Ким Робинсон - The Ministry for the Future

Recognizing this change, she added a German class to her days. Turned out that would be easiest in the evenings. The city offered free classes, the people who signed up for them were from all over the world. She joined a class that met nearby on Monday nights. The language was wicked, the teacher kindly: Oskar Pfenninger, a white-haired man who had lived in Japan and Korea, and knew English among other languages, but would not speak any of them with his students, at least not in class; nothing but German in class. So they blundered together through the hours of his lessons, and went out afterward for pizza. There they spoke English. As the months went on they even tried speaking German to each other, shyly and with much laughter. Turned out they were all taking the class to fit better in Switzerland.

The days grew short, the air chill. The leaves on the lindens turned yellow and the west wind swept them away. The fire maples on the lanes running down to the ETH went incandescent red. Up on the Zuriberg the views got longer as the trees got bare-limbed and the air chilled and grew clear. She took walks up there around sunset, trudging up the hill, wandering the paths, then clumping or floating back down, depending on her mood. The nude concrete woman holding up her green loops of garden hose always regarded the weather stoically. Mary liked the way she held firm her position. I too will be a concrete woman, she said to her as she passed.

The year turned. She got through Christmas and New Year’s without going to Ireland, and without thinking much about anything. The ministry’s team invited her to their holiday parties, and she went to them.

Once at one of these she stood out on a balcony with Badim. They looked down on the lights of the night city, elbows on the rail.

How’s it going? she said.

He considered it. Pretty well, I guess.

I had a good time on Gaia day.

He laughed. That wasn’t us. But I did too. Where did you go for it?

I was out on the lake, swimming with some friends from my club. We made a ring and held hands.

He smiled. Did you feel the moment?

No. It was too cold.

Me neither. But people seemed to like it. I think it was worth supporting. I still think we need a religion. If others feel the same, who knows.

I think it was good. And I’m sure you’re following on.

We are. But it’s something that has to come from inside.

Mary regarded him curiously. Even now she knew so little about him, really. Her man from Nepal. She had heard things recently, not to her face but around the internet, rumors to the effect that the Ministry for the Future had been thousands strong and had waged a savage war against the carbon oligarchy, murdering hundreds and tipping the balance of history in a new direction. Bollocks, no doubt, but people dearly loved such stories. The idea that it all happened in the light of day was too frightening, history being as obviously out of control as it was—better to have secret plots ordering things, in a realm without witnesses. Not that she completely disbelieved this particular tale. Her man had a look that could freeze your blood, and a lot of money had disappeared into his division without explanation.

Do you have someone now like I had you? she asked him curiously.

He looked over the side of the balcony. Bare linden branches below. Someone to do the dirty work, you mean?

Yes.

He laughed. No, he said. No one I trust the way you trusted me. I don’t know how you did it.

I don’t either. Actually, you made me do it. Right? I mean what choice did I have?

You could have fired me.

I suppose. But I never even thought of that. I’m not that stupid.

He laughed again. Or you were entirely deceived.

I don’t think so. But now, for you—it must be a problem. You need someone you can trust.

He nodded. I know. It’s my problem. But I don’t know. Maybe the need isn’t as great now? Or I’m doing both, and I don’t let my right hand know what my left hand is doing?

She shook her head. I don’t think that’s possible.

No, I suppose not.

What about your team? I mean in the darker side of things. There must be some people there who could do what you did.

I suppose. I’ll have to think about that. I don’t know. What I think now is that what you did was way harder than I thought it was.

What do you mean?

You trusted me.

She regarded him. She wondered if it were true. Maybe it was.

Sometimes you have to, she said finally. You just throw yourself out there. Throw yourself off the cliff and start making the parachute.

Or start to fly, he suggested.

She nodded dubiously. She didn’t think they could fly.

Let me know if I can help, she said.

I will. But he was shaking his head, very slightly. No one could help him with this. As with so many things.

They went back into the party. As they crossed the threshold from balcony to room he touched her arm.

Thanks, Mary.

After we were given our passports we put our names on a few lists, and waited some more. Of course those were the days that felt longest of all. Finally we got lucky; our names came up on one of the Swiss cantonal lists—for Canton Bern, in fact, where we had been all along. We were invited to move to Kandersteg. A village up in the Oberland. On a train line, where the line ran into one end of a tunnel which cut under the mountain south to the Valais. Said to be quiet. A bit of a backwater. Room in a hostel for us, and apartments being built. We said yes. My daughter, her husband, their two little ones.

Once there we moved into the hostel, and got on the waiting list for an apartment building soon to be finished. Kandersteg turned out to be a very Swiss village, like a set from a movie, a rather clichéd movie, but fine, we were there. A family from Syria. There were five other refugee families living there, from Jordan, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Mauritania. We said hello to them cautiously.

Of course we all knew about the SVP, the Schweizerische Volkspartei, the Swiss People’s Party. They do well in the mountain cantons, and they don’t like immigrants. People in the Fremdenkontrolle and the SEM, the State Secretariat for Migration, were often only marginally helpful to us, or even unfriendly, but the SVP are actively hostile. It’s best to avoid attention. Part of that means not gathering in groups with other refugees, looking together so dark and strange. Unheimlich . We all knew that. When we met, at first, it tended to be privately.

So, a day came when I stood outside the doorway of our hostel. Green alps rising all around, gray mountains above them leaping to the sky. Like living in the bottom of an immense roofless room, or even at the bottom of a well. But a quick creek in a drainage channel ran right through the middle of the village, making a cheerful sound. The air was clean and cold, the sunlight on the rocks above a thick yellow. A real place, despite its unreal look. And we were here. Here, after twelve years in a Turkish camp, two years on the move trying to get to Germany, very crazy years, very hard; then fourteen more years in the Swiss camp north of Bern. Now we are finally somewhere.

And yet now I find I am seventy-one years old. My life has passed. I will not say it was wasted, that’s not right. We took care of each other, and we taught the children. They got a good education in that camp. We did what we could with what we had. It was the life we could make.

And now we’re here. And the SEM awarded us a small lump sum based on how long we had stayed in the camp, and that being so long for us, it wasn’t all that small. We could combine it with the savings of the Jordanian family new to Kandersteg, and together we rented an empty space in a building on the main street between the train station and the cable car terminus. The space had been used as a bakery, so it was not too difficult or expensive to change it into a little restaurant. Middle Eastern food, we were told to call it. Kebabs and falafel, and other things people already knew about; then, when we got them into our place, we could have them try dishes more interesting. Six tables and we would be full. It seemed possible, and it was interesting to try. Well, who am I kidding—it was exciting to try.