Five Ways to Forgiveness Page 4

  The cold was frightening. If I slipped on the ice and broke a leg, no one might come by for days, she thought. I’d lie here and be frozen dead in a few hours. Well, well, well, I’m in the Lord’s hands, and dead in a few years one way or the other. Only, dear Lord, let me get to the village and get warm!

  She got there, and spent a good while at the sweet-shop stove catching up on gossip, and at the news vendor’s woodstove, reading old newspapers about a new war in the eastern province. Eyid’s aunts and Wada’s father, mother, and aunts all asked her how the Chief was. They also all told her to go by her landlord’s house, Kebi had something for her. He had a packet of cheap nasty tea for her. Perfectly willing to let him enrich his soul, she thanked him for the tea. He asked her about Abberkam. The Chief had been ill? He was better now? He pried; she replied indifferently. It’s easy to live in silence, she thought; what I could not do is live with these voices.

  She was loath to leave the warm room, but her bag was heavier than she liked to carry, and the icy spots on the road would be hard to see as the light failed. She took her leave and set off across the village again and up onto the causeway. It was later than she had thought. The sun was quite low, hiding behind one bar of cloud in an otherwise stark sky, as if grudging even a half hour’s warmth and brightness. She wanted to get home to her fire, and stepped right along.

  Keeping her eyes on the way ahead for fear of ice, at first she only heard the voice. She knew it, and she thought, Abberkam has gone mad again! For he was running towards her, shouting. She stopped, afraid of him, but it was her name he was shouting. “Yoss! Yoss! It’s all right!” he shouted, coming up right on her, a huge wild man, all dirty, muddy, ice and mud in his grey hair, his hands black, his clothes black, and she could see the whites all round his eyes.

  “Get back!” she said, “get away, get away from me!”

  “It’s all right,” he said, “but the house, but the house—”

  “What house?”

  “Your house, it burned. I saw it, I was coming to the village, I saw the smoke down in the marsh—”

  He went on, but Yoss stood paralysed, unhearing. She had shut the door, let the latch fall. She never locked it, but she had let the latch fall, and Gubu would not be able to get out. He was in the house. Locked in: the bright, desperate eyes: the little voice crying—

  She started forward. Abberkam blocked her way.

  “Let me get by,” she said. “I have to get by.” She set down her bag and began to run.

  Her arm was caught, she was stopped as if by a sea wave, swung right round. The huge body and voice were all around her. “It’s all right, the kit is all right, it’s in my house,” he was saying. “Listen, listen to me, Yoss! The house burned. The kit is all right.”

  “What happened?” she said, shouting, furious. “Let me go! I don’t understand! What happened?”

  “Please, please be quiet,” he begged her, releasing her. “We’ll go by there. You’ll see it. There isn’t much to see.”

  Very shakily, she walked along with him while he told her what had happened. “But how did it start?” she said, “how could it?”

  “A spark; you left the fire burning? Of course, of course you did, it’s cold. But there were stones out of the chimney, I could see that. Sparks, if there was any wood on the fire—maybe a floorboard caught—the thatch, maybe. Then it would all go, in this dry weather, everything dried out, no rain. Oh my Lord, my sweet Lord, I thought you were in there. I thought you were in the house. I saw the fire, I was up on the causeway—then I was down at the door of the house, I don’t know how, did I fly, I don’t know—I pushed, it was latched, I pushed it in, and I saw the whole back wall and ceiling burning, blazing. There was so much smoke, I couldn’t tell if you were there, I went in, the little animal was hiding in a corner—I thought how you cried when the other one died, I tried to catch it, and it went out the door like a flash, and I saw no one was there, and made for the door, and the roof fell in.” He laughed, wild, triumphant. “Hit me on the head, see?” He stooped, but she still was not tall enough to see the top of his head. “I saw your bucket and tried to throw water on the front wall, to save something, then I saw that was crazy, it was all on fire, nothing left. And I went up the path, and the little animal, your pet, was waiting there, all shaking. It let me pick it up, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I ran back to my house, and left it there. I shut the door. It’s safe there. Then I thought you must be in the village, so I came back to find you.”

  They had come to the turnoff. She went to the side of the causeway and looked down. A smear of smoke, a huddle of black. Black sticks. Ice. She shook all over and felt so sick she had to crouch down, swallowing cold saliva. The sky and the reeds went from left to right, spinning, in her eyes; she could not stop them spinning.

  “Come, come on now, it’s all right. Come on with me.” She was aware of the voice, the hands and arms, a large warmth supporting her. She walked along with her eyes shut. After a while she could open them and look down at the road, carefully.

  “Oh, my bag—I left it— It’s all I have,” she said suddenly with a kind of laugh, turning around and nearly falling over because the turn started the spinning again.

  “I have it here. Come on, it’s just a short way now.” He carried the bag oddly, in the crook of his arm. The other arm was around her, helping her stand up and walk. They came to his house, the dark raft-house. It faced a tremendous orange-and-yellow sky, with pink streaks going up the sky from where the sun had set; the sun’s hair, they used to call that, when she was a child. They turned from the glory, entering the dark house.

  “Gubu?” she said.

  It took a while to find him. He was cowering under the couch. She had to haul him out, he would not come to her. His fur was full of dust and came out in her hands as she stroked it. There was a little foam on his mouth, and he shivered and was silent in her arms. She stroked and stroked the silvery, speckled back, the spotted sides, the silken white belly fur. He closed his eyes finally; but the instant she moved a little, he leapt, and ran back under the couch.

  She sat and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Gubu, I’m sorry.”

  Hearing her speak, the Chief came back into the room. He had been in the scullery. He held his wet hands in front of him and she wondered why he didn’t dry them. “Is he all right?” he asked.

  “It’ll take a while,” she said. “The fire. And a strange house. They’re . . . cats are territorial. Don’t like strange places.”

  She could not arrange her thoughts or words, they came in pieces, unattached.

  “That is a cat, then?”

  “A spotted cat, yes.”

  “Those pet animals, they belonged to the Bosses, they were in the Bosses’ houses,” he said. “We never had any around.”

  She thought it was an accusation. “They came from Werel with the Bosses,” she said, “yes. So did we.” After the sharp words were out she thought that maybe what he had said was an apology for ignorance.

  He still stood there holding out his hands stiffly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I need some kind of bandage, I think.”

  She focused slowly on his hands.

  “You burned them,” she said.

  “Not much. I don’t know when.”

  “Let me see.” He came nearer and turned the big hands palm up: a fierce red blistered bar across the bluish inner skin of the fingers of one, and a raw bloody wound in the base of the thumb of the other.

  “I didn’t notice till I was washing,” he said. “It didn’t hurt.”

  “Let me see your head,” she said, remembering; and he knelt and presented her a matted shaggy sooty object with a red-and-black burn right across the top of it. “Oh, Lord,” she said.

  His big nose and eyes appeared under the grey tangle, close to her, looking up at her, anxious. “I know the roof fell onto me,” he said, and she began to laugh.

  “It would take more than a roof falling onto you!” s
he said. “Have you got anything—any clean cloths— I know I left some clean dish towels in the scullery closet— Any disinfectant?”

  She talked as she cleaned the head wound. “I don’t know anything about burns except try to keep them clean and leave them open and dry. We should call the clinic in Veo. I can go into the village, tomorrow.”

  “I thought you were a doctor or a nurse,” he said.

  “I’m a school administrator!”

  “You looked after me.”

  “I knew what you had. I don’t know anything about burns. I’ll go into the village and call. Not tonight, though.”

  “Not tonight,” he agreed. He flexed his hands, wincing. “I was going to make us dinner,” he said. “I didn’t know there was anything wrong with my hands. I don’t know when it happened.”

  “When you rescued Gubu,” Yoss said in a matter-of-fact voice, and then began crying. “Show me what you were going to eat, I’ll put it on,” she said through tears.

  “I’m sorry about your things,” he said.

  “Nothing mattered. I’m wearing almost all my clothes,” she said, weeping. “There wasn’t anything. Hardly any food there even. Only the Arkamye. And my book about the worlds.” She thought of the pages blackening and curling as the fire read them. “A friend sent me that from the city, she never approved of me coming here, pretending to drink water and be silent. She was right, too, I should go back, I should never have come. What a liar I am, what a fool! Stealing wood! Stealing wood so I could have a nice fire! So I could be warm and cheerful! So I set the house on fire, so everything’s gone, ruined, Kebi’s house, my poor little cat, your hands, it’s my fault. I forgot about sparks from wood fires, the chimney was built for peat fires, I forgot. I forget everything, my mind betrays me, my memory lies, I lie. I dishonor my Lord, pretending to turn to him when I can’t turn to him, when I can’t let go the world. So I burn it! So the sword cuts your hands.” She took his hands in hers and bent her head over them. “Tears are disinfectant,” she said. “Oh I’m sorry, I am sorry!”

  His big, burned hands rested in hers. He leaned forward and kissed her hair, caressing it with his lips and cheek. “I will say you the Arkamye,” he said. “Be still now. We need to eat something. You feel very cold. I think you have some shock, maybe. You sit there. I can put a pot on to heat, anyhow.”

  She obeyed. He was right, she felt very cold. She huddled closer to the fire. “Gubu?” she whispered. “Gubu, it’s all right. Come on, come on, little one.” But nothing moved under the couch.

  Abberkam stood by her, offering her something: a glass: it was wine, red wine.

  “You have wine?” she said, startled.

  “Mostly I drink water and am silent,” he said. “Sometimes I drink wine and talk. Take it.”

  She took it humbly. “I wasn’t shocked,” she said.

  “Nothing shocks a city woman,” he said gravely. “Now I need you to open up this jar.”

  “How did you get the wine open?” she asked as she unscrewed the lid of a jar of fish stew.

  “It was already open,” he said, deep-voiced, imperturbable.

  They sat across the hearth from each other to eat, helping themselves from the pot hung on the firehook. She held bits of fish down low so they could be seen from under the couch and whispered to Gubu, but he would not come out.

  “When he’s very hungry, he will,” she said. She was tired of the teary quaver in her voice, the knot in her throat, the sense of shame. “Thank you for the food,” she said. “I feel better.”

  She got up and washed the pot and the spoons; she had told him not to get his hands wet, and he did not offer to help her, but sat on by the fire, motionless, like a great dark lump of stone.

  “I’ll go upstairs,” she said when she was done. “Maybe I can get hold of Gubu and take him with me. Let me have a blanket or two.”

  He nodded. “They’re up there. I lighted the fire,” he said. She did not know what he meant; she had knelt to peer under the couch. She knew as she did so that she was grotesque, an old woman bundled up in shawls with her rear end in the air, whispering, “Gubu, Gubu!” to a piece of furniture. But there was a little scrabbling, and then Gubu came straight into her hands. He clung to her shoulder with his nose hidden under her ear. She sat up on her heels and looked at Abberkam, radiant. “Here he is!” she said. She got to her feet with some difficulty, and said, “Good night.”

  “Good night, Yoss,” he said. She dared not try to carry the oil lamp, and made her way up the stairs in the dark, holding Gubu close with both hands till she was in the west room and had shut the door. Then she stood staring. Abberkam had unsealed the fireplace, and some time this evening he had lighted the peat laid ready in it; the ruddy glow flickered in the long, low windows black with night, and the scent of it was sweet. A bedstead that had been in another unused room now stood in this one, made up, with mattress and blankets and a new white wool rug thrown over it. A jug and basin stood on the shelf by the chimney. The old rug she had used to sit on had been beaten and scrubbed, and lay clean and threadbare on the hearth.

  Gubu pushed at her arms; she set him down, and he ran straight under the bed. He would be all right there. She poured a little water from the jug into the basin and set it on the hearth in case he was thirsty. He could use the ashes for his box. Everything we need is here, she thought, still looking with a sense of bewilderment at the shadowy room, the soft light that struck the windows from within.

  She went out, closing the door behind her, and went downstairs. Abberkam sat still by the fire. His eyes flashed at her. She did not know what to say.

  “You liked that room,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “You said maybe it was a lovers’ room once. I thought maybe it was a lovers’ room to be.”

  After a while she said, “Maybe.”

  “Not tonight,” he said, with a low rumble: a laugh, she realised. She had seen him smile once, now she had heard him laugh.

  “No. Not tonight,” she said stiffly.

  “I need my hands,” he said, “I need everything, for that, for you.”

  She said nothing, watching him.

  “Sit down, Yoss, please,” he said. She sat down in the hearthseat facing him.

  “When I was ill I thought about these things,” he said, always a touch of the orator in his voice. “I betrayed my cause, I lied and stole in its name, because I could not admit I had lost faith in it. I feared the Aliens because I feared their gods. So many gods! I feared that they would diminish my Lord. Diminish him!” He was silent for a minute, and drew breath; she could hear the deep rasp in his chest. “I betrayed my son’s mother many times, many times. Her, other women, myself. I did not hold to the one noble thing.” He opened up his hands, wincing a little, looking at the burns across them. “I think you did,” he said.

  After a while she said, “I only stayed with Safnan’s father a few years. I had some other men. What does it matter, now?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “I mean that you did not betray your men, your child, yourself. All right, all that’s past. You say, what does it matter now, nothing matters. But you give me this chance even now, this beautiful chance, to me, to hold you, hold you fast.”

  She said nothing.

  “I came here in shame,” he said, “and you honored me.”

  “Why not? Who am I to judge you?”

  “‘Brother, I am thou.’”

  She looked at him in terror, one glance, then looked into the fire. The peat burned low and warm, sending up one faint curl of smoke. She thought of the warmth, the darkness of his body.

  “Would there be any peace between us?” she said at last.

  “Do you need peace?”

  After a while she smiled a little.

  “I will do my best,” he said. “Stay in this house a while.”

  She nodded.

  Forgiveness Day

  SOLLY HAD been a space brat, a Mobile’s child, liv
ing on this ship and that, this world and that; she’d traveled five hundred light-years by the time she was ten. At twenty-five she had been through a revolution on Alterra, learned aiji on Terra and farthinking from an old hilfer on Rokanan, breezed through the Schools on Hain, and survived an assignment as Observer in murderous, dying Kheakh, skipping another half millennium at near-lightspeed in the process. She was young, but she’d been around.

  She got bored with the Embassy people in Voe Deo telling her to watch out for this, remember that; she was a Mobile herself now, after all. Werel had its quirks—what world didn’t? She’d done her homework, she knew when to curtsy and when not to belch, and vice versa. It was a relief to get on her own at last, in this gorgeous little city, on this gorgeous little continent, the first and only Envoy of the Ekumen to the Divine Kingdom of Gatay.

  She was high for days on the altitude, the tiny, brilliant sun pouring vertical light into the noisy streets, the peaks soaring up incredibly behind every building, the dark blue sky where great near stars burned all day, the dazzling nights under six or seven lolloping bits of moon, the tall black people with their black eyes, narrow heads, long, narrow hands and feet, gorgeous people, her people! She loved them all. Even if she saw a little too much of them.

  The last time she had had completely to herself was a few hours in the passenger cabin of the airskimmer sent by Gatay to bring her across the ocean from Voe Deo. On the airstrip she was met by a delegation of priests and officials from the King and the Council, magnificent in scarlet and brown and turquoise, and swept off to the Palace, where there was a lot of curtsying and no belching, of course, for hours—an introduction to his little shrunken old majesty, introductions to High Muckamucks and Lord Hooziwhats, speeches, a banquet—all completely predictable, no problems at all, not even the impenetrable giant fried flower on her plate at the banquet. But with her, from that first moment on the airstrip and at every moment thereafter, discreetly behind or beside or very near her, were two men: her Guide and her Guard.