‘Milena. The chairs are up,’ called Mike, already sitting, balanced in a criss-cross bamboo framework. It was Mike who called and not Peterpaul. Peterpaul did not like to call in public, in song. The days of persecution had been brief, but Peterpaul was still wary.
Milena suddenly felt a nose bump against her hand. She never had to call Piper. He knew when to come. He was more intelligent than most dogs. Perhaps he had been given an empathy virus. When he was human. He had been trained now to wear shorts in public, and slept in a wicker basket in the hall.
‘Pi-per!’ sang Berry, and chuckled hoarsely, clambering up on to his back. Milena and the Princess began to walk across the grass, hand in hand. Piper crawled beside them on hands and knees, panting with his tongue hanging out, a wide doggy grin of contentment.
Oh, it was a beautiful day! Trees and clouds and sky. In one corner of the park, well away from her was a cluster of moving shrubbery. It was Bees, three or four of them. The Bees always followed Milena, keeping their distance, respectful and silent, like mourners. The Bees bored and oppressed and sometimes frightened Milena. Milena could sense how they saw the virus as something golden, in islands in her body. The cancer sang to them of life even as it was killing her.
But today was so beautiful that Milena felt strong enough to give them a smile and a wave. And they smiled and waved back, looking for a moment like normal people, white teeth in purple faces, quick smiles for a friend on a sunny day. Then Milena saw that one of them was the King. She smiled and waved again, to him.
Milena had not planned to come out. The friends had planned to stay inside, in the Coral Reef room at the hospital. It was comfortable there and warm. There was a kitchen and a bedsitting room and even a small balcony, with a view over the river. The friends had all crowded onto it, and felt the air like a bath all around them. It did not seem likely that Milena would get too weary or too cold. They must get so tired, Milena thought, of me being ill all the time.
Peterpaul reached out towards her to help her sit. He took such exaggerated care to lower her gently that Milena wanted to smile. There had been just a little ill will when she had asked Peterpaul to leave the Comedy. Dante was not an Everyman, and could not be played as one. She had worried about it for weeks, losing sleep, before she finally told Peterpaul over lunch at the Zoo. She was replacing him with Jason, the waspish apothecary from the Babes’ production of Falstaff. She explained, and Peterpaul had said nothing for the rest of the meal. She learned later that he wanted to reply in the funeral music from Peer Gynt and was too embarrassed. He was not angry; he was very, very disappointed. He might also have been a little relieved.
So we’ve all lost the Comedy. Peterpaul didn’t sing it. Mike’s pregnant so someone else is riding the Bulge. And I’m dying. Someone other than Milena Shibush is pumping out the images every night into the sky. There’s not a breath of live performance about it now. It’s a recording. And only the first two books; we only had time to do the first two books. You can’t call it a Comedy if you only do the first two books: it ends in Purgatory. Well, thought Milena with a smile, a lot of people have said watching it every evening is pure hell. She settled onto the chair and reached across to take hold of Mike’s hand. Oh, it was good, just to sit and feel the sun on her face. Her Rhodopsin skin tingled with the light: she could feel the yellow reflection from the arms of the bamboo folding chair and the warm green reflections of the grass and the sudden stab of orange from the grit of the football pitch. We can almost see with our skins, she thought, her eyes closed. I can almost feel the clouds overhead on my arms.
Little Berry was singing, a far from aimless song. His voice was like a cherubim’s, inhuman. It was an infant’s voice singing complex and beautiful music with perfect pitch, perfect tone. It was not innocent. It was unsettling, the voice of another kind of human being. And the song was so strange, as well. It seemed to be about the day itself, the trees, the sound of the tennis balls on racquets, the sunlight. But there was something wary in it too, something defensive. What, wondered Milena, does little Berry have to defend? He must know Singers are different. But people are not unkind to them, well, hardly unkind any longer. Then Berry stopped singing. Milena opened her eyes, and found that Berry had been looking at her, dead at her, at her face. I scare him, she thought.
He was wide-eyed, solemn, his mouth pulled down at the corners. Was he about to cry? Milena was about to say to the Princess: Berry’s worried about something. Then she decided to find out what it was. She tried to Read him. Usually infants could not be Read. Either they were too blank, or too different from adults for the reading to make sense. Milena could only get a dim sense of what Berry was feeling. Berry was a jumble of song. The songs were secret. Berry did not sing them around adults. The songs were about his world, and his world was like an egg that he was hatching. He was trying to keep it warm. This tender world, protected by secret song. Now it was Milena’s turn to be disturbed.
He’s trying to defend it from us. Well, children always have secrets. Milena tried to dismiss it from her mind. She suddenly felt unutterably weary. I have a disease to fight. Little Berry must fight battles of his own. Except that it did not feel in the midst of the tangle of song as though it were his battle alone.
Milena drifted into sleep, or in a state enough like sleep for her friends to call it that and not feel too disturbed. They spoke in whispers. Berry had been told to stop singing in case he woke Aunty Milena. He kept on singing in his head and Milena heard the music as if in a dream.
She woke up after a time feeling very thirsty. She had been breathing through her mouth. There was a dull ache, all the way from the surface of her eyes back through to the back of her brain.
Oh don’t say I’m ill, she thought. Don’t make me be ill. Let me have this day. It is such a perfect day. Please. I don’t want to be carried back, I don’t want to vomit, I don’t want any pain. Not today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow the sky will be grey, and we won’t be all together.
‘Are you all right, Milena?’ asked Mike, rising in his chair, giving her hand a little shake.
‘Yes,’ she said. No point pretending to be asleep.
She opened her eyes. They were full of a clear, sticky moisture, that refracted the light into rainbows. There were nameless shapes of light, rainbows dancing all around them, swirls of light, beating, like wings.
She opened her eyes and she was in another world.
I know that! I know that place! Milena remembering suddenly sat up and yelled. I know what it is now! I know where I am!
I’m really ill, thought Milena who had been a director. This is the start of a new sickness. But she didn’t mind. She was smiling.
The world was made of light, light exchanging light, light going in and out like breath, the breath rising up from the Earth into clouds, clouds edged with all light, light in all colours, white, fading to ice blue, swirls of ice crystals in the breath of the world.
Hallelujah. Hosanna.
Shaky, smiling, Milena stood up. She stood up and began to run across the grass. She wore sandals; she could feel the swish of grass against her toes; she could feel the stream of air, fresh from the respiration of the plants, the trees, the grass, the breath going in and out of her, the light on her skin, striking Rhodopsin, breaking it apart, making sugar, sugar and sodium that sent nerves flashing, her seeing, dancing skin, rippling like waves with the light.
The ground had knees and elbows, and outstretched arms, and suddenly Milena had fallen forward with delight into them. She stared about her with delight.