The Years of Rice and Salt (37 page)

Back in the Bardo

Well, it was, as might be imagined after an end like that, a very discouraged
and dispirited little jati that huddled together on the black floor of the bardo this time around. Who could blame them? Why should they have had any will to continue? It was hard to discern any reward for virtue, any forward progress—any dharmic justice of any kind. Even Bahram could not find the good in it, and no one else even tried. Looking back down the vale of the ages at the endless recurrence of their reincarnations, before they were forced to drink their vials of forgetting and all became obscure to them again, they could see no pattern at all to their efforts; if the gods had a plan, or even a set of procedures, if the long train of transmigrations was supposed to add up to anything, if it was not just mindless repetition, time itself nothing but a succession of chaoses, no one could discern it; and the story of their transmigrations, rather than being a narrative without death, as the first experiences of reincarnation perhaps seemed to suggest, had become instead a veritable charnel house. Why read on? Why pick up their book from the far wall where it has been thrown away in disgust and pain, and read on? Why submit to such cruelty, such bad karma, such bad plotting?

The reason is simple: these things happened. They happened countless times, just like this. The oceans are salt with our tears. No one can deny that these things happened.

And so there is no choice in the matter. They cannot escape the wheel of birth and death, not in the experience of it, or in the contemplation of it afterward; and their anthologist, Old Red Ink himself, must tell their stories honestly, must deal in reality, or else the stories mean nothing. And it is crucial that the stories mean something.

So. No escape from reality: they sat there, a dozen sad souls, huddled together at a far corner of the great stage of the hall of judgment. It was dim, and cold. The perfect white light had lasted this time for only the briefest of moments, a flash like the eyeball exploding; after that, here they were again. Up on the dais the dogs and demons and black gods capered, in a hazy mist that shrouded all, that damped all sound.

Bahram tried, but could think of nothing to say. He was still stunned by the events of their last days in the world; he was still ready to get up and go out and start another day, on another morning just like all the rest. Deal with the crisis of an invasion from the east, the taking of his family, if that was what it meant—whatever problems the day happened to bring, trouble, crisis, sure, that was life. But not this. Not this already. Salt tears of timely death, alum tears of untimely death: bitterness filled the air like smoke. I liked that life! I had plans for that life!

Khalid sat there just as Khalid always had, as if esconced in his study thinking over some problem. The sight gave Bahram a deep pang of regret and sorrow. All that life, gone. Gone, gone, gone altogether beyond . . . The past is gone. Even if you can remember it, it's gone. And even at the time it was happening Bahram had known how he had loved it, he had lived in a state of nostalgia-for-the-present, every day of it.

Now gone.

The rest of the jati sat or sprawled on the cheap wooden floor around Khalid. Even Sayyed Abdul looked distraught, not just sorry for himself, but distraught for them all, sad to have left that turbulent but oh-so-interesting world.

An interval passed; a moment, a year, an age, the kalpa itself, who could tell in such a terrible place?

Bahram took a deep breath, exerted himself, sat up.

“We're making progress,” he announced firmly.

Khalid snorted. “We are like mice to the cats.” He gestured up at the stage, where the grotesqueries continued to unfold. “They are petty assholes, I say. They kill us for sport. They don't die and they don't understand.”

“Forget them,” Iwang advised. “We're going to have to do this on our own.”

“God judges, and sends us out again,” Bahram said. “Man proposes, God disposes.”

Khalid shook his head. “Look at them. They're a bunch of vicious children playing. No one leads them, there is no god of gods.”

Bahram looked at him, surprised. “Do you not see the one enfolding all the rest, the one we rest within? Allah, or Brahman, or what have you, the one only true God of Gods?”

“No. I see no sign of him at all.”

“You aren't looking! You've never looked yet! When you look, you will see it. When you see it, everything will change for you. Then it will be all right.”

Khalid scowled. “Don't insult us with that fatuous nonsense. Good Lord, Allah, if you are there, why have you inflicted me with this fool of a boy!” He kicked at Bahram. “It's easier without you around! You and your damned all right! It's not all right! It's a fucking mess! You only make it worse with that nonsense of yours! Did you not see what just happened to us, to your wife and children, to my daughter and grandchildren? It's not all right! Start from that, if you will! We may be in a hallucination here, but that's no excuse for being delusional!”

Bahram was hurt by this. “It's you who give up on things,” he protested. “Every time. That's what your cynicism is—you don't even try. You don't have the courage to carry on.”

“The hell I don't. I've never given up yet. I'm just not willing to go at it babbling lies. No, it's you who are the one who never tries. Always waiting for me and Iwang to do the hard things. You do it for once! Quit babbling about love and try it yourself one time, damn it! Try it yourself, and see how hard it is to keep a sunny face when you're looking the truth of the situation eye to eye.”

“Ho!” said Bahram, stung. “I do my part. I have always done my part. Without me none of you would be able to carry on. It takes courage to keep love at the center when you know just as well as anyone else the real state of things! It's easy to get angry, anyone can do that. It's making good that's the hard part, it's staying hopeful that's the hard part! It's staying in love that's the hard part.”

Khalid waggled his left hand. “All very well, but it only matters if the truth is faced and fought. I'm sick of love and happiness—I want justice.”

“So do I!”

“All right, then show me. Show me what you can do this next time out in the miserable world, something more than happy happy.”

“I will then!”

“Good.”

Heavily Khalid pulled himself up, and limped over to Sayyed Abdul Aziz, and without any warning kicked him sprawling across the stage. “And you!” he roared. “What is your EXCUSE! Why are you always so bad? Consistency is no excuse, your CHARACTER is NO EXCUSE!”

Sayyed glared up at him from the floor, sucking on a torn knuckle. Daggers in his stare: “Leave me alone.”

Khalid made as if to kick him again, then gave up on it. “You'll get yours,” he promised. “One of these days, you'll get yours.”

“Forget about him,” Iwang advised. “He's not the real problem, and he'll always be part of us. Forget about him, forget about the gods. Let's concentrate on doing it ourselves. We can make our own world.”

BOOK 5

WARP AND WEFT

One night can change the world.

The Doorkeepers sent runners out with strings of wampum, announcing a council meeting at Floating Bridge. They wanted to raise to chiefdom the foreigner they called Fromwest. The fifty sachems had agreed to the meeting, as there was nothing unusual about it. There were many more chiefs than sachems, and the title died with the man, and each nation was free to choose its own, depending on what happened on the warpath and in the villages. The only unusual feature of this raising-up was the foreign birth of the candidate, but he had been living with the Doorkeepers for some time, and word had spread through the nine nations and the eight tribes that he was interesting.

He had been rescued by a war party of Doorkeepers who had run far to the west to inflict another shock on the Sioux, the western people bordering the Hodenosaunee. The warriors had come on a Sioux torture, the victim hung by his chest from hooks, and a fire building under him. While waiting for their ambush to set, the warriors had been impressed by the victim's speech, which was in a comprehensible version of the Doorkeeper dialect, as if he had seen them out there.

The usual behavior while being tortured was a passionate laughter in the faces of one's enemies, to show that no pain inflicted by man can triumph over the spirit. This foreigner hadn't been like that. Calmly he remarked to his captors, in Doorkeeper rather than Sioux: “You are very incompetent torturers. What wounds the spirit is not passion, for all passion is encouragement. As you hate me you help me. What really hurts is to be ground like acorns in a grinding hole. Where I come from they have a thousand devices to tear the flesh, but what hurts is their indifference. Here you remind me I am human and full of passion, a target of passion. I am happy to be here. And I am about to be rescued by warriors much greater than you.”

The Senecans lying in ambush had taken this as an undeniable sign to attack, and with war whoops they had descended on the Sioux and scalped as many as they could catch, while taking particular care to rescue the captive who had spoken so eloquently, and in their own tongue.

How did you know we were there? they asked him.

Suspended as high as he was, he said, he had seen their eyes out in the trees.

And how do you know our language?

There is a tribe of your kinsmen on the west coast of this island, who moved there long ago. I learned your language from them.

And so they had nursed him and brought him home, and he lived with the Doorkeepers and the Great Hill People, near Niagara, for several moons. He went on the hunt and the warpath, and word of his accomplishments had spread through the nine nations, and many people had met him and been impressed. No one was surprised at his nomination to chief.

The council was set for the hill at the head of Canandaigua Lake, where the Hodenosaunee had first appeared in the world, out of the ground like moles.

Hill People, Granite People, Flint Owners, and Shirt Weavers, who came up out of the south two generations before, having had bad dealings with the people who had come over the sea from the east, all walked west on the Longhouse Trail, which extends across the league's land from east to west. They encamped at some distance from the Doorkeepers' council house, sending runners to announce their arrival, according to the old ways. The Senecan sachems confirmed the day of the council, and repeated their invitation.

On the appointed morning before dawn, people rose and gathered their rolls, and hunched around fires and a quick meal of burnt corn cakes and maple water. It was a clear sky at dawn, with only a trace of receding gray cloud to the east, like the finely embroidered hems of the coats the women were donning. The mist on the lake swirled as if twisted by sprites skating over the lake, to join a sprite council matching the human one, as often occurred. The air was cool and damp, with no hint of the oppressive heat that was likely to arrive in the afternoon.

The visiting nations trooped onto the water meadows at the lakeshore and gathered in their accustomed places. By the time the sky lightened from gray to blue there were already a few hundred people there to listen to the Salute to the Sun, sung by one of the old Senecan sachems.

The Onandaga nations keep the council brand, and also the wampum into which the laws of the league have been talked, and now their powerful old sachem, Keeper of the Wampum, rose and displayed in his outstretched hands the belts of wampum, heavy and white. The Onondagas are the central nation, their council fire the seat of the league's councils. Keeper of the Wampum trod a pedestrian dance around the meadow, chanting something most of them heard only as a faint cry.

A fire was kindled at the center point, and pipes passed around. The Mohawks, Onondagas, and Senecans, brother to each other and father to the other six, settled west of the fire; the Oneidas, Cayugas, and Tuscaroras sat to the east; the new nations, Cherokee, Shawnee, and Choctaw, sat to the south. The sun cracked the horizon; its light flooded the valley like maple water, poured over everything and making it summer yellow. Smoke curled, gray and brown turned to one. A morning without wind, and the wisps on the lake burned away. Birds sang from the forest canopy to the east of the meadow.

Out of the arrows of shadow and light walked a short, broad-shouldered man, barefoot and dressed only in a runner's waist belt. He had a round face, very flat. A foreigner. He walked with his hands together, looking down humbly, and came through the junior nations to the central fire, there offering his open palms to Honowenato, Keeper of the Wampum.

Keeper said to him, “Today you become a chief of the Hodenosaunee. At these occasions it is customary for me to read the history of the league as recalled by the wampum here, and to reiterate the laws of the league that have given us peace for many generations, and new nations joining us from the sea to the Mississippi, from the Great Lakes to the Tennessee.”

Fromwest nodded. His chest was marked deeply by the puckered scars of the Sioux hooking ceremony. He was as solemn as an owl. “I am more than honored. You are the most generous of nations.”

“We are the greatest league of nations under heaven,” Keeper said. “We live here on the highest land of Longer House, with good routes down in all directions.

“In each nation there are the eight tribes, divided in two groups. Wolf, Bear, Beaver, and Turtle; then Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk. Each member of the Wolf tribe is brother and sister to all other Wolves, no matter what nation they come from. The relationship with other Wolves is almost stronger than the relation with those of one's nation. It is a cross-relation, like warp and weft in basket-weaving and cloth-making. And so we are one garment. We cannot disagree as nations, or it would tear the fabric of the tribes. Brother cannot fight brother, sister cannot fight sister.

“Now, Wolf, Bear, Beaver, and Turtle, being brother and sister, cannot intermarry. They must marry out of Hawk, Heron, Deer, or Snipe.”

Fromwest nodded at each pronouncement of Keeper, made in the heavy, ponderous tones of a man who had labored all his life to make this system work, and to extend it far and wide. Fromwest had been declared a member of the Hawk tribe, and would play with the Hawks in the morning's lacrosse match. Now he watched Keeper with a hawk's intensity, taking in the irascible old man's every word, oblivious to the growing crowd at lakeside. The crowd in turn went about its own affairs, the women at their fires preparing the feast, some of the men setting out the lacrosse pitch on the biggest water meadow.

Finally Keeper was done with his recital, and Fromwest addressed all in earshot.

“This is the great honor of my life,” he said loudly and slowly, his accent strange but comprehensible. “To be taken in by the finest people of the Earth is more than any poor wanderer could hope for. Although I did hope for it. I spent many years crossing this great island, hoping for it.”

He bowed his head, hands together.

“A very unassuming man,” remarked Iagogeh, the One Who Hears, wife of Keeper of the Wampum. “And not so young either. It will be interesting to hear what he says tonight.”

“And to see how he does in the games,” said Tecarnos, or Dropping Oil, one of Iagogeh's nieces.

“Tend the soup,” said Iagogeh.

“Yes, mother.”

The lacrosse field was being inspected by the field judges for rocks and rabbit holes, and the tall poles of the gates were set up at either end of the field. As always, the games set the Wolf, Bear, Beaver, and Turtle tribes against Deer, Snipe, Hawk, and Heron. The betting was active, and wagered goods were laid out by the managers in neat rows, mostly personal items of ornamentation, but also flints, flutes, drums, bags of tobacco and pipes, needles and arrows, two flintlock pistols, and four muskets.

The two teams and the referees gathered at midfield, and the crowd bordered the green field and stood on the hill overlooking it. The day's match was to be a ten-on-ten, so five passes through the gate would win. The head referee listed the main rules, as always: no touching the ball with hand, foot, limb, body, or head; no deliberate hitting of opponents with the ball bats. He held up the round ball, made of deerskin filled with sand, about the size of his fist. The twenty players stood ten to a side, defending their goals, and one from each side came forward to contest the dropped ball that would start the match. To a great roar from the crowd the referee dropped the ball and retreated to the side of the field, where he and the others would watch for any infraction of the rules.

The two team leaders fenced madly for the ball, the hooped nets at the end of their bats scraping the ground and knocking together. Though hitting another person was forbidden, striking another player's bat with yours was allowed; it was a chancy play, however, as a mistaken strike on flesh would give the hit player a free shot at the gate. So the two players whacked away until the Heron scooped the ball up and flicked it back to one of his teammates, and the running began.

Opponents ran at the ball carrier, who twisted through them as long as he could, then passed the ball with a flick of his bat, into the net of one of his teammates. If the ball fell to the ground then most of the players nearby converged on it, bats clattering violently as they struggled for possession. Two players from each team stood back from this scrum, on defense in case an opponent caught up the ball and made a dash for the gate.

Soon enough it became clear that Fromwest had played lacrosse before, presumably among the Doorkeepers. He was not as young as most of the other players, nor as fleet as the fastest runners on each side, but the fastest were set guarding each other, and Fromwest had only to face the biggest of the Bear-Wolf-Beaver-Turtle team, who could counter his low and solid mass with body checks, but did not have Fromwest's quickness. The foreigner held his bat in both hands like a scythe, out low to the side or before him, as if inviting a slash that would knock the ball free. But his opponents soon learned that such a slash would never land, and if they tried it, Fromwest would spin awkwardly and be gone, stumbling forward quite quickly for a big short man. When other opponents blocked him, his passes to open teammates were like shots from a bow; they were if anything perhaps too hard, as his teammates had some trouble catching his throws. But if they did, off to the gate they scampered, waving their bats to confuse the final gate guard, and screaming along with the excited crowd. Fromwest never shouted or said a word, but played in an uncanny silence, never taunting the other team or even meeting their eyes, but watching either the ball or, it seemed, the sky. He played as if in a trance, as if confused; and yet when his teammates were tracked down and blocked, he was always somehow open for a pass, no matter how hard his guard, or soon guards, ran to cover him. Surrounded teammates, desperately keeping their bat free to throw the ball out, would find Fromwest there in the only direction the ball could be thrown, stumbling but miraculously open, and they would flip it out to him and he would snare the ball dexterously and be off on one of his uncertain runs, cutting behind people and across the field at odd angles, wrong-headed angles, until he was blocked and an opportunity to pass opened, and one of his hard throws would flick over the grass as if on a string. It was a pleasure to watch, comical in its awkward look, and the crowd roared as the Deer-Snipe-Hawk-Heron team threw the ball past the diving guardian and through the gate. Seldom had a first score happened faster.

After that the Bear-Wolf-Beaver-Turtle team did what it could to stop Fromwest, but they were puzzled by his strange responses, and could not defend well against him. If they ganged up on him, he passed out to his fast young teammates, who were growing bolder with their success. If they tried to cover him singly, he weaved and bobbed and stumbled in seeming confusion past his guard, until he was within striking distance of the gate, when he would spin, suddenly balanced, his bat at knee height, and with a turn of the wrist launch the ball through the gate like an arrow. No one there had ever seen such hard throws.

Between scores they gathered on the sidelines to drink water and maple water. The Bear-Wolf-Beaver-Turtle team conferred grimly, made substitutions. After that an “accidental” bat blow to Fromwest's head gashed his scalp and left him covered with his own red blood, but the foul gave him a free shot, which he converted from near midfield, to a great roar. And it did not stop his weird but effective play, nor gain his opponents even a glance from him. Iagogeh said to her niece, “He plays as if the other team were ghosts. He plays as if he were out there by himself, trying to learn how to run more gracefully.” She was a connoisseur of the game, and it made her happy to see it.

Much more quickly than was normal, the match was four to one in favor of the junior side, and the senior tribes gathered to discuss strategy. The women gave out gourds of water and maple water, and Iagogeh, a Hawk herself, sidled next to Fromwest and offered him a water gourd, as she had seen earlier that that was all he was taking.