Part 7 (1/2)

”She's heading for trouble, messing with the wrong family! You have to be careful with all of them,” she told me. ”Every single one of them on that other side of things is a tricksy b.a.s.t.a.r.d who'll kill you soon as look at you, given half a chance.

”There's the gnarly throat-tipped one . . . and there's old hasty, who I think had best remain nameless,” she said wryly. ”All old b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, all of them. You can't trust them at all, that's what I say. I should know, eh? Shouldn't I?” She laughed. ”Trust me, trust me on this: it's too easy to get on the wrong side of them.

”What's it like out today?” she asked me. I told her that it was cloudy.

”You want to be careful with that,” she said. ”All sorts of faces in the clouds, aren't there?

Can't help noticing, can you?” She was whispering now. ”Do me a favour when you go home to your mum: don't look up. There's a boy. Don't look up at all.”

When I left her, however, the day had changed. The sky was hot, and quite blue.

The two drunk men were squabbling in the front hall, and I edged past them to her door. They continued bickering in a depressing, garbled murmur throughout my visit.

”D'you know, I can't even really remember what it was all about, now!” Mrs. Miller said when I had finished reading to her. ”I can't remember! That's a terrible thing. But you don't forget the basics. The exact question escapes me, and to be honest I think maybe I was just being nosy or showing off . . . I can't say I'm proud of it, but it could have been that. It could. But whatever the question, it was all about a way of seeing an answer.

”There's a way of looking that lets you read things. If you look at a pattern of tar on a wall, or a crumbling mound of brick or somesuch . . . there's a way of unpicking it. And if you know how, you can trace it and read it out and see the things hidden right there in front of you- the things you've been seeing but not noticing, all along. But you have to learn how.” She laughed.

It was a high-pitched, unpleasant sound. ”Someone has to teach you. So you have to make certain friends.

”But you can't make friends without making enemies.

”You have to open it all up for you to see inside. You make what you see into a window, and you see what you want through it. You make what you see a sort of a door. ”

She was silent for a long time. Then: ”Is it cloudy again?” she asked suddenly. She went on before I answered.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville ”If you look up, you look into the clouds for long enough, and you'll see a face. Or in a tree.

Look in a tree, look in the branches, and soon you'll see them just so, and there's a face or a running man, or a bat or whatever. You'll see it all suddenly, a picture in the pattern of the branches, and you won't have chosen to see it. And you can't unsee it.

”That's what you have to learn to do, to read the details like that and see what's what and learn things. But you've to be d.a.m.n careful. You've to be careful not to disturb anything.” Her voice was absolutely cold, and I was suddenly very frightened.

”Open up that window, you'd better be d.a.m.n careful that what's in the details doesn't look back and see you.”

The next time I went, the maudlin drunk was there again wailing obscenities at her through her door. She shouted at me to come back later, that she didn't need her food right now. She sounded resigned and irritated, and she went back to scolding her visitor before I had backed out of earshot.

He was screaming at her that she'd gone too far, that she'd p.i.s.sed about too long, that things were coming to a head, that there was going to be h.e.l.l to pay, that she couldn't avoid it forever, that it was her own fault.

When I came back he was asleep, snoring loudly, curled up a few feet into the mildewing pa.s.sage. Mrs. Miller took her food and ate it quickly, returned it without speaking.

When I returned the following week, she began to whisper to me as soon as I'd knocked on the door, hissing urgently as she opened it briefly and grabbed the bowl.

”It was an accident, you know,” she said, as if responding to something I'd said. ”I mean of course you know in theory that anything might happen. You get warned, don't you? But oh my . . . oh my G.o.d it took the breath out of me and made me cold to realise what had happened.”

I waited. I could not leave, because she had not returned the bowl. She had not said I could go.

She spoke again, very slowly.

”It was a new day.” Her voice was distant and breathy. ”Can you even imagine? Can you see what I was ready to do? I was poised . . . to change . . . to see everything that's hidden. The best place to hide a book is in a library. The best place to hide secret things is there, in the visible angles, in our view, in plain sight.

”I had studied and sought, and learnt, finally, to see. It was time to learn truths.

”I opened my eyes fully, for the first time.

”I had chosen an old wall. I was looking for the answer to some question that I told you I can't even remember now, but the question wasn't the main thing. That was the opening of my eyes.

Looking for Jake, By China Mieville ”I stared at the whole ma.s.s of the bricks. I took another glance, relaxed my sight. At first I couldn't stop seeing the bricks as bricks, the divisions as layers of cement, but after a time they became pure vision. And as the whole broke down into lines and shapes and shades, I held my breath as I began to see.

”Alternatives appeared to me. Messages written in the pockmarks. Insinuations in the forms.

Secrets unraveling. It was bliss.

”And then without warning my heart went tight, as I saw something. I made sense of the pattern.

”It was a mess of cracks and lines and crumbling cement, and as I looked at it, I saw a pattern in the wall.

”I saw a clutch of lines that looked just like something . . . terrible-something old and predatory and utterly terrible-staring right back at me.

”And then I saw it move.”

”You have to understand me,” she said. ”Nothing changed. See? All the time I was looking I saw the wall. But that first moment, it was like when you see a face in the cloud. I just noticed in the pattern in the brick, I just noticed something, looking at me. Something angry.

”And then in the very next moment, I just . . . I just noticed another load of lines-cracks that had always been there, you understand? Patterns in broken brick that I'd seen only a second before-that looked exactly like that same thing, a little closer to me. And in the next moment a third picture in the brick, a picture of the thing closer still.

”Reaching for me.”

”I broke free then,” she whispered. ”I ran away from there in terror, with my hands in front of my eyes, and I was screaming. I ran and ran.

”And when I stopped and opened my eyes again, I had run to the edges of a park, and I took my hands slowly down and dared to look behind me, and saw that there was nothing coming from the alley where I'd been. So I turned to the little s.n.a.t.c.h of scrub and gra.s.s and trees.

”And I saw the thing again.”

Mrs. Miller's voice was stretched out as if she were dreaming. My mouth was open, and I huddled closer to the door.

”I saw it in the leaves,” she said forlornly. ”As I turned I saw the leaves in such a way . . . Just a chance conjuncture, you understand? I noticed a pattern. I couldn't not. You don't choose whether to see faces in the clouds. I saw the monstrous thing again and it still reached for me, and I shrieked and all the mothers and fathers and children in that park turned and gazed at me, Looking for Jake, By China Mieville and I turned my eyes from that tree and whirled on my feet to face a little family in my way.

”And the thing was there in the same pose. I saw it in the outlines of the father's coat and the spokes of the baby's pushchair, and the tangles of the mother's hair. It was just another mess of lines, you see? But you don't choose what you notice. And I couldn't help but notice just the right lines out of the whole, just the lines out of all the lines there, just the ones to see the thing again, a little closer, looking at me.

”And I turned and saw it closer still in the clouds, and I turned again and it was clutching for me in the rippling weeds in the pond, and as I closed my eyes I swear I felt something touch my dress.

”You understand me? You understand?”

I didn't know if I understood or not. Of course now I know that I did not.

”It lives in the details,” she said. ”It travels in that . . . in that perception. It moves through those chance meetings of lines. Maybe you glimpse it sometimes when you stare at clouds, and then maybe it might catch a glimpse of you, too.

”But it saw me full on. It's jealous of its place, and there was I peering through without permission, like a nosy neighbour through a hole in the fence. I know what it is. I know what happened.

”It lurks before us, in the everyday. It's the boss of all the things hidden in plain sight. Terrible things, they are. Appalling things. Just almost in reach. Brazen and invisible.

”It caught my glances. It can move through whatever I see.