Mariella Read online

  Mariella

  by Claire Frances Raciborska

  Copyright 2014 Claire Frances Raciborska

  Smashwords edition

  Cover design by Sarah Bessinger

  Cover photograph by Colleen Raciborska

  For my first teachers,

  Colleen and Franek

  Chapter 1

  It was a jasmine night, one whose scent so shimmered and warped the air as to make all imagined things possible. What better night to move towards her husband, for them to find each other in the tangle of bedclothes. The heavy air, the sickly sweet fragrance; it drew them out of their heads and into their bodies, and then into each other. After, they lay in the dark, their forms curved around each other but not touching. A door had been opened, but they would not walk through it. They lay together; the panting of a moment ago stilled to the lightest breath. Outside, a dog barked.

  Abruptly Sophie rose, slid across the door and stepped out. The suburb was quiet. Pools of light lit up the tarmac beneath each evenly spaced streetlamp.

  They would not talk. Not now, and not tomorrow. They would not share the secret parts of themselves the way they had shared their bodies. They were two planets, and this brush was the closest their orbits ventured. She was a Clothes-Maker, he a House-Builder. Each performed their role admirably. They had been Placed well. Sophie was good at her job, and she enjoyed it in a way. She made things, which had always been important to her. But this making was controlled, partitioned. She sketched the barest impression of her ideas, drawn from an archive of trends and numbers, then parceled these off to the next Maker in the assembly line. All tasks were demarcated so. It was the way of the Anonym.

  Sophie leaned out over the railing, hoping someone would see her naked form. A scream built up inside her, a dagger ready to shatter the peace of the neatly-lined neighborhood. She left it sheathed.

  Instead she closed her eyes and dipped into the past, into the last time she had bared her soul, and exchanged the cacophony of shoulds, musts and have-tos for the voice inside her.

  The moon was shining in her window as she slept. It laid a silver finger over her face, gently rousing her to wakefulness. Outside the world was wet and shining. A thunderstorm had crackled through the air, leaving it quiet and waiting. The leaves of the trees had been washed by its rain. She knew it would be against the Rules. Every day she went to Class and learned about the world and its Rules. They were not laid out in the books. They were in glances and slaps and guilt. They were in whispered words and faces turned away. Sophie slipped very quietly from her bed, and took off her pyjamas, top and bottom. She folded and hung them over the back of her chair. Then she wriggled through the window and into the garden.

  The moonlight bathed her small nakedness, making it glow between the hydrangea bushes. The dark wet earth bubbled up between her small toes. She sank to the ground with a sigh of relief. Scooping up handfuls of mud, Sophie smeared dirt across the white wall of the house. She dragged her finger through the brown film, drawing daisies and stars and dragons and dreams. She began to throw mud-splashes wildly and laugh with her head back and her small mouth wide, but with no sound. This had already become her secret.

  Soon her face and arms and legs and tummy were thick with mud. She had become a shadow in between the trees of the garden. When she had spent all the joy and passion pent up inside her, she unwound the green coil of the hosepipe and sprayed down the wall. Afterwards, she sprayed herself from above, the water drenching her head and washing her body until it gleamed once again. She wriggled through the window, patted herself dry with yesterday’s clothes, and dressed herself with care. When she climbed into bed, she hugged her secret to her. She knew she would do it again.

  Sophie tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, her eyes fixed on the red light. The morning after a jasmine night was always ruffled, disturbed. She needed this moment to be over. She needed to reach her impossibly smooth and shiny office and hear the scratching of her pen against paper. She needed to confirm her world.

  Instead she reached over to the cubby, springing it. From its mouth she took the silver disc that Adrian had given her. He got it from the Black Market. It was his small rebellion, these words, rhythms and melodies that stepped beyond the boundaries in which they all tried to live.

  She slipped it in the CD player.

  She parked the car hurriedly, tyres hanging sloppily over the white paint. She had an uncomfortable feeling in her throat like rising bile and her stomach was twisted like shrapnel. She stumbled awkwardly to the supermarket doors, her desperation ill-carried by the pointy shoes in a shape so unlike her feet. Then the doors swooshed open, and she breathed in a deep calming breath.

  The hum of the airconditioners were her prayer, the chlorine of disinfectant her incense. The supermarket was her temple, the inane melody tinkling from the speakers throwing a dense blanket over it all. The shelves of things, brightly coloured and crisply wrapped, were just as they should be. She pushed a trolley back and forth, selecting a new shampoo, an extra pack of biscuits, a frozen dinner for her and her husband. The act of taking the things from the shelves and placing them in her trolley soothed her. She felt cultured and satisfied, knowing which shampoo would give her hair the most body, which dish washing detergent lasted longest and soaped soapiest. She felt as she did, as a young girl, getting all A+’s on her test.

  At home, she unpacked the groceries calmly, then sat down at the kitchen table. She found nothing to fill her mind – not work, not routine, not the rush of acquiring something new. With her nail she picked at a fleck of paint on the table. Cottage-green it was called. The cupboards and tiles around her were of the same.

  The marble counter below the cupboards had been wiped clean, only a jar of jam left standing on its surface. Her fridge droned in the corner. From outside there came the waves of traffic passing. Sophie began to hum Adrian’s song. It drummed up a feeling, one she knew. It snagged inside her, its familiar edges catching on familiar hooks. It was a stronger, darker version of the dullness she felt each day. A dullness so familiar she almost felt it as a friend. But the song had unmasked it, given it a name.

  Fear.

  In the face of such honesty, Sophie’s soul knew no defence other than joy. Her body was still, her finger slid beneath the loose flake of paint. With her head down and her eyes closed, fear and joy raged inside of her, fighting for her life. From inside the storm, a small voice spoke. It was insistent and clear. It was like the finger of the moon. Sophie stood up. She took the jar of jam, mulberry jam, and slowly unscrewed it. The lid clattered onto spotless tiles. She put in one finger, just one, and scooped out a blob of purple-black. Turning her hand, just a little, she let the blob drop onto the new old table. It grew upon impact, seeping outward. With the palm of her hand, Sophie spread the goo further across the surface. She dug three fingers, then four, into the jar and covered the table. When that was done, she moved onto the cupboards. With two hands, Sophie soon made cottage-green purple-black. The jam jar stood empty.

  Sophie walked to her droning fridge and removed a tub of margarine, (one highly recommended by the heart foundation). She greased the fridge. She had started to move faster with each covering, the stillness of joy accelerating towards its pinnacle. Now she started to draw. Dragging her fingers through mulberry dark and margarine glow, she wiped cars and offices and traffic lights and Rules and good bright little girls into being. She drew out the life she knew, the life that dulled her. The life that left her a shell with only fear knocking around inside.

  She ran through to the bathroom, and emptied a tube of toothpaste onto the mirror above the basin. She drew out the junkie thrills of objects arranged for choice and purchase, owning, controlling through small actions th
at meant nothing but another shackle to the power behind. She could not know how accurately she drew the faces of the Anonym. Those without faces. She did not know that those who saw and knew, would feel the flicker of danger.

  Chapter 2

  Anything that starts holds within itself the seeds of its own end. Tina brought the cup and saucer close to her mouth and blew carefully on the surface of the tea. She lifted her eyes to the windowpane as she brought the saucer down to rest comfortably on her belly. She was in her usual position at an oblique angle to the glass. Here her view lined up nicely with the narrow gap between curtain and wall. The afternoon sun slipped in softly through the delicate whorls of lace. There was some movement across the street. Tina had heard the neighbour arrive home earlier. Using one hand to balance her tea and the other to rub her stomach, Tina peered forward curiously.

  The woman came out the front door. Tina did not know her well, except to smile and nod politely. Certain boundaries must be maintained, and it was much easier to pretend they did not know when the other’s phone rang, or couples fought in the dark, if they ignored any connection at all. But illusion does not change what is. Tina had watched this woman for several years and she could see there was something different about her today. She could not See the flickering sparks that jumped out from Sophie’s shape, but she felt their effect all the same. It not only made Sophie seem different but made her herself feel different. She felt a rush of emotion, like affection or empathy, that flared her cheeks pink.

  Tina closed her eyes and shook her head, almost dislodging the cup and saucer. How could she tell anything about Sophie except what was there in front of her? She had been feeling rather peculiar these few weeks. Sometimes she thought it was the baby leaching off her food and air, making her feel ill. That was what her husband said. But sometimes she thought that the other little life inside her was stretching out tentacles of influence that had nothing to do with her body. Now her feet were tingling. Her bare soles were sunk into the thick of the carpet. It was part of her daily ritual at the window. Tina was a good wife and would soon be a mother. She had a job to do. Whatever was happening to that woman was not a part of that. Just one more look, she thought.

  Across the street Sophie had uncoiled the green hose from its neat plastic rack on the wall, and started spraying around her head in arcs. She was laughing too, loudly, raucously, so unlike any polite sound ever heard in the careful angles of the neighbourhood. Others had been drawn out of their houses now. No doubt they had been standing at their windows just as she was. These were those who felt it their duty to watch openly, with raised eyebrows and pursed lips. Herself Tina found this kind of watching led to so many less interesting things to watch. It was these pillars of society that gathered first on the pavement rimming Sophie’s lawn. One or two spoke to her. Someone clicked his tongue, loudly. Another sighed. But Sophie did not seem to hear them. She had already lost a few articles of clothing, shoes, socks, her blouse. The curves of her body shone brilliantly through her damp undergarments. Now that everything was wet; the walls of her house dripping, the grass oozing; Sophie threw aside the hose still gushing and dropped to her hands and knees.

  Tina could no longer see properly. The crowd was growing like a small mould. The audience seemed to have no effect on the woman. Tina would not miss this. She rushed to the door, pulling her arms through a heavy coat that had hung over a chair. She was being drawn to Sophie by something much stronger than curiosity. It was a force she did not understand and could not stop to question. In a moment she was running across the road, her feet still bare, her legs also naked beneath the winter coat.

  She stopped at the ring of people. Her chest was rising up and down with her heavy breaths, and her hands were cupped beneath her stomach to hold its weight. But all that was in Tina’s mind was Sophie, pale and beautiful, her hands full of mud. She had pushed herself back on her haunches and was rubbing it over her body, over her breasts and down to her hips. The man beside Tina breathed in sharply. All of them felt it, the potency in this moment, this spectacle. They watched in silence as their neighbour peeled off her old self to reveal a raw wet skin underneath.

  Soon they heard sirens. Someone had called the Regulators. Unease rippled through the body of the crowd as the ambulances and other, unmarked vans parked all around them, but each and every one took care to keep their faces blank, their limbs immobile. They would not defy or defend.

  Only Tina’s eyes grew wet, only her face crumpled with the salt of tears. But her swollen stomach disguised her and those in white coats pushed past, paying her no mind.

  It did not take long for order to be restored. The crowd of onlookers broke up in a desultory fashion. They drifted back to their houses and their lives. There was nothing more to see. The incident was nothing more than a small protuberance in their day, something to be stepped around in memory, scraped off their shoe.

  Physically there was very little left of Sophie’s transgression. The house stood staring with empty eyes, as did the others on the street. Only a few clods of uprooted grass and a certain gleam on the walls remained.

  And Tina. She could not bring herself to turn around and return to her home. The day was settling around her, sinking into the earth as evening drew overhead. A chill rippled through the air, pulling soft fingers over her cheek. She tightened the coat around her with both arms, crossing them above the bulge of her stomach. Still she would not move.

  Staring at Sophie, Tina had felt happy. It was a bigger and fuller feeling than she had ever felt huddled behind her window. She did not know if it came from Sophie, or herself, or something else altogether. But this was not why she stayed. She stayed because as wonderfully as the feeling had swelled within her, it had been ripped cleanly away. Abruptly, violently, she had been torn away from the best thing she had ever known, before she had had time to truly know it. She was bereft, and hollow. She was wondering if regret would come to replace the feeling of goodness. Unconsciously her hands slipped down to the writhing of life held in the tautness of her skin. Where had the world she thought she knew gone to? What would come in its place?

  But as she stood there, alone on the street in the shadows of dusk, she became aware of other feelings. Feelings more solid and rooted. A wetness trickling down her leg. Pain.

  Beneath her coat, her thin housedress was already stained red. She put her head back, opened her mouth, and screamed.

  Chapter 3

  Mr Nietzburger waited in front of the steel doors, watching the red numbers change above them, climbing towards his floor. His briefcase was firmly under his left arm, feeling proper and right next to the starchedness of his white coat. In his other hand he clicked a pen in and out.

  Mr Nietzburger liked his job. Although he was young he was already very good at what he did. It was him, and people like him, who kept it all together.

  The doors opened. In the metal cell stood the manager of this Cesto branch, the one Mr Nietzburger was there to assess. The other man stood with his hands clasped in front of him, his feet slightly apart, his eyes focused on the floor in the moment before the doors opened. He stood just as he should, Mr Nietzburger noted with pleasure. When he lifted his gaze and saw the Regulator waiting there, there was an invisible shift in his manner. Mr Nietzburger could almost see the hairs prickle on the other man’s neck, almost smell the sweat flow from his armpits, almost hear his heart hammering behind his tie.

  This man did not like him. Most men of his kind, those who had some measure of power, did not like to be reminded of those who had power over them. But he did not want Mr Nietzburger to see his fear. He smiled widely, showing all his teeth. ‘Oh, wonderful to see you. Come in, come in. How’s the assessment going then, Mr N? I trust everything’s in order?’ The man immediately berated himself for the use of ‘Mr N’.

  Mentally, Mr Nietzburger checked off another item on his list. This man used all the right words, in all the right places. Did he mean what he said? Did the words mean what he
meant? That did not matter at all. It was the veneer rather than the substance that let the Anonym’s control seep through the world like tea from a teabag.

  Mr Nietzburger lightly touched the briefcase under his arm. ‘I have all the Performance Reports here. Tanya, on Level Two, is doing particularly well. You might however,’ at this point Mr Nietzburger lowered his voice slightly, ‘you might want to keep an eye on Vincent.’

  Yes, Vincent, the manager remembered. The clever one with the terrible concentration. Some days he drifted in and out, others he shocked with the brilliance of his ideas. The latter was definitely the more disturbing of the two.

  ‘Understood Mr Nietzburger, completely understood. There’ll be no more trouble with that one. I’ll take care of it.’

  As the elevator began to descend, the two of them locked in its steely embrace, the manager once again began to sweat.

  Chapter 4

  The little girl’s feet did not touch the floor. She swung them back and forth while she watched her mother break the eggs into the pan. The sun poured in through the kitchen window. One of the window panes was missing, but it did not matter. It let the sounds of outside in. Warm insecty sounds.

  Her mother was beautiful. The little girl had always thought so. But it was a sad kind of beauty. Even as the sun plunged her in its arms, she had a bluish stain edging the space around her. Mariella did not know where it came from. It had always been there. She knew it was different from the pale rose colour that hovered above her own skin.

  They had always lived in the house on the hill, with no one around but the two of them, her mother painting canvases in the day and making clothes at night. Mariella did not often bother to notice that it was a good and wonderful life. It had always been that way.