Forget Yourself (9 page)

“It’s Pilsner.”

“Oh, sorry. Pilsner,” I responded. Frederick gave a look of panic and tried to cover himself with one of my blankets. “I’ll be out now,” I called.

Outside the light was dimmer, less brilliant.

“What do you make of this then? I’ve seen nothing like it, not since the world began.” Pilsner’s voice was flat as ever.

“It’s pretty.”

“Well some think it means something. They’re gathered now in the courtyard.”

“You’re not there.”

“I don’t think it means much, not really.” There was a pause before Pilsner resumed pressing words through dry cracked lips. “Haven’t seen you around there much. Not lately.”

“I’ve been feeling private lately.”

“Right. And have you seen anything of young Frederick? He also seems to have been feeling private.”

His eyes darted toward the closed curtains of my triangle hut. In the purple light his face looked blue. Few muscles in his face ever seemed to move and right then he looked like a corpse. I wanted to get away from him.

He spoke first.

“I’ll see you later.”

I watched him stumble away, looking older than I had ever seen him.

Once Frederick had left I made my way to the courtyard. People were still clumped around, but any real conversation had drifted away with the purple light. Now the sky was a normal black-blue. Burberry was stood toward the edge, a cold stare at the mass of muttering people.

“Burberry.”

“They were talking for hours,” Burberry uttered, her voice soft and distant, her gaze fixed on the courtyard. I was thrown by her missing my name.

“Er, they were?”

Burberry nodded slowly.

“Are you all right?” It seemed everyone was acting oddly.

“I’m fine. The usual. Things have just been difficult. He’ll have told you, I know he will.”

“So what were they talking about?” I asked, ignoring the issue and gesturing to the mass of people.

This is what I learned: they had talked for hours, an excitable minor had babbled about the world entering a new phase, the purple light brought change.

‘Shut up,’ someone had said, over and over.

Most agreed it was strange.

Some had spent the day scouring the sky. Perhaps there had been some sort of sky explosion.

‘Shut up,’ someone had said, again and again.

Back and forth, back and forth, and the sky had begun to dim.

‘Perhaps it’s an illusion.’

One last ‘shut up’ and then there was no more. The sky went dark, the purple had gone and that was that. Slowly people had dropped away until there were only one or two people milling around the courtyard.

We stood there side-by-side, until Burberry left without a word.

FREDERICK HAD BEEN BUILDING
. Frederick had been building a building. Frederick’s building was in the middle of his hut, which I now stood in for the first time.

The hut was large, though not quite as large as Pilsner’s had been, and grand, though not quite as grand as Pilsner’s. It was colourful, and the mosaic of the outside climbed through the windows and over the walls, jagged and bright. It was covered in bright shards of plastic, a clutter of landfill-spares. Furniture seemed to jut out the floor, as a part of the floor, and the windows were small—the whole place felt like a carefully constructed cave. I perched upon a silver stool.

“Your hut ...” I searched for something to say, yet he stood there ignoring my new experience.

“So, well, this is what I’ve been working on,” Frederick gestured to the small plastic bricks piled atop one another.

They were arranged in columns: red, green, white. The columns were piled atop more columns, and tapered, more columns on more columns further up, until it reached knee-height.

It was a tower, of the flat and two-dimensional type I could conjure up in memory. An empty tower. I didn’t understand it.

“Are you going to say anything?”

“Your hut—”

“About the work.”

“It’s—”

“It’s actually unfinished, unfinished right now that is. There’ll be more surrounding it,” he waved his arms over it, a colossus towering over his creation, “it’ll be a whole city, just wait, just wait.” He stood panting and pulled off his shirt, then his trousers, his chest and legs shiny with sweat, before regaining his breath. I moved my face closer to the bricks.

“Where did you find these? Were they with the rations?”

“No, no, I found them near the place where the severes live, they were mostly buried, in this red box.”

I stared at him. No-one had ever just
found
anything, not since the very first days. The shards of mirror around the small window behind him glinted, a shaft of light falling into my eyes.

I turned to face the door as it rapped three times. Bang. Bang-bang. I stood motionless as Frederick stepped over and opened it, but no-one was there.

Are there ghosts? I imagine there are ghosts. Flat white blobs with three black holes for a face. Where do we go when we drop dead? I don’t know what anyone believes outside, but I know that out there, when someone dies, they do the same as we do. The old woman in the hut opposite mine was buried near the courtyard. Now there are fifty graves. Fifty graves and a hundred people. You just drop dead, no-one talks about it.

Tie is there.

A long time ago I’d asked Tie if I would meet someone.

As I had asked the question I laid back, my head balanced on a stone. It had been cold and wet and even snowy for the few days before—there was still a firm chill to the air.

He told me I already knew the answer: of course I would.

I thought on it for a moment. A speck of rain landed on my forehead. I hadn’t wanted the conversation to end. It was long and comfortable.

I asked him if he had ever met anyone.

There was a pause. He told me that there was someone once, but that it was rushed and thoughtless. Then, in the morning—

He stopped and drew in his breath, heavy and wavering.

I asked him what happened.

Four beats and an answer.

He said they didn’t want to see him after that. Not like that.

I’d asked him who it was.

But he didn’t answer. I was afraid his face would crumple and his body collapse and all that would be left would be heavy sobs and I wouldn’t be able to stretch him out again.

I told him I was going to meet Tanned at the courtyard later. And his partner, though I admitted I didn’t remember her name.

He knew: Burberry. He’d known all the names. He’d known how everything worked. And he still brought me rations, right until it was time for me to collect my own.

And really, my very first trip for rations was intense. So intense my head throbbed and throbbed as though it would burst, bits of brain bouncing off the hot ground and bubbling in the light. It had been the hottest day I had ever known, and so many people wore bare skin, backs and arms and armpits exposed to the sun. Tie was different. He wore the same thick, heavy clothes he wore every day, the stench of sweat just slightly sharper.

Tie told me I was going to see a lot of people and hear a lot of things very quickly—that it’s the fastest thing that ever happens, getting rations, except while you’re waiting.

And I had nodded and tried to take in the blurry flurry of words.

He told me I’d get enough food to get by, if I just listened carefully to how much there was and how much I was allowed.

He explained carbohydrate, and protein, and everything else, and I nodded as my skin prickled.

It was the hardest thing I ever had to do and I would mess it up. Then what would happen? I nodded and nodded and nodded as he finished talking and suddenly we were in a mass of people, surrounded by bodies; chatter on all sides, a heady swirl of skin.

And then it was there. I had lost focus and it was there, in front of us all, as though the huge metal box had always been there.

Tie waited with me as lines were rationed out, as commands were rationed out and there was order. I had never seen order before. I stood watching, not daring say a word in case it was wrong. Eventually I was at the front, by the box, a stern-faced man opening and closing his mouth, four of this, five of that. I looked at Tie, panic wrapped around my body. He stepped toward Stern-Face and they whispered back and forth, and he motioned us inside.

Tie told me he was allowed in with me, to show me how it all worked. He’d pointed to vegetables and sugar and sacks of chips. He’d told me how many of each I could have and helped me choose each one, carefully placing them into bags with his big soft hands. With a small grin he’d even stolen a grape and held it to me, a small purple ball surrounded by fat fingers. I placed it on my tongue and slowly sucked away the skin, before tasting the pulpy flesh inside.

Clutching the half-filled bags we stepped back into the sunlight, shielding our eyes for a moment before pacing forward, away from the courtyard.

Once we’d returned to the shade outside my triangle home he’d informed me that I’d have to remember it all for next time.

I asked him why he couldn’t come in with me every time.

He shook his head and told me we weren’t in love.

And I’d laughed, perhaps cruelly, and asked him why ever did we need to be in love?

And he’d said you find a person, someone you love, and you stick with them. You love them. You live with them and you do everything together. You get the rations together.

I laughed again, less sure this time, and in a voice far too small for his huge frame, he spoke.

It’s in the book, you’ll see it soon enough.

Clack—clack—clack.

I pulled my eyes open. It was dark, save for tiny flickers of fire dotted about the room. The room was huge. I was sleeping in Frederick’s bed: immense and comfortable. Frederick was placing more blocks atop one another, each brick clacking atop the last. A candle spat, mimicking the sound.

“Frederick.”

“You’re awake.” He seemed excited. He was still wearing nothing but rough-stitched underwear.

“Did I sleep long?”

“Mmm,” he grunted, his voice thick with ambiguity. “Come look.”

I stumbled over to the bricks. There were two and a half towers now, at right angles to one another.

I still couldn’t understand what he was trying to do.

I LOST AN APPLE
, one of six.

I tried to focus on the game we were playing, keeping my eyes on my cards.

“He left me,” her voice was low as the ground and sticky as the air.

I felt her misery infect me, seeping into my pores at every moment, little by little, filling me with an emotion which spilled from her without control. When we had finished placing our bets—near-fresh fruit and firm vegetables—her arm rested against mine. She didn’t move it. Her skin was cold and smooth and I couldn’t tell her scent from the sweet mash of rations in between us all and the scent of vodka and sweat which seemed to stick like beads to every surface. I felt dizzy. I leant into her. The noise of the new casino surrounded us.