Broken City

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

I don’t understand Mari.

I don’t understand anything about this place but Mari’s behaviour today has proved particularly confusing.

My tribe has been wiped out, I have no idea what has happened to my family and whether or not they are safe. I’ve been kidnapped and brought to a strange place filled with strange people who behave strangely. Yet for some odd reason Mari thinks that the most important thing to do and the best way to spend our time, is by dragging us first to a dress makers where she purchased a great many highly impractical dresses for us, then on to a shoe maker where she presented us both with several pairs of shoes that although pretty, are of very little use, and from there to the hairdresser.

I think that she was trying to be kind, for she seems to think that we should view this excursion as some amazing treat and is, I can tell, puzzled by our lack of enthusiasm. I guess she doesn’t know that we have witnessed the elegance and relaxed atmosphere of complete luxury with confusion and a lack of understanding. Everything is so jarringly disparate from the world that we know exists just outside the walls of this compound that we feel uncomfortable and vaguely sickened.

So now I sit in my new dress with my hair arranged with the utmost care into perfect curls that have been gathered on the crown of my head to fall softly down on one side and in make-up that has somehow managed to make my eyes look as though they take up half of my face. I feel different—a little chilled, because I look like one of them—like an Andak, as though some how my own identity has be swallowed up and redefined so that I fit in better with the aesthetics of the place.

In a way I am relieved, because I will be meeting these people in their own guise, these clothes and the polish, they are a veneer—a type of armour to hide behind and take confidence from. The trick will be in keeping them as just that and not being taken over completely.

“I’m afraid that from now on I can’t help you very much—I can try but I don’t guarantee that I’ll be of much use.”

We are in Jan’s room, the boxes of our recent purchases are everywhere and we are sitting gratefully on the sofa, sinking into the feather cushions and drinking tea that Nan brought up for us along with the most dainty sandwiches I have ever seen.

“Why, what’s next?” I ask selecting another bite sized morsel and popping it into my mouth.

“Next is lunch,” replies Mari.

“Oh no—not that!” cries Jan dramatically.

Mari laughs.

“Actually to be more precise it’s a barbeque, we have a barbeque lunch every Wednesday in the Italianate pleasure garden, and tomorrow you will attend.”

“Why?” my voice is startled.

“You girls will have to meet everyone at some point, so tomorrow you’ll have lunch with us and tomorrow night you’ll have dinner with us at the dining room.”

“Why does the ‘dining room’ sound creepy?”

“You saw the park in the middle of the complex?”

“It was kind of hard to miss.”

“Well the pavilion in the middle is known as the dining room; it is the tradition of the tribe that the blood Andaks have dinner as a family along with their friends, some families have an open invitation—you know—families with unmarried daughters, pretty unmarried daughters who because of that invitation think it their right and their right alone to be included, they will not look on your interloping with friendliness.”