INTERZONE 254 SEPT-OCT 2014 (3 page)

NINA ALLAN

Some Roses and their Phantoms

We moved house this summer. Knowing that our trips to London will be less frequent in future, one of the things I did in the weeks leading up to the move was to pay a visit to the Surrealists at Tate Modern. There are paintings there I’ve known and loved since my early teens, and the artists who created them have been a source of inspiration ever since. One of the works that means most to me is the 1943 painting ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’, by Dorothea Tanning. It is an extraordinary, resoundingly fantastical work, both menacing and somehow uplifting, that depicts a confrontation between a young girl and a giant sunflower in a hotel corridor. The girl’s clothes are torn, seeming to suggest that an act of violence has recently occurred, and the sunflower itself seems alive, sentient, its stems and petals simultaneously reaching towards the girl and blocking her path. The Tate also owns Tanning’s later work, ‘Some Roses and their Phantoms’, a surreal still life in which once again flowers seem to have acquired a malign animation.

While looking at these paintings, I found myself reflecting on how little known they are in comparison with the works of Tanning’s more famous partner, the German painter and pioneer of the Dada movement Max Ernst. There is no evidence that Ernst is the ‘better’ painter – indeed from a personal standpoint I would argue that Tanning shows the greater technical refinement. Tanning supported herself with her art from a young age, and her career trajectory – she outlived Ernst by more than three decades – was longer. Yet of the two, Ernst is still the artist more people have heard of.

I’ve been aware of such inequalities for years. During my early period of fascination with the Surrealists, information on Ernst was presented to me by the yard; information on Tanning I had to search for. Following my trip to London I decided to conduct a small experiment. Posing as a casual browser, I looked up general biographical information on both artists online, I was shocked to discover that although Ernst’s lengthy Wikipedia entry covers his association with Tanning in just a few lines and does not even identify Tanning as an artist in her own right, more than half of the biography section in Tanning’s entry is devoted to her relationship with Ernst. Even the photograph used to illustrate the article shows her beside Ernst, with Ernst positioned slightly towards the foreground.

A year after Tanning painted ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’, the science fiction writer C.L. Moore published her novella
No Woman Born
. In it, she tells the story of Deirdre, a beautiful dancer who has perished in a theatre fire and is then brought back to life as what we would probably describe today as a cyborg. Her brain – fortunately undamaged – is housed within an elaborate mechanical construct, a new metal body that Deirdre has learned to control and animate with the power of her mind. For Harris, who knew her before the fire, the new Deirdre is something unearthly, something more than human. But in spite of the physical reconstruction she has been subjected to, Deirdre still retains the cast of mind and grace of being that made her remarkable. When Moore describes the new Deirdre’s finely moulded head as resembling a sculpture by Brancusi, I cannot help thinking again of Dorothea Tanning, who would have known Brancusi’s work well, and whose representation of animate form tended more and more towards similar abstractions as her vision progressed.

There is nothing of the surreal in what follows, though. Moore’s story is a tightly argued piece of science fiction that interrogates the nature of artificial intelligence, the rights of engineered life forms, and what actually constitutes a human being. Maltzer, the scientist who has designed Deirdre’s new body and helped to reintegrate her mind with her altered form, insists that she has lost everything that made her not only a proper human being but more specifically a
female
human being. He tries to persuade Harris that Deidre must be prevented from taking up her art again, because if she does, her formerly adoring audiences are likely to brand her a freak and turn on her. “She has enough already,” Maltzer says. “She can live normally as other people live, without going back on the screen… She’s too fragile to stand that.”

Maltzer’s attitudes may be horrifying, but they are not significantly different from those of the male biographers, art directors and book publishers who have either consciously or unconsciously sought to denigrate or annul the work or even the existence of so many female artists and writers across the centuries. What Maltzer wants, in the end, is to maintain control over Deirdre. In cloaking his desire to suppress her creativity behind a mask of concern for her mental and physical wellbeing – in ‘not wanting her to be hurt’ – he is reminiscent of the doctor-husband John in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s groundbreaking weird tale of 1892 ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. In seeking to censor not only Jane’s physical independence but her very thought processes, John is revealed as yet another respected professional who finds it difficult to accommodate the fact that his wife’s talents may be equal or superior to his own.

As science fiction, Moore’s story is remarkably prescient, and in Moore’s lush, imaginatively unfettered approach to speculative materials we see the beginnings of the genre-defying science fantasies of her modern-day counterparts. But
No Woman Born
could equally be interpreted as a depiction of a woman’s struggle to be herself, without censure or curtailment by men. Such censure and curtailment are especially to be condemned when they originate with a loved one or partner. Moore shows us one woman’s struggle to free herself from the bonds of such a partnership and enter new territory, to be what she knows she is, rather than what her man desires and demands that she should be. Deirdre’s loneliness in her struggle is palpable, yet she knows she must continue, regardless of whether others will summon the bravery to follow her.

When C.L. Moore’s husband and collaborator Henry Kuttner died in 1958, Moore stopped writing science fiction, concentrating on TV scriptwriting instead. When she married again in 1963, her second husband, Thomas Reggie, discouraged her from writing altogether. Compared with the many well known male contributors to
Weird Tales
and
Astounding Science Fiction
whose careers were spawned at the same time, and in spite of the fact that she was recognised by her peers as one of the most original voices among them, there is remarkably little biographical information on Catherine Moore. We are told that Thomas Reggie ‘forbade’ her from writing, that he vetoed her attendance at the ceremony that would have made her a SF Grandmaster on the grounds that Moore – whose health was failing – would find the celebrations in her honour ‘too confusing’. I have not thus far been able to discover any readily available documentation that puts Moore’s side of the story, or gives a fuller account of how and why these acts of oppression were perpetrated.

I was interviewed by telephone last month for the Spanish newspaper El Pais to coincide with the Spanish publication of
The Silver Wind
. A part of the discussion was given over to what my interviewer, the journalist and writer Angel Luis Sucasas referred to as the ‘international new wave’ of women in science fiction and fantasy, writers like Lauren Beukes, Karin Tidbeck, Sofia Rhei, Nnedi Okorafor, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Aliette de Bodard – the list goes on. On the one hand, talking about these writers and their achievements felt immensely gratifying, a reminder of how much ground has been fought for and won by women in SFF in recent years. As I said to Angel at the time, the idea that women do not write SF – that women do not
write
, period – was always a pernicious myth, and women artists are simply not prepared to put up with such blatant sexism any longer. Reflecting on our conversation later though, I felt bound to ask myself whether we truly are the first generation of women SFF writers
not
to be at least partially defined by our male partners, editors, commentators or industry professionals? I really think we might be, a fact I find both cheering and utterly dismaying. We are getting there, yes. But why the hell has it taken so long?

NINA ALLAN

Illustrated by Tara Bush

Marielena. My love, my muse, my demon. Since I was forced to leave my country, I am dispossessed of her. Ma-ri-el-ena. I say her name to myself in the dark when I can’t sleep, rolling the syllables around on my tongue like so many dark pearls. Because she is lost to me I see her in everyone. In the financier with her Jimmy Choos and her green Cross briefcase. The foul-mouthed publican, her forearms like an Olympic rower’s, her hair so red it dims the traffic lights – stop, stop, stop. The Pakistani student – Dolce & Gabbana spectacles, black hijab. The child with her dirt-smeared cheek and scabby knees. Marielena taunts me in her manifold guises and then slips away, hiding herself in the shadows. I strain to catch her voice, but all I hear is the noise of traffic and the shouts of youths, kicking a crumpled beer can down the street. Marielena’s absence is my greatest punishment. She sees my desertion as a betrayal, but I had no choice.

You imagine you understand how it begins. You – with your passport from birth and your front door key, your insurance against life, death and hijacking – think of palace coups and mobs with guns, young men in dirty bandanas and shouldering Kalashnikovs. How about a voting booth, a press conference, a gaggle of bland-speaking politicians wearing Western clothes? That’s how it’s done these days, believe me. Why shoot when you can legislate? The guns come out right at the end, for those who don’t get the message or who won’t get lost.

I chose to get lost, to come here. Marielena insisted I should stand my ground.
It’s your country
, she said.
These people, they’re just fly-by-nights
. She meant our new government.
We will outlive them all. Anyway
, she said.
You’ll shrivel up and die in a place like that. What are you going to write about? And you know I hate the cold
.

“I can’t outlive anyone if I don’t have a head,” I reasoned. Marielena fell silent. She didn’t say the word coward out loud, but I knew she was thinking it.

I imagine these decisions must be simpler when you’re a demon. Human death is like a bruise – it soon fades.

“You will come, though,” I said to her. “We’ll stay together?”

She kept her silence at first, and I thought she was sulking. Then she turned on me with fire in her eyes and asked me how I expected her to live in a country that had sold its soul. Not to the devil, oh no, but to the annual APR and the FTSE, whatever that was, to McDonald’s and Madonna and the iPhone.

The devil, now
, she said.
That might have been interesting
.

She told me she’d suffocate, then refused to discuss the matter any further. I thought she’d come round in the end. She had to. We were a team.

They kept us waiting in a secure enclosure at the airport. (If you thought secure enclosures were only for cattle, you would be wrong.) On the other side of the barrier, a woman who had failed the preliminary entrance stipulation was being escorted by two armed border guards towards a waiting plane. The woman was screaming and crying and rending her clothes. The border guards kept on going, just doing their job. I saw Marielena’s fury in that woman’s eyes, as I knew she meant me to. Her anger and her terror and her wordless farewell.

Muse and monster, Marielena, how is her loss even bearable for me to contemplate, much less suffer?

What do I think of when I think of my country? The special lamb dish my mother used to make, with apricots. Apricots, and shaded courtyards, and the stony road that leads you from the village right into the city. The city, with its markets and its protocols, the bookstore and Turkish cafe, the tiny forbidden record exchange, where at one time you could put on headphones and listen to albums by the Bee Gees and Nirvana, Mahalia Jackson and Amália Rodrigues, Salif Keita and Bob Dylan and Suzanne Vega.

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
. I could have fallen for you, dear Suzanne, if not for Marielena. She would have torn me apart, piece by bloody piece, had she ever suspected.

The smell of scorched earth and ripening figs, the tawny back of the midday sun, beating with a golden hammer on the terracotta roof tiles.

Tabby cats, swift ectomorphs, their mangy hides speckled with dust motes, patrolling the backyards of restaurants, jousting for scraps.

Foreign newspapers and tobacco root, chess games at dusk. Incense, incensed, insensible.

Myself, running home from school, haranguing my mother with my first ecstatic, eager, arrogant words of poetry.

I wake to rain.

Is this a new kind of temple that we come to, this damp concrete edifice where the Border Agency keeps its offices, its grey walls slick with drizzle, its acolytes in their nylon uniforms, deciding our fates behind a toughened glass screen with a tick in a box?

What do they make of our dramas, these men and women? You hear stories – stories of a Sudanese pastor, setting himself on fire outside the town hall in Leicester, of a computing graduate from Eritrea, revealing her genital mutilations to Customs and Excise at the port of Dover. Stories of pepper spray and mass hysteria, of dirty hypodermics and hatchets and electric steak knives. It is because of stories like these that the reinforced glass has been installed, the panic buttons and the sprinkler system, as effective against self-immolation as it is against illicit smoking in the agency toilets.

I could tell you I have no understanding of what drives my fellow supplicants to such acts of violence, but the truth is I do. The choking tide of rage and despair, the brain-freezing boredom, the night sweats and blurred vision and shortness of breath, all synonyms for the terror that overthrows you as you are dragged feet first out of your life and into this limbo. You are no one here until you can back up your personal tragedy with the appropriate paperwork.

The temple servants in their ugly uniforms know nothing. They are simply minions. Why waste energy committing suicide when there will always be more?

“I’m sorry, Mr Wahid, but we’re still waiting for a date for your hearing.”

“Do you have any idea when that will be?”

A resolute shake of the head. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t say. Your forms are still in the system, I’m afraid.”

“Does this mean I can’t look for work yet?”

“That’s all set out in your information booklet. Paid employment of any kind is strictly forbidden unless or until your request for asylum has been granted.”

I am not allowed to work, or to sign on for income support for another three months, maybe six if my application is left pending. I am permitted to claim my £20 weekly allowance from the Red Cross. I am allowed to pick up my free food vouchers, officially stamped, at the start of each week. It is not exactly the financial advancement we are said to be chasing.

In my country I was a qualified teacher on a generous salary. I taught basic literacy to village children, the study of literature to any adults who showed interest and who could spare the time. Some of the places I went to teach were accessible only on foot. Marielena, walking beside me, told scurrilous stories or composed sestinas, breaking my heart with her talent, which she took so lightly.

The children welcomed me as a preacher, or as a freak.

When I say
asylum seeker
, what do you see? A teacher and poet, laughing and sore-footed, or a pitiful wretch in an unwashed shirt, standing in line for handouts at your DSS?

The way they look at me, the people of your country. I do not know which is worse: the aggressive suspicion of the youths who hang around the supermarket car park, or the prim-voiced, closed-hearted annunciations of the servants of the Border Agency. There is pity in their eyes, or at least there is sometimes, but it is a pity that soon converts itself into indifference. The curt syllables of their textbook English slide into my bloodstream like injected toxins, coating the arteries that feed my brain with their fatty deposits. I can feel my soul asphyxiating. I hear their language in my own mouth and it is like eating thorns. The blunt presumptuousness of this foreign tongue, this barbed intrusion, cutting the sensitive flesh of my throat like the trefoils of thistles.

The airport enclosure where they held us was fenced in with razor wire. I had not expected, so soon, to experience something that reminded me so sharply of what I hoped to escape.

Your English feels like a language I will never master. I cannot even order a cup of coffee at a restaurant stand without revealing myself for what I am:
a foreigner
.
And you thought it was the language of poetry?
says Marielena, and laughs.

I pass my weekly report card across the counter. The youth stamps it, and hands it back, and then I leave.

By the time I get outside, it is raining again. People are sheltering in shop doorways. A woman in a man’s overcoat pushes a supermarket trolley in a wavering line along the pavement. She shuffles rather than walks, her shoulders hunched over, almost as if she is expecting an assailant to launch himself upon her from behind. The overcoat is horrible, filthy with the stains of some dried-on contaminant that I think might be spaghetti sauce. At first the sight of the shopping cart confuses me. Then I realise the woman must be a homeless person, what in colloquial English I have heard referred to as a
bag lady
. She is using the stolen trolley to transport her possessions. At home, the sight of a beggar would arouse in me nothing more than the accustomed feelings of guilt and regret, but my visit to the Border Agency has scourged my soul of charity. I am filled with resentment for this unknown woman, who has so carelessly squandered her birthright and her privilege. Whatever misfortune has befallen her, she still has her country. However sordid she becomes, no one can make her give up her name, or force her to leave.

How could anyone born into such riches dispose of them so thoughtlessly?

Annoyance hastens my step. I am eager to pass her by, to forget she exists. As I draw level with her, the woman turns her head briefly in my direction. Her eyes are huge and tired, and there is a scab on her lower lip. We gaze at one another with surprise, and for a moment I am almost convinced she is someone I know.

For a moment, she is not a stranger, she is Marielena.

What has happened to me is not so very different from what has happened to you.

I open my mouth to say her name, but she has turned her back on me. The wheels of her shopping cart tangle briefly with a piece of litter, and then she is gone.

My allocated lodgings are on Davenport Street, which is a busy bus route, one of the three or four main thoroughfares that traverse the city. The houses on Davenport Street are tall and old, their windows and brickwork streaked with the residue of traffic fumes, their roofs steeply pitched, like praying hands, covered in moss. My room at number 13 Davenport Street is ten feet by twelve feet, a little larger than the average English prison cell. The room contains a single bed, a wardrobe, and a dressing table. The bed is against the far wall, with its head beneath the window. The wardrobe, which is of the cheap, mass-produced variety that can be purchased in its constituent pieces and assembled
in situ
, stands at the foot of the bed. There is just enough space between it and the wardrobe to open the doors. The dressing table is kidney-shaped, with a discoloured oval mirror, a monstrosity whose past is likely as long and as obscure as the history of the house itself. When I first came to live in this room I hated the dressing table with an insidious, soul-destroying mania that seemed to suck on my sanity as a parasitical, venomous worm might eat away at my brain. It was as if this outmoded and ugly piece of furniture had been placed there deliberately, to mock me, an emblem of the hopelessness of my situation.

In time our relationship changed. I began to see myself and the dressing table as comrades, as fellow survivors. I look after it now as a treasured possession, my own sacred monster. I have washed the faded damask curtains that hide its bow legs, I keep the glass top dusted, I polish the mirror. At times I have even tried to picture Marielena seated before it, combing her hair like Sheherazade, studying her features in the clouded glass.

She glares at me from the corner of one eye.

You’ve got to be joking, comrade.

The best thing about my room at 13 Davenport Street is that no one is likely to burst into it and try to kill me. I have yet to find the words to describe the full extent of my journey to this place and time. Perhaps Marielena is right – the sudden absence of imminent danger makes me feel like a fraud.