by Jeff Kamen
He is spiralling away within himself and he goes about the rattling framework of his routine whispering, begging for clarity. Begging to know.
Drinking that had started at dusk now begins at morningtide. With the cruel sun out, hidden away by shutters, he sits hunched on the stairs like a black-lipped vampire, his eyes bloodshot and the fumes sour on his breath.
His head hanging, nails bitten low, he goes through everything and everything from the start. Hurt and blood and chains. Punishments and promises.
Flinching at times, he dwells on the viciousness of their arguments, recalling how she’d beaten him, shot him, almost killed him as she had the guard. How she’d chained him and set him to work without any regard for his feelings. How she’d smiled as he’d slogged away at the trench, how she’d lied about him to the old woman, even to her daughter.
Friends? Really? She said you were a patient ...
He clutches his face, moaning.
She said you were ill ...
Golden eyes before a fire, and safe among her own kind she is talking to them in relief, able to get the truth out at last, describing the worm-eater into whose cold clutches she has fallen and from which she cannot unhook herself. She then speaking in tears, the brave and wounded in earshot as a man with strong and natural-born lungs comes forward to support her, taking her in his arms as she weeps and presses her face to his chest, breathing him in, begging him to come home with her and set her free.
I hope you go far away. I hope the wolf smell you. I want you gone ...
‘Of course,’ he croaks, ‘of course,’ staring around the darkened kitchen in anguish ...
~O~
She returned early one morning to find him lying facedown in the orchard, fast asleep. He’d been clawing at a tree trunk by the look of it, was unwashed, lay damp and filthy in his clothes.
Putting down her bags, she went on a brief tour of the property to find the front door wide open and the kitchen strewn with clutter and the fire out. Round the back, she found tools left in disarray and the pigs screaming with hunger. She returned to the orchard and stood over him, nudging him with a foot.
They were calling from the cart to check that all was well, and she waved back to her old friend’s daughter and the blond-haired tribesman and watched them pull away, the covered vehicle creaking as it manoeuvred through the birches. Then, with another nudge, she watched him come to waking.
He looked up, blinking, to find what appeared to be a huge goddess standing over him, someone towering upwards to the sky. A figure smiling as she gazed down upon him, her face rimmed by her headscarf, the tied ends trailing down her neck like exotic feathers.
A relaxed face. A patient face. One that was pleased to see him. One that had saved a life worth saving and saved it well. She looked radiant.
‘Why you here?’ she asked softly. ‘Hmm? Why outside, like this?’
He continued to look at her, finding qualities within her that seemed to shine forth as though in a beaded cascade, a shower of beauty and sorrow and kindness and things yet unknown to him, which he did not have words for. He had a sense that he was dying and yet that life would never end within the ambit of those eyes. Those tawny, penetrating, mysterious ... and now warmly yielding eyes.
‘Motte? Why you here?’
‘I ... don’t really know,’ he answered, searching her for clues, for reasons.
She looked around the orchard. ‘I finish,’ she said. ‘I am home.’
He thought for a moment. Then thought some more. ‘Cora,’ he said, and even to say her name made him feel like he was falling upwards. ‘I, ah, I did what you said. And I want to stay.’
She raised her brow.
‘It … it’s all I want. I want to be with you. I want to share things with you, and be good to you. I want to learn from you, too. I, ah … I’ve never done anything for someone else. Not someone like you. So I might not be very useful, but I want to try. I really do. I want you to teach me about your world, and, ah ... well, I want to live in it. Always. I always want to be with you. And if you want me, you know, to go ...’ He swallowed painfully. ‘Then I will. But I’d be sad. Very sad. I’d miss you, all my life. So I’d prefer to stay.’ He watched her nodding at him, then added, ‘I want to be happy. And I want you to be happy too. That’s why I’m here.’
She watched him a few moments longer, then smiled. And then in a gesture that made his eyes water, she lay down next to him in the grass, and together they lay gazing upwards.
The day loomed over them. Life grew bolder in his eyes; it spread its huge naked wings and became immense in the cool morning sky.
A few birds flew overhead. He lay breathing in the scents of the orchard. Listening to the branches rustling, chivvying. The pigs gave up crying for breakfast and for once their squeals fell into the background; then into a deepening silence as he felt her lips on his cheek. She took his hand. He turned to look at her, and gently kissed her face. She smiled, quietly humming her song, and for a few seconds that he would never forget, he glimpsed in her features the tranquil, steady countenance of peace.
Chapter 57 — A Doomed Race
‘She was a healer, too. A good one, everyone learnt a lot from her. I owe her my life.’
‘Heiler? A healer?’ Nina said, bemused. ‘I’ve not been called that before.’
Jaala smiled, watching as Nina wound a strip of tape around the corner of her spectacles before fitting them over her ears and nose. Nina peered at her from behind them. They looked very peculiar on her. Neither lens fitted properly and they sat misshapen and one of them partially opaque within the pieced-together frames. ‘Do you all have bad eyes?’ she said, at which Nina grinned, saying, ‘No, of course not. Besides, they’re not mine. I just borrowed them because of this light. Working all the time. Think I must be tired.’
‘You must be.’
Nina made a few more notes, then underlined something and rested her pen. ‘I’m happy with how things are going,’ she said, ‘but I want to make sure. Let’s go forward a little.’
Jaala composed her hands, thinking. Summoning. Although she knew it was necessary, the effort of making sense of that period was draining her.
What happened next was a dropping sensation. A plunge without light.
Talking then like someone navigating a path and Nina encouraging her calmly, telling her not to rush. She picking her way through a series of dark and twisted shapes from that battle, too tarnished to permit any light of glory, finding events portrayed in buckled profile, sometimes in reverse, ruined images lying strangled, hanging upside down. As though the fighting was something that had happened to another person entirely, someone she wasn’t sure she believed in. And yet there could be no denying it was real, no avoiding that rack of names. Names like Gustav, like his cousin Dradjan, nailed to the days. Appearing like goats strung up in the marketplace. Figures with their throats cut, eyes staring, the sacred essence draining thickly to the dust.
‘Keep going,’ said a distant voice. ‘You’re doing well. Now go forward to the healer.’
Deep again in that swirling pond of mind and life and time, telling her of that dark autumn’s pain in the cave where the casualties had been laid out. Telling her of the nurses in the smoky little sickhouse. Working quietly, patiently, attentively. Watching over the sick, changing dressings. Carrying out the dead. Telling her how they’d delayed the funerals by two days to include her own.
She told of the owl eyes watching over her. Of the knives, the tweezers clattering coldly on a dish. The owl pecking out the suns with their burning iron cores.
We must cut these metal out ...
Cut ... cut this beautiful girl ...
Cut ...
‘How long were you in the sickhouse?’
‘... Months.’
‘You mean all winter?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did you first hear about Anya?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, I do know, but it’s ... confused.’<
br />
‘Do you remember who told you?’
‘Yes. Staš.’
‘Her brother.’
‘Yes. I just remember it was cold. So cold. The fires were down, there was lots going on. Lots of people.’
Closing her eyes, she went back and looked again into the headman’s starved and anguished face. Formally, although not in practice, it had been she leading the tribe when he’d arrived with over two hundred Naagli that frozen day. She described to Nina how they’d been seeking refuge in the mountains, only to meet with stony fields and empty trails and ice. Faced with death, they’d set out east in search of a winter home they stood a better chance of surviving in. It had only been by luck that they’d come across the caves. Lost, struggling within some dark inner maze, she’d been in no fit state to do anything but leave the two parties to reunite, the new arrivals throwing up shelters of sooty canvas and felt along the lake’s northern side, while the incumbent cave dwellers did what they could to feed and clothe them, keep them warm ...
She spoke for close to an hour, ranging across dates and topics until eventually, still scribbling notes, Nina brought her out of it and she was allowed to rest. After that they reconvened at a table.
‘Does it make you angry,’ Nina asked, ‘remembering it all?’
Jaala sipped her drink. Like all their food it tasted salty. Bloody. ‘Yes,’ she said, nervously. ‘It does. Does that mean ... she’s still there?’
Nina repositioned her spectacles. ‘Let’s think about that. What that means.’
‘Okay.’
‘You lost everything. Your home. Your guardian, your friends. Why wouldn’t you be angry?’
‘But, Nina, is she still there?’
‘Let me ask you something. What else do you feel about that time?’
‘I ... I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘Sad, if that’s the word. Heartbroken. For what we lost. For Annie. Even for Staš, it wasn’t his fault.’
They looked at each other, then Nina said, ‘What you’re feeling ... they’re your feelings. Yours. No one else’s. They may be emotions you can’t bear to feel, but the key to all of this is not creating distance ...’
She turned as the door grated open and Lütt-Ebbins appeared, stamping the muck from his boots before entering. He went briskly to a chair and sat unbuttoning a thick overcoat, the tarry smells of the camp rolling off him in a waft of chill air. ‘How are you both?’ he said, looking from one to the other. Jaala nodded in response, while Nina informed him that while they still had a little way to go, she was more than satisfied with Jaala’s progress. ‘Delighted with it,’ she added, and Jaala returned a small smile of gratitude.
On hearing this, he turned to Jaala as if for proof of this proclamation. For a moment she caught her reflection in his lenses. There to find a dark and unaccountable figure in stained woollens sitting with her hands clasped. ‘I’m feeling much better,’ she said.
‘That’s good, very good,’ he said warmly. ‘Excellent. We’ve been worried about you. As you can appreciate.’
‘I know. And thank you. I don’t know what I would have done. I might not even be here.’
‘Well, you are here,’ said Nina, scratching at her lank hair. ‘And we’re glad you are.’
Lütt-Ebbins exchanged a brief look with her, then said, ‘Yes. Of course. We’re very glad,’ then fell silent.
Jaala watched him a moment, sensing something behind his words. ‘Mihael,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to go outside?’
‘No, um ... no need for that,’ he said. He linked his fingers and studied them. Darkly stained from the nails down. One hand in soiled bandages. Just then a generator started outside, shearing through the silence. She shifted in her seat. Nina, pale and drawn, kept her eyes fixed on him. When he spoke again his voice was strained. He said, ‘We lost two more divers today. A team of twelve went in, made it all the way to Bergmanstrasse. Only ten made it out.’ As Nina reacted, he released a breath. ‘They managed to locate a container, but it was luck, not planning. Seems there are still strong currents at work down there, moving things along. There was nothing at the site they’d set out for.’
‘Who was it?’ Nina said hoarsely.
‘Vanns. Used to be a guard.’
Nina nodded.
‘And Luca. Young lad. You know his mother. Carli.’
‘Oh no,’ she whispered, and Jaala looked down.
‘It had a leak, some light damage, but there’s water and paste in it. Some parts we might be able to make use of. No tanks, though. No O2.’
There was another silence. Nina was staring at Lütt-Ebbins with glistening eyes, a tear rolling down beneath a chipped lens.
‘What does it mean?’ Jaala asked delicately.
‘In terms of oxygen, we’ve got supplies for five, maybe six months more. Then that’s it. We’re out.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘But you might find more, mightn’t you?’
‘I’d say after this morning, it’s unlikely. There’s another area we could search, but we know a lot of it was destroyed before we were able to seize control. And getting there will be extremely dangerous. Much more dangerous than today. We’ll lose others doing it, that’s for sure.’
‘But couldn’t … can’t you suck the oil out with your machines? Can’t you pump it, get rid of it somehow? Surely there must be a way?’
Nina wiped her cheek. ‘You’re talking about emptying a sea, Jaala. Sucking it up and spitting it out in the desert where it can’t pollute us. A sea that can catch fire, a sea that weighs more than water. And all of it done on less food every week and less good air to breathe.’
Jaala nodded, chastened, and looked on awkwardly as Nina asked about the boy and his family; about alternative plans they could try. Lütt-Ebbins spoke with her for several minutes, dismissing the most popular of the recent plans he’d heard as crazy, poorly thought out, almost suicidal in nature. At the end, he placed his hands together and pressed them to his lip. Sitting like a man at prayer. ‘I’ll be honest with you,’ he said. ‘Looks like the converter’s the only option left.’
‘You said it was broken.’
‘I said it had broken down. We’ll just have to pull people off the salvage.’
‘But if it keeps breaking down, isn’t it better to look for more parts?’
‘Yes, but we can’t go any deeper. It’s like I explained, we’ll end up losing people for the sake of it. Then imagine the mood.’
In the silence following his remark, Jaala thought of the low square building she’d often seen them working at. Of all their machines, it seemed to generate the most noise and smoke. A great silver tube shaped like a horn sucked the bad air in from outside, while a gridded mouth blasted the breathable gas like a wind around the stricken settlement. Running out from it to the ash mounds were dozens of chugging pipes from which the effluent spewed constantly.
She looked at them, each dwelling on the concerns before them, then she said to Lütt-Ebbins, ‘You thought the leader could help, didn’t you? The one on the bridge.’
Lütt-Ebbins looked up.
‘You remember him?’ Nina said, surprised.
‘Not really. Just pieces. But I remember talking to you.’
Lütt-Ebbins coughed a few times and waited, then said, ‘Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. We were hoping we might find someone to help us among the Ostgrenzers. Anyone with knowledge, really, but especially him. Even if unwillingly.’
She nodded at this, and for a brief moment found herself reliving the sight of the bleeding figure pointing the nozzle at his head; speaking to her and Radjík in such a cold and unearthly monotone. A man who’d died many times over, she thought, recalling the force of the explosion. ‘What was so special about him?’ she said.
Lütt-Ebbins laughed briefly; bitterly. ‘Special? I suppose you could say he was heading up some important research. The way it was being done was not how we’d do it ourselves, it wouldn’t be allowed. But the findings ... we think they’d have been
useful.’
‘I see.’
Turning to her, Nina said, ‘The Genetik you saw in the desert. They were building a race of them. Things who could live out here.’ She went on to explain that he’d been leading the regime’s genome development programme, a by-product of whose research was focussed on the human lung, and the means of enabling them to breathe outside. ‘That’s the knowledge we need,’ she said. ‘Without it, we’re only here as long as our supplies will keep us.’
‘If the converter keeps working, I’d say it’d give us an extra half year or so,’ Lütt-Ebbins said, and coughed again. ‘The longer it lasts, the more time we have for research. We just need a breakthrough. Maybe something small. If we don’t, well, things are going to be difficult. Very difficult.’
‘You mean you’ll die out here?’
Lütt-Ebbins hesitated, then gave a nod. Nina said nothing, just looked away.
‘And we ... I was responsible for killing that man?’
‘No, Jaala,’ Nina said, shaking her head firmly, ‘you did what you had to. It’s past. Now it’s our turn to act. Without him, without any of them. We’ll just have to pull through somehow.’
‘In a funny way the oil’s given us a second chance,’ Lütt-Ebbins said. ‘At least we have fuel. We’ll need to put it to good use, that’s all.’
Nina removed her spectacles. ‘Poor dear Luca,’ she said, as Lütt-Ebbins rose, buttoning his coat.
‘I thought you should know,’ he said softly, and bidding them goodbye for the moment, he left.
~O~
She set off through the camp with her fists in her pockets, treading through the cruddy ash, deep in contemplation.
As soon as Lütt-Ebbins had left, she’d told Nina she could not leave them knowing such news, told her that she had to do something, had to help in some way. To which Nina had said bleakly, ‘Face it, Jaala, we’re in a mess. You should get away. Now. This thing with Luca … it’ll light a fuse. It’s going to get ugly here and I don’t want you to be around for it. I don’t want you to see us like that. And there’ll be others who won’t want you here, too.’ When she’d asked why, Nina’s reply had been, ‘For the simple reason that whatever happens to you, whatever the future holds, you won’t be affected. You’ll be alive.’
