Air

by Geoff Ryman

  “Nonsense!” said Mae.

  Siao touched the tip of the pencil to his tongue to begin writing. Siao enjoyed writing. Mae had never noticed that before.

  My dearest brother,

  I am sorry to have concealed all my business dealings from you. It was not honest to do so. I have lost much because of this. I have lost your aid and your counsel. Instead you have become my enemy at a time when I most need friends.

  I have a wonderful idea, but I do not know how to progress it because I am so ignorant of the insurance business. And here at hand I have a brother who knows all about it! I think you and I together could come up with very intelligent ways to use the TV to get our local village people to see how important it is to have insurance.

  I need your help. Please can meet so that we can talk all through this.

  Your sister,

  Mae

  Mae was scornful. “It says nothing about the case. It does not even ask him to give the case up!”

  “Ah. You noticed.”

  “You are asking me to lie down and be screwed by my own brother.”

  “I am asking you to give something up so that he sees it is in his self-interest to give something up, too. So that he will be on your side, as a brother should be. I am willing to bet, Mae, that he would give anything to be by your side as a brother should be.”

  Mae snarled. “Hmph. Okay, we send your letter, ah? And just see the reply we get from my charming younger brother!”

  Mae,

  Your idea for television insurance is interesting. Of course, it would have to be linked with Yeshibozkent Home Guardian, whose interests I represent. But I am sure they would have no objections to screens that carried their brand and sold their products in a way that suits our locale. I will need to discuss this idea with them first.

  I do have doubts whether we can work together. Your behavior in the past leads to grave concerns about your state of mind. However, families must show solidarity in the face of adversity. If you are willing to allow my greater knowledge of the field to direct policy, then perhaps we can consider this further.

  Your brother,

  Mr. Wang Ju-mei

  Happy Province Sales Conqueror, Yeshibozkent Home Guardian

  Mae was furious. “My behavior! My state of mind! What about his, suing his own sister! Trying to take away all that she has done!”

  Siao sipped his tea. “Shall we look at what he really said? First, he has grave doubts about the two of you working together. Is that not something you can agree with?”

  Mae puffed out air. “Poh, yes, that at least.”

  “So. Shall we regard that as a simple statement of fact?”

  Mae shrugged her shoulders. “He sued me, I did not sue him.”

  “He hasn’t sued you. He has stated his intention to. In fact, he gave you fair warning. Isn’t that so? Mae? It is so.”

  “You are a man and you are on his side.”

  “You are perfectly right to call him jealous and scheming. Let’s just look at what he says in the letter. Now, he then mentions your behavior and your state of mind. Have you not chased a man with cleavers? Did you not have a careless affair with the neighbor? Did you not threaten to kill Ju-mei?”

  Mae did not like this. She wanted to fight, but there was nothing to fight.

  Siao whispered, “He is frightened of you, Mae. He is terrified of you. You are his big, brave older sister, and he knows you take on the New York Times and that you chased big strong Mr. Haseem out of your house, and he is scared!”

  There was something in what Siao was saying that made Mae laugh.

  “I’m frightened of you, Mae! The whole village is terrified of you! So, okay, Madam Owl, who is violent and aggressive, hates him. People know when you hate them, Mae. They also know when you love them.”

  Mae was still smiling.

  “So he is saying he will talk to his company, he is saying families must stick together. Mae! You’ve won! So now you must act like you have won.”

  Mae started to puff out.

  Siao said, “You must go and visit your family. And make amends.”

  MAE WAS LEFT TO WAIT ALONE IN THE ICY DIWAN.

  Her family burned tiny amounts of coal. Two gray chunks of it smoldered on the brazier. Mae sat on the cushions and tried to warm her feet and still her butterfly hands, her butterfly stomach. Mae, Mae, why are you so scared?

  She heard them whispering outside the room. Why were they so scared? Why was the whole family Wang frightened of itself?

  It’s like this for Ju-mei, she thought. He shows up in people’s houses, they don’t want to be discourteous, so they show him in into the diwan and have a quiet fight hissing behind curtains, trying to make each other be polite to him. He sits alone and pretends not to hear.

  But the least you can do is let people wait in warmth. If coal is such a luxury, then burn shitcakes. Except that the family Wang can’t be seen to burn shit, only peasants burn shit.

  We used to wrap birthday presents in the red paper napkins that came with the tea at the teahouse. We would wrap up something precious like an orange. And we would carefully pick off the tape so we could use the napkins again. Every little present came wrapped in the same red napkins.

  Poor Mama. All we ever had to eat was soup, one bowl of soup a day. And I remember one day we had to eat grass stew, just to fill our bellies. The next day, Mama went to every house in the village and begged. Someone gave her hen’s-feet. Someone gave her an onion. And she made us soup, out of almost nothing. And then one of us little monkeys spilled kerosene from the lamp into it. And she fell on the floor weeping. She did not even punish us. She just lay there crying.

  Mae looked at the photographs on the walls. There they were, all children lined up in white shirts, white dresses in the Golden Age, as Mama called the time when Papa was alive. Even then, she would have beaten those clothes white on the rocks under the bridge.

  There was Papa with a photographic face like burnished bronze in a city suit, with a mustache and a pipe. Mae remembered the day it was taken. They had all ridden down from Kurulmushkoy in a cart, and he had sat up straight and proud in his best clothes. He was the local candidate for the Party of National Unity, and that was why his picture was to be taken. That was why he was killed.

  It was okay for Missy and me, we were girls, we could go on being girls. It was Ju-mei who had no one to show him how to be. And that’s why Papa’s picture now hangs in the middle of the wall.

  Mai remembered. Ju-mei didn’t talk for six months after Papa was killed. He just sat in silence, looking at his little scuffed shoes.

  Mae remembered: It was Ju-mei who had found him dying in the diwan. We had to keep using the cushions, with Papa’s blood on them.

  Suddenly the diwan curtains snapped back as if Ju-mei wanted to tear them down. His chin was thrust up, he was in full city regalia, and he had on his glasses.

  Suddenly she remembered her father’s dead face and the answer came.

  He is frightened of the past. He is doing everything he can to escape it. And the more he fights, the more he’s trapped in it. And so am I.

  Something in Mae seemed to snap and unwind. She uncoiled and relaxed.

  Poor Ju-mei, you can never give up fighting, not even for a moment.

  Mae stood up and gave her brother a respectful bow. Even she was amazed. She did not feel a tremor of resentment.

  “Brother,” she murmured.

  “Sister,” he growled curtly, and jerked his head up and down. It was more like he was hitting her with his head than bowing in respect.

  He didn’t know what to say. They both stood staring for a moment.

  “May I sit down?” Mae asked.

  “I am amazed that you have to ask,” he growled back. He thought she was trying to show him up for bad manners. Which meant, of course, that he knew he had been bad-mannered at leaving her alone for so long.

  Mae sat down and looked at the walls and thought the Karz equivalent o
f, To hell with it. She gave up trying to do anything at all.

  “Your photographs reminded me strongly of the old days, when we lived here with our auntie.”

  “Tuh! I am too busy to think about the past.”

  “Me too, mostly. But you know, it was not all bad. It is good to remember how dedicated Mama was to keeping us clean and fed. How we all worked.”

  “It is pleasant to hear you acknowledge Mama for something.”

  Mae couldn’t be bothered with fighting. “She will always be Mama. It was very difficult for her; she relied on Papa for everything. In those days, it was possible to believe that if you were a woman you would never have to grow up. You could just go on doing what you were told. And suddenly … poof … no one there to tell you.”

  “She has never recovered from Father’s death.”

  “None of us has. We are so far gone we would not know what recovery looks like. Who we might have been if Papa had lived is so far away we cannot even imagine it. Only, I think we keep thinking we will one day grow up to be that family.”

  Ju-mei suddenly stood up. “What do you want?” he asked roughly. Mae couldn’t figure out if he was angry or threatened or impatient or bored or sad.

  She might as well answer his question for real. She sat and thought for a moment and the answer came as a surprise. “A little peace and quiet,” she said.

  “Tuh, there is little chance of that for anyone else when you are around.”

  And there probably was some truth in that. “Maybe that’s why I need some myself.”

  Ju-mei stood up straighter. “We are here to talk about a proposition.”

  Mae’s eyes felt heavy. She had a choice. She could let them have the argument Ju-mei wanted, or she could choose to hold on to what Siao had shown her: something new.

  Mae found she was doing this for Siao.

  “‘Insurance’ is too big a word for people who make their own candles,” she said. “They have to see it. They have to see themselves. So. Your company will have something called day tah. It is Info the company uses to calculate answers to insurance questions. Maybe the company has videos, maybe about real people the company has helped.”

  It was like a fire kindled in herself. Mae suddenly sat up.

  “So what we do is, pull all this stuff together into a show. And we have Number One Expert. That’s you. Maybe we put on the show on in Mrs. Wing’s courtyard. We make it social. Maybe in spring. Food, flowers, everything is abundant. Ah! And you come, and you explain. You show some films, but also, you invite people to talk to the TV and it gets answers especially for them.”

  She’d done something wrong. Ju-mei’s face was closing down. “I’ve been selling insurance to this village for many years, Mae. I don’t need you to tell me how to do it.”

  I have made a mistake. Here I am, the big older sister, telling him what to do.

  “I … I have let my enthusiasm carry me away,” she said. “Plainly, this scheme would rely entirely upon you.”

  “You have never bought any insurance yourself,” he said.

  What, I should spend all that money with you, because you are my brother? Mae had to quell the rising-up of anger. After all, Mae, his wife bought your dresses. Families buy from each other. Solidarity.

  “That was my husband’s decision,” said Mae.

  “Joe? Joe never made any decisions.”

  Ju-mei is being more honest in this encounter than you are, Mae.

  “I never thought we needed it,” said Mae.

  Until now. They needed it now, and for a reason. “I don’t expect you to believe me, Ju-mei, but I have only just realized what I want out of this.”

  “Money,” he said flatly, dourly, without hope.

  “I want you to get our village insured. Against flooding.” She thought for a moment. “And I want my family back.” She felt a little sting of tears around the base of her eyes.

  Mae thought it was to no avail. It ended like a business meeting, with Ju-mei promising to consider her proposal. Before she turned and left, she looked about the house. There were small thin rugs on the floor, and a picture cut from a magazine in a frame. The shelves were empty except for an encyclopedia Ju-mei had bought secondhand for his children’s education. The room was clean and tidy—so much work and so cold. Her mother did not show her face.

  Mae got home and decided to buy some Flood insurance. She made tea, climbed up the steps to Madam Owl’s attic. There was an e-mail for her.

  Sister,

  I have talked with the family and we have decided to accept your proposition. We think it would be better if we had the show here, in our own home. Mama is talking about about decorations and food. Would you or Mrs. Wing be able to loan us the television?

  There is something I did not understand. I did not understand before how much of what you do is done for the village. I thought you did it to make money. You dressed down and looked bad and I thought you had given yourself a different kind of air and grace, that you had set yourself up as something. It simply did not occur to me how much of what you were doing you were doing without thought of yourself.

  And so I find that I am more than happy to join with you in your project.

  Together we will get Kizuldah insured.

  Your brother,

  Ju-mei

  “Siao! Siao!” Mae called, overjoyed. “Siao! Come see!”

  MAE AND SLOOP IN YESHIBOZKENT PUT THE DEMONSTRATION TOGETHER.

  Siao and Ju-mei wrestled her television into the Wang family house. There were indeed flowers, but winter flowers, made of paper, and tables full of food. Someone from every household in the village came. The grates were piled high with coals, and there was rice wine.

  Ju-mei stood in front of them all, and showed people how much money they could make, and how they could pay, so little each week. The faces of other farmers explained: They were buying protection. These were not videos; Yeshibozkent Home Guardian set up live links. Lined, weathered faces like their own answered the villagers’ questions. “Oh, yes, we lost all our sheep to foot-and-mouth, but the company paid back our losses.”

  The director of Home Guardian also came on a live link. He told Ju-mei that his show was a model of how to bring the insurance crusade to the people.

  Siao was there and bought insurance on behalf of the family Chung. He made a handsome gesture of paying for the insurance of Mae’s weaving machine.

  Throughout, Mae sat quietly in the corner, wearing her best white dress.

  After the shaking of hands, and good-nights, and seeing her brother’s overjoyed smile, Mae climbed up the ladder to her loft and went to bed alone. Her arms held nothing, except the memory of the party. She cradled it all night alongside the swelling shape of her unborn child.

  But she found herself thinking of Siao’s smooth arms.

  20

  TEACHER SHEN CAME TO CALL.

  Mae opened her door and saw him against the glowing white-gray sky, and her heart thumped. “Teacher,” she said, greeting him in the formal fashion, with a bow of respect.

  Shen looked awful. Disordered wisps of hair were on his chin. They were gray, like an old woman’s whiskers. His eyes were encircled with concentric pouches of flesh.

  He stared at her.

  “It is cold for you; please come in, Teacher,” she said.

  He looked poor, he smelled poor. His coat was old, black, held shut. Something had been spilt on it. He had beautiful Eloi mittens, knitted by his wife.

  Mae kept talking. “Oh, such weather to come visit, let me make you tea.”

  “It’s not cold,” he said. “It is unseasonably warm.”

  “Please—please sit at the table.”

  Mae cleared away Siao’s breakfast things. “I know what you mean about warmth. All that snow on the hills, in this warm weather. I fear there will be a Flood.”

  Shen’s lip curled.

  Mae kept smiling, rattling out cups. “There was one, you know, in 1959, and all the village of A
ynalar was washed away. We need to be prepared in case it happens again.”

  Stop it, she told herself, you say that to everyone now. You chatter. He is not here for that.

  Mae bustled the kettle onto the brazier and rattled out cups for them both. She smelled his breath. Old sour wine. Chinese men could not drink well; the condition was called kizul, “red” for the flushed cheeks, and the anger. It should also be called “white,” for afterwards they were pale and shivery, like easily broken ice.

  He sighed and dug his fingers into his thick black hair.

  You were always so handsome, she thought. Friendship flowed down old familiar channels.

  “I didn’t sleep last night,” he said.

  “I don’t wonder at it. You have been removed from a most honored position, most unjustly.”

  “Tuh,”he said, looking at her as if she were the TV. His look said: You did it.

  “I did nothing, you know,” Mae said, sitting away from him. She found she was calculating how far he could swing if he went to hit her.

  Teacher Shen, I would ride in your cart upholstered with hops for the beer factory. That was always my favorite way to go to the city. You, me, and Suloi up early, all the four A.M. birds singing all around us. The dawn would come up on your friendly faces and we would eat buns and you would tell all your old village stories.

  Shen said, “My wife tells me you have been writing letters. You are trying to get me my job back.”

  Shen’s face shivered, the ice broke, and he was weeping.

  “They won’t give me my job!” He sounded exactly like a little boy, his face wrung like an old washing-rag. He stared at the table, drawing breath, trying to swallow. “I am not a farmer, I have very little land. What I am to do for money?”

  He patted his pockets. Looking for a cigarette. Then remembering he had none, could not afford them.

  Mae leaned forward. “You studied so hard to be a Teacher. It was not right of them to fire you.”

  “Fire me they did,” he said.

  “Kwan is trying to make a collection. Trying to get enough money from the village to pay you.…”