by Nōnen Títi
Leni emphasized that they all wanted her to do it, but nobody would force her or it wouldn’t be consented. “In Daili’s words, Jema, nobody said it would be easy. I’m not having a very easy time right now either, so maybe you shouldn’t think of whether you can or cannot do it, but whether you should, so we can share it.”
Benjamar had mentioned that too. Both were right. She should do it. Maybe she even could do it, but no matter how unethical it was to refuse in the light of all that had happened, Jema just could not say that she would.
Leni didn’t wait for an answer this time. She indicated that she was finished and sat back down. Jema reburied her head to avoid having to look at her. Why couldn’t they just tell her to do it?
Benjamar’s voice was tired and a little shaky when he started again. “So, Leni, yes or no?”
“Yes, but under my conditions.”
“Maike?”
“In all fairness I have trouble finding another solution. We’re still talking about a person’s life here, no matter how much we try to say that we’re not. I think it’s always best to fight fire with fire. I am now convinced that Leni can control the situation so I say yes, but without the mob. She can apologize to the Society.”
Benjamar was quiet for a while. Jema could hear him pacing, but his steps were slower than before. “Yako?”
“I believe that Leni has more than explained why the psychopathic justice of DJar, being devoid of emotion while trying to deal with an emotional species, failed on all accounts. I do believe that the opposite can succeed and I don’t think a bit of humility has ever hurt anybody, Jema. I know what it feels like to live with guilt, so I say yes.”
She’d expected that. Three-nil. It was like counting voting pebbles. Two more and Benjamar would stand alone, in which case he would accede to the majority decision. It was predictable what Wilam would do, regardless of his own opinion, if he had one, but Nini would try to help her, even if, in her heart, she knew better. Jema pulled her head up once more and leaned back against the wall: Time to stop hiding, to stop fighting as well. Let them have their victory as long as she didn’t have to beg.
“Wilam?”
“I don’t know anything about this,” Wilam tried.
“You know as much as we do. We need your opinion,” Benjamar said.
“Well, we have to do something, don’t we? A man is dead.”
“Do you think it is wrong?” Benjamar asked.
“On DJar it was wrong. I don’t know about Kun DJar.”
“So what is your answer, yes or no?”
“I don’t know.”
Wilam looked back at Nini, then around the room. Jema could stare at him now, the way she had before to give him a reason to vote yes, but he avoided looking at her.
“This is just not good enough. We need a yes or no. How hard can it be? If you think hitting is wrong you vote no.”
“I g-guess I’d have to vote yes,” Wilam stammered.
“What do you mean you have to? Nobody is telling you what to do. You can’t just say yes because the others do.”
Right now, Benjamar was actually the one trying to tell him what to do and he was almost shouting. Wilam started nodding, helpless against this anger. “Yes, I vote yes.”
Benjamar turned abruptly away from him. “Nini?”
“No, I can’t. I won’t ask for that.”
Then don’t ask, Nini. For Bue’s sake, don’t ask. For Benjamar’s sake, don’t.
“Why?” Benjamar asked.
“Because it’s too humiliating.”
“Try picture the opposite, Nini. Try picture Frimon being here and Jema dead or even just hurt.”
It didn’t work. “I can’t say yes, Benjamar. Please don’t ask me to.”
“So what is your vote?”
“No.”
Four to one. Had Wilam been asked last, it would have been a draw. Now Benjamar was in a predicament. “No,” he exclaimed. “I don’t like not having everybody agree. I said it had to be unanimous.” He stopped his march up and down the room in front of Jema. She saw his desperate eyes. He hadn’t expected this. He’d counted on Wilam. “So convince her, Jema,” he said.
Convince Nini? How? What about him? She couldn’t even convince herself.
He looked around at Leni, his hands in the air. Leni once more indicated that she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Not from him, anyway. Jema would have to openly refuse. The problem was that she couldn’t do that anymore than she could say yes.
“Damn it Leni, I can’t. What do you expect of me? How can I allow this?”
Like Frimon before him, now Benjamar was emotional in his struggle against Leni and losing despite that. He whirled around. “Now you can have your discussion about the council acting on what they vote for. You all say yes, so who’ll do it? Say Wilam, how about you?”
Yako jumped up and stopped but a nose-length from him. “Now wait a minute, Benjamar. That’s not fair. We all voted. Don’t take this out on Wilam.”
“I’d do it,” Rorag said.
“No way. You’re a child!” Benjamar shouted and turned to Leni. “Don’t you see what’s happening? It will get out of hand. He’s just a boy. He’s angry. It’s dangerous.”
As long as they all kept arguing Jema could concentrate on that.
“I run the penance, Benjamar, which means that nobody moves without my permission and for the last time, it’s out of your hands. You don’t have to allow anything. I made it clear that it’s up to Jema, yet you carry on making it a group project.”
He stood still for a moment, then turned back, ignored Yako and squatted down in front of Jema, his hands leaning on the ledge either side of her. “Would you be able to live with it?” he whispered.
She wasn’t sure if this sudden closeness helped. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not much.” He was sad and desperate and more than anything, tired. He needed her agreement.
She kept her voice to a whisper, aware of the silence in the room. “How?”
“Because for them it means doing the right thing. For Leni it means the same as it means for me that you came true on the agreement of the challenge.”
The offer that couldn’t be refused came from his own inability to decide. He was stuck, just like she was. In the light of his history with Leni and the position she’d forced on him, what right did Jema have to resist? “But I just can’t crawl like that. I want to, but I can’t.” Could he understand that?
“Would you rather it was imposed?”
Of course, it was better imposed. She’d give it all straight back to him. But was that fair? “I can’t say yes, Benjamar, but I won’t run and I won’t fight.” A compromise. The best she could do.
“The question is, will you do as they say – follow their directions?”
Her head was nodding before she knew about it. “Yes, I’ll consent. Damn!” If only all the other bodies in the room would disappear.
He looked around. A brief smile from Leni told Jema he’d let her know. He didn’t move, but he raised his voice a little. “What would you tell Nini if you were to convince her? What would you tell me?”
Nini was watching over Benjamar’s head.
Jema knew what she’d tell Nini. “I think it may put the fire back on.”
Nini looked away.
“I think you’re talking riddles,” Benjamar said.
Jema would have liked to keep him there, a barrier between her and the rest of existence, but he stood up.
Benjamar had not drowned, but he might as well have. Now he had to sit back and watch his kabin sail in the wrong direction. Leni would have to take charge from here. He could not be the executioner. He was exhausted. How could he have misjudged them, Wilam and Maike? Was this really a last resort?
“Where then, and when?” Yako asked.
“At my home tonight, when Kuntji is mid-sky. I will be there with the children. No onlookers, but Jema should be allowed a few
people close to her since she has no family.”
Jema shook her head without looking at anybody. How long would they go on discussing these details over her head?
“Besides that I need an observer from the council, but not you, Ben. You will have to deal with the crowd,” Leni said.
“At the risk of being told I’m doing it for the excitement, I think it’s only fair I do that,” Yako told her.
That was fine. The others? Nini was silent. Was she upset? Wilam was more confused by it all. He’d not been ready for this much change. Benjamar wondered about his own readiness. He felt like kicking something – kicking them all out of his home, to begin with.
Before he had the chance to do that, everybody’s attention was drawn by Rorag stepping up to Jema with that reed in his hand. “I made it for you.”
For a minute or so nothing at all happened but what went on inside people’s heads. It seemed that nobody dared even breathe. Only when Jema started reaching out to take it from him did Aryan jump between them, his eyes on Leni.
“Oh, come on! How can you expect a person to submit to all this and then say thank you on top of it? You fought against me to the very end, Jema. What happened now? You can’t be in that much need. Benjamar, say something – don’t you give up as well now. You’re supposed to be in charge here.”
A last gasp this was. Aryan had stood up for her more than once. The demonstration had been too much for him already, but he still had a lungful of air. Jema didn’t respond, but took the reed from the boy’s hand. Beaten, Aryan dropped his shoulders. Benjamar had to rescue him. “We need to quit, people. Kun is long down. Go eat.”
Aryan was out before the last word was spoken, Tigor right behind him, then Leyon, Maike, and Doret.
“Wilam?”
The farmer stopped in the space between the lamplight of the room and the moonlight outside. It was easier to say things in the dark.
“Look, I’m sorry for trying to force you earlier. Suggesting you’d do it. That was wrong.”
“I didn’t want that decision. I don’t think I should be in the council. I can’t do it.”
“You know, Wilam, right now I feel the same way, but we have no choice. None of us have. We’ll learn, somehow. We have to.”
It was Leni who put her hand on his back on her way out. “It will be all right, Ben. Trust me.”
Something about Leni made it impossible not to trust her. There was no denying her, a little like that fog. Was justice done, then? The guilty party and the victims had agreed on a solution. Had they? Had he kept an open mind or had he been taken for a run by the emotions of others? Or by his own sense of guilt over Leni, maybe.
“I’ll go ask Marya if there’s any food for us,” Yako said.
That left Benjamar with Nini and Jema, each still sitting where they had been all day, on opposite sides of the room. He’d promised Nini it would be okay the way Leni had promised him just now. She’d trusted him.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have invited them all, Nini. Maybe the old kennin didn’t do it like this.”
“Yes, they did. They must have. Just look at the chart.”
But even if Benjamar could read the chart, he wouldn’t be able to see that much meaning in a group of pictures. Did Jema? She had risked everything for it. “Why?” he asked. “Why is it right this way?”
Nini moved to sit next to Jema. “Because it will put the essence back together, Benjamar. Because nothing can exist on its own. Because some of us are OT and some of us are SJari. You are all looking into the same pool, but you all see a different reflection. You need to look deeper to see the essence.”
She looked up as if waiting for him to pass the test – or fail it, more likely. He didn’t speak her language, not in this. Jema might. She didn’t seem upset; not as much as she should be.
“I don’t know what happened, Jema. What happened to the people I trusted…”
“To do the right thing? Maybe they did… maybe they just did. This isn’t the first time, you know, that I’m responsible for somebody’s death. Maybe it will be the last. Never mind all those others I hurt along the way. The ones I ignored when they needed me and the ones I walked away from.” Her voice was spiteful, but she was spiting herself.
Nini put her arm around Jema’s shoulders. Benjamar sat down on her other side. “It wasn’t your fault that Daili died. I shouldn’t have said that then.”
“I know, but I didn’t mean Daili. I’ve lost people long before that. A child died because of me.” She grimaced what should have been a smile, while her hands played with the reed that had her name carved at the top. “Maybe it serves me right for being wrong in being right after all.”
“Now you’re speaking in riddles again.”
“I mean that even if my idea was right, it was still wrong to force it onto you or others. To convince people actively instead of letting them draw their own conclusions. That’s the same thing that set off all those ideology conflicts on DJar, the same thing I accused Frimon of.”
After all this she was now analyzing her own mistakes, finding reasons for herself. Suddenly the words were back.
“Listen to me, Jema. You saw something I couldn’t see; something my son tried to teach me a long time ago. He consciously treated his children unequally, each for what they needed, and in doing so, he made them more equal than I, at that point, was able to see. People don’t always open their eyes when they have to. Sometimes they are looking the wrong way. I have also been responsible for people’s deaths and a lot more than you have.”
A little envious of their physical closeness, Benjamar watched the two women as he recalled his days on DJar, when even a decision to end somebody’s life had been easy because it had been written in the law prints and, thus, not really his responsibility; where the judge had, indeed, cowered behind rules and facts, and justice itself had been a mere concept to appease the masses. “I never answered your question, Jema.”
She looked at him, as did Nini.
“You asked me a question yesterday and the answer is no.”
Nini’s eyes lit up.
“You asked if you could be my servant. My answer is no.”
Jema still managed to keep her thoughts hidden.
“I think I’ve made my point. I think circumstances have favoured me a little. I still want you to work with me. I think you already figured out how, but after tonight the rest of your life is yours.”
For the first time since he announced the elections five days ago, she smiled again, an honest smile… and then, without warning, the tears came anyway.
Nini pulled her onto her lap. “That was about time.”
PENITENT
Aryan took a deep breath of the cold night air. After the heavy atmosphere in Benjamar’s home he needed space. How did these people all get so intense? Even Benjamar hadn’t been able to stand up to that woman. She had it all: the words, the fire, the heart and the body.
Not that Aryan would have swapped Maike for her, but he wouldn’t have minded having had her for a mother – a mother who didn’t hesitate to smack her son but would never stand by if someone else threatened to. Or Benjamar – no longer the challenger; he was only a man, vulnerable like the rest of them.
The others came falling out of the shelter as Aryan had, relieved to be free. Tigor nodded briefly before heading north to the hill. He had reason to be joyful, though Aryan didn’t begrudge his having to stand up in front of all the people and say sorry tomorrow. He’d been the abuser, not the abused, but the distance between them wasn’t that big.
Wilam and Doret moved off in the same direction.
“Maike?”
She looked around and sent Leyon home before coming closer.
“I need to talk to you. You promised me a meal?”
“I tried. It didn’t work out yesterday,” she said.
“I know. How about now?”
She hesitated.
“Please?”
She started to laugh. “Ok
ay, I’ll get some food and we’ll walk somewhere.”
Aryan waited as she went into her shelter and from there into their Hearth. Funny how they used terms that hadn’t been used for so long. Back to old times… It wasn’t all that bad.
She returned with a pack over her shoulder and they headed north, up the path, past the cave and the latrines. The second moon was rising in the fogless sky. It was free as well. A bright glow spread over the huge natural crop field in front of them. The last time he nearly had her, it had been in the middle of the same sort of growth.
“About four kor from now the road should be ready. We could walk to town for the memorial.”
“I’m not going. Somebody has to watch over this place while Benjamar’s gone,” she said.
“Surely someone else would.”
“I’m not going, Aryan. I know you’re hoping for a new trip on SJilai, but I’m staying put. I happen to like it here.” She stopped at the east edge of the field, near a large rock. “We can talk undisturbed here.” She put the pack down, gently so it wouldn’t crash. Sitting against the rock, she started unloading it.
Aryan watched. She was wearing the faded red pants from her old guard uniform with a white blouse, which, under her fiery hair, made for a nice break to focus his eyes on, though he shouldn’t; after all, she’d only agreed to talk.
“I didn’t come to convince you to go to town with me or to SJilai.” He lowered his voice, so she’d listen a bit harder. “I came to say sorry.”
She carried on unpacking, but her eyes were on him.
“Not because of that challenge with Benjamar. I wanted to for a long time. In town I made a fool of myself trying, because I didn’t know what I was saying. Now I do, so let me say it, because it’ll be the first and last time I ever will, Maike. I mean it. I’m sorry I hit you and I’m sorry for what I said about Thalo.”
“You sure you’re not ill?” she asked.
“I’ve never felt better.”
She picked up a clay jar, which was closed at the top with a stiff piece of cloth and tied with a strand of tough fibre, the same as she had in her hair. “Wine?”