Читать книгу The Mark - Edyth Bulbring - Страница 9

Reader

I run as far as I can, without stopping to put on my nose shield. The hot wind buffets me; sand coats my face; black gob fills my nostrils. I stop when I can no longer breathe.

Locusts question me at the boom before I cross the bridge to Mangeria City.

“I’m going to the pleasure quarter,” I say.

A Locust grabs my arm. “No, you must stay with me.” He pushes me against the boom, his breath foul on my face. “I’ll show you pleasure like you’ve never had before.”

I soften my slap on his glove with a giggle, and pull away. It is not yet curfew. He has to let me pass. Locusts jeer as I race in the direction of the clubs where the Posh drink and laugh themselves silly.

People from Slum City party here too. Handler Xavier and the market wardens shake hands with the Posh, making deals that the Locusts turn blind eyes to for a cut of the credits.

If Kitty was with me, she would have pointed out her favourite places in the quarter. She likes to hang out here when she is not at school or playing the game with Handler Xavier. The men chase her like rats after a piece of meat in the sewers.

I am not headed for the clubs for a good time. My destination is the beauty parlour, one of many that service the Posh wanting a make-over before hitting the clubs. But I do not want my hair straightened or my face stretched tight, pinned to my skull so that my eyes appear like slits. I would rather have big eyes and Savage hair than look like a Posh.

Traders bustle me off the pavement and I walk in the street, avoiding the Drainers who are elbow deep in waste from the gutters. I dodge sweating Pulaks pulling fat Posh to shops where they buy the food people like me cannot afford and are not meant to eat. I leap over potholes, and three blocks on I reach the Beautiful Like Me Beauty Parlour.

The salon is choked with men and women shouting out like a gaggle of Market Nags at the beginning of trading day. Trussed in chairs, they gaze at mirrors, their faces dripping with treatments; hair sweltering under caps. The air is plastic.

The ways of the Posh are a mystery to me. They roast themselves on the beach to turn brown. And burn their skin with acid to get white again.

“I’ll be voting for the candidate from the sixth family. He looks trustworthy, I think,” a woman says as she bakes inside a plastic body wrap. She has Kitty’s honey-corn skin. Except for her face. The flesh has been burned off, leaving a mask of scab. Underneath, pale skin will grow. Fit for a Posh.

“Oh no, I like the candidate from the ninth family,” another says. She picks away at the crust on her cheek. And stops. She must not risk scarring.

One of the topics of conversation being thrashed to death in the beauty parlour today is the forthcoming Mangerian election.

It should interest me because I am taking part this year. I have to. It is Mangerian law. Everybody who has turned fifteen and is legal, from Posh to trader, has to participate in this event. Or non-event, people who know things say. Behind their hands.

There are exceptions to this rule. Past traders who are too old to work. And the Rejects, who cannot work because they are sick or damaged. They do not have any use, so do not matter.

Voting in the election has been beaten into me during civic responsibility class for the past ten years. I know it as well as the mark on my spine. Every three years, we must choose the Guardians who run our lives.

The slate of candidates is decided by an elite group of Posh who call themselves the Mangerians. They are post-conflagration families who banded together and got things running again after the world blew up and fell apart. The moon’s face was ripped in half, and ever since, she has been winking at us with one eye; the other half of her face is scarred black. These things happened in a time that people who know things remember.

The election candidates all come from the Mangerian families. They know best how our lives should be run. It has been like this since year Dot PC. We are grateful: if it were not for them, we would be running around like Savages instead of living happy, useful lives, gainfully employed in a trade. Yes, I know my civic responsibility lessons by heart.

Twenty candidates put their faces on the ballot; every Posh, every trader has twenty votes. So even though maths and I are not close friends, I can at least count my fingers and toes. It is no surprise who is elected to play Guardian for a three-year period.

I escape the chattering uglies and edge past the row of reclining chairs. I take off my sunglasses and scan the different creams on a tray. I see it – the tube marked with a black skull, hiding under a pile of hair dye. When I use it tonight I will not dilute it. I will not be using it to have Posh skin. It has to be strong. I want the mark on my spine gone.

“Ettie, my dear, are you looking for something?”

I jerk away from the tray as Me, the brains behind the Beautiful Like Me Beauty Parlour, approaches. A smile lifts his chub­by cheeks.

“Is there something I can help you with, Ettie dear?”

My hand fiddles behind my back for the edge of the tray and fumbles among the tubes. Me comes closer as my fingers fret. No, not this one. That one. My fingers tell me they have found it and I slip it into my shorts.

I begin to edge past Me. He darts left, and I go right. He goes right, and I go left. Me thinks it is funny, this dodge-dodge game. I put on my gosh-this-is-fun smile and dodge him a bit more until it gets boring. Humour is not dominant in my personality make-up.

“Ettie, come into my parlour and let me make you lovely. With my eye clips and my hair acid I can make you as perfect as any Posh mistress.” Me touches my hair and tweaks the corners of my eyes. “Yes, these fat eyes need a bit of work.”

I push his hands away; touching is not a game I play. Especially when there is a tube of stolen cream hidden in my shorts. “Don’t touch Me,” I say. I share name jokes with him sometimes to make him laugh. I stay friendly with Me because on nights when I miss curfew and do not want to risk the Locusts at the booms, I sleep on one of his reclining chairs.

I leave Me shadow-dodging, and walk past nail bars and massage parlours to a flat on the seventh floor. I knock on the door and wait, tapping my fingers against my leg as feet shuffle down the passage. Come on, old man. Come on. I don’t have all day.

When he opens the door, he peers at me through his sunglasses. His nostrils quiver as he sniffs the air. He sniffs again and gives a shy smile. His gums, as pink as a baby’s, say he is happy it is me (and not Me, who bugs him for rent).

I do not smile back. He must not know how happy I am to be here. I like to keep my visits to Reader on a strictly professional basis.

“Ah, it is thee, the lovely Juliet,” Reader says. He is the only person I know who calls me by my birthing name. I scowl at him in case he sees how much I like it, and he stops. Reader talks funny. At first I used to think he was ripping me. But now I know he talks like he does because this is who he is.

He pulls me inside, his fingers touching my waist, pinching and probing. “What is it you have concealed?”

I duck away from his hands. “Get off.” I clutch my stomach and follow him into the flat, removing the book from under my shirt.

“What is it?” he says again, sniffing the book I am holding up to his face.

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

He handles the book as though it was the last surviving butterfly. He turns the pages. “Ah, Charlie, how I remember you, my old friend.”

“I found it last week. It was chucked away near the beach.”

Baring his gums, Reader chuckles.

I come to him with books that have been discarded, abandoned, thrown away. Never stolen.

“Chucked away? It is a good thing you rescued it.”

“You can have it for your library.”

“Ah, the bounteous Juliet. As generous as you are comely.”

It is not in my nature to be generous. There is a price for my gift and I will be sure to claim it.

Reader runs his hands over the cover. He feels along the books in his bookshelf until he finds it a home. “I do not own this one. But it is not a very valuable book.”

He is lying. I know how much he wants it by the way he touched it.

He turns to me. “How much would you say it is worth? A half-hour, perhaps?”

“Five hours,” I say.

He says one. I say four. He says one and a half. We haggle until we settle on three hours.

“So, where were we?” he says.

“We had just started. She’d spotted the white rabbit and followed it down the hole. She was about to drink something, and we stopped reading.”

I wait for him to fetch the book. “It’s where I left it last time I was here.”

“Yes, of course, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.”

Reader shuffles past the books on the shelf. Too slow, too slow. His fingers tremble along the spines of the books. He is doing it on purpose to drive me crazy.

“How many times have we read that book over the years?” He pulls a face. “It is a bit young for you. Perhaps you could choose another?”

Not a chance. “I get to choose what I read in my three hours. Else I’ll take Charlie and be gone.”

“If you must, you must. Get it yourself.” He adjusts the sunglasses on his nose, turns around, stretches out on the couch.

I find the book and ease myself into a chair. Reader settles his head on a cushion and raises his hand. “You may commence.”

I find my place and begin to read. I feel hungry for the story and gobble up the words. Like Kitty with her mango.

Reader thumps the side of the couch. “Slow down, child, the words will wait for you. Treat them with respect.” He pulls a blanket over his legs. “When you read so fast it disturbs the rhythm of my dreams.”

This is the deal I have with Reader. I bring him books I nick during the game, and he lets me read the books in his library. But I have to read out loud to him. And slowly. He says my voice is so boring it helps him sleep. The arrangement used to work fine for me when I first learnt to read, but now I wish I could speed through all his books by myself.

People who know things say that in the olden days people read books on machines. All the books in the world lived on machines so small you could hold them in your hand like a real live book. The books in Reader’s library had all been dumped in landfills because no one wanted them any more. They liked their machines better than the books.

But everything went melt-down. The virus ate the books on the machines. And when most of the trees died and the oil dried up or spilled into the ocean, people burned the books they found in the dumps.

I hunt down any that escaped the burnings. They are sold in special shops in Mangeria City, together with the stuff the Scavvies salvage from the underwater city. Only the Posh can afford to buy these books.

I read chapter after chapter, as Reader snores. He shudders awake and asks, “How long have you been reading?”

“An hour.” I know it has been close on three hours, but if he learns the truth he will send me home, saying he has paid me in full.

“No, I mean when did I first teach you?”

Reader knows when it started. But he likes me to tell him again and again. It is as though he wants us to have a story that we share together. Like friends.

I tell him the story as quickly as I can. I want to get back to the Queen of Hearts who hates white roses.

I was nine years old when we started. I had been gaming at a Mangerian sports show with Handler Xavier and Kitty. The pickings were rich. Silver necklaces and gold timepieces. And there was a book. I did not know what it was when I found it at the bottom of a Posh bag. I picked it up and held it in my hands. I turned the pages. It was a picture book of birds. Not beastly ones like Mistress Hadeda, but birds of many colours.

I knew, as I looked at the pictures, that I was holding magic in my hands, so I took it to Witch to trade.

“I want magic to get rid of my mark,” I said.

Witch laughed at me. “Oh, Ettie, no magic under the sun can remove the mark.” She looked at the book, grimaced. “I’ve got no use for pictures. All the wisdom I want lives with the tellers. But I know someone who may want this.”

She sent me to Reader. In return for the book, he taught me the alphabet. The next book I brought him, he traded a lesson in reading words. The words became sentences. We stumbled through nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Eventually, I could read.

I visited him at the end of his working day, and he squeezed in a few hours before curfew. Some people get lucky with their trades. He got to be a teacher, instructing Posh children how to read.

Now he is useless, and he has been forgotten among his books in the flat above the salon. If the Locusts caught him living behind the city gates, they would send him to the place in Slum City for people who have outlived their use. They call it Section PT. It is the place for the past traders, run by people like the orphan warden who take money from Mangerian Welfare for keeping old rubbish out of the way of useful people. Mostly, they are left to rot in their beds. But I have never visited Section PT, so I do not know for sure. It is not a place I have ever had a use for.

The first book I read by myself was The Wizard of Oz. It is a book about a girl called Dorothy who is an orphan like me and lives in a place that is grey. She must be the most dead-brain girl in the whole world, because all she wants to do once she gets to Oz, is go back to her grey home and her grim carers. For Dorothy, there is no place like home. But I like the wizard. He is a fraud who keeps everyone guessing.

Reader repeats his question, and I answer: “I found a book and you taught me to read when I was nine years old.” One sentence is the most he will ever get from me.

Reader sighs and settles back on the couch. “You may now continue with Alice.”

An hour later, I come to the end of the book. The couch is snoring. I push myself off the chair and steal across to the bookshelf. My fingers travel over Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. My eyes stop. I see another copy of the book. And two more. Four copies of the same book. Foolish old man. When he realises he has given me three hours’ reading time for a book he already owns he will be mad. I cannot help grinning.

My fingers travel over another set of books and I pick one out. The pages are covered in tiny bumps. The work of insects, I suppose. Rows and rows of hard little eggs. My fingers start itching and I put it down.

“Why have you stopped reading? You woke me,” the couch says.

I grab another book and tuck it under my shirt. “I’m finished. I have to go.”

Reader walks me to the door. I stop to scratch my leg and he bumps into me. His sunglasses fall onto the floor. And so does the stolen book.

“What is it?” Reader says, sniffing. We stand, looking down. I wait for him to chase me away from his library for ever. If he does, I will rat on him and the Locusts will take him to Section PT where he will rot.

“You have dropped something.” He is not looking at the book. He is looking past it. His eyes are covered in a gooey film, they remind me of Witch’s bird.

“Yes, my bag.” I crouch, pick up the book. I hold it in front of his face. I move it from side to side. The eyes, like litchi pulp, do not flicker.

“Make sure you hang onto your bag as you walk the streets, Juliet. There are tricksters out there.” He gives me his baby-pink smile.

I do not scowl at him. I allow my face to mirror how I really feel; for once, I put my feelings on my face. It is not like I care squashed banana for the blind old mouse. But sadness puckers my face as I look at Reader, surrounded by books he can no longer read.

He lets me out and stands at the door. As I walk down the corridor to the stairs he shouts, “Juliet, perhaps I will see you next week?”

I know he will not see me because he cannot. But I stop and call back. “Maybe.”

The sun’s face dips behind oil clouds as I race to the bridge. The curfew siren has sounded and this billy goat gruff is late. The troll is waiting. I should have stayed at Me’s. The Locusts must not search me tonight. There is a book against my stomach and the tube of cream in the back of my shorts. Two secrets they cannot discover.

The mark on my spine tingles as I approach the boom. I slow my feet and loll my head. I gather my spit and allow it to dribble down the sides of my mouth. I stagger up to the Locusts and lurch like the Posh after a night in the pleasure clubs.

“Fly sickness. She has it bad,” a Locust says. “Let her through. But don’t touch her.”

I reach the boom and they step away.

“Stop,” a voice says.

It was Kitty’s terror yesterday. Today it is mine. I stumble on.

“Hey, I said stop!”

I turn around. And the Locust attaches his glove to my shoulder.