Forgiveness Day
the doorway. There was nowhere to put the tray but the floor, so he shoved it at Solly, said, 'Sorry, Lady!' and backed out; the door clanged shut, the bolts banged home. She stood holding the tray. 'Wait!' she said.
The man had waked up and was looking groggily around. After finding him in this place with her she had somehow lost his nickname, did not think of him as the Major, yet shied away from his name. 'Here's breakfast, I guess,' she said, and sat down on the edge of the mattress. A cloth was thrown over the wicker tray; under it was a pile of Gatayan grainrolls stuffed with meat and greens, several pieces of fruit, and a capped water carafe of thin, fancily beaded metal alloy. 'Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, maybe,' she said. 'Shit. Oh well. It looks good. Can you eat? Can you sit up?'
He worked himself up to sit with his back against the wall, and then shut his eyes.
'You're still seeing double?'
He made a small noise of assent.
'Are you thirsty?'
Small noise of assent.
'Here.' She passed him the cup. By holding it in both hands he got it to his mouth, and drank the water slowly, a swallow at a time. She meanwhile devoured three grainrolls one after the other, then forced herself to stop, and ate a pini fruit. 'Could you eat some fruit?' she asked him, feeling guilty.
He did not answer. She thought of Batikam feeding her the slice of pini at breakfast, when, yesterday, a hundred years ago.
The food in her stomach made her feel sick. She took the cup from the man's relaxed hand — he was
FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS
asleep again — and poured herself water, and drank it slowly, a swallow at a time.
When she felt better she went to the door and explored its hinges, lock, and surface. She felt and peered around the brick walls, the poured concrete floor, seeking she knew not what, something to escape with, something. .. . She should do exercises. She forced herself to do some, but the queasiness returned, and a lethargy with it. She went back to the mattress and sat down. After a while she found she was crying. After a while she found she had been asleep. She needed to piss. She squatted over the hole and listened to her urine fall into it. There was nothing to clean herself with. She came back to the bed and sat down on it, stretching out her legs, holding her ankles in her hands. It was utterly silent.
She turned to look at the man; he was watching her. It made her start. He looked away at once. He still lay half-propped up against the wall, uncomfortable, but relaxed.
'Are you thirsty?' she asked.
'Thank you,' he said. Here where nothing was familiar and time was broken off from the past, his soft, light voice was welcome in its familiarity. She poured him a cup full and gave it to him. He managed it much more steadily, sitting up to drink. 'Thank you,' he whispered again, giving her back the cup.
'How's your head?'
He put up his hand to the swelling, winced, and sat back.
'One of them had a stick,' she said, seeing it in a flash in the jumble of her memories — 'a priest's staff. You jumped the other one.'
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'They took my gun,' he said. 'Festival.' He kept his eyes closed.
'I got tangled in those damn clothes. 1 couldn't help you at all. Listen. Was there a noise, an explosion?'
'Yes. Diversion, maybe.'
'Who do you think these boys are?'
'Revolutionaries. Or . ..'
'You said you thought the Gatayan government was in on it.'
'I don't know,' he murmured.
'You were right, I was wrong, I'm sorry,' she said with a sense of virtue at remembering to make amends.
He moved his hand very slightly in an it-doesn't-matter gesture.
'Are you still seeing double?'
He did not answer; he was phasing out again.
She was standing, trying to remember Selish breathing exercises, when- the door crashed and clanged, and the same three men were there, two with guns, all young, black-skinned, short-haired, very nervous. The lead one stooped to set a tray down on the floor, and without the least premeditation Solly stepped on his hand and brought her weight down on it. 'You wait!' she said. She was staring straight into the faces and gun muzzles of the other two. 'Just wait a moment, listen! He has a head injury, we need a doctor, we need more water, I can't even clean his wound, there's no toilet paper, who the hell are you people anyway?'
The one she had stomped was shouting, 'Get off! Lady to get off my hand!' but the others heard
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her. She lifted her foot and got out of his way as he came up fast, backing into his buddies with the
guns. 'All right. Lady, we are sorry to have trouble,' he said, tears in his eyes, cradling his hand. 'We are Patriots. You send messish to this Pretender, like our messish. Nobody is to hurt. All right?' He kept backing up, and one of the gunmen swung the door to. Crash, rattle.
She drew a deep breath and turned. Teyeo was watching her. 'That was dangerous,' he said, smiling very slightly.
'I know it was,' she said, breathing hard. 'It was stupid. I can't get hold of myself. I feel like pieces of me. But they shove stuff in and run, damn ill We have to have some water!' She was in tears, the way she always was for a moment after violence or a quarrel. 'Let's see, what have they brought this time.' She lifted the tray up onto the mattress; like the other, in a ridiculous semblance of service in a hotel or a house with slaves, it was covered with a cloth. 'All the comforts,' she murmured. Under the cloth was a heap of sweet pastries, a little plastic hand mirror, a comb, a tiny pot of something that smelled like decayed flowers, and a box of what she identified after a while as Gatayan tampons.
'It's things for the lady,' she said, 'God damn them, the stupid Goddamn pricks! A mirror!' She flung the thing across the room. 'Of course I can't last a day without looking in the mirror! God damn them!' She flung everything else but the pastries after the mirror, knowing as she did so that she would pick up the tampons and keep them under the mattress and, oh. God forbid, use them if she
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Forgiveness Day
had to, if they had to stay here, how long would it be? ten days or more — 'Oh, God,' she said again. She got up and picked everything up, put the mirror and the little pot, the empty water jug and the fruit skins from the last meal, onto one of the trays and set it beside the door. 'Garbage,' she said in Voe Dean. Her outburst, she realised, had been in another language; Alterran, probably. 'Have you any idea,' she said, sitting down on the mattress again, 'how hard you people make it to be a woman? You could turn a woman against being one!' 'I think they meant well,' Teyeo said. She realised that there was not the faintest shade of mockery, even of amusement in his voice. If he was enjoying her shame, he was ashamed to show her that he was. 'I think they're amateurs,' he said-After a while she said, 'That could be bad.'
'It might.' He had sat up and was gingerly feeling the knot on his head. His coarse, heavy hair was blood- caked all around it. 'Kidnapping,' he said. 'Ransom demands. Not assassins. They didn't have guns. Couldn't have got in with guns- I had to give up mine.'
'You mean these aren't the ones you were warned about?'
'I don't know.' His explorations caused him a shiver of pain, and he desisted. 'Are we very short of water?'
She brought him another cupful. 'Too short for washing. A stupid Goddamn mirror when what we need is water!'
He thanked her and drank and sat back, nursing
the last swallows in the cup. 'They didn't plan to take me,' he said.
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