by CK Collins
Ashma, Callie is a person of kindness. But there are many things she does not know about.
Afternoon
Liashe, Masalay
Tchori can see it in Carodai’s face even before she’s shut the door — something has happened.
“Miss Vidaayit, hello.”
“Addi Brother.”
She moves to the credenza, the hiding place of Sule’s bug sweeper. “No need, child — done already. We are in the clear, if that’s the phrase.”
“You’re sure then?”
“I’ve watched you do it a hundred times over. Now, have a seat. This time I’ve something for you.”
A pad on the side table has scribbled notes from his call with Sule. “The Nova Coast?”
“Indeed.”
“Is she there?”
“The news is not quite as good as that. But it is good indeed. Sule has asked me to convey his admiration for your ingenuity.”
“Too kind.”
“Now let’s see . . .” He’s a half-minute rotating the pad and squinting at the notes. “Right, yes. Well he’s gone straight away to Silva. Still some unrepaired damage from the storm. Which was the 29th and 30th of November. But you knew that, didn’t you? No lives lost in Silva, all blessings to Ashma. Broken windows, damaged roofs. Flooding of course. That Portuguese redoubt on Silva Point had the middle of its walkway washed out.
“At the hospitals and midwiferies, he met all the familiar futility, so he’s moved up the coast. It seems the brunt of the storm was experienced there, the sixty kilometres between Silva and the start of the Karskan range, any number of small villages. They’re accustomed to gales, of course — it’s the unnatural calm preceding the storm that still unnerves them. One village after another, enquiry, enquiry, enquiry.
“At a place called Pasqua, he arrived to find a funeral just completed. The nearest neighbour of the deceased was pleased to come upon a servant of Liashe (an adherent of our sister Faith, this chap). It seems he’d come into possession of the dead man’s effects and was at a loss for what to do with his saadit and other materials of the rite. Sule accepted the items and came into conversation with the fellow.
“Some months before, it seems, there’d been a foreign woman. Pregnant. They’ve a natural cove nearby and a dozen vacation cottages associated. She came at the end of October, it seems, and departed after the storm.”
“Where?”
“Unknown.”
Failing to suppress a groan. “What nationality?”
“Also unclear. White. English speaking.”
“Oh come, they must have talked to her,” Tchori retorts testily. “‘English-speaking white’ — only a third of the globe, that. Do tell me we have her name?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake.”
“Child.”
“Well come on then. He’s left without her name?”
“If I could continue. It seems she was considered quite odd and had few interactions. And it seems as well that the circumstances of her departure were most irregular.”
“How so?”
“Well, our just-deceased fellow had a lad with whom he took worship. Too infirm for travel to temple, the chap, so they worshipped in his home. A great deal of evasiveness, but Sule deduced the lad was an orphaned veteran of the Brigades.”
“There truly, a placed igmaki?”
“We don’t countenance slurs, Tchori.”
“Of course, yes, begging pardon.”
“But yes.”
“He’s not harmed her, has he?”
“No. In fact she seems to have been assailed by a vawdra.”
“Ridiculous, they’re extinct.”
“Child.”
“Fine. So a vawdra. But she’s survived? How?”
“Alas, as Sule continued his enquiries, there was rapidly growing resistance. The caretaker of the cottages proved adept at not answering questions, and Sule was made to feel most unwelcome.”
Tchori shakes her head in irritation. “That’s all we know?”
“Well, Sule learned one other thing. It seems that when she left, it was with that same Brigade orphan.”
“Why on earth?”
“Well, apparently, together they slew the vawdra.”
16 February
* * *
Jaya, Masalay
As always, downtown is an adventure. As soon as I start thinking I’ve mastered this driving-on-the-left thing, I go the wrong way out of a parking lot and cause an international incident. Except it doesn’t really matter because ignoring traffic laws is just what you do here. Sidewalks are like extra lanes and stop lights exist just to be pretty. And every car gets its turn signals disconnected so they can double-wire the horn.
I finally get to the parking garage that Suapartni showed me a thousand years ago. Obscenely expensive, but I’m sticking with what I know. I get all kinds of looks. And not just from the Masalayans. I know I’m a whale — and being this white does make me stick way out — but the amount of attention I get is a little weird sometimes.
The first hotel gives me a nice tour. But they just hired a cute Australian and say they’ll call me if they need someone else.
The second place is ready to hire me on the spot. But I don’t like the feel of the place, it’s got this sex-tourist vibe. I tell them I need to think it over.
The ‘Exotica’ is next. Uh, no.
Number four is the farthest off the Harbour, a place called the Buckingham. Sort of an “Olde-England meets the Jersey Shore” thing going on. Lame, but also a little sweet. Which is how I like to think of myself. So I tell Miss Chipper Concierge Girl what I’m there about, and she sets me up at the pool with a San Pellegrino. A real happening place: they’ve got the waterslide action, the faux-reggae, the colorful drinks and cannonball splashes. Ah, the scent of rum and sunblock.
The manager comes over, pulls up a chaise — a Scottish guy who says to call him Roz. Not made for the tropics, our Roz: all blotched and perspiring. The whole time we’re talking I want to slather his face with SPF 50 and get him some electrolytes. There’s no specific point where I get offered a job, we just move into discussing my visa (he has a connection) and the fringe benefits (free buffet). By the time we’re done, he’s writing a number for Dad to fax my RN license and asking me if I can start at noon on Monday.
I stroll around the streets behind the Buckingham, feeling like a real grown-up. It’s more of an actual neighborhood than anything right at the Harbour. An honest-to-god local grocery in fact — people who look like they actually live in Jaya. I nose around and find a half-hidden rack with seed packets. They’re cheap and I fill the bottom of a hand basket. I’ve put enough energy into clearing all the old crap away — time to grow something of my own. Me and Ephraim, we need a project.
I buy my seeds and some other stuff for half what I’d pay at that shopping center behind The Estates — can’t say The Estates with a straight face, can’t do it — and go look for a place to eat. Breakfast was eggs, bacon, mango, and oatmeal. But that was, like, three hours ago.
I go five or six blocks past the grocery and follow the smell to one of those rice carts. Aarup kaam. Suapartni took me to some, slumming it, and I thought it was incredible. I wait for somebody to leave and slide onto the stool. The server stands in the middle, barrels of steaming rice all around him, and I point to a barrel of red kaam that’s peppered with flecks of black stuff. Looks spicy.
He lays out a big green leaf, slaps down a heap of the rice with his hand (Pashi would puke), molds it quick, then wraps the leaf into a perfect cone. Serves it over his wrist with a flourish — it’s a performance — and I laugh with ayin milais. I’m sweating worse than Roz the friendly Scott and it feels great.
I copy everybody else and lift the cone so that I can use my fingers to tumble the chewy goodness into my mouth. It’s so fiery good I could die happy this second. My fingers are sticky and stained. I go for another, the green. Looks innocent en
ough, but he gives me a look that says, “You sure about that, white girl?” I tell him to hook me up, and there’s an audience when I flick the first hunk onto my tongue. Rice soaked in napalm is what this is. The blood rushes to my face, and my eyes water, and I love every insane grain.
I get applause and approving bows. And ask him to give me two more.
Afternoon
Jaya, Masalay
Ashma, Callie does not know You. Or in her feel You.
Others see — they hear — at her they stare and do not know why. Others, they hear You as a whisper but do not know the sound. From Callie they do not want to part.
It is a blessing, Ashma. And a burden. To be always in the presence of You.
* * *
In this house is a ball of many colours that are the seas and countries of the world.
Of the world being round I was taught by the Sisters, but I did not have in my mind how it could be. I am now more understanding of Earth, Ashma. But I wish it was not so much of it sea.
Callie has showed to me that Masalay and America have the world between them. That is a thing I knew. Where in America she comes from is called Philadelphia and she has showed me it. And also the other places she has lived in, which are many. The names of those other places I do not remember but they are all America.
A thing she showed with her fingers was that it can be done to move any direction in the world and come back around to your beginning. She thinks it is a happy thing that the world does not have edges for falling off. I think that is good. But a thing it makes me know is that I am not ever going to get away from the beginning of me.
* * *
The Runai friend of Callie is called Pashi. I know that with Callie she argued much of bringing me into this house. When she visits Callie, I am into the garden so that she will not be reminded of me.
A thing said by Pashi is that Callie must write to the Sisters about me. Bidaan agreed, and she has sent the letter today. I asked could she say in the letter about Sister Imurna and how she brought me to know of peace and obedience to God. I am of much fear that the Sisters will read Callie’s letter and come to take me away.
Soon, I know, others will hear what I hear. People will come to know of the blessing in her and they will come. How I will tell the good from the wicked I do not know.
Cars I watch and people I watch. Dogs in the road I watch and overhead the birds I watch. The ways of You, Ashma, I do not know as I should, but the ways of the Skythk I know. In the embrace of the Skythk I have a long time slept. And I know that when again comes the Skythk, it will be a terror beyond vawdras and the drowning sea.
Afternoon
West Anartha Autonomous District, Masalay
At a gesture from their leader, the viyka team descends the hill, leaving Rika alone with Aarum Sidaarik.
“A beautiful night, Mr. Murai, wouldn’t you agree?”
Standing on the precise spot — is it intentional? — where a child recently shoveled dirt on her own father’s head, Sidaarik studies him, in no hurry to speak.
Rika feels too spent to be afraid, yet can’t bring himself to meet Sidaarik’s gaze. So odd to be alone with him. A short and coiled man, hair tidily grey, attired in a traditional tan durna that despite its simplicity seems tailored to fit him. Handsome, but less for any physical attribute than the lynx-like intensity of his bearing.
“Mr. Murai, I’ve been hard on myself,” he declares at last. “You were right here, in my lap — the answer — and I was blind. Now, I could choose to blame you for that. Had you been more forthcoming with personal details it might have helped. But no, it was primarily my failing — I was not prepared to see. Arrogance. But the past can’t be undone, can it? Best to focus on the future, don’t you agree?”
“Yes . . . it’s good to be able to move on from things.”
In the past, when he was still the person he’d always been, Rika would have been irritated by Sidaarik’s broad accent. (Did he sound that way when they let him in to the University? He couldn’t have.) But to his ears now the thickness sounds sonorous and full, whilst his own voice, so nasal and effete, is an embarrassment.
“We’ve important things to discuss, Mr. Murai. Your role in — is there any way to avoid understatement? — vital events. But I do need to ask your indulgence, briefly. It’s just that I’m so curious about your father.”
“I don’t . . .”
“You don’t relish the subject, I understand. If you’re worried about being made to pay for his crimes, please put that aside. The shii plainly forbids holding a son responsible for the offences of his father, and we’re quite strict about the law here. No, it’s just that I’m so curious about the man. For instance — did he discuss his work? At supper? Was someone, I don’t know, passing the rice when he commented, ‘Oh, today I dropped seven Talids from a helicopter’? Did he talk shop about methods for inflicting pain?”
“He, no, he didn’t ever discuss his job.”
“‘His job.’ I like that. As if he were a postal clerk. So it never came up over martinis?”
“With other people maybe. Not ever with me.”
“Interesting.”
“He thought I wasn’t right for it.”
“What do you mean, tell me?”
“He thought I was too soft.”
“Ah. The sensitive one. And was he right?”
“Maybe.”
Sidaarik looks pained. “No, no, ‘maybe’ is such a mealy word, it’s a weak word. You must be firm. ‘Yes.’ ‘No.’ ‘I will.’ ‘I will not.’ Those are firm words. And firmness, Mr. Murai, is what you must embrace. Can you do that?”
“I think I can.”
Sidaarik smirks. “Not quite the firmness I had in mind. But let’s call it a start. And I should be lenient. You’ve had a hard go of it, haven’t you? And then you come here where we have so few comforts to provide. And, on that subject, one more indulgence: can we talk about your friend Mrs. Daar? Have you been to her compound, that private island she has?”
“A few times.”
“The accounts I’ve seen, the images. I just wonder if they’re exaggerated or if it really is so opulent. Every amenity, they say — perfect elegance everywhere.”
“It’s really nice, yes.”
“Am I embarrassing you? You seem embarrassed.”
“It’s not my house.”
“But it is your world. Or was. Anyway, credit where it’s due, she’s a remarkable woman — the press she gets, her image in the world. She’s the bold and courageous reformer. The tireless foe of corruption and poverty. Well, and of terrorists. She learned that tune right quickly. Does she ever express thanks for how much I’ve helped the Masalayan aid budget?”
“You did kill her husband.”
“True. There is that. But does she truly hold that against me? And well done, by the way, on the firmness. That was sharp. But if we could take one more minute on the subject of Mrs. Daar. I suppose I do want you to understand my perspective.”
“Alright.”
“I’m routinely reviled, yes?”
“I’ll say yes.”
“A criminal, they like to call me a criminal. A terrorist too, but ‘criminal’ has staying power. And yet, Mr. Murai, you see how I live. Whilst Mrs. Daar steals millions — tens of millions, you tell me how much — and lives like a queen on that island. Feted the world over for erecting a ‘modern Masalay,’ with no recognition that it’s all been built on the backs of Talids and lubricated with their blood.
“I’ve just had supper with a woman — South Anarthan, born a couple kilometres from the gem district of Patchil-Kinaat — her entire life has been spent carrying human excrement. Carrying and pouring it. In buckets, little pails, since she was eight, cleaning the latrines of Runais twelve hours a day. Her own neighbours won’t speak with her. Because of the stink. They won’t allow her into shops, she’s made to wait in the street. A worse horror than any prison, all for the crime of being born a pursti Talid. Whilst
your father lives in a mansion.”
“I’m not going to defend him.”
“No, well that’s good. Your Mrs. Daar — do you think she would share a meal with that woman? Do you think she would let her walk on the same ground?”