by Luiza Sauma
Iris pulls the blanket from her face and inhales the stale, oxygenated air. A sense of calm envelops her when she sees her mother’s worried face, her long plait, her smooth, blue-white skin. Her fear vanishes like smoke. Eternal Eleanor Cohen, thirty-one years old, the age she was when Robert died, younger than Iris is now.
‘Mum, you look so real.’
‘I am real.’
Iris sits up. ‘Hey, I’ve gone insane,’ she says, doing jazz hands. ‘Woohoo, mad at last! What are you – a ghost? A vision?’
‘I told you, Iris, I’m dead. I had cancer. They didn’t catch it in time.’
‘What kind of cancer?’
Her mother shakes her head. ‘That’s not why I’m here,’ she says, primly. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Why?’
‘Iris, I –’
‘Wow, it really is you. Only you could be embarrassed about having cancer.’
‘If you wanted to know how I died,’ says Eleanor in a flat, patronizing tone, ‘you should’ve stayed on Earth – then you would know.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Iris turns away and curls into a ball. Her mother sits on the edge of the mattress. Iris feels it dip. She can feel the heat of her mother’s body, as though she is really here. ‘How is this happening?’
‘I don’t know how it works. Does it matter?’ Eleanor lays a hand on her head. Iris flinches, but her mother continues to lovingly stroke her greasy hair. ‘Do you want me to sing to you, darling?’
‘I’m not a child any more,’ says Iris, though she very much wants it. ‘You’re getting it all wrong. You’re nothing like my mother.’
Eleanor takes her hand away. She sounds like she’s going to cry. Ghosts can cry? ‘Iris, it’s me. I’ve missed you so much.’
‘You never said anything like that to me.’
‘That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it. I wasn’t perfect, Iris. I never knew the right thing to say.’
‘Why are you telling me this now? Why didn’t you say this when I was on Earth?’
‘Everything’s easier when you’re dead.’
‘What were you –’ The words stick in Iris’s throat.
‘What is it, darling?’
‘You never called me “darling”.’
‘I did when you were a child.’
Iris swallows. ‘What were you going to say to me, the last time I saw you?’ she says quickly, then closes her eyes and waits. Tears stream from her face onto the dirty blanket. She wipes her nose with her hands. She feels like a deranged baby with no control over her emotions. If her mother answers her question, she might just die of sadness and regret, just like that: pouf! ‘Wait,’ she says, ‘don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.’
‘I –’
‘Please, don’t.’ She turns to lie on her other side, facing Eleanor. ‘I can’t handle it.’
‘Iris,’ says Eleanor, smiling. ‘We’ve missed you terribly.’
‘You have?’
‘Of course we have. You look lovely. So grown-up.’
‘That’s not something you’d say.’
‘But I’m saying it now.’
‘I look terrible. I know I look terrible. You’re going to be a grandmother, by the way.’
‘I know,’ says Eleanor, before adding, ‘but I’m already a grandmother.’
‘What, Mona has a baby? Are you serious?’
Eleanor closes and opens her eyes, slowly. ‘Yes, a son. A beautiful boy.’
‘Is she OK? Did she go to university?’
‘She took some time off. She’s a wonderful mother, she really is. Do you need to know more than that? Do you want to know everything?’
Iris turns her head slightly, so she can’t see the look on her mother’s face. She hankers, suddenly, for not knowing; for imagining that Mona is really fine. So what if she had a baby young? People do it all the time.
‘Maybe later,’ she says.
‘Fine, but think about it first. Think about what it would mean, to know what’s going on over there.’
‘On Earth?’
‘Mona’s fine – you don’t need to worry.’
The ghost of Eleanor Cohen doesn’t eat or drink, but for some reason she sleeps. She lies flat on her back on the top bunk, in her nightgown, with her hands resting on her stomach. After the lights go out, Iris says goodnight to her mother for the first time in years. She can’t remember the last time they slept in the same room – perhaps it was their first night in Tufnell Park, when all the other rooms were full of boxes. Or was it because Iris was scared to be alone in a new house?
‘Goodnight, Iris,’ her mother murmured back then, just as she says it now. ‘Sleep tight.’
Iris waits a few minutes until Eleanor’s breathing becomes heavy above her. She breathes loudly, skittishly, as if panicked. Iris remembers that she always breathed like that in her sleep. Her mother drowns out the clinical hum of the Hub, for which Iris is grateful, though she can still hear the wind whipping sand against the window. Some kind of storm. It’s been years since she last shared a room with someone other than Abby, even if it’s someone who doesn’t exist. She closes her eyes and falls asleep.
35.
Kaddish
They gather in the cafeteria the next day to remember Abby. It still doesn’t feel like she’s dead, but perhaps, Iris thinks, this is how mourning always feels. It’s the first time that she has lost a friend to death, rather than to her own terrible behaviour, and it feels like a bad joke, as if Abby is hiding somewhere – under a bed, like Elizabeth – waiting to jump out and scream, ‘Surprise!’
Iris stands on the podium – the same one Norman used to stand on, when he made his speeches – and scans the crowd. Almost the entire population of Nyx is here, give or take a few. Jonah is standing a couple of metres away, waiting for his turn. She almost regrets volunteering to speak. There are no drugs to help her cope with the attention. Peter and his team aren’t here, and she’s grateful for that, but there’s no sign of her mother, either. When she woke up, Eleanor wasn’t around. Iris can smell her own BO, spicy and pungent, permeated into her clothes. She’ll never be clean again – not Earth-clean. She glances up at the cameras. Three of them are switched on. So they weren’t broken after all – just turned off. Death is good for ratings.
The room quiets down, even though she hasn’t made a signal to speak. She takes it as her cue.
‘Hi, everyone,’ she says, swallowing the last syllable.
‘You’ll be fine,’ whispers Eleanor, into her ear.
Iris looks to her side. Her mother is there, standing next to her. She puts an arm around Iris and taps her back, reassuringly. She feels so real. Iris looks up at the crowd. They are in silence, waiting, their faces blank. They don’t seem to have noticed the ghost.
‘This isn’t like work,’ says her mother. ‘They’re not waiting for you to fail.’
How would Eleanor know how she felt about work? They rarely talked about it. Iris can feel her breath on her face, can even smell it – milky and warm.
‘They can’t see me. Don’t worry.’
Iris clears her throat, and begins: ‘Abby is – was – my best friend. I’m not sure if that’s because we were thrown together into this strange situation or because she genuinely was my soulmate. I like to think that it was both. We were so lucky to find each other, to be roommates on Nyx.’
She stops and looks around. Around a hundred people are watching her, like a field of meerkats. Her mother’s bony hand still rests on her shoulder, lightly.
‘I can’t believe she’s gone. My life will never be the same again. She was the first person I spoke to in the morning; she was the last person I spoke to before closing my eyes at night.’ She pauses, noticing that people are starting to whimper and cry. ‘Abby was incredibly kind, generous and clever, and in many ways felt more like a sister than a friend. We knew each other so well that I find it hard to describe her. She was just Abby. She was important to me because I lo
ved her. I loved her completely. I know she felt the same.’
Her voice is flat and calm.
‘I didn’t know Abby on Earth. I can’t represent her as she was, there. I don’t know what her favourite drink was, I don’t know how she liked to dress, I don’t know if she wore lipstick or perfume. These are all things that people might know, on Earth, about a friend. They were some of the ways in which we defined ourselves, down there. Her family and friends on Earth would have a lot more to say about the things she liked. I know that, like many of our families, they found it hard to accept Abby’s decision to come here. And who could blame them? It was a crazy thing to do. But it seemed like a shortcut to an extraordinary life.’
Iris sees some people nodding and hears them go, ‘Hmm.’
‘I know about some of the things Abby missed. I miss many of them, too. Things we all took for granted, like sunshine and swimming and having a meal with your friends. Those things were often overshadowed by everything else on Earth. This is why Abby left the Hub, I think. She missed Earth too much.’
Iris hears a clear, high sound, like tinnitus, bearing down on the room, but she can sense that it is in her head.
Her mother whispers, ‘You’re doing so well.’
Iris nods. ‘Jonah is going to say a prayer for Abby. It’s called the Kaddish.’
There’s a heavy silence as she steps down from the podium and is replaced by Jonah.
‘Hi everyone,’ he says. He holds up a rag – a circle of grey material, cut from a sweatshirt – and places it on the crown of his head. ‘I haven’t done this in a long time, so I might forget the words. No, I will forget the words. When I pause and nod, please can you say “Amen”? I know most of you aren’t Jewish or don’t believe in God, but please do it anyway, if you can.’
Abby herself had lost her faith a long time ago, before she left Earth. It doesn’t matter. She would have wanted this. The high sound in the room has morphed into a low buzz, like the air conditioning at Freedom & Co. Iris thinks of her desk there, piled with pieces of paper, of Eddie next to her, with his impish smile and blue eyes. She can’t remember the bad feelings. They have shrunk over the years. Life was both simpler and more complicated, back when the future was unknown. What happened to Eddie?
‘Listen,’ says her mother, as if she can read her mind. She holds on to Iris’s hand.
Of course she can read my mind, thinks Iris. She’s my hallucination.
Jonah takes a breath and begins to sing, in a wavering, minor-key voice:
Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba.
B’alma di v’ra chirutei,
v’yamlich malchutei –
‘Um, wait a second,’ he says, ‘OK.’
– b’chayeichon uv’yomeichon
uv’chayei d’chol beit Yisrael,
baagala uviz’man kariv. V’im’ru –
Jonah pauses and nods. His face is damp and flushed with the stress of remembering.
Thirty or so people say, ‘Amen.’
Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach
l’alam ul’almei almaya.
Yitbarach v’yishtabach v’yitpaar
v’yitromam v’yitnasei,
v’yit’hadar v’yitaleh v’yit’halal …
To Iris, it’s just gobbledegook; the ancient gobbledegook of her long-lost father. It reminds her of the Lord’s Prayer she learned by heart at school. She didn’t believe a word, but she always enjoyed reciting it.
‘Um …’ Jonah looks at the floor, moving his head from side to side, trying to shake the words out, but they won’t come. Instead, he skips several lines, but nobody notices. Sweat is dripping from his hairline, down the sides of his face. ‘OK,’ he says, and continues to sing:
Oseh shalom bimromav,
Hu yaaseh shalom aleinu,
v’al kol Yisrael. V’im’ru –
He pauses and nods. Everyone says, ‘Amen.’
36.
The Ecstasy of Approaching Death
Iris lies in bed. Her stomach groans. Their meals are smaller every day. Better to live on air alone. Hunger makes her feel sad and helpless, yet exultant and energized, all at once. She remembers a brief internet craze, several years before she left Earth, of attractive young women sharing photos of themselves looking thin and ecstatic, preparing colourful, low-calorie meals with esoteric ingredients. This must be how they felt: thin, saintly and unencumbered. In her early twenties, Iris wasted hundreds of hours looking at those women, tapping her thumb on their hashtags – #eatclean, #wellness, #yum – thinking they were morons, but also wondering if their souls were purer than hers. Now, she feels as pure and clear as an icicle. A martyr. The ecstasy of approaching death, the end of things – perhaps that’s what those women were feeling.
But when Iris remembers the baby, thoughts of martyrdom evaporate. This isn’t the end. She forces herself out of bed and goes to the cafeteria.
She wishes she could speak to Mona, just once.
The cleaners mostly work in silence, out of respect for Abby.
Stella says to Iris, ‘Your speech was really special. The prayer, too. I didn’t understand it, but it sounded nice.’
‘It did, didn’t it.’ Iris’s stomach rumbles. Breakfast wasn’t enough. She puts her hand under her sweatshirt and tries to massage away the hunger. Her belly is round and hard, like a ball, but easily hidden. She has developed a way of walking hunched over, so that it doesn’t stick out. Or maybe everyone’s noticed and hasn’t said anything.
‘You’re hungry, huh?’ says Stella.
‘Yeah.’
‘Me, too.’
After a tiny lunch, Iris lies in bed again, feeling depleted. The hunger pangs have gone for now, but the emptiness remains. She cried for Elias, she cried for her mother’s ghost, but she still hasn’t cried for Abby. Her death doesn’t feel real – it’s as if she’s just on annual leave. Limited access to email, but you can text me if it’s urgent! Iris holds the box containing Abby’s ashes, shakes it and listens to the remnants of her friend, rustling like sugar.
‘Is this you?’ she says. ‘It doesn’t sound like you.’
She takes a picture of Abby’s wedding photo and writes:
In memory of our dear friend Abigail Johnson, pictured here on her wedding day in San Francisco, on Earth. We love you, Abby #iriscohen
She writes the hashtags #lifeonnyx, #outerspace, #RIP and #inmemoriam, before deleting them and hitting ‘send’. Five seconds later, a red cross appears. Huh. She tries to resend it. Red cross again. Either the app isn’t working or her post was rejected.
She looks out of the window at the pink wilderness and the lake in the distance. The air shimmers in the heat, just like it did on Earth, on hot days. Iris never understood the physics of it; she never bothered to look it up. Outside the Hub, it seems to be shimmering in one particular place – a circle of dancing light, hovering in the air. Iris hears a noise outside, like a frantic, muffled voice. The circle continues to glow – angrily, faster. She looks away.
I’m just seeing things.
Her eyes are getting heavy. What day of the week is it? What month, what year, what decade? It’s the constant daylight, meddling with her sense of time. Her bedroom window blacks out every evening, but she hasn’t seen a sunset in seven years. It has been one long, never-ending day. Does that mean I’m still twenty-nine? she thinks. Yes, even as my body continues to age, I’ll be twenty-nine for ever. She checks her tab. It’s Friday, 25 September.
Her tab beeps. It’s Rav.
Vitor’s gone. Can’t find him anywhere
She’s too tired to be surprised, too buoyed by the hormones in her body. She thinks of the foetus pulsing inside her, the first person in the universe who truly needs her. A skull, a spine, hands and feet, a brain. Eyes that have never cried. A tiny pink tongue.
Iris doesn’t want to die, not even a bit.
37.
The Missing
Rav leaves the next day without saying goodbye. It’s so unlik
e him, Iris thinks, but perhaps she didn’t know him at all. Two days later, Stella disappears. Then Yuko, with Carlos and little Norma. All of them gone, within a few days. All of her close friends. Other people follow.
The Hub should be surrounded by dead bodies, but it isn’t. Perhaps everyone melted into the air as soon as they left. Though the pink sand looks more disturbed than usual because of all the footprints – like a beach in the summer.
News about the missing spreads through word of mouth – whispers in the cafeteria, carried from table to table. Messages via their tabs. All the technicians have left. Norman must have gone, too. Perhaps he was the first to leave. Most of the kitchen staff have disappeared, so other people take over, cobbling together whatever they can. Several Nyxians find themselves eating alone, because all their friends have gone. For a few days they appreciate the novelty of eating, chewing and swallowing in silence. But then they realize that this makes the food taste even worse. A bland Nyxian apple is twice improved by conversation.
Three weeks have passed since Abby’s memorial service, but it feels like ten years. They don’t talk about her any more. People leave every day. There are no more memorials.
Iris doesn’t cry over any of the missing. She feels cut off from reality. She wonders if this is how her grandfather Otto, Robert’s father, felt at Auschwitz. No, he must have felt miserably, utterly alive. By comparison, this is nothing. This is of my own making.
Nobody cleans any more. The social media app still isn’t working, so Iris gives that up, too. Nearly everyone stops doing their chores. The Hub becomes coated in a thick layer of dust and grease. Iris touches the walls and leaves black smudges. When she walks past the farm, she can see through a window that the crops have drooped and yellowed.
She starts to find dead insects scattered about. They are pearlescent blue, two or three inches long. Natives of Nyx – perhaps they can’t survive in the oxygenated Hub. ‘Insect’ is the wrong word, since they have five pairs of legs. They must be the ones Abby was talking about, when she first discovered the way out. Iris has never seen one outside the Hub, through a window. Not once, in seven years.