by CK Collins
Rika tried living here for a few months. But he couldn’t do it. Everything screamed Disiri. Not just the house — it was Jaya, it was Masalay, it was every place she’d ever been, everything she’d ever touched. And the fragrance from the lake, it was all he smelled, it wouldn’t leave him. Sleeping without her was painful, but not as painful as waking up with the sensation of another woman’s — a different woman’s — breath on his neck. He was in hell. With no escape except to get back to Ghaatasira. And go where she’d gone.
I drift. I open my eyes. I see the cross-cut shadows of Venetian blinds. I see a bookshelf and a TV. I hear a refrigerator cycle on. I flatten my palm over where the baby is and close my eyes again. I feel the motion of the highway, and I drift. The rhythmic thwap of sprinklers on the window. I float. Not asleep, but somewhere south of awake.
* * *
I went too far. When I finally stopped, when I finally looked around me, I was nowhere. No shore. No bearings. Every direction black. I treaded water. Suddenly exhausted. That depth tugging at me. It crossed my mind, I remember it so clear, that I might drown. I made myself calm. I smoothed my hair back. I swam.
No reason, no sense, I just swam that way.
Rika did the same. Swimming that way, toward Disiri. The lake brought us together. It does that. And when I saw him on the water, this fellow human being in all that nothingness, I told him that I was lost. He said that he would help.
And he took my hand.
Part Two
Down The Nights
Which way I fly is Hell; my self am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep.
John Milton
15 October
* * *
Liashe, Masalay
Tchori shuts the door of the mending room. A place she’s never fancied. Irritating in the way of a run-on sentence: the paste accreted on counters, the mismatched vellum scraps, the piles of supplies that no one bothers to keep organised.
The window is swollen shut.
She’s ten minutes relocating the many neglected projects onto higher shelves. Enough space finally found, she lifts Lidayim’s box from the floor and unfastens the latch. Without yet lifting the lid.
Carodai has said he needs time to think before providing further explanation, and she’s resisted pushing him. But thrice she’s asked what he wants done with the flowers and finally suggested the mending room. “Splendid, splendid,” was his distracted reply, “I’ve the utmost confidence in your judgment.”
He looked a ghost on their return from the Far Karsk and made no effort to hide the palsy in his hands. After reaching the Trans-Mas, they stopped for supper — scarcely edible but the tea was strong and revitalised him. Back in the car those remaining hours, he became talkative. Explaining what first brought him and Sidaarik to Rith Idiiye. Describing his discoveries with Sidaarik and what they did with them. Revealing such shocking treasons against the state and Church that she would have thought them all fictions or delusions were it not for the savage strangeness of what they’d witnessed together.
She would rather not know these things. She is astonished by them, alarmed and appalled by them. And thrilled. And honoured. Cycling between privileged excitement and anxious denial.
She’ll not be handling the flowers absent adequate ventilation. Determined, she bangs the window frame with the heel of her hand until it shivers free. As with many windows in Liashe, the frame is barred against incursion from monkeys and other creatures. Fortunate. But if she were to be truly scientific she’d arrange to have a monkey eat one.
The lid is tight and she’s forced to tap the corners with a pasting knife.
Alive, all 18, near a fortnight after being picked. Alive and . . . so potent. The thrusting thorns, the dark and downy hairs, the arched petals, the smell — musky and heady and she can’t help inhaling it hungrily in.
She paces away. To the window.
Alive so long without water or light — it’s wrong, it’s unnatural — she must be systematic. They ought to be parceled into experimental conditions: water vs. no water; sun vs. no sun; air vs. no air. She prepares glass jars then pulls latex gloves from a pack balanced over brown bottles of solvent. Decisive and swift, getting it over with, she allocates the flowers.
If she were to rank her interest in different subjects, gardening would lie somewhere between ballistics and Sony PlayStation. But investigation is called for. She’s brought Kistulo’s digi (better resolution than her mobile) and takes a dozen shots from different angles.
Thirty minute’s clicking last night revealed an astonishing number of “flower enthusiast” websites, the world apparently suffering no shortage of semi-autistics who thrill to debate aphid control. She’ll register accounts this afternoon, post the best pictures, apologise for being a noob, and request enlightenment.
Gloves shed, she prepares a sign for the door: “CAUTION: FUMES! SEE THE HIGH LIBRARY FOR ADMISSION!” And adds a skull-and-crossbones for good measure.
Morning
Jaya, Masalay
The tiles are freezing.
I’ve seriously got to figure out this thermostat. It’s just so backwards — three days shivering in here while it’s a zillion degrees outside (a zillion degrees Celsius).
Such a nice bathroom. I think the toilet’s more expensive than my car. It’s definitely more comfortable.
Why I’m so wide-awake I’ve got no idea. Barely slept again, which I blame on the fridge. Something’s wrong with the compressor, it keeps cycling on and off with this loud clunking. I should try to fix it. There’s a lot of stuff I should try to do.
First off, I’m going to open these blinds. And no TV. Two hundred channels but 180 of them are for cricket and Indian soap operas. I’m going to clean, I’m going to get out in the garden, I’m going to seize the day. Seize it and then . . . throw it back probably. Catch-and-release.
It’s not like I haven’t accomplished a few things. Figured out the rice cooker yesterday. And made something kind of like oatmeal. But there’s a whole pantry and set of cabinets to conquer. Not to mention the fridge with its noises and very pleasant odor.
Pashi said she’d take me grocery shopping. But who knows when that’s going to happen. And the idea of sponging off her, I hate it. We’re seriously going to have to set up some kind of tab or something so I can pay her back. And not being able to do anything myself — Please Pashi can I have some milk? — it’s pathetic, I was more independent in elementary school.
The damn refrigerator starts up with its clunk-clunk routine. Maybe it’s not the compressor, maybe something’s just jammed. I should look for some tools. If I were Dad, of course, I’d have already pulled it out from the wall and be fixing it with a butter knife and paperclip. Of course if I were him I wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.
I’ve really got to call him again. Being worried about the cost is just ridiculous. Even Essio, Señor Scowl, isn’t going to begrudge me calling my dad. I got the answering machine yesterday — my own voice because of course he didn’t think he needed an answering machine — and I hung up before it got to the beep. What was I gonna say? “Hey sorry I missed you. I’m actually alive, believe it or not. Crazy huh? Okay ciao.” I need him in person.
He’ll get choked up. In Hungarian. Then curse bilingual and say how he wants to punch Masalay in the face. I’ll give him the abbreviated version — drowning, terrorists, coma, yada yada — and then try to make him understand why I can’t come home right now. And it’ll be awkward because he won’t want to tell me that he already picked up a replacement daughter — a discount one that he can’t return.
So but all right, the time difference is twelve hours. Or maybe thirteen, I don’t know. Whatever, I’ll call when it hits 11:00, he should be back from work by then. And won’t it feel good to have fixed the thermostat by then?
With the old-fashioned kind, you could just bend the filament a little, but this digital crap just likes to mock you. The arrows don’t do anything
. Or the buttons. Or kicking the wall.
I rub my bare arms. Going into their closets is something I was really hoping to avoid, but I can’t keep shivering. I head to their bedroom. Trespassing.
These pictures of people I don’t know. These dresses — which one did he like Disiri best in? These lame new-age CDs, are they hers, are they his, are they an inside joke and that’s why they’re in the closet? This rugby shirt that I’m going to wear, does he love it or does he hate it, did she put it on sometimes?
Looking through the bathroom is just as uncomfortable. I took a shower yesterday and managed to do it without looking at much of anything. But now I’m in full scavenger mode. An unwrapped toothbrush, which is nice. Tampons and pads, which (weird to realize) I won’t be needing. Shampoo, toothpaste, a bunch of plasters (goofy word) that I can use for the sores that are still sensitive. No Cetaphil or anything like that, but a bar of oatmeal soap and some Tylenol. Mostly the same crap you’d expect to find in an American bathroom. Proctor & Gamble unites us.
My hair’s a horror show, but what’s a gal to do?
I’m going to need something more than a rugby shirt. Disiri’s stuff is beautiful, but I avoid that half of the closet. Instead I take some of Rika’s dress shirts and a pair of fancy sweats that might fit if I pull the drawstring tight enough. It feels good to get out of the clothes that Pashi bought.
I shut the door behind me. There’s a guest bedroom down the hall and that feels like the place for me. The dresser’s empty. I put away the clothes I just picked up and deposit the toiletries in the bathroom that’s near the living room.
Next to the guest room there’s a linen closet, and it takes climbing on a chair but I find new sheets and pillow cases. Turns out there’s a vertical washing machine and dryer combo behind the kitchen — helpful considering I possess exactly two pairs of (bad-fitting) underwear.
The phone.
I don’t want to answer. I wait till the fourth ring. “Murai residence.” Like I’m the babysitter.
“Callie, it’s Pashi Murai.”
“Hey Pashi, how’s it going?”
We talk groceries. Feels like we’re avoiding the subject, but if she had something to report about Rika I’m sure she’d do it. She’s got a lot going on today — catching up from her little vacation in Patchil-Kinaat, and I tell her not to worry about me. “I’m doing fine, really. There’s tons of food here.”
Fortunately I don’t need to mention my need for clothes. She says she’ll pick me up tomorrow guaranteed and take me downtown. She wants me looking fabulous for my tea with the Murais, she says. I feel like telling her she doesn’t need to go overboard, but I get the feeling she wants to go overboard.
“Callie, I’ll ring if there’s anything about Rika.”
“Thanks. There’ll be something soon, I’m sure.”
“Well, Masalay is not a place where things happen fast.”
That actually hasn’t been my experience, but I say, “Yeah I understand.”
My heart’s racing after I hang up. All this nervous energy.
There’s a little nook between the kitchen and living room. It’s supposed to look out on the garden, but the curtains have been pulled and I leave them that way. There’s a circular bench going around a steel table with a fancy chess board on it. A half-way finished game. Black’s queen is in big trouble but its rook and bishop are nicely positioned to force check. I feel like I’m looking at one of those frozen-life scenes from Pompeii. I try to decide who was playing which side. I try to decide what move I’d make.
People are surprised when they find out I don’t suck at chess. When Dad and I used to play all the time, I could work a few cool openings and tactics and occasionally even beat him, but usually I was happy with stalemate. That was my specialty, forcing stalemates. He said it was like cheating.
A lawnmower starts up, and I move the curtain to look. There’s a whole squad of them with weed whackers and electric hedge clippers and ladders for trimming the trees. Kind of weird to have the front of the house manicured to the last blade while the garden out back, which Disiri worked so hard on, looks like hell on a Tuesday. They’re very professional and efficient and I watch them, kind of mesmerized. Eventually they move on — without asking to get paid, thank god — and I move away from the window and look at the pictures on the wall. I’d take them down if that didn’t feel disrespectful.
The Murai clan: Rika and Essio, two sisters, the Colonel and Mrs. Murai, grandparents. Every one of them looking like they just got their smiles back from the dry cleaner.
Disiri on a horse — so, so beautiful. Their wedding picture, both of them looking radiant. A picture of them in front of what looks like the Louvre. Disiri with what I guess is her family.
I go into the kitchen. Nothing here to feel inferior to. I pull the trash can over to the fridge. Foul, very foul. If I can get something down the garbage disposal I do that because who knows how trash collection works here. The rest gets double-bagged and tied tight. I find some bleach under the sink and don’t stop scrubbing till I’ve disintegrated two washcloths.
I should probably do the freezer next, but the pantry is what’s calling to me. What I wind up doing is just emptying all the shelves and doing inventory on the counter. It takes some doing, but I finally get everything sorted into three groups. There’s the definitely edible, like jam and noodles and beans, and I put all of that back on the shelves at eye level. Above that goes the mystery food with Masalayan labels that needs to wait until I’m feeling brave. Then way at the top out of sight is where I put the extra yummy emetics: pickled innards and fish-flavored mucous balls.
Mission accomplished — tiny, tiny mission, but still something — I take a break on the couch. Remembering that I was going to open those blinds. Trying to keep from feeling down. It’s just all so damn familiar. The Masalay part is new and so’s the coma part, definitely the pregnant part — but it’s like this is just my lot in life, to live where I don’t belong.
My whole childhood was this way, living where we weren’t allowed to live. Dad met the guy who owned this farm and worked it all out. Willie was his name. This Deadhead with a trust fund and eighty acres he didn’t know what to do with. Me four years old when we got there and Alex just a baby in a sling. This converted barn we lived in, my mom raising us and cannabis (our rent) and being more careful with the pot. Dad working himself raw to produce a profitable orchard. His parents had an orchard in Hungary, famous, and his grandparents before that. If they could make it work under the goddamn communists, how could he not succeed in the US of A?
Willie would shamble once a week in his Volvo, which could barely motor over the piece-of-crap bridge and series of ruts that we called a road, get stoned with my mom while Dad tried to fix the irrigation pipes or picker or whatever else was broke, because something always was. I’d read the books we had and play with Alex and get him fed.
The barn had power from daisy-chained extension cords, kerosene heaters, a kitchen sink that ran off of garden hoses, and a permanently temporary bathroom at the get-rained-on end of a plywood plank. There were hay bales to hide in, and Dad cinched ropes to the rafters for me and Alex to swing on. The constant war between cats and mice was entertaining, and the TV gave us Sesame Street and the 4077th through rivers of static-snow.
But the harvest always sucked for one reason or another, and there was no forgetting that Willie could get rid of us anytime his high wore off. And the neighbors, the real farmers who remembered Willie’s parents and didn’t think much of their son, they figured we were just trash. The only one who was close enough to be real trouble, though, was Mr. Cherry, who lived on the other side of the stream and liked walking around with a shotgun and binoculars.
To my little kid mind, the fact that Mr. Cherry owned a cherry orchard was something that seemed like an of course. Like if only we were the Avocado family we could have gotten the damn things to grow right. Apparently, though, there is no such thing as a Voros tree. At
least not one that can be made to bear edible fruit.
There was this county law that said you needed a special permit to live on a farm, or let anybody else live on your farm, and Willie didn’t feel like getting one of those. So we kept the bridge gate locked at night in case the sheriff ever came to check on us. And we blacked out the windows in the barn so that nobody on the road could see life going on.
When you’re four years old, or five or six or seven, you don’t question stuff like that. I assumed that’s the way everybody lives, that everybody’s got neighbors who hate them. That everybody’s got to be good at becoming invisible.