Coming of Age in Karhide

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Farre's feet. They were extended fully into the water, as if he had stretcheddownward to it, and the skin looked softer. The long brown toes stretchedapart a little. And his hands, still motionless, seemed longer, the fingersknotted as with arthritis yet powerful, lying spread on the coverlet at hissides. Makali came back ruddy and sweaty from her walk in the summer morning. Her vitality, her vulnerability were infinitely moving and pathetic to Hamidafter his long contemplation of a slow, inexorable toughening, hardening, withdrawal. He said, "Makali-dem, there is no need for you to be here all day. There is nothing to do for him but keep the water-basin full." "So it means nothing to him that ! sit by him," she said, half questioninghalf stating. "I think it does not. Not any more." She nodded. Her gallantry touched him. He longed to help her. "Dema, did he, did anyoneever speak to you about--if this should happen-- There may be ways we can easethe change, things that are traditionally done-- I don't know them. Are therepeople here whom I might ask--Pask and Dyadi--?" "Oh, they'll know what to dowhen the time comes," she said, with an edge in her voice. "They'll see to itthat it's done right. The right way, the old way. You don't have to worryabout that. The doctor doesn't have to bury his patient, after all. The gravediggers do that." "He is not dead." "No. Only blind and deaf and dumb anddoesn't know if I'm in the room or a hundred miles away." She looked up atHamid, a gaze which for some reason embarrassed him. "If I stuck a knife inhis hand would he feel it?" she asked. He chose to take the question as oneof curiosity, desire to know. "The response to any stimulus has grown steadilyless," he said, "and in the last few days it has disappeared. That is, response to any stimulus I've offered." He took up Farre's wrist and pinchedit as hard as he could, though the skin was so tough now and the flesh so drythat he had difficulty doing so. She watched. "He was ticklish," she said. Hamid shook his head. He touched the sole of the long brown foot that restedin the basin of water; there was no withdrawal, no response at all. "So he feels nothing. Nothing hurts him," she said. "I think not." "Luckyhim." Embarrassed again, Hamid bent down to study the wound. He had left offthe bandages, for the slash had closed, leaving a clean seam, and the deepgash had developed a tough lip all round it, a barky ring that was well on theway to sealing it shut. "I could carve my name on him," Makali said, leaningclose to Hamid, and then she bent down over the inert body, kissing andstroking and holding it; her tears running down. When she had wept a while, Hamid went to call the women of the household, and they came gathering roundher full of solace and took her off to an,other room. Left alone, Hamid drewthe sheet back up over Farre's chest; he felt a satisfaction in her havingwept at last, having broken down. Tears were the natural reaction, and thenecessary one. A woman clears her mind by weeping, a woman had told him once. He flicked his thumbnail hard against Farre's shoulder. It was likeflicking the headboard, the night table--his nail stung for a moment. He felta surge of anger against his patient, no patient, no man at all, not any more. Was his own mind clear? Why was he angry with Farre? Could the man helpbeing what he was, or what he was becoming? Hamid went out of the house and walked his circuit, went to his own room to read. Late in the afternoon hewent to the sickroom. No one was there with Farre. He pulled out the chair shehad sat in so many days and nights and sat down. The shadowy silence of theroom soothed his mind. A healing was occurring here: a strange healing, amystery, frightening, but real. Farre had traveled from mortal injury and painto this quietness; had turned from death to this different, this other life, this older life. Was there any wrong in that? Only that he wronged her inleaving her behind, and he must have done that, and more cruelly, if he haddied. Or was the cruelty in his not dying? Hamid was still there pondering, half asleep in the twilit serenity of the room, when Makali came in quietlyand lighted a dim lamp. She wore a loose, light shirt that showed the movementof her full breasts, and her gauze trousers were gathered at the ankle aboveher bare feet; it was a hot night, sultry, the air stagnant on the saltmarshes and the sandy fields of the island. She came around the bedstead.

  Hamid started to get up. "No, no, stay. I'm sorry, Hamid-dem. Forgive me. Don't get up. I only wanted to apologize for behaving like a child." "Grief must find its way out," he said. "I hate to cry. Tears empty me. Andpregnancy makes one cry over nothing." "This is a grief worth crying for, dema." "Oh, yes," she said. "If we had loved each other. Then I might havecried that basin full." She spoke with a hard lightness. "But that was overyears ago. He went off to the war to get away from me. This child I carry, itisn't his. He was always cold, always slow. Always what he is now." She lookeddown at the figure in the bed with a quick, strange, challengingglance. "They were right," she said, "half-alive shouldn't marry the living. If your wife was a stick, was a stump, a lump of wood, wouldn't you seek somefriend of flesh and blood? Wouldn't you seek the love of your own kind?" As she spoke she came nearer to Hamid, very near, stooping over him. Her closeness, the movement of her clothing, the warmth and smell of herbody, filled his world suddenly and entirely, and when she laid her hands onhis shoulders he reached up to her, sinking upward into her, pulling her downonto him to drink her body with his mouth, to impale her heavy softness on theaching point of his desire, so lost in her that she had pulled away from himbefore he knew it. She was turning from him, turning to the bed, where with along, creaking groan the stiff body trembled and shook, trying to bend, torise, and the round blank balls of the eyes stared out under liftedeyelids. "There!" Makali cried, breaking free of Hamid's hold, standingtriumphant. "Farre!" The stiff half-lifted arms, the outspread fingerstrembled like branches in the wind. No more than that. Again the deep, cracking, creaking groan from within the rigid body. She huddled up against iton the tilted bed, stroking the face and kissing the unblinking eyes, thelips, the breast, the scarred belly, the lump between the joined, grown-together legs. "Go back now," she murmured, "go back to sleep. Go back, my dear, my own, my love, go back now, now I know, now I know ..." Hamid broke from his paralysis and left the room, the house, striding blindly outinto the luminous midsummer night. He was very angry with her, for using him; presently with himself, for being usable. His outrage began to die away as hewalked. Stopping, seeing where he was, he gave a short, rueful, startled laugh. He had gone astray off the lane, following a path that ledright into the Old Grove, a path he had never taken before. All around him, near and far, the huge trunks of the trees were almost invisible under themassive darkness of their crowns. Here and there the moonlight struck throughthe foliage, making the edges of the leaves silver, pooling like quicksilverin the grass. It was cool under the older trees, windless, perfectlysilent. Harold shivered: "He'll be with you soon," he said to thethick-bodied, huge-armed, deep-rooted, dark presences. "Pask and the othersknow what to do. He'll be here soon. And she'll come here with the baby, summer afternoons, and sit in his shade. Maybe she'll be buried here. At hisroots. But I am not staying here." He was walking as he spoke, back toward thefarmhouse and the quay and the channels through the reeds and the roads thatled inland, north, away. "If you don't mind, I'm on my way, right away... . " The olders stood unmoved as he hurried out from under them and strode down the lane, a dwindling figure, too slight, too quick to be noticed.

  URSULA LE GUIN SOCIAL DREAMING OF THE FRIN ON THE FRINTHIAN PLANE dreams are not private property. There is no such thing as a dream of one's own. Atroubled Frin has no need to lie on a couch recounting dreams to apsychoanalist, for the doctor already knows what the patient dreamed lastnight, because the doctor dreamed it too; and the patient also dreamed whatthe doctor dreamed; and so did everyone else in the neighborhood. To escapefrom the dreams of others or to have a secret dream, the Frin must go outalone into the wilderness. And even in the wilderness, their sleep may be

  invaded by the strange dream-visions of lions, antelope, bears, or mice. Whileawake, and during much of their sleep, the Frin are as dream-deaf as we are. Only sleepers who are in or approaching REM sleep can participate in thedreams of others also in REM sleep. REM is an acronym for "rapid eyemovement," a visible acco
mpaniment of this stage of sleep; its signal in thebrain is a characteristic type of electro-encephalic wave. Most of ourrememberable dreams occur during REM sleep. Frinthian REM sleep and that ofpeople on our plane yield very similar EEG traces, though there are somesignificant differences, in which may lie the key to their ability to sharedreams. To share, the dreamers must be fairly close to one another. Thecarrying power of the average Frinthian dream is about that of the averagehuman voice. A dream can be received easily within a hundred-meter radius, andbits and fragments of it may carry a good deal farther. A strong dream in asolitary place may well carry for two kilometers or even farther. In a lonelyfarmhouse a Frin's dreams mingle only with those of the rest of the family, along with echoes, whiffs, and glimpses of what the cattle in the barn and thedog dozing on the doorstop hear, smell, and see in their sleep. In a villageor town, with people asleep in all the houses round, the Frin spend at leastpart of every night in a shifting phantasmagoria of their own and otherpeople's dreams which I find it hard to imagine. I asked an acquaintance in asmall town to tell me any dreams she could recall from the past night. Atfirst she demurred, saying that they'd all been nonsense, and only "strong" dreams ought to be thought about and talked over. She was evidently reluctantto tell me, an outsider, things that had been going on in her neighbors'heads. I managed at last to convince her that my interest was genuine and notvoyeuristic. She thought a while and said, "Well, there was a woman -- it wasme in the dream, or sort of me, but I think it was the mayor's wife's dream, actually, they live at the corner -- this woman, anyhow, and she was trying tofind a baby that she'd had last year. She had put the baby into a dresserdrawer and forgotten all about it, and now I was, she was, feeling worriedabout it -- Had it had anything to eat? Since last year? O my word, how stupidwe are in dreams! And then, oh, yes, then there was an awful argument betweena naked man and a dwarf, they were in an empty cistern. That may have been myown dream, at least to start with. Because I know that cistern. It was on mygrandfather's farm where I used to stay when I was a child. But they bothturned into lizards, I think. And then -- oh yes!" -- she laughed -- "I wasbeing squashed by a pair of giant breasts, huge ones, with pointy nipples. Ithink that was the teenage boy next door, because I was terrified but kind ofecstatic, too. And what else was there? Oh, a mouse, it looked so delicious, and it didn't know I was there, and I was just about to pounce, but then therewas a horrible thing, a nightmare -- a face without any eyes -- and huge, hairy hands groping at me -- and then I heard the three-year-old next doorscreaming, because I woke up too. That poor child has so many nightmares, shedrives us all crazy. Oh, I don't really like thinking about that one. I'm gladyou forget most dreams. Wouldn't it be awful if you had to remember themall!" Dreaming is a cyclical, not a continuous activity, and so in smallcommunities there are hours when one's sleep-theater, if one may call it so, is dark. REM sleep among settled, local groups of Frin tends to synchronize. As the cycles peak, about five times a night, several or many dreams may begoing on simultaneously in everybody's head, intermingling and influencing oneanother with their mad, inarguable logic, so that (as my friend in the villagedescribed it) the baby turns up in the cistern and the mouse hides between thebreasts, while the eyeless monster disappears in the dust kicked up by a pigtrotting past through a new dream, perhaps a dog's, since the pig is ratherdimly seen, but is smelt with enormous particularity. But after such episodescomes a period when everyone can sleep in peace, without anything excitinghappening at all. In Frinthian cities, where one may be within dream-range ofhundreds of people every night, the layering and overlap of insubstantialimagery is, I'm told, so continual and so confusing that the dreams cancelout, like brushfuls of colors slapped one over the other without design; even

  one's own dream blurs at once into the meaningless commotion, as if projectedon a screen where a hundred films were already being shown, their soundtracksall running together. Only occasionally does a gesture, a voice, ring clearfor a moment, or a particularly vivid wet dream or ghastly nightmare cause allthe sleepers in a neighborhood to sigh, ejaculate, shudder, or wake up with agasp. Frin whose dreams are mostly troubling or disagreeable say they likeliving in the city for the very reason that their dreams are all but lost inthe "stew," as they call it. But others are upset by the constant oneiricnoise and dislike spending even a few nights in a metropolis. "I hate to dreamstrangers' dreams!" my village informant told me. "Ugh! When I come back fromstaying in the city, I wish I could wash out the inside of my head!" EVEN ONOUR PLANE, young children often have trouble understanding that theexperiences they had just before they woke up aren't "real." It must be farmore bewildering for Frinthian children, into whose innocent sleep enter thesensations and preoccupations of adults accidents relived, griefs renewed, rapes reenacted, wrathful conversations with people fifty years in the grave. But adult Frin are ready to answer children's questions about the shareddreams and to discuss them, defining them always as dream, though not asunreal. There is no word corresponding to "unreal" in Frinthian; the nearestis "bodiless." So the children learn to live with adults' incomprehensiblememories, unmentionable acts, and inexplicable emotions, much as do childrenwho grow up on our plane amid the terrible incoherence of civil war or intimes of plague and famine; or, indeed, children anywhere, at any time. Children learn what is real and what isn't, what to notice and what to ignore, as a survival tactic, a means of staying alive. It is hard for an outsider tojudge, but my impression of Frinthian children is that they mature early, psychologically; and by the age of seven or eight they are treated by adultsas equals. As for the animals, no one knows what they make of the human dreamsthey evidently participate in. The domestic beasts of the Frin seemed to me tobe remarkably pleasant, trustful, and intelligent. They are generally welllooked after. The fact that they share their dreams with their animals mightexplain why the Frin use animals to haul and plow and for milk and wool, butnot as meat. The Frin say that animals are more sensitive dream-receivers thanhuman beings, and can receive dreams even from people from other planes. Frinthian farmers have assured me that their cattle and swine are deeplydisturbed by visits from people from carnivorous planes. When I stayed at afarm in Enya Valley the chicken-house was in an uproar half the night. Ithought it was a fox, but my hosts said it was me. People who have mingledtheir dreams all their lives say they are often uncertain where a dream began, whether it was originally theirs or somebody else's; but within a family orvillage the author of a particularly erotic or ridiculous dream may be all tooeasily identified. People who know one another well can recognize thesource-dreamer from the tone or events of the dream, its style. But after all, it has become their own as they dream it. Each dream may be shaped differentlyin each mind. And, as with us, the personality of the dreamer, the oneiric I, is often tenuous, strangely disguised, or unpredictably different from thedaylight person. Very puzzling dreams or those with powerful emotional affectmay be discussed on and off all day by the community, without the origin ofthe dream ever being mentioned. But most dreams, as with us, are forgotten atwaking. Dreams elude their dreamers, on every plane. It might seem to us thatthe Frill have very little psychic privacy; but they are protected by thiscommon amnesia, as well as by doubt as to any particular dream's origin, andby the obscurity of dream itself. And their dreams are truly common property. The sight of a red and black bird pecking at the ear of a bearded human headlying on a plate on a marble table and the rush of almost gleeful horror thataccompanied it -- did that come from Aunt Unia's sleep, or Uncle Tu's, orGrandfather's, or the cook's, or the girl next door's? A child might ask, "Auntie, did you dream that head?" The stock answer is, "We all did." Whichis, of course, the truth. Frinthian families and small communities areclose-knit and generally harmonious, though quarrels and feuds occur. The