Twelve Beans
by Sarah Das Gupta
Susie looked at the two sacks. Her worn face was screwed up, her expression uncertain. Would they be enough? It had been the worst year she’d ever known. The spring had been unbelievably wet. The fields had become stretches of unrelieved mud. Then it had been as if someone had turned off the tap. The summer had been so hot and dry that the soil was cracked and parched. It was like walking on badly laid concrete.
Anyone looking to the far horizon would have been impressed by the land stretching away in the distance. Row upon row of tall green plants seemed to be flourishing. Yet Susie’s expert eye fell on the bald patches of earth standing out like a livid scar on a pretty face.
She stumbled along the uneven track where the dry ruts made walking difficult. In a nearby field a gang of labourers was busy spraying the green-leafed crop. The heat was so intense it almost ricocheted off the earth back into the sunburnt faces. The nearest worker stood awkwardly at attention as Susie passed.
She climbed down the steep steps to a chrome-plated door gleaming in the heat. It opened into a large, cool, dark room. Steel beams supported a domed ceiling. As the door shut, the windowless room seemed to close in on itself. Outside, only the tip of the domed roof was visible. Most of the house was underground.
Touching a button, Susie stepped onto an escalator which snaked its way down past a number of floors until it stopped in the depths below. She pressed a blue light on the control board at the side of a sliding door which opened in a malignant grin to reveal a vault-like space with many similar sacks piled up to the metal ceiling.
Susie had just stepped off the top of the escalator when she became aware of someone crying. At first it was barely audible, but then it was punctuated by shuddering sobs which echoed in the silence. A woman in the regulation green uniform was sitting at the far end of the room, her face almost covered by a mass of untidy black hair. She was crying, her whole body convulsed by sobs.
The woman did not at first notice Susie sitting quietly beside her. She occasionally worked as a cleaner or kitchen hand if one of the regulars was off sick. Her sunburnt face, rough hands and broken nails suggested she was normally a field worker. Susie tried to remember her name, rather than refer to her by the number 53 emblazoned on her back. From somewhere she dredged up “Milly.”
“I’m sure we can sort this out, Milly. Most things aren’t so bad as they seem at first.”
“No, they’re much worse.” At this the girl again broke into desperate sobbing.
Susie suddenly remembered that she’d noticed the girl shyly holding hands with the leader of the work gang as they returned from the fields in the evenings. “Have you fallen out with Joe?”
“No, nothing to do with him, ma’am. I were just going to clean the kitchen.” She stood up, pushing the dark hair out of her eyes.
As Milly turned towards the door, Susie saw the rounding belly, noticeable on the girl’s slight frame. Her heart sank to think of the dark road that stretched ahead for this girl, hardly more than a child herself.
Before Susie had a chance to think further, familiar, heavy boots sounded on the steps outside. Bob pushed the door open and flung himself down on the nearest sofa. Susie shivered, despite the humid air that followed him as the door slammed.
“The heat always gets at them,” he muttered, pulling off his heavy boots and throwing them to the far side of the gloomy room. His sunburnt face was striking, but the curve of the thin lips prevented it from being handsome.
“What’s the problem?” Susie’s voice feigned a bright, sympathetic interest.
“Let’s just say the guards had to open fire. Now we’re one Velf less, up on that Eastern Border. We could do without that, the day the Ministry for Cooperation announces the outbreak of war in that zone.”
“War against Easteria! I thought we’d started peace negotiations.”
“Exactly! You should have been prepared,” her husband said with a cynical laugh. “Don’t forget most of the Velves up on that border are prisoners from the last conflict. I’ll have to move some from here up there to strengthen their resolve. Mind you, that shooting today has made them think a bit.”
“Well, just don’t move a group of potential rebels down here to the Home Zone. This heat is bad enough, and there are other problems...” Her voice faltered.
“Not some lover’s tiff or a bloody Velf with heat stroke. Why can’t you grasp a simple fact of life? Velves are scum, necessary, but still scum. OK, they grow our money but it’s still our money.” He turned on one of the many telescreens to monitor the Eastern Zone. There, guards were sitting quietly in the watch tower. Their guns lay ready. Stretched out on the sofa, his dark hair tousled and sweaty, Bob had fallen into an uneasy doze.
* * *
When Susie got up the next morning to another relentlessly hot day, Bob had already left for the Eastern border. A spokesman from the Ministry of Cooperation stared out of the largest telescreen, which dominated the room.
“The Father has everything under control. He, of course, anticipated the treachery of Easteria and had already signed a pact with our allies in the south. He reminds you of the urgent need to begin harvesting and—”
Susie switched off. The blank automaton of a face disappeared. She wanted to catch Joe before the gang left for the fields.
Standing at the end of the sun-baked field track, she watched the gang approaching. As they trailed past in their uniforms, many barely acknowledged the anxious, blonde woman standing at the field gate. Most faces looked sullen and resentful at the prospect of the sweltering day ahead. A tall, imposing figure, despite the humiliating, numbered uniform, walked at the back of the gang.
“Joe, I need a word with you. Just come up to the house. It won’t take long.”
He nodded and, after exchanging a few words with his deputy, followed Susie down the track. Keeping a respectful distance behind her, he removed his hat before entering the house.
“Sit down for a minute,” she gestured towards the nearest chair. “I found Milly very upset yesterday. I think you can understand why.”
A momentary look of anger flashed across his normally inscrutable face. “Yes, ma’am. She didn’t deserve it, none of it. She’s just a kid.”
“Well, you surely realised that before you, er, well, before you...” Susie stuttered to a halt.
A deep flush crept up Joe’s face. Susie felt afraid. She had broken all the rules: talking to a Velf, let alone bringing him into the house. What if Bob comes back?
“I’ve never laid a finger on the girl!” Joe said, his voice rising. “I tried to help, but it’s hopeless.” Joe looked suddenly vulnerable and defeated. “I’d strangle Ramsey with my own hands, but it wouldn’t help Milly or the baby. You know I’m right, ma’am.” Joe’s voice sounded bleak and hopeless.
“You don’t mean Carter Ramsey, the guard up on the Eastern Front?” Susie’s heart sank. Ramsey had shot the rebel the previous day; she knew he was a key figure in any attack or skirmishes in the area. “How did Ramsey meet Milly?”
“Ramsey was down here last winter, recruiting men for guards. On the last day, he and his mates were drinking and taking a few ‘beans’. They dragged Milly out of bed and...” Joe held his head in his hands. Susie could see his shoulders shaking.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about the baby. That’s for the Ministry of Child Welfare. It’s possible we can help Milly, but it’s going to be tough.” Susie listened to her voice as if someone else, someone younger, less battered, braver, was talking through her. As if the years had dropped away and she was once again that idealistic girl with the cute, turned-up nose and mass of blonde hair, full of reformist dreams.
“Could you talk to the boss, ma’am? Milly’s so young and sort of... helpless. She makes me think of the kittens. The ones they tied in a sack and threw into the river last summer.”
* * *
That evening, Susie had waited for the sound of boots on the steps. She had thought how Bob had changed, too. He’s not that young crusader out to change the world. Cynical now, hard and, yes, bitter, that’s the word, bitter; shut up in himself.
She had been proved only too right. Bob had made one concession. The child would be handed over, but he would drive Milly up to the Eastern Front and she could make her way back ‘home’ into Easteria. Despite all her doubts and regrets, Susie knew better than to argue. Her old energy had burnt out in the heat and traumas of too many summers.
The first sound Susie heard a few mornings later were feeble cries from the women’s dormitories. One of the older women appeared with a bungle of torn, grey blankets. A tiny, puckered face was barely visible, swathed in this assortment of rags.
Standing respectfully on the bottom step, the woman called out, “It’s a girl, ma’am. Small but strong enough to bawl the place down.”
Susie forced herself to walk down the stairs. Gently she drew back the ragged ‘shawl’. Two huge, dark eyes dominated the tiny face. Sucking noises sounded as tiny fingers wiggled, almost defiantly, in a tiny mouth.
“At least she’s got a reasonable chance. The minister’s wife wants a baby girl as a playmate for her own daughter. She’ll be well cared for, at least for a few years.” Susie could hear a cheerful, reassuring voice which seemed to belong to someone else.
Half an hour later, a ministerial car, coffin-like, menacingly black with darkened windows, swept in and out of the yard after collecting the bundle of rags.
From the steps, Susie watched Milly climb into the back of Bob’s armoured estate car. She appeared only after the rags had left. She clutched another, slightly bigger, bundle: all her worldly possessions. Susie fought back tears. She hoped Milly had the packet of “beans” safely hidden. Susie had taken a handful from one of the sacks. Hopefully, Bob wouldn’t weigh that one.
The price of xexerone had risen considerably since the dry summer. A powerful narcotic, easy to grind into a fine powder, yet so like the common bean, a gift to smugglers. It had become in effect the official currency. Susie thought regretfully of all the years of experiments and cross-breeding just to produce these magic “beans.” Of course, the Ministry of Dreams had come up with the concept of “beans.” Then it had developed the fairy tale myth of some peasant called “Jack” who had planted these to grow his own fortune and, of course, that of Westaria. Yes, “beans” sounds so much healthier than “xexerone.”
* * *
Bob watched as Milly walked slowly towards the border post. Susie is getting soft in her old age. Milly knows far too much about “beans” to be let loose in enemy territory. He raised the gun, carefully taking aim as he would have done with a wolf or coyote. The sound cracked open the silence of the valley. The slight figure fell forward into the rough grass.
Bob felt in the dying girl’s pockets. Twelve “beans” lay in his open palm.
Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Das Gupta
