Aliyah shone brightly, like an angel. Light suffused her, it rose from her skin, from her eyes. The Houses could not fight and so they’d reached a compromise, a way of speaking which was a way of sharing: and a One-times-One became a point linking two networks, became a router and a hub, became a One-times-Eight-times-Eight-times-Three-times-Three, was cleaved in two; and spliced together.
When it was over there was no discernible sign; only the act of both Sisterhoods slowly departing, without words; only their hosts remaining, and the newest Sister, the one who belonged to two Sisterhoods, and had once known Shereen.
Shereen scrubbed the surface of the table, scrubbed it until its wooden surface shone. When she raised her head again even the host Sisters were gone; when she turned back to the surface of the table, she saw Aliyah, momentarily, reflected in it. She turned her head. Aliyah stood there, watching her. Shereen raised her hand. Her fingers brushed Aliyah’s cheek, the skin of her face. Aliyah bore it without words. Her eyes watched Shereen, and yet they didn’t see her. After a moment she inched her head, as if acknowledging, or settling, something. Then she, too, were gone.
There are four Three-times-Three Sisters in the House of Mirth, and five in the House of Heaven and Hell, and two in the House of Shelter. Four plus five plus two Three-by-Threes, and they represent one faction of the city.
There are two Five-time-Six Sisters in the House of Forgetting, and five Eight-by-Eights in the House of Domicile, and they represent a second faction of the city.
There is a bridge between them, now. An understanding, and cargo continues to come and go through Polyphemus Port. And Shereen who is a one, and will one day be zero, continues to work in the House of Mirth, and in the House of Domicile, and she watches the Sisters on their silent comings and goings; and she wonders, sometimes, of what could have been, and of what didn’t; but to do that is, after all, only human.
-
URANUS
ESTHER SAXEY
The RMS Carmania stood at dock, serene despite the gull screams and mud stink. Christopher had left me watchdog to three trunks and a brace of hatboxes.
A lad rushed over to earn a tip.
‘Saw yer friend,’ he said, as he loaded the trunks onto a trolley. “Are you two artists?”
I would be leaving England within the hour. A queer impulse prompted me to announce: “No. We are Uranians.”
To my surprise, he grinned.
“What, is that like a Martian? Are you two from another planet?”
It wasn’t even the first time I’d heard this witticism. I began to hate Mr. H.G. Wells.
Being Uranians has led Christopher and me to travel a lot. Never fleeing in disgrace. Not yet. Not quite. Few trips came as near the knuckle as our escape to Paris, ten years ago.
Christopher and I had met at College (Trinity) but we hadn’t been the best of friends, only two of a group. As we lost good men to marriage, we grew more intimate. Not loving, not on my part. Perhaps had he been taller, less hairy, less like an anxious mole… But why would all that matter, you ask, when Uranian love is for the noble disposition? (Plato told Christopher so, and Christopher told me.) At the time, I believed that nobility would shine through in some physical way: graceful movement, sparkling eyes. So I would love my beloved’s mind, but my beloved would also be beautiful. I was insufferable.
Christopher took me out every week for art or opera. He gave me Uranian pamphlets, which I forgot to read, and poetry, which made me melancholy. In his presence I felt, always, that I was failing an examination.
Until one night when he burst into my rooms, hatless and agitated.
“He’ll be arrested this evening!”
We were admirers of Oscar Wilde (you could have known it by our neckties alone). Oscar’s libel case had just taken a disastrous turn.
Christopher cried: “We have to leave England!” He then made the most eloquent plea of his life. His proposaclass="underline" we take the boat train that night to Paris, to live where laws were more liberal.
I’d been torn between two idols, until that moment. Should I be a witty cynic, like Wilde? Or embrace the world as my brother, and find delight in every drop of dew, like Walt Whitman in his poems? I’d ricocheted between the two approaches, by turns aloof and sentimental. Now, Christopher was pushing me hard towards Whitman-ish optimism: freedom, he said, brotherhood!
While my man packed for me, I mused aloud: “If you think it’s dangerous to stay, perhaps I should warn some of my friends…”
“Oh. Well, we could.” He was right to be sullen, because I was lying. I wasn’t thinking of danger. No, I was thinking: I could burst in on a friend, the same way Christopher had burst in on me. Make the same impassioned speech, steal all Christopher’s best lines. Woo my friend! Win him!
And I would have done it. But there wasn’t one man who stood out above the others. Uranian love is lifelong (said Plato-through-Christopher). So I couldn’t accidentally shackle myself to a dullard. I’d been flitting about and fantasising, dithering over who to honour with my constancy.
The Waterloo platform was white with steam and swarming. Valets crowded the train corridors. Gentlemen sat in silent rows in every compartment, spines stiff with nerves. Nobody spoke. Half the Uranians of London were on the train.
Christopher’s energy was spent, but I was exhilarated by our flight. I wondered: should I make a speech? Brothers! We are travelling together. Once we reach Paris, must we disperse, like droplets in the ocean? Is this the greatest gathering of our kind since Athens? Surely, we should… We must…
I stood in the corridor by an open window, getting my nerve up. I looked into the starry night and told myself that the dark was as homelike and wholesome to me as the day. My brothers were beautiful (although not, I thought, all equally beautiful, and some couples shockingly mismatched). And somewhere up above us was our planet: gorgeous, mysterious Uranus. Pale blue, glowing from within, winding around the sun once every eighty-four years (Chris owned a small book on the subject). Unknowable, remote! My ruling celestial body!
“Everything to your satisfaction, sir?”
He spoke like a steward, but his bottle-green velvet suit put the lie to it.
“One shouldn’t have all one’s satisfactions satisfied,” I spluttered, failing to be Wildean.
His face was sly and his nose was broken. Edward Carpenter, the socialist said (via Christopher) that love may exist most purely between men of different classes. I wondered: who buys this lad’s clothes? Who bought his ticket for this train? His arm pressed mine as the train jolted. It was all very sudden. Were we both under the influence of our heavenly patron?
“Sir,” he said. “Can I kiss you?”
The last trace of my cynicism boiled away. I gave my passionate assent.
He pulled back and smirked. “That’s handy to know,” he said, and hopped off up the corridor, to boast to his chums.