A Very Private Life

by Michael Frayn

  They look at each other. Uncumber lifts her arms and then drops them helplessly. He smiles at her. She starts to smile back, then looks down, her chin trembling. She tries not to cry; she’s not sure what she’d be crying about, anyway—perhaps just alarm. What has she done? What has she committed herself to?

  “Nin,” sighs Noli, giving his little salute again. “Nessom, Uncumber. Shuras hov.”

  “Oh! Don’t go yet! There’s all sorts of things I want to—I mean, we’ve scarcely—”

  “Nessom, nessom,” he says. Then with great earnestness he leans forward and points first at her and then at himself. “Solim … honim … kala ao tisini tisini…. Nessom.”

  And he disappears.

  For some time Uncumber gazes at the blank screen and touches it—even caresses it. Then, as if nothing at all had happened, she dials Archaic Botany again, and for half an hour does become deeply involved in the history of ragwort, milkwort, St. John’s wort, lords-and-ladies, and eggs-and-bacon. Then the ancient weeds are totally obliterated by a wave of anxiety. She turns them off and copies out Noli’s number over and over again on different pieces of paper and in the margins of different books, terrified that she might lose it, and with it all possible evidence of his existence.

  She thinks she will never forget the last words he spoke, they were so true and perfect—when he leant forward and said, “Solim … honim … kala ao tisini tisini…. Nessom.”

  She feels that she has changed so much since the day began that she may have become unrecognizable.

  Nek taomoro Noli …

  “Oh, Cumby!” says Sulpice sadly when she tells him about Noli (though not about his bare eyes). “It sounds just like you, falling in love with a bald-headed man who doesn’t speak the same language. You’re just going to make yourself more unhappy than ever, aren’t you, Cumby?”

  And more unhappy than ever she does indeed become. Because the days will go by, and Noli won’t call. She won’t know where to put herself in her misery. She’ll get up from her air couch and walk up and down the room, she’ll be so agitated; she’ll wring her hands, and sigh and wish she were at least mildly dead. She confides in Sulpice, but can’t talk to him for more than a few minutes at a time before she becomes convinced that Noli is trying to get through to her and is getting the “busy” signal. So she switches off and waits on her own once again.

  She calls an information channel and hurriedly looks up the 515–214–442 area on the map: 515 turns out to be astonishingly remote, if one thinks of it in geographical terms—beyond 302, even, and bordering on the West 244 Sea. The climate is rather hot, she discovers, and there are important sea-vegetation farms along the 515–214 coast. At 515–214–442 itself there doesn’t seem to be much except seaplant-processing facilities. Perhaps Noli is a decider or an envisager in the seaplant industry….

  Eventually she surrenders pride and discretion and calls Noli. Her hands shake when she forms the number on the keyboard, and four times she has to abandon the attempt and start all over again. There is a long wait before the number answers, during which she keeps clearing her throat and putting her hands to her face to feel if her expression is as nonchalant as it should be, and to rearrange the set of her mouth less starkly and settle her dark glasses more concealingly over her eyes.

  At last a face appears on the screen—an indifferent-looking young man who is evidently chewing a mouthful of something. He is bare-eyed, and for a terrible moment she thinks it is Noli and that he has changed in some horrible way—or, worse, that she has entirely misremembered him.

  “Isn’t that …?” she begins. “I wanted … I was trying to get … Sorry, wrong number.”

  She switches off and has to walk up and down her room again, pressing her cheeks, before the turbulence caused by this unexpected deflection has settled enough for her to try forming the number once more.

  Again a long wait. And again the young man’s face, still chewing, still bare-eyed, still indifferent.

  “Oh God,” she says, not looking at his eyes. “I’m trying to get 515–214–442–305–217.”

  Without ceasing to chew, the young man twists his head slightly and looks pained, as if he finds her incomprehensible, and culpably so.

  “Isn’t that 515–214–442–305–217?” she asks desperately.

  “Noy?” says the young man indistinctly through his mouthful of food, looking more pained than ever.

  “Please, is that 515–214–442–305–217?”

  The young man shrugs and swallows. “Por sinsin mel … telin fa …” he mutters crossly, and switches off.

  Obviously it was a wrong number. But Uncumber is so cast down at getting it twice, and at hearing Noli’s language used unsympathetically against her, that she cannot bring herself to try again. She feels that it was a bad augury—that two wrong numbers and the harsh use of that caressing language have flawed the magic perfection of the understanding they have enjoyed until now.

  A whole day and a whole night of misery go by before she tries again. This time she orders a registered number, so that there can be no possibility of mistake.

  But it is still not Noli who answers. This time it is a middle-aged woman, also with naked eyes. She has dark hair that hangs flatly down either side of her sad, anxious face, and her chest is all wrapped in cloth. She gazes passively at Uncumber, clearly expecting no good from her. She is the saddest person Uncumber has ever seen. Uncumber feels a bond with her at once—she’s obviously someone like herself, who won’t take Hilarin and the rest.

  Uncumber shows the woman the piece of paper on which she has the number written. The woman reads it slowly, screwing up her eyes and forming each syllable with her lips.

  “Kari mecu sol mimidoro …” she murmurs hopelessly, when she has finished.

  Uncumber waves the paper about and raises her eyebrows in a foolish pantomime of interrogation.

  “Ka, ka …” says the woman uncertainly, nodding.

  “I’ve got the right number?” asks Uncumber.

  “Ka, ka…. Ka, ka….”

  Uncumber can’t think what’s happening. Are there several people sharing a number here? How could they? That would destroy the whole point of the holovision system.

  “Noli …” she says, trying to smile.

  “Noli?” repeats the woman without interest.

  “Ka, ka!” says Uncumber. “Noli! Noli!” She gazes about her, shading her eyes with her hand, trying to indicate that she is looking for him.

  The woman wearily pushes the hair back from her forehead and sighs. “Nek taomoro Noli,” she says.

  Uncumber gazes at her, waiting for her to elucidate in some way.

  “Nek taomoro Noli,” repeats the woman more loudly, pointing out of the chamber.

  “Nek taomoro …” says Uncumber after her, as if the words might yield up some faint savour of meaning when she tries them over on her own tongue.

  “Ka, ka.” The woman nods. “Nek taomoro Noli. Nessom.”

  Uncumber presses her lips together and nods, trying to smile.

  “Ka, ka,” she says. “Nessom.”

  The physical transportation of the human body

  Again and again Uncumber will try to call Noli. She gets the old woman, the young man, other men and women—even children; and all of them with bare eyes. “Noli! Noli!” she begs them. “Niston hona hona Noli,” they reply, shrugging their shoulders, and: “Vos chem Noli i menu o noru,” and, repeatedly: “Nek taomoro Noli.”

  She is tortured by this repetition of “Nek taomoro Noli.” Does it mean “Noli isn’t here just now”? Or that he’s busy? Or asleep? Or does it mean that they don’t know him, have never heard of him? But she feels that they do know him. They’re trying to tell her something about him. That he’s somehow gone away, perhaps? People do go away, they do in certain circumstances leave their houses—that’s what the emergency stairs are for. Maybe they mean he’s sick? Or slightly dead?

  Eventually she thinks of putting the cal
ls through a translation centre; but if anything the results are more frustrating still.

  “He is not here,” says the flat voice of the translating machine.

  “Can you find him for me?”

  “No.”

  “Will he be back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will you ask him to call me?”

  “I don’t know whether this is possible.”

  “Please, please, if you know where he is, find him for me!”

  “This is none of my business.”

  She believes she is beginning to go mad with the frustration of it; she catches herself clutching at her head and gasping aloud at the enormity of the situation, even uttering a little gasping laugh. She will have begun to feel by this time that her conversation with Noli was the most important event of her life—indeed, the only important event, the thing which gives the rest of her life meaning. It will seem to her that at some unconscious level she can recall each syllable they exchanged; that these syllables point to meanings deeper than words could express or conscious thought encompass, to ideas so seminal that they form a root system of premises from which conclusions branch out into every possible area of life—though what these conclusions are she naturally cannot articulate. And now all this is slipping away from her! Through some insane confusion she is being separated from this golden light and pushed away into a dark and meaningless periphery. The indifferent strangers on the screen have formed a line between her and Noli, to shut her out from him! When she is speaking to them she pleads with them, terrified of alienating them further. Later she rages at them for their incomprehension and indifference—no, their comprehension and cruelty.

  The idea that Noli has somehow separated himself from his holovision apparatus—has physically transported his body elsewhere—starts her thinking. It’s true—the body is physically transportable! And if Noli can do it, so can she! In these extraordinary circumstances anything is possible. She could go behind the holovision network! Round the back of the world!

  She begins to dream at night that she has actually taken the step and is floating through the air, through the soft clouds of the detritosphere, which glow red and gold and purple all around her, on her way to Noli. She wakes from these dreams in a state of exaltation, feeling that all her problems have been solved.

  Cautiously she asks Sulpice how people set about physically transporting their bodies.

  “I mean,” she says, “if you and Nanto-Suleta ever decide to share a house, how would you move to it?”

  “That’s very easy, Cumby. You just call up the service channel and ask them to send a travelling house.”

  And this is what she does.

  She makes certain preparations for the journey. She takes enough solid food out of the dispenser to last her till evening. She’s no idea how long physically transporting one’s body about the world takes; it might take all day! She medicates herself carefully against disease, and, remembering her last experience of going out through the door, she folds up a night sheet off the couch, with the idea that she can unfold it and wrap it round herself if she is afflicted by cold.

  Then, without a word to anyone, she opens the secret door which she and Sulpice found so many years before, shuts it carefully behind her, and creeps up the hard dusty stairs to wait for the travelling house.

  In the travelling house

  The travelling house, when it arrives, turns out to be quite comfortable and convenient. It lands on the roof right up against the door, so that when Uncumber opens the door she finds herself stepping directly from one house into the next without coming into contact with the outside world at all. Inside the travelling house there is a small room with somewhat battered upholstery and a collection of Archaic Seashells around the walls. Scarcely has Uncumber lain down on the air couch when the holovision chamber lights up and a wrinkled, cynical face appears.

  “Where to, love?” asks the face.

  “515–214–442–305–217, please,” she says.

  “Where?”

  She repeats the number, made nervous by the man’s incomprehension. He stares at her in pained surprise.

  “Have you any idea in your little head where 515 is?” he asks rudely.

  “I think it’s near 302, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, love, near 302! Down by 348—the other side of 196! What do you think this is—a magic carpet?”

  Uncumber blushes, not knowing what to say.

  “I can’t take you further than 977–921–654—not today. You’ll have to go by rocket, like everybody else. I’ll take you to the rocketport. 515! God save us!”

  He disappears. At once the couch comes up through the layer of air and presses into Uncumber’s back, as if it’s trying to push her up into the ceiling, and her stomach sinks down through the couch, as if it’s trying to reach the floor! It’s the most extraordinary and alarming sensation she has ever felt! And the whole house seems unsteady; it rolls her from side to side on the couch, so that she has to brace herself against the walls. So this is what happens in the physical transportation of the body! It’s not at all like the sensation of flying in her dream. No wonder it’s obsolescent.

  She quickly turns on the holovision and switches it to a soothing channel. But after a moment or two the wizened face of the houseowner replaces the calm, flowing forms.

  “Haven’t you ever travelled before?” he asks, looking at her oddly as she hangs on to anything she can.

  She shakes her head, feeling too strange to speak.

  “You’ve got some clothes with you, have you?”

  She nods.

  “Well, do me a favour, love—put them on now, before you get out into the outside world!”

  People

  When she steps out of the travelling house into the rocketport, a most astonishing scene greets her. People! Hundreds upon hundreds of them—all present in the flesh, together, in the same enormous room!

  For a moment she thinks she must be watching some gigantic holovision chamber. It’s the smell which first makes her realize that she is in the presence of actual physical bodies. She recognizes it; it is the delicate human smell she remembers from her childhood, when she and Sulpice climbed upon their parents and buried their faces in them—a sweet, lost, nostalgic musk, now multiplied several hundredfold so that it chokes and nauseates her.

  She tries not to breathe and pulls the sheet tightly about her to preserve herself from contagion. She is glad of the sheet. Everyone in the room is wrapped in some sort of material—often, as she sees, elaborately cut and shaped to fit the body. People stare at her and point her out to each other. She looks for a couch to lie down on, to be less conspicuous. But there are no couches, only seats, and these all seem to be occupied already. A great many people, in fact, are sitting on boxes or bundles of possessions, or on the floor.

  She is so stunned by this unexpected roomful of people that she cannot bring her mind to bear on it at all. Surely her father had told her that this was what happened in the olden days, this crowding together to move from place to place? Surely it was all done away with years and years ago?

  She finds a corner where she can stop to find her bearings in this extraordinary situation. The noise in the room is almost as disturbing as the stink. There are holovision chambers about the room, with soothing things happening in them, but the familiar sounds which should accompany them are drowned by all the talking that is going on, all the children’s crying, all the hawking, spitting, coughing, and sneezing.

  To Uncumber it seems like some old engraving of hell. And the room is so rundown and grimy! The indestructible surfaces are peeling off the walls, the rustless ceiling is rusting, the holovision chambers have been smashed loose from their mountings and bound back into place with wire. The floor is covered with abandoned packaging, dust, and in places lumps of some indescribable brown stuff which have apparently come off the shoes which people are wearing.

  Some of the people nearest to her, she
notices, are carrying pieces of electrical equipment, or kits of tools. And suddenly it comes to her: these people are all members of the outside classes! It’s obvious, of course, as soon as she thinks about it; the outside classes have to travel around, they have to transport their bodies to wherever their hands are needed.

  Roaming the world, wrapped in their artificial pelts—here, face to face at last, are her animals!

  The ancient trackways of the air

  Eventually, still feeling sick and giddy with the noise and smell of the place, Uncumber forces herself to make a move among the bodies. She finds an old-fashioned information machine—the sort of thing one sees in old tapes by Bregnil or Pin Lao-Tse—which keeps repeating: “May I help you? Ask me your questions,” in a flat, bored tone of voice. She asks it how to get to 515. “Please wait,” grinds out the machine. “There will be a delay of up to one minute while this information is located.” It is grotesquely archaic! It would be funny if it weren’t frightening. Surely the rockets themselves aren’t such hopeless relics of the past?

  But they are, as she discovers when she is transported through the airlock—on a creaking mobile floor which was obsolete when Cynewulf Mbadziwe was a boy—into the rocket which is to take her on the first stage of her journey. It has seats instead of couches, and in places—not, fortunately, near Uncumber—there are holes in the walls, fitted with transparent panels. Windows, for heaven’s sake! The upholstery is torn, the floor filthy; a smell of dust and staleness mingles with the stink of the passengers.

  A battered old lady clutching a case of optical instruments sits down next to Uncumber. She produces a box of garish pink pills, offers one to Uncumber, which she declines, then takes one herself and falls into a deep trance, with her head sagging irresistibly onto Uncumber’s shoulder. Still, Uncumber is grateful for her presence. Only twenty or thirty seats away passengers are shouting and striking each other and vomiting on the floor; she might have been next to them.