Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

From seeing each other to living together to getting married, Alice knew that Thom had pushed himself to the limit for her sake. But she was unwilling to admit defeat and let him go. One time she really thought Thom wasn’t coming back. Toto had come down with a cold, and as soon as he got better Thom told her he was preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Alice did not say anything the entire day. When they were drying the dinner dishes Thom leaned over and asked: “Are you angry?”

“No. What’s there to be angry about?”

“I know you’re angry. The Umbwe Route isn’t that difficult. We’ll have a professional guide.”

“It has nothing to do with the difficulty or whether you’ve got a guide or not. Don’t you get it?” Alice’s tone suddenly hardened.

“I guess I just don’t fucking get it!”

“If you don’t get it you don’t get it. Whatever you want, Thom! Go do whatever you fucking want!”

Alice knew that she was being unreasonable, but she had a good reason, though for now she did not have the courage to confront it. For a while after Thom left, Alice thought: This is it, he’s gone for good. He’ll continue his adventures on seas, on slopes and in beds far away from her. Two weeks later Alice received a picture postcard from Thom of a glacier on Mount Kilimanjaro. The handwriting on the back was so finely penned it seemed to be printed in some old-style English font. In writing, Thom was always affectionate, never angry:

Without you my life would be nothing but a grim expanse of ice, frigid, flat and gray. On days without you near me I’m as haplessly muddled as a butterfly released into an alien realm, feebly flapping its wings among unfamiliar plants at the wrong height .

The last few lines were so Nabokov. Ah, but that was Thom. Toto and what remained of their love had been spun into a fragile thread, the only remaining tie between them. Thom did come back in the end. But if the conversation turned away from Toto, the two of them turned into silent snipers, each returning to his or her own trench. Sometimes Alice thought that she should have let it be, let him leave long before. How could such a man belong to her?

Toto and Thom had been out of contact for two days, but Alice still had not thought to call the police. It didn’t occur to her that there might have been an accident. She assumed maybe Thom was just trying to avoid her. To do so, he might not scruple to conceive a crude missing person plot, and might even take her Toto away with him.

This suspicion only disappeared when Dahu found Thom’s body. Thom’s death gave her mourning an outlet, but also caused her soul, which she had been propping up with hate for many days, to collapse. Thom had always been this person in her life who might disappear at any moment; Alice had been preparing herself for the worst all that time. But what about Toto? Why was there still no sign of him?

Dahu, the rescue team and the coroner all supposed Thom must have fallen off the cliff and died. He had comminuted fractures all over his body. But the route on which they discovered Thom’s body was totally different from the one he had registered at the backcountry office. The placement of the body did not really make sense, either. It was as if someone had dragged him into the secluded rock house at the base of the cliff. Or had the force of impact caused his body to ricochet right into the shelter? And was this the reason he’d eluded discovery?

Alice listened as Dahu discussed what might have happened with some other climbing buddies. She couldn’t understand why they didn’t mention Toto. Toto still hadn’t been found, not even his backpack, but they didn’t seem at all concerned. Of the two people in the world who cared about Toto, one was gone, leaving her all alone. She lifted the shroud, took a look at the shrunken corpse hidden beneath, and signed the cremation authorization form without hesitation. She sprinkled Thom’s ashes in the water in front of the Sea House. Alice never thought to inform his family, because Thom had simply never given her their contact information; he hadn’t even told his parents when Toto was born. Which made her suspect that Thom had been alone in the world all along; maybe he remained alone right to the end. How she once loved his body, and the spirit it contained. Now all that remained of him was ashes and dust.

One night, Alice asked Atile’i about funerals on Wayo Wayo.

Atile’i said that Wayo Wayoan funerals are usually held late at night, because the islanders believe that with the approach of day, the spirits follow the stars and fade away. The deceased is carried alone in a little boat toward the edge of the waters around Wayo Wayo. There is a boundary the living can never cross, not even when fishing, because of a powerful undercurrent. The relatives of the deceased ride in two boats, one to the left and one to the right, to steady the spirit craft. When they near the current that will carry the deceased off, the Sea Sage chants the psalm of farewell. If they see lights flickering in the distance it is time to let go. Then the craft departs, never to return, while the relatives of the departed sing heartily as they row back. If they do not get the timing right, the craft will sometimes turn round and they will, however reluctantly, have to throw stones at it to sink it. Otherwise the spirit of the dead will never rest in peace.

“You sing? You mean singing? Like this?” Alice hummed the first melody that came into her head.

“Yes, singing.”

“Did you ever ask why you do that?”

“Because it’s good for the deceased.”

“Why is it for the good of the deceased?”

“Because our ancestors want us to sing.”

“Is whatever the ancestors want you to do necessarily good?”

“Whatever the ancestors want us to do is necessarily good.”

“I see,” Alice said, perfunctorily. She suddenly realized that the melody she had just hummed was from a song Thom had sung for her in the campground in Copenhagen.

“You see.” Atile’i fell silent a few moments, as if lost in thought. Then he said, “May the Sea bless you.”

She had just decided to follow the route that they’d taken together, father and son. No doubt this youth standing in front of her would be an ideal helper and companion on her quest. She wanted to make the trip to the place where Thom died and Toto went missing, to see for herself, once and for all, what it was like and how she would feel when she got there. “Can I hear that again?” Atile’i asked.

“What?”

“The song. You were just singing.”

Nobody has ever seen the forest he now beholds, like a forest in a novel that has grown into a real wood. This is not to say that the forest is not immense, peaceful, dark and deep. It is indeed immense, peaceful, dark and deep, just a bit unreal.

The man, blond-haired and big-boned, looks back and encourages the boy behind him, saying, “We’ll be fine. I know a path to the big cliff over there. I’ve climbed it many times. It’s fantastic there, really incredible. You’ll know what I mean after you climb it: everything looks different from up there. I’ve even seen long-armed scarabs up there.”

Long-armed scarabs. This time I have to see them for myself, the gray-haired little boy thinks to himself. The man is carrying all the equipment so the boy can keep up. The boy’s skin is fair, his eyes enchanting — brown at first sight but almost blue from a certain angle. He is a tight-lipped, determined little boy. The boy has not called for a stop for over four hours since breaking camp this morning. The man has been making a point of helping the boy regulate his breathing and pace himself as they march in single file along an almost unmarked trail. If the boy stops walking the man senses it immediately.