Memory of Water. Emmi Itaranta

other, I asked, did this mean that nobody really knew? She thought about this for a while and then said that there were different ways of knowing, and sometimes it was impossible to say which way was the most reliable.

      Little by little I learned that for all their diagrams and strange words and detailed explanations, my mother’s books did not tell everything. I wondered how snow would feel on my palm just before melting into water, or what ice would look like on a winter’s day in a sun-glazed landscape where the outlines of shadows are sharp-drawn, but those stories I had to seek in other books. I was disappointed with the tall bookshelf and its contents, which promised so much and yet ignored what was most important. What good was it to know the composition of a snow crystal, if one couldn’t resurrect the sensation of its coldness against one’s skin and the sight of its glimmer?

      The conversation of my parents drifted into my ears louder than before. My mother was using her sensible voice and my father’s answers were concise. I got up to close the door. The wooden floor creaked under my footsteps. I could smell the scent of pines in the cooling air streaming through the window. A large horsefly was buzzing between the glass and the insect net.

      Just as I was pulling the door closed, I heard the message-pod beep my own identification sound further down the hallway. I walked to the entrance, where the light of the pod was flashing red. To: Noria, the text on the screen read. I lifted the message-pod from the wall rack and placed my finger on the screen in order to log in. Sanja’s family name appeared: Valama. I was slightly surprised. Sanja seldom used the message-pod. Her family had only one shared account, and their pod had been bought secondhand. It was out of order more often than not despite Sanja’s persistent tuning attempts, or possibly partly as their result. I chose the Read option on the screen and waited for the message written in Sanja’s bouncy handwriting to appear. Come tomorrow, she wrote, and bring all the TDKs with you. Possible DISCOVERY!!

      ‘Discovery’ was one of the most important expressions in Sanja’s vocabulary. It usually meant she had come up with a use for something looted from the plastic grave. I wasn’t always entirely convinced that the uses she invented were in accord with the original purposes of the things, but I was nevertheless curious to see what she had discovered. I picked the pod-pen up from the wall rack, wrote Before noon in reply on the screen and sent the message.

      I was closer to my parents’ voices now. They rattled behind the gap of the kitchen door. A faint smell of seaweed stew floated in the air. As I was turning to go back into my room, my mother’s words caught my attention.

      ‘… If you told them now, when it’s not late yet?’

      I couldn’t make out my father’s murmured reply.

      ‘He’d see to it that we’d be left alone,’ my mother continued. ‘If the military learns about—’ She lowered her voice and the end of the sentence faded away.

      I heard my father pacing back and forth in the kitchen. When he replied, his voice was tight and unflinching.

      ‘I only trust Bolin as much as one can trust a soldier.’

      This was not unexpected. My father believed most army officers were thieves, and I didn’t think he was wrong. Yet my mother’s reply surprised me.

      ‘You trusted him more once,’ she said.

      My father was quiet for a moment before answering, ‘That was a long time ago.’

      I only had an instant to wonder about the meaning of those words before my mother said something in a soft voice, and then I caught my own name.

      ‘It is her I’m thinking about,’ my father replied. ‘Would you rather she became one of the tea masters of the cities? They’re nothing more than sell-outs, pets of the military. Besides, many still believe it’s against the teachings to let women practise as tea masters. She belongs here.’

      ‘She could learn another profession,’ my mother said.

       What about me, is anybody asking what I want?

      ‘Are you suggesting that I break our family line of tea masters?’ My father’s voice was sharp with disbelief.

      I couldn’t hear the words in my mother’s response, but her tone was harsher.

      ‘This isn’t really about Noria, or even the spring.’ My father sounded angry now. ‘This is about your research. You need their funding.’

      I took a slow step closer to the kitchen door, taking care not to make a sound. This was getting interesting.

      ‘I’m not on their side. But perhaps I need them to believe that I am,’ my mother said. ‘The water resources of the Lost Lands haven’t been properly investigated since the disaster. This project, if it were to be successful—’ The words lost their shape again as she lowered her voice, and I only heard the end of the sentence: ‘… less important than your age-old beliefs and empty customs?’

      My breathing sounded so loud in my ears that I was afraid they might hear it. I tried to exhale slowly and soundlessly.

      ‘They may seem empty to you, because you are not a tea master,’ my father said quietly, and every word fell heavy through the air. ‘Yet some things run so deep we can’t stop their flow. It’s ignorance to think that earth and water can be owned. Water belongs to no one. The military must not make it theirs, and therefore the secret must be kept.’

      The silence stretched through the still, dusky air, between the two of them and me standing on the other side of the door. When my mother spoke again, there was no crack in her glass-clear voice.

      ‘If water belongs to no one,’ she said, ‘what right do you have to make the hidden waters yours exclusively, while whole families in the village risk building illegal water pipes in order to survive? What makes you different from the officers of New Qian, if you do what they would?’

      My father said nothing. I heard my mother’s footsteps and turned hastily towards the message-pod as she walked through the kitchen door. When she saw me, she stopped in her tracks.

      ‘I was just reading my message and some pod-news,’ I said. Without looking back I turned, walked through the house into my room and closed the door behind me. Outside the sun was brushing the horizon among golden shreds of light on the smoke-blue sky. I had barely made it back to bed when the floorboards creaked in the hallway, and then there was a knock on my door. My mother peeked in, a questioning look on her face. I nodded to her and she stepped into the room.

      ‘There’s no need to pretend you didn’t hear us talking, Noria,’ she said and sighed. ‘Perhaps it’s a conversation we should have had with you in the first place. I sometimes don’t know.’ She seemed weary. ‘You know what we were talking about, don’t you?’ She pulled a wooden stool for herself from under my desk and sat down on it.

      ‘It was about the hidden spring,’ I said. She nodded.

      ‘The times are getting harsher,’ she said. ‘But whatever happens, whatever decisions we take with your father, you must always remember that we’re doing everything with your best interests in mind.’ I wasn’t looking at her. I pretended to be searching in my book for the paragraph I had been reading. The pages felt stiff and reluctant.

      ‘How would you feel about living in one of the cities?’ asked my mother. ‘In a place like New Piterburg, or Mos Qua, or even as far as Xinjing?’

      I thought of the only two cities I had seen: Kuoloyarvi in the east, and Kuusamo in the south. I remembered my initial excitement at the crowded streets, vault-shaped, large buildings covered with solar panels and whole building tops turned to giant blaze lanterns with transparent glass walls and greenery inside. I had been fascinated by the Qianese market stalls on the narrow alleys selling strange foods and drinks, their strong, spicy and sometimes unpleasant scents perceptible from several blocks away. I had wandered with my mother through the Danish quarters of Kuusamo, buying small bags of coloured sweets to take home with me, and the day I had taken my Matriculation Test I had been treated by