by Geoff Ryman
‘That wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy
This Signor Junior, this giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid.’
Milena listened. They were all listening, as the boy-actor stood rigid, glowering. Milena’s hands had curled into fists.
‘A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,
With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes.’
The hatred in it, the violence in it, made Milena jump. Who was speaking? The boy, Berowne, Shakespeare?
‘And so I sigh for her, to watch for her,
To pray for her! Go to, it is a plague.’
‘Stop,’ said the director. He was thirty-five years old, and there were creases in the flesh around his eyes. He sat very still, looking at the boy-actor. ‘You know how that’s supposed to sound, Jonz,’ he said. He sat a moment longer. ‘I give up,’ he said, and stood up. ‘Say it how you want to, Jonz, if it makes you feel better.’
But it does, thought Milena, it does make me feel better. It’s meant to hurt, it’s meant to bite, it’s meant to mean something to us too. We have to act it.
‘All of you,’ said the director, looking worn, ‘do it how you want to.’ Then he turned and walked up the aisle, leaving them.
‘Go home, I guess,’ shrugged the blandly cheerful fellow who was playing the King. Berowne still glowered.
‘Your way was better,’ Milena told Berowne. He only nodded.
Outside it was a drab, cloudy English summer afternoon. So fine, she and Rolfa would be friends. Could she accept that? She could accept that. It happens to everyone. Perhaps when she was certain of the friendship, she would tell Rolfa what she had felt just in passing, so that there would be not dishonesty—only friendship and music, until one day Milena would be cured. One day they would remember to Read her, and give her the viruses again. Perhaps she wouldn’t be like her father, after all. Perhaps it wouldn’t kill her. Why be a pessimist? she thought.
Until then she and Rolfa would be friends. Nothing would have to change. Even their routine, Milena thought could stay the same.
One evening they met for dinner and Rolfa was drunk. She had started to drink again. She arrived drunk, reeking in the middle of the Zoo cafe. She did not duck or cringe. She came up to Milena and prodded her shoulder with a finger the size of a salami sausage.
‘Out,’ she managed to say. ‘Outside.’ Under the fringe of fur, her eyes were baleful. She walked backwards towards the door. ‘Come on.’
‘Rolfa? Rolfa?’ Milena heard herself, heard her own voice drained, hopeless, frail, and she hated the sound of it. ‘Is there something wrong?’
Rolfa made a kind of twisted, barking yelp. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘No, no, no, no.’ She made a kind of waving motion with her hand, brushing something away. Very suddenly it became a slapping motion, in the air. She was dangerous.
‘Let’s…’ Rolfa paused to belch, ‘…go have a good time.’ The smile was a snarl. She spun off, into the night.
I don’t like this, thought Milena and followed, full of misgiving.
They went to another horrible pub across the river. The Comedy Restaurant said art-nouveau lettering on tiles outside it. There seemed to be no one there who Rolfa knew. She rolled her way like a millstone towards the bar, through the men who stopped laughing as she passed, towering over them, jostling them. The men looked small and hard and weasly. The place was as disordered as anything in Britain ever got. The plaster walls were bulging and cracked and stained in streaks. There were harsh alcohol lamps that stank. Milena looked at Rolfa, at her back. Then she felt one of the weasels pressing up against her. He wore skimpy trunks and a sleeveless body-warmer that smelled of sweat and beer.
‘Bow wow,’ he said. His forehead glistened with sweat. He’s got a virus, Milena thought. But which one?
‘You like dogs?’ he asked.
‘No. I don’t like dogs,’ said Milena warily, meaning that she did not like him. He had friends all around them, and they were all sweating. Some of them shook with fever.
Milena did not have time to consider what disease it was they had.
There was a flurry, a scattering nearby, and Milena turned to see Rolfa wading towards her, towards them, her shoulders shrugging from side to side, and Milena thought: she’s going to hit one of them.
That’s what she thought until Rolfa picked up a table. Not a large table, but a small, light one made of bamboo. Mugs rolled off it, beer fell in a gush, men shouted protest, and the table rose up, hit a lamp, and broke it.
Along the very edge of her teeth, Milena seemed to feel something, the thing that made Rolfa rot her own teeth to nothing, and she held up her hands and shouted, ‘Rolfa! Stop!’
Rolfa paused, blearily staring.
‘Rolfa! Nothing happened.’ Rolfa blinked, looked sheepish, defeated, confused.
‘Put the table down, Rolfa,’ said Milena.
Or you’ll kill someone.
‘Just put it down. Please? Nothing happened.’
The table was very gently lowered. Rolfa patted it, as if telling it she was sorry.
Milena pushed her way between the men, and took Rolfa’s arm and pulled. ‘Come on, Rolfa. Come on.’ And Rolfa followed, tamely, out into the night again. The barman followed.
‘What about the light?’ he shouted.
‘Don’t push!’ pleaded Milena, holding up her hands, and something in her voice convinced him.
Rolfa threw off her hand and walked towards the river. Milena called after her. She ran, to catch up, but Rolfa did not turn around or answer. She marched, with long lunging strides. It was dark, there were no lights, and Milena suddenly found she was alone with only just sufficient idea of where she was to find the river again, and the Shell.
Well, she thought forlornly. Well. That’s that. Something, she knew, has finished.
At one o’clock the next afternoon, she went to the steps and Rolfa was not there.
At six o’clock, she and Jacob went to the Graveyard and there was only silence. They waited hidden like mice for the singing to begin. The darkness deepened. Finally they edged their way towards the desk, and peeked out between the costumes.
Papers had been torn or crushed into balls. The musical scores had been ripped in half along their bindings and the pages had been scattered. The electronic device was in a corner; its panel was broken open; wafers were all over the floor; their resin tray was cracked and splintered; book covers had no pages in them.
Milena knelt and picked up what was left of the Wagner notebook. She tried to put its crinkly pages back in order and found spit between them. She wiped her cheeks and gathered up the things.
‘Jacob,’ she said, her voice going thin. ‘Help me back with all of this?’
They piled up the musical scores, and the wafers and carried them back like the honoured dead to Milena’s room at the Shell. ‘Tell her I have them. Tell her she can have them back when she wants them,’ Milena said to Jacob.
And she went to bed, wondering at the maze of rooms that was someone else’s life. She read the score of Das Lied von der Erde.
The last movement told a kind of ghost story. Two old friends meet and one speaks mysteriously of life in the past tense, of finding a resting place. He seems to move on, into eternity, the bright and shining blue. The friend has chosen to leave.
Milena imagined the music. It was not about death. It was about the beauty of the world as it is lived in, and the sadness of having to leave it. It was about the sadness of losing friends, and the necessity of it. Milena remembered Rolfa’s voice singing ewig…ewig. Forever.
The music was hers now. She had learned it. Milena was left at the end hugging the cream paper as if it were skin. She was holding a ghost, an abstraction of what might have been, a possibility.
That night she dreamt of musk ox, running on the tundra. One of them was calling like a seagull.
In the morning, Milena was shaken awake by Jacob.
‘Ms Shibush! Ms Shibush! Oh, look what I have for you!’ h
e exclaimed, smiling and excited. Then he whispered, ‘from Ms Patel.’ He passed her a fold of paper.
An envelope. It was as if something had been sent to her out of a previous century. Milena carefully lifted up the flap and pulled out a thick white card. It was edged in gold. Jacob waiting, smiling.
The card was engraved in beautifully flowing copperplate script.
‘Do you feel able to tell me what it says?’ Jacob asked her shyly.
‘It’s an invitation,’ said Milena. ‘For dinner at eight o’clock tomorrow evening.’ She passed him the card. ‘With Rolfa’s family.’
chapter four
ANTARCTICA (THE INDIGENT GLOVES)
The Bears of London lived together in one street in Kensington. It was a Nash terrace, painted cream, with black wooden doors.
Milena was too short to reach the door knocker. She tried jumping and missed and decided to avoid any further risk to her dignity. She pounded on the door with the heel of her hand.
There were shouts and thumpings and suddenly the door was thrown open by a naked Polar teenager. All her fur the length of her body was in braids. There was a blast of icy air from inside. The girl took one hardened look at Milena and yelled. ‘Rolf—a! Your little friend’s here.’ Then she walked away, leaving the door open.
It was bitterly cold inside. All the walls between the houses had been knocked down to make one enormous, barren room that ran the length of the street. A large male GE in a metal mask was squatting over a machine, welding a join. Milena had time to notice that the floor was covered in fur.
‘Shut the door!’ the Polar girl shouted. There was angry thumping, the girl stalked past Milena and flung the door shut. ‘It makes our hair fall out, you little Squidge,’ she snarled. ‘Rolfa! Slump your fat tush down here!’
The room was full of unopened bamboo packing cases. Polar teenagers lounged on them, watching a screen. It was video! It was showing an old movie! Milena couldn’t help but stare in wonder. There was a flash and a mechanical scream, and Milena saw someone torn to pieces before her very eyes. Why on earth, she wondered, have a video and then use it to see something like that?
‘What are you staring at?’ said another GE, a boy, his voice cracking on the edge of puberty like an egg.
‘Nothing,’ said Milena.
‘She’s never seen a video,’ said the girl and rolled her eyes. Some of the Bears were grooming each other, brushing their pelts or braiding them. It was their moulting season, too hot to go outside. They were sullen and dangerous with boredom. Milena hugged herself and tried to stand her emotional ground, but she was still feeling sick from having seen a human being rent into stringy chunks. She began to shiver from the cold. That’s frost, she saw in dismay, that’s frost on the inside of the windows.
Rolfa appeared at the top of the staircase. She was trying to wear a dress, and looked like an unsteady column of crumpled satin. She began her descent, clutching the handrail, stumbling, swaying. Her feet kept catching on the inside of her hem, making frantic motions within it like trapped rabbits.
Rolfa, lift the dress up, Milena willed, silently.
Rolfa’s hair had been brushed back out of her eyes and was held up by two pink resin butterfly clips that looked like lopsided ears. Braving the distance between the staircase and Milena, Rolfa held out something soft and black. It was a fur.
‘We usually dine upstairs,’ Rolfa said, as if to a stranger.
‘Thank you,’ said Milena for the fur, and wrapped it around herself, her teeth chattering.
‘Follow me,’ said Rolfa and began the ascent. She stood once more on the hem of her dress and had to hold out a hand to catch herself.
‘Rolfa,’ whispered Milena. ‘Up. Hold it up.’
There was a collapse of laughter from the cousins behind them.
There was something majestic about the way Rolfa ignored them. She bent over and lifted up her dress from the bottom, exposing her knees, and climbed the stairs.
There were chandeliers overhead. They blazed with light. There was a chug-chugging noise in the background. A private generator. There were paintings, extravagances of flowers or empty street scenes at dusk. But no people. Thick wires trailed alongside the carpet on the stairs, and from somewhere came the singing of a circular saw. The cold sunk into Milena’s bones.
‘Want to wash your hands?’ Rolfa asked, quickly.
‘I think they’d freeze if I did,’ replied Milena, watching her breath rise as vapour. I wonder, she thought, if my eyebrows are frosted.
‘In here,’ said Rolfa. Her voice was higher and softer than usual, very precise but barely audible as if there was no force of breath or personality behind it. Milena was shown into a room that made her gasp.
Capitalism, she said to herself. Capitalism was what she thought she was seeing. It was the only word she had for it.
There was a polished mahogany table. Little rough wooden boots had been nailed to the bottom of each leg to make it tall enough for GEs. There were more real paintings on the walls, another showerburst of light overhead deflected through crystal. There was an enormous covered dish made of silver on the middle of the table. It was twice as long as Milena was tall. There were silver knives, silver forks, silver candlesticks, matching mahogany chairs and, in the corner, a tin rubbish bin. Even in the cold, it stank of fish. Milena thought: what if we’re all still working for them?
A door swung open and a Polar female walked in backwards. She wore a billowing orange dress and carried a kind of porcelain cistern in front of her, a vat of food.
‘Hiya, Squidge,’ she said to Milena. The tone was not unfriendly. She put the cistern on the table and reached into the bodice of her dress. ‘You want some mitts?’
‘Oh yes please,’ said Milena all in a rush.
‘Thought you might,’ said the GE and rumpled her lip in Rolfa’s direction. ‘Here you go.’ She threw a brown ball of wool at Milena. Fingers trembling, Milena unwound it. They were gloves designed for counting money in Antarctic blizzards. There were no tips to the fingers. They looked utterly indigent, as if they’d been half-eaten by mice.
‘This is my sister, Zoe,’ said Rolfa.
‘You’re Milena,’ said Zoe. Milena was too cold to answer. Zoe left, shaking her head as if it wasn’t Milena’s fault that she’d been brought there. As she went out another sister came in.
She was even bigger, and her cheeks were flexed with the effort of keeping down a grin. She looked at Milena and Rolfa, nearly dropped two tubs of food on the table, and ran out. From behind the swinging door, there came a shriek of laughter. It was followed by spurts and whisperings.
‘That’s Angela,’ said Rolfa.
Milena sat down. The table was on a level with her chin. The two sisters re-entered, a matching pair, batting their long black eyelashes at each other over the top of fluttering Japanese fans. They lowered themselves gracefully onto chairs, spreading napkins over their laps. Zoe’s hair was wrapped around a hoop to make a glossy, flowing arch around the back of her head, Navajo style, Milena’s viruses told her. ‘I like your hair,’ she said.
‘Do you?’ beamed Zoe, lowering her fan. She batted her eyelashes. ‘Do you like my moustache as well?’
Then Milena saw that her moustache had also been wrapped around hoops, one at each end.
‘I used to have the same trouble with mine,’ Milena replied, with a flash of instinct.
The eyelashes stopped batting.
‘Only,’ said Milena with a sigh, ‘now I shave mine off.’
There was a click behind Milena and a kind of surly grunt. Milena turned to see a short GE. He was rotund and bristling like a hedgehog, his cheeks puffed out as if enraged. He was punching keys on a small device that made a whizzing sound and printed out a result on paper. He climbed up onto an especially high chair, tore off a piece of paper, and attached it to his fur with a hair-grip. He was decorated with bits of paper like a Xmas tree.
‘We gonna eat?’ he asked, and went back
to punching keys.
‘Yes, of course, Papa,’ said Angela, standing up. She lifted off the lid of the giant dish with a kind of malicious flair. It rang.
They were going to eat a seal, a whole roast seal. Its eyes had gone white and it was surrounded by a moat of amber fat.
Rolfa’s father reached forward and began to thumb out one of its eyes.
‘Papa!’ exclaimed Angela. ‘Please, remember our guests.’
‘You want an eye, Squidge?’ the father asked Milena.
‘Yes please,’ said Milena, crisply. He passed it to her on a plate. It rolled. Her eyes stonily on Angela, Milena popped it into her mouth. It’s a grape, she told herself, it’s just a grape. It crunched as she chewed it.
‘Of course, we’re on our best behaviour because of you, Ms Smashpuss,’ said Angela, as she began to carve the seal. ‘Usually we tear the hot carcass to pieces with our bare paws.’ With deft aplomb, she lowered a section of seal fillet onto Milena’s plate without letting fall a drop of grease.
‘Some wine, Ms Shambosh? We make it ourselves out of leftovers. I do hope you like it.’
‘Oh don’t mind me,’ said Milena. ‘I’ll drink anything.’
‘If you’re friends with Rolfa,’ said Zoe, sounding serious, ‘you probably have to.’
Angela went on serving. ‘Ma chere,’ she said to her sister. ‘You have let slip your nap-kin.’ She sliced the word in half, like an orange, as a joke. They were making fun, of Rolfa, of Squidges, of the way they thought Squidges thought of them. You are merry gals, Milena thought. But that is no reason to let you get away with anything.
‘Do try not to blow your nose on it this time, ma petite. Do you know, Ms Fishfuss, the last time she let slip her nap-kin, she picked it up and blew her nose on it, and it turned out to be the hem of my dress.’
‘Well,’ said Milena, sipping the wine. ‘Better than wiping her arse on it.’
‘You girls want to carry on like that, you can leave the table,’ said the father.
The serious business of eating commenced. It was noisy and prolonged. Handfuls of boiled seaweed were shovelled onto plates and into mouths. There was a side salad of whole raw mackerel. Rolfa’s father held one by the tail and lowered it into his mouth, steadily crunching. Seal paws were another great delicacy.