"Air (or Have Not Have)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ryman Geoff)

CHAPTER 2

The next morning was the day of the test.

Mrs Tung came calling, on the arm of her grandson Mr Ken Kuei.

'Granny Tung!' exclaimed Mae, delighted and alert. She was doing her laundry, and the cauldron was huge and unsteady on the kitchen brazier. Mr Ken gracefully passed his grandmother across to Mae.

Mrs Tung was still in her robe and slippers, hooting to herself like an owl. 'I thought I would just pop in, dear,' said Old Mrs Tung. It was a great adventure for her to go visiting. She laughed at her daring, as Mae eased her onto a chair.

Mr Ken was a handsome, orderly man. 'I told my grandmother about your certificate, and she wanted to see it.'

'Oh! It is nothing, but please sit down, Mr Ken.' Mae wanted Mr Ken to sit. She liked his calming influence. 'I meant to visit you this morning with some graduation cakes. Please have some.'

Mr Ken smiled and bowed slightly. 'It would be delightful, but my wife is doing the laundry, and I said I would help her.'

'Oh, perhaps you could come and help me!' Mae joked. Mae got no help.

Mr Ken bowed and left.

Mrs Tung ran her hands over the certificate with its frame and glass.

'It shows how we all love you,' said Old Mrs Tung. 'Read it for me, dear.'

Mae could not read. This was embarrassing. She recited what she remembered it said:

____________________

to Chung Mae Wang

CERTIFICATE OF APPRECIATION FROM THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 2020

for FASHION STUDIES

____________________

Mae had to stop. Something was swimming in her eyes. There was an area out of focus. 'I think I need glasses,' said Mae.

The blur shifted, changing size and shape like a slug. Mae's fingers began to buzz.

Mrs Tung's head was cocked to one side. 'Do you hear something, dear?'

There was a flash as if someone had taken a photograph. 'Oh!' Mae said, and was thrown back onto a chair. Everything tingled – her feet, her hands, even her eyes. Worst of all, her brain tingled; she could feel it dance. The room went dim.

'Chocolate. I smell chocolate,' cooed Old Mrs Tung.

Mae smelled wine, perfume, sweat, onions, rain on cobbles, scorched rice, old shoe leather. Colours danced in her eyes; green-yellow red-blue, as if colour had become toffee to be stretched and mixed. And there was music – all kinds of music – as if hundreds of radios were being played at once, and a rearing-up of screeching, tinkling sounds like thousands of birds.

'I don't feel well,' said Old Mrs Tung. She raised her hand to her forehead, and for Mae it seemed to open up in stages like a fan.

'It must be this Test of theirs,' said Mae.

'Mae, dear,' Mrs Tung said, 'I need to get home.'

And then Mae had a sense of deja vu, so strong that the words seemed to echo. It was not as if she had been here once before. It was as if she had always been here, and would go on being here, for ever. It was as if an image of herself had been copied in layers, off into eternity.

Mae stood up, but the room seemed to be stuffed full of sponges. She had to fight her way forward, giddy with sensation.

Colours, lights, stars, sounds, smells… Mae's hand touched a skillet, or so she thought, and she yelped and jumped back. She felt silk on her cheek. A baby kissed her toes. Her fingers were plunged into paddy mud.

Mrs Tung rose shuddering to her feet. 'Flies,' she said, and began to wave her stick.

Pork, cheese, tomatoes, oak bark, ginger – all skittered about Mae's tongue.

'All these flies!' Old Mrs Tung's blind eyes looked wild.

'I'm here, Granny!' said Mae, trying to sound calm. She waded her way through sight and sound. The world chattered, screeched, stank, glittered, rippled, stroked, soured, sweetened, burned. The air seemed set solid against her. Mae had to push herself from one second into the next. Time was gluing shut.

Mrs Tung spun around. 'Ugh. Flies!' She stumbled, and tottered sideways into the brazier.

Granny Tung!

Everything was slow. The cauldron rolled like a world making up its mind to fall. A wash of boiling water poured over Mrs Tung's thighs and legs, and the cauldron toppled against her, ringing like a slow gong and knocking her off her feet. Mrs Tung fell forward onto the ground and a steaming white sheet poured out with the chalky water and enveloped her, clinging.

Suddenly, stillness.

Mae panted for a moment. She had the sensation of having been fired from a gun, shot a great distance to somewhere else-

Here.

She jumped forward, and jostled the scalding sheet away from Mrs Tung. The boiling water had settled into her earthen floor, turning it into steaming mud. Hopping barefoot, Mae grabbed hold of Mrs Tung's arms and pulled. The old woman howled. The skin of Mrs Tung's hands was rucked-up and red like old tomatoes.

'I will get your grandson,' Mae said. It seemed as if hundreds of versions of Mae were speaking all at once, and would be stuck saying the same thing for ever.

Mae ran out into the courtyard.

A vortex of hens was running round and round in a perfect circle. All the village dogs were barking, their voices echoing from the amphitheatre of the surrounding hills. In the far corner, was a lump of what Mae at first thought was Mrs Ken's laundry in a heap.

Mae ran towards Mr Ken's kitchen.

Something tickled the inside of her ear. A mosquito. Go away! Mae tossed her head.

The buzzing returned, more insistent and louder. Mae remembered that once, a louse had got trapped inside her ear. I don't need this now!

The noise mounted to a roar. Mae had to stop, and she dug a finger in her ear, to prise it loose.

The sound motorboated forward inside her head as if changing gears, whining and roaring at the same time.

Nothing for it but to push on. The roar deafened Mae. It numbed her hands as she fumbled with the latch on Mr Ken's door.

The Ken family – Mr Ken, his mother, his two little girls – all sat around the table as if at a séance. They all held hands, and it seemed to Mae, because she could hear nothing, that they were all chanting in unison.

Mr Ken rose up at the table and mouthed at her. She began to make out what he was saying.

'… no need for fear and alarm.'

'Mr Ken,' Mae began, and the noise in her head rose to an all-consuming lion's roar…

The two girls and Old Mrs Ken waved her forward, nodding. Join in! they seemed to say. They all stood up and worked their mouths like fish at her.

'Just listen to the words. Try talking along with them. You will find that will help.'

Mae listened, and the roaring seemed to narrow into something like a line of surf breaking along a beach. She focused and there seemed to be voices, like mermaids in the waves.

Mae started to repeat them and they suddenly came clear.

'Imagine that your mind is a courtyard. Assign these words like livestock to a pen. They are instructions. They will be in that pen whenever you need them.'

The roaring stopped. Mae sighed, 'Oh!' with relief. Mae nodded to indicate to Ken that she got it.

'Try to see the courtyard. You will find that you have a very clear picture of it in your head.'

Echoing after each word, a great sigh rolled all around their house, rising and falling with Mae's own voice. Everyone in the village was saying the same thing at once.

Mae grabbed hold of Mr Ken's forearm and started to pull.

'Can you see it? There are four pens in the courtyard, and they have signs over them. Can you see the signs? Can you read them?'

'Mr Ken,' cried Mae. 'Your grandmother!'

The words rocked the room like a ship at sea and Mae was nearly thrown from her feet. The unfocused motorboat sound roared again.

Mae winced. She rejoined the chanting of the choir.

'The signs say: "Help. " "Information. " "Airmail. "And "That's Entertainment!" '

Mr Ken looked quizzical. Mae signalled desperately towards her house. She saw him remember: Granny! He waved wildly to his mother and his daughter, and then turned and ran with Mae.

Outside, all the voices of the village tolled around them like a thousand calls to prayer.

'We call the pens and things inside them the Format.'

The laundry in the corner of the courtyard had sat up. Mrs Ken Tui sat with her elbows pressed tightly over her ears. Mr Ken moved towards her. Mae pulled him and signalled, No, no – in here, in here!

'Go to "Help " when you need help using Air. "Info" will tell you about everything from weather reports to what's available in the shops…'

Mae dragged Mr Ken into her kitchen. On the floor Granny Tung lay with her back arched, her hands claws of pain. Mr Ken ran forward and slipped on the steaming mud floor.

' "Airmail" is where you go to send messages to other people. Anyone, anywhere!'

Old Mrs Tung felt her grandson's hands. She looked up, her blind eyes staring, her face smeared with trails of tears. She quailed, in a thin voice, '"That's Entertainment" is full of Air versions of your favourite films…'

Mr Ken tried to pull her out of the steaming water. He touched her and she howled with pain. He winced and looked up at Mae in horror.

'Let's rest for just a moment. Take some time to think about the Format… and in a few moments, you'll see what Air really can do.'

Like the sound of a rockfall dying away, everything went still. There was the sound of wind moving in the courtyard. Was that it? Was it finished?

'I'm so sorry, Mr Ken, she stood up and knocked the brazier-'

'Anything to make a bandage?' Mr Ken asked.

'All the sheets were boiling. Everything will still be hot.'

He nodded. 'I must see to my wife. I'll get a sheet.' He stood and left them.

Mae knelt. 'Do you hear that, Mrs Tung? Your grandson Ken Kuei is bringing bandages.'

Mrs Tung seized Mae's hand. Mae winced at the ruined flesh. 'I can see,' Mrs Tung whispered. Her blind eyes moved back and forth in unison.

Blind Mrs Tung said she could see, and something moved behind the curtain of the world.

The world had always been a curtain, it seemed – one drawn shut inside Mae's head. Now it parted.

'Oh, God… oh, please,' said Mae. 'Inshallah!'

The village dogs began to howl again.

The world pulled back and suddenly Mae stood in a blue courtyard. Everything was blue, even her own glowing hands. Neon signs glowed over the livestock pens. They were green, red, yellow, and mauve, and the flowing scripts were in the three languages of Karzistan and Mae knew, as if in a dream, what the words meant. In Air, Mae could read: Help, Info, Airmail.

The voice of Air said, 'Perhaps you see the Format more clearly now. This is how Air will look from now on. This is an Aircast, an image we can send out to you. It will be there whenever you need it. Let's see what an Aircast looks like. Go into the area called "That's Entertainment.

Mae! Mae! said a voice, far too closely, far too intimate, as if someone were whispering in her ear. Mae, Mae – help!

'Today, we have an Aircast from National Opera!'

'Granny Tung!' Mae heard her own voice. But she had not spoken.

The voice of Air said, 'We will see part of the opera Turandot. The opera is a favourite with audiences in the capital.'

The whisper came again. It was Granny Tung. Mae. Where is the world?

'I'm trying to find you, Granny!'

Air said, 'Perhaps we like to think that the opera's hero, Kalaf, is Karzistani.'

Mae raged. 'I don't want to go to an opera! I need to talk to Granny Tung!'

Immediately, the sound of the opera dimmed. A new, calmer voice spoke. 'To send messages, go to the area called Airmail.'

Mae shot forward. She went through a blue wall, and into it. Mae crashed into metaphor. Information swallowed her. Information was blue and she was lost in it.

Mae! Mae!

'Do not attempt to send or receive Airmail until you have configured your personal airmail address. This is like putting your house name on your letterbox.'

If Mae had had a voice, she would have shouted. 'I've got no time, this is an emergency!'

'For an emergency configuration, simply repeat your own name several times.'

Mae said her own name over and over.

Mae! Mrs Tung seemed to cry out.

'Mae, Mae, Mae…'

Mae!

Something seemed to go click. It felt like a small electric shock. Something was connected.

Immediately, Mae was seized, hugged, held in terror as if she were a strong tree in a flood.

Can you feel it? It's pulling us back, Mae!

The voice of Air slowed to a crawl. 'Your… mailbox … is configured…' Time was stopping.

Old Mrs Tung said one small, forlorn, unexpected word, full of dread.

Water.

Time reversed. Everything, the Format, the voices, the whitewashed stone walls, the people in them were sucked back in, down. It all collapsed, and everything was gone.

The past is so very different, we know it at once.

Mae knew she was in the past because of the smells. The wood beams stank of creosote; the house had a stewed odour of bodies and tea and fermenting beanshoots.

She was in a house at night, with no lights on; the walls were in unexpected places. A stairwell opened up underneath her feet. A woman stumbled, rolled down the steps and landed up to her knees in water.

My books, someone thought, all my beautiful books!

The woman stumbled to her feet, tried to find a candle. A candle, fool, in this?! She waded across the floor of her main room, water lapping around her shins. How much water is there? Where can it come from? She reached out and touched a leather binding on the shelf and in that moment knew the books were lost.

She heard a laugh behind her and turned. A woman's voice said, 'What is it worth now, all the money you married?' The voice was rough and silky at the same time; an old woman's voice.

'Is it still coming in?' Mrs Tung screamed, twisting around. Mrs Tung was young, supple, and strong.

'It is roaring down every slope.' Hearing that voice, Mrs Tung's heart sank with a sense of oppression, overruling, and contempt.

Mrs Tung waded her way through the flood. 'Are the children upstairs?' she demanded.

'Oh,' said the dark voice, 'so now you remember you have children?' The voice was bitter, triumphant, and full of hatred.

Mrs Tung pushed past her, feeling her old, quilted overcoat. The old woman laughed again, a familiar hooting, a slightly hollow laugh.

Then, from outside the house, from the slopes above, there came a spreading hiss and clatter like applause, as if all the stones of the valley were rising in tribute.

'Lily! Ahmet!' Mrs Tung called, in the dark, to her children. A thousand rolling pebbles clattered against the house like rain. There was a boom! and the house shuddered.

'Mrs Tung,' Mae tried to say. The words went somewhere else.

'Lily!' Mrs Tung shouted again, her voice breaking. The house groaned, and something made a snapping sound.

Mrs Tung bashed her head on a doorway, heard a wailing in a corner. She scooped up a child in thick pyjamas. Mae could feel the button-up suit made of flannel, smelling of damp dust.

'Where is your brother?'

The child could only wail.

'Lily! Where is Ahmet?'

The child buried her head and screamed.

Mae thought: Lily? Ahmet? Mrs Tung had another family? Another family before the Kens? Who?

Mrs Tung turned and begged the quilted coat, 'Mrs Yuksel, please! Have you seen Ahmet? Has he gone down the stairs?'

'Yes,' said the calm dark voice. 'He went out the front door.'

And the certain, terrible knowledge: Ahmet's grandmother did not want a half-Chinese grandson.

'You let him out!'

The laugh.

'You let him out to die!'

Carrying Lily, Mrs Tung thrust herself past her mother-in-law.

'Ahmet! Ahmet!' Mrs Tung wailed a whole broken heart. She plunged down into her front room and into mud up to her waist. The front room was choked with it. The child in her arms kicked and screamed.

It was all Mrs Tung could do to shrug herself around, turn, and wrestle her way back towards the stairs. As her foot struck the lowest step, still under mud, she felt a scurrying sensation round her knees. Water was flowing in over the top of the mud. The water was still coming for them, inexhaustible. Bearing Lily, she hauled herself up.

'Mrs Tung! Mrs Tung!' A voice was pleading.

Her own voice. If this voice was her voice then who was she?

'Mrs Tung, this is just a memory. Mrs Tung…'

What? What?

'This is all Air, Mrs Tung!'

'Water!' she shouted back, and rose out of the mud. Hatred swelled out of her heart. She felt the wall of the staircase. On the wall was a family sword.

'So you will not inherit my beautiful room,' said the laugh.

Mrs Tung swung the sword. The laugh was cut off. Mrs Tung turned and ran into the upstairs corridor. The wooden timbers creaked, like a ship. The entire house shuddered, heaved, and moved forward from its foundations. It twisted and began to break apart; she ran towards its end room, the one with the beautiful window, the one that looked back towards home, to Kizuldah.

She heard a great collapsing behind her, felt timbers separate, fall, rumble like barrels. Somehow she kicked glass from the window. Lily screamed. Reflected in the roaring water was fire, leaping along rooftops. Mrs Tung jumped, falling many feet, out over the downside of the slope, awash in a wake of water. She fell through warm air down into a snow-cold, icy torrent.

Everything pulled. Lily was pulled from her. She slipped away like a scarf into the current.

'Mrs Tung!'

The water was blue.

'Mrs Tung, this is just a memory, this is not really happening!'

Then why is the air warm? Why is the water cold? Can you feel water in memory?

Mae held and pulled, resisted the Flood and the backwards pull.

Somewhere dimly there was singing. Turandot was being performed. Three old men sung about their lost homes. 'Kiu. .. Tsiang… Honan.'

'There, Mrs Tung! We need to get back there!'

From somewhere, Old Mrs Tung said: It was real. It was as real as now and as important. My Lily was real.

Mae said, 'We need to get home!'

That was home! That is real! It all gets washed away. I can die, that means nothing, but a whole universe dies every day, slowly, slowly, it deserves remembrance, here, see it was beautiful, beautiful!

'Dear Mrs Tung. Sssh. See? See?'

Life like a mountain, huge, cold, fearsome, ice with water wreathed in cloud and air and sunset, too big, too strange.

Suddenly they were standing in a courtyard, a courtyard at night.

Mae said, 'Mrs Tung, that is the Format.'

Why are there neon signs? Help? Entertainment? I have done with all that, I am too old. In the corner there is a TV set. When did we get a TV?

It is showing an opera. I have never seen an opera. It is the opera in Balshang, and I have always, always wanted to see that, oh, the red and the gold! And look at the jewels as they sing! I have heard this on radio, and dreamed, there she is, there she is, the Princess, singing of a beautiful woman who died centuries ago.

In the opera, a woman sang, 'Principessa Loo Ling, my ancestress, sweet and serene…'

'Mrs Tung? Mrs Tung? I'm afraid, Mrs Tung. I have to go.'

Then go, child.

'I have to get back.'

You go on. I will stay here.

Mae pulled herself away, and felt herself stretching, held by someone else's thoughts.

She goes. I always thought Lily would be here to meet me. Instead it is Mae, faithful little Mae, who helps me across.

Our flesh is earth and fire our desires, and the fire burns through the flesh, the water washes it all away. And what is left is air. And air rises towards heaven.

There was a sense of parting, like a sprain.

Mae was separated from Mrs Tung, and standing in the Format, demanding in terror, 'How do I get back?'

Air answered.

'Leaving Airmail in the event of an emergency: every message area has its own entry protocol which should prevent access to the full mind.'

Mae cried, 'I've got access to the full mind!'

It was cold inside Mrs Tung, and the cold seemed to clasp and hold and freeze.

'Protocols can break down in the event of illness or extremes of emotion. If you find your mind in contact with more than the Airmail area of the person you are contacting, first find your own Airmail address. Concentrate on that area as if in meditation. Repeat your address like a mantra …'

Her address? Mae remembered. 'Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae…'

Something brushed past her. Darling child, it seemed to say.

'Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae…'

That was what Mae was saying, over and over when she woke up, lying on the floor, holding Mrs Tung.

Mae knew then why the old woman had laughed through the last sixty years of her life. It was not to keep up her spirits. Mrs Tung had hooted all her life from heartbreak.

And the dear old creature was dead.