‘You’ll hate me,’ said Thrawn with a sigh, looking up. It was a statement of fact. It had the ring of truth. It also sounded like a promise. Milena looked up at the sad, devouring face.
‘No I won’t,’ said Milena, lightly. A process of mollification had begun.
Later that same day, walking back from the Strand, Milena suddenly thought: it’s my birthday soon.
It was one year since Rolfa had gone. The thought rooted Milena to the pavement where she stood. She was standing on Waterloo Bridge, where she and Rolfa had walked back together from the Spread-Eagle. This year, September had been hot, wet, monsoonish. But on this one evening, the sky had cleared. It was the same plum colour it had been on the evening when Rolfa had led her back from meeting Lucy.
St Paul’s Cathedral looked the same, with its dome of white stone and sheets of lead. But electric lights hung in chains now all along both banks of the river. There were puddles of light, pools of it on the pavements. It will be like this, Rolfa, thought Milena. I will get further and further away from you. And you’ll get dimmer and dimmer, like one of those little lights on the end of the chain.
Milena couldn’t dawdle. It was her turn tonight to take care of little Berry. She walked on slowly, her head down.
A year since Rolfa; a month since Berowne had died giving birth. It was so unfair. He had made it all the way through. The child was born. It was wailing. He had time to shout at it, ‘Hello! Oh hello!’. Then the afterbirth came free. The blood had hit the ceiling. And there was another orphan. Of sorts. The baby’s mother, the Princess, could not face him.
Milena walked down the steps of the Zoo, and into the Child Garden.
She walked down into a room full of wood panels with colourful paintings. The place smelled of infants: milk and nappies and sodden padding. It was too warm. It made Milena giddy. A Nurse took her to Berry’s cot. He was three weeks old. He looked up at Milena with solemn blue eyes. Who are you this time? he seemed to ask. Milena lifted him up onto her shoulders and he started to wail.
‘I know. I know,’ she said, and patted him.
Out of the corners of the room, on the mattress-covered floor, the other infants came. They came crawling and whispering to each other.
‘All these people coming to see him.’
‘Yes, but they’re not his parents are they?’
The voices were high and wispy and wheedling with jealousy.
‘His father is dead.’
‘His mother never comes to see him.’
Their minds were full of virus. They could speak, they could read, they could add and subtract. They ringed Milena round like a hostile tribe. The sound of someone else crying made them angry. They wanted to cry themselves. They wanted to howl their lungs raw. The viruses made them speak.
‘Why can’t he talk?’ one of the infants demanded. He supported himself on all fours. His flesh was plump and creased.
‘Why haven’t you given him the viruses?’
‘It’s time he was given the virus.’
Milena didn’t answer them. She stepped over them. The room was hot and she was feeling ill. She simply wanted to escape.
‘He hasn’t had the virus!’ the infants called after her, in rage, as she fled.
She couldn’t think why it had so upset her. She felt she was protecting Berry from them. She had to stop to gather breath, cool breath, and found she was trembling. Her hands shook as she wrapped Little Berry up in his blankets. She held him to her, and walked under one of the brick bridges along the elevated walkways, and then looked up, and saw the Shell.
The windows were full of fire, reflected sunlight. Here it was again, September fire. Milena remembered Jacob. She remembered him walking back, into the Shell, to run his messages.
But now, because of you and Rolfa, when I dream, I also hear the music.
Rolfa was gone, and Berowne was gone. Jacob was gone too. All in one year? Milena had found Jacob one day in spring, crumpled on the staircase like an old suit of clothes, a costume in the Graveyard. The fire in the windows had once seemed like the fire of people’s lives. Now it was the fire of ghosts.
Milena stood where she had once stood before, unable to move. How did I get here? she wondered. How did I get here, holding someone else’s baby, with the smell of Thrawn McCartney still on me? In a world with holograms and electric lights. Milena felt the giddiness of time. It was a kind of vertigo. It was as if time had hauled her up at high speed a dizzying distance away from herself, away from her life. It was as if she were on a train, and the train was going faster and faster, and it never stopped. The stations of her life were rattling past. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. She was never given the chance to get off.
It was dark by the time Milena had climbed the stairs to her room. It looked much the same as it had when Rolfa lived there; a little tidier perhaps; a little emptier. The baby needed changing. Milena was surprised by how brave she had become about nappies and feeding times. When the baby was clean, she put him into his hammock and began to rock him.
Berry started to sing. His voice was high and pure and piping and he sang particular songs. Was it normal for a child to sing before it could talk? She thought. Berry seemed to hear her. He smiled at her. Is he Snide? Milena wondered. The songs he sang were the songs he had heard Milena humming. He sang the songs of the Comedy.
Milena lit a candle on her windowsill and opened the great, grey book. Here she could find herself. She took a piece of staved paper from a tidy pile of paper. And she began to work.
Milena was orchestrating the Comedy. A year after Rolfa had left, she had worked her way to the beginning of Canto Eight. There were one hundred cantos in all. Dante and Virgil had come to the river Styx. Milena looked at the tiny notes of music, one for each syllable. Why were some of them in red? In the corner, in pencil, words said:
trumpets glint like light on water. Sombre and joyful at once (a Comedy after all)
How, she wondered, how can you make horns sound sombre and joyful?
She could only do what she was able to do. Pretend the Comedy is a transcription, she told herself. Pretend that it’s a vocal version of an orchestrated original. Pretend you are reversing cause and effect and remember that horns in G will be written in C. No sharps or flats. The viruses will help.
Milena started to write, lost in work. She did not realise that she and Little Berry were humming in unison.
dear fish
Milena remembered a letter. She saw all of it, in memory, the light on the page, the clots in the ink. It read:
sorry about the name, but i think of you as fish — i dont mean any harm by it but tell me if you really hate it and ill try to mend my ways — to answer your question — i actually think of myself as Canadian — the arctic is different from the antarctic — more grass, more trees — the antarctic is a desert — but i still love it — now rolfa’s father he is definitely english tough which is how we ended up trying to live in south ken from which god preserve me
well im back now in the antarctic — place doesnt look any different — all blue ice and blue sky — my dogs still knew me — good lord — the love in dogs — you wouldnt believe — yipped and yelped whined and widdled — you sure knew you were wanted — dogs simply feel more than we do — im sure of it — never saw people get so happy to see anyone — never mind me I am just trying to get you to think of dogs a bit more kindly after what happened last year
anyway here i am sitting under my old alcohol lamp and im going out digging tomorrow with my dogs and im eating a greasy stew thats still frozen in the middle and i couldnt be any happier — rolfa didnt come with me — said she didnt want to and she should know except that right now i think she doesnt know what she wants — never saw anyone so confused as that poor girl — she went for the weediest little fella, a squidge, real tiny with a pudding basin haircut, blouse, shorts — papa’s hair turned spiky over it — then that all passed just as quickly as she took it up — she said she ate the little guy for breakfast and I can believe it — believe it or not my great soft lump of a girl is getting real aggressive these days — just before i left she THRASHED her first cousin — now he is one huge devil — size of a house — he said something and suddenly he was swallowing all of his teeth — last i heard she was reading up on ACCOUNTANCY — you keep writing — i really like your letters — they make me laugh — though i know the real reason you take such an interest in an old antarctic lady is that you want to know whats happening with rolfa — thats OK — ill let you know when i hear things