Tamaruq

by E. J. Swift

  The second time she is more careful. She watches the western kids. How they do it. The way they watch. She learns to recognize the moment they identify a target. Then the slow nonchalance of the approach and the dash away, quick as sin. She copies their movements. She has always been a good mimic. The first success is a dull thrill. Squid rings. Only a quarter-full bag but she doesn’t care, it’s food, it’s hers. She took it. She stuffs the rings into her mouth, an explosion of fat and salt, aware if she doesn’t dispose of the evidence fast enough someone else will take her prize. She turns the paper inside out and licks out every scrap of grease.

  Here and there she catches glimpses of herself. In water, in smeared glass, thin slivers, an eye, a limb, a half of her mouth. Her face, at once familiar and unfamiliar, has become her greatest hindrance. She maintains a mask of grease and grime. When her hair starts to grow out, she steals another hat.

  Inevitably she finds herself drawn to the border. She watches from the rails of waterbuses and the precarious ledges of bridges. From raft racks and deckings and public balconies where children stare and point at the spectacle below. The angle is different but the view is the same. The conical towers in their emerald and silver casings. Birds drifting in slow spirals above and about their peaks. Sometimes lone pairs, sometimes a flock in sudden inexplicable ascent, shrieking and clouding the sky with their beating wings. She used to be afraid of them. She is not afraid any more, not of birds. Along the length of the border waterway, the netting lifts from the waves as though suspended from invisible hands.

  There was a girl over there. A girl who threw parties and sketched gardens and her words were like a charm, even when they were about nothing of importance, which was most of the time. That girl ceased to be real in the moment the City abandoned her, the moment the Rechnovs, her family, gave the order to fire upon the tower, knowing she was trapped inside.

  Adelaide, run.

  What he told her. She is running now, though there are times when she believes it would be easier to let go. Slip through the gap in a bridge. Lie on a raft rack in the night and ask the stars to freeze her with their great cold hearts.

  People look at her in a way she has never experienced before. She is painfully aware of the softness of her own body, of never having learned to defend herself, of being frightened. One night a fight breaks out in the corridor where she is sleeping. She sees a westerner break a bottle against the step and stab the jagged end into the face of another.

  Glass shards are strewn across the floor, spotted with blood. The fight blunders away down the hallway, accompanied by crashes and screams and someone shrieking. What have you done, look at his eye, holy fuck look at it! She surveys the glass. The glimpses of red. She lets her eyes travel over it until she sees what she is looking for. An edge piece, a long, narrow triangle shaped like a blade. When no one is looking she darts forwards and takes it. Slips the glass into the pocket of her coat. Walks quickly away.

  Later, she uses a wall to grind the edges smooth at one end and wraps around scraps of cloth to make a grip. She brings the sharp end of the glass to her face, trying to find the courage to make a cut, rendering her face unrecognizable forever. The point of the glass presses into her cheek. Her hand shakes. She tries to make herself drag the glass down but she can’t do it. When she lowers her hand her cheeks are wet with tears.

  At night she keeps her fingers locked around the glass and doesn’t let go until morning.

  She hears the announcement late one night, lying with her ear close to the gap under someone’s door so she can listen to the intermittent sound of the o’dio. There will be an expedition boat. The boat is to depart the city, leaving on the first tenable day in the spring, to seek out land.

  She hears, with a shock, a voice she recognizes.

  Her brother, Linus.

  ‘As you know, this is the first expedition in almost fifty years. Naturally we’re excited about what we may discover, but it’s equally important to be reasonable about our expectations. The fact is, no one knows what’s out there.’

  The words flow from him the way life has always flowed for him: effortlessly. The way a Rechnov’s life is meant to flow.

  ‘But what do you think, Councillor? Do you really think there could be life on land? After all this time?’

  Linus’s voice is replete with confidence. ‘I think we should expect the unexpected.’

  After the interview with Linus the o’dio channel switches to Isis 100, and a few minutes after that the person on the other side of the door turns it off completely. She can hear a strong wind getting up outside the tower. Suddenly she can’t stay where she is, she has to move, go somewhere, it doesn’t matter where. She crosses a low-level bridge to the next tower, holding her hat to her head, because the wind is already whip-fierce. In the next tower there is a late-night bar which has the o’dio turned up loud. She waits and watches until one of its patrons leaves a beverage half-finished, and then she slips inside and takes the seat with the drink and holds it in both hands. You can’t hear the wind in here. That’s good.

  The bar is warm. She sips at the drink. It’s warm too. A slow fuzziness wraps around her head. Chatter is idle. Whispers, low and interrogative. Something is coming. She thinks about Linus’s expedition and tries to imagine land and wonders if it is possible that people might be there and what they might be like. The bar quietens. Unasked, the bartender brings her another drink and takes away the empty glass. She remembers Second Grandmother’s stories about square houses and flat gardens. Second Grandmother was a westerner. She wonders if Second Grandmother ever sat here, in this place, if she is retracing a course backwards, and if so where it ends. And then she realizes the bar has gone very quiet and she can hear the wind again, and she looks up and the only people left are herself and three men, two of them embroiled in deep conversation, the third sat apart, staring at her intently.

  The bartender has disappeared.

  She gets up and pulls on her coat. The man stands also, his movements leisurely, but his eyes never leaving her face.

  As she leaves the bar she hears his footsteps cross the room behind her. Outside, the tower corridor is deserted. Her heart starts to beat faster.

  ‘Hey, sweetheart.’

  He makes a chirping noise in his throat, the way you might call a pet, or a bird.

  ‘Hey, pretty girl.’

  She ignores him. Keeps walking, down the corridor, towards the stairwell. She hears his footsteps hastening and speeds up until she’s jogging. He’s following her, increasing his pace as she does. Why is it so empty? Where is everyone?

  She reaches an impasse. Bridge to her left, stairwell to her right. She can hear the wind shrieking. A Tarctic wind from the south, packed with spite. She can’t go out there: she’ll be ripped from the bridge like a piece of tissue. The man is only paces behind. She runs towards the stairwell, her heart pounding, her hands clammy with fear, and as she starts to descend the steps she hears quick, heavy footsteps and feels a shove between her shoulder blades and she trips and falls.

  She scrambles to her feet to find her way blocked.

  ‘Where you going, sweetheart? Don’t you want to say hello?’

  The man is taller than her. Broader. She can smell alcohol on his breath, sweet and pungent, but he stands quite steadily, his eyes narrowed, travelling from her face to her chest and downwards.

  ‘You are a pretty little fish,’ he says. ‘I was watching you in there.’

  She tries to speak. Get out of my way. The words stick; she can’t get them out. She tries to move around him. He blocks her.

  ‘Hey, hey! Where do you think you’re going?’

  She looks desperately past him. No one.

  ‘No point in screaming,’ he says softly. ‘There’s always someone screaming.’

  He reaches out and grips her shoulder, pinning her. His hand drifts down her arm and runs over her buttocks and he smiles.

  She eases her hand into her pocket. Her fingers clenc
h around the grip of the glass shard.

  Once again she tries to speak. Her lips work helplessly.

  ‘G-get—’

  ‘G-g—’ he imitates her. ‘You trying to tell me something, sweetheart?’

  His hand squeezes.

  ‘F… f-fuck you!’

  She jabs the glass into his belly. Direct, instinctive, like a thrust in fencing. Blood spurts over her hand. He gasps and lets her go at once, clutching at the wound. His face twists horribly. She wrenches the glass out and turns and sprints down the stairwell without a second glance. The glass is wet in her palm. The wind is shrieking. But she can’t hear footsteps.

  Sick and shaken by the incident, it is only later that she realizes. The words are in there. When she needs them, they are there.

  On the day of the boat’s departure she goes to watch, because everybody goes, and because she wants to see it leave. And it is an event. There is a curious parity between the two crowds as the boat makes its way down the rows upon rows of well-wishers, a moment when an outsider, perhaps, could hardly tell which way was east and which west.

  After the boat has disappeared, an uncertain atmosphere descends. Now we wait. Now we wait, not knowing. We wait. For how long? A month? Forever? A trail of thrown flowers and messages, those that did not reach the boat, float in the water corridor, the white patches of paper and colourful petals an incongruous debris between the crowds on either side. A large boat of Citizens begins to blare out music and soon its decks are bouncing with revellers. A group of westerners, apparently in jest, imitate the moves, and suddenly most of the crowd is moving, infected by the celebratory beat, but the movement is not quite in kilter, and a streak of restlessness, of unconfirmed mockery, weaves like an undercurrent through the westerners.

  After a time the skadi begin to urge westerners to move on, and Adelaide realizes that what seemed like a united occasion was only the appearance of one; now that the boat has gone, things will carry on, as they were. This is just another gesture from the City. The founding families, including the Rechnovs, are already surrounded by bodyguards in anticipation of potential assassins. When she looks again, they are gone.

  Anger grips her. Nothing changes.

  But now she has an instinct for the inevitable violence to follow, and shortly after the Rechnovs leave she extracts herself from the scene.

  She remembers Linus speaking on the o’dio and wonders what he made of this occasion. If he orchestrated it. What he meant by it. He always did believe in life outside Osiris, and she had always mocked him for it, but now she feels a flower of hope unfurling within her chest. That he might be right. That there might be something, anything, out there.

  Perhaps it is this thought that makes her take a route she has not travelled in weeks. On the waterbus she looks at her hands, marvelling at the layers of dirt, crammed between cracks in her fingernails, embedded in the grain of her palms. It doesn’t seem right, to go and see them like this, but she is suddenly so tired, so very tired. The thought of their kindness glows like a lantern over black water.

  She just wants a sighting. Ole and Mikaela don’t need to see her. She just wants to make sure they are there.

  She finds a spot on a tower decking across the waterway from where they live. Scanning the boats parked opposite, she sees that the Larssons’ boat, the one Ole taught her to drive with its faded blue stripes, is missing. One or both of them will be on their way home. They were probably in the crowd with her, watching the expedition boat.

  She waits. Her stomach is twisting about on itself. She barely notices it these days but she does now, here where she was cared for. She is in the shadow of the tower but she can see the sun on the waves, and refracting against the dirty bufferglass, and for a moment it is possible to imagine that she is somewhere else entirely. She feels herself sinking into the decking. She’s so hungry. So tired.

  A hand grabs her shoulder. Lips come close to her ear and she feels the warmth of breath as the aggressor murmurs.

  ‘Ata, isn’t it? There’s someone who wants to see you.’

  Another hand under her elbow, pulling her to her feet. She stares at the man, testing her body for a reaction, asking. In her pocket is the shard of glass. But as she stands the face of her captor fades in and out of focus. She dredges her memory. She has seen him before. Yes, she remembers now. The son. Oskar.

  She looks towards the tower, searching for the boat, suddenly desperate for a sight of those cheerful blue stripes. Oskar says, ‘Don’t worry about them. You’re coming with me.’

  On the journey there, blindfolded, she wonders how they will do it. If it will be slow or if they will just shoot her. Maybe they’ll drown her, like the City did the activist Eirik 9968. She thinks of his body in the glass tank, the hood over his face. Does it matter how it’s done? Soon enough, it will be over. Is that so bad? The guilt will vanish, along with everything else. She won’t wake every day knowing Vikram’s ghost has been wandering the corridors of her dreams. She won’t wake at all.

  After half an hour of driving she feels the boat stop, the motor cutting out. They push her out and she feels the decking, uneven beneath her feet. The air temperature rises as they enter a tower and then a lift which bears them upwards. The son, Oskar, leads her into a room and seats her in a hard plastic chair. She waits, expecting at any moment the coldness of a gun against her temple. This must be it. Then she feels hands at the back of her head. Untying the blindfold. She opens her eyes, blinking.

  She expected a dripping, burned-out room like the derelict spaces of the unremembered quarters where she was held captive before. But she is in somebody’s apartment. Plainly furnished, a kitchen area in front of her, a column of window-wall to her right. Sat in a chair facing her is a thin woman with sharp, intelligent eyes. She is wearing a headscarf and a thick smearing of cherry lipstick. The woman is leaning forwards, studying her intently.

  After a minute the woman says, ‘Yes, it’s her. You can go.’

  She hears retreating footsteps and the door closes. She is left in the room with the woman. They appear to be alone.

  The woman addresses her.

  ‘It is you, isn’t it? You are Adelaide Rechnov?’

  There’s something in the way she utters those last four words that is difficult to decipher. Perhaps disbelief that this pathetic creature could be connected to the City’s most eminent founding family. Or amusement that society’s darling, a woman believed dead, a woman worth millions, is seated here before her in the heart of the west.

  Adelaide doesn’t attempt to deny it. They know.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ asks the woman.

  She nods tentatively.

  The woman rises, crosses the room, fills a pan with water and puts it on to boil. For a minute the only sound in the room comes from the bubbling water. She pours a mug of tea and brings it to Adelaide. It’s very hot against her palms. An exhausted part of her registers that were she to throw the steaming liquid into the other woman’s face, there might be a chance of escape.

  ‘What happened to you?’ asks the woman.

  She looks at the floor.

  ‘What happened? You were in the tower, with the rebels?’

  The floor is cleanish, with cheap linoleum, peeling away in places.

  ‘I’m going to have to keep asking until you give me a response.’

  Adelaide taps her throat, and shakes her head.

  ‘Easily solved. I’ll get you something to write with.’

  She dumps paper and a pencil in Adelaide’s lap. Balancing the tea, she forms the words slowly.

  Who are you?

  The woman laughs. It is such a surprising sound that Adelaide starts and spills the tea. She lowers the mug to the floor and focuses on the woman’s hands, which are strong and capable-looking.

  ‘My name’s Dien,’ says the woman. ‘I’m what’s left of the resistance movement. The others are dead. Everyone in Soren’s cell. And the folks who had you. Pekko. Rikard. Drake. Nils. Your friend,
’ the woman allows herself a certain degree of innuendo, ‘Vikram. They all died in the tower. They burned there. But you already knew that, didn’t you?’

  Adelaide looks down. The hand that is squeezing the pencil is trembling. She doesn’t need to hear his name. She wishes they would get on with it. Why bother tormenting her, unless it’s for revenge?

  ‘Somehow you survived,’ says Dien. A note of wonder in her voice. ‘Somehow, that doesn’t altogether surprise me. Though when Oskar told me his suspicions I didn’t believe it. It’s only now, seeing your face…’

  Once again she rises and crosses the short distance to Adelaide. Cupping a hand under Adelaide’s chin, she lifts her head gently.

  ‘Incredible,’ she says. ‘You know, I never in a thousand years thought I’d meet one of you. A Rechnov. But here you are. The Architect’s granddaughter, sat in my apartment, drinking my tea.’

  Adelaide jerks away. She writes quickly.

  Get to the point and tell me what you want.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ says Dien. ‘Much as it pains me to say it, I’m afraid we need you, Adelaide. That face of yours has a value. We need it. We need your name. There’s work to be done, and you’re going to help us do it. So we’re not going to let you die just yet, though I’ve got to say it looks like you’ve been doing your best to do the deed yourself.’

  Adelaide shakes her head. She writes.

  I can’t help you.

  ‘It’s not a choice,’ says Dien. The tone of someone who isn’t used to being argued with. ‘Stars know you’re the last person in the world I’d choose to help me, but I know your worth, better than Pekko ever did. He was an arsehole – yeah, just because he was one of ours doesn’t mean we didn’t know it. But you – the City will listen to you.’

  She has a sudden sense of where this is leading. That nub of anger returns, bright and fierce. She is done with the City. Done with it.

  ‘Fuck – y-you.’

  Her words, barely a croak, but with force behind them, catch both women off guard.