The Man with the Compound Eyes (27 page)

The car was nearing the end of the tunnel. They passed the last mural design and distance marker. With “1 km” to go, there was already light beaming into the tunnel in the distance.

“It’s incredible! To think that we could tunnel through such a mountain,” said Detlef.

“Yeah,” said Jung-hsiang Li. Detlef couldn’t tell whether there was pride in his voice, or some other emotion. “You remember that time I went to pick you up in the car and told you I’d just gotten married? Now my eldest daughter is already married with children.”

“Fifteen years just to dig this one tunnel,” said Detlef. “Seriously, do you think fifteen years was worth it to shave an hour off the trip for all these people all these years?”

“Was it worth it? I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. My job is to dig, not to assess whether it’s worth it or not.”

“But now the heart of the mountain has been hollowed out,” Sara said.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s not important,” said Sara. “I was just thinking that it was such a beautiful mountain and now its heart is hollow.” They were now using ambient lighting in the tunnel. Lighting technology had improved by leaps and bounds the past couple of years, and the retrofit had only been completed the previous year. It now looked like there was a series of skylights on the ceiling of the tunnel spilling natural light down from heaven the whole way. The moment the car left the tunnel, the natural light took over. The weather when they’d entered was fair, so they didn’t expect an overcast sky when they came out the other side.

Then, in an almost imperceptible voice, Jung-hsiang Li said, “To my elder brother it was most definitely not worth it.” Jung-hsiang had mentioned his brother’s passing. What he had not said was that two of his brother’s colleagues were buried during one drill and blast, crushed to death in a shower of rock. Jung-chin had escaped death, but he couldn’t shake depression. They were his friends. From then on he just went through the motions, working like a machine. One day after the road went through, the neighbors discovered he’d committed suicide. He’d hermetically sealed every crack in the room and left the gas on. It was like a cave inside.

“Actually, this is only the second time I’ve been through this tunnel since it opened,” Jung-hsiang Li said, matter-of-factly, looking in the rear-view mirror, as if he had just seen his brother’s face.

“Get ready for a view of the sea.”

Atile’i drank from the cup Alice offered him and said, “This water tastes of scorched earth.”

Alice could not understand what he was saying, but assuming he was asking the name of the beverage, she said, “It’s called coffee. This is
salama
coffee, Hafay’s signature blend. I learned how to make it from her.”

Communication proceeded slowly. They had to go back to square one to relearn how to refer to everything. There were new things, and new names for old things. It was difficult for both Alice and Atile’i. But Alice realized that there can gradually be dialogue, even between languages that are quite far apart. Sometimes one doesn’t have to use language as it’s commonly defined. For instance, Atile’i would use his speaking flute to help him express himself or his emotions when Alice didn’t understand what he meant. Atile’i would play the flute with feeling and Alice would understand immediately. One time Atile’i was describing the beauty of his lover Rasula, “so beautiful that she can soothe anyone’s
salikaba
,” but Alice could not figure out what he meant until he played a short melody on the flute, utterly absorbed. “So beautiful that she can soothe anyone’s soul, right?
Salikaba
means soul, doesn’t it?” As if that was just what Atile’i, playing on the speaking flute, had said.

Ten days earlier, Alice would have doubted the reliability of flutesong
translation, but now she would say, “I can understand almost everything Atile’i’s trying to say with the speaking flute.” It was like an interlanguage between them, helping familiarize them with basic words, like
“salikaba”
and “soul,” and rules of usage. It was like some little elf that would fly over and whisper what Atile’i wanted to say in her ear.

Atile’i treasured his speaking flute because it was a gift from Rasula. The
kiki’a
wine she’d made was gone, but he hadn’t lost the speaking flute, because he’d used a fine rope to hang it around his neck. The flute was wooden and about ten centimeters long. It was played horizontally like a transverse flute, except that the finger holes were in two parallel rows. The body of the instrument was so small that Atile’i could almost play it without his hands, by holding it in his mouth.

Maybe because Alice had a gift for languages, she could understand at least thirty, maybe forty, percent of what Atile’i was saying. Of course, “speaking” was still difficult, for the two languages were totally different phonetically. Alice slowly went from using her own language exclusively to being able to mix in some Wayo Wayoan words, which Atile’i found reassuring. It wasn’t like he needed to be reassured about Alice. He knew from the beginning that this woman meant him no harm. This was just the consolation of language. After all, he had once thought he might die here, in a world full of bizarre and unfamiliar things, without ever hearing another person speak his native tongue again. Being able to hear someone speak broken Wayo Wayoan now made him very happy.

Sometimes it was hard to tell from his expression alone whether or not Atile’i was listening or understanding. He often looked off into the distance muttering something to himself. Later she understood that the mantra he kept repeating meant, “The fish will always come.”

The fish will always come, as will the rain. The average rainfall seemed to be increasing, and it was falling more and more violently with each passing year. Alice was especially inclined to think of Toto on rainy days or when she saw a faraway look in Atile’i’s eyes. Atile’i appeared to be five or six years older than Toto, because he said he had lived through a hundred and eighty moons before going to sea. Though it was hard
to know how long he had spent at sea, there was still something childish in the expressions that he wore on his weathered dark-brown face.

Apart from Ohiyo, Alice had finally found someone she was willing to open up to about how much she missed Toto. Perhaps it was because Atile’i wouldn’t understand the details of what she was saying that Alice felt more free to speak her mind. Even though they would never admit it, the people around Alice had all gone from sympathetic and patient to bored and sick and tired of hearing her talk about Toto. The very sight of her put people on alert. Oh no, here she comes again, they seemed to say to themselves.

Language might increase the distance of a story, making it seem even further away, but Atile’i was sensitive enough to realize that Alice really missed her son. That was the way it was, no doubt about it. He didn’t have to understand her story to intuit how she felt. When Alice mentioned for the umpteenth time what it had been like with Toto around, Atile’i recalled something the Sea Sage had once said and related it to Alice:
“Ind’e kasi ka mona’e lulala, i’a sudoma.”

Alice had already learned some of the words:
mona’e
meant ocean,
lulala
was flower, and
sudoma
beach. But she still didn’t understand the meaning of the whole sentence. She spent quite some time querying Atile’i before she felt she probably understood what it meant. Maybe it could be translated like this:
No beach, no matter what the island, can hold the waves
.

This was a maxim and an admonition. It would undoubtedly also count as a truth, even under scientific examination. Waves could not stay on a beach. There was often a fine line between proverbial wisdom and stating the obvious, between a truth and a truism, Alice thought.

“Only whales can be kept on the beach,” Atile’i said. The islanders believe that whales sacrifice themselves for the sake of all the folks who are unable to go fishing. When sea creatures use the land to kill themselves, their spirits soar up to the clouds; when land creatures drown themselves in the sea, their spirits turn into jellyfish. These were the rules of the spirit realm, taught to Atile’i by the horde of second sons he’d met on the sea.

“Sometimes death is payback. At other times, it’s just farewell, not owing anyone anything. As the days are long and the sea is deep, in the end the
salikaba
(Alice now had the word memorized) will betray the flesh, for the flesh is weak.”

Maybe because Alice tended to translate literally from Wayo Wayoan to Mandarin she always felt that the young Atile’i’s speech was overly poetic and a bit unreal. He made the pain that everyone had to suffer sound so beautiful. A kid Atile’i’s age should not be saying things like that. But in another sense, Alice thought about all Atile’i had experienced at sea, far more than she herself had experienced anywhere. Maybe the soul that resided in his young body was more complicated than the one that dwelt in hers.

Alice started taking Atile’i to draw water in the morning. Atile’i was curious about everything he saw along the way. The first time he saw a waterfall, he fell down to his knees, his eyes brimming over. He said this was something the Sea Sage had prayed for his whole life long: “How wonderful it would be to have such a mighty spring on Wayo Wayo. The sea is so big, but there’s not a drop to drink. That is the punishment of Kabang.”

Alice wanted to tell him that nobody could punish anyone else. She gave him a long explanation, but couldn’t be sure he understood.

Aside from drawing water, Alice also had to gather wild food plants. She had learned a lot by going to the Seventh Sisid, because Hafay would use plants Pangcah people often ate as ingredients in the meals she prepared. Things like
kakurot
(wild bitter gourd) to go with steamed fish. And you can combine
sukuy
(gac) with the snails you can catch anywhere and make a broth. Violet wood-sorrel can be pickled and served as a side dish. Rattan shoots make a great soup, while cassava can substitute for rice. Hafay also taught Alice how to make a pot out of a betel leaf and cook with it. You put the water and ingredients in the “pot” and toss in stones so hot from the fire that they make the water boil. Hafay said this was “stone bowl hot pot,” Pangcah style.

Atile’i had an outstanding ability to recognize plants. Usually he could remember something after Alice had picked it a single time. Soon he took over Alice’s job of foraging up in the hills. Sometimes when she got up in the morning, she would find the basket full of a day’s worth of vegetables.
Alice couldn’t resist giving him field guides to read. Atile’i was really interested in the pictures, which looked just like the real thing. He was learning the names of different species at the same time as he was getting more and more familiar with a foreign language. At first he only learned the practical plants, the wild vegetables or herbs, but soon he knew almost all the birds, insects and reptiles, too. He could tell Alice at a glance that up ahead there were three emerald doves, eleven lesser scimitar babblers, seventy-nine Japanese white-eyes and a yellow-mouthed screech owl, with its eyes closed. Oh wait, there’s also a red-banded snake.

He quickly realized that the wild ferns, both cross-the-ditch and lady fern, that carpeted the mountains weren’t poisonous. They were edible, and could be eaten raw as you walked along. Soon the gash on Atile’i’s calf formed a scab, and the sore at the corner of his mouth was much improved. He picked breadfruits and wild raspberries and stored them in the cellar he’d dug to keep them cool and fresh. Alice was amazed. Atile’i knew a whole lot more about survival than she did. Sometimes she felt that the mountain knew Atile’i right from the start. He plucked buds and drank dew as he went along, as natural as a babbler in the woods nibbling on raspberries.

Once in a while, Alice walked down alone and drove into town to buy food. She would arrange to meet Dahu, Umav and Hafay along the way, and would always see the ruins of the Sea House, now almost completely inundated, and the endless seashore, still in a shambles even after several months of clearance. She got the latest news update about the Trash Vortex from Dahu and Hafay: journalists had recently started calling it the “Primeval Plastic Soup,” which sounded like a dish on a menu.

One time when she came down to town, Alice caught a talk show on TV while eating in a buffet. Some famous buckraker claimed he had seen a little dark fellow swim to shore out of the plastic soup and vanish into a grove. “If you don’t believe me launch a search in the mountains. You’ll find him,” the buckraker averred.

“Nonsense,” said the owner of the buffet. Alice knew it was not. Could someone have possibly seen Atile’i run into the hills? Thank God Atile’i had already changed into the clothes Alice had bought for him and
could speak some Mandarin now. It would not be too hard to make up some story. Not to mention that the folks on this kind of show were all talk, no action. And to most viewers, it wasn’t supposed to be informative; it was pure entertainment, the kind of program that gave people everything but the truth. Nobody would actually go looking, would they?

At first Dahu and Hafay urged Alice to come back and live by the sea, but Alice told them that she wanted to stay in the hut for the time being, so they didn’t force the issue. Dahu had sorted out the stuff from the Sea House and packed it up. He was planning to take it up for her, only to meet with her adamant refusal. The situation was so awkward Dahu could only relent.

“I’m sure there’s something going on at the hut,” Dahu said privately to Hafay.

“You still don’t know Alice after all these years? If she wanted us to know she would have told us already,” Hafay said. “Anyway, maybe she’s just being a bit paranoid.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“But haven’t you noticed that Alice’s complexion looks so much better? Didn’t she say it’s been awhile since she stopped taking that whatchamacallit medication? I think it’s less likely now that she’d go and do something stupid, so whatever’s going on at least it seems to be doing her some good so far, right?”