Chapter 29The Warmth I Was Born With

He stood up and, for the first time, swung the hammer full circle. The hammer head came down on the base of the currency hologram.

Go back one step. The hammer was dragged up off the stone. The hammer head had been pressing on that white mark, and the dust along the edge of the mark was lifted with it, rose once, and settled back. He bent at the waist, not at the knee, so his left knee did not sound. His left hand closed on the handle, and the screw was still digging into his palm; its thread had been pressed into the lines of his palm, and it dug in a little deeper. The handle was steel. It was cold when he first gripped it; after a while it was the temperature of his palm.

The weight of the hammer head settled first on his left shoulder, then went from the shoulder down to his waist, down to the heel of his right foot. His right foot looked for a place on the stone, found one, and planted itself. There was fine grass on the stone. The grass was pressed down by the shadow of the hammer head; blade by blade it lay down, and blade by blade it stood back up.

He straightened. His shoulder sounded first, a single crack, clean, not the dull sound of the left knee. It was the sound of a nail being pulled out. It came out of his shoulder blade, travelled down his arm to his wrist, and a tendon in his wrist jumped. He did not stop.

The hammer head was as heavy as a steel girder; he did not count its weight. Weight was something that only needed writing on other people’s forms. The hammer head went up from the height of his shoulder, past the top of his head, and came down. The coming down was long, and he let it stay long all the way to the end. Wind poured in over the old star-shaped wall and into his cuffs, and pressed his coat against his back. He did not pull at it.

The base stood at the edge of the altar, three steps from him, a grey-white ring of a platform. Above the platform floated a stack of banknotes, every one of them flipping over; the faces in the portraits had been worn flat, leaving only an oval. Hanging at the very top was a price tag, larger than his palm, hung highest, its numbers jumping fastest. The hammer head struck the base, and the tag shattered. The recast steel girder, its cut end rough, ground that paper completely flat, ground it into the light of the base. The base sank half a foot, and light curled up along the edge of the sunken part, curling into a very white rim. From below came a dull sound, the kind a drawer makes when it is pushed shut.

The sound of it breaking was very soft. Paper could not break with a loud noise; it only split, again and again, into many strips, and every strip was still attached to numbers. Those numbers fell through the light, and halfway down they jumped back up one place, then stopped moving. He did not count those numbers. What he counted was how many scratches the hammer head had left on the stone when it came down. One, two, three.

The sound of the hammer was still rolling across the stone. It rolled over the edge of the altar, rolled to the foot of the wall, and the number board at the foot of the wall jumped one place. This time it did not jump back.

His chest rose and fell, breath after breath, and every one was his own. He spoke. Not a shout; speech. He still drew each breath out a long way, and every word landed on the stone.

“Freedom isn’t something you sold me. It’s the warmth I was born with.”

The instant the voice touched the ground, the thread of the first tag in the seam of the Liberty Mask’s shoulder plate broke. The slip of paper turned over once and landed on the stone without a sound. The Liberty Mask did not turn his head. A few threads were still left in that seam of the shoulder plate.

The second thread broke a little more slowly. The third went in one go, two threads together, both breaks very fine, so fine you had to look to see them. He counted, one, two, three. By seventeen the tags were coming away in strings, and the strung tags knocked against each other in the joint seams, making a string of very soft paper sounds. He stopped counting.

The word ‘warmth’ was not something he had come up with on the spot. That winter, the unit stood outside for roll call before it was light. He stood in the third row, and his breath went out in puff after puff. The fingers in his gloves had long since stopped obeying him. When the cold was at its worst, he would push his hands into his armpits, the last place on his body that was still warm. However many degrees his body still had left were his own. That word was something he had learned to reckon that winter.

The declaration went on like stitches being unpicked. Tags peeled from the joint seams in strings; the threads were all broken, and the slips of paper fell one after another, onto the stone, beside his boots. What showed underneath was ordinary metal, grey, older in colour than the outside.

Mitsuki let go of his hand. With a backhand flick she picked off the one the sanction order had pinned on her own right shoulder. That tag was pinned to bare skin, the pin shallow; two fingers and a flick and it was out. Only then did she turn the blade to pick off the ones on the Liberty Mask. The flat of the blade brushed his cuff and raised a little dust. The tip of the blade did not stop at the torch; it only pointed in that direction. She said, “My leave slip, I’m handing it in today.”

In her left wide sleeve a sheet of paper was tucked away, one corner showing. The paper was printed with boxes. The lines of the boxes had been folded white, and along the edge of the paper were three creases, running across, the first the deepest. Her left hand pressed on the cuff, pressed once through a layer of cloth, then let go. Jaewon did not look at that cuff. Neither did Swan.

Jaewon dropped low in a shadow step and flicked up a string from below. The shadow print was on the back of his jacket, and every time he struck, the shadow came half a beat later than the man. The half-beat-late shadow pinned a tag so that it hung a moment longer, and only then did his hand pick it off. Qingluan’s shawl cut across; its band of light swept along a row, and the tags in the row all lost their threads together. Swan’s shield opened. The hexagonal feather-scales reached over, caught the falling slips, and held them against the faces of the scales. Not one stroke landed on the Liberty Mask. Not to hurt him. What they picked off were all tags still hanging, one by one, picked off, caught, set aside.

When Qingluan’s shawl came back, its end wound twice round her wrist. The points of light on the shawl did not come back; only the weight of the cloth was left. She did not reach for those points of light. Swan’s scales withdrew one by one, into the ring on her wrist, and as they withdrew, each one first turned once, then lay flat.

Andrew counted the tags that had fallen on the stone: one hundred and three in all. One had been blown under the base by the wind, and he had not counted it. On his chest, a price tag was still pressed against the dog tag with nothing engraved on it, and he did not take it off.

He bent and picked up the nearest one. The paper was very thin, its back blank. He turned it over. The numbers on the front were still jumping, place by place; they jumped to a certain point and stopped. He understood that number. It was the price of a leg, the cheap kind. He put the paper back on the stone, laid over a blade of fine grass, and did not look at it again.

The Liberty Mask stepped back for the first time. There was no shadow under his feet, and the step back left nothing on the stone. The scored line was still where it had been; the tips of his toes were three inches off it.

※

The torch split open at that moment. The torch was shaped like a missile, and from its tail trailed a string of green and red numbers. The crack burst out from the dead centre and spread towards the four corners, one line fine, one thick. Andrew pressed his gaze onto the torch, onto the edge of the split. That edge was new, brighter than the torch’s casing. The stream of numbers in the flame was cut off; length by length it lost its weight and hung in mid-air, not falling. From deep in the crack leaked a very fine red, a single line, against the inside of the casing.

The torch’s grip was black, with a few grooves in it, and the grooves had been worn shiny. The hand holding it had its fingers closed, the knuckles bent to a fixed angle. The Liberty Mask stood behind the torch, his body not moving; only the torch moved.

The hand holding the torch trembled for the first time. The right hand. As it trembled, the exhaust flame swayed with it and swayed out a broken-off length of numbers.

Jaewon glanced at that hand and did not ask. Swan spoke, her sibilants very clean: “Your hand is trembling.” Jaewon’s shoulders sank an inch, then rose again, back to their old height.

The Liberty Mask did not look at that hand. His voice came down from over by the altar, without an echo.

“…I’ve been holding it a long time.”

The stone made no sound, the wall made no sound. The words came down and stopped where they landed, and went no further.

The Liberty Mask relit what was left of the flame. The tail of the torch brightened once, and a very short length of the number stream joined back on. That hand was still trembling, very slightly, so slightly that it could only be seen from this distance. Andrew’s right hand closed into a fist at his side, and there was nothing in the fist.

The sunken base slowly rose back a little. The stack of banknotes spread out and lay flat, flat into the floor of a stage. Fine lines lit up on the floor, each square the edge of a banknote. At the edge of the stage, twenty-four hologram dancers walked out and formed a line, the spacing between them the same, the length of their strides the same. Their soles were the same size, their laces the same length, tied the same way. They had no faces, only an oval, the same as the worn-flat ones on the banknotes. Their cuffs were white, with no stitching along the edge; they had been printed on. Andrew counted them once. Twenty-four, not one more.

They began to walk. Their steps came down together; the fine lines on the floor lit up once and went dark again. Eight steps, stop. Two beats of stopping, then walking again. Each time the numbers on the floor jumped one place, it was exactly one step, not one step early, not one step late.

The torch pressed down. This was a Broadway chorus number, the kicks high, the arms opening together. Twenty-four people lifted a leg at the same moment, lifted their hands at the same moment, turned at the same moment. With each bow and fall of the curtain a shock ring burst out under their feet; the shock ring pushed out flat along the floor, and only broke up when it reached the feet of the five. With each fall of the curtain, a run of coins sounded from under the floor, one after another, counted very precisely. Twenty-four people bowed their heads at the same moment, down to the same angle, held for a beat, then raised them together again. The numbers on the floor followed the dancers’ feet; with each step, one number jumped one place. The beats fitted without a seam, as neatly in step as a contract.

As the shock ring passed, the fine grass on the stone all bent to one side. The grass went down and stood back up, and when it stood back up, every blade was the same height. Andrew’s boot was pressing on a blade of fine grass; the grass did not break. He lifted his boot, and the grass stood up once more.

The Liberty Mask’s voice came down from over by the altar. “Watch closely. This is what in step looks like.”

Swan took a step forward. The satin toe of her left shoe tapped once on the stone; her right trainer came down, the pattern of its sole pressing into the dust. On her left wrist the scales opened, opened halfway, and stopped, waiting for her to decide.

She said, “We aren’t in step. We’re still alive.”

She said it very politely, every word standing very straight. The Liberty Mask did not answer. The torch was still pressing down, and the dancers’ legs were still lifting.

※

The five of them did not try to match the beat. To match the beat was to follow the other side’s count, and keeping up with it would mean counting themselves into their contract. They switched to a relay.

The same movement: the five of them each took over one section, through to the end.

It was the movement the dancers had just made: the arms opening from the chest, sweeping an arc, the tail of the arc ending outside the shoulder. The first started it, the second caught the tail of the arc, the third turned the tail outwards, the fourth brought the turn down to the ground, the fifth closed it on the last beat. The five stood in different places, the force went in different directions, and no one did anyone else’s part.

Qingluan went first. She raised her arm, lifting it from the shoulder; the shawl slid down the arm, its end still wound twice round her wrist. She hummed a tune. The tune climbed, and the sound rings lit ring by ring, up to the fourth ring, and stopped. The arc of her arm was only half flung out; her feet were still nailed to the spot.

Her voice sat in the middle range, thick, held low beneath her chest, one note after another holding the tune up as it climbed. She sang no words. The sound rings ran from behind her right ear down to her collarbone, each ring a little wider than the one before. He had never heard this tune.

Mitsuki got in on the half beat and caught the tail of the arc. The straight blade drew a slanting stroke and pulled straight the arc that was still bending. The edge passed along the stone without a sound. She did not look at the others; her blade looked only at the arc. The band of light on the blade joined up, very slowly, section after section, and was not fully lit until it reached the tip. Her footwork did not falter; she only landed a hair later than Qingluan.

Under her left eye the crescent-shaped mark lit up as far as her cheekbone, lit once, and dimmed again. Her plain white wide sleeve filled with wind, billowed once, and lay flat again. The paper in the sleeve did not fall out.

Swan twisted on her toes. The tip of the satin shoe on her left foot turned half a circle on the stone; her right trainer came down after it and turned the leftover force of the blade into a spin wrenched out of true. Her body tilted an inch outwards, and she pulled it back herself. The stiff collar of white feather pieces stood bolt upright; as she turned, the collar did not move, only her head tilted a little. One scale on her left wrist flipped open; as she pulled back, that one closed again.

The toe of the satin shoe was very thin. As it turned, it scraped up a ring of dust from the stone, and the dust fell on the top of her foot. The sole of the trainer was not so thin. When it came down, the whole foot pressed flat, so hard that the stone gave a dull thud. Two feet, two ways of landing. The trainer was the first to stop. Swan did not smile; the corners of her mouth drew down a little, then came back.

Jaewon carried the spin to the ground. He bent low, hands braced on the ground, and his body turned close along the stone, turning into a shadow step delayed by half a beat. The shadow print on his back lagged half a beat before it slid after his body, over the cracks in the stone, over the shoe print Swan had left. The broken microphone earring at his right ear had its break facing outwards; every time he landed, the break touched his own shoulder, touched once, and parted.

His jaw was clenched very tight, his teeth not loosening. He did not sing, did not shout. Jaewon took the others’ force, half a beat late, and passed it on.

The last half beat was Andrew’s. He caught it in that half beat. The hammer came down and struck the stone, struck out an accent. The white mark of the hammer head pressed on the old mark, and the white of the mark spread by another ring. The stone shook once; the shaking came up through the handle, up into his left hand, up into the screw in his palm. The screw dug in once, then stopped digging.

Andrew counted the landing point of each section. He did not crouch to measure; he measured with his eyes, and each measured number had to match the scored line, and if it did not match, he measured again. The scored line had been cut with a blade; both sides of it were turned up in a slight burr, and the burr left a very faint shine on the stone. Qingluan landed thirty-one centimetres outside the scored line. Mitsuki’s toes were on the scored line, not off at all. Swan landed twelve centimetres inside the scored line; she herself did not look at that number. Jaewon landed fifteen centimetres outside the scored line, twenty-seven centimetres more than Swan, the length of a shoe. He landed at eleven centimetres, four centimetres less than Jaewon.

Between neighbouring landings, the differences were thirty-one, twelve, twenty-seven and four centimetres. No two sections were the same.

He counted again in his head, and what came out was still those four numbers.

Jaewon did not look at those numbers. His feet were still in their last position, his body leaning forward, not yet there.

The seamless line of dancers opposite had a gap trodden into it by this relay line. The twenty-four kept equal strides, yet the gap stayed in the middle, and the line broke into two halves. The dancers at the break were still lifting their legs to the old beat, lifting halfway, stopping, then lifting on.

※

Andrew straightened up and stood at the edge of the scored line, facing the centre of the altar. His chest was still heaving, and he did not try to hold it down. He swallowed; his Adam’s apple moved once.

“This dance wasn’t allowed back then. You can work out the price, but not the beat.”

When he had finished, his voice rolled once across the stone and came back to his ears. It was his voice. There was the wall, the ground, the edge of the altar, and they caught his voice and gave it back to him. The voice from the other side came down and ended there; none of it came back.

He flung his coat back. The coat hung at his elbows; he shrugged once and let it slide all the way down onto the stone. Underneath was a grey T-shirt, loose at the neck.

At twenty, he had danced this section on a concrete yard. The yard was outside the community centre. It had no gate and no tickets, and anyone could go in, which was exactly why the people who came to keep order had grounds to speak up.

That day the speaker played a stretch of drums, no one singing, the beat rushing forward the whole time. There were no lights in the yard; they danced by the lamp at the door of the community centre. A few people stood round the edge. Someone whistled, someone held up a phone to film. He danced very well; it was the best he danced that year. That column on the form he later saw in many places, and each time it bore that word. It never changed.

The pair on his feet today he had bought later with his own money. He had walked the soles soft, and the laces were tied only to the third eyelet, loose.

He drew his left foot back half a step, so the loose laces would not lie on the stone. The end of a lace swept once across the stone, and he stepped on it. There was no need to tie them tight; tied tight they would catch at the ankle instead. That was something he had only learned over these past years.

He crouched, hands on the ground, and his right leg swept out a full circle. The dust on the stone was swept aside, showing the grey-white stone beneath. His heel scraped across, scraping out two fine grey-white marks. This time he did not rub them out.

Then he went down. A Thomas flare, his body spinning out on his hands, his legs opened into a circle, round after round. A windmill, shoulders to the ground, legs sweeping out, over his head. Last, a one-handed freeze into a headspin: his body stopped on one hand, the crown of his head against the stone, and turned one full circle. The hammer lay on its side next to him, its head resting on the edge of that white mark. His shadow on the stone was whole: hands, head, legs, nothing missing.

Sweat slid down from his temple, past the rim of his ear, and dripped on the stone. A small patch of the grey went darker, then quickly dried. His hand was braced on the stone. The stone was cold, and the cold climbed from his palm up to his wrist. He did not let go. In a crack in the stone a blade of fine grass had been snapped under his hand; the break was white.

His left knee sounded first, dull, old. He did not stop.

He counted to the fourth eight-count and got past it. He kept dancing. The fifth eight-count, the sixth. That form he had never seen again, but the word in that column had always stayed.

The twenty-four opposite tried to keep up with him. On the first beat they kept up; on the second, their legs were still lifting when he had already come down. They had no way to follow someone half a beat off; they could only stop and wait until they were back on their own beat. The torch pressed down twice, and still they could only stand there.

Mitsuki’s blade lay across her chest, unmoving. Her breath fell on the back of the blade, very lightly, each time on the same spot. Her gaze followed his legs, round once, and round again. Qingluan hummed the last note; the shawl hung to the ground and climbed no more. The satin toe of Swan’s left shoe tapped the beat on the stone, very lightly.

The command ring above his left forearm began to turn again. At first it was fast, running half a turn ahead; then it was no longer fast, and turned together with his hands. The far end of the fine line went past, each turn passing the same point, without catching.

The number board at the edge of the altar jumped another place. This time no one looked at it.

Jaewon followed him down to dance with him. Jaewon’s shadow print was half a beat slow. Jaewon’s first step landed beneath his centre of gravity, and with a shadow move delayed by half a beat, caught it. As he fell, Jaewon’s shadow arrived half a beat late and held him, and on the beat it held him, pushed him back up.

The centre of the pull was turned round by the two of them. The light that had been drawn away flowed back along the cracks in the stone all together, towards where the other three stood. Qingluan, Mitsuki, Swan. The three of them did not move. The light went round their feet, circled into a ring of white, and drew back in.

The hologram stage lost power once. All the fine lines on the floor went out, went out for one beat, then lit back up square by square.