'Which house? Whose, Mr Ken? Is there an empty house here? I thought they were all crowded with too many children, and children's children. And oh, such a difference, Mr Ken, to be two minutes away from one's husband. Passing him every day in the fields. Weeding his fields instead of yours by mistake.'

'I know, I know,' Kuei nodded.

'I want this to stop,' Mae said.

'It has not been good,' he admitted. He looked at her, his eyes that wanted to stay a child and that wanted her. 'But it could be good. If we just say, "Yes, it is true, but now we will live together, open." We could do that, and in a year they will get used to it.'

'You don't understand,' she said. 'That night – huh! The night before last, it seems a year ago. That night, as I walked home, I had made up my mind. That this would stop. I decided then.'

She heard the men and their laughter, the birds in the fields, and the very slight noise of the river that flowed right across the heart of the village. She looked into his dark eyes.

'I have been doing too much. I know what I want to do. I have to do just that, if I am to do it at all. And I cannot bear to give up.'

'Info,' he said, almost in scorn.

'This village,' she answered him. 'What your grandmother showed me is that everything dies. It is not good enough just to live. You have to know that death is certain. Not… Not just of the person, but of whole worlds. Ours is going to die. It is dead now. The only thing I can do is help it be reborn, so we can survive.'

Kuei was picking at something on the windowsill next to her. 'Mother to us all,' he said, in some bitterness.

'If it were a different time…' she said.

'If we were younger…' he said.

'If it were as it should be…'

'If we were as we once were…'

He shook himself like a dog, shivered. ' Urggh,' he said, partly in anger, partly in casting anger off. 'Will you go back to Joe?'

She paused in order to think, but found she did not have to. 'No,' she answered. 'No, I will concentrate on this.'

'On what?' Mr Ken yelped. 'You will concentrate on loneliness, Mae? On an empty house? A room in someone else's house, working like a servant in order to say thank you?'

Mae sucked in air through her nose, in a thin, focused stream that hissed, but was not a sigh. It was a gathering of strength.

'On clearing the floor for work.'

Kuei stared back at her, helpless. 'What work?' he asked again. He really didn't know. She wanted to hug him then, hold him, comfort him, for he was one of the dead. But it would be misinterpreted.

'Teaching us how to use that thing,' she said. Each word was like a brick that she could barely carry.

'You can do both!'

She held up her hands. 'No. I can't. I don't sleep, I hardly eat, I work in the house, I work in the fields, and then I work on that, and there is almost nothing left of me.' Suddenly she was shouting, 'I'm tired!'

The only thing in his face was sympathy for her.

'Maybe when all of this is done,' she said, more quietly, relenting.

'I will be waiting,' Kuei said helplessly. 'I waited before.'

A year from now? Maybe the change would come, and after that a time of calm. After the massacre, stillness?

Mae nodded yes, but said nothing further, to avoid giving him too much hope. He nodded yes as well, and made no move to kiss her, for both of them had agreed to end, not to begin. He turned and went down the stairs to the kitchen. The diwan seemed full of fine white dust.

And she ran up the wooden stairs to look out of a high window through bleached-blue sunlight over bleached-blue rooftops. Mae looked down and saw Kuei as if through a mist. He walked tall, straight, holding his jacket against the heat, the back of his T-shirt stained with sweat and nerves, past the men, who ignored him. They turned, grinning, to look at his back.

There goes my young man, thought Mae.

You only get one, said someone else's voice.

Remember him, remember his broad back, for he is walking into the past, into the Land of the Dead. Even if you meet again, you will both be different again, strangers or friends. Say goodbye now, for you will have no other chance; say goodbye for every moment to come without him. But at least you had him. For once you had him.

And again, that old question: Granny, Teacher, why is love pain? Why such a sweet sad sick hurt, a dragging-down in the belly, an ache, a yearning?

Because it always goes away,

Mr Ken paused at the gate and looked both ways, left and right, as if considering, though he had no choice. Then he walked on. Mae permitted herself to weep.

CHAPTER 13

Mae got her money.

She was working at three a.m., on Kwan's TV, when it announced that she had mail.

'I will read it for you,' the machine said. By now it knew that Mae avoided reading herself.

'The Republic of Karzistan, Ministry of Development, under the terms of the Taking Wing Initiative, is pleased to inform you that it will grant funding in full as requested in your recent application, under the following conditions…'

Mae was numb. The government was talking to her. The government knew who she was. They had just given her the money?

What conditions? Her mind went dark, ready to be hurt.

First, they wanted her to keep records of both sales and replies.

'The Taking Wing Initiative needs to know how successfully you have unrolled your mat. Please save the attached suite of Customer Care software. It will automatically record the data we need…'

It was a Question Map. The same information was recorded over and over – any letters she got, any orders she fulfilled, would be analyzed by country, referral, and type of business.

Mae kept listening for serious conditions. But there were none. No interest? No percentage?

Mae was enraged. What kind of foolish government was that, to arrange its business so badly? How could it prosper? Were they all children, like Mr Oz?

But praise the gods – Luck, Happiness, whatever – for giving them masters who were so naive. She had her money; she had her business back. Oh, could she ride this life like a leaf bobbing up and down on the river in a storm!

Mae needed to tell someone, but who could she tell at three in the morning? Poor Kwan who had nursed her but was now asleep? The Central Man, yes, but that would mean going back to her old house, to Joe, to Mr Ken… Who?

Mae went to Sezen's house. She knocked on the door. Then, beyond politesse, Mae pummelled it. This was good news.

There were hissed voices, shuffling, a child's cry, a shushing, slippers on the floor.

Sezen answered. She wore a little girl's nightdress and the spots on her cheeks had gone blue-black from merciless squeezing.

May seized her hands. 'I got the money!' she whispered. 'Sezen. It was as you said, the government gave us the cash!'

'This is a joke. This is madness,' said Sezen.

'They gave me every last riel of it. I asked for too much!'

'You mean we are going to do it?'

'Yes, yes, they loved it!'

Sezen squealed and hugged her, spun on her heel, and said, 'Let's get drunk. You have any booze?'

Mae shook her head.

'Rich woman, you will have whisky. You will have silks.'

You will build your mother a new house.'

'Tuh!' said Sezen. 'No. I will buy a motorcycle. Of my own.'

Mae pronounced her, 'Wild girl.'

'Look who is calling people wild. Eh? You? Adventuress. Madam Death. The man in her family. All these things people call you.'

Sezen bundled Mae into her own poor house. She threw cushions in abandon into a heap. In the middle of the night at the end of summer, the fleas were at their hungriest. They nipped about Mae's ankles in a mist.