— Please?
— It was a joke.
— Ah yes, Ukay humour. Different from Uessessarian. I speak Asswati very good, I laugh in Asswati but not Ukayan. They teach at school, here everyone speak Ukayan good like Asswati, but for me not, my mother always speak Uessessarian as child to me.
— It all comes to the same thing in the end.
— Please?
— We seem to communicate all right.
— Ah yes. You love my tea?
— Very good, thank you very much.
— You prefer with milk?
— No, no, it’s fine like this. You — er — you’re very cosy in here, aren’t you? You’ve arranged the furniture quite well.
— Ye-es.
— I’m afraid it’s very old furniture we picked up here and there. I got that armchair on a rubbish dump outside the town you know, they were about to burn it.
— Yes.
It is the knowledge of the shape and size of the sparse furniture which makes it visible in the darkened room, the armchair with its inside spewing, the rickety iron bed in the corner to the left of the verandah-door, the curtained shelves on the wall facing the verandah, the small table with the wash-basin that doesn’t match the jug or slop-pail, the cooking-ring in the corner, the larger table against the other wall, its far end covered from edge to edge with opened cans, the wooden kitchen chair. It is the knowledge of the history of every item which makes it sharply visible in the darkening room, even, if need be, in absolute blackness. It is likewise the knowledge of Mrs. Ivan however limited so far, that makes her tangible to the eyes and inner thoughts in the almost blackness of the darkening room. There is thus no need to talk, the atoms of her being move soundlessly in waves across the darkened room. A conversation, however, occurs. It is the knowledge of the history of every item thought that makes it tangible to the neural cells both before and after utterance, the utterance merely giving it that particular form which may or may not have been expected by the neural cells as they quickly rearrange themselves to enfold it in that precise form.
— What does your husband do, Mrs. Ivan?
— Labour Exchange.
— You mean, as an official?
— No, no. Unemployed. He wait.
— I’ve never seen him there.
— No? Maybe different, er — chass..
— Group?
— No. Different, er — well, yes, different group, different, ah, time.
— What did he do before?
— You on other side yes? Questionnaire.
— I’m sorry, one gets so used to thinking of oneself that way, one transfers it.
— Yes? You transfer much? Your sickness. Yes? Or contain?
— I suppose I transfer most of it. Mrs. Ivan, how did all this happen, really I mean?
— Really? What is really?
— Through all the false identities that we build, the love-making, the trauma-seeking, the alchemising of anecdote to legend, of episode to myth, what really happened to us?
— Us. Us is difficult. You still think us. I do not think us. My mother Tartar, some Chinese, my father Uzbek, half Bahuko.
— But. But your hair is blonde!
— Red, no? Red gold, on identity. You not look in daylight. Funny genes. My son, eight years, my son surprising black. He strong. He work good at school.
— I see. I thought — but if you’re quarter Bahuko, why are you living here? Why are you so poor? You’re even poorer than we are.
— Always somebody poorer. Look Sino-America, nothing to eat, and Seatoarea.
— Oh yes I know, I know.
— Ivan, he ex-Uessessarian. Unskill. Skill before, no use, gone. Lucky room here. Thank you.
— What happened, Mrs. Ivan? What happened? Please tell me.
— To Ivan?
— No, to us.
— Us again. You very sick. People come, strong, too much strong, sick from too much strong, they go, more different people come, with not sickness.
— No, it’s not that simple. Something happened, something robbed us of the fruits of the earth.
— Perhaps nothing. That is what happened. The fruits are to everyone. But something, something means all. It was too much difficult. Oh, I cannot say, for me Ukayan words not come.
— You mean, Mrs. Ivan, that the human element mutated in some way, disintegrated even, as a radioactive element transmutes into another by emitting particles, diminishing itself?
— Diminish is … less? No not diminish. More. Human element more bigger.
— Covering the whole earth and interpenetrating itself to a new consciousness and those who cannot grow with it must die.
— Yes. Cannot trap the god for strong. He get into blood and no get out with giving, so poison.
— Man needs his daily ration of the whole world, and nothing less than symbiosis will do.
— Man is daily ration of whole world, he must be also eaten by all others. He petrol, grain, he electricity, he books, he satellites, he information bad good, he hello how are you, goodnight, sleep well, you love my tea I love your sickness, and that perhaps was too much difficult. Oh, I have speak never so many words Ukayan.
— Your samovar tea loosens your tongue.
The steps on the verandah loudly surround the enveloping darkness back to the angles felt one second before the sudden flood of light brings them leaping into sharp outlines and colour. The entry of Mr. Ivan and young, Bahuko, bright-eyed, thin Ivan Ivanovich, does not dispel the interpenetration of the psychic rays but adds to it, enriching it with smiles, and oh what nice surprise, how kind, you will be better soon, now you have work, alas not me but there is always hope, Ivanek here is first in mathematics, have some more tea, I love your samovar.
The flies lie quiet on the transverse bar, at eye-level, so quiet they might be dead, this very dawn on the transverse bar of the closed window in front of the closed shutters. The closing of the window after the hot night, the closing of the window like an earthquake to the flies, did not disturb the flies in their embrace. Beyond the shutters, a few metres away, rises the slatted shape of Mrs. Ned’s bungalow dark in the shadow cast by this shack and the rising sun. In the evening it is the slatted shape of Mrs. Ned’s shack that casts a shadow, keeping the burning sun in its late aspect off the little room, creating in theory a coolness, were it not for the corrugated iron roof that has absorbed the heat all day. But now the sun is rising on the other side. Soon it will beat down upon the iron roof.
The mattress on the floor is already covered over. The kitchen door is framed by the bedroom door. At the end of the short dark passage, almost cubic in its brevity, the kitchen through the two open doors seems luminous and apparently framed in red. The door, however, is of rough wood. The luminosity is due to the rising sun that flows obliquely into the kitchen through the bead curtain over the door and more obliquely still through the window above the sink to the right of the door, due to the slanted shade from Monsieur Jules’s roof. Only a narrow shaft of light turns the red stone floor into a miniature ditch of fiery water across the threshold. The wrinkled wood of the wooden table is still and dead, unlit by any shaft refracted or direct.
The squint is not so blue to-day, or so wide, in the luminosity of the sunrise pouring its dust into the molecules of air through the window above the sink. But it is bluer and wider than at noon, when the luminosity is more stark, even with the shutters closed. The circle of gruel in the bowl is greyish white and pimply. The gruel occurs at dawn these days, and is come to, arrived at, never brought, movement being necessary and sooner or later leading to attainment.
— Lilly, why don’t we move from here?
— Are you out of your mind? How can we move? It isn’t allowed. And we’re extremely lucky to –