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‘No.’ He forced a tired smile. ‘Just childish. Forgive me, darling.’ He gave her a rough pat. ‘Too much work lately. I’m sorry. I think I’ll lie down awhile—’
‘You were so excited.’
‘I’m all right now. Fine.’ He exhaled. ‘Let’s forget it. Say, I heard a joke about Uel yesterday, I meant to tell you. What do you say you fix breakfast, I’ll tell the joke, and let’s not talk about all this.’
‘It was only a dream.’
‘Of course.’ He kissed her cheek mechanically. ‘Only a dream.’
At noon the sun was high and hot and the hills shimmered in the light.
‘Aren’t you going to town?’ asked Ylla.
‘Town?’ he raised his brows faintly.
‘This is the day you always go.’ She adjusted a flower-cage on its pedestal. The flowers stirred, opening their hungry yellow mouths.
He closed his book. ‘No. It’s too hot, and it’s late.’
‘Oh.’ She finished her task and moved towards the door.
‘Well, I’ll be back soon.’
‘Wait a minute! Where are you going?’
She was in the door swiftly. ‘Over to Pao’s. She invited me!’
‘Today?’
‘I haven’t seen her in a long time. It’s only a little way.’
‘Over in Green Valley, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, just a walk, not far, I thought I’d—’ She hurried.
‘I’m sorry, really sorry,’ he said, running to fetch her back, looking very concerned about his forgetfulness. ‘It slipped my mind. I invited Dr Nlle out this afternoon.’
‘Dr Nlle!’ She edged towards the door.
He caught her elbow and drew her steadily in. ‘Yes.’
‘But Pao—’
‘Pao can await, Ylla. We must entertain Nlle.’
‘Just for a few minutes—’
‘No, Ylla.’
‘No?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Besides, it’s a terribly long walk to Pao’s. All the way over through Green Valley and then past the big canal and down, isn’t it? And it’ll be very, very hot, and Dr Nlle would be delighted to see you. Well?’
She did not answer. She wanted to break and run. She wanted to cry out. But she only sat in the chair, turning her fingers over slowly, staring at them expressionlessly, trapped.
‘Ylla?’ he murmured. ‘You will be here, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said after a long time. ‘I’ll be here.’
‘All afternoon?’
Her voice was dull. ‘All afternoon.’
Late in the day Dr Nlle had not put in an appearance. Ylla’s husband did not seem overly surprised. When it was quite late he murmured something, went to a closet, and drew forth an evil weapon, a long yellowish tube ending in a bellows and trigger. He turned, and upon his face was a mask, hammered from silver metal, expressionless, the mask that he always wore when he wished to hide his feelings, the mask which curved and hollowed so exquisitely to his thin cheeks and chin and brow. The mask glinted, and he held the evil weapon in his hands, considering it. It hummed constantly, an insect hum. From it hordes of golden bees could be flung out with a high shriek. Golden, horrid bees that stung, poisoned, and fell lifeless, like seeds on the sand.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘What?’ He listened to the bellows, to the evil hum. ‘If Dr Nlle is late, I’ll be damned if I’ll wait. I am going out to hunt a bit. I’ll be back. You be sure to stay right here now, won’t you?’ The silver mask glimmered.
‘Yes.’
‘And tell Dr Nlle I’ll return. Just hunting.’
The triangular door closed. His footsteps faded down the hill.
She watched him walking through the sunlight until he was gone. Then she resumed her tasks with the magnetic dusts and the new fruits to be plucked from the crystal walls. She worked with energy and dispatch, but on occasion a numbness took hold of her and she caught herself singing that odd and memorable song and looking out beyond the crystal pillars at the sky.
She held her breath and stood very still, waiting.
It was coming nearer.
At any moment it might happen.
It was like those days when you heard a thunderstorm coming and there was the waiting silence and then the faintest pressure of the atmosphere as the climate blew over the land in shifts and shadows and vapours. And the change pressed at your ears and you were suspended in the waiting time of the coming storm. You began to tremble. The sky was stained and coloured; the clouds were thickened; the mountains took on an iron taint. The caged flowers blew with faint sighs of warning. You felt your hair stir softly. Somewhere in the house the voice-clock sang. ‘Time, time, time, time …’ ever so gently, no more than water tapping on velvet.
And then the storm. The electric illumination, the engulfments of dark wash and sounding black fell down, shutting in, forever.
That’s how it was now. A storm gathered, yet the sky was clear. Lightning was expected, yet there was no cloud.
Ylla moved through the breathless summer-house. Lightning would strike from the sky any instant; there would be a thunder-clap, a boll of smoke, a silence, footsteps on the path, a rap on the crystalline door, and her running to answer …
Crazy Ylla! she scoffed. Why think these wild things with your idle mind?
And then it happened.
There was a warmth as of a great fire passing in the air. A whirling, rushing sound. A gleam in the sky, of metal.
Ylla cried out.
Running through the pillars, she flung wide a door. She faced the hills. But by this time there was nothing.
She was about to race down the hill when she stopped herself. She was supposed to stay here, go nowhere. The doctor was coming to visit, and her husband would be angry if she ran off.
She waited in the door, breathing rapidly, her hand out.
She strained to see over towards Green Valley, but saw nothing.
Silly woman. She went inside. You and your imagination, she thought. That was nothing but a bird, a leaf, the wind, or a fish in the canal. Sit down. Rest.
She sat down.
A shot sounded.
Very clearly, sharply, the sound of the evil insect weapon.
Her body jerked with it.
It came from a long way off. One shot. The swift humming distant bees. One shot. And then a second shot, precise and cold, and far away.
Her body winced again and for some reason she started up, screaming and screaming, and never wanting to stop screaming. She ran violently through the house and once more threw wide the door.
The echoes were dying away, away.
Gone.
She waited in the yard, her face pale, for five minutes.
Finally, with slow steps, her head down, she wandered about the pillared rooms, laying her hand to things, her lips quivering, until finally she sat alone in the darkening wine-room, waiting. She began to wipe an amber glass with the hem of her scarf.
And then, from far off, the sound of footsteps crunching on the thin, small rocks.
She rose up to stand in the centre of the quiet room. The glass fell from her fingers, smashing to bits.
The footsteps hesitated outside the door.
Should she speak? Should she cry out. ‘Come in, oh, come in’?
She went forward a few paces.
The footsteps walked up the ramp. A hand twisted the door latch.
She smiled at the door.
The door opened. She stopped smiling.
It was her husband. His silver mask glowed dully.
He entered the room and looked at her for only a moment. Then he snapped the weapon bellows open, cracked out two dead bees, heard them spat on the floor as they fell, stepped on them, and placed the empty bellows-gun in the corner of the room as Ylla bent down and tried, over and over, with no success, to pick up the pieces of the shattered glass. ‘What were you doing?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said with his back turned. He removed the mask.
‘But the gun – I heard you fire it. Twice.’
‘Just hunting. Once in a while you like to hunt. Did Dr Nlle arrive?’
‘No.’
‘Wait a minute.’ He snapped his fingers disgustedly. ‘Why, I remember now. He was supposed to visit us tomorrow afternoon. How stupid of me.’
They sat down to eat. She looked at her food and did not move her hands. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her, not looking up from dipping his meat in the bubbling lava.
‘I don’t know. I’m not hungry,’ she said.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know; I’m just not.’
The wind was rising across the sky; the sun was going down. The room was small and suddenly cold.
‘I’ve been trying to remember,’ she said in the silent room, across from her cold, erect, golden-eyed husband.
‘Remember what?’ He sipped his wine.
That song. That fine and beautiful song.’ She closed her eyes and hummed, but it was not the song. ‘I’ve forgotten it. And, somehow, I don’t want to forget it. It’s something I want always to remember.’ She moved her hands as if the rhythm might help her to remember all of it. Then she lay back in her chair. ‘I can’t remember.’ She began to cry.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, I don’t know, but I can’t help it. I’m sad and I don’t know why, I cry and I don’t know why, but I’m crying.’
Her head was in her hands; her shoulders moved again and again.
‘You’ll be all right tomorrow,’ he said.
She did not look up at him; she looked only at the empty desert and the very bright stars coming out now on the black sky, and far away there was a sound of wind rising and canal waters stirring cold in the long canals. She shut her eyes, trembling.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right tomorrow.’
AUGUST 1999 (#ulink_c24e46a8-66fd-578a-b9fa-4b95272e53db)
The Summer Night (#ulink_c24e46a8-66fd-578a-b9fa-4b95272e53db)
In the stone galleries the people were gathered in clusters and groups filtering up into shadows among the blue hills. A soft evening light shone over them from the stars and the luminous double moons of Mars. Beyond the marble amphitheatre, in darknesses and distances, lay little towns and villas; pools of silver water stood motionless and canals glittered from horizon to horizon. It was an evening in summer upon the placid and temperate planet Mars. Up and down green wine-canals, boats as delicate as bronze flowers drifted. In the long and endless dwellings that curved like tranquil snakes across the hills, lovers lay idly whispering in cool night beds. The last children ran in torchlit alleys, gold spiders in their hands throwing out films of web. Here or there a late supper was prepared in tables where lava bubbled silvery and hushed. In the amphitheatres of a hundred towns on the night side of Mars the brown Martian people with gold coin eyes were leisurely met to fix their attention upon stages where musicians made a serene music flow up like blossom scent on the still air.
Upon one stage a woman sang.
The audience stirred.
She stopped singing. She put her hand to her throat. She nodded to the musicians, and they began again.
