The Sparrow (46 page)

"They pick out a good stud," D.W. said.

"Don't be crude, dear," Anne said. Chaypas and her guests decided to go to Aycha's to eat and suddenly the apartment emptied out. When they were alone, Anne leaned forward and continued conspiratorially. "But yes, that was certainly the implication. I must say, the custom has a certain rude appeal. Theoretically, of course," she added when George pouted.

"So why are they only ‘pretty sure' I'm a male?" George asked petulantly, his manhood under oblique attack from two quarters.

"Well, aside from your virile good looks, my love, they have also noted how wonderful you are with the children," Anne said. "On the other hand, you don't show much interest in collecting blossoms, so they're a little confused by you, actually. Same for Marc and D.W. and me. They think I might be a male because I do most of the cooking. Maybe I'm sort of the daddy? Oh, Jimmy, maybe they think you and I are married! Obviously, they don't have a clue about relative ages."

Emilio had become increasingly thoughtful and D.W., watching him, began to chuckle. Emilio didn't laugh at first, but he came around.

"What?" Anne asked. "What's so funny?"

"I'm not sure funny is the word," D.W. said, right eye on Emilio, one brow up speculatively.

Emilio shrugged. "Nothing. Only: this notion of separating the roles of genetic father and social father would have been useful in my family."

"Might have saved some wear and tear on your sorry young ass," D.W. agreed.

Emilio laughed ruefully and ran his hands through his hair. Everyone was looking at him now, curiosity plain on their faces. He hesitated, probing old wounds, and found them scabbed over. "My mother was a woman of great warmth and a lively nature," he told them, choosing his words carefully. "Her husband was a handsome man, tall, strong. Brunette but very light-skinned, yes? My mother was also very fair." He paused to let them absorb this; it didn't take a geneticist to work out the implications. "My mother's husband was out of town for a few years—"

"Doing time for possession and sale," D.W. supplied.

"—and when he returned, he found he had a second son, almost a year old. And very dark." Emilio sat still then, and the room was quiet. "They did not divorce. He must have loved my mother very much." This had never occurred to him before and he had no idea how he should feel about it. "She was charming, yes? Easy to love, Anne might say."

"So you took the blame for her," Anne said astutely, hating the woman for letting it happen and silently berating God for giving this son to the wrong mother.

"Of course. Very poor taste, being born like that." Emilio looked briefly at Anne, but his eyes slid away. A mistake, he realized, to speak of this. He had tried so hard to understand, but how could a child have known? He shrugged again and steered the talk away from Elena Sandoz. "My mother's husband and I used to play a game called Beat the Crap out of the Bastard. I was about eleven when I worked out the name, yes?" He sat up and threw the hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head. "I changed the rules for this game when I was fourteen," he told them, savoring it, even after all the years.

D.W., who knew what was coming, grinned in spite of himself. He'd deplored the random violence of La Perla and worked hard to find ways for kids like Emilio to settle things without knifing somebody. It was an uphill battle in a place where fathers told sons, "Anybody give you shit, cut his face." And this was advice given to eight-year-olds on the first day of third grade.

"Our esteemed Father Superior," he heard Emilio tell the others with vast enjoyment, "was in those days a parish priest in La Perla. Of course, he did not condone unpleasantries among family members, however tenuously related. Nevertheless, Father Yarbrough did impart a certain wisdom to young acolytes. This included the precept that when there is a substantial difference in size between adversaries, the larger man is fighting dirty simply by intending to take on a much smaller opponent—"

"So nail the sumbitch 'fore he lays a hand on you," D.W. finished, in tones that suggested the sagacity of this was self-evident. He had, in fact, taught the kid a few little things in the gym. Emilio being small, surprise was necessarily a prerequisite to some maneuvers. The subtlety came in making the boy understand it was okay to fight in self-defense when Miguel came home mean-drunk, but it was not necessary to take on a whole neighborhood of taunting kids.

"—and while there is a certain primitive satisfaction in decking an asshole," Emilio was telling them with serene respect for his mentor, "this should not be indulged in without temperance and forbearance."

"I sort of wondered where you learned to do what you did with Supaari," Jimmy said. "That was pretty amazing."

The conversation drifted off into stories of a priest Jimmy had known in South Boston who'd boxed in the Olympics and then D.W. started in on a few sergeants he'd known in the Marines. Anne and Sofia started lunch and listened, heads shaking, to tales of certain illegal but remarkably effective hockey moves available to alert goalies in the Quebec league. But the talk came back to the Jana'ata Handshake, as Supaari's attack on Sandoz was known among them, and when it veered toward Emilio's childhood once more, he stood.

"You never know when an old skill will come in handy," he said with a certain edgy finality, moving toward the terrace. But then he stopped and laughed and added piously, "The Lord works in mysterious ways."

And it was impossible to tell whether he was serious or joking.

T
HE CRUISE DOWNRIVER
from Kashan seemed to Supaari to go more quickly than the trip out from Gayjur. The first day, he simply let his mind go blank, his attention absorbed by the eddies and driftwood, the sandbars and rocks. But the second day on the river was a thoughtful one, full of wonder.

He had been deluged by new facts, new ideas, new possibilities, but he had always been quick to grasp opportunities and willing to take friendships where he found them. The foreigners, like the Runa, were sometimes startlingly different from his people and often incomprehensible, but he liked Ha'an very much—found her mind lively and full of challenge. The rest of them were less clear to him, only adjuncts to the sessions with Ha'an, translating, illustrating, providing food and drink at bizarre and irritating intervals. And to be honest, they nearly all smelled alike.

He would buy the rented powerboat outright when he got back, Supaari decided, watching a good-sized river
kivnest
breach and roll nearby. The purchase price had been rendered trivial; he had examined the foreign goods, knew now the dimensions of the trade he could broker. Wealth beyond counting was guaranteed. This trip alone had yielded a fortune in exotica. He had explained his business to the foreigners and they were happy to provide him with many small packets of aromatics, their names as marvelous as their scents. Clove, vanilla, yeast, sage, thyme, cumin, incense. Sticks of brown cinnamon, white cylinders called beeswax candles which could be set afire to give off a fragrant light that Supaari found enchanting. And they'd given him several "landscapes" that one foreigner made on paper. Beautiful things; remarkable, truly. Supaari almost hoped the Reshtar would turn them down; Supaari rather liked these landscapes himself.

It was obvious that the foreigners had no understanding of the value of their goods, but Supaari VaGayjur was an honorable man and offered the interpreter a fair price, which was one in twelve of what he'd get from Kitheri and, at that, a substantial amount. A great deal of embarrassing confusion ensued. Ha'an had tried to insist the goods were gifts: a disastrous notion that would have prevented resale. The small, dark interpreter and his sister with the mane sorted that out but then— what was his name? Suhn? Suhndos? He'd tried to hand the packets directly to Supaari! What kind of parents did these people have? If Askama hadn't guided her counterpart's hands to Chaypas's for the transfer, the VaKashani would have been cut out of the deal entirely. Shocking manners, although the interpreter had abased himself prettily enough when he recognized the mistake.

Because the VaKashani were hosts to the foreign delegation and thus entitled to a percentage of Supaari's profit, the village would move nearly a year ahead of schedule closer to breeding rights. Supaari was pleased for them, and slightly envious. If life were as simple and straightforward for a Jana'ata third as for a Runa corporation, his own problem would have been solved. He could simply buy breeding rights and get on with it, having proven his fiscal responsibility and obedience to the government. But Jana'ata life was never simple and rarely straightforward. Deep in the Jana'ata soul there was an almost unshakable conviction that things must be controlled, thought out, done correctly, that there was very little margin for error in life. Tradition was safety; change was danger. Even Supaari felt this, although he defied the instinct often and to his profit.

The storytellers claimed that the first five Jana'ata hunters and the first five Runa herds were created by Ingwy on an island, where balance could be easily lost and annihilation was the price of poor stewardship. Five times the hunters and their mates erred: leaving things to chance, killing without thought, letting their own numbers grow uncontrolled, and all was lost. On the sixth attempt, Tikat Father of Us All learned to breed the Runa and Sa'arhi Our Mother was made his consort and they were brought to the mainland and given dominion. There were other stories about Pa'au and Tiha'ai and the first brothers, and on and on. Who knew? Maybe there was some truth in it all, but Supaari was a skeptic. The Ingwy Cycle was too pat an explanation for duogeniture, too convenient for the firsts and seconds justifying their grip on the world.

It didn't matter. Whether the legends grew from ancient seeds of truth or sprang fully formed from the self-interest of the rulers, Supaari thought, things are as they are. He was a third; how, then, to convince the Reshtar of Galatna that Supaari VaGayjur was worthy of being created Founder? It was a delicate business and required subtlety and cunning, for reshtari were rarely generous in granting to others the very prerogative denied themselves. Somehow, Hlavin Kitheri must come to believe it was in his interest to bestow this privilege. A pretty puzzle for Supaari VaGayjur.

He let the problem go, for pursuit can drive the quarry away. Better to stroll along, alert for opportunity, wasting no effort on mad dashes and undignified chases. If one is patient, he knew, something always comes within reach.

A
FTER
S
UPAARI'S FIRST
visit, the Jesuit party settled into a routine that made their second full year on Rakhat as productive and satisfying as they could have hoped for.

They were given their own apartments, two of them, thanks to Supaari, who had arranged it when Anne admitted that they found it wearying to be with the Runa all the time. She also told him, privately, that D.W. was not well and sometimes found the distance to the river difficult. Supaari had no guess as to the cause or cure for the Elder's illness but thoughtfully specified living space further down the cliffside than Manuzhai's home.

Sofia lived with Anne and George. The apartment next door became a dormitory for the unmarried men and an office for everyone. Anne's side was home. This orderly division of use was, they found, a great improvement over the endless ad hoc arrangements made day by day when they were living with Manuzhai and Chaypas.

They now knew from Supaari that they were not just tolerated by the VaKashani but welcome. They had fit into the economic structure of the community by providing Supaari with goods that benefited the village and, in their own minds, this allowed them to be more assertive about requesting small accommodations, like limits to overnight visits and periods of privacy during the day. They still did a lot of visiting and often had guests who stayed overnight, especially Manuzhai and the ubiquitous Askama, but there was now some privacy on a regular basis. The relief was startling.