Air (or Have Not Have)

decent, capable of love. So why was she not responding?

'I'm very sleepy,' she said, as an excuse, as a lie, as the truth. Mae was feeling suddenly contrary.

He took her hand. 'Are you worried?' he asked. His eyes were searching her face for something.

The woman who had a lover and brandished knives suddenly unsheathed herself.

'What do you think of when you remember Tui?' she demanded.

His head hung for a moment. 'She was my wife.' He struggled. 'She was always frail. She did not like…' The rolling of his hand somehow indicated sex. 'It made her shake. I thought that was love, but later I knew it was fear. I don't know what frightened her.'

Mae sighed. 'She was always a frightened little thing. We used to pick on her. It was not right, but we said she had fleas.'

'I remember,' he said, in soft surprise. Had he really forgotten that?

'You never teased her. You were always a good boy,' said Mae. It was not said entirely with respect. But then it is difficult to be bad when your grandmother runs the school.

'I remember the things you would make,' Mr Ken said. 'My grandmother would sometimes show them to me specially. I thought they were beautiful.'

'What things?' she said. People always talked about the things Mae made as a child. It meant they didn't have to say: You were slow at your letters.

Mr Ken said, 'You would find old shells, and make a necklace. Once you made peas in their shells, out of library paste. I thought they were wonderful. Grandmother tried to bake them, to save them, and they broke, remember?'

Mae began to understand. He was saying he had wanted her even in those days and had not spoken. The truth was that she had not much noticed him back then. When had Ken Kuei gone from the quiet, staring boy to the broad-shouldered handsome man? Joe had been the one when they were young. Joe was like a knifeblade. Young and sharp, the rebel. Maybe he had been the fashion expert then.

'You married very young,' Ken Kuei said.

He was trying to say that he had been screwing up his courage when the announcement of their wedding had come.

Mae said, 'You should have been quicker.'

'I know,' he said, quietly. He stopped. 'Do you want to do this?' he asked.

Mae shrugged. 'I am here.'

'You don't seem happy.'

Happy? Whoever said life would be happy? His wife had just killed herself. 'No, I'm not, I never am,' she said, her fingers digging into her hair. 'You will have to get used to that.'

They stepped down off a bank, down into reeds. She tried to feel anything at all. Maybe she was just tired.

Maybe I just want to know what it is all for, if everything is to be swallowed up, if we are all reduced like those old photographs of Eloi. History turns us into exposed meat.

Sex, like history, stripped away who you were. You do what everyone else does, overwhelmed by base nature. Sex would blow away their selves, Chung Mae, Ken Kuei, like favorite scarves lost in the wind.

Mae was the one who initiated it. Perhaps she just wanted it over. She pulled his face to hers, they kissed. The ground was damp in patches. The tops of the reeds danced as if in excitement, in honour of the moon. The clouds were strange. They were stippled around the moon, like splattered mud-plaster.

Mae noticed that even while Mr Ken offered the beauty of his flat stomach and round thighs, he was slower this time. He worked himself up through many minutes, while she looked at the moon. Through his endurance, Mae was finally brought once again to the state she had never achieved with Joe. She became no one, just a body.

But she had learned: A lessening of desire in the man makes him work harder, longer, so the woman got more out of it. Joe was always done in an instant.

She said, 'We'd better go, it must be getting late.'

'Or getting early,' he chuckled, and put his forehead on hers again. It was a gesture of – what – relief? gratitude? surrender? It made her smile because already parts of him were becoming familiar.

Mr Shenyalar began to sing from his tower. The sky was already silver as she slipped back into her disordered house.

Inside, it was tiny and dark. The ground floor looked posed, like a museum exhibit, except that it smelled of Joe and was full of his snoring.

It was only then that the love came, the love she had been trying not to feel. It came torn out of her, like a baby ripped raw out of the womb. She missed Mr Ken; she wanted him there, not to screw, but to talk to about the past, the village, and all the things she could never talk about to Joe.

Her marriage was over.

She couldn't bear to get into bed with Joe, so she set about cooking his breakfast. She cooked in hatred, weeping as she oiled the pan and boiled the noodles.

Siao and Old Mr Chung tumbled down out of the loft and she dumped noodles onto their plates and she thought of the ridges of callus on Mr Ken's palms. She remembered his soft voice, the strength of him, the hesitant words.

Joe got up an hour later, hung over and silent. Finally he left to go, he said, to work.

Mae sat in a chair feeling drained and exhausted and baffled by herself. I wasted our night, she thought, as if holding it to herself. And I've got my Question Map to do. How am I to do a Question Map? I can't write.

She was half asleep when the thought came: It's a manager's job to manage. There's always going to be something you don't know how to do. Just find someone who does.

It was a beautiful new thought for Mae. Of course, just find someone who can. It warmed and comforted her and made the world seem tranquil and forgiving.

Mae went to sleep and woke up as someone new.

CHAPTER 7

The next evening, Mae called on Han An's mother with a proposition.

The house was the last on Marsh Street, down in the floodplain. Even now in summer its courtyard was full of mud, goat turd, and chicken shit. Mae balanced over it on high heels and knocked on the inner door.

An's mother, Kai-hui, opened the door in a haze of fatigue and loose hair. Her eyes widened at Mae's outfit.

Mae bowed. 'Mrs Han-ma'am.'

Mae was wearing her white dress with hearts and over that, her husband's best grey jacket. Her hair was pulled severely back, she wore her huge spectacles, and she carried a clipboard. Mae was well aware: no village woman had ever dressed like that before.

Kai-hui covered surprise in polite responses. She ushered Mae inside and exchanged assurances of well- being.

Formalities over, Mae said, 'I was wondering if I might speak to your daughter. I have a proposition for her.'

An was called, and came in. She was in work clothes, an old flowered dress and an apron. Her hair was in a kerchief, which she quickly pulled off her head. Kai-hui made tea, and served. They talked of the season: It was time to get out into the terraces, but it seemed as if lambing had only just finished.

Mae felt impatience. Dead, dead, this all has died. Perhaps too soon, she launched into the business.

'All our lives,' she said, 'are going to change. Air will come again. We have the television now to help us be more modern, but nothing is really being done to make the village ready.' She explained that she needed the help of a diligent, studious person. She saw a stirring of interest, then excitement, in An's eyes.

Mae continued: 'I have two purposes, I confess. First, it is to help me shape my business. That will change, too. But the second is also to help the village to decide: What do we want to do for the future?'