INTERZONE 254 SEPT-OCT 2014 Read Online Free PDF Page B

place,” the woman says. Her voice is soft and rasping as a tarnished key in a rusty lock, and I have some trouble in comprehending her. I am confused by her use of the word low. Does she mean that the path is on low-lying ground, that it is dangerous because it passes too close to the river? When I look up the word later, in my battered Collins paperback English dictionary, I discover that low can also signify degraded, poor, evil, or mean.
    I take a single step towards her. She is standing close to one of the streetlamps leading to the road bridge, and in the light it throws I am able to observe her face clearly for the first time. She is younger than I imagined, and the firm set of her mouth reminds me for just a second of my mother, the way she always looked when she was trying to tell me something important.
    “Are you from here?” I ask, then immediately feel foolish. What is my question supposed to mean, exactly? From this city, this country, this planet, this dirty strip of pathway alongside the canal? When the woman begins to laugh I am not surprised.
    “That’s a tricky question,” she says. “I was born here in the city though, if that’s what you mean. We lived on Coulter Street.”
    Once again I find it difficult to grasp her meaning, a failing I put down to my poor command of English. I know Coulter Street, though, because it is close to the library. The houses there are large and well kept. There is something unsettling, not quite real, in the idea that this unfortunate once lived in such a house, that she once had her home there.
    It would be easy to dismiss her words as fantasies, yet she seems perfectly lucid.
    “My name is Noah, by the way,” I say to her.
    “Mary.”
    She comes towards me then, dragging her stuffed-full shopping cart behind her. As she approaches I begin to smell the sharp, raw stench of the streets, the odour of bad drains and unwashed clothes, the scent I would sometimes catch on Marielena when she returned to me after one of her periodic absences, the sour reek I fear now emanates from me, also.
    Mary. It is an odd coincidence. Her eyes are amber in the lamplight, shading to gold.
    “You shouldn’t be out here at night,” she says. “It’s dangerous, even when you think it’s not.” We are both silent for a moment, and then she says something strange. “I have a present for you. Would you like to have it now?”
    She turns away from me to reach into her shopping cart. I feel a surge of panic, wondering what I will do if she offers me a filthy rag, a piece of half-eaten food, a plastic bag full of dog faeces. What she gives me instead is a book. She presses it into my hands, like a missionary from the old times, fervently offering a contraband bible to the unenlightened.
    “It’s old, but it’s very good,” she says. She tugs the woollen cap a little further down her forehead. “You should read it.”
    I glance down at the book in my hands. Part of the cover is missing, but there is enough of it left for me to see that I am holding a copy of URL Not Found , by the French-Egyptian writer Zaira Massi. I have never read it – our new government banned it, along with all the rest of Massi’s novels – but of course I have heard of it, it is one of those books everyone has heard of, whether they enjoy reading or not. It was published quite recently, three years ago at the most. I wonder what Mary means by calling it old?
    That the copy itself is well worn, perhaps? It is true that it is not in good condition.
    “That woman was a hero,” Mary whispers. “She comes to me in dreams. She saved my life.”
    I have no idea what Mary is talking about, or why she is speaking about Zaira Massi as if she were dead. Massi is still alive, so far as I know, though I am sure there are people – people in our new government, for example – who would wish otherwise.
    “I would love to borrow this,” I say to Mary. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
    She shakes her head.