Letters from Novosibirsk Page 8
But there was that feeling now of being with company, whether she wanted it, and acknowledged it, or not. Her precious reclusive days had suddenly become less reclusive. If toys were hidden under the floor, what might there be behind the walls, under the roof, or down the well in the yard? She thought of monks’ bones, or family secrets that had once been clandestinely locked away—a letter confessing the terms of an arranged marriage, or set of rings put away for a favorite daughter who had left for a short trip and never returned.
She saw her hideaway now as it must have been for a couple of hundred years: home for native Siberian families, a place where heavy toil and passionate feelings of love, hate, restlessness, jealousy, vigilance, and contentment had superseded any inclination toward a more contemplative life. No, the monks’ bones she had first imagined were grandma’s bones, an infant’s bones, the bones of widows and reckless young men; bones of sages and bones of idiots, all of a common stock.
Bones could be rattling under her feet in the creaking boards, bones supporting the roots of her little vegetable garden, bones holding down the earth and holding up the house; a close network of old bones familiar only to themselves and their histories, and shutting out the young Dane who had settled in like a cowbird, robbing someone else’s nest.
Zofiya, who quickly bored, had taken leave of Kolya and disregarded Elsa’s reactions to her magic. But Alexei had taken her place, watching Kolya more than Elsa:
“I know what you are up to, little one.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re forgetting what we old ghosts are able to do. I don’t want to sound like your grandfather, but I will say this: life is not easy. You were too young to know that. There may still be time to reconsider…”
“But I will have two more grandpas, and we will go to visit them. They will have candy and presents for me, and take me to the Animal Adoption Center. You may come too, Uncle Alexei, and see how nice it will be.”
“Some things are beyond my reach, little one. We all have our limitations. I am content to pass eternity at Vydrino, my birth and death place. But I feel that your will is made up. I cannot change it. I wish you everything a good life can bring, and hope you will find me when your Earth-time is over again.”
“But wait! It’s not yet! Uncle Alexei—”
9.
Wynnet was so enthralled by the 25th World Physical Engineering Competition that soon afterward he felt compelled to write this article:
Hello friends, in this my 32nd submission to Letter from Novosibirsk I offer the only unbiased and categorically unsentimental report of the world’s most exacting competition for the physically engineered, which recently took place in Ulan Batar, birthplace of this year’s newcomer to the events: horseback slicing.
This awe-inspiring event takes place at 2:30 on Thursday afternoons, only after each rider has had a three-course meal of tomato soup, yak yoghurt, and oatmeal. Riders must be at least 5’8” but no greater than 6’ tall, male, and of a weight between 150 and 180 pounds. Their blood tests must reveal 60–82 mg of testocytosan, .07–.04 mg of urolinosine, and pure caffeine distilled from coffee beans of South American (except Brazil) origin. (This is understandable, given that Brazil’s climate has been undergoing unpredictable shifts lately.)
Spectators may watch from the spartan but elegant Mongolian Equestrian Theatre, but may not wear deodorants, perfumes, or scented hair products of any kind to the event; these have been known to injure the horses’ concentration.
At 1:06 p.m./ECAT riders must line up in their slicing suits, which may be red, purple, or medium green, with their numbered WPEC skull caps worn over freshly shaven heads. At this point another blood test is done to ensure that diet and artificial energizer rules have not been violated. Then, as riders mount their Arabian thoroughbreds in numerical order, the bass note is struck, and the slicing begins!
The slicing dolls, each hand-stitched by blind Peruvian virgins, have been suspended from Norwegian maypoles by Sudanese pre-pubescents by sundown of the previous day (a Wednesday, you’ll remember). Approaching slicers must test wind currents and cloud deflection when deciding which tobacco-filled limb to lop off first. This may well be the most critical point in the race. Concentration marks the foreheads of all the participants, as well as many of the spectators, and (it may be said) the horses.
Limbs must be sliced as closely as possible, at a 30° angle. Any tobacco leaves that have fallen out of the severed limb are counted against the participant. If a leaf is unbroken, it tallies as a double fault. Riders are allowed four consecutive passes, of course, but each pass may include no more than 1.7 seconds of slicing (any number of limbs may be sliced at a pass).
The event must be rescheduled if a sneeze, cough, or audible gastric disturbance from the spectators reaches the ears of the riders. (Otherwise, spectators are free to look and breathe as they wish.)
If such unparalleled entertainment does not suit your fancy, there are always the more traditional events: yarn spinning (on yak back), endurance pirouetting, and professional walking—which exacted attractive new leg wrappers and spine pads this year. The pace of the walk was slowed to .004 mps to ensure that the judges were able to gauge calf muscles with their zoom sonoscopes. Indeed, one entrant this year was discovered to have his regenerative muscle implants ballooning at the wrong circumference!
It makes you wonder whether true sportswo/man/ship has actually devolved to the point of such irresponsibility. One can imagine with horror some future contestant showing up with nothing but his or her natural, animal-like physical condition!
By and large this year’s competition showed outstanding breeding, with only three uncleft chins, two unbridged noses, and one horrendous social coffee drinker—the tell-tale periocular facial lines were almost too embarrassing to look at. It is needless to say, this contestant lost her event: sunsmiling.
10.
Omar, tired of poring over his maps one afternoon, decided to drop in on the neighbors, not yet knowing that this was virtually a taboo thing to do in Novosibirsk.
The first cottage on the right belonged to Wynnet. Wynnet’s electronic scanner rang, telling him someone was standing behind his front door. He interrupted his game of computer solitaire to answer it.
Seeing another human, Wynnet showed neither delight nor irritation. He viewed Omar as he would a holoscreen.
“Can I help you?”
“My name’s Omar. I live next door.”
“So.”
“I thought I’d make your acquaintance.”
“Oh. Please come in my name’s Wynnet Lee nice to meet you can I get you something.”
“A glass of tea would be fine.”
Wynnet disappeared and left Omar to find a seat among Wynnet’s collections of antique encyclopedias and census records. Omar noted as best he could the floor plan of Wynnet’s cottage. He was also taken with the intelligent use Wynnet had made of storage space: file cabinets pulled out from the walls (wearing the same pine veneer), end tables encased old computer discs, and a system of hologram voice-mail stood ready to retrieve, recite, send, and store information at Wynnet’s slightest suggestion, from any corner of the cottage.
On seeing this little storehouse of antique, post-modern, and contemporary information blocks there was little doubt, thought Omar, that anything he needed to know for his future projects rested close to home.
“So what’s your belief?” Wynnet asked as he set the stark-white, steaming mugs on the table.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that please?” Omar pleaded.
“Certainly. I said, ‘So what’s your belief?’”
“I am not religious.”
“Religious? But I wasn’t talking about religion.”
“You have asked me what my beliefs are.”
“Incorrect. I asked you twice what your belief is. I see you do not have the correct fluency level to engage in norm
al English conversation. But you really should, since eighty-five percent of the world’s population currently employs it as the lingua franca of either business transaction or personal communication.”
“I see. You are right. But you are not always so easy to understand. If you are asking me what my preoccupation is, I will tell you. I am a cartographer.”
“So?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘So’? In this case, it means that I do not understand its relevance to anything.”
Omar brushed back his hair with his hand, trying to formulate an even-handed response to this representative of the ill-informed, but his first words were interrupted by a red, pulsating light, and a set of ringing chimes.
Time four-forty-five-fifty-eight. Statistical Significance Report. Late Monday edition. Commencing. First alert completed.
A skyscraper appeared on the coffee table, rotating, a translucent blue-green. It was quickly replaced by a New England filly, but Omar didn’t notice it—he was still wondering why the skyscraper. The filly showed for only an instant, just long enough to give Wynnet a stir, as the hologram voice mail continued:
Forty-seven-and-a-half storey Center for Digestive Research in Nairobi. Replaces thirty-nine normal Nairobi city blocks (NNCBs). Consolidates nine digestive research units in Southwest-Central-East Africa. Projected savings in discovery times: 523.8 days/experiment.
“What…” Omar began.
An aerial view