Ursula Le Guin - Five Ways to Forgiveness

“Well,” he said after a while, curiously self-conscious, “I’m tired.” He stood up, stretched, glanced for permission to enter her territory, got a drink of water, returned to his territory, took off his jacket and shoes, by which time her back was turned, took off his trousers, lay down, pulled up the blanket, and said in his mind, “Lord Kamye, let me hold fast to the one noble thing.” But he did not sleep.

He heard her slight movements; she pissed, poured a little water, took off her sandals, lay down.

A long time passed.

“Teyeo.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think… that it would be a mistake… under the circumstances… to make love?”

A pause.

“Not under the circumstances,” he said, almost inaudibly. “But—in the other life—”

A pause.

“Short life versus long life,” she murmured.

“Yes.”

A pause.

“No,” he said, and turned to her. “No, that’s wrong.” They reached out to each other. They clasped each other, cleaved together, in blind haste, greed, need, crying out together the name of God in their different languages and then like animals in the wordless voice. They huddled together, spent, sticky, sweaty, exhausted, reviving, rejoined, reborn in the body’s tenderness, in the endless exploration, the ancient discovery, the long flight to the new world.

He woke slowly, in ease and luxury. They were entangled, his face was against her arm and breast; she was stroking his hair, sometimes his neck and shoulder. He lay for a long time aware only of that lazy rhythm and the cool of her skin against his face, under his hand, against his leg.

“Now I know,” she said, her half whisper deep in her chest, near his ear, “that I don’t know you. Now I need to know you.” She bent forward to touch his face with her lips and cheek.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Tell me who Teyeo is….”

“I don’t know,” he said. “A man who holds you dear.”

“Oh, God,” she said, hiding her face for a moment in the rough, smelly blanket.

“Who is God?” he asked sleepily. They spoke Voe Dean, but she usually swore in Terran or Alterran; in this case it had been Alterran, Seyt , so he asked, “Who is Seyt?”

“Oh—Tual—Kamye—what have you. I just say it. It’s just bad language. Do you believe in one of them? I’m sorry! I feel like such an oaf with you, Teyeo. Blundering into your soul, invading you— We are invaders, no matter how pacifist and priggish we are—”

“Must I love the whole Ekumen?” he asked, beginning to stroke her breasts, feeling her tremor of desire and his own.

“Yes,” she said, “yes, yes.”

It was curious, Teyeo thought, how little sex changed anything. Everything was the same, a little easier, less embarrassment and inhibition; and there was a certain and lovely source of pleasure for them, when they had enough water and food to have enough vitality to make love. But the only thing that was truly different was something he had no word for. Sex, comfort, tenderness, love, trust, no word was the right word, the whole word. It was utterly intimate, hidden in the mutuality of their bodies, and it changed nothing in their circumstances, nothing in the world, even the tiny wretched world of their imprisonment. They were still trapped. They were getting very tired and were hungry most of the time. They were increasingly afraid of their increasingly desperate captors.

“I will be a lady,” Solly said. “A good girl. Tell me how, Teyeo.”

“I don’t want you to give in,” he said, so fiercely, with tears in his eyes, that she went to him and held him in her arms.

“Hold fast,” he said.

“I will,” she said. But when Kergat or the others came in she was sedate and modest, letting the men talk, keeping her eyes down. He could not bear to see her so, and knew she was right to do so.

The doorlock rattled, the door clashed, bringing him up out of a wretched, thirsty sleep. It was night or very early morning. He and Solly had been sleeping close entangled for the warmth and comfort of it; and seeing Kergat’s face now he was deeply afraid. This was what he had feared, to show, to prove her sexual vulnerability. She was still only half-awake, clinging to him.

Another man had come in. Kergat said nothing. It took Teyeo some time to recognize the second man as Batikam.

When he did, his mind remained quite blank. He managed to say the makil’s name. Nothing else.

“Batikam?” Solly croaked. “Oh, my God!”

“This is an interesting moment,” Batikam said in his warm actor’s voice. He was not transvestite, Teyeo saw, but wore Gatayan men’s clothing. “I meant to rescue you, not to embarrass you, Envoy, Rega. Shall we get on with it?”

Teyeo had scrambled up and was pulling on his filthy trousers. Solly had slept in the ragged pants their captors had given her. They both had kept on their shirts for warmth.

“Did you contact the Embassy, Batikam?” she was asking, her voice shaking, as she pulled on her sandals.

“Oh, yes. I’ve been there and come back, indeed. Sorry it took so long. I don’t think I quite realised your situation here.”

“Kergat has done his best for us,” Teyeo said at once, stiffly.

“I can see that. At considerable risk. I think the risk from now on is low. That is…” He looked straight at Teyeo. “Rega, how do you feel about putting yourself in the hands of Hame?” he said. “Any problems with that?”

“Don’t, Batikam,” Solly said. “Trust him!”

Teyeo tied his shoe, straightened up, and said, “We are all in the hands of the Lord Kamye.”

Batikam laughed, the beautiful full laugh they remembered.

“In the Lord’s hands, then,” he said, and led them out of the room.

In the Arkamye it is said, “To live simply is most complicated.”

Solly requested to stay on Werel, and after a recuperative leave at the seashore was sent as Observer to South Voe Deo. Teyeo went straight home, being informed that his father was very ill. After his father’s death, he asked for indefinite leave from the Embassy Guard, and stayed on the farm with his mother until her death two years later. He and Solly, a continent apart, met only occasionally during those years.

When his mother died, Teyeo freed his family’s assets by act of irrevocable manumission, deeded over their farms to them, sold his now almost valueless property at auction, and went to the capital. He knew Solly was temporarily staying at the Embassy. Old Music told him where to find her. He found her in a small office of the palatial building. She looked older, very elegant. She looked at him with a stricken and yet wary face. She did not come forward to greet or touch him. She said, “Teyeo, I’ve been asked to be the first Ambassador of the Ekumen to Yeowe.”

He stood still.

“Just now—I just came from talking on the ansible with Hain—”

She put her face in her hands. “Oh, my God!” she said.

He said, “My congratulations, truly, Solly.”

She suddenly ran at him, threw her arms around him, and cried, “Oh, Teyeo, and your mother died, I never thought, I’m so sorry, I never, I never do— I thought we could— What are you going to do? Are you going to stay there?”

“I sold it,” he said. He was enduring rather than returning her embrace. “I thought I might return to the service.”

“You sold your farm ? But I never saw it!”

“I never saw where you were born,” he said.

There was a pause. She stood away from him, and they looked at each other.

“You would come?” she said.

“I would,” he said.

Several years after Yeowe entered the Ekumen, Mobile Solly Agat Terwa was sent as an Ekumenical liaison to Terra; later she went from there to Hain, where she served with great distinction as a Stabile. In all her travels and posts she was accompanied by her husband, a Werelian army officer, a very handsome man, as reserved as she was outgoing. People who knew them knew their passionate pride and trust in each other. Solly was perhaps the happier person, rewarded and fulfilled in her work; but Teyeo had no regrets. He had lost his world, but he had held fast to the one noble thing.