Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

The word the Earth Sage uses most frequently is gesi . This word has many different meanings, but mainly it is used to describe what one does not understand. He often says gesi gesi, gesi gesi . He says there is gesi everywhere, and that there are things in the world that not even the Sea Sage and Earth Sage understand.

The day I left Wayo Wayo, the Earth Sage and the Sea Sage, my father — a prophet and a wise man — conducted together the rite of departure. For I am a second son, and second sons represent exploration, eternal immaturity and divine oblation.

I never expected to get grounded on Gesi Gesi, the name I gave to the floating island, meaning a place covered in incomprehensible things. I saw endless gesi gesi there, and even witnessed the formation of an island: black smoke burst forth from the sea, I smelled the reek of sulfur, and lava kept erupting for dozens of alternations of sun and moon. The boiling hot sea sizzled, and volcanic ash flew all around. Then lightning struck down through the clouds, and finally a new island floated above the waves.

In the name of Kabang, I swear: I saw the birth of an island with my own eyes.

I don’t know how much time passed, but Gesi Gesi kept drifting until it neared your island. I discovered someone had landed on the floating island and immediately dove to get away. The sea brought me here to your island, where I was fortunate to meet you, my savior.

In those days I spent drifting around, I kept asking Kabang: Why am I the second son and my brother the elder one? Why should a pair of twins, born into this world only minutes apart, have fates so far apart? When my mother was carrying us, did that not already mean that we were “in this world together?” So where is there any distinguishing between a first and second son? I know there are no answers to these questions, for, as we say on Wayo Wayo, nobody knows where the fish swims in the vastness of the sea before it’s caught upon the hook. I am a second son and have drifted here on Gesi Gesi, and these are things that cannot be changed.

The kid is unlike anyone I’ve ever met. He’s like a character out of a story, or a being from another world. His demeanor is at once novel and quaint. His leg isn’t fully healed, so his mobility is limited. Most of the time he sits quietly on a rock and gazes at the sea in the distance. Sometimes he completely ignores me and falls into a most peculiar state, a combination of sighing, moaning and giggling. It takes me a while to cross the wall of language between us and figure out what he means. Mostly we rely on gestures and expressions to understand one another. I imagine that communicating in this way is always superficial, that what you can actually express to a person who speaks a completely different language is quite limited. I suddenly feel a loneliness more intense than mutual silence.

The kid says he’s from an island called Wayo Wayo. I’m sure he told me why he left his island and drifted here with the Trash Vortex. He seems to think that the Trash Vortex is an island, too, and he calls it Gesi Gesi. But I don’t get his explanation of the meaning of gesi gesi in his language.

Though I concentrate when he talks, I cannot comprehend his speech, so when he tells his stories and gets to the most critical moments, I have to keep leaping great ravines in order to keep up with him.

But when he said, “My name is Atile’i,” I understood him right away.

There was nobody there when I returned to where I’d asked Atile’i to wait for me that day. Just as I was about to give up looking, he suddenly walked out from behind a tree. It was as if he was part of the trunk. That gave me quite a fright! Apparently he was making sure I meant him no harm and that I’d not brought anyone else with me. I almost forgot that he was seriously wounded; even with an injured leg he seemed to have the ability to blend into the wilderness.

He also had an incredible tolerance for pain. I received some nursing training when I was younger and I knew immediately that his ankle might be dislocated, maybe broken in a few places. But when I returned, the dislocated joint had been put back in place. He must have gritted his teeth and readjusted it himself. Initially I was going to give him my arm and help him along all the way to Dahu’s hunting hut, but he insisted on hobbling along on his own. He was like an injured beast, wary of his surroundings. I braced his leg with a makeshift splint and gave him some vitamins to restore his strength and some antibiotics to prevent infection.

Dahu’s hut is really close to a piece of farmland Thom and I purchased. We used to go there on holidays to tend the garden and stay for dinner in the hut. After settling Atile’i in, I made another trip to the seashore to see what shape my house was in.

The sea is totally changed. From a distance it is still blue, or even multihued on account of the garbage. But having spent time with the sea on a daily basis I can feel its emotions. Now the sea seems to be made out of pain and misery.

While having a meal in town I saw that Ming had written a letter to the editor. He described this latest incident as “payback.” “In media reports on the incident,” he wrote, “the island seems to be a victim, as if the island is a person who has been wronged. There’s never any mention of the fact that actually we contributed to the formation of the Trash Vortex. Considering the size of our island we made a pretty big contribution. In the past we avoided paying the inevitable price of development, and let more impoverished regions bear the cost for us, but now it’s payback time: the sea has sent the bill for the interest.”

I went to a hypermart to buy some rations and another, camping-style tent to store in the car. Before I knew it the sky was getting dark. By the time I hurried onto the mountain path I was losing my footing every few steps even with the flashlight. Just when I was starting to panic, a shadow flashed through the trees. My heart skipped a beat, but then I saw the shadow was limping: it was Atile’i. Atile’i turned and walked ahead, never letting himself out of my sight. The kid was showing me the way.

Atile’i’s leg is gradually healing. One day when I was writing at my desk, Atile’i picked up a stone, sitting nonchalantly in the doorway. Suddenly all the muscles in his body tensed up and he hurtled the stone so hard it was like he was throwing part of his own body. He hit a green pigeon. I spent some time explaining to him that I have enough money for food and we don’t have to kill birds, but he didn’t really seem to get it. At night he’s always alert to the symphony of mountain sounds, like a beast lying in wait for prey.

Sometimes he looks off in the distance like he’s listening to the music of the spheres. Sometimes he adopts a strange pose, with his right hand palm up and his left leg slightly bent. I ask him what he’s doing but he doesn’t say a word. It’s like he’s turned himself into a tree.

Much to my amazement Atile’i can imitate the call of any bird near the hut, even ones he’s never seen before. As long as he hears a birdcall seven or eight times he can do such a convincing imitation that he fools even the birds themselves. One time when he was sitting by the path he listened to the call of a crested thrush for all of a minute and imitated it at the top of his lungs, as if he’d turned into a being with a human body and the voice of a crested thrush, a voice that made all the lady crested thrushes fly down like they’d fallen in love with him.

A language that one group of people uses to communicate thoughts and intents sounds to another group like the calls of a screech owl or a muntjac. If we really tried learning birdsong the way we learn French or Russian, taking, say, two classes a day and keeping it up, would we eventually be able to talk with the birds? The very notion makes me all the more determined to learn the language of Wayo Wayo.