TURBINE | KAPOHAU

KATJA MOKHA

 

The Invitation
(extract from Antara)

 

2029

The invitation will be sent by email. It will fly unseen far across the world. To Australia, New Zealand, England, Mexico, France, America, and Malaysia, across to Singapore. For some, it will arrive quiet and unopened to an old email address they haven’t used in years, joining the graveyard of subscriptions begging for an updated payment method and the threats from a language learning service warning them of lost progress. For others, it will arrive simply in their spam folder, which some will check routinely so as not to miss invitations like this, but most will ignore. For others, their phones might tell them it is there. A few might open it.

One will arrive to a flat in London, England. Four of the rooms house sleeping twenty somethings. Some alone, some with overnight guests. The lounge-come-dining-come-kitchen (which is really just the latter) houses the recipient of the email. A red and green crochet blanket is entangled in her sleeping fingers. The other end kissing the floor—which is thin sticky carpet so it’s like kissing the man she met at the pub last night. The same man who is presently pressing his large body into hers. Who, when his friend had asked her if her ‘carpet matched the drapes’, had nudged him and triumphantly come to her rescue with an ‘oi’. When she wakes up she smells him, then sees him, and realises the sex was far too big of a thank you. She’s grateful they fucked on the sofa instead of her bedroom. And that none of her flatmates or their guests craved a midnight snack.

At 3am he tried to leave before she woke up. When he tried to extract himself he rolled her off the couch and she hurt her elbow. He tried to help her up. He offered to kiss it better. She needed to ‘go and throw up’. He got her a glass of water and waited on the other side of the bathroom door where she was waiting to hear him leave. When she came out she took the water. He asked to use the bathroom where he washed himself. She discovered he looked good with wet hair. They discovered they both like their Yorkshire Extra Strength tea with sugar and no milk, and that they both lived in Asia once. Their fingers brushed when she handed him the teacup, which has a crack in the handle she hadn’t seen yet.

At 8am he tells her he has to go home and change for work. She takes a step closer to him in the doorway to adjust his collar. He looks down at her neck and collarbone through the holes in the crotchet blanket she has wrapped round her shoulders. She smiles when she closes the door behind him. He walks under scaffolding on his way to work. A post is corroded. A bolt is missing.

Later, she looks at her phone and wonders why he never called. She sees the invitation.

One will arrive to an apartment in Fujairah, UAE.

On a window ledge of the sixth floor, in the hour between dark and cloudy light, a pigeon is building her nest. She has just returned from sweeping the promenade. At the base of a palm tree she found furry brittle strands. In a gutter she found small shreds of what were once trees. Further towards the thoroughfare she found loose needles in a very green bush—they’d tasted rubbery. Overnight, dusty sand has blown against the windows. Granules are packed in the angle between the glass and the ledge. Her nest pokes through the buildup, sturdy in its position. While this height leaves her more at risk to turbulent wind, she is just high enough to avoid the pique of sandstorms and is far from being vulnerable to the flooding that sometimes kills land creatures. There are tall spikes that line the ledge. She has built her nest behind them where it is safe. The sky turns from black to grey. From the other side of the glass a white light appears. She is about to rest.

On the other side of the glass is a two-bedroom apartment. The mother has woken with the watery sun and is standing in the living room. She looks out the window. There is a grainy film on the glass. Her belly is large. She can’t see her feet. She thinks of the baby’s view. She resolves to clean the window. Under the sink in the kitchen is a spray bottle and a cloth. When she sprays the glass, it smells like chemicals. When she wipes the glass, it doesn’t clear. She sprays the bottle again and presses the cloth harder into the window. She has to contort her body to put power into her arms without pressing her belly to the glass. She wonders if she could push hard enough to fall through it. Her belly touches the window for a moment. It’s cold and damp on her skin. The baby kicks. Through the clouded glass she sees a shape move on the ledge. She wipes the window again. It doesn’t work. The dirt is on the outside. She researches how to clean the outside of a window from the inside. She doesn’t have a ladder or scaffolding. She doesn’t have a really long pole. A thread of comments from a few years ago suggests using a magnetic device. She doesn’t have one of them either so she puts in a same-day order. It will be cheaper than hiring a window-washer.

The website says it will take a few hours to arrive, so she decides to get dressed. Even though the window is obscured, she walks away from the living room into the hallway before undressing. The shower is cold. She has forgotten to turn on the hot water. She steps out of the bathroom and flicks the switch on. She stands there in the hallway, dripping onto the cool tiles. She hasn’t been look in mirrors recently, but she still sees herself.. Her nipples are uneven. Her hair is thinning. Her body is stretched and bulging. The body paces the hallway, the bedroom, the kitchen, the living room. When it leaves the apartment, it wears clothes but it feels like it isn’t. It stays inside. It drips on the tiles.

The pigeon is awoken in the middle of the day. There is a loud sound from the other side of the glass. She gets up from her nest and paces the perch. A rubbery needle blows loose from her nest. She repairs it. She paces the perch on the inside of the spikes, and she waits. When the sun is low again, she lays her eggs.

The mother waits all day. A bell sounds on her computer: a notification of delivery. There is a buzz at the control panel by the door. She lets the delivery person up to her apartment. She watches them through the peephole while they leave it on the other side of the door. The magnetic window cleaner is encased in five layers of plastic. Two of which are polystyrene. She stacks the plastic carefully next to her computer. To use the device, she must place a magnetic spongelike device on either side of the glass. She might get it done in time to watch the sunset. Her feet are bare on the tiles as she crosses the room to the window. It hasn’t been opened in months. It squeaks as she pulls down the latch. She pushes the latch and the frame so as not to smudge it. It doesn’t budge. She pushes harder. It groans. She places both palms on the glass and puts her weight behind it. The window swings open with a crunch. Twigs and rubbish and dust tumble from the ledge.

The mother cleans the glass in time for the sunset. She looks out the window. Her belly is large. The world below is obscured by fog. The buildings are square. There is a strip of ocean which is a brown-grey gradient. A feather lands on the windowsill. She blows it away.

Her computer makes a bell sound as it receives the invitation.

Another will arrive to a phone in a hostel in Bali, Indonesia. A twenty-nine year old man from America picks up the phone and hands it into the office where the staff place it in a plastic container under a desk. The man had considered keeping it, but in comparison to his own, the phone is far inferior. It’s cracked at every edge—when he presses the power button there are pixelated lines traversing the screen. People don’t take care of things anymore.

He also believes handing the phone in will give him some good karma. He believes he’s lived a relatively righteous life. He has never hurt anyone. Not badly anyway. Not physically. He hasn’t stolen anything. Nothing worth anything anyway. And material things are so—material anyway. That is why he is there, in the hostel in Kuta, Bali. It’s why he’s let his hair grow so long, why he’s refused to wash it for years on end. He doesn’t care about his material self anymore. His higher self doesn’t need material possessions or modern clothing. Though he thinks the hair beads he haggled over with a local vendor do look good, their primary purpose is in fact connecting him to the earth. As is the hand-woven cloth he wears, with animals printed on it (which he also negotiated a discount for). He is blessed to be there, in the hostel games room, after everyone has gone out. It’s the best way to be grounded to his surroundings. Not to be distracted by material things like friends and fun and girls. The girls there are so shallow anyway. The ones he saw when he first arrived are anyway. The two of them, flocking around that group of guys who are just as shallow with their short haircuts and tight shirts. How is one supposed to connect to the earth when one is so tightly strapped into a cage of one’s own making. His friend Tree who he met at a hostel a few years ago in Thailand told him that. He doesn’t know that Tree now goes by Andrew again. The girls’ clothing is caged too. Straps pulled tight over soft skin. Skin that would be much better served with looser clothes. He could help them change.

The night before he finds the phone he tries to connect with this group. Or to get them to connect with him and his ideas. So they will be able to access the good karma too. He inserts himself into their conversation in the dorm. He convinces them to follow him as he has more experience in the area.

He leads a group of them to the roof where he proposes shrooms but only offers to share with the girls (since he is a gentlemen even to misguided people). He then follows them to a club. One of the men tries to guide the group away from him, which he takes harshly. One of the girls takes pity on him when he skulks away to the smokers’ area bordered by palm and banana fronds. He tries to help her see a better way of life. He thinks for that he deserves some good karma. He thinks she shouldn’t be wearing such a tight dress, showing so much skin. He thinks he deserves some good karma. He tries to take it under her dress under the banana fronds. She punches him. The man from inside comes out and punches him.

He is not invited the following night when they play beer pong and pool in the hostel. He looks through the window from the smoking area. Looks at them in their tight shirts, in their material worries. He sees the man drop his phone. He sees the group leave.

Then he does the honourable thing and hands in the phone. Then, he goes for a walk outside to smoke beneath the banana fronds. He sees a woman with long dark hair and a white dress. It’s loose and flowing. He likes that. He follows her into the jungle. He does not check out of the hostel.

Inside the plastic box in the office, the phone receives an invitation.