and his mind buzzed the flat lifeless hum of a heart monitor without a pulse.

  When he arrived he went through the motions of his chores. But his mind was not there. Carelessly he swept, wiped and dusted. Inside he was grieving.

  A gust of wind blew down the country road. The air was hot and heavy with moisture. It had hung still in the atmosphere, solemn and expectant. The s
udden rush signalled a change, the beginning of a storm. Clouds gathered together overhead as bits of debris cartwheeled towards the station.

  A flapping sheet of newspaper slapped into Wellington’s leg. He bent over and peeled it off. On any day before today he would have crumpled it neatly and tossed it in the bin. What use had he for news of a world that had shut him out? But today was different. Nothing could go back to the way it had been.

  He unfolded the sheet and held it out with stiff elbows. Splashed across the page was a photograph of Thornton’s temple. REVOLUTION, it cried.

  Wellington folded the newspaper over smoothly, and again and again, into a careful square. He tucked it into the top of his trousers. The broom in his hand dropped to the ground with a clatter. He began to walk. Abandoning his bicycle, abandoning all he had loved, Wellington walked with blank eyes and long strides. He walked away from his Indian myna friend. He walked into the heart of the city.

  Sophie lay on her side on the floor. Her one arm outstretched, her face was down-turned on the elbow of another. Her legs were tangled awkwardly. Outside her it was night all around. Inside her was the same emptiness. She had given up everything – her daughter, her will, her life as she had chosen it. Despair had invaded every crevice inside her. There was nothing left to do but wait for the slow creep of death.

  Had hours passed? Had days? She was not in a place to know. But at some point in the blackness, something had started to change. In a state of total surrender, terror loses its meaning. She drifted, her ties to the world cast off. The knots that had marked out good and bad, right and wrong, pain and pleasure had come undone. Now the darkness that had threatened to swallow her embraced her. She had finally stopped running.

  Her body lay absolutely still, as if death had indeed come to claim her. Inside was the same stillness.

  Slowly, the feeling came upon her that in her defeat she had found everything she had ever wanted. What had she wanted, always? What had she chased, always? What had she lived in perpetual fear of losing, before she had had it?

  Freedom.

  From far away, her sleeping consciousness began to swim to the edge of the blackness. The first thing it discovered was the humming of the fridge in the corner of her open-plan apartment. Her silence was suddenly invaded by what seemed its deafening roar. Then she felt the carpet, pressed against her skin. It was made of thick, shaggy threads. Slowly, one by one, she became aware of the sounds, smells, feels of her apartment. It was full of things she had quickly found indispensable, despite living without a single one in her home with Mariella.

  Mariella. She remembered that it was because of Mariella in the end that she had descended into this darkness. She had left her own daughter in the struggle to save herself. She had thought by surrendering her she could make a success of being in this world. She could try to fit in, do as she was told. This betrayal, rather than save her, had destroyed her. It had led her here.

  But here, in this darkness, away from everything, away from Mariella, she had understood her daughter for the first time.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that it was morning outside.

  Sophie walked slowly to The Institute. She took no notice of the journey in its entirety, only of each and every step. She looked at the letters on the signs as she walked passed, not taking in their meaning, only considering their form. She felt air move lightly over her skin, making her conscious of every naked inch. Her feet touching and leaving the ground made a steady rhythm. She let it draw her mind, pulling all her thoughts down her body, into her legs and through the pavement.

  The light the sun let down was sharp. It pierced the lines of buildings, the curves of cars, just as it had pierced the trees and hills of their home, hers and Mariella’s. The corners, lines and shapes of things around her had a strange clarity, an unusual brightness. She did not know if she were seeing them for the first time, or if they formed around her as she walked, existing only because she saw them. She noticed the shadows that moved as she did. She saw that these imitations danced and shifted as those that created them did not.

  Long before she reached the Institute she was making her path through dwellings made of trees, fence posts and old billboards. She did not wonder at them any more than she had wondered at the wind touching her arms, or the trickles of green silently present in the fissures in the concrete. She let her eyes fall lightly down the pattern of rust on a wave of iron. She let her fingers trail across the web of polygons on a wire fence.

  At the gates of the Institute there was a crowd of people. She looked above their heads to the great front doors. They were padlocked and barricaded with planks of wood nailed across their tall expanse. She lowered her eyes to the people. Their faces had a sameness about them, but Sophie looked at each in turn. There were shimmers of hope in their eyes. They were the same colour as honesty. The sparks glinted in the soft easy folds of relief that couched their faces. Sophie was glad that they were happy.

  She noted that all of the people wore gloves on their left hands. They had been carefully stitched together from torn bits of clothing, creating a patchwork of mutilated colour and texture. She wondered briefly at this oddity, but she had a more pressing matter in mind.

  ‘Do you know how I can get inside?’ They had approached as she had, so now the others stood so close around her that she directed her question at the general group rather than an individual.

  ‘No-one goes inside. Not now. Not unless you’re not part of The Others.’ Sophie could not pinpoint the origin of the answer for a moment, but she could hear the note of caution in the voice.

  ‘The Others?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘That’s us. And you.’ This time the tone was helpful, but the voice came from another direction.

  ‘But how can I see my daughter, Mariella?’

  ‘We are all connected, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters.’

  ‘That’s one of the reasons it’s important to eat pasta on Tuesdays.’

  ‘More important than that is to make sure salt never enters your body. It could deaden your senses to what’s real.’

  The people pressed closer around her. By her left elbow was a boy with a face as wide as a pumpkin. His mouth stretched across it in a happy pumpkin smile.

  ‘Thornton’s explained it all to us.’

  ‘Explained what? Who is Thornton?’

  ‘Why, the truth of things.’

  A girl standing to the side of pumpkin face said, ‘Thornton’s the one who explained it all.’ Her skin was so pale it lay almost like paper over her flesh and veins. She had obviously spent the last few days in the sun; her cheeks were toasted brown like cookies almost burnt.

  ‘What is the truth of things?’

  ‘Well, that which is not false.’

  ‘What is false?’

  ‘All that was before.’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before we knew the truth.’ The girl said it simply, with the same beatific smile on her face. She placed her one hand on Sophie’s shoulder, and used the other to indicate the crush of construction filling up the grounds of the Institute. ‘Would you to like to come and see?’ she asked sweetly. As the girl turned away from her, Sophie thought she could see the faint image of a bird perched on the girl’s shoulder, its head tucked beneath its wing.

  Sophie followed, amused, as Mariella had once been, curious. They said such strange things, things she could not understand. What was this they had made?

  As they were walking down a short path of wide smooth paving stones, she asked ‘What are the gloves for?’

  The girl turned her head in surprise. ‘Why, to keep us pure of course.’

  Mr Nietzburger walked through the gates of The Institute, which had been open ever since The Others had taken over the grounds. He walked past the temple painted green. He knew what it was and it held no interest for him.

  He passed those busy preparing salt-free meals and, since it was a Tuesday, picking out the pieces of noodle
from the cold salad packs they had stolen from the supermarket. He walked until he found a group of teenagers sitting outside the dwellings, out in the open. They had nothing much to do. The idea of Thornton’s movement had answered some elemental unease within themselves, and so they had responded in kind, with the support of their presence. But the various activities around the camp had not drawn them in. Mr Nietzburger had found his people.

  Mr Nietzburger had, in one reading of an internal memo, emptied out all his old thoughts. The mantle of fear he had worn as an identity and prison had been lifted. That space was almost immediately filled up with feelings of anger and a sense of time lost. He needed to do more than hold his new truth where he could see it. He needed to break forward to more freedom. It was something he was ready to take, no matter what. Mr Nietzburger circled among the young people, letting his intent be known. If he was going to fight, he needed an army.

  The seeds of his frustration were sown in fertile ground. These lingerers and loafers wanted an easier way out than Thornton had given them. They found they could not believe in his Rules, but they did not want the old ones either. They wanted to fight too. They wanted defiance, not obedience. And Mr Nietzburger gave them something they had not mustered together on their own.

  What could they arm themselves with? They took whatever they could find, leaning on the regime of old to create one anew. Some had knives, sharpened against a stone. Some wrapped shards of glass in old pieces of cloth to make their own terrifying daggers. Others pulled out guns old and new, big and small, rusted and shining. They appeared from the backs of closets and the bottoms of drawers. They belonged to people from all over the city, all of whom had been waiting for a day like this, when they could arm themselves against the vague unease which had followed them all their lives.