by Tina Shaw
A woman wearing a black dress comes running into this scene. She speaks rapidly to the chef. “The Director is coming. He’s on his way. Is everything ready?”
“Yes, yes,” he says, “everything as usual, just the way he likes it. The same as every morning.”
The woman pauses then, glancing around the kitchen, checking on everything. She clasps her hands together. “All right. But no mistakes today. He only ate one bite of the pastries yesterday. I will hold you personally responsible if he takes his custom to another restaurant,” she says, marching away.
The fat man, shaking his head, confides in one of the young men: “Only one bite, huh. He probably wasn’t all that hungry. That’s hardly my fault.”
“Perhaps he didn’t like the chocolate?” suggests the young man.
“Everybody likes chocolate. Especially the Director.” The chef looks distracted. Hands on hips, he turns to study his kitchen. “Quickly,” he says, addressing a thin young man, “get me some eggs out of the cooler. We’re going to make crepes with brandy.” And he grabs a metal bowl, plucking ingredients from shelves, muttering under his breath.
Intrigued, I creep back to the street. It’s not long to wait before the sleek black automobile pulls up to the kerb. Pedestrians hurry out of the way. The driver hops out of the car and opens the back door. A broad-shouldered Travester in a black suit gets out first. He glances in every direction, scanning the street, then bends down to the open door and says something. Then the Director climbs out and walks straight into the restaurant.
The other man and the driver stay by the car, speaking softly together. Light shines off the driver’s polished leather cap. Crouching in the shadows, I stay there for a while, listening to the hubbub inside the kitchen and keeping an eye on the street. The Director comes out of the restaurant and gets back into the automobile, which glides away down the avenue, heading towards the House of Law. I check the position of the sun: it’s around ten.
Finally, something helpful I can tell Jorzy.
10
Afternoon, and I’m dozing in my cubbyhole when Marina crawls in beside me.
“Leho,” she whispers, “are you awake?”
“I am now,” I mutter irritably. “What d’you want?”
She lies on her back, hands linked over her ribs, and stares at the low, stained ceiling of the cubbyhole. From somewhere in the building comes the sound of high-pitched singing.
“I hate this city,” she says finally, sighing.
“What is it?” Alert, I roll onto my side to look at her properly. “What’s wrong?”
There are two high points of colour in her cheeks, but her lips are pale. She turns her head to me; her eyes seem darker than usual. “They have refused my dispensation.”
I shrug; I can’t see what all the fuss is about. “So you can’t go and visit our aunt and uncle.”
Marina smiles faintly. “No, I can’t,” she murmurs. The building mumbles and creaks around us, boots sounding on the floor above, distant shouts. “Leho, if I tell you something, will you promise not to tell Jorzy?”
What can I say? I hate keeping secrets, and especially from Jorzy.
“You must promise,” Marina insists. “Cross your heart and hope to die.”
“All right, I promise,” I say, annoyed with her. How can I promise something when I don’t know what it is? But this is my sister, and I’ve never denied her anything. “If it’s that important …” I add, reluctant to hear her secret.
She is staring at the cracked ceiling a couple of feet above her head. In a low voice she says, “I’m pregnant.”
“What? Are you sure?” I whisper fiercely.
“Yes,” she says softly.
“How could you be so careless–”
“You,” she pokes my shoulder, “you don’t know anything about it.” A tear slides down her cheek. She takes a ragged breath, and looks away again. “It wasn’t my fault. It was Travester Harett, he–” Another tear runs down her cheek, landing like a raindrop on the shoulder of her dress.
I push up onto my elbow. “What? You’re saying he raped you?” I hiss, hot with anger. “Is that what you’re saying, Marina?”
Her fluid gaze meets mine, her eyes animal-dark and filled with fear. “You mustn’t tell Jorzy,” she whispers. “I don’t know what he’d do.”
Defeated, I fall onto my back, so we lie like sarcophagus twins. No wonder she wanted to hide away in the countryside. Maybe Nanna had a contact that could have taken care of Marina until she had the baby – until it could be adopted out, and she could come back. But in the city, she will have to go into hiding, in a basement or attic. Even then, what to do with a baby once it is born? You can’t keep a baby hidden indefinitely. Somebody is bound to report you to the Black Marks. I’ve even heard how the old women have ways to induce an abortion; everybody talks about it behind their hands.
“So Nanna knows–”
Marina gives a nod. That explains why Nanna has been so grumpy lately. “And I’ve told Ma.”
“What about the contraceptive?” I ask, thinking of the depots where Cerel women have to report every two months for the injection. There’s one in our street, a dingy brick building with steps worn smooth by all the women going into it.
Her fingers are twined together so tightly they look bloodless. “I – I don’t know. People say they don’t always work. I’ve heard stories. Sometimes there are … accidents. Women fall pregnant. And some of them want to keep the baby.”
We both know what happens if a Cerel should fall pregnant and want to keep the baby: eventually the woman disappears. They aren’t allowed to have babies any more. Babet was the last baby in our building, and she’s nearly nine.
“Maybe the last dose they gave me wasn’t strong enough,” she continues with a frown. “It can vary … Or, it happened about the time I was due for the next injection, maybe the drug had run low, its effectiveness …” Her voice falters, as if she has run out of energy.
I can hear the kitchen merchant outside on the street, banging his pots together to call the women out to see his wares. “But why the country?” I wonder out loud.
Marina gives a low chuckle and a sniffle.“You’ll think I’m silly.” I make no response, not thinking anything. “I know it would’ve been dangerous, and I know it would’ve been a mongrel, but Leho, I wanted to keep it.”
I roll my eyes.
“Oh, Leho,” she whispers, grabbing my wrist, “what am I going to do?”
“Have you told Nanna about the dispensation?”
She shakes her head. “Not yet. I’ve only just heard.”
“She’ll know what to do.”
“Yes, maybe,” she says with a sigh. “She might know what to do.”
There’s the sound of boots in the hallway and we both freeze. “Hey, you two, what’re you doing in there?” It’s Jorzy, peering in at us, his face darkened from the day’s welding, except for around his eyes where the skin is white from the goggles.
Marina instantly reverts to her usual self. “Jorzy,” she exclaims, shimmying out of the cubbyhole, “you look like a raccoon!”
Staying put, I listen to their voices as they move away. Jorzy’s voice is teasing, while my sister’s is light and lowered, as if she hasn’t a care in the world. How can she do that?
Rolling onto my side, I reach out a finger to touch the wall, tracing the charcoal picture I’ve drawn – a tree hung with orb-like apples. Nanna’s gods promise an afterlife where you can dwell in beautiful gardens filled with sweet-smelling trees and music made by water tinkling into fountains. With a huff, I roll onto my back, linking my fingers beneath my head, and wonder what Emee would make of our idea of paradise.
She would probably say why should Cerels have such a place, and not Travesters? No, we’d die and find the Travesters running even paradise.
* * *
Two days later, me and Jorzy are in the scrublands outside our father’s camp, lying on our fronts in the long dry gra
ss of an abandoned piece of land. Some distance away, beyond a high wire fence, is the yard of the wild camp. Single wooden buildings are placed in a cluster like toy blocks.
“It must be too early yet for them to come out,” says Jorzy.
It’s his day off from the factory, and he’s asked me to show him the wild camp. We’ve been here once before, but not for a while. It makes me wonder what he’s got in his mind. Being alone with Jorzy like this, I’m itching to tell him about Marina, except she would kill me.
“Doesn’t matter.” I shrug. “They don’t have a routine, from what I’ve seen. They come out at odd times.”
A glossy cricket hops onto the back of my hand, and I flip it away. An airship drones overhead, its plump body casting a long shadow on the ground, and I hope the crew in the cabin won’t notice us down here.
“Sometimes, when you think they’re due to have some exercise, they don’t come out at all.” I push a shank of hair back off my forehead. “I dunno if it’s a punishment, or maybe somebody forgets to let them out.” In my mind, the men in the wild camp are sort of like penned cattle, milling around aimlessly, waiting to be let outside.
Jorzy squints ahead. Sun glints off iron roofs. “What are all those men doing in there?” he wonders out loud.
“I hear noises sometimes,” I admit. Jorzy doesn’t know how often I come here, just watching and listening. “Hammering. That kind of thing. Maybe they’re building something.”
My brother snorts. He rolls onto his back and closes his eyes to soak up the sun. He must miss being outside. “Right. Like they first told us. How the men were being taken away to work on the roads.”
There’s nothing I can say to that. We were told one thing, but another happened.
A guard comes out of one of the low wooden buildings. I watch as the man disappears around the side. “Our parents,” I say quietly, “their friends – if they had killed the Director, none of this would be happening now.”
Jorzy’s eyes flicker open. “You don’t know that. It could have been worse.”
“Worse than Papa stuck in a wild camp?” I say bitterly. “Jorzy,” I add in a low voice, looking at his sharp nose and his dark gaze scanning the empty sky, knowing I’m about to unleash something, “I know where the Director goes every morning.”
Jorzy looks at me, alert. “What did you say?”
“The Director,” I repeat patiently, “he goes to this restaurant every morning around ten.”
Jorzy grips my arm, hurting me. “Which restaurant?”
“I can show you.”
My brother nods and releases me. He rolls over and his eyes go back to the camp though I can tell he’s thinking about the Director. “Good,” he murmurs, “that could be useful. Good work, Leho.”
And my heart swells to think I might have helped my older brother. Even if it’s with something dangerous. I just wish I could do more.
* * *
After the evening meal, I walk with Ma back down the corridor to her cell-like room. “What news from the city, Leho?” she asks, touching the cane lightly to the wall.
“I heard there was a riot at one of the wild camps,” I tell her.
She grips my shoulder. “Which one?”
“Not Papa’s.” We go through the open doorway and towards her spindle chair. She sits down with a sigh.
“What happened?”
I sit on the bed, wanting to tell her a sanitised version, though she will have heard worse. “The usual.”
They shot them all, my friend Eric said.
Ma nods grimly, knowing without my saying it out loud. “Just another excuse to cull the men.” Evening light coming through the high wooden shutters on the window falls on the side of her face, colours her long hair mahogany. Her scars don’t look so bad in this light. “What was the riot about?”
“They were trying to escape. Got one of the guards.”
Eric saw everything from a copse of trees beyond the wire fence. He’s a boy who watches the wild camps. For some food or a coin, he’ll report on what he’s seen. Some Cerel women give him a photograph, if they have one, and pay him to spy out their husbands or fathers. Nobody’s allowed anywhere near the camps, but a careful boy can get close enough to see and hear what’s going on.
“Good on them,” my mother murmurs. “At least they didn’t die in vain.”
It makes me feel sick, thinking it might be Papa next.
“I hate it,” I say quietly.
She raises her chin, turning her face in my direction. “I know, son.” Then she smiles, changing the subject. “I remember when I was a girl, and the city was so peaceful – we used to play hide-and-seek in Anahay Park. Gosh, it was fun. So many trees – you could get lost in that park.”
Anahay Park is still there, and I’ve walked its wide tree-lined avenues; though only late at night, when the Travesters are in their houses.
“In autumn it was golden – the trees turned gold, and the ground was also gold from the fallen leaves. It was so lovely.” She sighs. “In winter, we’d take our sleds to the park. There was a slope that was perfect for sledding.”
The sound of singing comes from another part of the building. I take a toothpick from my jacket pocket and start cleaning the dirt out from under my nails. My hands could do with a wash.
“Tell me about the doll’s house,” I say.
“Ah.” She smiles. “The beautiful doll’s house in my Travester friend’s room. We’d play with that house for hours. It had a roof that lifted up on hinges, so you could move the little people and the furniture around. We’d make up stories about the doll people, things they had done, their comings and goings, little dramas. There were even little plates with tiny meals on them. One plate was heaped with fruit. Another with bread and cheese. We’d set up little meals around the table with the dolls. Mother and father and children, all together, and living in this beautiful mansion of a house.” She sighs again. “So beautiful.”
“I saw something similar the other day,” I tell her. “But it was glass and metal, like the House of Law, and instead of people inside, it had little animals, pairs of them. It was in the window of a house. I saw it one night. It was lit up inside by some kind of small lamp so the whole thing was glowing.”
Her head’s on one side. “That is special,” she agrees. “I should like to have seen that.” She turns her cloudy eyes to me, and it’s like her mother’s instinct is seeking me out.
“Tell me about Jorzy,” says Ma, her tone changing, “why doesn’t he come to see me? He’s at the table each night, but he doesn’t come and chat like he used to. Is he keeping away from me for some reason?”
“He’s been busy,” I say quickly.
An inadequate answer, yet I can’t tell her what I suspect, that Jorzy doesn’t want to be alone with Ma in case she asks too many questions, or the right question. Ma is sharp. And she’s been here before, where Jorzy is right now: plotting an overthrow. Or at least, plotting something.
She seems like she wants to say more when we’re interrupted by a wild shriek. Babet and her friend rush into the room, pulling to an abrupt stop, giggling and puffing in front of Ma.
“You’ll never guess what we’ve just seen!” Babet exclaims breathlessly.
Ma clasps her hands together, leaning forwards. “Oh, what?”
“An enormous stick insect, this big.” Babet laughs, holding her hands a foot apart.
Ma smiles, reaching out to feel the hand span. “Well, I never. And where did you see this enormous creature?”
“In the turnips,” Babet explodes. “Leho, you’ve got to come and see it.”
“Yes, Leho,” my mother echoes, turning to me. “You go, son.”
“All right.”
The kids skip out of the room and I’m about to follow them when my mother says quietly, “And Leho, send Jorzy along to see me. There are things I would like to discuss with him.”
I’ll give my brother the message, but whether he’ll come or not is a
different matter. So many secrets. It’s not good to have so many secrets in a family.
* * *
A couple of days later, me and Bit are having a heated though whispered debate in a corner of the room Bit shares with his mother. We’re in-between a dark dresser and Bit’s bed, the faded patchwork cover neatly pulled up to the pillow.
“What do you want to go there for?”
“I told you – to see.” Ever since I saw the house on the river, I’ve had an idea. It’s a foolhardy idea, true, and it scares me to even consider it, yet I long to be brave and fearless – like my parents once were.
“You’ll get caught,” says Bit, disgusted, “and then they’ll throw you in a wild camp.”
“I won’t get caught,” I tell him, “and they don’t put boys my age in the camps.”
“They will this time!” His eyes are hard and pinched.
“Don’t be such a coward. All we’re doing is a little spying.”
“I am not a coward,” he protests. “Besides, what d’you need me for? You can go by yourself.”
“Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?”
The dog, sitting between us, turns her head each time either of us speaks, as if watching a ball being lobbed through the air.
“I don’t want to get caught. There’s only me and my mother now, and if I got caught, she’d be all by herself.”
With a frustrated sigh, I give up. You can’t beat that kind of argument. I flop onto Bit’s bed and link my hands behind my head. Bit sits in a chair by the dresser, and the dog rests her head on his knee.
“I was at the ruins yesterday,” he says, the peacemaker, “and I found this.” He tosses something over that I catch deftly, turning it in my hand and examining it closely.
