The Godling: A Novel of Masalay

by CK Collins

  “But I’ve heard it’s near impossible to arrange interview.”

  “Yes, it seems everyone is wanting to live in Jaya these days. Young people like yourself most especially.”

  “If I were to tell Brother that I have an interview. Very soon. He might see it as an opportunity to entrust me with a mission.”

  “Indeed,” he says admiringly. “Very clever indeed. And we must think of your needs as well. Have you interest in any particular office?”

  “Well, it might seem rather odd . . .”

  “Any office you like, my dear. I could arrange for interview with the relevant director — have you to spend the day if you’d like.”

  “That would be most kind, Minister.” After an appropriate pause for reflection: “I have had a long-standing interest in the Orphans Mission. Most particularly the Resettlement Office.”

  “Is that so?” he replies, nonplussed. “Arrangements for igmaki and so on? You’re certain?”

  “Everyone says that I have peculiar interests, and perhaps they’re right.”

  “Even they likely have waiting list. But I should have no difficulty moving your name straight to the top.”

  “Thank you so much, Minister.”

  “Don’t give it a thought. If only every novice possessed your ambition.”

  11 March

  * * *

  Jaya, Masalay

  Callie being at the hotel alone, Ashma, is a worry of me. After my lessons, I am meant to stay in the Talid Centre but always I leave. The entrance of the hotel I watch until it is my expected time of going in.

  Behind Callie’s nursing place, there is a room of supplies and in it she has made for me a space. To all of them that come for Callie I listen. Always the talking is English. Callie says this job is bad for her learning to talk Masalayan. Rough and sometimes drunk are the voices but they are never yet of threat or violence. I am ready, Ashma, to do all that a lone person can.

  * * *

  Always I ask will Callie join me at Temple, but always she is saying no. What she says is that she is happy religion works for me, but religion is not for her.

  The worship of this Temple is very different from the worship of Daadik. And of the Sisters it is different too. This I have been told by Sister Imurna, that of worshipping Ashma there are many ways.

  In this Temple are more people than I am able to count. It is a big place, but it is not a beautiful place. What has been explained to me is that their Temple before was in a fire destroyed. For a new Temple they are always collecting money.

  Everyone here is knowing well the ways of worship, even little children. This day the taking of hands and sharing of blessings is shared by me with a woman that looks Runai. I try to see if she wants somebody else’s hand, but she takes mine.

  I miss Daadik, Ashma. But I am thankful for this place.

  When the services is over, I see the Brother talking to a man I have not before seen. The look of him I do not like. To a farther place I go. Ready for running. Comes the man leaves and I am through a different exit. Outside Callie is there for me. I do not see anywhere the man. Callie is happy because she has had aarup kaam and her fingers are of red spice stained.

  * * *

  Something to Bidaan has happened. At the hat in his lap he picks. Callie asks him is something wrong. Of his wife being sick he mumbles, but I think it is not of truth. There is that sound the telephone makes, and Callie leaves for it.

  Bidaan quick leans to me.

  ———They’ve come asking questions.

  Who is it that’s come, I ask him. His answer is that they did not say. But he knows. It is the thing, Ashma, that I have feared. That Callie’s blessing would be discovered by Hilm Hivaa.

  ———Asked me if you’re a danger. I told them no, you ain’t, you’re devoted to her.

  I say to him my thanks. He shakes his head, as he has done before, of saying he does not understand me.

  ———There’s something about her. And that baby. In my dreams all the time, them both.

  I ask him were they asking about the baby. His answer of that is that the baby seemed the only thing they truly cared about.

  ———I can’t do this, son. I’m taking my wife, going off. Once that lot looks at you, there’s nothing good can come. That miss, you get her to the airport. Tomorrow.

  I tell him that Callie will not go. He shakes his head again and now it is only of sadness. He says to me to get a gun. But he knows, like I know, that a gun is nothing against Hilm Hivaa.

  * * *

  From cars we are watched. They are through the day changed and moved, the cars, but always they are there.

  Every morning Callie is wanting to have walks. It is because of the energy of the baby that is bursting always in her. She is wanting always me to come with her. The people here, who all are Runai, do not like seeing me on their sidewalks and streets. What Callie says of that is screw them.

  I have yesterday seen a mother to her children pointing at this house — to keep a distance. Behind the garden is a new neighbour. He looks at me in suspicion through his window coverings. He is wishing that he selected a different house.

  How I want to live, Ashma, is with love. Violence and hurt are not the way of You. But to protect Callie is above all. It matters more than my soul, which is already a tainted thing.

  Callie has said it is alright of me to keep sharp the kitchen knives. I have them all the time ready. From the shed, I have taken a hammer. And long scissors for cutting bushes. Heavy batteries I have fit into knotted cloths. From the kitchen I have taken a mallet. All are hidden for quick getting wherever I am. None can be enough against viyka but I will try.

  I have said to Callie that she should return to America. She says no.

  At the closing of her door at night, I am out of my room for watching the windows. The hour of two o’clock is when the cars are changed. Callie is always at dawn waking. Into my room I quick go. Sometimes I sleep. But always I am listening, Ashma.

  Evening

  Jaya, Masalay

  Nights are hardest.

  Mornings can be tough too. But once I get going on the day, I’m usually distracted enough.

  Night, though. All the feelings from the day, pooled, I spill over.

  I want a man rubbing my feet, rubbing my back, rubbing my center. Bringing me food. Rubbing me more.

  Sex. Dizzy sex. Lose-who-you-are sex. The sex I give myself — one more thing the baby has made me better at — but with another body to twist around. Sex like it was with Rika.

  But not.

  Because the farther I get from that, the less it feels like me. The less it feels like him.

  I can’t stop needing, I can’t be full. The furnace in me needs stoking — and every created thing feels like fuel. I want meat and onions and men and women and milk from the udder. I want the flesh and I want the stem, I want the pith and I want the rind, I want the juice that the fruit hasn’t finished yet. All the places of me that the world can come into, I want that, I want the coming in.

  But it wouldn’t be enough. No matter who I had. No matter how deep it went, the real itch would stay out of reach. They wouldn’t fill me, not really. That’s the baby’s place.

  I put down my book. I switch off the light. I curl around my baby. If I curl tight enough and quiet my mind gently enough, my heartbeat quiets too and I sink, we sink. I feel my baby’s breath, it breathes for me, and all is peace and heat, like the world when it was made.

  13 March

  * * *

  Jaya, Masalay

  Flying in to Jaya — always a queasying experience due to the sharp descent — Tchori is amazed by how much the city continues to change. Tower cranes are everywhere, a new hotel has appeared on reclaimed land that once belonged to the sea, and even the buildings of the slough have commenced a skyward climb. She takes a taxi.

  The Orphans Mission is housed with ten other Church offices in a converted home adjacent to the French and Italian consula
tes. It’s an attractive neighbourhood at the south entrance to the unloved Askita Daar Bridge, one of the city’s few ungainly structures. Feeling more a visiting dignitary than job aspirant, she’s given the deluxe tour and taken to early lunch by the director. He’s surprisingly young and amiable — insists she call him Isteyo and twice references the curriculum at Hogwarts — but appears genuinely competent and committed to the work.

  Following lunch, the office manager, a Brit called Ella, gives a short interview that feels positive, leaving Tchori with every indication of there being a future place for her. She feels ashamed, slightly, for having engineered the visit entirely as pretext. As she enquires about their work and says obligatory things about wanting to fulfil the Church’s mission of charity, she feels unexpected depth of conviction. There would be worse places to end up.

  But more pressing considerations are at hand. (Brother observed that Sule could likely have found a way to accomplish this himself. But Sule ought to focus on more critical tasks, and it feels good to do something active.) Ella encourages her to shadow the office staff for the remainder of the afternoon, and Tchori is given wide berth to observe and lend a hand with small tasks. As the office systems are explained, she nods attentively whilst formulating a plan and is patient for her moment. At half-four, the staff fall into discussion of the election, and no one notices her slip into the records room.

  * * *

  A first-tier hotel it is not. Catering to the younger, carousing set that can’t afford the dearer places that are skirt on the Harbour. No proper casino of its own but a large floor of slot machines, a roulette table, and that keno nonsense. Shuttles running on the half-hour to the strand and central downtown — easy enough to walk, but college students from Dusseldorf and Australian honeymooners don’t fancy having to navigate Jaya in sandals. The pool is themed for the Karsk, with mountain-scene walls, elephant fountains, and a twisting, vine-draped waterslide.

  She had worried the risk was unnecessary, but Sule agreed they might do it without risk, and she followed his instructions to the letter: Number 9 bus from the cricket grounds, then into the chemist’s at Sutcliffe and Monaco, wait for her mobile to ring and then leave out the back. A few blocks’ walk from there, and it seems impossible she could have been followed. She sits at the table specified by Sule and orders some horror called a Jaya Waterfall. The table is well chosen (no surprise), providing unobstructed view of the nurse’s station but little exposure to observation.

  When Sule appears, she almost doesn’t notice him. Though he’s scarcely altered his appearance, he somehow blends perfectly. Whereas she feels positively absurd in her long skirt, and it helps not at all to have him smirk at her iridescent drink. “It’s not as if the other options were better,” she complains, pulling out the ridiculous straw as she slides over the chemist’s bag. “Everything copied, and I managed to nick a badge.”

  “Smartly done.”

  “Right, and I’ve read the first page. He was in the Brigades three or four year. Hard to figure that the MDF didn’t shoot him. Says he was forced to join, but you know they all say that.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s full questionnaire, runs precious pages. What are the odds he told the truth on any of it?”

  “In my experience, a man’s lies say more about his character than the facts ever do. This will be very helpful. Thank you.”

  “Wasn’t difficult. So, it’s over that way, yeah?”

  “Those blue curtains.”

  The door to the nurse’s station has been propped open and a cheap plastic fan oscillates lazily. “She’s inside?”

  “Yes.”

  Tchori has yet to cool down from the walk, and her heart is racing. “Healthy does she look?”

  “Very strong.”

  “Good, that’s good. Hilm Hivaa, are they still in the hotel?”

  “A suite four floors above us. They’ve binoculars on her at all times.”

  “Still no attempt at contact?”

  He shakes his head. “It seems Sidaarik has decided to wait. If he were preparing to take her, the viyka here would be of a different breed, and they’d have different posture.” It’s ever a curiosity that Sule knows so much about the workings of Hilm Hivaa. Ever a curiosity what he’s done and is capable of doing.

  “What is it he’s waiting for, do you suppose?”

  “Something to do with Thaadi and the father, I expect.”

  “Right, yeah.”

  “I’ve taken some advantage. Unbalancing them.”

  “How so?”

  “Better to discuss at another time.”

  She shifts her chair and anxiously sips her appalling drink, tasting mostly ice and the crystallised rough sugar on the rim. “Is the boy here?”

  “He enters through a door off the interior hallway. Studies in a room off the nursing office. We won’t see him.”

  “Do you think . . . I don’t know how to put it . . . does she seem to have an understanding?”

  “It’s difficult to say.”

  “That’s just amazing to me.”

  “He knows. The lad. I feel certain.”

  “About her, about . . .?”

  “Certainly that they’re being watched. And about her.”

  “Interesting.”

  “He’s right protective.”

  “You think he can be trusted?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  And if the answer is no? She eyes Sule and feels confident that he’ll do whatever is necessary.

  She’s tempted indeed to raise the subject of their last call with Viv. Irksome, extremely so, to discover only this week that Brother has been keeping a suspicion from them. She was surprised by what he said — and surprised to be so distressed by it.

  Truly, though, one needn’t be a Que’ist to be touched by the stories of Lirim’s loving care of her child God. Nursing him amidst the whirlwind, vexed by his tempers and tricks, shielding him with her shawl from the murderous ants that swarmed, dancing with him on the elephants’ backs.

  Carodai reminded them, unnecessarily, that it was all make-believe. Latter-day invention. Of course, of course, but the existence of Lirim — Khaadum did have a mother. “He did,” replied Carodai, “but for only the briefest time.” In the ancient sources, the ones most secret, there is no Lirim. Not after childbirth. “The Commentary tells us that it could not have been otherwise: for him to have his life, she needed to surrender hers. ‘She gave him life most truly,’ is how the Commentary authors put it.

  “Those sweet stories of her and the child, they fell into the tea and made it easier to drink.”

  Tchori, so irritated, reminded him that the past is not the future.

  “Too right, yes.”

  And they concurred that nothing is pre-ordained.

  * * *

  It’s boisterous around the pool and so noisy. Breezeless — but that’s to be expected, isn’t it? The ice in her drink has melted, alleviating the syrupiness, but it’s no less red and if there’s gin in the damned thing it was measured from a thimble. A westerner, young and sunburned, hops toward the nurse’s office. Grimacing and laughing, and Tchori follows a small blood trail back to broken glass being swept by a steward. The man’s lit friends have already resumed their dancing.

  There.

  She’s come out of the office. So young. She meets the man half-way and lets him lean on her. Pale and unattractive. Stringy hair tucked behind her ear. A tattoo peeking below the sleeve of her ill-fitting yellow dress. That prodigious belly does not fit her frame, but the way she holds herself, the way she moves across those few metres — there’s a poise and grace. A power impossible to define. She moves the fan off the chair and helps him sit. She fetches forceps and bandage kit. She kneels before him.

  His grin has vanished. He is lost in her.

  “Sule, don’t you wish you could sit down and talk with her?”

  “Every day.”

  A breeze ruffles the blue taffeta curtains.
The people around the pool don’t notice. But Tchori notices and Sule. And she — she notices. Making a visor of her hand, she looks skyward, happy for the cool.

  The man’s wound tended to, she stands and pats his shoulder. He stares a long moment before hobbling away, bereft without comprehending why.

  As she sets the fan back on the chair, her eyes move over them with no recognition (of course, of course), and Tchori feels a shudder of relief and disappointment.