Geoff Ryman - Air_玖贝云文库

'Geoff Ryman's new novel is swift, smart and convincing. Air is a wonderful and frightening

examination of old and new, and survival on the interface between'.

Greg Bear

'This is a liminal book: its characters are on the threshold of something new; their village is on the

brink of change; the world is launching into a new way to connect; humanity, at the end of the novel, is on

the cusp of evolution ... its plot is exciting and suspenseful, its characters gripping, its wisdom lightly and

gracefully offered, its language clear and beautiful. Like The Child Garden, Air is both humane and

wise. This novel is such a village. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It becomes finer as I think back

on it, and I look forward to rereading it. I only wish Ryman's work were more widely available and more

widely read, as it deserves'.

Joan Gordon New York Review of Science Fiction

'Ryman renders the village and people of Kizuldah with such humane insight and sympathy that

we experience the novel almost like the Air it describes: It's around us and in us, more real than real, and

it leaves us changed as surely as Mae's contact with Air changes her. This amazing balance that Ryman

maintains — mourning change while embracing it — renders Air not merely powerful,

thought-provoking, and profoundly moving, but indispensable. It's a map of our world, written in the

imaginary terrain of Karzistan. It's a guide for all of us, who will endure change, mourn our losses, and

must find a way to love the new sea that swamps our houses, if we are not to grow bitter and small and

afraid'. Robert Killheffer, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

'The wondrous art wrought in Ryman's Air shows some of its meaning plainly, calling forth grins,

astonishment and tears. More of its meaning is tucked away inside, like the seven hidden curled-up

dimensions of spacetime, like the final pages of the third book of Dante, beyond words or imagining high

and low. Treasure this book'.

Damien Broderick, Locus

AIR

(or Have Not Have)

by

GEOFF RYMAN

Version 1.0

ISBN o 575 07697 6 (cased)

ISBN o 575 07698 4 (trade paperback)

Dedicated to Doris McPherson and what is left of (the original) Meadowvale, Ontario, Canada

CHAPTER 1

Mae lived in the last village in the world to go online.

After that, everyone else went on Air.

Mae was the village's fashion expert. She advised on makeup, sold cosmetics, and provided

good dresses. Every farmer's wife needed at least one good dress.

Mae would sketch what was being worn in the capital. She would always add a special touch: a

lime-green scarf with sequins; or a lacy ruffle with colourful embroidery. A good dress was for display.

'We are a happier people and we can wear these gay colours,' Mae would advise.

'Yes, that is true,' her customer might reply, entranced that fashion expressed their happy culture.

'In the photographs, the Japanese women all look so solemn.'

'So full of themselves,' said Mae, and lowered her head and scowled, and she and her customer

would laugh, feeling as sophisticated as anyone in the world.

Mae got her ideas as well as her mascara and lipsticks from her trips to the town. It was a long

way and she needed to be driven. When Sunni Haseem offered to drive her down in exchange for a

fashion expedition, Mae had to agree. Apart from anything else, Mae had a wedding dress to collect.

Sunni herself was from an old village family, but her husband was a beefy brute from farther

down the hill. He puffed on cigarettes and his tanned fingers were as thick and weathered as the necks of

turtles. In the backseat with Mae, Sunni giggled and prodded and gleamed with the thought of visiting

town with her friend and confidante who was going to unleash her beauty secrets.

Mae smiled and whispered, promising much. 'I hope my source will be present today,' she said.

'She brings me my special colours, you cannot get them anywhere else. I don't ask where she gets them.'

Mae lowered her eyes and her voice. 'I think her husband . . .'

A dubious gesture, meaning that perhaps the goods were stolen, stolen from — who knows? —

supplies meant for foreign diplomats? The tips of Mae's fingers rattled once, in provocation, across her

client's arm.

The town was called Yeshibozkent, which meant Green Valley City. It was now approached

through corridors of raw apartment blocks set on beige desert soil. It had billboards, a new jail, discos

with mirror balls, illuminated shop signs, and Toyota jeeps that belched out blue smoke.

The town centre was as Mae remembered it from childhood. Traditional wooden houses

crowded crookedly together. Wooden shingles covered the roofs and gables. The shop signs were tiny,

faded, and sometimes hand-lettered. The old market square was still full of peasants selling vegetables

laid out on mats. Middle-aged men still played chess outside tiny cafes; youths still prowled in packs.

There was still the public-address system. The address system barked out news and music from

the top of the electricity poles. Its sounds drifted over the city, announcing public events or new initiatives

against drug dealers. It told of progress on the new highway, and boasted of the well known entertainers

who were visiting the town.

Mr Haseem parked near the market, and the address system seemed to enter Mae's lungs, like

cigarette smoke, perfume, or hairspray. She stepped out of the van and breathed it in. The excitement of

being in the city trembled in her belly. The address system made Mae's spirits rise as much as the

bellowing of shoppers, farmers, and donkeys; as much as the smell of raw petrol and cut greenery and

drains. She and her middle-aged client looked at each other and gasped and giggled at themselves.

'Now,' Mae said, stroking Sunni's hair, her cheek. 'It is time for a complete makeover. Let's

really do you up. I cannot do as good a workup in the hills.'

Mae took her client to Halat's, the same hairdresser as Sunni might have gone to anyway. But

Mae was greeted by Halat with cries and smiles and kisses on the cheek. That implied a promise that

Mae's client would get special treatment. There was a pretence of consultancy. Mae offered advice,

comments, cautions. Careful! — she has such delicate skin! The hair could use more shaping there. And

Halat hummed as if perceiving what had been hidden before and then agreed to give the client what she

would otherwise have had. But Sunni's nails were soaking, and she sat back in the centre of attention,

like a queen.

All of this allowed the hairdresser to charge more. Mae had never pressed her luck and asked

for a cut. Something beady in Halat's eyes told Mae there would be no point. What Mae got out of it

was standing, and that would lead to more work later.

With cucumbers over her eyes, Sunni was safely trapped. Mae announced, 'I just have a few

errands to run. You relax and let all cares fall away.' She disappeared before Sunni could protest.

Mae ran to collect the dress. A disabled girl, a very good seamstress called Miss Soo, had

opened up a tiny shop of her own.

Miss Soo was grateful for any business, poor thing, skinny as a rail and twisted. After the usual

greetings, Miss Soo shifted around and hobbled and dragged her way to the back of the shop to fetch

the dress. Her feet hissed sideways across the uneven concrete floor. Poor little thing, Mae thought. How

can she sew?

Yet Miss Soo had a boyfriend in the fashion business — genuinely in the fashion business, far

away in the capital city, Balshang. The girl often showed Mae his photograph. It was like a magazine

photograph. The boy was very handsome, with a shiny shirt and coiffed-up hair. She kept saying she was

saving up money to join him. It was a mystery to Mae what such a boy was doing with a cripple for a

girlfriend. Why did he keep contact with her? Publicly Mae would say to friends of the girl: It is the

miracle of love, what a good heart he must have. Otherwise she kept her own counsel which was this:

You would be very wise not to visit him in Balshang.

The boyfriend sent Miss Soo the patterns of dresses, photographs, magazines, or even whole

catalogues. There was one particularly treasured thing; a showcase publication. The cover was like the lid

of a box, and it showed in full colour the best of the nation's fashion design.

Models so rich and thin they looked like ghosts. They looked half asleep, as if the only place they

carried the weight of their wealth was on their eyelids. It was like looking at Western or Japanese

women, and yet these were their own people, so long-legged, so modern, so ethereal, as if they were

made of air.

Mae hated the clothes. They looked like washing-up towels. Oatmeal or grey in one colour, and

without a trace of adornment.

Mae sighed with lament. 'Why do these rich women go about in their underwear?'

The girl shuffled back with the dress, past piles of unsold oatmeal cloth. Miss Soo had a skinny

face full of teeth, and she always looked like she was staring ahead in fear. 'If you are rich you have no

need to try to look rich.' Her voice was soft. She made Mae feel like a peasant without meaning to. She

made Mae yearn to escape herself, to be someone else, for the child was effortlessly talented, somehow

effortlessly in touch with the outside world.

'Ah, yes,' Mae sighed. 'But my clients, you know, they live in the hills.' She shared a

conspiratorial smile with the girl. 'Their taste! Speaking of which, let's have a look at my wedding cake of

a dress.'The dress was actually meant to look like a cake, all pink and white sugar icing, except that it

kept moving all by itself. White wires with styrofoam bobbles on the ends were surrounded with clouds

of white netting.

'Does it need to be quite so busy?' the girl asked doubtfully, encouraged too much by Mae's

smile. 'I know my clients,' replied Mae, coolly. This is, at least, she thought, a dress that makes some

effort. She inspected the work. The needlework was delicious, as if the white cloth were cream that had

flowed together. The poor creature could certainly sew, even when she hated the dress.

'That will be fine,' said Mae, and made a move towards her purse.

'You are so kind!' murmured Miss Soo, bowing slightly.

Like Mae, Miss Soo was of Chinese extraction. That was meant to make no difference, but

somehow it did. Mae and Miss Soo knew what to expect of each other.

The dress was packed in brown paper and carefully tied so it would not crease. There were

farewells, and Mae scurried back to the hairdressers. Sunni was only just finished, hairspray and scent

rising off her like steam.

'This is the dress,' said Mae and peeled back part of the paper, to give Halat and Sunni a glimpse

of the tulle and styrofoam.

'Oh!' the women said, as if all that white were clouds, in dreams.

And Halat was paid. There were smiles and nods and compliments and then they left.

Outside the shop, Mae breathed out as though she could now finally speak her mind. 'Oh! She is

good, that little viper, but you have to watch her, you have to make her work. Did she give you proper

attention?'

'Oh, yes, very special attention. I am lucky to have you for a friend,' said Sunni. 'Let me pay you

something for your trouble.'

Mae hissed through her teeth. 'No, no, I did nothing, I will not hear of it.' It was a kind of ritual.

There was no dream in finding Sunni's surly husband. Mr Haseem was red-faced, half drunk in a

club with unvarnished walls and a television.

'You spend my money,' he declared. His eyes were on Mae.

'My friend Mae makes no charges,' snapped Sunni.

'She takes something from what they charge you.' Mr Haseem glowered like a thunderstorm.

'She makes them charge me less, not more,' replied Sunni, her face going like stone.

The two women exchanged glances. Mae's eyes could say: How can you bear it, a woman of

culture like you?

It is my tragedy, came the reply, aching out of the ashamed eyes.

So they sat while the husband sobered up and watched television. Mae contemplated the

husband's hostility to her, and what might lie behind it.

On the screen, the local female newsreader talked: Talents, such people were called. She wore a

red dress with a large gold brooch. Something had been done to her hair to make it stand up in a sweep

before falling away. She was groomed as smooth as ice. She chattered in a high voice, perky through a

battery of tiger's teeth.

'She goes to Halat's as well,' Mae whispered to Sunni. Weather, maps, shots of the honoured

President and the full cabinet one by one, making big decisions.

The men in the club chose what movie they wanted. Since the satellites, they could do that.

Satellites had ruined visits to the town. Before, it used to be that the men were made to sit through

something the children or families might also like to watch, so you got everyone together for the watching

of the television. The clubs had to be more polite. Now, women hardly saw TV at all and the clubs were

full of drinking. The men chose another kung fu movie. Mae and Sunni endured it, sipping Coca-Cola. It

became apparent that Mr Haseem would not buy them dinner.

Finally, late in the evening, Mr Haseem loaded himself into the van. Enduring, unstoppable, and

quite dangerous, he drove them back up into the mountains, weaving across the middle of the road.

'You make a lot of money out of all this,' Mr Haseem said to Mae.

'I ... I make a little something. I try to maintain the standards of the village. I do not want people

to see us as peasants. Just because we live on the high road.'

Sunni's husband barked out a laugh. 'We are peasants!' Then he added, 'You do it for the

money.'Sunni sighed in embarrassment. And Mae smiled a hard smile to herself in the darkness. You give

yourself away, Sunni's-man. You want my husband's land. You want him to be your dependant. And you

don't like your wife's money coming to me to prevent it. You want to make both me and my husband

your slaves.

It is a strange thing to spend four hours in the dark listening to an engine roar with a man who

seeks to destroy you.

In late May, school ended.

There were no fewer than six girls graduating and each one of them needed a new dress. Miss

Soo was making two of them; Mae would have to do the others, but she needed to buy the cloth. She

had a mobile phone, a potent fashion symbol. But she needed another trip to Yeshibozkent.

Mr Wing was going to town to collect a new television set for the village. It was going to be

connected to the Net. Mr Wing was something of a politician in his way. He had applied for a national

grant to set up a company to provide information services to the village. Swallow Communications, he

called himself, and the villagers said it would make him rich.

Kwan, Mr Wing's wife, was one of Mae's favourite women: She was intelligent and sensible;

there was less dissembling with her. Mae enjoyed the drive.

Mr Wing parked the van in the market square. As Mae reached into the back for her hat, she

heard the public-address system. The voice of the Talent was squawking.

'. . . a tremendous advance for culture,' the Talent said. Now the Green Valley is no farther

from the centre of the world than Paris, Singapore, or Tokyo.'

Mae sniffed, 'Hmm. Another choice on this fishing net of theirs.'

Wing stood outside the van, ramrod-straight in his brown-and-tan town shirt. 'I want to hear this,'

he said, smiling slightly, taking nips of smoke from his cigarette.

Kwan fanned the air. 'Your modern wires say that smoking is dangerous. I wish you would

follow all this news you hear.'

'Sssh!' he insisted.

The bright female voice still enthused: 'Previously all such advances left the Valley far behind

because of wiring and machines. This advance will be in the air we breathe. This new thing will be

like TV in your head. All you need is the wires in the human mind.'

Kwan gathered up her things. 'Some nonsense or another,' she murmured.

'Next Sunday, there will be a Test. The Test will happen in Tokyo and Singapore but also

here in the Valley at the same time. What Tokyo sees and hears, we will see and hear. Tell

everyone you know: Next Sunday, there will be a Test. There is no need for fear, alarm, or panic.'

Mae listened then. There would certainly be a need for fear and panic if the address system said

there was none.

'What test, what kind of test? What? What?' the women demanded of the husband.

Mr Wing played the relaxed, superior male. He chuckled. 'Ho-ho, now you are interested, yes?'

Another man looked up and grinned. 'You should watch more TV,' he called. He was selling

radishes and shook them at the women.

Kwan demanded, 'What are they talking about?'

'They will be able to put TV in our heads,' said the husband, smiling. He looked down, thinking,

perhaps wistfully, of his own new venture. 'There has been talk of nothing else on the TV for the last

year. But I didn't think it would happen.'

All the old market was buzzing like flies on carrion, as if it were still news to them. Two youths in

strange puffy clothes spun on their heels and slapped each other's palms, in a gesture that Mae had seen

only once or twice before. An old granny waved it all away and kept on accusing a dealer of short

measures.

Mae felt grave doubts. 'TV in our heads. I don't want TV in my head.' She thought of viper

newsreaders and kung fu.

Wing said, 'It's not just TV. It is more than TV. It is the whole world.'

'What does that mean?'

'It will be the Net — only, in your head. The fools and drunks in these parts know nothing about

it; it is a word they use to sound modern. But you go to the cafes, you see it. The Net is all things.' He

began to falter.

'Explain! How can one thing be all things?'

There was a crowd of people gathering to listen.

'Everything is on it. You will see on our new TV. It will be a Net TV.' Kwan's husband did not

really know, either.

The routine had been soured. Halat the hairdresser was in a very strange mood, giggly, chattery,

her teeth clicking together as if it were cold.

'Oh, nonsense,' she said, when Mae went into her usual performance. 'Is this for a wedding? For

a feast?''No,' said Mae. 'It is for my special friend.'

The little hussy put both hands either side of her mouth as if in awe. 'Oh! Uh!'

'Are you going to do a special job for her or not?' Mae demanded. Her eyes were able to say: I

see no one else in your shop.

Oh, how the girl would have loved to say, I am very busy — if you need something special,

come back tomorrow. But money spoke. Halat slightly amended her tone. 'Of course. For you.'

'I bring my friends to you regularly because you do such good work for them.'

'Of course,' the child said. 'It is all this news; it makes me forget myself.'

Mae drew herself up, and looked fierce, forbidding — in a word, older. Her entire body said:

Do not forget yourself again. The way the child dug away at Kwan's hair with the long comb-handle

said back: Peasants.

The rest of the day did not go well. Mae felt tired, distracted. She made a terrible mistake and,

with nothing else to do, accidentally took Kwan to the place where she bought her lipsticks.

'Oh! It is a treasure trove!' exclaimed Kwan.

Idiot, thought Mae to herself. Kwan was good-natured and would not take advantage. But, if she

talked . . . ! There would be clients who would not take such a good-natured attitude, not to have been

shown this themselves.

'I do not take everyone here,' whispered Mae, 'hmm? This is for special friends only.'

Kwan was good-natured, but very far from stupid. Mae remembered, in school Kwan had

always been best at letters, best at maths. Kwan was pasting on false eyelashes in a mirror and said, very

simply and quickly, 'Don't worry, I won't tell anyone.'

And that was far too simple and direct. As if Kwan were saying: fashion expert, we all know

you. She even looked around and smiled at Mae, and batted her now-huge eyes, as if mocking fashion

itself. 'Not for you,' said Mae. 'The false eyelashes. You don't need them.'

The dealer wanted a sale. 'Why listen to her?' she asked Kwan.

Because, thought Mae, I buy fifty riels' worth of cosmetics from you a year.

'My friend is right,' said Kwan, to the dealer. The sad fact was that Kwan was almost

magazine-beautiful anyway, except for her teeth and gums. 'Thank you for showing me this,' said Kwan,

and touched Mae's arm. 'Thank you,' she said to the dealer, having bought one lowly lipstick.

Mae and the dealer glared at each other, briefly. I'll go somewhere else next time, Mae promised

herself. The worst came last. Kwan's ramrod husband was not a man for drinking. He was in the

promised cafe at the promised time, sipping tea, having had a haircut and a professional shave.

A young man called Sloop, a tribesman, was with him. Sloop was a telephone engineer and thus

a member of the aristocracy as far as Mae was concerned. He was going to wire up their new TV. Sloop

said, with a woman's voice, 'It will work like your mobile phone, no cable. We can't lay cable in our

mountains. But before MMN, there was not enough space on the line for the TV.' He might as well have

been talking English, for all Mae understood him.

Mr Wing maintained his cheerfulness. 'Come,' he said to the ladies, 'I will show you what this is

all about.'

He went up to the communal TV and turned it on with an expert's flourish. Up came not a movie

or the local news, but a screenful of other buttons.

'You see? You can choose what you want. You can choose anything.' And he touched the

screen. Up came the local Talent, still baring her perfect teeth. She piped in a high, enthusiastic voice that

was meant to appeal to men and Bright Young Things:

'Hello. Welcome to the Airnet Information Service. For too long the world has been

divided into information haves and have-nots.' She held up one hand towards the heavens of

information and the other out towards the citizens of the Green Valley, inviting them to consider

themselves as have-nots.

'Those in the developed world can use their TVs to find any information they need at any

time. They do this through the Net.'

Incomprehension followed. There were circles and squares linked by wires in diagrams. Then

they jumped up into the sky, into the air — only the air was full of arcing lines. 'The field,' they called it,

but it was nothing like a field. In Karzistani, it was called the Lightning-Flow, Compass-Point Yearning

Field. 'Everywhere in the world.' Then the lightning flow was shown striking people's heads. 'There have

been many medical tests to show this is safe.'

'Hitting people with lightning?' Kwan asked in crooked amusement. 'That does sound so safe,

doesn't it?'

'It's only the Formatting that uses the Yearning Field,' said Sloop. 'That happens only once. It

makes a complete map of minds, and that's what exists in Air, and Air happens in other dimensions.'

'What?'

'There are eleven dimensions,' he began, and began to see the hopelessness of it. 'They were left

over after the Big Bang.'

'I know what will interest you ladies,' said her husband. And with another flourish, he touched the

screen. 'You'll be able to have this in your heads, whenever you want.'

Suddenly the screen was full of cream colour.

One of the capital's ladies spun on her high heel. She was wearing the best of the nation's fashion

design. She was one of the ladies in Mae's secret treasure book.

'Oh!' Kwan breathed out. 'Oh, Mae, look, isn't she lovely!'

'This channel shows nothing but fashion,' said her husband.

'All the time?' Kwan exclaimed, and looked back at Mae in wonder. For a moment, she stared

up at the screen, her own face reflected over those of the models. Then, thankfully, she became Kwan

again. 'Doesn't that get boring?'

Her husband chuckled. 'You can choose something else. Anything else.'

It was happening very quickly and Mae's guts churned faster than her brain to certain knowledge:

Kwan and her husband would be fine with all this.

'Look,' he said, 'This is what two-ways does. You can buy the dress.'

Kwan shook her head in amazement. Then a voice said the price and Kwan gasped again. 'Oh,

yes, all I have to do is sell one of our four farms, and I can have a dress like that.'

'I saw all that two years ago,' said Mae. 'It is too plain for the likes of us. We want people to see

everything.'

Kwan's face went sad. 'That is because we are poor, back in the hills.' It was the common

yearning, the common forlorn knowledge.

Sometimes it had to cease, all the business-making, you had to draw a breath, because after all,

you had known your people for as long as you had lived.

Mae said, 'None of them are as beautiful as you are, Kwan.' It was true, except for her teeth.

'Flattery-talk from a fashion expert,' Kwan said lightly. But she took Mae's hand. Her eyes

yearned up at the screen, as secret after secret was spilled like blood.

'With all this in our heads,' Kwan said to her husband, 'we won't need your TV.'

It was a busy week.

It was not only the six dresses. For some reason, there was much extra business.

On Wednesday, Mae had a discreet morning call to make on Tsang Muhammed. Mae liked

Tsang. She looked like a peach that was overripe, round and soft to the touch and very slightly wrinkled.

Everything about her was off-kilter. She was Chinese with a religious Karz husband, who was ten years

her senior. He was a Muslim who allowed — or perhaps could not prevent — his Chinese wife keeping

a Pig. The family pig was in the front room being fattened: half the room was full of old shucks. The

beast looked lordly and pleased with itself. Tsang's four-year-old son sat tamely beside it, feeding it the

greener leaves, as if the animal could not find them for itself.

'Is it all right to talk?' Mae whispered, her eyes going sideways towards the boy.

'Who is it?' Mae mouthed.

Tsang simply waggled a finger.

So it was someone they knew. Mae suspected it was Kwan's oldest boy, Luk. Luk was sixteen,

but he was kept in pressed white shirt and shorts like a baby. The shorts only showed he had hair on his

football-player calves. His face was still round and soft and babylike but lately had been full of a new and

different confusion.

'Tsang. Oh!' Mae gasped.

'Sssh,' giggled Tsang, who was red as a radish. As if either of them could be certain what the

other one meant. 'I need a repair job!' So it was someone younger.

Almost certainly Kwan's handsome son.

'Well, they have to be taught by someone,' whispered Mae.

Tsang simply dissolved into giggles. She could hardly stop laughing.

'I can do nothing for you. You certainly don't need redder cheeks,' said Mae.

Tsang uttered a squawk of laughter.

'There is nothing like it for a woman's complexion.' Mae pretended to put away the tools of her

trade. 'No, I can effect no improvement. Certainly I cannot compete with the effects of a certain young

man.' 'Nothing . . . Nothing . . .' gasped Tsang. 'Nothing like a good prick!'

Mae howled in mock outrage and Tsang squealed, and both squealed and pressed down their

cheeks, and shushed each other. Mae noted exactly which part of the cheeks were blushing so she would

know where the colour should go later.

As Mae painted, Tsang explained how she escaped her husband's view. 'I tell him that I have to

get fresh garbage for the pig,' whispered Tsang. 'So I go out with the empty bucket ...'

'And come back with a full bucket,' Mae said airily.

'Oh!' Tsang pretended to hit her. 'You are as bad as me!'

'What do you think I get up to in the City?' asked Mae, who arched an eyebrow, lying.

Love, she realized later, walking back down the track and clutching her cloth bag of secrets, love

is not mine. She thought of the boy's naked calves.

On Thursday, Kwan wanted her teeth to be flossed. This was new. Kwan had never been vain

before. This touched Mae, because it meant her friend was getting older. Or was it because she had seen

the TV models with their impossible teeth? How were real people supposed to have teeth like that?

Kwan's handsome son ducked as he entered, wearing his shorts, showing smooth, full thighs, and

a secret swelling about his groin. He ducked as he went out again. Guilty, Mae thought. For certain it is

him. She laid Kwan's head back over a pillow with a towel under her.

Should she not warn her friend to keep watch on her son? Which friend should she betray? To

herself, she shook her head; there was no possibility of choosing between them. She could only keep

silent. 'Just say if I hit a nerve,' Mae said.

Kwan had teeth like an old horse, worn, brown, black. Her gums were scarred from a childhood

disease, and her teeth felt loose as Mae rubbed the floss between them. She had a neat little bag into

which she flipped each strand after it was used.

It was Mae's job to talk: Kwan could not. Mae said she did not know how she would finish the

dresses in time. The girls' mothers were never satisfied, each wanted her daughter to have the best. Well,

the richest would have the best in the end because they bought the best cloth. Oh! Some of them had

asked to pay for the fabric later! As if Mae could afford to buy cloth for six dresses without being paid!

'They all think their fashion expert is a woman of wealth.' Mae sometimes found the whole

pretence funny. Kwan's eyes crinkled into a smile; but they were almost moist from pain. It was hurting.

'You should have told me your teeth were sore,' said Mae, and inspected the gums. In the back,

they were raw.

If you were rich, Kwan, you would have good teeth; rich people keep their teeth, and somehow

keep them white, not brown. Mae pulled stray hair out of Kwan's face.

'I will have to pull some of them,' Mae said quietly. 'Not today, but soon.'

Kwan closed her mouth and swallowed. 'I will be an old lady,' she said, and managed a smile.

'A granny with a thumping stick.'

'Who always hides her mouth when she laughs.'

Both of them chuckled. 'And thick glasses that make your eyes look like a fish.'

Kwan rested her hand on her friend's arm. 'Do you remember, years ago? We would all get

together and make little boats, out of paper or shells. And we would put candles in them, and send them

out on the ditches.'

'Yes!' Mae sat forward. 'We don't do that anymore.'

'We don't wear pillows and a cummerbund anymore, either.'

There had once been a festival of wishes every year, and the canals would be full of little glowing

candles, that floated for a while and then sank with a hiss. 'We would always wish for love,' said Mae,

remembering.

Next morning, Mae mentioned the wish boats to her neighbour, Old Mrs Tung. Mae visited her

nearly every day. Mrs Tung had been her teacher during the flurry of what had passed for Mae's

schooling. She was ninety years old, and spent her days turned towards the tiny loft window that looked

out over the valley. She was blind, her eyes pale and unfocused. She could see nothing through the

window. Perhaps she breathed in the smell of the fields.

When Mae reminded her about the boats of wishes, Mrs Tung said, 'And we would roast

pumpkin seeds. And the ones we didn't eat, we would turn into jewelry. Do you remember that?'

Mrs Tung was still beautiful, at least in Mae's eyes. Mrs Tung's face had grown even more

delicate in extreme old age, like the skeleton of a cat, small and fine. She gave an impression of great

merriment, by continually laughing at not very much. She repeated herself.

'I remember the day you first came to me,' she said. Before Shen's village school, Mrs Tung had

kept a nursery, there in their courtyard. 'I thought: "Is that the girl whose father has been killed? She is so

pretty." I remember you looking at all my dresses hanging on the line.'

'And you asked me which one I liked best.'

Mrs Tung giggled. 'Oh yes, and you said the butterflies.' Blindness meant that she could only see

the past. 'We had tennis courts, you know. Here in Kizuldah.'

'Did we?' Mae pretended she had not heard that before.

'Oh yes, oh yes. When the Chinese were here, just before the Communists came. Part of the

Chinese army was here, and they built them. We all played tennis, in our school uniforms.'

The Chinese officers had supplied the tennis rackets. The traces of the courts were broken and

grassy, where Mr Pin now ran his car-repair business.

'Oh! They were all so handsome, all the village girls were so in love.' Mrs Tung chuckled. 'I

remember, I couldn't have been more than ten years old, and one of them adopted me, because he said I

looked like his daughter. He sent me a teddy bear after the war.' She chuckled and shook her head. 'I

was too old for teddy bears by then. But I told everyone it meant we were getting married. Oh!' Mrs

Tung shook her head at her foolishness. 'I wish I had married him,' she confided, feeling naughty. She

always said that.

Mrs Tung, even now, had the power to make Mae feel calm and protected. Mrs Tung had come

from a family of educated people and once had had a house full of books. The books had all been lost in

a flood many years ago, but Mrs Tung could still recite to Mae the poems of the Turks, the Karz, or the

Chinese. She had sat the child Mae on her lap and rocked her. She could recite now, the same poems.

'Listen to the reed flute,' she began now, 'How it tells a tale!' Her old blind face, swayed with

the words, the beginning of The Mathnawi. '"This noise of the reed is fire, it is not the wind.

Mae yearned. 'Oh, I wish I remembered all those poems!' When she saw Mrs Tung, she could

visit the best of her childhood.

Mae then visited the Ozdemirs for a fitting.

The mother was called Hatijah, and her daughter was Sezen. Hatijah was a shy, slow little thing,

terrified of being overcharged by Mae, and of being underserved. Hatijah's low, old stone house was

tangy with the smells of burning charcoal, sweat, dung, and the constantly stewing tea. From behind the

house came a continual, agonized bleating from the family goat. It needed milking. The poor animal's

voice was going raw and harsh. Hatijah seemed not to hear it. Hatijah had four children, and a skinny

shiftless husband who probably had worms. Half of the main room was heaped up with corncobs. The

youngest of her babes wore only shirts and sat with their dirty naked bottoms on the corn.

Oh, this was a filthy house. Perhaps Hatijah was a bit simple. She offered Mae roasted corn. Not

with your child's wet shit on it, thought Mae, but managed to be polite.

The daughter, Sezen, stomped in barefoot for her fitting, wearing the dress. It was a shade of

lemon yellow that seared the eyes. Sezen was a tough, raunchy brute of a girl and kept rolling her eyes at

everything: at her nervous mother, at Mae's efforts to make the yellow dress hang properly, at anything

either one of the adults said.

'Does . . . will . . . tomorrow . . .' Sezen's mother tried to begin.

Yes, thought Mae with some bitterness, tomorrow Sezen will finally have to wash. Sezen's bare

feet were slashed with infected cuts.

'What my mother means is,' Sezen said, 'will you make up my face?' Sezen blinked, her unkempt

hair making her eyes itch.

'Yes, of course,' said Mae, curtly to a younger person who was so forward.

'What, with all those other girls on the same day? For someone as lowly as us?'

The girl's eyes were angry. Mae pulled in a breath.

'No one can make you feel inferior without you agreeing with them first,' said Mae. It was

something Old Mrs Tung had once told Mae when she herself was poor and famished for magic.

'Take off the dress,' Mae said. 'I'll have to take it back for finishing.'

Sezen stepped out of it, right there, naked on the dirt floor. Hatijah did not chastise her, but

offered Mae tea. Because she had refused the corn, Mae had to accept the tea. At least that would be

boiled. Hatijah scuttled off to the black kettle and her daughter leaned back in full insolence, her

supposedly virgin pubes plucked as bare as the baby's bottom.

Mae fussed with the dress, folding it, so she would have somewhere else to look. The daughter

just stared. Mae could take no more. 'Do you want people to see you? Go put something on!'

'I don't have anything else,' said Sezen.

Her other sisters had gone shopping in the town for graduation gifts. They would have taken all

the family's good dresses.

'You mean you have nothing else you will deign to put on.' Mae glanced at Hatijah: she really

should not be having to do this woman's work for her. 'You have other clothes, old clothes — put them

on.' The girl stared at her with even greater insolence.

Mae lost her temper. 'I do not work for pigs. You have paid nothing so far for this dress. If you

stand there like that, I will leave, now, and the dress will not be yours. Wear what you like to the

graduation. Come to it naked like a whore, for all I care.'

Sezen turned and slowly walked towards the side room.

Hatijah, the mother, still squatted over the kettle, boiling more water to dilute the stew of leaves.

She lived on tea and burnt corn that was more usually fed to cattle. Her cow's-eyes were averted.

Untended, the family goat still made noises like a howling baby.

Mae sat and blew out air from stress. This week! She looked at Hatijah's dress. It was a

patchwork assembly of her husband's old shirts, beautifully stitched. Hatijah could sew. Mae could not.

With all these changes, Mae was going to have to find something else to do besides sketch photographs

of dresses. She had a sudden thought.

'Would you be interested in working for me?' Mae asked. Hatijah looked fearful and pleased and

said she would have to ask her husband. In the end she agreed to do the finishing on three of the dresses.

Everything is going to have to change, thought Mae, as if to convince herself.

That night Mae worked nearly to dawn on the other three dresses.

Her noisy old sewing machine sat silent in the corner. It was fine for rough work, but not for

finishing, not for graduation dresses.

The bare electric light glared down at her like a headache, as Mae's husband Joe snored. Above

them in the loft, Joe's brother Siao and his father snored, too, as they had done for twenty years. In the

Geoff Ryman - Air

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: