The Core of the Sun

by Johanna Sinisalo

  There were many times when I thought I was learning. I like beauty the way any elois would. It’s obvious to me that a bunch of flowers in a vase can make a room more colorful and pleasant. But I don’t really like merely decorative things. For an eloi, beauty and decorativeness are the same thing.

  I was interested in makeup as a child, too. It was exciting to change the way I looked by spreading different colors on different parts of my face. When you wanted and got the Femigirl Sample Pack for your birthday and let me borrow it, I had fun painting my face like a mask or putting leopard spots on my forehead. You were upset with me. I was playing it wrong. I played a lot of things wrong, even though I tried to follow your rules as well as I could.

  I sat with you and watched one television show after another that ended in marriage. “Elois” flouncing around in beautiful gowns, heavily made up, wigs on their heads, padded in the right places. They couldn’t use real elois—that would have been a real job, would have required memorizing lines, concentration, perseverance. The mascos dressed as elois on the TV shows tittered and giggled and fluttered and swung their hips and stuck out their lips and used an exaggerated caricature to show how an eloi should look and sound. I had read in one of Aulikki’s books that in old American movies, white people painted their skin black to portray Negroes. I wonder if some dark-skinned people who watched those movies thought that they were supposed to speak in simple sentences and roll their eyes and be childish and superstitious.

  I couldn’t be a real eloi because I had a horrible, selfish rebelliousness inside me that only caused trouble and sorrow later on. I know there’s absolutely nothing to envy about the depravities of a decadent democracy, but sometimes I find myself thinking that at least in a place like that nobody ever has to wonder about these things.

  I think of you every day. Every single day. I just know that I’m going to find out what happened to you. It’s the least I can do for you after all we’ve been through.

  Your sister,

  Vanna (Vera)

  SERVICE COMMENCEMENT ORDER

  Neulapää, Vanna

  FN-140699-NLP

  You are ordered to appear for mating market commencement under the following terms of service:

  Mating Market Region: Northern Pirkanmaa

  First Day of Service: June 1, 2015

  Location: The Mating Palace, Hämeenkatu 30, Tampere

  This service commencement order will serve as a travel pass on state railways and bus routes in transit to your designated regional station.

  Failure to arrive at the appointed time will be considered a punishable infraction. Those in financial need may apply for state wardrobe assistance.

  Dear Manna,

  This memory comes back to me over and over. It comes to me in dreams as vividly as if it had happened yesterday, and I wake up in a cold sweat.

  Aulikki had brought us up to the attic at Neulapää. I still remember the spring sunlight coming through the grimy little window at the end of the house, the smell of old beams and dust and heat and insulation under the roof.

  It was May.

  The debutante balls are always held on the first of June.

  We needed dresses. There were certain rules for what prospects should wear—nothing anyone had ever officially written down, but tempered by custom until they were as hard as iron.

  The dress should be low cut and show your legs and arms. If the weather was cold you were allowed to wear some kind of light wrap or lace shawl.

  It all had to do with the old saying “A mating man needs to see what he’s getting,” but of course it doesn’t stop anyone from putting padding here and there, wearing underclothes that puff you up or squeeze you in. Asking for state wardrobe assistance was something even the poorest families would avoid if at all possible—the state dresses were always years out of style and had a cloud of industrial cleaner clinging to them. People called them “bulletproof dresses” because they were made from the sturdiest possible materials. And you couldn’t customize them in any way; you had to return them to the state wardrobe supply exactly as you’d received them.

  Aulikki led us to the end of the attic where there were old rolled-up rugs and winter coats hung from the rafters for the summer. She showed us a row of dark blue, zippered garment bags and said she’d saved some of her old dresses in them. We could save some money by altering them to fit and using them for our prospect dresses.

  You hated that idea and stomped your feet, remember? You weren’t going to put on some hundred-year-old rag. You’d rather wear a state dress! But when Aulikki opened the first dusty old bag, you changed your mind. It was a bright red gown, bright as a glass ball on a Christmas tree. It had an open collar with an indescribable downy red cloud along the border—“Ostrich feathers,” Aulikki said—and the narrow waistline was made even more elegant by sparkling sequins that radiated down the skirt. Aulikki told us almost apologetically that in Sweden she had spent a couple of years as a ballroom dancer, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to get rid of her costumes. Your eyes shone with excitement and admiration.

  Now I was eager to see the dresses, too. I opened one zipper after another and found more and more treasures: emerald green, electric blue, dark gold, amethyst purple. Embroidered hems, ruffles, bows, feathers, silver glitter. Each dress was more wonderful than the last. You were so enchanted with the first dress we found that you hardly glanced at the others. You were smitten by the red color and the sequins, your fingers stroking the ostrich feathers over and over.

  I opened the last garment bag. It was a white floor-length gown. Not bright white but slightly silvery. It was made of a heavy, flowing, silky fabric, very simply cut. The strapless top was like a corset, covered in delicate lace.

  White, simple, unobtrusive—the kind of dress you could blend into the walls in. It was the opposite of all the other dresses.

  The idea came into my head at that second.

  I could finally do one good thing for my little sister. I wasn’t the tiniest bit interested in what impression I made at the ball, but it was extremely important to you. You imagined I’d taken Jare away from you. Now was my chance to give you something in return.

  At the ball you would be a glittering bird of paradise, and I would be beside you looking like a seagull at the landfill.

  I looked at Aulikki and asked if I could wear the white dress.

  Aulikki looked at the dress with her lips pursed, and at first there was a slight smell of turpentine and mud. But then she relaxed and said, “Why not? Finally get some use out of it.” It was a wedding dress, but the wedding never happened.

  When she mentioned a wedding you were immediately interested and started examining the dress. You didn’t think it looked like a real wedding dress at all. You waved your hands around showing how a bridal gown ought to have a wide hoop skirt with lots of tulle and brocade embroidery and little fabric roses and a train behind it. This didn’t even have a veil. It was just boring. Ugly.

  Your opinion strengthened my decision. It was a perfect plan.

  I wore my hair in a simple chignon, as close to my head as I could make it, ascetic and cold. Not a single alluring curl, no ringlets dangling in front of my ears, every strand of hair sternly plastered down and wrapped tight against the back of my head.

  I didn’t want any jewelry. For shoes I found some low-heeled white pumps at the store—I could use them later for summer shoes. You chose twenty-centimeter heels—you’d always liked walking around in those ever since you were little, trying not to trip. You knew how to stride from the hip, half tiptoeing, half in a swinging stride, as if you’d been wearing a skirt that was too tight around your knees all your life.

  You did your hair in a pile of curls peppered with little artificial flowers and topped off with a fountain of satin ribbons. You smelled like lilacs and lily of the valley and musk, your carefully grown fi
ngernails painted to match your dress and decorated with gold flourishes (I did those, and they were quite good, if I do say so), your makeup smoky and heavy, your lips lacquered red to match.

  You were—as they say—a darling debutante.

  I was wearing a nearly colorless lip gloss and a little bit of mascara. I wouldn’t have worn makeup at all but Aulikki warned me about it. A real eloi should be made up. Always. She helped me put it on so I looked like I had perhaps tried to make myself up but only done a halfway job, because of my inexperience. Makeup to inspire pity, but not suspicion.

  When I looked at the two of us in the mirror, it was like a red baroque canopy bed and a white puff of smoke, side by side.

  I was extremely pleased.

  At home you had seemed dazzlingly decked out.

  When you stepped into the banquet hall, I saw the strain in your face.

  You grew up in the country. You had no idea how tough the competition would be, how in this context more really was more. To an almost sickening degree. Dresses cut so low that nipples peeked out with the slightest movement. Skirts slit nearly to the waistband. Shoes with heels so high that they made you walk on pointe like a ballerina. Eyelids so plastered in gold or turquoise that they could hardly stay open. False eyelashes two inches long, artificial fingernails as long as the fingers they were glued to, unnaturally tiny waists in cinched corsets. The quantity of perfume in the air made my eyes water, made me cough.

  In this carnival of peacocks and puppets, things went absolutely the wrong way. I did stand out from the crowd. But I stood out like a graceful white gull soaring among a flock of fluttering, cawing, scratching birds of paradise piled with plumes to the point of collapse.

  I spent the whole evening on the dance floor, though I’m a bad dancer. Aulikki was a good teacher when it came to this important eloi skill, but it simply never interested me much. I preferred to listen to music rather than move to its rhythm, and when I did, I danced alone. Nevertheless, no sooner would one dance end than more mascos would shove themselves in front of me, jostling, shouting witticisms, each one trying to get me to choose him for the next dance. And while we danced they pressed their lips against my ear and called me “ice princess” and “snow queen” and “moonbeam” in a whisper, complimenting my daring, distinctive, exciting style of dress. Now and then I caught glimpses of you over their shoulders.

  I’d never felt so disappointed in my life, so sad, so powerless and helpless.

  My whole body ached as you stood in a row of rejected girls, waiting to be asked to dance, trying to thrust your chest out even farther, batting your eyelashes as if you were trying to fan the whole room, swinging your hips as suggestively as you possibly could, and when I caught your eye, it was burning with emotion.

  Hate.

  Jealousy.

  Pain.

  Inferiority.

  Sadness.

  Fear.

  Every time the water in the Cellar starts to rise, I remember that moment, remember the look in your eyes.

  Or rather, when I remember the look in your eyes, the water starts to rise. Black, shining, ready to drown me.

  I have to stop now.

  Vanna (Vera)

  VANNA/VERA

  November 2016

  I’ve had to use two jars of jalapeños from my secret stash to keep the Cellar door closed. Luckily fitting in at eloi school isn’t particularly demanding. When the black water starts to splash in the back of my head, calculating the calories, cholesterol, and salt content of a sample meal is about as difficult for me as it is for the average eloi. I don’t need to pretend to make mistakes.

  Right now I’m having an extremely hard time concentrating on the lecture on “A Crying Baby and a Harmonious Marriage,” because my mind is seething with all kinds of other questions.

  Why have our sources dried up?

  Has the Authority improved its methods that much, or are there more middlemen in the market? And if there are, why haven’t we heard about them?

  Is there some large organization that’s grabbing up control of the capsaicin market?

  And most important, where will I get my next fix?

  “Vanna, if your child is continuously crying because of colic, perhaps, or an earache, what do you do?”

  I’m startled by the teacher’s question. He’s a family masco, already in his forties. He enjoys his work; it’s a personal triumph for him whenever an eloi graduates to marriage.

  What in the world was he just talking about? I didn’t hear a word he said.

  Do I throw the baby out the window?

  “Um, I’d try to protect my husband from the noise.”

  “How, specifically?”

  “I’d sorta take the baby away from where he was sleeping. Or give him some earplugs.”

  The teacher looks at me in surprise. “So, Vanna, you were listening after all.”

  I wasn’t listening. I was deducing.

  Dear Manna,

  Maybe it was good that you hated me.

  When I inadvertently put you out of the game at the debutante ball, it aroused your anger to a peculiar intensity. But Jare upset you even more.

  You fell in love. That was your nature. You’re not to blame for that.

  In the life of an eloi there are certain rules and ways of thinking, and I wasn’t even conscious of all of them. They dawned on me in all their bleakness only after I met other elois at school in Tampere.

  If two elois are in competition for the same man, whoever is more charming or manipulative wins. Any feeling of friendship or empathy for the other person is a handicap. If a more attractive eloi is asked to dance, the wallflower has only herself to blame. Sometimes taking a masco from another eloi is just a display of superiority. Any attachment to the masco in question is irrelevant—the act of conquest is reason enough.

  From your point of view this is exactly what happened. I got Jare’s attention, but when he went back to town in the fall, I wasn’t crying in my pillow. I didn’t want him, but I couldn’t give him to you, either. I had, in other words, behaved in a perfectly normal, acceptable manner.

  You had to show your anger through some means other than sulking or arguing. But you were incapable of hiding it.

  It hurt. But maybe you weren’t afraid to hate me because you knew very well that I would still love you, unconditionally, no matter what you did. Like a little child who can shout at her parents and say she wishes they were dead and still trust that they will never abandon her.

  I will never abandon you.

  There was so much preparation and bustle and excitement about the coming-out ball that we completely forgot what it really meant.

  It meant moving to the city. It meant leaving Neulapää.

  It meant leaving Aulikki.

  It meant going to eloi college.

  For you, coming out was an exciting adventure, your entry into the mating market. For me it meant entering an utterly strange and hostile world.

  Aulikki was solemn as we gathered up our few possessions. I could smell her sadness, and I asked her if there was anything else bothering her aside from our departure. She said, almost angrily, that she wondered if she had made a terrible mistake about me. She might have been able to make me almost an eloi if she had set limits on my expectations since I was little. I might have learned to believe in them myself.

  I squeezed her hand and said that regardless of the circumstances, I wouldn’t have wanted us to do it any other way. It was easy to say because it was true.

  Aulikki smiled and a scent of relief floated around her. But I could also tell that she wasn’t completely convinced. I tried to cheer her up, told her that if she’d raised me to be an eloi I would have been a cat in a doghouse eventually anyway, at the very latest by the time I was in eloi college. But this way I would know exactly what to hide and what
to emphasize. “When dogs wag their tails it’s a gesture of friendship; when cats do it they’re about to attack. I would have been waving my tail around in all the wrong situations if I hadn’t been aware of who I really am.”

  Aulikki hugged me long and hard. She told me that there were two loose floorboards under the large pantry cupboard. Underneath there was a little space above the foundation where she could hide the books that Jare had brought me. No one else would know about them, and I could read them when I came to visit Neulapää. I smiled and nodded, although I thought the situation was more complicated than Aulikki realized, or wanted to realize.

  When we got to the city you didn’t want to live with me anymore. Living alone is better for advancing your mating prospects, but many elois prefer to live with other elois anyway, to share chores and borrow clothes and support each other in crises and, naturally, to lure mascos away from one another.

  I told you that it was your decision to make, that I would still support you and always be close by and easy to reach. You shrugged your slim shoulders with an indifference that stung me to the heart. I hadn’t realized how much I’d hurt you.

  Aulikki had hired a large moving van and driver. Between the two of us we had a couple of suitcases and a few curtains, lamps, rugs, and knickknacks that Aulikki thrust upon us, not enough to begin to fill the cargo space.

  When you were already in the van, your lips pursed and your seat belt fastened, Aulikki took me by the arm and asked me to call her often. I promised I would call every day if I could.

  Aulikki stuck her hand into her apron pocket. Remember how you used to hate aprons? In spite of the fact that an apron is a handy thing for an eloi to have around the house, a sign of a good homemaker. It protects you while you do your chores, you can wipe your hands on it, the pockets are handy for keeping things, and you just take it off when company comes. I can’t even count the times I’ve pressed my face into Aulikki’s apron in moments of desolation or happiness.