Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

“Why did they start talking so much later on?”

“Well, life was actually really hard in the old village deep in the mountains. People were too busy hunting and planting. They didn’t like to dance much, actually, but sometimes they sang. Nobody recorded their songs, though. One day a boy and a girl went up the mountain to do some work. In fact, they’d been secretly in love for a long time. They felt so happy to have the chance to go into the mountains together that they started taking turns singing songs they made up themselves. Well, they came to a stream, and over that stream was a log bridge. It was real narrow, but they still tried to cross it together. Unfortunately, maybe the boy wasn’t paying enough attention or maybe the girl wasn’t paying enough attention. Probably thinking about something else, eh? Whatever the reason, while they were crossing the girl fell off the log. The boy tried to save her, and he fell into the stream, too.”

“Did they die?”

“It wasn’t like dying, Dahu. You must understand that sometimes people aren’t alive, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve died. That’s the way it was for this couple, and they became the voice of the stream.”

People aren’t alive, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve died? Dahu didn’t get it.

“Folks say that from then on, the stream would always make a whispering sound. Listen, doesn’t it sound nice? Later, when Bunun people hunted or worked on the land, they would sometimes, often or always listen to the sound of the stream for a long time. Later some Bunun folks imitated that sound, and that’s how pisus-lig (harmony) came to be.”

Dahu’s father was a good singer and hunter, but a failure in life on the plains. He often got depressed, lost control of himself, and got into fights with guys at the factory over little things. So on holidays he liked to take the gun and face the wild boar up in the mountains and reminisce about the glory and the terror of the Bunun hunters of old. Dahu would always remember the look in his father’s eyes the first time he took him on a group hunting expedition. The dogs were tracking the prey, and Father was directing the hunters to form a ring around it. Dahu’s sweat kept dripping into his eyes, so much he could barely see the path. He had to rely more on hearing and intuition to scramble to his own position. There were gunshots all around him, which sounded like birds above the forest, flying, circling and sometimes leaving without a backward glance.

Dahu wanted to sing, but there wasn’t anyone to sing along with him, and after a few phrases the feeling just wasn’t right. He took out some jerky for Moon and Stone and picked some watercress for himself to raise his spirits. He washed it down with tea. In the forest, Moon and Stone were family. He thought it over and decided he should make camp a bit higher this evening. There shouldn’t be any danger of a landslide at the place he had in mind, and it was close to water. He looked over at Moon and Stone and said, “Oh forget it, let’s have a good night’s sleep and keep looking tomorrow. Even the moon needs to take a rest. Isn’t that right?”

Dahu looked up at the sky, the stars and the trees, thinking of the time when a village elder had told him, “You must often speak to the sky, the stars, the clouds and the forest, because they may be avatars of Dihanin (the host of spirits). If you don’t speak to them, Hanito (evil spirits) will descend upon you when you’re alone.” Dahu wanted to speak to them but did not know what to say.

Nearby there was the dog-like barking of a muntjac and the buzzing and chirping of a chorus of insects. Some drab owlet moths appeared out of nowhere and started crawling around on his night light. A while later Dahu discovered that more moths had gathered, lots of them. Some were giant moths like the ones he’d often seen as a child. He’d heard a climbing buddy who knew a lot about insects call them emperor moths. There was another pale turquoise-colored moth with a long beautiful tail called an Indian Luna. And there were still other moths with eyespots on their wings, like innumerable eyes staring at him. Moths like that were usually giant silkworm moths. They don’t fly around much, just stick quietly to tree trunks, like they’re part of the bark.

Suddenly Dahu felt faint, far-off shadows drawing slowly near. He looked up, hoping to see more clearly, only to find it was raining. Every thread of rain was glowing, as if the moon itself had turned to rain, like the moon was falling all around him.

Hafay always felt her best cleaning up the Seventh Sisid first thing in the morning. The aromatic melange of seawater outside and sea-grass mats and wooden chairs inside was reminiscent of the smell of cookies, and this rather childish odor allowed Hafay to forget her cares for a while.

On the first Sunday in July, Hafay saw a couple of new faces in the Seventh Sisid. A man and a woman came in right when Hafay opened, sat at the Lighthouse table, set up a camera, and didn’t move the whole morning. The man wore a cameraman’s vest that was literally covered in pockets and a huge backpack; he was big and strong, and had dark skin, a buzz cut, and single-fold eyelids. He looked like the kind of guy who likes working out and pays attention to detail. The woman was skinny, and with heavy eye makeup that made her face seem a bit unreal. And she was wearing silver high heels, in a place like this! She seemed made for TV. Well, I guess, Hafay admitted grudgingly, she is beautiful, but just barely.

The woman had turned on her tablet right after sitting down and had been staring at the screen ever since, like she wanted to avoid looking at her partner. He had set up a telescope and a professional video camera, with a sticker deliberately covering the brand name. Hafay only needed one look to know they were definitely not there for the bird-watching. A few friends of hers who often went bird-watching had mentioned that, what with upstream factories diverting water into their weirs and discharging waste into the river, over the past few years the fish population at the estuary had collapsed and the birding had even gone to hell at the river mouth. Besides, looking out from the Lighthouse today there weren’t any birds at all, only a gray expanse.

“Here on holidays?”

“No, we’re here on business. Our job today is watching the sea,” the man said.

“Well, I’ve been here watching the sea for many years now, and it’s really not a simple thing. Please take your time,” Hafay joked. Maybe they were here to do a story on Alice’s house. The past couple of years really quite a few of these media people had made the trip. She turned on the stereo and put in a CD from a long time ago. It was the aboriginal singer Panai’s song “Maybe Someday.” Panai was really popular with young people at the time, and one time Hafay heard Panai sing live at the seashore. It was so intense. To Hafay it seemed that though Panai was trying to be laid-back when she sang this song, there was this heavy vibe, as if maybe someday would never come.

Maybe someday, you too will want to leave this bustling town behind.

Maybe someday, you too will want to see that childhood place you keep in mind ,

“a place like Heaven,” Mama would say … maybe someday .

The man ordered the daily special. Hafay called today’s special Three Hearts, because she made it out of screwpine hearts, silvergrass hearts and shellflower hearts. She had gathered the vegetables the day before. For the main course you could choose wild boar shank or steamed fish. The man came over to the cashier and presented his name card. As she expected, he was a videojournalist for some TV channel, and the woman was an on-location correspondent.