Life (59 page)

“This is
my
way of dealing with
my
problem. And it works.”

“Fine, it works. We agree to disagree. So what was wrong with Plan A?”

“Plan A?”

“Where I don’t mention that your current relationship involves gross physical abuse.”

“Consensual. So-called ‘abuse’ that heightens emotional and physical enjoyment.”

“If you say so.”

Ramone had started to rub one of Pele’s threadbare ears between the finger and thumb of her right hand. Anna had seen this before: she believed the gesture was of great antiquity. “I’ve finished with them, actually. I only came back to collect my stuff. I wish I’d known you were coming, I’d have never let you in here. I’d have met you somewhere nice. Now you’ve seen this I know you’re sitting there despising me. Whenever we meet it’s at the wrong time, and I always end up looking like a jerk.”

Anna didn’t know what to say. She wanted to hug Ramone, the way Ramone was hugging that rabbit, but the declaration that she had come over here to make was impossible in the presence of the real person: not a symbol, not a metaphor, nobody’s tall dark stranger.

“You’re on your way back to Spence, aren’t you. You ran away from him and came to find me, but you’ve changed your mind. I knew that the moment I walked in here and saw you. I’ve been considered as a poor substitute, and rejected again.”

“You don’t want me, Ramone,” said Anna. “You never did.”

“Yes I do… Maybe not for long,” added the rabid one, hurriedly. “Maybe once would be fine. But I really do want you. Honest.”

They went together into the second guest room, which was free of big apparatus. They took a couple of the fur rugs, because there were no covers on the bed and the air conditioning was chill, got naked and lay between them, and hugged and kissed and nuzzled and licked and enjoyed each other, just for once, until Pele felt quite left out.

Now she will go back to being Most Favored Slave, thought Ramone, watching Anna’s sleep. I can’t stop her, and I don’t want to. In the prison at Kota Baru, where part of Ramone stayed forever, would TY set anyone free? It would not. In the future, when there were as many sexes as there were people (if she’d understood Anna at all), there would be prisons, there would be horrors. But what will I do with myself?
Modern culture, like modern science, rejects reductionism, becomes a maze of irreducibly complex specificity…?
Nah, it sounds familiar; it must have been done. How happy Spence would be, to see her facing an empty future. Well, too bad. It’s good to have these
Now Voyager
moments from time to time.
Something
will happen.

Something different—

She saw that lonesome road ahead, as dark and stony and hard to follow as ever. But the blackness above was riven with stars, and from now on, a fair share of those bright shining stars would have women’s faces. And this woman-hating woman was surprised to realize how happy this made her.

Something new—

iii

Anna woke up wrapped in white fur and bathed in sunlight. She thought she was on an ice floe, gliding under the midnight sun. Ramone was lying beside her, wide awake. As soon as she saw Anna open her eyes, she quickly got out of bed (either to avoid renewed embraces or in case Anna did not want to renew them; we will never know). They bathed in separate bathrooms, Anna exclaiming in disbelief at the level of bizarre luxury she found in hers: staying in this apartment would indeed have been a trip. By the time she was dressed, Ramone was in the kitchen making coffee.

“By the way,” she called. “Some of the snail mail is for you.”

“For me? Did you say for me?”

“What’s the matter, cloth ears? Some of the
letters
in my
mailbox
were
for Anna Senoz.
You must have been giving out this address as yours. I’m totally flattered.”

“I didn’t know your address until I got here… How mysterious.”

There was only one letter. She understood the sharpness in Ramone’s voice, because the handwriting on the large envelope was Spence’s. She opened it with trepidation, there was nothing inside but another envelope, this time University of Poole stationery. She sat down on a swollen red satin couch—

My dear Anna,

I take the liberty of a personal letter as the first installment of my most heartfelt apology. I am a touchy, irascible old fellow, and without my beloved wife to restrain me, too swift to avenge imaginary injuries. I believed that, careless of my department’s future, you had used us, used
me,
ruthlessly, knowing that our reputation would be a casualty of your premature publication, and this severely clouded my judgment on the day when we last met. Dear Anna, I will not attempt to excuse myself further. I hope and pray that envy of your achievement played no part in my hasty action. I have never known a better scientist or a more faithful colleague. As we used to say, in the old country, you are my father and my mother. Accept an old Hindu’s…

She could read no more. The thin, spiky handwriting blurred and swam—

“What is it?”

“I’ve got my job back, I think.”

“Tell them where they can stuff it,” said Ramone trenchantly, dumping two French coffee bowls on the perspex table. “There’s fuck-all to eat, so I hope you’re not hungry. Hey, Anna?
Anna?
”

Anna Anaconda was crying like a baby, crying the way a baby cries when fear has passed, without restraint, rocking herself with her arms wrapped around her knees.

“I thought nobody loved me,” she sobbed, “I thought nobody loved me!”

Hello?

Hi

Anna! Where are you?

I’m still in New York

How are you? Where’ve you been? Have you seen the news about TY?

I’m okay. I think I’ve about reached the point where Slothrop turns into a tree or dissipates into the zeitgeist or whatever he does.

Please don’t turn into a tree, Anna.

As soon as she heard his voice, all the heavy things she’d thought she wanted to say to Spence, all the lines she had honed for her day in court, vanished into nothingness.

“I came looking for Ramone, but she wasn’t here. Then I bumped into your mother and went to stay with her, up state. Did she tell you?”

“She didn’t, she was very righteous about not telling me, but I guessed. Did you get Nirmal’s letter? I didn’t send anything else, but he was anxious for you to have it.”

“Yeah, I got it. Ramone was here when I got back to the city.”

“Oh, right. How’s Ramone?”

“Same as ever. How’s Meret?”

A short silence, and then they both laughed.

“We haven’t seen much of the Crafts. They’ve been in Portugal, setting up Meret’s parents in their new digs. They’re putting The Rectory up for sale. Charles wants a bigger place, with some land. He’s looking at Suffolk, or maybe further north.”

Charles. My man!

And I’m sorry, red-headed babe. But it was you or me.

Anna leaned her cheek against the inside of the callpoint hood, thinking of Nirmal’s letter. It was good to know, from the date on it, that his change of heart seemed to have predated the upswing in TY’s fortunes. Not that this upswing was unqualified good news, because she knew what would happen. All the story would be about the sex; no one was going to pay attention to Anna’s vector of entrainment. Even within her own community, she’d have to fight like crazy to get the basic science back into the picture, and she would probably fail… If there were any future in basic science, anyway, she thought gloomily, here on the brink of the Dark Ages. But that letter… She would value that letter as highly as she liked. Nirmal didn’t have to give her back her honor, no matter how right she was. Plenty of precedents for him, if he’d refused. But he had done it of his own free will; he had led her back into the sanctuary—

“Anna, are you still there?”

“I’m at the airport. I’ll call you again when I know my flight.”

The car was packed, the sky was blue. Fergie the hamster had gone to stay with Henry, the Under Tens mid-fielder. The dead and golden month of August had come around again. Time to escape from the uncertainties, the shortages and failures, of modern urban life. Live in a tent, be elective refugees, and stop worrying.

Anna double-locked the front door and stood for a moment, as if listening.

This house…

Her reinstatement at the Genetics Department might prove meaningless, if the University’s financial position was as catastrophic as rumor had it. Most likely it wouldn’t turn out so bad. As Ramone said: civilization would go limping on for a while. But every time, when setting out like this, she had found herself wondering…Were she and Spence intuitively
practicing,
for an inevitable future that was getting very close? Maybe it really was Transferred Y that was carrying things over the brink, bringing a terrible salvation for the living world that had been under such threat from the awesome burden of human wealth and happiness.

Maybe, maybe not.

Think about it later.

Lock the door and drive away.

Life: An Explanation

I was born in North East Manchester, a landscape of narrow valleys, many streams, willows and poplars—overlaid with a thick crust of houses, mills and factories; most of the wheels already stilled before my time. In the house where I was born there was a window in the bedroom I shared with my younger sister, where I could hide behind the curtain and see a shadow girl on the other side of the glass, wild and free. I’ve written about my childhood, and how I think it relates to my writing, you can find the essay here:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gwynethann/SFEYE.htm. When I was grown I went to a south coast University, where I did not have a brilliant career (I didn’t do a stroke of work); but I dreamed my dreams and read some very interesting books. Later I lived in Singapore and became a passionate admirer of the culture of that whole region. The Jakarta Regime was subjugating East Timor, and I met Indonesians who tried to tell me how bad it was, but I was too ignorant to understand. That’s when the battle of the sexes, in all its cruel consequences and seductive appeal, began to be an obsession. I’ve written about that, too:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gwynethann/OSLO.htm.

Back in England, living in frugal content, combining motherhood and “career” (of sorts), exploring France and Italy on a shoestring every summer; for years I never had any private money in my pocket: I was making less than a science post-grad. But I couldn’t give up tussling with the questions that seem to me so important. How can something as fragile and unstable as human sexual difference
as it really is,
be the cause of so much suffering: the foundation of so many books of merciless law? How can this problem ever be solved? What would the solution cost?

The story of Anna Senoz is not my life story (the scruffy and pugnacious Ramone, Anna’s shadow-girl, is more like me, if I could imagine myself a feminist media-star). But in ways it’s the story of my life as a writer: the experiences that shaped me, the changes that swept over my world, the ideas that made me write the novels I’ve written, the people who have inspired me; the future I imagine.