Hanya Yanagihara - The People in the Trees

“Sixty,” murmured Tallent.

“I could be wrong,” I added quickly.

“No,” said Tallent. “I think you’re probably right. Sixty, though. That makes me wonder.” But he said nothing more, and after waiting for a while for him to continue, Esme mumbled something about getting ready for bed, and I went with her to lay out our mats, leaving Tallent to sit and think his private thoughts, the nature of which I could only try and try to envision.

The average U’ivuan woman is fifty-three inches tall, the average U’ivuan man fifty-six. The average U’ivuan family has four children. U’ivuans are stocky and blocky. They have wide feet (which make them good swimmers), long thighs (which make them good trekkers), thick arms (which make them good throwers), and small, square hands. The women, like all women in tropical climates, begin menstruating early (as early as eight, though usually around ten) and are finished with menopause by forty. As a race, they are known for their excellent auditory sense and their exceptional sense of smell. They are prone to tooth decay. The primary cause of death among both men and women is dysentery, probably from their habit of drinking the same water in which they bathe. The average age of death is fifty-two. 29

Of course, I did not know any of this when I examined Eve. So the next morning, when Tallent asked me to examine the three men as a sort of imperfect control group, I thought nothing of it. I suppose what was surprising to me was how similar — superficially, at least (though superficiality was all I had) — they were to Eve: the state of their gums, for example, their general flexibility, their good hearing and quick reflexes. They submitted to my exams tolerantly, opening their mouths obediently when I opened mine, taking deep breaths as I pantomimed filling my own chest with air. I even improvised a vision test, in which I drew thick black marks on sheets of notebook paper and then stood about twenty feet away; the men showed me by holding up their fingers how many marks were on the page.

“How are the men?” Tallent asked me that night.

“In good health,” I answered lamely.

“How old do you estimate them to be?” he asked mildly.

“Eve’s age,” I replied. I was very certain about this. “Sixty, give or take. Tu is perhaps a few years younger; his teeth are a little less worn, his vision a little sharper.” I did not add that the vision test had surprised me; all three men’s results were poor, poorer than I had anticipated. At first I thought that they had not understood the test, but when I stepped closer to them, it became clear that they knew what they were to do — they were simply incapable of doing it.

“Ah,” said Tallent, and was silent for a bit. “You’re right about Tu — he is younger than the others.” He paused again. “Tu is forty, Uva just turned forty-one, and Fa’a is forty-two.” He said this without triumph, only a sad kind of wonderment.

Then it was I who had nothing to say. “But … they can’t be,” I said uselessly.

Tallent smiled his brief, melancholy smile. “They’re elders in this country,” he said. “They are what forty-year-olds look like here. The question is”—and he nodded in Eve’s direction—“why a sixty-year-old looks like a forty-year-old.”

“Well,” I admitted, “then there’s a simple explanation. I’m wrong. She’s not sixty. She must be closer to their age.”

“I don’t think so,” said Tallent, and he called over to Fa’a, who, once he saw where Tallent was heading, came only reluctantly. All of the guides avoided Eve, but Fa’a perhaps most assiduously. He stopped a few feet short of her, and when Tallent pushed aside her fat beaver’s tail of matted hair to show him the mark, he craned his neck forward, lifting his heels and lowering his torso like a crane rather than taking one step closer to her.

But when he saw the tattoo, his reaction was immediate. For a moment he froze in that strange stance, his hands still held behind his back in a parody of an English gentleman, and then slowly moved closer to her. As Tallent had that first time, he let his fingertips just hover over the mark and then jerked them away as if he’d been burned. His jabberings to Tallent sounded furious, and although I could not understand his words, I could guess at their meaning— What is this? Is this a joke? — and, through Tallent’s soothing, low tones, his reply as well— No, it’s not a joke. Be calm. Be calm . (Even all these days and conversations later, U’ivuan still sounded to me like a blur of glottal stops and aggressive u ’s chopped up by the same three or four graceless consonants. Many years later, in Maryland, I would stand on a playground watching some of my newly arrived sons and daughters be taunted by the neighborhood children, who would scoop their hands under their arms, chasing after them and making noises like cartoon gorillas—“Oo-oo-ah-ah! Koo-oo-ka-ah!”—and would not be able to stop myself from agreeing with their interpretation.)

Fa’a stamped off; he and Tallent seemed not to have resolved their argument.

“Why is he so upset?” I asked.

Tallent sighed. “He recognized Eve’s mark,” he said, pointing at Eve, who was now lowering herself to the earth with a series of hoggy grunts, “as I knew he would. The mark of the opa’ivu’eke is given only to those who reach the age of sixty. It is given in a special ceremony, which is followed by a great feast.” He was quiet. “I have never witnessed it myself.”

I didn’t understand. “But why would that agitate him?”

“Because U’ivuans don’t live to be sixty.”

“ Ever? ”

“Fa’a doesn’t know of anyone. His great-grandmother, the longest-lived person in the known history of his village — that’s what he kept repeating, over and over — was fifty-eight when she died. He has never heard of anyone who has lived to sixty. It is an impossible age, and a coveted one. So you’re right, Norton. Eve is sixty — at least — and we need to figure out why, and how, she has lived this long.”

Esme arrived then, back from the stream, and Tallent told her of what had happened. I sat near them, half listening, but really I was looking at Fa’a, who was standing slightly apart from his cousins (who, as Tallent had predicted, were greedily devouring their salted vuakas, moaning with delight and relish) and looking up into the forest beyond. And suddenly, watching these short-lived creatures eating another short-lived creature, all of them spending their days searching only for a taste of something delicious, the jungle seemed a very sad place to me, and I longed to urge Fa’a to enjoy his vuaka while he could; he was forty-two, after all, and would surely not return to this island. But instead I only watched the three of them as if they were figures in a diorama, while in low voices behind me Tallent and Esme puzzled over how an Ivu’ivuan could have possibly reached the ancient age of sixty.

The forest was as Tallent had described it — hushed and mossy and magical — and in it I could feel both its lull and its danger: it was dangerous because it lulled.

I knew the forest was having its effect because of the way the guides’ behavior changed around Eve. They weren’t exactly friendly or casual — I could still see their small fingers tighten almost imperceptibly around their spears when they drew closer to her — but they talked to her in U’ivuan, and sometimes even reached out to stroke her skin, a gentle skimming pet of a touch, never lingering, never with any pressure.