Air (or Have Not Have)

CHAPTER 8

Sunni's-husband announced to the village: he was bringing in a television as well.

'Well, wife, your friend Kwan has a rival,' Joe exclaimed cheerily. He was back from doing business all day at the Teahouse. 'Business' meant sipping tea and playing chess until suppertime.

Mae was ladling soup into Siao's and Old Mr Chung's waiting bowls. She thought a moment. 'I don't know why you say "rival." '

'Tuh. Don't play innocent with me. You know the Wings and the Haseems are rivals.'

'Rivals for stealing their neighbours' farms,' muttered Siao, into his soup.

As if jabbed, Joe snapped his head around in Siao's direction, and then decided this was support. 'Yes, wife. Your friend Kwan is no better or worse than Faysal Haseem.'

Mae served her husband his soup. 'Except that we don't owe the Wings any money.'

Siao said, 'Haseem has to run it off the Wings' account, for which of course, he will pay rent, like water. So Wing still gets richer, at Haseem's expense. That makes Wing more clever.'

Siao was an odd fish. Somehow he knew more than Joe. Mae had long ago noticed that he did all the work, going off every morning with Old Mr Chung to work on the walls. He kept the household's accounts. So why was he content to sleep in the loft?

There was no doubt that two TVs in the village was news. As Mae and An went about their interviewing, they discussed the situation. What, really, would Mr Haseem get out of having a TV? Position, yes, but how would he use it to make money? His only idea would be to charge people for watching it. Since Wing did not, he couldn't, either.

At midnight, Mae went back to Kwan's to work on her TV. She was learning how to use the accounts package. The TV was fine, she had decided, just so long as you didn't go online.

Mae found Mr Doh, Mr Ali, and Mr Ho watching a police thriller. Drug dealers were being rounded up by computer surveillance. Mae found herself thinking: So, they are still loyal to Wing. Who is watching at Sunni's?

Kwan was thinking the same thing. She was serving tea to them, as guests. She had not done that for days. Mae, to show support, began to gather up used cups, and was rewarded by a beautiful smile. Over the plastic tub that was Kwan's sink, they talked.

'I wonder what horrors Mr Sunni shows on his set?'

'How to take over villages, perhaps,' said Kwan.

'I think he wants to be a strongman. Like in the very old days. He wants us all to work for him. If you had daughters he would try to marry one of his sons to them. To form a political alliance.'

Kwan bent from the middle with a silent laugh.

Mae's eyes were narrow and merry. 'He probably thinks that he has the male TV and you have the female.'

Kwan had to put down a cup in order to laugh. 'You have become like a thornbush lately!'

'I hate Mr Sunni's-man,' Mae said with a shrug. 'I wish I had killed him.'

'It will be very interesting when you interview him for your Question Map.'

'On the contrary, I look forward to it. I cannot wait until he tries to do one of his own.'

Kwan was still smiling, but she suddenly, gently, pushed the tip of Mae's nose. 'Do not grow too bold, Mae.'

'I have more than one enemy, I hear.'

'Shen,' said Kwan, her voice suddenly curdling. 'I cannot get over the change in that man.'

'I must talk to him as well,' sighed Mae. She saw she was not just making a Question Map. She was building a party. She realized that, in a sense, it was the party of Mr Wing.

Joe got wind of a construction job in Balshang.

It would take three days to drive there. Siao, Joe, Old Mr Chung, and Mr Doh would drive down in Mr Haseem's van, to join the work gang being recruited in Yeshibozkent. They were to leave that very day.

'It is a good opportunity,' Joe said. 'They are building an industrial farm, many buildings. There is a whole camp for the workmen they are hiring.'

'How much do they pay?' asked Mae.

He blew out air, from stress. 'I don't know.'

'All the men in the country will be going there, hoping for work.'

'But Mr Doh says that it is government work, so they try to spread it to all parts of the country. Who knows? There is a chance, and it is better than sitting around here.'

Mae was glad; it showed her husband had taken on the reality of their problem. 'I will pack your food and your shirts,' she said. It was a proper wifely thing to do. He nodded once, to indicate that this was quite right, too, and drew in smoke from his scrawny cigarette. Mae folded his shirts. Even if it was only four riels a week, if it was four weeks' work, that would be sixteen riels. And if Siao and Old Mr Chung did the same, then their problems were over! Taking into account loss of odd jobs, that was still a total of thirty-two riels overall.

Siao took one final look at the household accounts.

Siao's eyes latched onto Mae's, briefly. 'This comes just in time, eh?'

Mae nodded silently, yes. She could feel her eyes sparkle.

Mr Haseem's van drew up outside their gate and beeped. Mae did not want to be seen by that man, so she pressed the food and the reed box of clothing into her husband's hands. Farewell, husband, good health, courage, come back a wealthy man… The words tumbled as automatically from her lips as sneezes.

Then came a pause. He stared at her, wanting more; they had been young lovers once, she had borne him three children.

He pulled her to him and kissed her, and she hugged him, pushing her face to the side of his; she would have her freedom after he was gone. Siao called to him from beyond the gate.

Mr Haseem beeped again, she patted him. 'Go, or your good friend will drop you in the shit,' she said.

And unbidden tears came into her eyes. This was very convenient; she made sure he saw them. There were wisps of fear at being left alone, wisps of loss for Joe, who was her domestic companion.

'I will see Lung and our daughter,' he said. 'I will bring back news of Lung.' Joe worshiped his athletic, achieving, military son.

'That will be the best part,' she said. 'Now, hurry, hurry!'

Joe grinned, like a boy again, and broke into a run. He waved at the gate again.

He thinks I love him, she thought. He thinks that in the end we are still man and wife. And she remembered him when he was sixteen, handsome, a leader of the village youth.

Joe never grew up. She heard the car door slam, she heard male exuberance, a chattering, a yelling. She remembered him, his hair greased up, a toothpick never out of his mouth, car insignia stolen from vehicles in the valley pinned to the back of his jacket. She heard the van grind its way down the mountain road.

She listened to the sound of loneliness, the sound of dust. Mr Ken's house was there, like he was – ever present, always close, with a door that could both open and conceal.

Mae was walking before she knew it. I need to be out in the fields by late afternoon, she thought, or people will talk. It was still lunchtime. The children would be napping in Mr Shen's school, Mr Ken's mother might be sleeping before returning to the fields. If not, she could always say: Who will do your weeding for you, Mr Ken? I and the village women could offer to help.

She walked into Mr Ken's kitchen. He was sipping soup, his late breakfast. He looked up, still shiny with sweat from weeding his own fields.

'Joe's gone,' she said quietly. 'And his brother.'

'I'll be along,' he said.

She walked back to her own house, shaking. Her body was like Mr Haseem's truck rattling down the road. This is crazy, if anyone comes to call, they will find us. She pinned up the window curtains and drew shut the heavy draught-curtains across the doorway. She took down her sun hat, her jumper, her apron to collect the compost, her high-soled field clogs. She rammed them under the bed. Their absence would signal she was not there. All of that would signal: Mrs Chung is out at work. How then did she draw shut the draught-curtains? She opened them again.

She lay down on the bed, still smelling of Joe. It smelled of Joe but that smell would now be driven out by the smell of Mr Ken. That thought alone seemed to loosen the corsets of her belly. I will smell him when I sleep at night.

She heard the latch. Her breath caught. No one called out her name. She heard the latch close. Her heart was pumping. This is mad – if it is not him how will I explain? I will say I caught too much sun and I am ill. The curtains of the alcove were pulled back, rattling on their plastic rings.

It was him and he was smiling. He was shiny no longer. He had bathed.

He was naked under his overalls, which he flung utterly aside, and he was soon on top of her. His skin was as perfect as apricots.

The next day Mae went back out onto her husband's land.

The Chungs had one valley paddy and two long terraces very high up the mountainside. Mae had neglected them since planting the nursery rice. Dock and bindweed were already sprouting between the onions and rice shoots.

She began the long climb up the beaten paths. The swallows swooped about her, scooping insects out of the air. The terraces creaked and buzzed with the sound of crickets. Water lay in puddles, as warm as soup.

On her terrace the air was hot, still, breathless. The heat did a shivering fan-dance in the air. Only the kites circling high overhead looked cool.

Mae went to work hauling out weeds. Her back was soon aching. Tears of sweat wept into the ground. This delicious rice, she thought, it will be seasoned with my own salt.

Her clogged feet sank deep into the creamy soil with every step. The mud sucked and clung like a lover. Her high, broad hat kept the sun off her neck, shoulders, and even her arms. It could not keep away the flies and the midges. Come friend swallow, here is a feast, free me from flies. She waved her hands at the midges but they returned to tickle and stick to her skin that was like cooked rice, glutinous and steaming.

Mae stood up. She could see far below on the plain the livid green paddies of wet rice. The slashes of mirror among them were water reflecting sky. Beyond – hazy, losing all shape in bright sunlight – were the flat yellows, beiges, and greys of the distant mountains.

Was it like this in your day, Old Mrs Tung?'

No.

The voice was like wind.

Suddenly with a lurch Mae fell, growing smaller. The world collapsed around her, deflating. She was somewhere else.

Little Miss Hu was swung up away from the ground and out over the paddies, holding on to a high wooden arm. The arm was part of a pump for transferring water higher up the mountain.

Miss Hu hung for a moment, giggling in a mixture of fear and delight. Boys sat on the other end of the arm, a huge ball of dried mud. Miss Hu drew a breath and let go and dropped down. Her heart rose into her mouth and the mud greeted her like a mother with a plump hug. The little girl stood up coated in wet earth and whooped to the boys in triumph.

She jumped up and down, splashing in the mud, not caring about her old paddy clothes. 'Again! Again!' she demanded. The boys lowered the arm and she ascended again. She looked out across the valley.

The terraces were lined with pumps, dipping their heads like graceful marsh birds. Below, on the hillside, there was no schoolhouse, no mosque.

The opposite mountain was striated like an onion in layers of paddies. The terraces climbed in steps, green and lush, to the village of Aynalar. Its main street zigzagged up the narrow pass between high, fine stone houses with whitewashed walls and stained-glass windows. There was a dome and a minaret.

Hu Ai-ling looked at it with yearning. One day, she promised, I will live in Aynalar.

She let go again and Mae lurched out of the past.

She blinked and that same hill was now beige and featureless, a mass of tumbled grey stone. If you focused, you could see traces – traces only – of the walls.

The flood had washed one terrace down onto another, wiping them all away. One whole side of the valley had gone. No one spoke of it now, no one remembered. It was healed scar tissue. The opposite hillside, once layered with fields, stared back at her like an old blind face.

Mae remembered Old Mrs Tung. She had always sat at her attic window, facing out across the valley, wind in her face, blind. She had been looking in the direction of Aynalar as if, for her, it was still there.

This is worrying, thought Mae. No, this is really worrying, the way the world shrugs, and suddenly there is the past, there is the future. Like I have a sickness in my head.

No one said this would happen. They did not say you would visit the past. They did not say dead friends would not leave. They do not understand what Air is. She felt the wind move, chilling her wet arms like fear.

Where is this? Mrs Tung asked.

All Mae wanted when she got home was a chance to think, but waiting in her kitchen was her brother, Wang Ju-mei.

'Afternoon, sister,' Ju-mei said. He wore his cream-coloured summer suit.

'Hello, brother. Thank you for coming to see me,' she beamed.

Thank you for coming when it will be necessary to make you lunch, thank you for coming so that it will be impossible for me to wash. Thank you for trying, as always, to assert that Joe's house is in some way yours.

'Would you like something to drink?'

'Tea would be excellent,' he nodded.

She put on the kettle and thought: no, I will not miss my bath. She snatched up fresh clothes and draped them over her arm. 'You will not mind, brother, if I wash?' she said, in a little-girl voice.

Or would you rather I stank and dripped sweat into your lunch?

Ju-mei waved his hand as if it were nothing, but he was too choked with his own unsorted emotions to speak. If the kettle boils and he wants to make his own tea, let him.

My brother. He wants this house, and cannot accept it will not be his. He is a grain merchant, he sells insurance, he wears suits, he has to cast his shadow over things.

Anger made her snap shut the curtain closing off the narrow alley between the two houses. She scowled as she peeled off the sweaty T-shirt, all pleasure in her bath gone. She needed to think. Absent-mindedly she scooped cold water over herself from the rain butt.

Ju-mei will want to chaperone me, or even have me move back into his house for propriety. Well, that won't happen. But he will also feel he has the right to drop in and out when he pleases. Joe knows what Ju-mei is up to, that is why my brother never does this when Joe is around. But, oh God, he will be here day and night, with his new baby, and his wife will want me to change its diapers. He 11 bring Mother and leave her here and say it's my turn to take care of her.

When I want to sleep in Ken Kuei's arms.

Unless I am so rude that he goes away and doesn't come back.

Necessity in life can have a wonderful, calming effect.

Unless I finally, really tell him what I think is going on. Unless I say it in the way I have always wanted to say it. She began to grin. I am just going to say what I really think. I am a peasant wife used to livestock and hard reality. His little cream suit is no defence against that.

Mae went back into the house, still smiling with anticipation. Ju-mei sat staring at the boiling kettle.

'Ha-ha. Men. You just sit there watching it boil. Can't you make the tea yourself?'

Ju-mei had no answer for that. 'I… I was offered tea.'

'Indeed,' said Mae, toweling her hair. 'There it is.' Her hand indicated the earthenware bin, in which the tea leaves kept dry. Briskly she put away the dirty clothes in the wicker basket.

'I hope, brother, you did not come with thoughts of my cooking you lunch. I have my appointments.' She smiled at him. Her teeth had never felt so big.

He was foxed. Nothing was going as he had pictured it.

'You are bold, Mae,' he said.

'Bold? To visit neighbours I have known all my life, what is bold about that? You are bold to wear so much perfume. Pooh! You smell more like a woman than my customers.'

She pulled the alcove curtain shut around her to put on her Talent clothes. 'I'll tell you what else is bold: to drop into another man's house the moment he is gone and expect to be cooked lunch. Or doesn't your wife cook for you anymore?'

'You are a woman alone.'

'No. I am not. Miss An and I always work together, so I do not need a chaperone. I certainly do not need to be chaperoned in my husband's house.' Mae was decent in the heart-patterned dress, so she pulled the curtain back. She wanted to see his face slack with surprise. She stepped into her Talent shoes. 'And there is no need to try to establish any rights to this house. If Joe dies, Siao inherits; if he dies, Old Mr Chung inherits. Either one of them could marry and then it would never fall to the family Wang.'

He shivered in his chair. 'Mae! You are impossible. This is a brotherly call!'

'I know,' replied Mae, flinging up her husband's jacket to open up its arms. She paused. 'And I know exactly what that means. Whatever I've got, Ju-mei, you want. It's been like that for as long as I can remember. You want Joe's cock, too? You want to inherit this house? Maybe you can inherit it if you let Joe fuck you.' She sniffed and made plain she was about to leave. She muttered, 'Both of you would probably enjoy it.'

All blood drained from her brother's face. Abruptly, like a cripple, he stood up, shambling, shivering, having trouble gathering up the cane.

'I don't know what's come over you! You talk like a peasant. A rough farm girl.' He was at the door.

'I am a rough farming girl.'

'I… I had come to offer to pay the debt!'

And Mae whooped in triumph. 'I know! I know! And that is how you thought you would get the farm!'

Her sneaky little brother. His face fell. Mae had to laugh. She took his arm and led him towards the door. 'Come, come, brother, it's not so bad, all our fights end this way, only this time I have decided to skip the fight.'

Mae remembered the kettle. She swooped back into the kitchen to take it off the ring, and when she came back, he had gone.

For a few weeks, Mae's days settled into a pattern.

She did her housework in the early morning and worked in her fields until noon. At lunch or during the day, she might snatch some time with Mr Ken. In the early evening Mae and An would visit neighbours with their Question Map and drink tea late into the night.

After escorting An home, Mae worked to master the television. She saw there were hundreds of things she might do with the TV. She could use the television to sell or to Market Call. She could use it like a telephone to talk live or leave voicemail. In a year she would be able to use it to make material for Aircasts.

Aircasts were like films, but they were translated into the Format. They could go then direct to people's heads. So there would be Aircast versions of movies.

And Aircast version of ads, thought Mae. And all the ads, if you looked hard enough, had something called Intimacy Shields. So, Mae began to wonder, how do you do that in Air? When it's inside your head.

She tried to buy bolts of cloth online. But she still needed something called a Believability Card and that was easiest to do when you had a Clever Card.

Kwan rubbed her shoulders. 'The world out there has grown bigger. There are two worlds. There is the one you can see, and another world people have made up, and it is bigger than the real one. They call it Info.

And Mae felt lust.

Lust to be part of that world, lust to know how it worked, lust to know how the television worked, and how the Net and how the Air would give all that wings. With a lust that bordered on despair, she wanted to be first, she wanted to know all, she wanted to be mistress of all its secrets.

I will learn, she promised herself.

Kwan would leave to go to bed. Mae would keep learning and relearning how to make the accounts system work. She asked for the wrong things, the machine got stuck on the way she said certain things, she kept forgetting what fo mu lah were, and how you entered them, but she knew that it meant the numbers would add themselves up. She thought in passing of Siao, Joe's brother, and how he should see this.

She learned that she could save pictures from the Net or from video. She learned she could change their colour. She learned she could use the tiny camera to copy things from the real world and change them.

Above all else, she learned that she would no longer need to know how to read or write.

And at three a.m., her feet crossing in front of each other as she walked, she would make her way home, as sweaty as if she had been weeding the rice by night as well.

A note on the door might say, in her mother's handwriting: Your mother called. She wonders where her daughter spends her time and asked if you would be good enough to visit her. Mae would promise herself that she would. When she had time. She would fall into her bed. Mr Ken might be there, snoring gently. She might kiss him.

More usually, she would sleep alone. She would pull the pillow that smelled of him between her legs.

And she might dream, always of the past, of beautiful thank-you cakes not delivered until stale. Or a prize dress forgotten on a line until the sun bleached it. The sense of unease would persist, as she sat up. The long hot day would begin again.

The next fashion season would not be until after harvest, in October. By then she would know how much Joe and Siao had brought in. She could leave deciding about her fashion business until then.

Mae thought she was doing all that she could.

Then Sunni set herself up in the best-dress business.

Mae arrived at the Kosals to interview them.

'Oh, Mrs Haseem has just visited and asked us all the same questions,' Mrs Kosal told Mae. 'See. She has sent us a leaflet.'

Mrs Kosal went to fetch it and passed it to Mae, her watchful face and smile not entirely sympathetic.

Mae felt sick. The thing she feared most had happened. Her knowledge, her ideas, had been taken and used by her enemy before she had had a chance to complete them.

And Sunni was richer and had more time and she had a television of her own.

Mae stood reading in the street, looking at the professional print job, alarmed and unhappy. An kicked grit beside her.

'I cannot bear to read it,' said Mae, and passed it to her. Did An know she could not read? Perhaps she did. An read it aloud.

TRUE FASHION

FOR TRUE LADIES

NOW THAT CERTAIN PARTIES HAVE BEEN UNCOVERED

AS OFFERING FALSE ADVICE, THE WAY IS NOW OPEN

FOR TRUTH AND BEAUTY.

Mrs Haseem-ma'am sets the new standard for fashion.

With her eye on the world, she sees what the world of fashion really has to offer. Visit her Fashion-Doctor surgery when you have a moment. See what she can offer you as a best dress. It will be

PROFESSIONALLY MADE BY BEST FASHION HOUSES.

She will also visit to listen with clear heart and true vision to what you have to say. Do not waste words like seed grain on barren fields. Only Mrs Haseem-ma'am can make your words grow into green fields.

Sunni was trying to destroy her.

Mae forced herself to be calm in front of An. She looked at the swallows. The swallows still darted, the sky was faithful. Mae took some comfort.

'The village has never had a leaflet before,' she said. 'I have to admit, it is a bold stroke, a great compliment. It says to us: "You are as important as rich city people, to have a leaflet printed for you."

It was the work of a professional letter-writer. And that, Mae saw, was wrong in many ways.

'She has made a mistake,' Mae said, saving face in front of An. 'She addresses us as an employer would. And who are these fine ladies she writes for? Mrs Wing? Only Mrs Wing, who I think is still my friend.'

'Yes, I see,' said An. But she still kicked grit.

'An, can you help me this evening? Can you stay late?'

An sat at her kitchen table and wrote thirty-three letters in her beautiful handwriting on pages torn from Mae's exercise books. Mae made sure every one of them was different.

Dear Mrs Pin,

Your husband feeds his children by fixing cars and vans. How would you feel if a rich man wrote everyone saying, 'Don't use Mr Pin, he can't fix things.'

This would be unkind and untrue. Sunni gives herself airs and calls herself Mrs Haseem-ma'am. She wants you to talk to her like she is your boss.

You can call me Mae, like I am your servant. I will work hard to get you a good best dress.

Your servant,

Mae

Dear Mrs Doh,

I am not rich and do not have the money to pay someone to write letters for me. I can't pay to have them printed in the City.

I am a plain person, who likes beautiful clothes and wants her friends to be beautiful. You do not need to call me ma 'am.

I have always made good dresses for my friends and always will.

Your friend,

Mae

And finally:

Dear Sunni,

I may be a servant, but I find I am still a fashion leader.

I start to wear men's jackets and so do you. I do a Question Map, and lo, so do you. Mr Wing brings television. Your husband, so original, does the same.

You follow me and that shows I give true fashion advice. Everyone in the village thinks that, too.

It will be good to have two fashion experts. Because both fashion experts must work harder. It will be fun for me to see you work hard.

Your servant,

Mae.

Hands shaking with rage, Mae folded up the letters and sealed them with rice paste. 'I will walk you home,' she told An, and then she delivered all the letters to the thirty-three houses, including Sunni's.

Mae looked up at the stars, as bright as the souls of her people. Something inside her thrashed like a fish pulled up onto the shore. At first she thought it was anger. It was the need to do something more. Instead of going home, she marched up the hill to Kwan's house.

Kwan's courtyard was empty, but the television was running an old film with no one watching. Mae sat down to work, speaking to the machine. Kwan's dog started to bark. Finally Kwan came out, saw Mae, and started to laugh.

Kwan sat on her steps in her nightdress, and shook her head. 'Mae! You have just written letters to everyone in the village and now what are you doing?'

'I am setting up a school,' said Mae.

Kwan was still laughing. 'What, tonight?'

'Yes, tonight. I feel like the whole village will be swept away unless we do something now. Come and see.'

Images of the five pens swam up onto the screen. Kwan came up behind her.

'I made these. There are the five pens that Air sets up in your mind. I will make the TV imitate Air and I will show people how to use them, what they will be able to do. What do you think?'

Kwan was quiet. 'That will be a good thing to do.'

'I will call in everyone. I will call in people during those times when they are not busy. I will ask men to come just after breakfast, I will ask women to come after lunch.'

Kwan started to chuckle again. 'You just thought of this.'

'I have been slow,' said Mae. 'We all have to learn, Kwan. Or Air will come and it will use us, not the other way around.' What she felt was akin to panic. What she felt was akin to flying.

'Audio. Poster. Pictures,' she ordered. 'Birds. Swallows. Blue on white.' The words flew onto the screen as if they were swallows. The screen said for her under the silhouette of a bird.

'We have the school here, ah? Okay?'

Kwan nodded yes.

Mae's words became a poster.

____________________

SWALLOW SCHOOL

BE LIKE A SWALLOW

LEARN TO FLY IN THE AIR

Mrs Chung Mae has been deep into Air. She has been learning a lot about how the TV works. She wants her friends to know it, too. She will show how Air will work by giving lessons on my television for free.

• Men come just after breakfast.

• Women come just after lunch.

• Rowdy unruly young pests come after school and not before.

Mrs Wing Kwan

(Lady Sunni-ma 'am. You do not need a letter writer and a printer to make a leaflet. Mae will do one for you.)

____________________

Kwan was, by now, laughing aloud.

'Print,' said Mae, 'thirty-three copies.' Two copies were lined up side by side on one sheet of paper.

There was a whirring sound, and Kwan eased the paper out of her machine.

'Mae,' she said, reading. 'You are a miracle.' Mae felt triumph.