The Book of Strange New Things(107)

‘Somebody dissing Ol’ Blue Eyes?’ A woman who’d been seated at a nearby table sidled over, carrying her dessert bowl. She was a colleague of BG’s: they had a similar physique, although this woman was white and blonde. She levelled a mock-censorious stare at Peter. ‘Did I hear you blaspheming against the godlike Frank?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should know better.’

‘The consummate American songbook,’ she informed him, deadpan. ‘Never equalled. One of the great achievements of humankind.’

Peter nodded humbly. ‘Maybe I’m the wrong age to appreciate it.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty-three.’

‘I’m thirty-two!’

‘Well, I’m English, that’s another thing . . . ’

‘Al Bowlly, No?l Coward, Shirley Bassey?’ She spoke the names as though any British-born person would swell with pride to hear them.

‘Oh dear,’ sighed Peter. ‘I’m . . . uh . . . out of my depth here.’

There was a pause, during which Frank Sinatra launched into a ditty about a little old ant and a rubber tree plant. ‘It’s OK,’ said the woman, indulgently. ‘It’s OK. Not everyone likes the same things. It’s allowed.’

He remembered her name now: Iris. Iris Berns. She came from a Pentecostal family and was an atheist. She liked to play card games, she once had a sister who drowned in a back-yard swimming pool, she had a running joke with BG about centrifugal force, and she was heterosexual despite her butch appearance. None of these bits of information quite fitted into any sensible remark Peter could think of making at this point. Even calling her Iris might come across as an attempt to show off something he’d recalled too late, and anyway, she might want him to call her Berns like everybody else.

Why was even the shallowest human conversation so fraught with pitfalls and tricky calibrations? Why couldn’t people just keep silent until they had something essential to say, like the Oasans?

‘Give him a break,’ said Tuska. ‘He’s just come back from a long spell in Freaktown.’

‘Yeah?’ said Berns, plonking down her dessert and taking a seat at the table. ‘You should take some suntan lotion next time.’

‘I’ll do that,’ said Peter. He was aware that he was more red-faced than he needed to be, because he’d foolishly worn a sweater over his T-shirt. It had seemed a good idea at the time: a signal that he was a regular urban guy, not some freaky desert-dweller.

‘I’m surprised you got so much sun,’ said Berns, stirring a dollop of dark red syrup through the yoghurt-like substance in her bowl until the white turned pink. ‘They’re not exactly outdoors types, are they?’

Peter pulled the neck of his sweater down, to let air in. ‘They work outside almost every day,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Growing and harvesting food for us.’

Berns ate a few spoonfuls of dessert. ‘You know, I’ve driven all the way round that settlement, and I never saw a plantation, greenhouses, nothing.’

‘That’s because they’re right in the centre.’

‘The centre?’

‘Of the settlement.’ Peter took a deep breath. His forehead stung with perspiration. ‘Haven’t we been through this already?’

‘Must’ve been with a different woman, honey.’

‘Don’t call him honey,’ said Tuska. ‘He’s a preacher.’

‘The fields are inside the settlement,’ Peter explained. ‘The buildings are built in a circle around them.’

‘It figures,’ said Berns.

‘Figures? Why?’

‘They’re real secretive.’

Peter wiped his brow with his sleeve. ‘It’s not because . . . ’ His voice was too soft. A flotilla of children had come along to assist Sinatra on the chorus of ‘High Hopes’. Peter’s motivation to explain the Oasans’ relationship with agriculture faltered under their assault.

Berns stood up and called across the room: ‘Hey, Stanko! Can we have something instrumental? Our pastor here is having difficulty!’

‘No, really,’ protested Peter, as the eyes of everyone in the mess hall turned on him. ‘You shouldn’t . . . ’ But he was relieved when the voices of Frank and the school choir disappeared in mid-syllable and were replaced by the tinkling of a piano and some languorously shaken maracas.

Berns sat back down and polished off her dessert. Tuska ate the rest of his Bolognese. Peter had consumed only a few mouthfuls of his pancake but felt stuffed. He leaned back in his chair, and the amiable conversation of several dozen people rustled past his ears, a gentle hubbub of engineering jargon, small talk about food, polite disagreements about solving practical challenges, and the Jabberwocky mishmash of half-heard words and phrases, all interwoven with a Brazilian samba.

‘What music do you like, Peter?’ said Berns.

‘Uh . . . ’ His mind went blank. The names he might usually have rattled off were gone. ‘To be honest,’ he said, after taking a deep breath, ‘I’m not that keen on recorded music. I like music best when it’s performed live and I’m actually there when it’s happening. That way, it’s less like being expected to admire a thing, and more a celebration of the moment, of people doing something together in public. Something that could go horribly wrong, but through a combination of talent and trust and enthusiasm, it comes out sublime.’