Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

We climb into the Cliffwatch sometimes to find the notes and drawings, the hinges and papers and knobs. We hold these tight, a way to touch the absences. We say their names. We say, They did it for us. They wanted to go.

With the wind on my skin and in my ears, I still think I could blow away too if I wished hard enough.

Mumma says we don’t need weathermen as much anymore.

Sometimes a little bit of sky even turns blue on its own.

Still, we hold their catalogs close: fabric and metal; wind and rain.

We try to remember their faces.

At sunset, Mumma goes to the open wall facing the ocean.

“You don’t need to stay,” she says, stubborn, maybe a little selfish.

But there she is so there I am beside her and soon Varyl also.

All of us, the sunset painting our faces bright. And then, for a moment before us out over the sea, there she is too, our Lillit, blowing soft against our cheeks.

We stretch out our arms to hug her and she weaves between them like a breath.

Anil Menon’s most recent work, Half of What I Say , was shortlisted for the 2016 Hindu Literary Award. Along with Vandana Singh, he co-edited Breaking the Bow , an international anthology of speculative fiction inspired by the Ramayana. His debut novel, The Beast With Nine Billion Feet , was shortlisted for the 2010 Vodafone Crossword Book Award for Children’s Literature and the 2010 Carl Baxter Society’s Parallax Prize. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of international magazines, including Albedo One, Interzone, Interfictions, Jaggery Lit, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet , and Strange Horizons. His stories have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including Hebrew, Igbo, and Romanian. In 2016, he helped found the annual Dum Pukht Writers’ Workshop at the Adishakti Complex in Pondicherry. He splits his time between India and the USA.

When Amma handed me Sollozzo’s complete collection of short stories, barnacled with the usual endorsements of genius, I respectfully ruffled the five-hundred-page tome and reflected with pleasure how the Turk was now almost like a brother. Of course, these days we all live in the Age of Comity, but Sollozzo and I had developed a friendship closer than that required by social norms or the fact that we both loved the same woman.

It had been quite different just sixteen months ago when Amma informed me that my wife and daughter had returned from Boston. The news sweetened the day as elegantly as a sugar cube dissolving in chai. Padma and Bittu were home! Then my mother had casually added that “Padma’s Turkish fellow” was also in town. They were all returning to Boston in a week, and since the lovebirds were determined to proceed, it was high time our seven-year old Bittu was informed. Padma wanted us all to meet for lunch.

I wasn’t fooled by Amma’s weather-report tone; I knew my mother was dying to meet the Turk face-to-face.

I wasn’t in the mood for lunch, and told my mother so. I had my reasons. I was terribly busy. It was far easier for them to drop by my office than for me to cart Amma all the way to Bandra, where they were put up. Besides, they needed something from me, not I from them. Some people had no consideration for other people’s feelings—

I calmed down, of course. My mother also helped. She reminded me, as if I were a child, that moods were a very poor excuse. Yes, if I insisted, they would visit me at the office, but just because people adjusted didn’t mean one had to take advantage of them, not to mention the Turk was now part of the family, so a little hospitality wasn’t too much to ask, et cetera, et cetera.

Unlike his namesake in The Godfather , Sollozzo was a novelist, not a drug pusher (though I suppose novelists do push hallucinations in their own way). I hadn’t read his novels nor heard of him earlier, but he turned out to be famous enough. You had to be famous to get translated into Tamil.

“I couldn’t make head or tail,” said Amma, with relish. “One sentence in the opening chapter was eight pages long. Such vocabulary! It’s already a bestseller in Tamil. Padma deserves a lot of the credit, naturally.”

Naturally. Padma had been the one who had translated Sollozzo into Tamil. And given herself a serving of Turkish Delight in the process.

“If you like Pamuk, you will like him,” said Amma. “You have to like him.”

I did like Pamuk. As a teenager, I had read all of Pamuk’s works. The downside to that sort of thing is that one fails to develop a mind of one’s own. Still, he was indelibly linked to my youth, as indelibly as the memory of waiting in the rain for the school bus or the Class XII debate at S.I.E.S. college on “Are Women More Rational than Men?” and Padma’s sweet smile as she flashed me her breasts.

Actually, Amma’s lawyering on the fellow’s behalf was unnecessary; my Brain was already busy. My initial discomfort had all but dissolved.

I even looked forward to meeting Sollozzo. Bandra wasn’t all that far away. Nothing in Mumbai was far away. Amma and I lived in Sahyun, only about a twenty-minute walk from my beloved Jihran River, and all in all I had a good life, a happy life in fact, but good and happy don’t equal interesting. My life would be more interesting with a Turk in it, and this was as good an opportunity as any to acquire one.

However, I knew Amma’s pleasure would be all the more if she had to persuade me, so I raised various objections, made frowny faces, and smiled to myself as Amma demolished my wickets. Amma’s home-nurse Velli caught on and joined the game, her sweet round face alight with mischief:

“Ammachi, you were saying your back was aching,” said Velli in Tamil. “Do you really want to go all the way to Bandra just for lunch?”

“Yes, wretch, now you also start,” said Amma. “Come here— arre , don’t be afraid—come here, let me show you how fit I am.”

As they had their fun, I pulled up my schedule, shuffled things around, and carved out a couple of hours on Sunday. It did cut things a bit fine. Amma was suspicious but I assured her I wasn’t trying to sabotage her bloody lunch. I really was drowning in work at Modern Textiles; the labor negotiations were at a delicate stage.

“As always, your mistress is more important than your family,” said Amma, sighing.

Amma’s voice, but I heard Padma’s tone. Either way, the disrespect was the same. If I had been a doctor and not a banker, would Amma still compare my work to a whore? I had every right to be furious. Yes, every right.

I calmed down, reflected that Amma wasn’t being disrespectful. On the contrary. She was reminding me to be the better man I could be. She was doing what good parents are supposed to do, namely, protect me.

“You’re right, Amma. I’ll make some changes. Balance is always good.”

Unfortunately, I was as busy as ever when the weekend arrived, and with it Padma and Bittu, but I gladly set aside my work.

“You’ve become thin,” observed Padma, almost angrily. Then she smiled and put Bittu in my arms.

I made a huge fuss of Bittu, making monster sounds and threatening to eat her alive with kisses. Squeals. Shrieks. Stories. O, Bittu was bursting with true stories. She had seen snow in Boston. She had seen buildings this big. We put our heads together and Bittu shared with me the millions of photographs she had clicked. Bittu had a boo-boo on her index finger which she displayed with great pride and broke into peals of laughter when I pretend-moaned: doctor, doctor, Bittu, better butter boo-boo to make bitter boo-boo better . It is easy to make children happy. Then I noticed Velli had tears in her eyes.