Always Coming Home

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Some people were brought in many times in a lifetime, others once or never. Some members of the Doctors Lodge would act as dwesh on request, others only in cases they considered serious; and though the former were liked for their response to a need for sympathy, it was the latter who were most respected. All doctors who performed bringings-in also had been goddwe, and were brought in from time to time, as training and as therapy.

  Tarweed

  DYING.

  Fatally ill people, most of them sufferers from sevai, vedet, or cancer, came to live at the Doctors Lodge in a hospice routine called hwagedwean, continuous bringing-in. The alleviation of misery was set ahead of the prolongation of life, as a rule. If a patient asked for death and the family and close friends agreed, the issue was discussed by the Lodge. If the judgment was that death was appropriate, four doctors undertook to be present; euthanasia was performed as a ceremony, ritually, as were abortion and the killing of a monstrously defective birth. Euthanasia was performed with poison, given orally or injected; abortion was performed by curettage, preceded and followed by treatment with herbals; monstrous births, if they did not die of their infirmities at once, were starved, being looked after but not fed, until they died.

  In response to my questions on this latter subject, Alder gave me this written statement: “People [human and animal] that we kill or let die when they are born are those with two heads or joined bodies, those born dúsevai [a baby born with advanced sevai: blind, deaf, and subject to muscle spasm which prevent it from suckling], and those born very terribly misshapen or without brain, without skin, or without another organ necessary to life. Such people born dying are let die. Human people born who cannot live are let die with care and singing the songs of Going Westward with them, and the mother names them so they can be mourned at the Mourning Fires of the Equinox. Animal people of the Obsidian House born unable to live are killed in the proper way with the due words, and the death is burned.”

  BIRTHING.

  This seemed to be the only area where doctors specialised by sex. In animal practice there were almost as many men expert in attending on a difficult cow or ewe birth as there were women, but men doctors seldom presided at a human birth; and some women doctors—itatensho or “senders,”—specialised pretty exclusively in the care of pregnant and nursing women and as midwives. The complex and beautiful ceremonies of pregnancy and birth were directed by women of the Blood Lodge who were or who worked with women of the Doctors Lodge. Prenatal care and education was thorough, mostly embodied in ritual and ceremony. At the time of birth, hygiene was extremely strict. If the household of the mother failed to set aside a room for the birth and to have it ready and clean—down to scrubbed, sanded wood, fresh paint, boiled linens, and all the rest of a set of most exacting standards—the Lodge might insist that the delivery take place in their own building. The mother stayed in this clean, quiet, dimly lit room with the baby for a formal nine-day rest period; friends and family might come in to visit and sing, a few at a time. The father was in charge of welcoming, filtering, and sending away the visitors; a man of the father’s House could act in his stead, if the father was absent or divorced or otherwise not given responsibility for the child. He or his stand-in was expected to help the new mother with her work and keep her from overdoing while she was nursing the baby, though in fact her household normally protected or overprotected a young mother until she had to insist upon her freedom to come and go and work as she pleased. Thorn, who was in training as an itatensho with the Doctors of Sinshan, said that difficult labor and delivery were unusual, but that many pregnancies ended in unavoidable premature or still birth or in severely defective birth, due, evidently, to genetic damage. The same was true of the large animals; less so of the smaller animals, who in their more rapid generations had discarded the worst injuries resulting from old environmental poisoning and other traumas affecting the gene pool of every species.

  DISEASES.

  This list of illnesses is imprecise, incomplete, and probably wrong in many places. I could not identify many of the conditions which Alder tried to describe to me, and we were never perfectly sure we were talking about the same thing. Viral and bacterial mutations will have occurred, changing the nature of many diseases, no doubt; but the main problem was one of vocabulary. Kesh theory of medicine and methods of diagnosis differed profoundly from ours. For example:

  Though clearly aware of the role played by bacteria and viruses (the latter of which were utterly invisible to their microscopes) as agents of disease, they did not identify disease, or a disease, as an entity in itself. It was not something that happened to a person, but something a person did. The closest I could come to translating our word health into Kesh would be the word óya—ease or grace—or the word gestanai—living well, doing well, with a combination of inborn talent, luck, and skill. To translate our word disease or illness I would have to use the privative forms, póya—unease (not so far from the original sense of dis-ease) or difficulty or hardness; and gepestanai, living ill, doing badly, unlucky, unskilful. These Kesh words imply that the sick person is not a patient but an agent, not merely suffering an invasion from outside the body, but doing or being ill/ness. Curiously enough I think this view of illness involves less sense of guilt than does our image of a body victimised by malevolent forces from without. Implicit in it is an acceptance that we don’t always do what we would like or hope or ought to do, and that living is not always easy. The practices of the Doctors Lodge were not in the service of an ideal of perfect health, permanent youth, and the eradication of disease; they tried only to ensure that living wasn’t any harder than it had to be.

  There were Doctors Lodge ceremonies for immunisation of infants at 9, 54, and 81 days old; of children at 2, 4, 5, and 9 years old; and of adults at request or need. Diseases which the Kesh doctors could prevent or mitigate by inoculation or immunisation are mentioned in the following list:

  Tetanus, rabies, malaria, bubonic plague are the four diseases I feel I could identify with certainty. Immunisation existed for all these, and was given to infants and children, and to adults at need. Malaria was the scourge of the great inland marshes and estuaries, and though the immunisation was fairly effective it was not so completely so that the Kesh were very happy about travelling in the Great Valley marshlands. But then, they were mostly not very happy about travelling anywhere. Plague was still carried by ground squirrels, which were therefore never hunted and never handled, but no outbreak of plague had occurred in or near the Valley of the Na in living memory.

  My inquiries for the symptoms of smallpox and tuberculosis left Alder unable to identify these diseases as such. We did seem to be talking about the same thing when I brought up the diseases or conditions of which the herpes virus is the agent: chickenpox, coldsore, genital herpes, shingles. Alder knew them all and considered them to be related, grouping them under the name chemhem. Chickenpox was as serious in children as in adults, and immunisation was mandatory and effective.

  Venereal diseases—presumably varieties of syphilis and gonorrhea—were mostly called fucksores or foreigners’ misery—the latter being fair enough, since none was endemic in the Valley. Another reason for not travelling. Alder knew several treatments but no methods of prevention except hygiene.

  The rest of the diseases mentioned are identified only uncertainly:

  Infants were immunised against something that sounded like diphtheria, and against a rash which was certainly not measles, but might have been a form of scarlet fever.

  What Alder called “wet lung” was certainly some form of pneumonia. Penicillin, or a fungal derivative like it, was effective in treatment. I did not try to understand the immensely complex pharmacopoeia, mostly derived from herbs.

  Infectious hepatitis and some form of infectious jaundice were fairly common; Alder said that liver disorders were among the least tractable common illnesses. Hygiene was the principal tactic used against them.

  Passionately careful about their u
se of water and the condition of their streams and wells, the Kesh knew of typhoid only through books and the Exchange.

  Cancers of the skin were quite common; other forms of cancer certainly occurred but seem to have been less common than among us, but here the differing approach and understanding may have led me quite astray. Heart diseases, treated with drugs and with gedwean, if not symptomatic of congenital heart defect, seem to have been considered a liability of old age.

  The diseases or conditions which burdened the Kesh and their neighboring peoples with a load we don’t have to carry were sevai and vedet: congenital, intractable, degenerative disorders of the nervous system. (Forms of both diseases were shared with humanity by all the large domestic animals, and it was said that elk had died out in the whole Inland Sea drainage basin long ago because they “were vedet.”) As well as I could establish, both diseases expressed genetic (chromosomal) damage caused by long-lasting toxic or radioactive wastes or residues of the military-industrial era, widespread in soil and water, and leaching out uncontrollably from the very highly contaminated areas. Vedet involved personality disorder and dementia; sevai usually led to blindness and other sensory loss, and degeneration of muscle control. Both diseases were painful, crippling, incurable, and fatal. Severity of onset and the length of the course of the illness depended very much on what Alder called the “thoroughness” of the condition: major damage led to nonviability in the womb; minor damage might not show up till late in life.

  Late in life, in the Valley, would be over sixty. Life expectancy in our terms—averaged over the whole lifespan—would be short, not over thirty or forty, because so many children were born sevai or with other severe genetic abnormalities, leading to a high mortality in early infancy. But to a Kesh born óya and living gestanai, life generally went on well into the seventies, and old age was taken easily and lived, very often, with considerable skill and grace.

  A Treatise on Practices

  From the instructional library of the Red Adobe heyimas in Sinshan.

  Outermost: dim, coarse, cold, weak practices bring about a dead body [truned]. The practices of hunting and of war want patience, alertness, attention to detail, obedience, control, competitive ambition, experience, a dull imagination, a cold intellect. The butchering of animals and killing of plants for food are practices that want patience, alertness, attention to detail, presence of mind, and great carefulness. The danger to the killer is great. If the image of the other’s gift is lost the killer’s mind is lost, if the image of pain is lost the killer is lost. The image of the other’s pain is the center of being human. When by carelessness or wilfulness killing is practiced with cruelty, this is beyond the outside, and cannot in any way ever be brought in.

  Outermost, the practices of hoarding and usury are intractable, insatiable, and to be compared to cancerous tumors.

  Coming inwards, dim, coarse, cold, strong practices prepare a lead body. The milling and shaping of wood and preparation of all plants, roots, and seeds for food, the cutting up and smoking, drying, preserving, and cooking of meat of animal or bird or fish, the burial of dead animals of the town, the burial and funeral of dead human beings, these are practices of which some knowledge is appropriate and needful to all, so that they are done mindfully, in an appropriate manner.

  Coming inwards, those practices are coarse, bright, and strong, which chiefly exchange one thing for another. The practices of barter and exchange allow power to move in an appropriate manner from place to place; they imitate life strongly. The Millers arts of the uses of the energies of sun, wind, water, electricity, and the combinations of things to make other things are all practices of exchange. They want vigilance and clarity of mind, a bright imagination, modesty, attention to detail and to implication, strength and courage.

  Coming farther inwards, coming directly in, the practices of impregnation, pregnancy, birth, and rearing and nurture bring in the living.

  Innermost: warm, strong, fine, bright practices bring about living things and the diversity, complexity, power, and beauty of things. A bright imagination, a clear intellect, warmth, readiness magnanimity, grace, and ease are wanted in the practices of gardening, farming, sharing food, caring for animals, cure, care, healing, and comforting, the arts of making order and cleanliness where people live and work, all dancing and delightful exercises the arts of making beautiful and useful things, and all the arts and practices of music, of speaking, of writing, and of reading aloud or silently.

  Playing

  Toys made by adults for children were carved or sewn animals and dolls, miniature utensils and furnishings, blocks of shaped and sanded mill-ends, and balls of milkweed rubber, sheep-bladders, or stuffed sewn leather. Everything else children played with they made themselves or borrowed from the house or workshop. Most of their play was story-play, imitative of adult work and activities, including trance-singing, doctoring, death, birth, family quarrels, and all the soap-opera aspects of Kesh life. Children’s games with rules included:

  Many singing and dancing games, some quite complicated and pretty to watch. One called Múdúp (brush rabbit) was rather like hopscotch, the dancers following one another through a course or maze laid out ahead, and tossing and picking up beads or nutshells at certain points.

  Ring-toss was played with a carved ring of light wood, always across a creek, in pairs or groups. Ring-toss songs were sung until somebody missed a catch, at which the song had to be started over; “winning” the game was getting to the end of the song.

  Knife-toss or mumblety-peg was played very skilfully. A knife was often a child’s most prized possession, “a real steel blade knife from Telína!”

  Hish was a kind of badminton played with a feathered rubber-headed birdie (the hish, swallow) and long-handled, small-headed racquets strung with gut. Four people played, two on either side of a string or ribbon. The object of the game was to keep the “swallow” aloft in a regular swift pattern of exchanges. Hish was one of le Summer games, and adolescents and young men often went from town to town to play exhibition games. Grown women and older men seldom played hish, but often used the birdie and racquets to play without rules; in the dry season there was usually a hish court or two set up on the common place.

  Horseshoes was played just as we play it.

  For bowls, a heavy wooden ball was rolled on a smooth dirt lane towards five rocks placed in a V. Scoring was complicated, necessitating long, grave discussions. Old people played both bowls and horseshoes more often than most children did.

  Archery, darts, and the throwing-stick were of course elements of hunting, but were played as games for their own sake and exhibited as skills in the Summer games. Most children had a small bow made for them and learned to make their own arrows. Their hunting of small animals cannot be called a game, although it did follow strict rules, and was not an indispensable contribution to subsistence.

  Hide-and-seek was played a great deal in summer, as was a similar game which resembled Kick-the-Can—to free the prisoners, instead of kicking a can you threw a tall bamboo pole, and where it lit was the new base. Reverse hide-and-seek, or Sardines, was a great favorite with small children indoors in the rainy season.

  Shinny or field hockey was played on a fallow field or in a barnyard with a leather ball and wooden sticks. Four teams played at once, of two to five players; the object was to get the ball through four goals in a certain order. A kind of soccer, the ball being kicked only, had similar rules, as well as I could determine. The polo game vetúlou was also of this type, but was played without teams, each horse and rider being a team to themselves. In all these games the team or pair which first completed the pattern was the winner, but the game was not over till all players had completed the pattern. Although the games were wildly active and risky, aggressive behavior disrupted them at once and absolutely. Excellence consisted in speed, skill, and teamwork in completing the pattern; the game was a metaphor of society, not of war. This dominance of collaboration over competition was tru
e of all games except the gambling games.

  Dice games were much played by older children, adolescents, and many adults. There were two kinds of dice, both six-sided: apap or zero-zero was played with a pair, each marked with one through five spots and a blank side; hwots was played with four dice, marked with six symbols—leaf, bone, eye, fish, spade, mouth—rolled for various winning combinations, like a more complicated version of our slot-machine fruitbasket. Other dice games, some involving eight-sided long dice, were borrowed from neighboring peoples. Stakes were mostly wooden counters or pebbles; playing for objects of real value was not socially countenanced, but was very common, and adults sometimes went on long gambling binges—especially at the summerhouses, where nobody was close by to disapprove. People did not actually own enough private property to be able to ruin themselves by gambling, but they could damage their reputation. So far as I know, gambling meant dice-playing only; the Kesh considered the other games to be matters of skill, not chance, and therefore not appropriate subjects for betting.

  Among the sedentary games a favorite with children was jackstraws—a set of fine polished wooden sticks (or real straws, in the fields) dropped in a random heap, which had to be taken apart one by one, the player losing the turn by moving any straw but the first touched. A heavier set of polished sticks of olivewood was used for a whole group of games of pitch-and-toss, catch-on-the-hand, house-building, and so on, and some children did marvelous sleight of hand with such sticks.

  Lettered wooden tablets about the size of dominoes, some of them beautifully made and decorated, served for a series of games the general object of which, like our anagrams, was word-building, or, in the more difficult versions, sentence-building. Such games might go on for hours, sometimes days. The object of the game might be to make a poem, or the players might engage in a “flyting” or “capping” series of insults and ripostes. Such contests—without the game pieces, spoken as free oral improvisation—were a feature of the Wine Dance. Direct competition and aggression was typically channeled by the Kesh into verbal expression, which was acceptable so long as it was controlled, and admired so long as it was witty.