The GE stirred herself with a kind of convulsion as if she had almost settled into death herself, following the music there. She knocked over paper and plastic cases, as if she were blind. Sadness hung from her face like lead weights, pulling down the flesh under her eyes and around her jaws. The music had been calling for someone. The paper slid away to reveal a box, a small, crude soundbox, made of metal as thin as paper. No wonder the music had hurt when the volume was full up.
To the poor starveling of the Consensus the soundbox was a wonder, and it drew her out of her hiding, out of her fear, as did the soul-sadness on the GE’s face.
‘Where did you get that?’ Milena the actress asked in wonder, though she could hear music any time she liked. Her viruses would sing it for her, out of memory. It was the metal that drew her, the cost of the thing. It was private metal, something owned and therefore more precious, if only to someone else.
‘China, I believe,’ said Rolfa, and Milena could hear the youth in her voice. Youth was plump and fruity, not yet worn by doubt. It still had hope. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have any alcoholic beverages about your person, would you?’
Milena remembering saw that Rolfa was trying to be raffish. She was already trying to charm. She liked me as soon as she saw me, realised the Milena who remembered. She was signalling in a thousand ways.
‘No. I don’t like poisoning myself,’ said the actress, narrow, bitter, expecting defeat.
‘Tuh.’ Rolfa turned away. She was slightly slimmer then, without the pouches of fat on the small of her back. There was something musical in the way she moved. The clumsiness was stricken with feeling. Feeling grew out of her like fur: she bristled with it. Bleary with love and music, she began in a rather rational way to dispose of the mess on her desk.
Milena the actress had felt the first tug, the first little spindle thread of love, but she did not know it. ‘Effendim?’ she said, pained at being ignored. ‘I’ve come to change these boots.’
Already, unknown to either of them, they were together. Their animal selves had recognised it. Their whole lives were there to be read in the way they each smiled and moved. They had already Read each other, but their conscious selves had yet to catch up.
‘You,’ said Rolfa, turning, ‘are a ponce.’ It was said with a kind of honest affection. It was true, and Milena the actress needed to know that other people could see the things she tried to hide.
Milena the actress went cold and shy. She had been seen through again. Her masks were paper-thin. The moment for a reply passed and Rolfa turned away. The actress kept seeing Rolfa through a series of paper masks. Polar woman, rough and tumble. The Bear who Loves Opera, a famous Zoo character. Her conscious self was not seeing Rolfa at all.
‘Bastard.’ the GE murmured to herself.
‘Are you talking to me?’ demanded the actress. You know she’s not, Milena! Why are you looking for injustice?
‘No,’ said Rolfa, turning to smile, holding up a bottle. ‘I was talking to this empty whisky bottle.’ She’s saying she sees through you, but likes what’s on the other side. And she wants, she yearns, for you to like her.
Made bold by the force of attraction, Rolfa threw the whisky bottle away and listened to the breakage, as if extraordinary acts and sudden sounds could speak when people could not.
If it was me, now, Rolfa, I’d laugh and ask your name. I’d sit beside you and let you know that I already thought you were wonderful, that I didn’t mind the fur or the teeth or the rotting shoes. We’d sit and talk for hours about music, and I’d say, let’s go out for a drink if you like whisky so much. We’d be friends from the start. And the reason why I could do that now, Rolfa, the reason why I’m different, is you.
I don’t want to remember any more, I don’t want to see the waste and the pain and the waiting. I just want to hold you. I just want to stroke the fur on your arm, and try to save you from what’s coming. And this time I’d do it, this time, I would know how: I wouldn’t let anything go to waste. I’d say, wait until the metal comes and your Family has to make friends with the Consensus. I’d say, be with me from time to time, but don’t run away until you’ve shown them, your father and your sisters, that the music works. And I’d never let you be Read.
Rolfa held up a bottle. ‘God,’ she said, ‘is a distiller.’ She grinned, and Milena the actress saw the horrible teeth and the dandruff and finally relaxed enough to realise that she liked her, liked this strange creature.
‘Do you live here?’ Milena the actress asked, and stepped forward a bit. Amusement suddenly bubbled up through her, and childish wonder, and something sweet that was kept hidden and protected.
Maybe not, maybe I wouldn’t change anything, thought Milena remembering. She ached with love for both of them. Maybe this is the best way for this to happen, as tentative as a spider’s web. Not bold and knowing and businesslike.
A look came over Rolfa’s face, a look Milena remembering now recognised, a look of great tenderness, of simple kindness, of wishing the world were different for them both. Her hair in her eyes made her blink. ‘It would be better if I did,’ she said, ruefully, amused. ‘This is where I hide, instead. Since you don’t like poisoning yourself, perhaps you’d like to look at this.’ She held out the musical scores.
I’d forgotten that, thought the one who remembered. Already the music was being passed between us. The music would unite us and part us and fix us together for all of our lives. The paper was smooth like skin, and still warm from Rolfa’s grasp.
‘I take it the reading of music presents you with no difficulties,’ said Rolfa, meaning that most other things did. It was plain now that Rolfa was the older of the two, plain that she was controlling. I always thought you were a shuffling innocent, thought the Milena who remembered. But you knew so much, Rolfa. You were a genius after all.
Genius is in the shapes your hands make as they move, in every reaching or withholding gesture. You know what you are, and you know that ego is the enemy of what you are, so you defend yourself against it, against pride and ambition, and you are very gently guiding me, and you so very gently want me. You knew who I was, Rolfa, and you knew that you could make my body bloom, and my soul. I still want you, Rolfa. I want your hand on me, on the flower between my legs. Desire is like a blister that needs to be burst. And cunning, you were cunning to sing, knowing that it was the music that would hold me, hold us both. You sang, to show me what you already knew. That music in you had found its elect.
So the ghost began to sing again, out of the past.
Promises of forever, with silence in between them.
Suddenly Jacob’s face was smiling at her, eyes weary. ‘I have a message for you, Milena.’
I am Constable Dull, an’t shall please you.
‘From Ms Patel,’ said Jacob.
‘Want some mitts?’ asked Zoe, not at all unkindly, in the dining-room of the Family. Zoe passed Milena the fingerless indigent gloves of kindness. No, not mitts.
Milena and Rolfa ate again in the riverside park. They walked together to the Buddhist shrine and watched the acrobats. They rode on the back of a dustcart from the night market, listening to the sound of the horses’ hooves.
‘But now,’ said Jacob, ‘because of you and Rolfa, when I dream, I also hear the music’
And Jacob and Milena walked together again out into the sun, regretting Rolfa. The whole river regretted Rolfa, now, and the sky, and the birds. Jacob gave Milena’s hand one last squeeze. This time the crucifix was passed between them. ‘I must run my messages, now,’ he said, and turned away, and Milena saw again the sun reflected in the windows, the fire in each of the rooms. Jacob walked into the fire and was consumed. He made the light burn brighter.
‘Fire!’ Cilia was shouting. ‘Fire!’ A bell was ringing and Milena was outside in the cold again, in the dark.
