But he, my father: he was not one of us. My father had jut, and his jut was some of the strongest in southern Tinimavet. He was a nobleman, the son of a chief, a doctor of birds who had studied with two tchanavi in the hills. He could read water. He could read faces, too, and trees, thunder, owl cries, dead crickets. His hair had been silver as long as I could remember. What else can I say about him? I loved him and I still love him and I am like him, always like him, never like my mother.
When I was very small he was not with us. He was with the tchanavi. My mother used to talk to me about him. Wait until your father comes, she would say when the others teased me. Then you’re going to have jut, the best jut in the world. Who is my father? I would ask. And she: The king of the rivers. A man from the moon, a prince, a fallen star. And so I was not surprised when he put his head in at the door and I saw his silver hair and beard, like starlight or rain.
There she is, he said.—That was me he was talking about, as he smiled in the rushlight. He had been waiting to see me. He came forward into the room and I said, Look out for the grandmother, and he looked surprised and then laughed: What a quick-eyed girl!
You see, my mother’s mother was still alive then, wrapped up in a skin so that she wouldn’t scratch herself with her dirty nails. She was wizened, as small as a child, dried up as you would think no living creature could be, utterly shrunken and silent. You could imagine picking her up and shaking her like a gourd, the dusty organs rattling about inside her. I used to pick her up myself and row her about in my boat: me, a child of six. She was that tiny. My father stepped over her and sat with us. Eat something, eat, my mother was saying. There was datchi in coconut milk, rice, buffalo curd, a pot of my mother’s millet beer. The whole house smelled of happiness and food.
In a moment, my father said. I saw him open his pack and take something out, something reddish like clay in the light. He touched it lovingly with his slender hands, so that I knew: it was jut. He placed it gently against the wall.
I go rowing my grandmother. Her little face looks at the sky. We avoid the great canal that leads to the sea. I paddle about in the rushes, beside the green expanse of the rice, in the sunlight and the heat, the paths of dragonflies. The water is murky and brown; my grandmother’s face grows dark in the sun, even more wrinkled, but she doesn’t mind, nothing disturbs her. I sing to her:
My father is a palm,
and my mother is a jacaranda tree.
I go sailing from Ilavet to Prav
in my boat, in my little skin boat.
Kiem is known for its magic. Even you, the godless of Tyom, call on us to cure your diseases and banish your ghosts. We have powerful surgeons, doctors of leopards and doctors of crocodiles, and doctors of birds like my father, the “men of mist.” You can see them going from house to house when people are sick, stately, solemn, sitting upright in their boats, monkey skins dangling, carrying little bags sewn from the skins of frogs, their assistants wailing and ringing copper bells. They can bless musical instruments, take away warts, call down the moon. They battle the witches who ride in the forests at night. If your soul is lost, they can go to the shining land by closing their eyes and search for you, clothed in the gray plumage of herons.
At night they pass in a clamor of bells. We crouch in the doorway and watch them. Their boats ride low in the water, ringed by torchlight. Everywhere there are rustling sounds as people creep to their doors, lifting the curtains, peering down at the glow on the water. The boat stops, is moored to a post, a rope ladder descends, and they climb up into a house. It’s not our house. Now there are sighs everywhere, pitying murmurs, secret triumph. In Kiem you are always glad of another’s misfortune.
Yes, they are all like that—except my mother. She never understands; she is too stupid to learn how to behave. Her pity is real. Oh! how terrible! she says, wringing her hands, sometimes crying over the sadness of others. She cries over people we don’t even know, and worse, over people we do, that ugly Dab-Nin with her slit eyes and curling lip, who spits in the water whenever we pass and allows her son to tip my boat, watching him and laughing, not saying anything. Dab-Nin fell ill when I was thirteen, before I was ill myself. She coughed and lay on the floor with a swollen hip. And everyone sighed and was glad about it, everyone hated Dab-Nin, I’m sure it was a witch who caused her disease. And my mother wept. Oh, the poor woman. Imagine such idiocy. She would be glad if you were sick, I told her. My mother’s eyes widened, filling again with wretched tears. Her tears were her wealth, the one thing she had in abundance.
My father did not weep. He was always calm in the face of sorrow, dignified. He knew what it was to be sad. I think he was sadder than my mother, despite all of her misfortunes, because he understood more. He lacked the protection of ignorance. He could not weep at the death of a terrible woman like Dab-Nin, but somehow he was even sadder because of it, because everyone was in mourning for a creature they had all hated, because the world was foul and riddled with lies. He took me in his boat. We went down the stream from Tadbati-Nut, toward the great canal, away from the funeral, the vultures wheeling, the stench of the fire, the smoke creeping into the forest, the clanging of bells and the wailing of many voices. We went out to the sea. My father rowed to where the air was clean and we couldn’t hear the funeral anymore. The water was blue and the sun so hot that we opened our straw umbrellas and sat under them, drifting, happy on the great swells. We played vyet for a long time, and I managed to beat him once. Then we unwrapped our lunches and ate and drank. We didn’t go back until the sun was sinking and there were fires in the village, and Dab-Nin was reduced to ashes.
I know that people noticed it, our avoidance of the funeral, and that it gave them more to say against us. We were suspected of sorcery, of putting jut on people. And maybe they were right, at least about me. My father was too good to harm anyone and my mother was too stupid, but I—I was neither a saint nor a fool. I have thought about it often, wondered about it—am I a witch? Testing the thought of it in excitement and terror. In Kiem they often discovered witches who had not known their own natures, who had evil in them which acted without their knowledge, ordinary people, farmers, fishermen, grandmothers, even children, who went to be purged in the forest, screaming with fear. The doctors killed them in the clearing, killed the evil in them, destroyed their jut. When they came back they were simple and mild. They walked hesitantly and could not remember things and lived in smiling timidity until they were lost or eaten by crocodiles.
I thought about it then, for the first time: Was I a sorceress? Could I have been the one who killed Dab-Nin? Certainly I was glad she was dead, spitefully glad, exultant: it made me feel strong and happy with light and water. I was happy to be on the sea with my father for a whole day, while that horrible woman sizzled in her own fat. And later I was terrified that the doctors would find me out and take me into the forest to strip me of my power. But later still I thought: I’m not a witch, I can’t be one. Or at least I am not strong enough to do much harm. You see, had I been a witch, so many would have died in Kiem, the smoke from the funerals would have extinguished the sun.
While we were out on the water my father told me about death. I still remember his voice, his gentle gaze, the way his hair and face were patterned with light piercing through his umbrella, the way he leaned back in the boat and told this story:
The first man, who was called Tche, was the idea of the rain.
And the first woman, who was called Kyomi, was the idea of the elephant. This creator was not just an elephant, he was the inventor of the elephant, which he made as a shape to contain himself. He was his own inventor.
And the rain made the man Tche. She took her little bone-handled knife and cut his figure out of a piece of deer hide. Then she sewed it all over with pieces of coral and amber and ivory, and when she had finished, there was the most beautiful boy in the world. There has never been a boy as beautiful as the first one, though we like to say “as beautiful as Tche.” No one has since
made anything so beautiful out of a deer hide. And the rain put Death into his third vertebra.
And the elephant made Kyomi. He made her with his tusk, for he never uses any other weapon. He cut her figure out of a banana leaf and sewed it all over with jade and shells, and one raven’s feather for hair. When he had finished, there was the most beautiful girl in the world, and no other girl has possessed even the tenth part of her beauty. And the elephant gave her a wonderful gift: he blew salt into her eyes, so that she had the sight of the gods, by which the world may be truly seen.
All of this happened far away in the Lower Part of the earth, when it was still green land, before the fire.
And Tche and Kyomi were each alone in different parts of the forest, filled with wonder and joy and fear at everything they saw.
Now the elephant and the rain were very jealous of their creations, and their greatest worry was that these two would meet somewhere in the forest. So they held a meeting among the clouds on the top of a high mountain, and the elephant said: I do not want my Kyomi to see your Tche. For she has the sight of the gods, to which his beauty stings like a thunderclap, and if she sees him, she will surely forsake me. And the rain answered: Do not be afraid. For I have put Death itself into the third vertebra of this handsome boy. And I will tell him of it, and of its terrible potency, so that if she touches him, he will flee as if she has tried to kill him. And the elephant said: It is good. And also the girl must know that one cannot love a mortal and yet possess the sight of the gods.
Then the rain went down to the forest and found the boy sitting under a tree, where he was taking shelter, because it was raining. And she said to him: Listen, my son, what I tell you is most important. In your third vertebra you carry Death, which is waiting to catch you. You must take care that nothing touches that third vertebra of yours, especially not a woman’s hand, for it would be fatal to you!
What is a woman? asked the boy.
And the rain said: It is a creature like you, only ugly and clumsy and filled with dreadful cunning.
And the boy said: Oh! That is a terrible creature you have described! If I see one, I will run away.
And he went on with his new life, playing in the forest and in the rivers, and making boats and spears and beautiful arrows, and hunting even the flowers because he did not know any better, and sleeping on his stomach so as not to disturb Death.
And the elephant looked for Kyomi and found her down by the edge of the sea, gathering seaweed which she would cook for supper. And he said to her: Greetings, my daughter. What do you think of this sea?
And Kyomi answered with shining eyes: It is beautiful, like a long fire.
Then the elephant said: Ah! That is because you know only the gods. But if you loved a mortal man, how different it would be! Then this same sea, which is to you and me like a fire, or a great mat woven not of reeds, but of lightning, would appear to you gray and flat and even more lifeless than the mud.
How terrible! cried Kyomi. But what is a man?
That is a creature like you, the elephant said, only very ugly, with a great devouring mouth and ferocious nature.
And Kyomi said: Oh! What a terrible creature! Thank you for warning me. If I see one I will run away.
And Kyomi went on walking in the tall forests and down by the sea, gathering seaweed and drinking the dew from the flowers, happier than anyone who has ever lived after her, because she saw the world with the vision of the gods. And one afternoon she saw the boy Tche, and Tche saw her also, and they were far from the elephant and the rain. And Kyomi thought: This cannot be the man of which the elephant spoke, for he is beautiful like one of the gods. And as for Tche, he also thought, The rain did not mean this creature when she spoke of the woman who will cause me to die. And they smiled at one another and Kyomi gave the boy some seaweed and he gave her a hare which he had killed in the forest. No one knows how they came together, it might have been Ot the Deceiver who made it happen, the god in the shape of a chameleon. But they were happy, and they embraced as men and women do, hidden deep in the forest of the lost country.
And Kyomi was looking up at the sky, and suddenly it grew dark, and the trees were all blown out like a series of torches: for she had lost the sight of the gods as the elephant had foretold, and neither she nor her children would have it again. She knew it. She thought: This is the man. And weeping she drew him close, and the palm of her hand brushed over his third vertebra. And Tche cried out and thought to himself in despair: This is the woman.
Then Death leaped out and went clattering over the world.
(2)
The house my father was born in is visible from many places, but especially, on a clear day, from the sea. Lingering in your boat, at the edge of the desolate lagoon, you look up toward the lofty hills of the west. Gardens have been cut into the hillside like steps, fresh and beautiful, gardens of maize and tomatoes, guava orchards, dark green thickets of spinach and cassava, flowering patches of beans, everything tantalizing and blue in the distance. The road is a river of whiteness with small figures staggering along it, men with baskets of charcoal, donkeys with carts, and once a day the old woman coming to fill her pot in the Dyet, ringing her bell to frighten people away. The place she takes the water is there, the temple of Jabjabnot, built above a spring, straddling the cataract. It rises in plumes of mist, etched in the hill, inaccessible. It has many windows through which no one looks out.
Look up farther, along the road. There the houses begin, with their tiled roofs and pillars of carved calamander. Look at that one, the most serene, the one of the greatest elegance: that is the house in which my father was born. In the day its slatted blinds are raised to welcome the wind from the sea; the whole house is open, cool, tranquil, delicious. At night they lower the blinds, and lanterns hang from the corners of the roof, glass lamps brilliant with captive fireflies.
And here is the woman for whose sake he left that house: clumsy and startled as she paddles her boat, running aground on the mud, sometimes preferring to walk, even up to her ankles in the wet earth, because she is awkward with boats, she can’t learn to control them. And not only boats. She can’t play vyet, it’s impossible to teach her. She laughs, she waves her hands: I’m confused again! She doesn’t mind if you play, she will sit and watch you move the pieces without even the sense to feel envious or ashamed. She knows how to cook a few things, she cooks the same things over and over. Rice and peanuts, datchi in coconut milk. She talks about cooking, about a snake she saw, a baby crocodile, or nothing, she just sits there smiling wistfully.
Oh, I know she was beautiful. More than beautiful, famous, even though she was a hotun girl, without jut. There were still songs about her when I was young; there was a man who used to sing them when he rowed past our house at night. Child of the sky, beautiful night-hair, supple as a fish. Girl made of honey, disappearing in sunlight. Those were the songs they sang for my mother, full of her eyes like stars and her hair like a net to catch hearts when she walked with it loose on the wind. The only one who still sang them was that man, who was also hotun, a man older than my father with pensive eyes. I didn’t like him. But he was only one of my mother’s suitors—people said there had once been twenty of them. Oh, I believed it. Why should they lie? People in Kiem never lied for flattery’s sake. So I believed she had been a great beauty, even though to me she was this square-hipped, graceless creature with the scar on her forehead where she had once been struck with an oar in an accident. Yes, to me she was this scar, these tearful, frightened eyes, this odor of millet beginning to ferment, this hand with the fingers missing where they had been caught in a leopard trap when she was a child, this inconceivable bad luck. To me she was this terrible luck, this litany of misfortunes. And so, although I believed the tales of her beauty, I did not see how beauty alone could have drawn my father to her, to her poverty, foolishness, and constant affliction.
Once I asked him. More than once. Why did you marry Tati? And he laughed: I’ve told that story so
many times. Or else he said: That’s not a proper question for a little girl. But I would insist, and he would always give in.
Out in the waters of the lagoon he said: She was rowing her boat, and I was rowing mine in the other direction. We scraped together—our oars clacking—she nearly swiped my head with hers, frantic to get away, stuck in the canal! Well, she was so serious, and the situation so comical, that I laughed. I didn’t know anything about her. I didn’t know how poor she was, but I liked the way she laughed when I started laughing. She was so candid, so easy to please. . . .
And in the forest, when we had paused to rest after gathering mushrooms, sitting in the cool shade, he smiled and said: Well, she had lived a different life. I liked to hear about that. I liked her voice, her quiet manner of speaking. I liked the way she cared for her mother. I thought I would like to live with them. Can’t you understand that, little frog? No? They had a happy house, peaceful, it seemed to me. . . . There is peace in your mother, like light in a lamp.
And in the doorway at dusk, when we sat with our legs hanging over the side, watching the flickering lights from the other houses, he said: You know it was not always pleasant, living up on the hill. I know it is hard to believe. But we had sorrow. Sorrow is everywhere, of course, but on the hill we had a type which I did not want. I prefer the sorrow here.
Then you married Tati for sorrow? I asked, incredulous.
His face was still, like a tree in the shadows. I don’t know, he said.
If my father married for sorrow, then he married the right woman. Sorrow followed my mother like a lover. Her father died in his boat of a fever, his body absorbed into the river to find its way to the sea alone, to rot, to be devoured by the squids. Her brother died of a snake bite, blackening, his leg growing swollen and so pestilential in odor that he could not be kept in the house. He slept in a boat until he died, singing the songs of death and trying over and over to pluck the moon from the sky. And her sister. Her sister was last seen walking at the base of the hills. One of her sandals came to shore two days later. Her basket was found, too, her lunch still wrapped in banana leaves, but no one knew whether she had fallen or jumped.
A Stranger in Olondria: A Novel Page 25