by Adam Roberts
‘Maguelone?’
‘The woman we are going to hear speak. She is one of the most prominent Aquatics. She tours the region. I mean, she goes all along the Black Sea coast, and she even goes inland, sometimes.’
They walked for ten minutes, the crowd thickening around them until they were pushing through the midst of a big mass of longhairs, going through opened double-doors into a large hall well-lit with iWicks. ‘She’s popular?’
‘Some longhairs call her the Redeemer.’
‘So?’
Sergei opened his eyes wide as Issa had ever seen them. ‘You don’t understand?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Redeemer is what they called Neocles. The man who invented the Bug, you know. That people are using the same word – well, it’s like a sacred word, an important . . .’ But the crowd heaved, and Sergei was pushed away from Issa. She could no longer hear him over the babble. In fact, the crush was uncomfortable. She was taller than most of those around her, which meant that she could use her elbows to lift herself out of the mêlée a little. But she didn’t like it. The possibility of claustrophobic panic nibbled at the edge of her mind.
For a long time the crowd simply filled the hallspace, pulsing like a single, gigantic, breathing organ. Eventually, a very elderly woman emerged on a tiny wooden internal balcony, halfway up the far wall. This, Issa supposed, was Maguelone. She was extraordinarily ancient, perhaps as many as seventy years old, her skin wrinkled like a cabbage leaf, her hair white – white! – and down to her calves. The crowd grew, slowly, quiet. When she spoke, her voice was clear and strong, more singing than speaking: ‘Fellows! Comrades! Longhairs!’
There were no interruptions, and no questions after she had finished.
‘The future is the sea,’ sang Maguelone, ‘as the past was. Simple tools – a raft to sit on, a unit to turn salt to drinkwater and, every few weeks, a net or a piece of string to catch a slimy thing or a fishy thing from the water, and suck some minerals and vitamins in your mouths. What else do you need? Only your hair, the hair that defines you! Come to the sea – you will never be thirsty again, for you will be surrounded by water. Come to the sea – you will never be oppressed again, for the sea is freedom. Float away from the envy of the rich and the savageness of the soldiery, to the absolute freedom that is your birthright! Come to the sea – for I have had a vision! The Redeemer gave us our freedom, but he died before the whole of his gospel could be communicated. He set us free from food. He meant to set us free from the land as well! He was a Greek Christian from Kos. He came from the isles of Greece, jewels of the Mediterranean, the realm where sea defines land and land always faces the sea. If he had lived he would have said: take my great gift! Leave the hard and stony land to the rich. It will be their punishment! Remake yourselves as seafolk, and live on the sunlit blue roof that stands five miles above its ocean floor and that will never fall down to it. Remake yourselves as seafolk, and follow the great currents of the Atlantic and Pacific and Indian oceans. Remake yourselves as seafolk, and never set foot upon the land again!’ At each reiteration of ‘remake yourself’ the crowd cheered, and she waited until the yelling died down before going on. With this final exhortation the whole hall, Issa included, banged their feet and shouted, in an unbroken oceanwave roar. But it was dark, and longhairs grow sluggish when the sun has set, so the boisterousness did not last long. When it subsided, Maguelone, visibly tired, rounded off with a practical peroration: ‘You will need to band together and obtain money – for you will need to get yourself a raft, and a desal device, and you may want a pulse motor to propel you. But the expense is less onerous when it is divided between two dozen people, or four dozen, or a dozen dozen, if you think big enough! Organize, and return to the sea!’ She had to be helped off the rickety little balcony at the end of this, and the crowd, similarly exhausted, but buzzing, began to exit the hall.
It took a while for Issa to decant out, and she stood to one side as the crowd dispersed waiting for Sergei. Whilst doing so she saw, unmistakable in the crush, the bindi-forehead and crumpled face of Sudhir, the Spartacist leader she had met in the uplands. She was pushing through, angry-looking, and did not see Issa. But Sergei, coming up and clutching her in an embrace, did. ‘I see you noticed your cadre leader, there?’
‘You know her?’
‘I told you. I have a history with the local Spartacist crew.’
‘Then,’ said Issa, disentangling herself from his grip and starting down the road, ‘then you must know that I have no connection at all with the Spartacists here.’
‘Oh I haven’t been to any Spartacist meeting for several years,’ he puffed, jogging to keep up with her. ‘I’m not plugged in any more.’
‘Well: then you must take it on trust from me. I’m no Spartacist. In fact, I was hoping you might take me along to one of their gatherings – like you did for the Siblings and the Aquatic lady.’
‘But what did you think of her?’ he said, eagerly. ‘Wasn’t she inspiring? To live at sea for ever, like Captain Nemo! Outflank the land-dwellers, let them gather as much wealth as they want! What did you think?’
They were making slower progress now, up a series of freakish ascents and turns: Sergei unused to exercise, Issa growing more torpid as the night settled in her blood. ‘I would have liked,’ she panted, going up the incline, ‘more detail. More practical strategy.’
‘Oh,’ scoffed Sergei. ‘Detail! Where’s the passion and romance in your heart?’
‘What about storms?’ Issa pointed out. ‘And how are we to raise children on rafts, with nothing but a piece of string to catch a fish every three months?’
‘Details! You think longhair wit can’t solve that kind of problem? But think of the future!’ He sat himself heavily on the top step. ‘Longhairs take the sea – the wealthy don’t need it any more. It’s exhausted, mined out, fished dry, large parts of it are polluted and poisoned. The rich do without it, and continue their life on the land. The longhairs take the ocean. And after seven generations a mighty longhair nation has grown up, a seafaring people, living all the year in mighty seagoing rafts and yachts. I picture them gathering a vast armada, a spread of ships reaching from horizon to horizon, and sailing up the Thames Estuary to sack London, or sailing into Sidney Harbour to burn Sidney!’
Sitting beside him, Issa put her head back. Geometrically pared by the buildings, in the transverse fissure of two rooftops, gently angled towards one another, she could see a thousand stars. Two thousand. Three thousand. The more she looked, the more stars she could see. ‘I don’t see how life could be maintained for seven generations,’ she said.
‘Life will find a way.’
‘I suppose you think we could live for ever on the waters?’
‘Why not?’
They roused themselves, and started back along towards Sergei’s place. ‘It burns when I piss,’ he told her, apropos of nothing. ‘I suppose it does with you?’
‘No.’
‘You have an admirable constitution. I envy it. I think I have an infection down there. And Roxan’s got some illness. I don’t know what, she won’t tell me, but I can tell something’s up.’ They were at the wooden steps to Sergei’s doorway now. The stars pressed closer here, like the cosmic dizziness filling the unlit inside of the sky’s vast skull. Without premeditation, Issa said: ‘She is pregnant.’
Sergei went through into his big, dusty space; and Issa followed. He more fell than sat on his divan. Roxan was asleep in the corner. Issa felt it wash through her, that great weariness that immediately precedes sleep. As she started towards her shared bed, Sergei said: ‘Mine?’
‘Of course.’
‘I won’t believe it of that whore.’
This hurried Issa’s heart a little, the tone of it, the offhand violence of it. But she carried on walking towards her bed. There may have been a part of her that was thinking say nothing more, just go to sleep now. This, though, was unlikely to prevail against her larger character. �
�She said you would take that attitude,’ she told him.
‘What attitude?’ He sounded sulky.
‘She said you would want to have nothing more to do with her if you found out. I should not have told you.’
He was fiddling with his snuff pipe, trying it in one nostril then another. ‘It’s not like that,’ he said, eventually. He sounded almost plaintive. ‘I’m very happy for her.’
If she had had more experience of men, Issa might have spotted the danger in this whininess. But she was still very young.
‘Good,’ she said, telling herself that there was no crisis, after all. She sat on the end of her bed. Roxan was sleeping a deep, vegetative sleep. And Issa was ready to join her. But she wanted to put a few items of blithe smalltalk between her and this long-boned, rangy man before she went to sleep. ‘I enjoyed tonight. Thank you for taking me.’
Sergei looked at her with one eye, sniffed, and said: ‘Don’t mention it.’
‘Will you take me to a proper Spartacist meeting tomorrow?’
To this, Sergei only looked at her.
‘Joking aside,’ she said, feeling uneasy, although she did not quite understand why. ‘You do know I’m not actually a Spartacist, don’t you? It’s just that I’d be interested to see their take on the whole situation.’ When this produced nothing, she said: ‘It’s been an education, meeting you, Sergei. I’ve learnt a lot.’ She did not know that this was the worst thing she could possibly have said.
Sergei took another sniff. Then, he started talking very quickly – so hurriedly, in fact, and in such a low voice that Issa had trouble following him: ‘Always loved you, and it’s OK that you treat me like a hardfood turd, because that’s why I love you. You and I can wait until she gives birth and then raise the child between us. Did she tell you why I’m here?’
‘What?’
‘Did she tell you why I’m here? Did she tell you why I’m here? Did she tell you why I’m here?’
‘In what sense?’ She almost added: Why are any of us here?
‘Did you think I was letting you stay here rentfree and drink my water and not even asking you to twang my cock like a guitarstring – what, out of pure charity? Do you think I’m a holy man? I did it because I love you, because I love you, although you treat me like a fucking hardfood turd. And she will not destroy what I have built here. She said to you: come away. Didn’t she? She said to you: let’s go to New York where you can be queen and I can raise my child and we’ll leave fucking Sergei wallowing in his snuff doze. Did she tell you why I’m here?’
Issa had gone very still. Her heart had woken up and was running on the spot. ‘She didn’t tell me anything.’
‘Why do you think I’m here, Issa, rotting in this lakeside hovel, and not in a big comfortable house in Putingrad?’
Issa checked the distance to the door. She would have to get past Sergei of course, but he had taken two snorts of snuff, and would be sluggish. She was feeling sluggish herself; but with a little help from her friend adrenalin, she figured she could do it. The worry was Roxan. She couldn’t just leave her here, could she?
As if reading her mind, Sergei sat upright. From underneath his pillow, he brought out a small, plough-shaped object. It was a gun. He aimed it in her direction. Everything slowed down inside Issa’s head.
‘Why?’ she asked. She swallowed, then said: ‘Why are you here, Sergei?’
‘I shot a woman with this gun,’ he said. His eyes were bleary. ‘I shot her in Putingrad. On the outskirts of Putingrad is the world’s deepest hole. Did you know that? It’s an energy borehole, and goes seven kilometres into the earth. You can go down two kilometres as a tourist. It’s a very deep hole. After I shot Katerina, I wanted to go and throw myself into that hole. But my parents talked me round. Or forced me. Or . . . What does it matter? They had to smuggle me away. I was in Trabzon for a year or so, stoned out of my wits – so stoned my wits were a fucking dot on the horizon. In those days I lived a conspicuous expat life, and that was not clever. So there was some business there, and and and I had to come up the road.’
Issa concentrated on trying to keep her breathing calm and level. Oddly, although she was genuinely terrified – although she had no doubt that her life might end at any moment – it took an effort of will to stop herself falling asleep.
‘She told you to go away with her,’ said Sergei. ‘Don’t deny it. It’s what she would do. She is in love with you. She gets to sleep with you. I don’t get to. Wouldn’t it be sweeter if I killed all three of us now?’
‘I wouldn’t like that at all,’ Issa said, in as matter-of-fact a voice as she could muster.
He narrowed his eyes, then he opened them very wide. Then, abruptly, he slumped back on his divan and fell instantly asleep.
Issa sat watching him for a long time. The sensible thing, now, would be leave and never come back. Of course. Get out of there. Escape with her life. But she did not move. She could not have told you, if you’d been in a position to ask her, why she did not move. The rational thing would have been flight. But Issa did not do the rational thing – because she was drained of energy, or because some existential inertia overcame her, or because she was foolish, or because her karma was to remain there. Instead of going away she surrendered to her exhaustion. She lay down and slept. And the following morning, sitting at the open window letting the sun warm her head, she was perfectly aware of how peculiar her behaviour was. When Sergei woke, he looked at the weapon still in his hand with puzzled eyes, before tucking it away under his pillow. He got up and shook himself all over, like a wet dog.
Roxan woke as blithe as a songbird. She drank water, and Issa drank, and they chatted together, and Sergei joined in. Then, afterwards Sergei and Roxan went out, laughing, and Issa sat on the floor in a parallelogram of sunlight. She asked herself why she was still there. Might this not be the moment to slip away, to take a bottle of water and make her way down to the coast? But she did not go. She did not know why she did not go.
In fact she stayed a further four days. Every night was a period of low-level anxiety, as Issa lay there, conscious of the fact that Sergei had a gun right there, under his pillow. But she did not say anything to Roxan, or to anybody else. And life continued in its regular, lassitudinous groove. What had nested inside Issa was the germ of passivity, and it was growing its bindweed complexities in amongst the branches of her spirit. Her life was a soil in which this seed could take root, as any life is. She thought about this, but part of the cunning of this decay is that it feeds precisely upon our self-absorption. She told herself: ‘He could kill me at any time.’ She felt the force of the threat. But she didn’t do anything. Or to be precise: what she did was to cycle through a series of notionals. Maybe she should get them all to talk about it, compel Sergei to talk through whatever it was he had done in Russia. Maybe she could offer to have sex with him. Maybe she could steal the gun when he was asleep and somehow dispose of it. But she did none of these things.
On the third evening, the three of them chatted with seeming good humour about Roxan’s state. ‘We’ll live together here and raise the child,’ Sergei announced. ‘The three of us will make a utopia-in-little. Utopia will be we three.’ Roxan blushed. ‘You’re such a Nudnik,’ she told him. But there was an unmistakable flavour of threat in the word three.
How does it go on? Breath stains the glass. The view is the same in the morning and in the evening. The sun slides a tray of light over the floor. When it rains, the streets fill with dancing longhaired figures, and pots and pans are waved, and plastic boxes and bags are held out at arm’s length. The world is slightly heavier after the rainfall than before.
Issa watches a religious parade – a dozen ragged-looking longhairs dancing along the street down below, carrying an icon of Neocles, who made the Hair.
Sergei fucked Roxan right there in front of her, on the floor of his shabby one-room hideout. She watched without interest. Afterwards the two of them slept on Sergei’s divan and Issa stared int
o the corner of the room. It was the afternoon; cool but bright. There was nobody there, of course. There was nobody in the room except Issa, Roxan and Sergei. Except that there was somebody there. It took Issa a long time to bring him into focus. It was Rageh. ‘What you doing?’ Rageh asked her.
‘Just sitting in the sunlight,’ said Issa, but quietly, because she didn’t want to wake the two of them up.
‘Where you going?’
‘New York,’ she said, although it took an effort to get the words up.
‘Why there?’
‘Because I am its queen,’ she said. The words were plastic and unreal on her lips, but she mouthed them anyway.
Rageh stepped forward a little. His face wore an unusual smirk, as if he were laughing at her. But then she saw that the back of his head was all broken open, the edges folded out in petals of bone, like a tin sheet through which a fist has punched. He turned to look at the couple asleep on the divan. Issa could see inside, could see right inside: scooped and void, clean as a washed gourd. When he turned back to look at her, she watched the distortion in his front-face with renewed fascination. There was a tiny pale-pink hole, like a button, on the bridge of his nose. There seemed no connection between this shallow filled-in circular depression and the monstrous distortion at the back of the head.
‘How are you getting there?’ he asked.
‘By air, or water, or land,’ she replied.
‘Not by lying here,’ he noted, looking again at Sergei and Roxan.
‘No.’
The uncanny moment prolonged itself.
‘I’m sorry,’ Issa said, at a loss, ‘that I got you killed.’
‘Did you get me killed? My memory isn’t vivid.’
‘You don’t remember them emptying your head, with their gun?’
‘I suppose. I suppose I do. Distantly. It felt like – I don’t know. This is what I remember: a big wind was blowing in both my ears. A big wind, the biggest. It started with a dog bark that stretched into a rolling breaker crashing on a long, straight, black-sandy shore. But it was all very gentle, really. But it was a slow sort of drawing-out.’