The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  I look for Akhmim, to tell him, but he stays in the men’s side of the house, away from the middle where we eat, and far away from the women’s side.

  I begin to understand. He didn’t love me, it was just that he was a harni, and it was me … I led him to myself. Maybe I am no better than Shusilina, with her white hair and pointed ears. So I work, what else is there to do? And I avoid the mistress. Evidently Mardin has told her he is getting rid of me, because the attacks cease. Fadina even smiles at me, if distantly. I would like to make friends with Fadina again, but she doesn’t give me a chance. So I will never see him again. He isn’t even that far from me, and I will never see him again.

  * * *

  There is nothing to be done about it. Akhmim avoids me. I look across the courtyard or across the dining room at the men’s side, but I almost never see him. Once in awhile he’s there, with his long curly hair and his black gazelle eyes, but he doesn’t look at me.

  I pack my things. My new mistress comes. She is a tall, gray-haired woman with slightly pop-eyes. She has a breathy voice and a way of hunching her shoulders as if she wished she were actually a very small woman. I am supposed to give her my life? It is monstrous.

  We are in Mardin’s office. I am upset. I want desperately to leave, I am so afraid of coming into a room and finding the mistress. I am trying not to think of Akhmim. But what is most upsetting is the thought of leaving Mardin. Will the next girl understand that he wants to pretend that he is frugal, but that he really is not? I am nearly overwhelmed by shame because I have caused this. I am only leaving because of my own foolishness, and I have failed Mardin, who only wanted peace.

  I will not cry. These are impressed emotions. Soon I will feel them for this strange woman. Oh Holy, what rotten luck to have gotten this woman for a mistress. She wears bronze and white—bronze was all the fashion when I first came and the mistress wore it often—but this is years after and these are second-rate clothes, a young girl’s clothes and not suited to my mistress at all. She is nervous, wanting me to like her, and all I want to do is throw myself at Mardin’s feet and embarrass him into saying that I can stay.

  Mardin says, “Diyet, she has paid the fee.” He shows me the credit transaction and I see that the fee is lower than it was when I came to Mardin’s household. “I order you to accept this woman as your new mistress.”

  That’s it. That’s the trigger. I feel a little disoriented. I never really noticed how the skin under Mardin’s jaw was soft and lax. He is actually rather nondescript. I wonder what it must be like for the mistress to have married him. She is tall and vivid, if a bit heavy, and was a beauty in her day. She must find him disappointing. No wonder she is bitter.

  My new mistress smiles tentatively. Well, she may not be fashionable, the way my old mistress was, but she looks kind. I hope so, I would like to live in a kind household. I smile back at her.

  That is it. I am impressed.

  * * *

  My new household is much smaller than the old one. The mistress’ last housekeeper was clearly inefficient. I am busy for days, just trying to put things in order. I must be frugal, there is much less money in this house. It is surprising how much I have gotten accustomed to money at Mardin’s house; this is much more like I grew up.

  I do inventories of the linens and clean all the rooms from top to bottom. At first I am nervous, but my new mistress is not like the old one at all. She watches me work as if astounded, and she is never offended if she walks in her room and I have the cleaning machine going. I learn not to work too much around her, she is oddly sensitive about it. She won’t say anything, but she will start to make funny little embarrassed/helpful gestures, or suggest that I get myself some tea. Her husband is an old man. He smiles at me and tells me very bad jokes, puns, and I have to laugh to be polite. I would like to avoid him because he bores me nearly to tears. They have a daughter who is a terror. She is in trouble all the time. She spends money, takes her mother’s credit chip without asking—they have been forced to put a governor on daily purchases and they are in the process of locking the girl out of the parents’ credit.

  The daughter is nice enough to me, but her politeness is false. She argues with her mother about spending money on getting a jessed servant instead of sending her to school. But the daughter’s marks at academy are dreadful and the mistress says she will not waste money on more.

  Akhmim. I think of him all the time.

  Emboldened by my mistress’ approval, I rearrange the furniture. I take some things she has—they are not very nice—and put them up. I reprogram the household AI. It is very limited, insufficient for anything as complicated as bismek, but it can handle projections, of course. I remember the things my old mistress used to like and I put around cobalt blue vases and silver framed pictures. Marble floors would overwhelm these rooms, but the tile I pick is nice.

  My days are free on Tuesday and half-a-day Sunday. Tuesday my mistress apologizes to me. They are a little tight on credit and she cannot advance my leisure allowance until Sunday, do I mind?

  Well, a little, but I say I don’t. I spend the afternoon making flowers.

  When I make flowers I think of Akhmim and myself on the bed surrounded by crushed carnations and iris. It isn’t good to think about Akhmim, he doesn’t miss me, I’m sure. He is a harni, always an owned thing, subject to the whims of his owners. If they had constructed him with lasting loyalties, his life would be horrible. Surely when the technician constructed his genes, he made certain that Akhmim would forget quickly. He told me that harni do not love. But he also told me that they did. And he told he didn’t love the old mistress, but maybe he only said that because he had to, because I did not love the old mistress and his duty is to make humans happy.

  I put the flowers in a vase. My mistress is delighted, she thinks they are lovely.

  Long lilies, spiked stamens and long petals like lolling tongues. Sometimes feelings are in me that have no words, and I look at the paper flowers and want to rip them to pieces.

  On Sunday, my mistress has my leisure allowance. Mardin used to add a little something extra, but I realize that in my new circumstances I can’t expect that. I go to the Moussin of the White Falcon, on the edge of the Nekropolis, to listen to the service.

  Then I take the tube to the street of Mardin’s house. I don’t even intend to walk down the street, but of course I do. And I stand outside the house, looking for a sign of Akhmim. I’m afraid to stand long, I don’t want anyone to see me. What would I tell them, that I’m homesick? I’m jessed.

  I like to take something to do on the tube, so the ride is not so boring. I have brought a bag full of paper to make flowers. I think I’ll earn a little money on the side by making wreaths. I am not allowed to give it to my mistress, that’s against the law. It’s to protect the jessed that this is true.

  In the Nekropolis, we lived in death houses, surrounded by death. Perhaps it isn’t odd that I’m a bit morbid, and perhaps that is why I pull a flower out of my bag and leave it on a window sill on the men’s side of the house. After all, something did die, although I can’t put in words exactly what it was. I don’t really know which window is Akhmim’s, but it doesn’t matter, it’s just a gesture. It only makes me feel foolish.

  * * *

  Monday I wake early and drink hot, strong mate. I take buckets of water and scrub down the stone courtyard. I make a list of all the repairs that need to be done. I take the mistress’ printouts and bundle them. She saves them, she subscribes to several services and she feels that they might be useful. My old mistress would have quite a lot to say about someone who would save printouts. The mistress goes out to shop, and I clean everything in her storage. She has clothes she should throw out, things fifteen years old and hopelessly out of date. (I remember when I wore my hair white. And later when we used to wrap our hair in veils, the points trailing to the backs of our knees. We looked so foolish, so affected. What are young girls wearing now? How did I get to be so old, I’m no
t even thirty.)

  I put aside all the things I should mend, but I don’t want to sit yet. I run the cleaning machine, an old clumsy thing even stupider than the one at Mardin’s. I push myself all day, a whirlwind. There is not enough in this house to do, even if I clean the cleaning machine, so I clean some rooms twice.

  Still, when it is time to sleep, I can’t. I sit in my room making a funeral wreath of carnations and tiny, half-open roses. The white roses gleam like satin.

  I wake up on my free day, tired and stiff. In the mirror, I look ghastly, my hair tangled and my eyes puffy. Just as well the harni never saw me like this, I think. But I won’t think of Akhmim any more. That part of my life is over, and I have laid a flower at its death house. Today I will take my funeral wreaths around and see if I can find a shop that will buy them. They are good work, surely someone will be interested. It would just be pocket money, take a little of the strain off my mistress, she would not feel then as if she wasn’t providing extras for me if I can provide them for myself.

  I take the tube all the way to the Nekropolis, carefully protecting my wreaths from the other commuters. All day I walk through the Nekropolis, talking to stall keepers, stopping sometimes for tea, and when I have sold the wreaths, sitting for awhile to watch the people, letting my tired mind empty.

  I am at peace, now I can go back to my mistress.

  The Mashahana tells us that the darkness in ourselves is a sinister thing. It waits until we relax, it waits until we reach the most vulnerable moments, and then it snares us. I want to be dutiful, I want to do what I should. But when I go back to the tube, I think of where I am going; to that small house and my empty room. What will I do tonight? Make more paper flowers, more wreaths? I am sick of them. Sick of the Nekropolis.

  I can take the tube to my mistress’ house, or I can go by the street where Mardin’s house is. I’m tired, I’m ready to go to my little room and relax. Oh, Holy One, I dread the empty evening. Maybe I should go by the street just to fill up time. I have all this empty time in front of me. Tonight and tomorrow and the week after and the next month and down through the years as I never marry and become a dried-up woman. Evenings spent folding paper. Days cleaning someone else’s house. Free afternoons spent shopping a bit, stopping in tea shops because my feet hurt. That is what lives are, aren’t they? Attempts to fill our time with activity designed to prevent us from realizing that there is no meaning? I sit at a tiny table the size of a serving platter and watch the boys hum by on their scooters, girls sitting behind them, clutching their waists with one hand, holding their veils with the other, while the ends stream and snap behind them, glittering with the shimmer of gold (this year’s fashion).

  So I get off the tube and walk to the street where Mardin lives. And I walk up the street past the house. I stop and look at it. The walls are pale yellow stone. I am wearing rose and sky blue, but I have gone out without ribbons on my wrists.

  “Diyet,” Akhmim says, leaning on the window sill, “you’re still sad.”

  He looks so familiar and it is so easy, as if we do this every evening. “I live a sad life,” I say, my voice even. But my heart is pounding. To see him! To talk to him!

  “I found your token,” he says.

  “My token,” I repeat, not understanding.

  “The flower. I thought today would be your free day so I tried to watch all day. I thought you had come and I missed you.” Then he disappears for a moment, and then he is sitting on the window sill, legs and feet outside, and he jumps lightly to the ground.

  I take him to a tea shop. People look at us, wondering what a young woman is doing unescorted with a young man. Let them look. “Order what you want,” I say, “I have some money.”

  “Are you happier?” he asks. “You don’t look happier, you look tired.”

  And he looks perfect, as he always does. Have I fallen in love with him precisely because he isn’t human? I don’t care, I feel love, no matter what the reason. Does a reason for a feeling matter? The feeling I have for my mistress may be there only because I am impressed, but the feeling is real enough.

  “My mistress is kind,” I say, looking at the table. His perfect hand, beautiful nails and long fingers, lies there.

  “Are you happy?” he asks again.

  “Are you?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “A harni does not have the right to be happy or unhappy.”

  “Neither do I,” I say.

  “That’s your fault. Why did you do it?” he asks. “Why did you choose to be jessed? You were free.” His voice is bitter.

  “It’s hard to find work in the Nekropolis, and I didn’t think I would ever get married.”

  He shakes his head. “Someone would marry you. And if they didn’t, is it so awful not to get married?”

  “Is it so awful to be jessed?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  That is all he says. I suppose to him it looks as if I threw everything away, but how can he understand how our choices are taken from us? He doesn’t even understand freedom and what an illusion it really is.

  “Run away,” he says.

  Leave the mistress? I am horrified. “She needs me, she cannot run that house by herself and I have cost her a great deal of money. She has made sacrifices to buy me.”

  “You could live in the Nekropolis and make funeral wreaths,” he urges. “You could talk to whomever you wished and no one would order you around.”

  “I don’t want to live in the Nekropolis,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “There is nothing there for me!”

  “You have friends there.”

  “I wouldn’t if I ran away.”

  “Make new ones,” he says.

  “Would you go?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I’m not a person, I can’t live.”

  “What if you could make a living, would you run away?”

  “Yes,” he says, “yes.” He squares his shoulders defiantly and looks at me. “If I could be human, I would be.” He is shaming me.

  Our tea comes. My face is aflame with color, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. He feels morally superior. He thinks he knows the true worth of something I threw away. He doesn’t understand, not at all.

  “Oh Diyet,” he says softly, “I am sorry. I shouldn’t say these things to you.”

  “I didn’t think you could have these feelings,” I whisper.

  He shrugs again. “I can have any feelings,” he says. “Harni aren’t jessed.”

  “You told me to think of you as a dog,” I remind him. “Loyal.”

  “I am loyal,” he says. “You didn’t ask who I was loyal to.”

  “You’re supposed to be loyal to the mistress.”

  He drums the table with his fingers, taptaptaptap, taptaptaptap. “Harni aren’t like geese,” he says, not looking at me. His earring is golden, he is rich and fine-looking. I had not realized at my new place how starved I had become for fine things. “We don’t impress on the first person we see.” Then he shakes his head. “I shouldn’t talk about all this nonsense. You must go, I must go back before they miss me.”

  “We have to talk more,” I say.

  “We have to go,” he insists. Then he smiles at me and all the unhappiness disappears from his face. He doesn’t seem human anymore, he seems pleasant; harni. I get a chill. He is so alien. I understand him less than I understand people like my old mistress. We get up and he looks away as I pay.

  Outside Mardin’s house I tell him, “I’ll come back next Tuesday.”

  * * *

  It’s good I did so much before, because I sleepwalk through the days. I leave the cleaning machine in the doorway where the mistress almost trips over it. I forget to set the clothes in order. I don’t know what to think.

  I hear the mistress say to the neighbor, “She is a godsend, but so moody. One day she’s doing everything, the next day she can’t be counted on to remember to set the table.”

  What right doe
s she have to talk about me that way? Her house was a pigsty when I came.

  What am I thinking? What is wrong with me that I blame my mistress? Where is my head? I feel ill, my eyes water and head fills. I can’t breathe, I feel heavy. I must be dutiful. I used to have this feeling once in a while when I was first jessed, it’s part of the adjustment. It must be the change. I have to adjust all over again.

  I find the mistress, tell her I’m not feeling well, and go lie down.

  The next afternoon, just before dinner, it happens again. The day after that is fine, but then it happens at mid-morning of the third day. It is Sunday and I have the afternoon off. I force myself to work through the morning. My voice is hoarse, my head aches. I want to get everything ready since I won’t be there to see to dinner in the afternoon. White cheese and olives and tomatoes on a platter. My stomach rebels and I have to run to the bathroom.

  What is wrong with me?

  I go to the moussin in the afternoon, lugging my bag, which is heavy with paper, and sit in the cool dusty darkness, nursing my poor head. I feel as if I should pray. I should ask for help, for guidance. The moussin is so old that the stone is irregularly worn, and through my slippers I can feel the little ridges and valleys in the marble. Up around the main worship hall there are galleries hidden by arabesques of scrollwork. Kari and I used to sit up there when we were children. Above that, sunlight flashes through clerestory windows. Where the light hits the marble floor it shines hard, hurting my eyes and my head. I rest my forehead on my arm, turned sideways on the bench so I can lean on the back. With my eyes closed I smell incense and my own scent of perfume and perspiration.

  There are people there for service, but no one bothers me. Isn’t that amazing?

  Or maybe it is only because anyone can see that I am impure.

  I get tired of my own melodrama. I keep thinking that people are looking at me, that someone is going to say something to me. I don’t know where to go.