Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

So far the boy has stopped three times along the way, because he is constantly checking for scat along the trail, and for scarab beetles feasting on the scat. If he sees any movement he stops, picks out the beetles and puts them in a ventilated jar, without using chemical agents to put the insects under. He just tightens the twist top lid. “Wait in here a bit.” The boy taps the jar, not actually opening his mouth but adopting a benign expression apparently intended to reassure the beetles. “Don’t be afraid, I mean you no harm.” But obviously the scarab he has just caught doesn’t understand. Seemingly bewildered, it flails its three pairs of legs, trying to climb up the side of the jar only to slide back down again.

The man and the boy start sweating. The forest is dark and extremely still. It is a deep-toned stillness. The two of them share the sound of one another’s breathing. Just when the boy feels maybe they should rest a bit, the forest comes to an abrupt end and his eyes light up, as if someone has just flipped the sunlight switch.

As soon as the boy and the man see the cliff off to the one side, they immediately feel that the forest just now has been as real as real can be, and that the immense rock wall they now confront is fantasy. The man has seen so many of the world’s wonders, and has climbed this cliff face before, but he is still deeply moved by it. He enjoys this feeling most of all, the feeling of awe inspired by a certain anticipated scene. Meanwhile, the boy is thinking that the insects in his jar once lived at a place like this. He does not have too many adjectives in his vocabulary yet. He notices his heart is pounding, and that he feels giddy.

“Isn’t it great?” the man says to the boy. The boy does not respond. He is too thrilled to know how to respond, and at the same time starts to doubt himself.

“This cliff wasn’t here originally. It was only because of an earthquake that the mountain allowed the cliff to appear.” The man sees that the boy is wavering. “When I was ten years old, your grandfather took me free diving. You know, in the ocean, without a scuba tank, and he told me, only if you go to places nobody’s ever been can you see the colors nobody’s ever seen.” The boy nods, though he does not completely understand what this means.

The man has not left the island this whole year. When he’s found himself at a loose end he has taken the boy to the practice climbing wall. He’s seen what a quick study the boy is indoors, and everyone who’s seen him outdoors has been amazed. It’s like the kid was born with a rock climbing certification. Every time someone praises the boy the man is thrilled, as if he himself has been praised, and maybe this is why many people who know the man feel he is an oversized kid himself. The man surveys the cliff, looks for a new route. This is his custom, never to climb the same wall in the same way twice . Even when he brings his son who has just turned ten along with him.

The boy starts to get out his equipment, arranging his things one by one. He puts on his climbing shoes, safety rope and helmet. The man traces out the route in his mind, takes a deep breath and finds the first toehold.

“I lead and you belay, all right? Watch where I climb. I’ll keep my movements small, and choose rocks you’re able to reach. Got it?”

The boy nods and asks, “Will the long-armed scarab be able to climb up, too?”

Surprised by the question the boy had sprung upon him, the man thinks it over and says, “Of course.”

While the boy waits below, the man ascends slowly, finding the route in the pattern of the rock. He uses rock wedges to make anchors, clips a quickdraw onto each anchor, and hangs the lead rope into the quickdraw as a belay, all the while looking down to check up on the boy, who is craning his neck, trying to trace the route the man is taking. Then the boy starts climbing. Faintly feeling the boy’s weight on the rope, the man has a wonderful sense of well-being.

“No problem, you can do it,” the man says quietly, as if he’s afraid to startle the cliff itself. The boy sometimes looks up at the vertical path shining above him, and at other times he looks at the cliff face all around him. He finds himself in an alien realm. He is on the verge of tears, though not because he is afraid. No, this seems like a completely new kind of crying the boy has never experienced before.

They finally make it to the top as dusk approaches. The man and the boy yawp euphorically into the valley. Though the boy doesn’t usually speak, his call is loud and clear. Looking down from here, they can see the forest canopy, a green sea gently swaying. The sound reaches the top of the trees and startles a few birds, which dart up and dive back down into the sea.

They excitedly get the stove ready to brew tea and cook a vacuum-pack meal. Their secret trip is now half done. Actually, the point of the trip is not to climb the mountain. For the man, it is purely so that his ten-year-old son can experience the cliff. It’s also a chance for a father and son, who’ve been drifting apart, to renew their relationship.

After the picnic, the man explains the signs in the stars, adding, “You can see a million times more stars up here than you can down on the plains. Maybe you’re thinking, But aren’t the stars there, no matter what? Sure they are, it’s just a question of visibility. Visibility means how far you can see. You remember when we went to a wetland one time to see migratory birds? The sky was foggy, because there were fine particles floating in the air. I remember your mother saying that gazing at the stars these days is like wearing a pair of fogged-up glasses.”

Only the man speaks. The boy never replies, as if he simply does not exist. The man has regretted his decision to come to the island, but now he’s past the point of no return. He once dreamed about being an explorer. In his younger days, he cycled around Africa, piloted a sailboat across the Atlantic, ran an ultramarathon across the Sahara, and even took part in an interesting sleep experiment, spending fully half a year thirty meters underground. He followed his wife — his girlfriend at the time — here to Taiwan. At first everything was great: she accepted his sudden disappearances, which lasted from two weeks to a month. But after she became pregnant everything changed. The man remembers a time when he was totally willing to stay for the sake of the child, to build a home to raise his son in. And he had built it. Things were perfect then: the child was on the way, they were living in a unique house, and his wife was tender and affectionate again. Then he discovered that he still felt a longing to leave home.

Occasionally, when the man felt so physically restless he couldn’t stand it anymore, he would leave the house and go climbing or leave the island on some adventure with his friends. His wife would say it was okay but would give him the silent treatment when he returned, like he was a stranger. Later on he would just come and go without saying anything. Sometimes he didn’t know whether to stay or go. Maybe that’s why he turned to the consolations of sex. With his outstanding appearance, he has had no trouble finding Taiwanese girls willing to go to bed with him. A couple of times he even slept with his wife’s students. Though he regretted it after, sex has come to dominate his life, brutally and overpoweringly, a bit like a disgusting piece of gum sticking to the bottom of his shoe.

“But I feel like the stars I see up here are as real as the ones I saw as a boy. When I’m climbing it’s like I’m a kid again. Maybe that’s part of why I enjoy it so much.” The man kept talking and talking, more like he was talking to himself than to the boy. He sighed and said, “Sometimes things haven’t gone away, it’s just that we just can’t see them.”