Air

by Geoff Ryman

  I’ve never seen Edrem work at all, thought Mae. “Would you like some money?”

  Hatijah looked back, with a dull and heavy face. Probably not, if it means she has to move, thought Mae. She decided Hatijah’s problem was laziness. Hatijah seemed like a woman underwater, too tired even to swim to the surface of her own face. She did not reply.

  “Remember, I said back in May, before … before the Test”—Mae always faltered finding words for the event—“I said that I might have some sewing work to offer you.”

  Someone else said, “Only if I get to come, too.” It was Sezen.

  By the stars. Everything about Sezen had changed.

  Sezen wore grubby black trousers and an old black leather jacket. She glowered. There was no hint of politesse, no smiles, no graces.

  Mae herself had grown more blunt. “What will you bring?” she asked.

  “Myself,” said Sezen.

  “You can’t do anything,” replied Mae. “You mother can sew. You would just be a burden.”

  “Then my mother won’t help you.” Sezen’s face was fatter and covered in spots. Her hair had been impulsively chopped back from her face. Her hands were jammed in her pockets. Her posture had changed. Her head leaned to one side; her hips were thrust sideways. Every line of her body was a challenge.

  Hatijah just stared.

  “Okay,” said Mae with a shrug, “if this is a house where the daughter rules the mother. Your little brother is half starved and none of you have any clothes. Find money where you can.” Mae started to leave.

  “I can tell you what clothes to make.” Sezen stared back at her.

  Mae looked at her jacket, her jeans. “What clothes to rescue from garbage.”

  Sezen’s plump head wavered on a skinny neck. “If that’s the only place I can find them.” She still challenged: “Look. You want to make clothes for old women. What does a married woman need a best dress for? I tell you who is most interested in clothes. People my age. And we don’t want what you make.”

  Mae stopped. She knew what this sensation was. This was the sensation of truth coming from unexpected sources.

  “We see on TV. We don’t want to look like peasants; we don’t want to look like fashion people. This is what we want to look like.”

  Sezen had a school notebook tied with string to a post. She opened it and pressed it so it would stay open. She did this slowly with her eyes on Mae, with an air of presenting something outstanding.

  Instead of schoolwork, Sezen had been drawing.

  She was drawing who she thought she was. This Sezen had long flowing sculpted black tresses, and wore tight jeans, mutton sleeves, pinched wrists. Mae made to hold the book to see better.

  “Ah,” said Sezen, and snatched it back. You will not steal this, fashion expert, she seemed to say.

  Mae shook her head. “So. Jeans and mutton sleeves. These are new ideas? Many girls waste their time with fashion drawing, there is nothing special in that.”

  Sezen’s eyes rolled. How annoying when blind people cannot see. She held the book out one last time.

  Now the drawings had short, slicked hair pasted up into tiny points. They showed a dream Sezen. She looked like a hoodlum. Everything she wore was black. This was evil fashion, for bad young people, and Mae knew, herself, that, yes, given half a chance, this is what they would buy.

  “So. Now you begin to see,” said Sezen.

  “The Muslim girls would not be allowed.”

  “Hah,” said Sezen, scornfully. “They are the worst. What they wear under their robes is nobody’s business. What they don’t wear sometimes.”

  Mae considered, and on balance this was not what she had planned.

  “There is something in what you say, but I don’t like to be threatened, and I don’t like the way you boss your mother.” Mae shrugged, said goodbye, and walked out.

  Mae was out on the street when there was a change in the sound of the air around her and a darkness in the corner of her eye. Sezen had run after her—without giving the impression of having done so.

  “I will set up my own business,” said Sezen.

  With what, air? Mae blew out air and stopped and looked at her. Mae felt pity for her and dislike at the same time. “You don’t have a bargaining position. Don’t you understand that, child?”

  Sezen had nothing. Yet she stared back unblinking, determined. That curious wavering of the head. Her mouth was working too, slightly, all the time.

  “My mother is useless. My father is useless.”

  “Show some respect,” said Mae. Though it was true.

  “I have to do everything, my mother just sits there.”

  “Not much gets done, does it? Sezen, your house is a disgrace. I would not take credit for that if I were you.”

  Sezen suddenly shouted: “Will you let up on me! All of you! You are always on me.”

  “It is because you are rude,” said Mae.

  “I hate housework. I will do anything else. I will be very hardworking. And I do know what the young girls want. Look! Look!”

  Sezen shook the red book at Mae.

  Mae took it from her. Sezen let her. Mae folded it and put it under her arm. Her Kru bubbled in her head. She calculated.

  “I will look at these, Sezen, but the problem is that girls your age have no money. Their mothers will spend five riels on a dress. What will the girls spend? One riel? Two?” She shook her head.

  “Two riels,” said Sezen. She counted on her fingers. “You can sell six outfits, and get black demin for them all for five riels in the market. My mother sews them, I sell to the girls, we all make money.”

  “I do not count six sales.”

  “My boyfriend lives down the hill. He has a motorcycle. There are plenty more modern young people around here than you think. There’s one you don’t know about.” Sezen waited. “An.”

  That did make Mae pause, and the little minx struck again, hard.

  “You see. Your helpful little Talent—An. She wants these clothes.”

  “I will think about it, Sezen.”

  “So that’s six sales for … twelve riels total.… So that’s seven riels’ profit! I get one, my mother gets one, my boyfriend gets one—that leaves four for you!”

  “But I get to spend five riels on cloth?” Mae shook her head. “You will need to do better than that, Sezen. I agreed to nothing, okay. You understand? Nothing! I will see if this fits in with my business plan.”

  “It does!” insisted Sezen.

  Mae walked off, still shaking her head.

  Still.

  What Sezen had said about young people wanting something different was true. A new kind of best-dress business was not an entirely bad idea.

  Something bubbled up from the Kru. You can either be a general store and stock cheap standard items. Or you specialize. If you specialize you have to spread geographically.

  If I can sell best dresses to this village and the next, that’s not such a bad idea. Maybe I will need that motorcycle after all.

  8

  SUNNI’S-HUSBAND ANNOUNCED TO THE VILLAGE: HE WAS BRINGING IN A TELEVISION AS WELL.

  “Well, wife, your friend Kwan has a rival,” Joe exclaimed cheerily. He was back from doing business all day at the Teahouse. “Business” meant sipping tea and playing chess until suppertime.

  Mae was ladling soup into Siao’s and Old Mr. Chung’s waiting bowls. She thought a moment. “I don’t know why you say ‘rival.’”

  “Tuh. Don’t play innocent with me. You know the Wings and the Haseems are rivals.”

  “Rivals for stealing their neighbors’ farms,” muttered Siao, into his soup.

  As if jabbed, Joe snapped his head around in Siao’s direction, and then decided this was support. “Yes, wife. Your friend Kwan is no better or worse than Faysal Haseem.”

  Mae served her husband his soup. “Except that we don’t owe the Wings any money.”

  Siao said, “Haseem has to run it off the wireless account as Wing, f
or which of course, he will pay rent, like water. So Wing still gets richer, at Haseem’s expense. That makes Wing more clever.”

  Siao was an odd fish. Somehow he knew more than Joe. Mae had long ago noticed that he did all the work, going off every morning with Old Mr. Chung to work on the walls. He kept the household’s accounts. So why was he content to sleep in the loft?

  There was no doubt that two TVs in the village was news. As Mae and An went about their interviewing, they discussed the situation. What, really, would Mr. Haseem get out of having a TV? Position, yes, but how would he use it to make money? His only idea would be to charge people for watching it. Since Wing did not, he couldn’t, either.

  At midnight, Mae went back to Kwan’s to work on her TV. She was learning how to use the accounts package. The TV was fine, she had decided, just so long as you didn’t go online.

  Mae found Mr. Doh, Mr. Ali, and Mr. Ho watching a police thriller. Drug dealers were being rounded up by computer surveillance. Mae found herself thinking: So, they are still loyal to Wing. Who is watching at Sunni’s?

  Kwan was thinking the same thing. She was serving tea to them, as guests. She had not done that for days. Mae, to show support, began to gather up used cups, and was rewarded by a beautiful smile. Over the plastic tub that was Kwan’s sink, they talked.

  “I wonder what horrors Mr. Sunni shows on his set?”

  “How to take over villages, perhaps,” said Kwan.

  “I think he wants to be a strongman. Like in the very old days. He wants us all to work for him. If you had daughters he would try to marry one of his sons to them. To form a political alliance.”

  Kwan bent from the middle with a silent laugh.

  Mae’s eyes were narrow and merry. “He probably thinks that he has the male TV and you have the female.”

  Kwan had to put down a cup in order to laugh. “You have become like a thornbush lately!”

  “I hate Mr. Sunni’s-man,” Mae said with a shrug. “I wish I had killed him.”

  “It will be very interesting when you interview him for your Question Map.”

  “On the contrary, I look forward to it. I cannot wait until he tries to do one of his own.”

  Kwan was still smiling, but she suddenly, gently, pushed the tip of Mae’s nose. “Do not grow too bold, Mae.”

  “I have more than one enemy, I hear.”

  “Shen,” said Kwan, her voice suddenly curdling. “I cannot get over the change in that man.”

  “I must talk to him as well,” sighed Mae. She saw she was not just making a Question Map. She was building a party. She realized that, in a sense, it was the party of Mr. Wing.

  JOE GOT WIND OF A CONSTRUCTION JOB IN BALSHANG.

  It would take three days to drive there. Siao, Joe, Old Mr. Chung, and Mr. Doh would drive down in Mr. Haseem’s van, to join the work gang being recruited in Yeshibozkent. They were to leave that very day.

  “It is a good opportunity,” Joe said. “They are building an industrial farm, many buildings. There is a whole camp for the workmen they are hiring.”

  “How much do they pay?” asked Mae.

  He blew out air, from stress. “I don’t know.”

  “All the men in the country will be going there, hoping for work.”

  “But Mr. Doh says that it is government work, so they try to spread it to all parts of the country. Who knows? There is a chance, and it is better than sitting around here.”

  Mae was glad; it showed her husband had taken on the reality of their problem. “I will pack your food and your shirts,” she said. It was a proper wifely thing to do. He nodded once, to indicate that this was quite right, too, and drew in smoke from his scrawny cigarette. Mae folded his shirts. Even if it was only four riels a week, if it was four weeks’ work, that would be sixteen riels. And if Siao and Old Mr. Chung did the same, then their problems were over! Taking into account loss of odd jobs, that was still a total of thirty-two riels overall.

  Siao took one final look at the household accounts.

  Siao’s eyes latched onto Mae’s, briefly. “This comes just in time, eh?”

  Mae nodded silently, yes. She could feel her eyes sparkle.

  Mr. Haseem’s van drew up outside their gate and beeped. Mae did not want to be seen by that man, so she pressed the food and the reed box of clothing into her husband’s hands. Farewell, husband, good health, courage, come back a wealthy man … The words tumbled as automatically from her lips as sneezes.

  Then came a pause. He stared at her, wanting more; they had been young lovers once, she had borne him three children.

  He pulled her to him and kissed her, and she hugged him, pushing her face to the side of his; she would have her freedom after he was gone. Siao called to him from beyond the gate.

  Mr. Haseem beeped again, she patted him. “Go, or your good friend will drop you in the shit,” she said.

  And unbidden tears came into her eyes. This was very convenient; she made sure he saw them. There were wisps of fear at being left alone, wisps of loss for Joe, who was her domestic companion.

  “I will see Lung and our daughter,” he said. “I will bring back news of Lung.” Joe worshiped his athletic, achieving, military son.

  “That will be the best part,” she said. “Now hurry, hurry

  Joe grinned, like a boy again, and broke into a run. He waved at the gate again.

  He thinks I love him, she thought. He thinks that in the still man and wife. And she remembered him when he was sixteen, handsome, a leader of the village youth.

  Joe never grew up. She heard the car door slam, she exuberance, a chattering, a yelling. She remembered him, his up, a toothpick never out of his mouth, car insignia stolen from vehicles in the valley pinned to the back of his jacket. She heard the van grind its way down the mountain road.

  She listened to the sound of loneliness, the sound of dust. Mr. Ken’s house was there, like he was—ever present, always close, with a door that could both open and conceal.

  Mae was walking before she knew it. I need to be out in :he fields by late afternoon, she thought, or people will talk. It was still lunchtime. The children would be napping in Mr. Shen’s school, Mr. Ken’s mother might be sleeping before returning to the fields. If not, she could always say: Who will do your weeding for you, Mr. Ken? I and the village women could offer to help.

  She walked into Mr. Ken’s kitchen. He was sipping soup, his late breakfast. He looked up, still shiny with sweat from weeding his own fields.

  “Joe’s gone,” she said quietly. “And his brother.”

  “I’ll be along,” he said.

  She walked back to her own house, shaking. Her body was like Mr. Haseem’s truck rattling down the road. This is crazy, if anyone comes to call, they will find us. She pinned up the window curtains and drew shut the heavy draft-curtains across the doorway. She took down her sun hat, her jumper, her apron to collect the compost, her high-soled field clogs. She rammed them under the bed. Their absence would signal she was not there. All of that would signal: Mrs. Chung is out at work. How then did she draw shut the draft-curtains? She opened them again.

  She lay down on the bed, still smelling of Joe. It smelled of Joe but that smell would now be driven out by the smell of Mr. Ken. That thought alone seemed to loosen the corsets of her belly. I will smell him when I sleep at night.

  She heard the latch. Her breath caught. No one called out her name. She heard the latch close. Her heart was pumping. This is mad—if it is not him how will I explain? I will say I caught too much sun and I am ill. The curtains of the alcove were pulled back, rattling on their plastic rings.

  It was him and he was smiling. He was shiny no longer. He had bathed.

  He was naked under his overalls, which he flung utterly aside, and he was soon on top of her. His skin was as perfect as apricots.

  THE NEXT DAY MAE WENT BACK OUT ONTO HER HUSBAND’S LAND.

  The Chungs had one valley paddy and two long terraces very high up the mountainside. Mae had neg
lected them since planting the nursery rice. Dock and bindweed were already sprouting between the onions and rice shoots.

  She began the long climb up the beaten paths. The swallows swooped about her, scooping insects out of the air. The terraces creaked and buzzed with the sound of crickets. Water lay in puddles, as warm as soup.

  On her terrace the air was hot, still, breathless. The heat did a shivering fan-dance in the air. Only the kites circling high overhead looked cool.

  Mae went to work hauling out weeds. Her back was soon aching. Tears of sweat wept into the ground. This delicious rice, she thought, it will be seasoned with my own salt.

  Her clogged feet sank deep into the creamy soil with every step. The mud sucked and clung like a lover. Her high, broad hat kept the sun off her neck, shoulders, and even her arms. It could not keep away the flies and the midges. Come friend swallow, here is a feast, free me from flies. She waved her hands at the midges but they returned to tickle and stick to her skin that was like cooked rice, glutinous and steaming.

  Mae stood up. She could see far below on the plain the livid green paddies of wet rice. The slashes of mirror among them were water reflecting sky. Beyond—hazy, losing all shape in bright sunlight—were the flat yellows, beiges, and grays of the distant mountains.

  Was it like this in your day, Old Mrs. Tung?

  No.

  The voice was like wind.

  Suddenly with a lurch Mae fell, growing smaller. The world collapsed around her, deflating. She was somewhere else.

  Little Miss Hu was swung up away from the ground and out over the paddies, holding on to a high wooden arm. The arm was part of a pump for transferring water higher up the mountain.

  Miss Hu hung for a moment, giggling in a mixture of fear and delight. Boys sat on the other end of the arm, a huge ball of dried mud. Miss Hu drew a breath and let go and dropped down. Her heart rose into her mouth and the mud greeted her like a mother with a plump hug. The little girl stood up coated in wet earth and whooped to the boys in triumph.

  She jumped up and down, splashing in the mud, not caring about her old paddy clothes. “Again! Again!” she demanded. The boys lowered the arm and she ascended again. She looked out across the valley.