by Maja Lunde
Imagine if someone had discovered me, imagine if customers had looked in and seen me sleeping in the shop, right in the middle of opening hours. Even more stories could arise from such things, yet again I could put myself on the map as the village fool. But maybe, hopefully, the afternoon had been just as bloody quiet, or should I say as blessedly quiet, as the morning.
My stomach clamored for nourishment and wrapped in paper was a last piece of the pie. Dry and cold, the grease had congealed into a wormlike ridge around the edge. I ate it all the same and simultaneously swore I would never again allow myself be tempted into eating this dish. Perhaps not even pie at all. Although, what difference did it make?
I closed up, locked the door and set out for home.
The voices from the tavern grew louder.
The windows were warm yellow squares in the darkness. For the first time in my life, I felt drawn to them. A goblet of cheap wine, merely. It couldn’t do any harm. I stopped. If someone saw me in there, that I’d become one of them, would it really change anything?
Everything was as usual outside the tavern. The same scenes played themselves out this evening as on every other evening; two rough workmen were arguing loudly, one of them bumped into the other, shoved him, soon they would fight. A stout tramp gurgled to himself as he lurched down the street; at the same time a tall lout came staggering out the door, brushed against the corner and spewed twice where nobody could see, but the sounds of the day’s supper and the excessively large amounts of alcohol he had consumed, which found its way back out into the fresh air, were not to be mistaken.
No. I headed home. I had not sunk that low. When I passed the building, I noticed that even more people were outside on this bright summer evening.
A young girl’s vulgar squealing. “Stop it! Don’t!”
It was a no that said yes. Followed by intense giggling.
It was only now that I recognized the voice. It was Alberta. I didn’t even need to see her to know how her large breasts were most certainly on the verge of swelling out of her dress, I could literally feel the penetrating odor of the cleavage between them all the way here.
Somebody was pressing against her and digging with his hands at all of her curves, slurring drunken incoherence against her throat, absorbed in his own lust, own intoxication, own desire, pounding against this wind-fallen fruit, this rotting fruit, that would soon bulge into something unrecognizable, swell up, for nine whole months. A young boy, judging by his ungainly figure, perhaps no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, the voice still hoarse and fresh, recently changed. He was far younger than she was, should have been at home, in bed, sleeping or perhaps reading, studying, planning for the future, to make somebody proud, to make a name for himself. A door opened, the light fell through, disclosing with whom Alberta was having vertical intercourse, who the young figure was, who far too soon had commenced his own process of putrefaction, consumed by what he believed was passion, who at exactly this moment was in the process of putting his entire existence at risk, and who didn’t see me, see his father, his father who believed that life had long since hit rock bottom, but who at this moment truly had the rug pulled out from under his feet.
Edmund.
TAO
I continued along the subway track, passed several stations, but didn’t see any people, saw no sign of any kind of life. Mile after mile, still running, with lungs that burned and the taste of blood in my mouth. Every station I caught sight of awakened a hope. But every attempt to open a door, to come out onto the platform was the same slap in the face. Because they weren’t in operation. I was still in no-man’s-land.
I had no idea my legs could carry me this far, that I could push myself this hard. But now there was nothing left.
I sank down against the wall of a house. There was a tearing in my chest due to lack of oxygen. The darkness closed in around me, around the city, around what had once been a city. Directly across from me lay a collapsed building, destroyed beyond recognition, perhaps the last thing they’d done, those who’d moved away from here. As if they didn’t want there to be anything left. But everywhere there were traces of people. Old adverts posted, a broken bicycle, threadbare curtains bearing marks of the wind and weather behind a broken window, nameplates on entrance doors, some playful, handwritten, others formal and manufactured. Where were they now, all those who had lived their lives here?
I hadn’t thought about it before, but the rubbish had been removed. The bins were empty, lined up along the sidewalk, neatly in a row, down the whole street. Perhaps that was actually the last thing that had happened here. A garbage truck had rumbled through the deserted streets and cleaned up to prevent rats. Or perhaps to gather up the final remnants of nourishment, of organic waste that could be scavenged, scraped out and served again. Preferably as animal feed, or also for us, as food for humans, camouflaged, disguised, mixed into forcemeat and sausages, as canned food—with additives of all the different artificial components of flavors and chemicals that made our food edible.
My mouth watered. I’d been saving the package of biscuits for the way home. Now I had nothing.
I tried getting on my feet, but they gave out from under me. My muscles burned. I tried again, supporting myself against the wall, and this time I succeeded.
Step by step I walked over to the closest gate, pushed at it carefully. The movement produced a thunderous sound in the metal.
Inside there was an empty courtyard. Leaves had been blown into small piles in the corners. On both of the long sides there was a door. I tried one of them.
It led to an entrance, a cramped, narrow stairway. The day was sliding away out there, just a few small cracks in the wall admitted the dwindling twilight onto the steps.
I limped up the stairs. Every step hurt, but my breathing was no longer as heavy. I came up to the second floor. A door on either side. I tried the closest one. It was locked. I continued across the landing and stopped. Then I tried again, pushed the handle down. The expectation of meeting the same resistance was in my hand, so I jumped when the door slid open.
I stood there. The odor of the flat spread out into the staircase, hitting me. There was nothing special about it, but all homes have their own smell. The smell of the people who live there. The food they have eaten, the clothes they have washed, the shoes they have worn, the sweat they have secreted, the breath they have exhaled during the late-night hours—the rank smell from sleeping people’s mouths—bedding that perhaps should have been changed, a frying pan that should have been washed, but left for the next day, so the food residue had congealed and started to decay.
But now only the shadow of all the smells remained, almost hidden by the massive stuffiness.
I stepped across the doorway. The flat was small, just two rooms. Like our flat, Kuan’s and mine. Perhaps this had also housed a small family of three. A bedroom towards the courtyard, a combined sitting room and kitchen facing the street.
I closed the door behind me and walked into the sitting room. It was virtually empty, vacated, although the largest furnishings had clearly been left behind. A frayed corner sofa that was a little too big and covered with gray fabric loomed, taking up almost half the floor. An old, warped chest of drawers painted black stood against the opposite wall.
I searched quickly through the kitchen cupboards. I couldn’t stop myself, even though I knew they would be empty. Just a large, worn pot was placed at the bottom of a cupboard. Otherwise nothing.
The chest of drawers was also empty, except for some old cables and a telephone with a cracked dial pad in the bottom drawer.
Then I walked into the bedroom. The closets gaped, the doors seemed to have been opened randomly, as if somebody hadn’t had time to close them after they were emptied. On the walls were some empty nails, and the shadow of the pictures that had once hung there.
A narrow double bed was placed along one of the bedroom walls. Just a mattress, the blankets and pillows were gone. They had slept there, read,
argued, laughed, made love. Where were they now? Still together?
Along the other wall was a child’s bed. It could have belonged to a child of preschool age, was longer than a cot, shorter than an adult bed. It could have belonged to Wei-Wen. A small pillow was left behind. There was a dent in the middle, where a head had rested.
Suddenly my legs gave out from under me. I collapsed onto the child’s bed, remained seated for a few seconds. Not a soul, just me, for miles around. Everything was abandoned. Empty. And I was just as abandoned as this flat.
No.
A craving in my chest. Was it yearning? I’d barely thought about Kuan, avoided it, held him at a distance, every time his face popped up in my brain, I forced it away. Forced myself to think just about Wei-Wen, about finding my child.
I stood up, went back to the sitting room, pulled the telephone out of the cupboard and looked around me quickly. There, beside the sofa, was a telephone jack. It couldn’t be connected, not here, so far away from everything.
I rushed over and shoved in the plug. Then I lifted the receiver.
A faint dial tone could be heard.
Quickly I dialed my home number on the cracked dial pad.
At first all I could hear was a crackling sound, noiseless signals being sent mile after mile through old, virtually crumbling cables.
And then it rang.
Once.
Soon a voice would fill me, Kuan’s voice. I had no plan for what I would say, just had to hear him.
Twice.
Because perhaps there still was an “us.” Perhaps there could be, now that there was such a great distance between us.
Three times.
Wasn’t he there?
The seconds passed.
Four times.
But then.
“Hello?”
His voice in my ear.
I gasped with relief. “Hi.”
“Tao!”
I couldn’t answer, tried to hold back my sobs, but they forced their way out.
“What is it? Has something happened?”
“I’m . . . I don’t know where I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s nobody here.”
The sound became scratchy, the signals disappeared.
“Kuan? No!”
The telephone hummed faintly. Then the line went dead.
I tried again, dialed his number. Waited.
Nothing.
I took out the plug, put it in again.
The telephone remained silent.
I put the receiver in place, put it down on the floor. I stood up and looked down at it.
Suddenly my foot jerked out and kicked with all of its might. Again and again. The old electronics flew in all directions, along with cracked pieces of plastic.
Then I went into the bedroom, and over to the child’s bed.
I remained sitting there, while the room grew dark. The feeling of loneliness hit me so hard that I gasped. The moment became everything, the moment was an eternity. Me, alone in an abandoned flat. There was nothing else. I had lost everything. Even the money was gone.
Our second child. Who would it have been? Another boy? A girl? Like me? Awkward, calm, one of the outsiders. I would never get to know this child. I had sacrificed it, and nothing was left. Life stopped here.
I lay down on my side, pulling my legs up beneath me. Blindly I found the little pillow, grasped it, pulled it against me, embraced it, pressed it against my body, against my breast.
That’s how I fell asleep.
Wei-Wen’s hair smelled of a child’s sweat and something dry, like sand. I pressed my lips against it, captured a few strands of hair with them and tugged a little.
“Ouch, Mommy. You’re eating my hair!” I released the strands and laughed. Found his cheek and put my mouth against it instead. So soft, surprisingly soft, such soft cheeks children can have. It was as if I could press my lips against them and never, no matter how hard I pressed, encounter resistance. Just lie like this and have all the time in the world.
“My baby. You’re so sweet.”
He sniffled vigorously in response. Stared at the ceiling, where some fluorescent star stickers made up the solar system. I’d had them myself when I was a little girl, had begged for them, when my parents actually wanted to buy a doll. So when I grew up and moved out on my own, I carefully picked them off the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. I put them in a bag, packed them in the very bottom of a suitcase of childhood memorabilia, and when Wei-Wen was finally born, stuck them up again. It was as if I’d created a bond between my own childhood and his, between us and the world, between the world and the universe.
I’d helped him to learn the names of all the planets by heart, so he would understand how small we were—that we were also a part of something larger even though he was still much too young to take it in. The stars and the planets were still just stickers up there on the ceiling. He could only understand that the moon and the sun really existed because he saw them in the sky with his own eyes. But that the moon didn’t even have its own sticker, hadn’t been worthy of it, up there on the ceiling, that he couldn’t understand. It was almost as big as the sun.
“There’s Jupiter.” He pointed.
“Mm.”
I sniffed his hair, couldn’t restrain myself. But he didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s the very biggest.”
“Yes. It’s the biggest.”
“And Satum. That’s the one with the rings.”
“Saturn,” I said.
“Satum.”
“Yes. That’s the one with the rings.”
“That’s the nicest one.”
He thought for a little bit.
“Why doesn’t the earth have rings?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“I think it should have some. That’s the nicest.”
I buried my nose in his cheek. He twisted a little, turned his face away from mine.
“You can go now, Mom.”
“I can lie here a little longer.”
“No.”
“Till you’ve fallen asleep?”
“No. You can go now.”
He was ready, the bed had been made safe for the night. My job as mother had been carried out.
I kissed him on the cheek, one last time. He didn’t even have the patience to wait, pulled the duvet over himself hard.
“Go on. I’m going to sleep.”
“Yes. I’m leaving now. Nighty-night. See you tomorrow.”
“Nighty-nightseeyoutomorrow.”
I wanted to stay there, underneath the solar system, underneath Saturn’s fluorescent, neon-green plastic rings, but woke up at the first hint of daylight. The window had no curtains and the light of dawn spread slowly across the room. I lay in the same position, tried to find my way back, to the other room, the other child’s bed, but didn’t manage.
This morning, in this strange bed, the first thing I thought of was the same as all the other mornings: his name.
Wei-Wen. Wei-Wen.
My child.
The softness. His face.
I didn’t want anything else except to hold it tightly. But another face forced its way to the surface. A face from this world. The boy, the tall, gawky boy, with the package of biscuits in his hands. His eyes on me, ready to attack.
And the old people. Many of them incapable of understanding the situation, incapable of understanding that they’d been left behind to die. But the woman who’d come towards me—it must have been a woman—she knew. My arrival had awakened her. Awakened hope.
What would happen to her?
What would happen to the gawky boy?
And what about the waiter at the café?
His father?
What had happened to Wei-Wen? What had happened to him?
Something that involved all of the others.
The closing off of the forest, the military, the fence, the secrecy.
Something that involved
all of us.
I sat up quickly.
I understood it now.
I’d started in the wrong end. I’d started by wanting to find him. But I’d never find him, as long as I didn’t know what he’d been afflicted by. What it meant.
Wei-Wen’s face emerged again. But not his usual, soft child’s face. His face from that day. Wei-Wen in Kuan’s arms. The skin that grew whiter with every passing second. The breathing that was heavy. The images became clearer now. The images I’d tried not to think about, couldn’t bear to confront. I slid down onto the floor, pulled my legs up beneath me, stared straight ahead.
There he was. The pale, clammy face. The drops of sweat that trickled over the bridge of his nose. His eyes. He was conscious when Kuan came running with him. The whole tiny body struggling to breathe, breathing that tore in his chest, rasping. And the eyes scared to death. He stared right at me, couldn’t even ask for help.
Then, halfway between the hill and the complexes, his head fell backwards. He was unconscious. I saw it happen, how his gaze slid away, he disappeared.
When we arrived his breathing was just a thin thread connecting him to the world.
I leaned my head against my knees. Forced myself to relive the minutes out there. Look at his face, look at it. What had stopped his breathing? What had happened?
The paleness, the clammy skin. It resembled something I’d seen before. Suddenly another image emerged. Yet another face. Daiyu. The garden party. Daiyu lay on the ground in her light blue jumpsuit. The black shoes gleamed in the sunlight. She was clammy, too, her forehead sweaty. She tried to fill her lungs with air, the same rasping breath and the same pleading eyes. Help me, her eyes said. We stood in a circle around her. We’d been playing at the very edge of the garden, the adults sat at a table a short distance away. Daiyu’s hand was lying beside her. She was holding something. A piece of cake. The cake she’d helped herself to a little while ago. She’d just eaten it, lifted the piece off the plate, walked around eating while we played.
“Daiyu can’t breathe! She’s not breathing!” we screamed.
Suddenly her mother was there. We let her through; the mother shouted.
