Air

by Geoff Ryman

  Siao glanced up at her and rubbed his whole face, once, with his hand. He had managed to grow a wispy beard, and around his mouth were strings of muscle. He flicked ash. “Mr. Haseem has been very kind, but we’ve all hit the bottle. Perhaps we should say thank you, Mr. Haseem, and give our answer in the morning.”

  “Answer in the morning?” Joe said “A friend generously offers money and you insult him by saying we have to consider?”

  “I am saying that perhaps Mr. Haseem and ourselves will feel different in the morning,” Siao said.

  Joe glanced sideways at Mr. Haseem. He needed to look like the boss of the house. “Sometimes it is necessary to take a risk. You never have done that, Siao. You have never left home.”

  “Neither have you,” said Siao, quietly. “But I think perhaps soon you may have to.”

  Mae spoke. “Joe, your brother is right.”

  “Wife. This is between men.”

  Mae turned. “Mr. Haseem, please, my husband does not know what he is doing, please take the money back, there is no way we can pay you. Except to give you the farm.”

  She was being honest. She was much reduced; she had no weapons.

  “I think that is for your husband to say,” said Mr. Haseem.

  Mae leaned forward. “Mr. Haseem, please don’t take the farm, please don’t do this, I am a friend of your wife’s, think of the friendship and please don’t swallow us. Please, I beg of you!”

  Terror and confusion from the Test, hatred of what was happening, overwhelmed her. Mae got down on her knees. In the dust in her best white dress with the heart-shaped patterns, she abased herself.

  “Please don’t take our farm!”

  “I think it is your wife who is drunk,” chuckled Sunni’s husband.

  “Wife!” barked Joe. “You are making a scene. You are ill. Ill in the head.” He jabbed a finger at his own.

  “Take the money back!” sobbed Mae, seizing it from Joe and pushing it at Mr. Haseem. “Please.” It fell on the ground. She cradled it up, poison money, and tried to push it at him again. He took it, rolled it neatly, leaned across the table, and put it into Joe’s pocket, patted it, grunted, and leaned back. He looked content, exactly as though he had eaten well.

  So, Mae thought. You have your loan and you even had me begging on my knees. You know that I know, and that I am helpless. I should have denied you that, at least. I give nothing else away to you.

  Mae stood up and wiped her cheeks. She had a blinding headache, suddenly, and the entire room seemed filthy, dull, and wearisome.

  “One hundred riels is not a bad price to pay for a farm,” she said. “It is good business, Mr. Haseem. For you.”

  Joe looked befuddled.

  “Here, husband.” She poured him another whisky. “It is best that you be merry now. It is best that you forget.” She stroked his crisp, slicked-back hair, then lightly batted it.

  He took the glass with a hazy swagger. The wife pours her man a drink, that is right and proper behavior. Mae slipped her hand into his pocket, and took the money. She counted it.

  “One hundred riels,” she said, in acknowledgement to Sunni’s husband. “It is all there.”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Haseem, leaning back. “I am an honest man.”

  “An honest man!” insisted Joe, and held up the glass.

  “The wife always keeps the money,” Mae said, folding the money into the collar of her best dress. She thought, I would not put it beyond you to steal it back from my husband while he drops off.

  Sunni’s husband tipped his glass towards her in mock salute.

  Mae could not bear to see any more. She left and pulled the curtain shut behind her, but did not lie down. She stood riveted to the spot by panic. He has us, he has us, just like he got the others, the loans, the further loans, the money that could not be paid, the seizing of the house, the lands. This whole house is only worth three hundred riels! Our fields only bring in about a hundred. We have to find a year’s extra income, with interest.

  Mae thought of Sunni. Men’s business, is it? Well it can be women’s business as well.

  Now she could turn on the light. The bare bulb glowed over sewing machine, toiletries, and heaps of cloth. It showed her crumpled face, bags and lines around the eyes, a puffy mouth as if her husband beat her. There was her comb. She pulled it through her hair. There was her lipstick. She precisely placed it, outlining the lips she wished she had. She pinched her cheeks and found the right shoes, and threw on a sweater. She strode back out into the kitchen.

  “I’m going for a walk,” she announced, and stalked out into the courtyard. Sunni’s husband roared with laughter, and saluted her. “Walk well, fashion expert!”

  Mae walked across Upper Street then up the steep slope to Mr. Haseem’s riverside house. She knew that Sunni would be awake, bitter, watchful.

  Mae pushed open the courtyard gate, walked to the kitchen door, ducked down, and entered. The kitchen light was on, but Sunni was not there. Best not to surprise her if she was not looking her best. “Friend Sunni!” she called. “It is just Mae. Can I come to talk?”

  In fact Sunni was ready for her. Mae knew that from the way the curtain snapped back on its rings, the way Sunni’s hair and makeup were perfect, but most of all from the way she stood straight and tall with her plump face set.

  “This is late for a social call,” Sunni informed her.

  “Indeed. But I need your help.”

  “Indeed. You have not been yourself lately,” said Sunni. “Standards have been allowed to slip.”

  Mae knew then in her gut that this was pointless, she knew in her gut what the situation was. But at least later she would be able to say that she had asked.

  “Are you going to ask me to sit down?” Mae asked. “I do not intend to stay long. As you say, I have not been well lately.”

  Sunni motioned for her to sit, at the kitchen table, not to enter her main rooms. Sunni chose to stand.

  Mae announced: “I will, of course stay in the fashion business.”

  Sunni’s head inclined. “That is the first time I have heard you admit that it is a business. It has always been couched before in terms of friendly advice.”

  “And indeed much advice was given for free. Out of friendship,” said Mae. Her voice was sad, she felt sad. “And one can tell, of course, who one’s friends are in adversity.” Sunni, Sunni, I know what you are, but you are better than this. Sunni said nothing.

  Mae continued: “Your husband, of course, is in the farm-buying business.”

  Sunni was still unmoved. All of this, so far, she would have been expecting; she would have known that the loan would be offered. Sunni may even have tried to dissuade her husband, but right now, as far as she was concerned, the decision had been taken.

  Sunni took her time to respond. “It is more clever than being a farmer. It is the way to prosperity. It is, of course, prosperity that pays for fashion.”

  “Your husband has got Joe drunk, and fired him up with wild imaginings and loaned him one hundred riels.”

  “Tuh. More like your Joe has got my husband drunk, to loan you that much.”

  “We can’t pay, Sunni, and you know as well as I do that that is how your husband gets rich. And I am asking you as a friend to use your good offices to get your husband to take back the money now. Or, indeed”—Mae reached down into her dress—“to take the money back from me now yourself. And plead our case with him, and ask him to spare us.”

  Mae held out the money, printed so elaborately with the portrait of President Kubla Khan. Sunni seemed to falter in her resolve.

  “Please, Sunni,” said Mae, and felt the weakness of the illness return, as her voice shook, near tears again. “Otherwise we will lose everything.”

  “This loan nonsense,” said Sunni, faltering. “It is men’s business, my husband’s business, I cannot interfere.”

  “Sunni. He will destroy us!”

  “I cannot help you.” She turned to go.

&nb
sp; “Sunni, if you were ever my friend…” Mae stood to follow her, unbidden, into the rich man’s house.

  There were embroidered curtains, embroidered cushions, gold on green, everything overstuffed, the very room overstuffed, a small farm room full of glass decanters, snowstorm domes, and a set of billiard balls without a table.

  “This is none of my business!” said Sunni, more fiercely now. Her arm was across her tummy, as if she had cramps. She suddenly spun. “And as for being friends, you were a servant, do you understand? I bought your services, your, your, advice, your, your fawning over me, I purchased it, and you know that.”

  Sunni, Sunni, you hate this, you are made clumsy.

  “Of course it was business, we both knew that.” Mae was growing annoyed. “But you cannot have a business without a relationship, and ours was straightforward and good, with no misunderstandings. That can continue. But only if this nonsense—as you so rightly call it—this nonsense over the loan is put to bed!”

  Sunni looked cornered, her head was shaking slightly, No, no, no.

  Mae understood. “You are frightened of him.”

  “What nonsense, how dare you!”

  “Of course you are frightened of him; I am frightened of him. He is a brute, Sunni.”

  The two women stared at each other. The money was between them. Mae looked at it, considering its power.

  “But,” Mae sighed, “he makes you rich. That is why you married him. And therefore you cannot question the way he makes his money. As you say: It pays for fashion.”

  She put it back into her dress.

  Sunni’s face had crumpled, her mouth working. She wanted revenge now—revenge for being so coldly, clearly described.

  “Fashion expert. Who will need you, ah? Who will want your advice, servant, when your friend Wing’s TV gives us all advice, and better advice than you ever gave. Peasant. Farmer’s wife!”

  “Whore,” said Mae, coldly. I will regret that, she thought. But I do not need to take insults now. “At least I am not a whore, Sunni.”

  Sunni had no response to that at all. Mae turned and quickly walked away.

  Sunni started to bellow: “I was going to say something, something to him to help you.” Sunni followed Mae into the kitchen. “I was, but I will not now! How dare you call me names? ‘Friend?’ You? You do anything for money, and you call me whore?”

  Mae stood at the kitchen door. “Save it, Sunni, save it. Everything you have said about me is true. And I am sorry you sold your life for this house. I might have done the same.”

  And out into the night, out under the stars and clouds, that were eternal. A moon that was nearly full.

  What now! she wondered. Dear God, what now?

  Mae got back to find both her husband and Sunni’s-man asleep at the table. Siao had climbed upstairs.

  “Out,” Mae said, and shook Mr. Haseem. “Drunken man, get out, up, out.”

  Blearily, Mr. Haseem gazed up at her and grinned.

  I know you, she thought. You are the strong man who rules by force. You will have heads on spikes if we let you.

  “Out of my house,” she said again, and hit him.

  “Hey!” he bellowed, and looked for assistance at Joe. Her useless husband was dead to the world, too deadened even to help his enemy.

  “Out, out, out,” was all she could think of saying, raining blows about his head. He began to chuckle; he seemed to think it funny.

  “She-wolf,” he chuckled. Oh yes, that was it, the image of the angry wife, chastising her husband’s drunken friends. It enraged her still further to find herself cast in such an ancient role.

  “I am not throwing you out because you are drunk! I am throwing you out because you are an enemy to us. Because you want to steal everything from us. Get out before I slice open your eyes!”

  Mae grabbed her big kitchen knife. He stopped laughing and jumped back, away from the table. She saw his eyes flicker and she seized the cleaver before he did. “I will kill you and then we do not have to pay you back the money. I will kill you and spare the village a strongman.”

  She meant it. She swiped the cleaver at him and he yelped and jumped back, shouting, “Hey! Madwoman! The air has entered your head and—hey!”

  “I … will…” she promised and came at him, knife and cleaver flashing. “… kill you!” Her voice became a screech.

  He ran for the door and seized his coat, his thick tobacco-yellow fingers trembling, face crossed in surprise, fear, confusion. The world was suddenly upside down for him to be chased by a madwoman with knives. One last gasp of surprise and he ducked out of the house.

  Mae chased him across the courtyard, howling insults. “Run, dog! Run, donkey! Go, go, go!”

  There was light on courtyard walls, lights springing on throughout the village. Mr. Ken’s dog, awakened, began to bark. She heard the sound of Mr. Haseem’s feet outside the gates, the flapping of his loose shoeheel. Other dogs began to bark; all the village was awake, all the village would know by morning what had happened.

  “Mrs. Chung?”

  There, in his underpants only, was Mr. Ken.

  She began to sob. She dropped the knives, they clattered to the stone. She hid her eyes in shame, in fear. How had things gone so far so quickly?

  “What is happening?” Mr. Ken said. He stood still, looking at her, aghast. She didn’t want him to think her mad. She gathered herself in and explained.

  “Mr. Haseem has loaned Joe one hundred riels. He got Joe drunk, and Joe took the money.”

  Mr. Ken knew what that meant. “Ah,” he said.

  “We will never pay it back. He will get our farm!”

  “Won’t he take the money back?” Mr. Ken shifted, aware now of his nakedness.

  She yearned to hold him. That would comfort her, that would stop the world spinning, make everything stop.

  “No, he doesn’t want the money, he wants us, and our land. He wants to make us slaves. He wants to do the same to you, too.”

  A pause, a beat. The lights were still on. “You’d best go inside,” he said.

  She felt frozen in place, still shaking, still helpless. He knelt down to pick up her knives; she saw how the top of his back swelled outwards to broad shoulders. She saw the crease down the middle of his strong back where the spine was buried deep.

  Then he put an arm around her and in silence turned her not towards her house, but his own.

  “Sssh,” he said.

  He guided her into his own kitchen. He did not turn on the light. Very carefully, her knives were placed on the table, almost without a sound.

  What are we doing here in the darkness, each of us? Are we doing what I think we are doing?

  “My mother will be awake,” he said, in a voice as quiet as water on reeds. She smelled his breath: sleepy, garlicky, but somehow not unpleasant.

  It was Old Mrs. Tung who moved her, Old Mrs. Tung who knew how to get what she wanted.

  Somehow her hands were on his shoulders, then down his smooth broad back. Then his hands were on her breasts, and her heart was thumping, she could hardly breathe. This was dangerous, madness, but she found she did not care. One should not do this, one should make men stand off and away, but she had been doing that all her life and all she had to show for it was Joe.

  She must have tugged at him, for suddenly his smooth upholstered chest seemed to surround her. His thick bowed legs and his underpants, loose but also now full with a small hard penis, were pressed against her. She was wearing no underpants. Such a tiny penis, it would be inside her so quickly, it could be done so quickly so simply, as simply and as sweetly as a kiss.

  She found herself pulling up her good white dress. He kissed her, she slipped down the last of his clothing, and finally, finally, finally, for the first time in her life, she had it. This was foolish, he would despise her later.

  But she had just tried to kill someone with knives and she no longer cared. It was softly done, it was quiet. She felt his spasm, felt something shoot agai
nst an inner wall. Then his forehead leaned against hers.

  He had not left her body yet. Suddenly, as if clubbed, she was overwhelmed; something clenched shook and moistened inside her. She couldn’t stop herself saying, oh, oh, oh.

  “Sssh,” he said, and slipped out of her.

  Her dress fell down, covering her. He stepped out of his underwear, and walked with her, to the courtyard. The village lights were off now; the moon was still out. He was blue and naked and she had never seen anything as beautiful.

  They looked at each other. What now? both their faces seemed to say. Then they both smiled, overwhelmed by the speed of what had happened. Let tomorrow take care of itself. He nodded once, meaning, Swift now, hide now.

  She turned and walked back into her house, turned and looked at his dark and empty doorway.

  She got back in, and Joe was still asleep. You are not a bad man, she thought, you are just a bit of a fool and I do not want you the way I want Mr. Ken. She left him sleeping at the table. She fell onto their disordered bed.

  5

  IN THE MORNING, JOE HAD A HANGOVER.

  He would not stop moaning and holding his head. Mae was abrupt with him. She took back his plate of cold uneaten breakfast.

  “You’ll have a headache longer than that; you’ll have a headache all your life when you find yourself the slave of Mr. Haseem.”

  Joe’s eyes were fearful as well as pained. “We will have to make money. We might as well buy goats and make cheese.”

  Mae said, “We should spend none of it. Then all we have to do is earn back the interest.”

  “The interest!” Joe groaned, and held his head. “We agreed no interest.”

  “Then we will say that, and give him back just the hundred.”

  Joe looked fearful. “He will say it was fifty percent. He always says that.”

  “Then you had best get to work,” she told him.

  Joe left, looking guilty. He left Mae alone with all the terrors of adultery.

  If Joe looked guilty, what was she? The village did not forgive women who strayed. They would say Mr. Ken was a widower, he had his needs. But what had Mae been thinking of? You can’t be a fallen woman and a fashion expert; the husbands won’t let you in the house. The best she could hope for was that they would blame Air. So who buys fashion from a crazy woman with Air in her head who chases men with knives? What was she going to do?