Eleanor Arnason - A Woman of the Iron People

“This is good,” said Ivanova. “But not as good as I had hoped.” She paused for a moment. “It’s a beginning.”

“It stinks,” said Derek. “How can I do fieldwork? I have to be able to go into the villages!”

“Talk to the men,” I said.

“They’ll try to kill me.”

Angai went on. “Nia says you are going to want to travel all over and ask questions and look at things. Is she right? Is this true?”

“Yes,” I said.

Angai frowned. “I am not certain what to do about that. I do not want to find hairless people in every part of our country, turning over rocks and poking sticks into holes. It is hard enough to have children.” She paused. “Stay close to the village until I have had a chance to think more about this.”

Derek translated.

Eddie said, “This isn’t going to work.”

“Yes, it will,” said Mr. Fang. “They have the right to set these kinds of limits. We have the discipline to keep within the limits they have set.”

“What about Nia?” asked a voice.

“I have not decided,” Angai said.

“We have,” said the voice. “Ten winters ago we told her to leave. She has not changed. She was a pervert then. She is a pervert now. Look at the people she travels with! Tell her to go with them. Tell her to live in their village—not here, among people who know how to behave.”

The crowd parted. I saw the speaker now: a stocky woman of middle age. Her fur was medium brown and oddly dull. It soaked up light like clay.

“That is Anhar,” Nia said.

“I will ask the spirits what to do about Nia,” Angai said. “Not today. They don’t like a lot of questions all at once.”

“You have always liked Nia,” Anhar said. “You have always protected her. You are trying to bring her back into the village.”

Angai said, “You never know when to be quiet, Anhar. I am tired of your opinions! You have a little mind, full of nasty ideas. It is like a cheese eaten out by cheese bugs. It is like a dead animal eaten out by worms.”

“Wow,” said Derek.

Anhar turned. The crowd let her through. She walked away from Angai out of the torch-lit square. I lost sight of her in the darkness.

“What about the man?” another woman asked. “The Voice of the Waterfall?”

The oracle answered. “I am going to the village of the hairless people. My spirit told me to learn from them. I have not had any new dreams telling me to do anything else.”

Angai said, “I am done speaking. You have heard my decision. Do you agree with me? Or is there going to be an argument?”

There was silence. I had a sense that the people around me were unhappy. But no one was willing to speak.

At last someone said, “What did the spirits tell you, Angai?”

“I dreamed I was on a trail I did not recognize. The country around me was unfamiliar. The ground under my feet was hot. Smoke rose from holes. I could not see where I was going.”

“That does not sound like a good dream, Angai.”

The shamaness frowned. “I am not finished! There was an old woman with me. She had a fat belly and drooping breasts. She carried a staff and it seemed to me that she was having trouble walking. Sometimes she walked next to me. Sometimes ahead. Sometimes in back. She never left me. She made noises from time to time: grunts and moans. Most of the time she was silent. Once she was in back of me, and I thought I heard her stumble. I stopped and looked back. She said, ‘Keep going. Don’t worry about me. As old as I am, I will keep up with you.’ I went on. That was the end of the dream.”

The woman who had asked the question said, “All right. I will go along with you, Angai. Even though I am made uneasy by these new people. And even though I think Anhar is right about Nia.”

Angai made the gesture that meant “it is over.” She turned and went into her tent.

I said, “You finish translating, Derek. I want to speak to Nia.”

He made the gesture of agreement.

I walked over to Nia and the oracle. A couple of women removed the torches from their holders, taking them away.

Nia said, “I am not certain that Angai was being clever. She ought to have been more polite to Anhar. Now she’s made an enemy of her.”

“No,” said the oracle. “She has changed nothing. They were enemies already. Now they can stop pretending. I have never had an enemy, but I know it’s hard work being polite to someone you hate. It makes a woman tired. She loses strength. She cannot do things that are important.”

“You’ve never had an enemy?” I asked.

“Most men do not. If a man gets angry, he confronts the person who has made him angry. Or else he leaves. The women are trapped in their villages. They spend winter after winter next to people they dislike. They do not speak their anger. They cannot get away. That makes enemies. I have seen it happen.”

“Do you want to stay in the village?” I asked Nia.

She made the gesture of uncertainty.

“Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

“Here. With Angai.” Nia paused. “That was Ti-antai. The woman who spoke last. The woman who cared for your hand this morning. She was a good friend of mine when we were young.”

“Aiya!” I said.

The oracle said, “I will go with you. Angai made me stay at the edge of the village last night in an old tent that was full of holes. Even with the holes and the wind blowing through, it smelled of old age and craziness.” He paused. “Not holy craziness. The other kind.”

The square was empty except for my companions. The torches were all gone. There was no noise except the wind and Derek’s voice, still translating.

“What was the dream about?” I asked. “Why did it satisfy your cousin?”

“You don’t know much, do you?” Nia said.

“No. Who was the old woman?”

“The Mother of Mothers. If she tells us to go on through a strange country, then we will.”

“It was a good dream,” said the oracle. “I have had only a few that were that easy to understand. No one can possibly argue with it.”

Derek said, “I’m done.”

“Coming,” I said.

We left the square, walking through the dark village.

Ivanova said, “This decision is not going to satisfy anyone. The research teams are going to want to be able to travel. And Eddie, of course, is horrified that we have not been ordered off the planet.”

“That’s right,” Eddie said.

“I think the problem is vulgar Marxism,” said Mr. Fang.

“Oh, yeah?” I said.

“We oversimplify the dialectical process and we become fascinated by the drama of revolution. We forget that human history is very complex and very slow. Every big change is preceded by a multitude of small changes. There are compromises. There are failures. We take a step forward and then are forced to go back a step or even two.

“Even revolutions are full of compromise and failure. Even in the midst of great transformations, we go back. After the triumph of the October Revolution came Kronstadt and the crushing of the Workers’ Opposition.”

“I don’t understand where this is leading,” Ivanova said.

“We expected this meeting to resolve everything. We expected a revolution, the simple kind that we see on the holovision.

“We are in the middle of a revolution. It has gone on for over five hundred years. I have no idea when it will end, if ever. But it is not a simple drama. It does not move forward all the time. And there are no neat divisions. No scenes and acts. At least none that we can see. Historians put in such things later.

“Today—I think—the revolution has moved into a new stage. It has certainly moved onto a new stage. There are new actors and new problems. But there is no resolution.”