Salt (16 page)

At this she stalled, blushed a little. But she seemed to have come to a resolution not to become hysterical as she had done the previous day. She still stood, but was looking around now for a seat, for something to sit on. And then, giving up even that hope, she settled herself gingerly upon the floor. There was a pause, whilst her face was lowered towards the ground. Then she raised it, and she was smiling bravely.

‘Mister Szerelem,’ she said. ‘I have decided that our mission began badly yesterday. It seems to me that our two cultures are so very different that misunderstandings have occurred. You have misunderstood how totally the honour and dignity of Senaar informs everything we do. You did not appreciate the honour guard for what it was, simply as a reflection of the importance with which this mission is regarded in Senaar.’

I was shaking my head, and Rhoda Titus stopped talking, inclined her head, asking. So I drained my drink, and said, ‘You seem to think I care enough about your mission to misunderstand it. But I do not care, one way or the other.’

She coloured, and then pressed her palms together. ‘Please! Can you not see how difficult this is for me? I am trying to make concessions to your way of life. Surely you can help me a little in this difficult task?’

I shrugged.

‘Today I am resolved,’ she said, in her carefully paced speech, as if reciting something learned in advance, ‘to try and reach out to the culture of Als. Today I hope to learn something of your way of being, your mode of society. Once I have done this, I hope it will draw our two peoples a little closer together. I hope it will draw you and I, Mister Szerelem, a little closer together.’

‘Well, I have stood friend to you already,’ I said. ‘I am willing to do
so again today. But I cannot comprehend why you should wish to dance this dance.’

At this she leaned forward, her eyes intense. ‘For the sake of the children!’

I was a little startled. ‘You have children?’ I said.

‘Me?’ She sat back again. ‘Me? No. No.’ I noticed that her eyes were now glistening, as if she were about to cry.

‘What is the matter?’ I asked.

‘How could you ask me such a thing! Why do you continue to play these games with me?’

‘I am truly baffled,’ I said. ‘What games?’

‘You know who the children are!’

‘I do not’

‘Then why do you think I am here?’

‘I have no idea. Really I have not. I have received you only because this is my current work rota.’

Then it all came out in a rush. ‘Why else would I be here? Why else would somebody from Senaar come all this way, with all the pomp of a diplomatic mission? Only to try and bridge the gap between us, only to try and heal the wound, and have the children put back in touch with their grieving fathers. Only to help make whole again the terrible breach in God’s family.’

‘Does this have to do,’ I said, ‘with the children fathered by Senaarians before the beginning of the voyage?’

There was a pause.

‘You are playing a game,’ she said, coldly.

‘Certainly not.’

But the puzzle was assembling itself in her head. ‘All I can say, Mister Szelerem,’ she said, ‘is that the issue of the children has been a continual thorn in the side of the Senaar nation ever since the voyage began. These fathers have mourned their lack of access to their babies. The entire nation has grieved. Whole factions have grown up within our body politic concerned only with the question of retrieving these children – the hostages, as they are called – and bringing them home to the land of their fathers. Some would see the
army invade your land to bring this about. Your people are represented on all Visuals as wicked, almost satanic, without law or respect for humanity, with evil designs upon the flesh of the infant, as pigheaded and sunk into group-insanity, as living like beasts with no thought to the welfare of others.’

‘I can’t recognise the land you are describing,’ I said.

‘Oh I know there are exaggerations in the reports we hear. But do you see how difficult it is for a people such as ours, such as the Senaarians, who value civilisation above all things, to comprehend a land such as this?’

‘I once had a conversation with your Captain,’ I said. ‘It concerned these children you speak of.’

‘The President,’ she said, respectfully.

‘Is that how he styles himself? Your titles and all that bag-and-baggage of the hierarchy is hard for us to follow. Even Mister, which you call me, although I take it that Mister ranks lower in your hierarchy than President?’

‘I apologise if you have taken offence,’ she said, quickly. This was clearly a matter of importance to her. ‘I was unsure how to address you. If you find “Mister” unacceptable, perhaps I could call you “Technician”?’

‘I take no offence,’ I said, languidly. ‘I see no need for any such title. We have none such here.’

‘But I must call you
something
.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you are a man of importance.’

At this I laughed. ‘Only to myself, of course.’

‘My mission,’ she said, shaking her head, uncomfortable with this topic, ‘was given to me by the President himself. I am to build bridges between our two people, to try and come to an agreement about the children, to at the very least allow the fathers access.’

She stopped and looked at me. I shrugged again. ‘What do you mean by “access”?’ I asked.

‘Is the word an unusual one? I am not certain how complete your grasp of common tongue is. It means . . .’

‘I know the meaning, but not your interpretation.’

‘Oh! I apologise! I had not meant to suggest . . .’

I stood up. ‘Rhoda Titus,’ I said. ‘You are boring with these tics of yours. If I were offended, I would say so. I would not bury my anger or irritation away inside me, as it is the habit of your people to do. If I do not say I am insulted, then I am not insulted.’

She clambered upwards to follow me. ‘Again I apologise. But this is my point! How little I understand your ways! But the question of access . . .’

I was walking now, and she was following. ‘Yes?’

‘It would simply mean that the fathers could, for instance, travel to Als and see their children. That the children would be allowed to know who their parents are, and to meet and speak with them. From time to time.’

‘The fathers may by all means visit here,’ I said. I said this as a simple statement of fact, there being no Alsist border controls, or indeed borders. But Rhoda Titus took this as a concession: in her mind negotiations, such as the one she considered herself engaged in, were like a war, a battle between speakers.

‘Why thank you, Mister – eh, Technician Szerelem. Thank you! I knew that if I made a little gesture towards you, approached you person to person, left my guard, then we would be able to communicate.’ I lengthened my stride and she dropped away behind me.

She fished a handkerchief out of her jacket, and called a farewell. ‘I must go and report this breakthrough in negotiations to my people!’ And away she hurried, with her handkerchief already at her nose, ready for when she went outside.

I did not see her for the rest of the morning; but in the afternoon she returned. Once again, she came alone. Somebody must have told her that I was in the dome, where I had taken to spending many of my afternoons during this period of fixation of Turja. I had spent lunch with my lover; we had taken putty and bread from one of the old ship Fabricants and had eaten together, sitting amongst the long grass of the goose-green. Afterwards Turja went off to talk with some genengineers about adapting certain birds to high chlorine tolerance,
with a hope of releasing them wild. The mere thought of birds flying free through the air above us was more exciting than you can imagine! Or perhaps you can. I suppose you have never seen a bird in flight, have never sat amongst them as they twittered about you.

This was how Rhoda Titus found me, sitting cross-legged in the grass, reading a flimsy upon which Turja had printed out some old tract on the origins of money. She had found the text interesting as metaphysics, as a treatise on the sinister power of signs and imagery to dominate real lives, real people. She thought I might find it useful in my talks with Rhoda Titus.

But she did not come wishing to talk, this time. She came grinning, with the after-sex grin that Senaarians adopt when they have gratified the person above them in the hierarchy; the slave’s satisfaction at having pleased their master. ‘Mister – Technician Szerelem,’ she said, sitting down opposite me. ‘I have come to thank you! After some difficulties, our negotiations have finally begun well. I will not deny that it has taken me a little time to adapt myself to your ways but I have spoken direct to the President! He is delighted with our agreement.’

I was feeling pleasant disposed towards women, having lunched with Turja, and so I was minded to be agreeable to Rhoda Titus. ‘There is no agreement,’ I said. ‘But your pleasure gives me pleasure.’ This was an old saw of my mother’s. Simply saying it, feeling the pressure of my lips against one another on the
p
s and the kick at the back of the throat on the
g
s brought her memory back to me. I had been drinking vodjaa, and my soul was soft with such thoughts.

‘Yes, well, of course we can call it whatever you like. But to allow the fathers visiting rights, this is more than I had hoped for.’

I shrugged. My mother still appeared in my memory and I was not listening very closely.

‘I have been instructed,’ she said, grandly, ‘to locate the children, to speak to them, and to arrange the first of these visits. My President hopes – personally addressed this hope, to you, mind – that this first step will clear the way to a great deal of co-operation between our peoples; and perhaps a scheme of exchange between Als and Senaar
would allow the hos . . . ‘She gulped, stopped, started again,’ Children the chance to visit the land of their fathers.’

I tried to visualise my mother; she was still alive, probably, but on Earth. An impossible distance away. I conjured her face in my mind, and it blurred with the face of Rhoda Titus, looking at me eagerly. Two dissimilar women, one broken from me, existing only on the other side of the profoundest physical rupture. The other’s rupture was only ideological. I brought my mind to attention on what Rhoda Titus was saying.

‘I cannot say,’ I said, thinking how best to express myself, ‘I can’t say I know what you are talking about.’ I smiled, to try and elicit a smile, but her face had clicked into its worried, haunted expression. A great deal of Rhoda Titus’s expressions were devilled with that edge of fear. A function of the hierarchy again, I think, for the subordinate must be constantly anxious and trying to please the superordinate, fearful of pain at their displeasure.

‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘What do you mean by saying such a thing?’

‘I always mean what I say,’ I said. It seemed an uncontentious statement.

‘Perhaps,’ said Rhoda Titus, ‘perhaps the best thing now would be for me to speak directly to the mothers. If you would just direct me to the place where the hos . . . , the children are being kept, I can speak directly to them.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Give me directions,’ she said.

‘I cannot,’ I said.

‘You can. I believe you can.’

‘Rhoda Titus: these children were conceived thirty years ago. This is the oldest of old history.’

‘No,’ she said, as if she had been expecting me to make this point, as if this were one of the anticipated moves in the verbal chess game she had been expecting. ‘One year for ten in stasis. They will be biologically eleven, at most.’

‘In which case,’ I said, curling the corners of my mouth downwards
in a facial shrug, ‘they will still be staying with their mothers in the women’s dorm.’

‘Then I must ask you to arrange a meeting there.’

‘It’s the women’s dorm,’ I said. And then, because this did not seem to be enough for her, ‘I am a man.’

But this seemed to strike her only as facetious. ‘Technician Szerelem, you are the diplomatic officer for this community, it is your responsibility to arrange this meeting. You told me that the fathers could visit their children.’

‘I told you the fathers could come here,’ I said. ‘And indeed they can, for who would stop them? We have no borders, or border controls, unlike you. But whether the fathers can see these children has nothing to do with me. That is a matter for the mothers concerned.’

‘But you
said
. . .’

I stood up, bored with all this now. But she stood up as well, speaking with a loud voice now. ‘You cannot
walk away
,’ she said. ‘You promised me. I spoke to my President on the basis of . . .’

‘It is nothing to do with me.’ This was a simple truth as well, but it seemed to inflame her. She stood on the grass shouting at me, yelling and abusing me. But I was in a placid mood, so her words did not affect me and I wandered out of the dome.

What happened then is that she attempted to gain entrance to the women’s dorm, but was greeted there (as I understand it) with non-comprehension, and then, as she pushed her case, with hostility. Eventually, when she would not stop her strident demands to be taken to see the
hostages
and to be treated with the
respect
and the
dignity
that a diplomatic official from a great nation deserved, a few women grabbed her and threw her into the general hall. She tried to come in again, so they threw her out again. Then she went back to her shuttles, and summoned her men, and tried to force an entry again.

By this stage, the commotion had drawn a fairly large group of people to the entrance of the women’s dorm. I had wandered off to swim in one of the eel pools (I liked the slippery sensations of the eels
brushing against my body as I swam), so I was not present in person during these events. But reports were widespread, and I heard several eye-witness accounts. It seems that Rhoda Titus returned to the dorm entrance with six armed men. A group of women from the dorm blocked their way, yelling and shouting at her; and she stood there (they say) quivering with her rage, which was chronic in her, impacted like a bad tooth. The soldiers took aim, but the women from the dorm would not back down. They were yelling, and spitting, and somebody brought out a pillow from her bed and began slapping it on the heads of some of the guards. They flinched, but it would not be right (according to the hierarchical code of honour that Senaarian soldiers swear to) to shoot a woman armed with a pillow, only because she would not stop hitting you on the head with it. They say that some of the dorm women were shouting in home tongue, some in common tongue, and that the commotion was deafening. Then Rhoda Titus ordered her men to force their way through and enter the dorm, and the men surged forward; but there was such a crush of women in the entrance space that the soldiers heaved and heaved to no effect. They say that when Rhoda Titus withdrew her men to their shuttles, she was dark red in the face with her shame and embarrassment, and weeping tears copiously.