The Man with the Compound Eyes

by Wu Ming-Yi

  “Not so bad?”

  At first Alice found it hard to understand what exactly Thom was saying. After all, she had invested everything she had in this property, and she had even gone into debt. But gradually she seemed to understand. In the end she just had to get on with her life, fleeing when it was time to flee, fighting when it was time to fight, and dying like a meadowlark when it was her time.

  For the past year the sea had been like a random memory. In no time it had arrived on her doorstep, and since Christmas last year, she’d been forced to give up on getting in through the front door at high tide. Twice a day, Alice was put under temporary house arrest before being released a couple of hours later. At high tide, the sea would skirt the drainage ditch, encircling the house. When it receded it would leave various things behind at the back door: dead porcupine fish, driftwood in fantastic shapes, part of the hull of a ship, whalebones, ripped clothing, et cetera. The next day at low tide Alice would open the door and have to step over various dead things before she could get out of the house.

  The local government had informed Alice that she was living in a dangerous building and should vacate and move somewhere else. But Alice was adamant that, “If the house collapses due to flooding I’ll take responsibility. Please don’t encroach upon my freedom: I’ve got a legal right to live here.” A tabloid magazine even published a story about a lady professor living a cloistered life in a solar house on the beach. The only thing that story had going for it was that it included some of Thom’s architectural ingenuity, including those swiveling solar panels that followed the sun across the sky.

  Dahu, Thom and Alice’s Bunun friend, who was originally from Tai-tung in southern Taiwan, and Hafay, the Pangcah owner of a local bar, tried several times to get Alice to consider moving, but eventually they gave up.

  “Your head really is as hard as a boar tooth,” Dahu said.

  “You said it. That’s the way I am.” Alice sat in her house and looked out at the misty sea, as if she was sitting inside the body of some living organism. This little house was so nice. In all her life, she had never had such a wonderful time as in the past few years. It had been so wonderful that it seemed like a perfectly smooth glass globe, or like a holly plant without a single brown leaf. It was all a bit too perfect, a little too good to be true.

  In the end she never wrote at the Sea Window. She would just sit there quietly. The sea had no memory, but you could still say that it remembered things: the waves and the stones all bore the traces of time. Sometimes she despised it for all the memories and the pain it brought her. Sometimes, out of futility, she believed in it and depended on it, like a fish facing a baitless hook, knowing full well it’s going to hurt but going after it anyway.

  Alice lay there quietly, sensing the moonlight on her eyelids and the tide rolling in on her eardrums, like glass shattering somewhere far away. Outside the raindrops were falling big as stars, cloaking the earth in a humid, restless and surging air.

  Even though the weather bureau had predicted the possibility of a big quake within the year, many people had a sense of despair, a feeling that “it’s finally here,” when an earthquake struck this evening. During the quake every inch of the house was moaning and groaning, but Alice was ready to let it bury everything and have done. She had no urge to flee at first. Only later when the quake intensified did she feel an instinctive desire to find shelter. Remembering her suicide plan, she couldn’t help a grim smile. The house Thom had designed and built was stronger than she had imagined: aside from a slight skew in the beams, it was fine, just refusing to collapse. At high tide the next morning, the water had not only surrounded the house but also reached almost all the way up to the highway. Looking down from the road, the house appeared to be floating on the sea.

  Alice walked over to the window and looked out. The sea had flooded the house, reaching halfway up the first story. The waves beat against the walls, sprayed her face. She walked back to the stairwell and saw a lake down below. There were fish swimming over the red tile floor she and Thom had laid together. It was like being dropped into a huge aquarium. A bit dizzy, she reached out to steady herself, resting her hand on the rosewood picture frame hanging on the wall by the stairs. On one side of the frame they had stuck birthprints of Toto’s tiny feet, marks she used to remind herself of hope, pain and determination. But Alice found that now, inexplicably, her desolation seemed to have hidden itself away, like the blue sky that was always disappearing above the island. Alice felt this might be a sign she was already dead. Thinking about it this way, it no longer mattered whether she sought to kill herself or not.

  Under the combined onslaught of grief, ocean waves and the shuddering of the wave-battered and wind-lashed house, Alice almost lost her balance a couple of times. She stuck her head out the window for a breath of fresh air and noticed a shivering black shadow on a piece of driftwood right outside the window.

  It seemed to be a kitten. No, not just seemed. It really was a kitten, looking at her with sad eyes. Very peculiarly, one of its eyes was blue, the other brown.

  Alice leaned out the window and lifted the quavering kitten in. It was so scared it could not even manage a threat display. All it did was curl up softly in her arms.

  “Ohiyo,” she said to the kitten. She remembered that morning when she’d said good morning in Japanese to Thom and Toto just for fun. Toto so looked like a miniature adult in his climbing gear. Soaking wet, the kitten was still shaking, like a beating heart. She almost felt like the earthquake wasn’t over yet.

  She picked up a towel to dry off the kitten, found a cardboard box as a temporary shelter, and gave it some biscuits to eat. The cat did not eat, only looked at her anxiously. How big had the quake been? And how many casualties had it caused? Alice had no way of knowing. Her ability to reason had returned, but without a television, a cell phone or traffic noise she felt all alone on a deserted island at the end of the world. All she could do was focus her attention on this kitten. It—she—was dry now, and, seeming to realize that the worst had passed, had gone to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, tucking her soft forepaws into her belly and curling up into a fluffy fur ball. Her hind paws would jerk a bit from time to time, as if a dream had slipped in through a crack somewhere and entered her body.

  Suddenly there was another burst of roaring. Might be an aftershock. Alice’s body had regained the ability to react. She automatically grabbed the box in which the kitten was sleeping, intent on finding a place to hide.

  Only a few minutes earlier Alice had still been hoping to die, but now, in the flesh at least, she needed to stay alive.

  6. Hafay’s Seventh Sisid

  No doubt it was because of Hafay that the Seventh Sisid was so well known along the coast. Was it true that Hafay was no longer beautiful? No, you couldn’t say so. The most you could say was that she had put on a bit of weight over the past few years. More precisely, even with a bit of extra flesh she still had her radiant moments. It’s just that her beauty was no longer quite so easy to see.

  And to tell the truth, although Hafay’s cooking was distinctive, always making use of wild greens commonly seen in Pangcah cuisine, opinions were mixed about how the meals tasted. There was less disagreement about the drink menu. Who could say a bad word about Hafay’s brews? The only thing for the tourists to buy was millet wine or plum wine in tall colored bottles and cardboard containers. But if you asked Hafay, she’d say that’s not millet wine at all, it’s a box of chocolates. If you asked the customers at the Seventh Sisid, they would say it’s not millet wine at all, it’s monkey piss. Millet wine is supposed to be put in jugs and drunk out of the bowl that you’ve just finished eating with. How can you call it millet wine if it’s packaged up like this? The millet wine at the Seventh Sisid had a fragrant grassy sweetness, with dregs that hadn’t been completely filtered out floating in it. It went down smooth and had a kick. It was wholesome and fierce, and seemed to radiate light and heat once it got into your belly.

  B
esides millet wine, the Seventh Sisid had another attractive feature, its windows, or perhaps one should say its ocean views. The house was built on omah, uncultivated coastal land, out of bamboo, crape myrtle and Formosan michelia, as well as slate from the local hills. There were windows on all four sides, and from almost every window you could observe the constant waves of the Pacific from a different angle. The decor had mostly been donated by local aboriginal artists. But if you asked Hafay which artist did what, she would say, “What do you mean, ‘artist’? They were just people with nothing better to do who left these things here to pay for their meals. Artist my ass!”

  Customers had carved messages all over the tabletops. There was also quite a lot of verse by third-rate poets, some of it incredibly kitschy, some of it passable, just barely, and some of it was obviously plagiarized. More idiosyncratically, each table had a plate of betel nut. If nobody chewed it, Hafay wouldn’t bother replacing it, so if you happen to pay the Seventh Sisid a visit, whatever you do: don’t try the betel nut.

  Aside from such details, to most customers the space itself was nothing out of the ordinary. But somehow Hafay shuttling back and forth, her figure nicely plump, lent the place a wonderful ambience, and even the thin film of sand on the floor somehow made people feel at ease. For regulars, indulging in a drunk monologue with Hafay there to listen was almost a healing ritual. The best part about talking to Hafay was that she would never judge the sudden sadness that overcomes people after they’ve imbibed. She never got involved, but those long-lashed eyes of hers made you feel nobody could understand your private sorrow better than Hafay.

  But seriously, everyone found it a little hard to believe that Hafay could keep the place going all by herself. There must be elves sneaking in at night to help her prepare the food and take care of all the chores.

  Sometimes Hafay would start singing after hearing customers mumble and grumble. Strange to say, Hafay couldn’t speak Taiwanese or English, but she seemed to be able to sing songs in any language. Nobody ever asked how she had learned to sing them, because few people really remembered the songs she sang. Her voice infused people with the essence of a song. It would turn into a windblown seed: you never knew where in your heart the seed would fall, nor when it would sprout. Customers would be back in Taipei, riding on the subway, and Hafay’s voice would just start playing in their minds and drown out the subway noise. Then the other passengers would see someone look out the window, eyes welling with tears. But Hafay did not sing very often, and if someone made a request or sat at the bar and said:

  “Hafay, sing us a song.”

  Well, then she would reply, “Why don’t I give you a hundred bucks and you sing a song for me?” Nobody who asked Hafay for a song ever heard her sing again.

  The client base of the Seventh Sisid was simple, mostly friends from the village, tourists from the local B&Bs, and students and teachers from the U of D. Hafay tried not to bother remembering customers referred by the local B&Bs, but she would give a warm welcome to passersby.

  Hafay did not herself run a B&B, not because she was on her own or because she did not need the money, but mainly because she felt the B&Bs here weren’t what B&Bs were supposed to be like. They were mostly little inns operated by pretentious people from Taipei. Most people who chose to stay in such places were boring, run-of-the-mill. The vulgar and garrulous greatly outnumbered the pleasant and engaging. There were middle-class families who would not tell their noisy kids to shut up and big clans who wanted to spend the whole evening singing karaoke. Then there were couples who had just started seeing each other. They would come for a holiday but end up locking themselves in the room and spending the whole day in bed. Of course, there were also quite a few middle-aged couples. Some hoped a vacation would rekindle the flame, others were just having an affair, and Hafay could tell which was which at a glance.

  Another reason why Hafay did not operate a B&B was because she hated having her picture taken with customers. At first she would let them, but then some of them would post the pictures on the internet, and a few would even send them to Hafay. It disgusted and irritated her to see herself posing with a bunch of people she’d known for all of an hour or two. Forgetful Hafay usually wouldn’t be able to remember who they were. So Hafay often told regulars who encouraged her to open a B&B that, “Hey, I’m not cut out for it. Neither are most people who run B&Bs, mind you, but the difference is, I know I’m not and they don’t.”

  To be honest, Hafay did not really care for some of the professors and students from the university, especially students who would come around to do fieldwork for some silly class project. Hafay knew that the only reason old-timers in the village were willing to tell stories to these university people was because loneliness had overwhelmed them, left them longing for the good old days, not because of any highfalutin notions like cultural heritage or anything of the sort. It was loneliness that made their stories flow like water from an open tap. Hafay often thought that if she ever wrote a thesis, she would argue that the true source of culture is loneliness.

  Alice was a regular customer, that was for sure. The past year she had been coming to the Seventh Sisid once in a while all by herself, but always at dawn when the place was empty. Very few customers knew that the Seventh Sisid never closed. Maybe it’d be better to say that Hafay would always leave a little door open on the sea-facing side. Regulars could stick their hand through the hole in the door, undo the latch, come in and pour themselves a glass of wine or brew a pot of coffee anytime they wanted. Of course the café would be closed. Outside opening hours, Hafay might be out and about or in her room sleeping, but the Second Rule of the Seventh Sisid was, “Please make yourself at home: for the purpose of a Pangcah house is to entertain friends.” The First Rule of the Seventh Sisid was, “Help yourself to the wine.” Hafay thought that anyone who didn’t know the door was always open for regulars and tried to force his way in was a thief.

  The reason why Alice became a regular was simple: it was less than a five-minute walk from the Seaside House to the Seventh Sisid. At first Alice came alone; later she and Thom often came together, always sitting at the table to the far left that everyone called the Lighthouse. They called it that because Hafay had put a teardrop lamp on the table, supposedly positioning it so that sometimes even distant ships could see it at night, if the weather was clear.

  Alice liked to order salama coffee, while Thom always had millet wine. Thom was never stingy with his time, helping folks in the nearby villages, mostly old people, fix this and that around the house. He was a forthright and intelligent fellow. Hafay thought that he might well be the first Dane to be able to speak Pangcah. So when Toto was born everyone living along the coast was happy for them. Having no time for Taiwanese child-rearing taboos, Thom was taking Toto everywhere less than half a year after he was born. Toto had the most beautiful blue eyes. But they had a hidden depth that made the boy look at once innocent and aged.

  After Thom went missing, Alice would still sometimes come alone to the Seventh Sisid, but she always came when no other customers were around. Every time, she would sit at her usual seat at the Lighthouse and gaze out to sea. One time it was really late at night. Alice did not even turn on the light, maybe for fear of waking Hafay. From her room, Hafay saw Alice pour coffee cold from the pot and drink it looking out the window toward the Seaside House. No, now that the sea had risen the name had changed: it was now called the Sea House.

  Hafay knew that Alice had stepped into a kind of spirit trap. For the time being she was only watching, figuring out a way to get her out. She knew that at a time like this she could not try forcing it open or she would only end up tearing Alice apart.

  Hafay eventually decided to put on her nightgown and go out and have a drink with Alice. She quietly made a fresh pot of coffee. They did not even make eye contact in the darkness. Hafay brought out a candle holder a friend had carved out of a piece of driftwood and lit a candle, giving the two of them something to stare at. Ha
fay had a funny feeling that kawas was near, which she found reassuring. The two of them faced the firelight, and the sea. Finally Alice said, “Hafay, I’m sorry, I’ve barged in again to steal another cup of coffee.”

  “Barge in any time you like. Whatever you see here is yours.”

  Alice’s spirit had left her body. She was just sitting there, living off lingering warmth. The day she cooled off completely might be the beginning of a new life, or the end of everything. It was like the millet: it might ripen or wither, depending. Hafay could tell that was where Alice was at. She could just tell.

  “Hafay, I don’t mean to be nosy, but do you have family somewhere?” Alice turned her cup around in her hands. “If you don’t feel like talking about it, forget I asked.”

  “Yeah, I had parents, and I loved a fellah once. I often thought about having a kid, no matter who the father was.”

  Alice was looking out to sea, and Hafay too. They both knew that sometimes it’s better not to look right in someone’s eyes. “Hey, you know no one’s alone in this world. Don’t look at me now: when I was young I weighed all of a hundred pounds, and all male eyes would veer my way whenever I walked on by. But now time’s passed, and I’ve lost everything I had, ’cept I’ve gained a few extra pounds.” Hafay laughed cheerfully. Her laughter was contagious, and Alice even managed a laugh in return, just to be sociable.

  “But you’ve got this restaurant.”

  Hafay nodded. Yes, figuratively speaking, the Seventh Sisid had given Hafay a skeleton on which to hang her thoughts and memories.

  The two of them were drinking salama coffee, a fusion of Brazilian beans with a dash of sorghum, and certain fragrant herbs picked wild in the hills. The typical customer didn’t pay too much attention to it at first sip, not expecting to be drawn farther and farther, sip by sip, into the salama trap. Customers would smell the aroma left in the cup after the last swallow, a melange of rainforest, dusk and the burnt smell after a forest fire, and from then on would drink nothing but salama at the Seventh Sisid, almost without exception. Alice put the cup under her nose and her face opened up, like a window that had always been shut but was now letting in a bit of light.