She got up and sat on my lap, facing me, working my organ into her, like a lever on which she would fasten herself to me. Then she put her arms around my neck, lay her head on my shoulder, like a tired child, and was still. Then gently, instinctively, like a loving father, I rocked her, until the heat rose in us both in a smooth, quiet wave, spilling over us together.
Face to face we looked at each other again, and I said, “I will be man to you.”
I meant it too, but my attempts to prove it got nowhere. I wanted to build a ka for the two of us, apart from the others, as man and wife should live, I told her. But she seemed horrified at the idea that the two of us should leave the ka to live alone. “We can perhaps move to another ka if this sleeping wheel does not help your dreams.” I told her I wanted us to be alone so that we could make love anytime we wanted to, but she said we could make love any time we wanted to as things were, except during the night which was reserved for sleep. Then she said, “Before long, we will not want to make love so much. Then if we lived alone, we should have nothing but each other. Two is the number for making love. Two is a very strong number; for Other things it is too strong.”
“Donagdeo?” She nodded. “Twelve is the magic number here, is that it?”
“For the ka, for sleeping together, yes, especially during the winter fast. But all numbers are ‘magic’ for different things.”
“For what?”
She told me that in a few days the young kin would repeat the dance of numbers in the la-ka, and that after I learned the dance, I would understand.
“Will the dance be done with the ornaments? The precious stones, the gold crown?”
She took a long time to answer. “If that is what you want,” she finally answered.
“What do you mean?”
“I do not see such things in the dances or the dreams. If you see them, they are there, they are true, for you.”
“You mean they’re all in my head. I was hypnotized. They don’t really exist.”
“Yes, they exist.” Then she saw that we meant something different. “In this way,” she pinched my arm, “they do not exist. When we watch the dance, when we listen to the dreams, we are in the presence of what is most real and most precious. But we cannot see it or touch it, and so, perhaps it appears to each of us in the forms of that which we treasure. For you, because in the great world, these stones are valued …”
“I hallucinated rubies,” I grunted disgustedly.
“You saw that something presented before you, something which you could not understand, was a great treasure.”
I told her that I had seen the old Frenchman after his death, and she said that meant I was potentially a strong dreamer. “Yes,” I told her, “I dream of apple pie and bogeymen.” She refused to laugh and said that to see things while awake was very advanced. I answered that in the great world, we lock up people who see things while awake, and when I laughed, she looked sad.
“Maybe I’m a medium,” I said, jokingly, to try to cheer her up. “I can call back the dead. Anyone you want to see?”
But she became even more serious. “You would not want to do that, to keep them from Home. Tarn came to you after his death because he did not want you to go on suffering. But you would not want him to delay any longer.”
On the night before next Bath Day I watched the dance of numbers for the first time. I watched it many times after that, and learned to participate in it myself, since the kin of Ata placed great importance on everyone learning and participating in the dances, especially the dance of numbers, until they were too old for such strenuous expression. The dance was performed in the la-ka around and in the central fire pit after the fire had died to ashes which were stirred until cooled.
The dancers performed nude and carried lighted torches strapped to both wrists, so that their bodies were seen as wicks to a double candle flame, flickering and moving in the darkness. Twelve was always the starting number for the dance.
The twelve stood around the pit, facing inward, with their hands together in front of their faces, as if looking at each other through the single flame made by their two torches. They clapped their hands three times, making sparks fly, then formed a square, with three on each side, facing each other across the pit. Then they clapped their hands four times and formed a triangle, with four on each side; another clap and they were pairs facing one another; yet another and they were a circle again, holding hands and joining their flames as they moved slowly around the pit. They did this twelve times.
The first time I saw it, I thought the movements monotonous. It was a long time before I learned to appreciate the increasing beauty of the repetition, the deeper harmony of the moving together as they caught the rhythm and moved with it. And, of course, only when I had actually done the dance myself did I begin to appreciate the power of this repetition.
At the end of this sequence one of the dancers jumped into the pit and crouched unseen except for the faint glow of his torches.
Then four of the dancers faced each other at points north, south, east and west of the pit. They stood quite still, their hands clasped over their heads, their torches flaming upward. The other seven became frantic, running and jumping around and among the four, waving their arms and throwing fiery sparks everywhere, taking wild, running leaps across the pit. The four standing dancers never moved. This phase of the dance continued until one of the leapers, through misjudgment or fatigue, did not quite clear the pit; he or she would then crouch down in the pit with the other one.
At this point the dance became as dignified as it had been frenzied. The ten dancers sat down with their backs to the pit and their knees bent up to their chests. They bowed their heads to their knees and thrust their arms forward, so that those watching saw nothing but their hands with flames seeming to rise from the fingers.
This phase of the dance was performed entirely by the fingers, forming intricate mathematical combinations which I never learned to do with any ease. The combinations were never the same twice and the subtlety of movement of the one hundred fingers of the ten dancers had an uncanny, hypnotic effect, so that all was absolutely still by the time one more dancer rolled over backward into the pit.
In the deep hush that followed, the remaining nine dancers stood up and broke off into three groups of three. In each group the three dancers faced each other, clasped their hands together into one blazing torch, and went round in a circle three times. Then all three groups leaped to the edge of the pit, reaching their arms as far inward as they could without falling into the pit, trying to touch all their flames into one central flame above the center of the pit. They circled the pit three times, then went back to their three groups of three. This was repeated until, in the leaning forward over the pit, one of the dancers lost his balance and fell in. This part of the dance was always accompanied by a quick stomping of feet by the watchers, so that a low, dampened and ominous thunder resounded throughout.
The eight remaining dancers formed two squares, one cutting through the other, put their arms out to their sides to join torches, then, facing outward from the pit, slowly circled it, each dancer forming the point of an eight-pointed star. In this part of the dance there was some laughing and jostling, until one of the dancers was pushed into the pit, amidst general laughter.
The relaxed mood continued, as four of the remaining seven dancers took the north-south-east-west positions. The other three dancers formed a triangle which moved from one to another of the four compass points, circling each of them three times in gentle, even reverent movements, until one of the triangle jumped into the pit.
The two left turned the dance into a game of tag, in which they dodged around each of the four compass points, which never moved … until finally one caught the other and threw him into the pit.
The one that was left became a clown, harassing the four compass points, acting out every possible means to trip, push, jar, frighten, somehow plunge one of the four stationary dancers into the pit. But the
four remained still and unmovable as, amid delighted laughter, the clown grew more and more frantic in his or her attempts to unbalance one of them. Finally with a cry of mock frustration, the clown jumped into the pit.
The four remained quite still until the laughter died to complete silence. Then another few moments of stillness.
Then all four of them stepped down into the pit, where by this time there was a mound of huddled bodies. One of the four (usually south) joined the mound. The other three climbed upon it. One of them climbed onto the mound of crouched dancers on his hands and knees and stayed that way, firmly clutching the mound and looking down upon it. The next climbed onto him and straddled his back, looking straight ahead, then from side to side, thrusting his torches before him as if to see where he was going. The third climbed onto the shoulders of this one and stood reaching upward, stretching and straining, toward the point where the tree-trunk frame of the la-ka joined high above.
During this part of the dance there was singing from the spectators, which reached higher and higher pitches each time the standing dancer strained upward.
When the singing ended, the dancer on his hands and knees melted into the mound, while the other two jumped out of the pit again and faced each other across it.
This part of the dance was almost ferocious, as the two opposites traded act for act. Usually the two were a man and a woman, and this part of the dance was improvised in hundreds of different ways. Only one thing remained consistent; for every move made by one dancer, an opposing move was made simultaneously by the other. Utter concentration on the intent of the opposing partner in the dance was necessary, as I learned much later when I tried it, and the leading role was never in the control of one for long. The pace of this dance speeded up imperceptibly; faster and faster the two opposing partners moved until suddenly both threw themselves forward into the pit and, clasping one another close, fell as one upon the mound.
There was a deep silence for about five minutes. Then slowly we saw the glow of all the torches rise up above the rim of the pit. Slowly, very slowly, a single one of the dancers rose, in the center of the pit, as if out of the flames of the held torches. The dancer rose and stood, naked and without torches, arms outstretched to the sides, body glowing in the light of the torches.
A great sigh swept over all the people in the la-ka, and the dance was over.
Afterward I asked Augustine the meaning of the dance.
“It is itself,” she said.
“But movements have meanings. I’m asking you to interpret the meanings of those movements. There must be a great meaning for your people behind those movements.
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I do not know.” She looked a little worried, a little distant from me. “Why do you look so uneasy? Is it because you are hiding something from me?”
“No.” She looked so much more worried now that I had to believe her. “Of course, the movements have meanings behind them. If we were sure of the meanings, we would not need the dance. There is a great danger in trying to interpret the dance in words. Words get between us and the dance and the meaning behind the dance—just one more thing between us and the meaning. One must dance the dance and go through it to the meaning.”
We got off into a discussion of the Ata language, one of many I had with her. It seemed that the word for word was the same as the word for false or lie. And the language was amazingly concrete. It contained few abstractions except nagdeo and donagdeo. There were words for good or bad, honor or duty, and other lofty concepts. But they were seldom used. And there was no word for happiness. Nagdeo encompassed all that was positive, and donagdeo, all that was negative. These two terms were never applied to persons, only to acts. Persons were just kin, neutral, neuter, unmodified.
The conversation ended when Augustine asked me to define happiness. I began to fumble with the word. Then I used the phrase “pursuit of happiness” and became even more confused when she remarked that it did not seem that what I described as happiness could be gained by pursuit. When I reached the point of embarrassed confusion, she did not laugh. She only repeated, “That is the trouble with words.”
“But you people use words constantly to describe your dreams.”
“Yes, that is the best way we know. Except dance and music. They are better.”
“But you use words only to describe things, not concepts, not meaning behind the things.”
“Yes,” she would agree, and we would be back in the same circular discussion, until she would beg me please to stop making her talk.
There was a more serious problem in our relationship. She acceded to my every wish. She was always affectionate. Our lovemaking was frequent, and it got better and better. Yet I felt there was a great distance between us. One day I said to her, “You are willing when I want to make love, but you never come to me and ask.” After that she frequently initiated our lovemaking. But still I wasn’t satisfied. She enjoyed our lovemaking and was remarkably passionate, but even at the moment of orgasm I never felt I possessed her completely. I often accused her of not loving me, and as I explained what I meant by love, she became silent and serious, making no attempt to reassure me that she did love me.
After questioning and calculating, I decided she was only a couple of years older than I. Her lean, unlined face looked younger, but in her actions she seemed hundreds of years old. Once when I was complaining, she patted me, as she would in order to soothe an irritable child, and I nearly hit her. I stopped my hand in time and went into a hol-ka to cool off. That night I had a peculiar dream.
I was back in the world, with a woman—an anonymous one, like the women I always had, blonde, twenty, with sharp discontented eyes. We were arguing, and she was pouting and gesticulating and saying, “You don’t love me.” Prancing back and forth, naked, on a runway of the sort found in old burlesque houses, she poured out all of the words I’d used against Augustine. As she pranced she shrank and grew younger until she was a whining infant. I began to laugh at her, and then I woke up.
That morning I wanted to tell my dream to Augustine but she was already occupied with Jamal, so I told it, with some embarrassment, to Salvatore, who heard it with apparent indifference. I wanted to tell the dream, discuss it, interpret it, but during the whole day there was no chance. But the next time I began to complain to Augustine, I saw the whining female of my dream, and my words were too funny to continue. I stopped demanding Augustine’s dependence. And the moment I did her passion and joy in our lovemaking seemed to double, and there were weeks of full, almost delerious lovemaking nearly every day in the grove by the river where we had first come together.
Meanwhile Augustine’s belly was rounding, and the days were getting shorter. We spent less time in the fields now and more time preparing food for storage. Gradually the steps of the la-ka were filled with more and more dried fruits, wrapped bundles of grain, legumes, and nuts, until it became hard to find a place to sit for the evening stories. The fields were planted in root vegetables, which would be left in the ground until we exhausted the stores in the la-ka.
We began to spend most afternoons sitting in the sun and weaving mats. The mats were used to cover the great framework of the la-ka and were completed just in time, only three days before the first fall rain. Other mats were used to mend the coverings over the separate kas. Sometimes we wove the mats in silence, or someone would begin a song or tell one of the old stories. There was an unending supply of stories.
“Is the winter hard?” I asked Augustine.
She laughed, and the pink butterfly that hovered next to her ear rose to circle her head. “The winter is given entirely to dreaming. It is a wonderful time.”
“And the winter fast that Salvatore mentioned?”
“That will come when there is food enough left only for the young and the old.”
“And the pregnant?”
“Yes,” she agreed, smiling.
“We should have planted more and
stored it in the hol-kas.”
“The hol-kas are unusable, damp in the winter. Even the la-ka’s fire pit sometimes becomes a small pool.”
“Do we go to the la-ka to eat in the winter?”
“No, only to bring food back to the ka.”
“And when the food is gone?”
“We dig up the roots.”
“And when the roots are gone?”
“We fast until the first grass.”
“What if there is not enough?”
“There is enough. There is always enough. If we dream well, there will be enough food.”
In effect then, we were preparing for a kind of hibernation. On the day that the la-ka was completely filled and there was no more room to sit, the leaves began to fall from the Life Tree.
The people gathered that day under the Life Tree, sitting under it as the wind blew the leaves down upon them. They gathered up the dry leaves and brought them to the kas. Other leaves were swept up and soon the kas were almost knee deep in warm, dry leaves. Every day the weaving continued, and every day the people gathered under the tree, until all the leaves were gone.
There were still many fine days left, but we all spent more time in the kas. Sleeping periods extended to fill the longer nights, and I often found myself sitting up alone in the dark, long before sunup, waiting for the others to awaken. They had worked hard during the long days, and now they slept just as long and just as hard. Their movements slowed and there was no more dancing. They were conserving energy.
As it grew colder, we began to bring the animals into the ka at night. One night, when I had begun to shiver even before it was quite dark, a small brown she-goat with a dark face put its face into the ka between two mats that had loosened. The goat came in. I got up to fasten the mats, and when I returned to my place, I found the goat sitting there. I stretched out my back against it, and it kept me warm. In the morning it followed me outside and after that was never far from my side.
“Your animal has found you,” said Augustine. “That is nagdeo.”
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You Page 10