Melodrome Read online

  Surreptitiously, the agent slipped her the address of the photographer who had taken the picture of Munava. This photographer, who had a pneumonic whistle in his voice, confirmed one part of the story at least: Dielsi Munava had given up singing rogantos because she had fallen seriously ill and almost died; but she had recovered, he didn’t know how, and as a result had decided to choose another way. Another way? asked Lerena. How is singing a way? It doesn’t lead anywhere. Maybe it does, whistled the photographer’s voice. It wasn’t just herself she cured, you see; she saved me from a deadly pneumonia, for example. And now? Now, miss, it looks like the way has found her; now Munava is helping others to follow it. She changed her first name, said Lerena. No, no, said the photographer: Dona isn’t a name, it’s a title; I think they gave it to her in Cordilen; there used to be a theatron there.

  Cordilen was one of the main villages in the Felinezo Hills. There was nothing stealthy about Lerena’s approach because, after all, she was bringing a gift, but almost as soon as it began, she encountered not a fence but a series of filters; by making herself small she could pass through one, but then she would bounce off the next. In shops and hotel bars, she kept hearing the same story over and over: as a singer and songwriter Dielsi Munava had been spellbinding, but also rebellious and arrogant. A show-business mob with connections to the government at the time, and maybe the current government too, had tried to sabotage her career and keep her off the stage, off all the provincial stages where she reigned; they didn’t care if it sent her into free fall. She could easily have been robbed and killed; the only thing that had saved her in the end was the kindness of gentle, humble-living human beings. Or at least that was how Dielsi put it when she began to realise that her fans could constitute an underground movement of adamant rebels, people who, in her own words, kept faith with the natural, non-human world; her task would be to give the movement force, strategy and grandeur. The luminous shock that she had received was not meant to help her contemplate her navel. So she had gone to live in the hills.

  The scant light shed on Munava’s empire by this account of her illumination drew Lerena on; she thought that by giving thanks she could ally herself with the ex-singer’s rebellion. But she wasn’t really thinking much: her brain was devouring information and excreting

  whatever failed to nourish her fixed idea of giving back – that meant, almost everything. She had her watchwords: Action. Sisterhood of the used. Credibility and RELIABILITY. Work. Firmness. Failing to achieve a goal was something Lerena had never envisaged. She persisted. With each attempt, she succeeded in advancing one miloki further up the eastern slopes of the Felinezo range. One day she reached the watershed, and on the other side, beyond the holm-oak woods, she could see a broad region of smooth hills. A layer of mist rising off the marshes was broken here and there by villages with their quartzite high-rise blocks, like the stools of a constipated state. Had she approached one of those buildings, Lerena would have noticed that they were already run down: Munava’s people were renovating and modernising them, painting them in muted tones of green, yellow or pink. Like medical care, food supply and education, these services were organised by Dona Munava’s Clearseers and financed by the taxes that all land owners paid in return for physical and moral protection, and by the profits from the orchards, buffalo breeding farms, and home-spun textile workshops, as well as from dealing in the exquisite local kayfra. The government was happy enough to have no obligations in the region; nosey journalists were generally expelled, sometimes intimidated. All of these stories might have been untrue, or based on fanciful exaggeration. Lerena couldn’t have cared less. As for the existence of the Clearseers, she could only judge by their effects, which could just as well have been produced by some other phenomenon.

  Descending into the region at the wheel of her orange Diminut, with the bundle of panoramics wedged into the front of her pants, Lerena endured the covert observation of grave, intent and insincerely courteous locals. She would be hailed by a market gardener at a bend in the road, or accosted by a nurse at a truck stop, and asked for a lift to village G or shopping centre H, where similar individuals would listen attentively and suspiciously as she asked after Munava, before sending her on to other potential informers. On the way she would be stopped again. Each informer would oblige her to buy a kayfra joint; the coercion usually involved a proverb of some kind. You say what you say, witness or no – Time to go, the friend takes no offence. None of this made any sense to Lerena; on her own, between one relay station and the next, she listened to the mental turbine powered by the joints. No dividing the earth from the sky. She slept fitfully, in lodgitels or in her car, depressed by all the wasted time, and although she ate sparingly, it was clear that the money she had set aside would not be enough to see her through. In that cryptic network of roads, she wasn’t simply failing to proceed; she was actually going backwards, partly because the landscape itself was resisting her encroachment.

  Oh please, murmurs Suano.

  But Lerena pretends not to hear. She’s coming to the end.

  Fluid stations, educatories, holm-oaks on the hills, willows along the edges of the marshes, spray in the hair of the women selling canned food, a glaze over the sky, houses marked with a C for Clearseers: all of these were elements of the Great Magnetic Rejector Bell, which was neither permanent nor indiscriminate but directed specifically at her. She understood that the region was testing her strength before it would allow her to give thanks for the gift. And although Lerena had never lacked strength, she was tired of having no damn idea what the procedure was, how she was supposed to prove that she wasn’t trying to manipulate anyone. Maybe in order to repay the debt, she needed a masculine complement, preferably a man well versed in the operations of the mind, someone who understood her.

  So now, in the courtyard of the Deluxin guesthouse, she bites her lip and tilts her head, her hair falls over to one side, and looking fixedly at Suano Botilecue, she opens her hands, awaiting his instructions.

  At this point her farfonette squeals. Lerena inserts it into her ear, listens to two or three messages, then lays it on the ground. Suano is watching her out of the corner of his eye. She explains: It’s nothing, nothing, stuff left over from the past; my time is open-ended now.

  Clever diagnosis, says Suano. I don’t see why you need me.

  Sparks rise from the brazier. Lerena keeps quiet. The task of thanking Munava for the gift is all she can think about.

  It would be great if you could teach me how to be direct, Suano, how to make it obvious, I mean, how to get it across. Because in the Felinezo there’s this vibration in the air that keeps asking: What the feggis are you after here? And I’m not going to answer the air.

  If you can’t go and make the payment on your own, you’re never going to feel good about yourself.

  Come on, Suano, are you telling me you actually buy that flardle? I wouldn’t go with just anyone. I’d be paying you, and no-one else, to come along with me.

  Like a gigolo?

  We don’t have to sleep together if you don’t want to.

  And I’m not talking about paying you as a professional; it would be a gift, to show my affection, to show I’m sorry.

  I’m no use to you, murmurs Suano.

  She holds out a packet of cigarettes. They smoke wordlessly, as if both are now unable to go on.

  Yes, you are; you know how to map people’s memory.

  People.

  You explore memory; you have a gift for it; you’re bound to find something I didn’t notice. I know: you’ve already been through this with me; but people change, sometimes they even sort themselves out.

  The hint of a compliment falls into the space between them like radioactive rain.

  What if I explain why you’re so stubbornly determined to pay?

  I don’t know if I want you to go that far, Suano. Damn this fonette.

  Though tempted to listen to her messages, Lerena switches the farfonette off and puts it away in her b
ackpack. Noticing the expression of acute curiosity that Suano wasn’t quite able to repress, she looks down to hide a blush and a half smile: one corner of her mouth has softened, the other is tense with certainty.

  You want to know who’s calling? My mother, Suano, my lawyer, my brother, dozens of people, whoever.

  What do you need a lawyer for?

  For the separation package. You think I’m going to let them rip me off or treat me like an idiot?

  Lerena pulls out the bottle of Quellax and swallows another pill.

  You’re never going to get better.

  What would that mean: getting better? Letting the company keep my money? Look, I’m not a saint who’ll put up with anything, I can’t do that; but I’m trying to learn to do what’s right, Suano. That woman was good to me; it was providential; she turned up just when they were destroying my self-confidence.

  So she’s like a bodyguard you hired, and now you have to pay her wages.

  A puff of smoke and spray escapes from Lerena’s preoccupied lips. Sparks of laughter dying as they fall, showering Suano’s head.

  See? That’s what you do: you make me face the truths I’m trying to ignore. You were the first person to tell me that I shake hands more firmly when I meet someone than when I say goodbye. I should have thought about it, but I never think much about that sort of thing. As soon as I have an instrument in hand, I get to work and use it, I guess; I don’t waste energy holding on to it afterwards. I used you a bit like an instrument, didn’t I? Though I couldn’t say what for. And you realised, but you still loved me.

  Suano’s cheeks are filling with air; he doesn’t know whether to laugh back at her.

  But you still loved me, Doctor Botilecue; you must have been crazy, totally borangi. I didn’t realise how crazy you were; I should have been paying more attention. I could have done something; I feel really bad about that; it hurts. And maybe the pain is what brought me here; maybe it wants to give you something.

  Do you have any idea how hard it was for me get myself back together?

  Well you obviously didn’t, Suano, but let’s not talk economics.

  The dialogue continues in this vein for a while, Suano managing not to let his held-back laughter sour to a grimace. You only have to look at this courtyard, the mended clothes of the homeless, the crumbs of our rations, the poison line that keeps the cockroaches at bay, or even Lerena’s broken heel, which could almost have been scripted, to see that there’s nothing to laugh about here. So when Lerena says

  Suano, you’ve got nothing to lose…

  he keeps quiet for a long moment

  and finally says yes.

  How strange: he says yes.

  We all wonder why.

  Perhaps he thinks that Lerena, remembering how he once touched on the very core of her character, has suddenly felt a visceral need to be close to him again. As if the memory of that mumbled truth had made an incision, releasing desire – mixed with other feelings, true – but in her way, Lerena does desire him. Drops of that ardour fall onto the hardened crust of Suano’s heart, opening a breach, and compassion for Lerena wells up, along with a yearning to comfort her, since in the end he is the one responsible for her wound.

  No. It’s not that.

  Doctor Botilecue says yes because he can’t come up with an argument to show that Lerena’s idea – the idea that in certain circumstances there is nothing left to lose – is vague and misguided. He can’t refute it; and if he still has something to lose himself, after having lost so much, that’s because he has strayed from the ascetic path, and now he has gone and committed another professional faux pas.

  It’s also very tiring to sleep on a straw mattress night after night.

  Nor is it out of the question that, from where he has settled, at the centre of the common slough, Suano has just realised that he is still attracted to Lerena: not just the woman herself, with her beauty, her cheek and her temperament, or the love she can give, or her money and what it makes possible, but the combination of all these things: a beautiful, temperamental woman with money; the pleasures of a sensual largesse.

  Discovering this impulse in himself when he thought he was bound for asceticism comes as a shattering blow to Botilecue, and since he has a conscience, he opts for the antidote of a gratuitous act. He entrusts himself to fate.

  Resting her cheek on her hand, Lerena contemplates the night as if consulting the timetable of the stars. She has her own uncertainties.

  Suano, when we’ve done our duty, there’s going to be a swodge of money left over.

  I don’t have a duty to fulfil.

  Sorry, but I can tell you’re hungry.

  And I’m not saying it because of the money; the thing is, Lerena, you and me, we’re not a we.

  Okay, okay, I totally understand; but we still have to eat something.

  They stand. She buttons up her blouse. She knots the scarf around her neck, murmuring, It’s so cold all of a sudden. Suano smooths the dark hair on his temples, sparse and going prematurely grey. Now you can see how thin and tall he is, bowed, flexing like a liquorice stick. He goes into the booth to fetch a bag, some clothes and a few belongings, and then he comes over to tell us that he has to go away for a few days. He kisses the girl who brought the crate. She holds out her hand, but won’t take any more nickels from Lerena. What she wants is Suano’s food ration, and that is what she gets.

  Lerena doesn’t know that their lives are already knotted together, again; she’d rather not know; it’s enough for now to have the doctor at her side. She steps out into the street with her boots in her backpack. As if marking time, her hair bounces softly on the back of her pearltex coat. Drawing on a deep sense of risk, Suano musters the strength he needs to get himself going. And they set off.

  Tackaff, ssscksssck, pataff, sscksss, pat, sck, pt.

  A building’s chronodeon sings the time: a quarter past eleven.

  Their steps blend into the soundscape: tyres squealing on wet asphalt, the radiocalls of the Order Guards, the shouting of home theatres. We don’t exactly lose sight of them. As far as anyone can see, the menu of life-trajectories on offer is strictly limited. Lerena and Suano follow a line of flight, leaving behind the hologramads of central Vila de Asun and a row of leafless trees.

  One good thing about the task ahead of them is that it limits their options and anxieties. For example, they don’t mind having to dine in an anytime eatcha, where Lerena comes across as a stuck-up businesswoman and Suano as an intellectual with a look of studied scruffiness; or having to face down the complete silence around them while briskly consuming a soup and a yamera stew respectively – Lerena can enjoy a meal only when it crowns or prepares an exploit, and Suano’s imposed but assumed austerity has eroded his naturally voracious appetite. The silence at the table is simple enough. But there’s something not so simple about the halting talk that begins an hour later, as soon as they reach the Vivante Hotel, and intensifies in the suite that Lerena has rented for three months. It’s small, as if designed to bring them together. Suano’s mouth is watering; he doesn’t let it show, but he has to go to the sanit and gulps when he sees the little jars of cosmetics, the make-up cases, the underwear in the launderine basket. Forewarned, he will not take the bait, if there is any bait to take. And he gets over his dizziness.

  He comes out of the sanit to find that Lerena has dumped the roughly three million panoramics on the bed.

  When the array of longings and whims and even undiscovered needs that this money could satisfy has coruscated briefly before him, the sum, by dint of its sheer immensity, begins to seem abstract, like a press photo of the sky on a clear day. Both of them nod for a while, as if taking in what it means, and then Lerena says: Okay, you’ve seen it now, but it’s not a good look there on the bed. She slips on a pair of latex gloves, bundles it all into a bag and stows the bag away in the strongbox without her skin having touched a single bitcard. That’s it, she says.

  Preferring not to interpret this disp
lay, Suano points hastily at the bedspread that she is smoothing out: Don’t think I’m going to sleep there. She turns to face the window, its surface enamelled by the dancing lights of Seibel Bay. As on that decisive day in his consulting rooms, she speaks to him with her back turned: Suano, unless I talk to that woman, I won’t be able to go on, and I’m going to need your support, can’t you see? There’s another room here. She says this in a whisper, so penitentially that now, as she opens the connecting door, Suano is able to change the subject or, since there is only one subject for them, to broach another of its countless aspects. So where do we start tomorrow? In the town of Alcidez, on this side of the hills, she says; it’s seventy-two milokis away.