‘Mother?’ Ben frowned, not understanding. The repetition of the phrase had been assured, almost professional, and his mother did not play.
She turned, surprised to see him there, a slight colour at her cheeks. ‘I…’ Then she laughed and shook her head. ‘Yes, it was me. Come. I’ll show you.’
He went across and sat beside her on the long, bench-like piano seat. ‘This is new,’ he said, looking down at the piano. Then, matter-of-factly, he added, ‘Besides, you don’t play.’
‘No,’ she said, but began anyway: a long, introductory passage, more complex than the phrase she had been playing – a fast, passionate piece played with a confidence and skill the earlier attempt had lacked. He watched her hands moving over the keys, surprised and delighted.
‘That’s beautiful,’ he said when she had finished. ‘What was it?’
‘Chopin. From the Preludes.’ She laughed, then turned and glanced at him, her eyes bright with enjoyment.
‘I still don’t understand. That was excellent.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’ She leaned back, staring down at the keyboard. ‘I’m rather rusty. It’s a long while since I played.’
‘Why didn’t you play before now?’
‘Because it’s an obsession.’
She had said it without looking at him, as if it explained everything. He looked down at her hands again, saw how they formed shapes above the keys.
‘I had to think of you and Meg. I couldn’t do both, you understand. Couldn’t play and look after you. And I wanted to bring you up. I didn’t trust anyone else to do the job.’
‘So you gave up this?’
If anything, he understood it less. To have such a gift and not use it… it was not possible.
‘Oh, there were plenty of times when I felt like playing. I ached to do it. It was like coming off a drug. A strong, addictive drug. And in denying that part of me I genuinely felt less human. But there was no choice. I wanted to be a mother to you, not simply a presence flitting through your lives.’
He frowned, not following her. It made him realize how little he knew about her. She had always been too close, too familiar. He had never thought to ask her about herself, about her life before she had met his father.
‘My own mother and father were never there, you see.’ Her hands formed a major chord, then two quick minors. It sounded familiar, yet, like the Chopin, he couldn’t place it.
‘I was determined not to do to you what they did to me. I remember how isolated I felt. How unloved.’ She smiled, reaching across to take his right hand – his human hand – and squeeze it.
‘I see.’
It awed him to think she had done that for them. He ran the piece she had played through his memory, seeing where she placed emphasis, where she slowed. He could almost feel the music. Almost.
‘How does it feel to be able to do that?’
She drew in a long breath, looking through him, suddenly distant, her eyes and mouth lit with the vaguest of smiles, then shook her head. ‘No. I can’t say. There aren’t the words for it. Raised up, I guess. Changed. Different somehow. But I can’t say what, exactly.’
For the first time in his life Ben felt something like envy, watching her face. Not a jealous, denying envy, but a strong desire to emulate.
‘But why now?’
‘Haven’t you guessed?’ She laughed and placed his right hand on the keyboard. ‘You’re usually so quick.’
‘You’re going to teach me.’
‘Both of you,’ she answered, getting up and coming behind him so that she could move his arms and manipulate his hands. ‘Meg asked me to. And she wouldn’t learn unless you could too.’
He thought about it a moment, then nodded.
‘What was that piece you were playing when I came in? It sounded as if you were learning it for the first time, yet at the same time knew it perfectly.’
She leaned closer, her warmth pressed against his shoulder, her long, dark hair brushing against his cheek. ‘It wasn’t originally a piece for piano, that’s why. It was scored for the string and woodwind sections of an orchestra. It’s by Grieg. “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen”.’ She placed her hands either side of his own and repeated the phrase he had heard, then played a second, similar one.
‘That’s nice,’ he said. Its simplicity appealed to him.
‘You came back early,’ she said. ‘What’s up? Didn’t you want to go into town?’
He turned, meeting her eyes. ‘Father called. The T’ang has asked him to stay on a few days.’
There was a brief movement of disappointment in her face. It had been three months since she had seen Hal.
‘A few more days,’ she said quietly. ‘Ah, well, it’ll soon pass.’ Then, smiling, she put her hand on his arm. ‘Perhaps we’ll have a picnic. You, me and Meg. Like old times. What do you think?’
Ben looked back at her, seeing her anew, the faintest smile playing on his lips and in his eyes. ‘It would be nice,’ he said. But already his thoughts were moving on, his mind toying with the possibilities of the keyboard. Pushing things further. ‘Yes,’ he said, getting up and going over to her. ‘Like old times.’
The next morning found Ben in the shadowed living-room, crouched on his haunches, staring intently at the screen that filled half the facing wall. He was watching one of the special Security reports that had been prepared for his father some months before, after the T’ang of Africa’s assassination. It was an interesting document, not least because it showed things that were thought too controversial – too inflammatory – for general screening.
The Seven had acted swiftly after Wang Hsien’s death, arresting the last few remnants of opposition at First Level – thus preventing a further outbreak of the War between the factions in the Above – but even they had been surprised by the extent of the rioting lower down the City. There had been riots before, of course, but never on such a widespread scale, nor with such appalling consequences. Officials of the Seven, Deck Magistrates amongst them, had been beaten and killed. Security posts had been destroyed and Security troops forced to pull out of some stacks in fear of their lives. Slowly, very slowly, things had settled, the fires burning themselves out, and in some parts of the City – in East Asia and North America, particularly – Security had moved back within days to quell the last few pockets of resistance. Order had been restored. But for how long?
He knew it was a warning. A sign of things to come. But would the Seven heed it? Or would they continue to ignore the problems that beset those who lived in the lowest levels of the City, blaming the unrest on groups like the Ping Tiao?
Ben rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. To the respectable Mid-Level citizenry, the Ping Tiao were bogeymen – the very type and symbol of those destructive forces the War had unleashed – and MidText, their media channel, played heavily upon their fears. But the truth was otherwise.
The Ping Tiao had first come into the news eighteen months back, when three members of their faction had kidnapped and murdered a Mid-Level Administrator. They had issued pamphlets claiming that the Administrator was a corrupt and brutal man who had abused his position and deserved his fate. It was the truth, but the authorities had countered at once, depicting the dead official as a well-respected family man who had been the victim of a group of madmen. Madmen who wanted only one thing – to level the City and destroy Chung Kuo itself.
As the weeks passed and further Ping Tiao ‘outrages’ occurred, the media had launched a no-holds-barred campaign against the group, linking their name with any outbreak of violence or civil unrest. There was a degree of truth behind official claims, for the tactics of the Ping Tiao were certainly of the crudest kind, the seemingly random nature of their targets aiming at maximum disruption. However, the extent of Ping Tiao activities was greatly exaggerated, creating the impression that if only the Ping Tiao could be destroyed, the problems they represented would vanish with them.
The campaign had worked. Or at least in the Mid-Levels it had worked. Further d
own, however, in the cramped and crowded levels at the bottom of the City, the Ping Tiao were thought of differently. There they were seen as heroes, their cause as a powerful and genuine expression of long-standing grievances. Support for the terrorists grew and grew. And would have continued growing but for a tragic accident in a Mid-Level creche.
Confidential high-level sources later made it quite clear that the Ping Tiao had had nothing to do with what was termed ‘The Lyon’s Canton Massacre’, but the media had a field day, attacking the Ping Tiao for what they called its ‘cowardly barbarism and inhumanity’.
The effect was immediate. The tide of opinion turned against the Ping Tiao overnight, and a subsequent Security operation against the terrorists resulted in the capture and execution of over eight hundred members of the faction – most of them identified by previously sympathetic friends and neighbours.
For the Ping Tiao those few weeks had been disastrous. They had sunk into obscurity. Yet in the past few days they seemed to have put that behind them. Fish emblems – the symbol of the Ping Tiao – had been seen everywhere throughout the levels, painted on walls or drawn in blood on the faces of their victims.
But the authorities had hit back hard. MidText, for instance, had played heavily on old fears. The present troubles, they asserted, were mainly the result of a conspiracy between the Ping Tiao and a small faction in the Above who financed their atrocities.
Ben froze the tape momentarily, thinking back to what Li Shai Tung had said – on that evening five years earlier – about knowing his enemy. It was on this level, accepting at face value the self-deluding half-truths of the MidText images, that Li Shai Tung had been speaking then. But these men – terrorist and Company men alike – were merely cyphers: the scum on the surface of the well. And the well was deep. Far deeper than the Seven dared imagine.
He let the tape run. At once the babble began again, the screen filling once more with images of riot and despoliation.
Vast crowds surged through the lower levels, destroying guard posts and barriers, wrecking storefronts and carrying off whatever they could lay their hands on. Unfortunate officials were beaten to death before the camera, or bound and doused in petrochemicals before being set on fire. Ben saw how the crowd pressed in tightly about one such victim, roaring their approval as a frail, grey-bearded magistrate was hacked to death. He noted the ugly brutality in every face, and nodded to himself. Then the image changed, switching to another crowd, this one more orderly. Hastily made banners were raised on every side, demanding increased food rations, a resumption of state aid to the jobless and an end to travel restrictions. ‘Pien hua!’ they chanted in their hundred thousands, ‘Pien hua!’
Change!
There was a burning indignation in many of the faces; in others a fierce, unbridled need that had no outlet. Some waved long knives or clubs in the air and bared their teeth in ferocious animal smiles, a gleam of sheer delight in their eyes at having thrown off all restraints. For many this was their first taste of such freedom and they danced frenziedly in time with the great chant, intoxicated by the madness that raged on every side.
‘PIEN HUA! PIEN HUA! PIEN HUA! PIEN HUA!’
Ben watched the images flash up one after another, conscious of the tremendous power, the dark potency that emanated from them. It was primordial. Like some vast movement of the earth itself. And yet it was all so loosely reined, so undirected. Change, they demanded. But to what?
No one knew. No one seemed capable of imagining what Change might bring. In time, perhaps, someone would find an answer to that question – would draw the masses to him and channel that dark tide of discontent. But until then, the Seven had been right to let the storm rage, the flood waters rise unchecked; for they knew the waters would recede, the storm blow itself out. To have attempted to control that vast upsurge of feeling or repress it could only have made things worse.
Ben blanked the screen, then stood, considering what he had seen. Wang Hsien’s death may have been the catalyst, but the real causes of the mass violence were rooted much deeper. Were, in fact, as old as Man himself. For this was how Man really was beneath his fragile shell of culture. And not just those he had seen on the screen, the madness dancing in their eyes, but all of Mankind. For a long time they had tried to fool themselves, pretending they were something else – something more refined and spiritual, something more god-like and less animal than they really were. But now the lid was off the well, the darkness bubbling to the surface once again.
‘Ben?’
He turned. Meg was watching him from the doorway, the morning sunlight behind her throwing her face and figure into shadow, making her look so like his mother that, momentarily, he mistook her. Then, realizing his error, he laughed.
‘What is it?’ she asked, her voice rich and low.
‘Nothing,’ he answered. ‘Is it ready?’
She nodded, then came into the room. ‘What were you watching?’
He glanced at the empty screen, then back at her. ‘I was looking at Father’s tapes. About the riots.’
She looked past him. ‘I thought you weren’t interested.’
‘I’m not. At least, not in the events themselves. But the underlying meaning of it all… that fascinates me. The faces – they’re like windows to their souls. All their fears and aspirations show nakedly. But it takes something like this to do it. Something big and frightening. And then the mask slips and the animal stares out through the eyes.’
And the Ping Tiao, he thought. I’m interested in them, too. Because they’re something new. Something the City has been missing until now. A carp to fill an empty pool.
‘Well… shall we go out?’
She smiled. ‘Okay. You first.’
On the lawn beside the flower-beds, their mother had spread out a picnic on a big red and white checked tablecloth. As Ben came out into the open she looked across at him and smiled. In the sunlight she seemed much younger than she really was, more Meg’s older sister than her mother. He went across and sat beside her, conscious of the drowsy hum of bees, the rich scent of the blooms masking the sharp salt tang of the bay. It was a perfect day, the blue above them broken here and there by big, slow-drifting cumuli.
Ben looked down at the picnic spread before them. It all looked newly created. A wide basket filled with apples lay at the centre of the feast, their perfect, rounded greenness suggesting the crispness of the inner fruit. To the left the eye was drawn to the bright yellow of the butter in its circular, white china dish and, beside it, the richer, almost honeyed yellow of the big wedge of cheddar. There was a big plate of thick-cut ham, the meat a soft pink, the rind a perfect snowy white, and next to that a fresh-baked loaf, three slices cut from it and folded forward, exposing the fluffy whiteness of the bread. Bright red tomatoes beaded with moisture shared a bowl with the softer green of a freshly washed lettuce, while other, smaller bowls held tiny radishes and onions, peeled carrots, grapes and celery, redcurrants and watercress.
‘It’s nice,’ he said, looking to his mother.
Pleased, she handed him a plate. A moment later Meg reappeared, carrying a tray on which were three tall glasses and a jug of freshly made iced lemonade. He laughed.
‘What is it?’ Meg asked, setting the tray down.
‘This,’ he said, indicating the spread laid out before them.
Meg’s smile faded slowly. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?’
‘No,’ he said softly, reassuringly. ‘It’s marvellous.’ He smiled, then leaned forward, beginning to transfer things to his plate.
Meg hesitated, then poured from the jug, handing him the cold, beaded glass. ‘Here.’
He set his plate down, then took the glass and sipped. ‘Hmm,’ he said, his eyes smiling back at her. ‘Perfect.’
Beside him his mother was busy, filling a plate for Meg. She spoke without looking at him.
‘Meg tells me you’ve been reading Nietzsche.’
He glanced across at Meg. She was looking
down, a faint colour in her cheeks.
‘That’s right.’ He sipped again, then stared at the side of his glass intently.
His mother turned her head, looking at him. ‘I thought you’d read Nietzsche.’
‘I did. When I was eight.’
‘Then I don’t understand. I thought you said you could never read a thing twice.’
He met her eyes. ‘So I thought. But it seems I was wrong.’
She was silent a while, considering, then looked back at him again. ‘Then you can forget things, after all?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not a question of forgetting. It’s just that things get embedded.’
‘Embedded?’
He paused, then set his glass down, realizing he would have to explain.
‘I realized it months ago, when Father quoted something from Nietzsche to me. Two lines from Ecce Homo. The memory should have come back clearly, but it didn’t. Oh, it was clear enough in one sense – I could remember the words plain enough. I could even see them on the page and recall where I was when I read them. But that was it, you see. That’s what I mean by things getting embedded. When Father triggered that specific memory, it came back to me in context, surrounded by all the other ragbag preoccupations of my eight-year-old self.’
Ben reached out and took a tomato from the bowl and polished it on his sleeve, then looked up at his mother again, his face earnest, almost frowning.
‘You see, those lines of Nietzsche were interlaced with all kinds of other things. With snatches of music – Mahler and Schoenberg and Shostakovich – with the abstract paintings of Kandinsky and Klee, the poetry of Rilke and Donne and Basho, and god knows what else. A thousand intricate strands. Too many to grasp at a single go. But it wasn’t just a case of association by juxtaposition – I found that my reading, my very understanding of Nietzsche, was coloured by those things. And try as I might, I couldn’t shake those impressions loose and see his words fresh. I had to separate it physically.’
‘What do you mean?’ Beth asked, leaning forward to take a grape from the bunch.
‘I mean that I had to return to the text. To read the words fresh from the page again. Free from all those old associations.’
The Art of War Page 20
