Air (or Have Not Have)

receive that thank-you.

Joe came home early, with Dr Bauschu, the county doctor.

'You cannot work, wife,' said Joe, heartsick, as if she were a favourite machine that had broken.

She paused and contemplated what must be true. 'My heart is too full,' she replied.

And suddenly, she remembered him, she saw him. Tiny, mischievous, in shorts – the child Joe. She saw him as Mrs Tung saw him. Oh, what an angel! A beautiful, merry little fellow in shorts, running amongst the others, chuckling and buffing them on the head, still laughing when they cuffed him back. He grew quickly and was too soon developed. Joe had ceased to learn.

There was little enough mischief in Joe now, or laughter.

'Oh, husband! What we have all lost, what we will all go on losing through all of history, it cannot be weighed. It cannot be measured!'

Her handsome, comic husband stood helpless, scratching his head. Whoever had heard of a wife who could not work because she perceived the weight of history?

Dr Bauschu asked her to sit down and roll up her sleeve. He was a hard, thin man who circulated among half a dozen villages with a battered old black briefcase. He had always been highly critical of the fashion expert – she did too much massaging with oils, too much dental flossing, services on the borderline where beauty crossed into health.

He seemed quite pleased that she was ill. 'So, you see, when illness really comes, even you call for the doctor.'

How unpleasant could he be? I am in mourning, fool, for a whole way of life.

Dr Bauschu insisted on taking her temperature, her pulse. He prodded her for lumps and peered down her throat. 'It is a nervous condition triggered by the trauma of that Test. Otherwise, there is nothing wrong. I suggest a drawing-off of humours.'

Even Mae knew that he had ceased to be scientific. He heated her good glasses, and set them on her lower back, to suck and draw.

'The doctor used to come every six months,' said Mae, sleepily, 'in a white van with a red crescent. We would all line up for treatment, even if there were nothing wrong. There always was something to cure: a tooth or a cut or head lice.'

The doctor's glasses gleamed as he snapped shut his bag. She was talking nonsense. The fashion expert had fallen.

That night most of the village crowded into Mae's single room.

Mae's sister-in-law, Mrs Wang, barracked around Mae's kitchen, trying to brew tea by looking in all the wrong places, scattering arrangements. Joe's brother Siao quietly followed her, replacing things. Ten of the Soongs, who were connected to Mae by various marriages crowded into her house. She couldn't even think of some of their names.

Mae's mother exclaimed to Old Mrs Soong. 'It is God's will. We have sinned and gone on sinning, so God punishes us.'

'Nonsense, Mother,' said Mae. 'God doesn't punish. He doesn't reward. He lets us get on with it.'

'Her father was murdered,' said her desolate mother, handkerchief gesturing towards Mae, as if that explained everything. 'She lost her sister and her daughter…'

All the family legends came out. Mae was too tired and harassed for them now. Wasted love was wearisome. Her handsome older sister Missy, who died… Mae's elder daughter, who also died… Why remind her of that now? Being with people, feeling so ill, reminded Mae of the worst of her past. She wanted everything gone. She wanted sleep, but they had all come to make her feel better.

Teacher Shen came, looking solemn. He brought his beautiful wife Suloi, in case anyone misunderstood his friendship with Mae.

'Teacher Shen,' Mae said, pleased to see him. Suloi had Kwan's face, the face of their minority, the Eloi. Mrs Shen was just as beautiful as Kwan. Even now, here, she was merry.

Mrs Shen asked, 'How is our fashion expert?'

'Very confused,' Mae replied. 'I am more a history expert now.'

She looked up at Teacher Shen's face and, lo, remembered him as a skinny, put-upon little boy. Old Mrs Tung had worried so about him. She had wished she had more books to give this solemn child.

'You should have gone for that exam,' Mae said sleepily, 'to be a civil servant.'

Teacher Shen blinked, his face darted up towards Kwan, who nodded once downwards.

'I could not afford the time or the books,' he said quietly. 'So I took the teaching course.'

'Remember the tiny white book? About the rabbits?' Mae murmured. Old Mrs Tung had found it for him, a book of his very own.

His face was a wan smile, his eyes unblinking. He produced from his pack. 'This one,' he said.

It was a tiny battered book, stained by childhood, and it said in the language of their people The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

The Teacher turned to others in the room about him, and his staring eyes were filling. 'It's true,' he whispered to the room. 'It's true.'

Shen's Eloi wife edged closer to Mae, on her knees, smiling. She took Mae's other hand.

'You have become a prophet,' she said, in a very quiet voice.

'Of the past,' said Mae. What would it be like, just once, to have a moment to herself?

Standing among her friends were Sunni and her husband Mr Haseem. He wanted this house.

The next day was Mrs Tung's funeral.

Mae watched impassively as the cardboard coffin was lowered into the rocky ground. The mosque looked small, high on the hill, its whitewash peeling. The whole hillside looked peeling.

It was somewhat strange to see your own body buried, to see people you did not really know daub their faces. To know that you had lived so long that there was no one left to mourn you. Mrs Tung's grandsons were grown men, sad, yes, discomfited in suits. One was a mechanic in Yeshibozkent, another drove buses. They would be back to business by the afternoon.

Mae was not in mourning; for her, Mrs Tung was not dead. A body was only earth. Mrs Tung was with her in Air.

Sunni Haseem came to her and took Mae's hand. 'I am so sorry,' said Sunni, conventionally.

'Why?' Mae asked.

'She led a full life,' Sunni agreed.

And Mae remembered Mrs Tung making love in the middle of battle, in the marsh.

She remembered the tops of the reeds being cut down by bullets as Mrs Tung embraced. Mrs Tung's young man leaned back and smiled, and Mae remembered that smile. It was careless, as if to say, Life is not worth having if it's not worth losing. And Mae knew: The boy was killed.

'She died at an honourable age,' said Sunni.

Oh, fashion wife with your little kitchen and lack of love, what do you know about it? What have you ever given for anything?

'Honourable?' Mae repeated. As if all Mrs Tung had done was darn tea towels. 'She was a guerrilla; she hid soldiers in the school.'

Kwan and Joe came forward, and took her arm. 'Let's get you back home,' Kwan said.

Mae stood her ground. 'Why do people treat the past as if it had lost a battle that the present won?' she demanded, fists clenched. 'Why do they treat it as if it faded because it was weak?'

Joe looked baffled and distressed.

'I don't know,' said Kwan.

'The past is real,' said Mae. 'It's still here.'

'Then maybe so is the future,' said Kwan.

Through those weeks, into June, Mae slept late and long.

She grew plump through inactivity, dreaming of ninety years' worth of human voices: children, adults, the