Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

He shrugged again.

Milena chuckled with frustration. ‘Max!’ she said, as if to call out his better self. ‘Will I see a copy of the schedule?’

He only nodded.

‘I’ll come in tomorrow for the book, if that is well with you. Max? Max, please answer me.’

‘Yes,’ was all he said.

Milena shook her head as she left. I get that book back, and then I get rid of you, Max. There’s no way that you are up to doing this project.

Milena came back the next day to his office, and was not surprised to find that he wasn’t there. The charcoal burners were full of icy ash. Milena searched his room. The drawers of the black desk were empty, the long white shelves were empty. The room was as blank as the paper.

Milena took a sheet of his paper and wrote on it, angrily, making slashes of the Chinese characters.

Where is my book

Then she went to the Three Eyes.

The corridors echoed with the sound of distant feet walking on other floors, and with the strains of music — pianos, violins. It was as if the building were sighing to itself.

Milena knocked on his door. The door was green and should have hidden dirt, but all around the handle there were grubby fingermarks. From down the corridor, from outside the windows came the drifting sound of someone rehearsing Bartok on the violin.

The door opened very slightly, and there was a blast of hot air. It smelled of socks and stale bedding, and the room beyond the door was dark. Milena saw part of Max’s face, one eye looking at her.

‘May I come in, Max?’ she asked.

‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ he replied.

‘I’m used to that. I don’t need to come in, if you can just give me the book.’

‘Let me get dressed,’ he said.

Dressed? thought Milena. It’s mid-afternoon. I’m not waiting for you any more, Max, I am not standing out here in a cold corridor looking at a closed door. Milena lunged forward at the door before Max could close it and pushed her way in. She felt the edge of the door thump into the soft flesh of his shoulders and toes.

‘Milena, please!’ he yelped in genuine outrage. Milena forced herself sideways through the door.

Max stood looking at her, appalled, in only his linen shirt, underpants and socks. The room was dark and the blinds were down. Milena had an impression of clothes in heaps and bedclothes that had fallen onto the floor.

‘I’m very sorry, Max, but we agreed to meet today. I have been leaving messages and trying to talk to you for over a month. I am sick of chasing you. Please may I have that book!’

‘It’s in my office,’ he said.

‘No. It is not. I have searched your office and it is not there. Where is it, Max?’

He stared at her, even more exposed than his nakedness made him. ‘This is really outrageous,’ he said to the floor. ‘I am the conductor of an orchestra. Having you go through my office!’

‘Max. Where is the book?’

‘I will get it for you.’

‘Is it in this room, Max?’

The room was small. A sink, a bed, a cupboard, a chest of drawers. He was Party member, so there was also a small water closet. He was Party and had privileges. But there was not much space there for the great grey book to hide. Clothes were piled on the floor, twisted in strange shapes as if being tortured.

‘You’ve lost it, haven’t you Max?’

‘I’ll find it for you!’ he insisted. He could not manage anger, only petulance. Hands shaking, he began to pull on his baggy, wrinkled trousers.

‘Did you give it to someone else to write the music?’

He did not answer. Shaking, wounded, he was pulling on socks.

‘If you gave it to someone else, simply tell me who and I will fetch it.’

No answer. ‘Max. Please answer me. Did you give it to someone else?’

‘Of course not. I don’t think so.’

‘Which is it Max. Yes or no.’

‘I don’t remember!’ he suddenly shouted.

‘You don’t remember?’ It was Milena’s turn to be undone. Her voice went dismayed and childlike.

‘No! Now leave me alone, and let me think.’

‘Max, what do you mean, you don’t remember?’

‘I don’t know. I’m a very busy man with a full concert schedule and I’m afraid I had rather more on my plate than your silly little book.’

‘Max. Max. It was a great work. It was not your property, it belonged to the Zoo, to everyone. What do you mean, you were busy? Will you answer me please, Max?’

He didn’t, he couldn’t, there was nothing to say. Milena began to ransack his room. She picked up all of his clothes, trousers, shirt and socks, and threw them one after another onto a heap in the middle of the floor. She pulled back the sheet and the under blanket from his bed and dragged the mattress away from the wall, and looked behind it. Max stood over her, hands on his hips.

‘Go on, make a mess,’ he said. ‘It’s not behind the bed.’

‘It’s probably up your arse,’ said Milena. Max went pale.

Milena stood up, and began as neatly as her rage would allow to turn out the contents of his cupboards. She unloaded masses of paper from the upper shelf. It was full of music paper. There was a fortune of paper, and it had all been wasted. Notes were placed aimlessly on it, and crossed out, sometimes in what looked like scrawled fury. The notes sometimes dribbled away into doodles, meaningless patterns, or drawings of faces or women’s genitalia.

‘What I wouldn’t have given to have this paper,’ said Milena, thin lipped.

‘All right,’ said Max, and began to help, as if doing her a favour. He was taller than Milena and could reach the upper shelf. He stepped in front of her, blocking her view and went through the paper, sheaf by sheaf.

As he thumbed through the first sheaf, he said, ‘It’s not there!’ With each subsequent pile of paper, he said, ‘And it’s not there! It’s not there,’ as if to say I told you. Almost as if to say, see? It’s gone forever.

‘It’s not in this room,’ he said, as a finale.

‘So try to remember, Max. A big grey book. What did you do with it Max?’ No answer. ‘How long ago did you last see it, Max?’

‘I don’t know. A long time.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I kept thinking it would turn up.’

‘Max!’ and Milena found that she was almost weeping. ‘Max, how could you do it? How could you do it and keep any self-respect?’

The face was blank again. You don’t have any self-respect, Milena thought. Not really. Your whole life is a mask. What are you trying to hide?

A man like this, Milena thought, has motives that are secret even from himself. Without realising it, Max, you wanted to destroy the Comedy. She thought of sheafs of wasted paper, and the angry scrawls and knew, without quite being able to say why, that part of him had deliberately lost the book.

Milena looked at him. He was so ugly and helpless that she could not yet pity him. She could feel only anger and scorn. Somewhere in that fat head of yours, she thought, is the answer, buried deep, deep down so that even you can’t find it. I need a mind-reader to get at it. I need a Snide. Milena knew then what she was going to do.

‘I’m not going to tell the Minister for a week,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to tell him you’ve lost an entire, very valuable project for one week. Start thinking, Max. I won’t tell him anything about this if I get that book. But I will be back and back and back again until it’s found.’

She left him and went straight to the apothecary woman.

Without her clown make-up, the woman’s face was beautiful but sharp. The nostrils were too flared, the eyes too avid, the precision-painted mouth too perfect. It was a criminal’s face. Milena needed a criminal.