Air

by Geoff Ryman

  “She’s fighting, she’s there,” said Kwan. She took hold of the hand and kept talking to her. “Come on, Mae. You can come back. The old witch only has part of your soul. You have the rest. Come back, Mae!”

  KWAN VISITED MAE MOST DAYS.

  Siao and Ken Kuei lived together with Mae in the ruin of their houses. The village had decided not to regard this as a scandal. Both men loved her; of course they would stay with her in misfortune.

  Only the barn and the back corner of the house still stood. The wound had a scar of piled stones over it, bandaged with plastic. Daylight peeked through, but the room was warm. There was room for the brazier and the table, and the alcove with the bed. Part of the loft remained, but was unused.

  Kwan would duck through the low doorway and bow with respect to Old Mr. Chung, who sat in the only standing corner of his old house. Kwan would lay food on the table—village bread, a few dried vegetables, and at times even a bottle of rice wine saved from the Flood.

  Siao and Mr. Ken would both then busy themselves with the cooking. Politely, they would pass each other the knife, the soy. Kwan had once asked Ken Kuei how it was, all three of them living together. “Oh,” he said. “There is no problem. I have lived next to Chung Siao all my life. We have always been friends.”

  Kwan felt a quiet pride. Such behavior is only possible, she thought, among a truly civilized people.

  It was best for Mae to sleep in her own bed. It might help to bring her back. Certainly Old Mrs. Tung did not like it. The old creature quailed, Why are we in this place? She was confronted with the fact that she did not belong.

  The tiny bedroom alcove was kept as tidy as possible by Mr. Ken. Old Mrs. Tung would sit disgruntled next to the tiny window. She kept turning out the electric lights; she hated them. She lit candles. Mr. Ken put them out. Candles in such a crowded space were dangerous.

  “Hello, Siao,” said Kwan. “Is she eating?”

  He shook his head no: No, she is not. “She says her tummy burns.”

  Her tummy ballooned out just under the rib cage like a pigeon breast. You could tell just from looking at her shape that something was terribly wrong. Old Mrs. Tung could learn nothing new, so she could not remember that she was pregnant or where the pregnancy was. She felt full so she never ate. Mae’s starving face was becoming more and more delicate. Mae was beginning to look like Mrs. Tung.

  Kwan said, “Mae’s not fighting.”

  Perhaps there is no more Mae left to fight.

  “I found the onion in my old store. And Mrs. Ozdemir, bless her, she still keeps giving me bits of her goat for Mae.”

  It was smoked scrag-end. Siao went for the cleavers. “The famous cleavers,” he said. He added the onion and curry powder to cover the taste of stale meat. They sat and talked of village things. The two men took turns to stir the fry up.

  Kwan looked at Mae’s beautiful old dresses hung in an orderly row. “It’s been a long year,” she said.

  “Huh. More like a century,” said Kuei.

  “Remember, last April? She was already beginning to talk to people about graduation dresses, showing them fabric, bustling about the place. She always wore high heels for that, remember?”

  “Oh! Do I!” Kuei rolled his eyes, as if he had never seen anything as beautiful. “With her hair always up. I would look out, and it was like a dream to see her, like someone from TV had dropped down by mistake into our village.”

  Kwan’s smiled wryly. “That was the effect she wanted.”

  “She was a different Mae,” said Mr. Ken.

  Which Mae do you love? Kwan wondered.

  Old Mrs. Tung shifted with discomfort and frustration. “Where is Mae?” she demanded. “And, Kuei, why are we are we eating old goat? Can’t you find anything better?”

  Siao made a space near him for Mr. Ken to moisten the bread. In the corner, Mae’s TV still received voicemail. Kwan considered: It is probably Siao, who loves the Mae she became—Unrolling Mats and TV screens.

  “I will have to get back soon to the girls,” Mr. Ken warned Siao. His daughters lived with their cousins at the Teahouse. Siao nodded. The two men were a household.

  And, Kwan considered, it is probably Siao who keeps it together.

  As soon as the shreds of goat were cooked, they offered the food. Kwan leaned forward. “Mae? Mae, eat something, please.”

  “I am not hungry,” said Old Mrs. Tung. “Kuei! Take me home. We have been here long enough. It is evident that Mae and Joe will not be back.”

  “For your baby. You must eat,” said Kwan.

  “What … what … what…” Mrs. Tung shook her head no—no, over and over. “What are you talking about?” Old Mrs. Tung demanded. “I don’t want your food, woman! I want to go home. Why can’t we go home?”

  “Sssh, Granny,” said Kuei, coming from the stove.

  “We have been here for hours!” Old Mrs. Tung started to weep from frustration.

  “Sssh, Granny. The house is gone; it was washed away in a Flood.”

  “What?” Old Mrs. Tung looked up in horror and her eyes shivered with all the despair of fresh discovery.

  Old Mrs. Tung could only live in the past.

  MAE LIVED, FASCINATED, IN AIR.

  Air was real life—all of life all at once, for it made all times one time. For Mae, time was a breakfast table, with everything in reach. She would stretch across eternity and feel herself expand, out of Air and into any moment of her life.

  Mae would walk to school hand in hand with her brother Ju-mei. She threw acorns at him, and they ran, laughing, round and round the One Tree.

  Joe took her on a date, down the hill to Kurulmushkoy. The Teahouse there catered to young people and had a radio.

  Dazzled, at sixteen, Mae sits in a booth and listens to U2. It is only two years since the Communists have gone; there is all this new stuff. Joe seems to be king of it.

  “U2 are from Ir Lang Do. They are not English, not American. They had a big event, all the big stars sang for poor people. It went round the world. Yah.” Joe looked into his tea. His hair is buzzed short, he wears a chrome necklace. Joe is the future. His eyes are sad. “We missed it.”

  Mae is entranced. She is moved. “We will not miss it next time, Joe,” she says. She ventures forth, and puts her hand on top of his. This is simply because she finds she feels the same. “Next time, we will be part of the future.”

  “We can bet on that,” he says, and pushes his hand into his tight jeans and pulls out a quarter-riel. He slams it on the table.

  “It is a wager!” Mae giggles, at sixteen, and covers her teeth with her hands because she thinks they are huge and make her look like a horse. But her eyes are fixed on Joe.

  And then this time shrinks and folds down into itself. It is the room and the people and the smell of boiled water and cigarettes that collapses, not Mae herself. Mae is always there.

  Mae can do frightening things. She balloons herself back into the womb before she was born. She can feel her mother’s terror and misery seething around and inside her. She hears pumping and muffled voices. She sees gentle light. It is like dying, a gentle dying that is not fearful because you know that this is the beginning.

  The unborn infant knows that too, connected in Air to its own future.

  We live and we die in eternity. Our physical bodies occupy the balloon world. The balloon world has space, and we are trapped in one part of it. The balloon expands and we are trapped with that expansion. And that is time.

  But, oh, in Air!

  Air has no time.

  Air is everything that has been and will be, waiting its turn to puff out of its tiny dot into our brief world.

  And Mae’s life is hinged with that of another.

  IT IS THE FIRST DAY OF AUTUMN SCHOOL AND MRS. KOWOLOIA COMES WITH HER LITTLE DAUGHTER KWAN.

  Mrs. Tung thinks: My, but the child is solemn. And Mrs. Kowoloia, oh, she is so beautiful, ethereal. She floats—and all that embroidery!

  “Mrs. Kowoloia
, you are as beautiful as the butterfly!” hoots Mrs. Tung, seizing her client’s hands with gratitude, for this is the first arrival of the school year. The courtyard will soon be full of children.

  Mrs. Kowoloia says, “Mrs. Tung, may I say what a benefit this is to all of us. To run a school for us year in and year out. And we all know of your education.”

  “Ah! But all my books were lost,” hoots Mrs. Tung, holding up her hands and laughing for the dead.

  The little girl looks seriously ready for work and disgruntled that there is none to do.

  “Kwan, dear, I have some paper and paints.”

  Kwan wrinkles her nose. “It’s all right,” says Kwan. “I’ll read my book.”

  Every time the boys play football together in the white dust of my courtyard, I say, “Ahmet would have played with them.” When all the little girls sing or skip rope, I close my eyes and imagine I hear Lily chanting with them. My Lily, who I let fall and drown.

  Two little girls slip through the gate all by themselves. One is tall and skinny, and angry. The other is tiny, so small that her chin hits her chest as she scowls.

  I know who this is, thinks Mrs. Tung, and she walks forward, bending at the middle.

  “Are you the little girls who lost their daddy?” Mrs. Tung asks.

  The oldest looks at her with frightening directness. “He was shot by Communists.”

  “And what is your name?” Mrs. Tung half hopes it will be Lily.

  “I like to be called Missy,” says the elder. “So that’s what everybody calls me.” She looks down at her sister with a mother’s pride. “This is my sister, Mae,” she says, in a way that makes Mrs. Tung want to weep, it is so full of love and care.

  The little one is shy. She holds up an autumn leaf. “It’s red,” she says. “I found it on the ground.”

  “Leaves fall. That’s because autumn is coming. I’m Mrs. Tung.”

  “It’s beautiful. It looks like a cushion. All red.”

  “Where is your mother?” Mrs. Tung asks.

  “Nowhere,” Missy says coolly.

  Missy coughs, and from deep within her lungs comes the authentic crackle of TB. She coughs again, and passes Mae to Mrs. Tung. “Mae’s clever,” says Missy. She ushers Mae forward, arm around her shoulder. Her solemn eyes meet Mrs. Tung’s. Mrs. Tung feels a prickle up her spine, as if Missy is passing Mae to her, to care for.

  Missy coughs again, Mrs. Tung is sure.

  Mrs. Tung could taste Air.

  “Come, Mae. We have another clever little girl for you to meet. Her name is Kwan.” Mrs. Tung moves them forward together. The older one is lean and already gray as a ghost.

  Mrs. Tung gazes at the round face of the little girl and to her it is like an egg that will hatch. She can half see who this Mae will be—oh, clever, yes, but not in any way that school can capture. She will turn herself into Missy, to honor her and love her and remember her.

  The children run around her, swirling like dust, and Mrs. Tung can see them all hatching, into Shen, into Joe, into Kan-hui. It is her job to warm them, love them into life.

  MRS. TUNG SITS IN HER BIG KITCHEN, DARNING WET SOCKS.

  You darn them wet so that they will dry and heal shut. Her smelly, kindly old husband is in the fields. Her young man is off in the hills. Mrs. Tung feels heavy and weighted, as if going up a fast escalator. She is pregnant, and she knows the child is not Mr. Tung’s. She becomes aware that she is hearing gunfire. Has the war moved back here?

  Suddenly, the guns batter so loudly that it is as if the guns are in the kitchen. Mrs. Tung jumps. She hears a cry, from nowhere.

  Then everything is still again, just dust turning in rays of light. Suddenly Mrs. Tung is certain.

  Kalaf is dead.

  Something that was in the air is there no longer. Like music that is suddenly turned off. Like the sudden smell of burning food. He is dead, she thinks, and I will be getting a telegram.

  She puts the sock down on the table, and ponders. It will not do for her husband to see any telegram about any man. She ponders a moment, and wonders why she is not crying when there is no doubt.

  Mrs. Tung goes up Lower Street to the Teahouse, and she slips sideways into the room with all the men and cigarette smoke. The men in cloth caps look up and glower. She is a woman, even if her head is covered. Only whores sit in cafes with men. Mrs. Tung sits at a table and starts to darn socks. She focuses on the yarn and the thread. The morning passes. She nods yes to a glass of tea, but does not drink it.

  Her cousin Mr. Tui comes up and suggests she should leave. Mrs. Tung just shakes her head, for she finds she does not trust herself to speak. She keeps her eyes on the socks.

  Then the machine in the corner of the room chatters. Mrs. Tung sees the shadow of Mr. Tui turn away. Mrs. Tung puts her hands in her lap and waits.

  The shadow comes back. “This is for you,” he says, leaning down, so that she has to see his walrus face looking sad.

  “You should have said you were waiting,” says Mr. Tui. Mrs. Tung knows that if she speaks, she will start to weep. Cousin Tui stands up. “She was waiting for this!” He shakes the telegram at the men at the bar.

  He folds it flat and puts it in her limp and waiting hands.

  Dear friend, beloved cousin Kalaf is dead.

  “He was kind to me when I was young,” says Mrs. Tung, and scrunches up the telegram as if it were her face. Her face becomes a rag to be wrung; she can feel water seeping. She stands up, and holds up, and swiftly strides out of the Teahouse. She keeps her head high, walks back home through the narrow corridor of houses, and cannot tell anyone that the father of her child is dead. She finally closes the door of the kitchen, and hides her face in her husband’s wet socks.

  Mrs. Tung knew before she could have known.

  Mrs. Tung had been a traveler in Air. Before there was Air.

  So Mae went to find her.

  MAE WENT BACK TO THE DAY OF THE TEST.

  Mae burgeoned back into her old life.

  The cauldron is boiling; Joe has eaten his rice. Old Mrs. Tung is led in, chuckling at herself. Kuei helps her, blind to his own future, as blind as this time-bound, work-bound Mae.

  TO Chung Mae Wang

  CERTIFICATE OF APPRECIATION FROM THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 2019

  FOR FASHION STUDIES

  And all around them are the magnetic fields, the arcs emanating from the fire in the heart of the earth—unnoticed and of no importance to Kizuldah for two thousand years.

  Until now.

  There is the flash and the buzz and the inflation of the mind. Every neural pathway is jolted at once.

  A kind of Question Map of the self. Every question answered, complete.

  Buzzed and jolted and in that moment stamped for ever on eternity, in Air. A complete, unchanging, unloving, unnatural Map.

  And, oh, murmuring, here comes the Format.

  Mae has to chuckle. It was such a cheap and tinny thing, the Format, like a child’s plastic space-helmet clamped on the head. A few lines of code, a bit of information added to the mix.

  “Chocolate. I smell chocolate,” coos Old Mrs. Tung.

  Here it comes, thinks Mae-in-Air, here it comes.

  The cauldron is knocked, and topples. It will fall forever. That white steaming sheet will like a shroud will cling and scald the old thin flesh for an eternity.

  Mae is moved by pity and jumps forward, her mind addled and stirred by the unfamiliar immanence of all-time one-time. She plucks away the scalding shroud.

  Mrs. Tung? another Mae demands, riding on the shoulders of her old life. Where are you, Mrs. Tung?

  Mae-in-Air seeks the eternal soul.

  In time, Mrs. Tung takes another Mae’s hand. There are sticky trails across Mrs. Tung’s face, as if from snails. Her hands are lumpy and blue.

  “I can see!” Mrs. Tung whispers. Here eyes waver back and forth, skipping, leaping, but they move in unison.

  Mrs. Tung, it’s me, Mae!

  Air was saying, �
�To send messages, go to the area called Airmail…”

  Mae watches her early self swoop clumsily across a virtual courtyard and overshoot the graphics. She embeds herself in the blue stone. Seen from enough distance, anything is funny.

  Air says, “For an emergency configuration, simply repeat your own name several times.”

  And Mae-in-Air hears her other self say over, and over, “Mae, Mae, Mae…”

  Mrs. Tung cries out in unison, Mae! Mae!

  Click.

  That was it. That was it right there.

  Such a simple thing, a mailbox address. You don’t need to talk about souls, or wonder how your imprints got entangled. It’s nothing to do with the Gates or the U.N. Format.

  All you have to do is chant the same name together when they configure your mailboxes.

  Mae starts to laugh. Their mailboxes had the same name! That was the problem. They would have the same name for eternity—all eternity, both past and future.

  The imprint had the mailbox, but the imprint was connected always to the real self, the real person who controlled.

  All I have to do, Mae realizes, is talk to the real Mrs. Tung.

  Water, says Granny Tung, as if in prophecy. The 1959 flood comes gurgling back, but Mae is gone.

  MAE PIERCED AND REPIERCED AIR LIKE A SEWING NEEDLE, LOOKING FOR THE REAL SOUL OF MRS. TUNG.

  Mae sat on her own shoulder, morning visit after morning visit to Mrs. Tung’s attic.

  There Mrs. Tung was in her chair at ninety, the wind blowing in her face as if fresh from a Cossack campfire, looking back at memories of the hills.

  “Is that you, my dear Mae?” Mrs. Tung would banter and then laugh again from heartbreak. “Well, well, come and sit near me child, and tell me all your news. Hoo-hoo-hoo!”

  Mae would collapse. “Woh! Nothing Granny, just laundry.”

  “Oh-ho-ho, I used to so love doing laundry. Watching it hang out in the sun all those colors. I used to love the smell of it you know.”

  That’s because you loved the people who wore the clothes, Granny.

  And Mae-in-Air, on her own shoulder, would whisper: Granny, Granny Tung, can you hear me?

  And it seemed sometimes, that the old catlike face would go still and listening, as if just catching a whisper.