The Man with the Compound Eyes (19 page)

At first the woman seemed frightened by Atile’i’s Roaring Rite, for she screamed and fell off the earthen mound. Then she scrambled back up again and embraced the animal that seemed so strange to Atile’i’s eyes. Soon, maybe because she discovered Atile’i could not hurt her, the woman started examining him; and when she realized his leg was confined, a look of concern appeared on her face. After a while, she forced a smile, as if to offer him reassurance, and then she started helping him move the rocky earth off his leg. Maybe because of the pain, or maybe for some other mysterious reason, Atile’i’s tears kept falling. He was like a sea turtle that has been stopped from going back where it belongs.

The woman was not the same as the white people Atile’i had imagined
or seen in books. She had another kind of translucent skin, sort of like a jellyfish. The woman was not tall, and might even be a bit shorter than Atile’i. After freeing him, she kept talking and gesturing, but he could not understand a thing. The only thing he could be certain of was that the woman probably did not bear him ill. Her movements and tone of voice told him that. Atile’i tried to say a few words to her in reply, but she did not understand, either. Then, out of gratitude, he started to imitate the birdcall he had learned while lying there just now to take his mind off the pain. Atile’i pursed his lips and let air through his lips and throat to produce a sound that was at times resonant, at times warbling. This was the sound of thanksgiving. The woman looked at Atile’i with surprise, as if she had seen a bird that could speak a human tongue.

“A sound can fly over any land, like a wave on any sea,” Atile’i remembered the Sea Sage saying. Without a doubt, the Sea Sage was truly wise.

Atile’i, too, remembered what happened after he dove into the ocean, afraid someone would discover him. His body was abnormally warm, the water relatively cold, so when he dove in the frigid seawater it initially felt scalding hot. He swam for his life, like a wounded barracuda spotted by a shark. He swam for he did not know how long, until his chest ached terribly and his spirit was ready to leap out of his throat. Then a great force flooded in from behind. Sensing the approach of a huge wave, he went promptly limp and let himself get tossed about. Atile’i clearly saw that the wave was pushing him toward land, and all around him were the strange things from the island. Underfoot and underarm, behind his back and before his eyes, Atile’i was wrapped up in a mixture of shore and sea, as if he was just another piece of the island.

Atile’i thought his spirit would depart when he hit land, but fortunately it remained in his body when the wave retreated. He hid inside a big rock. That rock was very strange: it was hollow, and around it were similar rocks, as if rocks also had the gift of imitating one another, just like people. He was shivering now, maybe because he had been soaking in the water too long. He had an instinctive desire to run toward dry land, assuming this was his only hope of survival. There was a group of people in the distance
wearing strange clothes and carrying strange tools. Atile’i was careful to avoid them, doing his best to imitate the grass as he moved.

Inside a clump of grass, Atile’i had his first opportunity to size the place up. It was really peculiar: the land on one side was extremely high, and the land beyond the high land higher still, as if it led all the way up to the sky. The Earth Sage would never believe me if I told him. But was this Earth Sage’s turf, too? Did he even know about the existence of such a large expanse of land?

Atile’i started to run toward the highland. He ran and ran, until he felt his body was not listening to him anymore. In the time it takes for a fish to get caught on the hook, he felt something press down upon his leg. Before he knew it he could no longer move.

“I’m caught! I am caught by many stones. Oh venerable Kabang, please save me,” Atile’i muttered.

Atile’i could only lie helpless on his side, immobile. He remembered the way to dispel pain that the elders had taught him: imagine that you are a fish. Elders often said that of all the creatures the fish was the least afraid of pain, for a hooked fish can still strive mightily with a fisherman for a long time before its life passes away. If a person got hooked, he would likely submit in the blink of an eye.

“A man of Wayo Wayo only gives up when his blood stops flowing, just like a fish, for we are people of the sea,” the Sea Sage had said.

Lying on the ground, Atile’i carefully observed this new world. In every respect, in its colors, scents and sounds, it was different from Wayo Wayo. Of course it was also different from the island on the sea. So this was what the world was like: you pass through something and come out the other side, and the world there is somewhat similar but not quite the same. Atile’i was pleased with himself for coming to this realization.

Then he heard the sound of the woman’s footsteps. Then he saw the woman.

After releasing Atile’i from his earthly bondage, the woman kept repeating the same things over and over again to him. From her gestures, Atile’i guessed that she wanted him to stay put. Atile’i did not remain there in order to wait for her. In fact, he had no choice in the matter, because
his leg was broken, and a person with a broken leg cannot go anywhere. Worse, a man with a broken leg could never become a good fisherman, and his diving would suffer as well.

“Never again will I have the chance to become a real Wayo Wayoan man,” Atile’i thought, despairing like a gull caught in a
gawana
.

Hafay felt a hot flash the moment the hail started coming in through the roof. Even her bones got goose bumps. It was the same feeling she’d had the night before the flood destroyed the village that year in Taipei. She looked over and those two foolish reporters were still shooting. Hafay had no time to think. She yelled for them to get upstairs immediately, but they still looked like they had no idea what was going on.

“Hurry up or it’ll be too late,” Hafay shouted, right before the wave hit.

Experience told her that the second wave is often the worst, so as soon as the first wave receded Hafay got them to run up to the road. Han picked up his camera, piggybacked Lily, and waded toward shore without looking back. Hafay followed close behind, and hard on her heels the wave was silently flooding in another time.

This time it was the sound of the wave that left people paralyzed.

Standing up on the road, or what was left of it now that most of the foundation had been scoured away, Hafay looked back just in time to witness one of the walls of the Seventh Sisid collapse, as if to the rhythm of the retreating wave.

“Oh Ina,” Hafay murmured to the sea.

The year after the flood, Hafay’s Ina took her back to the east coast. Instead of going back to the village, Ina decided to stay in town. She applied for a
job in a massage parlor and rented a studio apartment. Every day when Hafay got up Ina would have breakfast ready for her. She would have just gotten off work, her hair looking exactly the same as when she’d left the night before.

Sometimes Hafay wondered whether people were right to say that you could choose your own life. Could you really? After losing her Ina, what else could Hafay do but follow in her footsteps? And if she had not spent those few years in that line of work, how could she possibly have saved so much money so quickly, enough to build the Seventh Sisid? Life is sometimes a trade-off. I give you something of mine in exchange for something of yours, or I borrow from the future to get what I don’t have now. Sometimes after all the trading is done, you get back something you’d given up, Hafay sometimes thought.

Hafay did not shed a single tear when she saw the Seventh Sisid collapse, probably because she’d had a premonition that one day the house would have to be returned, most suitably to the sea.

That day, after helping Hafay clean up the things that had fallen out of the Seventh Sisid, Dahu drove Alice’s car to school, charged the battery, drove back and parked it. Then he walked over and sat down by Hafay, handing her a lunchbox. In all this time, Hafay’s eyes had not for a single instant left the place where her house had been.

Dahu asked: “You got a place to stay?”

Hafay shook her head.

“Stay with us then, for the time being. I’ve moved to a Bunun village down south in Tai-tung. The people in the village are building traditional houses. I’ve built one myself, but nobody’s living in them yet. I can live in mine for now, and you and Umav can stay with my Uncle Anu. There’s air con at his place, so it’s more comfortable. If Alice comes back and doesn’t have a place to stay, I’ll invite her to come crash there, too,” Dahu said, all in a rush.

Hafay shook her head and said, “I can go stay at an inn.”

“Don’t get on the bad side of your bank account, Hafay. Don’t quarrel with your bread and butter. It’ll take some time to rebuild, but maybe if you save some money the Seventh Sisid can be restored.”

Hafay didn’t say a word, or respond in any way.

“We’re still alive, right?” Dahu loaded the things he had gathered into the backseat, then opened the door to the passenger side. Many years later, Hafay would recall that Dahu’s gesture just meant so much to her, because at the time she was unable to decide anything for herself. She really needed someone to open the door for her.

They drove south along the coast. Hafay faced the driver’s side, gazing past Dahu’s melancholy profile through the window out to sea. Only now did she realize that the Trash Vortex or whatever it was called had pretty much covered the shoreline. The garbage glittered in the sunshine like it was encrusted with jewels. Dahu did not say anything to Hafay the entire way, while in the backseat his daughter Umav slept on Hafay’s chaotic pile of luggage.

When they were almost at Deer County in Tai-tung, Hafay said, “At least I’ve still got the coffee machine.” Dahu burst out laughing.

“Why’re you going back to the village?” Hafay asked.

Dahu said, “I’ve been away a long time. I started out with a plan to go to the city and get an education, then after I graduated I just wanted to come back to the village to teach elementary school. I didn’t expect to fall in love with my wife. She was the reason I left the village again.” In a quiet voice, Dahu started telling Hafay about him and Millet, as the headlights probed the long, nearly straight highway ahead.

“I can make a bit more driving the taxi in Haven, but lately I’ve been thinking: Forget it, you know? The good thing about the village is that you’re welcome there no matter when you go back, and no matter what kind of job you do you can always scrape by. As it happens I’ve got an uncle here, Uncle Anu. He went to the city when he was young to get himself a master’s degree, just like me, and one year when he was back for a visit he heard there was this really nice piece of land that a consortium wanted to build a columbarium on. Uncle Anu managed to get a loan to buy the land. He borrowed some from friends and the rest from the bank. He does tours there at a place he calls the Forest Church. He teaches the city folk about the Bunun lifestyle, how we plant millet, how we hunt and build our houses. It’s been a while now. I’ve been coming down and helping out every chance
I get. Now I’ll just move back here for good. Besides, Umav has kids to play with in the village.”

“You haven’t mentioned this to Alice, have you?”

“Not yet. This is something I just decided recently.”

Everything is just getting started, Hafay thought.

It was already evening when they got to the village. Dahu gently shook Umav awake, and friends in the village were making dinner for everyone, not just for Hafay and Dahu, but also for some tribespeople who’d just gotten back from cleaning up the beach.

Then a stocky middle-aged fellow with a childlike grin walked over and slapped Dahu on the back. Dahu introduced them: “Anu, Bunun.” Dahu pointed at Hafay and said, “Hafay, Pangcah.”

Anu was a talkative fellow. He got Hafay to listen to him when she was feeling depressed and did not want to listen to anything. He told her all about why he had founded the Forest Church, what problems he’d had, how much money he still owed, how many times the bank had tried to seize his house, and so on.

“My house almost got auctioned off quite a number of times.”

“Then why didn’t it?”

“Nobody’s interested. Who would want to buy it, in this location? Only Bunun people would be willing to live here. Ha ha! It’s rotten luck for the bank. I hear the loan officer that approved my mortgage lost his job!” he said, laughing, and Hafay could not help laughing along with him.

“There are only two kinds of people who would loan money to Anu: angels and fools,” Dahu said.

Soon Anu was lying on the floor, drunk, and wouldn’t budge. His friends and relatives all went home. Dahu took Hafay to the guest room, which had two single beds, one for Hafay and the other for Umav.

Hafay lay on the bed but just couldn’t get to sleep, not expecting that Umav would also be having a sleepless night. Umav was sitting up in bed, watching the moonlight outside.

“Auntie Hafay, want to take a walk in the Forest Church?”

“The church? Right now?”

“Yeah, now.”

“Do you have keys?”

Umav looked at Hafay, surprised. “How could there be keys to the forest?”

They walked to the end of the road, passed a mesa with a view of the river valley below, and came to stand in front of two towering trees. Umav said, “This is the gate.” Hafay realized she had gotten it all wrong: the Forest Church was a tract of woodland without even so much as a fence around it. The two of them stood there as if they had turned into a couple of animals.

“I thought it was a real church.”

“What do you mean, a real church? Are there false churches, too?”

“That’s not what I meant …” Hafay said. “What’s inside?”

“Walking trees,” said Umav.

“Once upon a time, there was a girl who always took her basket along when she went to work in the fields, but very mysteriously would never allow anyone to peek inside. But a nosy neighbor wondered why there was always a handsome young man helping the girl plow and plant when she was working. So the neighbor went behind the girl’s back and told her Ina.”