Memory of Water. Emmi Itaranta

flared in me again, but then I remembered the high walls and checkpoints dividing the streets, the ever-present soldiers and curfews. I remembered the exhaustion that had settled on me after only a couple of days, the pressing need to get away from the crowds, the longing for space and silence and emptiness. I could see myself loving visiting the cities, and I could see myself loathing living in one.

      ‘I don’t know,’ I said. My mother was looking at me intently.

      ‘And how would you feel about not becoming a tea master?’ she asked. ‘You could study languages, or mathematics, or assist me with my research.’

      I thought about it, but not for long, and answered truthfully.

      ‘I know the tea ceremony; I’ve studied it all my life. I wouldn’t know what else to be.’

      My mother remained quiet for a long time, and I could tell that her thoughts were running restless; she was much worse at concealing her feelings than my father. Eventually I broke the silence.

      ‘You know that house in the village, the one with the mark of water crime on the door?’

      ‘The blue circle?’ Something stirred in her. It took me a moment to understand it was fear. ‘What about it?’

      ‘What happened to the people who lived there?’

      My mother looked at me. I saw her searching for words.

      ‘Nobody knows.’ She stepped to me and squeezed my hand. ‘My dear Noria,’ she said, and then paused, as if changing her mind and not saying what she had been about to say. ‘I wish we could have given you a different world.’ She stroked my hair. ‘Try to sleep now. The time for decisions will come later.’

      ‘Good night,’ I said. With that, she smiled. It was a quick smile, and not at all happy.

      ‘Good night, Noria,’ she said, and left.

      After she had gone, I got up, kneeled in front of the book cabinet and took a wooden box from the bottom shelf. Through the thin layer of lacquer I could feel the grain of the undecorated wood against my fingertips. I turned the key in the lock and lifted the lid.

      Inside the box was a random collection of past-world things excavated from the plastic grave. A handful of smooth-polished, multicoloured stones and a small, twisted metal key with almost no teeth left lay on top. Under them were three partially translucent plastic rectangles with slightly rounded edges and two wheel-shaped holes in the middle. The same three letters were visible on each one: TDK. Dark, thin tape that was broken had unravelled from inside the rectangles. I had always liked the feeling of TDK tape between my fingers: it was light and smooth as a strand of hair, as air, as water. I had no idea what Sanja wanted with the TDKs. Neither of us had any inkling what they had been used for in the past-world, and I had only kept them because I liked to stroke the tape every now and then.

      At the bottom of the box glinted a silver-coloured, thin disc that I had once brought home because I found it beautiful. I picked it up in order to admire it once again. The shiny side was slightly scratched, but still so bright that I could see my own reflection in it. When it caught the light of the blaze lantern, it reflected all colours of the rainbow. On the matte side were traces of the text that had once run across it, and a few combinations of letters still remained: COM CT DISC.

      I placed the disc and the TDKs back in the box, locked it and stuffed it into my seagrass bag that was hanging from the hook on the wall next to the cabinet, ready for the morning.

      When I closed my eyes, I saw the distance that separated our house from the village and from another house, more weather-worn than ours. On its door a blue circle stared into the white night with outlines sharp enough to wound. The distance was not great, and if I looked at it long enough, it would grow narrower, until I’d be able to touch the door of the other house, to listen to the movements behind it.

      Or the silence.

      I wrapped the image away and pushed it from my mind, but I knew it did not disappear.

       CHAPTER FIVE

      I passed through the open gate of Sanja’s house and stopped the helicycle by the fence. Sanja’s mother Kira was standing in the middle of a patch of tall sunflowers, cutting a heavy flower head off the thick stem. At her feet there was a large basket, into which she had already gathered several flower heads, ripe with chubby seeds. Sanja’s little sister Minja was sitting on the sandy ground, trying to make a flat stone stay on top of three wooden blocks piled upon each other. The insect hood she had inherited from Sanja swayed on her head, oversized, and the stone kept slipping off her fingers time after time.

      ‘Noria!’ Minja said when she saw me. ‘Look!’ The flat stone rested forgotten in her hand for a moment as she pointed towards her construction site with her other hand. ‘A well.’

      ‘Pretty,’ I said, although the assembly did not resemble a well in any shape or form that I knew.

      Kira turned around. The dust-coloured front of her dress was scattered with the yellow of dry sunflower petals. Her face was weary and pale in the frame of black hair that looked unwashed under the insect hood, and the clothes hung loose on her narrow figure, but she was smiling. At that moment she looked a lot like Sanja.

      ‘Hi, Noria,’ she said. ‘Sanja’s been waiting for you all morning.’

      ‘My mother baked a pile of amaranth cakes yesterday,’ I said and pulled a seagrass box out of my bag. It felt heavy in my hand. ‘She sent these. There’s no rush with returning the box.’

      I caught the momentary stiffness on Kira’s face before her smile returned.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said and took the box. ‘Send my best to your mother. I’m afraid we don’t have anything to give back.’ She dropped the freshly-cut flower head on top of the pile in the basket. The lush, dark-green scent of the stems wafted in the air.

      ‘It doesn’t matter.’

      Kira didn’t look at me when she took Minja’s hand. I felt awkward.

      ‘Sponge-bath time, Minjuska,’ she said. ‘You’ll get to play with the pirate ship if you’re good.’

      Minja squealed, got up to her feet and dropped the flat stone on top of her well construction site. The blocks crashed to the ground, sending dust flying around them. Kira started towards the house, holding the cake box in one hand and Minja’s hand in the other.

      ‘See you later, Noria,’ she said. I waved goodbye to Minja, but she was only interested in the promise of the pirate ship.

      I walked around the house. Through the insect-net walls of the workshop I saw Sanja sitting on a stool at the table and fiddling with something. When I knocked on one of the pillars supporting the roof, she looked up and waved her hand. I stepped inside, closed the door behind me and took off my insect hood.

      The machine on the table in front of Sanja was the same she had found in the plastic grave a few weeks earlier. I recognised its angular shape, the dent embedded in the front panel, the strange numerical combinations and another dent on top. Two power cables ran from the machine to the solar generator sitting at the corner of the table.

      ‘Did you bring them?’ she asked. She had pulled hair back from her face with a worn scarf and two red spots were burning on her cheeks. I thought she must have woken early out of sheer excitement and fluttered restlessly around the workshop all morning. I placed my bag on the table and dug out my wooden box, from which I produced the TDKs.

      ‘I don’t understand what you want these for,’ I said.

      Sanja disappeared under the table to rummage around. She emerged a moment later, holding a black plastic rectangle. I remembered seeing it a few weeks earlier when I had come to get the waterskins repaired. When she picked up a TDK from the table, I realised how much the objects resembled each other.