Turn Left at Venus

by Inez Baranay

  ‘And so did you,’ Saul said. It was a kind of question. Ada couldn’t answer it. The question of judging her own life meant only trouble when it turned up. Is it the life you wanted when your dear best love has left it? She missed Noemi, she missed the grief that had for a while been all of her life, coloured all her days, and become a lasting faded bruise that only hurt when you pressed on it. Or something bumped into it. You might even grieve for the grief that is subsided. She grieved for the loss of the person she had been with Noemi.

  ‘But the agency has diversified,’ Saul told Ada. ‘Things are different now, as I’m sure you appreciate. You’re going to be making more money from the TV series than you’ve made from all your publishing in the last seven years.’

  Good, fine, and Saul seemed to know what to do next just as Sophie always knew.

  ‘I’m wise like my name,’ Sophie used to say. ‘Each case is different.’

  Saul was going to keep the same office also. ‘It’s rent controlled!’ he told Ada. ‘Do you know what they could get for this space these days?’

  Saul had been that child who, first time she met him, was hanging out in Sophie’s office, trying to make the cat play with him. Sophie joked, ‘Hearing things no child should hear; making book deals is like sausages and the law.’

  Ada understood. ‘People shouldn’t see how it’s done.’

  ‘There’s a reason for those sayings.’

  Saul said, ‘When we met I was a little kid but I knew about you. You had been to Bali before anyone. I don’t know what I thought that would be like but I did know not many people went there. They didn’t yet.’

  And then he’d turned into a big kid, with glasses on his face, a backpack hanging off his shoulder, coming by to Sophie’s office with Vera, one time Ada was there, and they invited Ada to come to lunch with the three of them. They went to a Mexican place and talked about the war in Asia and how bad it was and why it was and where it was and whether that was anywhere near Bali.

  Saul went away to make his mistakes and take his detours then came back to stay in San Francisco, edited publications and took photographs and trained as a barista and when needed found people to fill in for Sophie’s assistants and did it himself once when he could though never had thought it was his career path. Now he would live in the same house where Sophie and Vera had combined their collections of furniture, books, teapots.

  It’s all about the timing, and once it wouldn’t have been right but now it suited Saul to do this and he had made the total commitment.

  It’s still the city it always was. Saul was staying in spite of the changes, in spite of considering moving out because of the changes.

  All right, a lot of people had been driven out and all that young tech money had taken over; still you could have pretty much the life this city always offered, to the lucky ones.

  ‘I hope we’re still going to see you from time to time,’ said Saul.

  Now he was a man with a beard like all the young men had and he wasn’t so very young.

  Apart from that, there was something about Saul that resembled Sophie, even though Vera was his birth mother. Saul said, ‘I thought “Sophie” was a word for your other mom.’

  ‘They were happy together,’ Ada said, a kind of question.

  ‘Sure they were, what is happy anyway? We were a happy family, in the sense if one had a sorrow we all had that sorrow. That’s what being a family is, am I right?’

  Ada said, ‘I never had a family since I was fifteen and kind of not even then so I really don’t know.’

  Saul said, ‘But you had Sophie.’

  ‘I could never talk to anyone like I could to her. It wasn’t often, but it was always …’ The word didn’t come. ‘She understood.’

  Saul said, ‘She was like that with everyone.’

  Saul tried to talk about investments and then realised Ada wasn’t really following.

  This was at an earlier time.

  When he was still saying it wasn’t too late.

  Every now and then in her life Ada had stayed somewhere that made her wonder if she might buy her own house or apartment in the vicinity – the French Alps one time, Amsterdam, Sydney – somewhere she might collect furniture and artworks and repeatedly return to write in. Start having guests maybe, thinking about what that might be like. A nice guestroom like you’d like to stay in, hard pillows and soft pillows, a good firm mattress, a bedside lamp. Not that she wanted to wake up and find she had guests really, she started thinking, when she went as far as inspecting some places with solicitous real estate brokers, getting paperwork, consulting Sophie, who said it was a good idea and knew someone who’d take care of it.

  ‘But then?’ asks Noemi.

  ‘But then,’ says Ada, who had dedicated some imaginative consideration to the idea, ‘I realised it would never work.’

  Ada lived in hotels and short-term rentals because she liked to. She liked it more all the time. She’d listened to stories of the infuriating need for plumbers, tilers, roofers, security services. Of deranged and vicious neighbours, disasters that arrived only in your absence, accomplished robberies. Very loud very dusty construction works that started up next door. Plants that died while you were away. A good hotel in the vicinity that you’d rather be staying in. But Ada could always leave. Until Noemi, but that was different, that was Noemi.

  Noemi with her collections of books, paintings, records, rugs, architecture magazines, and all that folk art from Mexico when later in life she investigated her heritage. Though she’d moved a few times and also spent semesters in other places, this was her city, Noemi always kept stuff in this city, knew she would always return. A place to send the things you bought, store them, have a couch for friends to stay. A tree by the back fence that you watched grow over years. Noemi had bought when buying was an option for a freelance architecture critic and said it was one of the best things she’d done.

  Ada arrived with her two suitcases. She gave Noemi only perishable things, flowers, fruit, herbs in pots, fragrant oils, tickets to a concert, subscriptions to magazines. Noemi would ask, ‘Which affects you most, the family you had as a child, or the family you create as an adult?’

  ‘You shaped my past,’ Ada told her, ‘you tell me.’

  Saul said, ‘You’ve always had a perfect life.’

  ‘Sure I have,’ said Ada with patent sarcasm.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘not always easy.’ Saul understood that artists suffer.

  ‘Normal like that,’ said Ada.

  ‘Sophie would always say to me, “Thank the divine that you are not a writer.”’

  Ada thought that was pretty funny. ‘She’d tell me, “Remember you are not obliged to be happy.” You have no idea how helpful that was.’

  ‘Why,’ asked Saul, ‘were you not always happy?’

  ‘I know how to worry,’ Ada told him mildly. ‘I was born that way.’

  ‘You have the career most writers can only dream about,’ Saul told her. ‘You made a living from your writing from the start, a comfortable living, which could have been spectacular if you had engaged with readers, but, your choice. You go wherever you want, you do whatever you want.’

  That was true enough, but it sounded as if all that should have made her, well, happy.

  ‘I know, you work hard too. Still. You worked out the way you wanted to do it from the start.’

  ‘Not quite at the start,’ Ada said. ‘I learned from my mistakes, like everyone.’

  ‘But you didn’t worry about money,’

  ‘I don’t remember, I don’t think so.’

  Saul talked about all the money from the TV, and more would come with the new film. A lot. Meaning a lot more for him too, but that was all right.

  More money she’d only have to leave. What could she do for herself with more money now? Cryogenic freezing; a booking on the first passenger flight to Mars. Ada had taken care of things, made it clear where her money was to go when she was no more. Meanwhile, Ada l
iked giving money away and gave it in a random, even capricious way.

  At this stage it could not have made any difference to her whether they made the film again or not, but Ada met the makers, that is, the ones who wanted to make it, and listened to their ideas.

  She went to them, got herself driven all the way to Sacramento.

  Two young-ish women and a person who introduced themselves as ‘non-binary’. A trio who lived and worked together. The three had made a name for themselves with a series they paid for by a modest crowd-funding campaign; it played in some festivals, was uploaded to the web, got so many views, a very great number.

  ‘TV is hungry for content,’ they kept informing Ada. And now they had a go-ahead to make a two-part film for an uprising streaming network.

  ‘Prestige network,’ said one of them, gesturing with ironic air quotes.

  ‘We were talking about updating Turn Left At Venus, make it today, as it is so relevant, the planet needs saving now.’

  ‘But,’ one of them said, ‘we also thought, it could be exciting keeping it set in the period it was written, another way of showing how relevant it is.’

  They had pitched their idea already, and now they knew about her.

  ‘We admit, we first knew the old film.’

  ‘But that sent us eventually to the book, and to you.’

  The updating idea won, and they were about to create even more commotion than they expected or dared hope for with the announcement of who they would cast as The Stranger.

  Ada was never likely to object; why would she? She couldn’t have written The Stranger that way back then but a new her couldn’t not write it that way today.

  The trio were going to make it set in a time that’s a bit like then a bit like now a bit like it will be.

  ‘So!’ And by now they were looking at each other, charmed by each other, the old writer from the long ago, the new young makers from the now and the coming times.

  They were young, they were the future, the works of old belonged to them now.

  ‘I got the right feeling,’ she told Saul. ‘So let them do it.’

  They would re-imagine it, it would be theirs not hers. She would sign.

  But there were also network executives involved. This was a big-budget series, this wasn’t something you could shoot on a phone and put up on YouTube. The network found out that the original writer was still alive, and there was pressure on Saul.

  ‘Have you thought about what I asked you?’ said Saul. He was in the office, talking into that larger newer computer. A lot of the books had been moved out. The cat had died.

  Ada was in her favourite hotel in Singapore. She was on her way to Sydney. She kept thinking this was probably the last time she would fly to Sydney. She didn’t need a wheelchair at the airport but had almost wished for one last time.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ said Ada. ‘It would be too disrespectful to everyone I have refused until now.’

  The thought of having to talk about her work to strangers – that was horrifying. They’d ask about her process, her lifestyle, her intentions, where her ideas came from; she’d seen enough author interviews. Give them an inch, it never stops. The reader would feel entitled to know what she never cares about. It’s not that Ada doesn’t love her readers, she really does love them, but she meets them in the books’ dimension not this world of favourite celebrities and absurd transitory kerfuffles about what The Stranger could look like.

  ‘I understand,’ said Saul. Who didn’t really. ‘Still, at this time of your life, it’s a whole new proposition. You could vet the questions. You could start with doing something online. They really want to know what you think of the casting. A statement from you about that would be golden.’

  Noemi says, ‘Nakedness was revolutionary once. Now, to protect your own mystery is very radical.’

  ‘I wasn’t even trying to be radical.’

  ‘No one can replace me but I want you to be happy,’ Noemi tells Ada.

  ‘I’m going to be on my own when I’m not with you,’ Ada tells Noemi, who makes her immaterial presence felt.

  ‘I’m going to Sydney now,’ Ada told Saul.

  ‘I hear it’s changed. Same like all cities have. Expensive.’ Saul now refrained from telling her she should have bought there; it made no difference now, there was still a little hotel she liked in the only part of town she ever went to, the part that to her meant Sydney. She might stay on, write her next thing there again, her last thing, like her first, in the same place. You can only move very slowly when you’re 200 years old or whatever she is. Words didn’t come easily anymore and seemed strange when they did. Like you’re not sure the word you’re thinking of is the right word for anything at all. You have to have places on this earth, in this life, to return to.

  Saul had an idea he was fond of.

  She thought she’d left him back on her laptop in Singapore but here he was on her phone in Sydney.

  It was like this, it was a new world now. People could find out anything within seconds.

  The movie was in development and people wanted to know its origins. Not only the earlier film, but who wrote it originally. Someone wanted to do a story on the original writer. They found out she was still living.

  They must have found out from Saul, where else? But Ada just listened for now.

  Saul said, ‘They’ll do the story with you or without you.’

  He said, ‘They’ll find the research where someone found out who you are.’

  He said, ‘If they want to find you they will. They don’t want to protect you, like the fans do; they want interest in their product.’

  Ada said, ‘Then every time we turned down such requests, the people we said no to, it all means nothing. Or worse.’

  Anyway, people liked not knowing. They liked having a version. They liked calling for a reveal while not really wanting it.

  Saul was trying to make his point. ‘Come out before they out you.’

  No, why should she? Ada said, ‘I can’t see any reason to.’

  And besides, it had happened once and nothing much came of it. Pretty much everyone preferred A. L. Ligeti to be unknown, private, the name of an author not a personality, proof of the possibility of privacy.

  Saul said, ‘It’s a different world now. Once you could be in control of what parts of you you allow to be seen.’

  Ada said, ‘I’m an old, old woman now, I just really don’t care. I just want to go for a little walk now.’

  34

  TREASURE MAKERS AND ANCESTORS

  The room is full, full of the breath and auras of several human beings.

  The ones in virtual appearance as if emanations, as if on interstellar winds.

  The ones bodily present, they’ve brought in the outside air, its metallic and organic odours. The vapours ascending from their skins and the fabrics of their clothes mingle and reform as a new blend, settling and again rising. New voices are whispering, shushing, sometimes with a giggle as someone is nervous perhaps even terrified.

  ‘Can she hear us?’

  Jay says, ‘We have to assume they can hear and understand.’

  A sense of respectful compliance calms the fluster. Jay’s cohort needs direction. Jay’s directing. Jay’s in charge of this room, for a while longer anyway.

  ‘They’re not going to speak or move again, ever?’ Not an inquiry, more an averment, a rehearsal.

  Their air of expectancy, of something immense.

  The vibrations of drugs that awakened a sense of heightened actuality.

  ‘Will you get in trouble if we have this here?’

  A couple of them laugh a bit. Bit late for that now.

  ‘Wait, should you be doing that?’ says the one called Brix. That moment of a question in the air, a question about why the question was even asked.

  ‘Of course,’ a Twin says finally. ‘We all do it, don’t we.’ The two who are called The Coilsplit Twins sound the same.

  ‘It’s what we do no
w, we’re the recording angels now.’

  ‘We can all decide together later who can see this.’

  A lighter flares and the scent of incense flavours the room, sandalwood, cedar, frankincense; it smells like a temple in here now or one of those Wiccan rituals.

  What do you want? Revenge? Forgiveness? A blessing? No need for a tomb. Earliest memory. Last thing that happened.

  ‘We are gathered here for you …’ They are grouped around Ada now, a shift in tone.

  In one consent, they are here to do good, they are here to do a bold, kind thing, they are here as if religion, they are here to express something that swelled and bruised their hearts, they are here to be bound together, they are here for an expression of their commonality, compassion. They are here to enact an ideal or a sacrifice to an ideal. They are breathing as one.

  Jay is saying, ‘We are here for you, and we are all looking absolutely gorgeous.’

  The air tingles with an electric shimmer.

  Jay’s head is now so close, almost touching, now murmuring directly to Ada, so very softly, ‘Now, I’m going to give you something that would ease any possible pain. Thanks to Brix and Kay Dee for sharing their drugs.’

  They are here for this sense of awe exhaled into the room.

  Jay says, ‘We shall each say what your work has meant to us. In just a few words, all right?’ They’ve been prepared.

  A moment in which they must glance at each other, nod, gesture, agree to take their turns. The several voices around her are those of people Ada knows – or no, not exactly the same ones, but so very nearly.

  The people you know in life become other people; Ada has found that a person’s life story often has a small number of lead characters who reappear with altered names and modified identities. But you can be surprised.

  Jay says, ‘So I’ll go first. I was still young and confused when I read Turn Left At Venus and found out that someone else too had strange thoughts. Mine were a bit different. But the same in strangeness. So I made peace with strangeness and when I found out this is who wrote that book my life made even more sense.’