by John Boyne
The girls were all pretty, but there was one in particular who caught my eye, for she seemed shyer than the rest, remaining mostly silent while her sisters joined in the bawdy jokes of my bathmates. I was accustomed to the obscene conversation of men in places like this—even in Negombo, which prided itself on being a more cultured part of the country, the men treated the women of the bathhouses like whores. Still, despite my desire to block out my surroundings, I remained conscious of the girl I admired, who was standing in a corner of the room, mixing a fresh treatment in a stone bowl from spices and oils. She seemed a little too sophisticated and elegant to be forced to endure the badinage of libidinous men and I shrank back against the side of the enormous tub when she came over, hoping to make it clear that I was traveling alone and not a member of their party. As another of the girls began to bathe the fattest of the men, he grabbed her hand and pushed it down into the water between his legs, making the rest all laugh uproariously when she tried to pull away. It was a disgusting sight to behold but there was nothing that I could do, for there were four of them and only one of me and they were already looking in my direction as if they resented my silence.
“You look angry, friend,” said one of the men. “You don’t like a girl to touch you?”
“I like it well enough,” I replied. “When she has chosen to do so.”
He laughed and shook his head, rolling his eyes contemptuously. “Don’t act the innocent,” he said. “You’re old enough to know how these places make their money.”
I chose not to engage in this dialogue and he soon grew bored of taunting me, rising from the bath, his tumescence an insult to my eyes, before taking one of the girls into a side room from where we were treated to the sounds of his exertions. So disgusted was I by his behavior that I considered leaving, but at this same moment, the girl I liked came over with her bowl of perfumed lather and began to knead it into my skin, producing a deeply comforting sensation. Beneath her breath, she sang a lullaby about a many-colored butterfly that could scarcely be heard above the sounds of laughter from the men, but it was soothing, and when I closed my eyes, I imagined myself a child again, in a time of peace.
When my bath was over, she invited me for a massage, leading me to an empty stall, where I lay down upon towels that had been warmed by hot rocks. As she worked her fingers into the knots of my back, I felt more at ease than I had in a long time. It had been an eternity since a woman had touched me with such feeling and as I let out an involuntary sigh I found, to my embarrassment, that I, too, was growing aroused.
Noticing this, she reached her hand down between my legs as she had undoubtedly been trained to do, but I took her softly by the wrist and shook my head.
“You don’t want this?” she asked, confused, appearing worried that she might have displeased me in some way.
“Not today,” I said, covering myself up. “But thank you.”
She glanced around anxiously. From the other side of the bathhouse door I could hear the noise of the inn as it seeped through the walls, and she told me that the landlord, her father, would beat her if he suspected that she had not satisfied me.
“Your father would do this?” I asked in surprise.
“Of course,” she said. “He has beaten me since I was a girl. This is what men do, no?”
“Not all men, no,” I said. “And you have satisfied me. Truly, you have. I don’t want anything more, I promise. If I am asked, I will only sing your praises.”
She nodded but was clearly baffled by my refusal. I suspected that no man had ever refused her ministrations before and, for a moment, I wondered whether it would be kinder simply to allow her to do what was expected of her. Instead, I dried myself with a rough towel and donned my clothes once again before making my way toward the door, looking forward to the food that awaited me.
Glancing back once more, however, I noticed the innkeeper’s daughter watching me, and our eyes held each other’s for an unusually long time. And then—slowly, as if she were unaccustomed to such things—she smiled.
* * *
• • •
I slept late the next morning. When my eyes finally opened, I pressed them closed again in the vain hope that I might find my way back to the warm, welcoming land that I had just departed, but it was not to be. I rose and dressed and returned to the center of the hostelry, where the innkeeper, a big brute of a man, had laid out food for breakfast. As most of the other travelers had already woken and departed, however, there was little left for me.
“Eat,” he told me, pointing toward the scraps that remained on the table. “It’s that or nothing.”
I looked at the scraps that remained in disappointment but soon forgot my hunger when the girl who had massaged me the previous night reappeared. I blushed a little, remembering that she had featured quite prominently in my lurid dreams, and when she glanced in my direction, she seemed confused by the blossoming redness of my cheeks, before placing some potato curry and a little dahl before me.
“Where did you get that?” asked her father, grabbing her roughly by the shoulder, and she lowered her eyes when she replied.
“It would have gone to waste otherwise,” she said. “I heated it up in a pan for our guest.”
He seemed unimpressed but walked away, disappearing into another room, and when I summoned the courage to ask the girl her name, she told me that it was Kasi. I smiled and told her that in my village, this was a word that meant “radiant.”
“I do not feel radiant,” she replied with a shrug.
“Sometimes our greatest luster comes from within.”
“You are leaving this morning?” she asked, ignoring my pathetic attempts at flattery, and I nodded.
“I am.”
“For where?”
“I travel onward to Anuradhapura,” I told her.
“They say that there are great palaces there,” she replied, glancing toward the door as if she could scarcely even imagine a world that existed beyond her own narrow universe. “And the most powerful men in the land live there in splendor. The ladies bathe in goat’s milk and the men cut each other’s heads off if they dare insult a woman.”
“It is true, I think.”
“But it is a long way from Padeniya. You will not make it there today.”
“No, I plan on breaking the journey overnight again,” I told her. “In a place like this, I expect. And then, all being well, I will arrive in the capital tomorrow.”
“Be warned that there are robbers along these roads. Many who would slit your throat for the sandals on your feet. You are a merchant? You are carrying goods to trade?”
“No,” I told her. “I am a simple craftsman, that’s all. I work with bronze. Let me show you.”
I returned to the small cubicle in which I had slept, passing the man who had seemed familiar to me the night before. He was awake now, too, but stood with his back to me as he packed his belongings in his satchel and, although I once again felt the strange twist of recognition, I did not want to leave Kasi alone for too long and so retrieved my saddlebag, removing one of the packages before bringing it outside and handing it to her. I had chosen a small replica of a child, the entire piece less than half the size of my palm in height, and her eyes opened wide in admiration as she examined it. I couldn’t stop myself from staring at her; her pupils were of a blue tourmaline such as I had never seen before.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, holding the figurine in the air, where the light streaming through the window caught hold of it, sending a spark of gold dancing against the gray stone wall of the hut. “You made this?”
“I did,” I said. “It represents Uttia, the youngest of King Aggabodhi’s children. It’s the Queen’s birthday in a few days’ time and I was commissioned to fashion bronze icons of each member of the royal family as a gift.”
“But how do you create somethi
ng so intricate?” she asked, and I explained my process in simple terms.
“It can be dangerous, though,” I told her. “Should any of the roasted clay fall on your skin, the pain can be excruciating. Look at what I have endured over the years.”
I held out my hands, displaying the small burns and scars that I had acquired since my childhood experimentations with bronze had begun.
“This one,” I said, pointing to a small black welt on the third finger of my right hand, “was one that I received while making this very replica. It still stings, especially in heat.”
She examined it for a moment before standing up and disappearing into a side room. I stared after her, uncertain whether I had said something to offend her, but when she returned, she was holding a small bowl filled with a white paste, infused with the scent of lavender and the aloe vera plant, before taking my hands in her own and massaging the cream into my skin. The sensation was both soothing and stimulating, the touch of her skin against my own deeply affecting.
“Tell me your name, traveler,” she said, and when I whispered it to her, she repeated it back to me, her voice carrying like music in the air. I took my right hand back and placed it behind her head, pulling her forward slowly, but just as our lips were about to meet, a sound came from behind and I saw two of the men from the previous night’s bath stepping into the room. Noticing my sculpture on the table, one reached across and lifted it, weighing it in his hands. I watched in fear, nervous of saying anything in case I antagonized him and he dashed it on the stone floor. When he tossed it to his friend, my heart somersaulted and I cried out. Fortunately, the other man had sure hands.
“This must be worth some money,” said the second man. “Where did you buy it?”
“I didn’t buy it, I made it,” I said, and they looked at each other for a moment before grinning and throwing it back to me. I wrapped it in its packaging again, thankful that no harm had come to it, and returned to my food as the men left some coins on the table and departed.
“Pigs,” said Kasi after the door closed behind them. “They come from the Kelani river, passing through here once a month, and treat all the girls like filth.”
“Have they hurt you?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said, and from her expression, I knew that she understood me very well. “Many times. But who can stop them?”
I felt a great rage burn within. The idea of those animals performing the marriage act with this girl against her will offended me to my core. Images of slaughter came into my mind but I brushed them away, for I had already been responsible for two deaths in my lifetime and I did not wish to add a third to that number.
Finally, the food eaten and the time passing, I had no choice but to gather my things. As I prepared to depart, Kasi met me at the door.
“You will come back again?” she asked me, and I nodded.
“On my way home,” I told her. “I’ll be in Anuradhapura for several days, I think, but I will sleep here again on my journey back to Negombo.”
She leaned forward and this time, uninterrupted, we kissed.
When I went outside to collect my horse from the stable, I felt a burst of exhilaration within my chest. Riding north, it seemed as if I were being swept along by the Buddha himself.
GREENLAND
A.D. 623
MY SECOND DAY of traveling proved so arduous I began to wonder whether my father had been right when he predicted that I would surely perish before finding Angerdlánguak, the leader of the Eskimo people of the North, who, it was said, had six thousand men at his command. I doubted the world could even contain such a vast number of souls.
“You’ve never traveled more than a few miles from home,” M’arak had remarked the night before I departed, not long after we’d buried my aunt and he had failed to persuade me to remain at home until the weather turned. “You can’t even cast a fishing hole without falling in. And you expect to travel hundreds of miles without incident?”
“I’ve only fallen in once,” I told him irritably. “And that was when I was a boy and Jôrut pushed me.”
He shook his head. “You’ll find yourself in the Unknown World before the day is done.”
In truth, I had been anxious about the journey, but I believed that I had both the will and the stamina to survive whatever hardships might come my way. After all, Angerdlánguak’s own man, Børge, had traveled from the northwestern tip of the world to our village without incident and he was old and fat while I was young and healthy. Although it was true that Børge had brought eight men to assist him on his journey, along with one hundred dogs, while I was traveling alone and had only six canine companions to drive my sledge.
Following the directions that Børge had given me, I steered a straight northern path without veering too close to the western fjords.
Journey north for three days, he had told me. Soon you will hear us, soon you will sense us, soon you will find us.
The conditions were not vastly different to home, the snow was neither deeper beneath my feet nor heavier as it fell from the sky, and I felt in the best possible position to survive the trek. I simply had to ensure that my course was true and my resolve remained strong. I wore the skins of two caribou, one with a layer of fur pressed against my skin and the other with a layer facing out. My hands were encased in fish-skin gloves and, over the previous week, my cousin Haansi had killed four seals and fashioned a new set of mukluks for my feet that rose as far as my knees. My handsome young assistant, Parkk, had sung a lullaby about a many-colored salmon when Haansi presented the mukluks to me and the two had collapsed in laughter, although I’d failed to see the joke.
The dogs did their best to keep up a good pace but, late in the afternoon, my eyelids began to twitch involuntarily from snow blindness and I feared that the drift would prove so deep the sledge would struggle to make sufficient progress. From time to time, I checked the pouch of amulets stored in my satchel to ensure their safety, for if I were to drop them, they would be lost forever and my entire journey would have been for nothing. Of course, I wore a charm around my own neck, too, a simple talisman made from wolf skin and feathers that I’d fashioned in the days leading up to my departure. Whenever my spirits drooped, I pressed my hand against it, allowing its energy to infiltrate my bones and encourage me to keep going.
Fortunately, I had slept surprisingly well the night before, and as hour followed hour, I consoled myself by thinking of the girl I had met, K’asalok, and how much I looked forward to seeing her again on my journey home. It had been a long time since I’d felt such stirrings for a woman and I wondered whether she might be persuaded to share my life and give me children, an idea that had been on my mind for some time now, for at twenty years of age, I was beginning to grow old and as yet had no sons to carry on my name.
* * *
• • •
When a cluster of igloos finally came into view in the distance, I drove the dogs on even faster. There were, perhaps, twenty or thirty large-sized dwellings spread out across the ice so I estimated that at least four hundred people must live in the community, and as I pulled the pack to a halt, a group of men gathered around a fishing hole paused in their conversation and one set his rod down to walk toward me. I greeted him respectfully, asking whether I might find accommodation for the night among his people.
“Your name, stranger?” he asked, and when I told him, he frowned, struggling to pronounce the syllables.
“Still, as long as you can pay, I don’t care what they call you,” he said, adding that his own name was Eipe. “But you’ll find it a dark night for us here. We say goodbye to our oldest friend this very night. He travels toward the Unknown World in a few hours, so our spirits are low.”
I assured him that I had come with enough money for my lodgings and offered my sympathies for the great sadness that had descended upon his people. A group of children emerged from
one of the ice-chambers and took my dogs to be housed and fed while I followed Eipe into the largest of the igloos, where a meal of steamed walrus and musk oxen was served to me. I fell upon it like a wolf and my spirits lifted. An elderly man sat in the center of the room on a raised chair and I watched as dozens of men, women and children approached him, knelt down and invited him to place his hands upon their heads while he closed his eyes and muttered an incantation over them. I had never witnessed such a practice before and wondered whether he was a holy man of some description. His skin was weather-beaten, marked with so many grooves and crevices that only the presence of a pair of bright blue eyes betrayed his humanity. Something about his bearing suggested to me that he had endured much pain in his long life.
“Some, it is true,” replied Eipe when I made this observation to him, and I watched as he observed the scene with a mixture of affection and sorrow in his eyes. “The man’s name is Gudmundur. He was once a teacher here, so is known and revered by all. He taught most of my friends and me how to hunt, fish, throw spears, climb mountains of ice. Also, he is my father.”
I looked up from my meal in surprise. “He is the focus of much attention,” I remarked. “Has he achieved some great milestone?”
“It is he who is traveling to the Unknown World,” replied Eipe with a regretful smile. “We are saying goodbye to him and receiving his blessing before his journey takes him to the land from which no man may return.”
