Nest of Worlds (5 page)

Leo returned late, alone, and said that Gwenda and Haifan were watching over their burnt child. Tad had been detained by the police.

Pale and disheveled after a sleepless night, Haifan came home on the first morning bus. Aladar had died at sunrise, not regaining consciousness. Gwenda, her nerves shattered, had been admitted to the women’s section of the same hospital.

The mood was funereal. Gavein showed up to eat his macaroni and pizza and immediately left. He preferred to lie on his mattress or on the rug and stare at the ceiling, at a wall, at the telephone that was silent, not clattering once.

He went to see the movie starring Maslynnaya and Lola Low, because that was the only one playing in the neighborhood theaters. Zef was right: both actresses were well endowed. But it was boring: there was nothing to the story.

It’s the same here, no better, he thought sourly. Just as in Lavath, the films are given moronic plots. He had already come to this conclusion about the television fare.

While Gavein was in the theater, Hilgret received a fatal electric shock ironing clothes. She fell unconscious, the cord caught around her, and the current kept passing through her body. The rug caught fire from the iron. Edda returned in time to extinguish the flames but too late to save Hilgret.

When Gavein got back, the body had already been taken to the morgue. There was only a burnt hole in the rug.

“It’s stalking us,” said Edda, becoming hysterical. It lurks out there, waiting for the next victim . . . This, it’s only the beginning.”

“You’re right, Edda,” said Haifan. He had aged overnight. “Sometimes, for years at a time, nothing happens. Peace and contentment. Then suddenly, for no reason, everything is turned upside down, day after day. Our life goes slowly, then it races.”

Like the passage of time itself, Gavein thought. A plane ascends. The pilot thinks he is flying normally, but to the people on the ground he is almost motionless.

The next day, Hanning called to say that Mrs. Dave Throzz could be picked up now, at Port 0-2. He tried to be polite, even correcting himself: “Mrs. Magdalena Throzz.” The port was at the northern end of 2000th Street. Depending on the weather, it was a drive of from fifteen to twenty-five hours.

Gavein made a reservation for a microbus, since he hadn’t bought a car yet. The bus cost him twenty packets.

The weather wasn’t that bad, but the ride took twenty-six hours, because other passengers got on or got off en route. It was cheaper this way. Gavein could sleep under any conditions, and whenever he was the only passenger, he stretched out comfortably on a seat.

There were two drivers. Goft (from Gozzafath) had a puffy face and bags under his eyes. He said he was switching to another line of work soon. The second driver, Pat, was as old as Goft, gaunt, toothless, with sunken cheeks and gray skin. On the fingers of his right hand, he had tobacco stains, but he never smoked while he drove. He talked a lot, with a lisp. He talked about his wife and four children, two of whom had light hair, though the parents were both grays. Pat couldn’t get over that misfortune, because those two were his most capable offspring. They had no chance to get a higher education, being whites. The other two were studying engineering. When Pat talked, he leaned toward you, and his breath was fetid. Gavein twisted away from the smell. He found that if he pressed back, deep into his seat, Pat couldn’t follow, restrained by the safety belt. It was even better when Pat drove.

The 0-2 seaport turned out to be an enormous structure with a blank wall of red brick several kilometers long. At the base of the wall was a row of numbered doors. Inside the building went an endless hall, filled with glassed-in cubicles for officials, dozens of rope barriers, kiosks, and little shops.

Limping, Gavein picked his way through the crowds of travelers and waiting families. His feet hurt from being immobile so long. After twenty minutes, he found the right section. The secretary was a red.

That’s all they hire, he thought. But he was wrong: the red woman directed him to the correct person, a black woman. He went with her to the room where they kept the catalogues.

“The file should be here.” She put on her glasses to read the labels on the metal cabinets along the wall. In glasses she looked prettier—more intelligent.

She should keep them on her nose all the time, not in the pocket of her uniform, he thought.

She searched for the right file.

“Here’s transport number 077-12-11-4,” she said. “Hmm. Ah? Four years of compensation.” She looked at him over the paper. “You’re going to be surprised.”

“Something happened?”

“No, but the years go by. She has definitely changed. She might have forgotten you.”

“That’ll be my problem. I’d like to see her, as soon as I can.”

The official nodded: she understood. “Dave, you can call me Anabel, all right?” she said. “I don’t see her name in the register. Ra Mahleiné . . . ?”

“Yes.”

“No one here by that name. There’s no Throzz either.” She went through a sheaf of papers carefully. “No, she’s not here.”

“What does that mean?”

“Dave, there’s another list. Though 324 women embarked, only 238 arrived. They had an epidemic on board.”

He said nothing for a moment. At last he managed to speak. “I won’t believe that until I see the body.” His throat was so tight, he could hardly get the words out.

The official was watching him.

He said, louder, “By law, the bodies must be frozen. But surely a list of the dead exists.” Anything was better than the uncertainty.

“Absolutely. The name will be on one list or another,” she agreed. She went through more papers. “Not here either,” she said after a while. “No Ra Mahleiné, no Mahleiné, no one by the name of Throzz. Perhaps there was some mistake.” She shrugged.

“I’m not leaving until I find out. But . . . that means, doesn’t it, she may still be alive.”

“Did she leave before or after your flight?”

He understood what she was suggesting: Ra Mahleiné might have changed her mind at the last minute. He had trusted his wife completely, not once considering the possibility that she would find someone else. The worm of doubt was planted in Gavein’s head—that was what the black official intended, this woman with wire glasses and the uniform of the maritime transport service.

“She left three weeks after I did,” he said. The worm was feasting, growing fat. “I won’t go until I’ve seen everyone who arrived,” he said, stressing each word.

“Listen, Dave. They’re in quarantine now. Longer than usual because of the epidemic on board. If she’s here, you’ll find her. Why don’t you come again, when the quarantine is lifted?” But she stopped, seeing the stony look in Gavein’s eye.

“I’ll wait here. Until this is resolved. I’ll sleep—” He pointed at the floor, which was covered with a thin carpet. It was not much worse than the rug in his room, which he had slept on several times.

“If it’s that important to you. But this will take a while.”

At least they didn’t throw him out bodily. He waited in an empty room. He sat, he dozed, sometimes he paced. He tested the cabinets and found they were all locked.

After a few hours Anabel returned, pulling a cart packed with files. Gavein thought to himself that the proud name she had, taken from the name of the Land of her birth, would be of no use to her when she moved to Ayrrah.

“I found the records of your wife’s ship. These are all the passengers.” She pointed to the cardboard box. “And these boxes are for the ships before and after: 077-13 and 077-11. She might have been on them. There is a third possibility: she might have taken a seaplane, her courage failing her. Such persons would not be filed. But I can provide you with a full list of the women who embarked.” She was feeding Gavein’s worm.

“That was a lot of work, Anabel.”

She smiled. Before she left, she showed him again how to use the files.

It was simple: you inserted a card into the slot of the reader, and on the monitor there appeared a black-and-white photograph of the passenger when she embarked from Lavath. Photographs were taken thereafter at three-month intervals to the present. Some folders had fewer prints, ending with a memo that gave the date of death. The photographs were grainy, the image quality poor, the resolution low.

Dozens of faces went by, changing all too rapidly. They grew thin, grew fat, grew ugly; only a few did not submit to the passage of time. This gallery of women’s faces, arranged chronologically, spoke eloquently of the toll of travel in real time.

When he got to the end, the sky outside the window had turned black. There was no Ra Mahleiné.

Anabel returned and said, “Dave, the office is closing. The port is closed until dawn.”

“She’s not here.”

“Tomorrow is another day. You’ll have to spend the night somewhere. Do you have a place?”

“Not really.”

“You can stay with my parents. They have a room upstairs. For thirty packets. A clean bed, breakfast, and for another three packets, Mama will make you lunch. What do you say?”

He wondered what else was included for those thirty-three packets. But the thought came: if he left here, he would never find the way back, in this wilderness of officials, cubicles, desks. If for some reason they were trying to hide the fate of Ra Mahleiné, then, forewarned, they would misdirect him, and he would wander through this vast complex until exhaustion and despair finally defeated him.

“That’s very kind of you, Anabel, but I couldn’t sleep a wink. I have to know! It’s all the same if I stay here or go upstairs—I won’t sleep. And here I can keep looking. There are plenty of folders I haven’t gone through yet.”

“But that’s not permitted.”

He heard hesitation in her voice. She was lying, he was sure of that. He went with his intuition.

“I think I can deal with the person in charge, Anabel. Call your supervisor, let me talk to the woman. I know my rights. It’s inexcusable that finding a passenger should take so long,” he said.

“Actually . . . I’m the person in charge here.” Her tone showed that his bluff had worked.

Gavein gave a disarmingly helpless smile. There was a pause. He outwaited her.

“All right, then. I’ll do this for you, Dave. Let me have your ID; I need it to set up an overnight pass for you. You’ve had no trouble with the law?” She looked at him sideways. “No suspended fines, even?”

He shook his head.

“Wait here.”

In no time she was back with the ID, the pass, and a magnetic key that opened the door to a room with a dresser and a toilet. She wheeled in another cart with photographs. This was more cooperation than he had expected.

“These are ships 077-10 and 077-14. If you don’t find her there, then I don’t know.”

She was not pleased. He didn’t care. In any case, she left. He began with the registers, but found nothing. The only possibility was an error in the name. He believed, he absolutely believed that Ra Mahleiné had got on a ship, and yet the worm of doubt continued to gnaw at him. It showed him an image of a weary Ra Mahleiné striking up an acquaintance at last with the handsome pilot of a seaplane, running away with him from the ship. The marriage, after all, had not been that long. And had he ever really understood her? Her thinking would be totally different from his, and she was four years younger besides. Except that the idea of compensating travel had been hers, not his. There had to be a trace of her somewhere.

The bitch, he thought of Anabel. She spat poison in my head.

His confidence left him: the time difference, after all—he parted with his wife two weeks ago, she parted with him four years ago. Four years was four years.

At night his examination of the folders was slower. He went through all the ships, through 077-12 twice, but not once did he come upon Ra Mahleiné’s beloved face. At the very end of the file for 077-14, he made a discovery: the race was given for each passenger. Included in the column of data was always a B, R, or G. But never an NC, “no category,” for whites. The race letter was placed in a corner of the screen, easily overlooked in the flood of other information.

“I’m an idiot,” he muttered. “How could I have missed this?” He scrolled through the file of 077-12 again: not one white. They were all black, red, or gray. He sighed with relief. He would have to look in some other place. He wasn’t even angry with Anabel for lying to him—all officials lied.

It was dawn.

She woke him after three hours. He felt crumpled, crushed. No wonder, he had been lying on the floor. His bones ached, and he needed a shower. Anabel brought a few rolls, with coffee in a paper cup. This went beyond official courtesy. He told her what he had discovered last night. He observed how the satisfaction on her face faded.

“I had no idea she was white,” Anabel said. “There are no whites in the file, of course.”

Gavein remembered that he had in fact mentioned the color of his wife’s hair, but all he said was “There must be at least a list. May I see that?”

“There’s a list, yes. But it has only numbers.”

“What do you mean?”

“Once on the ship, the passengers become the property of Davabel. The formalities of changing citizenship are all taken care of the moment they leave Lavath.”

“So?”

“Her Lavath first and last names were not recorded. She is a number. Assuming she is . . . alive.”

Gavein rubbed his hands. He wanted to give the impression of a man rested up and eager for the next challenge, a man who would never back off or give up. “I’m positive this will work out. The coffee was excellent, the roll even better. Nothing like a good breakfast to make a person optimistic. You baked these yourself?”

“Yes, myself. That is, Mama helped me.”

An obvious lie: these rolls came ready-made from the store, the kind you browned and served. Edda made the exact same rolls.

“Mmm,” he murmured, like a cat. “First-rate.” He shook off his sleepiness. “So when can I see the white women from the transport?”

“Well, now, if you like.” She was capitulating. “They’ll be eating lunch. There are cameras in the dining room.”

She led him down a corridor.

“But if she’s among the dead, I won’t be able to find her,” Anabel said over her shoulder. “She had only an identification number.”

The word “among” sent a shiver through him.

In the guardroom were dozens of monitors. They showed different cells: some screens were empty, others had women. The women were all dressed the same: gray-blue skirts, gray shirts with
Quarantine
on the back.

“Only the dining room and lounges can be viewed, and the bedrooms at night. The showers and toilets may not be viewed, by law. The passengers have a right to privacy,” she explained.

“But the maintenance men can always take a peek.”

“You’re mistaken.” Her lips tightened. “In the showers and stalls there are no cameras, because of rust.”

“Good. Rust rises in my estimation.”

She ignored his remark.

“Over here, Dave,” she said. “This second one in the third row.” She jutted her chin at one of the monitors. “The whites from transport 077-12 are eating lunch right now. With these two levers you can move the camera. Identification numbers are on the front of their shirts. If you find your wife, read out the number, and I’ll call her to the microphone. You’ll be able to get a good look, and if you identify her and she confirms your identity, you have the right to examine her naked. Immigration law allows that. Personally I would advise it, because on the prison ship she will have aged and changed—and then you can back out. No conversation, by the way, is permitted.”

Gavein turned the levers, watching the monitor. Soon he was able to pan slowly across the sad faces of women, their hair tied in kerchiefs as gray as their shirts. Though the grayness might have been a result of the poor camera image, which was almost completely devoid of color. The numbers were on large white patches sewn to the shirts. He couldn’t see the women who sat at the edge of the camera’s range, even at maximum close-up. Some glanced up, taking note of the camera’s movement. They began to speak with animation, and soon most of the women were staring at the lens. A few smiled, but generally the looks were hostile, angry. Two women raised a fist.

“If you don’t find her this way, I’ll order them to walk single file down a corridor. Then they’ll have to walk right past a camera. You want to be sure she’s dead.”

Exactly at that moment, he recognized his wife. She was sitting in profile, bent over. She never sat like that before. She was eating from a bowl with a spoon. She wore glasses, poorly made, of crooked wire. She never wore glasses before. For a moment he fought the lump in his throat. She was alive. He wanted to leap with joy.

“That’s her. She’s sitting over there,” he said at last.

The official started.

“Her number is 077-12-747,” Gavein said. “You can call her. Anabel?” He saw the gesture she made. He couldn’t show what he felt. There was no telling what else they would think up. This was a battle; there would be time to celebrate later.

“Very well.” She gave him a look and said crisply into the microphone, “077-12-747, go to the interrogation room.”

Ra Mahleiné pushed away her bowl and stood up, agitated. Gavein fought to keep his tears from welling. He once believed he was incapable of crying. As she walked, he could see her better. She hadn’t changed so very much, though she looked pitiful, as if after a long illness. She had a stoop. It wasn’t the stoop of young women who are too tall and try to lessen their height by bending—naively, since in profile they resemble birds that stalk, remaining too tall. Ra Mahleiné was bent forward at the waist, like a woman beginning to suffer from osteoporosis. Before, she had had a slight defect in posture; now it was obvious.

“Her name?” asked Anabel.

He was angry that she was making him repeat it. He had no doubt that she remembered that name.

Ra Mahleiné was at another monitor now. She looked calmly into the camera, standing at attention in the way required.

“State your identity,” Anabel snapped into the microphone.

“Number 077-12-747,” answered Ra Mahleiné in a hoarse voice.

“I want your first and last names.”

“You beat those out of me over the years. I’m not giving you an excuse.” The way she spoke was different, defiant. The sweetness was gone.

“Give your first and last names from Lavath. That is an order,” said Anabel.

“Ra Mahleiné Throzz.”

“May I say something to her?”

“That’s not possible,” said Anabel. “For two reasons. On the ship there was an epidemic of mental illness—she might not be able to endure hearing you. And the law forbids it.”

Gavein sensed that on this point the supervisor would not bend.

“Someone called Dave is inquiring about you. Do you know him?”

“I don’t know any Dave. I will not undress in front of the camera for a stranger just because he has taken notice of me. I think my husband hasn’t forgotten me in two weeks. He will come, to . . .” She broke off.

Gavein’s soul sang.

“Anabel, she knows me under a different name.”

“Don’t interrupt. This is the procedure. Now I’ll confirm your relationship.” Anabel had become the perfect official.

“He knows your name,” she told Ra Mahleiné.

“I don’t know where he learned it,” Ra Mahleiné said with a shrug. “It was no secret. You could have told him yourself. You tried to make me believe, before, that Gavein had sold me . . .”

Gavein started. The goodwill of Anabel, her concern, her helpfulness—it had all been a game, to break him. From the first, she had known the one he was seeking.

“Behave yourself,” barked Anabel, no longer resembling a woman who loved to bake rolls. “He came to take you from this place. And you will undress if I order you to undress!”

Ra Mahleiné’s reply was to lift a clenched fist to the camera and kiss it.

“I’ll call the guards,” Anabel threatened.

“You exceed your power, and the tape from this camera will be evidence against you,” Ra Mahleiné said.

He didn’t recognize his wife, so fierce and determined. This exchange was apparently the continuation of a duel that had been going on for a long time.

“This man from Lavath calls himself Gavein Throzz. You know such a man?”

“That was my husband’s name. But I don’t believe you, that he’s standing there. You tried to trick me before and didn’t succeed. Give it up . . .”

But Ra Mahleiné didn’t seem as sure of herself as she had been.

“I don’t want her undressing here. It’s humiliating. Stop this, Anabel. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s her.”

“No, no,” Anabel sputtered. “You have to sign the affidavit, so that in the event of an error you cannot make a claim against us and search more. If you sign, you must accept her. But if she undresses, you can change your mind and look for another.”

Why was she insisting on this? What reaction from Ra Mahleiné was she hoping for?

“I’ll sign the affidavit.”

“All right. I’ll terminate her quarantine in two weeks. We’ll deliver her then to your house.”

“She can’t go with me now?”

“Impossible. Health reasons. She might be carrying a disease.” Anabel shook her head, then barked into the microphone, “077-12-747, you will move to the preparation room, starting today.”

“Gavein,” called Ra Mahleiné. “Do you see me? Don’t look at me now.” She covered her face with her hands and could not speak.

“077-12-747, leave the interrogation room immediately. The matter has been settled. You have been recognized, and Mr. Throzz accepts you. Go.”

“Yes, good . . . Gavein,” Ra Mahleiné said, wiping her glasses with an edge of her shirt. “My glasses . . . My eyes went bad, Gavein . . .”

Anabel, furious, switched off the monitor.

“So it turned out the way you wanted,” she said to Gavein. “But what will you do with her? She can’t be your wife, you know. Whites aren’t written into passports.”

“She was written into mine. They made an exception for me.”

“That was only a note guaranteeing her personal safety, nothing more. In addition to her, you can have a normal wife.”

“Or two red women. I was informed.”

“You’ll have to worry about her health. After those years on the ship. The climate in Davabel isn’t good for the fair-haired.”

“It isn’t. I’ll have to worry.”

He signed the necessary papers, carefully reading everything before he signed. Then he left.