Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

Suddenly, Siao in his T-shirt had inserted himself sideways past the Wangs, and his steady face was wrinkled in an embarrassed smile. There was no accusation in the face at all. Mae saw at once: He had absolutely had his fill of the Wangs. She also saw his Karz blue-grey eyes, and his fine dark beard, and his slim workman's arms. She found herself thinking: He has grown up.

'Come home?' Mae asked him.

Siao nodded yes, very slightly. 'It would be pleasant to be in my old house,' he said.

'I am sorry for what happened,' Mae said.

Siao stayed smiling and calm, while his shoulders equivocated. 'It was a terrible thing you did.'

Mae nodded. Yes.

Siao turned back to the doorway. 'Mr Wang…' he began. 'I must speak to my father.'

'You cannot go back with that woman after what she has done!' roared Mr Ju-mei.

Siao rocked slightly in place. 'I am so grateful for what you have done for us, but I am aware that we cannot stay as guests for ever. It is a burden for you. Please, I am very cold, we all are, can we not simply ask Mae to come inside?'

'Never!' wailed her mother.

Ju-mei stood up straight. 'You heard what my mother said.'

His wife chipped in: 'The baby is freezing.'

Siao nodded once, politely, and smiling, stepped inside. 'Just a moment, Mae, I will not be long,' he said, bowing slightly. He closed the door.

When he opened it again, he had Old Mr Chung with him. The old man looked confused now. He had on a filthy quilted jacket, with his box of tools. 'Is it a job?' he asked, looking eager.

Still in his T-shirt, Siao stepped outside with his father into the snow and closed the door after him.

'Your family has been very generous to us,' he said to Mae. Mae saw his bare arms and took off her coat and put it around Siao's shoulders.

They were all cold. Mae spoke quickly: 'The house is restored to you as long as I can pay rent. The business is now in the barn. How are you, Old Mr Chung-sir?'

'Ready. Ready,' the old man said, stepping in place as if held back by a harness. 'They are driving me crazy.'

'Father, that is rude.'

Old Mr Chung looked at Mae. 'I know they are your family…'

Mae heard herself say, 'You are my family. Whatever was between me and Joe, I always loved his family.'

The old man blinked. 'We loved you.'

The door blurted open like an awkward remark. Ju-mei stood glowering at the door. 'You keep a poor old man outside!' he accused Mae.

'Then perhaps you can let us inside,' said Mae.

Mae won. Reluctantly Ju-mei admitted her. Her mother sat enthroned and avoiding her gaze. Young Mrs Wang had taken the baby elsewhere. The inside of the house, as always, was as empty and as clean as an iceberg. The tiny brazier did nothing to warm it. On the wall was the framed photograph of all of them as children, and another photograph of her father, so familiar that it looked nothing like him.

Mae's mother cowered in black trousers and jacket and a long flowered scarf. She looked tiny and frail and unhappy. There is nothing in her to be frightened of, Mae thought. Then she thought: Frightened?

Siao said, bowing, 'We have decided to take Mae's kind offer.' Something in the way he said it made Mae realize: Siao is head of the family now. Joe's going has been good for him.

Ju-mei glowered. 'I cannot believe you will accept any help from that woman.'

'We have taken much already from her family who owed us nothing and were so kind to make space for us in their home,' said Siao. 'We are impoverished and through our own efforts have lost everything we inherited. At least this way, there may be some small illusion that we live in our own home.'

Ju-mei glowered at Mae. 'Your sentiments are noble, Siao, and I can only add that I am deeply ashamed that my own sister has left you in such a terrible situation. You have been an ideal guest…'

Ah, thought Mae, they've all been driving each other crazy.

'… and I feel that as a mark of my respect and affection for you that I will assist in carrying your cases and goods.'

He wants to see what is going on, thought Mae.

And he did. Ju-mei went into the barn and saw the giant weaver with its lights and display, and its speaking voice. His eyes boggled.

'You make money from this?'

Mae used her little formula: five hundred collars at ten dollars each.

Ju-mei looked so forlorn that part of Mae wanted to hug him. He looked like such a disappointed little boy: he pouted and looked sad and yearning, and hung his head. Ju-mei had always thought that if someone had something, they had got it by stealing it from him.

'Tuh. Who will work for a woman like you?'

'About half the village,' chuckled Siao, 'since it makes them so much money. Your sister has appeared in the New York Times' He even gave his sister-in-law a little hug about the shoulders.

'Hmm. And you think you can run a business of this size by yourself?'

'Oh, I do not think that,' said Mae, ringing her little bell voice. 'I know I can. So I will not be needing your help.'

Mae moved into the attic.

She wanted it that way, to keep her new TV out of the way of thieves, she said. She did not mention the Flood to Siao.

'That will be fine,' said Siao. 'I was tired of that attic. But, hoi, Mae! Let me tell you – that attic is cold! Are you sure you want to be up there?'

'Siao. I am a fallen women. People will be more comfortable coming to your kitchen to offer you work if I am not there.'

His eyes looked briefly pained and then he nodded yes.

As if to make it up to her, Siao made a pulley. It had a strong net to carry things and strong wooden wheels and it could hoist her TV up and down from the attic. 'In case you want to take it outside in summer to teach,' he said.

Siao was plainly overjoyed to be back. He scampered, bringing in charcoal for the braziers, making a new bedspace for his father beside the fire, and screwing hooks into the roofbeam. He ducked and climbed and dangled, as lithe as any monkey.

Mae warmed whisky, and around their old wooden table, they all toasted the Chung family and its house. 'The new house,' they called it, as if it had been rebuilt.

And then, alone and wearing every single piece of clothing she possessed to keep warm, Mae sat alone in her attic, in front of a television of her own.

'Please say hello,' it asked her, to start the process of getting to know her.

'Hello,' replied Mae. It was like meeting a female cousin for the first time and knowing you were going to become friends.

She entered a new e-mail address – the one she had told Kwan's machine to forward e-mail to – and at last began to work on her own. She sipped yet more warmed whisky, and went to work.

____________________

audio file from: Mr Hikmet Tunch

17 December

I have been looking at a particular site in America about history and have found it very interesting. Perhaps friends of yours would like to know it is available. Strange indeed are the uses to which we all are put. I myself come from a long line of peasant soldiers of the Karz. Throughout history, we have laid down our rakes and picked up our axes to march off to bash the Happy Province into submission. But it is like a walnut that does not break open, but is only driven into the mud, so that it sprouts again. I seem to have been used to help plant it afresh. Once there was a dictator. He drove millions to various kinds of deaths, by war, in prison, or simply in harsh deserts farming their lives away. He destroyed temples, burned books, and ruined the art of calligraphy. He wrote terrible poetry and forced everyone to learn it, so destroying the literary taste of one quarter of humanity. He remained a warrior even as Chairman. He was at his best as a warrior, because as a warrior, he was fighting for his people, dreaming for them. After that, he only ground them down. But I forgive him for saying one beautiful thing: