by Nōnen Títi
When Benjamar finally let them go, Jema refused to acknowledge Roilan’s existence and walked north to Leni’s home. She needed someone to talk to.
Leni and her family were just about to have meals. Jema’s “sorry” was waved away as Leni put out another bowl, despite Jema telling her she wasn’t hungry. Anoyak also shared mealtime without eating; an experiment to prove Frimon’s theory that people needed less food on Kun DJar. He’d been at it for a moon and looked none the worse for it.
Jema told them what happened and finished by saying she’d get Roilan back somehow. “That fanatic truth worshipper.”
“Cursing and kicking won’t get you anywhere,” Frimon said.
“What do you want me to do, just sit back and pretend it never happened? I can’t do that.”
“If you’re going to make a protest about something, you want to make sure that your message is heard. That means you don’t go out and do it on your own, relying only on their promise. You make sure the others are there with you in plain view.”
“I tried that.”
“You want the attention from your opponent so you make sure you get it by coming up with something unexpected. More importantly, you instigate their reaction so it is they and not you who end up saying the wrong thing.”
She instantly knew what he was saying. “Like Roilan in that trial? Is that why you said it?”
Frimon didn’t reply with words, but his eyes gave him away. He had managed to get Roilan into trouble then, but maybe also Maike and certainly Thalo. “If you hadn’t done that, he might have lived.”
“Thalo didn’t deserve to live after what he did,” Frimon answered.
“It is not up to you to decide that,” Leni told him and then turned on Jema. “Nor is it up to you to judge Roilan. Mature people don’t seek revenge.”
Jema blushed from being told off in front of the kids. She looked at Frimon, who raised his eyebrows with a smile as if to say they were in this together. To acknowledge that, Jema agreed out loud that Thalo had brought it upon himself. “Marya should have nicknamed him Self-Destructive.”
Next she had to explain that Marya had devised nicknames for all the people in a prime position. It had started when Kalgar and Frantag were quarrelling. She’d called them Self-Possessed and Self-Important. From that she’d found names for all the others as well. “Kolyag is Self-Serving, Tigor is Self-Indulged and Roilan is Self-Righteous,” she finished, knowing what the next question would be, only she’d not expected it to come from Rorag.
“So is my father Self-Sacrificial?” he asked.
Jema had answered no before thinking it was maybe better to leave it at that. “She called you Self-Devoted.”
“She would, because she doesn’t understand. My devotion is for Bue. People who criticize me should learn to listen to the explanations first.”
“She meant it because of this atonement ritual. It isn’t like you kept that a secret,” Jema answered, not willing to abandon Marya, even if Marya was far away and probably wouldn’t care what Frimon thought of her.
“My atonement is for my son. I won’t make it a secret or I would be denying my sincerity.”
“Or your gratification?”
“Jema!” Leni exclaimed.
“Is that what you think?” Frimon asked. “Do you think I do this for attention? Bueror died doing it. Do you think he did it for attention?”
“Bueror didn’t have a son, or he wouldn’t have.”
“And what makes you the expert so suddenly? Because you’ve been told a bit about his life, you suddenly know what he would do?”
“No, but everything in his story tells me that he was sending a warning. He was bestowed with a burden too great to carry. He didn’t want that for others. You’re taking the description of the act for what it is, but you’re missing the meaning.”
Aware she was going too far, but unable to silence her anger, she could feel the shocked expressions of the others.
Frimon had turned red “I take the act to help me focus on the meaning of my faith. Bue knows I should remind him of the example of Bueror, so he can choose to behave like a man. Now more than ever.”
“Don’t be stupid; how much faith do you need to burden your son with your humiliation in the name of some moralistic dogm– Ah!”
The slap silenced Jema in mid-sentence.
“Nobody talks like that… to me… or to anybody else in my presence,” Leni asserted to justify it.
For a confused moment there was a picture of home – Kaspi’s home – followed by an image of that diaper in the clinic and then Nori’s dress in a bag. Jema glanced around. Everybody was watching her. How embarrassing!
With a slight touch of her hand on that same spot, Leni demanded to be acknowledged.
“I’m sorry.”
Frimon left the room, slamming the door behind him. The kids followed a moment later. Leni didn’t speak; she waited for something – an apology, no doubt. After all, Jema was supposed to be a guest here, but she’d insulted her hosts. What had possessed her to judge his atonement, his belief, without being part of it herself?
“I’m sorry, Leni. I only jumped into Rorag’s shoes. I didn’t mean to upset Frimon.”
“Can you blame him, Jema? No matter how noble your intentions, but can you blame him?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Jema repeated, because she had no idea what else to say.
“But you did, and for the same reason that Roilan hurt you.”
“I know.”
“Do you? I remember you once telling me that you weren’t in the habit of judging what you didn’t understand. But today you judge what is not your concern, while accusing Frimon of being moralistic. You forget those are the same thing; you have no right to tell others right from wrong, only yourself.”
“I know that.”
“Frimon doesn’t have that right either, but he does have the right to express right or wrong to his son. That is his parental right. And do you really think that I’ve witnessed his atonement every year without making sure that Rorag can deal with it? Have you that low an opinion of me that you have to come here and step in?”
“No–”
“Look at me.”
“I’m sorry, Leni. I don’t know why I did that. I have no excuse.”
Leni started collecting the bowls. “You’re right, Frimon is moralistic. Some people are naturally more so than others. But unlike most, he’s aware of it; he has struggled with the right and wrong of it his whole life, because an inclination to make judgments and assuming the right to impose those are two different things, even if moral institutions like the Society and the state try to convince people otherwise. Just remember that every war, every hurt, and every problem between people is always a direct result of people assuming the right to impose or express their moral judgment. It caused the deaths of my father and of Emi’s father and if you want to carry on being a friend of this family, you will have to apologize to Frimon for expressing yours.”
Jema nodded, struggling to keep the stone that was pressing on her chest from making her eyes water, which would be wrong. She stood up to go to the door.
“And Jema, I am not Daili who waited for stations. You have one chance.”
“I know.”
The kids were sitting on the steps when she walked out. Leni had called her a friend of the family, but she would lose them… lose Anoyak… “I’m sorry,” she said to Rorag.
“My dad thinks I’m not normal,” he replied.
“I think you are. Is he inside?” She indicated Frimon’s home and, when Emi said that he was, knocked on his door.
He didn’t answer.
“He’s upset,” Anoyak said and stood up to open the door for her.
Whether she wanted to or not, Jema followed him in. Frimon was sitting on his handmade seat, but didn’t look up.
It was easier to talk to the silent person in the half-dark room. “I’m sorry you got hurt because of what I said
. I wasn’t judging you, only the situation… it just happened. But I had no right to say it out loud, even less right to do that in front of the children, and I certainly had no right to use that language.”
Being sensitive and with a similar need for harmony as Daili had, he visibly relaxed.
Jema added that she appreciated him as a father to Anoyak, aware that, also like Daili, he was a caregiver by nature even if the child was not biologically his own, and his entire heart and soul went into helping others, even if his ideas were different.
Daili, with her warm homeliness, had physically resembled Kaspi more than Leni did, but Leni’s response had taken Jema back home in a way she’d never before felt it.
She went to sleep that night thankful that Leni had not allowed her to mess up this friendship as well, and with a parade of faces and voices in her mind: Kaspi’s “Live well…”, Nori’s “I don’t exist”, and Daili’s “Anytime, Jema, you know that…” – a succession of memories of people she had loved and lost – lost to one person’s assumed right to judge what was best for others.
MADE FOR US
Kunag asked if it would be okay for him to go into the bush to see if he could find the eyecreatures. “Only for a little while. It’s been so long and it was them I wanted to stay for, only… we’ve been so busy.”
Nini looked up at him. A head taller than she was, his hair had grown long again. He had a soft face and begging brown eyes, but with words he was asking for permission. What he was really saying was that he’d like to stop building shelters for a while, but he still felt he had to make up for something.
“How about you go all day tomorrow? Do some drawing. And take Hani along – she hasn’t seen them yet.”
“Thanks, Nini.”
A second shelter was finished. This one was bigger, cube-shaped, and tall enough for the boys to stand in, and it had taken them three kor. It stood opposite the little shelter, which sat under the trees. This new one had its own rain protection – at least, they hoped so. The roof was made of braided mats of reeds, sticking out like eaves on all sides, thick enough to keep the rain out and drain it off. They tested it by throwing water. The hut was raised off the ground with similar mats on the floor and a drainage area underneath. At the centre, under a hole in the roof, instead of matting there was a small recess surrounded by rocks, so they could make a small fire to stay warm if winter turned out to be as cold as in town. At the moment the temperature was pleasant and the days hazy, but nights were turning dark again.
To prove that the roof would not catch fire, Leyon lit a pile of dried reeds. Even with the flames going up to the height of his middle – much higher than they would ever need to burn – they stayed well away from the roof, while the smoke went straight up and out without filling the shelter.
The four of them moved in. Around three of the four walls the boys had made a ledge which was too narrow for the mats but made for comfortable sitting, and at night they put two mats on each side of the cold fireplace. Both Kunag and Leyon were very proud of the building and happy with the praise they received, but they were putting off the idea of starting again. The amount of work involved to make one small shelter for four people and the idea that four gran of people may come here was sending Kunag into hiding.
The next day, with Hani and Kunag gone, Nini sat down with Leyon and watched him shape a basket from the reeds he had collected. He wove them together, his hands moving so fast that Nini had trouble following. When finished he stuck his hands inside a bowl at his feet and pulled out a sticky goo with which he started to cover the newly-finished basket.
“What’s that?”
He explained it was a sort of resin that helped seal the vessels. “You know that purple plamal that lies all over the rocks near the river? The one we were told to stay off in case it was slippery? Well, I accidentally stood in it and it stuck to my shoe. After that, and for the first time on this expedition, I didn’t get wet or cold feet anymore. It water proves, see?”
He showed her a finished bucket, which was full of water.
“That’s really great, Leyon, but you shouldn’t have touched the resin without knowing what it would do to you.”
He took a bit of the goo in his hand and smeared it onto her arm. Then he looked at her and grinned. “I didn’t. I only touched it for a fraction the first time and waited to see if there was a reaction. I figured if it goes on the food bowls I’d better be careful. Just like you and Gos, I tested it.” He pivoted the new basket on his hand while covering it.
“I’m sorry, Leyon. I should have asked first. I think you’re a great craftsman.”
He glowed under her compliment.
Both Kunag and Leyon were so dependent on her approval here, where on DJar they would have long been on their own. They weren’t children – Leyon was two and a half kor and Kunag two years older – and it wasn’t guilt. Yet Hani didn’t show any of it. If anything, she was more mature than a sixteen-year-old on DJar would be.
After finishing his basket, Leyon showed her the creations he had stored in the tiny shelter and which Nini hadn’t realized he’d done. The reeds were plentiful and versatile. Leyon had made baskets, bowls, buckets, flat mats for sitting on, and he was working on a thick mat to sleep on. He had sewn two plaited mats together on three sides and was filling it with slabs of moss Kunag had collected and dried. “Much better than the thin camping mats,” he said. “I’m giving the first one to you.”
He had also made a small cup from just mud, which he wanted to try firing in an oven once he built one.
“Where did you learn all that?”
“I think I saw it on screen or in print once. I was just trying things. I didn’t have any skills like all of you, so I found myself one.”
“You know, Leyon, without people like you this colony wouldn’t survive.”
“It’s kind of nice to be useful,” he answered.
“I hope we’ll find more materials we can use for crafts like that,” Nini said.
Leyon answered there was no need; the reeds were good for nearly everything and they would never run out. “You know what?” he asked, pausing to study her face. “I really think those are there for us to use so we don’t ruin anything else.” His eyes were smiling as if expecting she’d take it as a good joke, but he was serious.
“You may be right, you know.”
This allowed him to tell her what he’d found. “Every time I go there, there are new reeds and the amount is always proportional to what I took, and they are taller as well. Don’t tell Kunag, okay, in case he thinks they’re alive, but I don’t think they are. I think they’re made for us. It’s like every time I think of something, it comes, like I was thinking they are too short for homes. Do you think that’s possible? That Kun DJar can read our minds?”
Nini didn’t know how to answer that. She told him anything was possible and to keep her informed.
Once confident that solutions could be found, Nini or Hani would be able to come up with an idea, Kunag would draw it and Leyon experimented until it worked. Then they all helped out. Thus came the idea of using only reeds for building a shelter: If they were indeed in endless supply and easier to work with than the mud bricks, it was worth a try. If woven tight enough, they’d be wind- and waterproof and they could finish it with the same resin they used for the bowls. Mixed with mud, that made a paste that could be easily spread, and after Kunag added some black pods which turned the whole goo into a black paint, they covered the tiny mud shelter and the roof of their home with it.
They began the new shelter by pulling and bundling the reeds into poles as thick as a person’s body, which then had to be bent and tied in the middle and at both ends. When it proved too difficult to hold both sides of a bundle in place with only eight hands – these reeds stood at twice the height of Kunag if pulled out of the lake without cutting – they turned it upside down, so the tying could be done when sitting on it until they had an arch. They made two more arches before tying
all of them together with mats. Then they hoisted it up with a rope to turn it the right way around.
“It’ll blow away,” Hani warned.
She was right. It needed to be pitched into the soil somehow, but that was easier said than done. This time it was Kunag who came up with the solution: Why not set it between two low walls of mud, pasted like the ledge in their home, using the resin as a glue? That would ground it and form seats around both the inside and the outside of the hut. It would also raise it a little so they could stand up inside.
In the next kor, all four of them carried mud using Leyon’s baskets. He had been right in saying the supply was plentiful – the entire east quarter of the mud lake was filled with tall reeds. The rest was pliable mud, which was cold and made Nini shiver when she first stepped into it. After a while it no longer mattered; they were all just as dirty and it felt good not to care.
They discussed how to position the entrance, but since none of them knew from which side to expect the coldest wind, the deciding factor was that the shelter faced the two trees. Thus the entrance would point north since their current home stood in the centre, opposite the trees facing west.
This new shelter was an elongated dome, much bigger inside than it appeared from without, but as it was closed at the top, it wasn’t suitable for a fire. Leyon – after having convinced them to take a trip to the beach to collect some seaweed – cut the thick vegetable matter into large strips. These strips, stretched between two rocks and kept moist with a thin layer of water mixed with resin every day until they were almost elastic, were woven into the matting to give them a translucent window that allowed it to be semi-light in the daytime. The entrance was made entirely of mud walls, about a meter in height as well as in length, which functioned as a little hallway in order to keep rain and wind out. They strengthened it with pieces of cut reeds and once again raised the floor with a few reed layers before covering those with a paste, this time of yellow mud. The boys moved in straight away, leaving Nini and Hani with some space to move.