Marek Huberath: Nest of Worlds

“You missed the pasta, Max, but are in time for the pizza.” Edda gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.

He muttered something, put his glasses on, then comically stared at his neighbors to the left and to the right. He was wall-eyed. The lenses enlarged his eyes to the point of caricature.

“I can finally see,” he said.

“This is Dave,” said Edda. “He’ll be living with us, upstairs.”

Max extended a muscular hand across the table and had a grip like a vise. The tablecloth jerked as he leaned, and everyone jumped to keep things from falling. Taking advantage of the situation, Gwenda’s older son overturned the ketchup. Only Gavein saw that it was done on purpose.

“When Max comes, we need a rubber tablecloth and metal plates,” laughed Haifan.

Edda wiped up the excess ketchup with a rag, saying nothing, and she put a napkin under the tablecloth. When everything was restored to order, a large, steaming piece of meat au gratin was put in front of Max. Gavein would have preferred that to what was on his plate. He hated the vomit smell of pasta: that was the association he invariably had with melted cheese and cooked tomatoes. He wasn’t crazy about macaroni either.

Max dug in. All else ceased to interest him. He chewed steadily, quickly, like a machine.

He’s not eating, he’s feeding, thought Gavein. Like a bee: you could sever the head from the abdomen, and it wouldn’t stop chewing.

The lowered face, the hairless skull, and the eyes looking to the side made Max resemble an embryo or grub. He ate noisily, panting and slurping. Occasionally he would become aware of this fault and try to eat more quietly. The trouble this cost him resulted in nervousness and even louder breathing.

Gavein concluded that Max shouldn’t try to control the noise that was natural to him, because in either case no one else could eat while he did, and there was no point in his suffering too.

The conversation resumed, with the purpose of drowning out the noise of Max eating.

“Have you given a Name yet to the little one?” Max unexpectedly asked, wiping his full mouth with a napkin.

Gavein froze. In Lavath such a question was a terrible breach of etiquette. Here, evidently, it was not.

“Only yesterday I went and registered at Administration. He’ll be a Myzzt , and his everyday name will be Duarte,” answered Edda, though Max was no longer listening.

“Did you choose it, or did he bring it with him?” asked Haifan, joining in.

“He brought it with him, but we like it. He’ll be the master of his fate,” she said.

“But fate can’t be mastered, can it?” Haifan countered.

“That will be for him, not others, to decide.”

Max fed, snorting.

The Immigration Office was located on 5665 Avenue, an hour’s walk, but it took Gavein twice as long, because the thaw had turned the snow into a thick slush that was even slipperier underfoot than the usual ice. The passing cars kept throwing salty gray slop up onto the sidewalk.

The modest one-floor building had been finished off with a decorative greenish brick. Leo said that buildings here were wood and Styrofoam inside, or particleboard. In the best case, they used plasterboard. The brick was just for show. In Lavath, gray concrete was the building material of choice, with marks left by the wooden frames.

Gavein had to take care of the rest of the immigration paperwork. He also wanted to soften, as much as he could, Ra Mahleiné’s fall to the bottom of the social ladder: the ladder that had four rungs.

He went to the window under the sign Registration Of New Arrivals. After a few minutes, an official appeared, not happy that his lunch had been interrupted.

“You made a mistake, picking a wife too early,” the official said. “That’s better done in the second stage of your life. Then there’s no farewell when you move.” He took a sip of watery decaf from a cardboard cup.

Gavein detested the coffee here.

“A premature marriage is a complication but not a major one. This is Davabel. With a three on your passport you should have no problem getting an annulment. Or authorization, even, to keep your woman. Is she pretty at least?” The official’s talk seemed a flow of unconnected phrases. “Black like you?”

“White.”

“That makes no sense. Whites are not considered.” This was a man who didn’t blink, who knew his business. “Here, as the possessor of a three, you can have a black wife or even two reds. Your previous union doesn’t need to be annulled, because it doesn’t exist in the eyes of the law.” The official clipped a large form to Gavein’s passport. “Personally I would advise you not to have one wife with a two and another with a three, though that can be done as well. Such marriages aren’t stable. I’m sure the rules on that will be changed soon.”

“My wife’s name is Ra Mahleiné. I’d like you to put that on my passport. I haven’t been able yet to pick her up at the port, but I believe she has arrived.”

“Whites aren’t put in passports. You can have as many of them as you like, as mistresses. Unfortunately they age quickly, grow ugly. A problem you don’t need.”

“All the same I’d like her entered as my wife.”

“She was younger than you?”

“Yes.”

“She traveled in real time, while you went by dilation, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Consider how much she’s aged… She’s thirty-five now, biologically and chronologically.”

“She sacrificed four years of her life so that she could be in synchrony with me.”

The official waved a hand. “Where am I to put her? There’s no place on the form for whites.”

Gavein stared at him stubbornly. He knew this was possible.

“Very well,” said the official. “Under ‘Marital Status’ I’ll put an asterisk, and here… at the bottom there’s a box ‘Comments.’ I’ll write her in here.”

The son of a bitch, Gavein thought. He wields his power. He could have written her in normally.

“Her name is Ra Mahleiné,” Gavein said.

“Don’t be absurd. She has no name in Davabel. I’ll put down ‘Mrs. Dave Throzz, no category.’“

“Please write her name, Ra Mahleiné.” Gavein knew his rights.

“I’ll write Magdalena. That sounds more natural. And her Significant Name?”

“ Aeriella .”

The official put the form into a slot in the computer, to stamp on it the code of the Name.

“I need more information. She’s very fair?”

“Yes, fair. Eyes blue, dark blue. She’s tall.”

“Tall as you?” the official joked. He was short and roly-poly.

“No, but taller than you. Thin, without any special marks. I don’t know what else…”

“Fair, so she’s reddish?” The official’s manner changed, now that their duel was over about writing Ra Mahleiné into the passport. He was just doing his job now, and his tone became more sympathetic. In Lavath such informality would not have been possible: an official was always the personification of his office.

“No. Her eyebrows, her lashes are darker.”

“Yes, I remember women like that,” the official said with a sigh. “Goddesses of the north. I couldn’t get my fill of looking at them. I sat at a cash register in a store. I wasn’t allowed to lift my eyes to one, ever. It was torment.”

“You remember Lavath?”

“Northern women, they’re like snowflakes: beautiful but short-lived.” The official shook his head. “In Davabel they melt quickly. Even when it’s freezing…”

“When will I be able to pick up my wife at the port?”

“I remember,” he went on, answering the first question. “The miserable youth of being a red in Lavath. I have no reason to stick my neck out for whites. You get my meaning?”