As I had predicted, the shuttle slowed and then stopped just south of Forty-second Street. The windows on the shuttle are covered with bars, but you can still see everything outside pretty well. I had chosen a seat on the right so I could see the Old Library, and sure enough, there were the chairs, six of them, arranged in a row facing the avenue, although no one was sitting in them and the ropes hadn’t yet been uncoiled. The Ceremony wouldn’t begin for another two hours, but there were already radio technicians strolling about in their long black coats, and two men were filling the wire trash cans with rocks from the back of a big truck. It was the truck that had stopped the flow of traffic, but there was nothing we could do except wait until the men had filled all the trash cans and then had climbed back into the truck and moved out of the way, and from there, the rest of the trip was very fast, even with the checkpoints.
By the time we reached my stop, it was 17:50, and while the drive itself had taken longer than normal, I was still home much earlier than usual. But I did what I always do after work, which was to go straight to the grocery store. Today was a meat day, and because it was the third Thursday, I was also entitled to our monthly ration of soap and toilet paper. I had saved one of my vegetable coupons from the previous week, so, along with the potatoes and carrots, I was also able to get a can of peas. That day, along with the usual assortment of flavored protein bricks and soy patties and artificial meats, there was also real horse meat, dog meat, deer meat, and nutria meat. The nutria meat was the cheapest, but my husband says it’s too greasy, so I bought a half kilo of horse meat, and some cornmeal because we were almost out. We needed milk, but if I saved up another week of rations, I’d be able to buy a pint of pudding, so I instead bought the powdered version, which my husband and I both dislike but would have to do.
Then I walked the four blocks home to our building, and it was only when I was safe inside our apartment, browning the horse meat in vegetable oil, that I remembered that it was my husband’s free night, and that he wouldn’t be home for dinner. But by that time, it was too late to stop cooking, so I finished frying the meat and then ate it with some of the peas. Above me, I could hear the echoey sound of screams, and knew that the neighbors were listening to the Ceremony on their radios, but I didn’t want to listen myself, and after cleaning the dishes, I sat on the couch and waited for my husband for a while, even though I knew he wouldn’t be home anytime soon, before finally going to bed.
* * *
The next day, everything was as usual, and I caught the 18:00 shuttle home. As we passed the Old Library, I looked for remaining signs of the Ceremony, but there weren’t any: The rocks were gone and the chairs were gone and the banners were gone and the steps were clean and gray and empty, just like normal.
At home, I was warming a little oil to fry some more of the meat when I heard my husband’s knock on the door—tap-tap-thunk-thunk-thunk—and then his call—“Cobra”—to which I called back “Mongoose,” and then the clunk of the bolts unlocking: one, two, three, four. And then the door opened and there he was, my husband, my Mongoose.
“Dinner’s almost done,” I said.
“I’ll be right out,” he said, and went back to our room to change.
I put a piece of meat on his plate and a piece on mine, as well as peas and half of a potato for each of us, which I’d baked that morning, after my husband left for work, and had reheated. And then I sat and waited for him to come sit down at the table across from me.
For a while, we ate in silence. “Horse?” my husband asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Hmm,” my husband said.
Even though I’ve been married to my husband for more than five years, I still find it difficult to know what to say to him. It was like this when we first met, too, and as we left the marriage broker’s office, Grandfather had put his arm around me and brought me close to his body, but he didn’t speak until we were back home. “What did you think?” he had asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t supposed to say I don’t know—I had been told I said it too much—but in this case, I really didn’t know. “I didn’t know what to say to him when I wasn’t answering his questions,” I said.
“That’s normal,” said Grandfather. “But it’ll get easier, over time.” He was quiet. “You just have to remember the lessons we’ve had,” he said, “the things we discussed. Do you remember?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “？‘How was your day?’ ‘Did you hear the story on the radio?’ ‘Did anything interesting happen today?’？” We had made a list together, Grandfather and I, of all the questions one person might ask another. Sometimes, even now, I reviewed that list before I went to bed, thinking that the next day I might ask one of them to my husband, or to one of my colleagues. The problem was that some of the questions—What do you want to eat tonight? What books are you reading? Where are you taking your next vacation? The weather’s been great/terrible, hasn’t it? How are you feeling?—had become either irrelevant or unsafe to ask. When I looked at the list, I remembered having those practice conversations with Grandfather, but I was unable to remember his replies.
Now I said to my husband, “How is the meat?”
“Fine.”
“Not too tough?”
“No, no, it’s fine.” He took another bite. “It’s good.”
This made me feel better, more relaxed. Grandfather had told me that when I was anxious I could help calm myself by adding numbers in my head, and that’s what I had been doing until my husband reassured me. After that, I felt relaxed enough to say something else to him. “How was your free night?” I asked him.
He didn’t look up. “Fine,” he said. “Nice.”
I didn’t know what else to say. Then I remembered: “There was a Ceremony last night. I passed it on the ride home.”
Now he did look at me. “Did you listen to it?”
“No,” I said. “Did you?”
“No,” he said.
“Do you know who they were?” I asked, even though we all knew not to ask that question.
I had asked just to make conversation with my husband, but to my surprise, he looked again at me, directly at me, and for a few seconds he said nothing, and I said nothing, too. Then “No,” he said. It seemed to me like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t, and we finished eating in silence.
* * *
Two nights later, we woke to a pounding, and the sound of men’s voices. My husband sprung out of his bed, cursing, and I leaned over and switched on the lamp. “Stay here,” he told me, but I was already following him to the front door.
“Who’s there?” he demanded of the closed door, and I was impressed, as I always was in these instances, by my husband’s bravery, by how unafraid he seemed.
“Municipality Three Investigative Unit 546, Officers 5528, 7879, and 4578,” replied a voice on the other side of the door. I could hear a dog barking. “Pursuing suspect accused of violating Codes 122, 135, 229, 247, and 333.” Codes beginning with a one were crimes against the state. Codes beginning with a two were trafficking crimes. Codes beginning with three were crimes of information, which usually meant the accused had somehow accessed the internet or was in possession of an illegal book. “Permission to search the unit.”