Four Ways to Forgiveness

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “A little over seven years.”

  She winced. “Were you lucky?”

  It was a queer question, not coming out the way she meant, but he took it at value. “Yes,” he said. “Always. The men I went there with were killed. Most of them in the first few years. We lost three hundred thousand men on Yeowe. They never talk about it. Two-thirds of the veot men in Voe Deo were killed. If it was lucky to live, I was lucky.” He looked down at his clasped hands, locked into himself.

  After a while she said softly, “I hope you still are.”

  He said nothing.

  “How long has it been?” he asked, and she said, clearing her throat, after an automatic glance at her watch, “Sixty hours.”

  Their captors had not come yesterday at what had become a regular time, about eight in the morning. Nor had they come this morning.

  With nothing left to eat and now no water left, they had grown increasingly silent and inert. It was hours since either had said anything. He had put off asking the time as long as he could prevent himself.

  “This is horrible,” she said, “this is so horrible. I keep thinking…”

  “They won’t abandon you,” he said. “They feel a responsibility.”

  “Because I’m a woman?”

  “Partly.”

  “Shit.”

  He remembered that in the other life her coarseness had offended him.

  “They’ve been taken, shot. Nobody bothered to find out where they were keeping us,” she said.

  Having thought the same thing several hundred times, he had nothing to say.

  “It’s just such a horrible place to die,” she said. “It’s sordid. I stink. I’ve stunk for twenty days. Now I have diarrhea because I’m scared. But I can’t shit anything. I’m thirsty and I can’t drink.”

  “Solly,” he said sharply. It was the first time he had spoken her name. “Be still. Hold fast.”

  She stared at him.

  “Hold fast to what?”

  He did not answer at once and she said, “You won’t let me touch you!”

  “Not to me—”

  “Then to what? There isn’t anything!” He thought she was going to cry, but she stood up, took the empty tray, and beat it against the door till it smashed into fragments of wicker and dust. “Come! God damn you! Come, you bastards!” she shouted. “Let us out of here!”

  After that she sat down again on the mattress. “Well,” she said.

  “Listen,” he said.

  They had heard it before: no city sounds came down to this cellar, wherever it was, but this was something bigger, explosions, they both thought.

  The door rattled.

  They were both afoot when it opened: not with the usual clash and clang, but slowly. A man waited outside; two men came in. One, armed, they had never seen; the other, the tough-faced young man they called the spokesman, looked as if he had been running or fighting, dusty, worn-out, a little dazed. He closed the door. He had some papers in his hand. The four of them stared at one another in silence for a minute.

  “Water,” Solly said. “You bastards!”

  “Lady,” the spokesman said, “I’m sorry.” He was not listening to her. His eyes were not on her. He was looking at Teyeo, for the first time. “There is a lot of fighting,” he said.

  “Who’s fighting?” Teyeo asked, hearing himself drop into the even tone of authority, and the young man respond to it as automatically: “Voe Deo. They sent troops. After the funeral, they said they would send troops unless we surrendered. They came yesterday. They go through the city killing They know all the Old Believer centers. Some of ours.” He had a bewildered, accusing note in his voice.

  “What funeral?” Solly said.

  When he did not answer, Teyeo repeated it: “What funeral?”

  “The lady’s funeral, yours. Here—I brought net prints—A state funeral. They said you died in the explosion.”

  “What Goddamned explosion?” Solly said in her hoarse, parched voice, and this time he answered her: “At the Festival. The Old Believers. The fire, Tual’s fire, there were explosives in it. Only it went off too soon. We knew their plan. We rescued you from that, Lady,” he said, suddenly turning to her with that same accusatory tone.

  “Rescued me, you asshole!” she shouted, and Teyeo’s dry lips split in a startled laugh, which he repressed at once.

  “Give me those,” he said, and the young man handed him the papers.

  “Get us water!” Solly said.

  “Stay here, please. We need to talk,” Teyeo said, instinctively holding on to his ascendancy. He sat down on the mattress with the net prints. Within a few minutes he and Solly had scanned the reports of the shocking disruption of the Festival of Forgiveness, the lamentable death of the Envoy of the Ekumen in a terrorist act executed by the cult of Old Believers, the brief mention of the death of a Voe Dean Embassy guard in the explosion, which had killed over seventy priests and onlookers, the long descriptions of the state funeral, reports of unrest, terrorism, reprisals, then reports of the Palace gratefully accepting offers of assistance from Voe Deo in cleaning out the cancer of terrorism…

  “So,” he said finally. “You never heard from the Palace. Why did you keep us alive?”

  Solly looked as if she thought the question lacked tact, but the spokesman answered with equal bluntness, “We thought your country would ransom you.”

  “They will,” Teyeo said. “Only you have to keep your government from knowing we’re alive. If you—”

  “Wait,” Solly said, touching his hand. “Hold on. I want to think about this stuff. You’d better not leave the Ekumen out of the discussion. But getting in touch with them is the tricky bit.”

  “If there are Voe Dean troops here, all I need is to get a message to anyone in my command, or the Embassy Guards.”

  Her hand was still on his, with a warning pressure. She shook the other one at the spokesman, finger outstretched: “You kidnapped an Envoy of the Ekumen, you asshole! Now you have to do the thinking you didn’t do ahead of time. And I do too, because I don’t want to get blown away by your Goddamned little government for turning up alive and embarrassing them. Where are you hiding, anyhow? Is there any chance of us getting out of this room, at least?”

  The man, with that edgy, frantic look, shook his head “We are all down here now,” he said. “Most of the time. You stay here safe.”

  “Yes, you’d better keep your passports safe!” Solly said. “Bring us some water, damn it! Let us talk a while. Come back in an hour.”

  The young man leaned towards her suddenly, his face contorted. “What the hell kind of lady you are,” he said. “You foreign filthy stinking cunt.”

  Teyeo was on his feet, but her grip on his hand had tightened: after a moment of silence, the spokesman and the other man turned to the door, rattled the lock, and were let out.

  “Our,” she said, looking dazed.

  “Don’t,” he said, “don’t—” He did not know how to say it. “They don’t understand,” he said. “It’s better if I talk.”

  “Of course. Women don’t give orders. Women don’t talk. Shitheads! I thought you said they felt so responsible for me!”

  “They do,” he said. “But they’re young men. Fanatics. Very frightened.” And you talk to them as if they were assets, he thought, but did not say.

  “Well so am I frightened!” she said, with a little spurt of tears. She wiped her eyes and sat down again among the papers. “God,” she said. “We’ve been dead for twenty days. Buried for fifteen. Who do you think they buried?”

  Her grip was powerful; his wrist and hand hurt. He massaged the place gently, watching her.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I would have hit him.”

  “Oh, I know. Goddamn chivalry. And the one with the gun would have blown your head off. Listen, Teyeo. Are you sure all you have to do is get word to somebody in the Army or the Guard?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You’re sure your cou
ntry isn’t playing the same game as Gatay?”

  He stared at her. As he understood her, slowly the anger he had stifled and denied, all these interminable days of imprisonment with her, rose in him, a fiery flood of resentment, hatred, and contempt.

  He was unable to speak, afraid he would speak to her as the young Patriot had done.

  He went around to his side of the room and sat on his side of the mattress, somewhat turned from her. He sat cross-legged, one hand lying lightly in the other.

  She said some other things. He did not listen or reply.

  After a while she said, “We’re supposed to be talking, Teyeo. We’ve only got an hour. I think those kids might do what we tell them, if we tell them something plausible—something that’ll work.”

  He would not answer. He bit his lip and held still.

  “Teyeo, what did I say? I said something wrong. I don’t know what it was. I’m sorry.”

  “They would—” He struggled to control his lips and voice. “They would not betray us.”

  “Who? The Patriots?”

  He did not answer.

  “Voe Deo, you mean? Wouldn’t betray us?”

  In the pause that followed her gentle, incredulous question, he knew that she was right; that it was all collusion among the powers of the world; that his loyalty to his country and service was wasted, as futile as the rest of his life She went on talking, palliating, saying he might very well be right He put his head into his hands, longing for tears, dry as stone.

  She crossed the line. He felt her hand on his shoulder.

  “Teyeo, I am very sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to insult you! I honor you. You’ve been all my hope and help.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “If I—If we had some water.”

  She leapt up and battered on the door with her fists and a sandal.

  “Bastards, bastards,” she shouted.

  Teyeo got up and walked, three steps and turn, three steps and turn, and halted on his side of the room. “If you’re right,” he said, speaking slowly and formally, “we and our captors are in danger not only from Gatay but from my own people, who may…who have been furthering these anti-Government factions, in order to make an excuse to bring troops here…to pacify Gatay. That’s why they know where to find the factionalists. We are…we’re lucky our group were…were genuine.”

  She watched him with a tenderness that he found irrelevant.

  “What we don’t know,” he said, “is what side the Ekumen will take. That is…There really is only one side.”

  “No, there’s ours, too. The underdogs. If the Embassy sees Voe Deo pulling a takeover of Gatay, they won’t interfere, but they won’t approve. Especially if it involves as much repression as it seems to.”

  “The violence is only against the anti-Ekumen factions.”

  “They still won’t approve. And if they find out I’m alive, they’re going to be quite pissed at the people who claimed I went up in a bonfire. Our problem is how to get word to them. I was the only person representing the Ekumen in Gatay, Who’d be a safe channel?”

  “Any of my men. But…”

  “They’ll have been sent back; why keep Embassy Guards here when the Envoy’s dead and buried? I suppose we could try. Ask the boys to try, that is.” Presently she said wistfully, “I don’t suppose they’d just let us go—in disguise? It would be the safest for them.”

  “There is an ocean,” Teyeo said.

  She beat her head. “Oh, why don’t they bring some water…” Her voice was like paper sliding on paper. He was ashamed of his anger, his grief, himself. He wanted to tell her that she had been a help and hope to him too, that he honored her, that she was brave beyond belief; but none of the words would come He felt empty, worn-out. He felt old. If only they would bring water!

  Water was given them at last; some food, not much and not fresh. Clearly their captors were in hiding and under duress. The spokesman—he gave them his war name, Kergat, Gatayan for Liberty—told them that whole neighborhoods had been cleared out, set afire, that Voe Dean troops were in control of most of the city including the Palace, and that almost none of this was being reported in the net. “When this is over Voe Deo will own my country,” he said with disbelieving fury.

  “Not for long,” Teyeo said.

  “Who can defeat them?” the young man said.

  “Yeowe. The idea of Yeowe.”

  Both Kergat and Solly stared at him.

  “Revolution,” he said. “How long before Werel becomes New Yeowe?”

  “The assets?” Kergat said, as if Teyeo had suggested a revolt of cattle or of flies. “They’ll never organise.”

  “Look out when they do,” Teyeo said mildly.

  “You don’t have any assets in your group?” Solly asked Kergat, amazed. He did not bother to answer. He had classed her as an asset, Teyeo saw. He understood why; he had done so himself, in the other life, when such distinctions made sense.

  “Your bondswoman, Rewe,” he asked Solly—“was she a friend?”

  “Yes,” Solly said, then, “No. I wanted her to be.”

  “The makil?”

  After a pause she said, “I think so.”

  “Is he still here?”

  She shook her head. “The troupe was going on with their tour, a few days after the Festival.”

  “Travel has been restricted since the Festival,” Kergat said. “Only government and troops.”

  “He’s Voe Dean If he’s still here, they’ll probably send him and his troupe home. Try and contact him, Kergat.”

  “A makil?” the young man said, with that same distaste and incredulity. “One of your Voe Dean homosexual clowns?”

  Teyeo shot a glance at Solly: Patience, patience.

  “Bisexual actors,” Solly said, disregarding him, but fortunately Kergat was determined to disregard her.

  “A clever man,” Teyeo said, “with connections. He could help us. You and us. It could be worth it If he’s still here. We must make haste.”

  “Why would he help us? He is Voe Dean.”

  “An asset, not a citizen,” Teyeo said. “And a member of Hame, the asset underground, which works against the government of Voe Deo. The Ekumen admits the legitimacy of Hame. He’ll report to the Embassy that a Patriot group has rescued the Envoy and is holding her safe, in hiding, in extreme danger. The Ekumen, I think, will act promptly and decisively. Correct, Envoy?”

  Suddenly reinstated, Solly gave a short, dignified nod. “But discreetly,” she said. “They’ll avoid violence, if they can use political coercion.”

  The young man was trying to get it all into his mind and work it through. Sympathetic to his weariness, distrust, and confusion, Teyeo sat quietly waiting. He noticed that Solly was sitting equally quietly, one hand lying in the other. She was thin and dirty and her unwashed, greasy hair was in a lank braid. She was brave, like a brave mare, all nerve. She would break her heart before she quit.

  Kergat asked questions; Teyeo answered them, reasoning and reassuring. Occasionally Solly spoke, and Kergat was now listening to her again, uneasily, not wanting to, not after what he had called her. At last he left, not saying what he intended to do; but he had Batikam’s name and an identifying message from Teyeo to the Embassy: “Half-pay veots learn to sing old songs quickly.”

  “What on earth!” Solly said when Kergat was gone.

  “Did you know a man named Old Music, in the Embassy?”

  “Ah! Is he a friend of yours?”

  “He has been kind.”

  “He’s been here on Werel from the start. A First Observer. Rather a powerful man—Yes, and ‘quickly,’ all right…My mind really isn’t working at all. I wish I could lie down beside a little stream, in a meadow, you know, and drink. All day. Every time I wanted to, just stretch my neck out and slup, slup, slup…Running water…In the sunshine…Oh God, oh God, sunshine. Teyeo, this is very difficult. This is harder than ever. Thinking that there maybe is really a way out of here. Only
not knowing. Trying not to hope and not to not hope. Oh, I am so tired of sitting here!”

  “What time is it?”

  “Half past twenty. Night. Dark out. Oh God, darkness! Just to be in the darkness…Is there any way we could cover up that damned biolume? Partly? To pretend we had night, so we could pretend we had day?”

  “If you stood on my shoulders, you could reach it. But how could we fasten a cloth?”

  They pondered, staring at the plaque.

  “I don’t know. Did you notice there’s a little patch of it that looks like it’s dying? Maybe we don’t have to worry about making darkness. If we stay here long enough. Oh, God!”

  “Well,” he said after a while, curiously self-conscious, “I’m tired.” He stood up, stretched, glanced for permission to enter her territory, got a drink of water, returned to his territory, took off his jacket and shoes, by which time her back was turned, took off his trousers, lay down, pulled up the blanket, and said in his mind, “Lord Kamye, let me hold fast to the one noble thing.” But he did not sleep.

  He heard her slight movements; she pissed, poured a little water, took off her sandals, lay down.

  A long time passed.

  “Teyeo.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think…that it would be a mistake…under the circumstances…to make love?”

  A pause.

  “Not under the circumstances,” he said, almost inaudibly. “But—in the other life—”

  A pause.

  “Short life versus long life,” she murmured.

  “Yes.”

  A pause.

  “No,” he said, and turned to her. “No, that’s wrong.” They reached out to each other. They clasped each other, cleaved together, in blind haste, greed, need, crying out together the name of God in their different languages and then like animals in the wordless voice. They huddled together, spent, sticky, sweaty, exhausted, reviving, rejoined, reborn in the body’s tenderness, in the endless exploration, the ancient discovery, the long flight to the new world.

  He woke slowly, in ease and luxury. They were entangled, his face was against her arm and breast; she was stroking his hair, sometimes his neck and shoulder. He lay for a long time aware only of that lazy rhythm and the cool of her skin against his face, under his hand, against his leg.