Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“Like pure gold,” Thomas repeats. “These cigarettes are expensive?”

Livia nods. “So I am told.”

“Who makes them? The same people that make sweets?”

She shakes her head. “No. Sweets are a government monopoly. It used to be held jointly by three or four families, before the Spencers bought it up. These”—she stabs a finger in the direction of Charlie’s fist—“are illegal. Officially they don’t even exist. Nobody knows where they are made. Or how.”

“The Spencers own the sweets monopoly?”

Thomas would like to hear more about this, but Charlie talks over him, his voice bewildered, struggling to make sense of things.

“It was like London,” he says. “Like a fever. Only it didn’t come from the outside. It came from within.” He shudders, lays his palm on his throat, as though the infection were stuck there, poisoning his breath.

“But why?” he asks, still in the same panicked tone. “Why would anyone pay money to buy Smoke? It makes no sense.”

ф

Livia explains it to them. They are sitting on the settee again. She has poured Charlie a glass of water. No glass for Thomas. But then: Thomas isn’t convalescing.

“You went to London,” she starts. “We heard about it, of course. My whole school was talking about it. Your Trip . A daring experiment for a better future. Most of the girls were jealous.”

“That’s because they don’t know what it is like,” Charlie interjects. “It was horrible.”

“Was it?”

Livia says it with peculiar emphasis. Her eyes are on Thomas. He thinks about it.

“It was horrible,” Thomas repeats Charlie’s phrase. “But also: a liberation. You could not help but sin. So you are free to behave like a cad.”

Livia nods. “Mother says, when there are government contracts for work in the cities, the gentlemen line up to do it. Of course, the official line is that it is a sacrifice they are making, ‘for the commonweal.’ Sometimes, Mother says, ladies go on weekend jaunts to London. For ‘charity.’”

There is contempt in her voice. She seems to hate hypocrisy as much as Smoke.

“That’s crazy,” Charlie insists. “It turns you inside out, the city. You lose yourself, become someone else. It makes you evil .”

“Just so. Apparently one view has it that evil has its joys. But of course one cannot risk total dissipation. Nor undo all those years of schooling the senses.”

Livia’s anger is so palpable now, Thomas almost expects her to smoke.

Almost.

“Since going to London is inconvenient, many a gentleman has looked for a more controlled way of sampling vice.”

“A cigarette’s length of sin!” Thomas shakes his head, half amused, half disgusted. “So school really works, eh? They take you in at eleven, and for every wisp of Smoke you get a black mark against your name. By the time you finish, you’ve become so very disciplined, you are incapable of letting yourself go. Oh, sure you smoke on occasion, but it’s weak, a mere hiccup. Even when you long for it, you can no longer find it, your inner pig.”

He looks from Livia to Charlie. Charlie didn’t need much schooling to become good, Thomas thinks. He was born that way.

Thomas is less sure about Livia.

“So it’s sweets when you want to avoid infection and cigarettes for leisure,” he continues. “And just like that you have mastered the Smoke! So when do they do it then? These gentlemen you’re talking about? And gentlewomen. When do they decide it’s time to take a holiday from being good?”

He has Livia’s attention now. She is unflinching. “When they want to seduce their chambermaids. Or their husband’s valets.”

“Or rob,” Thomas adds. “Or kill.”

“You could kill without Smoke,” Charlie whispers. “If it were righteous.”

It is hard to say what he is thinking about, but he looks stricken, more so than when Thomas explained to him that Smoke is a lie; that it came to them a quarter of a millennium ago; that the powers that be rewrote the past. Charlie does not want to live in a world where sin is a sport dabbled in by the rich.

“I am not sure you could, Charlie,” he says gently. “Even the executioner in London first worked up a Smoke. What do you think, Miss Naylor?”

But the girl does not seem interested in the question; turns away from them both, walks over to the lectern, and bends over her book. She reminds Thomas of her mother then: dismissing him at the end of one of their talks. If it was only Charlie there, perhaps she’d let him stay. But Charlie accepts her decision, walks over to the door. Thomas follows more slowly. He isn’t quite done yet.

“I’ve been calling you a nun,” he says, still looking at Livia. “But there is more to you than that. The nun has a brain. And teeth.”

His voice is respectful. He thinks of his words as a compliment.

Livia does not stir.

“Do you know where your mother’s laboratory is?” Thomas asks.

“Yes.” She speaks without looking up.

“Will you show it to me?”

“No.”

Thomas nods, studies her, hunched over a lectern, the ruler marking her place.

“Thank you for your help.”

Thomas closes the door behind them with more force than he had planned. He hopes it does not undo his words of thanks.

ф

One floor down, they walk into Julius’s valet. Mr. Price. The man enters the far end of the hallway just as they step off the stairs. Thirty steps separate them, muffled by carpet. They walk towards each other like two armies in the field.

Price is an imposing man, tall, broad-shouldered, not fat but massive, each limb a tree trunk, heavy with muscle and bone. A line running parallel with his hair marks the place where he habitually wears a cap: below, his face is wind- and sunburnt, brown like a root. On top, it is pale, the skin strangely tender, like a mollusc’s, living in its shell.

There is such purpose to Price’s movement that Thomas begins to wonder whether Julius has found the broken cigarette yet. He is walking without haste but with a mechanical precision that eats up the yards. It takes Thomas an effort of will not to slow his own step, defer their meeting. Instead he mirrors the man’s movement, walks chest out, at the centre of the corridor. Charlie notices his change of gait and keeps step at his side.

The closer they come, the more they see of Price’s features: the stubble-framed mouth, the blunt, broken nose, the deep dimple that marks the chin as though someone pressed his thumb in it when it was being baked. It’s a handsome face, in its own way, strong-featured and not unintelligent. But the eyes are ringed with something. Resignation. Implacability. A lifetime of violence. A sliver of red is visible where the lower lid curves around the eyeball. Not bloodshot eyes, then, but blood-lined ones: as though for emphasis, with a razor-edged pen. The brows that frame these eyes slope downward, from temples to nose. A frown splits them. It is not for their benefit, has been written there by the facial habits of a lifetime, by anger, concentration, or by pain. Five steps apart his smell becomes noticeable, of leather and sweat and an edge of old Smoke. In a moment they will push together chest to chest. Again Thomas thinks of the broken cigarette. If there is to be a fight, neither of them is the man’s match. He wonders whether he’ll be able to busy Price while Charlie runs for help.

And if anyone will be willing to help.

One step before their collision, Price veers aside. He never slows, walks past them, his heavy boots making remarkably little noise. At the end of the hallway, Charlie stops, looks after the man. His face is flushed. It has not been often that Thomas has heard his friend speak in anger.