Anna Smaill - The Chimes

‘And those who do make physical objects, most don’t see memory in them at all. They keep them for comfort. Or there’s a bare shadow in them of what happened. If you don’t know any different, a shadow is probably enough. Of course, there are a few like you who can see them clear, as if they are happening. Then there are those like me.’

‘What can you do?’

She holds her hands out from her so we both see the current that plays over them. Thumb and smallest finger oscillating in the air like she’s playing an octave trill on an invisible klavier.

‘I can see memories,’ she says, ‘that others have made.’

I am silent. The idea is impossible.

There is a sound at the end of the forcinghouse and we turn at the same moment. Standing at the door is a man, his expression scared. He sees me and draws back, pushes the bag that’s slung across his shoulder behind him.

‘It’s all right,’ my mother says. ‘You can come in. This is my son.’ She turns back to me. ‘It’s your choice, Simon. You are old enough to decide.’

The man comes closer. I recognise him. It’s Johannes, who teaches rudiments and solfege at the local school. I raise my hand in the notes for greeting and he carves out the response. So crisp and clear I can’t help feeling the implied correction of my slumped tones.

‘What do you have, Johannes?’ my mother asks.

‘My son is leaving the village,’ he says. ‘He will be prentissed to one of the instrument makers in London.’ He comes forward and the pride is evident on his face. I know Charles. He came up in my year. A skilled lutenist. And a bully.

‘I have many memories of him, of course. But this is our final dinner.’ He holds out a coiled mettle lute string. ‘I want to remember it particularly. We played a duet that he wrote for the occasion.’ He hums a phrase and places the string on the bench in front of my mother.

‘Thank you for bringing this. I will keep it. Would you like to be told of it again?’

He nods. ‘Tell it to me next time at the market. Then I’ll decide when after.’

He leaves, and my mother places the memory on a piece of roughcloth.

It’s a while before I can speak. Everything I thought I knew about my mother is shifting, moving, modulating. ‘Does anyone forget they’ve given them to you?’

‘Yes. Most wish me to remind them, tell them the story of it again. But some are happy to forget as long as I keep the objectmemory safe.’

She beckons to me. ‘Over here, Simon. Come.’ I walk nearer.

‘My mother had the skill to keep others’ memories too. It goes in families.’ She looks at me, and her look is a question.

‘It’s illegal?’

‘Yes, it is. And you will have to understand the danger. But isn’t it better to know what you can do? Then at least it is your choice.’

She is asking me to touch it. ‘I’m not sure,’ I say.

Then there is another noise, this time sharp and loud. My father is standing a few feet inside the door. A basket hangs loose in his hands. On the dirt floor, the bulbs it held are scattered askance and rolling in misshapen half-circles. My mother spreads her arms wide. It is an unthinking movement and for a moment I wonder whether she is shielding what she is doing from his vision, or whether it is my father who is the one that must be protected.

If you did not know him, you might not hear the anger as he forms his words careful and precise. I can feel the cold coming from across the room and I draw back.

‘You gave me your word,’ he says to my mother.

‘What did I say?’ she asks.

‘Don’t play those tricks.’

‘I said I would not take them to London anymore. I didn’t say I would no longer keep them. I can’t refuse to take them. I can’t turn people away.’

‘What you said is that you would look to your safety so we could bring up our son. You said Simon would stay clear of it. Do you want him to be hunted down and tortured? Killed?’ The muscles around his mouth work even after he stops speaking. His hands clench, unclench. I am afraid, though not sure what I am afraid of. When I was young, he would carry me across the fields and I thought nothing could come for me, not even down out of the sky.

My mother speaks piano. ‘We don’t have the right to choose for Simon if he has the gift.’

Mouth crooked like it’s broken. Everything out of line. ‘Don’t have the right? What rights are left? He is my son and I might forget everything else, but I won’t forget that. I won’t let him do this.’

He takes my arm and pulls me to the bench where my mother steps aside. He bends me over the bench with his weight at my back so my face is close to the memory. So close I’m almost touching it with my chin. I stare at the string. Threads tuft off the yellow cotton at its tail where it once wound onto the peg of the instrument.

‘Look at it, Simon. Look close,’ he says. ‘Do you see it? Other people’s pain? Other people’s happiness?’ He pulls me back up toward him and puts his hands up to my cheeks. ‘You are not going to die for that,’ he says. And then he punches me in the stomach.

The floor is cold and the nails’ smooth heads touch like mouths on my bare feet. The echo of my father’s punch is raw and empty in the centre of my belly, and a part of me feels like crying. I walk to the balcony, open the door and lean out. It is empty, only the tomato plants climbing their way slowly upward in the silver light. At Lucien’s quarters, I stand still for a while. My heart is loud. I am certain that I have forgotten something. I should not disturb him. I clear my throat, enough that he would hear. I wait. Five long breaths. Then, in one movement, I soundlessly pull aside the curtain.

It is bare, empty. There is no shelf. No memory bag. No candles. His hammock is folded neatly on the ground next to a grey wool blanket the same as the one in my quarters. Lucien has gone.

I go back to my quarters, pull a jacket from the small bundle of clothes that makes my pillow. I dip a waterpouch in the parabucket. I take my knife from my ankle and slip it through my belt so that I can feel the cold of it lying against my stomach. Then I slip the bolt out smooth, push down the latch and try to open the door as silent as I can.

Nothing is moving out on the race. I stay close to the storehouses, slide past lento and pause at the rubble of the row past ours, where one section of the side wall has been destroyed. The wind comes off the river and blows between the emptied buildings, giving birth to fast new currents.

Then, down the far end, just before the cranes, I see a figure weaving. It moves forward lento, and every few steps it stops.

Even while standing it sways back and forth and has to hold its arms out in a curious way. Just before the first broken bridge, the figure clips down to its knees and empties its stomach into the water there, hunched over and all out of tune.

Lucien’s walk is from the top of his head down, his neck pitched straight as a plumbline, like a keen vibration. This is just some poor sick soul who’s wandered into our territory by mistake. There is nothing I can do for them except offer some water, perhaps point them out past the race and back to one of the parks or crosshouse yards. The crumpled shape is visible only as darkness in the surrounding faint moonwhite and I pat my knife. Just because someone is so sick they’re vomiting their guts into the river, isn’t to say they won’t have some strength left for a fight.