“Why? What are you hiding? Why are you such a silent people? Is there a taboo against talking?” It took a long time to explain the word taboo to him, and even then he did not understand the word, could not seem to imagine what it meant.
“No, there is no taboo. Nothing is taboo.” He looked quite shocked and puzzled, unable to assimilate the concept of something forbidden.
“Then why do you all remain so silent?”
“Talking too much is donagdeo.” He grinned and backed off from me. I saw him hop the stone walls and hurry toward the hol-kas, pulling off his tunic as he ran. I sat down on the path and leaned against the wall, closing my eyes and thinking. I must have dozed off. When I woke up a half hour or so later he was walking past me, arm in arm with Augustine. It was sunset.
When they saw me, they stopped to wait for me. I got up, my eyes meeting Augustine’s. Hers looked neutral and serene. I moved as though to walk behind them, but they made a space between them and we walked three abreast, in silence, as usual.
Then Augustine began to hum softly and Chil-sing joined her. Others walking behind us joined in, rather absentmindedly, immediately breaking into rich harmonies, which died off into whispers. We stopped at the pool and scooped water up to our faces, rubbed our hands together and sprinkled what was left on the tree roots as we ducked under the branches of the great tree.
A few people were already in the center of the cone near the fire, feeding one another from the pots. Others were carrying in bits of fruit. A child came up to me and stuck a sprig of sage in my hair. It was all very friendly and loving and gay, and completely frustrating to me. There was not very much food and it took a long time to pass it around in this playful way. I would have been glad for a stiff drink and a cigarette. I’d read somewhere that every culture in the world has always discovered some method of intoxication, be it hemp or alcohol. I wondered if these bastardized rejects of various cultures—for that is how I now saw them—had not even reached a sufficient level of culture to be able to get drunk.
I sulked, I suppose, letting people bring me bites of food but offering none in return. “Hurry up,” I told them. “Let’s get on with it.” They understood me, but went on as they were doing until everyone stopped eating and was seated.
People tended to sit according to their ages. The infants were held by boys and girls, down in the center of the cone near the fire. Behind them sat slightly older children, Chil-sing among them, and behind them the adults. Augustine sat in the back near the top of the cone, her head resting against one of the beams that pointed to the sky. The very oldest people were carried down to sit near the fire with the infants.
Salvatore sat with his eyes half closed near the fire. The black bird flew to the top of the tent poles, then glided downward in sweeps above the heads of the people as they quieted down. When they were quiet, it landed on Salvatore’s shoulder, and Salvatore began to speak.
What I reproduce here is my limping translation of what he said. It lacks the purity and directness of the Ata language, and also its complexity, which was revealed only in these sessions, never in the language of everyday acts. But I had finally broken through, and, although the story I give here was a version arrived at after much work, I understood the sense of the story, got most of the words, at that first hearing.
“Nagdeo without beginning. Nagdeo without end. Nagdeo forever, our home.”
At the end of each phrase the people repeated a word or two, but I will leave out these responses.
“But the day came when a piece of the sun fell to the ocean. It fell and floated on the ocean. It separated itself into earth and water and plants and animals. It was no longer sun, but each of its parts was a part of the sun and a sign of the sun. And all parts, earth and water and plants and animals, were content in their division, content in their expression of the sun, content to be a single part multiplying itself under the light of the sun, striving and being, as a sign of the sun but never true sun, lost to the form of the true sun.”
I could see the lips of the people moving in silent imitation. They all knew the story by heart.
“Until the single multiple signs formed the human part. And the human part of the sun was not content. The human part suffered because within it was the knowledge of the fall from the sun and the yearning to return.
“It knew and it did not know. It suffered and yearned. It suffered and yearned for what it did not know. And out of its suffering and yearning grew the cry of the people, yearning to know the way back to the sun.
“And the sun took pity on the people, and when they fell asleep, the sun shone through the sleep and lit up the world of sleep and showed them the way. In silent light of sleep the people saw that as there was a law of gravity there was also a law of light and that the law of light was stronger than the law of gravity.
“And the people obeyed the light of sleep, and they kept the light within them, and stood in the light of sleep both waking and sleeping until the light surrounded them and filled them. And they became the light. And as the sun shone on them, they shone back, and were lifted as light and shot as rays of light. And gravity was overcome and the people of light returned to the sun where they shine and flame eternally.”
I had been listening with my eyes closed, concentrating on the words. I opened my eyes. Salvatore stood in front of the fire. The spokes of a gold crown radiated from his head with almost blinding glow. Then a quick motion, and the crown was gone.
“Eternally,” repeated the people. Then they all rose, said, “Nagdeo, nagdeo, nagdeo,” and began to leave the tent.
The next day I approached Salvatore. He absolutely refused to discuss the gold crown. His face remained blank when I spoke of it.
“Did you understand what you heard last night?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, contemptuously. “I understand that you worship the sun, a common thing among primitive people.” He looked at me but said nothing. “And you believe dreams are real happenings. Isn’t that right?” He nodded.
“Do you know,” I said, as he picked up a half-finished mat and started weaving, “that the sun is only a star, like all the other stars you see in the sky at night? There are millions of suns and millions of planets all spinning around the suns and …” I wished that my knowledge of astronomy were greater. The old man listened to me and said nothing. “You really believe that man’s distinguishing characteristic is his desire to return to the sun? The sun is a ball of fire. If this planet moved a bit closer to it, we’d all be burned up!” He nodded. “Then why do you cling to these senseless myths?” He didn’t answer.
I decided there was really no point in attacking him on these grounds but rather on the question of dreams. “Yours is a life based on delusion and hallucination,” I began, but he looked so sad and depressed at these words that I gave up for the rest of that day.
In the morning, when everyone in our ka got up and began the recital of what they had dreamed the night before, “in the world of sleep lit by the sun,” I interrupted them with a little recital of my own. “Dreams,” I said, “are not real, like this is real.” I touched my arm and then hit one of the branches of the ka. “They are hallucinations, mental enactments of desires. Dreams are the guardian of sleep. You dreamed of a plum because you were hungry. You dreamed I was pulling your leg off because the bruise on your leg aches where you bumped into the wall yesterday.”
“Yes, that is perhaps true,” said Chil-sing.
“But you believe in these dreams. You think they are reality?”
“Yes, they are reality.”
“But they happen only in your head!”
There is little point in repeating the endless arguments with which I started every morning. There was no question about it, no doubt at all that for these people, reality consisted of dreams and their waking life was an illusion. They had reversed everything. At one point, in exasperation, I slapped Chil-sing hard across the face and said, “Look, isn’t that real, my real hand hit yo
ur real face, and it really hurt.”
“Yes, it hurt,” said Chil-sing. “But that does not matter. What matters is that it is donagdeo for you to be angry and hit me.”
The translation of the word was quite clear now, although there is, of course, no such word in English, or any other language. The word nagdeo, which was a greeting, a prayer, a benediction, whatever, roughly meant something like “good dreams,” but not really that. It was something more like valuable dreams or enlightening dreams. To call something donagdeo was to say that it was not productive of good, valuable, or enlightening dreams, dreams which showed the way back—to the sun.
All kinds of things were donagdeo. Anger was donagdeo, and so was eating too much or not eating enough, or talking too much. The list grew and grew.
But beyond that, every act had become ritualized to serve the dramas of their dream life, which in turn dictated their waking life. The very plan of the village had occurred in a dream of someone long ago, no one could remember when. I pointed out to Chil-sing that everyone walked at least an extra mile getting to the la-ka because of the circular paths, but he said that is how the dream said it should be done, and it would remain that way unless superseded by another very strong dream.
“If your dream told you to kill me, would you do it?” I demanded.
“It would not tell me that.”
“Why? How do you know?”
“To kill is donagdeo. It would not tell me to do what is donagdeo.”
“My dreams do. In my dreams I must kill dark things that …” I stopped. I had no intention of joining the morning ritual of telling my dreams. Chil-sing looked at me uncertainly.
“You told me,” I said, “that there were no taboos here. Your whole life is run by the most primitive taboos, the most reactionary and restrictive.”
“No,” said Chil-sing. “Nothing is taboo.”
“But everything is donagdeo. Same thing.”
“No, it is not the same. Nothing is forbidden. But who would want to do what is donagdeo? Who would want to ruin his chance to find the way?”
“How do you know what is donagdeo? The old ones like Salvatore tell you, don’t they? They make rules, taboos.”
Chil-sing looked puzzled again. “Salvatore is a strong dreamer, a good guide.”
“You see. Taboo.”
Chil-sing shook his head. “But each person finds for himself what is donagdeo. To force anyone to do or not to do something is also donagdeo. Nothing is forbidden. Nothing is taboo. But I listen to Salvatore because he is usually right.”
I nearly exploded with exasperation. “If I could only get you to believe that beyond this island there is a fantastic world, full of wonders you never could dream of. Places where people don’t have to exist on leaves and berries and work all day, where …”
At this point Chil-sing usually withdrew. But each time I told him, he sounded a bit more curious. Once when I was haranguing him, we heard the roar of an airplane. He froze, and so did everyone else around us.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“So the people in the noisy bird won’t see us.”
“How do you know there are people in it?”
“Someone saw them in a dream.”
“And why don’t you want them to see you?”
“Someone knew it in a dream.”
“I want to attract the attention of a plane so that it will come and get me and take me off this island and back to civilization. Would you stop me?”
Chil-sing bit his lip. “We would watch you, as we watched you when you tried to force Augustine.”
“And if I didn’t stop?”
“To force you would be donagdeo. But I think they fly too high to see you anyway.”
“Then why do you freeze to avoid being seen?”
“Habit,” he said.
“Let me tell you something,” I said. “If we could attract the attention of that plane, we could get food and clothes and thousands of things you never dreamed of. And you wouldn’t have to work in the fields all day, to have them. And at night, you wouldn’t sit on the hard steps of the la-ka and watch the repetition of some old story—you could enjoy plays and pictures that would make your dreams seem pale. You could trade the treasure of the la-ka for many things. Why don’t Salvatore and the other old ones tell you this? Why should I lie to you about it? You know I’m telling the truth. They don’t want you to learn about the outside world because they’d lose control of this one.”
Day after day I kept at him. I figured that the only ones I could get to were the young ones. The older ones were completely set and unapproachable. And I would need help if I were ever to manage to get away from here.
I thought Augustine must be a key figure in all of this. But it was a long time before I felt I could approach her. Finally one day I did. She had come back early from the fields and was walking along the path, her eyes fixed in a faraway look that told me she was thinking over her latest dream. I stepped out in front of her.
She stopped and faced me without any expression.
“I want to talk to you,” I said. She nodded, and we sat down on the stone wall under a fig tree.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” I began.
She nodded. “You should go to the hol-ka,” she said, “just to be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“It would help you.”
“How? I don’t understand. It feels to me like a tomb.”
“The hol-ka is to help us when we have gone very far from nagdeo, or when we are afraid we might. There we go naked back into our mother.”
“And you come out reborn.”
“And begin again,” she smiled. “I go often …”
“Yes, every day, I notice.”
“… because I so often stumble. I am so far from …”
“Nonsense,” I told her. “You’ve got some kind of puritannical obsession with …” Then I wasted an hour trying to explain what I meant by puritannical. She just kept smiling and shaking her head. “It’s that you feel guilty because I raped you and …” Another hour on guilt. I was practically yelling when I finally said, “You people are imprisoned by your superstitions!”
And she only shrugged and said, “Perhaps.”
“I can’t get any of you to argue with me.”
“Arguing is …”
“Don’t tell me … donagdeo.”
She laughed and nodded.
I was tired and irritable like a sulking child. “I really wanted to ask you about the dream that told you I would come here. Please tell me that dream, every detail of it.”
It was sunset, and we got up to walk to the la-ka. She put her arm through mine and told me as we walked, keeping her eyes straight ahead as if she read her words in the air before us.
“I was walking on the beach. I walked back and forth on the sand looking out to the sea watching for the sunrise. Behind me stood all the people of Ata, and behind them stood many, many more people who were not of Ata. All looked out to sea. They were waiting for something. We all waited. The sea turned red, a dark earth red. And from the sea came a great cry, a howl from a creature not human. I could see the creature in the red waves. It was a terrible, monstrous beast. I was afraid. But I knew what I must do. I waded out into the rust-colored sea. I waded further and further out to where the monster thrashed and howled. And when I came close, the monster reached out and grapsed me. It tried to pull me into the deep red sea. But I kept my eyes on the sun rising out of the red sea behind the monster. And tightly as it gripped me I began to inch backward toward the shore. The monster howled and tightened its grip, but I kept my eyes on the rising sun and I kept stepping back to the shore, inch by inch.
“Finally I reached dry sand, just as the sun emerged from the water. I fell on the sand, and the thing gripping me fell upon me. In the light of the risen sun, I looked and saw that it was no longer a monster but a man. He rose up and the people of Ata, still standing on the beach, said ‘Welcome.
We have been waiting for you.’ And from the head of the man came a bright light, like the rays of the sun. The man turned his head to look at us, and turned the bright light upon us, lighting up the people of Ata so that they could be seen by the many people who stood behind.”
I waited for her to go on, but she was through. “You dreamed of a man who tried to pull you into a rust-red sea. How long before I came since you lay with a man?”
She looked at me. “A long time.”
I thought her pathetic, a striking woman, but no longer young. It had been a long time since anyone had taken her into the orchard. “You dreamed this dream because you wanted to lie with a man.”
“Perhaps,” she said, refusing to argue.
We walked on quietly for a while. Then she said, “After I had dreamed the dream three times. I told it in the la-ka as is our custom.”
“And so it became official dogma.”
“Dogma?”
“Never mind. You told your dream and then you found me. There is no connection.”
“In the dream,” she said, “I saw the face of the man in the sunlight. It was your face.”
“Are you sure you didn’t dream this after you found me?”
“Sure,” she said. “I waited for you.”
“So you believe your dream brought me here?”
“No. Oh, no,” she said. “No one can bring you here. You must want it with your whole soul. You wanted it.”
“I did not.”
“You cried from the depths of yourself to come here.” She looked at me admiringly. “Still it is not easy. You must be a very strong dreamer.”
We had arrived at the pool. She bent low, scooped up water to sprinkle on herself and on the tree, then disappeared under the branches.
We ate in the usual way and then sat down. That night the storyteller was a younger one, a boy who had just begun to wear a tunic. He sat down beside the fire, waited for everyone to be quiet, then cleared his throat and began.
“A boy lived for many years in a ka. Every day he wanted to look upon the sun, but he could not, for to look directly at the sun would make him blind. Instead, when the sun went down, the boy looked at the moon, which had taken a bit of the sun’s light, enough to show to the boy what he must do.
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You Page 6