Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

“Anthropomorphic? Why can’t we be anthropomorphic?” Sara laughed, causing Detlef’s heart to tighten.

“You sound more a poet than a scientist.”

“I am a poet, as well as a scientist,” Sara said. “But I enjoy being a poet more.”

Sara’s ear, like a shy little animal hiding in a thicket, peeked through her fiery hair.

The car was nearing the end of the tunnel. They passed the last mural design and distance marker. With “1 km” to go, there was already light beaming into the tunnel in the distance.

“It’s incredible! To think that we could tunnel through such a mountain,” said Detlef.

“Yeah,” said Jung-hsiang Li. Detlef couldn’t tell whether there was pride in his voice, or some other emotion. “You remember that time I went to pick you up in the car and told you I’d just gotten married? Now my eldest daughter is already married with children.”

“Fifteen years just to dig this one tunnel,” said Detlef. “Seriously, do you think fifteen years was worth it to shave an hour off the trip for all these people all these years?”

“Was it worth it? I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. My job is to dig, not to assess whether it’s worth it or not.”

“But now the heart of the mountain has been hollowed out,” Sara said.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s not important,” said Sara. “I was just thinking that it was such a beautiful mountain and now its heart is hollow.” They were now using ambient lighting in the tunnel. Lighting technology had improved by leaps and bounds the past couple of years, and the retrofit had only been completed the previous year. It now looked like there was a series of skylights on the ceiling of the tunnel spilling natural light down from heaven the whole way. The moment the car left the tunnel, the natural light took over. The weather when they’d entered was fair, so they didn’t expect an overcast sky when they came out the other side.

Then, in an almost imperceptible voice, Jung-hsiang Li said, “To my elder brother it was most definitely not worth it.” Jung-hsiang had mentioned his brother’s passing. What he had not said was that two of his brother’s colleagues were buried during one drill and blast, crushed to death in a shower of rock. Jung-chin had escaped death, but he couldn’t shake depression. They were his friends. From then on he just went through the motions, working like a machine. One day after the road went through, the neighbors discovered he’d committed suicide. He’d hermetically sealed every crack in the room and left the gas on. It was like a cave inside.

“Actually, this is only the second time I’ve been through this tunnel since it opened,” Jung-hsiang Li said, matter-of-factly, looking in the rear-view mirror, as if he had just seen his brother’s face.

“Get ready for a view of the sea.”

Atile’i drank from the cup Alice offered him and said, “This water tastes of scorched earth.”

Alice could not understand what he was saying, but assuming he was asking the name of the beverage, she said, “It’s called coffee. This is salama coffee, Hafay’s signature blend. I learned how to make it from her.”

Communication proceeded slowly. They had to go back to square one to relearn how to refer to everything. There were new things, and new names for old things. It was difficult for both Alice and Atile’i. But Alice realized that there can gradually be dialogue, even between languages that are quite far apart. Sometimes one doesn’t have to use language as it’s commonly defined. For instance, Atile’i would use his speaking flute to help him express himself or his emotions when Alice didn’t understand what he meant. Atile’i would play the flute with feeling and Alice would understand immediately. One time Atile’i was describing the beauty of his lover Rasula, “so beautiful that she can soothe anyone’s salikaba ,” but Alice could not figure out what he meant until he played a short melody on the flute, utterly absorbed. “So beautiful that she can soothe anyone’s soul, right? Salikaba means soul, doesn’t it?” As if that was just what Atile’i, playing on the speaking flute, had said.

Ten days earlier, Alice would have doubted the reliability of flutesong translation, but now she would say, “I can understand almost everything Atile’i’s trying to say with the speaking flute.” It was like an interlanguage between them, helping familiarize them with basic words, like “salikaba” and “soul,” and rules of usage. It was like some little elf that would fly over and whisper what Atile’i wanted to say in her ear.

Atile’i treasured his speaking flute because it was a gift from Rasula. The kiki’a wine she’d made was gone, but he hadn’t lost the speaking flute, because he’d used a fine rope to hang it around his neck. The flute was wooden and about ten centimeters long. It was played horizontally like a transverse flute, except that the finger holes were in two parallel rows. The body of the instrument was so small that Atile’i could almost play it without his hands, by holding it in his mouth.

Maybe because Alice had a gift for languages, she could understand at least thirty, maybe forty, percent of what Atile’i was saying. Of course, “speaking” was still difficult, for the two languages were totally different phonetically. Alice slowly went from using her own language exclusively to being able to mix in some Wayo Wayoan words, which Atile’i found reassuring. It wasn’t like he needed to be reassured about Alice. He knew from the beginning that this woman meant him no harm. This was just the consolation of language. After all, he had once thought he might die here, in a world full of bizarre and unfamiliar things, without ever hearing another person speak his native tongue again. Being able to hear someone speak broken Wayo Wayoan now made him very happy.

Sometimes it was hard to tell from his expression alone whether or not Atile’i was listening or understanding. He often looked off into the distance muttering something to himself. Later she understood that the mantra he kept repeating meant, “The fish will always come.”

The fish will always come, as will the rain. The average rainfall seemed to be increasing, and it was falling more and more violently with each passing year. Alice was especially inclined to think of Toto on rainy days or when she saw a faraway look in Atile’i’s eyes. Atile’i appeared to be five or six years older than Toto, because he said he had lived through a hundred and eighty moons before going to sea. Though it was hard to know how long he had spent at sea, there was still something childish in the expressions that he wore on his weathered dark-brown face.

Apart from Ohiyo, Alice had finally found someone she was willing to open up to about how much she missed Toto. Perhaps it was because Atile’i wouldn’t understand the details of what she was saying that Alice felt more free to speak her mind. Even though they would never admit it, the people around Alice had all gone from sympathetic and patient to bored and sick and tired of hearing her talk about Toto. The very sight of her put people on alert. Oh no, here she comes again, they seemed to say to themselves.

Language might increase the distance of a story, making it seem even further away, but Atile’i was sensitive enough to realize that Alice really missed her son. That was the way it was, no doubt about it. He didn’t have to understand her story to intuit how she felt. When Alice mentioned for the umpteenth time what it had been like with Toto around, Atile’i recalled something the Sea Sage had once said and related it to Alice: “Ind’e kasi ka mona’e lulala, i’a sudoma.”