Dancing at the Edge of the World

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  THE SECOND REPORT OF THE SHIPWRECKED FOREIGNER TO THE KADANH OF DERB

  (1984)

  In November of 1984, the Seattle branch of Antioch University invited Vonda N. McIntyre and myself to chair a daylong conference on Women, Power, and Leadership. Expecting fifteen or twenty participants, and faced with ninety-five women and three men, Vonda and I were pretty well floored. We floundered about all morning trying to pull the thing together: object lessons in the inexperience of Women given the Power of Leadership, certainly. We asked the group for help, and a quiet woman at the back proposed a format that satisfied both those who wanted to hear us speak as “successful” women and writers, and those who, like Vonda and me, preferred a general discussion in which as many voices as possible might be heard. The lot-drawn panel format she suggested worked splendidly, and people talked that afternoon about living and working in a society that conceives of power and leadership almost totally in male terms—talked with a cogency and often a poignancy that have stayed with me and enriched my understanding ever since.

  I read this piece as my opening statement. At the time I was thinking about a series of these “Reports” (the “First Report” was published in Antaeus and then in my story collection The Compass Rose), but so far there are only two. Communications from Derb seem to have been interrupted.

  Your Highness:

  I have been trying to figure out how to tell you a story about a Representative Person of Earth, so that you might be amused by the tale while learning from it, or from the spaces between the words, something about my world, or yours. The trouble is, I have not been able to think of a Representative Person.

  I met a member of the House of Representatives once. He was an odd person, not representative at all. He entered the room when the party had been going on for an hour or so, and from the way the host and hostess and others went to him like bits of iron to a magnet, and from the way he spoke in rich tones, it was evident that he was important. Unfortunately I lived in the wrong district and had never heard his name, and so when we were introduced I was puzzled by the curiously professional way he shook my hand, as if handshaking were a profession, and by the way he used his eyes. He used them as a means of looking straight into my eyes with an expression of intense sincerity. I had the impression that he did not see me. I don’t know who, or what, he did see. He talked well and loudly, told two fairly dirty jokes at dinner, and laughed. He impinged upon all of us, while none of us seemed to affect him in any way. He exuded himself, while absorbing nothing. From what inexhaustible source, since he never replenished it by drawing upon the rest of the universe, did he draw so much self to exude? When I found out (on the way home) that he was a Representative, I thought that that explained it: his inexhaustible source was power—power itself. He was, as it were, plugged into the main. But this disqualified him as a Representative Person. Most people have to generate their own power.

  Once upon a time a baby was born and named Soru. When she was little her mother carried her into the fields and laid her in the shade at the field’s edge while the work went on. When Soru got bigger she ran about in the village with the other little children, and played down by the stream. The children made toy boats out of big leaves; Soru liked to make little mud figures of people and set them in the boats. The boats always sank, and the mud figures dissolved quickly in the muddy water, becoming swirls of tiny particles drifting downstream. Soru learned how to prepare food with her mother and aunt and elder sister. With other girls she learned other necessary skills such as sewing, mat-making, roof repair, dancing, fire-tending, milking, storytelling, genealogy, and all the labors of the fields. She was healthy, merry, and industrious, and not long after she attained puberty Anfe’s family came to ask about her dowry; presently she became Anfe’s wife and went to live in that household. There she worked very hard, but Anfe’s three younger sisters were jolly and affectionate, and the four of them were always laughing and playing and joking. Soru’s first baby was born on the day it rained after the long drought; the rain beat like great drums, and the child was a beautiful and healthy girl. The next year she had a boy, and the year after that a girl. Anfe’s father died then, and the man from Monoy came and insisted that the debt be paid. The family could not pay it all, and he would not accept part payment, so they lost the land. Soru and Anfe and the three babies and Anfe’s youngest sister had to move in with Anfe’s mother’s sister, who was a mean, lazy old woman. That house was so dirty it could not be cleaned, and far too small for them all, but Soru managed. She worked for Tima in the fields. When the chance for a good marriage for Anfe’s youngest sister came up, Soru saw to it that a dowry was provided, though she missed her sister-in-law’s company, and now while she was in the fields she had to leave the children in the care of the old woman. Anfe was a good-natured man and a hard worker, but he hated being tied down to one job for long; he quit work so often that he couldn’t always find it, and went without work sometimes for weeks and months. At such times he would hang around with other men and drink, and come home drunk and treacherous and full of rage; then he and the old woman would quarrel, and the children would hide from them until Soru came home from the fields. One day in the long rains Anfe and the old woman began quarreling again. He began swearing and hitting her. The eldest girl knew that after her father left, the old woman would beat the children, so she took the two little ones and ran to hide down by the river where they often played. The river was swollen with rain and the banks were caving in. The bank fell away under the eldest girl’s feet and she was swept away by the river. The little ones came crying to the house. When people came to the field where Soru was working and told her, she sat down on the wet ground and rocked her body, crying out, “Oh, oh, my child of the rain, my child of the rain!” She was five months pregnant then. After that happened, Anfe drove the old woman out of her own house, and she went to live with her granddaughter in Monoy. Anfe got a job he liked, working on the dam they were building upriver; he could only come home twice a month, but he got very good pay. Soru was not well and had to stop working in the fields. She got the house as clean as it could be got, and was content looking after the two children, but she still did not feel well. More than a month before her time she began to bleed, and they could not stop the bleeding; and so she died, and the baby was stillborn. Anfe’s elder sister took the two children. Soru lived twenty years, eight months, and four days.

  What I don’t know how to do, you see, is put Soru and the member of the House of Representatives together so that they make any sense. Soru seems to say, “Work, laugh, grieve, die,” and the Representative says, “I, I, I, I,” and neither can hear the other. If you put the two together, it does make sentences: I work, I laugh, I grieve, I die. But these sentences mean such different things to Soru and to the Representative! He might even deny that the last two sentences—I grieve, I die—were true. Soru would deny none of them, but she probably would have seen little sense in talking about such things; she went ahead and did them. And maybe sang about them. The Representative also indubitably has worked and laughed and will die, but he does not want these matters mentioned, preferring such terms as “profit incentive,” “recreation,” “life expectancy.” I can’t think how he would refer to grief at all—perhaps as “mental health problems.” But since Soru simply did not exist, was a total blank, in respect to profit incentive, recreation, life expectancy, and mental health problems, the Representative would be unable to comprehend the fact that she existed, or indeed that anyone else exists; so we are back to his “I, I, I, I.” And to the subject of power.

  Power is said to be the most important thing on earth. It is said that if Soru had had power—various sorts of power, but all deriving from the sort of power the Representative has—if Soru had been plugged into the main, her life would have been three or four times longer and happier.

  The life expectancy of the Representative is certainly more than three times longer than Soru’s life and ten times longer than S
oru’s eldest daughter’s life. Is a life expectancy, however, a life? At eleven years old, Soru was a very good dancer. Can people who are plugged into the main dance? Or can they only twitch as the electricity courses through their veins? They say the victims of electrocution and the subjects of electroshock therapy, when the power is switched on, do a sort of dance.

  I have a notion that the word “power” has become a form empty of content, which has meaning only as the individual fills it, pours the molten bronze of a life and self into that empty mold. Other such words are “God,” “Country,” “justice,” “rights.” They are words frequently used by the Representative. But has he ever filled them with anything? Is “I, I, I, I” what should fill those great empty forms?

  The architect gives me the blueprint. “There,” he says, “there’s your house!”

  “Very nice! When will you start work on it?”

  “Start work? I’m an architect, not a carpenter. It’s finished—I’ve done my work! Why don’t you move in?”

  So I move into the blueprint. I become very clever at cooking nutritious paper stew, which my family eats all grouped cheerily together in the Dining Area of the blueprint. We furnish the living room with cutouts from an advertisement for a Colonial American Living Room Suite in the daily paper. We find a color TV in the Sunday supplement. Sometimes the Representative appears on our TV, in one dimension, since it is only a two-dimensional set; and he talks about power. Other men appear, talking about Power to the People, the Power Struggle in South Erewhon, the Orderly Transfer of Power, the Power Shortage, and so on. It was a tricky job cutting out the little tiny paper cord and plug for the TV set, but it works fine.

  Your Highness:

  I am still looking for a Representative Person of Earth, but there seems to have been a power failure somewhere. Please give me some time.

  ROOM 9. CAR 1430

  (1985)

  The view, where I sit writing this, is of frozen Klamath Lake, a sweep of bluish white, and the dawn-bright mountains above it—a picture postcard of Oregon winter. Ten minutes from now my view will be of fences zigzagging past farms among the snowy hills, a whole new postcard. And soon after that it will be great, solemn, snow-hung firs and the peaks and chasms of the Cascades. Because I’m sitting in Room 9, Car 1430, of the Coast Starlight, coming north to Portland. And the whole trip is beautiful.

  President Reagan has decided he can do without Amtrak and has left it out of his budget. I suppose the last time Mr. Reagan rode a train was before I was born, and by now he probably doesn’t know anybody who ever travels by train. He only knows Important People, people whose time is money. Only unimportant people take trains. People to whom time isn’t money, but life, their life lived and to be lived.

  Quite a few young families are on this train. The kids patter up and down the aisles and corridors, merry; it’s all a thrill to them. Quite a few elderly women and men are traveling together or alone, maybe grandparents like me coming back from a visit to the daughter’s new daughter. There are some single men—businessmen? Are there still businessmen who take the train for a break? They sit there (like me) with their briefcases, reading and writing, looking out the window to follow an idea or see a snowy mountain swinging by. There are quite a few people on this train, and not many empty seats or compartments. Nearly twenty million people rode the trains of America last year. Unimportant people.

  The administration’s dislike of Amtrak may be rooted in a perception of the system as vaguely socialistic. It is supported by the government, to be sure. So are the auto and plane industries, of course, but they can’t be called public transportation, and therefore they escape suspicion.

  The usual justification, however, for killing the passenger trains is that train travel is “outmoded.” The private car for short trips, the airplane for long trips—that’s Progress, the Future.

  (Hold on for just a moment, please, while I watch the big engine up there kicking out a spray of shining snow like a skier on a graceful turn …)

  It can be seen just the other way round. Commuting by car is increasingly difficult; in the big Eastern cities it is simply impossible—a thing of the past. As for the airplane, it’s beautiful, useful, and wasteful. It has one and only one advantage as a passenger carrier: speed. If speed really matters, if you have to be at a funeral in Kansas tomorrow or if you only get two weeks off a year and want to spend them in Hawaii or Mexico, then it is good to be able to fly there. If speed is not essential, then it is good to have the option of not flying. Why should we be forced to undergo the incredible and increasing discomfort, danger, and indignity that the airlines inflict on their passengers?

  Trains are not deliberately overbooked.

  Train stations are downtown—not in some dreary boondock twenty-five dollars away from where you want to be.

  Train seats in coaches are deep, wide, and comfortable.

  Train rooms in the sleepers are genuinely luxurious.

  Train food isn’t much good any more, since Amtrak’s budget has been cut and cut and cut, but at least you can eat when and how you choose. Instead of being strapped into a seat with a plastic platter of stuff slapped down in front of you, like a kid in a highchair, you can get up and walk to the diner (they still use linen tablecloths) or the snack bar or the lounge, and eat and drink like a grownup. Or you can bring a sack and have a moveable feast. A croissant and a tangerine just out of Klamath Falls (the car porter brought me coffee), a cheese-and-tomato sandwich as we cross the Cascades …

  The airplane does not represent the future of passenger transportation. This country’s days of blind wastefulness are past and gone; any attempt to continue them is not progressive but deeply reactionary. The plane, with its tremendous inefficiency as a passenger vehicle, is the anachronism. It is out of date. An administration seeking a sound economy would (like Japan and most European countries) be refunding its passenger train system, enlarging and improving it. Not wrecking it through underfunding and then, like a spoiled kid with a toy he doesn’t understand, trashing it.

  Let’s save our trains for human beings, unimportant as they may be—people who know that how you go matters just as much as where you get. Roll on, Coast Starlight! Take us to those far places your lonesome whistle tells about, and bring us on back home!

  THEODORA

  (1985)

  Written as the introduction to the Yolla Bolly Press edition of The Inland Whale, Theodora Kroeber’s retellings of Native American stories.

  Some people lead several lives all at once; my mother lived several lives one at a time. Her names reflect this serial complexity: Theodora Covel Kracaw Brown Kroeber Quinn. The last four are the names of men: Kracaw her father’s name (and the source of her lifelong nickname Krakie), Brown, Kroeber, and Quinn her three husbands. Covel is a family name on her mother’s side, used as a girl’s middle name for several generations. Her first name came from a novel her mother liked, Theodora Goes Wild. She was Theo to some, Dora to none.

  The (auto)biographical note about the author on the jacket of the first edition of The Inland Whale reads in part:

  Theodora Kroeber was born in Denver and spent her early years in the mining camp of Telluride, Colorado. She earned a B.A. in psychology and economics and an M.A. in clinical (then called “abnormal”) psychology at the University of California. Offered a position in a boys’ reformatory, she got married instead and had three sons and a daughter. When the children were grown and raising their own families, she began to write. Part of the background for her writing comes from Indians, rivers, and deserts encountered while accompanying her husband, A. L. Kroeber, the noted anthropologist, on professional journeys and field trips.

  The bit about the boys’ reformatory is a characteristically graceful piece of legerdemain: Theodora took her master’s degree in 1920 and married Clifton Brown that same year; three years later, with two baby sons, she was widowed; in 1925 she met Alfred Kroeber; they married, and in 1926 and 1929 her other two childre
n were born. Where the boys’ reformatory comes in this crowded decade I can’t quite figure out. Although she wrote two biographies notable for their exhaustive research and scrupulous selection of fact, Theodora’s native gift was for the brilliant shortcut that reveals an emotional or dramatic truth, the event turned legend—not raw fact, but cooked fact, fact made savory and digestible. She was a great cook both of foods and of words.

  The Inland Whale was written in the late 1950s, when, as she says, her children were off having children, and she and Alfred were enjoying the freedom of his long emeritus career, during which he taught at Harvard and Columbia and was a resident of various think tanks—well-traveled, unhurried, productive years. Work, writing, was pretty much like breathing to Alfred Kroeber; he just quietly did it all the time. With time and energy now to spare, Theodora soon found her own breath. First she wrote a couple of essays with Alfred (interesting pre-computer attempts at counting word frequency in poetry), then some children’s stories (often a woman’s way into literature—threatening to no one, including herself). Then a first novel. And then this book.

  I don’t know the genesis of the book, but would guess that separate stories, which she had tried retelling for their own sake and the work’s sake, began to make a whole, a shape in her mind. Perhaps she set out to write a book of stories about women, but I think it more likely that the pattern became apparent and the connections imperative as she worked and reworked and re-reworked the material—for she was a hard writer, a merciless reviser. The coherence of the book and the clarity of her prose are the result of the kind of distillation that makes fine liquors, the kind of pressure that makes diamonds. She strove for a vivid simplicity, but she was never artless.