“Why was she dangerous?” I leaned in. “Drodin, was she breaching?”
“Jesus, I don’t think so. If she did I don’t know shit about it.” He put up his hands. “Fuck’s sake, you know how watched we are?” He jerked his hand in the direction of the street. “We’ve got you lot on a semipermanent patrol in the area. Ul Qoman cops can’t watch us, obviously, but they’re on our brothers and sisters. And more to the goddamned point, watching us out there is … you know. Breach.”
We were all silent a moment then. We all felt watched.
“You’ve seen it?”
“Course not. What do I look like? Who sees it? But we know it’s there. Watching. Any excuse … we’re gone. Do you …” He shook his head, and when he looked back at me it was with anger and perhaps hate. “Do you know how many of my friends have been taken? That I’ve never seen again? We’re more careful than anyone.”
It was true. A political irony. Those most dedicated to the perforation of the boundary between Besźel and Ul Qoma had to observe it most carefully. If I or one of my friends were to have a moment’s failure of unseeing (and who did not do that? who failed to fail to see, sometimes?), so long as it was not flaunted or indulged in, we should not be in danger. If I were to glance a second or two on some attractive passerby in Ul Qoma, if I were to silently enjoy the skyline of the two cities together, be irritated by the noise of an Ul Qoman train, I would not be taken.
Here, though, at this building not just my colleagues but the powers of Breach were always wrathful and as Old Testament as they had the powers and right to be. That terrible presence might appear and disappear a unificationist for even a somatic breach, a startled jump at a misfiring Ul Qoma car. If Byela, Fulana, had been breaching, she would have brought that in. So it was likely not suspicion of that specifically that had made Drodin afraid.
“There was just something.” He looked up out of the window at the two cities. “Maybe she would, she would have brought Breach on us, eventually. Or something.”
“Hang on,” Corwi said. “You said she was leaving …”
“She said she was going over. To Ul Qoma. Officially.” I paused from scribbling notes. I looked at Corwi and she at me. “Didn’t see her again. Someone heard she’d gone and they wouldn’t let her back here.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s true, and if it is I don’t know why. It was just a matter of time … She was poking around in dangerous shit, it gave me a bad feeling.”
“That’s not all, though, is it?” I said. “What else?” He stared at me.
“I don’t know , man. She was trouble, she was scary, there was too much … there was just something. When she was going on and on about all the stuff she was into, it started to give you the creeps. Made you nervous.” He looked out of the window again. He shook his head.
“I’m sorry she died,” he said. “I’m sorry someone killed her. But I’m not that surprised.”
THAT STINK OF INSINUATION and mystery—however cynical or uninterested you thought yourself it stuck to you. I saw Corwi look up and around at the shabby fronts of the warehouses when we left. Perhaps seeing a little long in the direction of a shop she must realise was in Ul Qoma. She felt watched. We both did, and we were right, and fidgety.
When we drove out, I took Corwi—a provocation I admit though not aimed at her but at the universe in some way—for lunch in Besźel’s little Ul Qomatown. It was south of the park. With the particular colours and script of its shop fronts, the shape of its facades, visitors to Besźel who saw it would always think they were looking at Ul Qoma, and hurriedly and ostentatiously look away (as close as foreigners could generally get to unseeing). But with a more careful eye, experience, you note the sort of cramped kitsch to the buildings’ designs, a squat self-parody. You can see the trimmings in the shade called Besźel Blue, one of the colours illegal in Ul Qoma. These properties are local.
These few streets—mongrel names, Illitan nouns and a Besź suffix, YulSainStrász, LiligiStrász, and so on—were the centre of the cultural world for the small community of Ul Qoman expatriates living in Besźel. They had come for various reasons—political persecution, economic self-betterment (and how the patriarchs who had gone through the considerable difficulties of emigrating for that reason must be rueing it now), whim, romance. Most of those aged forty and below are second and now third generation, speaking Illitan at home but Besź without an accent in the streets. There is maybe an Ul Qoman influence to their clothes. At various times local bullies and worse break their windows and beat them in the streets.
This is where pining Ul Qoman exiles come for their pastries, their sugar-fried peas, their incense. The scents of Besźel Ul Qomatown are a confusion. The instinct is to unsmell them, to think of them as drift across the boundaries, as disrespectful as rain (“Rain and woodsmoke live in both cities,” the proverb has it. In Ul Qoma they have the same saw, but one of the subjects is “fog.” You may occasionally also hear it of other weather conditions, or even rubbish, sewage, and, spoken by the daring, pigeons or wolves). But those smells are in Besźel.
Very occasionally a young Ul Qoman who does not know the area of their city that Ul Qomatown crosshatches will blunder up to ask directions of an ethnically Ul Qoman Besźel-dweller, thinking them his or her compatriots. The mistake is quickly detected—there is nothing like being ostentatiously unseen to alarm—and Breach are normally merciful.
“Boss,” Corwi said. We sat at a corner café, Con ul Cai, that I frequented. I had made a great show of greeting the proprietor by name, like doubtless many of his Besź clientele. Probably he despised me. “Why the fuck are we here?”
“Come on,” I said. “Ul Qoman food. Come on. You know you want it.” I offered her cinnamon lentils, thick sweet tea. She declined. “We’re here,” I said, “because I’m trying to soak up the atmosphere. I’m trying to get into the spirit of Ul Qoma. Shit. You’re smart, Corwi, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know here. Help me with this.” I counted off on my fingers. “She was here, this girl. This Fulana, Byela.” I almost said Marya. “She was here—what?—three years ago. She was around dodgy local politicos, but she was looking for something else, which they couldn’t help her with. Something even they thought was dodgy. She leaves.” I waited. “She was going to Ul Qoma.” I swore, Corwi swore.
“She’s been researching stuff,” I said. “She goes over.”
“We think.”
“We think. Then suddenly she’s back here.”
“Dead.”
“Dead.”
“Fuck.” Corwi leaned in, took and began thoughtfully to eat one of my pastries, stopped mouth full. For a long time neither of us said anything.
“It is. It’s fucking breach, isn’t it?” Corwi said eventually.
“… It looks like it might be breach, I think—yes I think it does.”
“If not to get over, to come back. Where she gets done. Or postmortem. Gets dumped.”
“Or something. Or something,” I said.
“Unless she crossed legit, or she’s been here the whole time. Just because Drodin’s not seen her…”
I recalled the phone call. I made a sceptical maybe face. “Could be. He seemed pretty sure. It’s sus, whatever.”
“Well…”
“Alright. So say it’s breach: that’s alright.”
“Bullshit it is.”
“No, listen,” I said. “That means it wouldn’t be our problem. Or at least… if we can persuade the Oversight Committee. Maybe I’ll get that started.”
She glowered. “They’ll give you shit. I heard they were getting—”
“We’ll have to present our evidence. It’s circumstantial so far but might be enough to get it passed over.”
“Not from what I heard.” She looked away and back. “Are you sure you’d want to, boss?”