The Telling

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  "My cousin's daughter will come stay with me."

  "Mizi? But she's only six!"

  "She's a help."

  "Iziezi, I don't know if this is a good idea. I may go a long way. Even stay the winter in one of the villages up there."

  "Dear Sutty, Ki isn't your responsibility. Maz Odiedin Manma told him to come. To go with a teacher to the Lap of Silong is the dream of his life. He wants to be a maz. Of course he has to grow up and find a partner. Maybe finding a partner is what he's mostly thinking about, just now." She smiled a little, not so cheerfully. "His parents were maz," she said.

  "Your sister?"

  "She was Maz Ariezi Meneng." She used the forbidden pronoun, she/he/they. Her face had fallen into its set expression of pain. "They were young," she said. A long pause. "Ki's father, Meneng Ariezi, everybody loved him. He was like the old heroes, like Penan Teran, so handsome and brave.... He thought being a maz was like armor. He believed nothing could hurt her/him/ them. There was a while, then, three or four years, when things were going along more like the old days. No arrests. No more troops of young people from down there breaking windows, painting everything white, shouting.... It quieted down. The police didn't come here much. We all thought it was over, it would go back to being like it used to be. Then all of a sudden there were a lot of them. That's how they are. All of a sudden. They said there were, you know, too many people here breaking the law, reading, telling.... They said they'd clean the city. They paid skuyen to inform on people. I knew people who took their money." Her face was tight, closed. "A lot of people got arrested. My sister and her husband. They took them to a place called Erriak. Somewhere way off, down there. An island, I think. An island in the sea. A rehabilitation center. Five years ago we heard that Ariezi was dead. A notice came. We never have heard anything about Meneng Ariezi. Maybe he's still alive."

  "How long ago...?"

  "Twelve years."

  "Ki was four?"

  "Nearly five. He remembers them a little. I try to help him remember them. I tell him about them."

  Sutty said nothing for a while. She cleared the table, came and sat down again. "Iziezi, you're my friend. He's your child. He is my responsibility. It could be dangerous. They could follow us."

  "Nobody follows the people of the Mountain to the Mountain, dear Sutty."

  They all had that serene, foolhardy confidence when they talked about the mountains. No blame. Nothing to fear. Maybe they had to think that way in order to go on at all.

  Sutty bought a nearly weightless, miraculously insulated sleeping bag for herself, and one for Akidan. Iziezi protested pro forma. Akidan was delighted and, like a child, slept in his sleeping bag from that night on, sweltering.

  She got her boots and fleeces out again, packed her backpack, and in the early morning of the appointed day walked with Akidan to the gathering place. It was spring on the edge of summer. The streets were dim blue in morning twilight, but up there to the northwest the great wall stood daylit, the peak was flying its radiant banners. We're going there, Sutty thought, we're going there! And she looked down to see if she was walking on the earth or on the air.

  ***

  Vast slopes rose up all round to hanging glaciers and the glare of hidden ice fields. Their group of eight trudged along in line, so tiny in such hugeness that they seemed to be walking in place. Far up above them wheeled two geyma, the long-winged carrion birds that dwelt only among the high peaks, and flew always in pairs.

  Six had set out: Sutty, Odiedin, Akidan, a young woman named Kieri, and a maz couple in their thirties, Tobadan and Siez. In a hill village four days out from Okzat-Ozkat two guides had joined them, shy, gentle-mannered men with weathered faces, whose age was hard to determine—somewhere between thirty and seventy. They were named Ieyu and Long.

  The group had gone up and down in those hills for a week before they ever came to what these people called mountains. Then they had begun to climb. They had climbed steadily, daily, for eleven days now.

  The luminous wall of Silong looked exactly the same, no nearer. A couple of insignificant 5,000-meter peaks to the north had shifted place and shrunk a bit. The guides and the three maz, with their trained memory for descriptive details and figures, knew the names and heights of all the peaks. They used a measure of altitude, pieng. As well as Sutty could recall, 15,000 pieng was about 5,000 meters; but since she wasn't certain her memory was correct, she mostly left the figures in pieng. She liked hearing these great heights, but she did not try to remember them, or the names of the mountains and passes. She had resolved before they set out never to ask where they were, where they were going, or how far they had yet to go. She had held to that resolve the more easily as it left her childishly free.

  There was no trail as such except near villages, but there were charts that like river pilots' charts gave the course by landmarks and alignments: When the north scarp of Mien falls behind the Ears of Taziu... Odiedin and the other maz pored over these charts nightly with the two guides who had joined them in the foothills. Sutty listened to the poetry of the words. She did not ask the names of the tiny villages they passed through. If the Corporation, or even the Ekumen, ever demanded to know the way to the Lap of Silong, she could say in all truth that she did not know it.

  She didn't know even the name of the place they were going to. She had heard it called the Mountain, Silong, the Lap of Silong, the Taproot, the High Umyazu. Possibly there was more than one place. She knew nothing about it. She resisted her desire to learn the name for everything, the word for everything. She was living among people to whom the highest spiritual attainment was to speak the world truly, and who had been silenced. Here, in this greater silence, where they could speak, she wanted to learn to listen to them. Not to question, only to listen. They had shared with her the sweetness of ordinary life lived mindfully. Now she shared with them the hard climb to the heights.

  She had worried about her fitness for this trek. A month in the hill country of Ladakh and a few hiking holidays in the Chilean Andes were the sum of her mountaineering, and those had not been climbs, just steep walking. That was what they were doing now, but she wondered how high they would go. She had never walked above 4,000 meters. So far, though they must be that high by now, she had had no trouble except for running short of breath on stiff uphill stretches. Even Odiedin and the guides took it slow when the way got steep. Only Akidan and Kieri, a tough, rotund girl of twenty or so, raced up the endless slopes, and danced on outcroppings of granite over vast blue abysses, and were never out of breath. The eberdibi, the others called them—the kids, the calves.

  They had walked a long day to get to a summer village: six or seven stone rings with yurts set up on them among steep, stony pastures tucked in the shelter of a huge curtain wall of granite. Sutty had been amazed to find how many people lived up here where it seemed there was nothing to live on but air and ice and rock. The vast, barren-seeming foothills far above Okzat-Ozkat had turned out to be full of villages, pasturages, small stone-walled fields. Even here among the high peaks there were habitations, the summer villages. Villagers came up from the hills through the late spring snow with their animals, the kind of eberdin called minule. Horned, half wild, with long legs and long pale wool, the minule pastured as high as grass grew and bore their young in the highest alpine meadows. Their fine, silky fleece was valuable even now in the days of artificial fibers. The villagers sold their wool, drank their milk, tanned their hides for shoes and clothing, burned their dung for fuel.

  These people had lived this way forever. To them Okzat-Ozkat, a far provincial outpost of civilisation, was civilisation. They were all Rangma. They spoke some Dovzan in the foothills, and Sutty could converse well enough with Ieyu and Long; but up here, though her Rangma had improved greatly over the winter, she had to struggle to understand the mountain dialect.

  The villagers all turned out to welcome the visitors, a jumble of dirty sunburnt smiling faces, racing children, shy babies laced into leather c
ocoons and hung up on stakes like little trophies, blatting minule with their white, silent, newborn young. Life, life abounding in the high, empty places.

  Overhead, as always, were a couple of geyma spiraling lazily on slender dark wings in the dark dazzling blue.

  Odiedin and the young maz couple, Siez and Tobadan, were already busy blessing huts and babies and livestock, salving sores and smoke-damaged eyes, and telling. The blessing, if that was the right word for it—the word they used meant something like including or bringing in—consisted of ritual chanting to the tabatt-batt-batt of the little drum, and handing out slips of red or blue paper on which the maz wrote the recipients name and age and whatever autobiographical facts they asked to have written, such as—

  "Married with Temazi this winter."

  "Built my house in the village."

  "Bore a son this winter past. He lived one day and night. His name was Enu."

  "Twenty-two minulibi born this season to my flock."

  "I am Ibien. I was six years old this spring."

  As far as she could tell, the villagers could read only a few characters or none at all. They handled the written slips of paper with awe and deep satisfaction. They examined them for a long time from every direction, folded them carefully, slipped them into special pouches or finely decorated boxes in their house or tent. The maz had done a blessing or ingathering like this in every village they passed through that did not have a maz of its own. Some of the telling boxes in village houses, magnificently carved and decorated, had hundreds of these little red and blue record slips in them, tellings of lives present, lives past.

  Odiedin was writing these for a family, Tobadan was dispensing herbs and salve to another family, and Siez, having finished the chant, had sat down with the rest of the population to tell. A narrow-eyed, taciturn young man, Siez in the villages became a fountain of words.

  Tired and a little buzzy-headed—they must have come up another kilometer today—and liking the warmth of the afternoon sun, Sutty joined the half circle of intently gazing men and women and children, cross-legged on the stony dust, and listened with them.

  "The telling!" Siez said, loudly, impressively, and paused.

  His audience made a soft sound, ah, ah, and murmured to one another.

  "The telling of a story!"

  Ah, ah, murmur, murmur.

  "The story is of Dear Takieki!"

  Yes, yes. The dear Takieki, yes.

  "Now the story begins! Now, the story begins when dear Takieki was still living with his old mother, being a grown man, but foolish. His mother died. She was poor. All she had to leave him was a sack of bean meal that she had been saving for them to eat in the winter. The landlord came and drove Takieki out of the house."

  Ah, ah, the listeners murmured, nodding sadly.

  "So there went Takieki walking down the road with the sack of bean meal slung over his shoulder. He walked and he walked, and on the next hill, walking toward him, he saw a ragged man. They met in the road. The man said, 'That's a heavy sack you carry, young man. Will you show me what is in it?' So Takieki did that. 'Bean meal!' says the ragged man."

  Bean meal, whispered a child.

  '"And what fine bean meal it is! But it'll never last you through the winter. I'll make a bargain with you, young man. I'll give you a real brass button for that bean meal!'

  '"Oh, ho,' says Takieki, 'you think you're going to cheat me, but I'm not so foolish as that!"'

  Ah, ah.

  "So Takieki hoisted his sack and went on. And he walked and he walked, and on the next hill, coming toward him, he saw a ragged girl. They met in the road, and the girl said, 'A heavy sack you're carrying, young man. How strong you must be! May I see what's in it?' So Takieki showed her the bean meal, and she said, 'Fine bean meal! If you'll share it with me, young man, I'll go along with you, and I'll make love with you whenever you like, as long as the bean meal lasts.'"

  A woman nudged the woman sitting by her, grinning.

  '"Oh, ho,' says Takieki, 'you think you're going to cheat me, but I'm not so foolish as that!'

  "And he slung his sack over his shoulder and went on. And he walked and he walked, and on the next hill, coming toward him, he saw a man and woman."

  Ah, ah, very softly.

  "The man was dark as dusk and the woman bright as dawn, and they wore clothing all of bright colors and jewels of bright colors, red, blue. They met in the road, and he/she/they said, 'What a heavy sack you carry, young man. Will you show us what's in it?' So Takieki did that. Then the maz said, 'What fine bean meal! But it will never last you through the winter.' Takieki did not know what to say. The maz said, 'Dear Takieki, if you give us the sack of bean meal your mother gave you, you may have the farm that lies over that hill, with five barns full of grain, and five storehouses full of meal, and five stables full of eberdin. Five great rooms are in the farmhouse, and its roof is of coins of gold. And the mistress of the house is in the house, waiting to be your wife.'

  "'Oh, ho,' said Takieki. 'You think you're going to cheat me, but I'm not so foolish as that!'

  "And he walked on and he walked on, over the hill, past the farm with five barns and five storehouses and five stables and a roof of gold, and so he went walking on, the dear Takieki."

  Ah, ah, ah! said all the listeners, with deep contentment. And they relaxed from their intensity of listening, and chatted a little, and brought Siez a cup and a pot of hot tea so that he could refresh himself, and waited respectfully for whatever he would tell next.

  Why was Takieki 'dear'? Sutty wondered. Because he was foolish? (Bare feet standing on air.) Because he was wise? But would a wise man have distrusted the maz? Surely he was foolish to turn down the farm and five barns and a wife. Did the story mean that to a holy man a farm and barns and a wife aren't worth a bag of bean meal? Or did it mean that a holy man, an ascetic, is a fool? The people she had lived with this year honored self-restraint but did not admire self-deprivation. They had no strenuous notions of fasting, and saw no virtue whatever in discomfort, hunger, poverty.

  If it had been a Terran parable, most likely Takieki ought to have given the ragged man the bean meal for the brass button, or just given it for nothing, and then when he died he'd get his reward in heaven. But on Aka, reward, whether spiritual or fiscal, was immediate. By his performance of a maz's duties, Siez was not building up a bank account of virtue or sanctity; in return for his story-telling he would receive praise, shelter, dinner, supplies for their journey, and the knowledge that he had done his job. Exercises were performed not to attain an ideal of health or longevity but to achieve immediate well-being and for the pleasure of doing them. Meditation aimed toward a present and impermanent transcendance, not an ultimate nirvana. Aka was a cash, not a credit, economy.

  Therefore their hatred of usury. A fair bargain and payment on the spot.

  But then, what about the girl who offered to share what she had if he'd share what he had. Wasn't that a fair bargain?

  Sutty puzzled over it all through the next tale, a famous bit of The Valley War that she had heard Siez tell several times in villages in the foothills—"I can tell that one when I'm sound asleep," he said. She decided that a good deal depended on how aware Takieki was of his own simplicity. Did he know the girl might trick him? Did he know he wasn't capable of managing a big farm? Maybe he did the right thing, hanging on to what his mother gave him. Maybe not.

  As soon as the sun dropped behind the mountain wall to the west, the air in that vast shadow dropped below freezing. Everyone huddled into the hut-tents to eat, choking in the smoke and reek. The travelers would sleep in their own tents set up alongside the villagers' larger ones. The villagers would sleep naked, unwashed, promiscuous under heaps of silken pelts full of grease and fleas. In the tent she shared with Odiedin, Sutty thought about them before she slept. Brutal people, primitive people, the Monitor had said, leaning on the rail of the riverboat, looking up the long dark rise of the land that hid the Mountain. He was right. Th
ey were primitive, dirty, illiterate, ignorant, superstitious. They refused progress, hid from it, knew nothing of the March to the Stars. They hung on to their sack of bean meal.

  ***

  Ten days or so after that, camped on névé in a long, shallow valley among pale cliffs and glaciers, Sutty heard an engine, an airplane or helicopter. The sound was distorted by wind and echoes. It might have been quite near or bounced from mountainside to mountainside from a long way off. There was ground fog blowing in tatters, a high overcast. Their tents, dun-colored, in the lee of an icefall, might be invisible in the vast landscape or might be plain to see from the air. They all held still as long as they could hear the stutter and rattle in the wind.

  That was a weird place, the long valley. Icy air flowed down into it from the glaciers and pooled on its floor. Ghosts of mist snaked over the dead white snow.

  Their food supplies were low. Sutty thought they must be close to their goal.

  Instead of climbing up out of the long valley as she had expected, they descended from it on a long, wide slope of boulders. The wind blew without a pause and so hard that the gravel chattered ceaselessly against the larger stones. Every step was difficult, and every breath. Looking up now they saw Silong palpably nearer, the great barrier wall reaching across the sky. But the bannered crest still stood remote behind it. All Sutty's dreams that night were of a voice she could hear but could not understand, a jewel she had found but could not touch.

  The next day they kept going down, down steeply, to the southwest. A chant formed itself in Sutty's dulled mind: Go back to go forward, fail to succeed. Go down to go upward, fail to succeed. It would not get out of her head but thumped itself over and over at every jolting step. Go down to go upward, fail to succeed....

  They came to a path across the slope of stones, then to a road, to a wall of stones, to a building of stone. Was this their journey's end? Was this the Lap of the Mother? But it was only a stopping place, a shelter. Maybe it had been an umyazu once. It was silent now. It held no stories. They stayed two days and nights in the cheerless house, resting, sleeping in their sleeping bags. There was nothing to make a fire with, only their tiny cookers, and no food left but dried smoked fish, which they shared out in little portions, soaking it in boiled snow to make soup.