Tamaruq Read Free

Mikaela. ‘She’s been staying with us.’
    No. No—
    ‘Since when?’
    ‘Since the night the tower collapsed.’
    Please stop – you don’t realize—
    ‘The tower—’
    ‘We found her, Oskar. In the water. She was in trauma. Don’t raise your voice, it upsets her—’
    She sees the change in the young man’s face. The hint of recognition, the confusion as he struggles to place her.
    ‘Ata,’ says the man again, a disbelieving note in his voice. ‘Take those glasses off a minute?’
    He reaches out a hand. She doesn’t know what his intent is but the movement is enough, it’s the impetus her body needs. She turns and runs. Behind her she hears his shout, Hey! and Mikaela Larsson calling after her, but she’s already in the stairwell. Her chest is tight. It’s hard to breathe. She races down the stairs, blundering into people, ricocheting against the walls, unaware of any pain as she connects with concrete. She can hear the man, Oskar’s, voice.
    ‘Hey,
Ata
! Where are you going?’
    He’s following. Did he recognize her? Could he?
    There’s a bridge ten floors down. She ducks into a corridor and heads for it. He won’t know which way she’s gone. He’ll have to guess.
    She steps out of the tower onto the narrow catwalk that constitutes a bridge this side of the border, clutching at the rusting handrails for balance. The tail of a winter wind hits her face, whipping through the inadequate western clothing and chilling her at once. The sea churns coldly in the waterway below. Ahead of her on the bridge is a young child. She watches where the child steps and places her feet in the exact same spaces. They are agile as birds, the kids here, and it is this that will give her away, any hint of hesitation, the suggestion that she has not spent her entire life balancing on rickety bridges constructed from salvage that might at any moment give way beneath her feet.
    Fifty metres to the next tower. She crosses the bridge. She does not look back. She ducks into the tower. The lift is a trap; she takes the stairs to the surface. A waterbus is pulling in and she elbows her way onto it, using the few peng left over from the kelp to pay for her ticket. She goes below, and sits, head down, heart racing. Black spots dance in front of her eyes. The motor starts up, sending shudders through the boat.
    Yes, leave. Leave now. Please. Please.
    The boat pulls away. She doesn’t know where it is going and doesn’t care. The place that was safe is no longer safe.
    She should never have gone outside. She thought the disguise was enough, but it only takes one person who follows the newsreels, and it’s over.
    The waterbus reaches a terminus somewhere near the south-western edge of the city. Here there are wide interstices of daylight between the conical towers and through them the sea stretches away into the distance, its grip unbroken except for the occasional fishing or military boat.
    Adelaide disembarks with the rest of the passengers. It is only then she realizes the waterbus has remained busy to the end of the route. She looks up at their destination. The terminus appears like any other tower in the west, its drab grey slopes pocked with indents from unidentified sources, graffitied landscapes layered over grime, with no obvious signs to indicate what or who might be found inside.
    On the decking westerners mill about, some pushing into the queue for the returning waterbuses, others smoking thinly rolled cigarettes, watching the buses, idly exchanging conversation. She finds it hard to guess the ages of westerners, who often look older than their years, but there is a full spectrum here, from young children clinging to the legs of their minders to old faces furrowed with lines and tempered by the harsh climate. Something jumps into her mind, something Vikram said once, about the average life expectancy this side of the city, and she has to close off the thought quickly, to prevent the whirlpool. She enters the tower