Air (or Have Not Have)

'Did we?' Mae pretended she had not heard that before.

'Oh yes, oh yes. When the Chinese were here, just before the Communists came. Part of the Chinese army was here, and they built them. We all played tennis, in our school uniforms. Oh! They were all so handsome; all the village girls were so in love.' Mrs Tung chuckled. 'I remember, I couldn't have been more than ten years old, and one of them adopted me, because he said I looked like his daughter. He sent me a teddy bear after the war.' She chuckled and shook her head. 'I was too old for teddy bears by then. But I told everyone it meant we were getting married. Oh! I wish I had married him.'

There were so many people Old Mrs Tung wished she had married – from her Cossacks to boys in other villages and of course her Kalaf. She even managed to love the ones she had married.

It's all so precious, thought Mae-in-Air, it's all so beautiful, we have to ignore it, to get on with the laundry.

And Mae felt a wind blow, a movement in Air.

Old Mrs Tung did a slight jerk, and turned her head and tried to chuckle. 'Ooh. Hoo-hoo-hoo. Someone just walked on my grave,' she said, in time.

And outside time, dim and confused something rippled, like a voice: Mae?

Dying people say their fathers return. The dead sit down beside them, to comfort them. They give them kisses in dreams. Missy lay dying in summer, in an attic room that was always hot and smelled of old sweat in clothes. Mama would not let Mae visit, for fear of making her ill as well. But Mae still crept in and marvelled in horror at the dark circles under her sister's eyes and the dew of sweat. Missy looked at her, said sweetly, 'Isn't it lovely that Papa lies so quiet next to me?'

Again: Mae?

It was just a whisper, unclear, unformatted, a swirl, an eddy in time from a place where nothing can move.

Mae-in-Air reached across for it, across the breakfast table of time.

And very suddenly, like the incomplete thing it was, the room, the space it contained and the bodies in it, collapsed like cards, fell back and down.

And there in infinite layers reflecting back, reflecting forward, babe, child, woman, Granny, was Mrs Tung.

Mrs Tung was a weaving blur around the landscapes of three villages lost in forgotten hills. Mrs Tung was a serpent-weaving pattern of someone's entire life, a sinuous wild shape through time, folded in on itself.

Folded in on Mae.

Mae didn't use one name to call it. She used all names: Young Miss Hu, Ai-ling, Mrs Yuksel, Mrs Tung, Granny. The names were a weaving serpent blur as well.

And the entirety seemed to rouse itself, in something like recognition. It rose up like a ghost.

There was no speaking to it. There was nothing clamped to its head to translate and set other people's messages in order. It rose up and then settled down, into the most probable shape. But it could be teased down the hill, edged towards the imprints.

'Help me,' whispered Mae.

And the entirety lifted up its aged, young, beautiful self and corralled its separate parts like hundreds of waving chiffon scarves, collected itself, trying to recognize and learn in a realm where time and learning were complete. Finished, meaning, accomplished.

Mae nipped in and out of that life like a mouse through floorboards. Mae called, and the entirety tried to lift its head as Mrs Tung slept.

Mae whispered to Mrs Tung in dreams.

A young wife tossed fitfully in her bed in a village called Mirrors. Mae tried to lead her back to the moment when the cauldron spilled, when the fire shot through the Air.

Little Miss Hu shivered on the grass as she slept by a campfire, trading horses. Mae called.

Granny shook her head, aching in a wooden chair, asleep in dreams, in Air.

Dreams are a way for the finished self in Air to live again, to have a before and an after in which to think. We learn through all eternity in our dreams.

And so did Mrs Tung. The dream had recurred all through her life.

It was a terrible dream, always the same. A friend, a daughter, even Lily perhaps, needed her. She, Mrs Tung, had done something. She didn't mean to do it, she had not known she had done it, but it was something she had done. Sometimes, at its most nightmarish, she had somehow stolen her friend's body.

And the answer was always the same.

Old Mrs Tung lifted all of herself up like a thousand ragged ghosts. And she was blown by love towards one particular time.

'Mae Mae Mae Mae Mae Mae…'

And she met a friend, and that friend seemed to pour her like slithery silk scarves to one particular thing.

That thing was a part of Mrs Tung's life. A moment of her life that had been taken and frozen and held. It was like a burn victim, so scarred that it could not move, embittered and incomplete. Incomplete and angry, after the beautiful pattern should have been finished. Mrs Tung settled on it with her whole self, and enveloped it and welcomed it and hugged it and stilled it. She was reunited with a tiny, hardened, mean little part of her life. She wove it back into the beautiful carpet.

And then said, very clearly, quoting the poet through all her life:

'Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale, complaining of separations.'

Somewhere in time, Mae's eyes fluttered and opened again.

She was in her kitchen, back in herself.

'I'm back,' she managed to whisper. There was a sound of scraping chairs as two men jumped up from the table.

But somewhere else, two spirits sat together as if in an attic exchanging memories, joined forever, remembering the poets.

'Body is not veiled from soul, nor soul from body, yet none is permitted to see the soul.'

In the future, everyone will be able to talk with their dead.

CHAPTER 26

Mae, Siao, Mr Ken and his children all strolled together towards the celebration.

They were a new kind of family. Mr Ken walked on ahead, cajoling and calming his two daughters who were beside themselves with impatience to get to the square to join their friends.

Mr Ken's arms were full of little paper boats. Each one had a birthday-cake candle balanced in it. The girls kept jumping up and trying to snatch them, as if they were full of bonbons.

'Careful, careful!' said Mr Ken. 'The candles are only held by a little wax, and these are for Auntie Mae and Siao as well.'

'Let me have mine,' said the eldest, trying to look more mature. She delicately peeled a boat from her father's grasp. She looked at it with experienced eyes. 'What happens if the candle falls over and the boat catches fire?'

'Oh, that is very good luck: That means your wish gets to Heaven even faster.'

Mae thought, I think Kuei has just made that up.

But, oh, he was handsome, his hair combed, his broad shoulders in a nice new shirt, his round legs in beautiful new slacks.

Mae and Siao strolled slightly behind them, holding hands.

Siao had caught her glance and grinned. 'I have found you out,' he said, teasing. 'I know you have a lover. But I am not sure who it could be.'

'Ah, now I am undone,' said Mae. She played along, but she could still be taken aback by Siao's unexpected