At six months, Isaac remained birdlike and remote, always looking into the distance, intent on some far-off mystery of leaves and light and shadow. By his first birthday, he had an otherworldly dignity, a tiny quiet unsmiling boy with deep-set elvish eyes, who spent a great deal of his time examining the kaleidoscope of his own fingers, entranced by the patterns they made. She began to hope that his silence had its roots in deafness, for he did not babble, did not turn toward her when she called his name, seemed not to hear the Runa children around him as they squabbled and played and teased and huffed in breathy laughter. But one day, he said, “Sipaj,” and repeated it endlessly until the word for “Hear me!” became as meaningless as a mantra for all who listened. Then the silence closed in again.
As his second birthday approached, he seemed to have achieved a state of unassailable self-containment: a precocious Zen master without needs, without desires. He would nurse when Sofia placed her nipple in his mouth; later, he would eat when food was placed on his tongue, drink if water were brought to his lips. He would allow himself to be picked up and held, but he never raised his arms to anyone. Carried about by his Runa playmates as though he were a doll, he would wait unmoving and unmoved for the interruption of his reverie to cease; put down, he would return to his meditation as though the incident had not occurred.
Inside his invisible citadel, it seemed, there was a perfection from which the outside world could not distract or tempt him. He sat for hours, still and well balanced as a Yogi, his face sometimes transformed by a smile of shattering beauty, as though privately pleased by some secret, sacred thought.
Sofia did not have to ask what would have been done with a Runa baby so abnormal. Like a Spartan exposing his deformed infant on a wolf-prowled hillside, a Runa father would have given a defective child up to the djanada—veal for Jana’ata aristocrats. Perhaps the Runa did not realize there was anything wrong with Isaac, or perhaps they didn’t care; Isaac was not Runa and so the rules for him were different. As far as Sofia could tell, they simply accepted Isaac’s solitary silence as they accepted his lack of tail and his hairless body, as they accepted nearly everything in their world: with placid good humor and unruffled calm.
So Sofia, too, tried to accept her son as he was, but it was not easy to watch her child stare for hours at his hands or sit patting the ground with a quiet unchanging tattoo as he listened to some inner melody. As beautiful and inhuman as an angel, Isaac would have been difficult for any mother to love, and Sofia Mendes’s life had provided little opportunity to practice loving.
In the most hidden region of her soul, she felt an unspeakable relief that her son desired so little of her. For years, the only measure she had of how deeply she felt the loss of her parents was the unreasoning terror that swept through her at the mere thought of dying young and orphaning a child of her own. There were some compensations for Isaac’s condition, she told herself. If she died, he’d hardly notice.
She would realize later how close she’d come to madness. She’d looked over the edge of it, dizzy and careless at the brink, by the time Isaac was four years old. It was then that Supaari and his infant daughter arrived in Trucha Sai, brought there by Djalao and several other VaKashani women. The forest Runa showed no amazement at his unexpected appearance in a haven they had always kept a secret from their Jana’ata masters; it was their nature to accept things without much questioning, and Supaari VaGayjur had always been different from other djanada. But if the Runa were as calm as ever, Sofia Mendes was rocked by the strength of her emotions. Supaari was Jana’ata and yet, when she first saw him, she did not think of riot or death, of oppression or exploitation or cruelty, but only of friendship and an end to loneliness.
It was the first time since Isaac’s birth that she had found something to thank God for.
“THEY TOLD ME YOU WERE DEAD,” SUPAARI SAID IN H’INGLISH, STARING at the tiny foreigner. Horrified, he spun away and walked a few paces and then returned to her, like a scavenger returning to a carcass. He reached down toward Sofia’s face, disfigured by the tripled scar, and felt even more ashamed when she seemed to flinch away from his touch. “I would have looked for you,” he said, pleading for understanding. “The VaKashani told me you were dead!”
Because he expected it, he saw hatred and blame in her face. Exhausted from his journey and all that had gone before it, staggered by the sheer majestic variety of ways he had managed to be wrong about things, the Jana’ata sank by degrees, weight shifting from feet to tail to knees to haunches until at last he slumped on the ground, head down between hands sunken into the forest humus. Her wordless reproach—her very existence—seemed to him a killing blow and he was fervently wishing for some quick death when he felt her small hands on each side of his head, lifting it.
“Sipaj, Supaari,” she said, kneeling so that she could look into his eyes, “someone’s heart is very glad you have come here.”
Bleakly he thought, She didn’t understand me. She has forgotten her own language. “Someone thought you were gone,” he whispered. “Someone would have tried to find you.”
He rolled heavily into a sitting position, knees akimbo, and looked around: sleeping shelters, with their graceful sloping thatched roofs, creaking and flexing in the breeze; woven windbreaks decorated with flowers and ribbons; raised sitting platforms paved with beautifully made cushions. Runa, going about their lives, untouched by Jana’ata law or custom. Apart from the awful disfigurement, the little foreigner appeared well.
“Sipaj, Sofia,” he said finally, “someone has a great talent for error. Perhaps it was better for you to be free of his help.”
She said nothing and he tried to read the expression on her face, to make sense of her scent, her posture. It was unnerving, this inability to be sure of what anything meant, knowing now how little he had understood Sandoz, wondering if he had even been wrong to believe that Ha’an had cared for him. “I think,” he said slowly in K’San, for Ruanja did not have what he needed and he believed Sofia had forgotten H’inglish, “I think that you will hate me when you know what I have done. Do you understand this word, ‘hate’?”
“Apologies.” She joined him on the ground, sitting cross-legged on the low grassy herbage that covered the clearing. “Someone has forgotten your language. Someone knew only a little.” She could see how tired he was and the long, handsome face seemed thin to her, its elegant bones more prominent than she remembered. “Sipaj, Supaari, such a long journey you have made,” she began, the Ruanja formula as natural to her now as if she had lived with it all her life. “Surely, you are hungry. Will you—”
He stopped her with a single stubby claw pressed gently against her lips. “Please,” he said in a tone that Anne Edwards had interpreted as wry. “Please, don’t offer.” He threw his head up and away from her. “How can I eat?” he asked the sky in K’San. “How can I eat!”
From out of the crowd surrounding Supaari’s VaKashani escort, Djalao came forward, having heard his cry. She was carrying the sturdy basket she had packed with provisions for him and his child and dumped it abruptly on the ground. “Eat as you always have,” she said quietly, but with a hardness that Sofia had never before heard in a Runao’s voice.
Some kind of unspoken understanding passed between Djalao and Supaari then, but it was beyond Sofia’s ability to read from their body language. The children—scampering and chasing one another, excited by the visitors and the break in routine—became louder and more unruly by the minute, and before Sofia could call out a warning, Kanchay’s daughter Puska took advantage of her father’s absorption in adult talk to leap onto his back, instantly pushing off it with an arching joy-jump that tipped Supaari’s basket over. Unruffled, Kanchay separated himself from the adults’ conversation, repacking the basket’s contents quickly before the children could catch the scent, and then tore off, bent over and arms flung wide, gently barreling into the little mob of youngsters, sweeping them into a delighted, squirming heap.
Smiling, Sofia
looked around for Isaac, concerned that he had wandered off while everyone was preoccupied. But there he was: lying on his back, watching winged seeds spiral down toward his face from the w’ralia above him. Sofia sighed and returned her gaze to Supaari, sitting dazed on the ground.
“Sipaj, Fia. Everything has changed,” he said. He glanced up at Djalao VaKashan, and his ears flattened. “Someone didn’t understand!” he cried. “Someone knew but didn’t understand. Everything has changed.”
“Sipaj, Supaari,” Djalao said, standing above him. “Eat. Everything remains as it was.”
Not what—who is in the basket? Sofia thought, realizing now that Kanchay had repacked it quickly to protect the children from an early understanding. Chilled, staring at Supaari, she thought, He eats Runa. He is djanada.
It was a long time before any of them could speak. “Sipaj, Supaari, we are what we are,” Sofia said at last with the simple Runa logic that was, for the time being, all she could muster. Standing, she grasped the Jana’ata’s arm in a token effort to lift him to his feet. He looked up at her, distracted. “Come and eat. Life goes on,” she said, tugging on his arm a little. “We-and-you-also will think of problems later.”
SUPAARI GOT UP AND TRIED TO CARRY THE BASKET AWAY FROM THE clearing so he could eat downwind and beyond the lines of Runa sight. He must always have known what he was doing at some level; even before, it had seemed unconscionable to eat meat in the presence of Runa. Snarling softly, he struggled with the basket—the handles of which were, after all, suitable only for a Runao to carry—and felt even worse when Kanchay climbed out of the tangle of children to help him.
The girl Kinsa, neither adult nor child herself, had sat murmuring to Ha’anala all this time, not quite sure where she belonged. Seeing Supaari move off, she decided to follow along, carrying the baby on her back. Sofia, walking beside her, reached out and put a finger under the infant’s tiny curved claws. “Supaari!” she cried. “Yours? But how? Someone thought—”
“It is a long song,” he said, as Sofia took Ha’anala in her arms and Kanchay calmly unpacked a portion of meat. “When someone arrived in Kashan after the riot—” He paused, looking again at her terrible scarred face. “You understand this word, ‘riot’?” Sofia looked up from the baby cradled in her lap and lifted her chin in affirmation. He went on, “The VaKashani were in a great confusion. So many were gone and among them, most of the Elders. There was no one to tell it clearly and there was everywhere fierno, even days after the culling. Your ‘lander’ was still there, but the VaKashani said that all the foreigners were gone. The carcasses were eaten, they said.”
She had been thinking what a joy it was to have an infant meet her eye, but hearing this.… Of course, she thought. Meat is meat. But even after what happened to Anne and D.W., it had never occurred to her that the others had been—. Oh, Jimmy! she thought, throat closing spasmodically.
Mouth dry, Supaari put his meal aside. “Later, when it was nearly dark, Askama came forward. She was only a child, but she knew you foreigners well, so someone listened to her words. She used H’inglish because Ruanja is confusing for this. She said: Meelo is not dead—” He stopped when Sofia changed color abruptly. He could see the pulse racing at her throat, understood now the full tragedy of what he had to tell her. “You didn’t know?”
“Where is Meelo now?” she asked. “My God. My God, if he’s alive it changes everything—”
“He is gone!” Supaari cried. “Someone is so sorry! Do you understand? Someone would have looked for you, but the VaKashani said you were all gone and ‘gone’ can mean two things! Askama said only Meelo is not dead, that he was with the Jana’ata patrol. She said nothing of the foreigner Marc or of you—”
“Marc!” Sofia cried. “Marc is alive, too?”
“No! He is gone!” Supaari doubled over in frustration. “Sandoz is gone also, but a different way!” Tired as he was, he got to his feet and began to pace. “Ruanja is impossible for this! Can you remember any H’inglish?” he demanded, swinging around to look at her.
“Yes,” she said. Supaari’s baby began to keen. Kinsa, too, was becoming upset by the intensity of the emotion and seemed about to cry herself. Handing the infant to Kanchay, Sofia stood as well and stopped Supaari’s agitated prowling with a hand on his arm. “Yes. I remember English,” she said again. “Supaari, where is Marc? Where is Sandoz now? Are they dead, or not where we can see them?”
“Marc is dead. It is my fault. I meant no harm!” Inexplicably, he held up his hands, but she was too distracted to see any point in the gesture. “The hasta’akala doesn’t make us bleed—”
“Supaari, for God’s sake, where is Sandoz?”
“The others sent him home—”
“What others?” she cried, frantic now. “What do you mean, home? To Kashan?”
“No, not Kashan. There were other foreigners who came—”
“Other foreigners! Supaari, do you mean people from another river valley or people like—”
“Foreigners like you. With no tails. From H’earth.”
She was swaying and he caught her before she fell, pressing his hands against her shoulders. “I’m all right,” she told him, but he could see that she wasn’t. She sat on the ground and put her head in her hands. Kanchay gave the wailing baby to Kinsa and told the girl to go back to the clearing and stay with the others. He came and sat behind Sofia, arms around her shoulders protectively, and she leaned back to let him know she appreciated his gesture, but spoke again to Supaari, as calmly as she could. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
IT TOOK A LONG TIME, AND THREE LANGUAGES. HE TOLD HER HOW HE had tracked down Sandoz and found that Marc was alive as well but only just; told about bribing the patrol commander, and about the hasta’akala and how he’d meant only to protect Marc and Sandoz from being tried for inciting the Runa to riot. “You see?” he asked her, showing his hands again to display the thin, tough webbing between his fingers. “It is nothing for us—it only weakens the hands if the webs are clipped. But for the foreigners, there was so much blood and Marc died.” And then there was the season in Gayjur with Sandoz, and Supaari’s own fear that Emilio would perish of loneliness.
That much, God help her, Sofia understood. “But others came,” she reminded Supaari. “Where are the other foreigners now?” When he didn’t answer, she leaned forward to clutch at his arm and cried, “Supaari, did they all leave? Oh, my God. Don’t tell me they’re gone! Did they all go back to Earth?”
“I don’t know.” He turned away, ears down. “They sent Sandoz away first. The others sojourned with me awhile in Gayjur.” He stopped speaking abruptly.
“They’re gone, aren’t they,” she said dully. “Are they dead, or did they go back to Earth?”
“I don’t know!” he insisted, but she could sense that he was concealing something. Finally, he spoke again, very quietly. “I don’t know, but I think … I may have created a market for …” There was a long silence. “Sofia, what is this word: ‘celibate’?”
She looked up, amazed that he should ask this now. But it wasn’t like him to evade.… How could she explain? “It means abstention from sex.” Supaari looked blank; English was no good. She tried again in Ruanja. “To make a child begin, there is an action—” He lifted his chin. “Among us, this action is also done for pleasure. Do you understand? For enjoyment.” Again, the chin went up but slower this time, and he was staring at her intently. “A celibate is one who never … behaves this action—not to begin children or for pleasure. Do you understand?”
“Even if they are first- or second-born?”
“Birth rank makes no difference among us—”
“A celibate is VaHaptaa, then. A criminal without rights?”
“No!” she said, startled. “Sipaj, Supaari, even this one finds celibacy hard to understand.” She paused, unsure how to put this, which language to use, how much to tell him. “Men such as Sandoz and Marc and Dee set themselves apart. They choose
not to behave this action for children or for pleasure. They are celibates so that they may serve God more completely.”
“Who are ‘god’?”
She took shelter in grammar. “Who is, not who are. There is only one God.” She said this without thinking, but before she could even attempt to explain monotheism, Supaari cut her off.
“Sandoz said he was celibate—he said he took no wife so that he could serve many!” the Jana’ata cried indignantly, standing once more and walking away from her. He spun and glared, ears cocked forward, on the attack. “He said he was celibate. Celibates serve god. God must be many.”
Q.E.D., she thought, sighing. Where were the Jesuits when you needed them? “God is one. His children are many. We are all his children. Sandoz served God by serving His children.” Supaari sat down abruptly and rubbed the sides of his head. “Sipaj, Supaari,” she said sympathetically, reaching out to touch the lean-cheeked, wolfish face. “Does your head hurt, too?”
“Yes. You make no sense!” He stopped himself, and changed his mind and then his language, going back to H’inglish. “Maybe you make sense to you. I don’t understand.”
Sofia smiled slightly. “Anne said that’s the beginning of wisdom.” He looked at her, mouth open. “Wisdom: true knowing,” she explained. “Anne said wisdom begins when you discover the difference between ‘That doesn’t make sense’ and ‘I don’t understand.’ ”
“Then I must be very wisdom. I don’t understand anything.” His eyes closed. When he opened them, he looked as though he might be sick, but soldiered on in the jumbled creole that was all they had to work with. “Sipaj, Fia. What means in H’inglish ‘serve’? Can service mean the behavior for—for having pleasure?”
Children of God Page 17
