Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

“Without the mountain what forest would there be for you to study? The forest is for us to hunt in and revere, not for us to research,” Dahu could imagine his father saying in that booming voice of his.

But as this was a matter of life and death, Dahu set out anyway. Even if something unfortunate should happen to him, doing his duty was more important than respecting the taboos, especially considering his duty on this trip was to Thom … Or maybe he was doing this for Alice. Dahu hollered for Moon and Stone to get on his motorcycle, one sitting on the gas tank up front, the other on the seat behind. Moon and Stone were black Formosan mountain mutts. With a crescent streak on her chest, Moon looked a bit like a Formosan black bear, often called a moon bear, while Stone had a lopsided mouth, because the first time he’d gone hunting his lip had gotten torn by the tusk of a wild boar. No matter how much bigger or stronger the quarry was, Stone would always stand his ground when attacked, never giving an inch. Moon and Stone were Dahu’s loyal companions of the alpine forest grove. But now they too were going in circles in the mountains. Occasionally the two of them would raise their heads, as if the scent of the target they were tracking had floated up into the sky.

Sometimes a person does not know where to go, or how he has ended up where he is. Dahu remembered how he’d decided to move here to Haven over ten years ago. It was all on account of Millet. Dahu had just graduated with a master’s in forest ecology from a respected public university, which was a rare event in the village he came from. Actually, it was unprecedented. “Grad school for the forest, eh? What about fishing? Is there a master’s degree for ‘shooting the gun,’ too?” Dahu’s friends all made fun of him. At the time aboriginal people tended to do native language-related or sociological topics for their degrees, but Dahu was only interested in the forest.

Dahu soon decided he should finish his mandatory military service before starting anything new. One time he and a few fellows from his company got sent into Haven on an errand and started drinking. Then they up and decided to visit one of the “gentlemen’s spas” in front of the train station for a “special massage.” They knew they didn’t really need a massage. What they really needed was what the sign euphemistically referred to as an “essential oil detox.” Dahu noticed his heart was beating faster than usual as he was walking up the dimly lit stairwell, maybe because he was drunk. The stairwell led to a dark hallway with doors that opened on little partitioned rooms. He was with two buddies, and each of them got his own room. About ten minutes later, a girl knocked on the door. “Will I do?” Dahu nodded, without actually having gotten a good look at her.

His friends had explained the general procedure over drinks. “The ‘beautician’ will give you an essential oil massage for about half an hour to an hour, then she’ll tell you to turn over. She’ll dim the light. This is when you get the ‘special therapy.’ When the time comes, don’t be too shy. Just enjoy yourself, eh.”

Lying facedown on the massage table, Dahu was looking through the breathing hole at the toes peeking out of the girl’s high heels. They were exquisite, almost like they’d been specially created. Dahu’s pulse hadn’t slowed a bit. He felt like a sambar deer with a hunter hot on his heels. The girl asked him where he was from, what he did for a living, her manner businesslike, but her voice was so soft he felt he was walking through a pathless wood. While they were chatting, Dahu found out the girl was from Tai-tung, just like him.

But during the “special therapy,” Dahu was so nervous he could not get fully erect. Her back turned, the girl was pumping him up and down with her hand, but Dahu had not ejaculated by the time the bell rang. He hadn’t even touched her. He’d just been looking up at her waist-length hair. From this angle she looked quite young, maybe as young as twenty. But when they got talking about how old they were, the girl was upfront about her age: she was already twenty-eight.

“Baby face.”

“Yeah, baby face.”

“Uh, what’s your name?”

“I’m Millet, Number eight. I do hope to have the opportunity to serve you again soon.” Like a memorized line of a customer-service girl at a telecom company, Dahu thought. This was the first time he’d gotten a good look at her. She had a short purple dress on and quite a few bracelets on her arms. She looked just like a typical young woman on the streets of Taipei. She had a roundish face, not too fleshy. Her nose was somehow stubborn looking. From her skin color, she didn’t look much like an aborigine, but her eyes sure did. Before leaving, Dahu was still peeking down at her toes, which appeared even more bashful now, as if they were sorry they’d walked in. What pretty toes! thought Dahu.

From then on Dahu often drove to Haven on his own. He would go in with his head lowered and tell the manager, “Number eight, Millet.” Gradually the two of them were getting familiar, and sometimes Millet would go out with Dahu for a midnight snack. She’d complain to him if she had a bad customer. She told him some fellows would demand a discount if they hadn’t been able to “shoot.” “The matchmaker can’t promise a son, am I right?” said Millet in not very correct Taiwanese as she got out a cigarette. “There ain’t no sure things in life.” Her skin was a lot lighter now, maybe from working indoors for so long.

Millet usually did the night shift from eight till six and caught up on sleep during the day. Dahu originally planned to apply for a position in a research institute and study the Bunun relationship to the forest, but later he decided to return to his home village for a stint as a substitute elementary teacher. Who’d have thought he’d up and decide to move to Haven and drive a taxi, just to be able to see Millet more often? It made perfect sense for him to go pick Millet up after work, waiting at the entrance of the spa at six every morning.

At first Millet refused to go to bed with him. All the senior girls had warned her never to fall for a customer. “Unless you’re sure it’s just a fling, just don’t go to bed with him. If you do, you can wail and moan all you want, but all you gonna hear is I-told-you-so,” said Ling, an older girl who’d taken Millet under her wing. Ling had gone into the business to raise her two kids after the sudden death of her husband due to a drug overdose. She would turn the light down while servicing customers, and would never look at them.

But as the days wore on, Millet couldn’t help letting Dahu into her heart. He was a good listener, never groped her, and came almost every day to pick her up after work. Millet gave Dahu her cell number and a key to her studio apartment near the spa. The past few years of Millet’s life had been spent helping her mother pay back her father’s debts. She divided her time between her apartment and the “office.” Sometimes Dahu would bring home lunch and quietly watch Millet while she caught up on sleep. Dahu felt that Millet, false eyelashes removed, became herself again, the girl with the nearly perfect, seeming freshly sprouted toes, the only part of Millet he’d been able to see through the breathing hole in the massage table.

Dahu drove the taxi, but he still missed the mountains, so he started to meet some other climbing enthusiasts and joined a search and rescue team. When there was an emergency in the mountains, Dahu would drive the taxi up and participate in the rescue operation. With his rich knowledge of mountains and forests, Dahu soon had quite a reputation. He helped avert a number of alpine tragedies. There were people from all walks of life on the team: tour guides, junior high school teachers, and a steak vendor and tonic hawker from the night market. Once the call to assemble went out, they would all drop whatever they were doing and gather to form the team. In their leisure time, they became climbing buddies. Many of them were mountaineering legends in their own right. Some were Han Chinese, some aboriginal — Pangcah and Amis, Bunun, Sakizaya and Truku. They shared a love for the mountains. None of them was willing to give up the mountains for all the money in the world.