by Geoff Ryman
In Archbishop's Park one of the workmen finished a bottle of beer. His head tilted backwards to receive the last drop, and overhead he saw the spangle of stars. Another workman was peeing half-seen behind a bush. A tug moved in the direction of St Thomas's Hospital, with the current of the Thames. It swung up and down in the wash of a bigger barge. Lights from the hospital glowed.
In London's two hundred and ninety-two hospitals over fifty women were in labour at that very moment. One of them bit her lip and pushed, and there was a sense of breakthrough, and the head of newborn was free. Another newborn was slapped, and began to wail. It began to wail, just as Zoe turned in the doorway; as the coffee vendors nodded; and as a laughing man in a pub seemed suddenly to slip and fall, knocking mugs from the counter. His heart had failed. In the kitchen of a kaff, near the Cut, amid a clatter of pots and pans, a twelve year old sharing in the cooking poured boiling water over herself. A man finished positioning his favourite stuffed chair in the middle of the street, to watch the show in the air. Three doors down a young man moved from one foot to another, nervously waiting for a girl he only partly knew.
It can't be done. Now cannot be imagined or described, not all at once. We have to string it on a thread, in imitation of the way we view the past. In imitation of the way we view ourselves. If you try to tell the whole truth, you never stop talking. And so we tell stories, histories, instead.
'Time is money,' said Rolfa's father.
'Who were you today?' Mike Stone asked gently.
Milena was sitting on the balcony of her hospital suite. There were no sharp corners in the hospital suite. It was made of Coral and had grown like flesh. The floor of the balcony flowed upwards to make a wall. The top of the wall rose and fell with a line as natural as that of a tree branch. The walls were covered with plaster because the Coral could sting.
The Coral had chewed up rubble from the older buildings of St Thomas's Hospital and laid it in genetically-determined patterns. Milena's genetic balcony looked over the Thames. There were moored barges strung with lights and full of people. The windows of the West were full of people. The West was a sandy-coloured swelling of Coral where the Houses of Parliament had once been, across the river.
Below was the embankment pathway that Rolfa and Milena had walked along on their last day together. Milena remembered looking up at the hospital then. Now she was here, ill, and the wide pavements of that walkway were filled with Bees. They sat in respectful silence, looking up at her. Oh well, thought Milena, leave them be, it's the last night of the Comedy.
The souvenirs of her life were scattered about her. There were not many. There was her attempt to orchestrate the Comedy. It was bound in a notebook. Music by Rolfa Patel said the first sheet. Orchestrated by Milena Shibush. There was a dirty lump of felt invested with personality called Piglet. There were Rolfa's papers, and some Coral jewellery that Mike had bought for her. There was the paper Cilia had given her, and the music that Jacob the Postperson had remembered. In a box of earth on the wall, mere were herbs. They had been grown out of the wall of the Bulge and Mike had brought them home. They were dying.
There was a hard, hot swelling in Milena's stomach, and her arms and fingers were as delicate as a robin's foot. All her skin was fluorescent now. It gave off a dull, orange glow, with brilliant threads in it where nerves ended in the surface of the skin. There was a huge, gathering knot of flesh just above her shoulder.
Even the Party had stopped telling Milena that she was going to get well. They still insisted that she had many months to live and refused to accept what Milena herself knew, that she was weakening. As she weakened, her empathy virus grew stronger.
'Who were you today?' Mike Stone had asked.
'I was...' she paused, actress-like for effect. 'One of the attendants downstairs in the laundry. The short one with the wig, I think. I was very tired and had flat feet, but I was in love with Flo. You know Flo, the one who always says hello. I don't think I really knew it, but Flo made my life worth living. We just talked, folding towels and sheets. The soap on them brought our hands out in a rash. Flo's family live in the outreaches, did you know that? I didn't quite hear the name of the place. Oxbridge? Boxbridge?'
'Uxbridge,' whispered Mike. 'It's in the west.'
'Never been that far out,' replied Milena.
'What about when you went up in the Bulge?'
'That,' said Milena 'was moored at Biggin Hill.'
'That's far out of town.'
'It's south.'
Oh, said Mike in silence.
'Then,' said Milena. 'I came down with an attack of barge girl. I was a nine year old girl helping my mother on a barge. I ran back and forth along the wood in bare feet, but I knew the varnish would stop me getting splinters. I had lines trailing in the water and I was checking them all for trout or salmon. I had never caught a salmon. I was in love with the idea of catching a salmon. Isn't that strange? Love is the only word for it. I ached to catch a salmon. Meanwhile, I helped with the sails, and checked the tiller. I whistled for my dog. My dog never slipped or fell into the water. And my mother sang.'
Milena paused, living another life.
'She'll make a nice thread,' Milena said. Milena and Al were making a tapestry of what she empathised. They called it 'A London Symphony'. The pattern had music woven into it, the music of Vaughan Williams.
'The tapestry sure is pretty,' said Mike Stone.
The tapestry hung in the air, for those who were Snide to see it. Mike Stone was not Snide.
'Was Heather helping you? Was Heather there?' Mike asked.
Milena settled back. 'Heather's always there.' From time to time Heather would emerge, to help drive down the visions that came with Terminal empathy. Milena let her emerge sometimes, to talk to Al. Heather would the too, when Milena did.
'She's a big help,' said Mike. Something in the way he said it was as if he understood.
Milena had grown imperious, on her cushions, under blankets. 'How would you know?' She drew the blankets about her, nestling down so that she was looking straight up at the sky. She was cold. 'I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering what to do about all of this.' She let a bird-like hand drop towards the things on the floor. 'Most of that is Rolfa's. I want the papers to go in trust for her to her sister, Zoe. But not to anyone else in her family, just Zoe. Do you understand?'
'Yes,' murmured Mike Stone, leaning against the balcony doorway. He preferred to stand rather than sit. He preferred to spend most of the day in another room, away from Milena. He knew he annoyed her.
'The paper with the music written on it — not the score, you stupid man, the notes, there, those! That should go to Cilia and no one else. It was Jacob who remembered the music, and Cilia who gave me the paper, and it was very precious. This cross was Jacob's and I want you to have that.'
'Thank you,' whispered Mike Stone.
'Don't get morbid,' said Milena. 'I'd like a drink. A whisky. Neat. Hard.' It seemed to Milena that she had spent her life doing things for other people. Now she wanted to be served.
Shuffling his feet, Mike Stone worked his swollen buttocks around and waddled into the kitchen. The sound of his feet enraged Milena. Couldn't he pick them up? The burgeoning growth in her stomach was hot and as noticeable now as a late pregnancy. She had dreams in which she gave birth to monsters. 'Quick!' said Milena, suddenly fierce. She wanted that drink.
Then there was a voice, like a virus, hot in her inner ear. God, it whispered, must be a distiller.
'Did you say something?' Milena demanded.
'No,' came Mike's voice, and the sound of waddling.
'It's going to start any minute!' Milena was impatient. Canto Thirty Three. Dante and his goddamned numbers and star charts. You couldn't change a thing without making a mistake.
Shuffle, shuffle, waddle, waddle. Where was he with that drink?
'You sound like a duck,' she said, bitterly. Her face was stringy, sour; she could feel it, pulling in on itself like shoe leat
her that had been salted by wet pavements in winter. She wanted to say and think beautiful things, but there wasn't time. She wanted to step back and view her life as a whole but a thousand tiny things, blankets and pain and boredom, nibbled at her like Mice. It was as if Mice were swallowing up the last crumbs of her life.
'Thank you,' she said, taking the drink, pursing her lips, and sniffing. The whisky was harsh on her tongue.
'Are you comfortable, darling?' Mike asked. He moved so slowly these days, like a boulder rumbling, rolling.
'Yes, yes, I'm fine, sit down before you hurt yourself.'
What did it add up to, a life? An accumulation of memories, scattered, discordant, buried so deeply most of them never surfaced again. We don't leave much of a dent behind, she thought. A few things to be given away and some ash scattered on a favourite place. Milena's ash was going to be thrown to the River. She belted down two more mouthfuls of the drink, and immediately felt queasy. She put the glass down.
And you only used to drink tea, said the voice.
'I'll drink what I like,' insisted Milena, aloud.
'Something else, darling?' Mike Stone asked.
'No,' she replied exasperated. 'I've got my drink haven't I? What else would I need? It tastes like shit. Was it the good whisky?' Mike rocked in his chair trying to get up. 'No.' said Milena, suddenly savage, angered by her own unfairness to Mike. 'Just sit there!'
I shouldn't have had that drink, she thought and felt a kind of weight descend. It was as if something were pushing her deeper into the chair. It was as if the chair were spinning. There really was something terribly wrong. She knew it as soon as she felt it, and then denied it.
She pursed her lips and sat up again, as far as she could.
'Why doesn't it start!' she exclaimed.
Below, the Bees began to stir. It was most strange. They were not talking in unison.
Mike Stone remembered something. He leaned forward and picked up the dirty lump of felt. He put Piglet in Milena's lap. Milena stroked his ears. Milena and Piglet watched the Comedy together every evening, as if part of Rolfa were still there.
A trumpet sounded in the sky. Every other night since June it had announced a Canto of the Comedy.
Light, like aurora borealis, played on the horizon.
Then the Comedy arose, like a new planet. Each night the end of the previous Canto was played again.
Dante himself seemed to climb up over the edge of the world. In the last Canto he had passed through the uppermost level of Purgatory through the fire that purified those whose only sin had been to love. The homosexuals walked the circle in the opposite direction from the others. The sin of Caesar, Dante called it. The sin of love was the highest sin, the last that needed expiation. Love was burned away, and men came elevation to the Earthly Paradise, Eden.
There, in Eden, Dante had drunk the waters of Lethe and his memory had been cleansed of sin. The destruction of memory set him free.
'I really shouldn't have had that whisky,' said Milena. The Bees were talking more loudly. They were disagreeing. 'She wants to see it!' one of them, a woman, was saying quite plainly in the darkness.
Dante climbed, bringing Eden with him. The sky overhead was full of trees. Eden was Archbishop's Park, by Lambeth Bridge.
It was the Park as Milena remembered it on her birthday. Light flowed in and out of the trees, as Rolfa's music flowed. But there was one new tree.
It was superimposed, slightly floating, on the memory of the Park. It was a huge tree, with graceful dangling branches delicately supporting leaves like those of a maple. Its bark was in sections like a puzzle. In the Comedy and in reality, the tree was called the Tree of Heaven. The sight of it made tears start in Milena's eyes, though she did not know why. She did not remember where she had ever seen a Tree of Heaven before.
A costermonger's cart had been chained to the Tree of Heaven. It represented truth. In Dante, it represented the real Church, to be borne away by the dragon, the old serpent. This Comedy was two allegories, one old, one new, both intelligible to an audience of viruses.
The old cart was taken over by the Vampires of History and the Beast that Was and Is Not. The old snake's skin glistened with light and in the light of its scales were glimpsed old scenes, ghostly faces. The snake was history. The snake was memory. It stole the truth, to a clashing and banging of Rolfa's music. The end of the previous Canto had been recapped. The new and final Canto was to begin.
There was a moment of silence, of darkness.
Out of the silence, and into the silence said the voice in Milena's ear.
'Will you stop talking!' she said, turning on Mike Stone. He stared at her blankly. It wasn't him, thought Milena. So who is talking? She pressed a hand across her forehead.
Voices began to sing in Dog Latin. They were the Naiads. The viruses knew they represented the seven cardinal and three theological virtues. Milena made them real people. We are all virtues, now.
There was Billy the King, and Berowne. There was Hortensia. There was Jacob, and Moira Almasy. There was Peterpaul, and Al, and Heather. There was the Zookeeper. And there was Chao Li Song.
Deus venerunt gentes, they sang.
I don't want to hear this now, thought Milena. Her head swam. The very walls and air sang at her, and the light seemed to dazzle, as if she had a migraine. I'm too ill. She could go inside, but there would be no escape from the light, from the sound.
And she saw all the faults. There was a slight jerk of transition here. Unlike the text of the Comedy, a complete Psalm was sung.
The Naiads were singing Psalm 78. There was no clue in Dante or the opera as to how much of it should be sung. There had been a note from Rolfa in the great grey book. See setting of Psalm, the note had said.
Where? What setting? Milena had always wondered. When the orchestration by the Consensus arrived there was a setting of the complete Psalm. From nowhere.
Milena fondled Piglet. She stroked his ears. He was wearing out.
Suddenly his zipper burst, as the virtues sang.
Piglet split open and a tiny black book slipped out of him.
Something silent, something hidden, something dark. The flickering light in the sky reflected on gold lettering on the binding. HOLY BIBLE said the words.
Milena's hand fluoresced to make light to read by. She opened the book. The Old and New Testament said the words.
And in writing, underneath it — For an audience of viruses.
'Oh my God,' said Milena.
She flicked through the pages. There, almost infinitesimally small there were staves and notes. How small could Rolfa's writing get? How small and hidden in the dark. It was as if Rolfa wrote fractally, each part leading to a smaller part.
'Mike! Mike!' Milena cried out. She held out the book to him, open, her hand shaking. 'Mike! She did it again! She set the whole ficken Bible to music!'
Mike took it from and looked at it, stunned. Each word of the King James version had been given a note.
And Milena knew then. There would be other books.
'Mike,' she said. 'Have them search. Have them look all through her house. There will be more. There will be others.' Milena made a guess.
'Have them look,' she said, 'for a complete Shakespeare. Have them look for Don Quixote.''
Have them look for A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
Milena lay back, suddenly queasy.
It wasn't meant to be performed. It was all more original than that. For an audience of viruses the notes said, and I didn't understand. It's lazy just to listen to music — Rolfa had said that and I didn't understand. It wasn't written to be performed! She said that, too, the last time I ever saw her.
The Comedy wasn't a new kind of opera. It was a new kind of book.
A book you read and while you read, your viruses turned it into music. Like the words Satie added to his piano pieces — there only for the pleasure of the pianist, and not be recited to an audience.
The performance was all my
idea.
Milena was giddy, giddy again, as if weightless. The fire water in her stomach burned. 'I think I'm going to be sick,' she said. Mike tried to rock to his feet, to get a bowl or a towel. He was too late.
Milena, to her surprise, was too weak to swing her legs off the chair. Vomit spewed all down her chin and over her blankets and dress. Piglet would now smell of adulthood sick as well.
'Oh, Milena,' said Mike, in sympathy.
'Ficken Naiads,' said Milena, as he fought his way to his feet.
Milena lay helpless on her bed, and looked at Lucy. Lucy was Beatrice. Beatrice was Wisdom. She looked on calmly, with a faint smile and sang in an aged voice:
'Modicum et non videbitis me;
Et iterum…
A little while, and you shall not see me, my beloved sisters,
And again, a little while, and you shall see me...
Lucy, who had disappeared, had somehow recorded all of her part in the Comedy. Another strangeness.
Milena lay still, as Mike folded away the sick-covered blanket. Things like that did not matter any longer. Beatrice's face mattered now. This Beatrice had gone on ageing. She was no longer beautiful except in the ways her face had crinkled, in its ruggedness like the rocks. She looked immortal, as if she had gone sailing on, resolving human weakness, discarding as unnecessary the human beauty of youth. The Queen of Dante's soul, his love, his reminder of goodness. More stern than the rocks, a love as deep as the Earth, whispered in memory, and now restored on top of a mountain in a forest.
People don't love like that, thought Milena. Not for a lifetime with just a memory.
And on that hill the voice in her ears said, a small boy and his bear will always be playing.
'That's the wrong opera!' shouted Milena.
Then the helicopters came. There was a great shuddering in the air, and a shadow fell as if materialising out of the darkness and moonlight itself, blue-black and gleaming. It turned around over the pavement, over the heads of the Bees, scattering dust, lifting up their human foliage and rattling it, making a sound like the ocean.
