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

CHAPTER 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 per cent. 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?

Well, Mae, apart from anything else, you have to make money. All your life you have done that by staying ahead of the village. You better get to that TV and find out what everyone has been watching on it.

With no more precise thought than that, she stood up and walked out into the courtyard.

And in the courtyard, Mr Ken was staggering with a wheelbarrow of mucked straw.

Oh, wonderful.

'Good morning, Mr Ken-sir!' Mae called brightly, for the village to hear. She walked more quickly to escape. To her horror, Mr Ken lowered the barrow and began to walk towards her with an expression of perplexed sincerity, even solemnity. At least this time he was fully dressed.

Mae started to walk more quickly. She wanted to avoid any chat in public places such as her house. He began to smile slightly. He walked faster.

He stood in the gateway, of all the silly places! There was still a hint of a smile in the creases of his mature face, but he said the most direct thing: 'Do you regret last night?'

'No,' she said, before realizing that she had spoken. She wanted to escape.

'Do you want to go on?'

Mae felt something akin to panic; she wanted him to stand out of the gate, to keep his voice down. He looked like both her husband and her son at once.

'Yes,' she said, quickly.

So, this was love. Ken Kuei stood before her and she could scarcely bear to look at him. She felt old and misshapen in comparison. He was her boy, her baby, she saw in him the beauty and sadness of passing generations. It was as though Mr Ken were a corridor into which she could shout and hear echoes resonate like sad voices. Into a lost past, into lost chances.

No wonder she had never had love. Mae knew now that she had avoided it. Love hurt. She had known inside that love would make her guts twist, her eyes weep. She wanted to be with Ken Kuei; it hurt that she found no light and easy words with him, it hurt that their situation was dreadful, that they would have to slip and slide, hide, do it in corners like something dirty. It hurt worse than childbirth, worse than anything.

Mr Ken said, 'I will see you when I can.' His jaw worked with something unsaid. 'I do not want to cause you trouble.'

Mae cupped her forehead between her hands. Oh, that is nice. Trouble, what trouble could there be, fucking another man than your husband? All disaster loomed there.

'I am a widower, there will be no blame on me,' he said, looking at the ground.

'We have been talking long enough, and too solemnly,' she murmured, and mimed the pleased and neighbourly smile that kept distance.

Mae raised her voice for the sake of the walls. 'It is so sad about your wife, I still feel for you,' she said. 'If there is anything you need, please ask my husband.'

Mr Ken was still smiling. 'There's no one to hear you.'

She felt silly, frightened, but she couldn't help it. She remembered the listening lights of the night before.

'It will be no trouble. Just talk to Joe.' She felt like weeping in panic.

'When. How?' he demanded.

'I will leave my house tonight,' she whispered. 'We can go out into the fields, into the reeds. Three a.m.?'

That firm, old light was in his eyes again. He kept shifting in her vision between man and boy. Now he seemed older. He nodded once: Good.

'This will end well,' he promised her.

She shook her head with misgiving, and left him.

And so she was reduced to being a young girl, addled by love instead of money. Love catches up with you if you ignore it, she thought. She wanted to be with him, now. She wanted to suckle on his nipples as though they were breasts. All these things shocked her, overturned her. She was upended like a boat.

'I am bereft,' Mae said. She said it to Old Mrs Tung.

She answered. When I was in trouble, I started a school.

Mae walked on, towards the television set.

And there were the men of the village, at this hour of the morning, watching kung fu.

There was Joe.

'I knew!' she exclaimed. 'I knew I would find you here! Shiftless, feckless man!'

Joe shifted his feet staring at them, wincing with hangover and embarrassment.

'You comic character,' she told him, more in frustration, sadness, and affection than anything else. Young Mr Doh, Old Mr Doh, Mr Ali – they all chuckled, too.

'Your wife is well again, I see, Joe,' said Young Mr Doh.

'And a good hand with knives I hear, too,' said Old Mr Doh. And they all laughed. Which meant that yes, they all knew she had chased Mr Haseem out of her house. Did Joe? He kept grinning, looking baffled.

Mae needed the men to be away. She needed the television. 'What are we to do with you small boys?' Mae said, shaking her head. 'Ah? You have families, you have fields, you have duties, what are you doing here?'

'Watching the movie?' shrugged Joe. More laughter.

'Joe, you dolt,' she said, simply, quickly. That made the men laugh again.

'Wifely humours,' Young Mr Doh said. It was a way of saying a woman was right. He leaned forward and pushed some buttons. 'Okay, I've saved the movie. What time?'

The men frowned and wobbled their heads. They murmured times, but Old Mr Doh was something of a leader. 'Eight o'clock,' he said.

With a flourish, his son moved the hands of the clock to eight.

Mae felt a stab of something icy in her chest. They can do that? Go back to a movie? The movie folded up like a picture and was dropped into a pink piggy bank. Mae thought, Mr Doh knows how to do that? And I don't? The men stood up with a murmuring and an exchange of cigarettes. They nodded goodbye to Mae.

She was left standing alone in the courtyard.

The screen showed nothing but a door.

Mae sat in front of the screen. She touched the door. It creaked, it opened.

There were pictures with words underneath. Mae couldn't read. On the screen was a picture of an hourglass with running sand, like her life draining away, and there were rows of pictures: books and magnifying glasses and things that had no meaning for Mae at all. Mae saw a drawing of a newsreader. News would be good. She touched the newsreader and up came a screen of words.

Too many words, too complicated. It assumed so much, this machine – that you understood what the signs meant, that you could read, that you could guess what lay behind each door or each word. Her heart was sinking.

Then she saw a picture of an ear.

'Touch the ear,' said a woman's voice: Kwan, behind her.

Kwan was wearing a folded headdress, the peasant dress of her ethnic minority. She had never done that before. She stood over Mae.

'Go on,' she said.

Mae did.

The TV replied, 'You have chosen the talking option.' Mae felt both relief and shame. Kwan knew the fashion expert found it difficult to read.

'It is good you are learning,' said Kwan, suddenly relaxing. 'It is good you are not afraid of it.'

Afraid? Well, yes, this was new stuff.

The TV kept talking. 'The list of available topics is very long. It is probably easier if you tell me what you want to know.' It was as if the television were inhabited by a ghost. Like Old Mrs Tung.

'Fashion,' said Mae.

And for some reason, as if on impulse or from affection, Kwan had taken hold of the muscles between Mae's neck and shoulder and given them a squeeze.

'So you are going to fight,' said Kwan.

Mae paused. 'You know,' she sighed.

'In this village? There is nothing to do but talk.'

Mae was ashamed, fearful, and angry. 'There is everything to do!'

Mae amazed herself again with the passion, almost the frenzy, that welled up inside her. 'The village is like a goose without a head when the legs keep twitching. The whole world has died, and we have a year to learn how to live all over again!'

She spun around to look at Kwan. Kwan was blinking in surprise.

The television said in a honeyed voice, 'You have a choice of looking at the Paris spring collections, the Beijing Festival of Culture, or the Vogue channel.'

'I do not need to be beholden to that dog of a man now! I need to be doing this!'

'Pause,' Kwan said once, to the machine. It whirred in place. 'Mae, we could loan you the money to pay him back. What is the interest?'

'Joe was so drunk, he did not even ask!' Mae swayed under the weight of it all.

'We would not charge interest,' murmured Kwan.

Mae felt many things, all at once – gratitude, relief, and wariness. She feared that they would end up replacing one loan with another. You and Wing make yourselves rich the same way Haseem does, she thought, only, you are more polite. Though she loved Kwan, Mae did not entirely trust her.

'We would stand in an echoing corridor of loans,' Mae said quietly.

'That is true,' said Kwan, calmly. 'But the offer will stay open, if you need it.'

'Thank you, Wing's-wife, ma'am.'

'Don't be silly,' said Kwan, for Mae had addressed her as an employer.

Mae sighed. 'Until we have money, I am everyone's servant,' she said. 'The offer is kind and will be remembered. Paris,' she told the television. 'Show me Paris.'

'I will leave you to it, then,' said Kwan. She turned and walked away.

She has changed, too, thought Mae. We will all change.

So Mae looked at the ghosts of Paris, and they were no help. These were clothes that no human being could wear, let alone farming women in the Happy Province. The television talked and talked. It explained why it was such a revolution that long flaps of cloth hung uselessly down to the knees from the shoulders, or that someone called Giannini had gone for splashes of colour.

Mae already knew. It is just a special way of talking. It sounds grand, but it offers nothing to actually do.

What… she asked herself, what actually am I trying to do?

I am trying to find something that will make me money. I think if I spend more time at this machine, then I can stay ahead of my clients, find something to sell them. But they are ahead of me…

Paris fashion kept parading, as if to say, look, peasant, look what you cannot afford to even look at. Look at what your world could never have in it. Learn the lesson of your poverty and your distance and your unimportance.

She looked around. Two little village girls stood in Kwan's courtyard, twisting in place with coy naughtiness.

'Who told you you could come to Mrs Wing's house? Go on, go away.'

'We want to watch the television,' one of them said – determined to stay, hopeful of being allowed to.

'You should be in school,' Mae said.

They said nothing, but their eyes and smiles grew brighter. A little boy ran up to them and stopped, dead, to see an adult by the television. The girls burst into fits of naughty giggles.

Then An, Kai-hui's daughter, sauntered in. Her eyes widened, she bowed briefly towards Mae. 'Children,' said An, newly graduated. 'You should be in school.'

More giggles.

Mae reached up, to find some way to turn it off, to hoard the fashion information. How had Young Mr Doh done it? Mae touched something and another screenful of words appeared. 'Main menu, 'said the screen. Were they in a restaurant?

An said, 'No, no, don't change it for my sake.' Then she used a new word. 'Undo,' she said, and they went back to the fashion show.

The sun kept rising, the courtyard kept filling. An's friend Ling-so walked in as well. Ling-so said that she had preferred the Singapore fashion show last week. But then she said, 'Eastern couture suits our tastes better.'

Mae felt like she had swallowed an ice cube whole. While she had been ill and wasting time, all the village had been watching television. Mae felt a kind of hungry panic. She had fallen so far behind!

In desperation she turned around. 'What do the children want?' she asked.

She knew the answer: kung fu. She knew also that the children would run forward and push the button for themselves.

The children sat open-mouthed as the kung fu hero met a man whom they all knew was a dragon in disguise. The secret dragon breathed out fire. For some reason he could fly, with a sound like a sliding whistle. Even An and Ling appeared to be content. This confirmed Mae's suspicion that people would watch anything so long as it was on TV.

Mae didn't watch. She sat thinking over and over, What do I do? What can I do?

At high noon, Mr Shen arrived from the school.

He was shaking with rage. 'All of you, back into class. All of you, what are you doing, when you should be at your lessons!' He cuffed the boys about the head. They ran off giggling.

Mr Shen glared at Mae. 'You have let this sickness take you over!'

Mae was shocked to have Teacher Shen, of all people, be angry with her.

'I was trying to use it for information…' she began. Her voice sounded weak, even to her.

'Oh, yes, it looks like it! Hong Kong indulgence. This whole country is sinking into it.' He spun on his heel and marched to the television set. He pulled out its plug. In a fury, he pulled at the plug until, by adrenaline strength, he succeeded in hauling the wires free from their screws.

'There,' he said, shaking the naked wires at Mae. Then he walked away, taking the plug with him. He stopped at the foot of the stone staircase leading up to the Wing house.

'Mrs Wing-ma'am!' Shen shouted. 'I have taken the liberty of turning off your machine. Perhaps I can advise you to keep it inside your house and away from my students.'

The children were gone, still giggling, like laughing leaves blown in the wind. Shen marched off, through the dust, without a further word to Mae. She looked up and saw Kwan already descending the stairs to the courtyard. She had a screwdriver and a replacement plug.

The village was a boat that had come free from its anchor. Mae shook her head.

An was elegantly scornful. 'He's scared because he is Teacher and he knows nothing about all this.'

'Tub. My parents pretend nothing has happened,' said Ling-so, even more beautifully turning away. Her lipstick was perfect.

Kwan knelt beside the TV, quietly replacing the plug.

'Why don't you take it inside?' Mae asked.

'Because we want the village to have it,' said Kwan, still kneeling.

'At least now we can look at fashion in peace,' said An.

On came Paris again. Kwan walked back up the stairs to her laundry or her sweeping. The Paris show ended, and the two girls changed to the Vogue Channel. More ghosts, in silver fabric, and Mae found that she had nothing to say that was any different from what the two girls said. Finally, when a shadow had crept across the wall and touched the screen, it was like a sorrowful spell. Quietly she bid the girls farewell. Young, poised, beautiful. They could read. They had no dinners to cook. This new world was theirs.

When Mae got home, Joe was waiting with Mr Haseem.

Joe did not look like a dolt now. He looked very upright and angry. 'You will apologize to Mr Haseem,' he demanded.

Mr Haseem's face seemed to be made of old porridge – heavy, dour, unmoving – and he looked without blinking at Mae. She looked back. She calculated quickly, knowing what had happened. Someone had told Joe about the attack, and honest Joe, moral Joe, was appalled. He had no understanding that sometimes morality was not enough. There was one quick way out.

'I'm very sorry, Mr Haseem,' Mae said coolly. 'I have not been myself lately.'

Joe nodded once, abruptly. Quite right and proper, the nod said. 'To chase a guest with knives from our house!' Joe murmured.

You have to cling to something, if all the world is changing. Joe clung to rules. He was stiff, formal, but dignified. Mae's heart wanted to break for him; he just did not understand.

'Mr Haseem-sir,' said Joe, 'please accept an invitation to dinner.'

Haseem was as slow as a frog on a lily-pad, with its sticky tongue curled up, waiting to lunge. 'I am afraid, Mr Chung-sir, that my wife would not consent. She is too upset by the events of last night.'

'Oh!' said Joe, in shock. He turned and glared at his wife.

'Things were said to her that cannot be easily forgiven.' Mr Haseem pressed his advantage. 'I accept the apology for your good sake, Mr Chung. I have to say that nothing in your wife's manner makes me think her apology is genuine.'

He was trying to enlist Joe, force more out of her. No, thought Mae. You will not humiliate me further. Mae said, 'It was genuine enough, Mr Haseem-sir, when I got down to you on my knees and begged you to take back the money. If you are so insulted, perhaps you will withdraw your generous loan.'

She held out the money again.

Sunni's-man leapt to his feet. 'Really, this is too much. You let your wife drive you, Joe. She has no place in interfering with our business! You and I are friends, but I want no dealings with her.'

That's because, thought Mae, I am a match for you.

'Any further business will be conducted in my house. She is not welcome there.' Mr Haseem stalked out.

Joe blinked at her in fury, speechless. He was not used to scenes of any sort, least of all in his own kitchen.

Mae felt detached. It was strange, the mix of feelings. She thought of Joe in a kindly, distanced way. It was part of the beauty of their way of life that he should be so small, so constrained, and so insistent on good behaviour. That way of life was dead.

'What is the interest rate?' Mae asked Joe, in a small, clear voice.

'What?' He clamped a hand on his forehead. His head shook in disbelief. 'Do you care only for money?'

She stayed in the same mode, still and cool. 'Is anything in writing?'

'Yes,' he said fiercely, proudly thinking: See how businesslike I am? Her heart sank for him.

'So. I ask again. What is the interest rate?'

'Two per cent,' he said, with a diagonal jerk of the head that seemed to say: See how unfounded were your fears?

'A month?' she asked.

He blinked at her. Poor Joe.

'That means that in a year's time, we not only have to pay him back the hundred, but also find a further twenty-four riels.' A quarter of a year's income. 'And that is only if he does not compound it monthly.'

She let the roll of notes fall like leaves onto the table. 'There is your money, Joe. I suggest that you do not spend one riel of it. It will be hard enough for us to find the extra twenty-four.'

She turned and began to cook supper: the blackened pot, the single electric ring. She looked at him, and he was looking at the money. 'Make no mistake, Joe. I will not work for Mr Haseem.' Her voice was cool with promise. She cooked. Joe drank.

Come, darkness; come, three a.m., she prayed.

In the courtyard of the Wings' great house, Kwan had an air of someone cleaning up after the party, collecting cigarette butts.

'Kung fu?' Mae asked ruefully.

'Oh!' sighed Kwan.

'You begin to regret your generosity?' said Mae.

'I begin to regret that people do not get bored!' said Kwan, and slumped on a chair.

'I know. I know,' said Mae, her eyes going hard like boiled eggs in agreement. 'I am bored.'

Kwan looked around, questioning.

'Is there anything on that thing other than fashion and kung fu? Junk for women, junk for men?'

'Ask it,' said Kwan.

'But ask it for what?'

'Ah,' said Kwan, 'that is the question. When you are an ignorant peasant, you do not even know what to ask.'

Mae's mind danced in the Format like a moth around an electric light.

'Search,' she told the television.

The TV replied. 'Please tell me which word or keywords.'

'Eloi,' Mae said. The name of Kwan's national minority. Kwan sat up, with a sharp intake of breath.

'Ah. That does not bore you.' Tonight, thought Mae, I am as sharp as a knife.

The TV asked, 'What aspect of the Eloi interests you?'

Kwan intervened. 'History. Politics.'

The TV whirred to itself.

The TV said, 'We have found sixteen listings whose main subject is the history or politics of the Eloi minority.'

Kwan's face softened. 'I thought there would be nothing.'

'Fourteen of these listings are held in our professional or academic files. If you are a professional or academic subscriber, say "Yes." Say "No" if you are not a subscriber.'

To get the good listings you had to pay. To pay you had to have something called a Clever Card which established that you were Believable.

Kwan said that she was a director of Swallow Communications.

'We're sorry. Your account covers a range of popular entertainment and documentary options, but full text searches must be paid for by corporate subscription. Please say "Yes" if you want to subscribe, and have your Clever Card ready…'

Mae asked, 'What's a Clever Card?'

Kwan looked worn. 'You have to go to the bank. You have to have a passport. You have to have money. More than we have.'

'But you pay! The government pays.'

Kwan sighed. 'Not enough for that. We'll have the two free listings.'

The first offering was the official Karzistani government files. It gave a picture of a happy, modern people. A model spun around in traditional garb.

'Fashion!' exclaimed Mae, and began to laugh.

The model was a Balshang beauty, all Beijing-styled angular elegance, face composted with layers of paint and powder. Mae suddenly thought she had never seen anything as funny.

'Traditional… Eloi… woman!' Mae gasped for breath. 'Fresh from mucking out stable and making shitcakes for the fire.'

Kwan stood still and icy.

There was a government video of a modern-day Eloi, relocated to Balshang apartments. The woman was plainly of Eloi stock, but was drab in a loose white shirt, blue trousers, and an awkward headscarf to appease the city's Muslims. She proudly showed her new toilet, her new icebox.

Mae could not help but laugh again. The boldness of it! Not one mountain, not one pony, not one terraced field, not one dirty hungry child. Not one destroyed Buddhist temple. Oh, everything was modern about the Eloi.

'Hmm,' said Mae. 'They call it "information." That does not make it true.'

Kwan paused for a moment, then suddenly looked around. 'Do you have a lover?' she asked.

Mae's heart stopped. 'How do you mean?'

'When a woman gets bold and heedless, as if she had gone through a door, when she gets harder, cynical, and brighter… well…'

And Mae knew something, too: 'Do you have a lover, then?' Mae thought of the beautiful Kwan and her older husband.

'Long ago,' said Kwan, and tapped the screen to select the next article.

'Who?' asked Mae, edging forward.

Kwan looked back. 'Who is yours?' she asked.

'Yours was long ago and does not matter. The past is dead.'

The next free offering was in German, from a museum. It was about some show or exhibition in Berlin that was long since closed. Kwan scrolled down a menu, hoping to find something else. 'He was an Eloi shepherd, high in the hills,' she said.

Mae was fascinated. 'Oh! Was he beautiful?'

Eloi men could be beautiful, like their women. Some of them had tattoos like stockings on their bare smooth legs, and bracelets, and wild stallion-manes of hair.

'He was to me,' said Kwan. She looked old under the harsh yellow light; old, but in a good way – handsome, lined, smiling with endurance. 'He was blind in one eye.'

'What happened?'

'The usual things,' said Kwan, amused, with a bit of a swagger.

'No. I mean, the end.'

Kwan's endurance was even more rocklike. 'He said I was too Chinese.' She shrugged. 'He was right. I stayed with Wing.' She sighed with concern. 'Be careful, Mae.'

'Oh, I have been careful all my life! Do not tell me to be careful.'

'It's not Sunni's-man is it?'

'Ah!' squawked Mae, and pretended to spit.

'I had to ask, chasing a man with knives. It could mean…'

'It meant I really wanted to kill him! That bastard! He wants to take everything.'

'Everyone laughed,' said Kwan.

'Did they? It was not funny at the time, I tell you – old Sunni's-man knew I was mad, and he went running.'

Kwan started talking like a Talent. 'Our fashion expert, all delicate femininity, the sweetness of flowers, the wistfulness of morning mist, the gentleness of the butterfly.' Kwan shook her head. 'Chasing the headman with cleavers!'

Mae suddenly understood. It was funny. 'This year, all village fashion experts will wear an adornment of knives. We see Kizuldah beauty Mrs Chung in a necklace of real murder weapons used on friends of drunken husband. Note the subtle arrangement of cleavers about the shoulders.'

Kwan smirked in mild amusement and then said, 'So who is he?'

'Mine is not yet in the past,' said Mae.

'Mmm-hmm,' said Kwan. She thought she had guessed who it was.

Mae gave her a slap on the back of the arm. 'You be careful. You know nothing.'

'I am saying nothing,' replied Kwan.

The voice droned on in a language they could not speak. The advertisement showed rare photographs of the Eloi. They looked as if they had been taken one hundred years before. They were as alien to modern-day Eloi as the propaganda video had been. Alien faces stained with dirt, with tense lines of muscle around the chin and cheeks. They wore headdresses and boots that were wrappings of animal hides. These worn people stared accusingly out of the screen, from the past.

'Oh, Allah be praised,' said Mae shaking her head, feeling disappointment for Kwan's sake.

'There is nothing in between,' said Kwan, her head shaking quickly from side to side. 'We are either like angels descending at the end of an old pageant, all costume, or we are refrigerators for the Karz.'

Their choices came to an end. That was it. Kwan was hard-faced.

'Save,' she said. 'Print.'

The TV buzzed as if it were sewing something. A tongue of paper began to emerge. Mae saw letters stick out, and then the top of an Eloi head.

'It prints?' she said, almost in despair.

Kwan nodded. 'In the West, children make screens for this thing. They do all their business on it. You can even make movies for Air-casting on this thing. That knob on top is a camera. In America, children make Air music out of their own heads and then share it. They call it "Ko-lab Oh." '

'We are so far behind,' said Mae.

'We live in a different world,' said Kwan. 'Sometimes I think we can never catch up. Now, with Air, they will be ready, and we will not be. We will be like children wandering around, lost.'

Kwan pulled out her sheet of paper. It was all laid out with information about her people that she had not written. Suddenly, she snapped to. 'I'm going to bed,' she announced. 'You be good.'

Finally Mae was left alone with the screen.

'Money,' she asked it.

There were offerings of books she could buy or courses she could pay to take. There was a course in 'How to Have a Bank Account,' offered by the Balshang Older Citizen's Institute. Someone in a place called Mi Wok Ee was offering loans. The text came up and the TV read it for her, but much of it made no sense.

Suddenly there was an avalanche: loans, courses, 'how to get rich quick!' Many windows all at once on the screen, all babbling. One window on top of another, cutting off the other voice before it had finished.

'Stop.' said Mae. Nothing happened.

Say yes if you want to ring this telephone number to have personal, on-TV counselling on making money. Please have your Clever Card or Believability Card ready. Calls cost two dollars a minute. Buy this book; join this bank. Just say yes.

'No, no, no, no,' Mae kept saying.

They crowded round like wasps on shit. One little window sliding on top of another one, a little babbling voice talking over the last.

'Stop!'

'Temporarily overloaded,' replied the TV, and suddenly went dark.

One little voice spoke from the darkness. 'Thank you for using our Helpful Librarian tool. From time to time searches on this free service will result in paid-for responses arriving according to your interest.'

In the silence Mae felt her heart thumping. That was it? That was the great online world, the Net that Mr Wing had talked so long and hard about, that he had yearned for, fought for?

No wonder. No wonder they wanted to replace it.

Mae's eyes swelled with disappointment and anger. What use was it to them, this thing? It was just a way to sell them things, to take money from poor people. What use was it if you had no money, no banks, no way to get Clever Cards or Believability?

Maybe Shen was right. All it did was show us worlds we could never join. We just sit and watch and get soft and fat and bored and talk about Singapore fashion as if we could ever take part. We push our noses against the window and watch other people eat.

'Off,' said Mae. And the TV went as still and ominous as black thunderclouds.

So what was she to do now? Mae plunged her fingers into her hair. Her hair was greasy and needed washing. She had missed a fashion season; she had to find an extra twenty-four riels for the loan.

So what did she have? Make a list, Mae. She listed 'house,' 'three rice terraces.' No orders for dresses?

She had Mrs Tung's memories.

She had sickness, debts, and an idle husband. His hardworking brother. His aging father. She had her own interfering brother, and her overwhelmed mother. If she went to them for help, they would try to take over.

She had Kwan's offer. Would it be so bad, owing Kwan money?

She had Air. She had been inside Air deeper than anyone else. So, what was in Air?

All right. She closed her eyes and tried to find her way back in. 'Air,' she said. Nothing happened. She tried to think her way back to the courtyard. She remembered it, but could not see it.

She did begin to discern something, dimly – an extra weight in her head like a load to be carried. She felt it and tried to describe it to herself. Unlike a headache, it didn't disappear when described. Instead it focused.

If anything Air felt like a turnip. In the rice sometimes a tuber grew. You would pull on what you thought was a weed, but it wouldn't budge, so you would reach deep down into the mud, and follow the root to pull it free. And there, numb, dumb, but salvageable, there would be something you could use.

You just had to haul it out.

Mae seemed to trace this root with her mind, deeper and deeper, but it was held fast, mired. It would not move. It was as if it were rooted by an entire planet rather than its blanket of earth.

And then Mae remembered something. She had an address, and the address was her name.

'Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae…'

She felt a gentle settling. It was as if she were dust or feathers, in the air during cleaning day. She seemed to swirl in the sunlight like stars, and then to fall gently down.

She settled gently, slowly into place. It was rather calming. She felt a wide smile spread across her face. The loan, the money, the house, her husband, Mr Haseem – all seemed to fall back, up, away into a world that was full of light and dust and settling.

It was as if she were finally, finally going to her bed after a long day in the fields, when your shoulders are sore and knees are full of needles. You settle not so much onto the bed as into yourself.

More and more of Mae fell into place. Gradually, enough of her came together to look up and around.

Mae seemed to stand in the courtyard.

'Welcome,' a voice said. 'You don't have any Airmail messages.'

The stones were blue as if in moonlight. They were made of dust, too. Mae could waft up to and then through them. They were just pictures as on a screen. Did the TV make images out of dust?

She asked for 'Info.'

Air spoke to her, in the voice and accent of her people. 'Right now we have nothing new. We just have some things to show how Air works. You can have a look at some of those.'

The voice was like her own. This is me talking.

'Okay. I want to find out about making money.'

'Okay, but this is the first time you've done this. A lot of things we have here are like movies. They are very familiar because they are made to work like movies. This won't be like that. This will be as if you grew someone else in your head. This will be as if you become someone different. If you don't like it, just say your address.'

'Okay,' said Mae. 'Oh. No. Wait. Does this need my address to work?'

'Airmail and all services but Air movies need your address to work.'

'Am I the only one in the village with an address?'

There was a buzzing. For the first time Mae felt that her brain was made of something. She could feel the ends of it sparkle and fizz, like it was the edge of a tapestry before the ends were tied.

Air said, 'Old Mrs Tung is the only other person with an address. Do you still feel like accessing our Money Expert?'

Somewhere else, where she was huge like the moon, Mae nodded her head – yes. That was enough for Air.

This courtyard, Mae thought. It is my own courtyard.

Something she could not turn into a voice came at her. It was dim, like talking on her mobile when there was a bad connection. There were no words but she somehow understood. That understanding suddenly ballooned out.

Yes, they want to help poor people and they want to demonstrate this thing, so they needed me.

It was as if she had another Mrs Tung.

It was not quite a whole person. It rattled too quickly and seemed to go a bit in circles. It was a part of person, an attitude to something. It was a thousand things that person knew, matted together like a rug.

So of course I said yes. Money - what do you want to know?

Mae could almost see it, a tiny little overcoming spirit so sure of itself, so amused, and so in love with money and business and investments and trust funds. Trust funds? Suddenly sure, secure, and certain, Mae had knowledge of trust funds. It was not book-learning. It was knowledge like riding a bicycle or how to walk across the spring flood-plain by stepping on the tufts of reed.

The banks hold your money and pay you so that they can use it…

Stop! Stop! I want to sell people something new.

Well, then, you better find out what they want. One way is to do a 'Koeh so tong ah. 'A Question Map.

Mae saw one, all lines of writing on paper, in English. Someone else's memories.

You find people who are like the people you want to know about. Normally that's so tough you need scientists to help you, but in this case you can actually ask all the people. That's a one hundred per cent sample. Just make sure you really have got them all.

Mae saw a series of black balls in a column. This was a list, a way of remembering, called 'Dos and Don'ts.' She saw a name, too, and knew it was the name of the person in her head, and she caught a word.

This was Kru. Kru in her own language meant 'a great teacher.' This was a Kru word for something she couldn't pronounce but which got turned into 'Mat Unrolling' in Karzistani. 'Mat Unrolling' is what a trader did in the square; they unrolled a mat, laid out their radishes. Mae liked that. It sounded real.

Don't ask leading questions, and that means, a question that puts an idea into people's heads that they might not have had. Don't ask questions that can be answered yes or no. Ask the same question two or three times in different ways to see if you get the same answers…

Hold, hold how can I remember this?

The flow of knowledge stumbled. Who said that? someone, somewhere, seemed to ask.

The overcoming spirit was frightened.

What's in my head? it seemed to ask.

Nothing, nothing, said Mae, and went still and small. She started thinking in this new train again. How it rattled along this train of thought. Knowledge came intimately as if it were her own. The thoughts felt close and personal.

The thing was eager to share. It felt its life had been vindicated by doing this one great thing. Mae began to see a tiny old white man with bright and shining eyes.

So. They are somehow able to copy Krus, give us Krus in our heads. This Kru was a great and good Mat Unrolling Kru, so great and good that he could afford to give his head for nothing. He gives his wisdom as from Heaven, to help, because he feels pity.

There is a word for that: bodhisattva.

So where else would you expect to find an emanation of the Buddha but in Heaven? But never, never, would you expect the great gift of wisdom to enter you as if from a balloon in reverse, as if the balloon was pumping you up, filling you with air.

This was a very great gift indeed. Mae felt her wide grin and she felt her solid body press both hands together in respect.

And she also had one wicked thought. I have an address. No one else in Kizuldah does.

Mae sat under another desert mountain sky. She sat with hands kept pressed in respect and learned all she could about Question Maps and unrolling her mat.

The stars turned slowly. Mae grew tired, before that bright, enduring, unchanging mind. Somewhere her giant body dipped in respectful farewell. Mae's spirit went back the way she had come. She recited.

'Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae…'

She felt a wind blow and scatter her and spin her. She seemed to spin dancing back into the solid world.

Mae found herself sitting next to the dead and useless mechanical box. Her eyes were wide and streaming with water as if she were weeping from joy. She had not blinked all the time she was in Air.

And she stood up, and she strode forward, and she knew what she would do.

She would make a Question Map and ask all the women in the village what they wanted and that would be what she would make. And she would be one with the Kru to understand how the magic of money really worked, for it seemed clear now that money had come from the gods, was an aspect of them. Until it had been stolen by kings and presidents. Coins should bear the image of the Buddha.

And she would go back and learn more. If the Net were all about greed and gouging then she would learn how to use it to unroll her mat. She would be among the ones who won in this life, through work and virtue.

Air was new, Air was strong, Air would bear her up. She felt the long root go back and she knew now. She was rooted in the world but the world was in rooted in Air.