I remember thinking, at that time, that it was appropriate they should call themselves by the same word they gave to animals. They seemed hardly more than animals in their simplicity and lack of human consciousness.
As I went on learning the language I ran into several difficulties. Their verbs lacked tense—literally, as they spoke, there was no sense of past or future, only of now, the present moment. That’s why it would be impossible, if not boring, but surely confusing for my reader if I tried to translate directly any talks I had with them. And the reader must understand that, as I report future talks, when I knew the language better, I must distort these talks to fit a language into which what they said really cannot be translated.
The language lacked all sense of the singular, the individual. But what most struck me, next to the lack of a sense of time, was its inconsistency of gender. Everything animate and inanimate was either masculine or feminine, nothing was neuter—except human beings. I’d never encountered anything like this in any other language.
And it was no accident, but a reflection of the way they lived. Great care was taken to pair “masculine” and “feminine” objects in planting or arranging things. I would have said that no people could be more constantly concerned with sex. Yet I never heard anyone referred to by pronouns of gender—no he or she. There were words for man and woman but they were almost never used.
I have already mentioned similarity of work between the sexes and similarity of clothing. Ornaments too were worn by both sexes. There seemed to be only one consistent rule or custom about ornaments. People might put a flower or a woven necklace on someone else, then stand back to enjoy the effect. But I never saw anyone decorate himself or herself, or show any sign of concern for appearance. Ornaments, like food, were to be given to others.
One pronoun referred to all human beings. People called to one another by this word when not using someone’s name, or they referred to one or more people by it. It was both singular and plural and it meant kinship. The way most people use the word “brother” would be the closest word in English, but because “brother” implies gender and singularity, it is quite wrong. The closest word I can think of to approximate the meaning of this pronoun is “kin.” We were all called kin.
But as soon as I started feeling better, I had something else besides language on my mind. I remember thinking at the time that every island paradise in the books I’d read or written (one of the spy stories actually did take place partially on a South Pacific island) always contained plenty of plump, brown, willing females. I couldn’t make up my mind about this place.
Along the paths or in the fields, the naked children engaged in sex play the way animals do, touching and sniffing at one another, ignored by the adults. Quite a lot of the sex play was homosexual, and that made me think that perhaps there were no restrictions on sex. On the other hand, it was at the time of sexual maturity that people began to wear the tunic, a point in favor of modesty and sexual taboos. But what I saw made me doubt there were any.
I’d been walking beyond the fields into the orchards when I heard a sound. Ahead of me were a young boy and girl sprawled on the ground. Her tunic was pulled up and so was his. She was kneeling over him, straddling his chest. Then she slid down and sat on his erected organ, giving a little grunt as it pushed into her. A couple of rocking motions and it was all over, and both of them looked a little uncertain and unfinished. Then they laughed, got up and snatched some leaves from one of the trees to clean themselves, rubbing the leaves between their legs. They threw the leaves on the ground, clasped each other’s hands and went back to the fields. There they parted, went back to work and seemed not to notice one another again.
What really shook me was that on their way back they spotted me, realized I’d been watching them, but gave no sign of embarrassment. In fact they both gave me what I can only describe as a smile of enticement, looking over their shoulders at me as they went back to work.
I’d been weeks without a woman, at first hurt and sick, later confused. In fact I’d been in such a state of confused frustration for the past few days that I was probably ready for some kind of emotional explosion. The explosion, after seeing those two kids rutting like animals, was a sexual one. But I wasn’t interested in kids. I knew who I wanted, and if things were so free and easy here, I could at least enjoy her, and probably think a lot straighter afterward.
I walked across the field to where Augustine bent over a plant. I resisted a temptation to pat her uplifted buttock and instead greeted her, “Nagdeo.”
She stood erect and smiled uncertainly at me, then frowned. She was as tall as I was and her sweat had made the grassy tunic cling to her breasts and thighs. I could hardly wait to get the dress off and see the black curve of her thigh. I’d had black women before, but they’d never lived up to my expectations of primitive passion. I found them cold and sad. But Augustine was different. I reached out my hand and took hers. I led her away from the field, into the orchard, picking a place not far from where the kids had been. Then I turned and put my arms around her.
She still had the uncertain smile on her face, but it left her and her blue eyes widened. “Don’t be afraid,” I said, but I could see she was not afraid. She was just very serious. She stood still and stolid, unresponding but unresisting. With my arms still around her, I pulled up her tunic until I could grab her bare buttocks in both hands. The butterfly rose from her shoulder and hovered over us. I waved my arm; it fluttered just out of reach.
“Donagdeo,” she said. “Donagdeo.” It was like another form of the greeting. Maybe it meant, “Let’s go,” or something, I told myself. But I knew I was wrong. Her expression as she said it was solemn. She stood absolutely still and whispered, “Donagdeo.”
“Sure, to you too, baby,” I said. I took her by the shoulders and tried to lower her to the ground. She was stiff. But she didn’t fight. “Come on,” I said. “We’re not kids, let’s not play coy.” I decided that she was probably as strong as I was and if she didn’t want it she could knock me down, and if she couldn’t do that all she had to do was call out to the others, who weren’t more than a hundred yards away. Probably she liked it a little rough, I thought, as I pushed her down to the ground and yanked up her tunic.
There were stretch marks on her belly. “You’re not exactly a virgin,” I mumbled. I pulled the tunic up beyond her breasts. It covered her face, and she lay still.
Her nipples were bright rust-colored against the black swelled breasts. She shuddered when I got one of them between my teeth. I thought what a great lay she would be if I could wait and do it right. But this time I couldn’t wait. I knew I’d come the minute I got into her. But it wouldn’t matter to her. She was used to primitive sex. Later I could impress her with technique. I grabbed her knees and pushed them upward and out as I kneeled up to her, keeping my mouth clamped onto her breast.
That was why I didn’t notice them. I only felt something, the hair rising on my neck, a slight chill on my back. I raised my head and looked up to see a pair of legs planted in front of me. It was the bald man. To the side were more legs; all around us people stood. I threw my hands over my head, expecting a blow from them. But nobody moved. They just stood there watching.
“Look, she wants it, she’s not resisting,” I said, pointing to her. She lay quite still, her face still covered by her tunic, her body quivering slightly. None of them looked at her. They just looked at me, with the same grave expression she had worn. Nobody moved, nobody said anything. “Well, if she’s your woman, one of you, come get her,” I said. Nobody moved.
“Okay, you want to watch?” I said, and threw myself upon her. Nobody moved. Suddenly I felt sick. Something I had not felt for so long I hardly knew what it was—a wave of shame—passed through me. I felt it only as anger, sickening anger. I stood up. As soon as I did, the people fell back and started to walk back to the fields. I walked away, feeling like a fool with the tunic I wore still at a tilt with my waning erection. I went u
p the side of the hill beyond the trees, and watched a couple of them help Augustine up and lead her away.
She went straight across the field to a hol-ka (one of the little igloos). She crawled into it and stayed there the rest of the day. I didn’t see her when I went to the la-ka to eat at sundown. And she left a gap among the spokes of our sleeping wheel that night. I didn’t sleep much, and at dawn I saw her come in briefly, then leave again with the others. She was smiling and looked actually happy. Her smile was especially broad as she bowed toward me before going out to go to work.
I thought she was laughing at me. I suspected that they were all laughing at me. Savages, I told myself, laughing at me.
I don’t excuse what I did then. It, like most of my life, was inexcusable. But I understand it. I was a throughly lost, dislocated man. For all I knew I was insane and living some kind of nightmare on an island in my demented head. Nothing made sense. I was in the midst of the inexplicable, minute by minute, all day long, with no hope of understanding where I was and waning hope of getting back to reality. It was like being suddenly struck blind and trying to find my way without help. Worse, because if I were blind I would know that beyond my blindness there existed a still familiar reality. But reality was, in fact, what no longer existed in any recognizable form. I was afraid, and fear turns very rapidly into cruelty. I wanted revenge.
I went out to the fields. I followed and I watched until she went off by herself, to one of the fallow fields. I waited while she dug a small hole, crouched over it, then filled the hole with dirt. Then I grabbed her, threw her down and rammed myself into her. I came, like a sneeze without pleasure or relief.
And I felt I had lost something again. Even lying in that dirt she had a kind of dignity I couldn’t touch. I felt that I was the one who’d been humiliated. She looked steadily up at me, shook her head slowly and said, “Donagdeo.” Her eyes flashed angrily, and she shook her head as if to clear it, got up quickly, brushing the dirt off her tunic and hurried away. Almost running, she pulled off her tunic as she hurried across the field to a hol-ka. She dropped the tunic on the ground and crawled inside.
I watched for a long time, but she didn’t come out. When she ran away, I’d assumed she was going to tell the others and that they would gang up on me again. I’d been warned once. This time, I thought, they’d hurt me. I believed I’d probably bring the whole village down on me.
But nothing happened. A couple of hours later she was back in the fields working, moving in light dance-like steps as she stirred the ground with her hands and feet, loosening the dirt round a plant. No one seemed to notice me as I walked across the field, wandered through the orchards, then back toward the village again.
I stopped in front of a hol-ka. It was a small mound of clay and rocks, like an igloo, with a crawl tunnel leading into it. The entrance was covered by a mat. Just outside the entrance I saw a tunic, folded neatly on the ground. Evidently people entered a hol-ka naked. But what did they do there?
I walked a few yards to the next hol-ka. There was no tunic outside, no sign that the place was occupied. I looked around. No one was close by. I pulled off my tunic and crawled in. The short tunnel was narrow. I had to fall on my belly and move forward on my elbows. Then the tunnel went sharply downward. The place was actually a hole in the ground, covered with a rock and clay roof. It was completely dark inside and there was enough height to kneel but not to stand. By the earthy smell I recognized this as the place where I’d awakened after the accident, or, at least, one like this. I felt around the sides and top. Nothing. It was quite bare except for mats on the ground. I sat down on a mat. I sat still for about ten minutes, and then the place got to me. I was overcome with claustrophobic panic, and I frantically felt the walls until I found the opening. I crawled out too quickly and scraped my shoulders, emerging head first and blinking into the bright sunlight.
As I poked my head out, someone was passing by. It was the bald man, who hadn’t spoken to me since he’d caught me with Augustine. He smiled at me, nodding approval, and said, “Nagdeo.” I was sick of the sound of the word. I put on my tunic and straggled along the-circular path, letting it take me inward toward the center of the village.
Along the path there were children and old people, tending plants and bushes which grew along the stone walls. Others sat weaving grass. Someone was always weaving grass into tunics, blankets, cups or mats. Some of them smiled and nodded as I passed; others remained absorbed in their work, silently, except for the occasional babble of a child which was usually answered with a gesture by an adult. I looked a little more closely at the walls as I slowly walked by. At first I thought they were covered with undifferentiated weeds, wild ivy and lichens. But now I saw there was too much variety for the growth to have occurred naturally. I knew very little about plants and flowers, having always considered any interest in them the province of lonely senile women, like the collecting of cats. But I was able to recognize some simple herbs, like sage and a species of thyme. I could see that the plants growing on and near the low stone walls were an incredible variety, almost no one like another, and that they were being carefully tended by people who were too young or too old to do much work in the fields.
As I was looking at a plant, Chil-sing came past me. I caught his arm and pointed to the herb. He spoke a word. Then I pointed to another herb, and he spoke the same word. I shook my head, pointing to one and the other as he repeated the word. Then suddenly he grinned, and nodded, and gave me two entirely different words.
We sat down in the middle of the path and began to talk. It would serve no purpose to describe this session of gestures, sounds, frustrations, charades. In fact it would be impossible to explain all the ways in which I finally conveyed my meaning to Chil-sing and how he answered me. This was the first of the really searching conversations—or call them lessons—we had. And how we communicated cannot be literally translated into English. Even after I became fluent in the Ata language, I found it impossible to translate directly into English, for many of the reasons which I have already outlined, and others besides. All talk which follows must be seen as a crude approximation of what we were able to communicate at the various stages of my understanding.
I can tell you how the breakthrough in this understanding came during this session with Chil-sing. I spoke in English with gestures and then, for no reason in particular, switched to words in other languages, whatever words I knew. And I discovered that some of the words in English were close enough to the Ata word to be understood. The same was true of words in Spanish, German, and the bit of Greek I knew. Over half the words Chil-sing used were completely inexplicable to me, and I somehow held the conviction that these words came from Asian or African languages that were utterly foreign to me. I asked him if this were true, and he shrugged and said he did not know.
The following dialogue is a condensation in English of what actually took nearly four hours to communicate, in the first real conversation I held.
“What is this island?”
“Ata.”
“Where is it?”
“It is Ata.”
“No, in what part of the world?”
“In the center of the world.”
“But near what country? Near Mexico? Near Europe? Where?”
“I cannot say anything of countries. Ata is the center of the world.”
“How did I get here?”
“Why you came is unknowable.”
“Not why, how?”
“They are the same.”
“Where did I come from? Who brought me here?”
He was silent at this question and looked at me for a while before he said, “Only you can answer that.”
“What do you mean? I don’t know who brought me here. I was in an accident. I woke up here.”
He shook his head at me. “No one comes without seeking. You could not come here unless you wanted to.”
“Where did you find me?”
“On the shore.”
; “On the shore of the ocean? Where?”
He pointed toward the east, toward the beach where the sunrise bath took place every six to nine days.
“Who found me?”
“I did. And Salvatore.” That was the bald man’s name.
“How did you happen to find me?”
“We were looking for you.”
“You expected me?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know I was coming?”
“Augustine knew.”
“How did she know? Who told her?”
“Nagdeo.”
“I thought nagdeo was a greeting, like good morning.”
“It is.”
“But you say it is a person?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who is he? Where can I find him and talk to him?”
At this Chil-sing just laughed, and despite our continued talking I could not make any sense of his earnest attempts to explain the word to me.
“How did you come here?”
“I was born here.”
“But the others, did they come from other places, as I did?”
Chil-sing shook his head, then looked uncertain. Some had, but not very many. “It is very hard to come here, as you know.”
“They must have,” I told him. “That explains why your language contains words borrowed from other languages.”
At that Chil-sing laughed. “Oh, no,” he said. “Oh, no.”
“Explain yourself. What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I cannot explain.” His young face looked puzzled. “I am not very wise yet. If you listen in the la-ka at night you will soon learn all the answers to your questions.”
“Is your treasure kept in the la-ka?”
“Treasure?”
“The riches of your people. The precious ornaments used in the dances.”
“Oh, yes.” He frowned as if uncertain. “Our treasure is kept in the la-ka.” He pushed back his golden curls and looked apologetic. “But please … I would please like to stop talking now.”
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You Page 5