Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  Still nothing to report about Ramiratam and the others, I’m afraid. The media doesn’t mention them at all—nothing about charges or a trial—not even any rumors make it to our ears.

  With Ramiratam and the others detained and you in that suspended prison, everything has become very quiet here once again—no separatist talk, no old songs for the Lady of the Ruby Lake, nothing. It’s as if the celebration and all the ferment at the beginning of the year never happened. As for the government’s story regarding your “elevation,” most people recognize it as mockery, just another insult that must be borne. There are some, though, who really seem to think the government is sincere, and take this as proof, somehow, of your connection to the Lady! I don’t know whether to laugh or groan. I wish I could inhabit their pleasant reality.

  Try to keep your spirits up. Don’t fret about me and whether I’m well. You know I’m proud of you, and if your father could have lived to see the path you’ve taken, he would have been too. Yes, even though he never spoke about politics.

  The man from the security services who brings me your letters has permitted me to send you the enclosed book of poems. Remember when you went off to St. Margaret’s? You wouldn’t let me pack this book; you insisted on carrying it with you. You were so determined to show your new lowland classmates that we in the mountains were not the primitives they imagined, but cosmopolitan and cultured. I doubt you mentioned the Lady of the Ruby Lake to them! How different things are now.

  Stay well, Kayamanira

  With love,

  your mother

  P.S. Did you know that Sumi sometimes visits me? I always give her a little treat.

  July 26 (Kaya’s memoir)

  This evening I feel parched, though they’ve left me plenty of water. I think it’s green things I’m thirsty for, and birdsong. Poor Sumi. You’re a fine bird, but you can’t help me there.

  But they left a different sort of refreshment, better than water in its way: a letter from Em, this time by post instead of ocean waves and Sumi.

  She asks if I committed a crime. Such a direct question! How can I answer her? The law says I did, but if the law itself is criminal, then is it a crime to break it?

  She mentions the Seafather. He must be a sea spirit or deity, I guess, but not one I ever heard of when I was studying in America. Perhaps it’s only people in her floating village who know him. Maybe, then, if I ask Em to imagine what it would be like if one day it became a crime to honor the Seafather, she would understand what it’s like here, never being able to celebrate the Lady of the Ruby Lake.

  But Em probably doesn’t spend much time thinking about grand ideas like freedom of religion any more than I did, when I was her age. I didn’t care, in primary school, that the teachers told us not to sing our songs on the school grounds. Why should I, when we could sing them on the walk home? Just as I never wondered why it was that our people only appeared in the history books at the point when the lowland kingdom extended its reach up into the mountains, as if we didn’t exist before then. That was just the way it was: school was where we learned about distant, confusing lowland history. For our own history—the exciting stories about the Five Sister Kingdoms of olden days—we relied on grandparents and parents. That was the ordinary pattern of life.

  We weren’t thinking about olden-days stories in our final year of primary school, though. What excited me and Nawalam and Dinasha that year was the thought that if we studied very hard, we might win a scholarship to one of the prestigious secondary schools in Palem, the capital city, down on the coast. We were the first cohort of students from the mountains to be required to learn the national language from our first year of school, so we were the first to whom the scholarship was offered—and we were thrilled. That’s how far from activists we all were!

  Some of our classmates, the ones who suffered more in trying to master the national language (it was three switches on the shoulders anytime we lapsed into our native tongue), no doubt felt more bitter about how things were, but not us: we were the ambitious ones. We were going to remake ourselves as lowlanders. The separatist movement that had been crushed when we were small children was a severe embarrassment to us. How could our aunties and uncles have participated in something so shameful and foolish, so damaging to our nation?

  Every now and then we’d overhear the grown-ups talking about those days, among themselves, but then they’d notice us listening and the talk would die. “We have to think of their future,” they’d say, nodding in our direction, and, “It’s just the way things are.” Always with a note of regret in their voices that we didn’t want to hear.

  I wonder how Ramiratam felt, back then. None of us knew—not in primary school—about his parents. Our parents would never talk about it—certainly not my father, who hated political talk, or my mother, whose brother had been detained, but then released. But Ramiratam must have known. Was it hard for him to keep silent? Or was it like second nature, self-preservation? Rami, if I could be granted one wish, it wouldn’t be to change anything that’s happened in the past year. I would wish to have been a better, more perceptive friend to you back when we were all younger.

  Ramiratam wasn’t even going to try for the boys’ scholarship, and none of us understood why he held back, since we all knew that he was a better student than boastful Nawalam, who claimed to be the best in our school.

  “Conceding the field?” Nawalam teased. “You’re making things too easy for me.” So then Ramiratam did try—and lost out to Nawalam. I couldn’t believe it. Nawalam scored higher than Rami? My confusion grew deeper when I caught a glimpse of Ramiratam’s exam on the headmaster’s desk when I was dropping off the attendance. In the final box, neatly printed in red: ninety-five. Five points higher than the score Nawalam was bragging about to one and all. Ramiratam was the top scorer. Why didn’t he say anything? His silence kept me silent too, for three days, until I could no longer tolerate the mysterious injustice. But when I finally worked up the courage to ask him about it, all he would say was that the exam score was only part of what determined who received the scholarship, and that he had never expected to win.

  I wanted to ask Dinasha for her opinion on how this could have happened, but there was something about Rami’s face, and voice, when he spoke to me, that kept me from sharing my secret knowledge even with her. I was left thinking about it on my own.

  To thirteen-year-old me, it simply didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be bad character: Ramiratam was always helping the younger students with their work, never smoked, had never snuck off to steal a taste of Uncle Satmelelin’s distilled Dragonfire. He did once jump from the shell of the abandoned dump truck into the flooded quarry on a dare, but I don’t think the teachers ever found out about that, and anyway, that belonged in the category of bravery, not bad character.

  Family circumstance? Nawalam’s family owned so much land that they hired other people to help them till it. Ramiratam lived with his grandparents, not in our narrow valley but somewhere on the actual mountainside, far enough away that he had to leave before sunrise to reach school each day. You could see the sharp bones of Rami’s shoulders through his uniform shirt where they had worn the cloth thin; Nawalam had a new shirt each year. But wasn’t a scholarship meant to erase distinctions of wealth?

  It made me wonder if maybe I hadn’t deserved to win the girls’ scholarship. Maybe it should have gone to Dinasha. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her outright what she’d scored on the exam, but when I expressed my doubts about the scholarship, she just rolled her eyes.

  “How could you have won the scholarship if you scored lower than I did? No, I’m sure you won it fair and square. I might have come close to you on the language questions, but I didn’t finish the maths section, and I’m never good at identifying literary passages. You’ll just have to live with the glory—and uphold mountain honor!”

  Again I felt the urge to tell her about Nawalam and Ramiratam’s scores, but again I held my tongue. Instead I vowed I’d
be a second Morakalan.

  Morakalan, the one person from the mountains that the lowlanders know and admire, because he embraced lowland ways, learned the lowland language, wrote poems in the classical lowland style, and fought with all the lowland patriots for W—’s independence. That’s who I wanted to model myself on. I wanted my new classmates to see me as accomplished, knowledgeable, modern, and as much a child of W— as they all were.

  At St. Margaret’s, I was lucky to have Tema as a bunkmate. She was bossy, yes, but she was a shield, too, against the other girls’ careless (and sometimes deliberate) cruelties, and she became a true friend.

  On the first day, girls were milling around, finding their bunkmates. Many of them gave me mistrustful looks or turned away entirely when I tried to meet their eyes, and my resolve to be bold and friendly was trickling away. Then Tema came over. I’m embarrassed to say I was intimidated—all the lowlanders are very tall, but she was exceptionally so. Most of the other girls had their hair in plaits or pony tails, but Tema had hers cut at an angle at chin length. It swayed like curtain fringe when she moved her head.

  “You must be the girl from the mountains, Kayamarina … no; that’s wrong, isn’t it: Kayarima … no: Kayana—”

  “Kayamanira,” I said. “But you can call me Kaya.”

  “Kaya—that’s much easier. I’m your bunkmate, Tema. Don’t you worry about them,” she added, waving her hand at the rest of the girls. “I won’t let them pick on you. I know which ones are friendly and which ones are impossible stuck-up snobs. Come on; let’s go. Here, help me with my bags—that’s part of how it works in the dorms: first-years get a second-year bunkmate to look after them, but in return they have to do favors if the second-year asks. I’ll be very reasonable, though; not like my bunkmate when I was a first-year. Ughh, she thought she was queen of the dormitory. And don’t worry; we’ll come back and get your stuff. Is that all you brought? Huh. That’s not much. Is it true that all the mountain natives are poor? I heard the only prosperous people in the mountains are those who moved there from the lowlands. I suppose you must be here on scholarship. I pay full fees—my father runs Pearl Fin Consolidated Fisheries. He’s got to be a millionaire at least.”

  That was the way she always talked: a continuous, quick-moving stream of words. I had been nervous about my accent, but at that moment I thought that perhaps I’d get by without having to say a word at all. After she had made her remark about her father, one of the other girls said,

  “Phew, does anyone smell fish? Oh, I should have known: it’s the fish oil millionairess. Did you know if you eat too much fish, it makes you monstrously tall?”

  Several of the girls laughed, and I felt my heartbeat speeding up. But Tema didn’t bat an eye, just said, “My goodness, Shim, all those sweets you hide under your pillow, and yet you’re as sour as raw tamarind. Still hankering after an invite from the princesses? And yet you still haven’t got one. Can’t imagine why not!”

  Some of the very same girls who had laughed at Shim’s taunt laughed at Tema’s retort. Shim lifted up her chin and wrinkled her nose and said to the girls near her,

  “I really don’t think I can bear the fish stink any longer. Let’s go talk to the new English instructor. Peri says she taught in Japan before coming here and can sing both Spice Girls and Amuro Namie songs.” She and two or three others girls wandered off.

  “That’s terrible, what she said,” I ventured.

  “Oh, Shim doesn’t bother me. I have plenty of friends.” She said it lightly, casually, but the way her eyes traveled after those girls and the way she pressed her lips together after saying it made me wonder.

  “See them?” she said, pointing to two girls standing under the giant angsana tree in the center of the courtyard, heads practically touching as they looked at something one of them was holding. I nodded.

  “Everybody calls them the princesses because they’re both from the old royal family. You wouldn’t believe how some of the girls fawn over them. It’s ridiculous. Like the royal family ever did anything for W—. My father’s done more for W— than any prince in a gold jacket and scarlet eyeliner.” She made a face.

  “And it’s not as if it does girls like Shim any good to play up to them. They’ll only ever associate with other former aristocrats. Stupid.”

  As if aware that they were the topic of discussion, the two girls looked up. Tema narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe it. They can’t possibly be coming over here.”

  But they were. They stopped in front of us and stared at me.

  “See, Sarei? Mountain people really are small, and so dark! Like black lacquer,” remarked the one on the left, whom I found out later was called Vira. “Just like something out of an anthropology film.” To me she said, “Tell me, is it really true that you people wear bones and feathers in your hair?”

  I was at a loss for words. Do you mean children’s good luck charms? I wanted to ask, and Lowlanders don’t have those? You don’t call on birds by bone and feather, for protection, and plait the charm into children’s hair? But then I recalled how angry it made the headmaster whenever he saw any of the year-eight students wearing one. How he scolded! My mother had wanted to plait mine in my hair when we were taking the high school entrance exams, just for luck, but I said I didn’t need luck, just more time studying.

  “Doesn’t she speak our language?” Vira asked, turning to Tema.

  “Of course I do!” I said, finding my tongue at last. “It’s my language too, you know. No, we don’t wear bones and feathers in our hair, any more than you do.”

  That’s how I sold out my home and my people that first day—erased our childhood good-luck charms, denied the tears we shed to master the national language.

  “Oh, too bad,” said Vira, almost pouting. “I guess we won’t get to see an exotic costume on uniform-free days. Well, keep her in line, Tima—”

  “It’s Tema,” Tema corrected, but Vira ignored the interruption.

  “—and don’t let her embarrass herself. You’re such an expert on so many things that might trip a backwoods innocent up. Things like Western toilets and all—didn’t you treat the whole dorm to an explanation of Western toilets last year? Fascinating stuff.” Sarei laughed, and the two of them drifted away.

  “Stupid princesses,” Tema muttered. “Let’s hurry up and get settled; no point in hanging around here. Grab that bag—no, that one.”

  She strode off at quite a pace; I practically had to run to keep up with her, which was hard, lugging one of her bags and my own.

  “False praise is worse than jeers,” she said, shoving underthings into the sliding drawers under the bunk bed. “Maybe the princesses think it’s crude to talk about toilets, but some girls really don’t know. If you don’t come from the capital, you might never have seen one … have you seen a Western toilet?”

  One thing I loved right away about Tema was that she would talk about anything, directly, and with her full heart. Even embarrassing things. Em reminds me of Tema in her directness.

  “The headmaster told us about them before we left. One of about a hundred miscellaneous things he thought we should know.”

  Then I took the plunge and turned the conversation. “You said ‘False praise is worse than jeers.’ Were you- Did you know that Morakalan uses that phrase in the fourth of his Sixteen Odes?”

  He’s from the mountains, I wanted to add, and he’s in the literature textbook.

  Tema looked at me blankly, and I instantly wished I hadn’t brought up poetry. Perhaps Tema hated poetry. Then her face brightened.

  “Oh! you mean Kalan. We usually just call him Kalan. Why do mountain names have to be so long? Yes, I love Kalan’s poems—he’s not as good as Pirar, but sometimes he has just the right way of expressing things. So … you like poetry? Do you have literary aspirations?” She sounded almost anxious when she asked.

  “I do like poetry,” I said. “Literary … aspirations?” For a moment the meaning of the word escaped me, but
then I remembered. “I-I don’t think so. I like to write poems, but I need to do something more practical later in life. Something to help people where I live. I think I want to become a doctor or a biologist or something like that.”

  Tema flashed a radiant smile when I said that.

  “Oh well, that’s perfect then. Yes, you study sciences; I don’t mind at all if you excel in science. In fact, it could be handy. Me, I intend to become a literary critic and a novelist and maybe run a newspaper one day—and I wouldn’t mind recognition for poetry too, and it would be awkward if you and I both wanted to be school poet. But if you want to do well in sciences, you probably won’t have much time for poetry, so how about you leave writing poems and winning literary contests to me, and I’ll leave science contests to you? All right?”

  On the one hand, Tema was including me in her imagined future of fame and greatness, and there was something intoxicating about her confidence. On the other hand—not write any more poems? Could I keep on writing them on the sly, maybe late at night or very early in the morning, without her finding out? And what about reading poetry?

  My face must have given me away.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing! But … you wouldn’t mind if I still read poetry, would you?”

  She laughed.

  “Of course not! I’ll want you to read my efforts, for one thing. How about we pick out a poem a night, to share? Come on; don’t look so solemn! What do you say?”

  I managed a smile.

  “All right; yes.”

  And our futures did turn out as she imagined, more or less. When we finished high school, she entered a journalism program at W— National University, and I went to America to study agronomy. Tema wrote me while I was in America to say that she had a job with a TV news station. Just before I came back to W—, she wrote that she was engaged to be married.

  I guess she’ll have heard about what I and the others have done, about the “trouble.” The “agitation.” What must she think? My protector and friend, and now we stand on opposite sides of a deep gulf.