Wu Ming-Yi - The Man with the Compound Eyes

“The mountain will cure you,” Atile’i told Alice.

Alice was still determined to take advantage of the last half day of fair weather and make it through the forest to see the mighty cliff. Maybe it was the language barrier or maybe it was that he sensed her determination to get there, but Atile’i, now a powerfully built youth, decided to carry Alice, who was apparently delicate but actually hard as granite inside, through the forest on his back.

This was a typical mid-high altitude alpine forest: the forest floor was covered in layer upon layer of fallen leaves, and the tree trunks were tall and straight, and each cast its own shadow. Atile’i felt like he was walking on waves. It reminded him of the island of Gesi Gesi, as well as of everything on Wayo Wayo. Especially Rasula.

Now Atile’i was holding Alice’s thighs, which were gripping him around the waist. He couldn’t help it: he got an erection.

He remembered Rasula’s kiki’a wine and that last night they’d spent together: the look in her eyes, the sound of her moans, and the smell of her body, her soft body, so totally different from Alice’s but also so alike.

During this time, without anyone to teach him, Atile’i had as a matter of course come to understand certain things. Such as the reason his fellow islanders had established the custom of the “last night,” when young maidens had the right to pull a second son into a thicket of grass: because that was his only opportunity to leave a seed behind on Wayo Wayo.

If any of the girls had gotten pregnant with his child, he hoped it was Rasula. He knew that if an island girl got pregnant, then that was that, and nobody would care whose seed it was. Wayo Wayo women did not calculate their ages in years; they only spoke of “the year I had the first child” or “the year I had my second.” Which was why some Wayo Wayo women did not know how to respond when asked their age, because they were infertile. Such women did not bear the marks of time, and often lacked the protection of relatives. Atile’i hoped Rasula was expecting, so that there would be at least one person to take care of her. He knew it would be his elder brother Nale’ida, though. Nale’ida would be responsible for keeping Rasula’s drying rack covered with fish, for this was the law of Wayo Wayo.

Of course, he had no way of knowing, because at this moment he happened to be on another island, an island who knows how far away from Wayo Wayo. And now he might never be able to ride Gesi Gesi again and find the way home.

At this thought, Atile’i felt that every step was taking him deep into the forest, so deep he might never find his way out.

Alice, riding on Atile’i’s back, felt a strange consolation, as if Thom had finally come back to bear her up. She held the young man closer.

Alice knew that the lifestyle she’d been leading with Atile’i at the hunting hut seemed stable but in fact could change at any time. They could not stay there forever: it was too flimsy, might collapse in a typhoon. And Atile’I couldn’t keep hiding there indefinitely. She had to make some decisions on his behalf, including whether to introduce him to other people, beginning at least with Dahu and Hafay. Perhaps he could be friends with Umav, like brother and sister. Who knows, maybe someday Atile’i might cease to be Wayo Wayoan and “go Taiwanese,” Alice thought.

But Alice had her own issues to deal with. All this time at the hunting hut, it appeared she had just been quietly foraging, writing, getting on with her daily life, but actually she hated herself for not being able to live except in writing, except in a world in which she talked to herself.

Maybe I need to take a trip to the cliff myself, Alice had thought.

And as Atile’i carried her over the undulating forest floor, she suddenly remembered a time many years before on the way to the creek with Thom when they had caught a stag beetle with a lovely pair of mandibles. Delighted, she had brought it home to make a specimen of it, hoping to surprise Toto on his birthday. She used ether to put it under, pierced its exoskeleton with a size-three insect pin and placed it in one of the cells of a small insect specimen case. There were already two inmates: a giant Formosan stag beetle and a deep mountain stag beetle. The mandibles of this newest member of the collection were just so conspicuous. It was so beautiful, like a miniature deer.

One sleepless night, she went to get pen and paper out of the drawer only to be given a terrible fright. She jerked the drawer open, spilling out the contents.

It turned out that the newest member of the collection, still pinned in its cell, was slowly rowing its three pairs of legs, like it was in a swimming pool. Maybe because the dose of ether was too small, that bug, brimming with life, had only gone into a temporary coma. Now it was resurrected. Its neighbors were still peacefully impaled, while this tiny deer kept pacing the void, unable to go anywhere.

Do insects feel pain? Maybe when their relatives or family members are gone, they are oblivious, but when pierced with a size-three insect pin are they really as senseless as we imagine them to be?

As Atile’i carried Alice through the forest, each of them was giving off a distinctive smell, because of memory. The olfactorily acute forest critters noticed. The damp, long-settled leaves were silent, but the freshly fallen leaves sounded like brittle bones. Atile’i snapped the bones of the forest floor with every step. It was raining now, the raindrops falling gently, and when Atile’i looked up he thought he could see the end of every thread of rain.

They finally managed to get through the forest to the base of the massive cliff before nightfall. It was like a wall, a giant creature. All the winds in the world had to stop before it, and the forest could only look up in wonder.

Atile’i let Alice down and wiped his sweaty, shining face. Alice pulled out the raincoat stashed in her windbreaker and put on her rain hat, wrapping herself in a small, yellow world. She was calmer than she had expected. So here it is, she thought. Here it was.

Since it was already dark, Alice and Atile’i had to stay another night in the mountains. And because the bear had destroyed the tent, they had to search all over for a place to get out of the rain, finally finding a hollow beneath the cliff. It was not deep, but if you crouched down you could pack a few people in there with you. The ceiling was higher on one side than the other, and at the low end the hollow was apparently connected to another cave, though Alice could not see for sure in the dark. She remembered the people in the alpine association telling her that the cliff never used to exist, that it only appeared after the earthquake due to fault displacement.

The mountain was split asunder, the cliff made manifest. This was the destination on the map. Was this where Dahu had found Thom’s body?

Alice stared at Atile’i from behind. He was making a fire to brew tea. In the flickering light, his shadow on the wall beside her was sometimes as big as Thom, sometimes as small as Toto. She caressed Atile’i’s shadow on the stone wall of the hollow embedded in the base of the cliff, murmuring, “So this is where you’ve been, all this time.” Now, in full possession of her faculties, Alice finally realized that all is shadow. But even a shadow is enough. Even a shadow of a shadow is enough.

Atile’i, having finished making the fire, was sitting quietly watching the rain outside. The rain suddenly became surprisingly heavy, and rainwater started flowing in and down toward the nether reaches of the hollow, whence it trickled away. It was as if there was a river running through the cave straight toward the heart of the mountain, destination unknown.