Edda looked in the newspaper. Unfortunately, Gwenda was right, so Edda was unable to take her boarder down a notch.
“Plosib . . . That tells the police nothing,” mused the all-knowing Haifan. “If the baker had been Murhred, then the driver of the truck would have been in trouble.”
“But if the baker had been a Sulled or a Myzzt, then the driver could rest easy,” Gwenda added. Stating the obvious reinforced her belief that she was intelligent.
Gavein noticed that at the mention of the Name Murhred, Edda flinched. Could that be Leo’s Name? Or even her own, Murhredda? From Murhredda you might have the abbreviation Edda. He had never heard of a Significant Name being abbreviated, but the customs here were different.
Plosib meant “By man, but accidentally.” Murhred, on the other hand, meant “By man, intentionally.” Gavein was certain now that in Davabel the Significant Names were the same as in Lavath. Sulled was “By your own hand.” Myzzt was “By your brain,” and it was a Name of Man. The others belonged to the group of Names of Conflict.
Gavein’s Name was Aeriel, which meant “By air,” and it was a Name of Element. Ra Mahleiné’s was the same: Aeriella. She would sometimes joke that their being together lowered their life expectancy. They had ignored the coincidence, trusting to the capriciousness of fate.
In Lavath, not as in the other Lands, common names were based on animals, plants, objects. Many people were called Bharr—which was Bear—and Wildcat and Wolf were also popular.
“Gavein” was the snow tiger, the only predator that dared face the mighty white bear. Apparently, the two beasts never met: the tiger kept to the forest, the bear to the tundra. But these ancient rulers of northern Lavath were conquered: their territory was now covered with residential bunkers, and the few remaining specimens were kept in captivity. Gavein had never seen his shaggy namesake.
“Mahlein” was an old name, for manul. The prefix “Ra” meant the female of the species. Once, in a zoo, both saw a real manul. It was grave and dignified, with an owl’s round face and large, mournful eyes. It didn’t look at all like the merciless killer of tiny creatures in the taiga. Ra Mahleiné liked to go to the zoo and look at the curious animals there. She found it amazing that once they had lived in freedom.
“Is there a zoo nearby?” Gavein asked the people at the table, breaking the silence.
“In the Park of Culture, at the corner of 5400 Street and 5600 Avenue,” replied Leo. “But there’s not much to see there. An excellent zoo is at the center, on the corner of 5000 Street and 6000 Avenue.”
The conversation was interrupted by a noise at the door; the postman was fitting a magazine into the letter slot.
Edda opened the door and invited him to the table. He brought chill air with him, as if coming in out of a snowstorm. He was short, stocky, with a large circular head. He put his mailbag, stuffed with newspapers and letters, on the floor. He brushed all the snow from his tunic, getting some of it on the people at the table, and handed the tunic to the young Eisler.
In a crimson uniform that had red stripes and shoulder braids, and a badge that said Davabel Post Office, Division 5445660, Officer Maximé Hoffard, Max looked important.
He took a seat at the table, panting and groaning from the effort. He put his postman’s cap beside his plate. A thin wreath of white hair surrounded his shiny bald spot. He took out a handkerchief and with it wiped, ceremoniously, his wet bottle-thick glasses.
“You missed the pasta, Max, but are in time for the pizza.” Edda gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.
He muttered something, put his glasses on, then comically stared at his neighbors to the left and to the right. He was wall-eyed. The lenses enlarged his eyes to the point of caricature.
“I can finally see,” he said.
“This is Dave,” said Edda. “He’ll be living with us, upstairs.”
Max extended a muscular hand across the table and had a grip like a vise. The tablecloth jerked as he leaned, and everyone jumped to keep things from falling. Taking advantage of the situation, Gwenda’s older son overturned the ketchup. Only Gavein saw that it was done on purpose.
“When Max comes, we need a rubber tablecloth and metal plates,” laughed Haifan.
Edda wiped up the excess ketchup with a rag, saying nothing, and she put a napkin under the tablecloth. When everything was restored to order, a large, steaming piece of meat au gratin was put in front of Max. Gavein would have preferred that to what was on his plate. He hated the vomit smell of pasta: that was the association he invariably had with melted cheese and cooked tomatoes. He wasn’t crazy about macaroni either.
Max dug in. All else ceased to interest him. He chewed steadily, quickly, like a machine.
He’s not eating, he’s feeding, thought Gavein. Like a bee: you could sever the head from the abdomen, and it wouldn’t stop chewing.
The lowered face, the hairless skull, and the eyes looking to the side made Max resemble an embryo or grub. He ate noisily, panting and slurping. Occasionally he would become aware of this fault and try to eat more quietly. The trouble this cost him resulted in nervousness and even louder breathing.
Gavein concluded that Max shouldn’t try to control the noise that was natural to him, because in either case no one else could eat while he did, and there was no point in his suffering too.
The conversation resumed, with the purpose of drowning out the noise of Max eating.
“Have you given a Name yet to the little one?” Max unexpectedly asked, wiping his full mouth with a napkin.
Gavein froze. In Lavath such a question was a terrible breach of etiquette. Here, evidently, it was not.
“Only yesterday I went and registered at Administration. He’ll be a Myzzt, and his everyday name will be Duarte,” answered Edda, though Max was no longer listening.
“Did you choose it, or did he bring it with him?” asked Haifan, joining in.
“He brought it with him, but we like it. He’ll be the master of his fate,” she said.
“But fate can’t be mastered, can it?” Haifan countered.
“That will be for him, not others, to decide.”
Max fed, snorting.
8
The Immigration Office was located on 5665 Avenue, an hour’s walk, but it took Gavein twice as long, because the thaw had turned the snow into a thick slush that was even slipperier underfoot than the usual ice. The passing cars kept throwing salty gray slop up onto the sidewalk.
The modest one-floor building had been finished off with a decorative greenish brick. Leo said that buildings here were wood and Styrofoam inside, or particleboard. In the best case, they used plasterboard. The brick was just for show. In Lavath, gray concrete was the building material of choice, with marks left by the wooden frames.
Gavein had to take care of the rest of the immigration paperwork. He also wanted to soften, as much as he could, Ra Mahleiné’s fall to the bottom of the social ladder: the ladder that had four rungs.
He went to the window under the sign Registration Of New Arrivals. After a few minutes, an official appeared, not happy that his lunch had been interrupted.
“You made a mistake, picking a wife too early,” the official said. “That’s better done in the second stage of your life. Then there’s no farewell when you move.” He took a sip of watery decaf from a cardboard cup.
Gavein detested the coffee here.
“A premature marriage is a complication but not a major one. This is Davabel. With a three on your passport you should have no problem getting an annulment. Or authorization, even, to keep your woman. Is she pretty at least?” The official’s talk seemed a flow of unconnected phrases. “Black like you?”
“White.”
“That makes no sense. Whites are not considered.” This was a man who didn’t blink, who knew his business. “Here, as the possessor of a three, you can have
a black wife or even two reds. Your previous union doesn’t need to be annulled, because it doesn’t exist in the eyes of the law.” The official clipped a large form to Gavein’s passport. “Personally I would advise you not to have one wife with a two and another with a three, though that can be done as well. Such marriages aren’t stable. I’m sure the rules on that will be changed soon.”
“My wife’s name is Ra Mahleiné. I’d like you to put that on my passport. I haven’t been able yet to pick her up at the port, but I believe she has arrived.”
“Whites aren’t put in passports. You can have as many of them as you like, as mistresses. Unfortunately they age quickly, grow ugly. A problem you don’t need.”
“All the same I’d like her entered as my wife.”
“She was younger than you?”
“Yes.”
“She traveled in real time, while you went by dilation, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Consider how much she’s aged . . . She’s thirty-five now, biologically and chronologically.”
“She sacrificed four years of her life so that she could be in synchrony with me.”
The official waved a hand. “Where am I to put her? There’s no place on the form for whites.”
Gavein stared at him stubbornly. He knew this was possible.
“Very well,” said the official. “Under ‘Marital Status’ I’ll put an asterisk, and here . . . at the bottom there’s a box ‘Comments.’ I’ll write her in here.”
The son of a bitch, Gavein thought. He wields his power. He could have written her in normally.
“Her name is Ra Mahleiné,” Gavein said.
“Don’t be absurd. She has no name in Davabel. I’ll put down ‘Mrs. Dave Throzz, no category.’“
“Please write her name, Ra Mahleiné.” Gavein knew his rights.
“I’ll write Magdalena. That sounds more natural. And her Significant Name?”
“Aeriella.”
The official put the form into a slot in the computer, to stamp on it the code of the Name.
“I need more information. She’s very fair?”
“Yes, fair. Eyes blue, dark blue. She’s tall.”
“Tall as you?” the official joked. He was short and roly-poly.
“No, but taller than you. Thin, without any special marks. I don’t know what else . . .”
“Fair, so she’s reddish?” The official’s manner changed, now that their duel was over about writing Ra Mahleiné into the passport. He was just doing his job now, and his tone became more sympathetic. In Lavath such informality would not have been possible: an official was always the personification of his office.
“No. Her eyebrows, her lashes are darker.”
“Yes, I remember women like that,” the official said with a sigh. “Goddesses of the north. I couldn’t get my fill of looking at them. I sat at a cash register in a store. I wasn’t allowed to lift my eyes to one, ever. It was torment.”
“You remember Lavath?”
“Northern women, they’re like snowflakes: beautiful but short-lived.” The official shook his head. “In Davabel they melt quickly. Even when it’s freezing . . .”
“When will I be able to pick up my wife at the port?”
“I remember,” he went on, answering the first question. “The miserable youth of being a red in Lavath. I have no reason to stick my neck out for whites. You get my meaning?”
His hair was dyed black, but on his crown, under his cap, was the requisite strip of red.
“You’ll be notified by phone. I’ll see to this personally. Here’s my card. Both of you should drop in sometime. My wife makes great pizza, and her pasta isn’t bad. We’ll talk about old times.”
On the card was written Ian Hanning, R, followed by several abbreviations that indicated his position and address.
9
Gavein’s apartment was claustrophobic. The walls were white, empty, smooth, and of uneven height; the ceiling showed every sag in the roof; each room, with its narrow, high windows, was like the half of a misshapen skull. Outside, the rows upon rows of small houses differed only in their details: balustrades, porches, the arrangement of the windows.
In Lavath, when individual houses were occasionally built, they were as solid as the concrete bunkers. They made comparison possible, gave a sense of scale, of what was big and what was little. Here almost all the buildings were the same size.
For hours Gavein lay on his inflated mattress, looking at the ceiling or at the walls, where flakes of paint hung and fell. He had had a phone installed (a phone was obligatory), but no one ever called. Ra Mahleiné had still not arrived.
The only events in the day were the meals at Edda’s. They kept him from going crazy. Every day, pasta from the refrigerator was reheated and served. With hot tea poured from a pot, or coffee that had no caffeine. Zef, Edda’s oldest son, would eat his pasta before the others and sit sewing more skulls or skeletons on his black leather jacket. He came back to the table when the pizza was served. (He was definitely adopted: Edda was not over forty.)
The children of Haifan and Gwenda usually ate with everyone else. The younger one, Aladar, often stayed late at school to do additional work. The older one, Tad, was alone today; perhaps that was the reason he sucked at his strands of spaghetti with a quietness unlike him.
Zef was finishing a new skull, which had sequins instead of sockets. The other diners were laboring over their pasta as it turned cold.
“Going somewhere?” Edda asked.
Zef’s red comb had been newly stiffened. It reminded Gavein of a rooster puffed up to crow.
“At Bats they’re showing a movie for three packets. Four whole hours for three packets,” Zef said.
“What’s it called?” Gavein asked, interested. The last pieces of spaghetti were short; you didn’t have to work to twist them around a fork. Finally you could converse.
“The title’s not important. Lola Low’s in it, the former basketball star, and there’s a lot of sex . . .”
“Zef,” cautioned Edda, nodding at Tad.
“And Maslynnaya’s in it too. She’s short, dainty, and completely bald, they say. Wears a wig everywhere,” he continued, unfazed.
“You’re taking a girl to the movie?” Edda asked, darkening.
“Lib unwound and hasn’t been rewound yet.” When Zef spoke of women, he always used jargon.
Gavein disliked the style. Speaking of women as people and not as things was something he had always done, not the result of age. But to give Zef a lecture about this would have been a waste of breath.
The wait between the first and second course was longer today, because Edda had forgotten to take the pizza out of the freezer. The diners got up and went their ways, leaving only Gavein and Haifan at the table.
“So who’s going with you?” Edda asked her son.
“Pete, Beanpole, Hans, and a new guy, Earthworm. He’s black. We’re taking seltzer.”
“For shooting?” Edda continued her interrogation.
“Yeah. We’re shooting from the balcony on the people below, but only after the second hour of the movie. That’s the deal.”
Shooting seltzer was a harmless form of gang warfare. But often it degenerated to the usual black eyes and bloody noses.
“And the people below you?” asked Gavein.
“They bring umbrellas. It was announced. Beanpole did that. That’s the deal.”
“There won’t be any trouble?”
“No trouble. It’s all arranged. Next week we sit below, and they’re on the balcony.”
“Just don’t go roaming the streets at night. There are no deals outside the theater door.”
Of Zef’s gang Gavein knew only Beanpole and Earthworm. They dropped in once, when Gavein was helping in the kitchen.
Beanpole,
unusually tall, had a morose, pimply face and long hands. Being a white, he lived in the slum nearby. He took interest in nothing, cared about nothing. Every other sentence, he used his favorite word, “Loose.” His utterances all seemed the same—but there were worse faults than that.
Earthworm was new in Zef’s gang. They had accepted him because he was black. As tall as Beanpole, but frail, his limbs like sticks, he reminded Gavein of a clothes hanger.
10
“Something here I don’t get,” said Zef, breaking the silence. He turned to Gavein but was watching Haifan out of the corner of his eye. “Your wife, Dave, is a couple of years younger than you. But everyone moves from Lavath, Davabel, or Ayrrah when they’re exactly thirty-five or seventy, never any other way. Unless they make it to a hundred and five, a geront. So if you’re thirty-five now, how did she come with you?”
“I came by plane, she by ship,” replied Gavein. He understood that Zef’s intention was to draw Haifan into the conversation. Haifan, an astronomy teacher at an elite middle school for blacks only, was unaware that this Mohawked, ridiculous-looking kid was studying for bachelor’s degree orals in physics. Zef was setting a trap for the supercilious pedagogue.
The fish took the bait. Haifan put down his paper and began to hold forth in the confident, resonant voice of wisdom: “That is simply explained. First, the speed of time is dependent on the altitude above sea level. The higher you go, the more slowly time passes. Here on the ground in Davabel, an hour elapses on your watch, but at a great height, it’s a minute, and higher still, it’s a second, and higher still, even less.”
“How high was your plane?” asked Zef.
“The pilot said we were at the altitude of seconds,” said Gavein.
“Well there you are,” Haifan continued. If two people wish to depart for a Land at the same time but one of them is not yet thirty-five or seventy, the younger of the two travels by ship in real time—that is to say, in time as it passes on the ground—while the older individual takes a plane. The route and the height of the flight are chosen so that at the end of the voyage, reaching Davabel, Ayrrah, or Lavath, the two persons have exactly the same age, which is the End of Youth or the Beginning of Old Age or, for a lucky few, the Attainment of Venerability. Sometimes it is necessary for a person to go by both ship and plane, because there are limited routes and possibly several stops along the way. Seaplanes are used by those who make stops. Did you take a seaplane, Gavein?”
Nest of Worlds Page 3