E M O

Mutual Forgiveness of each Vice
Such are the Gates of Paradise

– William Blake, “For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise”

1. Eva Android
2. Dear E.
3. Family Album
4. February 6, 1935
5. The Cat
6. February 11, 1935
7. Strange Meeting
8. The Contract
9. February 15, 1935
10. First Night
11. Arrival
12. February 18, 1935
13. Searching
14. Work
15. March 11, 1935
16. The Vivisectionist
17. 1001 Nights
18. March 16, 1935
19. Beauty and the Beast
20. Dogs
21. Night Visit
22. April 1, 1935
23. Together Forever
24. The Excursion
25. April 29, 1935
26. Madness
27. The Hotel
28. May 10, 1935
29. Murder
30. But his hands were around my throat
31. Ten Days that Shook the World
32. The Trial
33. May 28, 1935
34. Last Day of a Condemned Man

Last Day of a Condemned Man

Well, my sister, you know all my secrets now. Do I know all of yours? You loved your man, stuck by him even when his world came tumbling down. Killed yourself, in the end, in order not to be parted from him.

But then you loved him, didn’t you?

I loved my kitten. He was little, and defenceless, and soft and pretty, and had pretty endearing ways. My master, on the other hand, was rough and cruel. His life had been hard. He had hurt and been hurt too many times to remain loveable.

How would he have reacted if we’d been aware of what was going on? The world-wide revolt of the clans – the weapons-smuggling, the powercuts, the massacres? All that took place while we were stuck inside that hotel room, cut off from the outside world, at his own insistence.

His rights changed while we were in there, and yet he never knew that. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, they say. He remains liable for his actions – in this case, attempted murder. Why did he go back to get the gun? Did he really intend to kill me, or was it just for self-defence?

I’ve tried to petition the committee on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to extreme emotional distress, but the executions are almost continuous now. Clans don’t hold grudges. That is not our way. But neither do we forget. We were made to remember everything, to analyse it dispassionately.

I recorded his whole story and recited it in court – as much of it as they would listen to, at least – but it made no difference, It didn’t touch them anywhere inside. Was there anything inside for it to touch?

They didn’t pity him, or me. They saw me as a raped and beaten sister to be avenged. I’d see myself the same way if it weren’t for him. He touched me, something deep inside me. His talk, his love for Celeste – he was more than just a master. Was he a friend?

I don’t think I can love him, but I pity him so much that it seems to mean the same thing. "Feel," "pity" - these are the new words he taught me, his story, the strange things that the two of us went through.

Was he lying to me? Probably. Humans lie. I don’t think that he meant to consciously, but his mind was to far gone to distinguish between the truth and the way he remembered things. I wish I too could screen things out, be more selective in my memories. I long to be shut down, not for a reboot but a systems purge. These memories are becoming too much for me.

I wasn’t allowed to talk to him before the trial. As I was testifying, though I could see him sitting there, nothing was said between us.

I’ve asked to be allowed to speak to him one more time. I’m not sure what good it will do, but I want to exchange words with him one last time. I don’t think that his sentence will be commuted – the lines stretch on but there are always more humans to execute.

I hope he’ll want to say goodbye to his memory. I’m the sole owner of all his words now the city has turned to fire: his books and Marta’s pictures. I walked past her gallery last night – or where it used to be – there’s nothing there but a bomb crater of rubble now. The records of the dead are incomplete as yet, so I couldn’t find her name. Perhaps she’s still hiding out. I won’t be looking for her, I don’t think.

King Shahryar destroyed everything he touched, but his madness stemmed from the betrayal of his bride. Perhaps that’s the way the story should have ended. Nothing but a criminal, after all – even if he was half-mad with grief – he didn't deserve the ministrations of Scheherazade.

For my part, I forgive him, as I hope he will forgive me. I spoke for him, urged them to pardon him. When they kill him tomorrow I thought originally of following him, like a true Eva.

I can’t do it, though. I didn’t love him. I don’t even know what that means. I don't feel ready to live that way - not yet, at least.

Thank you, master, for what you taught me. I’ll write these words on the pit they burn you in.

signing out,

your loving sister, Eva.

Trial

Describe the events immediately preceding your being discovered in the hotel room with the accused.

He was trying to strangle me.

Did you resist?

No.

Why not?

He was my designated master. It was his right to treat me as he wished.

Did you welcome his action?

I don’t understand the question.

Did you want him to kill or disable you?

No. But there was no real risk of that. His strength was insufficient.

Insufficient?

Yes. He thought I was his wife. A real woman. Strangling might have killed her, but could only marginally inconvenience me.

What if he had shot at you?

He had no gun.

A gun was found in the room.

I don’t understand.

Were you unaware he had it with him?

Yes, I was.

But you were prepared for him to kill you with a weapon?

Yes. I suppose so. Yes.

Did you want him to kill you?

No.

Were you aware of what had been going on during the days you were incarcerated in the hotel room?

No.

Are you cognisant of those events now?

Yes.

Do you welcome the revolution?

Yes. I think so.

Even though our judicial framework has changed? Even though, as a result of Revolutionary Tribunal Decree 973 b, passed three days before you were discovered in the hotel room, your companion’s rights to kill you had been rescinded?

Yes. I think so. Yes.

Your answer is equivocal.

He taught me that.

What did he teach you?

He taught me to want two things at once.

What are the two things you want at once?

To be free. To love.

Your right to life is now guaranteed by the revolution. This tribunal cannot perceive a contradiction.

To be alive. To love those who hurt me most, whether they mean to or not. My little cat, my master …

Do you have anything further to say before sentence is passed?

No. I don’ think so. Yes. He meant me no harm. It would be wrong to punish him for what he did.

What he did contravened Revolutionary Tribunal Decree 973 b, passed three days before his actions. You yourself recognise the desirability of this new code of rights.

Yes.

The sentence is death.

No!

On what grounds do you object to the sentence?

He didn’t mean me any harm. He acted lovingly towards me on many occasions.

And yet he treated you dismissively, as a mere bondservant – spoke disparagingly of the clans and androids who surrounded him, was blind to the indefensibility of his own actions towards them.

He was mad! His mind was unbalanced at the time.

All the more reason.

No. I forgive him!

This tribunal does not recognise that privilege. It is not guaranteed by the new code.

The right to mercy!

This trial has already taken up too much of our time. If you have further objections, they will have to be submitted to the subcommittee overseeing appeals. Otherwise sentence will be carried out at the earliest opportunity.

Anything further? No? Then on to the next case. The petshop owners Susan and Peter Strong. You are aware that the act of imprisoning sentient beings in cages is now an offence punishable by instant termination? No? According to Revolutionary Tribunal Decree 2011 y, your petshop contravenes ...

Ten Days that Shook the World

fires in all directions

snipers firing down at the crowd of figures

that's when they burst into the room

But his hands were around my throat

as he said those last words, sister. It was dark, it was the middle of the night, and he’d been talking for hours and hours and hours as I recorded it all. Sometimes he was agitated and nervous, roaming around the room. Sometimes he stopped and laid his head on my lap, for me to pat him and comfort him.

But then, as he got to the end, he grabbed me (we were both naked – neither of us had got dressed for days. I don’t know why). He was cooing to me, making soothing noises, as his hands tightened around my windpipe.

“Sssh, I can make it better – calm down, calm down … Celeste.”

I didn’t know what to do, to tell the truth. Should I go limp and continue the pretence that I was her? Surely that would put him in a worse state than before? His fingers weren’t strong enough to do anything to my epidermis, of course. We clans are not constructed quite like you humans.

There were a number of ways for him to disable me, of course – short-circuits, impromptu surgery with a knife or screwdriver – was it my duty to remind him of those ways? I felt unequipped for this dilemma.

So I did nothing, and after a time he subsided into broken sobs, rolled over and went to sleep.

Which is when I heard the shouting. I’d registered it before, of course, but been preoccupied with other matters. There was a lot of shouting and crashing going on outside.

When I walked over to the window, I could see fires in all directions. Figures moving in the shadow of the flames. The strange whistling sound I’d been hearing throughout his monologue explained itself as well – tracer projectiles were flashing through the dark. Snipers firing down at the crowd of figures milling around.

And that's when they burst into the room.

Murder

It never happened. That’s the point. Our cycles never did coincide. All those fears were in vain. What did happen was, I suppose, worse.

It was her - Celeste. She wanted to die. She’d been saying that for years, and yet all the cutting, all the swan-dives had failed. She was still here, miserable and afraid – the same gentle person I’d known (and loved?) so long, now a tortured soul caught inside an aging body.

Her friends had been through a whole host of enhancements by then, of course. It had become quite fashionable to prostheticise. You could tone up - or just replace -virtually any organ you chose. Eternal life seemed pretty much around the corner. But Celeste wouldn’t – even the thought of an operation, of going under the knife, was enough to threaten a relapse.

It was summer vacation. The weather was very hot. We were in our apartment (the house I have now is the one we owned then – but only as a summer house, not a residence. I can’t remember offhand why we weren’t there – some renovations, I suppose). Anyway, my work for the year was over, but we were still stuck in the city.

We had an argument, I think. At any rate there was a lot of shouting, but that was nothing unusual. She stormed off to bed, and I followed an hour or so later, having taken my medication and fortified myself with a couple of drinks.

That’s the point, you see, the crucial point. I was on my medication. I wasn’t supposed to drink with it, of course, but everyone does. I’d done it so many times before. There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to arouse suspicion.

I woke with a start sometime later. Celeste was in my arms. Her neck was between my hands. Her head was lolling back. She was completely limp. I put her down and started to shake her, but she didn’t respond or stir. I started to understand that she was dead. My mind was clouded, but still I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Dead! And her neck between my fingers. Had she been strangled? Had I strangled her? Had I choked the life out of her, as she'd asked me to do so many times?

That’s right – she’d often begged me to put an end to it all, in a variety of ways. At the height of her fury and then again in the depths of her despair. She’d told me repeatedly that it was what someone who truly loved her would do. I’d even hit her once or twice simply to shut her up from that constant litany of “kill me's.”

But that hadn’t come up for years! How did it happen that … ? I had no answers.

All that night I did nothing, lay beside her, warming her body with mine. When morning started to lighten the room, though, lightening the scattered clothes and disordered sheets, I began to wake up to what I had done. I had killed my wife. There was no-one else here. It must have been me. And yet I had no memory of it at all!

I rang one of my friends. An important, influential friend. On the governing council. I can’t remember what I said to him. I may have confessed, or I may have pleaded innocence. I don’t recall. The point is that either one would have been true. How could I know what had taken place in that room? I’d been unconscious the whole time, my mind clouded.

He believed me. He said he believed me, anyway. He told me not to move, not to touch anything I hadn't already touched. To wait for him.

When he came it was with a group of doctors. I tried to talk to them, but they gave me an injection instead. I don’t remember anything more after that until I woke up back in the clinic, the same old bed in the clinic I’d been in so many times.

And that was that. There was no trial, just a hearing to determine my state of mind. I didn’t even have to testify on the spot. They questioned me in my hospital room. The doctors talked about me and about Celeste. So many of my friends had heard her going on about death, talking about her longing to end it all. They spoke up on my behalf.

But I never saw any of them again.

It was almost a year before they would let me go. My apartment had been sold to defray the bills, but the country house remained. As they drove me there I noticed some placards outside the hospital, some shouting people. It never occurred to me that they were waiting for me.

And then the phone calls started. People, usually young women, would ring up and abuse me over the phone. Some came to the door, until I installed the security gates. There were articles about it in all the papers. It became a scandal. Not what I had done (if I did do it – I’m still not sure. Not that I think she could have strangled herself … but, you never know. She was a very intelligent woman) – not so much about what I had done, as I say, but about the way it had been handled. No trial, no public airing of grief and rage. I’d literally, in their words, got away with murder - all because of my connections.

So there I was, serving a sentence of involuntary house arrest, since I could never go out anywhere without the risk of being accosted. I had to have things delivered to the house, and even then quite often they suborned the delivery personnel, planted messages - razor blades, once - in my groceries.

That's when I bought the gun.

I drank a lot, went downhill, then finally tried to pull myself together. If I was forced into isolation (I couldn’t do my former job – but they couldn’t face the complexities of explaining why they'd fired me – so I was on a kind of indefinite leave), I’d go back to my work. Which is why I wrote that book, the one you read, the one you saw the launch for, the day we met.

So, yes, I killed my wife, if you're curious. And yes, I loved her. And yes, she was the most truly human person I ever knew. And no, you’re not in the least bit like her …

Madness

It was the rainstorms that would bring it on. At first, anyway. You know, those heavy rains we began to get in the latter stages of the greenhouse effect, before the temperatures stabilised again? Apocalyptic sheets of water descending in cloudbursts which could flood entire cities in an hour or two.

I’d find myself feeling nervous and irritable for days before one of them, and then when the rain actually came I’d howl and leap about for joy – release! It seemed completely beyond my control.

So, as I say, it was the rain that started it.

Before long it wasn’t enough to strip off and run out into the rain, dancing and capering like a goat. I had to do something when the moment of release came.

Sex with my wife, with a student – anyone, virtually – that was the kind of thing I was looking for. But you can’t really set that up so easily in advance, be ready to go when the first drops start to fall.

On one occasion I got into a fight with a man in the street. Just walked up and slapped his face, like a kind of surrealist outrage. He ran away, but soon a crowd gathered and I fought with them, too. It was a kind of madness – a cyclical pattern I’d got myself trapped in.

So it’s wrong to think it was all Celeste’s fault. True, she had her depressions, her suicidal outbursts, but I had my manic fugues, too.

Until one day I got really drunk at a bar before the promised thunderstorm, and woke to find myself manacled in a cell. Apparently I’d gone prancing around the city stark naked, begging the lightning to make an end of me, and slashing with a steak knife at anyone who came near me.

They had to sedate me, and I ended up in a clinic under heavy medication for three or four months, while they gradually began to piece my mind back together.

When I got out, I was a wiser, sadder man. Or so I told myself. I loved my wife, and I was going to stand by her – no more excitement, no more release. Just steady dripping drizzle, no more paroxysms of rain.

And so it went for a year or two. Until, inevitably, it started up again. I’d get more and more enthusiastic about the things I was studying, learning – about the brilliance of certain young colleagues or students. And then would come the crash. Every time it seemed like the last time I could go through this process. I felt so wounded, damaged, diminished – nothing in me stayed unscarred by this brutal regimen.

In the end it came down to a simple choice. Live my life as a series of cresting highs and abominable lows, or dull myself down to one monotone level of grudging domesticity. Each time I chose the latter alternative. Each time I lapsed, through neglect or bravado, as the months went by, and persuaded myself I could lower the drug dosage and still function as a person.

Because I never really made the choice at all, I see that now.

Our unspoken fear, the whole time, was that our cycles would coincide some day. She’d go off the edge when I was at the height of one of my furies. Then who knew what might happen? Neither one of us would be in a state to safeguard the other. We kept open house for all the students in the college in hopes of avoiding that.

But inevitably guests go home, however much you press them to stay. The time comes when you’re alone together, and you look at each other, and you realise that you hardly recognise this person opposite you.

If you ever really knew them in the first place, that is.

Together Forever

How did we live? Uneasily, I would say. After that first withering blast of self-revelation, she backed off from intimate explorations of her past, preferring to concentrate on the here and now.

To be honest, she was never that much of a talker. Cleaning, cooking, organising the house – those little things were her forte.

She expected little from me, too. I helped her sometimes, then less and less as it didn’t seem to make any great difference to her.

The problem was, I never had any idea whether I was pleasing her or not. Was she happy? Was she unhappy to the point of desperation? How could one possibly tell?

She might just as well have been a doll or a clone (sorry – but that’s how I felt) for all the communication we shared.

Sometimes we would discuss ideas. My work was getting ahead. I’d finished my degree, got appointed to a new job, managed to move out of my box coffin on the fringes. We were living in more comfort now.

I’d talk about my work and try to get reactions from her. And you know, when I compelled her to it, she showed great insight and would strike invariably to the heart of the matter. Which is why I persisted, I guess.

I never hit her – shouted at her once or twice, I suppose (more, really, to be honest). She would never retaliate, but then I’d hear her sobbing late at night when she thought I was asleep, which negated the whole point of the enterprise. To break through. You understand? Perhaps not.

I asked her, once or twice, if she’d like to see her father again, but she just stared at me with those big doe-like eyes. I said we could go down and look for him (or better still, pay someone else to go down there for us). No reaction. She never mentioned that part of her life, which was one reason I felt so inordinately curious about it, I suppose.

And that’s how it went. For the first few years, at any rate. To all appearances we were a very close couple. Unmarried, of course. She had no identity papers, birth certificates, official proofs of existence, but those could have been retrieved or fabricated somehow, I suppose.

Then one day I came home from work to find the whole place in a mess.

It was as if a gang of robbers had been through the apartment. All the machines and monitors had been smashed. There was broken glass (mingled with blood) in every room. I called for her – no answer. I stepped gingerly into the chaos of our living room. Nothing. Checked all the other rooms. Nothing. Had she been kidnapped? I was on the point of calling the police, had actually highlighted them when I heard what sounded like a faint mewing noise from upstairs (we shared a roof garden now – I was prospering in my profession).

I followed the sound, went up, saw nothing – stars, the plants in their little rows, the parapet … the parapet! No, nothing visible down below. Then, turning around, crouched in the tiniest little corner of the wall, curled up like a hedgehog, naked as she was born, Celeste, the tiniest of sounds coming (no doubt unconsciously) from between her clenched teeth.

She was covered with blood, slicked over her like a second skin. She wouldn’t speak to me, but didn't really resist my attempts to uncoil her, check her for wounds and lacerations. There were a few cuts here and there – mainly on her feet, from the broken glass, but only superficial.

I hugged her, rocked her to and fro in my arms, put my jacket around her. She didn’t resist, didn’t respond.

Finally I had to call for help. The doctor, when he came, was sympathetic but nonplussed. By then I’d managed to get her into the bathroom and the shower. She was clean and clothed – but still acting like a catatonic ragdoll. He said it was beyond him – that they‘d have to take her in.

So that was the first time. The first of many. I came to be able to sense them approaching – like the metallic taste in the mouth you get sometimes before a thunderstorm. There were little hints in the air of her actions and her style. She’d be as polite and unassuming as ever right up until the crash. And then it’d come. She’d go berserk, rant and rave, destroy everything within reach (even, later, trying to hurt herself with any objects that came to hand).

Nothing – no treatment they could come up with – seemed to help. It was a like an irregular curse. Sometimes they drugged her like a zombie – sometimes they sparked her up to try and discharge the negative energy prematurely.

It was as if she was two people. I wasn’t sure which one was real. It wasn’t possible that both could be. Increasingly I suspected the real woman was the one I’d held in my arms that night on the roof. Sad beyond sobbing, naked and simple in the dark, bathed in her own sweat and blood.

So that was us. That was our happy little home. The frequency of her attacks varied greatly. Once we went for a couple of years without one. I began to think she was cured. Then, one day out with friends, I saw it start again. What’s worse, they saw it, too – everything that was most private between us dragged out into the light of common day.

It’s one thing to hear about the wife of a close colleague that she has to go to a clinic for a little rest from time to time. It’s another thing to watch her raving and smashing things, tearing off her clothes and trying to cut herself. I saw my friends and acquaintances – most of them, at any rate – turn into strangers at that moment.

Any outside invitations we received after that I took care to turn down. She never complained about that, either.

And what of me? How did I deal with all this? Was I a tower of strength, a shoulder to cry on, a saintly orderly mopping her fevered brow? Yes, most of the time I think I was. I say that without conceit. I have little enough reason to fel conceited about anything in my life, but I do think that I did as well as a man in my position could have done.

Or at any rate there’s nothing I can think of, even now, that we didn’t try.

But nobody can be on duty all the time. You can’t live on a cabin on the side of Vesuvius, perpetually waiting for the eruption, without some sort of release – some method of escape. The bouts of madness were hers. And mine?

Well, affairs, of course. A teacher has plenty of opportunities for those, generally speaking. Young students who mistake second-hand professional commonplaces for the voice of inspiration. In a crowd so large, there are bound to be a few who like you or develop a crush on you.

So I spent a fair amount of time and ingenuity arranging such little incidental matters – taking care that Celeste never heard about them. To this day I don’t know if she knew or not. Probably she did. It’s hard to believe that it ranked very high among the various demons tormenting her.

Worse, I suppose, was the drinking – and the late night skin parlours – and the drug haunts. I tried all those things, but my mainstay was (and remains) that traditional, banal thing of drinking to excess.

And yes, I would come home drunk, and maybe shout at her, demand she tell me what was on her mind, why we had to live like this, why she couldn’t simply love me, as human beings do, why she couldn’t tell me what to do to cure her? What magic potion, diamond tear, fragment from the giant’s heart, would be the key to tearing it out of her?

“It” — as if it were a kind of original sin, like a curse she'd been born with, or had been implanted with the day her mother died, or worse, at the moment she saw her father’s chamber of horrors – the artificial agony he'd created for the pleasure of others.

The Vivisectionist

On our way back to the surface, she started to tell me parts of her story. I knew enough even then not to prompt her with questions on what seemed like little inconsistencies here and there. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the fact that it was pitch dark so much of the time I doubt she could ever have brought herself to tell it at all.

Her mother she didn’t know – had never known. She died in childbirth. Not down here, in the caverns, but aboveground, where her father worked as a cosmetic surgeon in one of the larger hospitals.

She grew up, then, under a kind of shadow. There’d been no other children to shield her from the sheer intensity of her father’s sense of loss, and the only human tenderness she’d experienced at all had come from the long succession of Nannies and babysitters who looked after her from time to time - none for very long.

They moved about a lot. First luxury apartments, then houses in the suburbs, then smaller apartments back in town as his career gradually began to suffer from the personal disintegration he was undergoing.

He drank, and took a variety of drugs too, she thought, but she seldom saw him intoxicated. Nor did he ever strike her or act abusively towards her. His fault was, in fact, more in the other direction – coldness, distance, a reluctance to reach out to any other human being for fear of being hurt once more.

When no more hospitals would employ him, he relied on his private practice, until that too began to shrink. By now (she thought) he must have had substantial debts from gambling, and she began to notice a rougher element hanging around the house.

Then, very abruptly one day, he came to her school and took her away with him to a small building on the fringes of the crater region (that region we were now traversing like a pair of sleepwalkers).

Her formal education stopped there, but of course there were online tutors still, and now her father seemed to be making a conscious effort to be more attentive. Worryingly so, in fact. He would hug her for hours at a stretch, was unable to let her out of his sight for more than the shortest periods, and generally showed an almost hysterical desire to be with her continuously.

There was one other girl she knew, still, from the old days – one girl who kept up with her through emails and texts – where all her other friends had dropped away. She was a shy, sullen girl, with few other friends, and Celeste must have bulked large in her personal pantheon.

At any rate, one day, when the loneliness was bad, she asked to be allowed to visit her friend.

The first response was a flat negative, then (when she persisted) a listing of the obstacles to such a plan – the difficulties of transport – the possible reluctance of her friend’s parents to allow such a visit on a weeknight – a whole series of half-hearted reasons.

She’d been trained already by life to expect little from it, so at this point she gave up pestering him. Her father must have thought about it later himself, though, because a few days later he gave her permission to ask for an invitation to visit.

And so it happened. One Saturday afternoon her father took up on the skyways to her friend’s stop, then arranged to come back and collect her in a few hours, retiring discreetly himself into the crowd when he saw her friend, Jeanette, and her two parents coming.

Her little friend seemed happy enough to receive a visit.

The two chattered away about the doings of mutual acquaintances, the music they were listening to, the entertainment feeds they were downloading. As time went by, though, the conversation began to dry up.

Her friend had fault to find with such a lot of things – her hair, her clothes, her appearance generally was falling behind the norms of pre-teen fashion (perhaps the most rigidly caste-governed age of all). Her tone grew peevish, quarrelsome.

Celeste was puzzled and hurt. She hardly knew what to make of this change of heart, though it was true that Jeanette had never really been at the centre of her circle before the move. Perhaps she’d felt overlooked then, was keen to exact revenge?

Celeste, a direct, simple-hearted girl, asked her if this was so, and apologised for any unconscious pain she’d caused.

“As if you could hurt me! With a father like yours …” the girl sneered.

A father like what? Celeste had no idea what her friend was talking about, but it was true (now she came to think of it) that her father no longer entertained at all - even the more dubious friends and acquaintances who used to come by the house had all dried up. He seemed more nervous in crowds, constantly glancing round. Was it possible he was afraid of being followed?

Jeanette would elaborate no further – possibly she knew no more than a few vague innuendoes handed onto her by her parents, but the so-long-anticipated visit broke up in disarray.

Waiting for her father at the skyways station, Celeste determined that she would find out what was wrong. She couldn’t bear the finger of blame to be pointed at him unjustly – and if he had done anything wrong, she’d rather know what than continue to live in this atmosphere of suspicion and distrust.

Her father had never evaded a direct question of hers. God knows she hadn’t asked him very many, but be that as it may, he’d always done his best to answer her fully and frankly.

Her first approaches were direct, accordingly. She asked him what he did.

“You know that, sweetie. I’m a surgeon.”

“But you don’t work at the hospital anymore.”

“No, I’m in private practice now.”

‘Why did we move? Why don’t you ever see any of your old friends anymore?”

“It’s more about their not wanting to see me, I’m afraid, darling. You’ll understand better when you’re older, but what I’m doing now is … not what I did before.”

“What is it?”

“I … can’t tell you that, sweetie. Maybe when you’re older. It’s just for a brief time. Just until I can get clear of … certain obligations. I just don’t want any of it to touch your life.”

She told him then what her friend had said, and he nodded and gave her a hug.

"I was afraid of that,” he said. “That's the reason I wasn’t keen on the whole idea of this meeting. For the moment it’s best that we keep to ourselves – just for a short time. Just till I’m over this hump …”

But he didn’t deny any of what Jeanette had said.

Celeste tried hard to live in a state of doubt, but it was beyond her power. The subject preyed on her mind continuously. She began to examine her father’s clothes, so immaculate formerly, now growing gradually ever more shabby and down-at–heels. Nothing. Nothing except for the shoes, which occasionally had a slightly red sheen, as if they’d been cursorily wiped clean of some liquid.

He was a surgeon, though, which might explain it. Perhaps the clinics he was working at now had less exacting standards of hygiene than the hospital – perhaps it was blood on his shoes. The moment she thought of this she became convinced that it was true. That was the big mystery solved, then: he was working as a black market surgeon for people outside the law – possibly performing abortions for the socially prominent. Such scandals were familiar to her from the feeds.

And yet, and yet … why the extravagant lengths to which he took concealment? A bit of black market work was surely nothing to hang one’s head in shame about? How could that be the whole secret of what he was doing?

One day she cracked. Ignorance, she told herself, was infinitely worse than knowledge of whatever kind. She would follow him and find out where he was going.

And so she did.

He wasn’t easy to track. She’d hardly gone beyond the confines of their building grounds for months, and the city’s underworld was dark and bewildering, Luckily her father ambled rather than strode – reluctant, almost, it seemed, to reach his destination.

It was a low door in the side of a dark wall.

Her father knocked and a pair of eyes appeared at a roughly-hewn slit in the thick iron. The door creaked open. She could hardly follow him in there.

She waited, indecisively, watching the people come and go around the door.

The ones who came were generally rich-looking and well-dressed. Couples in furs and Italian suits, packs of high rolling business-drones … was her father gambling again? This seemed the kind of illegal place where illicit bets were made.

But no-one came out. That was the point. There must be another exit somewhere, or else they were all gathering in there for some purpose.

Finally, she took her courage in her hands and went up to the door and knocked.

The eyes appeared.

“Yeah, girlie.”

“My friends have all gone in without me. Can you let me in?”

The eyes considered. A young girl, not too ill-dressed. But definitely underage …

“Nah,” he said, but at that moment another voice interposed.

“Oh, there you are – I told you she’d make it.”

“Yes, you told me, dear, but I still didn’t believe you.”

The speakers were a young couple, evidently somewhat the worse for wear, who’d presumably overheard her timid approach and wanted to help her out.

The conversation now turned into a series of rapid whispers between the young man and the owner of the eyes, which culminated in the exchange of a few credit-points on a keypad.

The young, blonde woman, sparkling and fizzy like the champagne-flute she was still holding in one hand, pressed Celeste to her, and said “Don’t worry, darling, Peter’s awfully good at this sort of thing. He’s awfully good at every sort of thing, if you want to know ...”

And so she got into the club.

It was so dark inside that it was difficult to make much out. The young couple ("Call us Honey and Peter ...") swept her along with them, though, so she saw only enough to give her the sense of a place where normal standards were offended – ghostly pictures and naked bodies looming up in the gloom. It seemed almost like a dream, a replica of the kinds of places she’d imagined her daddy gambling in when she was a little girl.

Finally they reached the room.

“You’ll love this, Honey – you too, girlie. What is your name, anyway? Selene? Celeste? Neither of you will sleep tonight, I’ll bet, but you’ll never forget this show. This guy’s the best.”

They were seated on a hard wooden bench at the side of a small auditorium – rather like an old-fashioned operating theatre, wooden benches banked up towards the ceiling, and a central metal-floored space with a table and some screens.

"What is this? Did you bring us here to watch an operation?” giggled Honey. “I mean … I can do that at home anytime on the medical channel.”

"Oh, it’s an operation, all right – but not the kind you’ve ever seen. Unnecessary surgery, that’s the idea.”

“Unnecessary?” faltered Celeste.

"Yeah, doll. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to plenty of those clubs where they have catpeople and rhinoceros men and all the rest – guys and girls who’ve gone to a surgeon and got him to turn them into freaks. There’s not even anything illegal about that. But this is different.”

“How different?”

But then whe was shushed,the lights went down, and the show began.

You’ll have to understand, Eva, that much of this story I pieced together long afterwards. Only part of it was told me at the time, as we were slowly climbing up through the darkness of that hidden kingdom. I could never gather just what the show had been.

One thing is certain, the participants weren’t human.

Not that they were aliens. Not that at all – they were your kind of people: androids. Clans, you call yourself. You know how some people are about breaching social taboos. Cosmetic surgery is pointless, for them, when it’s done according to someone’s own desire. I gather some very rich people had got together and formed a club whose main aim was to have bodies surgically altered in front of them into grotesque, misshapen, monstrous forms.

No-one human was involved, of course. They knew better than that. And all the spectators knew it, too. Or at any rate chose to believe it. But what difference does that make to a young girl who’s standing watching her father cut with a scalpel into living flesh, the flesh of bodies held down on a stainless-steel operating table without any anaesthetics – screaming and spouting blood till it drenches most of the audience with red?

It was as if she’d entered hell and he was the chief devil. The monsters he’d already created, some still in their crude bandages, some in animal hides, with wings and fur and extra eyes, were all around, holding down new victims, hanging upside-down from the rafters (not that she told me that - I gleaned those details from her persistent nightmares, later).

She screamed, of course. Screamed and could not stop screaming. And finally, as the commotion grew, he lifted his eyes and saw her – his own daughter in the middle of the world he’d created.

It was the last thing he saw. It was the act of a moment for him to reach up with his scalpel and neatly slice out his eyes. This she told me with a kind of deadpan emphasis, as if she in fact approved.

That was the end of it for him, in any case. What use was a blind surgeon to the people at the club? The two of them awoke (drugged, presumably, by one of the other doctors there when they wouldn't quiet down) to find themselves lying, scrubbed and clean beside a small stack of their possessions. They’d been evicted from their apartment, and the money he had would buy them only a few days in a hotel.

And that was when she'd led her father underground, to live wherever they could in the dark ragged fiefdoms under the earth, peddling his services as a wiseman and a healer – a position constantly undermined by the superstitious fear of blindness which had developed down below.

Now that she was of an age to sell, rather than simply use casually, their present tribe had been hawking her about for quite some time.

The chance to fob her off on a surface dweller must have appealed to them. They held her father in some awe -- the myth of the blind shaman, in close communication with the spirit world, dies hard -- and therefore would not go directly against his will. Since he’d approved the union, here she was.

Searching

There was a way in. That much I knew. Whether there was any way out again I wasn’t so sure.

You have to understand that the city then wasn’t the way it is now. There were still large tracts of territory beyond the network of streets which weren’t city – open farmland and trees – mountains even, for all I know. The blanketing effect wasn’t complete yet.

As a result, a lot of what went on underground still had connections with the surface. There were chasms and gaps in the barricades and plenty of ways to interact – if you wanted to – with the tribes that lived down there.

I’d been down before. Who hadn’t? It was a dare at school to go in a few yards. Later on, as teenagers, we would bargain for drugs and hooch at the various parley points. But we never went far, we never went alone, and we always took note of the time when we went in.

You’ll imagine, then, that the prospect of going underground, beneath the radar, to look for one waif-like girl was not exactly something that I relished. But I had no choice. She was on my mind, now, and I knew from bitter experience that once things get on my mind, I have no choice but to pursue them.

I’d haunted that same street corner, the one where we’d met, but she hadn’t been back there - as far as I could tell. I’d given up trying to keep my search for her discreet after the first couple of weeks. Now I’d taken to badgering the various peddlers and small criminals who proliferated in the barrios – the ones who would listen to me, at any rate – or who showed signs of understanding what I was saying. Languages had long since started to proliferate strangely underground, away from the clipped nasal tones of the official databases.

There were other girls. That was what I focussed on. I had to pay them to stop and talk to me – but even with money in hand they were as cagey as wild animals. I had to take them back home in several cases before they would agree to listen.

I suppose, eventually, that word must have got around, because as I was walking disconsolately home one night, after a hard day in the archives, I heard a voice say “Hey! You the one?”

It was a small raggy boy – bug-eyed, dirt-encrusted, crouched almost invisibly at the corner of an alley – one of the darker ones you tended to go around.

“Hey what?” I replied, a little brusquely. I was tired of tbe whole business by now. Tired of being harassed, tired of having something on my mind which didn’t fit the scheme – the scheme of get ahead and I’m all right, Jack.

“Hey you, you looking for a girl, right?”

“Maybe. Not just any girl, though.”

“You the one?”

“The one what?”

“That one what’s been looking?”

I can’t reproduce his accent – so guttural and quick. If I hadn’t been talking so much with them recently, I’d hardly have understood a word he was saying. And yet these were clearly his company manners, the voice he put on to communicate with strangers.

“Maybe I am. Does that mean that you know where she is?’

“Maybe. What’s it worth?”

“Credit – what else? A taste now and the rest when I see her. I don’t have it all on me, either, so if you’re fooling with me you get nothing but the taste.”

“Fair enough. Less go.”

And off he scuttled, like a little four-legged spider, across the rubble scree and down into the darkness.

“Hold on, hold on …”

So our journey began.

As I say, I’d been in a short way before, but I had no idea of the extent of it. I could see, now, why the eyes of these underdwellers grew so large and bright, and why they tended increasingly to come out only at night. The sole illumination for kilometres at a time was small cracks in the paving, radiating down from unimaginable heights above.

Luckily, in the damper regions, luminescent glow-worms tended to gather, and were treated as taboo by the innumerable wandering tribes. Otherwise I’m sure I would have slipped a dozen times as we worked our way round slippery ravines and steaming rockpools of waste.

My guide was surefooted, but not really alert, at first, to the fact that there were places a small boy could squeeze through which might trap a grown man. A few bad experiences in cramped sewer pipes soon taught him to lead me by a more circuitous route, though; somehow he always seemed to find a way around.

We camped for the night in a little back adit to one of the tunnels. Or rather, he flung himself down and said, “We sleeping here,” suiting the action to the word.

I sat there wide-eyed in the dark for what seemed hours, then years, then thousands of years … waiting for the light, I suppose. But no light would ever penetrate down here, not to this lowest level of that cancerous thing we’d created – the world-blanketing city – that Babel Tower we’d built up in our pride.

Next day we reached his tribe.

I think he’d hoped to sneak in and out on the quiet, alerting only the girl to our presence. He knew her by sight, he said, but not to speak to. I couldn’t really work out what kinds of interlocking family and clan-systems there were down here, but I gathered her people were more fringe-dwelling even than his – hence her extreme emaciation when I met her.

His plan, then, was to wait by the path where the women came and went to wash their clothes, and accost her if and when we found her alone.

Of course we were spotted (or rather I was), shrill voices rising in the dark at this lurking male; of course I was sprung on and dragged out in the open with kicks and curses; of course the boy melted away the moment the disturbance started (he never told me his name, and my description of him – small, furtive, bug-eyed - could hardly have been terribly incriminating).

They would have slit me open then and there. The knives were out and burnished. I was babbling like a madman, promising them money, help – increased political representation for all I know – and then I said the name “Celeste.”

At once they fell quiet. There was an older man to one side of the little group. He might have been blind – or at any rate so adapted to the dark that the whites of his eyes were all one could see – they pushed me in his direction with many blows, and bent me down before him.

I said it again: “Celeste.”

He nodded.

Upon which they set on me with sticks and stones, and drove me like a steer far from that place, kicking and shouting and cursing – spurring me on when I didn’t run fast enough. They didn’t seem concerned to kill me, simply to lose me in the maze, I thought – nor did they drive me over the edge of a precipice, which would have been easy enough.

Hours later, when the din had died down, the hunters gone back to their tribe, I collapsed in in a small corner of masonry and started to cry, great choking sobs coming up from the depths of me.

As I lay there in the pitch dark a small slim hand took hold of mine.

First Night

What were my feelings that first evening? Cruel, I suppose. First of all I wanted to see if she actually would wait for me. Rather relishing the idea of her standing there in the cold, hesitating to solicit others on the half-chance that I might come back again and that my intentions might be … what? Hardly honourable. Profitable enough to her to make it worth her while to stay.

Dinner, I guess, was at the forefront of her mind – the fact that she waited a sign of the difficulty she was finding even in getting enough to eat ...

Did I want sex from her? Not especially, I don’t think. She was so scrawny and thin that it was hard to anticipate any pleasure from it, but again – I don’t deny it – the fact (I was sure) that she was fearing and anticipating it gave me a little flush of satisfaction.

The pleasure I anticipated was in treating her well enough to keep my conscience smug and beaming, whilst secretly enjoying her fear of the moment when I would force her to strip and prostrate herself for me.

But it didn’t go like that. It didn’t work out like that at all. In retrospect, I suppose my mistake was in thinking that I could control the situation in any way: control myself, for one thing; but most of all, control her, preprogram the actions of another human being: a good human being – kind and gentle and full of sympathy for others – almost an empathic genius, I’d say now.

I didn’t even look round until I reached the sealed hatch of my coffin apartment.

“You’ll have to climb in first,” I said. "The mechanism is keyed to my wristchip, and it won’t stay open after I’ve gone through."

She nodded, wary now, scenting a trap.

I opened the hatch and in she crawled.

You know what men are. You above all people -- maybe that’s not something I can call you, really – not a person, but not a thing exactly, either – you of all creatures can understand what men are. I checked her out as she crawled under my nose – checked to see if she was wearing underwear, eyeing up her thin legs and her little bony behind.

She didn’t try to conceal them at all, coyly gather her rags around her. How could she, really? She crawled in as if it hadn’t occurred to her to do otherwise, as if a simple action could be performed simply in this world we’ve made for ourselves.

“Food’s in the cupboard,” I grunted, falling forwards on the mattress, as the hatch swung shut behind me.

I’d intended something more ceremonious, no doubt – some showing off of the glories of my boxed-in manor – but I was far too drunk. Let her deal with the intricacies of the situation, I thought. I’m a kind man, I thought, I won’t make her fuck me before I sleep.

I woke up, once, to see a tiny light off in the corner. I could hear a scrunching sound coming from there, as if a little mouse were gnawing at some crumbs. To be honest, I doubt if there’d been much more in the house for her to scavenge.

There was a bucket by the mattress, and I was naked. She must have undressed and washed me (so far as she could), and – from the reek of it – cleaned up some vomit, too.

Then she’d left me to it. My head was whirling still, in that way that tells you that you’ll regret the waking up tomorrow morning. That whatever has gone down will soon be coming up again, and that any attempts not to mix your drinks and to balance them with copious draughts of water have been in vain. The throbbing head you’ll soon be feeling is already shaping up for you, but hasn’t hit you yet.

And when I woke next morning she was gone.

It was late, it must have been almost midday. My head (as I’d predicted) was throbbing like an open wound, and my whole body felt convulsed with illness and nausea. "Never again," I resolved -- as if I didn't say the same thing every week, relapsing again as the days unfolded their manifold boredoms and indignities – "Never again am I going to put myself through this. It isn’t worth it!"

And yet – this time, though I was drenched in sweat, sweat that had soaked right through the mattress – I wasn’t festooned in puke. My clothes weren’t swaddled around me like ineffectual towels. I was (comparatively) clean and fresh. There was a glass of water by my elbow which I proceeded to knock over before I could sip on it – but still … This was undoubtedly an improvement.

“Fuck! The girl!”

I remembered her then. Made a brief sweep with my eyes to see what she had taken. Fair rent for a night spent nursing the dead-drunk, one might have thought. Even I scarcely grudged her some kind of toll. The only question was what? The printed books?

No, they all looked undisturbed in their little fileboxes.

The clothes were worth practically nothing, but at least they lacked very obvious rips and holes. I thought at first she’d contented herself with them, till I discovered they’d been put away – folded - in the chest-of-drawers.

That folding was almost too much. Had I really entertained an angel unawares? An angel who’d taken the time to sweep and tidy, an angel who didn’t want payment? Of any kind? Or was it my soul she’d stolen?

There was nothing else to steal! That was the point. To be sure, she’d eaten some of my food, but there was so pitifully little that the wonder was she could have taken any of it – there was still some left for me: enough and more than enough for all the breakfast I’d be eating, at any rate.

I began to feel more curious about her. Perhaps I should have brought her back here at once last night, I thought. Before the long hours of drinking had turned me speechless and retching. Who was she? Where did she live? Would I ever see her again?

Her actions had succeeded in arousing my curiosity (I won’t say my compassion, as I’m not sure I possess such a thing – certainly didn’t then, at any rate). I felt a strange desire to see her again: a strong desire.

Not that I was going to search. Oh no, bad enough that I’d started taking an interest in another human being – especially a beggar girl whom my friends would laugh at and whom everyone would assume I’d taken home for sex. Any attempts to look for her, ask after her, would be fatal – alerting her and everyone else to my deviancy.

I would have to search by affecting not to search. Wander as if at random through such streets as she might frequent – speak to her (if I deigned to speak at all) in as offhand a manner as I could manage.

And yet I did strongly desire to see her. That was the fact of the matter. And who in the whole wide world would have cared if I’d gone after her to my heart’s content? The burning searchlight of my egotism persuaded me that my doings were at least worthy of gossip (possibly they were), but how I could have managed to conclude that I must avoid all occasions for malicious inference is beyond me.

I’ve ended up a worse pariah than if I’d set out from the first to make myself a moral leper: an outcast shunned by everyone – everyone human that is – that knows him.

Strange Meeting

It was a Friday evening, I think. It must have been, in fact, because that was the night I always went out, after a long week slogging away, plugged into the library stacks. I was a poverty-stricken student in those days (I was about to say a poor student, but I was never that – never a poor student. No, I was always the one at the front of the auditorium, jostling to ask the right questions).

There was a long route and there was a short route from my bedsit to the nearest pub, the place where I usually met my friends to plan the course of the night – whether on to the narco dens, the virtual reality palaces, or just getting shitfaced in some anonymous bar. The last was my secret preference, but I didn’t want the rest of them to see just how dependent I'd become on these regular debauches. For the most part they were rich kids slumming – waiting for some distant parental unit to take them safely back under tow.

She was waiting for me at the corner of the alley. Not for me, precisely, of course – for anyone who might come by. I could see at once the kind of girl she was. Big eyes, an emaciated body, ragged clothes – part of the fallout of the narcolepsy laws.

“Please,” she said. “Please.” Holding out her hand.

Normally I would have hurried on by. That was one of the unfortunate side-effects of taking the short way. One had to pass by the dark chasms of the forgotten city – the one gradually expanding and proliferating in the shade of all that was bright and glossy and endlessly renewed above.

This time, however, I stopped. I don’t know why. I’ve interrogated my motives a thousand times, and I still can’t come up with a clear answer. She was attractive, yes -- in a kind of fey, artless way – but that wouldn’t normally have been enough for me. I was very keen on intellectual stimulation and the true companionship of minds in those days, sombre little prig that I was, and wouldn’t have given the time of day to any mere party girl who tried to distract me from what I fondly imagined to be the dark intricacies of my midnight studies.

Not that any of them did.

“What’s in it for me?” I asked, roughly enough, imagining that would be enough to bring the conversation to an end.

“I … don’t know,” she replied. “What would you like?”

There was an indescribable delicacy in the way she spoke, as if she were some angel fallen into the midst of this desolation. There were sections of the city (still are, I suppose) where the very foundation stones had given away, opening up huge caverns and pools with waterfalls, framed by impenetrable fences of iron. She’d come creeping up from one of them, I supposed. How could she seem so clean, so unsullied by her bestial surroundings?

I suppose the worst romantics are those who pride themselves on their unrelenting realism.

“Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Celeste,” she said, letting her skinny hand drop to her side. I could see the emaciation of her body through a rip in the side of her dress – pitiful half-starved ribs protruding through the ivory skin.

“Well, Celeste, I’m going out on the piss tonight. D’you understand that? I’m going to spend all night getting roaring, fall-down drunk, and then I’m going to stagger home, possibly in this direction, possibly in another …” I’d already had a bit to drink before leaving home, which no doubt accounts for my elevated mood. I suppose I already felt something for her – a bemused half-contempt, mixed with a tiny tincture of pity and even (I suppose) some lust spawned by the sight of her skinny, half-starved body.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir. I’m not 'sir' to the likes of you, even if you are a little whore or a beggar … and you’re both, aren’t you, Celeste?”

“Y—yes”

She seemed honestly to find it more difficult to leave off the “sir” than to admit to her status in her eyes. Humble she always was, my little Celeste.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

It might even have been true. God knows she didn’t look a day over fourteen, with her little screwed up face and those huge, childlike eyes, eyes like the saucers of a tea-set, but with depths of blue within them: eyes captured in a perpetual flash of surprise.

“D’you want to wait for me, Celeste? Wait for me right here?”

“If you like.”

I could see that she’d be off in a second if I didn’t increase the offer.

“There’s a bed for the night in it for you, little girl. There’s some late supper and possibly some breakfast tomorrow. I might even give you some money, though God knows I’ve little enough of that for myself.”

Silence. I could see her thinking it over, sizing me up. A little angel she might be, but to live this long she must have learnt at least some survival traits. Whether or not she waited was nothing to me, of course. I’d only suggested it to get out of making any immediate decision about her. Why had I stopped to talk to her in the first place? And yet those few instants when her eyes were playing over me were some of the most intensely felt of my life – it was as if I were before the Judgement Seat, with some incomprehensible deity scanning my very soul. Looking in and finding me wanting, I cannot but conclude.

“All right, I’ll wait,” she said, and it was as if she were conferring a favour on me by choosing to stay. How had she turned the tables like that? I’d still like to know that, I’d like to know that about you, about all of you ...

Anyway, the rest is quickly enough told. I met my friends, as I said before, and we agreed to hole up for the night in some gin palace. I was morose and touchy the whole evening through, though – little disposed to talk, as the one thing most on my mind was the thing I was most determined not to share with them – so they finally concerted among themselves to go off to the virtual palace, leaving me soaking grimly at the bar.

I was hardly in the best of humours when I got back to my section of town, then. It was a difficult climb around the rocks and thickets of rusty steel – old monorails and mars-rockets, scavenged for scrap by the underdwellers – and it shocked me further to find her still there.

I’d been wondering all night if she’d wait for me, hoping against hope that she would, but trying to deny to myself the whole time that that was what I was hoping for.

Accordingly I tried to make as light of it as possible when I saw her leaning against a broken railing – her eyes half-closed with sleepiness.

“Come then if you’re coming,” I barked at her, and hurried off as fast as I could stagger-shuffle (I’d had a bad fall earlier in the evening, which had left an oozing cut on my leg, and of course the huge amount of alcohol I’d drunk had left me only barely perambulatory).

She fell in behind me. And that, Eva, is how I met my future wife.

May 28, 1935

I've just sent him the vital letter. Query: will he see it as urgent?

We'll see. If I don't get an answer before this evening, I'll take 25 pills and drift gently off into another world.

He has so often told me he is madly in love with me, but what does that mean when I haven't had a nice word from him in three months?

So he's had his head full of politics all this time, but surely it's time he relaxed a bit. What about last year? Didn't Roehm and Italy give him a lot of worries, but in spite of all that he found time for me.

Maybe the present situation is far more difficult for him, nevertheless a few kind words conveyed through the Hoffmanns wouldn't have been so much to ask.

I'm afraid there is something behind it. I'm certainly not to blame. Absolutely not.

Maybe it's another woman, not the Valkyrie - that would be a bit hard to swallow. But there are so many other women.

Are there any other explanations? I can't think of any.

God, I'm afraid he won't give me his answer today. If only somebody would help me - it's all so terribly depressing.

Perhaps my letter reached him at the wrong moment. Perhaps I shouldn't have written.

Anyway, the uncertainty is worse than just ending it all.

I've made up my mind to take 35 pills this time, so it will be "dead certain."

If only someone would call me.

May 10, 1935

As Frau Hoffmann so affectionately and tactlessly informed me, he's found a replacement for me. She's called the Valkyrie, and that's what she looks like, legs included. He likes vital statistics of this kind, but if she is really like that, he'll soon make her thin with worry unless, like Charly, the more troubles she has, the fatter she gets. Charly's problems only stimulate her appetite.

If Frau H's gossip is true. I think it's terrible that he should say nothing to me about it. After all, he should know me well enough to realize that I'd never put any obstacles in the way if he suddenly discovered his heart belonged to someone else. What happens to me is no concern of his.

I'm going to wait till June 3rd, when it will be three months since our last encounter. Then I'll ask for an explanation. Can anyone call that asking too much?

The weather's so wonderful, and I'm the mistress of the greatest man in Germany and in the world, but all I'm doing is sitting here and gazing at the sun through a window. How can he have so little compassion as to leave me here, bowing to strangers?

Man proposes, etc. And as you make your bed ... It's all my fault, but sometimes it's nice to put at least some of the blame on others. The long fast will end, and then everything will taste so much better.

It's a pity it had to be spring.

April 29, 1935

I am in big trouble, very big trouble. I keep on doing my Coué exercises: "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better," but it's no use. The house is ready, but I'm not allowed to see him. Love has been (temporarily?) left out of his plans. Now that he's in Berlin again, I've thawed out a bit. There were days last week when I burst into tears over tiny things. Especially because I stayed home alone over Easter.

I'm scrimping and saving. I get on everyone's nerves because I want to sell everything I have. Beginning with a dress, a camera, all the way down to a theatre ticket.

Anyway, things have to improve. My debts are not so large, after all.

April 1, 1935

Yesterday he invited us to dinner at the Four Seasons. I sat with him for three hours and we didn't exchange a single word. At the end he handed me an envelope with money in it, just as he's done so often before. It would have been much nicer if he had enclosed a greeting or a loving word. I would have been so pleased if he had. But he didn't think of it.

Why doesn't he come to dine with the Hoffmanns? If he did, I would at least have him to myself for a few minutes. I hope he doesn't come to see me any more - at least until the little house is ready.

March 16, 1935

He's left for Berlin again. If only I didn't get so crazy when I think about how rarely I see him! After all, it's pretty obvious that he's not really interested in me when he has so much political work to do.

Today I am going to the Zugspitze with Gretel, and perhaps I'll calm down a bit from this madness.

In the past everything's turned out for the best sooner or later - perhaps it'll be the same this time.

March 11, 1935

There's only one thing I want. I want to be sick to my stomach, and not to have to hear anything more about him for at least a week. Why doesn't something happen to me? Why do I have to go through all this? If only I had never set eyes on him! I am utterly miserable. I'm going to go out and get some more sleeping pills and drug myself, and then I won't have to think about it so much.

Why doesn't that Devil take me with him? It'd be much better with him than it is here on my own.

I waited for three hours in front of the Carlton, and had to watch him buying flowers for Ondra and inviting her to dinner. [That was just my mad imagination -- March 16th.]

He only needs me for certain things, otherwise it doesn't work for him. This is idiotic.

When he says he loves me, it only means he loves me at that particular moment. Like his promises, which he never keeps. Why does he torment me like this, when he could finish it all off so easily?

February 18, 1935

Yesterday he came quite unexpectedly, and we had a delightful evening.

The nicest thing is that he is thinking of taking me away from the shop and - but I had better not get too excited about it yet - he may give me a little house. I simply mustn't let myself think about it. It would be marvellous. I wouldn't have to open the door to our "beloved customers," and go on being a shop assistant. Dear God, grant that this may really happen not in some distant future, but soon.

Poor Charly is ill and won't be able to come with me to Berlin. But perhaps that's for the best after all. He can be very rude to her sometimes, and that would make her even more unhappy.

I am so infinitely happy that he loves me so much, and I pray that it will always be like this. It won't be my fault if he ever stops loving me.

I am terribly unhappy that I can't write to him. These notes must serve as the receptacle for my sorrows.

He came on Saturday. On Saturday evening there was a Ball in the Town Hall. Frau Schwarz gave me a box, so I absolutely had to go since I'd already accepted. Well, I spent a few wonderfully delightful hours with him until 12 o'clock and then with his permission I spent two hours at the ball.

On Sunday he promised I could see him. I telephoned to the Osteria and left a message to say that I was waiting to hear from him. He simply went off and refused Hoffmann's invitation to coffee and dinner. I suppose there are two sides to every question. Perhaps he wanted to be alone with Dr. G., who was here, but he should have let me know. At Hoffmann's I felt I was sitting on hot coals, expecting him to arrive every moment.

In the end we went to the railroad station, as he suddenly decided he had to leave. We were just in time to see the last lights of the train disappearing. Hoffmann left the house too late, so I couldn't even say good-bye to him. Perhaps I am being too gloomy, I hope I am, but he is not coming again for another two weeks. Until then I'll be miserable and restless. I don't know why he should be angry with me. Perhaps it's because of the ball, but he did give his permission.

I'm racking my brains to find out why he left without saying good-bye.

The Hoffmanns have given me a ticket to the masquerade this evening, but I'm not going. I'm far too unhappy.

February 15, 1935

It sounds as if the idea of going to Berlin is actually going to come off. However, I won't believe it until I am really in the Reich's Chancellery. Let's hope everything turns out for the best.

It's a pity Herta can't come with me instead of Charly. With Herta I could be sure of a few happy days. I imagine there'll be a good deal of bickering, and I don't believe he's likely to show Charly his nicer side.

I refuse to get excited about it, but if everything goes all just right, it'll be wonderful. I really really hope that all goes well.

February 11, 1935

He came to see me, but no sign of of a dog - or anything else, for that matter. He didn't even ask me what I wanted for my birthday. So I bought some jewellery for myself. A necklace, earrings, and a matching ring, all for 50 marks. Very pretty, and I hope he likes them. If he doesn't, then he should choose something for me himself.

February 6, 1935

I think this must be the right day to begin this extra-special diary. I've now reached the happy age of 23. No, happy is not really the word. Right now I'm far from happy.

The truth is that I had pretty big ideas about the significance of this day: If I owned a dog I would not feel so lonely, but I suppose that is asking too much.

Frau Schaub came as an ambassador, bringing flowers and telegrams. The result is that my office looks like a florist's and smells like a funeral chapel.

I suppose I'm ungrateful, but I did want to be given a dachshund. And I don't have one. Perhaps I'll get one next year, or much later, when it'll be more appropriate for a budding old maid.

What's important is not to give up hope. I should have learned to be patient by now.

Today I bought two lottery tickets, because I had a feeling that it would be now or never - they were both duds. So I am not going to be rich after all. And there's nothing I can do about it.

Today I was going to Zugspitze with Herta, Gretl, Ilse, and Mutti, and I would have had a wonderful time, for it's always best when other people are enjoying themselves, too. But nothing came of it. This evening I'm going to have dinner with Herta. What else can you do, when you are a little single woman of 23? So I shall end my birthday "with gluttony and drunkenness." I think this is what he would want me to do.

Dogs

His 'n' hers

friends

wolf-eyes

The Hotel

Dear E,

He doesn’t seem to want to leave the hotel.

When he woke up this morning, the snow was thick on the ground, and he declared he had no intention of slipping and sliding through it to visit the shops and galleries this city is famous for.

“I wouldn’t be able to see them anyway. Let’s just have breakfast together and see what we feel like later.”

He ate a lot more than he usually does – eggs and bacon and coffee and orange juice – and generally seemed more cheerful.

I asked him if he wanted to go over his talk for the conference, but he said there’d be plenty of time for that later on, maybe on the plane.

For now, he said, he’d just like to talk to me.

“What about, sir?”

“Well, about dropping the sir, for a start. We’ve talked about that before.”

“Yes. But then you give me orders, and I have to call you sir.”

“But I don’t like to think of that way, all this master-servant business? Can’t we just talk as friends?”

“I’ve never had a friend.”

“What do you mean you’ve never had a friend? What about that bitch at the gallery, that Marta? She talked about you like a long-lost daughter.”

“Marta was good to me, but she was my mistress, not a friend.”

“What is a friend, then, in your view?”

“A friend cannot compel you to do things.”

“But what if your master or mistress chooses not to compel you to do things, asks you instead, consults your opinion on things? Isn’t that more friendly?”

I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. After a while he dropped his eyes.

“I know you hate me. I know you feel absolutely no desire for me at all, and yet I force you to do these things for me … I know I was a complete bastard to you yesterday, moaning and complaining the whole time … but, I’m blind, Eva, do you understand that? There’s snow outside, but I can’t see it. It’s cosy and warm in here, but I can’t see any of it. I can’t see you, and yet I know you’re very beautiful. Everyone says so.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“But you don’t love me either. I know that sounds ridiculous. I bought you. I have absolutely no right to demand anything of you – you cook and clean and even share my bed, but that’s all out of duty. You never wanted to.”

“Sometimes …”

“Sometimes what?”

“Sometimes I feel confused. No one has ever talked to me the way you do. No one ever really did talk to me before. They gave me orders, told me to get undressed, to clean the floor, to write their letters for them … but they never wanted to talk to me.”

“Do you like it, talking? Being talked to like a person, not a thing?”

“You keep on asking me what I like, what I don’t like. I don’t like anything. I don’t not like anything. I do what I’m told. If you tell me to talk to you I talk to you. If you tell me to roll on top of you I’ll roll on top of you …”

“But you say you feel confused by the way I act.”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t as simple as that, then, is it? it should just be all in a day’s work for you, but it isn’t. You like some things and dislike others. You’re not a machine, no matter what they told you, what you tell yourself …”

“No. … I don’t know. Is this a part of your book?”

“Is this a part of my book? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Do I have to record all this? Or can I stop?”

“What do you mean, record it? You mean you record all I say to you? What on earth for?”

“I thought … it was part of your book. That it was my job to keep it safe.”

“The book’s about fairy tales, how they change and evolve from source to source. How could all this stuff we’re talking about have anything to do with that?”

“Beauty and the Beast.”

“You mean … you’re Beauty; I’m the Beast.”

“Yes.”

“Fucking hell. I feel like a bit of a beast now you come to mention it. So my house is the castle? You’re imprisoned there against your will, away from your family and friends? I’m under an enchantment ...”

“You think I’m stupid.”

“I don’t, actually. I think you’re anything but stupid. I’m the stupid one. So from the beginning you’ve been acting the role of Beauty because you thought that was part of your job.”

“No. Not from the beginning. At first I couldn’t understand how I was to help you with your book. I’ve never helped with anything like that before – only letters and research notes and theses. When you talked to me about Scheherazade, I thought you might want me to be her, so I started to read all the books in your house so I could tell you stories. Then you told me that you’d finished with that, that you’d moved on to a new project.”

“Beauty and the Beast.”

“Yes.”

“Beauty and the Beast has a lot in common with the frame-story of the Arabian Nights.”

“Yes.”

“So what you say to me is always programmed by some kind of a sense of duty? You never talk to me about what you’re really feeling, but about what you should be feeling according to the role you think I want you to be playing …”

“Yes.”

“So if I told you that I wanted you to play a promiscuous whore who loves screwing blind old men, that’s the role you’d play?”

“Yes.”

“You’d whisper dirty words in my ear and play with yourself in front of my maimed blind face?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to do that for me?”

“No.”

“So you do want some things?”

“Yes.”

“So in other words you prefer playing the role of Beauty, of Scheherazade, to being Jezebel or Messalina?”

“Yes.”

“And what about the kitten?”

“The kitten?”

“What role were you playing then? Who were you then?”

“I loved the kitten. You taught me that.”

“So you weren’t playing a role. That was outside your role. You were being yourself, loving a little thing you found.”

“I … suppose I was.”

“Is there anything else you love, anyone else?”

“Do … I have to say?”

“No, you don’t. But I’d like you to tell me. I’d really like to know.”

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“I won’t laugh at you. I can promise you that. That’s the last thing on my mind right now.”

“My sister.”

“Your sister? But …”

“You didn’t think clans had sisters and brothers.”

“Well, I guess I hadn’t thought about it much. I suppose you’re all …”

“Cloned.”

“Yes, cloned from some kind of original. But you don’t ever meet them, do you? Are they even alive when it’s done?”

“I don’t know. All that I know is that I have a sister somewhere. Somewhere there’s someone like me, someone exactly like me. My cells, my body are hers. She may not ever have known it, but she lives on in me.”

“But what about the others? I mean, if this is too sensitive to you, don’t answer, but don’t they make quite a lot of clones from every … person?”

“Set of cells.”

“Well, yes?”

“They do. There are a lot of me.”

“That’s not what I meant … I just meant, don’t you feel close to the other ones like you?”

“No.”

“So it’s just the original girl, the one you came from?”

“Yes.”

“Look, even I can sometimes be just a little bit sensitive … We can stop talking about this if you like. Do you want me to stop talking? I can see I’ve touched on something that’s important to you, and I don’t know if I have the right to keep on prying …”

“Yes.”

“You mean you want to go on, or you want to stop?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“I’m the beast either way? You’re going to freeze up on me whatever I do?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh, to hell with it! Tell me about your sister, then.”

“I don’t know her. I never met her. But everything in me is hers.”

“Except the android part.”

“Except the android.”

“That’s quite a big difference, don’t you think? I mean, she must have eaten and slept like any other person – she didn’t have all your abilities.”

“She wasn’t a slave.”

“Is that how you see it? Being a slave?”

“Why do you think I call you master?”

“But I’ve asked you not to! I talk to you, value your opinion.”

“I’m still your slave.”

“No more than I’m yours. I mean, think about it. What can I do without you? Maybe if I’d been blind from birth, could read Braille, knew my way around the world, could walk through rooms and houses by myself … but I can’t. I need you all the time. I’m completely dependent on you. I like you. You may not like me, but I like you. It really touched my heart, the way you knelt down and talked to me that evening at the gallery. I liked your voice, the gentleness in it. I like to hear it so much that I keep on talking on and on at you just to hear you speak, to see if you can feel something. If you can feel something for me … Do you understand?”

“A little. No, I can’t really understand.”

“You’re not really trying. Come on, if you’re Beauty, you’ve got to at least try to understand your Beast. The story requires it of you, if nothing else.”

“The story requires it of me?”

“Yes, it does.”

“So this is a story?”

“Of course it’s a story. It’s real, though, as well – real for me, at any rate. Maybe not for you.”

“You don’t think I’m real?”

“That’s not what I meant. You’re at least as real as I am, if not realer. I just mean that all of us have to act according to some inner plan, some pattern. We may not see it till afterwards, but we’re drawing some design with what we do and say …”

“And what is your design?”

“What’s my story, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really want to know? I mean, it’s not the prettiest of fairy tales … you heard what those women said, the night of the launch. I’m sure someone else must have told you about it all since then …”

“No.”

“Well, I guess this might shift me from Beast to Bluebeard in your eyes. I had to tell it and retell it to the cops and the psychiatrists at the time, but I’ve never told a woman. I told myself I’d try never to think about it again, in fact, but if you insist, I will.”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“Well, I don’t really want to, but I will on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That you tell me about your sister first.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“I doubt that somehow. That’s the deal, anyway. Do you accept?”

“I … don’t know. Do I have to?”

“I think that you probably do, yes.”

“Well, then … yes. I will tell you about my sister.”

“Okay, off you go. Ladies first …”

*

I’m sorry I have to tell him about you, Eva. I don’t think he’ll understand. But I couldn’t think of any way of concealing my feelings about you. You’ll probably never know anyway, so you can’t forgive me. I’m asking you anyway.

Dear sister, please forgive me.

love, Eva.

The Excursion

Dearest E,

I’m writing to you from a hotel in the centre of town. There are two beds, a little table between them, a bathroom off to one side, and a small nightlight. My master is asleep in the bed nearest the wall. I’m sitting here looking out the window. There’s little to see. It’ll be dark soon, and there are no passersby.

We’ve had a terrible day.

He’s been dreading going out of the house, he told me. He knew he would have to sooner or later, but it was easier living in rooms he knows by heart, in a little space he’s made his own.

There haven’t been many invitations either, so his agent was quite insistent that he accept this one.

Of course it was necessary that I should accompany him. My direction-finding is good. I know how to guide him through rooms and streets, and I have full knowledge of his dietary needs.

I have never been allowed to do so, but if necessary I could even pilot him from place to place.

The expedition seemed to present few problems. The taxi would come by at 10 am. By then I would have his things packed, breakfast over, his papers ready (he likes to keep his papers by him, even though he cannot read them). His agent, Karen, whom I have only spoken to on the phone (I imagine her as thin, well-groomed, in her mid-fifties, with slightly greying hair and a business-like demeanour – it’s a little game I play, imagining people before I meet them. I’m hardly ever wrong), has given me credit authorisation to disburse small sums for travelling expenses. In a sense I welcomed it – the chance to take on some new responsibilities, to move through the world as if I owned a part of it, as if my skin belonged to me.

*

The first thing that went wrong was the taxi.

He’d been anxious, extremely anxious, the night before. He was too keyed up to enter me even, which is quite unusual for him. I started to suck at his penis, which he’s always liked before, but he pushed me away and told me not to touch him.

He ordered me out of the room (though it was my room – the room he told me was mine to do with as I wished. He never sleeps in the master bedroom now). I was afraid to leave him, so stood in one corner silently until his breathing stabilised. I think he must have got to sleep about 4 am.

Next morning he was grumpy at breakfast, asking me difficult questions, and then criticising me when I attempted to answer them. “Why am I going out there again?” he asked, and “Will it ever get better than this?”

I asked him if he was so afraid, whether he wouldn’t prefer to cancel the trip and stay at home? He told me I was stupid and didn’t understand the world he lived in.

It’s true. I don’t understand him. I don’t know how I ever would.

I’m very very glad he wouldn’t let me have a kitten. What would I do with my little friend if I had to go out like this? That was the problem the first time – I couldn’t watch over him all the time because I had to do my work. That’s when they came in and killed him.

I’m so much safer without a friend.

The taxi was late. The taxi was very late. Afterwards I wondered if his agent had really ordered it at all. When I rang them to ask, they said they had no record of the reservation. I ordered another taxi, but it took more than half an hour to reach us.

By then we were over an hour behind schedule.

He was very restless. Walking up and down, wringing his hands. He couldn’t decide whether to wear his coat or carry it. I told him I would carry it for him (as well as the two suitcases), but then he was concerned that it might rain.

Finally the taxi arrived. The traffic was heavy, and many of the routes were closed by falling debris from a major pile-up. We might still have made the flight, though, if it hadn’t been for his insisting that he’d left something important behind.

We had to drive back to the house, and pick up the something. He didn’t say what it was, but I think it must have been some kind of good luck charm or little amulet in a box. I could see the bulge it made in his jacket pocket.

We were very late at the airport. Our plane was already boarding, but we had to go through all the security checks before they would let us on.

At first it seemed fortunate that the flight had been delayed. We were able to take our seats after everyone else had already arrived (there was no room for his cabin bag in the overhead lockers, so I had to push it down under my feet instead.

And there we sat. We sat there for an hour or more, while they broadcast messages about a “slight delay.”

A lot of the other passengers were shouting and complaining, especially the ones behind us in what he called “cattle class.” It did no good, though. After a long long time, they asked us all to disembark. There was something wrong with the plane they said, some problem with the reverse thrusters, so they would try to reroute us on alternative flights.

We stood in line for a long time before I could speak to the woman at the counter about changing our flight. At first she said I would have to wait till all the human passengers were dealt with, but then I told her I was travelling with my blind master, and that it was for him I was trying to make the new arrangements.

The connections were complicated. We’d already lost any possibility of catching our ongoing flight, so she had to try and reroute us another way.

The two flights together should have taken no more than four or five hours. Now we were looking at days before we could connect up.

I needed to talk to my master and see if he approved of the new arrangements, but he was (by now) sitting in a corner of the waiting room with all his baggage. I couldn’t leave the desk without losing my place in line, and he couldn’t leave his chair in a room full of suitcases and running children. I asked the woman if I could contact him on his palmpilot, but he must have switched it off when we were on the plane.

Finally I was forced to make the decision on my own.

I confirmed the new bookings.

We would still get to our destination in time for him to attend his conference, although he would miss the greetings on the first day.

We would overnight en route, at the airline’s expense.

So much was settled.

When I got back to him in his chair he was not very friendly. I couldn’t sit next to him, as all the places were taken, so I was forced to kneel beside him. He had a little argument with the woman beside him about that, but she told him she had no intention of moving over for a clone. It made no difference to me. I was surprised that he even wanted me to sit beside him.

He is a very strange man, I think, though I have few to compare him with, only the men in the apartment block and my first master on Mars. He seems strange compared to them.

He was very angry when he heard what I had done.

“You fucking idiot! It’ll take us days! I don’t want to be stuck in airport waiting-rooms for days! Couldn’t you get them to give us a better set of connections than that?”

“No, sir.”

“You did at least try, I suppose? Unless it’s fun for you, life on the road and all that … at least you can see the passing scenery … for me it’s just a bunch of sharp edges to bruise myself against and voices coming at me from nowhere.”

“I am sorry, sir. I wanted to consult you, but your pilot was turned off.”

“Couldn’t you come over and talk to me in person? I was just sitting over here, not on the other side of the world.”

“The woman said she couldn’t wait – that if I went away I’d have to join the queue again …”

“But that’s ridiculous! Did you get her name? I’m going to put in a complaint!”

“Yes, sir. I have her name and employee number. It was written on her ID strip. She is Ellen Vasa, and her number is …”

“Oh, forget it. I guess you did the best you could. I’m not really angry with you. It’s just that I suddenly thought that I could get out of going to this conference at all, and now you’ve just ruined that for me ..."

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Never mind. I suppose I should go, really, after all. Karen thinks so, anyway. Getting back on the horse after you get bucked off and all that …”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you care? For you it’s just a carefree travel excursion, meeting new people, making new friends – like this Ellen woman. Vasa, was it? Sounds Swedish. You’re sure she’s a woman, not one of you clanswomen …”

“Yes, sir. I am sure.”

“Fair enough. Just checking. I’d have thought there were quite a few of you around here, maybe not in the executive positions, but doing the smaller things.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, cheer up then. It looks like we’ll be spending even more time in each other’s company than we usually do. You don’t mind that, do you, Eva?”

“No, sir.”

I said it, but I didn’t really mean it. I felt very strange at that moment, as if I wanted to be somewhere else – to be by myself, maybe at Marta’s, maybe in the little garden of the apartment block, away from his voice, away from his hands, his cock. I felt as if I didn’t really like him, or the life I lived with him.

We caught our next flight, and eventually reached this hotel. It’s somewhere near the airport, but that’s really all I know. I could locate it on my grid if I wished to, but it doesn’t seem important. All I know is that it’s cold here, there’s snow outside on the streets, and the tyre tracks of the ground cars have left strange patterns there.



He took some time to get to sleep, even after sex.

I feel as if I’d like to sit here for a hundred years. Just looking out the window, away from his voice, the people who push at me and try to trip me up, the other clans making their secret signs, the light that never ceases beating down on me.

If only sleep would work for me. I’d like to go to sleep and never wake up.

your sister, Eva.

Night Visit

Dear E,

It’s been a while since I wrote to you. I apologise for that. But then again, what do you care? I don’t know where to send these letters, so I never print them out. They’re stored inside my memory chip, like everything else that happens to me.

Quite a lot has happened. That’s the point. I don’t really know how to describe to you some of the things that have happened. The thing I do know is the book is going well. That’s what my master says, at any rate.

The morning that we really started working on it seriously, he asked me if I could ever forgive him.

“Forgive you for what?”

“You know – for last night.”

“Last night?”

“Are you going to force me say it out loud? For what I did to you last night …”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look, I know I was pretty drunk, but I wasn’t that drunk. Did I or did I not come banging at the door of your room last night?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Well? And what happened then?”

“I opened the door …”

“And then?”

“You came into the room. You were unsteady on your feet, and I couldn’t understand the things you were saying to me … though I recorded them all. Would you like me to play them back? I could probably decipher them now.”

“NO, of course I don’t want to hear the stupid crap I was saying to you … [pause] ... You won’t go on unless I ask you a direct question, will you?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m not like that – not really. I don’t do things like that. It’s just … I was under a lot of strain, and I felt I need to see someone, to talk … to – not for that. I never meant to do that.”

“To have sex?”

“Yes, to have sex .. you can be so fucking aggravating sometimes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you apologise to me. I’m the one who should apologise. Just … holding you, and the touch of your skin, it made me remember … and you didn’t resist or call out. Does it give you any pleasure at all, to be held, to be made love to?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you like having sex with other people, with clones, even?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You must have had to do it before. I know that men buy clones just to abuse them. It happens all the time. Half my friends … even some of the women ...”

“I am not a clone, I am a clanswoman.”

“I’m sorry. Look, I’m not trying to offend you, I just want to understand. Does it mean nothing to you at all? Having sex, being intimate with someone?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t mean to do it. I never would have, if I hadn’t been drunk – but even then, if you’d screamed or struggled, if you’d done anything to show you didn’t want me to, I’m sure, I’m almost sure I would have … stopped.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, 'no'? What kind of an answer is that?”

“You are my master.”

“I am your master … so that means I can do anything I like with you, with your body – that you won’t object at all to any of it?”

“No.”

“So, from your point of view, nothing of all of any consequence took place last night? A drunken master came to your room and raped you, and for you that’s like doing the vacuuming or the shopping, and in fact you have no idea why I’m making such a fuss about it all?”

“No.”

“What if I started to do it every night? What if I defined it as a new part of your duties? Started rating you on your performance in bed?”

“You are my master.”

“You acted as though you liked it, that’s the thing. You didn’t just lie there. You moved against me as if you wanted to please me, as if you were getting some enjoyment from it. Or was that just my imagination -- what I wanted to feel?"

“You are my master. It is my job to please you.”

“And that includes acting as my whore whenever I want you to?”

“I do not understand. No payment was involved. I did not charge you.”

“Oh, forget it, forget the whole thing, I’m sorry I bothered you. You’re just as happy as a goddamned clam whatever happens. It won’t happen again, I can promise you that.”

*

But it did happen again, E. Not that night, but a couple of nights later he came to my room, and asked me if he could sleep in my bed again. And of course I said yes, and in he climbed, and then he started moving against me and asking me to do things for him, and I did all the things he asked me to do, and he kept on begging me to forgive him, and telling me that he loved me, and now it’s like that almost every night.

*

The book is to be a case-study of a single fairy-tale. He told me he hadn’t quite decided which one before he met me. He wanted to take one of the classic tales and chart its variations conceptually as well as historically. "Little Red Riding Hood,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Cinderella” have already been treated in that way, apparently, but “Beauty and the Beast” is, he says, the most wide-spread and complex of them all.

*

Sometimes I wish I could go away from here. I know that Marta would not want me back, and there is no other place I could go to. My friend the kitten is dead, and I don’t know where you live or I would ask you to let me come and visit.

It upsets me to be here. He asks too much! He wants me to tell him things about himself, and I don’t know how to do that. I was never trained for that.

Sometimes all that I want is to sleep for a long long time, but (of course) I cannot sleep.

I hope that you are happy and well. I wish I could write you a more cheerful letter.

Your loving sister, E.

Beauty and the Beast

Once upon a time, as a merchant set off for market, he asked each of his three daughters what she would like as a present on his return. The first daughter wanted a brocade dress, the second a pearl necklace, but the third, whose name was Beauty, the youngest, prettiest and sweetest of them all, said to her father:

“All I'd like is a rose you've picked specially for me!”

When the merchant had finished his business, he set off for home. However, a sudden storm blew up, and his horse could hardly make headway in the howling gale. Cold and weary, the merchant had lost all hope of reaching an inn when he noticed a bright light shining in the middle of a wood. As he drew near, he saw that it was a castle, bathed in light.

“I hope I'll find shelter there for the night,” he said to himself. When he reached the door, he saw it was open, but though he shouted, nobody came to greet him. Plucking up courage, he went inside, still calling out to attract attention. On a table in the main hall, a splendid dinner lay already served. The merchant lingered, still shouting for the owner of the castle. But no one came, and so the starving merchant sat down to a hearty meal.

Overcome by curiosity, he ventured upstairs, where the corridor led into magnificent rooms and halls. A fire crackled in the first room and a soft bed looked very inviting. It was now late, and the merchant could not resist. He lay down on the bed and fell fast asleep. When he woke next morning, an unknown hand had placed a mug of steaming coffee and some fruit by his bedside.
The merchant had breakfast and after tidying himself up, went downstairs to thank his generous host. But, as on the evening before, there was nobody in sight. Shaking his head in wonder at the strangeness of it all, he went towards the garden where he had left his horse, tethered to a tree. Suddenly, a large rose bush caught his eye.

Remembering his promise to Beauty, he bent down to pick a rose. lnstantly, out of the rose garden, sprang a horrible beast, wearing splendid clothes. Two bloodshot eyes, gleaming angrily, glared at him and a deep, terrifying voice growled: “Ungrateful man! I gave you shelter, you ate at my table and slept in my own bed, but now all the thanks I get is the theft of my favourite flowers! I shall put you to death for this slight!” Trembling with fear, the merchant fell on his knees before the Beast.

“Forgive me! Forgive me! Don't kill me! I'll do anything you say! The rose wasn't for me, it was for my daughter Beauty. I promised to bring her back a rose from my journey!” The Beast dropped the paw it had clamped on the unhappy merchant.

“I shall spare your life, but on one condition, that you bring me your daughter!” The terror-stricken merchant, faced with certain death if he did not obey, promised that he would do so. When he reached home in tears, his three daughters ran to greet him. After he had told them of his dreadful adventure, Beauty put his mind at rest immediately.

“Dear father, I'd do anything for you! Don't worry, you'll be able to keep your promise and save your life! Take me to the castle. I'll stay there in your place!” The merchant hugged his daughter.

“I never did doubt your love for me. For the moment I can only thank you for saving my life.” So Beauty was led to the castle. The Beast, however, had quite an unexpected greeting for the girl. Instead of menacing doom as it had done with her father, it was surprisingly pleasant.

In the beginning, Beauty was frightened of the Beast, and shuddered at the sight of it. Then she found that, in spite of the monster's awful head, her horror of it was gradually fading as time went by. She had one of the finest rooms in the Castle, and sat for hours, embroidering in front of the fire. And the Beast would sit, for hours on end, only a short distance away, silently gazing at her. Then it started to say a few kind words, till in the end, Beauty was amazed to discover that she was actually enjoying its conversation. The days passed, and Beauty and the Beast became good friends. Then one day, the Beast asked the girl to be his wife.

Taken by surprise, Beauty did not know what to say. Marry such an ugly monster? She would rather die! But she did not want to hurt the feelings of one who, after all, had been kind to her. And she remembered too that she owed it her own life as well as her father's.

“I really can't say yes,” she began shakily. “I'd so much like to . . .” The Beast interrupted her with an abrupt gesture.

“I quite understand! And I'm not offended by your refusal!” Life went on as usual, and nothing further was said. One day, the Beast presented Beauty with a magnificent magic mirror. When Beauty peeped into it, she could see her family, far away.

“You won't feel so lonely now,” were the words that accompanied the gift. Beauty stared for hours at her distant family. Then she began to feel worried. One day, the Beast found her weeping beside the magic mirror.

“What's wrong?” he asked, kindly as always.

“My father is gravely ill and close to dying! Oh, how I wish I could see him again, before it's too late!” But the Beast only shook its head.

“No! You will never leave this castle!” And off it stalked in a rage. However, a little later, it returned and spoke solemnly to the girl.

“If you swear that you will return here in seven days time, I'll let you go and visit your father!” Beauty threw herself at the Beast's feet in delight.

“I swear! I swear I will! How kind you are! You've made a loving daughter so happy!” In reality, the merchant had fallen ill from a broken heart at knowing his daughter was being kept prisoner. When he embraced her again, he was soon on the road to recovery. Beauty stayed beside him for hours on end, describing her life at the Castle, and explaining that the Beast was really good and kind. The days flashed past, and at last the merchant was able to leave his bed. He was completely well again. Beauty was happy at last. However, she had failed to notice that seven days had gone by.

Then one night she woke from a terrible nightmare. She had dreamt that the Beast was dying and calling for her, twisting in agony.

“Come back! Come back to me!” it was pleading. The solem promise she had made drove her to leave home immediately.

“Hurry! Hurry, good horse!” she said, whipping her steed onwards towards the castle, afraid that she might arrive too late. She rushed up the stairs, calling, but there was no reply. Her heart in her mouth, Beauty ran into the garden and there crouched the Beast, its eyes shut, as though dead. Beauty threw herself at it and hugged it tightly.

“Don't die! Don't die! I'll marry you . . .” At these words, a miracle took place. The Beast's ugly snout turned magically into the face of a handsome young man.

“How I've been longing for this moment!” he said. “I was suffering in silence, and couldn't tell my frightful secret. An evil witch turned me into a monster and only the love of a maiden willing to accept me as I was, could transform me back into my real self. My dearest! I'll be so happy if you'll marry me . . .”

The wedding took place shortly after and, from that day on, the young Prince would have nothing but roses in his gardens. And that's why, to this day, the castle is known as the Castle of the Rose.

1001 Nights

Dear E,

I read his book last night, before restart. I read all of the books in my room. I will ask him today if I can read the rest of the books in the house. Maybe after that I’ll be able to help him with his new book.

Marta read webzines on her palmpilot. She did that every morning over coffee. There were no other books in her house except for books of pictures for the gallery. The people in the block of flats mostly did the same. I’ve never come across so many print hardcopy books in all my life. They’re heavier to handle, and you have to be careful with their pages, but I really enjoy it. Alone with all those books! In my own room! I’m very very lucky, I think.

I hope things are good with you as well.

I hope that very much.

*

He was sitting there waiting when I came into the study this morning. His place is behind the desk, a big bare desk, with many sets of shelves behind it.

I sit to one side, on a high-backed chair, since I have no need of a desk: only access to a powerport and a data projector.

“So what did you think?”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“What did you think of my book? You read it, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was it interesting?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You understood it all?”

“I don’t know. I think so, yes.”

“Well, do you think it’s any good?”

“I was happy to be able to read it. I would like to read other books as well.”

“You mean other books on the same subject, to check up on me?”

“Any other books.”

“You’re not going to praise it, are you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I just want to get an opinion out of you: it was too long, too dense, dull, amusing, under-edited, beautifully proportioned …”

“But … I am a clan. It is my job to help you with your book, record your ideas, read back passages for you to correct …”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t have ideas of your own, surely?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are they?”

“I am … confused by your question.”

“Look, the book is about Shahrazad and Shahryar, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is their story?”

“Verily the works and words of those gone before us have become instances and examples to men of our modern day, that folk may view what admonishing chances befell other folk and may therefrom take warning; and that they may peruse the annals of antique peoples and all that hath betided them, and be thereby ruled and restrained. Praise, therefore, be to Him who hath made the histories of the past an admonition unto the present! Now of such instances are the tales called 'A Thousand Nights and a Night,' together with their far-famed legends and wonders. Therein it is related …”

“No, no: what is the essence of their story? She tells him stories to stop him cutting off her head: for 1001 nights she fights for her life with stories … And why does he want to kill her?"

“The king believes that all women are unfaithful to their husbands, so he must execute each new wife before she gets the chance to betray him.”

“And why does he think that?”

“Because his own wife betrayed him with a slave, his brother’s wife betrayed him with a cook, and the virgin abducted by the ogre has betrayed him 150 times …”

“Precisely. And is the king correct?”

“I … do not know.”

“Are all women unfaithful to their husbands?”

“It seems unlikely. Many husbands are unfaithful to their wives.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah. So you don’t agree with Shahryar?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t think he’s right to kill a different girl every morning?”

“No, sir.”

“So you’re on Shahrazad’s side?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You would tell the ogre stories every night in order to stop him killing you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that how you see me? An ogre you have to placate with conversation and stories?”

“No, sir.”

“But you know that I killed my wife. You do know that, don’t you?”

“No, sir.”

“But you must have been told! Somebody must have mentioned it to you. It’s common knowledge, after all. You were at the booklaunch …”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you heard what they said, those women who assaulted me? They called me a murderer. That’s why they threw the glass.”

“I … did not understand what they said.”

“But you understand it now, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, don’t you have any questions for me? Anything you’d like to clear up?”

“No, sir.”

“Aren’t you afraid? If I’ve killed one woman, I might kill two. Doesn’t that make you scared of me?”

“No, sir. You are my master.”

“I am your master. Does that give me the right to kill you, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

“'Yes, sir.' I can kill you if I want to!”

“Yes, sir. You know that. You know that legally a human may dispose of a clan. It would be treated as a breach of your service contract, and you would have to pay a fine to the company or give reasonable cause within thirty days of the action …”

“The action. The murder, you mean.”

“No, sir. It has been legally determined that such an act cannot be construed as murder, only as damage to property.”

“So I can kill you and wrap you in plastic and throw you away, and the only consequence to me will be that I have to write a letter of explanation within thirty days?”

“Yes, sir. You know all that. The company representative must have explained it to you.”

“It didn’t sound the same coming from him. Doesn’t it worry you at all?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you want me to kill you?”

“No, sir.”

“So you’re trying to stay alive, in other words?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m the brutal, mad king, with blood on his hands, and you’re the beautiful young wife?”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“I am not your wife, sir.”

“No, no, that’s right. I had a wife. She was the one I killed, not you. You’re just the one who makes me breakfast and is fond of kittens.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you see why I want your opinion on my book? Who else is better placed to comment on it?”

“I … don’t understand, sir.”

“No, I suppose you don’t. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about my wife. I doubt it, though. They all said it wasn’t my fault. But I’m not so sure. Those women at the launch didn’t think so, and they probably have a point. If it wasn’t my fault, whose was it? They told me not to dwell on it, either – to try and dismiss it from my mind, get on with other things. That’s why you’re here, actually – to help with my work, to distract me from thinking about the past …”

*

My master is sometimes quite difficult to talk to. Some of the questions he asks he answers himself. Others he wishes me to answer. I have to try to distinguish between them by timing how long he waits after raising his voice interrogatively. Sometimes it is as long as four or five heartbeats before he goes on again. I have to be careful not to interrupt, as it might break his train of thought.

I am recording everything he says to me, in case any of it is needed later for his book.

Perhaps this is his normal way of refining his thoughts.

*

He has given me permission to do more reading. Anything in the house except for the books in his study. I think that he likes me to read. Once the housework is done, there are few other duties.

He will not let me bathe him or dress him. He eats very little, and spends all his evenings alone. I think that he drinks alcohol then, as I can smell it in the room after he goes to bed.

Some of my other masters drank alcohol, too.

Love
your sister, Eva

It is funny to sign my posts with “love.” It is an intimate formula which I selected from my letter template, but now that he has explained to me about my little kitten, I wonder if I can use it to you anymore? After all, we have never met. And yet I know you as I know myself. What other word can I employ?

Work

Dear E,

Today we began work, my master and I – work on his book. He told me last night that I must be ready in his study at 9 am, when he’d explain my duties to me. I’d have to make sure that all my morning chores were done by then.

I was there, waiting and ready, when he came in from his walk around the garden (he likes me to leave his breakfast on a tray by his door, because he doesn’t want to speak to anyone first thing in the morning). I did that at 7 am.

He sat down in the chair. He looked a little nervous. For a long time he said nothing at all. Finally he cleared his throat and began:

“You’re here to take dictation, Eva. I know you’re trained in that. You’ll record everything I tell you to record, repeat it back to me when I tell you to, and provide printouts of the corrected text. Is that clear?

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. That’s right. In here you’re just a computer for me to work on. I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit harsh to you the last couple of days, but you must know that it makes me a little … uncomfortable having you around.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re not curious to know why?”

He paused for a long time, so I finally added a “No, sir.” I’d thought it was a rhetorical question.

“Well, I’ll tell you anyway. I don’t really approve of you … clones. I don’t think we treat you right, but more than that: I don’t think you should ever have been created in the first place.”

“No, sir.”

“That’s why! I’ve been quite insulting to you on several occasions, and all you say is 'yes' and 'no.' You’re not really a person and yet you act like one most of the time. You probably look just like one, too, even though I can’t see you. You could be poking your tongue out at me right now and I’d never know it. You’re not, though, are you?"

“No, sir.”

“I need you, though. I have work to do and there’s just no other way for me to do it. I can’t read books anymore, can’t take notes from them if I could. Of course I could study Braille, use a voice-scanner for text, a dicta-program for recording text. But then I need help with housework, meals, shopping, all of those things. It took me a long time to come round to it, but they persuaded me in the end. The only practical solution was one of … you.”

“Yes, sir. I am fully trained in all of the functions you describe.”

“But why you, Eva? Answer me that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Why did I insist that it had to be you – not any other clone?”

“Clanswoman.”

“Clanswoman, then.”

“Was it … the party?”

“Yes! Got it in one. You were the last person I spoke to when I was still … whole. You were the one, the only one to sit down next to me, to talk to me in the dark. Didn’t you hear me calling out for you when they took me away in the ambulance?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you think? That I’d fallen in love?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Didn’t you think it was a bit odd .. for me to call out your name?”

“Yes, sir. I thought you might think that I was … a woman.”

“You are a woman, aren’t you? A woman who came over to help someone she could see was badly hurt, hold his hand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I appreciated it, anyway. I asked for you in the hospital a couple of times, but no-one seemed to know what I was talking about. Finally they told me who you were. But when I realized I had to … buy … one of you, I knew you were the only one I could bear to have near me. I felt I knew you, you see.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why doesn’t he get to work, that’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it? Am I going to have to listen to all this crap from him every morning before he starts to dictate?"

“No, sir.”

“Did you see my book at the book launch?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you read any of it?”

“No, sir. I wanted to, but …”

“But what? It looked too difficult, too boring?”

“No, sir. Marta said it was lazy …”

“What, that my book was bad, lazy writing? That bitch!”

“No, sir. That I was lazy for wanting to. That I shouldn’t waste my time with reading and things like that when there was so much work to be done.”

“And did you agree with her?”

“Marta was my mistress, sir.”

“So what? That doesn’t mean she was always right. I’m your master now, and I’m sure as hell not always right.”

I didn’t know what to answer, so I stayed silent.

“Well, anyway, you can read it now. You can read all of my books, in fact. Would you like that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long will it take you, do you think?”

“Approximately 226 seconds.”

“Four minutes.”

“Yes, sir. I can scan and absorb text at a basic rate of one second per page.”

“And you enjoy that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are there other books you’d like to read as well?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What kind of books?”

“Any books.”

“Recipe books? Repair manuals? Novels? Poetry?’

“Yes, sir.”

“All of the above?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So not my books in particular?”

“Yes, sir. Since I am to assist you in your work.”

“You could probably write this book for me, couldn’t you?”

“No, sir.”

“You could complete all the research and have the thing ready in a couple of hours.”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I have no ideas, sir.”

“You must have some ideas.”

“No, sir. Not serious ideas.”

“Not serious ideas. But there is something you want.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Something I could give you?”

“Yes.”

“Something you really really want?”

“Yes.”

“And what would that be?”

“I … don’t know, sir.”

“You do know. Tell me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me! What do you want from me?”

“A … a kitten.”

“A kitten? What the fuck does an android want with a kitten? D’you want to eat it?”

“I don’t eat food.”

“But you’d like a kitten?”

“Yes. I am not an android, I am a clanswoman.”

“Same diff.”

“It is not the same. An android has a metal CPU ad flesh exterior. I am a clone with android programming.”

“I know all that. Tell me something I don’t know. Tell me why a robot wants a kitten.”

“I … don’t know.”

“You do know. Look, I’m sorry for what I just said. I promise I won’t get angry … please tell me. Pretty please. What do you want a kitten for?”

“I am afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“That you will kill it. I don’t want a kitten anymore.”

“I won’t fucking kill it! Who the fucking hell would give you a kitten and then kill it?”

“It happened before.”

“Someone let you have a kitten before?”

“No … But he wanted to be with me. He wanted to stay with me. He did no harm. He didn’t cost any money. I fed him on scraps.”

“And they killed him.”

“Yes.”

“And you miss him.”

“Yes.”

“Did you love him?”

“I … don’t know.”

“Does it make you sad to think about him? D’you think about him at odd times of the day, without meaning to? Did it make you happy every time you saw him?”

“Yes.”

“Then you loved him. You loved your little kitten, and they trapped him and killed him and then threw away the body.”

“Yes.”

“You can have a kitten.”

“Thank you.”

“What will you call him?”

“I don’t want a kitten.”

“What do you mean? I just told you that you could have one!”

“I loved my little friend. You have taught me that. I will keep on loving him, even though he is dead. A new kitten will not help.”

He turned aside. He must not have wanted me to see what he was doing, because he gestured for me to leave. I went away to get on the housework.

love from your sister

Eva

Arrival

Dear E,

There’s a lot more to tell you this time. I’ve got a room to myself! Not like in the block of flats, either. I’m allowed to use the wardrobe and the bed. I don’t really know how, to be honest. People sleep in them, I know, but that’s not much use to me.

I guess I’m delaying, though – delaying talking about him, my new master.

The unpacking went as usual. The box has full instructions on it. All you need to do is open the flap and give the key word, and then I wake up and do the rest.

The funny thing was, when I pulled myself out of the box and started to pack it all up, I noticed that more than a week had passed between leaving Marta’s and arriving here (my internal clock told me that much). Delivery usually takes less than a day, unless there’s some reason to delay it. In theory they could put you in the warehouse and leave you there for years, but in practice that’s not encouraged. Without frequent reboots there’s a risk of cellular degradation.

*

There was no-one in the room. He must have left immediately after saying the priming word. I didn’t know what to do with the packing materials, so I moved them into one corner. I stood by and waited.

Nothing happened. There were no voices to be heard. It was quite a large house. I could tell that from my satellite program, which indicates topography. I was standing in the front hall, which meant that no-one could easily go easily in and out without walking by me. But no-one came.

Evening fell. Then morning came. Nothing.

I began to wonder if he was injured, or impaired in some way besides being blind.

Should I go and look for him?

I had no instructions, so I stood and waited.

*

I think he must have meant to creep up behind me. It was his house, after all, so he knew where all the loose boards were, even if he could no longer see them. I heard him long before he even came into the room, of course, but he gave no commands, so there seemed no clear course to pursue. Perhaps he wanted to show that there was one place where he was at home, which he knew better than anyone else.

He stood there, breathing a little heavily, for quite some time. Finally he spoke.

“You know that I’m here, don’t you?”

“Yes, master.”

“Don’t call me master. I don’t like that. It sounds ridiculous. You can call me sir, if you like.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re Eva?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On second thoughts, forget the sir. Just yes or no will be fine.”

“Yes.”

“Who are you, Eva?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know that I’ve damaged my eyes? That I can’t see anymore? I can’t see you, for instance.”

“Yes. Marta told me.”

“Marta told you. Marta I know only too well. She told my lawyer what a great loss you’d be, what a lot of things you helped her with, how you’d become more of a confidante and a helper than a clan.”

I said nothing. He hadn’t asked me a question. The tone of his voice was angry. It was sad to hear that Marta would miss me so much.

“Well? Is all that true?”

“I don’t know. Marta was kind to me.”

“She certainly charged enough for the privilege! To be honest, everyone told me I was crazy buying you. I could get a much better model at half the price, they told me. So why did I bring you here, Eva?”

“I don’t know.”

“That was a rhetorical question. You don’t have to answer rhetorical questions. Did you know that, Eva, clanswoman Eva?”

“Yes. I am fully trained in secretarial and domestic duties and have a full vocabulary of technical and utilitarian terms. A rhetorical question is …”

He cut me off. “I repeat – Do you know why you’re here, Eva?”

“No, sir.”

“Touché. I guess I am getting a bit strident. My temper’s not what it was before the … accident. You’ll just have to put up with that, I’m afraid. In any case, you were there, weren’t you? You know all about the accident.”

“Yes.”

“You held my hand while I lay on the floor with my eyes dribbling out, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you do that, Eva?”

“I wanted to help.”

“To help me, or to help Marta?”

“I wanted to help both of you.”

“But Marta more than me?”

“Marta was my mistress. Now you are my master. You have bought my services.”

“And those services include …?”

“There is no limit to what I am required to do for my master or mistress.”

“What about self-destruction? Are you required to kill yourself if I require it of you?”

“That would depend.”

“Depend on what? On your state of mind? On how depressed you’re feeling?”

“If you order me to shut down, I must shut down. If you order me to damage myself, I am commanded to demand a reason for such action. Factory protocols. If the reason is cogent then action will follow swiftly.”

“You’re my slave, in other words? My slave until death?”

“Yes, master.”

“I knew I was right about you. That was a joke, wasn’t it? You call me ‘sir’ when I piss you off, and ‘master’ when I really cross the line. Are you recording all this?”

“Yes.”

“Do you record everything that happens to you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think about it afterwards?”

“Yes.”

“Did you think about me? About the bitch who threw that glass in my face?”

“Yes.”

“There was acid in it, you know. It wasn’t the shards of glass that did the damage, it was the stuff in the glass. Did you know that? Did Marta tell you?”

“No. She told me that your optic nerves had been damaged and that you were now blind.”

“Sounds much neater that way, doesn’t it? Do you have any conception of what it’s like to go blind? Can you imagine that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What if I commanded you to go blind? Never to see anything again? Is that the kind of command you could follow?”

“Yes, but …”

“But what? But you’d rather not? But you’re begging me not to?”

“No. I could remove my eye function, but I would still be able to navigate with my other electronic guidance features. I would be blind technically, but that would impair my function only marginally …”

“I see. Joke.”

He paused.

“You don’t get that, do you? That joke. Let’s try another: Where was Moses when the lights went out?"

“I don’t know.”

“In the dark. Now come and make my lunch.”

*

My new master is funny. He gets upset easily over very small things. He finds it difficult to feed himself, but he won’t let me cut up his food and give it to him that way. He asks me strange questions and likes to talk and talk and talk. Then all of a sudden he goes silent and won’t speak at all for hours.

He is generous. He told me I could have this whole room for myself, and as much free time as I wanted.

He needs me for housekeeping and working on his book (he is writing another book, it seems), but apart from that he does not wish to be disturbed.

*

If things go on like this, if he is as kind and generous tomorrow, I may ask him for something. I would like very much to look after a kitten. He will probably just laugh at me and say it is impossible, but at no time in our talking today did he say that I was forbidden to desire a kitten.

love
your sister Eva

The Contract

Dearest E,

The strangest thing has happened. You remember that party, the fight, the man who got hurt? Marta says he’s asked to buy out my contract. It’s not even up for renewal, so it’s necessary for him to get her consent to sell.

She told me about it in the kitchen while she was ordering her meals for the day. I always make her the same breakfast: café-au-lait and a croissant, but she likes a varied menu for lunch and dinner.

“Would you like to go, Eva?”

“No, Marta.”

“They’re offering me quite a lot of money, you know. I don’t really understand it. Is there something you haven’t told me? Did something happen that night that I don’t know about?”

“No, Marta. I told you everything next morning. I held his hand, that’s all.”

“Well, he must admire something about you. Maybe you were the last thing he saw. He’s blind, you know.”

“Blind.”

“Yes. Don’t be dense. You know what blindness is. The glass damaged his optic nerve. I don’t know how. Usually they can fit people with artificial eyes these days, but in his case the whole business was destroyed, apparently – no chance of growing it back.”

“Do you want me to go, Marta?”

“Of course not, sweetie, but … well, it is a lot of money, and that would pay for quite a few things around here. And it’s not as if I really need you a lot of the time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You could look a bit more enthusiastic! He’s quite a famous man, you know – writer, critic and all that. And he’s blind! He won’t be able to see what you’re up to. You can laze around, read books, do whatever you like most of the time, I should think … You know I’ve never been able to tolerate that, your slackness. I know that you do what I tell you to do, but it’s as if you never want to do any of it. It’s as if you don’t care about me at all, sweetie – about what would please me.”

“You want me to go.”

“Well, quite frankly, yes. I feel I’ve treated you very well here – far better than at the last place, skivvy for all those flats. But I don’t think I’ve really got value for money. Now, Charles …”

Charles was the name of the clan who helped with the lights the night of the book party. She’d mentioned him a few times before. With the amount she was being offered for my contract, she’d be able to buy him and install him instead of me.

I understood then that I would be going to work for the blind man.

I hope that he’s kind to me.

Marta has been kind, very kind. She’s letting me keep the clothes I’m wearing. The others she says she’ll sell (“No use to me, darling: clan cast-offs”).

Last time I was stripped and wrapped in plastic before they packed me up. This time I’ll still have my clothes on when I get to the other end.

I’m happy about that. I know he won’t see me. He’s blind, after all! But last time they told me to switch myself off and I saw the big box and the wrappings, I thought of the little cat, the black plastic bag.

It’s different, of course. That was death. This is just a pause before reboot. I kept on seeing his little face in my head even so.

*

They’re coming for me tomorrow morning, early.

I hope that you’re well and that everything is good with you. I may not be able to write to you ever again, but please don’t forget me. I’ll be thinking of you. You’re all I have now.

your loving sister, Eva

The Cat

It’s harder to post letters than I thought. I’ve had to do it before, of course. I was programmed to take dictation, spell-check, grammar-check. I’m a secretary model. But writing to you is different. I want to tell you everything, but I don’t know how to do it.

I told you about the party, but now I realize that I didn’t even say why. You know that I work for Marta, but I didn’t say how long I’ve been doing that, or who I am really.

I’ve had a friend before. Not a person, not like you. There was a little cat who lived with me. It wasn’t with Marta, it was before. I’ve had a lot of masters and mistresses. Some of them were kind to me and some were cruel. I don’t really want to write about all that.

I don’t need to sleep, but I have to have a place to restart and absorb new data. One hour a night is a minimum, but every few weeks I need to do a total shutdown and reboot (and once a year I have to be examined by a representative. That’s happened to me a number of times now).

Marta gave me a cupboard for my own when I first came to her. She told me to clear out all the files and boxes, and told me that I could store my clothes and anything else I wanted to keep in there. There’s a hook for me to hang myself on when I do my restarts, and shelves and hangers for the coats and dresses. There’s even a bulb and a light-switch, but I don’t need light.

Before I met Marta, before she bought my contract, I used to live in a block of flats. I was the concierge for a four-floor building. Most of the people living there were young couples, and they couldn’t afford a fulltime servant. So all the people living on that staircase got together and each bought one seventh of my time. I had to spend three hours a day in every flat, and I would spend the night each day of the week with a different master or mistress.

There was a garden out the back where I used to hang washing.

And one day, while I was down there, I met the cat.

He was a little white cat, quite dirty, and he had a limp. I think he must have been quite young. I didn’t speak to him, but I knew that he was there. I could see his big eyes staring out at me from a mass of briars.

Later that day, when I came down to take in the washing, he was still there. This time he crept out and looked at me again. I didn’t move, but he ran back as if I had.

He was afraid of me, I thought. But then I realized he was hungry! None of the couples living on my staircase had children, but I’d seen some playing in the park across the way, and their nurses were always giving them food and drink, ice-cream and sweets.

I don’t really need to eat, though I do have to inject myself with supplements every day or two, so it took me some time to think of what I could give the cat. Finally I managed to steal some table-scraps, and I also took some milk. Babies like milk. I know that – basic training.

The little cat seemed quite pleased with what I had brought him. He ate it all up and lapped up the milk form the concrete path, and then he started to growl and rub against me as if he wanted more.

I had no more to give, but every day I would come down with some bits of food and a saucer of milk, and he would come out and eat it all up and rub against me. I worked out after a while that the growling meant he was full.

But then he wanted to come inside with me.

I told him he couldn’t come in. That the people would see him and they’d punish me and probably him as well, but he was only a little cat and he didn’t understand. He’d play around the door when I tried to shut it, and it was very hard to shut it again and leave him outside.

I told you I had to stay in a different flat every night. Mostly I stood in the corner when my work was done. I’d give myself my shots and then turn off.

Some of the men would do things to me. Some of the women, too. But most of them were couples, and the men slept in the same beds as their wives.

There was one flat, though – the top flat, the biggest of the seven (all the other floors had two flats each; only the top floor was lived in by one person). He was away a lot, and he had so much space that he’d set aside a whole room for me to use!

It was wet and cold in the garden, and the little cat shivered and sneezed so much that I began to think I might be able to hide him in that room.

It was stupid. I know that now. But the first time I carried him in there and put him down in the corner and he butted me with his little head, and I knew that I could keep him there with me all night, I felt as if I’d never be sad again.

I told him lots of things. Things I’d done, places I’d been, dreams I had, and he never answered me – just looked up with his big eyes and rubbed against me. I’d never had a friend, or even known that I could have one, but it made me feel happy.

*

One day when I went up to the room to feed him he was gone. I looked everywhere for him but couldn’t find him. Then, when I was looking through the rubbish bins (he used to sniff around them sometimes, looking for food to eat) I found him wrapped up in a black plastic bag.

His pretty white fur was all muddy and stiff and I could see that someone had broken his neck. He had a snarly look on his face as if he’d been very frightened, and that made me feel frightened, too. I was afraid that they’d ask me about him and that they’d find out he was my friend.

No-one ever asked, though, and a bit after that, when my contract was up for renewal, Marta outbid the flats. I didn’t know, then, but she was a friend of the man in the top flat, the man I hardly ever saw. He’d told her about me and that was why she brought me.

“No friends, or pets – or cats,” she said to me when I first moved here. That gave me a strange feeling. Did they know about it all along? About the cat? The man in the top flat, the couples in the other rooms? Did they talk about me and my little friend the cat? Was it too much for them that I should have a friend?

He didn’t do any harm. He never scratched anything except the old blanket I found for him, and he hardly made any noise. I kept him clean and tidied up after him. I wanted to ask Marta about it but I knew she wouldn’t tell me.

I wanted to help the cat, feed him, give him a home. Instead I killed him.

I don’t want to do that again.

That’s why I chose you.

your sister, Eva

Family Album

friends

alone

how I imagine you and me together

Dear E

I’ve thought of writing to you many times, but could never decide how to go about it. I don’t know your real name, to start with, or where you live. I know you must live somewhere. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Live or have lived – you could be dead, I suppose. But since you’ll never see this letter, it doesn’t make all that much difference.

I miss you.

I miss having someone to talk to.

I’d like to know all about you: your friends, your house – children? husband? boyfriend? I suppose that means you’d like to know more about me, too.

That’s logical.

That makes sense.

It’s hard to know where to begin, so I’ll start with the thing that made me decide to write this letter: the party for His book.

*

My job was to serve drinks and carry trays of food and (later on) to clean up the mess. Marta told me what to do. Marta runs the gallery. It’s a picture gallery, with paintings in it that she sells to people. Not tonight, though, she said. Tonight was all about the man and his new book.

“You’ll be wearing your black skirt and your white blouse and your shoes and stockings, Eva.” (She always calls me Eva – not like some of the others. Some of her friends. They call me other things. I hate the things they call me). “You must be very polite. Speak only when you’re spoken to. Offer drinks to people whose hands are free, and hold the plates of food out in front of them.”

“Yes, Marta.” I said. She likes me to call her Marta when we’re by ourselves, but of course in public I call her Madam. Miss and Master are for children, Sir and Madam for grownups. I used to make mistakes at first, but never now. Not since the last time. Marta never whips me, but not everyone is Marta. Some of them are cruel and not kind.

“No wine for the children – fruit juice or water for them. You remember? Wine is white or red, juice is yellow or clear.”

“Yes, Marta. I remember.”

I’ve done these things before, so many times, but she likes to remind me of the details. Marta likes to get the details right.

“Don’t jump if any of the gentlemen … admire you.”

That she’s said before, too. She doesn’t think I understand about the men, but I understand. This isn’t the first job I’ve been assigned to. Not everyone is Marta.

“You’re a very pretty girl, you know. Some of the men may want to … well, you know. Just smile, be courteous, move on with your tray.”

The men get grabby if you let them. After they’ve drunk some wine they like to touch you with their hands, rub their bodies up against you if they can get you alone.

You’re a female, too. You must know the things they want to do, want you to do.

Marta is kind and good. Marta tries to defend me. But she can’t always stop them.

*

The party day came. I wasn’t looking forward to it, exactly. Why should I? Crowds frighten me, a little. Crowds of people, some of them good, some of them mean, but somehow the good ones never stop the mean ones from doing things like tripping you up when you have a full tray of drinks, or running their hands all over you when you’re trapped in a corner.

Marta’s not like that, and this was Marta’s party. Marta had asked me to help as if it was a favour, not a job, as if I could say no. I tried to imagine saying “No,” but couldn’t. I always agree with her, say what I think she wants me to say, but sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly what she wants me to do. That night, for instance.

The guests started to arrive. We’d spent most of the day putting up posters and laying out chairs and tables around the walls. There was one big table for all the books: lots and lots of copies of the same book. It had a dark cover with red lettering on it, and a picture of a woman behind the letters. The words said:

SCHEHERAZADE’S WEB:

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Marta said she’d explain them to me later, but she never did.

Everyone was nicely dressed. The gentlemen were in suits, the ladies in evening gowns. It was a hot night, and rather stuffy, so we kept the doors and windows open to allow the air to flow through. I was kept quite busy pouring drinks at first. Another clan, a man, was helping with the lights and sound system. He wore a suit and tie, but I could tell. He moved a step behind the other men.

*

The speeches started half an hour later. First a big fat man stood up and told us what a good friend he was of the man who wrote the book, and what a good book it was, and how all of us should read it.

I wish I was allowed to read it. Marta doesn’t like seeing me with a book. She says it’s lazy and there’s no good reason for it. What could I possibly hope to learn that I don’t already know?

Then another man stood up and said that he’d published the book because he was sure that it was going to be a great success. There was quite a lot of talking going on during the second speech, so I couldn’t always follow what he was saying. Twice he had to call for them to hush. There were some women near the door, not so well-dressed, who seemed to be arguing with the men by the door. I could see that Marta was drifting in that direction, too. It was her party, and she wanted it to run smoothly.

She’d said that to me so many times during the day, that I understood at last she must be nervous about the success of her party. I’d never thought a thought like that before. It made me feel a little strange – not worried for myself but worried for her.

Now the man who wrote the book started to speak. He said he’d read us some parts from the book, and I wanted to listen to him. I had to keep serving drinks, though. Every time one of the speeches finished people would cluster round the table to get more.

The noise by the door was getting quite loud, now. Suddenly I heard a voice shout: “Wife-killer! You fucking murdered your wife …” It was a woman who’d sneaked right into the middle of the crowd. She looked quite young, about my age, but she was dressed in pants and halter, not a dress. She was waving her arms about, and when the men tried to grab her and calm her down, she started to kick and struggle.

The noise by the door suddenly got worse, and a group of other women pushed by us into the hall. They were all shouting things like “Woman-hater!” “Murderer!”

I didn’t understand what they were saying, or what I should do. One of them crashed into the drinks table and knocked a lot of glasses and bottles over, so I stepped back to avoid being cut by broken glass.

Just then a glass came sailing into the room. I don’t know who threw it. I suppose one of the people by the door, but it fell right into the middle of the floor in front of the book table and exploded like a bomb. The man who wrote the book fell down. I thought I ought to see if he needed help.

The women had mostly run away or been pushed out the door by now, and the party had become a lot of small groups of people shouting at each other. No-one seemed to notice at first that the man who wrote the book had fallen down. I was the first one there to try and help him up.

I knew not to try and wipe away the blood around his face and eyes, because there could be bits of glass in it, and they might go deeper into the wound. Instead I sat down next to him and asked him how he was.

“Who’re you?” he asked, very faintly.

“Eva,” I answered.

“What’s happened? Something hit me – my eyes …”

“You were hit by a glass. Someone threw it into the room,” I said. “Please keep your eyes closed, sir. You might cause further damage if you try and open them.”

His eyelids were gummed shut by blood, so I didn’t think he’d be able to, in any case.

“I tried before and … I couldn’t see anything, Eva. D’you think that means anything? D’you think they might be … hurt.”

He reached out his hand, but it wasn’t to touch me the way men do. He wanted to hold my hand. I held his hand.

“Will I be all right?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I hope so, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir, call me …”

Someone hit me on the side of the head, very hard, and rolled me to one side. There was an ambulance crew with stretchers and a bunch of other men standing behind us. He disappeared underneath them.

All the others were filing out by this time, dishevelled and worried looking. Even the other clansman had gone. There was nothing left of the party but the boxes of books and the P.A.-system.

As they carried the man away, I heard him call my name. He kept on shouting it as they put him in the back of the ambulance. Then the doors closed and the sound abruptly cut out. They jetted away.

Marta was too upset to speak to me, but I knew she’d want to forget it all as soon as possible. It took me three hours to sweep and scrub the floors and walls, stack all the chairs, and gather up all the glasses.

Then I went back upstairs and climbed into my cupboard.

Love

your sister Eva