Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

Occasionally, the people went hungry, the weather was too rough, or two of the villages would come into conflict; but no matter how he spent his days, everyone was skilled at telling diverse stories of the sea. People told tales at meals, when they met, at rituals, and when making love. They even told them in their sleep. A complete record had never been made, but many years later anthropologists might know that the islanders had the greatest number of sea sagas of any people on Earth. “Let me tell you a story of the sea” was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. They did not ask how old people were, but simply grew tall like trees and stuck out their organs of increase like flowers. Like the obstinate clam they just passed the time. Like a sea turtle each islander died with the curl of a smile at the corner of his mouth. They were all old souls, older than they appeared, and because they spent their lives staring at the sea they all had melancholy miens and tended to get cataracts and go blind in old age. When they were ready to go, old folks would ask the youngsters by the bed, “What’s the weather out at sea like now?” People believed that dying while gazing at the sea was the grace of Kabang. Their lifelong dream was to arrive at the moment of death with an image of the ocean in the ocean of the mind.

When a boy was born, his father would select a tree for him and carve a notch for each resurrection of the moon. When there were a hundred and eighty notches, the boy had to build a talawaka of his very own. Years before, the anthropologist S. Percy Smith had described the talawaka as a “canoe.” Actually, it was more like a grass boat. The island was too small to have enough trees with trunks thick enough to be made into canoes. Students of anthropological history smile at Smith’s mistake, but nobody would laugh at him, as anyone who saw a talawaka would assume it was a dugout canoe. A talawaka was made by weaving sticks, rattan stems and three or four different kinds of silver grass together to form a frame and applying three coatings of plant pulp. Peat from the bog was used to plug any remaining cracks, and the craft was waterproofed with sap. A finished talawaka really did look like a finely finished canoe made by hollowing out the trunk of a sturdy tree.

The finest and sturdiest talawaka on the island was made by a youth named Atile’i. Atile’i’s face had the typical traits of his people: a flat nose, profound eyes, shining skin, a sad, slouching spine and arrow-like limbs.

“Atile’i, don’t sit there, the sea fiends will see you!” hollered a passing elder upon seeing Atile’i sitting by the shore.

Once, like everyone else, Atile’i thought that the whole world was but a single island drifting on the sea like a hollow clamshell in a tub of water.

Having learned the art of talawaka construction from his father, Atile’i was praised as the most skilled talawaka -maker among the island youth, even more skilled than his elder brother Nale’ida. Though young, Atile’i had the physique of a fish and could catch three ghostheads on a single breath. Every girl on the island pined for Atile’i and hoped that one day he would waylay her, throw her over his shoulder and carry her off into a clump of grass. Three full moons later, she would discreetly inform Atile’i that she was with child. Then she would go home, act normal, and wait for Atile’i to arrive with a whalebone knife and a marriage proposal. Maybe that’s what the most beautiful girl on the island, Rasula, was hoping for, too.

“Atile’i has the fate of a second son. What good is a second son who can dive? Atile’i is destined for the Sea God, not for Wayo Wayo.” Atile’i’s mother often complained in this vein, and people would nod knowingly, understanding that raising an outstanding second son was the most painful thing in the world for any parent. Atile’i’s mother grumbled day and night, her thick lips trembling, as if the more she bemoaned her son’s fate the greater his chance of avoiding it might be.

Unless an eldest son died young, the second son seldom married and went on to become an “old man of the sea.” Upon reaching his one hundred and eightieth full moon, he would be sent out to sea on a mission of no return. He could take no more than ten days’ worth of water and was not allowed to look back. Hence the saying, “Let’s just wait until your second son returns,” which simply meant, “Perish the thought.”

With flashing eyelashes and sparkling skin, covered in crystals of salt, Atile’i looked like the son of the Sea God. Tomorrow he would brave the waves in his talawaka . He climbed the highest reef-rock on the island and gazed down at the distant swells, at the white creases in the fabric of the sea. The seabirds flying along the shore reminded him of Rasula, who was as nimble as the shadow of a bird in flight. And like a shore pounded by the waves for many eons, his heart, he felt, was about to break.

According to custom, Atile’i’s admirers laid ambush at dusk. Atile’i had only to wander past a clump of grass and some young maiden would accost him. Every time he hoped the girl in the grass would be Rasula, but Rasula never appeared. Atile’i made love over and over again to the girls in the grass, for this was the last chance he had to father a child and leave some small part of himself behind on the island. In fact, as a matter of propriety and morality, he could not refuse their propositions: the girls of Wayo Wayo could ambush a second son on the night before he went to sea. Atile’i broke his back making love to the girls in the thickets, taking no pleasure, intent only on nearing Rasula’s place before dawn. He had a feeling he would meet her there. Each girl along the way sensed that once inside her Atile’i was in a rush to leave. Hurt, they all asked, “Atile’i, why don’t you love me?”

“You know that people can’t pit their hearts against the sea.”

Atile’i finally made it with pale fishbelly dawn on the horizon. A pair of hands appeared from inside the grass and lightly drew him in. Shivering like a seabird ducking beside a boulder to dodge a flash of lightning, Atile’i could barely get an erection, not because he was exhausted but because the look in Rasula’s eyes was like a jellyfish’s sting.

“Atile’i, why don’t you love me?”

“Who says I don’t love you? But you know no man can pit his heart against the sea.”

They cuddled for a long while. Eyes closed, Atile’i felt like he was hanging in thin air, gazing down upon the open ocean. He gradually became aroused, tried to force himself to forget that soon he would go to sea, wanting only to feel the warmth inside Rasula’s body. At dawn, the villagers would all go down to the shore to see Atile’i off. Except for the Sea Sage and the Earth Sage, nobody would have noticed that all through the night departed spirits of second sons had been coming home. They all wanted to ride with the youth whose skin sparkled like the son of the Sea as he piloted the talawaka he had fashioned himself, carrying a “speaking flute,” a final gift from Rasula, as he rowed away to the fate he shared with them, each one, the fate of every Wayo Wayoan second son.

Alice Shih got up early one morning and decided to kill herself.

Actually, she had mostly made all the necessary preparations. Or perhaps one should say now nothing stood in her way: there wasn’t anything she wanted to leave anybody, and she did not have much of an estate. She was simply someone who wanted to die.

But Alice was an obstinate person. She cared about all the people she cared about. There weren’t many left, her son Toto and the students who had entrusted her with their hopes and dreams. Once Alice had known what she would need. Now nothing was clear.